A Contest for My Tiny Little Cash Cow

So it's not really a cash cow, but while Air Pirates fights its way through the query trenches, "Pawn's Gambit" is still over there making money.
That's right, you guys. Those selfish requests I made? You totally stepped up. Thanks entirely to you, my first-and-only pro sale is going to be printed in Beneath Ceaseless Skies' Best of Year Two Anthology. And I'm going to pay you back the only way I know how: with a contest.

Leave a comment, and one of you will randomly win your choice of the following:

1. $5 for Amazon or Barnes and Noble (enough to buy, say, the anthology when it comes out in the fall...if you wanted).
2. A critique of a query letter and/or the first 10 pages of a novel.
3. A sketch of anything you like.

The winner will be announced Friday morning, July 29th.

I feel a little silly celebrating every little dollar this one story makes, but when you're in the query trenches, you gotta take what you can get, aye?

And anyway, as long as I'm going to have a patron, I'm glad it's Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The art, the stories, the editor...that magazine is a class act all the way. If you haven't already, go check it out (besides, it's free).

Using Tropes to Fix a Weak Plot

I am heavily plotting Post-Apocalyptic Ninjas (with Mechs!) in a vain effort to forget that, right now, agents are judging my soul. It's taking a lot longer than I think it should (the plotting, not the soul-judging), partly because my wife and I decided nine kids wasn't enough, and partly because Post-Apoc Ninjas is the novel I have to love more than the one I'm querying,* so I want the plot to be STRONG before I start writing.

And I've discovered a couple things: (1) my first idea is often a trope I'm dangerously familiar with and (2) the weak parts of my plot are where I used my first idea.

Take, for example, the Engineered Public Confession (warning: TV Trope link), in which the hero tricks the villain into admitting to his plan while he secretly records it. It was done in Minority Report, UHF, Monsters Inc, practically every episode of Murder, She Wrote, and it's #189 on the Evil Overlord List.

Does that mean we can't do it? HECK, NO! (Dude, Murder, She Wrote ran for twelve seasons!) The question is: how?

First: Identify the point at which the reader will recognize the trope. It could be as early as when the hero confronts the villain, or later when the villain begins to gloat, or (depending on how you play it) it might not be until the hero reveals his recording device. Finding the point is subjective, and varies depending on what genre you're writing (a reader of detective novels will probably see it coming long before a romance reader, for example), but do your best.

Everything before that point doesn't matter. It's what you do after that point that makes or breaks the trope.

Second: Decide how to play the trope. There are a number of ways you can do this:

1. Subvert it. We talked about this before. Subverting a trope means it looks like you're going to do the trope, then you twist it in some way. Maybe the recording device doesn't work, or the villain is genre savvy and doesn't fall for the trope, or the intended audience hears the confession and doesn't care (or agrees with the villain!). Don't make the mistake of thinking your twist is completely original, but it's a good way to keep the reader guessing, and it can take you down some unexpected plot paths.
2. Avert it. This means don't do the trope at all. The reader recognizes the trope is coming then...it just doesn't. There never was a recording device, or there was but the recording is never used. Sometimes averting a trope can be just as clever as a subversion. Sometimes it's just a different trope. But it's another way to go.
3. Play it straight. Wait, wouldn't that be cliche? That's always a danger, but even played straight, there are a million ways you can pull it off (TWELVE SEASONS!). The recording could be accidental. It might be witnessed instead of recorded. There might be obstacles keeping the hero from showing the recording to the public. (This, btw, is where TVTropes.org is most useful).

The trick is to keep it unpredictable. That point when the reader recognizes the trope? It's at that moment she creates expectations in her mind of how the story will play out. If you meet all those expectations exactly, you will (probably) have bored your reader. That's what you have to avoid.


* Yes, there's Cunning Folk. There are definitely things we like about Cunning Folk, but we're not convinced it's the novel to get us an agent, not without a significant amount of rewriting anyway. (When did we start using the royal we?) Anyway, it's not trunked yet, but neither is it a priority. It's just waiting for me to love it again.

Loincloths and the Undead

A brief selfish request (last one, I promise!): "Pawn's Gambit" made it to voting round two! So please, PLEASE, if you're on Facebook, vote for it here to get it into Beneath Ceaseless Skies' Year Two Anthology. (Please?!).

And now our regularly scheduled post:

So I'm not drawing every day, but Marie Criddle did convince me to join this group blog where we draw every week. I'll probably cross-post things here every once in a while, but if you're interested in random sketches by some fantastic artists (and some by me too), head on over to Anthdrawology.

Last week's theme was "Board Games." Check it out.

How to Use TVTropes.org

TV Tropes is a fantastic site, collecting every story trope humanity has ever done, along with examples. If you've got a spare month or two (not a typo), I highly recommend heading over there. If you've never been, let me give you some tips on how to use the site.

