John C Wright

Part of an interview with John C Wright:

Q: What else about your book might pique the interest of readers?

A: My goal was to have one violent fight, one disaster, or one eruption of bizarre magic, once each fifteen pages or so.

Burning Gold

The Sun has gone out.

Ordinarily in an emergency we'd send word to the Duke, and he might send word to the King, but it's getting colder every day...well, there aren't any more days, because the Sun has gone out. And with Her light no longer shining, the land is getting cold. In the endless night, frost giants and werewolves prowl, undead rise from their mounds, and worse than that, things are coming out of the mountains.

We need the greatest heroes of the kingdom to head into the dwarven ruins and find the secret of Burning Gold (You thought the dwarves loved gold because it was shiny? No, it's because they knew how to set it ablaze, to provide light and warmth in the deep places of the earth). Then we need those selfsame heroes to take all the gold they can carry, to light their way through the mountains to the Edge of the World, and to find the place from which the Sun rises. Once there, those mighty warriors and subtle wizards could surely find a way to release Her, or heal Her, or persuade Her to take up her shining shield again.

Unfortunately, we're out of time, and the great heroes of the kingdom aren't here. We're sending you.

How to Write A Scene: Ten Minutes of Planning for 2000 Words

How to Write A Scene: Ten Minutes of Planning for 2000 Words

1. Describe the setting. Think about the main impression that you want to generate, and give us a description of that impression at least three times. Try to use at least 20 "senses" words; use each of the five senses at least once.

2. What does your main character want, and why is that important to him? What is his primary emotion at the beginning?

3. What is his opposition in the scene? What does that opponent want, and why? What is his primary emotion? What sort of conflict does the protagonist have to engage in?

4, 5, and 6. Three twists. Each twist is one of:

• find a clue 
• find an item that is useful in the present conflict 
• find an item that will be useful later 
• a countdown starts 
• someone unexpectedly changes sides 
• change in the type of conflct (conversation becomes fight, for instance) 
• reinforcements appear for one side or the other 
• you are given a task that you must complete during the scene 
• you are given a quest; 
• some aspect of the setting becomes dangerous 
• you must give up something valuable to gain what you need. 

7. Resolution: does the scene protagonist succeed or fail in his goal? What emotion does he feel at the end of the scene? How does the resolution raise the stakes and/or make it more difficult to achieve his ultimate goal? What happens to raise the tension in the reader?

8. Aftermath: once the scene is over, what does the scene protagnoist think about what just happened? How does he feel about it, once he has time to stop and reflect? What choice does he have to make in order to move ahead? How much time passes before the next scene?

Eight items, so if you devote 250 words to each item, you have 2000 words.

Writing the Pefect Scene

Notes from a panel with Sean Hoade at SLC ComicCon.

Sean recommended Jack Bickham's Scene and Structure; Bickham was a student of Dwight Swain and covers much of the same ground.

Each scene has a viewpoint character, and that character has a goal, opposition, and a resolution. To clarify the goal in the first draft, you can have the viewpoint character come right out and say "I want to ____", describing what he wants to accomplish during this scene. (You might also add a line about how that scene goal will help him accomplish his overall goal). The four possible resolutions to the character's action are Yes, No, Yes-But, and No-And-Furthermore. The Yes and No options are bland.--they either solve the problem (with a Yes) or at least do nothing to change it (if it's a No). A Yes-But solves this problem but raises a whole new one; the No-And-Furthermore leaves this problem open and makes it worse.

A scene never has conflict which is entirely internal. That goes in a sequel; a sequel is the connective tissue that links one scene to the next. The sequel has four parts: emotion  and expresson; thought and reflection; decision; action. The action is the beginning of the next scene (and the point at which you can change PoV characters, if you need to).

Use the length of your scenes and sequels to vary your pacing. Long sequels with lots of emoting and internal monologues will slow down the action.

On Plotting, Rising Action, and the Try/Fail Cycle

Notes from SLC ComicCon 2014 panel, including Kevin J Anderson, Brandon Sanderson, Dave Farland, Larry Correia, Brandon Mull, Brad Torgersen.

Plotting:
When you're writing an epic, you can't wing it. When you're building a skyscraper, you really need a blueprint. My outline sometimes runs to 100 pages--it gets to be a first draft.

