S. K. Dunstall

I recently critiqued a batch of stories written by a writing class.

The writers could be divided into two specific groups:

• Those who had just left secondary school and moved into tertiary education. Ages ranged from about eighteen to twenty, and

• Mature-age students who had been out in the workforce/world for some time. Their ages ranged from early thirties to mid-fifties.

The stories submitted by the mature-age students ranged from thrillers to fantasy to slice-of-life. Some were funny, some were racy. There was even one semi-horror. Even so, they were all relatively light in tone.

Every single person in the younger group, however, wrote black, bleak stories from real life where the protagonist ended up getting killed, or beaten up, or raped. Or all three. Without exception.

No wonder dystopian fiction is such a hit in the young adult genre nowadays.

Over at ProBlogger Jon Morrow, of Copyblogger, posted a motivational article called How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World.

It’s an emotional topic and not just because of the catchy title. It has garnered hundreds of comments. Read the article and you’ll see why. But I don’t want to talk about what caused the outpouring of support, I want to talk about the writing.

This is fact, not fiction, but if you study Morrow’s technique this is ideal for fiction.

More after the break, with major spoilers.

Overheard at a coffee shop near one of the big five publishing houses.

Smartly dressed girl, “I’m employed to edit manuscripts, but he hasn’t given me a single manuscript yet.”

Sympathetic noises from more casually dressed friend, who looks as if she has the day off and is meeting Girl for lunch.

More casual conversation, and I get the impression that Girl is working for ‘him’. Maybe as an assistant, but he’s definitely her boss.

Girl, “I waited and waited for him to give me some editing to do. He didn’t. Finally, I asked, and he came back with a whole pile of manuscripts and said, ‘Send these back. They’re rejects.’ ”

Horrified sympathetic noises from friend. “He’s treating you like a secretary.”

“Exactly. And I’m employed to edit manuscripts. Well, I gave it a few more days before I asked again. Do you know what he did? He gave me more manuscripts to return. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to do this job any more.”

Rest in peace Diana Wynne Jones, who passed away on 26 March 2011.

Two quotes from the Tor site say it best:

She was passionate about what children want and deserve from their literature. Adults would approach her at signings, wanting to know why she wrote such difficult books. In one case, when a woman protested, the woman’s young son spoke up and assured Diana, “Don’t worry. I understood it.”

Emma Bull, Remembering Diana Wynne Jones

and

… meanwhile Diana’s readers, children in 1973 when Wilkins’ Tooth came out, were grown up. It would be conventional to say here, “and had children of their own” but while that’s true too, what is fascinatingly true, is that many of them had books of their own. Diana had not just grown fans, she had grown writers.
Farah Mendelsohn, Diana Wynne Jones

You were the best, Diana.

I’m a conversation writer. I can do repartee with the best of them, and Sherylyn puts emotion and actions around it. So when our characters talk it’s a reasonable mix of talking versus description (we think anyway). Get them into a fight, however, and it’s a different story. We’re both hopeless at that.

Late last year we put Potion up on Authonomy*. Or rather, I convinced Sherylyn that she should put it up and do all the work promoting it and monitoring other people’s stories, which she did under our planned pen-name, Rowan Dai.

We got some excellent feedback which helped us improve the story a lot. One particular criticism that came up again and again was that the fight scene didn’t work. The thing was, we knew that we had glossed over it, but until so many people pointed out the same thing we—I won’t say we couldn’t see it as a major problem, because we knew it was—but we ignored it, and sort of hoped it would go away.

As all writers know, bad writing doesn’t go away. You have to fix it. We worked at it, and worked at it, and worked at it.

It took a lot of work just to get from:

“Hieyah,” Van Wallah yelled, and he charged the elf.

Blade jumped across, grabbed Van Wallah’s vest.

Van Wallah tried to wriggle free. Couldn’t. “Get him, men,” he ordered, and while Tegan watched, horrified, his men converged on Alun.

River charged forward to save him, but two of Van Wallah’s men jumped River.

Blade clubbed Van Wallah with the hilt of his sword. Tegan heard the crack. The bandit went down. Blade then grabbed a stool and bounded into the fight. Summer was close behind.

Katarina hesitated, looking around for somewhere to put her wine. Finally she handed it to Tegan and joined the fight. Tegan put the wine on the window ledge and started gathering a spell.

Her friend had turned into an impressive fighter. Showy too, not like Blade and Alun, who dispatched two men each while Katarina fought hers. River and Summer fought one each as well, but not as easily. Tegan’s holding spell kept another four on the edge until a blast of hatred distorted the spell and they converged on the elf.

She rebuilt the spell and Blade picked them off one by one.

A quick fight. Less than two minutes …

Potion (Not So Simple After All) by Rowan Dai Draft 3

to:

“Hieyah,” Van Wallah yelled, and he charged the elf.

