My story “If Only… ” appears in this collection. The story originally appeared in Nature 489, 170 (06 September 2012)
Category Archives: Blog
Six Tips on Showing not Telling
- Remember, the reader isn’t stupid; you don’t have to explain everything. They’ll probably understand what you’re getting at.
- Describe effects, not causes: she shivered not she was cold
- Unless you happen to be a Victorian novelist, there’s no need to describe everything in a scene.
- Writing about how characters react is often better than simply stating. The smell of the eggs made him feel sick is better than He didn’t like eggs
- If you don’t know the meaning of pragmatics, Google it. Now use that when writing conversations.
- Finally, don’t tie yourself in knots. Sometimes it’s okay just to tell.
See Also
- Six Lessons from Music…
- Six Tips on Writing Speech
- Six Reasons why Maintaining a Blog will make You a Better Writer
- Six Little Masterpieces of Economy
- Six Useful Websites for Writers
- Six Ways to Stay Sane as a Writer
- Six Ways that Being Published Won’t Change Your Life
- Six Things to do When You’ve Finished a Story
- Six Tips on Writing First Drafts
- Six Tips on Narrative Voice
Six tips for Writing Character
- Giving a character a colourful hat or a stammer does not make them into a character. It may fix them in the reader’s mind, which can be a good thing, but it won’t give them a character
- Don’t be arbitrary. Some people construct characters by putting together a list of contradictions. You end up with a character that is original, but it won’t seem authentic.
- Don’t fall into the trap of trying to capture every passing character in detail. Focus on what’s interesting.
- Some people accuse others of the faults they see in themselves. Do your characters do that?
- Characters come alive in their interactions with other characters. Does one character irritate another, annoy them, make them laugh, make them jealous… ?
- Even better: what do your characters think of each other? How do your characters talk about other characters currently off page?
See Also
- Six Lessons from Music…
- Six Tips on Writing Speech
- Six Reasons why Maintaining a Blog will make You a Better Writer
- Six Little Masterpieces of Economy
- Six Useful Websites for Writers
- Six Ways to Stay Sane as a Writer
- Six Ways that Being Published Won’t Change Your Life
- Six Things to do When You’ve Finished a Story
- Six Tips on Writing First Drafts
- Six Tips on Narrative Voice
Connoisseurs
Everyone’s a connoisseur nowadays. Patisserie, whiskey, cheese: all the little pleasures in life are seen not be enough, they need to be ranked and properly appreciated. You can’t just enjoy a bar of chocolate any more; it has to be 85% cacao and handmade by a master chocolatier.
When she was about 3, some friends of mine saw my daughter eat a piece of 85% cacao chocolate (they didn’t see her spit it out afterwards) and were impressed by this, for some reason. I’m not exactly sure why. If anyone had asked me I would have said I was prouder of the fact that I’d managed to train her to use a knife and fork at the table to eat most of what was given to her. I’d have been more impressed with myself if I’d managed to develop her palate to the point where she’d eat cabbage without complaining.
Being a connoisseur is the new gluttony. CS Lewis wrote about something similar in The Screwtape Letters. Being a connoisseur means rejecting perfectly good pleasures in pursuit of something better.
Worse, though, being a connoisseur means being blown about by the vagaries of fashion. What is regarded as good whiskey today was seen as being second rate 50 years ago. Being a connoisseur isn’t about recognising what’s good and bad – there’s good SF and bad SF, and I hope I write the good stuff – but it’s about identifying the smallest possible subset of the good and rejecting the rest.
Marketing people love this, it allows them to distinguish between brands. Shops love it, it means they can charge higher prices. We’re fools to fall for it.
Sometimes good enough is good enough. We’re snobs to think otherwise.
21st Century Science Fiction
Featuring “The Waters of Meribah” by Tony Ballantyne (Originally published in Interzone 189)
One of the most creepily memorable stories in modern SF
-David G Hartwell
Buy on Amazon UK | Buy on Amazon US
A bumper crop of 34 stories from authors who first came to prominence in the 21st century, compiled by two of the most highly respected editors in the business….Grab this book. Whether newcomer or old hand, the reader will not be disappointed.
