In the March 15th issue of New Scientist, I read the following:
Since 2004, EmSense, a company based in Monterey, California, has been using biofeedback to help game designers evaluate new products. Testers play a game wearing EmSense's headset, which uses an EEG to record their brainwaves, and also measures their heart rate and the sweatiness of their skin. EmSense then builds up a blow-by-blow profile of the player's emotional state and levels of arousal during play so the game can be made more engaging. And it occured to me that exactly the same could be done for books. Here's what I envisage: Find a group made up of your target audience (in my case, probably 12-year-old boys), give them a headset and a copy of your book, and then measure their responses to the book, page-by-page or even paragraph-by-paragraph. You could find out exactly how they were responding to what you'd written, which bits were exciting, funny, boring, slow. You could then revise accordingly. Okay, you'd need some way of monitoring what they were reading, but some kind of camera could do that fairly easily. So, how does that sound to you as a writer? Is the idea that you might be so closely forced to follow the reactions of a small group a complete nightmare? Something appalling that could be used to turn you into a machine rather than an artist? Or does it sound like a really useful tool that could give the kind of honest, detailed, unbiased feedback that you could never hope to get from a critiquer? Someone, someday is going to decide to use this for books, if they haven't already. Would you be willing?
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First. I am proud of this. See, it might seem a little weirdly obsessive, but here's what I've been doing with my novel: I've set up an Excel spreadsheet that I use to enter the running total word count. The spreadsheet then calculates the number of words done that day and the weekly rolling average, and plots these on a graph. I realise this is strange behaviour, and it's not what I'm proud of. What I'm proud of is that I've finally got the weekly rolling average up to 1,000 words for the first time. Taking into account that Mondays and Tuesdays are full work days for me and so a bit of a write-off for writing, I'm pretty pleased by it. And it looks good on the graph.
Second. I have managed to give myself whiplash in the neck by stretching. This morning, I stretched back and then came forward too quickly, and I now have whiplash. I'm trying not to turn my neck. Is this the most pathetic way to injure oneself or what?
Third. I've just sold a reprint (republish?) of my Realms of Fantasy story, The Land of Reeds, to Pseudopod. It's a fantasy set in ancient Egypt, and I pity the poor reader who is going to have to pronounce all the ancient Egyptian names and words. Not that anyone could really say they got it wrong, I guess. This is my third sale to Pseudopod. I like this podcasting thing. :)
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| 2008-04-04 16:30 |
| Three quick entries about writing: Three: In which I feel sympathy for fat-fantasy writers. |
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I think I finally understand what happened to Robert Jordan. I understand why he had so much trouble reaching the end of his 'Wheel of Time' series. I understand why George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire keeps getting longer. I understand this because I am trapped in The Book That Will Not End. Every time I think I'm about to make progress, something else happens to complicate it and put the end further back, like Alice, running as fast as possible without getting any closer to the end. Now one of my characters has been bitten by a Martian slug thing, and that's going to add a whole slew of new words. And I can absolutely guarantee that, by the time I through those, a new complication will have arrived.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's good stuff. I wouldn't be writing it if I didn't. It's the right thing to do. It's what stories are.
But. It. Will. Not. End.
P.S. 'Fat-fantasy authors' in the title? These are authors of fat fantasies, right? Not fantasy authors who are fat. Good. Glad we cleared that up. (Not that I don't feel sympathy for fantasy authors who are fat, having put on a few pounds myself in recent years...)
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| 2008-04-04 16:26 |
| Three quick entries on writing: Two: In which I have to be hit over the head to realise the obvious. |
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Steph sent me a fantastic link the other day. It's a blog entry by Mary Hershey about going to an author event by Elizabeth Gilbert. In the Q&A, Gilbert was asked about her intention when writing her bestselling novel Eat, Pray, Love. She revealed that she had written the book for a single friend, quite literally. She had been advised by her younger sister to write to one reader, and she'd taken that advice literally. In every part of her book, she'd written it as though she was writing an extended letter to her friend. She'd decided what to say and how to say it based on how best to explain it to that individual friend.
