Category Archives: Fictorians Alumni

Writing Spaces

A Capsule Hotel
A Capsule Hotel

When I moved to Tokyo late last year, I expected some things in my life were going to change.

Among the more obvious changes were the fact that I would look vastly different from everyone else, sometimes enough to warrant a long, uncomfortable stare, as well as being functionally illiterate. Then of course there was the living situation, the job, the food, the language, the lack of a car, the weather, the… well, pretty much everything.

One thing I thought wouldn’t change, however, was me. Particularly, my writing habits.

Yet after I had gotten settled in to my new life, I found that it was difficult to write. Part of this could be attributed to the change in job. For the past several years, I had worked in a call center, where the word “downtime” usually meant “do whatever you want as long as you stay at your desk.” For me, that meant a lot of reading (and thus inspiration to write) and, when I discovered the power of cloud storage, writing. My new job is rather different. I’m not sitting at a desk anymore, and there is never downtime, especially not the kind that I had before. But I had worked jobs like this in the past and still found the will to write quite easily. I figured it had to be something else.

Tokyo has a reputation for being crowded and cramped, and I suppose in a lot of ways it is. The word “megacity” conjures images of fantastically high skyscrapers clustered together from horizon to horizon, a la Judge Dredd. But Tokyo is pretty normal, especially in the more suburban areas. My apartment isn’t huge by any standard, and I have to get really creative with how I use the space in my kitchen, but I’ve seen smaller apartments in Seattle. Size wasn’t really the issue, but I figured that the root of my problem lay somewhere in my living space.

My apartment came furnished, but by more or less Japanese standards. There was no bed, only a futon (one very different from those you see at Ikea, no doubt) for sleeping on the floor. And there was a couch, a TV stand, and what I thought was a coffee table, but actually turned out to be a coffee table with a heater built into the bottom. This glorious invention, called a kotatsu, keeps your legs warm throughout the winter without blowing up your electricity bill. Provided, however, you are okay with sitting on the floor.

It turns that I wasn’t. I’ve enjoyed western comforts, such as chairs and desks, for most of my life. Sitting on the floor did not feel natural to me, and took a lot of adjusting. I mean, a lot. No, really, a lot (what I’m saying is I never fully adjusted). I thought I would tough it out and learn to adapt to my situation, as one should after moving halfway around the world, but eventually I said, “To hell with this.” And bought myself a desk/chair combo.

What a difference that has made. I immediately began cranking out chapters and outlines and ideas like I was still sitting in that call center, patiently waiting for some irrational customer to complain about the bill they never paid.

You may find yourself asking, “Why didn’t you just get a desk to begin with?” First of all, taking furniture on the train always involves logistical challenges, as well as the occasional dirty look. But more importantly, I didn’t realize how much of an effect my environment would have on my writing until I actually saw the difference in output.

If you ever find yourself suffering from writer’s block and having difficulty getting in the zone, it may not be you that’s the cause. It could be your writing space. After all, your butt is only half of the butt-in-chair equation.

Join Brandon on the blog tour for his recently-released novella, Spear Mother: A Tale of the Fourth World! Spear Mother is the third release taking place in his epic fantasy world. Details of the tour can be found on his website: http://brandonmlindsay.com

The Editing Hit List

At Work
At Work

What cursed names do you reserve for your editor? We know you have them. We know you give them to us. And we don’t care. We actually kind of like it.

When you work with an editor for the first time, you’ll start to shed preconceived notions about the shape your story is in. Getting that MS back bleeding and red can be a shock. But, I swear, we only do it in self-defense. I want to help you and your MS avoid some of that unnecessary blood loss.

I see a lot of things I wish I didn’t. Every editor does. I’ve already spoken about how important it is to pay attention to your submission guidelines, and what industry standard formatting looks like, so here are a few other things on my hit list.

1. Single quotation marks.

I sometimes wish writers weren’t taught they existed. In fiction writing, the most common use you’ll have for single quotation marks is to indicate a quote within dialogue. Enclose the speaker’s dialogue in double quotation marks, then enclose the phrase they are quoting in single quotation marks. You nest them, with the double quotation marks on the outside.

“So this guy, he actually growls at me, his eyes turn red, and he tells me, ‘Give me a keg of beer.'”

Is that the only time you can use single quotation marks? No, outside fiction, it’s the convention in studies like linguistics, philosophy and theology to infer special meaning by enclosing some words in single quotation marks. They’re also used by the Associated Press for headlines.

Use double quotation marks for dialogue (obviously), around titles of short stories, magazine articles, and TV episode titles; they can be used as a style choice when you are writing a sentence and you want to refer to a word rather than use its meaning, as I will in the next item on the hit list.

