On Covers: And now for something fun…

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Credit: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/fog-over-dubai
Credit: Daniel Cheong Photography.  Source: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/fog-over-dubai

Thought I’d have a little fun with Photoshop and a picture found via Google that pretty much fits the feel of A Division of Souls, and created a quick mock-up cover for it. All told it took me just over an hour, a bit of cropping, playing around with fonts, and rewording the back cover copy from previous query synopses I’d written. Tell me what you think! Note: If you’re curious, that’s Dubai. I picture the Mirades Tower being very similar to the Burj Khalifa. Note: Yeah, I know the copy on the back cover gets a bit screwy when white letters overlap shiny blue lights of that skyscraper. Like I said, this is just a mockup. 🙂

EDIT: I finally just recently discovered that this picture was most likely taken by Dubai resident Daniel Cheong, so proper credit where credit’s due.  Check his stuff out at Daniel Cheong Photography, it’s well worth it.

On Writing: Printouts, Notebooks, Scraps, and Everything Else Behind the Scenes

Jon Chaisson1 Comment
This seemed like a good idea at the time...
This seemed like a good idea at the time…

Back in mid-July, I’d looked at the tall black bookshelf I have next to my desk and realized that the bottom two shelves were woefully out of order. The bottom shelf was full of bound manuscript printouts of my writing output thus far; I had complete then-up-to-date prints of the trilogy, prints of the Great Pre-PC Writing Transcription Project of 1995-96, the many versions of the Infamous War Novel, and so on. And on the shelf above were three piles of unbound printouts from various other projects (finished and unfinished), notes hastily scribbled on scrap paper, a relatively large collection of my drawn maps from over the decades, lyrics for both jeb! and the Flying Bohemians, and the ridiculous pile of notes hastily scribbled for the trilogy over the course of five years.

With the best of intentions, I chose to clean it up, or at least put it in some semblance of order. Part of this was due to the fact that I’d been looking for a Mendaihu Universe outtake I’d written around 2001, as well as the 1994 version of my current WiP Two Thousand, and I couldn’t find either of them easily, not without spending a good hour digging through things. So without further ado, I pulled everything out and set to work.

This soon led to me digging through other areas of Spare Oom, as I realized I had the file box that contained various personal effects, four file boxes that carried smaller bits and bobs, and the short and partially obscured bookcase next to the loveseat. Oh, and maybe some random papers sitting in with my CDs and tapes in the Spare Oom closet. And maybe one or two things stuffed in the night table drawer next to the bed. And and (! fookin) and…

The above picture was taken once I got it all sorted. Sort of. It took an extra day for me to finish the sorting, and in the end I had not one but two boxes of stuff to throw away. It was a mix of paper and detritus, stuff I had little or no use for. One box would be shredded and/or put down in the recycling, the other put in the trash. This would soon include about a dozen or so spiral notebooks of varying use and age. They all had something written within, but hadn’t been used since then. Many of these ended up being recycled, many of the useless notes shredded and the useable ones added to the sorting.

Two days later, and things were somewhat cleaner, but I started thinking…there’s got to be a better way for writers to save their works in progress, their dead-end projects, and pretty much any piece of created prose or related notes. Do I really need to save Craptastic Revision #4, in which the novel is complete but I desperately need to fix about twenty scenes that fall utterly flat? Do I need to save this printout of the only five pages I wrote of this incomplete story, even though I have it saved on my hard drive, copied on one of the externals, and is also on my Dropbox cloud?

Let’s be honest, it’s fun for a writer-in-training to hoard every single tidbit even remotely related to any of their projects, perhaps on the offchance that they make it big and these become “behind the scenes” and “outtakes” documents like a collector’s edition DVD, or even better, on the offchance that they make it big and decide to donate their papers to a local library, like some well-established writers have. Or like me, saving every version I print out, just in case I want to refer back to an earlier version for ideas or reference material.

And then there’s reality.