I'd never thought about writing in this way before, but it makes perfect sense. I've heard authors talk about writing books for themselves, and I've thought in terms of writing for an audience (in fact, this was the very first blog entry I ever did, back in a long-lost blog), but I've never focused it as though I was writing for a single, real person that I actually knew. Doing so makes a lot of sense. Writing is being about being specific rather than generic. We describe the singular rather than the generic when describing a scene ('we passed a sharp-sided valley', for example, rather than, 'we passed sharp-sided valleys'). We write an individual character rather than writing about 'a boy' or 'a girl'. It makes sense to extend this to the book's audience, too.
In fact, how often have you heard authors tell how they wrote a book for their kid or kids and read it to them as they wrote it? When you write for that very specific, individual audience rather than for an undefined mass, it will always be more consistent, accurate and focused. I know this. I knew this. But I may have only finally realised this when the blog entry hit me over the head with it.
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| 2008-04-04 16:26 |
| Three quick entries on writing: One: In which my smugness doesn’t last long. |
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Just the other day, I gave Steph some good writing advice and felt very smug about it. Something had happened to one of Steph's characters and she (the character, that is, not Steph) was overcome by wild magic. So I advised Steph not to cure the character straight away. Curing the character would have been easier for the story. It would have enabled the protagonist to get on with what had to happen. But it would have been the wrong thing to do. Keeping the character 'infected' is going to cause all sorts of complications and difficulties for the protag (and for Steph). It's going to get in the way of smooth flow of plot. But it's going to be a whole lot more fun. Nalo Hopkinson referred to this as 'going there'. If you've got something difficult that's going to happen and your instinct is not to do it, you should absolutely do it. Go there. Don't back away.
So, now we fast forward to today. In my book, one of my characters has been bitten by a Martian critter and is unconscious. But I need to get my characters out of the Martian wilderness pretty quickly so I can get to the end of the book. My instinct was to let the character recover straight away. Steph pointed out to me that that was the easy out. But it wasn’t the most fun or dramatic. It wasn't 'going there'.
Suddenly, I was feeling a whole lot less smug.
It's amazing how many books don't 'go there'. A character is about to be kidnapped, but then the baddies fail. The character is about to be robbed, but they manage not to be. They are about to get lost, but then they find the way.
It's not dramatic. It doesn't make the book better. Obstacles have to cause real problems. They have to have consequences or they're not real obstacles. Now I shall tattoo that to the backs of my hands and I may even remember it.
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On Tuesday, I finished part one of my novel with a stonking great climax and lots of fun. Of course, finishing one part means having to start the next. It's like running a race then having to haul yourself back off the ground to run another. Inevitably, that means my word-rate for the last two days has dropped, as I've had to sit back and start to plan out part two of the book in more detail (the previous detail was: they travel from place A to B, with some action and adventure in the process, which probably isn't enough planning).
Part two is, essentially, going to be travel. I need to get them from where they've spent the first section and take them to where the book will end, hundreds of miles away (and where we might finally discover the dragons). Shifting location when you've firmly established yourself in one place is a bit risky. For example, I absolutely love Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels (is there anyone who doesn't?), but the bits I find least interesting are where they are travelling from one country to another, particularly the travel to China and then back again from China. These sections feel a little too much like a travelogue to me. On the other hand, the travel to South Africa in book 4 works fantastically. This is because there's much more of an urgent, driving issue in book 4. The dragons are dying, and there is only a limited time to find the cure.
Travel has to have something to drive it, something that gives it an arc of its own. It can't just be: see place 1, see place 2, see place 3 and so on. So, that's the kind of stuff I'm trying to work out. How to advance the plot, to drive the characters and to give it structure and meaning. Hopefully, I've found a way.
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I've also been thinking about how to improve my website (http://www.patricksamphire.com). I'm pretty happy with the top banners and imagery. I'm happy with the footers. The main navigation is okay (although I'm going to change it). But I've never liked the body of the website, the bit with the actual text in. It doesn't make good use of space and it doesn't look that great. So, I'm going to restructure and redesign it, as well as tweak the other parts. And while I'm at it, I'm going to clean up the code a bit, as it was rather a rush job when I first did it. Not that it doesn't work or that it isn't valid, but it could be neater and more efficient.