1) Let it depress you. Start with some trope you're writing, say air pirates. Follow the links to all the interesting, related tropes--especially ones you thought were original--like cool-looking airships or the villain's airborne fortress that threatens to rain cannonballs on the goodguys. Come to the realization that there is NOTHING original in your story AT ALL. Quit writing.

2) Let it encourage you. After you've quit writing for a few years, realize that nobody ELSE is original either. That makes unoriginality okay (within reason). The goal in fiction is not originality, but to take what's been done and make it fresh and interesting again. To make it YOURS.

3) Let it inform you. Now that the tropes are no longer soul-crushing, find your favorite trope to see how it has been handled before, how it's been subverted, and how famous the examples are so you know what you can get away with. Come up with subversions of your own, or mix it with other tropes in new and interesting ways.

4) Let it inspire you. Stuck for ideas? How about the origin story of a Judge-Dredd-style adventure hero and his possibly-insane sidekick facing an evil tribal circus in the African jungle. If that doesn't work, just hit the TV Tropes Story Idea Generator one more time until you find something you DO like! And if it sounds too lame or familiar, just add ninjas (or samurai or pirates or mecha or whythehecknot all of them). Because it's AWESOME.

Are any of you even still reading this, or did I lose you like 15 links ago?

Hook, Hook, Where is the Hook?

The hook is what you say when your friends ask, "So what's your book about?" It's how you tweet about your book. It is the fundamental concept behind the plot of your story, written in such a way as to make the reader say, "Cool, tell me more."

But how the heck do you distill 100,000 words into one sentence of cool? It's not easy. The internet has some good tips already, but I'm going to throw my own version into the mix because with something as subjective as a novel hook, you can't have too many ways to think about it.

I think there are 7 things the hook should have:

1. Protagonist. Who is the story about?
2. Antagonist. Who or what is against the protagonist?
3. Goal. What does the protagonist want to accomplish?
4. Stakes. What will happen if the protagonist does not accomplish their goal?
5. Conflict. What is keeping the protagonist from accomplishing their goal?
6. Setting. Where/when does the story take place?
7. Theme. What is the story's main subject or idea?

Figure out that information, then stuff it into a sentence. That's your core. The rest of your query, synopsis, and even your novel needs to be focused around that. For example:

A cowardly bookworm receives a package from his supposedly-dead mother, so he joins a crew of air pirates to find and rescue her.

This is the hook for Air Pirates. Can you see the elements? Some are weaker than others, but they're there:

Protagonist: cowardly bookworm
Antagonist: not specified, but implied in the word "rescue"
Goal: to rescue his mother
Stakes: his mother will be hurt or die (implied in the word "rescue")
Conflict: he doesn't know where she is, and presumably someone doesn't want her to be rescued
Setting: implied with "a crew of air pirates"
Theme: a coward overcoming his fears

As you can see, not everything has to be stated explicitly, but the more clear the 7 elements are, the stronger your hook will be. (There's a lot to be said for voice, too, but I'm not dealing with that here).

Also be certain nothing else is included. The more you try to cram in, the more questions are raised. In the example, I didn't tell you about the future-telling stone in the package because, although it is important to the story, it raises a lot of questions. And as far as the hook goes, it doesn't matter what's actually in the package, just who it came from, and that he thought she was dead.

So an exercise for you. Take a look at the (current) hook below for my Shiny New Idea,* and see if you can find the 7 elements in it. Which ones are weakest? How could they be made stronger? (I'm not asking you to do this in the comments, though you're welcome to, if you want).

A fugitive ninja must convince a young con-artist to take the throne, before the nobles kill everybody in civil war.

Then take a look at your own hook and do the same!


* Post-Apocalypse Dragon-Riding Ninjas (with Mechs!). Don't worry. It all makes sense in my head.

(This post is a remix of an older one) 

How to Use Proper Nouns in a Query

A lot of authors (myself included) love to tell you the names of everything and everyone in our stories. The people and places in it matter to us. I mean, when I talk about my wife and kids, it means so much more to me to use their names. I want them to mean the same to you.

But to you, they're nobody--just names. It's a common problem in query letters, where the author figures giving you a name for everything counts as "being specific." But it's not specific. It's actually confusing. Take this, for example:

Sam Draper needs someone non-threatening to consult a seer named Victoria, hiding among the monks at the Monastery of St. Jude -- he reckons Hagai Wainwright is as non-threatening as they come. Hagai agrees, intending to turn Sam in to Lt. Rafael Tobin at the first opportunity. But when Victoria says Sam is the key to finding his mother Anna, Hagai chooses Anna’s life over the law.

Kind of a lot to take in, right? And that's only a portion of the query. Imagine 2-3 more paragraphs packed with names like that. After a point, it gets hard to keep them all straight. Result? Confusion. Form rejection.

Using a proper noun is like taking a highlighter to your query. It can make important information pop out and your query easier to read. But used too much, it actually interferes with comprehension, to the point where it would be better to not name anything at all.

