Yesterday spelled the end of Aussiecon, the 68th annual world science fiction convention, held in Melbourne this year. Sunday night was the Hugo award ceremony, which actually had a tie for the main event - Miéville's The City & The City and Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl tied for Best Novel. The rest of the Hugo award winners are listed here.

I just discovered (well, last week, but I'd already written posts by then) a new blog called storyfix.com, maintained by one Larry Brooks. While I'll admit he pushes his 'how to write a novel' book a little too loudly for my taste, a lot of the posts I've been reading so far have been great. Two in particular on story structure present great visual aids for structuring your story. They're PDF's (and pretty large PDFs at that) but they're great visual conceptualisations of story structure, arcs, plot points and turns.

On a completely different note, Dan Wells had a great article on the inherent commercial difficulties in using dramatic, world-changing events in your story - that it means the world that readers fell in love with no longer exists, and can't (easily) be used for other tie-ins, merchandise, sequels or other fund-generating avenues.

And on a more humerous angle, Michael Stackpole has a great article about how much spammers seem to know about him, and (drumroll) there's a new Simon's Cat video out - whee! Also, love the concept behing Neil Gaiman's recent tweet: I dreamed that people from Wikipedia came round to your house to adjust reality if it differed from what they had online. Given some of the discussion pages I've read on wikipedia, my gut response is *shudder*.

A while ago I wrote a review of yWriter, the little software package I use (mostly) to write novels. I praised the fact that while it had an impressive array of useful features, almost all of them could be completely ignored without much detriment to your work process - this is a good thing. It means you're not spending hours farting about with something that feels like writing but actually isn't. That's far too seductive a game to play.

Liquid Story Binder is a beautiful software package that does exactly the opposite. You can have plot trees, character dossiers, galleries, timelines, mindmpas, outlines, journals, project goals, colour schemes for your work area, a music playlist, multimedia organiser, storyboarding, scene 'building', and a host of other things, most of which sound like things I've already listed but are apparently something completely different. It sounds wonderful - so many things you can do with your writing!

Oh - it also has a word processor. Yeah. The thing you actually use to write.

There's a particular English class that almost every student for the past ten (twelve? twenty?) years has gone through. It happens usually around year seven or eight, when English teachers are trying to stretch students' vocabularies and teach them to think about what they're writing, rather than just plonking words on the page. It's a class that I (and a lot of other writers my age) remember vividly, now with anger, for the sheer amount of effort it's taken me to unlearn what I was taught then.

It's the class where they teach you that 'said' is an evil word.

You spend weeks writing little stories where characters will smirk, glare, grimace, giggle, stutter, yelp, flinch and gulp their way through conversation, entirely oblivious to the fact that out those verbs, only one is actually possible as an act of speech.

According to the WSJ, Dorchester, one of the largest mass-paperback publishers, will be going all-digital, apparently effective 'Monday', in response to hard times / falling paperback sales / the end of publishing as we know it. All their titles will be released digitally or using print-on-demand, shipping books to bookstores 'as demand rises'.

Kristin, over at Pub Rants, has some reservations about the move, since apparently Dorchester has been "having difficulty reporting monies owed to the author for electronic book sales", difficulties that apparently still haven't been fully resolved for said authors. Eeek.

Keeping with the digi-book theme, Steve Saus over at IdeaTrash has had a pirate week - not talking like them, but discussing how they really affect authors, and what authors (not publishers) can do to help mitigate any harm done. Essentially - DRM doesn't work and is annoying, make a personal connection with your work - people will happily pirate from a faceless corporation, but baulk at taking money from a person, and if you keep producing, the pirate-appreciate-buy cycle actually works for you, getting you more sales than you lose to piracy.

And finally, Jared Axelrod gives authors a so-simple-it's-foolproof guide for which questions you should be hammering yourself with, depending on what stage your story's at.