Designing websites is never a quick job for me. I'm not naturally artistic, and I'm certainly not naturally a designer. So I tend to go slowly and do a lot of trial and error. I think I know what I want to do with it, but that may change as I go on. We shall see!
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Annnnnnnnd... the accountability meters:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
I have, with much sadness and trepidation, increased the total target length of the novel to 75,000 words, because it just wasn't going to come in at 65k. Not sure if I'll keep it to 75k, but I'm going to try damned hard!
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Okay, this bugs me. Back, oh, years ago now, a band called The Dogs D’Amour put out a completely fantastic album called 'In the Dynamite Jet Saloon'. It was wonderful. Sleazy, catchy, spare and full of great songs. But this was back in the old days, before technology, so I bought it on a cassette tape. Cassettes don't last too well, and anyway, I don’t have anything to play it on anymore, even if it had kept its quality. Sadly, the album isn't available on CD, and I don't know if it ever was. So I thought I'd check it out on iTunes. And, yep, they don't have the album, but they did have an album called 'Unleashed' which had a bunch of the same songs. A compilation album, I assumed, so I bought my favourite songs from 'In the Dynamite Jet Saloon'.
Bad mistake.
This isn't a compilation. The songs have been re-recorded. I guess it’s a live album, although I don’t hear much of a crowd.
Man, I hate this. The original album was so good. This live album... isn't. Really isn't. They've completely lost the feel of the songs. They've lost the space and the sound. Why do bands do this? Why can't they have the original albums on iTunes? Why do we have to make do with third-rate, crappy live albums only?
I guess this is a reminder to listen to the 30 seconds excerpt before buying from iTunes again.
In better buying news, I've kept on my book-buying roll. I bought Iain M. Banks's new Culture novel, Matter. I think Banks is genuinely the best SF author working today. His stuff is brilliantly-written, smart, original and funny. He writes with complete freedom and confidence, and he seems to be able to do pretty much anything. (His non-SF stuff is pretty impressive too.) I started it last night, and it's everything I was hoping for so far.
I also bought Oisin McGann's Ancient Appetites. It's a YA fantasy/SF set in the Victorian era. I haven't started it yet, so I can't say much about it, but I'm looking forwards to it. McGann has been getting way better with every book, and this looks like his best so far.
I almost bought Joshua Mowll's Operation Red Jericho, which looks fantastic. It's exactly the kind of book I like reading and which I try to write. Full of adventure, outrageous ideas and fast action. The only reason I didn't get it was because the only copy the bookshop had was a battered one. I need to make another trip out soon, because my pile of unread books only just reaches the ceiling.
Now the obligatory updates:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
They are going to explode a boiler to destroy the machine. It's going to destroy the whole house. The clockwork robots will die. It's going to be sad.
These progress meters are turning out well. It's ages since I've written this much on a work day. Of course, it was helped by the fact that I woke up at 5 a.m. today (not by choice!)
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Crazy weather in this country. Yesterday, it was pushing 80F. This morning, it's below freezing and there's snow on the ground. How do you all cope?
Okay, yesterday was a good day to leave Florida. The weather had turned unpleasantly humid, it was cloudy, and the wind had picked up uncomfortably. By contrast, Michigan is cold but sunny and clear. Maybe not beach weather, but....
We've got just under a week left before we head back to the UK (counting down the days until we get to be back with Maya again), and we're going to take it pretty easy. Steph had to do all the driving in Florida, which was pretty bad for her CFS, so it's recovery time now (punctuated by occasional socialising, of course). I'm feeling pretty knackered too after a couple of bad nights' sleep.
My main aim before we go back (and I'm not convinced I'm going to achieve it, because vacations are good for that sort of thing) is to make my current novel change direction. It's lingering too long in one place, and I need it to kick on forward to the adventure part. Might have to get out the cutting knife to do it.
That's all for now. Back to what you were doing.
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It's approaching the end of another warm, sunny day here in Florida. It's close on 6 p.m., and it's not even slightly dark yet. We're in a cafe, me drinking green tea, Steph drinking hot chocolate, and they're playing Deep Purple and Whitesnake over the stereo. How cool is this? How can this not be the whole point of life? Sadly, we've only got a couple more days here. Back in England it's now dark, the rain continues to fall and floods are spreading (again). I'm starting to get that feeling I get when vacations are drawing to a close; that enormous reluctance to back to the routine of work and chores.