Before I moved out of the family house in early 2005, my dad gave me use of a three-drawer filing cabinet, which I had next to my desk in the Belfry. This was in addition to two milk crates under the desk. The milk crates carried printouts of the various novels I’d worked on and were not presently using; the filing cabinet held the various poetry notebooks, unbound printouts, spiral notebooks big and small, and other pre-PC writings that I hadn’t scanned or transcribed. I think it even contained personal paperwork like paychecks and bills. They remained there for the most part until our final trip up to Massachusetts before we had to pack everything for our move to San Francisco; at that point in late autumn I had to spend a good couple of hours going through it all. Save? Throw away? Shred? One of the first things I did was take all the spiral bound notebooks and debate what I could save. That’s when I found at least 15 or 20 of them in there, with about twenty or so pages used, the rest blank. Well, I realized. That’s a waste. I ripped out the used pages and put them in manila folders, and donated the notebooks to one of my cousins, who could put them to good use. By the time we moved out in December, I’d gone from multiple storage containers to two large plastic storage tubs, and over the course of 2006 and 2007 I sorted through them, keeping some and shredding others. And as of today, nearly all that’s left is on those two bottom shelves of that black bookshelf. There’s another pile of printouts over on the bottom shelf of the semi-obscured bookshelf, prints I know I won’t need any time soon.

I think this is partly why most of my writing is nearly all on PC now–it’s just easier to save the various versions of my Word documents than to waste toner and paper (and space) with the various versions. I’m only using about five notebooks on a consistent basis at present:

1. College-ruled softcover moleskine: personal journal
2. Composition book with the black and white mottled cover: poetry (some habits die hard)
3. Small hardcover moleskine A: artwork
4. Small hardcover moleskine B: calendar notebook to keep track of word count and project movement
5. Small spiral notebook: notes on music and stuff I hear on the radio

I have a few other notebooks lying around that I don’t use nearly as often, but they also have specific uses. I don’t use the printer all that often as I used to…in fact, it’s been at least a few years since I last put toner in there. [I’m even contemplating replacing this one with a three-in-one so I can rescan a lot of my stuff.] I’m often tempted to pick up a new notebook here and there whenever we pass the stationery section of Target or happen into an OfficeMax, but I keep myself in check. If I do buy something, there’s usually a reason for it now, and not “just in case I need it down the road”. I did save a few from this recent culling, so I can use those first before going out to buy more.

Do I miss hoarding new notebooks? The feel of fresh pages, the excitement of writing that first page of that new project? Well, not entirely. What I do miss actually is the hoarding of snacks and 12-pack cans of Mountain Dew in my desk like I did in the Belfry, but I think I can look past that. I still hoard my writing, but it’s all digital now, saving the various versions in multiple folders and putting them on my Dropbox so I can access them anywhere. [And I mean anywhere–the other weekend I accessed my shopping list from my phone in an aisle of Amoeba.] It’s much easier to handle.

The only downside to that, of course, is that I now have multiple folders with multiple copies of multiple projects. I may need to do a bit of reorganization and culling there at some point…

[Thanks to Meagan H for the inspiration for this entry, as well as passing on this great article about notebook clearing!]

On Writing: Determination and Distraction

Jon Chaisson2 Comments

Some of you may have seen my Twitter pic or my LiveJournal post last night regarding “the Return of the Whiteboard Writing Schedule.”  A few years back I bought one of those erasable whiteboards that has a calendar grid on it and stuck it on the wall, eye-level, in front of my desk.  I used to have one of these in the Belfry years ago as well, which I used as a way to remind me of due dates and deadlines.  It worked out pretty well then, and figured it would be good to have again.

When I first put it up, I came up with the idea of giving myself a strict writing schedule.  Two reasons for this: my writing time is not as concrete as it used to be, and I find that I’m more productive when I give myself a specific schedule in which to do things.  This was proven during the Belfry years when I consistently hit a high word count working in the early evenings every day.  I also had one project going at the time–the Bridgetown Trilogy–so as long as I stayed true to it, I was fine.

I’ve used this schedule since around 2011.  I’ve changed it up a few times, moved things around, dropped a few projects, but for the most part it’s worked.  I chose to drop it for a time earlier this year, but for a good reason: I was doing a major revision of the Trilogy and wanted to devote all my writing time solely to that.  Now that that’s done and that I’ve anchored myself to a new writing project, it’s time to return.  I reused the January 2013 schedule I’d come up with that had served me well; the new project takes up the weekday, with Walk in Silence taking up the weekends.  I’ve also peppered in some offline/personal projects such as poetry, art, and music practice.  I’m also returning to my morning 750 Words, which I’ll sneak in during my work hours alongside my daily journaling. 