I've always loved stories with double meanings, things that leave it to the audience (or reader) to decide one way or another. Not just 'does this happy ending last', but the meaning of the piece altogether. Margaret Atwood's A Handmaiden's Tale is perhaps the best example of this I've ever seen. It's something I've tried several times myself in short stories - unsuccessfully so far. I suspect that's largely to do with the fact that I couldn't decide / never knew which of several versions was actually happening, which made it impossible to write clearly. That and I always aimed for something far too complex to be ambiguous.

Having just seen Inception, which pulls this trick off beautifully, I think I'm getting a better idea of just why my previous attempts fell apart.

I'm in the middle of a transition at the moment, a change in how my whole life works that's going to take a good six months to perhaps a year to settle down. Gone is a major sink in my time, even though I've brought in new activities and new responsibilities at my job(s). And in its place is a surprising lack of writing - the extra time available to me hasn't automatically converted itself into more words on the page.

Which is frankly a "duuuh" moment, but it's not what I expected. I spent much of my time earlier this year railing against how little time I had to write, and now that I have time, I find an amazing number of things to do instead of writing, including nothing at all - staring off into space and running whatever story I feel like through my imagination. More fool me, really, I should have known better.

Writing games are tricks, exercises, things to try to get your writing brain in the mood. I find them useful when a story's giving me trouble - I can't think of a way out of the corner, or I can't think of a corner to get into, or I'm just not feeling in the right mood to write that story - as well as generating new ideas, and just keeping my writing-mind in shape. And on the plus side, they're usually fun to try, and you can end up with the germs of some great little stories.

Eavesdropping

You need to be somewhere where either people make phone calls, or people have conversations but it's noisy enough that you can only hear one side. Train stations, airports, cafes, office cubicles, supermarkets and the foyer of expensive restaurants usually work. Each place will often have its own 'tone' of conversation, too, so try a variety of places with this one.

The first step is simple, albeit not particularly polite - listen in on someone's phone conversation, or one person's side of a face-to-face conversation, and note it down. Write down everything they say, as close to verbatim as possible. If you can do shorthand, so much the better.

You'll need to be reasonably circumspect - as a general rule, people don't like you recording their conversations, and in some places it may even be illegal, even though you're not intending anything harmful with it. Be careful. If they walk out of earshot and you haven't got much, don't follow them (unless it's really easy to do so inconspicuously, like at a train station). You can take snippets of several people's conversation and glue them together for much the same result.

Once you have your conversation, sit down and examine what they're saying. Forget trying to figure out what they actually were talking about - now it's time to imagine what they could have been discussing. Secret spy code-words, clandestine liasons, illicit business deals, broken hearts, new love, old arguments - whatever triggers your imagination. Feel free to make it a conference call, if need be - two, three, four other people on the line, butting in. The only rule is you can't change the speech you've recorded - that's what was said. Though it wasn't necessarily all said by the same person, if that works better for you.

Now write the scene of that conversation. They don't have to be on the phone, they could be in a living room together or on opposite sides of the galaxy with half a year between each sentence as the message travels across space. Write not just the dialogue, but the whole scene of that conversation - what they're doing, feeling, seeing, touching, smelling. See where it goes.

I had* a problem, where the two main places I write were incompatible. That is, the software I prefer to write with - Dropbox and yWriter, wouldn't run at one of the places I write at, due to the particular system configuration. So I'd resolved to write the novel at home, and write shorts and other things at the incompatible place.

Which was working - this morning, before my colleague's assistance, I wrote the start of what I thought was a short story that had been kicking around. It went pretty well - I liked the voice, I liked the concept, I even liked my opening page, which probably means it was rubbish. It got my attention, it flowed well, it felt lively.

What it didn't feel like was the start of a short story. It was punchy, but took its time. You knew what was going on, where the plot would be going, but nothing was actually happening, so much for that first page or so. And as I was writing, notions crept in - that while the concept was simple, its ramifications weren't, or shouldn't be. That, as a story, it was a bit of a trick-piece, but as a novel it might have more depth. Some character and humanity.

