Alex Livingston

Blog

  • Worldbuilder, or Great Minds Think Alike

    Dunno if you remember a post from a while back in which I proposed a process by which fan content could be legitimized to the benefit of all.  Looks like the clever folks at Angry Robot books are spearheading the movement.

    WorldBuilder takes that idea and moves it forward a billion or so steps (note: might not be a billion).

    In January, when we publish Adam Christopher’s uber-cool prohibition-superhero-noir novel, Empire State, we’ll be inviting fan creators everywhere to visit the world of Empire State and create their own works of art based in the Empire State universe. These creations can then be uploaded to a dedicated website, and distributed under a Creative Commons license.

    I find this to be excellent, and hope it catches on.

  • What I Learned from Embassytown

    Oh man.  I finished up Embassytown on audiobook last week, and if I hear the word “language” one more time I’m gonna stab someone. I don’t care how sexy british her voice is.

    That’s not true. I do care.

    A few tid-bits that stick with me:

    A good sci-fi universe envisions the end-results of many technologies, not just one. Aliens from whom speech and consciousness are the same. Aliens whose technology is all biological. Almost-sentient robots. A human diaspora via an adjacent dimension, and what happens when they get to the end of space.

    Give the reader some new vocab, and make it awesome. Read: floaking. immer. exot.

    Build that world through the eyes of your character. We’ll catch up. And if some aspect of the place’s history doesn’t have anything to do with the characters or the plot, who cares about it anyway?

     

    Embassytown was very satisfying read/listen,  and a big influence on my trying out the whole first person thing in my latest.

    Also, Simon LeBon likes it!

  • What I Learned from The Help

    Yes, I read The Help. It was more or less the last book on Earth I would read normally, but I did.

    I mean, come on:

    • It’s a NYT Bestseller.
    • There are neither spaceships nor sailing vessels.
    • It’s about race relations.
    • It’s set in the sixties (1960’s, not 1860’s or AD 60’s)
    • It’s about women.
    • The cover is yellow and purple, and has birds on it.

    Sweet Jesu. Books with any of these traits don’t find their way on to my radar very often.  But when I saw this series of posts on novel structure using The Help as an example, I decided to go for it.

    So what did I take away from this adventure?

    • The antagonist does not ever have to be the narrator/POV. Miss Hilly came across just fine without taking the reins at any point.
    • Set up a character with a flaw/obstacle about which she is unaware, then have another character bring it up.
    • The incident that kicks off the plot can be subtle, but it has to be about the main character’s life changing.
    • The most interesting scene in the book from a writerly standpoint is a party in which the POV is third person, as opposed to the first person used in the rest. This is the only time in book this happens, and it works. All three narrators are present at this big do, and the one-scene switch gets the plot point across without having to chop it up or repeat it three times.

    Now, I have a number of criticisms for The Help, but that’s not what I’m here to accomplish today. From a structure standpoint, the book is solid.

    Ok, just one thing. I don’t know what book the movie was based on, but it sure doesn’t look like The Help. There is a very real threat of physical harm and socially-sanctioned murder underlying everything in the text – the trailer looks like a bunch of ladies having a grand old time.

  • Bits I Learned from Hull Zero Three

    Hull Zero Three: a neatly-done amnesia mystery on a spooky old spaceship.  So, what did I take away from it as a writer?  I warn you: spoilers.

     

    The setting is a character. It’s moody. Fickle. Mean. It doesn’t care if you die. It wants you to die. It provides for you. It reacts to your touch. You wonder what it wants from you, if it even knows you’re there. These are the makings of a complex and memorable character. It’s even called “Ship”, as if it were a person by that name.

     

    You don’t have to explain it all.  Why the strange bodies of the characters? They vary widely in size, shape, and color based on some sort of functional utility — but were they like that on Earth? Or were they created on-ship? The honking people had their own language; was it developed before the ship launched?

     

    Many questions, but it’s OK. I didn’t need the full history of the world, just enough to keep me going in the story.

     

    Everyone is superstitious, even in the future. The issue of the silvery beings was my favorite of the novel. Hearing sci-fi characters talk about something as if it were a fairy or a yeti or the Virgin Mary rang very true to they way people actually act. Everyone has experiences they can’t explain, and the most logical solution isn’t always the right one. Giving characters an odd phenomenon to react to provides an opportunity to show (or discover) more about who they are.

     

    All in all, a good take.

  • Guest Post!

    If you haven’t been reading What Not To Do As A Writer, you should remedy that immediately. And what better way to start than to read my guest post?

     

  • Does being DM make for better writing?

    They say being a Dungeon Master and running a D&D campaign makes you a better writer. Sure, any time spent making up stories helps; extemporizing characters, plot twists, and locales to keep your game going flexes those metaphorical creative muscles.