It’s a lot, but I like having a lot to work on.  It keeps the creative blood flowing.  It also makes me a better writer in the process.  Furthermore, they’re not strict deadlines but guidelines.  This isn’t homework, something I must do, but something to aim for on a weekly basis.

 

So…what’s this about distraction, then?

Well, that would be the forays over to YouTube, the refreshing of the Twitter feed, my longterm project of music cataloging, among other things.  Mostly done during the work day, when things are slow.  All well and good in moderation.  I can allow myself to let the time pass.  Hell, my old timewaster at work when I didn’t have internet access was doing word search games.  It’s a way to relax and keep oneself occupied.

On the other hand, when there’s nothing better to do and no immediate directive involved, it’s easy to fall into the trap of distraction.  Popping onto a website to see the latest posts, read the latest news, keep up-to-the-minute tabs on friends and acquaintances.  We still get fascinated by immediate gratification, and that’s what the internet is all about.  It’s what movies, radio, and TV were all about.  Which means that it’s up to our own selves to know when to turn it off, because no one else will do it for us.

It took me awhile to learn that.  I’ll fully admit that I get easily distracted.  Playing around with my mp3 collection, falling down the Wikipedia or YouTube rabbit holes, playing FreeCell or Solitaire, you know how it is.  I’d stop myself after twenty minutes or so, basically when my conscience would gently prod me and say “Dude, look at the time.  You’re wasting most of it right now.  You’d better get cracking if you want to get anything done tonight.”  And as timing would have it, my wife would walk in about five minutes before that moment and mock me for dicking around so much.  I’d eventually get things done, but later than usual.

This is another reason for the return of the Whiteboard Writing Schedule:  so I’m too busy doing things I enjoy, such as writing, drawing, or playing my guitar, to be distracted by timewasting things such as cat memes and silly gifs.

So.  How to avoid distraction?  Any specific steps?  Any tricks?

Not really.  Just the one step: Be aware that you’re distracting yourself, and do something about it.  Especially when you notice it and not doing anything about it.  You want to be a writer, yes?  Fine.  You want to get some writing done tonight?  Fine–then stop not writing.  You’re well aware of the distractions–it’s up to you to be procative and cut down on them.  Replace them with distractions you enjoy–reading, painting, hiking, what have you.  They may not exactly make you more productive or prolific, but they’re an outlet that inspires you.  And in the process, they may even change your mood so you’re even more creative once you start writing.

Fly-By: brb, heading to Worldcon!

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay in posts here, it’s been a busy couple of weeks!  We will be heading to the UK at the end of this week for Worldcon, so I will most likely not be able to provide any updates until I return.

[There is the temptation to post from the UK, as I will be bringing my tablet with me, but that will ultimately depend on if I have the time in between the convention and doing all the goofy touristy things one does on vacation.  We shall see.]

Thanks for your patience!

On Writing, Revision, and Recording Music

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[Note: I posted this at my LJ back in September 2013, and thought it would be worth reposting here.  Enjoy!]

A short time ago I tweeted something that came to me about the writing and revising processes, and partly how I was finally able to understand what I needed to improve my writing, and also made me understand just how to write and record a song correctly. This came to me while I was doing my Blogging the Beatles posts a few weekends ago, and I’d like to expand on it a bit here.

In short, it occurred to me that revision, for the most part, is very much like how many rock bands record their music. The listener–and with books, the reader–are only given the finished piece: the end result of a long process of composing, noodling, demoing, recording, overdubbing, and final mixing. What the public often does not hear/see is all that work as it unfolds. You don’t hear/see the alternate words, the alternate melodies/plots, the mistakes and the other bits and bobs. And if all this is done correctly, you hardly notice all the tiny flourishes as separate entities of the whole, because you’re not supposed to; they’re supposed to be part of the entire, much larger experience.

For the longest time–probably up until the last two years or so–my writing process has been extremely slipshod and make-it-up-as-I-go-along, and giving myself subconscious reminders for things that would need revising later. I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to remember the story arcs and the random plot twists that I would need to expand on later on in the story, and I’ve made copious notes on the esoterica of my created world. I may have crowed about outlines in the past, but I’ve used them, or at least planned out the plot a few chapters ahead of where I was at that time. Still, after all these years, I’ve come to the realization that while this process may work, it’s time consuming and unorganized.