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In my more than 40 years working in the science fiction publishing industry, I’ve seen this notion crop up every 10 years or so: ‘Science fiction has exhausted itself. There are no good new writers coming along anymore. The genre is finished!’ Tor editors Hartwell and Nielsen Hayden thoroughly refute such claims….Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will certainly be recognized as one of the best reprint science fiction anthologies of the year, and it belongs in the library of anyone who is interested in the evolution of the genre.
–Gardner Dozois
Civillian Reader Interview
Writing Tools
Charles Stross has written an interesting polemic about Why Microsoft Word must Die over on his blog.
I broadly agree with him. But this post isn’t to dwell on what’s wrong with Word, but rather to look at the alternatives.
Replacing Word is easy. I’ve used LibreOffice (and its predecessor, OpenOffice) Writer for around 7 years now with few problems. Neither my publisher nor my collaborators appear to be aware of the fact that I’m not using Word, which makes me wonder why people say that Word is essential. The sort of demands placed on a Word Processor when producing text based manuscripts are not particularly heavy. I suspect an unwillingness to move away from Word is down to fear of the unknown rather than any solid reason.
The advantages of LibreOffice are that it’s free, it’s Open Source (if that’s important to you), and it’s sufficiently similar to Word to make the transition quite straightforward. As an added bonus is it doesn’t have the Microsoft ribbon toolbar which I find irritating to say the least.
Of course, as Charlie points out, Word and LibreOffice don’t lend themselves to extended pieces of writing. More and more writers are switching to software that allows you to structure your writing, a common example being Scrivener. I’m a great believer in such tools.
Emacs and org-mode is one such tool. I discovered org-mode for Emacs in 2008. I wouldn’t recommend Emacs to everyone, but I find it the ideal application for planning, structuring, writing and editing. I’ve written my last three novels using org-mode, exporting the finished products to odt (Libreoffice) format when I’ve finished. You can find out more about my Emacs writing set up by following this link. Aethernet Magazine is also produced using org-mode. The magazine is marked up using org-mode codes and then exported to html for conversion to mobi format using kindlegen. There’s more about Emacs over on my tech blog.
Finally, I use the Evernote App on my phone to record notes and pictures. I’m a great believer in getting ideas and dialogue down “fresh”. They’re never as good if you try to recreate them later. I’m actually writing nearly fully realised scenes now on Evernote, line by line, as the mood hits me.
Take a look at my monthly series How Writers Write to see other writer’s setups
Dream London Signing
Oldham Waterstones
Saturday October 19th
12 – 3pm
Dream London Blog Tour
27th September 2013
2nd October 2013
8th October 2013
10th October 2013
15th October 2013
18th October 2013
22nd October 2013
24th October 2013
30th October 2013
20th November 2013
Speculative Scotsman Blog Post
29th November 2013
Writing Serial Fiction
I’m currently just over half way through Cosmopolitan Predators! and I can’t help thinking what a different story it is for being written as a serial.
The big thing that I’ve noticed is how much the serial form encourages plot. I’d originally intended the story to be much looser, a collection of characters who touched on each others lives to a greater or lesser extent. Yes, there was a back story to the founding of Eunomia, the asteroid where the action takes place, and yes, there was an ending in sight. What I hadn’t planned for is on just how intricate the plotting would become. There seems to be something about the serial form that encourages me to pick up old points and to explore them further a couple of episodes down the line. Perhaps its something to do with the urge to include a cliff hanger at the end of each part. After all, if you’ve set one up, you have to resolve it next time.
Is Cosmopolitan Predators! a better book for being written in this way? It’s hard to be objective about this. The book that it might have been will never be written now. I can’t compare the two different stories, as one of them doesn’t exist. Naturally, though, I think what I’ve done is a better story, I wouldn’t be writing it otherwise. Now, though, I’m too close to it to see all its faults. Maybe in a couple of years time I’ll have a better idea.
What I do know, however, is this: I’m very tempted to write my next novel as a serial. To commit myself to writing 12 parts over twelve months, and to give those parts to my first readers for comments. Yes, I’ll rewrite the whole thing at the end of the process, but my next novel will be heavy on plot, and I think this approach may well benefit it.
We shall see…