A long time ago I was working with this computer programer, a guy I honestly didn’t like all that much. He was stiff and conservative and thought I was a hippie freak. One day we were stuck having lunch together and I tried to make conversation by asking what he liked about programming. Suddenly his face lit up, he looked rapt and engaging. He spoke of ideal computer code. It was compact, easy to understand and did exactly what it needed to do in as few lines as possible.

Elegant code

I hadn’t thought of it before, but we designers strive for elegance too. He and I found a little common ground that day. Recently a newer writer in my writing group asked how one should show setting to the reader. I think he was looking for an exact answer like, “Describe at least two things per scene. Use no more than four sentences, but no less than three words.” Of course the answer isn’t that static or simple. Each story needs different things.

Elegant setting has just the details it needs to put the reader there

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Sure, each writer will create setting in their own way, I might do it with simple direct language. Maybe you’ll do it ornately. As always, when you’re writing the first draft, just write. But when you’re rewriting that second draft, you should interrogate each detail.

Does it add to the scene? No? Cut it. Does it contribute to the larger story? Is it clear? Is it interesting? What’s the right balance for that story? Do you have too many details? Not enough? Is your character in a blank room? Do you only have visual details, but no smells or sounds?

Newspaper comic creator Ernie Bushmiller, who did “Nancy” for decades, was famous for using just the right amount of detail. He would draw three rocks to show us there were “some rocks” in the background. Always three. Why? Because two rocks wouldn’t be “some rocks.” Two rocks would be a pair of rocks. Four rocks was unacceptable because it would indicate “some rocks” but it was one rock more than was necessary to convey the idea of “some rocks.”

Elegance

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.

Waiting – Ha Jin

As you look over your writing, you might find elements to combine. Can something be visually presented and also give us an impression of smell? Or texture? It might be useful to go overboard in the first draft and write every detail. Then combine and compress them, see how few words you can use to describe your scene. If you go back and forth between adding and subtracting, you’ll eventually have the exact words that show setting, you might even slip in how the reader should feel about it. Boom! You have strong elegant description.

This process applies to dialog too. Readers mostly care about how the characters feel. They want to know how the characters are bouncing off of each other and how they each view the world. Add and subtract. Once you’ve communicated just what you need to say, it’s probably time to move on. Being elegant means always knowing when to stop. Too much dialog becomes mundane. Too little dialog and the reader might not feel the character. You have to cut out meaningless small talk, mundane things like ordering food or “Hi, how are you?” Replace it with things about the character and the story.

Beyond setting and dialog, elegance applies to all aspects of prose, including structure. How is your information presented? Is each detail coming at the exact time the reader needs it? How you parse out details is like the stones in a river, you don’t want them too close or too far away from each other. You need to build a path from the beginning to the end. That same interrogative technique applies to where you place information. Look at where you bring in detail and information. Have you described a room how a person just walking into it would see it? Is the reader learning things in an order that increases tension and interest? A well structured story is as compelling in structure as it is in content. The right number of words, the right words, showing up at the right time in the right order.

Elegance.

Dear Young Writer,

I see you there, poised over the keys of your Smith Corona typewriter. Pause for a moment and read this, if you would. I know, I know, you have a lot yet to write for that English class–and I know, too, about the extra credit assignment you’re stressing over for your history class. (You’ll need a new typewriter ribbon before you begin that one.)

The stress won’t ease for a long time to come, but you will find you enjoy it. Eventually. You will like deadlines–not merely for their whooshing sound; you will like having goals. Someday, you will discover you work well enough without them, too, because the work simply bleeds from your fingers. Some days, you won’t be able to stop the words; cherish these days, because they will be balanced by others, where it seems you can’t latch onto a single word and make it do anything worthwhile.

I know you think you can’t find your way, that everything is essays and reports at this point, but take heart that you will find joy in even these. Just wait until you read Lysistrata for the first time. You will discover something you can’t even imagine. You will discover exactly what words can do and will start playing with them yourself. When friends say “you could write better than this,” you actually dare to believe them–and commit words to paper.

Your first submission will be horribly mis-sent. Do you really think the audience of Seventeen wants to read about a young girl who survives a nuclear war? Regardless, make the submission, enter the contest, and keep watching your mailbox for a reply. It’s going to be the pattern for the years to come. Write, submit, and do it all over again. The shape of the replies will change–you will actually learn how to target markets and send them to appropriate editors. You will make a blunder with your first book–ah, the arrogance of the eighteen year old who thinks she knows everything about publishing–but no worries. You will learn from this, and carry on. And wait until the advent of email…

The rejections will grow deep. People will tell you to throw them away, but I wouldn’t. I would keep them, in a folder, in your file drawer. Some years down the road, you will look at them fondly (and the way MZB scribbles “doorknob!” on your manuscript–ah, keep that one, for it is a lesson you never forget!). Don’t resent them. Each one is a step along the path. Stephen King got rejections. J.K. Rowling, too. I know, you don’t yet know that last name, but trust me, you will.