In the last few years, I’ve been working primarily on the revision of the Bridgetown Trilogy, rarely writing anything completely new. That’s not to say I’m not writing anything at all; there are several passages in this revision project that are either total rewrites of older scenes, or are brand new scenes that replace old ones that don’t work. I’ve been writing a few other things here and there, outtakes for Walk in Silence, posts for Blogging the Beatles, and making notes for both new and old ideas. It may look like I’m getting nothing done, but trust me–I’m doing all the background work right now.

Again–it’s like recording a song.

Over the course of the Blogging the Beatles posts, I’ve done a lot of reading of Mark Lewisohn’s book The Beatles Recording Sessions, which goes into fascinating detail as to when, how, and where their songs were recorded. I’ve read this book countless times in the past, but in the context of my blog series I’ve begun appreciating the crafting of the music, listening to the songs and trying to understand exactly what they did to make it sound that way. In the end it’s also made me think more about my own creative processes, both in writing and music.

The beginning always starts with an idea. It might be something obtuse: John Lennon came up with the vocal melody for “I Am the Walrus” from the up-down tones of police sirens as they passed by his home. It might be something coming from out of nowhere: Paul McCartney was convinced he’d copped the melody to “Yesterday” from somewhere, but it was his own creation. It might be inspired by life: George Harrison wrote “Savoy Truffle” about Eric Clapton’s addiction to sweets. The point being: this is where the idea takes hold. I’ve mentioned in the past that my trilogy came from watching the Gall Force animes.

The next step is the rough draft, the demo. Here’s where a band gets together at someone’s house and hashes out a few ideas that have been brewing over the last few weeks. The Beatles did this in early 1968 when they came back from India, gathering at George’s house for a few days and hammering out a few rough drafts of songs that would eventually show up on The Beatles (aka The White Album), as well as Abbey Road. In writing, this is where you’re writing longhand, maybe doing a bit of outlining and/or plotting, drawing maps, putting up that wall of Post-Its. In essence: here’s where you sit down and riff it, build on that one idea (or multiple ideas) and see what unfolds.

Next is the first draft, Take 1. It’s going to be rough, there are going to be dozens of mistakes and wrong notes and flubbed lyrics. If the demo contains enough ideas that you can continue fleshing out, this is where you start adding a few things here and there, perhaps fleshing out a melody or two that you found captivating. You may even find that a bit that worked in the demo sounds horribly out of place here, and you drop that. Now, unless you’ve been practicing and rehearsing that one demo for quite a long time, you have to remember that this first take is going to sound like crap, no matter what you may think. Rarely does one get a complete finished song at this point. In writing? Same exact points. You’ve got the idea, now it’s time to start molding and shaping it into something better.

Next is the following drafts, the continuous takes. However long it takes to get that one passage right, to fix that lyric or bum note that’s been bugging you all this time. You may even resort to outside influence–your bandmates/your writing group–and ask them to take a listen/read and see if they find something you’ve overlooked. This is the longest and the most frustrating part, because you’re focusing mostly on building the song/plot. You may even drop it for a time and work on something else so you can return to it later, listen/read it with a clear mind.

Eventually, you’ll hit that last draft, that last take of the song. There will be a point, if you’re paying attention, where everything will just click. The song might not be the most perfect one in existence, but it’s exactly how you want it to sound. You’ve fixed those bum notes, you’ve cleaned up the lyrics. You’re at a point where you’re happy with it, maybe even a bit proud of it. In writing, this is where you’ve pretty much tied up all the loose ends of the plots, fixed the grammar and spelling mistakes, gotten it to the point where it looks clean.

This, of course, is not the final result. Not yet. And this is where, for years, I’d stop. I thought I’d be done with the book and send it out to agents and publishers, thinking I had a good shot at getting accepted. This is where I’d also get rejected, of course. There are many and countless reasons for that, which I won’t go into at this time. The point is, it’s not quite finished yet.

This is where the overdubs, the final mixing, and the running order come in. There’s that one point in the middle-eight that sounds just a bit too sparse, so you decide to throw a bit of horns or a solo in there. The vocals are weak here, so you overdub yourself to punch up the strength of the sound. This song sounds quite out of place as the third track on the album, but would sound so much better as the second-to-last track. Translated: this is the final read-through, the point where you pick up the novel as a whole, read it as you would a potential reader instead of its author. This is where you pay attention to how you react to the story. This is where you notice that one character needs more description or action. Where you notice that this subplot leads nowhere. Where you feel that Chapter 5 would make so much more sense chronologically as Chapter 8 instead. Where you threw a deus ex machina or something in there out of laziness, or as an “I’ll fix it later” and promptly forgot about it.

