Tag Archives: writing

The Right Stuff

Someone said that a Science Fiction story was one that wouldn’t work if you removed the science element

I was struck by this watching an episode of the Right Stuff on Disney+. The opening scene deals with the would be astronauts discussing a friend who has just “flamed out”: been killed in a test flight. The characters drink whisky around a fire, they speak in low voices, they shake their heads and look serious as they reflect on the noble mission they are undertaking.

It’s am interchangeable scene that could have appeared in many stories.

Compare that with opening of Tom Wolfe’s original novel. A test pilot has been killed but which one? The tension is raised as the wives phone each other, trying to determine who it could be. The identity of the pilot is revealed.

And then, something different. Rather than nobly reflecting on the tragedy, the other pilots try to determine the cause of the accident. As always, they decide it was pilot error. It wasn’t down to chance, it was something that could have been avoided if the pilot did their job properly. It seems heartless, but that’s how the other pilots maintain their sanity, that’s how they handle the uncertainty of the job.

The Right Stuff novel was Science Fact, not Science Fiction, but like good SF it respected its subject matter, it didn’t just throw standard story elements at a setting and waited to see what would stick.

Incidentally, I seem to remember the opening quotation was by Fred Pohl. I had a look online to check but I couldn’t find it. I did find this rather nice line though:

“Someone once said that a good science-fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. We agree”.

Frederik Pohl, 1968.

The Path of a Story

There’s a story that turns up every so often where one of the characters wonders what things would have been like if x hadn’t happened. If they’d never been born; if they’d never met their partner; if they’d never found the item that turned them into a superhero. Some films that spring to mind are It’s a Wonderful Life, Shrek 4 and Sliding Doors.

It’s something I occasionally think about when writing a story, or more usually, rewriting a story. Sometimes when I’m rewrite I think of a good idea and start to include it, only to find I’ve already done it a few pages later. 

I feel as if I’m creating when I write, but how much creation is there? How much of the path of a book is fixed by my experience and personality? As my friend Eric Brown often says, writing is about letting your subconscious take over. Part of becoming a writer is learning how to do that…

I’ve written more about this here: I Used to Worry about Finishing Stories

Cargo Cult Science Fiction

There’s too much Cargo Cult Science Fiction.

 The term “Cargo Cult Science” was first used by physicist Richard Feynman in 1974. It focuses on the superficial rather than the underlying causes.

Cargo Cult Science Fiction is SF built on Cargo Cult Science.  

Now don’t get me wrong. Cargo Cult SF isn’t SF based on imaginary ideas. Some of the great SF novels contain no real science (a classic example is The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester).

Cargo Cult SF is SF that doesn’t take the science seriously.  In Cargo Cult SF it’s good enough to say something scientific sounding (quantum carburetor anyone?) without exploring the imaginary science further.

In Cargo Cult SF the hero gains superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive vampire bat and no one else in the story thinks to experiment with radioactive tigers, jellyfish or wombats.

In Cargo Cult SF people use time travel to change past events and no one ever thinks to use time travel to change them back again.

In Cargo Cult SF Gaia steps in to save the USA and no one asks what exactly had she been doing when people died in floods and famines in other parts of the world.

If you don’t follow the science, no matter how wild your idea is, you’re not writing SF.

The Machine Stops

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

The Machine Stops – E. M. Forster

I was reminded of the above story while looking at Wikiquotes. I was struck by just how much the quotation described me using my iPad at the time.

I don’t think it’s the purpose of SF to predict the future. I think that the majority of SF writers would agree with me on this. I think what we’re seeing here is a reflection of our world in Forster’s reflection of his world…

The Edit

I’ve spent the past week tweaking my latest novel following a rather excellent edit by my agent.

An excellent edit. What does that mean?

It’s not that he corrected the spelling or tidied up the word order, though he did that.

It’s not that he pointed out inconsistencies in the plot, though again these were flagged up.

It was an excellent edit because he showed how to make the story better. He highlighted the areas where characters acted inconsistently, where I’d withheld information unnecessarily, where I’d missed a trick on the story development.

Basically he pointed out where I could be a better writer.

Just to put the above in context, I’d already edited the novel myself several times, I’d had extensive feedback from my wife and two other well known and very experienced authors.

If I’m honest, when I hand my work across to others, I’m really hoping for unadulterated praise. I want them to say that they’ve just read a work of genius. Until that day arrives, I’m delighted to have such talented people offering me advice.

Swearing in a Suit

Last week I headed into Manchester to do some writing, as I often do on Wednesdays. An hour in a coffee shop to go through my notes and get my ideas in order, and then off to the library for four or five hours of writing, free of the distractions presented by music and the internet.

All pretty routine, with one exception. I was going to a meeting that evening, so I was wearing a suit. The full works: shirt, tie, jacket, trousers, dress shoes. Nothing unusual. I wear a suit for the day job. I felt perfectly at ease.

Until I began updating my swearword list.

