One of my favorites is the First Pages workshop – come find out where to take your novel!As some of you know, I started a Patreon campaign about a year ago. It’s worked pretty well, although I still need to put together the first year’s worth in ebook form to send to people.
I’m going to stick with it, particularly given that I get new ideas for short stories all the time (and generate a lot in the course of teaching), but I’m thinking about making some changes.
The most important is making it so paid content isn’t just restricted to patrons. I’m going back and forth about this. Right now it feels like a subscription model, but if I go to public content, it seems less so. But what paid patrons would get along with the public posts are sneak peeks at drafts for outside markets, which would be free but accessible only to people supporting the paid stories. The drafts would be early ones, rather than late, and they also wouldn’t be getting paid for, which seems to be the main criteria editors apply to Patreon stories when ruling them out for acceptance. (This is a whole ‘nother long and interesting discussion, I think.)
I recently switched from two stories a month to one and I’m going back to two.
I need to remove the postcard incentive because I keep forgetting to send them, and figure out something else. Suggestions?
Today’s wordcount: 5476
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 112800
Total word count for the week so far (day 2): 11487
Total word count for this retreat: 42856
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, finished “California Ghosts” and “I am Scrooge”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: an hour
Classes that are coming up soon and still have room! All times are Pacific Time.
July 15 (Wednesday), 7-9 PM ““ First Pages Workshop Section 1
July 17 (Friday), 2-4 PM ““ Writing Your Way Into Your Novel, Section 2
July 19 (Sunday), 9:30-11:30 AM ““ First Pages Workshop Section 2
I would happily support the public availability of the stories. So many great works of art that we all share come from the patronage system. True, as we are not a single patron we don’t share in the fame, but I don’t believe anyone who is contributing to your writing wants to keep you to herself.
Hi, Cat. Instead of a physical postcard, a virtual one would be interesting. You could write “thank you, [name]” on a small slip of paper and take a photo of it somewhere in your world, then email it to the recipient.
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
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Retreat, Day 25
Tomorrow’s online class is Delivery and Description. Click here for details.Today’s wordcount: 3001 (so far. plenty of daylight left.)
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119954
Total word count for the week so far (day 6): 23568
Total word count for this retreat: 70229
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Moderator,” untitled piece
Works finished on this retreat: “California Ghosts,” “My Name is Scrooge,” “Blue Train Blues,” “Misconceptions of Gods and Demons”
Taught week 3 of the Writing F&SF stories class, prepping to teach Delivery & Description tomorrow.
We have no water at the moment, or at least a pump is broken and we must conserve what we have in case of fires. Hopefully fixed soon, but I drove into Santa Cruz this afternoon and had a nice chat with the guy at the Pure Water store, who recommended all sorts of local places and doings.
I have been reading and reading here. I was watching no TV but Wayne and I usually watch Big Brother each year, so we started watching it while he was here and now have been watching it together while Facetime-ing. Yes, we are huge geeks.
From “Never Volunteer”:
“This is the Other Side,” [Dustin] said. I swear I could hear the capital letters.
“Like with ghosts?”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Not at all,” he said, but didn’t explain anything beyond that. He held out his hand. “Come on.”
“What, you’re not going to carry me without my say so anymore?”
He gestured around himself. “I’m much less worried about you running away here.”
He did have a point. I rolled to my knees and stood up, ignoring his outstretched hand.
I looked around. It was a little like being on the set of an old movie, one where the landscape had been manicured to the point of knowing that somewhere, lurking in the underbrush, was a horde of gardeners with trimming shears in hand.
But here, apparently, all of that was natural. As were the jewelbright bees and birds. When the unicorn appeared, my inner 12-year-old-girl swooned. It trotted towards us and I had never seen anything so pretty in all my life: flowing mane, opalescent horn and horns, great brown eyes with enough lashes that you wondered exactly how it saw through all that.
“Henri,” Dustin said.
It was, apparently, a salutation, because the unicorn nodded before it turned to sweep me up and down with a cynical eye.
“This is it?” it said. Its voice was high-pitched and epicine; only the name made me think it was male.
“You are being rude,” Dustin said. His voice sounded resigned, as though it were the sort of thing he’d said to Henri to the point where both of them were tired of it.
Henri had no intention of quitting. He shook his mane, flipping it back out of his eyes. Was it entirely accident that the sun shone on the tip of his horn, that the gesture made him seem otherworldly graceful, that his mane flowed like creamy froth, inviting the touch?
But I wouldn’t have fondled that unicorn for all the tea in China. He was clearly an asshole.
If your world has something unusual (like dinosaurs), it needs to be signaled early on, or else you will surprise and alarm your readers when someone gets eaten by a Tyrannosaurus. This week focused on delivering information and description. Next week we’ll talk about revision, rewriting, and otherwise preparing a story to go forth into the world.
In the course of one workshop the topic of writing about rape came up and Jim C. Hines has provided a timely article about it in the most recent Apex Magazine. In brief, Don’t use rape as 1) easy motivation for a character or 2) shorthand for how bad someone is and do some research about things like the mental aftereffects if you’re going to write about it.
Landscape and long descriptions are often a feature of fantasy and science fiction. Often the purpose is to look gee-whiz pretty, but it can inform the story in many ways. Here, for example, is the beginning of Gormenghast:
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbor until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the season, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Things worth noticing about that paragraph:
The phrase “certain ponderous architectural quality” has its own ponderous architectural quality.
The focus of the novel is the castle. Same with this first paragraph.
There’s a tension between the mouldering castle and the humans around it, whose dwellings are described as “an epidemic” and “clamping” (great verb!) themselves “like limpets.”
The tower is compared to a mutilated finger, it points blasphemously, it’s filled with owls, all things that will resonate throughout the book.
The last sentence slays me with its beauty. Isn’t that nice? Good use of a semi-colon, too.
Description needs to accomplish more than gee whiz. It can:
provide sensory stimulation
convey information about the thing being described
convey information about the character through whose perceptions the description is filtered
convey information about the context of the thing being described, i.e. the setting/world
convey tone
convey style
underscore or advance motifs and metaphors
Too little description and the reader has nothing to hold onto. Too much and they feel buried.
In writing description, think about the impression you’re trying to create. Visualize the scene – what is the atmosphere? What does it look/sound/feel/smell/taste like?
Good verbs add energy, sensory input, interest, and precision. Did verbs for description exercise in class.
Description adds texture, creates “crunchy” prose. Don’t write prose that is dull as oatmeal. Give us a meal – a solid, meaty verb or two, an edge of sweet lyricism, a dash of bitter irony, the precise crunch of details, a texture we can run our tongue over, and tiny seeds of unexpected words that we can pop between our teeth, one by one.
Some ways to deliver information
Through dialogue of primary character(s)
Through dialogue of secondary character(s)
Through description
Through embedded documents
Through exposition
Twin Peaks scene where Dale Cooper goes over the suspects while throwing rocks is an example of getting away with lots of exposition by making it weird and entertaining.
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
3 Responses
I would happily support the public availability of the stories. So many great works of art that we all share come from the patronage system. True, as we are not a single patron we don’t share in the fame, but I don’t believe anyone who is contributing to your writing wants to keep you to herself.
I think it’s worth a try, Cat. It seems like a much more open model to me that – I suspect – has upside for everyone.
Hi, Cat. Instead of a physical postcard, a virtual one would be interesting. You could write “thank you, [name]” on a small slip of paper and take a photo of it somewhere in your world, then email it to the recipient.