So then, in true analytical fashion, I give you 4 tips to using proper nouns in a query:

1. Any character, group, or place that is mentioned only once should not be named.
2. If possible, only the protagonist(s) and villain(s) should be named. No more than 3 names in a query!
3. For characters (etc.) that need to be mentioned more than once, but do not deserve a place of importance next to the main characters, try meaningful identifiers: "his mother," "a group of assassins," "her home planet."
4. If you must give a character's FULL name, do it once at the beginning.

Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on your story. But let's apply these tips to the example above:

Sam needs someone non-threatening to consult a seer hiding among the monks -- he reckons Hagai is as non-threatening as they come. Hagai agrees, intending to turn Sam in at the first opportunity. But when the seer says Sam is the key to finding his mother, Hagai chooses his mother’s life over the law.

If nothing else, it's more clear who the major players are now. If the seer came up again in the query, I'd probably give her name (but she doesn't, so I didn't). Otherwise, who cares about the name of the monastery she's at? And the specific officer Hagai goes to isn't important either, just that he goes to the law (or thinks about it).

Anyway, that's just my take. What do you think?

What to Do When the Critics Disagree

One of the more common questions from my post on when your critics are right was what to do when the critics disagree. When one person says your sad ending should be happy, but another says it's not sad enough, who's right?

A little background: Air Pirates is written with two POVs--the main storyline in Hagai's perspective and backstory told in Sam's past. I've gotten all kinds of comments on this.

(For the record, ALL of my beta readers are awesome people who get it. Not a single jerk has read this novel. They just differed in their opinions of where it should go.)

• "I love the two storylines. It never gets boring."
• "I like both Sam and Hagai, but switching back and forth like this is hard. What if you took out Sam's story and made it it's own novel, like a prequel?"
• "Sam is awesome, but I thought Hagai was annoying. Can it just be about Sam?"
• "I LOVE Hagai, but Sam is too much. Can it just be about Hagai?"

If I were to follow this advice, I would simultaneously have to: (1) remove Hagai's story, (2) remove Sam's story, (3) write a novel each for Hagai and Sam, and (4) change nothing.

You can see where that might be difficult.

But the purpose of critiques is not to fix the novel for you. Critiques give you an idea of how people are responding to your novel. It's up to you how you address that. To the tips!

1. FOLLOW YOUR GUT. You know your story best, and you can usually tell which comments resonate with you and which don't. When it was suggested I split the novel in two, I debated it a lot, but ultimately decided it would turn the story into something I didn't want to write. That freed me to focus on what I would change.
2. LOOK AT THE ROOT OF THE COMMENT. Even though their advice was contradictory, all of my beta readers were correct. I just had to go deeper than the advice and look at the reason behind it. Hagai was annoying sometimes, and Sam was sometimes too much, but removing one or the other as a main character wasn't an answer I liked. Knowing the root cause, however, I could fix the real issue: make Hagai more proactive; make Sam less of a Mary Sue.
3. LOOK FOR THE TRUTH IN EVERY COMMENT. So I ignored the suggestion of splitting the novel in two, but did I ignore the comment entirely? Heck, no. There was something that reader didn't like about switching back and forth, and it was my job to figure out what it was. Realizing that made me take a cold, hard look at both storylines to figure out what made "switching" difficult for some people. I shortened some chapters, deleted others, and focused the tension so each storyline could stand on its own, resulting in a far less boring story overall.

It looks cut and dried, but believe me, it wasn't at the time. Analyzing critiques is hard work (and a good reason to limit how many beta readers you have at one time), but Air Pirates is a lot better for it. Good enough? Heck, I don't know. But definitely better.

What do you do when critics disagree?

The Great Criddle-Heine Art Swap

The great K. Marie Criddle approached me to exchange sketches, which does all kinds of nonsense to my ego (e.g. "Your ego's so fat, it uses Wilson Fisk's socks for finger puppets"). ESPECIALLY since I failed to win a Criddle sketch from her recent contest. It's like I won the contest for free!

Well, not free. I got to draw this:

This is Miss Hannah P. Bartleby, the main character of a manuscript Marie is revising for her agent. She's not the most graceful of young ladies, but she can be a mean duelist with that grappling hook when she wants to (that's right, it's for DUELING).

And for me, Marie drew a picture of Ren from Air Pirates:

He's a machinist who took care of Sam for a number of years (before Sam ran off to become a pirate). His face and arm got kinda messed up in the war, but he can still wield a mean sledgehammer.

Speaking of Air Pirates, the YA revision is finished (did I mention that yet?) and in the hands and Kindles of some betas. Also the query is being worked on, even though I plan to do at least one more revision/beta cycle before I call it finished. I'm getting excited, but that always happens in this stage. Talk to me again in 6-8 months when I either have a new idea for revision or have decided nobody wants a steampunk adventure about fortune-telling stones, air pirates with mechanical arms, mothers who were presumed dead...

HOW COULD NOBODY WANT THAT?!

