Avoiding the Obvious

Inspiration is a funny thing. The more I write, the wider the range of things that I find inspiring – or, more accurately, the greater the number of places I take inspiration from.

A lot of science fiction and fantasy draws from history. Traditionally, much fantasy has been set in a kind of tidied-up medieval Europe with magical elements (probably derived from Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons) put on top with varying levels of subtlety. This is changing, but the stereotype remains strong. SF, too, has borrowed heavily from other places: Dune uses the Middle East, The Forever War is essentially about Vietnam, and a lot of military SF stories involve WW2 Germans, US special forces or the British Empire in space.

Like, er, this.

Not that any of this is necessarily bad. I’ve borrowed elements from loads of places: partly as parody, partly as inspiration. But it’s important not to end up using the same set of tired elements in a setting. When writing something like steampunk, which has a pretty narrow set of archetypes, it’s difficult not to end up just shuffling the same very small pack of cards as everyone else.

So how do you write something that’s your own? How do you bring something new to the genre?

Firstly, I think it’s important to avoid obvious pop-culture references as much as possible when dealing with well-known concepts. If all you know about vampires is taken from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s pretty likely that you are going to create something that feels excessively derivative. But if you go back into the myths themselves or the history behind the stereotype, you might well find something that you can develop in a new and interesting way.

In End of Empires, the tomb of an alien warrior is guarded by a robot beast called the Mechanical Maneater. This was inspired by Tippoo’s Tiger, an automaton commissioned by a sultan called Tipu to celebrate his victory over the British Empire. The fully functional and rather suave version in End of Empires is a ludicrous exaggeration of the original, but the real-world device served as a sort of springboard from which my imagination could go in an interesting direction – and one that I’ve not seen before in the steampunk ‘canon’. It still is steampunk, I suppose, but it's a new angle.

Similarly, while researching alchemy for the fantasy novel that I'm currently writing, I stumbled upon a fascinating detail: several ancient scholars were said to own brass heads, which would answer questions put to them. Roger Bacon was said to have possessed such a device. This is innately creepy (and reminiscent of the interrogation of the severed head in Alien). The brass head found its way into the fantasy novel, in an more disturbing form, as a sort of arcane radio to relay information. But information from whom?

Am I the only person who finds these kinds of picture really sinister?

Secondly, it’s good to look at other genres than your own to see how things are done. If you want to write a fantasy story about a group of adventurers crossing the wilderness, then The Fellowship of the Ring is a good place to look. But if your story is about betrayal and conspiracy and just happens to be set in a fantasy kingdom, it might be just as helpful to read some John le Carre, or watch The Bourne Identity. To me, Neuromancer has quite a similar feeling to noir stories like those of James M Cain or Raymond Chandler, or even to the heist movies of the 1970s, even though it is set in 2075 or so.

And thirdly, I think it’s important to write about what you want to write about. This is easier said than done. It means setting aside writing as a form of admiration for or tribute to something else. It’s about working out what things really grip you. Maybe the elements seem like an unconnected mess: stock car racing; dragons; a kid whose dad has recently died. But fused together, those elements could be something really unusual.

If we're talking about publication, I don't think it's enough to really want to write more Harry Potter books, say, because that’s J.K. Rowling’s job. If that sounds harsh, it isn’t meant to: if anything, it’s an encouragement to get out there, to lay a claim on new turf, to mark out your own territory.

Can I Write It? Yes, You Can!

Over the years, I've seen a few people ask: “I have this great idea - will it work?” The answer I’d give to this is always the same: “Almost certainly, provided you write it well”. Unless your idea is total rubbish, it will probably work if you write it well enough. It may not be brilliant, it may be a bit derivative or not quite add up when you put the book down, but for the purpose of reading the novel – yes, it is very likely to work.

