Category Archives: writing

Strength (Spiritwalker Monday 19)

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There are a lot of ways to write about strength.

As a writer I can get frustrated when a characteristic I mean to be understood as strong is interpreted by a reader as weak, even though I comprehend that every reader will bring a different interpretation to the table. Also, and more importantly, I get frustrated when I see myself as a writer falling into the trap of stereotyping “strength” and “weakness” in ways I don’t like and which I think are negative but which I revert to if I don’t stop and think past received assumptions about people and gender.

What do we mean when we say “a strong male character” or “a strong female character”?

What about “a strong character?” How does that come into play without it being tied to gender or sex?

And what do I mean by “we,” anyway? What about cultural and historical differences in how strength is defined?

What is strength?

There are so many ways to define strength in terms of the human personality and human characteristics and how it relates to what is valued in any given society at a particular moment in that society’s development or decline. What defines strength now may in twenty years or a thousand years be seen as a sign of potential weakness, while something I define as weak may be seen as strong elsewhere.

Actual physical feats of strength range from a simple measure like weight-lifting to a more complex measure like physical endurance. As a woman I have been told more times than I care to count that men will always rule human civilization because they are physically stronger by what I call the weight-lifting measure, an opinion that oddly leaves out humanity’s crucially advantageous traits of dexterity, adaptability, creativity, intelligence, and persistence. And what about endurance? In some ways, endurance is the greatest test of strength.

Is strength a way to tear things down or to build things up? In the Bible, Samson famously does both, although it is important that while his strength is commonly defined as physical in fact, as a Nazirite, it is his spiritual strength that has nurtured his physical strength.

Sometimes it seems like portrayals of strength in the (heavily USA-based) media I see around me are getting choked through narrowing definitions. I say that in part because I think mainstream US media is going through one of its cyclical restricting modes, while meanwhile in the global gestalt a new creative energy and vision is expanding with increasing vigor.

Part of that is because views about strength, like views about anything, go through fashions: the strong silent cowboy becomes the blustering self absorbed Rambo; the man too honest and righteous to break the law becomes the man who breaks the law to make things right; the calm moderate in-control man becomes the angry passionate man while meanwhile in many societies being unable to contain or control anger is seen as a flaw rather than as a sign of strength.

During the writing of Cold Steel I had a series of email exchanges with Michelle Sagara about definitions of and assumptions about masculinity in our culture.

I was concerned that a particular character might not be seen by some readers as a “strong male character” because he does not display several of what are typically (although not exclusively) seen in today’s media/fiction as “strong male” characteristics. This isn’t an exclusive or finite list, but two of the characteristics I identify as seeming to me to be stereotypical today as approved markers of masculinity are the “man as soldier” (or warrior) which is related to but not exactly the same as the man who uses violence (and kills) to righteously solve problems. I still also see elements of a type I call “the masterful man,” the man who won’t take no for an answer, who knows what he wants perhaps better than you do, who pushes until he gets what he wants. This is a form of what is often called “the alpha male” but by no means the only example of the type. All three of these types seem to me important in an imperial context: That is, an empire tells stories about itself to justify the empire, and some of those stories naturally will include valorizing war and soldiering, violence, knowing better than others, and the idea of exceptionalism, that the empire is destined to rule and/or somehow favored by god, chance, Fate, or destiny.

Leave aside for the moment the larger and related question of what exactly we mean when we say male, female, man, woman, and so on ( I’m no gender essentialist regardless). And for the moment I’m speaking about my experience primarily but not exclusively with American English-language media and fiction.

If strength is defined in limited ways, then human character is not only limited but harmed by being forced to adhere to increasingly smaller sets of perceived value. When certain characteristics got locked in as strong and others ignored, or derided as weak, it creates a restrictive view of humanity.

Crucially, for writers, narrow definitions of what constitutes a strong man or a strong woman can affect how people read and view those characters. Some readers will reject a character as strong because that character does not adhere to stereotypes of “strong.”

For instance strength can be expressed through patience, and patience is a characteristic that both men and women have. But if patience is not seen as a masculine characteristic, then a male character in a fictional story characterized as patient may or may not be seen as a strong man. For example, the film Witness contrasts Harrison Ford’s world weary and violent cop with Alexander Gudonov’s non-violent, patient, quiet Amish farmer (it finds both men ultimately positive as role models but I note that the story revolves around Ford’s cop).

