jack

Darchi's tumbled to her hands and knees on the dark hillside, nearly going head over heels on the slight slope. She hissed under her breath, and the undead owl perched on her shoulder hooted reproachfully.

"I am being careful, Grandmama!" she hissed back. "You're supposed to warn me! That's why we were so pleased to find the owl."

The owl hooted quietly in gentle rebuke, and Darchi cringed inside. She methodically rearranged her limbs until she was sitting securely with her knees clasped in front of her. The owl had flapped the remains of its gigantic wings about her head keeping its balance as she shifted position.

After a moment she spoke more calmly. "I'm sorry, Grandmama. I'm ok."

A gentle, comforting hoot.

"There's the spirit house." Close enough at the bottom of the slope for her to see without the Owl's night eyes. "Can you see anyone?" she asked again.

The owl hooted tiredly.

"Yes, I know you'll tell me," she sighed. "I guess, I just mean, I'm ready."

She rose elegantly to her feet, and took a small, measured step down the hillside, squinting at the dark ground to avoid another tumble. She glanced up fixing the position of the dim shape of the spirit house in her mind, and then down at the slope and took another careful step, and then another. Closer to the corner of the graveyard where foreign dead were buried, hemmed by the smaller, separate, spirit fence. The failings spirit fence. The corpses she might be able to use.

We haven't had the reveal yet, but how did writing yuletide go? This was my fourth year, and third year of doing nanowrimo as well, after which yuletide always feels a lot more possible :)

This year I managed another fairly short story, by which I mean I crammed as much stuff I loved about the characters as possible, but didn't try to write much of a plot.

In retrospect, my first story (Ivan, By and Illyan), which out of all my stories felt like it had the most "stuff" in it, was only 6,000 words, whereas last year's (Cordelia, Gregor and Ivan), which I'd expected was going to turn out about the same, was actually much longer, about 16,000 words.

Escape from the Orc Lair of Unnecessarily Revealing Armour in the second year was the shortest, only 2,000 words, partly due to the "script for comic" format instead of prose. I thought I could have added more scenes but I felt like they wouldn't have added that much.

Somehow how "dense" a story feels is different to how long it actually is. I don't know if that's just a story being "better", or if it's more quantifiable than that. It's something like the opposite of writing a story which is so formulaic you forget it as soon as you've read it, but not completely.

The first story focused on lots of emotional themes I really liked: Ivan's relationship with Illyan as a sort-of father, Ivan coming into his own as an adult, Ivan's awkward friendship with Byerly, By being By, what a BDSM and/or LGBT club gentlemen's club on Barrayar might look like. And touched on stuff revealed in Red Queen, which I hadn't actually read at the time. And dwelt on ImpSec, how all those senior military intelligence operatives actually interacted with each other, how day-to-day capital spying actually worked, how it felt to be By, when he was enjoying his persona and when he wasn't.

I think that's why it worked so well. And it so happened I manage to cram them into a fairly short slice of reminiscence and action, when I could have included perfectly good but not necessary stuff that padded it out into a proper plot. The third story was a bit more like that: I had a core of stuff I really liked, about Gregor being Gregor, and Cordelia being Cordelia, but I overshot on the plot a bit.

Whereas in the first story, I was quite nervous how it would come out because I hadn't written any fanfiction except a couple of unfinished pieces a decade before, so I hesitated a lot, but also sank a lot of effort into "can I make this better?" that I think translated into finding extra ideas that could be crammed into the same space. I should try to do more of that :)

Like how HHGTTG or Foundation are really short by modern standards but don't feel short.

I've slowly evolved some habits in responding to prompts. Something like, look at the prompt, fish around for potential ideas (both above stories were basically generated from "all the characters in this prompt are great, I just want to write about all of them") which often involves mulling on it for a few days. Then think of specifics, instigating incidents, etc, and other things I might like to cram in. At this point I usually have too many things I *want* to do (often "I know, a crossover as well!") and I have to be ruthless and pick the best idea I think I'm fairly confident of actually being able to do. I can always bring in ideas later if they feel like they fit, but my perfectionism always wants me to use ALL the ideas and I have to be firm in rejecting that.