So someone might ask: “I’ve got this idea for this prince who goes on a quest to avenge his mother’s death, but really she hasn’t died, she faked her death because she hated her husband the king who used to beat her and she’s gone off to be a vigilante like Batman but more medieval and this prince doesn’t know it and swears to kill this Batman person because he’s breaking the king’s laws which is treason, but he doesn’t realise that it’s his own mum, and meanwhile she’s being blackmailed by pirates. Would this work?” And the answer is “Sure, why not?"

Medieval Batman, by Sacha Goldberger

Say every element of this story is well written. Say the two main characters, the prince and the queen, are really well constructed and believable. Say the king beating the queen and the queen escaping from him are credibly portrayed. Say the training and the being Batman and the quest elements are exciting and well-paced. And the pirates are suitably villainous. Why shouldn’t it work?

Of course, there are certain things that you may have trouble with when deciding what kind of things you want in your story. In particular, I'd be wary of writing of experiences that other people may have had that you haven’t, because it will be far, far easier to call you out. You may be able to convincingly depict a shuttle flight to Mars, based on your work on a cross-channel ferry, but you may not be able to write convincingly about a divorce, because nobody you know has been involved in one. And the divorce is much easier to get wrong, because other people will be able to turn to you with certainty and say “It’s not like that”.

On the ferry to Calais, Mars.

Someone (possibly J.N. Williamson) once said that originality wasn’t about doing what had never been done before, but doing what you wanted. The originality is often not in the basic concept, but in the treatment, the way that it's approached. If you have an idea that seems strong even after you’ve turned it over and thought about it, and that idea is not glaringly offensive to anyone with a brain, the question then becomes “Can you write this well?” 

And, ultimately, nobody can answer that until you’ve tried.

Five Thoughts About Beginnings

“A beginning is a delicate time.”

Frank Herbert, Dune.

Ironically, the opening of the film of Dune is one big infodump!

One of the hardest decisions about writing a story is how to start it. Too slow, and too padded with backstory, and it runs the risk of losing the reader’s attention. Too fast, and you risk of simply chucking the reader in at the deep end and confusing them. Here are five suggestions about avoiding those problems. As ever, what follows are not rules that can never be broken, but what works for me and avoids the most obvious dangers.

1 Focus on one person and hit the ground running

To get interest from the reader, it's easiest to focus on the actions of one person as quickly as possible, preferably from the start of the story. That person is going to be the point of view of the reader, as if the reader is watching the events of the story from a camera strapped to that character’s head. Of course, you can change viewpoint character later on, or introduce more central characters, but to zoom in like this will give the story a sense of immediacy from the moment it begins.

It's probably best to introduce only a few characters at the start, which might be a problem with an ensemble cast. I'll talk about this in a separate post, but I'd suggest that you drip-feed them in. A good example is in the first Dragonlance novel, which is literally the write-up of a Dungeons and Dragons game involving six main heroes. The characters meet at a rendezvous, but arrive in ones and twos, so the reader isn't swamped with descriptions. Then, once assembled, they leave in a group.

What I think you should avoid, or at least treat with great caution, are the writing equivalent of those panoramic shots you get in films, which take several minutes to look over the landscape before narrowing down to follow one person. Apparently, Stephen King often begins a book with this sort of sprawling introduction - and then deletes it when he edits the story.

2 Our sympathy is with an innocent, dynamic character

If the story starts with a man running through the undergrowth, pursued by sirens and snarling dogs, we’ll automatically side with him until we have a good reason not to. He’s the underdog, he seems not to have deserved what’s happening to him, and he’s doing something exciting. This is important in an opening. Characters become sympathetic partly by being likable, but also by doing exciting things (often, but not always, physical ones). Readers will automatically want to read about a character who drives the plot forward, unless they are a blatant villain (and even then, they may still want to, as per The Day of the Jackal).

Lovely chap.

3 First impressions last

I’ve heard that Pixar have a rule that when the lead character in one of their films is introduced, he has to be shown doing the thing that he does best. This immediately sets him up as That Kind of Guy. My own book, God Emperor of Didcot, begins with Isambard Smith escaping from two angry aliens, jumping across a bridge and stopping for a cup of tea. He then expresses puzzlement that aliens don’t want to join the British Space Empire. This tells you a lot about him, and the sort of things he can be expected to do. If you give a misleading first impression of the character at the start of a story, it may take a lot of time and effort to alter the reader's view.

