Inland, Dreaming of Waves

So you think you know how to be a writer, eh?

I’ve been reading The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova. I’m really enjoying it.

Caveat: I have no intention of ever writing science fiction. I do intend to write a fantasy novel someday, once I get all these ideas for short stories and poems on paper, but sci fi? No, doesn’t particularly interest me.

This book is great for simple explanations of how to write a story, conflict, etc.

In my twenties I got a master’s degree in English/Creative Writing. I don’t recall anyone talking much about conflict, or what a story was—they were all groovy experimental writers, and I wanted to be just like them.

And I even published my groovy experimental short novel in the 1990s. It’s called Microgravity, and it’s book number 3,000,000 on Amazon. Come on, you know you want to check it out.

I’m not sure I’m past all that, but I do know the collection of stories I wrote is relentlessly mainstream. It’s a girl’s coming of age story, all about sex and family and abortion. And whether keeping silent is the same as telling a lie.

It you had met my family, you’d understand. A few hours with the passive-aggressive Partins, and all would be clear to you. Not that I’m criticizing them because I’m so wonderfully assertive—I’m not. But if I can’t bitch about my family in a blog, then when can I?

It was great fun writing these stories. I drew many of my characters from people I knew in high school, borrowing a hairstyle here, and somebody’s red apple cheeks there (face cheeks, you pervert!), and divvying myself up among the main characters. I love Natalie because she’s so impulsive and has her head in the clouds, but my favorite is Deirdre, the perpetual outsider, obsessed with xeriscape, and hopelessly in love with a man who’s hopelessly in love with her best friend and sleeps with every woman on campus.

I swear, they’ll get together someday.

But for now, in my collection, Deirdre’s function is to comment on Natalie. People who read the 5 or 6 Deirdre stories say, “But they’re not really stories.”

OK, even I know enough about conflict to know that. Think of them as interludes. Commentary. My own personal amusement.

To get back to the sci fi book, it does have some useful exercises that I’m going to apply to some of these stories. For example, Bova says that every character should have an emotional conflict: self vs. duty, for example. Natalie’s conflict is partly freedom vs. family, partly love dreams vs. career dreams.

posted by Price of Silence @ 10:13 AM