Then there's some writing. Then I usually find that everything is a bit "off", that I had an idea of what I wanted the characters to do, but what I wrote is a bit out of character, and I need to rejig it -- someone complaining wearily instead of complaining angrily, character A asking "Do you feel X?" instead of character B spontaneously coming out with it, removing or adding some slapstick style humour where it was forced or would fit without being cringy. This needs a couple of days off to let everything "settle down". I've got better at doing it quickly as a lot is the same skill of letting go of ideas I wanted but don't work, but time is still the best way for me.

And then we have a story and I move onto the next thing!

Producing wordcount

Last month I did another NaNoWriMo month. I wasn't sure if I would, as I've been more wanting to work on techniques that work in shorter works, than in planning a whole novel, but idea that grabbed me was for a superhero novel I'd been doing bits on before that, so that's what I went with.

Details about the novel to follow, I won't try to force myself to cram all that into this post.

I set myself a more restrained goal, the same as last year, of about 30k, or whatever felt right. That was a good choice -- I can do a whole 50k nanowrimo when I push myself and did the first year, but it required using some time I was off work, and took my attention away from everything else a lot. And, it works when I have a good idea what I'm writing, but it was a real struggle to invent enough of the world and characters to keep up with what I could write.

In fact, this year, I came in slightly short of my original goal, but I'm fairly pleased with that. I feel like between the three years I got a good spread of what I could achieve pushing myself different amounts, and all of them have a place, and it's good to know that -- unlike how I used to be -- the alternative to "obsessive dedication" isn't "absolutely nothing got done" :)

That said, I think I would have benefited from being firmer about sticking to a daily word count target. I don't think I should have aimed for an average, as if I get behind I lose all my motivation, so trying to "catch up" to lost days when I wanted to pay attention to something else just wouldn't have worked, which is why I gave myself more latitude in the first place. But, despite (amazingly!) having cured myself of not starting *at all*, not having a specific target can translate to not getting very much done on a particular day. A specific goal would help with that, and I may try to do that more specifically in future: not every day necessarily, but decide something like a 1000 words "three weekday evenings and double at the weekends."

The other difficulty is that often I need to specifically come up with more plot to happen, and no amount of trying to write words helps, I need thinking time. But it's easy for that to turn into procrastination time. I think I need to find a level of outlining that works for me, and have a split target of "outline N lines, or write N words" or something like that.

Or maybe, deliberately feel out characterisation and worldbuilding choices by writing short vignettes which are NOT the novel, and then once it's more clear, try to do the actual writing at stronger pace. Lots of famous novels are mulled for years before they're written, and often "two novels a year" authors, while often really good, produce novels without the same depth as other novels of the same length.

Like, this blog post. I'm writing it about as fast as I can physically type it. But I don't usually write fiction like that, except for some scenes where I'm familiar with all the characters and what might happen and am just really excited to get to it actually happening.

Writing characters

Another big realisation was, if I have cool characters, ones I'm invested in, I'm excited to write. If I don't, then I'm not.

I never expected to do much creative stuff because as a child I found intellectual stuff easy and people hard, so I just always assumed I'd be an abstract-thought type person. I was pleasantly pleased to find that writing was a habit that DOES work for me.

But even so, I often had ideas for premises I found really interesting -- magic systems, virtual worlds, etc, and I just assumed I'd be like an old-school hard-sf writer who mostly wrote about physical sciences and didn't write about characters. But it doesn't turn out like that. I can write lots of worldbuilding, but actual prose tends to flow when I have characters, and even the worldbuilding is a lot better for looking from a point of view of "what's this like for people actually living in it?"

What parts of writing am I good at

Well, I don't want to over-egg the pudding here, I'm probably not as good at *any* parts of writing as people who are *good* at writing, but which tend to work out well for me?

As mentioned, premises -- people over-value premises as a good premise without a good execution doesn't bring much, whereas a good execution can shine without a good premise. But still, I think books with excellent premises benefit from it, and all my stories have a core idea which is really interesting when I describe what it's about, even without knowing about the content (at least to me, I often stumble describing it aloud).

And characters, I'm often giggling at the characters bouncing off each other, and I never expected that to be one of my strengths.

