The Pressure Must Be Irresistible

     There are days...sometimes one after another...oh Good Lord, how many days there are!...when my storyteller side cringes in despair. The way writers buckle to trends! The way they praise their own work! The way they bandwagon! But I suppose I should be more specific.

     You’ve heard me rant and rave about the prevalence of the unending series several times before this. You’ve heard me petition the heavens for a few decently plotted, characterized, and written novels that don’t have twenty-three sequels (with more in the offing). You’ve heard me fulminate when I’ve reached the end of a novel whose promo blurb gave no warning about being the first volume in a series...only to discover that that was what it was. So I shan’t assault your eyes with further harangues of that sort.

     When I go shopping for fresh reading material – a daily event here at the Fortress – I have my antennae fully extended for all the known warning signs. It takes a strong sense of the original, unique, and exemplary to get me to start reading a series, when I know that that’s what lies before me. Even then, the odds tick upward only slightly – perhaps slightly more if the first volume is a freebie.

     But what do I find this morning?

     The book has as its kinda-sorta subtitle:

(A Standalone Sci-Fi Thriller)

     Glory be to God! Someone out there is thinking of us poor, series-addled readers who want a few stories that actually end! Though I’d never heard of author Jasper T. Scott, I figured I’d give it a try. I’ll let you know if it’s any good.

     Yet there is irony in store, Gentle Reader. For the book has a kinda-sorta sub-sub-title:

(Scott Standalones Book 1)

     So Mr. Scott has grouped his standalone novels into a kinda-sorta series!

     Oh! The pain, the pain...

Writer Reviewing Other Writer’s Books Experiences Great Consternation

     (Film at eleven!)

     Seriously, as a writer with nearly three decades of experience under my belt, it can be very difficult to assess another writer’s work in a fair and evenhanded manner. After all, most readers are not writers themselves – yea verily, even today – and are mainly interested in learning whether they would be likely to enjoy the book in question. If your review doesn’t give them a sense for that, it’s essentially pointless.

     But readers who write approach others’ fiction with a different perspective. Its essence is well expressed in this piece by Writing Observer:

     When a writer reads someone else’s work, unless they are one of the lucky few that can switch off that part of their brain at will, they are simultaneously analyzing the text flowing beneath their eyes. We can’t help it — like any other professional, we are constantly looking for help with our own efforts. What doesn’t work here, and how do I avoid it? What is a beautiful, shiny piece of prose, or scene, or entire chapter, and how do I make mine look so good?

     It’s an uncomfortable feeling — and sometimes a dangerous one. We can lose sight of the forest for the trees, people. We have to cultivate an ability to step back and look at the work as a whole — that is what makes a good (or bad) piece of work, not a few blemishes or a few shining passages. The whole work is what matters in the end...

     A writer who undertakes to review is obliged to remember that any writers who read his review will be heavily outnumbered by ordinary readers looking for a few hours’ entertainment. Any nitpicking he might express to himself about the book in question should be downplayed in favor of an emphasis on the book’s entertainment value.

     An example: Back when Tom Clancy was churning out the techno-thrillers, I purchased, read, and greatly enjoyed virtually all of them. Yet Clancy’s prose is a study in a wide variety of errors young writers are counseled to avoid. Some of those errors are serious: for example, ambiguity of viewpoint and head-hopping in mid-scene. Others are minor glitches of phrasing and style that a multitude of other writers – far less gifted than Clancy at crafting and narrating a compelling story – also commit. But the writer-who-reads and notices them can still be enthralled by the storytelling. If he chooses to review, he’s ethically obliged to keep that uppermost in mind.

     And so we come to my episode of consternation.

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     I receive a daily email from Freebooksy that reports on the day’s free-eBook promotions. Now and then I pick up a book from that email. I last did so about a week ago: Emergence, by Liberty Speidel.

     The nitpicky, Uber-perfectionist lobe of my brain was in overdrive from the very first page. There were a lot of stylistic glitches. There was also a revelation that should have occurred but didn’t, as I would find out much later. Main character Darby was portrayed in a fashion that struck me as ambivalent: equally likely to strike a reader as sympathetic or unsympathetic. But the central premises are original, especially considering that the tale is part of the “superheroes” genre, and the plot moved me smartly along. So when I finished Emergence, I went on to Retaliation,the next book in the series.

