Jibber Jabber - Q2 - Volume 33

[Dustin Adams]

With only three weeks remaining for what is sure to be an epic wait for Q1 (Results after the gala) I'm starting the Q2 thread.

I'm sure we're all subbed for Q1 and busily clicking away on our Q2s, yes?

[amoskalik]

I haven't picked a Q2 yet. I have a number of ideas to choose from, but will write a flash or two first.

[Imagination Vortex]

I've got my first draft written, just need to go through and add a few more things before it's ready for critiques. I'm really on top of things this time!

[reigheena]

I've written two drafts and am now waiting for beta readers.

[disgruntledpeony]

I have to narrow down ideas. I have three distinctly different short stories vying for my attention at the moment, all of them largely in the conceptual stages. (I'm also not yet finished with my Q1 entry, although I'm hoping to finish it up within a week or so.)

[storysinger]

I'll be writing a syfy story for this Q.

[emilymccosh]

I have a sort-of-maybe idea that will be really weird if I can't do it right and quite possibly brilliant if I manage it perfectly. Then again, I can't even think about it until I finish my Q1 entry. frantic typing! Ahhh!

[disgruntledpeony]

...So, funny story. In the effort to narrow things down, I have in fact expanded my potential story options. I now have five different ideas to choose from. Ahh well. I'll whittle myself down to one project eventually.

[DoctorJest]

I have punted my Q1 story up into Q2. I didn't have a single thing around that I would feel happy submitting to Q1 this year, and there was no way I'd be ready with the one I'm working on in time for the deadline. However, the story's done, and the principle writing is finished -- so it's just revisions and polish now. I should be able to have a fairly leisurely build up to Q2, and hopefully a head-start on Q3.

[kentagions]

Arithmetic: 40wpm (slow typing) X 25min = 1,000 words

20wpm (my speed typing) X 50min = 1,000 words

I've never written 50,000 words in one year, but this makes it look easy.

[Dustin Adams]

I type blisteringly fast. Up in the 80 - 100 range.
I could write an entire flash in ten minutes.

It's coming up with what to write that slows me down.

[disgruntledpeony]

I type blisteringly fast. Up in the 80 - 100 range.
I could write an entire flash in ten minutes.

It's coming up with what to write that slows me down.

Same here, as far as average typing speed goes. (I've been told it sounds like a machine gun when I type. ) In the end, though, you can only type as fast as you can think. I've been trying to learn to think faster.

[kentagions]

So how about this?
50,000w/60min per hour/2hr per day/5days per week/50weeks per year = 1.67wpm
That's about fourteen characters per minute.

I'm going to be optimistic about this, damn it!

[dstein]

Quick question for anybody with a little info:

I've been told that Dave generally picks a story in each genre. I can think of a few off the top of my head that I've read in collections—urban fantasy, trad fantasy, sci-fi, horror, possibly dark fantasy or military SF—but does anybody have a better idea of what specifically those categories are, as generally interpreted by WotF? The family tree of speculative fiction has so many branches that I'm not sure how Farland and Co. specifically differentiate them.

[Dustin Adams]

The only pattern is: there is no pattern.

Personally, I think your odds go up if you are niche.
When I got my semi crit, Dave wrote that he had three good space stories, but could only pick one.
I took that to mean, on a spaceship. Pretty big "genre".

Urban fantasy, also a big genre.

Urban fantasy with cloned werewolves, probably not going to go up against urban fantasy murder mystery with a grim female detective as the MC.

Take the story Shifter, for example. Urban fantasy?
Then there's near future. Far future.

I think the generals are easy to pin down, but the specifics, well, there's more than eight, so if you write one, then you're likely going to compete against other good stories, not other good stories in your genre.

My space story was a space story. I didn't sub genre that bad boy at all. :(

[MattDovey]

Put another way: the more unique and interesting your setting & world building, the less competition you have.

Don't just make another Star Trek/Star Wars/Mass Effect clone. Come up with a space opera that hasn't been seen before. Do something other than elves and orcs and dwarfs. This is short fiction, and you can get away with almost anything. Throw all your crazy ideas in.

I can confirm this works, and can't say anything more for another three months, which is killing me already.

[kentagions]

I can imagine that an editor who wants to maximize the audience appeal for an anthology of speculative fiction will want to choose stories from several different sub-genres. Once chosen - stories 1,2 & 3 from the first quarter, and so on - stories will represent their sub-genres. I would suppose that future stories in sub-genres already represented might receive less emphasis. I might further suppose that strong stories already chosen might interfere with a same sub-genre story's ability to be considered at all. One last, very dangerous, supposition is that a publishable story which stands alone as sole representative of its sub-genre will have the best chance of winning.

