Category Archives: Evan Braun

Making the Science Work: Freedom through Limitation

Craft & Skills Evan Braun The Writing Life World-building 2 Comments

EMC2Sixteen-year-old me dried off after a long summer evening languishing in the family hot tub with one of my best friends from high school. The discussion that evening had been scintillating. With the tangy scent of chlorine still hugging me like a toxic cloud, I opened the patio door and stepped into the house, my damp feet sinking into the now-soggy carpet. I draped the towel over my shoulders and made my way towards the living room, where my friend was already spread out on the couch. I was pleased he hadn’t gone straight home; true, it was well after midnight, but I was awake. I wanted to converse. I wanted to think!

My friend Troy and I spent many late nights deep in conversation while the rest of the house slept, but this particular night in 1998 was the granddaddy of them all. I don’t think we went our separate ways until 5:00 a.m. In the intervening hours, for some unbeknownst reason (I may never recall the exact circumstances that inspired this), we took out a pad of paper and began to sketch out a history of the coming hundred years or so. What would be the defining events of the twenty-first century? Would mankind colonize space? How about the moon? Mars? Perhaps other, more exotic locales? How would we get there? What technologies would we use? How long would it take us to develop them? How would politics contribute to these endeavors? And perhaps more importantly, how might politics hinder them?

We weren’t interested in wild flights of fancy. This was a sober-minded effort to gauge the direction our society was moving in and extrapolate it to its most probable outcomes. And perhaps the oddest part of all is that there was no inherent “story.” No, this was an undiluted act of futurism. We were thinking on a grand scale, laying out the broad strokes of history, albeit a future history. It wasn’t until the following October that I zeroed in on a particular timeframe in our nascent world and decided to set a story there.

On the subject of future studies, Wikipedia says there “is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science.” Now, I understand that Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable research venue, but that statement really hits the nail on the head. You see, I was an artist and Troy was a scientist. All these years later, I’m releasing my first novels and he’s a globetrotting geophysicist-but that artist/scientist partnership is crucial. I need the balance it provides. Not that I don’t do my own research (I do a lot!), but it’s helpful to have a watchful eye appraising the more outlandish ideas in my first and second drafts.

This might sound limiting-and I’ll grant that in many ways it is limiting. But as a hard science fiction writer, I love those limits. Placing limitations on the way the world functions on a practical scale, forcing myself to find ways to work within the confines of occasionally unyielding science, often forces me to explore more interesting story possibilities than I ever would have been able to uncover if I had allowed myself to play against a completely open canvas.

What kind of limits am I talking about? They’re mostly in the realm of physics. A big one is gravity. In Star Trek, for example, technological hand-waving allows for the existence of artificial gravity, simplifying ship design and scene mechanics (believe me when I say that having characters float around in unpressurized compartments presents huge scene-blocking challenges… especially if they have to fight to the death). Warp speed allows ships and characters to gallivant from planet to planet the same way we move around in cars today. For space opera, these conventions are accepted and welcome. But what kind of story develops when you embrace the fact that it could take years (or decades) to get to one’s destination? What kind of story develops when you embrace the realities of living in space or on another planet, right down to the nitty-gritty, inconvenient details?

The answer is the kind of stories I like to read. In my experience, scientific inconvenience breeds creativity. I’m constantly asking myself, how does a space elevator work? What kind of propulsion are we likely to use to get to Mars a hundred years from now? What kind of spacecraft might we design for the purposes of traveling into deep space? What kind of fuel might it require, and where might that fuel come from? What kind of resources will be valuable, and how will we access them? These questions lead invariably to conflict, and from those conflicts are born all manner of plots that resonate with me (and hopefully readers) because of their firm basis in probability and reality.

And then I run my ideas past someone who’s smarter than me (in Troy’s case, much smarter than me). That’s a human resource no writer should ever go without.

