CM Dietrich

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Month: September 2016

An Exploration of Fandom

September 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

The very first thing I was a fan of as a child was Robin Hood*. I thought about the world constantly. I read the stories over and over again. What would I do if I got lose in the woods and found Robin? How would I help them rob the rich to feed the poor? Why was there only one woman in the stories, and how come I had to be pretend to be her literally every time we played Robin Hood at school? (I far preferred playing it at home, where one of my sisters would jump at the chance to be Maid Marion and I could finally be someone else–like Robin himself, or Will Scarlet.)

After that, it was Star Wars. Not just the original trilogy–although I so loved that trilogy–but the books as well, the expanded universe that just opened my mind up to the possibilities that were contained within the worlds that Lucas had originally created. There was just so much out there, so many things we could possibly be. In my imagination,  I flew X-Wings, I joined the Jedi Academy with Jacen and Jaina, I stared in awe while Luke Skywalker taught us to use the Force and helped us build our lightsabers. I read all of the books I could possibly get my hands on (yes, even that one. I read that one a lot.).

And from there, it was onwards, through the Belgariad and Mallorean into Stephen King and Anne Rice. I fell out of love with Star Wars when the Phantom Menace came out, and went through a brief period where all I read was Robin Cook**. and it was just after then that I started writing for myself.

Even though I’d spent most of my childhood imagining making my own lightsaber (interestingly, I don’t remember any of the colours of the blades, though I’m sure I had many), when I started writing, I started with original work, and I mostly kept that up. I read a little bit of fanfic here and there, but not much of it, and I definitely didn’t have any need to write any of my own. And fanfic was hard to find, then–Google existed, just barely, but I never knew where I was supposed to go to find the things I was looking for, and it was hard for me to find decent stuff. Livejournal was able to provide for a while, but strikethroughs kept happening, and it was difficult to trust that content would always be there.

Then Mad Max: Fury Road happened, and it changed everything for me.

I wanted–no, I needed–to read everything about it. When I ran out of reading the things that were actually canon, I went back to fanfic. And lo, in the time between when I was a child and now, Ao3 now existed, and there were tags, and there were categories, and everything was beautiful.

After Mad Max, there was The Force Awakens, and my love for Star Wars blossomed and exploded so hard in my chest it was like it had never faltered to begin with. And there was Hamilton, and Leverage, and Stranger Things, and it is so beautiful and amazing that there are so many artists out there that are offering up their visions of what they think, what they see, what they extrapolate from the art we’ve been given to weave their own beauty on top of what we already have.

My family and I went to Sask Expo this weekend, and it was so great. There was cosplay, and there were artists and writers, and there were quilts and stuffed animals and the Ghostbusters car, and it was just so amazing to see everyone out there, showing us all what they love, showing us how much they love it.

I really love fandom, everybody. I really, really love it.

I started writing some of my own fanfic this year, actually putting things down on paper instead of just keeping them in my head. I don’t know what I’ll actually end up doing with it–but hey, I have feelings to explore, and I can explore them in the context of some of my favourite art. That’s a pretty great opportunity to have.

 

 

*Yes, the animated one with the fox. That one.

**I tried to get from Robin Cook into Tess Gerritsen, and still remember the nausea winding around my guts as I tried to get through the start of one of her books, the horror beautiful and compelling and definitely too much for me at the time.

Foreshadowing!

September 12, 2016 / / 0 Comments

It’s no secret that I think foreshadowing is pretty great. When I was waxing on about it earlier on Twitter, I actually referred to it as my “favourite writing technique” and I am pretty sure that’s accurate*.

The thing about stories without foreshadowing is that they’re deeply unsatisfying to me as a reader. I love being surprised by endings (even more so when there’s an awesome twist), but I don’t want the surprise of the ending to be caused by WHAM! a ton of new information! that wasn’t available before just now! that is the only way for this plot line to be resolved! aren’t you surprised!

Well, yes, I am surprised. But I’m also upset.

Let me back up here.

I have enough experience in real life with getting hit on the side of the head by things that I didn’t see coming. I don’t want–or need–the fiction I read to replicate that experience. I want to have the satisfaction of putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together, and I want the delight and novelty of the final picture not being quite what I expected–but I want that in the context of finishing a puzzle of a dog, and realizing that there’s actually a kitten tucked in at the dog’s feet. I don’t want to start a puzzle of a dog, and then realize that the pieces aren’t actually a puzzle of a dog, they’re a series of obscure tokens that I can trade in at the farmer’s market for a tomato. I did not sign up for this tomato. Nothing about these puzzle pieces indicated there was a tomato coming. I can actually SEE THE DOG on the puzzle pieces, but now that I’ve hit the end, I’m being told that these dog-shaped puzzle pieces are only good if I want to redeem them for a tomato.

I do not want the tomato.