Which is mildly problematic, as I'm already writing a novel, but manageable. I like to multitask. But it posed an interesting question to me - how do you know if the idea you're toying with is novel-sized or short-sized? Obviously we do know, most of the time. But how? What is it about a story that makes you feel there's a whole novel in there, or that there couldn't be? And how implicitly do you trust that initial assessment - how easily will you consider turning a short into a novel, or ripping the heart out of your book to make a short?

*Until about half an hour ago, when a colleague showed me Dropbox's command-line install (thanks, Austin!). Now I'm golden, as soon as I get dropbox up and running under wine.

I'm close to the end of something that's been monopolising my time, and along with the light at the end of the tunnel, there've been increasingly persistent thoughts about my novel. Well, novels, but the others are still in the crib, chewing letter blocks. 

I'm not happy with the story as it's written, nor do I feel too sure about the second version I'm looking at writing. Things don't work, don't mesh quite the way I'd like. The end doesn't answer or solve the beginning, exactly, the hooks and turns are slightly sideways. It feels like the beginning and end of two separate realities have been stitched together.

And the reason occurred to me last night - I'm trying to keep too many of the components. Trying to make the story work with X, Y, Z, A, B, and K.  Which would be okay if those things were naturally intertwined or meshed somehow, but they're not. Well, not without a lot of pushing, and I think it's that pushing that's putting the strain in my story.

Humour's a great sell - if you can make people laugh, they'll like you, pay attention, remember what you said and possibly even pass it on. I can't remember the number of times I've used a Terry Pratchett quote to emphasise something, even to people I know have never read him (which is usually a mistake, because nothing kills a joke faster than having to explain it.). Even when I teach - software engineering and programming, perhaps some of the driest subjects around - my students remember what we go through because I act like a nutbar, waving my arms around, throwing my stationary across the room and anthropomorphising an operating system.

It's not for the faint of heart, however.

I've always loved surreal art. Or perhaps realistic-surrealist - where both the familiar and absurd are constructed photorealistically. It's a difficult stunt - most often, the meld between reality and unreality is difficult; there's a 'seam' in the art, a place where it's clear the concepts are changing.

It's less obvious with different styles. Vladimar Kush's work, for example, has a clear illustrative style, which helps blend the concepts, similar to the great Dali. But it's the realistic ones - the ones where I can believe the absurdity with just as much conviction as the mundane - that really get me. I saw one such artist several years ago in a local gallery - I wish I could remember his name. His paintings were 2m square, and therefore far too large for me to own, rich with vivid colours, and real enough to touch. The concepts were simple and clear - a caravan in the sky, a sunset being 'unzipped' into day, posts from a pier in the clouds (yes, the collection had a sky/clouds theme.) - but the execution was gorgeously realistic.

I watched the finale of a show that I like (that shall remain unnamed, as it hasn't yet aired in Australia). It was unusually dark, even for a show that opens up some heavy psychological worm-cans on a regular basis. A character was staring in the face of complete despair, alone and desolate, and considering throwing away everything he'd worked for over the season, even though he knew it would cost him the only thing left that he cared about.

And then, just at the precipice, a rope was thrown. Love was offered, and understanding. Everything was going to be alright.

And it was sickening.

Playing on the reader's expectations is elementary - which way will they go, which man will she choose, who will survive, who is the villain? A lot of what draws the reader along is wanting to see their expectation subverted in some way - we see the couple end up together, but not for the reasons we thought. They choose the seemingly worse idea, but it turns out better than the other could have. You give the reader what they expect, but twisted. Robert McKee's Story goes into a lot of depth on this, and is well-worth the read (despite his snarky comments about novelists).

You can, of course, attempt to give the reader no idea what to expect. There's a choice - who is the better man, which is the dream or the reality, and the audience is given no meaningful clue as to which is the correct choice. They have no indication which way to sway their expectation. It can make for a far-more-entranced reader, but at a cost.

There seems to be a growing conviction in both comments on the blogosphere and in the real world that one needs a degree in Being A Writer - specifically, an MFA or other degree in creative writing. That agents, editors and even readers will roundly dismiss any upstart daring enough to query, write or publish without such an esteemed qualification.