Not that there’s anything wrong with writing a story about a moon-sized Death Star (that might cost 850 quadrillion dollars to build, by the way). There’s room for everyone under the sci-fi umbrella!

Platonic Male-Female Relationships in Fiction (a.k.a. “The Glue”)

Character Craft & Skills Evan Braun First Drafts Reviews The Writing Life 7 Comments

In my first published novel (I’ve only had the one, but hey, I’m nothing if not an optimist), I originally set out to write a book that would subvert expectations in that it had no romantic subplot whatsoever. It was about three men setting out on a globe-trotting adventure. No icky girl cooties here! There was lots of questing, but alas, no love story. Well, after a few beta readers got through with it, I caved and added one-and you know what? In that case, the book was better for it.

Then, last summer, I sat down to begin work on a new novel. In the first chapter, I introduce two characters-one of them a man, the other a woman. They’re co-workers, archaeologists working together on a dig in South America. The two characters aren’t romantically involved. They’re just friends.

Well, by Chapter Five I found myself inadvertently writing a paragraph about the man admiring the woman from behind and acknowledging that he’d always been attracted to her.

Whoa! I thought to myself. Where did that come from?

Maybe Harry Burns was right. In When Harry Met Sally, one of the most iconic romantic comedies of all time, Billy Crystal’s character starts off spouting his theory (though he calls it fact) that a man and a woman can’t just be friends. Ignoring the hetero-normative caveat here, his ideas are met with stiff resistance. Every time I watch this movie, I cheer when Sally sets him straight. I mean, what a load of crap! Of course men and women can be friends. My own life is exploding with opposite-sex platonic friendships.

So, it is with great dismay that I watch as the movie progresses to Harry ultimately being proven correct. Perhaps it’s true that men and women can’t “just be friends,” but Harry and Sally eventually fall in love in dramatic Hollywood fashion. (Sorry, folks; no spoiler warnings for twenty-five-year-old movies. Them’s the breaks.) I’m quite the sentimentalist at heart, so this is most likely the only time I’ve actively rooted against a romantic-comedy couple overcoming the odds and making it work. I just don’t like the underlying message.

Indeed, I am a big proponent of platonic relationships in fiction. And yet, I am forced to look at my track record. As in the two examples cited above, I started off writing romance-free relationships and ended up reversing course. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.

The thing is, romance is easy. Now, when I say that, I don’t mean to imply that writing romance doesn’t come with its share of challenges. On the contrary, as the people charged with the uncomfortable task of reading my first drafts know all too well. I’m not the world’s best romance writer. I have to put in two or three times the usual effort for my romantic liaisons to really jump off the page-in a good way, that is.

So why do I say it’s easy? Well, romantic feelings are a wonderful and effective way of motivating your characters to take action. Love causes people to climb mountains, swim oceans, and reach for the stars. The death of a loved one, in particular, can set your story on fire-and this was my motivation, however misguided, for linking my star-crossed archaeologists. You see, in the absence of love, an author has to dig a lot deeper to figure out why characters behave as they do. Adding romantic subplots to spur along a waning story or character is a default move, and it can be used as a crutch when handled inelegantly.

If you are to get your reader deeply invested in a platonic relationship, you’re going to need to get creative. Could When Harry Met Sally have been a satisfying movie if the two characters had merely turned out to be best friends who never developed feelings for each other at all? I’d like to say yes, but I don’t think I’m alone in having a hard time imagining it.

My experiences and observations show me that if it’s true that love makes the world go round, then friendship is the glue that keeps it from coming apart as it hurdles through space at thirty kilometers per second. In other words, friendship is, at its core, stronger. Which is a bit ironic. Friendships, historically, last longer than marriages.

By tapping into the reasons why this is true, we can find a number of ways to guide the creation of compelling opposite-sex platonic relationships. So, let’s get to those reasons!