You’re going to be in a terrible accident later this year; it will change the path your life takes. Take advantage of the time you spend at home healing to write and to read. Read everything. You will be faced with a tutor, which seems a terrible thing, but this tutor will introduce you to Japanese poetry. Hold to it. It will bring you one of your best stories.

As for the extra credit piece you’re going to write about the museum rats that come to life after dark… No worries–you get an A+, and you spook your teacher enough that he asks you to read the piece to the entire class. You will hate that part–you are ever the introvert–but you do love the looks on their faces, and the way the story affects them. That you will never forget.

love,

Yourself

Author James Van Pelt recently sold his one-hundredth short story. Here, he takes a look back and shares with us the things he’s learned along the way.

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When I was a kid, I dreamed a bunch about being an adult, about being big and accomplished and competent.  While my friends talked about being action/adventure heroes, though, I dreamed about being a writer.  The idea that there could be books in the world with my name on them?  Wow!

What’s been exciting is that in many ways, I have fulfilled my dreams.  At least I hit that important milestone for me of publishing a book.

One way of evaluating a writing career is by noting the milestones: the first completed story, the first professional critique, the first submission, the first rejection (and second and third and . . . you know how it goes), the first acceptance, etc.  Milestones mark the writer’s life.

For me, I just reached a significant one: I sold my 100^th story.  To get to it, I had to start twenty-one years ago, in 1990, when, after eight years of collecting rejections, I made my first short story sale.  The editor of a little magazine, After Hours, phoned me to say he liked my story, but none of it took place at night, a requirement for stories in his magazine.  Could I please make some part of the story take place at night?  I changed one sentence, and the sale happened.  I was now a published writer, a huge milestone.

If  you would have told me in 1990, after I made that first sale, that lightning would strike me 99 more times, including sales to Analog, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales and many others; and that my stories would appear in several “year’s best” anthologies; that I would have been a finalist for a Nebula; that I would have the stories assembled in three collections; and that after 100 sales I would still feel like a newbie, I would have laughed in your face.

One-hundred sales sounded more science fictional to me than any science fiction idea I ever wrote.

So, what has 100 sales taught me?

• Nothing beats opening up a new file on the computer, putting my name and address on the upper left hand corner, spacing to the middle of the page, and then pausing to consider the title for the new, unwritten story.
• Almost every story I’ve written has started with the feeling that the idea was inconsequential, and the only reason I was writing it was that I wanted to be working until a really good idea came along.
• At some point in every story, I’ve told my wife, “I don’t know what the heck this piece is.  It’s weird and I don’t know how to write it.”
• All my stories sound better in my head when I’m in the shower thinking about where to go next with them.
• Story writing is about discovery for me: both discovering what is going to happen next and discovering why the idea is important to me.
• Sometimes I think the only reason I write a story is so I can pile up enough words to justify being really lyrical for a paragraph.
• At some point in the writing of every story, I’m convinced it’s the best thing I’ve ever put down on paper.
• At some point in the writing of every story, I’m convinced I’ve never written worse dreck.

Along the way, I’ve also heard really good advice from other writers, publishers and editors:

• Long time editor, George Scithers wrote on a rejection letter, “I hope while you were waiting to hear about this story that you were writing your next.”
• I asked Connie Willis when she signed a book for me if she should would include her top three pieces of writing advice.  Her first one was, “Never kill the dog,” which I’ve interpreted to mean, “Don’t take cheap and easy emotional shortcuts.”
• James Patrick Kelly told me that the writing of his classic, “Think Like a Dinosaur,” didn’t feel any different to him than the next story he wrote which he was never able to sell.
• Ray Bradbury said, “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without life, without fun, you are only half a writer.”
• I was on a panel with Terry Pratchett at WorldCon and he said, “Make sure your character doesn’t suffer from plucklessness.”  I’ve always liked that word, plucklessness.

But mostly what I’ve learned on the road to those 100 sales is that I was right when I was a little kid:  being a writer is very, very cool.

Writing gives me focus.  Whether I’m reading the news or watch a mini-drama unfold in the grocery store, or overhearing a too loud conversation, I think about story, about human interaction, and about significance.  Wherever I am, I think about description.  It’s practically a mantra with me: what can I see, hear, touch, taste and smell?  And whenever I construct anything with language, I’m aware of how sound effects sense, how connotation and denotation intertwine, and how words are metaphors.

Mostly, though, I’m blessed with the permission that all writers have: to close my eyes and imagine other people and worlds, to hear other conversations, and to live for a moment in someone else’s skin.

What being a writer has done for me is to let me remain a kid, where imagination holds its own with reality, and putting my nose to the grindstone means making it all up and pretending.

One-hundred story sales later, I’ve learned that it’s okay to dream, just like a kid.

This week’s blog post is about how to write rather than how to submit, which means that it’s going to be full of advice you either don’t need or won’t take. However, knowing that what I have to say is unnecessary has never shut me up before, so here we go!

