Category Archives: Musings

May 7, 2013

Craft v Platform

By J Michael Melican

There is a tension in some, it would appear, between two apparently opposing forces: the practice of one’s craft, and the building of one’s platform.

I’ve discussed this before, but really, I have never thought of this – what I’m doing here – as ‘platform’. The concept that blogging, maintaining a site, setting up a page, being active on twitter, attending cons… that all of that could be merely some effort to ensnare potential readers, that always struck me as slightly nefarious. Dishonest at worst, a mistake of priorities at best.

I always figured on doing all those things because I like doing them. I like here tapping away and throwing my words out into the churning void of bandwidth and opinion that is the internet. I liked going to Genrecon and meeting a community of people who shared my passions, or gave me new insights into passions related but different, or even new insights into my own. I like interacting with people on Twitter, on Facebook, wherever else it might be. So I hadn’t really felt the tension between these things and the craft of writing, other than the obvious mismanagement of time that could occur.

But Jane Friedman’s post on Writer Unboxed got me thinking about this tension anew last month, and as a result I went away from the website here, I left neglected my Facebook Page, I went away from Twitter… ok. That last one’s not true. Twitter is a difficult thing to shake. I did though take a more passive role on twitter, allowing those I follow to guide me to links and such, but not tweeting (much).

What then has been gained from this month of social media ‘sabbatical’? What gained from a month devoted to craft rather than the building of ‘profile’?

  • I finished writing my draft of Old Man Madigan. It comes in at 10,000 words and I’m wondering now whether I submit it to a market which may be prepared to serialise it, or whether I go in hard with the editing shears and cut.
  • I started expanding some ideas for other short stories, tentatively entitled: Pareidolia, Watchers, Melange. They run a gamut of weird urban/psychological, scif-fi futurism, alt world Fantasy.
  • I wrote a draft of ‘The Witch Way’, a Fantasy short story  at 5,000 words and in need of an edit.
  • I completed a draft of ‘Leaving the Farm’ which had been kicking around in my head and on my computer for years, never really having much structure or purpose. It’s 2150 words and not really genre fiction at all to be honest, straight up Lit Fic with a rural bent.
  • I did a heck of a lot of reading: Chuck Wendig’s Bad Blood, Shotgun Gravy, Bait Dog, Blackbirds, and Mockingbird; Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country; Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns (and currently reading King). Reviews to come.
  • And I sent out a query email for Exile, in the hope that an agent may be interested.

An agent was, and requested chapters, and so I’ve sent them now. I’m cautious and nervous and excited and apprehensive and uncertain and hopeful and worried and blasé… all at once or vacillating between the states. In one sense it’s not a step I haven’t reached (and stumbled upon) before, but I feel it’s progress. The last time an agent requested chapters it was on the basis of a face-to-face meeting, not so in this case. The agent currently considering my submission asked to see more based solely on the few paragraphs into which I distilled my novel. So that’s a good thing, to know that the query email worked, to know that I can pique the interest.

All in all a productive month, especially as I look back on it now. So what’s in store for this month? I hope to edit those two stories that are complete drafts, and to send them out. I have a list of markets to which I can submit (thanks Peter M Ball and  Alan Baxter) and I intend to put that list to use… and of course to check my emails obsessively, in the hope of good news.

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April 2, 2013

Grimdark

By J Michael Melican

So I’ve basically played the role of a vaguely interested observer in all this, but something Joe Abercrombie tweeted today – a piece by Daniel Abraham in Clarkesworld – has finally motivated to reach into my proverbial pockets and draw out two-cents, which I now humbly submit to the debate.

As Abraham notes the moniker “Grimdark”  is taken from Warhammer 40,000 (affectionately known as 40k). I played the game as a young fella. I had my armies (Eldar predominantly, but I did put a bit of an Orc Horde together and was compiling some Imperial Guard when I gave it all away. The miniatures  including some incredibly carefully and poorly painted Banshees and Scorpions, were sadly lost in a house-fire) and would spend long afternoons plotting the fractional m, movements required for victory or poring over a codex seeking some tactical advantage. I didn’t get too much into the surrounding mythology of the 40k universe, but it grew exponentially whilst I played and subsequently. I am aware now that entire novel series are devoted to the expanded universe, in much the same way you’ll find with Star Wars and Dragonlance and such.

I am familiar with the line from which “Grimdark” apparently comes: In the grim darkness of the future there is only war.

Two of my favourite modern Fantasy authors (Abercrombie and Richard K Morgan) have been labelled as writing Grimdark, as well as Mark Lawrence,  an author highly recommended to me and near the top of my to-read list (after I finally finish Red Country, which I am powering through at amazing pace). Judging by Abercrombie’s thoughtful response, and Richard Morgan’s, neither of them are thrilled at the assignation (though Joe seems to have embraced it with his twitter handle), but more on that latter.

Mark Lawrence’s response basically summed up my own, but seeing as we’ve made it this far, let’s unpack it a bit.

Genre is a fraught concept. At its best it’s a useful framework for understanding tropes and narrative archetypes, at its worst it’s a cage, a ghetto, a straight-jacket. Mieville’s reference to Tolkein as the “Big Oedipal Daddy” of Fantasy is perhaps a starting point in identifying how the Fantasy genre came to be seen both from within, and from without. Fantasy was escapism for nerds. It was largely derivative to it’s progenitor (and “Author of the Century” no less) and it operated within variations of his British agrarian idyll being threatened by malevolent forces.

Arguably this continued until recently, arguably very recently, arguably it continues still. Many would point (as Abraham does) to Thomas Covenant, and fair enough. Others would point to George RR Martin, whose Game of Thrones was published in 1991 and featured many of the traits now assigned to Grimdark: the amorality, the incest, the rape (so much rape, so casually put to the page), the murders, the attempted (and successful) infanticides, regicide, ultimately (spoiler alert of sorts) the death of the apparent protagonist before the end of the first book.

But Grimdark seems a more modern label than either of these. