On Writing About Airships

I love airships. I'm not sure why, but they've always captured my imagination. From the first one I can remember in Final Fantasy to my koala pilot in Mutants Down Under. Those were the hooks, but it became an obsession when I saw Laputa for the first time. I've gotten other hits since, but mainstream media seems to be lacking in strong airship-based entertainment. I've been itching to create something with airships for a long time, and it's exciting to finally be doing so.

The other day, I got to the first airship combat scene in Air Pirates. I thought writing it would be a breeze. Like chase scenes. I hardly ever have to plan a chase scene ahead of time. So long as I have a mental picture of the location, the action just happens and all I do is record it. Imagine my surprise when I realized that airships are slow, ponderous vehicles, and combat between them isn't inherently exciting at all.

It worried me at first, but I though about similar vehicles - seagoing ships and submarines, for example. Sea and undersea battles are also slow, boring affairs, but that didn't keep me from enjoying Pirates! or The Ancient Art of War at Sea. Nor did it keep Pirates of the Carribean, Master & Commander, or Hunt for Red October from their exciting action sequences. It's just a different kind of action.

One I need to learn to write.

Why I Do Write

Everyone has their influences and teachers. These are some of mine:

From J. R. R. Tolkien, I learned about sub-creation.

From Orson Scott Card, I learned that a world is only as good as its characters.

From George R. R. Martin, I learned that every character should have a name. From Masashi Kishimoto, I learned that every character should have a story.

From Chris Avellone, I learned that a well-designed character, no matter how complex, is definable in one interesting sentence.

Also from Orson, I learned that cliche is not a bad place to start, but a terrible place to stop.

From Chris Baron, I learned that revision can make anything better. From George Lucas, I learned that it is possible to revise too much.

From David Mack, I learned that writing is like exercise - the hard part is sitting down to do it. On my own I figured out that, most of the time, I don't actually want to write; I just want to have written.

I'm still working on that last one.

Why I Don't Write

David Mack wrote, "It's not the writing that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write." I've been thinking a lot on what keeps me from writing, and recently I made a major change to help me work better.

The list of what keeps me from writing is huge. I'm married, have a toddler, homeschool, parent 5 kids, teach programming, blog, fix computers, write newsletters, fix the house, and on and on. But all of those are Things I Have To Do or Things I Should Do. There's an equally large list of Things I Don't Need To Do (or Things I Shouldn't Do Instead of Writing): e-mail, pointless research, blog reading, chicken counting*, books, Sudoku, and more.

I've always been aware that most of what distracts me is on the internet. I sit down at the computer out of habit, and the first thing I do is check my e-mail. I check my feed reader for any updated blogs. If I'm being particularly distracted, I'll do some research I don't need to do or check recent hits on my blogs. Only when I'm sure I've exhausted my interest in the internet, do I start to write. Needless to say, getting my head into writing after repeating this cycle a few times is difficult**.

So in the interest of Getting Things Done, I have made a change. As of yesterday, I check the internet once in the morning and once at night after the kids go to bed. The rest of the day Firefox stays closed. It's not easy, but I think I'll get used to it after a while, and I think it will help.

Mindy Klasky at SFNovelists mentioned a similar self-discipline technique, though she allows Firefox for research, et al. Unfortunately I can't do that. I know myself too well. Instead, I write blog posts offline to be uploaded later. If I need to research something, I make a note of it and look it up that night. If I need a dictionary or thesaurus, I *gasp* use a real paper one. I'm still working out where to get random names, as I make heavy use of online generators for minor characters. Yesterday I used my wife's highschool yearbook.

Mindy also talked about making daily goals for herself. It's a good idea I'm going to try and keep in mind. Today I need to write a blog post (done) and start a short story***.


* A reference to the fable whose moral is "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched." Also known as daydreaming. I waste much more time than I'd like to admit thinking about what things will be like after I get published.

** Everytime I get up, the cycle repeats when I sit back down, and with homeschooling and parenting a little one, the times I need to get up are many. Right now, for example, the Little One is quiet, which means he's doing something he shouldn't be.

*** I know. "Start a short story" is too small and vague to be a good goal. But I can't say "finish it" because I don't think I will, and I can't give a word count because I don't yet know what's reasonable for me, given the aforementioned homeschooling and Little One****.

**** Now that the day is done, I managed to write almost 1,600 words, or about 40% of the story. Not bad.

Better Words

If you didn't already know: in writing, use strong verbs. A common amateur mistake is to toss adjectives and adverbs into a sentence to describe what the character is doing, but strong verbs are so much better. For example:

BAD	GOOD
“I want you to leave,” she said angrily.	“Get out!” she shouted.
He jerkily got into his sporty little car.	He stumbled into his Corvette.

Can you see the difference? If you can't, then trust me. The sentences on the right are much stronger because of the verbs "shouted" and "stumbled" (also because of the more self-explanatory dialogue and the more specific "Corvette").

I've found a thesaurus to be helpful for this, but not helpful enough. Instead, I keep three text files in my writing directory: said.txt, looked.txt, and walked.txt, filled with words to use instead of these common verbs. Today I'm sharing them online.