If male characters can’t be seen as strong except when martial or angry or violent or masterful in the sense of being forceful, then think how harmful that becomes to our understanding of what it means to be a man and the cultural creation of role models for boys to grow into. Think of how harmful it is for women.

And what about women? What is a strong woman? One who kicks ass and can fight “as well as a man”?

As many have pointed out before me, if women only get to be strong insofar as they look and behave like men, then that does not uplift women.

If characteristics long defined as “feminine” are automatically derided as “weak” or undervalued and dismissed as “girly,” then those attitudes affect all children as they grow into adulthood just as restrictive attitudes about boys affect all children likewise.

I love stories and characters that celebrate diverse ways to be strong.

In Grace Lin’s Where the Mountains Meet the Moon, Minli is stubborn and determined. And she listens.

Oree, in N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Kingdoms, has a clear and powerful sense of herself that makes her strong.

In Michelle Sagara’s Silence, the main character Emma is caring and loyal to her friends and to others. I tend to find compassion a sign of strength, and it appeals greatly to me in characters.

In Cold Fire, I deliberately had Andevai court Cat not with manly arrogant alpha-ness but with patience and food.

While Nevyn in Katharine Kerr’s Deverry sequence does fit the acceptable mode of the “mysterious and wise old man with magical powers” character, he himself is strong because he uses his mind, is often kind and patient, and because he fulfills a very long burden of service to make up for a wrong he caused. That’s strength.

The sisters in Aliette de Bodard’s story “Immersion” are strong by being smart, observant, thoughtful, and (again) determined. Their radicalism is quiet, necessary, in some ways tentative, and within its small orbit it is effective.

Strong female characters in Danish tv shows like Forbrydelsen, Matador, and The Eagle work well for me because they are portrayed as competent, intelligent, no-nonsense, pragmatic, efficient, compassionate, caring, and steadfast.

Of course every reader brings their own view of strength to the table.

What portrayals of strength (from any fiction) have you liked that did not fit with classically stereotypical kickass or martial or alpha-manly definitions of strength? Do you think that SFF and YA, for example, are pushing the boundaries of what is seen as strong or are more likely to fall back into more standard modes of “strength expression”? Are all characters given equal chance to be seen as strong, or are some given more limited roles than others?

I have no definitive answers. I’m just asking questions here.

Short Stories, Deadlines, & the Cold Steel FINAL Cover (Spiritwalker Monday 22)

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This week’s Spiritwalker Monday post was supposed to be The Creole of Expedition Part Two (Part One from last week can be found here), in which I go into detail (and quote extensively from people who know more than I do) about how I “created” a creole specifically for the city of Expedition so the people who live there could have a regionally specific way of talking.

I haven’t had time to finish writing that post because of other deadlines.

1) I am still working my way through the page proofs of COLD STEEL.

Of course I am looking for typos and grammatical mistakes, of which so far I believe I have found only two in quite a long manuscript, which means the Editor, Associate Editor, copy editor, and Sr Production Director have all done an excellent job. There is one odd glitch (marked by the orange post-its) which has to be trimmed out throughout [number strings that got dropped into/left in from some previous cycle of production]. Given the paucity of actual typos, my focus has been making any last (minor) changes such as changing a word or rephrasing a conversation or (in one case) adding a small revelation to the end of a chapter. This massive project is due at the end of the week.

2) A final copy-edit read-through of my short story “My Voice Is In My Sword,” which was originally published in WEIRD TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE (edited by Katharine Kerr & Martin H. Greenberg, 1994) and is being reprinted (together with a new interview) in APEX MAGAZINE‘s February 2013 issue. It’s now done and turned in.

3) Edits on my short story (technically a novelette) for Jonathan Strahan’s FEARSOME JOURNEYS (Solaris/S&S Summer 2013), a collection of original epic fantasy short stories. Due at the end of this week also.

Because of these deadlines, I plan to finish and post the Creole Part Two post — next week.

For this week, have a jpeg of the final cover for COLD STEEL. Note the cut on her cheek.

ETA:

I’ve edited the image below out and asking you to go to the image here (Cold Steel Final Cover).

Doggerland, the Ice Age, & the Landscape of the Spiritwalker novels (Spiritwalker Monday 28)

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Twenty thousand years ago Earth was in the grip of an Ice Age (technically we are still in an Ice Age, in one of the interglacial warming periods). Massive sheets of ice covered much of North America, northern Europe, and parts of north Asia and locked up so much water that the contours of the continents were different because the sea levels were lower. As  temperatures began to rise, the ice began to melt and the oceans to rise.

