Greetings from the edge,
Deep into On Writing right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly enjoying The Three-Body Problem, which insistently is not about the problems that arise from needing to dispose of three cadavers, and I’m also really enjoying the alien-eye view of human jingoism and bloodthirsty expansionism in The Word for World Is Forest.
But I genuinely think On Writing has the potential to change my life.
The other day, I posted some thoughts from the first few chapters, and in that same spirit, here are the biggest things I’ve taken from it today:
- Whatever else you do, do not become a literary prostitute. Write what fascinates you, not what seems profitable or fashionable. Your best material comes from your own life, obsessions, fears, work, relationships, and imagination. Readers can smell a fake from orbit.
- Truth matters more than genre, style, or literary cleverness. A story can survive rough prose, but it cannot survive dishonesty. The goal is not to impress people. The goal is to make people believe.
- Stories grow better from situations and characters than from rigid plotting. Start with a strong “what if?” question, throw believable people into trouble, and let them surprise you instead of dragging them around by the ankles with an outline.
- Description should be sharp, selective, and purposeful. A few vivid details will do far more work than a shopping list of clothing, eye colour, and wallpaper. Description starts in the writer’s imagination, but it should finish in the reader’s.
- Setting matters, but story matters more. Use description to create mood, texture, and a sense of place, then get out of the way before the scenery starts chewing the furniture.
The man is so good at what he does, and so twisted, that every night before he goes to bed, Satan probably checks under the bed to make sure Stephen King is not hiding there.
As well as that, I’m proud to say my short story Emergency Call 2164 is now posted and live, although it does look a little lonely in the brand new Fiction section of Rambles & Whimsy. I’m hoping to put more work up there soon. I have a few pieces ready to go, but they still need copyediting, so I’m going to make like a kobold on caffeine pills with a red pencil.
Speaking of which, I can highly recommend The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding. I’ve been dipping into it while looking for ways to flesh out Valtheraine and the wider world of Lore, and it has turned out to be a genuinely useful resource. It is packed with thoughtful essays on all kinds of worldbuilding topics and would be valuable for any GM looking to create their own setting or simply put more flesh on the bones of an existing one.
I think that’s about it from the broom cupboard for now.
I started work in earnest on my Silence of the Lambs article today, and I’m hoping it will be live around the 23rd of April, as long as the Chianti lasts.
See you in the margins,
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