    But I’m not convinced being a DM really makes me a better writer. Here’s why.

    1 – Less time writing. Every minute spent coming up with interesting and unusual ways for the stalwart band of adventurers to find their way into the enchanted city of Crystalspire means less time actually writing stories. Detailed world-building? Yes, but only as it relates to gameplay. No one wants to hear my history of the place. They want to roll dice and get stuff.

    2 – Less time reading. See above.

    3 – Railroading. The heroes find themselves in a room surrounded by slavering baddies. The humble DM has built a cool narrative experience for them around the challenge of talking their way out. Then the Dragonborn breaks down the wall and walks through the wreckage into the street. DMing is about bringing the players – who are creative people looking to collaborate with you on a fun story – engaging and fluid content. If you force them to do anything, in most cases you’re not doing it right. But if you let the characters in your fiction run around pell-mell, you’re going to end up losing focus.

    4 – Good and evil. There’s always a Big Bad. He’s bad. He’s not complex, you can’t see his point of view, and you don’t identify with him. He’s got the PCs right where he wants them, and he’s gonna kill ‘em dead. He’s the flattest character you can imagine – and you always need him just as he is. This is a game about fighting. Sure, sometimes it’s about sneaking or negotiating, but mostly it’s about fighting. If your PCs just go around waxing everyone they come across, that makes them the bad guys. They don’t want that (especially if there’s a paladin in the party). So, if your buddies are going to enjoy this fighting game, they need someone to fight. Not a deep and subtly-crafted character: a punching bag in a Peter-Jackson-Sauron helmet.

    Participating in collaborative fiction is a blast, and definitely uses some of the same skills as writing, but the two are different beasts. DMing can help the writing process, though, by teaching you about people, about their motivations and reactions. As it turns out, not everybody wants to save the village. When they do, there better be some reward. PCs can be distrustful, boorish, violent, selfish and any of a number of qualities not normally attributed to a square-jawed hero — all while still being relatable and interesting characters.

    And when you’re trying to build the scenes in which these people participate — that’s when it feels most like being a writer.

  • Rhymer is up!

    Rhymer (my book) is now available in Kindle format.  (FYI – PC, iOS, Blackberry, and Android all have Kindle apps, so those work too.)

    Go here to check it out — you can download a sample, which is cool.

    Seeing one’s own name on Amazon for the first time… well, let’s just say it adds some gravity.  I’ve been plugging away at this project for months (and the world for years), and now it is let free to sail into the hands of The Reader. I’ve been swinging between excitement and terror since seeing the word “LIVE” last night, and I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to take to make the pendulum stop.  A specific number of sales? The first review? The first BAD review?

    Thinking back to the release of The Nightmare Maze at Choice of Games, I seem to remember the jitters subsiding a bit when the iOS reviews started coming out. Some folks said it was 5-star awesome and others loathed it to no end, but all of them felt strongly enough about it to get online and say something. That was a good feeling.

    And now to start the next one….

  • Submit – or, I’m old

    I’ve got a few short stories in the bank, and have started the process of sending them off to magazines and sites for potential publication.  Since I’ve been focused on plays and IF for the last few years, it’s been ages since I tried this in earnest.

    So, there’s this thing called the internet now. No longer must you print out a copy, put it in a piece of folded paper, figure out how much the thing weighs, affix appropriate governmental tender, and drop it into the designated bin.  And then you hear back quickly via something called “email”.  What a time to be alive!

    I sent a story over to Lightspeed, and received a response in days.  That’s right– days.  As in, a division of time smaller than a week. Amazing. One down, on to the next.

    Sure, online submission existed last time I tried a major blast, but it was a rarity. Now it appears to be the standard. I find myself wondering whether or not publishers have found the number of submissions increasing since the paper days.  And, if so, what about the quality? Did we put more care into our submissions because we knew we had pay for the paper?

    I say nay. I’m just as cautious with digitext as I was with paper. The only difference is now I watch my gmail inbox rather than my mailbox.

  • Cover Time

    Yes, the time has come for me to make a cover for Rhymer. The recording process for the podiobooks version starts this weekend, and (assuming they accept the project) I need to get the associated image ready.

    Rhymer is a retelling of an ancient Irish imram (seafaring wonder voyage myth) set in a sci-fi space universe.  My goal is to convey this in an image.

    I’ve been digging on all the minimalist covers/posters which have been running around online, so a few circles and vectors led to this:

    Green circles = space, right?  And a sailboat where a spaceship would be = something unusual and ancient is afoot here.

     

    My first draft of the complete cover keeps with the minimalist thing.  The font looks like 70’s mythology text to me, very D’aulaires’.