What about everything else. Poetic prose? Good plotting? I think those are things I can *do*, but aren't usually what drives readers to love them.

"Fun" ideas

I don't quite know how to describe this, but often I have an idea and think "that moment would be really cool" or "that cultural reference would be really funny there", but then can't tell if it looks sort of contrived.

Reading other people's writing, some moments stick out to me like that's what happened. It isn't always. I've heard people describing their process, and sometimes they built a scene around a payoff, adding all the necessary initial conditions to the scene that when I read it feels like it grew naturally out of what came before. And sometimes I hear an author talking about why they wrote "that line" and it was for some completely other reason than I guessed. But I think it is a common flaw, dropping in something that seems funny, trying to do slapstick in prose, or putting in a cultural reference that sticks out uncomfortably, or trying to do an emotional pay-off of character X telling character Y where to stick it that feels fake, because you liked it, and didn't realise or didn't let yourself realise it didn't stick.

Obviously this depends on taste. Sometimes it works for some people and doesn't work for others. Some things don't work but aren't cringe-worthy when they don't work, and some things really, really, are.

My philosophy has been, put it in (or at least put it in in square brackets), and then decide, LATER, whether it works or not, and if not, don't get hung up on taking it out. Rely on the scene to be good, don't stretch for that particular line.

At the time I'm writing it, I'm literally incapable of telling if it works or not.

Writing with people

I really like writing with people. But it's not actually an especially efficient way for me to write. Writing in a quiet room with mandated silence does help, but it mainly forces me to start and I've got a lot better at doing that anyway. And I find a lot of things, even just hearing people start and stop typing, quite distracting.

Meeting up with people with mandated quiet periods for working and short breaks for chatting would probably work well, but I'm quite content going along for a bit, filling up my encouragement and social meter, and heading home after a bit. And writing at home with people there is usually fine too.

And posting cryptic comments on twitter helps me a lot, for whatever reason! :) Although there hasn't been that much this month :)

I have decided I do not have more time to spend revising my novel. I really enjoyed it, although it is still pre even a first draft. But thank you ever so much to everyone who was excited to see it, if you're ok reading the rough version, please do, thank you so much.

This is a novel about Hashara, an angel who helped make the world but screwed up, and is trying to do better, and her girlfriend Lizzie. Hashara looks like a tall woman with curling horns and matted goat hair. Sometimes she's up, sometimes she's very persecuted.

Expect lots of musing about the relationship between angels and God. An angel asking, "What DOES God want me to do? Do the humans know any better than I do?" Angel magic and human magic. Angels-as-demons. Angels as genius locii. The fell children of misguided angels, the nephilim, prominently including such supernatural creatures as vampires and maybe leviathan. A flamingo-breeder. Lesbian lovers. Old church ladies. Awkward conversations with bishops. Lots of me-ish dialogue.

The link is in the immediately prior post. If you do not have an LJ or DW account, you can ask me to email you a link (yes please, you're very welcome!) or to log in with openid (or maybe facebook) and comment on this post.

The fic I received was all the words that ever were or ever will be , a telling of some of the events in Bujold's Curse of Chalion from the Daughter's perspective. It didn't tell anything new, but I loved how it empathised with the Daughter's frustration, and told some of the story of her Father's curse from her point of view.

And I wrote Escape from the Orc Lair of Unnecessarily Revealing Armour, a Rat Queens and Oglaf crossover. It is told in a script-for-cartoon-panels format (although, as a literary device, it might not translate that well to an actual comic). It is quite smutty with bdsm and dubcon, in the general vein of both original works. If you like the sound of that, awesome, if you don't, you probably don't want to read it, although I include a break to read the set-up and ending if you'd like (see author's note).

ETA: Fixed link to my story.

For a plot bunny (yes, really :)):

You have a multivalued function from a sphere onto "some surface", continuous everywhere except two points. (Or, equivalently, a function from "some surface" to the sphere, I guess?)

If you look at points on the surface which map onto the same point on the sphere, and connections between them of "paths" on the sphere (up to continuous deformation), I feel like they end up acting like the integers, where "+1" and "-1" correspond to a clockwise of anticlockwise circumnavigation. Or possibly some subset, a cyclic group of some finite order, if there are repeats. Is that right?