These are imaginings, musings and suppositions, i.e. crap. If I thought about this stuff when writing, I'd screw myself into a hole so tight that my fingers couldn't touch the keyboard. Instead, I mix and match Speculative Fiction Sub-genres (I've written a Dystopian Urban Fairytale) to generate ideas that inspire stories I'm jazzed about telling.

I believe that Dave's likelihood of choosing one sub-genre over another is beyond my control. Controlling the things that I can will improve my writing, so I work harder at those. [Please note: I have used personal pronouns in this missive for a reason. Scientific study arriving at an hypothesized perfect sub-genre might work. It's just more work than I want to do. Don't let me prevent anyone from trying to second-guess the contest by creating an LGBT Mystery Sci-fi Urban Steampunk History-revision Western. I'd love to read that story!]

Kent

[s_c_baker]

Put another way: the more unique and interesting your setting & world building, the less competition you have.

Don't just make another Star Trek/Star Wars/Mass Effect clone. Come up with a space opera that hasn't been seen before. Do something other than elves and orcs and dwarfs. This is short fiction, and you can get away with almost anything. Throw all your crazy ideas in.

I can confirm this works, and can't say anything more for another three months, which is killing me already.

However, I would add that the mutated naked mole rats were entirely unnecessary. Especially what they did to George Washington's trousers. PG-13?!

HUMPH.

[MattDovey]

Put another way: the more unique and interesting your setting & world building, the less competition you have.

Don't just make another Star Trek/Star Wars/Mass Effect clone. Come up with a space opera that hasn't been seen before. Do something other than elves and orcs and dwarfs. This is short fiction, and you can get away with almost anything. Throw all your crazy ideas in.

I can confirm this works, and can't say anything more for another three months, which is killing me already.

However, I would add that the mutated naked mole rats were entirely unnecessary. Especially what they did to George Washington's trousers. PG-13?!

HUMPH.

I laid the groundwork for the mutated naked mole rats* with my Dream Machine, planting that idea firmly in Dave's mind before I submitted so he'd recognise it as a familiar mark of genius. But I couldn't help that his mind wandered to George Washington's trousers. I can tell you, it was hell trying to incorporate that into the plot only 3 hours before deadline.

On topic: I think it was in the Hide & Create podcast where Dave explicitly said he is not just judging a contest, he is building an anthology, so variety in genres is important. Take it as gospel that a different setting reduces your level of competition.

*I am starting to realise that your subconscious has an odd fixation on twisted rodents.

[dstein]

Ah, so it's less that there are specific delineated genres than that Dave tries to represent speculative fiction pretty well with a little variety. That's a load off of my mind!

[s_c_baker]

*I am starting to realise that your subconscious has an odd fixation on twisted rodents.

I cannot tell a lie: I cut down my father's ferret tree.

Uniqueness in setting definitely counts. I wouldn't worry about genre labels per se, though.

[Dustin Adams]

Transport. Your. Reader.

[orbivillein]

Quick question for anybody with a little info:

I've been told that Dave generally picks a story in each genre. I can think of a few off the top of my head that I've read in collections—urban fantasy, trad fantasy, sci-fi, horror, possibly dark fantasy or military SF—but does anybody have a better idea of what specifically those categories are, as generally interpreted by WotF? The family tree of speculative fiction has so many branches that I'm not sure how Farland and Co. specifically differentiate them.

A way to answer the question is to read the judge and judges fiction. More than read, study what distinguishes their techniques from the mediocre. Farland and the judges generally favor methods that imitate reality. Realism's core departure from Romanticism, in other words, and Modernism's extensions thereof. Fully realized scenes entail reality expression, not per se realistic, realistic to a given milieu. Or as Dustin Adams admonishes in the next to last post, "Transport. Your. Reader."

A description of John W. Campbell's editorial slant is also illustrative: the reality aspect and fantastic motifs, of course, (show emphasized over tell), and that the improbable, impossible, fantastic motifs of substance be natural and necessary to a given milieu and central to the drama.

The contest rules state no horror. The kind of horror the rules mean is about as clear as a brick wall though generally can be understood to mean visceral horror, like Bram Stoker's Dracula, blood and gore. Not to single out vampire per se. Psychological horror with fantastic motifs, though, is okay.

