The Voices in my Head

Tony Jay is an English actor, best known for his voice acting in various cartoons and video games. He's played many roles, but it was always his villains I loved. His smooth, British baritone lent an air of danger and superiority to characters like Shere Khan (though not the one in the original Jungle Book) and Chairface Chippendale.

Now you may have no idea what I'm talking about. You may never have seen Tale Spin or The Tick. Odds are good you've never played Fallout, Torment, or Icewind Dale either, all of which starred villains voiced by the late Tony Jay.

But for me, these were some of my favorite stories, and now it's presenting an odd sort of problem. See, the other day I discovered that no matter who my villain is, no matter how well I know them or plan their background and character or even pretend to talk like them - when I sit down to write the dialogue of that villain I involuntarily write the voice of Tony Jay.

Like Arad, the nigh-omnipotent tyrant of Travelers. In my head, he speaks with Tony Jay's voice. Now I didn't realize this at the time because the voice fit. Arad is a dangerous being who considers himself superior to, literally, everybody. So I thought it was just Arad's voice.

But then the other day, I was trying to write Jacobin Savage, the cruel pirate captain from Azrael's Curse (slash Air Pirates). The pirates in this world tend to speak like something between the Irishman from Braveheart and Pirates' Captain Barbosa - fast and flippant, with heavy use of slang and light use of grammar. Savage was supposed to be no different, but when I tried to write his dialogue he sounded less like Captain Barbosa and more like Commodore Norrington.

The difference is relatively subtle on the page, I suppose. For example, Tony Jay's Savage might say, "You want to change the world, isn't that it? You want to rid it of folks like the Imperium, and you think by hitting military targets instead of random merchants, you might do that. What you don't see is that you're just scratching an itch."

But Savage's words need to be more like, "You want to change the world, aye? Want to rid it of the Imperium, and you reck you can do that by hitting Navy marks 'stead of chance merchers. But you're just scratching an itch."

Subtle differences. And for all I know they both sound like Alan Rickman in your head. But it's hard when I want Savage to have a unique voice, and all that comes out is Tony Jay.

So thank you, Tony, for portraying such memorable villains that I can no longer imagine evil in any other voice. You've simultaneously enriched and ruined my life. Well done.

I Heart My Alpha Reader

I have beta readers who will read the novel when it's finished. In the meantime, I have one person who is willing to read each chapter as it comes out, even if it's weeks or months between, even when the chapters she gets are a confusing mess.

She's my alpha reader. The following is a random list of things I love about her:

• She claps in excitement when I tell her I have a new chapter.
• It's fun to watch her read. She winces and laughs and gets scared at all the right moments.
• She asks me all kinds of useful questions, especially when what I wrote doesn't make any sense.
• She doesn't put up with me when I try to argue why something I wrote is right. (Don't argue with the reader!)
• Even if a chapter sucks, she encourages me by telling me what she liked.
• Having her read each chapter, when I haven't finished the novel yet, helps keep me going. It helps me believe that what I'm writing is worth reading - or can be.
• Knowing she'll read the ending as it happens forces me to plan everything leading up to it, so it (hopefully) strikes her well.
• Her questions, and her convictions about what "has to happen next," give me ideas I hadn't considered and make the novel better.
• She doesn't give me ideas often (usually preferring to let me do the writing), but when she does they're always good.
• She believes in me.

Everyone's got their own process. For some, an alpha reader might just get in the way. For heavy planners like me, though, I recommend finding someone who can tell you how you're doing, chapter by chapter. They don't have to be a writer, just a reader. My alpha reader (who's also my wife, if you didn't already figure) has as much to do with the quality of my manuscript as I do.

She doesn't even like sci-fi or fantasy.

Random Sentence Meme

I'm mutating a meme for writers (don't worry if you're not a writer, I still have instructions for you below):

1. Open up your current work in progress. If you have no WIP, go to step 3.
   
2. Leaving it in its current formatting, copy the 5th sentence on page 21, and paste it into the comments of this post. If your WIP does not have 21 pages, go to the last page divided by 2 (round up).
3. If you have no WIP, use the 21st page/5th sentence of the book you are currently reading.
4. If you are not currently reading a book, then get off the internet right now and read one.

A Spectator's View of Publishing's Future

UPDATE: See the comments for two more interesting articles on this topic.

Everyone's been talking about the future (or sometimes the end) of publishing lately. As a spectator, I am totally unqualified to talk about it, but I'm going to anyway because it's my blog and that's the way I like it. (Likewise, if this is a little stream-of-consciousness, I apologize. I'm kind of thinking out loud.)

I used to think that authors write the books, then publishers do all the printing, marketing, and selling of it so that we don't have to. It turns out that's not true (people have been talking about that too). So if all but the best selling authors are expected to do their own marketing, what is the publisher doing?

As far as I can see, they (1) get art for your cover, (2) pay for the printing, (3) get your book in bookstores, and (4) get your book in at least the basic review places. Those are good things. It's very hard for regular people to do any but (2), and if you are self-published, you can't do (3) or (4) at all.

But how many people read those reviews and then buy the book? Is that a lot of copies there? It's some, certainly, but it's not your main readerbase (well, certainly not in my genre). Similarly, who is buying books at bookstores (other than MattyDub and me, who would live at Borders if they let us)? That's some copies as well, but the bookstores seem to be dying which implies that fewer and fewer people are buying from there. That trend might not continue, but what if it does?

What I'm saying is, if the majority of my readerbase is coming from my own marketing efforts, then what do I get by being with a publisher?

Okay, okay. You get a lot of proofreaders who know what they're talking about, which makes your book a lot better and gives it Credibility. I don't want to knock that. Credibility is good. But it's possible to write a good book, and get a huge readerbase, without the credibility of a publisher. It's hard, but no harder, I think, than getting a publisher to begin with.