Back in the day, the island we call Britain was not an island but part of Europe. The English Channel did not exist, the Rhine River flowed a lot further south before it reached the Atlantic Ocean, and people lived and probably often thrived on what was then an expanse of land that now lies beneath the North Sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from ScienceDirect.

Coincidentally, the December 2012 National Geographic includes an article about this region, called Doggerland after the Dogger Banks, a shallow area in the North Sea well known to fishermen.

There is a fabulous map at the NatGeo site which I can’t post here, but you totally should go there and look at it (scroll up, for some reason the link deposits you at the end of the page). The graphic clearly displays how the expanse of land changes across time as the ice shrinks and the oceans rise. The shoreline in Spiritwalker falls somewhat close to what is shown here as the year 8000 B.C.E (Before the Common Era), although of course this mapping is educated guesswork.

When I “built” the landscape of Spiritwalker, I wanted enough ice that Britain would be attached to the continent but not so much that most of Europe would be too cold for extensive human habitation.

Europe’s Lost World: The rediscovery of Doggerland by V Gaffney, S Fitch and D Smith (CBA Research Report 160, 2009) provided a great deal of information by some of the scientists at the forefront of this research.

The book also provided a crucial set of figures depicting “Isopollen maps showing changes in vegetation over the postglacial” (in Europe). I needed to know how a late glacial landscape would differ from today’s European landscape in terms of climate zones and vegetation, not just shorelines. For instance, how far north could people farm? Would there be other geographical variations in vegetation zones? What could farmers grow? Some grains can grow in harsher conditions with shorter growing seasons; others need warmer, longer seasons. I never go into detail about issues like this although they are alluded to, and specifically if briefly mentioned in Cold Steel.

The city of Adurnam is actually in what is now the English Channel, south of Portsmouth, on the old paleolithic watercourse of the Solent River, more or less (despite being named after Portus Adurni, the Roman fort at what is now Portchester, a suburb of Portsmouth). The land controlled by Four Moons House lies east of London and Canturbury, in what is now the southern part of the North Sea but which in Spiritwalker is all land. For these landscapes I consulted references like the Journal of Quaternary Science, which has an entire journal volume dedicated to the Quaternary history of the English Channel.

I also wanted to know how melting would occur, how quickly vegetation could “migrate” north, and by what “mechanism” the trolls (the feathered people, that is, the intelligent descendents of troodons) might have survived into the “present day” of the novel while at the same time allowing for human migration into the Americas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from USGS.

The land bridge between Asia and the Americas was generally ice free during the Ice Age due to climate variables. Called Berengia, this land bridge had a significant population of mammoths and other now extinct mammals. Meanwhile, however, the massive North American ice sheet for a long time cut off Berengia from the ice free southern part of the North American continent.

E.C. Pielou’s excellent After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America (The University of Chicago Press, 1991) is a superb resource for a fantasy writer. It taught me about Berengia’s ice free corridor, conditions in newly deglaciated landscapes, and how plants return to those zones, which they can do remarkably quickly under the right circumstances.

It also taught me about refugia, which are ice free areas, large ones like Berengia and then also small ones: nunataks are ice free zones at high elevations like mountaintops and coastal refugia are small ice free sections of “coastal plain in the lee of high mountains” (Pielou). Some plant and animal species survived in refugia, surrounded by ice and thus cut off from other populations for long periods.

Refugia and nunataks gave me a rationale for the survival of my intelligent descendents of troodons. Also, the existence of coastal refugia made it possible to suggest that humans, after crossing ice-free Berengia either on foot or by boat along the coast, had coast hopped down a string of coastal refugia to the ice-free lower portion of North America (as they may have done in our world). Meanwhile, the ice would have kept the two populations, the small but expanding feathered people population in the north and east and the small but expanding human population in the west and south, from meeting until rather late in this prehistory at which point contact between outlying groups would have brought caution, conflict, cooperation, trade, and eventually yet more complex interaction.

It was easy to find information on Europe and North America–the above referenced books and articles are not the only resources I used–and far more difficult to find information on how the Ice Age affected, for instance, the climate of the Caribbean, something I needed to know for Cold Fire. I did what I could with maps of the sea floor in the Caribbean to consider how the ocean currents would work since the islands of the Caribbean Basin are larger in this alternate landscape, I posited that the hurricane season would be shorter due to water temperature changes, and I winged it a bit.