Answers the Second: Randomness and Torture

Matthew Rush asks: Would you rather be Jirayah (Pervy Sage) or Kabuto (the dork with the glasses)?

I can't say I approve of Jiraiya's choice of hobbies or Kabuto's choice of employer, though they are both pretty powerful. But any way I look at it, Jiraiya's got one thing going for him that Kabuto doesn't. Sage Mode:

Susan Kaye Quinn asks: Favored platform: Mac or PC?

I would love a Mac. Thank you for offering.

Every time I buy a new computer, I have to make this decision, and it always comes down to the same thing: Macs are expensive, and PCs have all the open source software I want.

Preferred literary success: Bestseller or Hugo?

Oy. Fine, if I have to choose, I go with the one that gets more readers: bestseller.

Apocalypse: Super virus or sentient computers?

Neither. The world is destroyed by robot pirates and zombie ninjas (also dinosaurs).

Awesomeness: Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

For the purposes of this exercise, we will pretend George Lucas stopped fiddling with Star Wars in 1983. With that in mind, the most awesome trilogy ever is ISTHATSAMUELL.JACKSONINANICKFURYMOVIEZOMGITIS!!!

Caped Guy: Batman or Superman?

Batman, hands down. Did you know he has a file on every superhero's weakness, just in case he ever has to fight them? The guy's a genius.


Asea asks: What's your favorite local food?

Market food: fried pork and bananas, dim sum and pork dumplings, chicken satay, rotee, fried potatoes... (Hm, just got a Mary Poppin's song stuck in my head).

If your characters (from your various WIPs) were caught in a zombie apocalypse, would they make it?

Heh. Hagai would be the first to go, though Sam and Ren might last a while (good fighters, and I bet the zombies would have a hard time storming their airship). Suriya, on the other hand, should have no problem. She has a tendency to blow things up when she's mad.

Do you ever make up your own board/card games? How about twists to existing ones? Do you play games in combination (e.g. you play Monopoly, and the profits from it fund expansion in Puerto Rico)?

Before I focused my creative energies on getting published, I designed games all the time. As for twisting existing ones, we don't do it often (I tend to assume the game balancers did their job well), but we do it to our most familiar games. We've played Settlers with a blind setup (i.e. flip the numbers over after you place your settlements) or with a 12-sided die, and we once played Ticket to Ride: World Domination, in which we combined a board of regular TtR and TtR:Europe. I don't like Monopoly much, but I love your combination example. Sounds like it would be fun for a tournament or a gaming marathon.


Thanks again for your questions and for putting up with my answers. Don't forget our special guest artist on Friday!

The Real Reason I Outline

I'm nearing the end of The Great Air Pirates YA Revision of 2010, and I discovered something. For years now, I thought I outlined because I'm an obsessive compulsive planner. And I am. But the real reason I outline, as it turns, is because when I draft I'm a wimp.

See, in Air Pirates there's this character that dies. I mean, a lot of characters die, but there's this one in particular. I really liked this character, but as long as they live, the protagonist has no motivation for change. Not a very interesting story.

So I killed the character in the outline. It was easy. Just a quick sentence: "So-and-so dies. Protagonist goes nuts." No problem.

But when I got to that spot in the draft, I froze. Did they really HAVE to die? Did I have to write the words that killed them? I didn't want to do it, and I was sad when it was done. But I did it because I outlined it that way, and I couldn't think of a better solution (also I didn't want to re-outline half the book just to accommodate the suddenly-living character).

That was in the first draft. Then the means of this character's death had to change for the YA version, and I had to kill them AGAIN. It took me like an hour just to type the words that made it real, and if I hadn't planned it, I wouldn't have done it.

So there you go. I don't outline because I'm afraid to wing it. I outline because, if I didn't, my characters would just win all the time. While that's lots of fun for me (I do like my characters), anyone I swindled into reading it would get bored fast. And since my characters can't pay me, I guess that makes my choice easy.

Poll: How Do You Feel About Maps?

Everyone has their own opinion on maps in a novel. Some people despise them, considering them a cheap form of infodump. Others will buy a book just because it has a pretty map, regardless of what the book is about.

Of course it depends on the quality of map and how (or whether) the story uses it, but in general how do you feel about maps?


Personally, I LOVE them. I can't read Lord of the Rings without flipping to the map every time a place is mentioned.

But because of that, I'm kind of a map snob. I'm disappointed if the book takes place in a single undetailed location, or in places that aren't even on the map (I'm looking at you, Name of the Wind). I get upset if the map is wrong (it's happened!). And while I do love flipping back to the map, I don't want to HAVE to.

My favorite maps do four things:

1. They are not required to follow the action (i.e. they can be skipped).
2. They include most important locations mentioned in the book.
3. They don't include too many places that AREN'T mentioned in the book.
4. They enhance the experience for those who want to study them.