You haven’t got a swearword list? I started one when I wrote COSMOPOLITAN PREDATORS – a list of the different swearwords used by the inhabitants of Eunomia, the asteroid world where the action takes place. It made sense to me that an international community would have a cosmopolitan collection of swearwords. My swearword list contains the word, its meaning and its language of origin. I found it so useful I’ve been keeping it updated for the novel I’m currently writing.

It’s fun using swearwords from different languages, but not, I discovered, when wearing a suit.

Sitting in a cafe in a shirt and tie, copying down lists of rude words, I suddenly felt a little bit childish. Not just a little bit. I felt like there must be better ways to spend my time. I found that I was turning my laptop so that people couldn’t read the screen, that I was checking that no one was watching me.

Thinking about it, this shouldn’t have been surprising. My writing has always been affected by my environment. If not, I wouldn’t carry a notebook with me in order to capture live emotions. But even so, I didn’t realise that environment extended to what I was wearing.

Apparently it does.

So if you find yourself in a coffee shop in Manchester, and you notice a man in a suit blushing as he types away, come over and say hello. Just don’t take offence if I close the laptop first.

Shorthand

A few years ago I was travelling back to Manchester by train. I couldn’t help overhearing the phone conversation of the person sitting opposite me. He was an aspiring actor, travelling back from an audition in London, and he was recounting the experience so loudly the whole carriage couldn’t help but overhear.

He was a interesting character; it quickly become obvious that every setback in his life was someone else’s fault, that the main thing holding him back was people’s inability to see his natural talent.

So I started to take notes: I’ve written elsewhere about how important I think it is to capture conversation live. In those days I used to write notes in the back of the paperback I was reading, and that’s what I did…

… until the aspiring actor noticed what I was doing, and took offence. He’d read my words upside down.

Which is a roundabout introduction to the real reason I learned shorthand: so I could quickly take notes without other people knowing what I was doing.

I was reminded of this on reading the following article on the BBC website: is the art of shorthand dying out?

Perhaps it is. I don’t use shorthand as much as I used to, I now mainly capture notes straight to Evernote on my phone (although I wish there was an app that understood Teeline).

But I don’t regret learning shorthand. It still comes in useful occasionally, capturing conversations, getting ideas down fast, and giving me something to do in boring meetings.

Anyway, isn’t life all about learning new things?

A Pierre Victoire Event

When my wife and I lived in London, we’d often go to a little chain of restaurants called Pierre Victoire. Back in the 1990s you could get a three course meal and a glass of wine for £4.99.

It was excellent value and very tasty. My wife used to be in catering and she would often comment on how they brought the cost down: smaller portions, using cheaper vegetables like carrots, warming the cheap red wine slightly to make it taste better and so on.

And then Pierre Victoire put the price up to £5.99. Same good food, still excellent value…

… but we stopped going. There was something about that extra pound that meant it no longer seemed like such a bargain. I don’t know, maybe it was the difference between paying for two meals with a tenner and with having to pull out a note and then scrabble for two more coins.

There are lots of occasions in life when a tiny change makes all the difference. My wife calls these changes a Pierre Victoire Event. You can read an Emacs example of this here on my Tech blog

How to be a Great Writer

I was having a conversation about Detective Fiction with a friend of mine recently.

He brought up the fact, apparently well known in detective fiction circles, that the mobile phone is killing detective plots. Writers are tying themselves in knots trying to invent situations in which their characters are unable to make phone calls: they lose their phone, they’re out of charge, there’s no signal, whatever.

Now, I should state again for the record that I don’t read much detective fiction. I’ve nothing against it, it’s just not my thing. But I can’t help thinking that the writers he’s talking about are missing the point. They’re making the same mistake that bad SF writers do: they’ve had an idea and they’re going to hammer the story around it to make it work. They’ve worked out a plot, and they’re going to follow that plot to the end, even if it means getting their characters to act in some pretty strange ways.

I’m often asked about how much I plot a story, and I usually say the same thing. I plot about half way, I have an idea about the ending but that’s it. I always end up following my characters somewhere else. This is one of those things that you can’t be taught, it only comes with practice.

Good writing involves finding an original set of characters and putting them in an interesting situation. Find those things and the story will write itself. A real character will have their mobile phone with them, they will remember to have charged it. Instead of asking how they will lose their phone, a good writer will instead ask what happens next after the character has made that call a lesser writer would have been trying to avoid. That will resuly in a far more interesting story…

You can tell great writing by the way that it just is. There’s something very unforced about it, something very natural, a sense that what you’re reading could be no other way than the way it is. Characters act naturally, any surprises in the story come from their circumstances, not from their reaction to events. Plots unfold in a manner which appears logical (at least on reflection), nothing seems contrived.

Great writing leaves the reader thinking "I could have done that. All I needed was the basic premise and I would have written that. I mean, what else could have happened?"

And that’s the point. It all seems so real, so natural. That’s the mark of a great writer. Someone who has worked hard to make it all look so effortless.