Example from a different story showing the first notes made when plotting out "Rappacini's Crow." Not every detail here got used, but the notes helped me keep fleshing out the idea until I was ready to write it.Here’s a snippet from what I’ve been working on today. Peeps who attended the Plotting class yesterday (which was AWESOME) – this is the steampunk horror story that I showed you the initial notes for.
A frenzy of fretwork adorned the house’s facade, but it was splintery, paint peeling in long shaggy spirals that fuzzed the puzzled outlines. The left side drooped like the face of a stroke victim, windows staring blindly out, cataracted with the dusty remnants of curtains.
Marshall Artemus Smith thought that it would have given a human man the chills. He glanced back at Elspeth to see how she was taking, but her face was chiseled and resolute as a fireman’s axe.
“You all right?”
She swabbed at her forehead with a bare forearm, leaving streaks of dark wet dirt. “Thank your lucky stars you don’t feel the heat,” she rasped.
Hot indeed if enough to irritate her into mentioning that. He chose to ignore it.
The house sagged amid slumping cottonwoods, clusters of low-lying groves, their leaves indifferent ovals of green and pale brown. Three stories, and above that, two cupolas thrust upward into the sky, imploring, the left one tilted at an angle.
His spurs jingled as he clanked up the front steps. His eyes ratcheted over the scene for clues, but it was clear that their fugitive had entered by the front door, which hung a few inches ajar.
Wood creaked under Elspeth’s slower treads. “This was his mother’s house,” she said.
She’d gone over the files meticulously as always, then summed up the details for him as they’d ridden along. He ticked through them in his head.
“The scientist?”
“Angeline Pinkney, yes. She helped discover how to harness phlogiston. They had her working on the war effort till she was dying of rotlung. Then she retired out here and lasted another two years.”
Phlogiston, the most precious material in the world, capable of fueling marvelous machines like himself. He carried a scraping of it, small as a fingernail clipping, deep in his midsection. Once a year, it was replaced, but it was valuable enough that he’d had people try to kill him for it before.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
On The Treatment of Coders
Coders can seem like odd creatures sometimes. Under that ladybug costume, though, they're as human as you or I.This article originally appeared in the now-defunct online magazine Imaginary Realities. It talks about MUD administration, and draws on my experience working with Armageddon MUD, the world of Zalanthas. For those who don’t know what a MUD is, it’s a text-based roleplaying game. Here’s the wikipedia article on MUDs.
One of the sad truths of the mud world is that there are never enough coders. Builders aplenty, brimming with fresh idealism and plans for entire zones, appear (and sometimes disappear) at the drop of a hat. But coders are the unicorns of the mudding world, seldom glimpsed and ardently pursued. We are lucky enough to have three dedicated coders on Armageddon MUD: Morgenes, Tenebrius and Tiernan, as well as a few other staff members willing and able to wade through the bugs file and tinker with things upon occasion. How, then, does an administrator keep these rare beasts happy? The following four steps may help.
1) Communicate: When asking for new code, try to let the coders know exactly what is desired. For example, instead of ‘Let’s make archery more complicated,” a staff member might propose “Let’s put a range on archery, so the farther away the target is, the harder it is to shoot it.” A full description of the the idea, perhaps including examples, such as fake logs showing what the idea will look like when being used, helps make sure the originator of the idea and the coder are on the same track as far as things like syntax and usage are concerned.
The same holds true for bugs. Describing how it’s supposed to work as well to how it’s working right now helps clarify ideas. Coders want to know if the bug is REALLY a bug, or something being reported because it doesn’t work as the reporter feels it should.
With bugs, give the coders as much information as possible, including how to reproduce the bug. Examples by way of logs are great, and if they include some form of error message (or message that they’re getting that shows it’s an error), it often allows the coder to track down what section of the code needs to be worked on.
Make sure people aren’t bumping into each other. On Armageddon, we’ve got a coder’s board, where people post changes as they make them. This alerts fellow team members to what they’re doing and is also helpful if unexpected bugs crop up, enabling people to track exactly what got changed and when. Two people should not be working on the same idea at once unless they know it, and can divvy up the work accordingly.
2) Have a purpose: Will it get used? Is it something players are asking for? This one is a matter of ego, but we’re all human and we all do have egos. Seeing their work getting used, regularly and as envisioned, is a reward beyond any thanks or congratulations other staff members can give a coder. Track player requests, through entries in the bugs/ideas/typos files as well as emails to the account and posts on the general discussion board in order to convince a coder that the players want, and will use, something.
Generally, with new ideas figure out how they are moving towards some goal. A piece of code like a new skill is going to sound more interesting if it fits into some overall purpose, such as a master plan of non-combat related skills for the economy than it would if it is just a random idea. You are also going to end up getting more out of the idea if it is part of a greater whole.
Make it innovative. Some coders like to be trail breakers, to feel that they’re not just playing catch-up with another mud, but are creating ideas and concepts new to the mud community. Some ideas get requested to ‘balance’ things out between groups: guilds, or races, or mount speed. When a coder starts to feel like the code they’re doing that day only works to nullify a change made last week, then they’re going to start wondering what they will be asked to implement tomorrow.
3) Share the work: Do as much of the grunt work as you can for the coders, including helping thoroughly test, providing help files and documentation, and fleshing things out. In testing, give coders information about what is not working and how to recreate the result. Be precise about what needs to be changed: not ‘the plague of locusts spell needs to do more damage’, but ‘it needs to do about twice the damage it is now.’ When something requires a new help file or modification of an existing help file, do not expect the coder to do it, but supply it yourself. If it is something that requires building, provide the items. Teamwork of this kind, when it is working well, is terrific, and will often produce amazingly cool results.