I have a map for Air Pirates (I don't see how you could write fantasy without one), but I don't show it to my beta readers. So far only two have asked if there was a map, and nobody said they were lost without one. I take that to mean I'm doing a good job. Though if this thing gets published, you better believe I'll be pushing for a map. I mean, assuming I get any say at all.

What are some of your favorite (or least favorite) maps? Why?

Talk Like an Air Pirate 2: All the Swears

Heyya, mates, Sam Draper here. Adam asked me to teach you shiners how to curse like a skyler, so here we go, aye? (And if you're thinking, "Oy! Who's this swabber, and what's he flailing about?" You oughtta read this first. It might keep you from getting scatty.)

First off: bleeding. I'll be bled if I know where this came from -- maybe some monk story -- but it's bleeding everywhere. I don't give a drop if you're a skyler or a groundhog: you can't bleeding swear without bleeding 'bleeding.'

'Piking' is another good one, but it's usually reserved for when you get thrown over by a pack of sodding dog-lickers. As in, "You gave me half what this junk's worth, you piking bastard!" If you ain't being cheated, I reck 'sodding dog-lickers' is good too, aye?

You'll be needing oaths too. 'Flack' and 'flot' are okay, being words for human muck. Though like as not you'll be wanting a pronoun in there: bleed it, pike it, soddit (or 'suit it,' if you're aiming at respectable -- not likely in the skies), and tullit (for when you just don't drink the wash some loony is pouring).

Now that's all good and well for your general swearing, but if you're gonna mix words with an air pirate, you'll need something a bit more direct. Lucky for you, skylers' got no end of offensory insults.

Someone too smart for their own good is a nummer. The opposite (with less smarts than a tumor on Tuesday) is a nimbus. A piker what stabs you in the back is a bleeding merc. And for govvies what leech off their constituents, we call them a willyguv. Then you got your maggot, blighter, dog-licker, bullock, swabber, rat orphan, coal monkey, or feckless lump, for when it don't matter what you call the gunner. And feel free to make up your own, aye? All the best pirates do.

I reck that's good for now. I'll be back later, see if you got any questions for me, breezy?

Air Pirates: Plan B

Heyya, mates. Sam Draper here again on account of Sunday's another Talk Like a Pirate Day. Like last year, Adam asked me to give you folks a lesson on speaking skyler. He...


Okay, you know what? I can't do this. I haven't written anything remotely Air Pirate-y in over 6 months. I've totally forgotten how to speak skyler.

But it's a good opportunity to tell you what's been going on with the novel, aye? (And for those of you whose hopes were dashed just now, I promise I'll let Sam write a post when I've got my head in the world again. Breezy?). First things first though. I've gotten a lot of new readers since the last time I talked about this novel, so here's the idea:

Hagai, a cowardly bookworm and the shame of his ship-building father, receives a package from his mother -- the mother who's been dead for 18 years. The package is a stone that gives him visions of the future. It leads him to an air pirate named Sam, and to more adventure than he ever really wanted. (More in my original query, here).

I've gotten no offers yet obviously, though I have gotten some partial and full requests (which is way better than last time). And while I still have material out there awaiting a response, it's time to execute Plan B.

Multiple people -- including an agent or two -- have said this story feels like YA. It's not (Hagai is 21, Sam a few years older), but it could be with a little work. Just a couple rewritten chapters and a few overhauls (though when I first thought of this plan, I thought I'd only have to change Hagai's age, which required no rewriting at all).

Point is, I'm excited. Really the only way to get over rejection is to work on something new!

The Ocean

I'm sick, so today's post is short. This picture is from our recent trip to the US, in which my son sees the ocean for the first time (that he remembers).

"That's the ocean, Isaac. When you grow up, the Earth will be covered in it, and you'll be the most famous pirate in the world."

That Deeper Meaning Nonsense

When people admire art,* they often want to know what the artist meant by it. I get that. I do it myself. But honestly I don't really like "explaining" my art.

* I'm including books in this.

Part of it is plain old fear. If I have to explain it, it means I didn't do a good job of it, right? Or what if I explain it, and they don't like the deeper meaning of it, and therefore don't like the work? Orson Scott Card's Homecoming Saga is really thought-provoking science fiction, for example, but I know people who stop liking it when they find out it's patterned on the Book of Mormon.

Should that matter? Should the author's interpretation of what they wrote affect MY interpretation?

Shortly after it was published, someone wrote a review of my story "Pawn's Gambit". He really liked it (and I was bouncing for a few days after reading it), but here's what he got out of it:

We come to understand the true meaning of family, of love, of sacrifice. We have all had our differences with the ones we love, but even when we dislike our family we still do whatever it takes.

When I read that, I was all ==> O_o.

I mean, I see how he got that out of the story, but I can't say that's what I was trying to say. I can't say I was trying to say anything, really. It was just a fun adventure.

Does that invalidate his opinion? This is what the story meant to him. And like I said, he's not pulling it out of thin air. There IS family, love, and sacrifice in the story. There IS a father trying to rescue his daughter, even though his daughter wants nothing to do with him.