Here’s a little-known fact! Most of the stories that get rejected from Shimmer are rejected because the slush reader(s) detect a deficiency in one of the core categories on our submissions check-list. Even though Beth told me not to give away our secrets on pain of death, I have risked receiving angry emails to show you this:

Now, most stories are able to get the first eight check-marks on their own. I’m here to talk to you about the mysterious ninth requirement. (The typo on page four is so that we can make sure our copy-editors are doing their jobs.)

The ninth requirement? Character motivations. No shit.

Look.

The most awesome stories have characters doing weird and unusual things. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fiction, it’d just be a journal entry entitled, “Stuff I did today and my feelings.” Or your Twitter feed details about every meal you consumed in the past week. You know, boring.

However, sometimes when I’m reading a story, I still find myself wondering WHY, for the love of everything good and holy, would anybody ever do what the protagonist just did.

This usually stems from a shocking lack of self-preservation on the character’s part. Not, mind you, recklessness. If your protagonist is nineteen and is on their first drunken bender, I’ll believe almost any stupid thing you tell me they want to do. (Whether I’ll actually enjoy reading said story…)

Think about oft-parodied horror movie tropes. You know that getting out of the car in a creepy, abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere in Northern California is a bad idea, right? Especially if it’s full of creepy vehicles and you can hear howling monsters, and there are dead animals everywhere! Don’t get out of the car!

Of course, if you need to put gas in the car in order to escape, or you just don’t believe in monsters, fine. There just needs to be a reason more compelling than, “The author thought that having the protagonist fight for their life at a gas station would be awesome.”

Or, take contemporary fantasy. I never have a problem believing that the vampire character drinks blood, wants to drink blood, obsesses about drinking blood, craves blood like a heroin junkie in withdrawal – whatever. But I do sometimes get jostled out of fiction where perfectly ordinary protagonists fail to react to their exceptionally weird neighbors.

Or “twist” endings. The character will be doing whatever it is that they do through the story, until they make a bizarre and unexpected choice at the end. I mean, I like being surprised, but just because I didn’t see it coming doesn’t mean that it was good. This is why “rocks fall and everyone dies” is a joke ending.

It sucks as a slush reader. Life is hard. I’ll finish reading these stories (assuming I make it to the end, but I digress) and feel strangely sad. I usually know what the author wanted me to feel, but all I end up thinking instead is, “But why would anybody DO that?”

The first step to avoiding this problem (yes! There is a plan! With steps!) is to make sure that YOU know why your character behaves the way they do. Why does your character want to join the evil empire? Why would anybody eat a frickin’ pomegranate in Hell? Etc.

Step two is also pretty obvious – make sure that the reader knows. There are as many different ways to do this as there are ways to write, so don’t let me cramp your style. Personally, I prefer subtle approaches. For instance, feeding the reader information slowly so that instead of getting an answer to the question, “WHY?” they just never ask in the first place.

You don’t want your reader to wonder about stuff like that while they’re reading. Wondering leads to thinking, and thinking leads to escape.

Oh man. So this is where I should tell you how to do this, right? Well, I can’t. You just have to try, fail, try, fail, fail, fail some more, revise, and then give up and submit the story.

Unfortunately, if I’ve got you paranoid about whether or not your character’s motivations make sense, the best test is to have someone else read your story.

Hint 1

If several readers independently tell you that they didn’t understand your character’s motives, you have a problem. If it’s just one reader, well, maybe they were having an off day, but try not to be too patronizing. These are SF fans, so they know all about revenge being best served cold, which means you won’t see it coming.

Hint 2

“But people just do that!” NO! NO! NO! Nobody cares! NOBODY CARES! Sure, people make stupid, terrible, awful decisions for no reason every day, (How else do you explain Easy Mac?) but readerly people like to pretend we aren’t the lowest common denominator. No matter how many people you know who Totally Behave This Way, if we’re supposed to sympathize with the character, we want their behavior to make some amount of sense. Probably.

Step three isn’t really a step, but it is an imperative sentence! “Don’t be neurotic.”

The submissions we get at Shimmer tend to be pretty good, so I see more problems like this than I do submissions in which the character’s behavior makes no sense.

Essentially, if you’re TOO worried about the story and you second guess yourself, it’ll show up in the fiction. (A rough indicator is usually too much internal monologue in which the protagonist thinks about what they’re going to do and why they’re going to do it. Which isn’t to say that all internal monologue is a Bad Thing, mind.)

I’ll be reading along and the character is about to do something completely in character. Maybe the vampire next door has just captured a new victim, and your kick-ass protagonist is about to break in the door and save the victim. Great! Exciting! But then the fiction shudders to a halt as the protagonist thinks something like, “I could have just called the cops, but…”

As a reader, I then start to think, “Hey, yeah? Why aren’t you calling the cops? They’ve got guns and like using excessive force.”

That’s the last piece of unsolicited advice I’m going to give you – don’t implant doubts in the heads of your readers. Because doubting, just like wondering, also leads to thinking, which leads to escape. And, subsequently, rejection.

As always, none of this matters if you do whatever you do so well that I don’t care.

I’m supposed to leave you with some kind of question that sparks comments, but I can’t think of any.

So… hey. Go write a story, or something.