     Well, the stylistic glitches didn’t trail off. If anything, they increased in frequency. Darby’s characterization continued to be jagged, not always effectively sympathetic. I also deemed one of Speidel’s “structural” choices to be dubious. But there was a sense of freshness about the story’s sociopolitical backdrop and its most important plot motifs. When I finished it, I went directly on to book three, Capitulation.

     I could go on in this vein through books three, four (Omission), and five (Escalation). There were more errors of the sort in the previous books, plus lots of loose ends, and at least one continuity error of note. Perhaps worst, main character Darby was ever more portrayed as headstrong, disrespectful of higher authority and heedless of others’ greater experience, and prone to acting without thinking or pondering the probable consequences – i.e., who struck me as a brat who should be sent to her room without her dinner or cell phone.

     By now you must have the idea. As much as the writer in me wanted to take Speidel across my knee and spank her soundly for her myriad errors of craft, she’d invented a setting of considerable originality, had made use of motifs that were either inherently original or original as employed, and had kept the stories moving forward at a good tempo. How to review the series?

     Great God in heaven! My writerly side kept wanting to chastise Speidel. But I’d read all five books, end to end, without pausing. To write a nitpicky, hypercritical review, as if I were critiquing my own fiction, would unfairly shortchange the entertainment value of the books. Yet not to mention the flaws at all would grate severely against the part of me that values craft and precision in writing.

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     I’m still dithering. Perhaps the only place I’ll mention my consternation is right here. (Or at my op-ed site, where this will be cross-posted.)

     I wrote some time ago about the importance of being reasonable in one’s expectations of an indie writer, especially a relatively inexperienced one. I still feel that way. So if and when I get around to actually posting a review of Speidel’s “Darby Shaw” series, I’ll have to rein in the impulse to harp on what I saw as failings of craft and emphasize the entertainment value the series offers. Ordinary Christian charity would dictate that course. For now, the above emission of steam should bring the pressure down to a manageable level.

Because We All Need A Little Catharsis Now And Then

     If you’re familiar with Mervyn Peake’s neglected fantasy trilogy Gormenghast, you’ll know the story of Fuchsia, the daughter of Lord Sepulchrave Groan, 76th Earl of the isolated community of Gormenghast. Fuchsia begins the story as an immature yet sensitive child, isolated by her position and her personality, who finds her deepest solace in dreams. As her young brother Titus, who is destined to occupy the Earldom, ages toward maturity, her isolation deepens, and she spends ever more time in the pursuit of love and acceptance through dreams and reverie.

     Fuchsia is perhaps classic fantasy’s most pathetic character: incapable of fulfillment until the instant of her accidental death. Yet it is her very insufficiency that makes her appealing. As the daughter of a noble house whose powers pass through primogeniture to the oldest male descendant of the expired Earl, she is of no use to the house except as a means by which to form a useful alliance through a politically advantageous marriage – something impossible to the completely isolated House of Groan.

     Readers have lamented and dreamed alongside Fuchsia for decades. But John Ford and Richard Hudson of the Strawbs were the first to immortalize her in song. Immerse yourself in her sorrows now, along with some beautiful images, woven into a compelling pastiche.

A child denied all love can't weep
But bravely bears her life alone
So Fuchsia as you try to sleep
You dream of friends you've never known

In troubled years when no one cared
You searched for comfort everywhere
For heavy burdens never shared
Became too much for one to bear

So much to give, but those who live
Don't know of you...
Your fantasy of love to be...
Cannot come true:
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia

Now poised above the castle walls
You look your last on lonely skies
Night owls pray for you as they call
Returning ere the dawn shall rise

Your loveless life has led you here...
Not knowing why
Your troubled mind's no longer clear...
To live or die:
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia

Pursuing The Heights...Or Scorning Them?

     There are days I have to withhold myself from others. Not to do so would be dangerous – to the others, not to me. Such occasions are triggered by a variety of stimuli. Blame it on my Irish temper, if you like. It’s integral to me, and I’ve had no luck taming it.

     Today was such a day. The stimulus was a couple of comments at another site which I will forbear to specify. It involved a conversation among writers, including several too cowardly to give their real names. In the course of that conversation, certain things were said that lit my boilers and turned the flame up to its maximum.