4) Appreciate: Good coders can never be praised sufficiently. We try to make sure that players know who is responsible for new and interesting changes, by posting information about them in the news as well as in our weekly update, which is a mailing our players can subscribe to, which provides information about changes, staff and world news, upcoming recommended playing times, etc. When players write in with compliments or feedback on a code change, make sure that the note gets passed along to the person , as well as that the coder knows how cool or slick you think the ideas they have implemented are as well.
There is a tendency sometimes to regard coders as resources that spit out code at request. But the fact of the matter is that treating coders in that way will frustrate both sides, leading coders to become discouraged and unmotivated to implement new ideas and builders to feel that their coding needs are not being met. These four points may help avoid such frustration.
As part of recent updates at SFWA we recently revamped the Nebula Recommended Reading list to show up in alphabetical order. It’s a stopgap measure until the website gets re-designed, and to my mind has some of the same problems as presenting by order of number of recommendations. In musing that over, I mentioned to webmaster Jeremy Tolbert that I looked forward to the new school of aardvarkpunk we were inspiring. A half hour later this story appeared in my head.
This is a Patreon story, published thanks to the generous support of my patrons on there; they get access to the Chez Rambo Discord server, additional sponsor-only snippets and stories, plus sneak peeks at new drafts, discounts on Rambo Academy for Wayward Writer classes, and a chance to win my monthly giveaway. If you’d like to support indie publishing plus get stories, sign up to support me there!
Aardvark Says Moo
“Aardvark says moo,” says the clown, handing over the balloon animal.
My overly precocious kid squints her eyes. “No they don’t.” She folds her arms. No eight year old should be that definite about anything. Whatever happened to the idea of childish sense of wonder?
“I was being whimsical,” the clown explains. “Do you understand what that word means, little girl?”
Now he’s gone and done it. I could have warned him, but no one had consulted me since moment one of this interaction. The kid went up, the clown looked at her and started twisting a pink balloon around, and then he had to start being all whimsical.
“Whimsy,” my child says, “is playfully quaint or fanciful. A talking aardvark impersonating a cow is just dumb.”
At this point, a supernatural element enters my story. You may think it’d be something subtle, maybe the sort of knife edged was-it-real-or-not stratagem that Henry James could employ, but the fact of the matter was that it was a Valkyrie, walking up to look us over.
Maybe a woman dressed like a Valkyrie, you’re thinking. A costume party might have occurred to you, maybe, which means you’re going off on a total tangent, so lemme say this. Kid’s birthday party. Bouncy castle, hot dogs, cake. The only costume was the clown’s, and it wasn’t a particularly inspired one.
The Valkyrie moreover is real. Realer than real. Like a black hole of realness that made everything around her look like faded plastic. Her armor is made of golden scales. She smells like ozone and honey and looks like an angry supermodel with no makeup. She says, “Kyle Holiday, I have foretold that you die in the line of duty tonight but I will take you to Valhalla.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s been some mistake,” the clown says. “That’s my name, but I’m not going to die.”
“No one thinks they’re going to die,” the Valkyrie says significantly.
“Hang on,” my kid says. “This is my best friend’s birthday party and no one should die at it. She’s delicate. She’ll be traumatized for years. Take it elsewhere. What’s he supposed to die of, anyway?”
The Valkyrie listens to the air for a moment. “Peanut allergy.”
“I’m allergic to peanuts,” clown Kyle says cautiously, “but that’s why I don’t eat anything at these gigs.”
The Valkyrie shrugs.
“No, I mean it,” my kid says. “No one’s dying.” She grabs a napkin from the table and holds it out to the clown. “Maybe you breathe in some peanut particles. Tie this over your nose and face. Then get out. Better a flaky clown than a dead one.”
The Valkyrie says, “Who are you, to interfere with a hero’s death?”
“One, my name is Anna Louise Mayhew,” my kid says, her chin pointed at the Valkyrie, “and two, he’s at a kid’s birthday party.”
This Valkyrie listens to the air some more. This time it takes longer, and she gets a funny look on her face halfway through.
“Well,” she says, when she finally returns her attention to us, “he dies while working. There’s not that many clearly defined hero’s deaths around any more, but he faces down countless children.”
“And delights them,” she adds as an afterthought. She reaches out and tweaks the napkin off the clown’s face. “You don’t need that. You’ll like Valhalla.” She looks at my kid. “You’re Anna Louise Mayhew, huh?”
Something about the way she says it makes me step up and say, “Anna, why don’t you walk your friend to the gate?” I fold my arms, look the Valkyrie over. She’s about twice my size, could snap me like a twig, but she seems relaxed about it all. I say, “How do you know her name?”
“I take her, later on,” the Valkyrie said. “We always future-remember the important ones.”
I’m torn between pride and horror. “What? When?”
“Relax,” the Valkyrie says. She takes a piece of cake and it’s somehow reassuring, makes her seem a little less real and more like someone in a costume. “Not till long after you’re dead. They coax her out of retirement for it. She wins and saves humanity.”
I don’t really want to know anything more than that. I say, “So you’ll forgive her saving the clown?”
“It’s kinda pathetic, taking a clown to Valhalla,” she says. “Sometimes someone screws up the paperwork. This might be one of those times.”
Anna comes back and stands looking at the Valkyrie. I can’t tell if it’s fear or admiration or something else. I imagine her as a little old lady, facing down some unguessable enemy, that same solemn expression. The Valkyrie wanders off and vanishes into sparks that travel up into the sky. No one else seems to notice.
These sorts of things happen around my kid a lot, I’ve noticed. I say, “You were kinda hard on that clown about the moo thing.”
“Well, maybe,” she says. “I don’t like whimsy, though. Aardvark goes moo, how twee is that?”
I bet that Valkyrie’s looking forward to seeing her again.
As part of recent updates at SFWA we recently revamped 