And who says I didn't mean all that, at least subconsciously? Fatherhood is something that's very dear to my heart, and a common theme in many of my favorite movies. So if it comes out in what I write -- even when I don't intend it -- I'm not surprised.

So what matters more? The author's intention, or what the reader brings into the text? Have you ever changed your opinion of a story because you found out the author didn't mean at all what you thought?

More Answers, in Which Ancient Histories are Revealed

L. T. Host asks: What the deuce IS a jelly baby?

Like little, chewy babies, but you eat them!

I'm curious which PART of the CA coast-- if you're in the middle-ish, here's hoping it warms up before Fiance and I take a trip up there mid-July. If you're down south, you picked a good time to come. This is the NICE weather everyone talks about when they talk about CA. :)

We were in Southern California (Orange County and, briefly, San Diego). So yeah, pretty much the definition of Perfect Weather.

I'm also curious why you picked Thailand?

The simple answer is because my wife Cindy is Thai. The complex answer involves mission trips, a little mysticism, and a DTR (not in that order). We could talk about it over coffee, except I don't drink coffee. (Seriously though, you can e-mail me or something if you want the longer story).

C. Michael Fontes asks: What prompted you to become foster parents in Thailand?

The short answer to this one is the mysticism: God called us. The less short answer: Cindy's had a heart for orphans since she was young. When we decided to be overseas missionaries, we had a vague idea of running an orphanage/planting a church in whatever country we ended up in. But after we got here, that all kind of changed.

Emmet asks: In a no-holds-barred fight who would you rather be, the Emperor or the Lord Marshal (obviously the answer is Riddick, but other than that)?

Let's take a look:

The Emperor's prescience pretty much cancels out the Lord Marshal's coolest abilities. Plus, you know, it's not like he has a pretty face to protect. As long as Darth Vader's not around, I gotta go with Palpatine.

Anica is a great name, but if there had been no vetoing process (Cindy), what would have been on her birth certificate?

The only girl names I tried to push were Anica and Serenity (the latter being your suggestion, as I recall). But if I'd had a boy, and no wife to stop me, he'd be either Morpheus or Optimus Prime.

Would you rather write an amazing book (LOTR caliber) that doesn't get published until after your death, or a shite book that gets made into a bunch of movies (Twilight), and all your friends pat you on the back and say "great job" but then ridicule you on message boards around the internet, and you will have no other books to redeem yourself? 

So either way my career is depressing and full of rejection? In that case, give me the movies.

Would you rather give up cheese for the rest of your life, or be a vegan for a year? 

Definitely vegan. Uh... vegans can still eat bacon, right?

Bane of Anubis asks: How could you choose Aliens over Dragons? :P 

[Bane is referring to being a finalist in Nathan's contest, wherein I was a total jerk and voted Josin over him.]

See, Bane, like any good American I assumed my vote didn't really matter. How was I to know you'd tie? As soon as I get my time machine working, the first thing I'm going to change is my vote, I swear.

jjdebenedictus asks: Do these jeans make my butt look big? 

I can honestly say, from my point of view, they do not.

Myrna Foster asks: Do you have any other family over in Thailand?

Me? No. But Cindy's dad lives in Bangkok. She also has approximately one thousand aunts, uncles, and cousins scattered throughout the kingdom. One of them drew me a family tree once trying to explain it all. It took him like half an hour. I don't remember any of it.

What do you have in your writer's "drawer?"

You mean the stuff you'll never, ever read? Folks who've been around here a while will remember my first novel, Travelers, which got trunked after 60 straight rejections. Also before Pawn's Gambit, I wrote and submitted another Air Pirates short story to BCS, trunking it because it just wasn't working. And before that there was a short story that would eventually evolve into my current WIP, Cunning Folk. That one...is not very good at all.

Do you really own an umbrella chair?

.......no.

And lastly, Carrie says: I'm relatively new to your website. I'm curious to hear on what are your thoughts in regards to writer's block.

Which I'll answer on Friday. Thank you, everyone, for your questions! I enjoyed answering them. Hopefully you enjoyed it too.

Fantasy Slang: How to Not Scare Off the Reader

You know where slang comes from. You've built a dictionary for your made-up culture. Now how do you teach the reader this new slang without overwhelming them? Also without resorting to cheap tricks or boring exposition? Here are some guidelines I use.

If the meaning of the slang is obvious from context, no explanation is needed. Don't give it. Seriously, the reader doesn't need every phrase explained. Often context is enough:

"I'm sorry. About... about what I said..."
Sam waved it off. "Nothing. Birds in the wind."

If the meaning is unnecessary to following the story, don't give it. Have you ever read the poem "Jabberwocky"? Half the words don't make any sense at all. A couple you can figure out from context (frabjous, galumphing), but most you just don't need to know (slithy toves, borogroves, tulgey wood, and pretty much everything else). And that's okay. You can understand the story fine without them.