My plot is "What promise am I making the reader, and what steps do I need to take to fulfill that promise?"

I'm a loose outliner. For each character, I know where they're going to end up. I need to know the ending. And I blow something up every forty pages.

I need to look for movement.You never have a static scene--a character is always going up or down. I think about where my protagonist is, and what's the worst thing that I can do to him....

Pantsing is for the daydreaming at the start of the project. Once you've got the ideas, you outline.

I can pants a short story but I need a skeleton for a novel.

If you do pants it, go back and write an outline afterwards, as a post mortem tool.

Try/Fail:
My characters are my friends, but it's an abusive relationship. They can't have it easy.

"Try/Fail" is a diagnostic tool, for finding problems after you've finished. Practice writing and you'll internalize the need to give your characters trouble, although you may not call it "adding a Try Fail cycle" while yoiu're writing it.

Remember that there's not just the one Protagonist/Antagonist Try Fail Cycle. There are other characters and other subplots and they need their own cycles.

The response to "Try" can be "Yes" or "No"--which are boring--or "Yes But" or "No And". The "No And" is what you'd call a Try/Fail"; the "Yes But" isn't  "Fail" but can also be interesting.

Productivity/Writer's Block:
Don't look for perfection. You need to be prolific. The more you make, the better you get. Ask your alpha readers if there are parts they find boring or confusing.

If I get stuck, it's because I made a mistake the day before; but when I figure out how to fix it, I get excited and write even more.

Destress. It's a first draft; you don't have to be perfect.

Set a deadline so you're committed to getting stuff done, rather than thinking I"m A Writer" but not doing any writing.

Sanderson: I'm usually writing one book, planning one or two more, and editing another. I write 500 words per hour, which is low; but I write 8 hours a day, five days a week. If you figure half my time is editing, travel, and other non-writing activity, that's 500words  x 8 hours x 5 days x 26 weeks = 520,000 words per year. One 400,000 word epic and one 120,000 word novel.

Correia: I write 10,000 words per week, every week.

Write what you think is cool--that you'd want to read.

RavenCon: Production Process

The process of producing a book goes:

1. R&D
2. Write
3. Send it to Publisher
4. Substantive Edit
5. Copy Edit (almost always done by freelance)
6. Typeset
7. First Proof
8. Proof and Index (freelance)
9. Print
10. Fold and Gather (book without covers)
11. Print Cover, Bind and Package
12. Deliver

There's an Editor Association where you can find freelancers to look over your book. An editor should ask for a sample from the middle of the book (the beginning and end have had more people look at them and are more likely to be clean). The editor will decide how much work she thinks it needs, and quote a price.

What you look for in an editor:

• experience in the genre
• experience in a publishing house, vs only as freelance
• compatibility and trust
• compatible technology--you need something with Track Changes, and preferably MS Word.

What the editor will want:

• word count
• sample pages
• time limits, whether "required delivery date" or "will be away from email from X to Y"
• don't make changes once you've sent the manuscript
• make note of fictional or foreign terms
• put everything in writing

A copy editor is more expensive to hire than a proof reader; but a copy editor's changes are made at the MS Word stage, whereas a proofreader's changes mean changing DTP and layout. 

The most frequent criticism is "show, don't tell". You will find it helpful to have a writer's group.

Find out what style manual your publisher wants to conform to.

Part of what a publisher looks at is whether you have a blog and a Facebook presence.

RavenCon: Writing Believable Magic

Your magic system has to have something to do with the plot. Establish it early so it's not a deus ex machina.

It has to be consistent, and it has to have a cost or limitation. Limitations reduce the ramifications. If you can call down fire, but only within 50ft and only while you concentrate, then that will influence your worldbuilding a lot less than if you can call down fire on a whim, anywhere in the world.

It should have an element of the unknown. It's not technology, it's not a case of "anyone can understand it if they study", and you're not just calling an engineer.

Do you reward "ability to plan ahead" or "ability to extemporize"? (Or maybe both--sorcerors extemporize, wizards plan).

How does magic affect the world? If there's a domestic dispute involving a caster, does she turn him into a chicken, or banish him to another plane, or cause teporary baldness?