This is by no means comprehensive, and I welcome suggestions for addition. I'm sure most of you will enjoy suggesting, actually.

said	looked	walked
barked begged bellowed blared bleated blurted cackled chortled coaxed cooed coughed declared demanded echoed exclaimed expounded gasped goaded groaned hacked haggled harped hissed hooted hummed jabbered jeered jested joked moaned mused noted panted pleaded pondered posited pronounced protested purred queried questioned rasped repeated sang screamed shouted sneered sneezed snickered sniffed soothed spat spewed spumed stammered stated stuttered threatened tried trilled trumpeted uttered waffled wailed wavered whined whimpered whispered worried yelled	admired analyzed attended beheld considered contemplated examined eyed eyeballed flashed focused gaped gawked gazed glanced glowered goggled heeded inspected lamped marked minded noted noticed observed ogled peeked peeped peered pored over read regarded scanned scouted scrutinized saw spotted spied stared studied surveyed tended turned viewed watched examined	advanced ambled ambulated ankled cantered dove filed footed it frolicked went hiked hoofed it locomoted lumbered lurched marched meandered paced padded paraded patroled perambulated pitter-pattered plodded pranced promenaded raced roamed roved ran sauntered scuffed shambled shuffled slogged stalked stepped strided strolled strutted stumbled stumped toddled toured traipsed tramped traversed treaded trekked tromped trooped trudged wandered

Pixar Sci-Fi

It's to the point now where my wife and I will see a movie just because Pixar made it. Finding Nemo and The Incredibles are two of my favorite movies of all time. Today, Wall-E didn't move me as much as those two did, but I think that's only because the family and father/son themes resonate much more strongly with me. Which is to say that Wall-E is a good movie, and it's not Pixar's fault that I wasn't moved to tears this time. (MINOR SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW).

I also thought it was interesting from a sci-fi point of view. I've already noticed in my own stories a recurring theme of world-destruction. It's what Travelers is about, and it lies waiting deep in the history of Air Pirates. So I immediately enjoyed seeing another take on what could happen to Earth and to all those colonists who fled and forgot where they came from.

Unfortunately, my brain can't help finding flaws. Part of that is because S.C. Butler wrote a post about Wall-E at SF Novelists. I couldn't get the plant-in-space thing out of my head the entire time, and I found myself watching for other logical absurdities as well.

There were a number of questions that were left unanswered, like how does reproduction work on the Axiom, and why did the Axiom fly so far away from the Earth if they always intended to return, and (perhaps most pressing) why didn't they just shoot the trash into space? Questions that could have been answered, but weren't quite.

One big flaw that bugged me was that the humans who (as far as I could tell) had never walked in their lives, could walk when the plot needed them to. After generations of sedentariness, I don't think their bodies would be able to support their own massive weight. I could've let it go if the movie hadn't specifically mentioned the possibility of "bone loss" (in a video that was meant for colonists returning after 5 years, not 700, but whatever, another unanswered question). It could be explained away by low gravity, but when they got to Earth they had no problems there either.

Like Butler's plant flaw, it didn't ruin the movie for me, but I won't be able to get it out of my head. I don't accept the excuse that "it's a kid's movie" either. The folks who write kid's movies should care about what they do (esp. at Pixar) just as much as those of us who write for adults. After all, when our kids watch a movie over and over again, we have to as well. And the movies that do really well are the ones that both kids and adults enjoy.

Writing Algorithm

There are two kinds of writers*: planners and non-planners.** Planners think, brainstorm, outline, and do all of the other stuff that your writing teachers taught you to do in elementary school. Non-planners just write. Both methods are valid, but if you know me at all then you can guess that I'm an obsessive-compulsive planner.

I have to plan.

Mainly, this is because I don't like major revisions. I know, I know, revision is part of writing - the most important part even, but to me it still feels like wasted work. The idea of writing half of a novel only to then figure out what the story's really about, and consequently throw away that whole first draft, is too painful.

That doesn't mean that everything goes according to plan. It hardly ever does, and no matter how much planning I do, the beginning bits often get heavily reworked by the end of the novel. And so far, in both novels, I didn't really know how the ending would work until I got there.

I've never been good with endings.

Anyway, once the writing begins, I have a pretty established process - so much so, I refer to it as an algorithm:

0. Given: A chapter-by-chapter outline in which each chapter has a 1-2 sentence summary.
   
1. Brainstorm events/scenes that must happen in this chapter.
   
2. Create an event outline of the chapter. The event outline is what actually happens, whether behind the scenes or not.
   
3. Convert the event outline to a plot outline. The plot outline is how I choose to reveal the event outline to the reader - it's what I actually write.
   
4. Write the chapter.
   
5. Read the chapter once and revise it.
   
6. Give the chapter to my wife, Cindy.
   
7. When Cindy finishes reading it (this could be in four days or four months, but I'm writing while I'm waiting), go over it with her.
   
8. Revise the chapter again based on Cindy's critiques.
   

As you can see, I revise as I go. If I make a major plot change, that ends up being wasted time, but most of the time it makes the draft mostly usable by the time I get to the end. It also helps me to feel like I'm accomplishing something; when I say I'm done with X chapters, I mean I'm really done. Basically.


*Actually that's not true. There are as many kinds of writers as there are writers. But stereotyping people with convenient labels is what separates us from the animals.

**I've often seen non-planners referred to as "pantsers", a reference to writing by the seat of one's pants, but since for me this word only conjures images of junior high school bullies, I won't be using it.

Travelers, First Chapter Online

UPDATE (Feb 23, 2010): The first chapter of Travelers is no longer available online as it no longer represents my best work (far from it, in fact). If you really, really, really, really want to read it, you can try and e-mail me for it. But no promises.

For other samples of my work, see "Published Works" in the sidebar, or try the writing samples tag.