Double quotation marks can also sometimes be used as scare quotes. I’m sure you’ve heard the term. All scare quotes do is indicate that a word is special in some way, usually a sarcastic or ironic author showing that he doesn’t believe or buy into the meaning.

And I see . . . hell, everybody sees double quotation marks used incorrectly in this way all the time. Check this out.

2. Mixing up “a” and “the.”

I see this more than a little. And I can see you shaking your head already. You totally don’t do that, that’s dumb. Well, not so fast, Speedy. I see it a lot for a reason.

These words infer very different things. Only use “the” when referring to something or someone that has already been introduced to your story, and “a” for something new to the story.

For example, when introducing a new element, like a big, slashy red pen, upon the first mention of that red pen, it is always, “a” red pen, not “the” red pen. “The” references a specific red pen, and since the red pen has never appeared nor been mentioned in your story thus far, the characters couldn’t possibly know to which red pen you were referring when you said “the red pen.” In this instance, it would be “a red pen.”

Thereafter, since the red pen has now been introduced, and your readers and your characters know about it, it would be “the red pen.”

3. Paragraph breaks.

Give them to us. New paragraphs are important for your readers. They tell when you’re switching time, place, topic or speaker, and they break the page up so it is not a solid block of words.

Don’t downplay the psychological impact of how the writing actually looks. It is intimidating and discouraging to see huge blocks of uninterrupted text, and you don’t want your reader to be discouraged before they even start to read, right?

Paragraphs create white space on a page and that white space provides a visual and mental break for readers — like coming up for air. New thought, new paragraph. It is often a good idea to separate lines of dialogue into new paragraphs; and the same goes for thoughts.

There are a few standard times to make a new paragraph:

a. when you start in on a new topic,
b. when a new person begins to speak,
c. when you skip to a new place,
d. when you skip to a new time, &
e. when you want to produce a dramatic effect.

Some of these breaks may require a new scene, or even a new chapter, but at the least, give us a new paragraph.

4. Action sequences.

Action is usually the most difficult for writers to become proficient in. Time and again the manuscripts I work on will have the heaviest line editing concentrated in action scenes. I start hacking harder when characters do, so here are some rules of thumb.

Less is more. Use fewer words; more words merely gunk up the flow and muddy clarity. Action should be sharp and fast, your words should suit that.

Use only the actions that are necessary to show what is going on and no more. If there is no reason to include an extra dodge, sway, swing, leap, scream or twist, then don’t. Each movement should build off the last and serve to increase the stakes and the tension until the climax and resolution. If it doesn’t, cut it.

Save your big, dynamic action verbs like “slam,” or “jolt,” or “roar” for action scenes. You can only use each a finite amount of times, so save them for when they fit the scene and when they’ll have the most impact.

Anything that slows the tempo doesn’t belong. Tempo is the level of activity within a scene via dialogue, action or a combination of the two. Together with rhythm (the way scenes interact with one another), tempo dictates the pacing of your story.

Pay close attention to that pacing too. Is your story filled with action scene after action scene after action scene? The whole point of an action scene is to get the blood moving, create tension, make readers fear for your characters. It’s easy to make your readers numb by overdoing it. If your tension is getting stale, it is because you’re hitting the same emotional beat too many times. Too much action — but this can be applied to any kind of scene, any emotional beat.

When that’s happening you have to use an opposing beat. So change it up and throw in some romance or mystery. Or mysterious romance. Give readers a rest so they can step back and appreciate your action again. To put it another way, if you love bacon (and you do), and so all you eat is bacon (and you might), you’re going to grow tired of bacon . . . this is a bad example.

With that, I close my hit list to you for now, and leave you to your own devices. But I’ve got my eye on you. My big, bright, baleful, red eye. Go ahead, call me all the bad names you want. I’m here for you.

Joshua Essoe is a full-time, freelance editor. He’s been editing and writing for twenty years in one form or another, but has focused on speculative fiction in the last several. He’s done work for David Farland, Dean Lorey, Moses Siregar and numerous Writers of the Future authors and winners, as well as many top-notch independents.Together with Jordan Ellinger, Diana Rowland and Moses Siregar, you can find him waxing eloquent (hopefully) on the writing podcast Hide and Create.

Metal Gear Solid, or How I Was Ruined for All Other Video Games

The first moment I realized that I had expectations for what a game ought to be was the moment I first popped Metal Gear Solid into my Playstation. I had read the previews about the game in all the video game magazines I subscribed to (which was every one available) and I had played games similar to it—or at least I thought I had. Metal Gear Solid was, on the surface anyway, a third-person military shooter with emphasis on stealth elements. Pretty par-for-the-course, as far as video games go.

And then I discovered that everything I believed about the world was a lie.