THIS is the final draft: this is where you make the song sound seamless, like you and the band recorded it in one go, without a single blemish. This is where your audience will not see the work you put into it, but only the end result.

Once you hit that point, then it’s time to send it out to the agent and/or publisher.

Writing Soundtracks

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Most of you out there know that, aside from being a writer, I’m an incurable music fan.  Not a day goes by where I’m not listening to some radio station or some new album I downloaded that week.  I laugh at polls that ask if I listen to music more than a few hours a day–it’s more like all day long.

This includes my writing time.  I’m one of those writers who prefers to have some sort of music going while I’m writing.  What I listen to actually boils down to whatever project I happen to be working on.  I’m currently working on Walk in Silence, so the music of choice has been strictly 80s alternative.  For the most part I’ve been listening to the 1st Wave channel on our Sirius XM setup, where Swedish Egil and Dave Kendall have been providing me with tasty retro goodness for the last few months.  This is perfect for this first draft, as I’m not focusing too much on specific albums and songs at this time.  The second draft will focus more on that, so my soundtrack will focus more on my own mp3 collection.

The evening writing sessions down in the Belfry that produced The Phoenix Effect from 1997 to 1999 and the Bridgetown Trilogy from 2000 to 2004 had their own expanding soundtrack; the former contained a high amount of the free cds I got when I worked at HMV, and the later contained many of the titles I bought during my weekly journeys to Newbury Comics back when it was in Amherst.

Was the writing influenced by the music I bought?  Well, yes and no.  I didn’t go out of my way to look for the perfect song that would fit a specific scene, nor was I writing and editing a scene to a specific song in a Miami Vice-like manner.  I’d grown out of that habit a long time ago.  I merely found myself gravitating towards the moods the music created when I listened to them, and used that as a mental anchor when I needed it.

When I was writing a number of scenes that needed personal and emotional tension, I would often throw on Dishwalla’s And You Think You Know What Life’s About.  If it was an epic action scene, it would be Failure’s Fantastic Planet.  Global Communication’s two albums 76:14 and Pentamerous Metamorphosis fit the bill perfectly when I was writing about the world of Trisanda.  Trip-hop like Massive Attack and Sneaker Pimps worked good when I was writing about the seedier areas of Bridgetown.  I also had certain go-to bands whose entire discography worked, like Porcupine Tree.

I always made a conscious effort never to let the music interfere with the story; I tried not to write scenes that lost their energy when the music wasn’t playing.  If anything, the music served as an anchor, giving  me something to focus on, something to aim for.  Failure’s epic album closer “Daylight” served as the audio anchor for the final scene in A Division of Souls–I needed something desperate and angry and with a hint of fear that would mirror what was going on during those final pages, and I think that it paid off.

Now that I’m working on a project that’s specifically about music, I have every reason to listen to whatever I like.  Whatever my next writing project is, will I have the same listening habits during my writing sessions?  Who knows, but I’m pretty sure something will be playing.

On Conlangs in Science Fiction: When Should a Writer Use It?

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As you have seen here and here, the Mendaihu Universe has its own constructed language, or conlang. which I’ve chosen to use for the alien Meraladhza race.  Creating this ersatz language was not just a hella nerdy thing to do, but it was a lot of nerdy fun as well.  As noted in that previous blog post, there were two reasons for doing so:

1. To give the aliens their own language, pure and simple.  Once you read Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as a writer you can’t help but feel super-conscious about aliens being able to speak your native tongue so easily, and sometimes fluently to the point of using localisms, without thinking it’s a cop-out.  It’s a silly worry, as it’s widely accepted in the genre, expected even, for aliens from other worlds to be able to speak your language, or at least to have some sort of translating device.  Thus Adams’ brilliant sendup using the babel fish–it’s a brilliant satire of the old-school science fiction stories where the aliens somehow knew the Queen’s English upon first contact.