 

 

Image from Nature

I dredged around to find what I could about world regional climate variation–for instance, although my map of the Eastern Hemisphere doesn’t extend that far south, I posit that Lake Chad in the West and Central Sahel is huge because of the climate making west and central Africa wetter–but mostly I focused on areas I knew I was going to visit in the story.

 

Why Cat Sews (Spiritwalker Monday 30)

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(Note for the spoiler-wary: I have done my best to eschew spoilers, so if you haven’t read the books, there are vague references to plot herein, but I have tried to make this post basically spoiler-free except in the mildest way. If you have read the books, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.)

 

In chapter 1 of Cold Magic, our heroine Cat Barahal sneaks downstairs at dawn to return a book she’s not been given permission to remove from her uncle’s library. It’s clear she is well educated and from a family with a high degree of education for girls as well as boys.

While in the parlor, Cat notes that

(a)ll eight mending baskets were set neatly in a row on the narrow side table, for the women of the house–Aunt Tilly, me, Beatrice, her little sisters, our governess, Cook, and Callie–would sit in the parlor in the evening and sew while Uncle or Evved read aloud from a book and Pompey trimmed the candle wicks.

This sentence is meant mostly to describe the poverty of the household. I don’t go into detail about the arrangements, but the reader may guess that the family does not have enough money to heat and light more than one room in the evening.

Another way to show their straitened circumstances is to show that they sew almost all of their own clothing because they can’t afford to have their clothes made by others (the book is set before the era of inexpensive ready-to-wear clothing that can be bought off the rack in clothing stores). Mending is also a crucial part of economy, as well as refurbishing older clothes, re-purposing worn garments, and re-fitting them for a different person.

The mention of sewing, and how the family mostly makes their own clothes, also tells us something about the world, a time in which sewing, knitting, weaving, and other fabric crafts are not a luxury or a hobby but a necessity. People who could not afford bespoke clothing (made to measure by a tailor or dressmaker) had either to sew their own, buy used clothing at markets, or hope to obtain cast-off or stolen items by other means.

Sewing is mentioned in a second context as well:

Our governness, Shiffa, had been imported all the way from the Barahal motherhouse in Gadir to teach us girls deportment, fencing, dancing, sewing, and how to memorize large blocks of text so we could write them down or repeat them later.

Cat is portrayed as a sensible, practical girl who has learned a number of skills, some of which are specifically tailored to the role all children of the extended Hassi Barahal clan are expected to take up in service of the clan’s business, which is that of mercenaries, spies, and couriers. Fencing and memorizing text are skills clearly useful for spies and couriers. Fighting and spying are also skills that adventure novels highlight.

In book two, Cold Fire, Cat is thrown out into the wide world alone and far afield from the place she grew up. Basically, she finds herself with the clothes on her back and her sword as her only possessions. It would have been easy for me at this point to focus on Cat’s sword-craft.

Being confident with a sword is a useful competency for a young woman unexpectedly out on her own in an insecure and often dangerous world. Her ability to use the sword could become the most important and most visible of her skills as she continues her adventures.

But I did not want to imply that the skills most important to her ability to adapt to her new circumstances were solely or chiefly the skills that have long been culturally identified as “masculine,” such as fencing (fighting). I wanted to depict skills identified (in American society but by no means in all societies) as “feminine” as equally important to her survival.

Why? Because as a society we often tend to value the “masculine” over the “feminine.” “Masculine” is public and strong, “feminine” is private and (often) sexual, and frequently “feminine” concerns are defined as trivial and unimportant. Such definitions are cultural constructs, as is the relative value assigned to various skills and experiences.

For instance, is reading a “masculine” skill? In places and times when the literacy rate of men far outpaced that of women, or when boys were far more likely to be given an education than girls, reading was considered a masculine pursuit. It’s easy to forget that today, when one of the common assumptions in the USA today (again, this will be different in different places) is that girls somehow naturally tend to be better at reading than boys. This idea is pervasive now but in other times and places would have been considered radical or ridiculous.

What is Cat’s most important “possession?” What does she see it as? When Cat washes up in Expedition, she acts to secure the good will of the woman who has shown her hospitality by describing the skills she thinks would interest her host.

“Can I help in some way? I’m a good worker. I know how to sew, cook, read, and write. I must tell you, I have nothing, no coin, no possessions, nothing but my labor to offer you.”

Competency and willingness to work matter when it comes time for a character to adapt to new situations. Competent characters are more likely to adapt successfully regardless of whether their skills are culturally identified as masculine or feminine, of course, but as a society we tend to depict stereotypically “masculine” skills as more valuable or just tend to depict those skills at all, as if they are the only ones “people” will be willing to or interested in reading about.