Asking anyone what distinguishes genres and subgenres is sure to provoke dissent, especially nowadays with so much blurring of any distinctions being the normal. Plus that Modernism's customs are likewise blurred though a mainstream of fantastic fiction more so than another literary movement.

Worth noting that Campbell, toward the end of his career, aligned with L. Ron Hubbard's creative slant, Dianetics, and Scientology generally. For that matter, the judges do to varying degrees, too, more so Hubbard's creative slant and fiction methods than beliefs. Though Hubbard's mannerisms are less expressly his than that they are the general state of the fiction art circa mid twentieth century -- pre Postmodernism. The fantastic motifs have evolved and socio-culturally adapted since then; the general fantastic fiction methods haven't changed.

[dstein]

Transport. Your. Reader.

/smacks forehead

I knew I was forgetting SOMETHING! :)

To paraphrase Dr. Jonathan Crane, I always intend for my writing to take the reader places. Sadly, those aren't always places the reader wants to go. But where that disconnect happens, I'm hoping it's more and more because I have a particular sensibility and a voice which holds appeal for a particular audience, and less and less because I simply need to develop the skill to appeal to the audience I'm courting. I have a long way to go.

Read the judge and judges fiction. More than read, study what distinguishes their techniques from the mediocre... [The judges generally align with] Hubbard's creative slant and fiction methods...

True, at least for those I've read, and I've noticed from reading the compilations that WotF winners are often more "Hubbard-ian" than your average off-the-shelf fantasy or sci-fi book as well—or the short stories of other prominent spec fiction journals. It's hard for me to pinpoint the exact style (since I'm not as familiar with Hubbard himself as I plan to be), but I'd say a few common threads are pretty clear morality within the world (even if the characters don't exhibit it), and a focus on narrative momentum and very driven characters over literary devices which don't advance those things or ambiguity.

The thing which really turned me onto this contest wasn't submitting or even the community (as great as it is), but realizing how conducive some of those things were to improving my skill and imagination as a writer. I went from semi-cynically trying to ape certain ways of approaching the craft to having to begrudgingly admit that they improved what I was putting out there. I'll probably never fully share the sensibility of a Wolverton or a Card or even a Hubbard, but that doesn't mean I can't learn from all of them.

[orbivillein]

Parallels drawn between Hubbard, Card, and Farland-Wolverton's story craft do revolve around a morality system and urgent heroic adventure, where somewhat roguish heroes are outraged and made by immoral circumstances. "Everybody loves a rogue."

Today's rogue is different, though, from Hubbard and Card's, maybe Farland-Wolveton's, heydays. Rogues of their times were wholesome, only somewhat off in their degree of going rogue and concrete of rogue behavior. They behaved like otherwise respectable people, only they had a minor vice or two that were victimless. Their heroes' roguishness revolved around standing out from the meek and subjugated masses' general apathy. They bucked immoral authority.

Today's rogue hero is "ironically cool," sarcastically mocks and ridicules social and cultural moral circumstances, victimizes them, to include virtues.

[LDWriter2]

Just now started to think of Q2.

Maybe I will do a SF tale this time-feel like doing one. Thought about a beginning but then thought of an opening I found earlier today. I did it months ago and forgot about it. Could go with that one if I can recall where I was going with that opening--or think of a new plot with that opening.
Or I can redo one story that came to mind. I wrote probably a couple of years ago by now. I like it and it has determination in the MC as well as angst. I have learned a lot since then which is why I would redo it.

Hmmm....

[disgruntledpeony]

I bit the bullet and downloaded the free trial of Scrivener today. (Not going to pay for it until I know I like it, because money is not something I have in abundance.) I'll probably go through the tutorial this evening.

I do have to say, I was reading over how it works and it sounds cool in theory. The way it's structured might actually help me a great deal with focus issues, simply because everything is easily available.

[bobsandiego]

I bit the bullet and downloaded the free trial of Scrivener today. (Not going to pay for it until I know I like it, because money is not something I have in abundance.) I'll probably go through the tutorial this evening.

I do have to say, I was reading over how it works and it sounds cool in theory. The way it's structured might actually help me a great deal with focus issues, simply because everything is easily available.

Welcome Friend, all are welcome.

I've been using it for a few years and I love it. It helps me think in scenes more and the abaility it have all my research, notes, character sketches, etc in one place is fantastic.

[reigheena]

I plan on downloading the trial after I finish the current draft of my story. I have so many files for my stories, it will be nice to have it all in one place.

[emilymccosh]

I just looked it up as well and it sounds very interesting... I might take a shot at the free trial!