It was Mark Twain who said:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

As I walked home the other night I tried to work out what words I would use to describe the weather.

It was late February. Summer, the hottest month and we’d had fifteen days straight of temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius.

It was hot, but it wasn’t scorching heat, because a scorching heat is a clear, burning heat that brings in mind the Drifter’s song Under the Boardwalk, where …

“your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fireproof.”
[Kenny Young/Arthur Resnick]

Nor was it that variation of scorching heat that seems so uniquely Australian, maybe because I only ever come across it in the bush, usually in granite hills. That heat where each and every gum leaf is absolutely still, but is given the illusion of movement because the heat rising from underfoot makes the air shimmer; where the only things that moves are the ants, and the only sounds you can hear are the cicadas.

It wasn’t a dry heat at all. We’d had thunderstorms earlier in the day. It had stopped raining, but there were lowering black clouds with lots of moisture in the air, and while it was hot, it wasn’t as hot as it had been the last few days.

It wasn’t balmy, because balmy is warm, with just a of dampness in the air and ideally a light breeze that makes you want to dance.

Maybe muggy, but the clouds were very black and while I associate mugginess with clouds to me they’re usually higher up, and a not-so-dark grey when it’s muggy.

Sultry, I finally decided. The weather was sultry.

Novellas are making a comback

I love a good novel. A place where I can lose myself in a well constructed plot. Where the subplots add spice and colour to the story. Where the protagonist has a chance to grow, where the secondary characters can become as important to me as the main protagonist. Where I can lose myself in a different world.

You can’t do that in a short story. A short story follows one incident and, usually, one character. If you do any more the story falls apart.

You can’t even do it in a novella. In a novella there isn’t the room for sub-plots or secondary characters. The story has to be about the protagonist, and unless the author is truly skilled—or it’s a very long novella—when an author tries to include sub-plots the story come comes off as being an unfinished novel.

Thus while I read the occasional short story and novella, they’re not my favourite stories. I want something I can immerse myself in.

With the advent of ePublishing the novella has made a comeback. The self-publishing boom has also increased the number of novellas out there. Some of my favourite authors are writing novellas now.

I can’t say I like the trend, but I can understand it.

Why readers buy novellas

I would imagine that if you asked ePublishers why they publish novellas they will say, “There’s a demand for them,” and one can infer from that that people like them.

I buy them, although I don’t like doing it much.

Sometimes I don’t know what I’m buying. One of my biggest frustrations with eBooks is not realising that a story I have purchased is not on novel. Particularly when I pay nearly novel price for it.

Sometimes I do know and I buy them on price point. I will pay $2.99-$3.99 for novellas by authors I know and like.

Sometimes I buy them simply to support the author.

Why writers write novellas

Some writers prefer the format, in much the same way as some writers prefer to short stories while others prefer to write novels. Even so, I’d venture to say that most people write them for another reason.

Because they can make more money out of novellas.

A novella runs somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 words, give or take 10,000. The average length seems to be around 30,000 words. The average length of a modern novel runs to 80,000+ words, and in our genre starts at 100,000 words and goes up.

How many novellas can you write in the time it takes to write a novel?

At least three, probably four.

Let’s say your novella sells in the eStore for $3.99, while your novel sells for $7.99. Sell two novellas and you have made the same money as you have on your novel. But given that you can write four novellas in the time it takes to write that novel, you can theoretically make double the income.

Not to mention you are delivering a story every three months, which helps with marketing. You always have something new to sell, and you get up a backlist really fast.

The novella dilemma

When I find a writer I like, I buy their books. A growing number of my favourite authors—especially in the smaller niche markets—are turning to novellas. Which is a pity, because many of them write delightful novels.

What do I do?

If I—and other readers—keep buying their novellas then they’ll keep writing them, because it’s easier, faster and more lucrative than writing novels. But I don’t like their novellas much. They don’t have the depth, the characterisation or the story that a novel has. They leave me dissatisfied.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Novellas aren’t going to go away. Sometimes a story even suits that particular form.  But for me, as a favourite author switches their output from novel to novella I eventually stop buying their books.

I go and find myself other authors who write in the longer length I prefer.

Our agent came back to us last week recommending changes to our novel. Major changes, like ‘rewrite the last third of the book’. As an author, that’s the last thing you want to hear, and I can imagine how I’d feel if I was doing it alone. Luckily for me, I don’t write alone.