2. What if I wanted them to use their language?  In a way, I wanted to play around with the idea that our languages have permeated Anjshé, just as it has permeated ours–which is how a lot of real languages have evolved on Earth, anyway.  This is another reason I chose the aliens to have been among us for at least a few hundred years before the trilogy’s timeline; this would have given time for a bit of cultural bleedover to take place, including language.  The Meraladh would have picked up on various languages, and the Earth humans would have picked up on Anjshé, and both sides would have appropriated a few phrases into their own language at that point.

So if you’ve created a conlang for your novel or your created world, you may need to ask yourself: when is it needed?   In my opinion: when it’s needed within the context of the story.  Think about why you want to use the alien language–I mean, aside from “because it’s cool”, of course.  Give the language a reason for being there.

Say your main character is meeting up with your aliens for the first time, and he or she doesn’t know the language, or doesn’t have a translating device on them.  You could play up the tense moments by having them attempt to converse, never quite sure if they’re being friendly or aggressive.  Some writers have used this as an ongoing plot device, such as CJ Cherryh whenever she has the alien kif speak in her Chanur books.  Even Adams used this idea to amusing effect, having Arthur Dent hear a few moments of the Vogon language before Ford Prefect slams a babel fish into his ear; in the process, we find that the Vogons are not just horrible amoral aliens in general, but their language is so hard on the ears that it has literally caused other aliens to kill themselves rather than listen any further.

Within the trilogy, I use the Anjshé language only where it’s truly needed, specifically when a character is having an extremely emotional or spiritual moment.  It could be passive, such as when Alec Poe spits out the word pashyo (a general exclamation of surprise or frustration) whenever he’s annoyed with the situation.  Or it could be when Caren Johnson humbly apologizes to a Meraladian character with nyhnd’aladh…I am sorry, when she speaks out of turn and inadvertently says something hurtful.  I also use it whenever a character is performing some kind of spiritual action; just before a major ritual begins, I have Denni Johnson speak an entire introduction completely in Anjshé before she repeats it in English.  All these moments not just utilize the conlang to give the moment realism, but I’ve also given it a reason for being there:  as the Meraladians are a very spiritual people, so is their language, which they deem just as important as their actions.

*

As always, one major thing to remember about creating a conlang is to make it pronounceable to the reader.  Unless you’re creating a language that’s deliberately hard on the tongue and/or ears, such as Adams for his Vogons or Cherryh for her kif, you’ll want to voice them out as you create them.  If you can’t pronounce it without tripping over your tongue or your throat seizing on you, chances are good that your reader will have the same problem.

A few other hints to think about:

–Make some ground rules to keep it consistent.  As stated in a previous entry, the most common sounds in Anjshé are “mmh” and “aah”, as they are the sounds of the spirit at rest.  Creating these kinds of rules will show that you put effort into this conlang, that you’re not just making it up as you go along.

–Study up on real foreign languages–or even your own native tongue–as a way to see how and why that culture created its vocabulary.  Anjshé is partly inspired by real languages that create new words through existing shorter words, like some Japanese and German; it’s also partly inspired by the aural flow of Gaelic.  In this process, keep in mind how these new words will affect your characters:  how would they deliver them, and is there a specific reason why they are saying them?

–Create a primer or a glossary that you can always refer to while writing to help you remain consistent in usage as well as in spelling.  You may even want to add these words to your word processor’s dictionary to avoid the auto-correct kicking in.  Additionally, you can use this glossary as part of your novel’s endnotes so the reader can refer to it when necessary.

–Have fun with it and see where it leads you!  Don’t think of it as your boring homework from high school–you’re creating not just new words here, but a new created culture, which you can then integrate into the novel itself.  This  will give your story more depth in the process, even if it’s just a short passage.  Readers will pick up on this and enjoy the reaction it causes.

 

Creating a conlang can be as detailed or as vague as you want and need it to be.  On the whole I believe I only have about seventy or so Anjshé words I created and added to the Bridgetown Trilogy, and used them only when necessary.  I left the door wide open for expansion, of course, and if that is part of your long-term goal, then by all means, go for it!

An Introduction to the Bridgetown Trilogy

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Hi there, and thanks for sticking around!  And hello if you’re a new visitor!  Welcome to Bridgetown!

So…what is The Bridgetown Trilogy, you say? Where is this mythical B-Town?  And why does the banner picture of the city look suspiciously like downtown Los Angeles as seen from the Getty Museum?  What is this trilogy all about anyway?