In fact, a wide range of skills are necessary for societies to hold together, and in a fully realized world it is important to acknowledge more than a limited few.

In Cold Fire, Cat’s skill at sewing gives her a way to make a place for herself in her new circumstances. It gives her a bit of status and respect, and as well creates an interesting contrast to her old life because in the city of Expedition, sewing (as well as tailoring for both men and women) is a predominantly male profession. Additionally, she mends while conversing with other women (because hand-work like sewing is a job that can be done while listening and talking), and the ties she builds with other people are crucial to her success in being accepted in a new place.

Sewing helps her to survive.

As a character, Cat sews because in the cultural landscape and time she grew up, she would have learned how to sew. She sews well because sewing well is a challenge she relishes. Because she likes fashionable clothes that flatter her figure, sewing is the only way she has to fit herself in such clothing.

As a writer, I emphasize Cat’s sewing because it is true to the character and the time and  because it works well within the plot.

I emphasize her sewing because it allows me to give life to the world through details of daily life that intersect with the character and the plot rather than simply using discrete details pinned on like photos or backdrops. Sewing is a detail that helps to illuminate Cat: She is a very physical character, very active, and of course very talkative, but her facility at sewing also reveals that she is painstaking, likes to do things well, and that despite her talkative nature she is also a good listener.

Finally, I emphasize her sewing because I want to make a statement about the importance of all the different kinds of work that underpin human society, especially those that, in my experience, are too often brushed aside in the science and fantasy fiction that I love to both read and write.

Two Quick Questions re: (Spiritwalker Monday 31.1)

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A quick additional post today to ask you all a question. Two questions, actually.

 

1. I’m finishing up my read-through of the copy-edited manuscript (the copy editor did a very good job overall). I’ll be sending it back to Orbit in a week and therefore will be making any final changes to the manuscript in the new few days.

In COLD FIRE I included an Author’s Note in the front matter of the book that briefly touches on the basic world-setting of the Spiritwalker Trilogy, lists the days of the week and the cross-quarter days used by Cat in order to clear up any calendrical confusion, and talks a little bit about the creole used in Expedition.

For COLD STEEL I’m cutting the discussion of the creole (although I will be writing a post about it that I will also post in the Extras portion of this site discussing the Antilles creole  of my alternate Earth).

Technically, because of the way the layout works, I have a little bit of space remaining in the Author’s Note (because of what I have cut). I don’t have to add anything, but I can add another paragraph or two if need be.

So I wanted to know if you had any specific (world-setting and thus non-spoiler type) question you wish was answered in the Author’s Note that will be found at the front of the book, a short paragraph or two that can be read before starting the novel.

Anyone?

 

2. I have a number of weeks to fill in for the forthcoming Spiritwalker Mondays. A few posts are complete or almost complete and I have as well a list of posts/excerpts I would like to write. Plus a short story or two.

But let me ask you: Is there a particular question about the Spiritwalker trilogy you would like to ask me? If so, do so here, and I will answer it as one of the Monday posts.

On that same vein, as a reader of these Monday posts, are you most interested in posts that directly relate to the Spiritwalker books or are you also interested in more general posts about writing and worldbuilding that may only tangentially reference the Spiritwalker books, such as the one I posted today?

I appreciate your input.

Perception and Filtering (Spiritwalker Monday 31)

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I started this line of thought yesterday on Twitter while walking the dog in the park.

We are constantly making decisions about what is important. Decisions about what is important are also being made on a subconscious level simply about perception & what we intake from the environment around us, which we are perceiving and absorbing and filtering every moment of our lives on some level. In a similar way our unexamined cultural assumptions can cause us to do a lot of filtering we aren’t necessarily aware of.

We can’t absorb everything in our environment, so we block. But as writers and readers if we aren’t alert, we do the same without knowing it.

I think this question of perception and filtering is tricky. Maybe we walk a tight rope between being overwhelmed and being blinkered.

When my spouse and I got back to the parking lot with the dog, I headed for the side of the lot where we have parked the last few times we’ve been there. This time we had parked on the other side of the lot, and my spouse had to remind me that we were parked in a different place than usual.

I reflected how, in writing and even in reading, I tend to head for the familiar side of the story. Often if I don’t stop to think about it I just replicate patterns that are the most common in our culture and media, the things that I am told over and over again are the most real and authentic as currently defined and delineated by the society in which I live or, more properly, by the constant deluge of messages cascading down upon me through media, art, received knowledge, local patterns of human interaction, environment, and the very items easily available to me.