I love the re-read value that comes from good foreshadowing. I love the idea that the story is one story when you read it through the first time, and it’s still the same story on the second go-round, but now it has all these layers, all these extra asides and things that you didn’t see the first time because you were too focused on getting the dog together, but now that you know there’s a kitten in there too, you can see the things that you didn’t see the first time, like how the dog is looking down at the kitten, and how there’s a little tuft of kitten tail visible right on the bottom border of the puzzle, and it makes it seem like everything has more depth this time around.

Nobody wants to redo a puzzle of a dog where it’s actually tokens that can be traded in for a tomato. There’s nothing fulfilling that comes out of that.

So, how do I get foreshadowing into my own writing?

I revise.

Forever.

Because the thing about rarely plotting before I go is that I have no idea what I’m supposed to be foreshadowing. I have nothing. I have a vague feeling about things that I would like to happen, and then I just write and a bunch of stuff comes out that is generally drastically different from the things I anticipated.

But once I’m at the end, I take a step back, and I look at the puzzle, and I figure out what I actually want the picture to be. What kind of dog is it? What colour is the kitten? Do they look like they’re getting along, or is this picture depicting a brief silence before a massive fight?

And then I go back in my edits, and I strip out all the references to the sunflower that I thought I was going to put in at the beginning, but ended up leaving out of the narrative entirely. I make sure that I keep the kitten in mind right from the very beginning. I make sure I’m consistent about the way the dog looks.

And once I’m at the end, I step back again, and I look at it again. And I do the same thing again, and I try to put more layers into it, and I make sure I don’t tip my hand too early, and I make sure that the words are going in the direction that I want them to go.

(It’s sometime during this revision that I generally conclude that I should probably just burn the entire manuscript and start over.)

I don’t always get it. Sometimes I can’t make things work the way I want them to work. Sometimes I can’t see through what I’ve written to figure out how it should work.

But when the foreshadowing works?

Oh, that payoff is so lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

*It’s vaguely possible I’m more in love with run-on sentences than I am with foreshadowing, but I choose to believe that foreshadowing ekes out a win here.

3 Day Novel Complete!

September 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Whoa, I did it. I actually finished the 3 Day Novel contest. (Not going to lie, that’s why this is a Thursday morning post instead of a Monday morning post like normal.)

It was a really interesting (and almost therapeutic) experience for me in a lot of ways. Because I knew I was short on time, I did a lot of things that I normally don’t do–I plotted out the basics of the story from start to finish, I thought about each of my characters briefly instead of just making them up as I went, and I stayed very plot-oriented throughout the entire thing, instead of diving into character exploration as I saw fit.

There were a couple of major benefits to this method.

First of all, I actually finished the damn thing. Start to finish. It clocked in at just over 30,000 words, which is pretty much too short for anything–but it’s done, and during my Monday review/editing spree, I actually didn’t outright pitch sections during the revision, which is a first for me. Part of that is because I legitimately couldn’t afford to pitch anything due to the timeline–but also, looking back on it now, I don’t actually think I would pitch any major sections. That makes this the first manuscript I’ve completed where I didn’t have to just jettison massive chunks of it.

Second of all, it forced me to summarize. Let me start by saying that I’m not satisfied with the result of the summaries–some of the coolest things in the story (in my opinion) actually ended up happening in summaries instead of happening in narrative. But it also prevented me from wandering into ‘what if this’ and ‘what if the other’ and ‘also let’s explore this third thing’. I directly narrated the things that were most important to Sophia’s arc–and I summarized everything else. This method also meant that I maximized the time I covered. Overall, in thirty thousand words, I covered seven months of time, which is a ridiculous record for me.*

Third of all, I absolutely destroyed all of my previous wordcount records. Prior to this, my wordcount record had been set in 2003. I was in grade twelve at the time, and the day that I started my science fiction novel, I managed to get 10,123 words written (yes, I remember the exact wordcount). I have never even touched that goal since then. I had a smattering of 5k days during NaNoWriMo 2015, but most days were way less than that. I had multiple years (2005 – 2014) where I hardly wrote at all, and even when I got back to it in 2014, I was slow and unfocused. But during the 3 Day Novel contest? I banged out a reasonably consistent 1800 words per hour. Some of that is due to the style I was writing in–my 3 Day Novel submission was done in a somewhat snarky first person, with occasional asides to the reader, whereas HH is more of a layered introspective overwrought poetry. But I think I’m just getting better at focusing and more efficient at saying what I want to say.

Drawbacks to this method?

I’m completely wiped out, physically and emotionally.

Words are hard now.

Overall, I think the 3 Day Novel was a huge success, and I’m pretty excited to get back to revising what I wrote once I’ve let it sit for a while here.

 

 

 

*To put it into perspective, I’m 26k into my rewrite of HH, and I’ve covered three days.

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