News: The Fathomless Abyss

Today’s wordcount:4006 (teaching day)
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 92212
Total word count for the week: 17073
Total word count for this retreat: 17073
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
Other stuff: Taught Character Building class, did some e-mailings
Steps: 6351

From today’s, part of Hearts of Tabat

The Red Moon’s Sugar Tea House had a flimsy and unfinished look to it “” one door had a (0 of tiles half laid around it, ending at a shoulder-high mark where either tiles or energy had given out. The tables were all-of-a-kind but second-hand, marked with stripes and weather stresses, but the chairs were a mismatched conglomeration that could, upon study, be sorted into four groups: a set once marked with a noble signet, all chiseled away; a few basket-woven chairs, looking flimsy but more comfortable than the rest; a set of plain chairs, crude in construction and made of pine planking, and one rocking chair, set in the corner. The floor underfoot was unfinished planking, marked with spills and splotches and a winter’s worth of grime in the grooves between the planking. The narrow windows were half-shuttered, their lower reaches clad in gray slats, while their naked uppers admitted winter’s chill light.

A fat-bellied stove sat cold in the back of the room, while chal steamed in a vast samovar/vat near the till. A skinny boy sat there, reading a penny-wide and paying no attention to the room whatsoever.

Sebastiano paid the boy a couple of copper skiffs and received a ceramic mug. The samovar smelled as though it had not been cleaned in a while, but the chal was hot and surprisingly peppery. Sebastiano chose not to contemplate what the spice might be masking. He found a basket-woven chair with a low table beside it that was cleaner than the rest of them and sank down into it with a sigh. It creaked and murmured under his weight but held.

No one else was in the tea house, which was not a good sign. It had the feeling of a stage set, of something erected more for show than for purpose, and it made his encounter in the flower shop seem all the odder, as though he’d been catapulted into the pages of a penny-wide, something lurid and full of spies and secret words.

He sighed and slouched back a little in the chair, sipping at his mug. Was that the sort of story he had wanted for his life? He would prefer a love story, something simple and not too complicated, ending up happily in a way that promised for a good life, with love and family and friendship and at least moderate wealth.

That was, he thought, not the story he had told himself ten years ago, when he had first come to the College of Mages. That had been a younger man’s story, one of devoting himself to his craft, discovering things that no one had ever learned before, adding to the store of Human knowledge. That had been a worthy enough ambition but he was no longer sure that was what he wanted.

Surely this was not the normal state. Surely people usually knew what it was that they wanted of life “” everyone at the college of mages seemed to, at least.

Shadows flickered past the door as passersby went down the street. The boy turned a page and kept reading. His lips moved a little as he read, sounding out words.

Sebastiano felt dissatisfied, at odds with himself. Thoughts of the oread still rankled at him. Why had she thought he would do her harm? The thought came to him that she wished him harm, and that was why she had feared it from him, but he discarded it. Oreads were simple creatures, and no danger to Humans.

I’m working on converting the Description and Delivering Information class to the on-demand version, along the same lines as the Character Building Workshop and the Literary Techniques for Genre Writers workshop, and hoping to finish it up over the next couple of days, which may be overly ambitious, because a) I am doing NaNoWriMo, b) life is complicated by Orycon and then a Thanksgiving trip on the 20th and c) this is my birthday weekend and I like to slack a little.

So, what’s the difference between taking one of my live online writing classes and the on-demand versions? Let’s look at the cons first:

1. No live interaction, which is a little sad. You can comment on the class material, though, which you have access to in perpetuity, or at least as long as it’s up.
2. No chance to hear other people’s work with the exercises or get a chance to chat with them.

Pros, on the other hand?

1. A bit more lasting. As I said, you do get permanent access, including when the material updates.
2. Work at your own pace. Want to do an exercise more than once? Go for it. Want to stretch things out or take a break for that trip to Bermuda? You’re fine.
3. Considerably cheaper than the live version — half the price, usually.
4. Considerably expanded material and more exercises. The character building workshop ended up being close to 20,000 words; this one will match and probably surpass that.

Want a preview? Here’s an early page, Description as Collaboration:

The Writer/Reader Relationship
Description is a collaboration between writer and reader. You provide a handful of details; from them your reader constructs a three-dimensional experience. You build the funhouse ride, but so does your reader, an experience that will differ — sometimes radically — from reader to reader, depending on their experiences and depth of imagination.

It begins the minute you supply a detail. The author says “red” and immediately a red — perhaps a bright candy apple red, maybe something murkier — appears in the reader’s mental vision. Add “wheelbarrow,” and they supply a wheelbarrow based on the ones they’re most familiar with. Add “glazed with rain” and the possibilities splinter even further.

And that’s fine. It is an inescapable fact and nothing you can do will change it. It is impossible for you to include the depth and range of detailed description that would be necessary to unquestionably determine every nuance for the reader.

Choices Matter
As soon as an author introduces a detail, it begins to grow in the reader’s mind. And unspoken behind every detail is an authorial I selected this detail rather than any other for a reason that will matter to the reader. That is perhaps one way of looking at writing: the art of selecting and conveying details in an order that creates a complete experience for a reader.

How the author presents details — which details are mentioned, the things that are included about them, and the wording and syntax in which they are presented — is one of the major factors that creates style and tone.

Style might be defined as the overall way in which the story is told. It is different than the content of a story, but usually content and style are linked and work together.

Tone is the overall emotion or mood of a story, and is created primarily but not solely by the style and word choice.

Here’s a photo of a thrift shop object described in two different styles, then two different tones*.

• Style example #1: There it stood, the proud ceramic, small in stature but twice as splendid. The corn god glared out, positioned, poised, ready to bring autumn to the land.
• Style example #2: Paul glanced down at the statue. Small. Yellow and orange. Glazed. Corncob-extured body. Why this, he wondered.
• Tone example #1: The little statue was a welcome find, smiling at her from the shelf, colored like the first autumn leaf. It was solid in her fingers, still smiling up at her as she tilted it to see if there was any marking on the weathered bottom and with a thrill of pleasure saw the mark, right where she had hoped.
• Tone example #2: Shadows gathered in the corners of the curiosity and her scalp prickled, as though in warning, as she picked up the little yellow statue. It felt ominously solid in her fingers as she tilted it to look at the base. The sight of the marking struck her like a blow.

Same object, four different stories. Stop now and do a five minute timed writing with your own description of the object.

Don’t Jar Your Reader
Because of a reader’s inclination to create what’s happening in a story in their head, experiencing it in something like a dream, or at least that state of fierce inattention to anything else in which a spouse, child, or friend can speak repeatedly before being perceived. That’s the delicious immersion that is part of the joy of reading and part of it is making the reader comfortable enough to forget that they are reading.

An author must lull a reader into trusting them, by letting them know that they will deliver that immersion, in part by not ever reminding the reader that they are reading. Anything that reminds a reader of this fact generally should be avoided, unless you’re doing something funky and metafictional.

And the thing that reminds a reader that they are reading more than anything else is the author supplying a detail that the reader has already firmly fixed in their head. This is a moment which for a reader is like having the GPS in your car suddenly go “Recalculating” because you took a wrong turn. It should be avoided at all costs. Paying attention to the collaboration and what expectations you are creating in your reader is important. Get the hang of that and you can even play with and subvert those expectations.

*I make no claim any of this is good writing, simply a good example.

If you’d like to get more information about classes as they appear, including upcoming special holiday gift certificates, fill out the following:

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