     What was said that redlined my tachometer, you ask? First, this: that trying to make your novel as good as it can possibly be, as close to perfect as you can bring it, is a waste of the author’s time.

     Need I explain why that flicked me on the raw?

     No, I didn’t think so.

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     I’m a (retired) engineer. If there’s any characteristic that unites all engineers everywhere, it would be this one: We want our designs to be perfect.

     I can’t bring myself to submit anything to anyone if I can still detect a flaw in it. I was that way as a working engineer, and I’m that way as a writer of fiction. I love my (imagined) readers too much to subject them to anything that isn’t the very best I can make it. But while that would be enough reason to strive for perfection, there’s more involved.

     It involves my opinion of myself as a responsible artist. A responsible sculptor wouldn’t leave a few extraneous stone chips on his statue. A responsible painter wouldn’t fail to correct for errant brush strokes, as far as possible. A responsible musician wouldn’t fail to correct – or to redo entirely –a recording that was stippled with errors.

     A responsible writer takes comparable pains. He reviews his work with a critical eye. If possible, he enlists others in the effort. He corrects any flaws he can detect before he presents his tale to his readership. To do less is to say “This doesn’t matter that much.”

     But it does matter that much, damn it all! It will bear my name. It will be taken as representative of the larger body of my work. And if my readers can find fault with it, they’ll be that much less inclined to read other things I’ve written. Some subset of them will dismiss me as a second rate writer.

     I can’t bear the thought, much less allow the reality. So I labor to the utmost to seine out any ambiguities of plot or viewpoint, any awkward phrasings, and (of course) any low-level errors of grammar, spelling, or punctuation that I can find in my manuscripts before I release them to the world. I regard it as an ethical obligation, to say nothing of the impact on the maintenance and enlargement of my readership.

     But an unnamed commenter who goes by an anonymizing moniker has called it a waste of time. Perhaps his / her / its anonymity is for the best.

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     The above was bad enough. There was worse.

     Another anonymous commenter at the aforementioned site said, in effect, that he / she / it didn’t want thematic content. If that’s not clear, here’s a paraphrase of the comment:

     Stories with serious themes turn me off. I avoid books that I “should” read. I seek to escape reality for a while, nothing more.

     Let’s see, now: A story that lacks a theme:

• Could involve protagonists and antagonists that are morally indistinguishable;
• Could ignore the nature and implications of sentience and causality;
• Could award the palm of victory to an evil participant.

     Why would anyone read such a thing? For the vampires and werewolves, the elves and wizards, the ray guns and rocket ships? It would have no connection to life as we know it: a world in which limited beings with individual abilities and motivations must strive against all manner of opposition to fulfill or defend their values, while simultaneously straining to respect the moral and ethical constraints our nature lays upon us. There would be no point to such a story. It would be akin to watching a wrestling match between unnamed, interchangeable contestants.

     The notion is so offensive that words fail me. The lowest, cheapest hackwork fiction at least nods toward some sort of theme. Pick up any Harlequin Silhouette romance. The least engaging of them makes an effort to say something about the nature of our world and the people in it.

     I must assume that the commenter cited above is completely unconscious of what makes a story worth his / her / its time, and is unaware of what he / she / it really enjoys about the tales he / she / it finds enjoyable.

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     There’s no risk to me in encountering such bilge, of course. I’ll do as I think best regardless of anyone’s contrary opinion. But younger writers, not yet completely formed and ready to fly, could be affected by such emissions. That disturbs me.

     Writing fiction is a serious business. Whether or not he’s aware of it – whether or not he admits it to himself – what a writer writes will help to mold his readers’ diction, knowledge, attitudes, and convictions. He can’t avoid it. To be blasé about the quality and content of his work is shameful.

     Yes, I know mine is a minor voice. But ought my sentiments to be dismissed, merely because I have a tiny readership?

Using The Great Stories

     Among the phenomena that irritate me most, in these days when everyone with a word processor and an Internet connection can call himself a writer, is the blatant theft of tales told by other, better writers. Such thefts aren’t always outright plagiarisms, though some of that takes place, too. More often, they take the form of setting and motif appropriations: the use of places and characters (or character categories) made famous by other writers in their best known, best loved works.