4 Start at a point of change

I particularly dislike stories that begin with the lead character being bored. This seems to be very popular where the hero is a student of some kind. The trouble is that it’s tedious in itself. If you are successfully evoking the feeling of boredom, you are boring someone! Best to start at the point where things change: the hero is sitting in a dull lecture when a bird flies through the window. The heroine is eating breakfast when her husband opens a letter and faints. The point where normality breaks is usually the point where the story – not the background for the story – begins.

5 The reader doesn’t need to know everything

And shouldn’t, either! A good beginning poses two big questions (and many others): “Why did that happen?” and “What will happen next?” People will want to read on to find out the answers. They will have to have answers, too, or their interest will fade, but no doubt those further questions will be answered in turn. Even a book without much action can raise questions. Take the opening of 1984, which includes all sorts of intriguing hints that something is wrong with the world. The rest of the book, in a way, is Winston Smith’s quest to find out why. Not that it did him any good...

Do I Really Want to Write This?

A lot of words

A novel tends to be at least about 70,000 words long. That’s a lot of typing. Within that space, you could expect to have five or six well-developed central characters (if not more), the main plot, some sort of subplot, and perhaps a second subplot. To put it a different way, that’s quite a lot of words to do with the subject of the book.


The big question

So the question is this: do you really want to write 70,000 words or more about this idea? I don’t think this is asked often enough of writers. The idea that seemed so great to begin with might not have the mileage in it to last a whole novel. Or it might just not interest you as much as you thought it would. You might find that you don’t have the time or the resources to do justice to the concept, especially if a lot of research is involved.

(It's slightly different if you're writing a book to order, but we'll come to that later.)


Letting ideas ferment

My own tactic, if I have a brilliant idea for a novel, is to wait for a month before doing anything with it. By that time, the idea will either have matured (or mutated!) into a story that I’m happy working on properly, or will have faded away. What often happens is that two otherwise weak ideas will end up mixed together to produce a third, much stronger concept.  It might be that a concept which can’t sustain a whole novel becomes part of a different work, or a short story in its own right.

In my own writing, I’ve jettisoned a lot of concepts that sounded exciting at the time, but which didn’t feel so good a month later. I’ve found that there were two settings in particular that I wanted to use to write stories: the tongue in cheek space opera setting of the Space Captain Smith books, and the murky world of the fantasy stories that I’m currently writing, which is a sort of magically-supercharged Renaissance.

Personally, I’m sure that you will never write a great novel on a subject that you don’t really care about. You might write a publishable one, maybe one that will be quite saleable if it’s like something else that sells well, but it won’t last. So you have to really want to do it. And that means having not just a good idea, but all the elements to keep the book engaging to the end. Because if you’re entertained, chances are the reader will be, too.

Some Books You Might Find Useful (and the odd link)

There are many how-to-write books out there, and almost certainly loads that I've never seen. However, I can attest that the following are all good. Your results may vary, but each one is worth a look.


On Writing by Stephen King

This is pretty much an essential read. I think King is better at writing non-fiction than fiction, and here he looks at the art of writing (actually, and more accurately, he calls it a craft) in clear and entertaining prose. King de-mystifies the process of writing without making it sound easy or routine, and gives some very good advice about editing and the creative process itself. Highly recommended.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Nobody is going to mistake this for a fun read, and I think you'd go a bit weird if you read it from cover to cover in one go, but it is a very useful guide to writing good English. A very handy reference book.

How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by J.N. Williamson

I'm recommending this collection of essays somewhat warily. First up, it may well be out of print. Secondly, if it isn't, the last quarter or so, which deals with getting published circa 1990, is completly out of date. However, it contains about 20 essays by expert genre writers (Ray Bradbury, Dean Kootz, Colin Wilson and others), all of which are very interesting. There's a strong focus on Horror, which was a much bigger genre when it was published, but the techniques described are applicable to all forms of fiction.