I guess my real point is that all the trends seem to be moving the advantages of a publisher away from them and into the hands of small authors. The internet is enabling us more, the slow death/metamorphosis of the publishers is requiring us to take on more. If the publishers don't figure this out soon, someone on the internet will find a way to hand out Credibility to self-published books, and then it will all be over.

Well, not over. Different.

(Bonus Question: how do I self-publish books on the Kindle? No print runs, no art required. I think that would undercut almost everything that's left of Big Publishing, if it can be done.)

Turning an Idea into a Story

In Orson Scott Card's writing books Characters and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, he mentions this thing he does called A Thousand Ideas in an Hour. It's fun to do and a good way to get past writer's block.

The idea is this. You start with whatever idea you have, then begin asking these three questions: How? Why? What result? For example, you've got a princess locked in a tower. How did she get there? Why is she locked up? What happens as a result? Every answer is a branch. Some branches will end quickly, others will lead you into the rest of your story if you continue to ask the same three questions. Toss in a little, "What could go wrong?" and toss out anything that feels too cliche, and you've got yourself a story.

I did this with a class of highschoolers a year ago, and I think it was their favorite part of the class. It went something like this:

Me: Let's start with something simple. Give me an occupation.

Teacher.
Banker.
Lifeguard.
Swimmer.

Okay, let's go with the banker. What could go wrong at a bank?

It could get robbed.

Sure. I don't think we need to ask why yet, so how might this happen?

A man walks in with a gun and asks for money.
Some men take the bank hostage.
Someone blows up the safe.
Someone inside the bank robs it.

Okay, great. Let's go with someone inside the bank. Who could do that? Who's inside a bank?

Bank tellers.
Security guards.
Managers.

How could one of these folks rob the bank?

The guard could let other robbers inside the bank.
The teller could grab some money off the counter when nobody's looking.
The guard could raise a false alarm and, while everyone's distracted, go into the vault.
...or take money off the counter.
...or take money from someone's pocket.

What about the security guard. Why would he do that?

He hates his job.
He's been planning to rob the bank for months/years, and got hired so he could do it.
He needs the money for his daughter's operation.

I think around here we had to end the class, but hopefully you get the idea. It's really fun to do in a group with a leader - someone asking the questions and picking the most interesting paths to follow. I tried to follow paths that sounded more original to me and had more conflict potential. It's what I try to do with my own stories too.

Try it out and see what you come up with. Better yet, tell me how you brainstorm to get past writer's block.

Endings

I recently received a short story rejection from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It was a nice rejection; he explained what he liked about the story and what didn't work for him. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the things that didn't work for him were things I didn't like either. One of those things was the ending.

I have a problem with endings. I always have. I can remember getting reports back in 4th grade with all the red pen on the last paragraph. "Needs a better conclusion," it would say.

One problem is I don't plan them well. For all my neuroses about planning ahead, the truth is that I plan the near parts in excellent detail, with increasingly less detail towards the end. So by the time I get there, I am often left with all these plots and subplots crashing together, knowing who wins and who dies, but never knowing how.

This happens a lot in smaller scenes throughout the writing process, and I always figure something out, but for the ending that something has to be really good. That's hard to do when so much of the story has already been decided.

My other problem with endings, I think, is that I don't care about them. Oh, I know how important they are, and my very favorite books are those with amazing endings. What I mean is, when I first fall in love with a story I'm writing, it's never the ending I'm thinking of. It might be the world, or the speculative element, or one of the characters, but it's never the ending.

My Beloved Alpha Reader told me she loves the way I end chapters - could I just end the novel like that? The problem (I told her) is that what makes my chapters are the cliffhangers. I'm real good at cliffhangers. I can pull a decent scene- or chapter-ending cliffhanger out of almost anything. But if I ended my book like that, I'd make a lot of readers mad (including myself - I hate books that end with blaring cliffhangers).

Okay, so here we are. You're all readers. What makes a good ending to you? I know the basics - the logistics, if you will: It must answer most, if not all, of the questions raised earlier in the story. It must make sense, arising naturally from the plot and characters (e.g. no deus ex machina). It should not be boringly predictable (though it doesn't always have to have a major twist). What else, then? These things make an ending not bad, but what do you think makes one good? What are your favorite endings and why?

(Be kind with your answers to that last one. Mark spoilers appropriately.)

The Pillar of Skulls

Near the gate between the first and second layer of Hell, there lies a grotesque monument of the damned. Towering more than a mile high, howling and writhing with eternal torment, is a terror to match any other in the Nine Hells.

Here lies the Pillar of Skulls. It seethes with the frustration and hatred of a billion souls, moaning and wailing in endless, hopeless agony.

Yet here, too, lies the greatest store of knowledge in all the planes of existence. For among the Pillar's eternal prisoners lie great thinkers, world leaders, teachers, scientists... the entirety of the world's lore and experiences can be found within.

And so once in a great while, a seeker of knowledge will brave Hell itself to speak to the Pillar. But should they survive the charred wasteland, should they avoid the endless legions of Lord Bel's devils, should they escape the watchful eyes of the five-headed Tiamat, they must still contend with the Pillar itself.

When a visitor comes, the billion skulls fight each other to make themselves heard. The surface of the Pillar billows and pulsates, one skull appearing - howling unintelligible obscenities - then disappearing as quickly to be replaced by another.

Even should the seeker find the right one - a soul who has the information they are after - there is a price. For every skull on the Pillar, every soul doomed to live out eternity in the Nine Hells, wants only one thing. "I'll tell you what I know," they will say. "I'll do anything you ask. Just, please, take me off this pillar. Please, I...

"I just want to be published."