I Watch Movies: A Fantastic Fear of Everything

…So, let’s all pretend I didn’t disappear for four months and instead kick off a new series of reviews and commentary.

I went down to the Loft Cinema last week to see A Fantastic Fear of Everything, a British horror-comedy starring Simon Pegg. It’s about an author whose extensive research into 19th Century serial killers has left him barricaded in his apartment utterly paranoid and so busy jumping at shadows that he hardly seems aware that there’s an actual serial killer on the loose in his neighborhood.

Give me a Crowbar, a Candle, and a Tortoise and I Can Rob Any Building In Town

Today I wanted to share this really awesome post from the Smithsonian’s Past Imperfect blog:

The year is—let us say—1170, and you are the leader of a city watch in medieval Persia. Patrolling the dangerous alleyways in the small hours of the morning, you and your men chance upon two or three shady-looking characters loitering outside the home of a wealthy merchant. Suspecting that you have stumbled across a gang of housebreakers, you order them searched. From various hidden pockets in the suspects’ robes, your men produce a candle, a crowbar, stale bread, an iron spike, a drill, a bag of sand—and a live tortoise.

The reptile is, of course, the clincher.

The Problem with Writing Cinematically

For many of us, even those who grew up with an intense love of reading, film and TV have a powerful hold on the way we envision stories. I have often heard beginning writers talking about how they have their fiction plays out in their heads like a movie and they want to put that image on the page.

But unless you’re writing a screenplay (or a comic book), all you have to work with is text. And when the biggest single storytelling medium in most people’s lives is visual, that can create problems. I’d like to run through a few of the issues I’ve seen crop up in my own work and that of others as a result of the way that movies and TV have infected our brains.

Improve Your Writing Through Tabletop RPGs

A set of dice for tabletop gaming. Roll for initiative!

I’ve recently gotten back into tabletop roleplaying as a Game Master for a Pathfinder adventure path and I’ve really been noticing all the ways that tabletop gaming can help fiction writers.

First, a quick summary for the uninitiated: Tabletop roleplaying is a form of collaborative storytelling that relies heavily on imagination, mediated through a set of rules and kept unpredictable through the use of multi-sided dice. Most games feature a single Game Master and several Players. Each Player invents a character that they control throughout the events of the game. The Game Master (GM) is responsible for bringing everything else to life — people, places and events — and adjudicating the actions of the Players.

That means that one of the GM’s core responsibilities is providing effective, on-the-fly description.

Outlines: What are they good for?

Not this kind of outline!
(silhouette of Jane Austen, from the 2nd edition of Mansfield Park, c.1810)

Well, the Labor Day weekend really threw off my blogging schedule last week. But I’m back now, so let’s dig into today’s topic: outlines.

When I first got into fiction writing, I heard a lot of contradictory information about outlines–those preliminary notes that are sometimes prepared before starting a story proper. It wasn’t always clear to me what an outline was, what it should look like, and what it should be used for. The first thing I had to learn was that there was no one “right way” to outline and compose my thoughts.

Everyone’s approach to outlines is different: some don’t use them at all, while other people carefully choreograph every scene beforehand. And of course plenty of people are somewhere in the middle. Some folks need Venn diagrams, charts, and other visual elements, while others are fine with just words on a page.

Finding out what works for you often takes some experimenting. I have a little experience in that regard.

Grandmasters: Theodore Sturgeon

Due to technical difficulties I’m a little short on time this week, so I’m sharing a nice little video about the significance of the late Theodore Sturgeon on the development of Science Fiction.

As the video notes, Sturgeon played an important role in raising the bar for SF’s literary standards. He’s probably best known today for the retort that became Sturgeon’s Law, usually paraphrased as “ninety percent of everything is crap.”

Sturgeon developed this rule of thumb after growing tired of defending SF from literary critics who would pick some of the worst SF material and then compare it to some of the best literary fiction in order to argue that SF had no value.

I’ve always been interested in the historical roots and evolution of science fiction and fantasy, so expect some more posts on influential ideas and figures later on.

Final reminder: there are only a few days left to submit an entry to the “What’s in the Box?” writing contest, so if you’ve got an idea get it in now. The contest ends midnight, August 31, 2013.

The Short Story and Me

I’m in the midst of some final polishing on a short story I’ll be shopping around soon. This is something of an occasion for me because I don’t actually write all that many short stories.

Coming up with short story-sized ideas has always been a challenge. Part of it is my natural inclination to keep asking “what happens next?” Which often leads my attempts at short stories to feel more like the opening chapter of a novel than stand-alone tales. My current novel project, Sheep’s Clothing, actually grew out of such a circumstance.

For a long time, I was told again and again that the route to success in science fiction and fantasy was to start out publishing short stories, build a name for yourself, and then move on to novels. But the evidence suggests publishing short fiction has at best only a marginal impact on selling your first novel.

Causality, Contingency, and Coincidence

People often underestimate the degree to which history is contingent, able to swing one way or another based on a chance occurrence or one the decision of a single person. In hindsight, unforeseeable events often seem inevitable.

Audiences, aware that stories are inherently fabricated, tend to be very hostile to the sort of coincidences that can drive history. This presents something of a challenge to authors looking at history for inspiration.

So let’s look at one of the great contingencies of history, that one time when the South could have won the American Civil War in 1862 were it not for a single dropped letter.

On Creativity

I’m a bit pressed for time today, so I’m just going to share this awesome lecture by John Cleese on the topic of creativity–what it is, how it happens, and what you can do to make it easier to be creative. It’s funny, insightful, and offers useful information to writers and non-writers alike. If you’ve got a half-hour to spare, definitely give it a look.

John Cleese – a lecture on Creativity from janalleman on Vimeo.

I was pointed to this video thanks to MrBTongue over at Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage. Give him a look, too. He does in-depth, intellectually rich commentary on gaming and other subjects, such as this fantastic analysis of Blade Runner.

Writing Contest: “What’s in the Box?!”

Pandora and her box. Engraving of a painting by F.S. Church. Public domain image.

Archaeologists at the site where Richard III’s body was recently discovered made a strange new find earlier this week: a heavy stone coffin, containing a second sealed coffin made out of lead. The team intends to transport the mysterious second coffin back to a lab for study, but because X-Rays and CAT Scans are unable to penetrate the lead cover they will have no idea what is inside until they open it.

If popular culture has taught us anything, this is a bad idea.

But it presents a great opportunity for speculative fiction! So I’ve decided to hold a little writing contest. Whoever can come up with the best idea for what’s sealed inside the lead coffin-within-a-coffin before midnight, Aug. 31, 2013, will be awarded one internet. And also a $10 Amazon gift card (continental U.S. only). There’s no limit on the number or length of entries, but only one entry will be selected (by me) as the winner. Others may receive honorary mentions.

You can email your entries to me at mattevanprobst (at) gmail [dot] com or provide them in the comments below.

Oh, and when the ignorant scientists release The Thing That Killed Richard III from its centuries of imprisonment and the Age of Man comes to an end, please resist the urge to say “I told you so.” As last words go, it’s just really tacky.