Diminishing pleasure

I returned to Jane Eyre after a quarter of a century. Sad to say the novel didn't age well in my mind.

Of course I am aware that the work is over a century and a half old, and I know that I need to take the peculiarities of that time in stride. Still, arcane social ideals and ethnocentrism typical of the age apart, the style of the novel was what turned me away. Repeated breaking of the fourth wall and undisciplined use of tense apparently have become something I really dislike, and this is a pity as I recall liking the novel very much when I read it first.

In a sense I guess my personal development as a reader mirrors the development of authors as a group these last 150 years.

A Swedish event

One of the few literary events in Sweden that claims world status has just made the news. This year's Nobel Prize winner is Doris Lessing.

In case anyone managed to miss

The author known as Robert Jordan is dead.

I guess I'm the last of latecomers to flag this event.

On thee and thou

A fun piece of knowledge for an avid reader of fantasy. Thee, thou and thine are popular in stock fantasy. They are, apparently, almost always incorrectly used.

Even though Wikipedia should be used with care, this article conforms with the literature I have available.

Primarily used to denote familiarity, or by a superior to an inferior, the usage of these words in fantasy becomes rather hilarious. Rather than use the formal 'you' our heroes deliberately insult kings, queens and fair ladies all around them.

I can only quote Sir Edward Coke: "I thou thee, thou traitor!"

ME, or it finally makes sense

I'm studying, among other things, a little bit of how English has changed as a language over the centuries.

Finally the atrocious spelling starts to make sense. Middle English, when current spelling was phonetic spelling. Sure, that's a simplification, but still.

Of course the spelling is still as atrocious, but at least I'm starting to understand why.

Why a shovel is better than a bulldozer

When you have the need to get rid of a little dirt, use a shovel and not a bulldozer.

Other wise the result can be appalling as SFWA found out. Now it should be noted that, for example, Jerry Pournelle believes that bulldozers are indeed viable replacements for shovels. The problem with that stance is that you attract far too visible problems, just as John Scalzi noted. Needless to say this sorry affair has made the blogosphere, which is bad enough, but also into Slashdot, which is just about as bad as it can possibly be for genre SF/F.

That is why, when your hands ache from using the shovel, you should still abstain from powering that bulldozer up.

Shakespearean sonnets

Just read one. Peculiar one.

She looks like a goat, walks like a goat, bleats like a goat and smells like a goat, and still I love her.

Now, which sonnet is it?

Planning

Planning, profiling and disposition. Bea is preparing for interviews and I have just finished moving all questionnaire answers to a digital format. Isn't it great fun writing non-fic? Eh?

Marking up chapters and creating sub hierarchies, but not a single word of content yet. This is a far cry from the writing I am used to from the last four years. All in all it very much resembles the way I had to put words to paper during my days in IT.

Non-fiction

Is what I am going to write for the near future. Not because I have always dreamt of writing non-fiction and neither because I suddenly found a fountain of wealth. It is all a side effect of the championships in the card game we play. The main gamer's organisation in Sweden hired our club to write a handbook in running this type of events, and as both Bea and I have rather extensive experience in the area we agreed to the task.

It is definitely a paid for writing project, but our non-profit organisation is the recipient of the money, so I am not entirely sure that it counts as a writing credit. Well, it is a job that needs to be done, and honestly, someone ought to have written this several years ago, so I guess I could just as well, be one half of that someone.

One rather funny aspect of it all is that the sum allocated for this is more or less dead on the average advance for a new writer in speculative fiction, an eye opener in itself.

On the market of short stories

Another blogger, author and (I believe) editor has an article and a suggestion. Heeding it might just be a good thing for us aspiring writers, and published writers for that matter as well.

Redirection

I see from my statistics that a few of you come here in search for information on the European Championships in V:TES held the first weekend of August. Heading over to ec2007.blogspot.com should give you the information you want.

For the rest of you, I'm still slightly comatose from a week of games. A few days more and I should have caught up with documentation and much needed sleep, and after that I'll reactivate both my regular writing as well as this blog.

Busy elsewhere

For a stiff week I'll be rather busy with the EC.

Neat Potter sales

US sales at 8.3 million copies the first 24 hours according to this article in DN. I also read in an old fashioned paper newspaper that British sales were almost 3 million copies sold during the first 24 hours. Back here in Sweden the book has sold out.

Minor madness

Just added an RSS feed for this blog. http://feeds.feedburner.com/twl

More Potter madness

Reading an article in DN I saw how the Potter fever has struck Sweden as well.