MGSMetal Gear Solid was footage from the International Space Station for flat-earthers. It proved that one need not sacrifice story to gameplay, or vice versa, that not only could they coexist in harmony, but become fully integrated with one another. MGS even takes it one step further: it takes the player experience and makes it an essential aspect of both the gameplay and the story.

An example of what I mean by that. (*SPOILER ALERT* for those who have not played it; shame on you, by the way!) At one point, a character named Psycho Mantis, one of the several villains you must defeat to save the world from nuclear devastation, decides to battle you. The problem is, nothing you do works—nor can it. With his psychic powers, Psycho Mantis is able to predict every action you take the moment you take it, rendering all your efforts to injure him useless. It is impossible to defeat him—until you realize that his psychic powers only extend to controller port 1. Plug your controller into port 2, and you may just have a chance. (*END SPOILER*)

One of the reasons this grinding-to-dust of the fourth wall is so effectively jarring is because the game strives for realism in so many ways. The environments are incredibly detailed, the characters are rich and deep beyond belief, yet even those things are not safe. When the protagonist, Solid Snake, returns to an old military base in Alaska (which is where the bulk of the action of the first game took place) in Metal Gear Solid 4, he also returns to the exact same 32-bit polygonal art style of the original Playstation game.

SolidSnake-600x372Kicking down the fourth wall and violating expectations was a part of the series before Metal Gear Solid was even released, though in a comparatively more subdued form. When a traitorous member of Solid Snake’s team tries get him to abandon his mission in 1987’s Metal Gear, he says, “Solid Snake! Stop the operation. Switch off your MSX at once.” (The MSX was the platform on which the game first appeared.)

What these games proved to me is that we need not be satisfied with our expectations, that suspense can be built when we shake the very foundation of our readers’ worldviews. There are times when I’m writing and I realize that my story has taken the expected path—the safer path. It’s at times like these where I wonder, “WWMGSD?” Metal Gear Solid would probably turn my novel into an ASCII flipbook animation, which is a little unconventional for even my tastes, but it can still serve as a guidepost for ways to keep readers from guessing what’s coming.

The Bokor’s Daughter

It is said the Bokor serves the Loa with both hands. 

For good or for ill. 

Elise, my father, was many things. None of which were a good man. Once I was gone, the hardest part was in him letting go. 

I remember the long night he cried to Baron Semadi to not dig my grave. It took two days for my body to rot. 

And six days before I walked again.

The term “zombi(e)” has been a part of american pop-culture since the pulp age of literature. Their cultural significance goes back much longer.

George Romero may have invented the zombie, but Haitian Vodoun have known about their existence since the dawn of their civilization. The Zombi is so ingrained in the Haitian culture, that to create one is as much a crime as pre-meditated murder.

I am neither scientist nor philosopher, and I’m certainly not a medical doctor. But there are plenty who are and who were.  Sometime around the late-80’s, a guy named Wade Davis had pontificated on the scientific reality of zombies. He focused on the case study of a man by the name of Clairvius Narcisse.

Narcisse was, for lack of a better term, a trouble maker. He defied the common acceptability of Haitian culture. He placed a tin roof on a a hut that should have been thatched, he refused to allow his brother the use of his land to feed his family. And considering social-norms, he was almost a complete and total prick.

It is believed that his brother, feeling the slight from the denial of his land consulted a Bokor, a kind of mercenary magician. The Bokor created a zombie powder, which was used to turn Narcisse essentially into a zombie.

After checking himself in to a hospital for a number of medical complaints,including coughing up blood, Narcisse ended up being pronounced dead by western doctors.

He said that shortly before being pronounced dead, he felt as if his skin was on fire with insects crawling beneath it. He heard his sister weeping as he was pronounced deceased, even felt the sheet being pulled over his face. Although he was unable to move or speak, he remained lucid the entire time. Even as his coffin was nailed shut and buried. He even had a scar on his face from when a nail was driven through his face. He said that while he was underneath the earth, he felt a strange floating sensation as if his consciousness was almost above the coffin. He lay there for an unknown about of time until the Bokor and his henchmen dug him up, where he was immediately beaten into submission, bound, gagged, and spirited off to a plantation where he lived for the next two years while being force fed a single meal a day.

That meal contained Datura, a strong hallucinogenic that is called the zombie cucumber. It causes extreme delirium and total amnesia, among many other symptoms. Narcisse later recalled that his time spent on the plantation was full of days where the world seemed to pass by in an almost slow-motion haze.

Scientific analysis of multiple powders revealed ground up bones, ground up glass, urticating bristles, toads, and all sorts of other witches’ brew ingredients. There  was a commonality to the powder though. Tetrodotoxin. The poison inside of a puffer fish that has been known to cause a near catatonic or death-like state.

Keep the myth behind the legend in mind.

Because sometimes, the truth is more terrifying than the fiction.