No matter how supportive they are, your spouse/partner/significant other can only talk so much about the story before their eyes glaze over. They definitely can’t read and reread and reread again. They can’t tell you the minutiae of how the lines work and why the bad guy isn’t really a bad guy, he’s just a guy. In fact, talk about the book too much and all you get is, “Yeah, yeah. What’s for dinner?” (There’s only one answer to that, by the way, and it’s, “I don’t know, you’re cooking it.”)

Your co-writer loves the book as much as you do. They know every character intimately. Better, they can talk for hours about it, just like you can. They will dissect the story with you, trying to work out what’s wrong, what’s right, what can go, what absolutely has to stay. Coming up with ideas of how we might fix problems.

When one of you can’t think of anything to fix a story, the other often can. Or you can bounce ideas off each other.  Stupid ideas, crazy ideas, ordinary ideas, until one sticks and you both say, “Yes, that might work.”

Better, she is going through the same things you are. While your family and friends are saying, “It’s just a story,” your co-writer is obsessing about the same things you’re obsessing about.

For pantsers like us, it’s easy (enough) to write a first draft. Turn on the computer, open your word processor and let the words pour out. Sure there are a few humps along the way but it’s relatively painless compared to the rewrites.

First drafts are fun. Rewrites are hard work, but the rewards are greater because rewrites are where you turn that rough piece of clay into a beautiful statue that you are proud to show off. (Believe me, you wouldn’t want to see our first drafts. They are terrible.)

It’s so much easier to do all that work when someone else is sharing the hard work alongside you.

We’ve all heard at least one story about the persistent author who follows the agent into the restrooms at a conference and tries to hand their manuscript to the agent under the toilet door.  Hopefully, most of us know this is outright not done, but I recently saw similar behaviour in my office when someone hassled one of our service-desk people and it struck me that a service-desk person is treated a lot like an agent when it comes to chance meetings.

So first, a bit of background for those who don’t know what I mean by service-desk, or who call it something different in their part of the world.

Businesses run on computers, and someone has to get those computers up and running, install software users want, manage computer security, protect us from our stupidity when we accidentally erase files, manage backups and so on.  This is the service desk, otherwise known as support, IT support, help-desk or by a myriad of other names.  I will call it the service desk.

In a small company, say 10 people or less, you can often get away with one knowledgeable computer person who does all of this as an adjunct to their own job.  Or maybe pull in an external company to do the work. As the company grows, however, you need a dedicated person; and then another; and then another.  Until finally, your company grows so big they outsource help-desk again, only this time it’s to a service desk in another country, and you can be stuck for days waiting for them to unlock your password or something else trivial.

In this blog I’m talking about in-house staff, where they still work inside the same building you do, so you know who they are.

Everyone wants to talk work

If you’re an agent or a publisher, as soon as someone knows you’re in the industry, what do they want to talk about? How can I get my book published?

Likewise, as soon as anyone knows you work in the service desk they want to talk about their computer problems.

Will you look at my work?

Leading on from that, the agent or publisher is often asked by friends and family—will you look at my book to see if you can publish/represent it?

Likewise, the first person friends and family turn to when their computer breaks down is the family member who works on the service-desk. (Failing that, it’s the family member who works in IT, any part of IT.)

Tell me what to write/buy

Many people ask agents and publishers about trends. What is the next big thing? (So they can write it.)

Service-desk people are expected to give advice on the best computer to buy, software to install, etc. They’re expected to be up with the latest hardware, and what’s coming.

Captive audience

There are the above-mentioned infamous toilet incidents, of course. But there are other places where the agent/service-desk staff member becomes a captive audience. The best place is the lift.  You just can’t escape.

The response by both is the same. The beleaguered agent/service desk person smiles and listens, and says,

“Send in a query. The information on how to do that is on the website.”

or

“Put in a service-desk request. The form is on the intranet.”

and they make their escape as soon as the lift door opens.

 

You’re hammering in a nail and you hammer your thumb instead. What do you say?

Ouch?

Maybe, but you’re more likely to swear, or use some special word that you reserve for such occasions. Dangnabbit, anyone?