For one thing, best friends are less likely to keep secrets from each other than romantic partners. As any dramatist knows, secret-keeping is fuel to the plot engine. But guy-and-gal friendship combos are most likely going to be co-protagonists (or co-antagonists, which can be extra spicy), meaning the question of whether or not their friendship will survive calamity doesn’t need to be at the core of your story. It can be, but it doesn’t need to, whereas lovers can hardly ever get through a story without getting muddied at some juncture. The vulnerability and honesty of friends-only pairings actually allows us to cheer for them and relate more readily. A best friend can be the haven in the midst of heavy drama.

In a friendship situation, we are more likely to drop our masks and just be ourselves. If sex and/or a relationship isn’t on the table, what do we have to lose? A man who isn’t trying to woo a woman needn’t work so hard for her to like him, meaning we’ll get a better chance of seeing who he really is. What you see is what you get. The same is true for women, who also are likely to keep their cards close to their chest when there’s a risk of suffering a broken heart. When the chance of rejection is low, the real character comes out-and in fiction, that’s exactly the kind of scenario into which we want to coax our characters. Transparency is a virtue!

The mistake you might make is creating friendships without love. But strong friendships are built on intense love… just not the romantic/erotic love we are more likely to recognize. And if you think I’m making a case for writing friendships without dramatic undertones, think again. The threat of losing a best friend will drive a character to extreme lengths just as strongly-perhaps even more so-than the threat of losing a lover, especially if that friend has been around for a long time. The risk of losing that kind of honesty, vulnerability, and transparency can be devastating.

Returning to the real world, my best friend happens to be a woman, and it sometimes feels as though we have been friends since the dawn of time. We don’t see each other nearly as often as we like, since we now live very far apart, but our bond is tight. The last time we saw each other, just after Christmas, our conversation took an interesting turn.

After dinner one evening, she put down her fork and asked, “What’s the dealbreaker?”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“Well, what would I have to do for you to end our friendship? You know, the dealbreaker.“

Silence set in. I honestly couldn’t think of anything. After all, we had been through a lot, surviving hundreds of fights and come out stronger every time. Nothing was ever bad enough to drive a wedge between us.

“What if I murdered someone?” she prompted.

I thought about that. Honestly, my bond with her was so strong that even murder wouldn’t change the way I felt about her. The only real dealbreaker I could imagine is if she insisted that I help cover it up or dispose of the body, and even that would depend on the motive for the crime.

And that’s what I mean. Platonic relationships are true partnerships. In fiction, romantic couples are constantly cheating on each other, breaking up, and getting back together. They’re famously inconstant. But when men and women leave romance out of the picture? Well, that’s kismet.

Dive In! The Water’s Nice

Conventions Evan Braun The Writing Life 3 Comments

Sounds of the lunch rush washed over me as my heart sank. I fell back into the crinkly leather of my booth seat as the woman across from me reached into her bag and pulled out three full pages of elevator pitches. As for myself, I had travelled halfway across the country with nothing but a few changes of clothes and a mustard stain on my lapel. This is what it felt like to be grossly unprepared.

This was a mere two months ago, hours before the start of World Fantasy Convention 2012. I had arrived early in the morning before the Thursday sessions and was now eagerly catching lunch with a good friend of mine I hadn’t seen in over a year. To my surprise, my friend was more interested in talking shop than catching up on our personal lives. The only reason this surprised me is because we were on different pages. She had come to Toronto to make valuable connections and further her writing career. If I’m being completely honest, I had mostly come to socialize. Like I said: different pages.

And it was me who had to now make a series of furious, last-minute adjustments.

My friend, who’s been writing for many years, has an impressive body of work and a long list of ideas for future works in progress. She’s a big-idea, high-concept thinker… and she had come all this way with books to sell. That wasn’t her mentality; she was as much there to “buy” an agent or editor as anything, and I think that’s a healthy perspective. But however you look at it, WFC is a book market, and she had come with the correct mindset.