There are some aspects of me reverting to defaults that I think are okay and even in some ways potentially necessary to mental health. Everything can’t be brand-new. Everything can’t be a climb uphill in a blizzard of new information and re-situating myself in my environment.

If we aren’t grounded in some familiar aspects, then we’re just lost.

I remember reading many years ago a science fiction novel by Cecilia Holland which I really didn’t understand  at all because the author had done such a good job of making the aliens truly alien to my then-reading brain. I simply could not connect with the story. (I have no idea how I would react to the story now.)

But at the same time, I have to be careful. I have myself responded to stories or novels in which I find a character or culture to “feel” unbelievable only because it doesn’t match the stereotype that I may have based on my own narrow cultural assumptions about things as various as gender, history, language, identity, and money (and so on).

As a writer I must push back against and remain alert to places where I slide into the unexamined default. Last week’s post on Andevai’s character development is an example of how I started writing a book with the idea in my mind of a fairly stereotypical alpha male character who I later rethought and revised to turn into someone who I hope is more complex and not quite as stereotypical. (although readers’ mileage may vary)

What are your thoughts on this?

Can you think of an example in your own writing where you started with one idea and then realized that you were your own self maybe perpetuating an assumption or stereotype that you didn’t actually want to perpetuate?

Can you think of an example in something you’ve read where  your expectations weren’t met, or where what would have been a standard solution was undermined or overturned in a pleasing or unexpected way?

 

Andevai’s Character Development (Spiritwalker Monday 32)

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This is a post about the writing process. It contains spoilers for Cold Magic and Cold Fire. In it, I discuss choices I made and ways in which I changed my mind throughout the drafting process. If you don’t want spoilers (and you’ve not read the books) or if you prefer to interact with only the final product and not see into a writer’s head as she discusses the process or if you’re not interested in reading about the writing process, READ NO FARTHER.

If you’ve read the books (or don’t care about spoilers), and if you find process interesting, read on. iow, this is a post for those who like the commentary on DVDs. Me, I never listen to that commentary. I like to see the final product in its pristine state. However, I’m happy to offer the commentary for those who are interested.

In the original conception of Cold Magic, a mage comes to the house with a legal claim to marry the girl. This story has always had the “forced marriage” trope as part of the plot. A “forced marriage” is any story in which two people have to get married because of outside forces. One might have to marry to secure an inheritance while the partner needs to marry because because she or he is destitute. An accidental encounter might impel them to marry because of societal strictures or for convenience’s sake. A fraud marriage might turn into a real marriage. Or they might both be required to accept a marriage arranged by others for reasons of political or economic or family alliance. And so on.

Cat was always going to have to marry a strange man who walked into her house with an unshakeable claim to her.

And the man was always of higher social status than Cat and her household.
Continue reading →

I Need Your Vote on Cold Steel (Spiritwalker Monday 33)

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In honor of USA’s election day, a vote.

I am in the process of going through the copy edited manuscript for COLD STEEL. This is part of the production process that takes a book from manuscript to printed (or formatted e-book) finished copy.

After I write and revise a novel, I send the revised manuscript to my editor. She (or he) reads through it and requests editorial changes. We discuss any questions I have, and based on his/her comments and our discussion, I revise again. Typically, s/he will read it through one more time, and I’ll make a second round of changes, although usually this round deals less with major revision and more with details and those last bits of scenes that need burnishing.

This finished, final version enters production. One of the first things that happens is that the manuscript is sent to a copy editor. The copy editor’s job is to read carefully for grammatical and punctuation errors, for typos, for consistency in naming and details (does the character have brown eyes on page 34 and hazel eyes on page 213?), and for adherence to house style (Oxford comma, yes or no?). As well, a good copy editor will catch more subtle inconsistencies as well as confusing or illogical passages and may ask for clarification of descriptions or scenes that don’t quite make sense or aren’t communicated clearly.

The copy edit is also the last place the writer can, if necessary, made changes straight into the manuscript without having to worry about changing the line or page length. Once the typesetting and layout of a printed book is complete, it is expensive to change the layout if there are significant changes. Changes made at the proofreading stage are, therefore, frowned upon. That is why it is so important to make use of the copy editing stage to do any final cleaning up and polishing.

I have just completed my first pass through the copy edited manuscript.