    I used this as the cover for the proof copies I Lulu’d up to make editing and proofing easier. It looked OK, but much more suited to online.

     

    For draft #2, I poked around for 60’s and 70’s book covers to see what the masters did.

    And yes, I added a distressed look because I am a book nerd. The drawing for the logo is taken from one of a hanafuda cards.  Chance, games, and weather play major parts in the book, so the Rainman card seemed a natural choice.

     

    Of course, e “covers” don’t really need all the same stuff that RL covers do.  Like, ya know, words and all that.  Perhaps I’ll end up just using the “icon” version. Hmm….

  • Authors, Voice Actors, and Listeners

    My car and I have developed a new relationship due to the audiobook.  Where before it represented only the oppressive duties of commute and errand, now it serves as my private listening chamber.  Focused.  Utilitarian.  A reading nook can be entered, a book interrupted by a phone call.  But for forty minutes a day, I get to enjoy whatever fiction I choose without disruption.

    Gaiman classifies it perfectly, of course:  “I grew up in a world where stories were read aloud”. When I heard the next story on NPR was going to be an old favorite talking about my latest obsession, I tuned in (pun intended) closer.  The first sentence of his essay on audiobooks did more than simply grab my attention; it enlightened me on part of what I enjoy about the medium.  I like to listen.

     

    I had a reputation on the schoolyards.  Not for shove-fights or brilliant kickball plays, of course. No, the kids knew that if they gave me a chance I would burn up their recess time with over-long jokes.  The kind where the joke is on the listener:  ‘I can’t believe he made me listen to that whole thing for a stupid pun’. When the other kids asked me to retell one of these extempore epics, it was only to fool another friend into suffering through it.  Jump in the lake — it’s not that cold.  Here, smell this.

    These jokes were my favorite to hear, though.  Antimacassar-intricate stories knotted by scout leaders looking to keep the boys entertained on road trips in a time before texting.  Yes the puns were bad, but each detail of the protagonist’s journey was built from that wordplay.  The disembodied fingers which guarded the drawbridge could not be a full hand.  Neither could they be an ominous red or black.  The hero could not be a gallant knight; he needed to be the lowest-ranking member of the court to succeed at his Arthurian task.  How else could the king let his pages do the walking through the yellow fingers?

    See what I mean?  Bad (and now dated) pun.  But the trick is in the telling.

     

    I’ve been hanging around Podiobooks.com for a while now, and most of what I’ve listened to has been read by the authors themselves.  Does that add to my enjoyment?  A remarkable level of connection between reader and writer.

    How different would my perception of Ishmael Wang be if Nathan Lowell did not read him?  Would a voice actor have made him different somehow?  More aggressive, more eccentric?  The lines between protagonist and author can get a little fuzzy in any form, but particularly in audio.  How much of Wang is Lowell? Does he say things the same way Lowell does? How much Mur Lafferty is there in Kate from the Afterlife series? Some? Any? Someone else read Daniel’s sections in season one – why?

    When authors read the first-person text of their own stories, I find myself assuming that the protagonist has a great deal in common with the writer.  Not intellectually – I understand the difference.   But the feeling is still there.  “This person is talking about himself”.  This is a great fear of mine about my own writing, and I’ve certainly written protagonists who say things I don’t believe.  Perhaps I’m just projecting.  Or is it that I crave to know the mind of the author?  Either way, I can’t stop listening.

    The audiobook has its flaws, certainly.  I wonder how much I’ve missed by not being able to reread a paragraph or flip back a chapter or two.  A narrator puts an interpretive layer between the author and the audience… but is that really a flaw?  Lowell did a great job reading Michael J. Sullivan’s The Crown Conspiracy, a story about as far from the Trader Tales as possible. Robertson Dean’s pleasant narration did not detract from my experience with Zero History any more than an actor’s detracts from a script.  Indeed, the opposite is true more often than not.

    Why am I obsessing over this, you ask?  I’ve asked a highly talented friend to read Rhymer for podiobook distribution.  Am I taking something away from the listener by denying them the opportunity to hear my mumbling?  I say ‘nay’.  ‘Author’ and ‘voice actor’ are two different roles, even when performed by the same person.

     

    PS – Boy, I referenced a lot of stuff in this post. A critic at heart, I guess. I often spend more time thinking about other peoples’ work than developing my own.   If only I could write in the car….

    Seriously, go listen to all of this:

    Gaiman’s NPR story.

    Podiobooks.com

    Nathan Lowell’s Traders Tales.

    Mur Lafferty’s Afterlife series.

    Michael J. Sullivan’s The Crown Conspiracy.

    William Gibson’s Zero History.