Swearing, as in using bad language, seems to have been around almost as long as humans have. In this day and age it’s hard to write a book without any swearing in it. Especially when you want your book to sound realistic.

Yes, there are still people who don’t swear, but it would be a rare book if your world was peopled with just them.

But what about books set in other worlds? Suppose you are writing fantasy or science fiction. Do you still need swearwords then?

You don’t need them, but a few don’t hurt. Or if not swearwords, at least some sort of expletive that your character can use at extreme moments. Like maybe when your space soldier gets shot in the leg with a blaster, or when an enormous creature with rows of serrated teeth swoops down from the clouds above them and carries off one of their party. (Okay, so maybe for this last one they’d just run, but you get the gist.)

What words would your characters use?

They won’t always be the same as the words we use today. Swearwords change over time, and over geography. Nowadays they are often related to sex, whereas in the past they were more about religion.

Thus if you had to make up swearwords, what would you use?

I think a good place to start is to consider how religious your world is. If it’s very religious, then the words are likely to be based around the religion. On a world which worshipped the Great Mother, who donated her own body to the Megadeath to save the world, a swear-word might start out as something like ‘by the Great Mother’s body’ and morph into ‘gramody’. On a world which had less religion one might be more likely to start with body parts and go from there.

No matter how clever your expletives are, you need to be careful of overusing them. Especially when it’s an unusual word.

Different people have different tolerances to the made-up word. For example, in Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series, I stumble every time I read ‘Bilairy’s balls’, yet other people I know who have read the books are fine with it.

Sometimes it’s the frequency of the word, rather than the word itself. It’s a fine line between a what works as regular swearword that someone peppers into casual conversation, and the occasional expletive.

I think a good test would be to replace your super-new invented swearword with a current word that is equivalent or slightly stronger than the one you invented. Then, if you can read the story without the swearword jumping out at you, you’ve probably got the frequency down okay, at least.

I have long believed that you can tell whether a book is written by a male or a female.  Now Teresa Frohock is trying to prove it one way or another.  Over on her blog she’s posting extracts–one a day–and you have to guess if it’s written by a male or a female.

She and another writer have brought together some SFF writers who have

… kindly pledged a sample of their work for us. Each author has written a short scene (approximately 500-1000 words) or a short-story and has chosen a pseudonym. There is a mix of men and women. I will post one scene or story a day (omitting weekends and holidays).

THE TASK: Tell us, based on the prose, whether the scene was written by a man or a woman.

Teresa Prohock, Gender bending along with a contest

She posted the first excerpt today. You have 24 hours to read it and decide if it was written by a man or a woman before she closes off the comments.

 

When you critique someone else’s writing it’s always a difficult line between how honest you can be and how careful you must be. Let’s face it, as writers all we want to hear is how wonderful our writing is. We don’t want to know that those words we slaved so hard over need more work.

Sherylyn and I are quite blunt when we critique each other’s work. We can afford to be. We’ve worked together for a long time and we get on well outside of writing too. But for some writers brutal honesty can be damaging, especially when you’re starting out. It takes a lot of courage to show someone what you have written. Thus most of us try to be gentle when another writer asks for feedback.

Here’s our silly season guide to what writers really mean when they politely give feedback on your story.

Say	Mean
I felt the story took a long time to get going.	The start is boring and long-winded and unnecessary.
I wonder, do you really need the first chapter? I feel the story is strong enough/you would make the story stronger if you started at chapter two.	Cut the first chapter. You don’t need it.
I felt the story slowed down in places.	The story drags.
I felt the story slowed down in places, especially when you moved away from the main protagonist’s POV.	The secondary POV character is boring.
I found it difficult to connect with your main character.	Your main character is horrible. He/she comes across as truly unpleasant.
Although your descriptions added colour to the story, there were a lot of them and sometimes they took me out of the story.	Are you aiming to win the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest? I can’t see the story because the descriptions get in the way. Cut them. Cut lots of them.
I found your one of your secondary characters, Maria, intriguing and would like to know more about her as the story goes one.	Maria is much more interesting than your main character. Maybe she should be the protagonist.
I would have liked more explanation here.	I have no idea what’s going on.
I would like to have known a little more about the world here.	Put in some world-building please. I can’t even imagine the place you are describing (or rather, not describing).
Initially I thought that Simon was on his own, yet now I realise he’s with a group of friends. I would like to have seen that telegraphed more, especially before they help him out.	Where did all these people come from? They just appeared out of thin air.
I felt some of the dialogue was unrealistic.	Nobody talks like that.
To me, the ending felt a little rushed/contrived.	The ending’s a mess and you left a lot out.
I feel your action scenes are much stronger than your dialogue/description.	Your dialogue/description is weak.
I love the new first chapter you added. You have improved the story, and the new start made me want to read on.	I love the new first chapter you added. You have improved the story, and the new start made me want to read on.