WFC is the only major con I’ve attended in the two and a half years since I decided to pursue my writing professionally, but I know for a fact that it’s not unique. Writers go to cons for many reasons, but primary among them is the great white hope of networking: to make that one perfect connection with someone who has the ability to make your wildest publishing dreams come true. WFC 2012 was crawling with those kinds of people. Best-selling authors, agents, and editors from all the major genre publishers were on the premises, and the hardest of hard-nosed genre writers were hunting them like Bugs Bunny at the height of rabbit season.

This wasn’t the fun, laidback reunion with friends I had hoped it would be. In retrospect, it was a hundred times better.

Let me get personal for a minute and explain that I hate networking-or maybe I just hate the word. The idea of walking up to perfect strangers and making small talk, all with the agenda of finding out whether or not they’re useful to me or not… well, it’s fair to say that rubs strongly against my grain. Of course, ardent professional networkers probably wouldn’t describe their skillset quite that way, but it’s the way I have always perceived it. You would therefore expect that a con like WFC was a cesspool of human ugliness from which I would instinctively want to run screaming.

But fortunately, it was too late to do that by the time I sat across from my friend over a burger and fries and that long list of elevator pitches. Thank goodness for that, because WFC was a game-changer for me. And my fervent hope is that one of 2013’s many excellent conventions will be a game-changer for you, too.

In the month of January, you will hear stories from many con- and workshop-goers, our hope being that these experiences and tips will prepare you to take the leap and jump into the professional pool, perhaps for the first time. You’ll learn many things. Like, what’s an elevator pitch? Why is the hotel bar the most important location at a convention? How do you meet other professionals without coming across as desperate and needy? I learned all this and more. Oh, and guess what? I changed my mind about networking. It’s not the dirty word I thought it was.

Welcome to 2013, the year to take big steps. Bold steps. Game-changing steps.

The Year-Round Professional

Evan Braun 4 Comments

As I set out to write this post, I have been awake for about thirty-six hours straight. The reason? I’m in Toronto, enjoying the first day of World Fantasy Convention, where hundreds of other writers like me, each at various stages in their careers, have converged along with some of the very brightest luminaries in genre fiction. Why do they come together? Because success attracts success. Events like WFC allow writers the opportunity to rub elbows with people whose careers are worth emulating. The old saying is true: If you want to be a success, hang around with other successful people; their success might rub off on you.

This seems a fitting note on which to begin our blog’s November coverage of one of the most prevalent writing institutions of the past ten years: National Novel Writing Month, usually shortened to NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo gives us the opportunity to emulate some of the best habits of successful authors all over the world. For this one month, we reprioritize our lives to extreme degrees, all in the name of meeting a daunting (but achievable) challenge-to write a novel in a month.

As I said, this is a daunting challenge, and yet writers of all ages, of all genres, and of all nationalities manage it every year. They do it through discipline, focus, and sheer determination. Over the course of the coming days and weeks, the Fictorians are going to serve up a regular dose of content designed to encourage you and keep your productive during the darkest days of November. The success stories and productivity tips we’ve accumulated may be just what the doctor ordered at this unusually active time in so many writers’ lives.

Aye, and there’s the rub. The determination we demonstrate during the month of November should be parlayed into December, January, and the long months beyond. Why is it that we make such stunning resolutions in November, but give in to our slovenly, procrastinatory impulses the rest of the year? I believe every writer should take on the NaNoWriMo challenge at least once, if for no other reason than to get a foretaste of what being a professional, deadline-oriented author is really all about. This year, let’s take a cue from the pros and emulate their zeal all year long. Let’s learn to be prolific.

The writing that results from NaNoWriMo isn’t always perfect, but it’s highly rewarding because it allows you the opportunity to demonstrate what you’re really capable of. When I last took on the challenge, I produced the second half of the manuscript which later became my first published novel.

By emulating success, we actually make ourselves successful. At some point, you’ll realize that you’re not just copying the pros; you’re becoming one of them.