Bollocks. I should know: I have one. Hell, technically I have two.

Honestly, I blame this misconception largely on the glut of creative writing degrees and courses that began not too long ago, and the marketing that accompanied them. With so many universities claiming their degree teaches you how to hone your fiction and characters and learn what it takes to create a good piece of writing, it's somewhat inevitable that would-be writers form the impression this is the only way to learn to hone your fiction and characters. But a degree isn't always helpful to a budding writer. Sometimes they can do more harm than good.

I wrote a while ago about breaking your own rules, where the audience isn't given the expectation for some crucial elements of your world or story. Here, however, I'm talking about an altogether sillier version - breaking rules that you have specifically enunciated to the reader.

Inspired once again by Doctor Who - the second half of the Weeping Angels. Amy, for retcon-reasons we won't go into, has to keep her eyes shut and navigate a forest with Angels in it. Angels are a perculiar kind of alien that, as explained by Ten in Blink, don't exist when they're being observed - as soon as they're seen by any living thing, they turn to stone. When Amy inevitably encounters the Angels, she has to 'walk as if she can see', to fool the Angels into thinking she can see them, so they won't kill her. When she (of course) gives her blindness away, the Angels attack.

I've just started watching Castle, where Nathon Fillion's famous crime author helps the police with detectiveness. It's a delight to watch, despite the premise being so old it buys second-hand clothing with its pension. Though as I say that, I can't actually think of where I've seen it before, off the top of my head. Aside from Bones, which is similar-but-not-quite - Brennan was helping the police before she wrote the book, after all. I'm certain that I've seen the author-helps-police concept floating around, though. And I'd swear I've seen another character on film or TV pinning down the secrets pasts of those around him by the way they hold their coffee. Although the releasing "Castle"'s novel on Amazon's definitely a cute idea.

It's happened to everyone. You're writing along, chest-deep in the groove of the story, barrelling forward, and in walks a character you've not seen since the start of the previous novel. Everyone turns to look at them, and - wait, what did they look like, again? Did they have a weird speech mannerism? Do they like sushi?

What do you do? Stop everything and trawl through your work, looking for previous references? Skip over this bit with big FILL THIS IN LATER notes? Wing it and promise yourself you'll check it later (hah)? Whatever you do, your stride is now broken, the engine of story that was driving you along now sputtering and flicking on its fuel light.

And it's entirely avoidable.

Not at all inspired by Moffat's new and improved Weeping Angels on Doctor Who last night, of course (I know it's magic pretending to be science, but is it too much to ask for a little narrative consistency?)

Retcons - "retroactive continuity" - are rife in television and film, where continuity takes second, third, or fourth place to the whims and wishes of the director, the execs, the screenwriter or even the marketing department. In novels it's rarer, but not unheard of (J.K's wand lore in Deathly Hallows, anyone?).  A retcon is a usually-game-changing factoid that, when introduced in a later story makes a previous story no longer sensible. Take the wand lore example - as there are already a half-million copies of this argument on the internet - in early books, the wand chooses the wizard, and wands don't work as well for wizards who aren't their masters. In book seven, a wand changes allegiances away from a disarmed master. Which means, as everyone goes through duelling practice at school, pretty much nobody's wand works properly anymore as a matter of course, and there's no way of knowing who the real master of anyone's wand is. And what happens if you defeat a wizard whose wand already thinks it's somebody else's anyway? Erk.

You've stolen a precious few hours a week for writing, and you're guarding them jealously against the recurring invasions of friends, work, illness, errands, TV, dates and sleeping. You're diligently plugging in your quota, be it a thousand words a day or a hundred. The story is rolling along, the characters revealing their quirks and fears, the plot smoothing over holes.

And yet, it all just gets more difficult. The words start to stick, they sound hollow and forced. Ideas fall flat. Things that looked amazing six months ago are uninspiring, or perhaps worse - cliched. You struggled with what's to come next in a scene, what small crisis to throw a character, how to solve a larger one.

Your experience meter is running dry.