The book will e released at 1 am, which corresponds to midnight UK time, and there are book stores which will be open at that time.

Several stores plan to lose money on their initial sales of the last book in the series. Prices have been cut to below half of the recommended one.

All this for a YA book in a foreign language. That says something about how widely spread basic mastery of English is in Sweden.

Characters and words

I just noticed a minor, yet interesting, difference between Sweden and the English world. Places asking for short stories here in Sweden give the maximum length in characters whereas the English speaking counterparts give them in words.

I wonder about the reason for this peculiar difference, not that it matters much for practical purposes.

Plotting the good lie

Your hero triumphs over his his/her antagonist, or fails horribly. No matter what, in a story the conflict should be resolved within scope of the conflict itself. That is good story telling. An example of not so good story telling would be a deus ex machinae resolution.

You probably recognize this and acknowledge it as well, as do I. Still, this is only a matter the good lie. Herein lies an interesting conflict. Where character focus has shown a tendency to go as far as making realistic characters more important than interesting characters the same can not be said for plot. Realistically the unexpected, the god in the machine, happens all too often. Still, you know that the reader will be aghast if the last chapter ends with the hero or villain getting killed accidentally in a car crash.

Episodes should lead to episodes which lead to a resolution, and the as sudden as late introduction of an event, outside the scope of the story, which takes it into a totally different direction is not popular.

So we force the plot to stay within the boundaries of the good story, telling the reader the good lie. Obviously the same should be done with characters. Plotting the good lie has to be followed by telling the good lie in order to give the reader a good read. In fantasy character and plot need to be lied well; setting to a certain extent less so.

The truth

The truth, the realistic truth or the experienced truth? That is the question -- for a writer at least.

The truth is absolute. It is the kind of objective truth we seldom encounter, and in as much as it is there at all to begin with it is also rather uninteresting.

The realistic truth is the objective sounding version we agree to accept, either by embracing it or by being dragged screaming and fighting until we face it. It is, however, not the truth. The realistic truth can be truthful or an outright lie, but it has the ring of truth to it, and we tend to accept it as such for that reason. It is also one of the tools of the trade for a writer needing to suspend disbelief.

The experienced truth is the one each one of you take for granted and makes each one of you roar in frustration when you are faced with it in another. At least that frustration comes in full strength when that other person doesn't share your experience of truth. The experienced truth is also the only one that matters. It is what the realistic truth becomes if ruefully accepted or the one it already is when embraced. It is the version you believe in, for whatever reason, valid or not.

The experienced truth is also the most interesting one for authors willing to face their own darker sides in order to write a better story.
It is the kind of truth that makes us assume that dictatorships spew out propaganda and democracies provide objective information.
It is the version of the truth that has been manipulated whenever a great book comes with a great message, because great messages are always manipulations of the truth, and no one is interested in the truth.

Realistic characters

I've been following, and participating, in an on-line discussion on books. A specified series of books in this case, but I'll abstain from identifying it.

People have exchanged opinions about the contents; mostly about characters and their corresponding characterisation. Whereas one set of opinions complain about characters so boring to read about that the plot dies the other side states that characters must be realistically depicted, and if the plot suffers as a result, then so be it.

Now I'm admittedly subjective, advocating plot before character as I do, but it would seem that non-writing readers tend to prefer the fun story over fantastic characters.

It should be noted, however, that readers of speculative fiction are to a great extent writers themselves. By writers I include anyone writing stories no matter whether they have a publishing history or not. The group of people who talk about writing but seldom put words to paper is even larger.

Again I see how the modern mantra of character above all gets in the way of an enjoyable story to read. Flat world with a generic plot is all fine as long as the author concentrates on creating a very small number of fantastic characters. You see, the current vogue is that there be only one main character. At least according to tips on writing from professionals and semi professionals.

Strangely enough the titles with a multitude of characters, where it is debatable if a main character can be identified at all, continue to book the slots for best sellers. It would seem that readers aren't as easily educated as writers and continue to shop for the fun story where action and pace require several viewpoints from which to see the story unfolding -- and with them the need for several characters. With several characters come, to a certain extent, the need for economy, which in turn translates into thinner depictions and more unrealistic portraits. There is little room for navel gazing when the plot needs to move forward.

So there is a thing as too much character after all. At least in my opinion.

More critting

I'm doing a few crits, slowly admittedly, and jumping between languages is starting to have me see why some things work in English but not at all in Swedish. Scope and bombastic seems to be two easily identifiable themes.

I assume I'll learn more as I go along, but as of now I have only managed to see these two stylistic details that work better in English.