Dance Macabre by Stephen King

I learned a lot about plotting and the mechanics of storytelling from this book, which ostensibly focusses on horror films. Towards the back of the book, King discusses a range of novels, including Dracula, The Haunting of Hill House and The Body Snatchers, and provides very useful insights into the way that they engage (and frighten) the reader. It's sometimes irrelevant, often digressive, but a very interesting read from a writer's point of view.

Wonderbook, by Jeff Vandermeer

I'm in two minds about this one. I've got it, and read it, and enjoyed it, but it is a very visual book, and I tend to learn better from walls of plain text than from illustrations, unusual fonts and similar frivolity, which make me tut and wave my walking stick. However, a lot of people I know swear by it. Definitely worth a look.

And here's a link to a large number of short articles about writing: mainly about fantasy, but largely applicable to anything else. The author seems to have been a schoolteacher and writer of fan fiction, but the articles are generally recommended to anyone trying to write fantasy that makes sense and goes beyond the usual stereotypes. Some of the articles may seem rather basic, and a few are a bit internet-focused and sweary, but many are well worth a look.


Limyaael's "Rants"

And if that isn't enough...

How about a few essays? I would recommend:

"Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell (pretty much obligatory)

"On Thud and Blunder" by Poul Anderson (especially for historical and fantasy writers)

and

"The Simple Art of Murder" by Raymond Chandler (especially for stories with a crime element)


Of course, you don't need to read all of these, or indeed any of them, to succeed. But it's never really a matter of doing something that will guarantee success in writing. What you're seeking to do is to raise your chances of writing a good, publishable novel, to put the odds in your favour as much as you possibly can. And reading some of these won't hurt.

Introduction

What is this?

This is a blog about writing books: more specifically, fiction and, even more specifically, science fiction and fantasy, although many of the points raised will be applicable to other sorts of stories. I can't guarantee that you'll end up writing a bestseller, but hopefully you'll find something useful and interesting here. The posts won't be in any sort of order, and will include some gratuitous self-promotion, but I'll tag them so you can pick what to look at.


Who are you?

Me, trying to look professional

I'm Toby Frost. I have written six novels, shortly to be come seven when The Pincers of Death comes out this October. Five of them are comedy science fiction, published by Myrmidon Books, and tell of the adventures of space captain Isambard Smith and his hapless crew as they try to civilise the galaxy.

The sixth is Straken, published by Black Library (Games Workshop's fiction imprint) and is military SF about a tough commander stranded on a planet full of monsters. There's less jokes, but more explosions and an awesome ending involving an alien dinosaur and about a million space orks.

I've also written a range of short stories for Black Library, Snowbooks and other publishers. I have given talks to the Festival of Writing in York, the Get Writing event in Hertfordshire and others.

My official website is here: http://www.tobyfrost.com/

and the Space Captain Smith website is here: http://spacecaptainsmith.com/

Here is the Space Captain Smith wiki, which contains background detail and other, related silliness: http://smithipedia.spacecaptainsmith.com/index.php/Main_Page

If you're looking for the non-writing page where I make model kits with varying degrees of success, it's here: https://inaworldofpaint.blogspot.co.uk/


So is this just about science fiction?

No. There are certain things that seem to relate to a fantastical setting, but really apply to any sort of writing that isn't set right here, right now. Take world-building, for instance: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles or Daphne du Maurier's Manderlay are as distinct settings as Narnia or Dune. Most of the techniques apply to fiction of all sorts. As Theodore Sturgeon said, good science fiction is good fiction.


Anything else I should know?

Only this: different things work for different people, particularly in the actual mechanics of how quickly and in what circumstances you write, and one size doesn't fit all (in fact, I would be suspicious of anyone who said that it did). However, if this blog helps somebody, or entertains them, that's good.

Oh, and The Pincers of Death is out on October the 9th. Quality read. Honest.