Well–it’s high time I give you the rundown.  The one-sentence pitch that I’d come up with, which I’m currently using:

Caren Johnson’s younger sister has been forcefully awakened as a powerful and supernatural deity, revered by multiple worlds…and a war has just been declared in her name.

Nice kicker, eh?  I’d like to think so.  [Mind you, that was probably the hardest damn thing to create.  I’m not one for brevity.]

So let me give you the situation:  Caren Johnson is an elite member of a special branch of the Bridgetown Metro Police called the Alien Relations Unit.  With the humanoid Meraladzha living among us, the ARU has been tasked with keeping the peace between aliens and humans.   She’s proud of her work; she’s followed the career paths of her parents, Aram and Celine, both highly revered and decorated ARU agents.  They were both killed in the line of duty five years before the events that take place in the trilogy.  She’s become the legal guardian of her younger sister Denni, a precocious and very intelligent fifteen year-old, and she loves her dearly.  Caren does her best to balance life and work, but because of her parents’ history, they sometimes blur…

Aram and Celine were also a part of an elite force called the Mendaihu–a collection of supernaturally strong and highly spiritual people whose primary goal is to protect the planet…not just the humans and the aliens, but their souls within as well.  The reasons for their deaths had never been officially released publicly, but Caren knows why; they were protecting their daughters from a potential evil that had come to kill them.

Caren fears she will become Mendaihu as well, for it’s in her soul and in her blood.  But what she fears most is when Denni ‘awakens’ to her own Mendaihu powers.   Her one wish is to let Denni live a normal life without such heavy responsibility.

Nehalé Usarai, a rebel Meraladian and an one of the strongest Mendaihu in the province, has other plans.  He knows Denni’s fate…but he also knows that she’s the current incarnation of the One of All Sacred, one of the highest revered deities in Meraladh history.  He performs a dangerous and potentially lethal Awakening ritual, and in the process not only awakens Denni, but a large swath of Bridgetown as well.  He knows this is dangerous, but he fully believes that she will bring peace and balance to the world.

The only thing that could stop her is an equally strong and formidable force called the Shenaihu; they are the yang to the Mendaihu yin, their spiritual opposite.  When one acts, the other must act in kind to retain the balance, or the both the physical and the spiritual world could spiral out of control.

Both sides have other plans, despite the balance.  It will be up to Denni, Caren, and a host of others, both awakened and not, to ensure that the balance returns.

The story takes place over three books:  A Division of Souls, The Persistence of Memories, and The Process of Belief.   It’s about many things: belief, patience, clarity, and love.  It’s about physical and spiritual evolution.  It’s about family.  If I had to whittle it down to a single sentence, I would say this: it’s about devotion to oneself despite outside influence.

 

*   *   *

At this time, the first book has been submitted to a potential publisher, and I’m currently awaiting a response.  I’m keeping my options open, but my aim is to have the trilogy published by a professional house.

Here’s to hoping!

On Dialogue: Realism, Conversation and How to Get It

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I admit, I love writing dialogue.  To me, that’s where the characters really blossom and show their true colors, even if they’re speaking evasively.  They can’t help but reveal parts of themselves.  I actually enjoy passages in books where there’s a heavy conversation going on.  If it’s done well, it’s like the story has just decided to shift gears and rev the engine a little, show off a bit, and lets us see how characters interact.  And if it’s done really well, the writer can even get away with a bit of exposition while they’re at it.

It does take practice to write good dialogue, though.  You have to be a good listener of course, but you also need to be able to know what you’re listening for.  For example:

1.  You don’t want them to sound like you.

I fell prey to this quite often when I was starting out.  All my characters sounded like townies from central Massachusetts, quick with a smartass remark or a localism, generally friendly to everyone, and so on.  I grew out of that when I learned how to create unique characters.  I kind of cheated on this while writing True Faith, basing many characters off of real actors and actresses of the time.  One character was based on Denis Leary, so he was often abrasive and unafraid to say questionable things; another on Christian Slater’s Heathers character so he often sounded slimy and untrustworthy. That was the only project where I went out of my way to create a cast list like that, but it definitely made me listen closer to actual conversation.