Some writers have horror stories about egregiously bad copy editors who did such a bad job on the manuscript that the poor writer had to spend days “stetting” (stet==to let stand [the original]), and that certainly does happen. In my case, I have a very good copy editor, and the book you read will be better for her/his work.

But that’s not my question. My question is for you, the readers.

A brief aside: What follows may constitute an extremely mild spoiler, so if you hate and loathe all spoilerish things, don’t read on. However, if you don’t mind, no worries.

Continue reading →

Cat’s Voice & Deciding What Point of View to Use (Spiritwalker Monday 34)

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I once flippantly said that I would never ever write a novel in first person.

As a narrative style, first person is heavily and primarily dependent on voice. The narrator is right there, talking to the reader directly, and it has always seemed to me that there must be something distinctive in the voice which necessitates it being told in first person rather than third. That distinctiveness is there in addition to whatever unique circumstances within the narrative make it a story best told in first person.

◊

I interrupt this discussion to give a quick and simplistic definition of different types of point of view:

  • First person I walked down the street. When I turned around, I saw a tiger walking behind me.
  • Second person: You walk down the street and when you turn, you see the tiger walking behind you.
  • Third person limited point of view: She walked down the street. When she turned to look behind, she saw a tiger following her.
  • Third omniscient. She walked down the street and a tiger was walking behind her. (she hasn’t turned to see it yet, but the narrator can see it)

In first person, the “I” is the narrator. In second, the narrator is speaking to the “you.” In third person limited there is a (usually hidden) narrator but the story is being told solely through the eyes of the point of view character, who can only see and observe what she would naturally see and observe. In third omniscient, the narrator can see all.

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When I wrote the very first pieces of narrative that would eventually become the Spiritwalker Trilogy, I had trouble finding a voice that worked. My first attempts, all in third person, didn’t catch; they did not feel right.

I finally tried first person. The voice flowed far more smoothly in first than it had in third.

Here is the original first page of the novel. This is from the earliest draft, unrevised and (you’ll note) a different opening point than the novel has now. Also, notably, I changed Bee’s name from Bianca to Beatrice.

Bee and I sat in the window-seat with a blanket tucked over us to keep off the chill and the heavy curtains closed over our backs to hide us from anyone who might wander into the sitting room.  Our breath made steam flowers on the windowpanes.  Winter’s cold had come early; it was still a week away from year’s end.  Outside, snow glittered in the square and on the crowns of trees, although the streets had been swept clean.

“What did he say?” Bee whispered.  By the light of the street lamps lining the square outside, I could see her bat her eyelashes in that truly obnoxious way she had, the one that never failed to demolish the objections and reproaches of any adult caught in the beat of those dark wings.  “Cat,” she added breathlessly, “you have to tell me.”

“I swore I wouldn’t tell.”

She punched me on the shoulder.  Though she might look like a dainty little thing, Bee was a bruiser, really mean when she got roused.

“Ouch!”

“You earned it!  I’ve been in love with him forever – ”

“Two weeks!”

“Two months!”  She pressed a hand to her ample bosom, which was heaving under her tightly-laced, high-collared dress.  “I kept the truth of my desperate feelings to myself for fear – ”

“For fear we’d wonder why you’d so suddenly left off being in love with and destined to wed Maester Lukas of the lovely dark curly hair and turned your stalwart heart to the beauty of Maester David of the handsome black eyes.”

“Which you yourself admit are handsome.”

“Yes, he’s almost as pretty as you are, and well aware of it.  He’s the vainest boy I’ve ever met.”

“How can you say so?  The story of how his family escaped from the assault on Sawili by murderous ghouls is heart-breaking.”

“If it’s true.  Anyone can say what they like when there are no witnesses.“

“You just have no heart, Cat.  You’re heartless.”

“Thank the Lady!  The family is well-to-do, that’s certain.  A point in his favor.”

“You’re going to tell me what he said because otherwise I will pour a handful of salt into your breakfast porridge for the next month – ”

“Hush.”

I have good hearing.  I could hear footsteps coming from a mile away, or at least from the landing.  Bee froze with the hand to her chest and face raised – she was still glowering at me – posed unmoving like one of the living re-creations of the honored ancestors in a tableaux at the New Year’s Festival.

“Bianca?  Catherine?”  The voice of Servestra Artistina rose in volume as she entered the room behind us.  We had carefully turned down all the lamps to make it gloomy.  “Darlings?  It’s time to leave for the lecture.”