If the meaning is not necessary yet, don't give it. Not every term has to be explained right away, even if it's important later. When it becomes important, the reader won't mind you stopping for a paragraph to explain it. In Air Pirates for example, the word 'jacks' is introduced on p. 15 (see excerpt below):

B'Lasser flashed a foot of sharp steel.

“Oy, oy, oy!” Dean came running out from the back, hands waving. “No blood! You gotta fight, you take it down the road. Else I call the jacks in here.”

There's a little context, but the full explanation doesn't come for another 25 pages. Yet nobody's ever complained.


When you finally do need to explain it, there are a number of ways you can do it -- more than I list here, certainly:

1) Include a character who doesn't "get" the slang and needs it explained, or who can at least identify with the reader's confusion:

Hagai looked around. "What did you do with my friend?"

"Easy, lad," Sam said. "I just showed him the way out. I didn't pack him either, if that's what you're flailing about. 'Sides, man like him, float in the dark he would."

Hagai didn't know what that meant. "So... you didn't kill him?"

"Nay, Gai, I didn't kill him." Sam's smile mocked him.

2) Use context. You know that first tip, where if the context is there already you don't need to explain it? It works both ways: if you need to explain it, add the context. For example, "grubbing":

Normally, if Sam wanted a snack, he would've just grubbed it off the shelf while no one was looking. But Crike Cappel, who'd been grubbing a lot longer than Sam had, taught him that he had to establish “legitimacy.”

3) When all else fails, tell. You don't want to do this often, but don't be afraid of it either. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?

Fitch came back a few minutes later with the keys. As he opened Sam's cell door, Sam said, "Where's the guard?"

"Sleeping," which meant he was unconscious.

I know I've been talking about slang, but these modes of introduction work for any made-up terms in any genre. (Though obviously speculative fiction will have more of it).

What else? What other methods have you used or seen to introduce foreign terms without being intrusive?


DON'T FORGET! There's still a contest going on for a free book. Link to the contest post for a chance to win. Read Pawn's Gambit to improve your chances. Contest ends Thursday at noon!

Fantasy Slang: Building a Lexicon

Using the origins of slang I talked about last week, I came up with 120 slang terms and over 50 different idioms for the Air Pirates world. Sound like a lot of work? Well, it was and it wasn't. I didn't do it all at once, but over a long period of time (actually all 19 months I drafted the novel).

It was very hard at first, but once I got some patterns down and got a feel for the air pirates' language it became easier. Here are some things that helped:

UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURE
Many of the methods I outlined last week require an understanding of the culture involved. Metaphors arise from what a culture is most familiar with: a farming culture will use farming metaphors, an underwater civilization will use ocean metaphors, etc. Jargon that has transitioned to mainstream slang will be dependent on the subculture from which it came (in my case, pirate culture).

The Air Pirates' world is one of airships, pirates, and the ever-present fear of dark water. Sam talked about this some in his Talk Like a Pirate Day post. Knowing the foundations of their metaphors made it easier to come up with them. Then I often evolved or shortened them (thus obscuring my sources), but not always. Modern slang is a mix of phrases whose origins are immediately apparent and phrases whose origins have been forgotten. I wanted the Air Pirates' language to be similarly mixed.

TAKING IT ONE STEP AT A TIME
Don't try to come up with 100 idioms at once. That'll drive you nuts, and you won't even use half of them.

While writing Air Pirates, I mostly came up with slang words as I needed them. Sometimes I thought, "I feel like they'd have a special word for this. But what?" But mostly I came up with my own slang whenever I found myself using modern idioms and cliches. This had the added benefit of wiping my manuscript (relatively) clean of cliches.

KEEPING TRACK
Every time I made up a new slang term or idiom, even if I didn't end up using it, I wrote it down in a separate document. Sometimes I'd make up an idiom only to cut it as part of a larger revision. But I still had the idiom saved in my "Pirate Slang" document for use later.

Then every time I needed a slang term or idiom, I'd skim through the existing ones to see if anything fit. Sometimes I'd use a word I already came up with, sometimes not. If nothing else, skimming the old words made it easier to come up with something new that fit the existing pirate lexicon.

And that's pretty much it. Next time I'll talk about how to introduce all this odd slang to the reader without overwhelming them.

Meanwhile, have you ever made up slang for a story? How did you do it?


DON'T FORGET! There's still a contest going on for a free book. Link to the contest post for a chance to win. Read Pawn's Gambit to improve your chances. Contest ends May 6th!

Fantasy Slang: Origins of Slang, Part II

Language evolves in interesting ways, often without its speakers being aware of it. Last time I talked about how slang comes from euphemisms, metaphors, and reverse meaning. Today, let's talk about jargon, shortening, and swearing.

JARGON
Technically, jargon isn't slang. The purpose of jargon is to allow its users to speak more precisely about technical issues in a given field (usually). Slang, on the other hand, is often used to exclude non-members from a group. But the two are closely related, and jargon can become slang over time as knowledge of a field becomes more widespread (e.g. everyone knows what it means to download something now, but in 1980 the word was as obscure as "SNMP" is today).