2. Don’t just listen to the words.

That was also in 1995, the year I worked at a theater chain, so I was able to watch pretty much all the blockbusters that year for free, and that’s where I really started focusing on dialogue.  Movies can often be a great study guide.  You don’t always need to watch the classics repeatedly like I did in college; pick out your favorite movies and study them.  And don’t just listen to the words; listen to the pacing, the delivery, the intent.  Listen to the way someone evades answering a question, or the reason why they’ve raised their voice.  They’re not just throwing words at us, there’s meaning behind them.  Dialogue can help drive the story just as well as prose can; find out how your characters can do that for you.

3. Be realistic, but not too realistic.

One of the most irritating things I’ve seen over the last decade or so is the literal quote in news stories.  Say you’re reading coverage about a congressman explaining why they voted as they did; what we’d like to see is an easy-to-read quote: “We deliberated long and hard on this issue, and to tell the truth, we almost couldn’t make it pass…but we were relieved when it did.”

But what we’ll sometimes get in the coverage is this:  “We, uh. We deliberated long and hard, you know, on this, the issue.  We–to tell the truth, I’ll say this, we almost couldn’t–it nearly didn’t pass.  But we were relieved when it, when it did.”

Sure, if you want to quote a person exactly and without edits, by all means, go right ahead.  I understand that you may be doing so to avoid any possible misquotation.  But as you can see from the previous paragraph, it’s hard as hell to read.  Your brain gets impatient because you already know what they’re going to say before they said it, and you lose interest before you’re even done.

Some writers can get away with that kind of dialogue, especially in film, and depending on your tastes, it works or it doesn’t.  It really does depend on the story, because the dialogue needs to flow just as smoothly as the prose does.

Let’s highlight that: the dialogue needs to flow just as smoothly as the prose does.

The reason for this is that, more than anything else, you’re telling a story, and nothing takes you out of a story quicker than a passage that feels desperately out of place, yes?  It can be tricky sometimes, especially if you’re writing jerky dialogue on purpose (say, the character has a stutter or is too nervous around others), but at the same time, it needs to be able to sustain the interest.

Of course, there’s always the caveat: if the dialogue is being used as a plot device–say, the character says something shocking and unexpected–if you can pull it off, go for it.

That said, dialogue can be just as tricky as prose, but at the same time, it can be a lot of fun.  Experiment with it, figure out how it best works for you and your stories.

*    *    *

Here’s a few of my personal exercises on learning how to write dialogue:

1.  Watch movies and certain television shows.  I’ve already talked about movies, but some tv shows work too.  I’m talking about mysteries, dramas, finite series; shows that not just tell a half-hour or hour long story, but have an arc that ties the whole season or series together.  Listen to how the characters speak to each other over the course of the series.  Does their friendship deteriorate or grow stronger?  Why are they growing nervous around them when they speak?

2. Try writing a short story with nothing but dialogue–no dialogue tags, no description, nothing, just the characters speaking.  Trust me, it can work.  I tried it a few times for my daily words exercise some time ago and posted an example at my LiveJournal, and I had a hell of a fun time writing it.  By limiting the extremities, I forced myself to tell the story through what the two characters were saying.  A few hints at the setting, who they were, what kind of society they lived in, just by having them talk to each other.  It’s not nearly as hard as you think–in fact, it was a hell of a lot of fun to do, and well worth trying.

3. Real life listening.  My wife and I do a lot of walking and taking the bus around our city, and we both have a habit of catching snippets of other peoples’ conversations.  We’re not spying or being rude; we’re simply catching some of what they say to their friends as they pass by.  We’ve heard all sorts of great gems from tourists and locals alike, especially if they’re heard out of context.  Not only are they great for story prompts, they may influence how you see the characters speaking such things.

Fly-by post – Yes, I’m still here!

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

My apologies for not updating here over the last few weeks!  It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, between work-related issues and deadlines as well as getting some serious work done on my Walk in Silence book outline, so I’m afraid I haven’t had the time to keep this updated.

As of now, I’m where I want to be with the WiS work at the moment, and things should quiet down considerably on the work end of things.  Which means I have absolutely no reason not to be updating these more often.

SO!

Starting now, I’m hoping to have at least one update a week here, and perhaps update even more once soon after.  I still have quite the backlog of posts I have planned–they’re staring me in the face on a clipboard above my desk as we speak–so I hope to get these out to you as soon as I can.

I appreciate your patience–I’ll be back soon!