Although first person felt like a better fit for the story, I nevertheless I worried that first person wouldn’t be effective, that I couldn’t keep it up for an entire novel much less a trilogy, that the “voice” would become tired. I hadn’t yet learned that Cat, in fact, never gets tired of talking.

So I rewrote the scene in third person limited past tense because all my novels until then had been in third person limited past and thus it is the point of view I’m most comfortable with.

Cat and Bee sat in the window-seat with a blanket tucked over their skirts to keep off the chill and the heavy curtains closed over their backs to hide them from anyone who might wander into the sitting room.  Cat’s breath made steam flowers on the windowpanes.  Winter’s cold had come early; it was still a week away from year’s end.  Outside, snow glittered in the square and on the crowns of trees, although the streets had been swept clean.

“What did he say?” Bee whispered.

By the light of the street lamps lining the square outside, Cat could see her cousin flutter her eyelashes in that truly obnoxious way she had, the one that never failed to demolish the objections and reproaches of any adult caught in the beat of those dark wings.  “Cat,” she added breathlessly, “you have to tell me.”

“I swore I wouldn’t tell.”

Bee punched Cat on the shoulder.

“Ouch!”

Though she might look like a dainty little thing, Bee was a bruiser, really mean when she got roused.  “You earned it!  I’ve been in love with him forever – ”

“Two weeks!”

“Two months!  Ever since I had that dream of walking with him through the golden palace undersea – ”  She pressed a hand to her ample bosom, which was heaving under her tightly-laced, high-collared dress.  “ – I have kept the truth of my desperate feelings to myself for fear – ”

“For fear we’d wonder why you’d so suddenly left off being in love with and destined to wed Maester Lukas of the lovely dark hair and turned your stalwart heart to the beauty of Maester David of the handsome black eyes.”

“Which you yourself admit are handsome.”

“Yes, he’s prettier than you are, and well aware of it.  He’s the vainest boy I ever met.”

“How can you say so?  The story of how his family escaped from the assault on Sawili by murderous ghouls is heart-breaking.”

“If it’s true.  Anyone can say what they like when there are no witnesses.“

“You just have no heart, Cat.  You’re heartless.”

“Thank the Lady!  The family is well-to-do, that’s certain.  And his sisters are known to be very clever and maybe touched with a breath of magery .  All points in his favor.”

“You’re going to tell me what he said because otherwise I will pour a handful of salt into your breakfast porridge every morning for the next month – ”

“Hush.”

Cat had good hearing.  She could hear footsteps coming from a mile away, or at least from the landing.  Bee froze with the hand to her chest and face raised – still glowering at Cat – posed unmoving like one of the living re-creations of the honored ancestors in a tableaux at the New Year’s Festival.

“Bianca?  Catherine?”  The voice of Servestra Artistina rose in volume as she entered the dark room. “Darlings?  It’s time to leave for the lecture.”

Two things jumped out at me when I switched point of view.

First, third person had no “pop.” For me, it read flat.

Second, and more importantly, my attempt to write in third person limited felt and read (to me) as if I was instead writing in third person omniscient. I couldn’t get the voice into third person limited because, as I realized, the story had a narrator who was speaking, and that narrator is Cat. So I had to switch back to first person and trust that I would be able to fully “get” her voice right and hold on to it for three volumes.

In the end, writing a trilogy in Cat’s voice proved easy, especially as I discovered the “sound” of her voice. The rhythm of her speech is distinctive, she observes and speaks with a flavor all her own, and she is funny, often on purpose and sometimes inadvertently. That she loves to talk matters to the plot. Better yet, I enjoyed the challenge of filtering the story through her eyes and her words while leaving a little space for the reader to maybe see some things and some characters a little differently than Cat does.

The other thing I learned? Never say never.

The Omniscient Breasts

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After years of thinking about this issue, and inspired by a comment on Twitter about omniscient breasts, I have finally written a post on the male gaze, the female gaze, and sexualized women in fantasy and science fiction novels.

Imagine a female pov character is going along about her protagonist adventure, seeing things from her perspective of the world as written in third person. She hears, sees, considers, and makes decisions and reacts based on her view of the world and what she is aware of and encounters. Abruptly, a description is dropped into the text of her secondary sexual characteristics usually in the form of soft-focus Playboy-Magazine-style sexualized kitten-bunny-I-would-fuck-her-in-a-heartbeat lustrous-eyes-and-nipples phrases. Her breasts have just become omniscient breasts.

 

You can read the whole thing over at Hugo-award-winning weblog & fanzine SFSignal.