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From the Department of Good Advice

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Billy Wilder’s tips for screenwriters.

Most of them also apply to novelists.  The only one that could be debated is #10:

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then – that’s it. Don’t hang around.

But that’s because movies are more like short stories, or at most novellas, than they are like novels.  That’s why Tolkien’s extended fourfold wrap-up of The Lord of the Rings works in the context of the novel, but is less effective on the big screen.

(Also, of course, it is necessary to remember that in a perfect world any writer’s advice on writing would come with a clearly-printed THIS IS HOW IT WORKS FOR ME, ANYHOW label attached.)

Another Thing it Doesn’t Pay to Worry About

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Back in the dark ages, when I was first learning to type, the Word of God as passed down from on high by the instructor (who was more interested in training 80-words-a-minute secretaries than in teaching the rudiments of touch typing to a future English major) was that you double-spaced following a period.

I never became an 80-words-a-minute typist, but those two spaces after the period were hardwired into my brain, not to mention into my spacebar-hitting thumb.

Cue the musical montage representing the passage of time, with the tappity-tappity-tappity-bing! of the typewriter fading into the musical-popcorn boop-boop-boop of the old computer keyboards, and that sound fading in turn into the near-silence of keyboards today . . . followed by the Word of God saying that it is now customary to space only once after a period.

Why is this something it doesn’t pay to worry about?  Because, one, of all the reasons an editor may have for rejecting your manuscript, the question of how many spaces you’ve put after your periods is way low on the list.  And, two, if the whole thing bothers you that much, you don’t have to sweat blood retraining your spacebar thumb — all you have to do is run a search and replace during the final edit, and change every instance of two spaces to a single space instead.

Well, Well, Well.

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 2 Comments

It appears that Random House has blinked.

The contracts for Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt will now come in the writer’s choice  of versions, one of them the previous “profit-sharing” arrangement, and the other a traditional advance-plus-royalties deal.

Which means that there’s even less excuse, now, for a writer to sign the unconscionable version.

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 1 Comment

So I’m not even going to bother.

John Scalzi has a couple of masterful takedowns of Random House’s new Hydra and Alibi imprints, and why no writer in his or her right mind should sign one of their contracts, here and here.

And if those warnings aren’t enough, here’s Writer Beware on the subject.

Furthermore, SFWA† has ruled that Hydra is not a qualifying market for membership purposes.

If all of that isn’t warning enough for the wary, then I don’t know what is.

†The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. For acronymic purposes, the second F is superimposed upon the first.

Blizzard Warning

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To everybody in the path of the storm:

Stay inside; stay warm; stay safe.   Friday and Saturday look like good days for cuddling up next to your computer and working on your novel.  Whatever you were thinking of driving to will still be there on Monday.

(And if circumstances force you out onto the road anyway, make sure you’ve got a warm blanket or a sleeping bag in the car with you, just in case.  Some bottled water and a couple of energy bars probably wouldn’t hurt, either.  Making Light has a bunch of useful links. )

Tell It to the (Space) Marines

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This story is all over the science fiction and fantasy segments of the internet this morning, but just in case you’ve missed it, a few links:

Games Workshop, owners of the Warhammer 40K gaming franchise, slap down a self-published Amazon author in the name of asserting their trademark on the term “space marines.”

The estimable John Scalzi weighs in on the topic, as do many commenters.

I particularly like the person who provided a link to a Wikipedia list of actual space marines.  I have no idea how many, if any, cosmonauts were the then-USSR’s equivalent of marines, but I’ll bet that somebody on the internet does.

Over at Making Light, they’re on it as well.

And why did Games Workshop choose to go after a self-published author, and not, say, the Heinlein estate or any of the other fairly large gorillas who have used the term and the concept of “space marines” in their science fiction since the late nineteen-thirties at least?  For the same reason that school administrators, when they decide to implement a “zero tolerance” drug policy, go after the honor student who gives her best friend a Canadian Tylenol for cramps, rather than the apprentice hoodlums selling coke and steroids to the football team out in the school parking lot — they can get the desired result (the appearance of vigorously carrying out policy) without the fear of serious repercussions (in the form of lawsuits or busted kneecaps.)