     The targets for such appropriations are usually the very best fiction writers in the English language. Of course! If you’re going to steal, why limit yourself to what you could pilfer at a 7-11? So we see what are often called “imitations” of Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, Stephen King, and other great storytellers of years past: mediocre stories that exploit the creations of those writers’ imaginations.

     Why would an aspiring writer do such a thing? Lack of imagination alone doesn’t strike me as a satisfactory explanation. No one wants to be known as an unimaginative petty thief, and the “serial numbers” on such a story can’t be adequately “filed off.” It seems more likely that the aspirant is entranced by the tales he chooses to mimic. He might be fully aware that he lacks the power to concoct something nearly as good, and has resolved to settle for some adulatory fingerpainting along the margins.

     Deplorable and sad. Yet the notion of a “subcreation,” composed as a “homage” to the great work of another creator, has considerable legitimacy. It can be done in an acceptable way, and I’m here to tell you how to do it.

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     The prog-rock band Glass Hammer, headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee (is that enough doubled letters for you?), includes in its oeuvre works that constitute subcreations beneath the expansive umbrella provided by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s fantasy has inspired a huge number of imitators, but few have been respectful enough to do what Steve Babb and Fred Schendel of Glass Hammer have done. In their CD Journey of the Dunadan, they make use of an “unexplored space” Tolkien left in his epic fantasy: the wanderings of Aragorn and his yearnings for Arwen Evenstar, daughter of Elrond Halfelven and fairest of all the children of the Eldar race. This tale weaves artfully among the threads of Tolkien’s well known adventure, in such a fashion that it enhances the greater saga without contradicting or distorting it.

     That’s how it should be done. If a creator has left such an unexplored space, and if a story can be inserted into that space that neither violates nor distorts the original tale, it can stand as a valid subcreation with its own value. As the overwhelming majority of fantasies written since The Lord of the Rings borrow from it to some degree, Journey of the Dunadan constitutes a pattern to be followed by others equally respectful of Tolkien’s prerogatives.

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     There’s another way to exploit an earlier creation: the “what happened next?” approach. If the original creator completes his tale and leaves the future events in the characters’ lives open, a capable writer can take up the threads from there – once again, assuming he can do so without violating or distorting the original. The late Robert B. Parker, a mighty storyteller in his own right, did this in his novel Perchance to Dream, which Parker bills as a sequel to Raymond Chandler’s magnum opus The Big Sleep. Parker adapts himself smoothly to Chandler’s “L.A. noire” style and portrays detective Philip Marlowe in this follow-on adventure in a fashion Chandler would applaud. This sort of subcreation should only proceed with permission from the original creator (or his estate). If that can be secured, it’s a legitimate way to borrow from an earlier creator.

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     Finally, a subcreation can be rooted in the great classical and pre-classical legends, or in a story from the Bible. E. William Brown’s novels of Daniel Black make use of several mythologies: Nordic, Greek, and Egyptian. He combines elements from those sagas into a brand new epic set in a world like our own, yet unlike it. Brown’s “Midgard” is a place where magic actually works – indeed, it’s the dominant force in all of society, including the societies of the gods. The epic is so convoluted that I could hardly do it justice in a squib here, so take my word for it: Brown has concocted an original and intriguing alternate universe in which to exploit those myths. (And nobody will be suing him for his borrowings!)

     If you’re going to reach into the Bible for some foundation stones, great care is required. You don’t want to offend anyone unintentionally; it wouldn’t be gentlemanly. As for risking God’s wrath, that’s even more serious. I’ve taken my fate in my hands on two occasions: my short stories Names and The Last Vigil. Two minor characters – one a complete fabrication, the other the Roman soldier Longinus who attended to Christ on the Cross – were my foci. As I could speak of them without contradicting or distorting the greatest story ever told, that of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind, I felt I could get away with it. (I’ll find out for certain in the afterlife.)

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     So: it can be done. Viewed apart from the attitude of the subcreator, the requirements are fairly simple. Yet in the final analysis it is the subcreator’s attitude that matters most. He must respect the earlier tale as something over which he has no rights whatsoever. Moreover, he must respect its creator in the fullest sense: as one who, having brought something original and striking into the world, deserves to be shown homage for it. He must not mock or deride that earlier artist with an attitude of “I’ll show him how it’s done.”

     Keep this in mind should you elect to travel the road of subcreation.