If you have *three* points, what can the relationship between the points look like? What about more?

I remember doing something like that but not what it's called.

I'm trying to put something like the shadows of amber onto a more concrete mathematical footing :)

I've always loved Three Musketeers. Yes, it's absolutely ridiculous, but it's so me. Oh, no, you can't say "he was ambushed". You have to say "he saw a musket barrel protruding from a hedge, and being a perspicacious young man, realised it was unlikely it had come there by itself; more likely it had been carried there as part of an ambuscade upon his person. On which realisation, he threw himself flat."

Latest writing idea

A hybrid three-musketeers/wild west. The idea is, to capture the *feel* of a setting where people take fatal risks. And also, have non-fatal duels because it establishes you as someone to take seriously (in terms of, not accosting, not in terms of, respecting your good sense).

So, secondary world discovered. Similar to this one, but unpopulated, with magic. At the right locations, with the right preparations, you can transport a human through, but not much else.

The magic works in a very ritualistic way: imagining repeating patterns, colours, concepts, in various combinations, triggers various powerful-but-simple effects, including plain force, emotional manipulation, and a few others. Anyone can do that in theory, but it takes a lot of preparation and dedication to learn the combinations that are actually most effective.

Magicians are in demand because they can hunt energy creatures which roam the world, which are useful for ££££. And because anyone with magic is like a musketeer or a quick-draw in the fictional west, people respect them because they have to, whether or not they like them.

Communities are a mess of whoever ended up there scrabbling to survive and bring a profit back to our world, people working for corporations on this side, arrestees serving a prison sentence in exile rather than in prison, etc, etc.

I think I can handle the magic duels and magician-magician interactions. But what are the communities clustered around the portal-areas like? How often can portals be used? Which of those political ideas make sense? What would the communities look like? I'm going for something like, a new mining town. What economic activities are going on here, what are the most plausible to ship back (given the constraints that you can't mass-ship goods)? Does temporary-transportation make sense? What other questions should I try to answer?

Also

I was also thinking, there is almost no chance I will ever try and submit any of my (rough) old stories for publication, ever, so I should probably arrange for them to be online somewhere easy to read. Probably on AO3 linked from my LJ/DW, but would anything else be better?

I got carried away by this, and spent two days worth getting it written. I've always been fascinated by mentions of stories about demons who repented and joined the church, but rarely actually read any. I didn't have any time to edit it, comments welcome, but especially about the overall story, or anything particular you liked or I got wrong, I know there are still some spelling and grammar errors.

When the assistant called her name, Hashara wobbled nervously to her feet, balanced on awkward mythological hooves. Nowhere in London was designed for hooves, or curving horns, and every day she shied away from the glares and suspicious looks and hate and pity and polite glances deliberately skating off her. People's surface thoughts echoing in her head, stopping drifting on dinner and TV and sex, long enough to reject her. Even on halloween, everyone else dressed up as sanitised demons, a human with a mask. Not a body covered with long hair, and gnarled, twisted horns. She showered daily, and rubbed wax into her horns and skin cream into her skin, but she still felt like a dirty, matted, horror. She'd resisted the idea of getting her hooves shod.

The assistant glanced up from her clipboard, and with an iron grip on perfectionism, hesitated no more than a second in calling "Hashara [embarrassed, shocked pause], devourer of souls? Hashara, the Bishop will see you now."

( Read more... )

One day Achilles came running up excitedly to the Tortoise. "What blood type are you?" he asked.

"Um," said the Tortoise. "I'm not sure. How can I tell?"

Achilles paused in his enthusiasm for a moment. "Well, are you more workmanlike, or more passionate?"

"Um. Well, on balance I think I'm more workmanlike. I think you're passionate. But I don't like where this is going..."

"Oh, don't worry. My new guru told me all about it. If you're more workmanlike, you're probably type A. And you're right, I'm type B: impulsive and original!"

( Read more... )

You should also read http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/ even if you don't like Elizier Yudkowsky in general. You may think "duh", but even when I know in theory that just because having a word for something doesn't make it a well-defined or important concept, I find it very helpful to have it helpfully spelled out for me until I stop making that fallacy!