Blade jumped across, grabbed Van Wallah’s vest.

Van Wallah tried to wriggle free. Couldn’t. “Get him, men,” he ordered, and while Tegan watched, horrified, his men converged on Alun.

River charged forward to save him, but two of Van Wallah’s men jumped River.

Blade clubbed Van Wallah with the hilt of his sword. Tegan heard the crack. The bandit went down. Blade then grabbed a stool and bounded into the fight. Summer was close behind.

Alun scrambled out from under the huddle of Van Wallah’s men and jumped at the two men attacking River. He dragged them off, raised a fist to one, who went down. Another fist.

Another man down.

The huddle of men suddenly realised Alun was no longer there. They turned to find him.

Katarina hesitated, looking around for somewhere to put her wine. Finally she handed it to Tegan and joined the fight. Tegan put the wine on the window ledge.

Her friend had turned into an impressive fighter. Showy too.

What spell could she use? If she was alone and was attacked she would use fire or fear, but if she used them here they would work against her own side. Maybe a holding spell, but it would have to work on individuals. She started forming the words.

Katarina used her long legs as weapons. She fought dirty too. Tegan winced at one kick.

One of Van Wallah’s men pulled out a sword.

Tegan didn’t think. It was instinctive to call the weapon to her. All the other swords came too and Tegan dived under the bench as they rattled down where she had been sitting.
The man whose sword it was lunged for it. Tegan gabbled a quick holding spell. He froze mid-lunge.

Blade clubbed another man with his stool. The man went down. Beside another Tegan hadn’t seen fall. Blade clubbed another. The stool broke. He tossed the stool away and followed through with his fists.

Tegan crawled out from under the bench, started composing her spell again.

Another two men were down over where Alun was fighting.

Blade hit another hard enough to push him back. Tegan’s holding spell caught him.

“Behind you,” Tegan said, as another man attacked him from behind. She’d lost track of the others.

Blade dropped low, and pulled the attacker over his shoulders. The man went crashing into the pile of swords.

One man was down near Katarina, who was fighting another. River and Summer fought one each as well, but not as easily. Tegan’s holding spell kept another four on the edge until a blast of hatred distorted the spell and they converged on the elf.

Tegan pulled the spell back into place and Blade finished them off two-by-two, by cracking their heads together.

A quick fight. Less than two minutes …

Potion (Not So Simple After All) by Rowan Dai, Draft 5

Obviously, we still have a long way to go to fix up our fight scene. But after we changed even this much we noticed one thing. In the critiques that followed, no-one commented that the fight scene needed fixing.

*I have seen a lot of writers ask about the value of Authonomy and lots of different answers from “It’s a sales job” to “absolutely brilliant” to “absolutely useless”. I’m definitely in the camp that says don’t expect to get published through it, but if you use it properly and work at it then it’s a great critique group. It helps not just with improving your own novel but also with seeing mistakes other people make. Analysing other writers’ work can really help you pinpoint the same mistakes in your own.

Or it used to be anyway. It changed a lot and for a while there it was a case of ‘you vote for me, I’ll vote for you’, and I stopped using it because of that. I know Authonomy was trying to fix this. I don’t know if they have. I haven’t been back to look.

There’s an interesting discussion over at Sarah Monette’s LiveJournal site Notes from the Labyrinth about food in fantasy. Sarah asked how writers go about inventing cuisines and delicacies and hawker food, especially when you don’t base it on a specific culture.

Read the comments. They’re interesting.

Most of those who commented agree on some basics. That food culture depends a lot on geography and climate. If your fantasy world is set near the sea the cuisine is likely to contain seafood. If it’s set in the tropics it won’t contain wheat, so no bread. It also depends on how settled your fantasy world is. A world of hunter-gatherers will eat differently to an agricultural society.

Other comments covered technology and culture. What type of technology does the world have to preserve food? Who does the cooking?

Opinions were divided as to how necessary food descriptions are to a story.

I confess that I put food into my own stories.

I also confess that I write a lot of stew. And a lot of inns. Many fantasy readers and writers would throw up their hands and groan on hearing that. “Not stew. Not inns,” they cry. “Cliche. Cliche.”

Inns in fantasy are to me the equivalent of modern-day fast-food places crossed with pubs. Nowadays when you want a quick bite to eat you go to McDonalds or KFC, or maybe even to your local noodle shop.

I also expect alcohol to be more freely available than it is in a world like ours.

Your average fantasy world is more mediaeval than ours, otherwise it would be science fiction.

Put these three things together and what do you have? A place where alcohol is served? An inn. Fast food? This can only be hawker style food or something that’s sitting on the side of the stove ready to serve.

That’s right. Soups and stews.