I don't think I'm really designed for working a 9 to 5 job. Not that my job isn't the best one I could have if I have to be in an office, but what I'm really designed for is a job that involves beaches, cafes and the odd bit of writing (well, more than the odd bit would be ideal, but I'll settle for one or two thousand words a day). If anyone wants to offer a couple of thousand a month for me to do that, give me a call...
Yesterday was another beach day, on Fort Lauderdale beach this time. The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm, but not too hot. There was a breeze, but the sea was relatively calm. We went swimming. Steph--and she omitted to mention this in her blog--was a complete wimp about getting in the water. :) Of course, when she was in, she didn't want to get out again. There were sea gulls and pelicans, and some strange, long-legged big bird that wasn't close enough to identify. I have decided that pelicans are officially very cool. The way they can just seem to hover a few feet above the waves, their wings not moving, as they drift down to settle in the water: that's cool. It's almost magic, as though gravity is for other people.
Tonight, we have left-over Indian food from a surprisingly good Indian restaurant that we went to last night (nothing compared to Mumtaz in Bradford, but then what is?) and we're going to watch House (season 3 DVDs, that Steph bought me for Christmas) later on. If it wasn't for Maya waiting for us, I wouldn't feel the need to go home at all. As it is, we're missing Maya more every day. After a while, you just need your dog, for games and cuddles and playing. I have no idea how anyone manages without a dog.
Okay, as this is a fairly rambling journal entry, I'll ramble to the Sarah Connor Chronicles (I keep wanting to call them the Sarah Jane Chronicles; in fact, that might be cooler: Sarah Jane meets the terminators). Okay, this show isn't bad. It's perfectly watchable. Summer Glau is fantastic as the friendly terminator (even if she's essentially reprising her odd-but-kick-ass role as River from Firefly). The real problems with the show are that, so far, they're just repeating the plot from the movies. To carry a series, they're going to need a lot more than that: more depth, better characters, more ambiguity, more story. The other problem is that John Connor, future 'messiah', is just an irritating, obnoxious teenager. I can't help but think that the sooner some terminator blows him away, the better. Oh yeah, and the guy playing John's 'father figure' can't act. Other than that...
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One of the odd things about being on vacation is that it's harder to work on a novel. I guess it's because on vacation you have no routines, and a novel, being such a big work, almost requires some kind of routine to make progress. There's so much to keep current in your head, and it's something you simply have to pace. I could say no one ever managed a novel at a sprint, but that's patently untrue. However, I certainly never have. The fastest I ever managed a first draft was 6 weeks, and that was a fairly short first draft, driven by the kind of immediate inspiration that comes only once or twice in your lifetime, and in any case, 6 weeks isn't a sprint.
So, breaking the routine breaks the pace, and the novel stutters, temporarily. The good thing about this is that a vacation is a really good time to work on shorter fiction. I've had a bunch of short stories hanging around waiting to be revised for ages now, and the vacation has finally given me the chance to tidy them up. I'm hoping to send three out today, bringing my grand total of short stories in circulation to four. Which doesn't sound many to most of you, I'm sure, but it's the most I've managed for several years.
We spent the morning in Espresso Royale, in downtown East Lansing. Espresso Royale is my favourite cafe in town. It's got a nice atmosphere, friendly staff and, remarkably, really good tea. Not Betjeman and Barton quality good, of course, but the nicest I've come across in the US, and way better than 99.9% of the British cafes I've tried.
The weather here has finally stopped trying to emulate Wales (national motto: "Not always raining", according to Jasper Fforde). The skies have cleared, the sun is out and warm, and the air has a delightful chill to it. It feels like winter, although not like the type of Michigan winter I was promised/threatened with. More like the kind of nice British winter that happens from time to time.
And, last but not least, I've spent my Christmas iTunes voucher on Breed 77's Un Encuentro. Breed 77 are a Gibraltar band who fuse Latin with Heavy Metal for a really energetic, dynamic sound. Un Encuentro is probably their most Latin-influenced album, and their most interesting. I can't recommend it too highly.
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