This, Now, is a Cool Thing.

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 1 Comment

The remains of Richard III have been found underneath a car park in Leicester and positively identified by DNA matching.  (There’s a guy in Canada who’s a direct descendant of Richard’s sister Anne.)

This Sort of Thing Has Just Got to Stop

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 13 Comments

It’s one thing for companies to insist on ownership of patents for things developed in their labs on their time.  At least the inventors sometimes get internal recognition, not to mention resumé cred.

But now we have a school board in Prince George’s County, Maryland, that wants to assert ownership of the copyrights not just for things like lesson plans and computer apps created by teachers in the system using district-provided iPads and other tools, but also for material written or developed by students as part of a classroom assignment.

And that is just plain wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong with a side order of extremely bad and heinous.  And did I mention, just plain wrong?

Not that I feel strongly on the subject, or anything like that.

Character Types to Avoid

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While you’re stocking your plot with characters (or, if you work the other way around, while you’re assembling the cast of characters who will generate your plot), there are some types you want to steer clear of because they will  lose reader sympathy — not just for themselves, but for any characters who happen to be standing too close to them.

One is The Annoyingly Perfect Character.  This character is good at everything, and is always on the right side of any issue — no matter what the normal side may be for his time and place.  Dogs always like him.  He can drive a stick shift without ever stalling at a busy intersection.  He can cook an intimate dinner for two and not have the kitchen stacked full of unwashed pots and pans at the end of the evening.  If the character is female, she can do all of these things and run a Fortune 500 company without ever chipping her fingernail polish.

Another is The Character Who Wins All the Arguments.  This usually happens because he or she is also The Character Who Agrees With The Author.  Readers get annoyed by this one in a hurry, especially when they start thinking that the author is deliberately setting the character up with debate partners who aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree.  (Yes, Robert A. Heinlein, I’m looking at you.)  If you’re going to be writing a debate, remember that even the wrong side is likely to have one or two good arguments going for them — be fair, and let them have those two measly points before your highly principled hero crushes them under the weight of a dozen stronger ones.

And a third is The Character Who Can’t Get a Break.  This is the guy (or gal) for whom the line “if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” might have been written.  If he has a job, he will lose it.  If he gets a job, it will be in a sweatshop, or a soul-destroying cubicle farm, or a seething office morass of backstabbing and bureaucratic corruption.   His significant other will cheat on him; or, if faithful, will contract a lingering and expensive malady that will cause him to turn to a life of incompetent crime in order to afford the treatments.  He will leave his only umbrella on the bus.  The reader will begin to suspect that the author hates this character, and will secretly despise the character for putting up with such unfair treatment.

Don’t write these characters.  Your readers will be grateful for it.

Some Questions Answered

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Q.  Do I need to get a bachelor’s degree in creative writing in order to be a writer?

A.  No.  Get a degree in something that interests you, like chemistry or English literature; or get a degree in something that will bring in a paycheck, like computer programming or dental hygiene.  Take as many electives as you can in things like literature and history and anthropology, and don’t stop writing.

Q.  Do I need to get a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing in order to be a writer?

A.  Definitely not.  If you truly like academia and can afford to spend the time and money, you might enjoy the experience; and if you have ambitions to write a particular kind of literary novel, you might make some useful connections that way; but most writers do just fine without needing to acquire paper credentials.

Q.  Do I need to attend a writers’ workshop in order to be a writer?

A.  No.  Again, if you can afford the time and the money, you may enjoy the experience; and (as with undergraduate and graduate writing courses) you may learn some bits of craft and technique in the class or workshop setting at a more accelerated rate than if you’d struggled to figure them out on your own.  Still, most writers do fine without attending either classes or a workshop.

Q.  All right, then.  What do I need to do in order to become a writer?

A.  Read.  Read a lot, and read widely.  Read fiction and nonfiction; read good books and trash.

And write.  All you need for that part is a pen and some paper, or an open computer file.

Write until the page isn’t blank any more.

Then do it again.  And again.  And….

You get the idea.