Jargon can also take the form of a thieves' cant or rhyming slang, where the intent is to exclude. As languages evolves, and these code langauges become more generally known, they can become slang for a whole culture.

Just like their real-world, seaborne brethen, air pirates have their own jargon, some of which has passed to the public. A ship's brig is called the klack (though this meaning now means any prison). Crewmen might be navvies, turners, swabbers, stokers, machinists, gunners, or just plain skylers. And any of those terms have passed into the language as metaphors; for example, a swabber is a generally derogatory term for someone with a crap job.

SHORTENING
Language often evolves to make things quicker and easier to say, to the point of obscuring the origin of the phrase in question. "Goodbye" was once "God be with ye". Internet acronyms occasionally find their way into spoken speech. And no one knows what the heck "okay" used to mean, but nearly every language uses it now.

Almost everything is shortened in the Air Pirates' world. I mentioned the term "baron" last time. And hardly anyone actually says "spot of blue in the dark;" they're more likely to say "a spot in the dark," "a spot of blue," or even just "a spot." Likewise, mercenaries are mercs, anchors are anchs, and centimeters are cents. (That last one actually comes from the Thai language, where shortening words is practically a national sport).

SWEARING
Making up swear words is really, really, really hard. That's because swearing is only effective because we decide it is so (or have been taught so). There is nothing inherent about swear words that make them worse than any other word -- only the meaning we assign to them. Most made-up swear words sound silly to new readers because they have assigned no meaning to the word.

If you decide to make up swear words, imagine what kinds of things would offend members of your culture. References to sexuality, feces, or blasphemy work for almost any culture. But if your culture is particularly fantastic, you might decide other things (i.e. things that are normal to us) are vulgar to them.

I didn't get too creative with the swearing in Air Pirates, preferring instead to choose words that sounded like swear words but weren't. Words like flack and tullit. I also borrowed words from British slang like sod and bleeding, once again giving a feel of swearing without actually being offensive to the (American) ear.

Using euphemisms, metaphors, reverse meaning, jargon, shortening, and swearing, you should be able to come up with a number of phrases to make your made-up culture feel more real. It is a lot of work, but you don't have to do it all at once. I'll talk more about that next time.


DON'T FORGET! There's still a contest going on for a free book. Link to the contest post for a chance to win. Read Pawn's Gambit to improve your chances. Contest ends May 6th!

Fantasy Slang: Origins of Slang, Part I

A while ago, I talked about a method to make up fantasy languages that don't sound made-up. Today I want to talk about slang, where it comes from, and ways to make up your own. If you've read Pawn's Gambit (or this old post), you know the Air Pirates' world has tons of slang. These posts are a taste of how that evolved.

Slang is a bit harder to come up with than fantasy languages. A foreign word can be completely made up and still work, but slang often uses recognizable words in unusual ways. Done wrong, it makes the world feel silly. But done right, it not only makes a fantasy culture feel deeper, it can provide clues to the culture itself.

EUPHEMISM
Slang often arises as a roundabout way of discussing harsh or taboo topics. For example, English has a thousand euphemisms for sex and death. Kicked the bucket. Knocked her up. Sleeping with the fishes. Sleeping with each other. And so on.

In the Air Pirates' world, a pirate might "rack" a girl, especially a "woman of easy virtue" (prostitute). Knockers don't kill people, they pack them (why don't they knock them? I don't know. Language is funny like that).

METAPHOR
Metaphors -- idioms, really -- are slang's cultured cousin. "Bite the bullet" used to be quite literal, but became a metaphor for doing anything painful or difficult. Criminals want to stay "under the radar," even if they've never flown a plane in their lives.

Metaphor is a powerful tool to make up slang unique to a fantasy culture. There's no radar in the Air Pirates' world, but a good pirate knows to stay "in the clouds" even if they're not in an airship. A "spot of blue in the dark" literally refers to ocean without dark water, but mostly means hope in the midst of trouble.

REVERSE MEANING
Remember when "bad" meant cool? How about sick or phat? Sometimes slang is not a new word, but an altered meaning of an old one.

I didn't use this method very often in the Air Pirates' world -- I tried, but the results often sounded contrived. One that worked (for me, anyway) was the term "baron" for a shopkeeper. The idea was that "robber baron" used to be a derogatory term for a merchant who cheated you. Over time it came to be a common title for all merchants, good or bad. When it was shortened to simply "baron", it became almost a term of respect, like a title.


That's enough for now. Next time I'll talk about jargon, shortening, and swearing. Meanwhile, you tell me: where have you seen slang done well? Done poorly? Do you think they used any of these methods, or something else?


DON'T FORGET! There's still a contest going on for a free book. Link to the contest post for a chance to win. Read Pawn's Gambit to improve your chances. Contest ends May 6th!