 

The last one is a difficult one.  Sometimes it’s a desperate attempt to say something good and you overcompensate by gushing about the things that do work in the book–but I find people don’t say they ‘love’ things about someone’s writing unless they really do love it. Yes, they’ll say positive things, but they don’t generally use strong passionate words like ‘love’ (or even ‘hate’) unless they mean what they say.

Praise indeed.

Current thoughts on food in science fiction

Food in fantasy genres gets a fair amount of press. Some of it focuses on how impractical writers can be or even the perfect fantasy novel meal, and of course there’s lots of talk about how impractical stew is (I’ve written this one myself ). George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire seems to particularly inspire people to write about the food in it.

But what about the food in science fiction?

Soylent green comes to mind as probably the most infamous, but there’s lots of food out there. Technovelogy lists food in well-known science fiction novels.

A lot of early science fiction contained food pills taken by spacers, protein grown in nutrient tanks and lots of packaged meals being rehydrated or reheated in microwaves (or an equivalent).

Except for rehydrated/microwaved meals, that reality hasn’t happened yet. Nor does it seem likely in the near future. NASA, for example, found that when they tried to compress food down to dried cubes, their astronauts didn’t eat it. In a study published in March 2011, planning for longer-term space missions such as a manned trip to Mars is for a mix of:

• irradiated wetpack foods (irradiated to kill any bacteria that might spoil the food),
• freeze dried foods,
• low moisture natural foods such as nuts,
• extended shelf-life bread products,
• powdered drinks, and a small amount of
• fresh fruit and vegetables.

Developing the NASA Food System for Long-Duration Missions by Maya Cooper, Grace Douglas and Michele Perchonok

Note that the fresh food is included for crew morale, rather than as a dietary necessity. Also current NASA missions have no capacity for refrigerated storage, so all food must have a long shelf life.

Designing a food system for our own universe

We’re currently world building for our Linesman novels. Here we have ships that move through space by passing through an alternative dimension, which cuts down travel time down to manageable distances. Travel between populous worlds takes hours or days, while even the isolated rim worlds can be reached in weeks.

From here we extrapolated what we see as trends in modern cargo and passenger carriers on land, water and in the air. With the exception of the small people carriers (cars, which seem to be getting smaller) carriers are getting larger. We’re in the era of the super-tanker and the super-liner. Even the planes are getting bigger.

We also assumed that there would be no issue with:

• carrying frozen goods, and that
• somehow, in our world, humans have been re-engineered to not have to worry about alien micro-organisms killing them (because, after all, that’s a whole other blog, and once you get started working that out, it will hijack your story)

Thus for short-duration trips we imagine that most ships will work like ships do currently here on Earth. They take in supplies—a mix of frozen, fresh and dried—enough to last the trip with maybe a bit over, and resupply at the next world. Some food would be pre-prepared, ready to microwave, while some food would be cooked, much as it is now in our own homes.

Matthew Johnson, in From Farm to Fable: Food, Fantasy, and Science Fiction commented that biggest gap between the present and the past is not what we eat, but when we eat it, because until methods of storing food and transporting them were invented, most foods could only be eaten in season. That won’t be a problem in the future. Thus the food will be a mix from any world, any season.

We also have space stations, whose inhabitants spend months at a time on board the station. For these, we imagine that they will use something like hydroponics and produce their own fresh vegetables.

So our future travellers will eat foodstuffs from various worlds, but preparation and storage will be much like it is today. While there will be compressed emergency rations, these won’t be common fare, only for emergencies. The only pills will be medical, perhaps to provide essential vitamins and minerals for crew whose genetic makeup has changed from the human norm.

As for the food the aliens eat. That would be telling.

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If you are interested in food from novels, particularly fantasy and science fiction, you might like to visit Food Through The Pages.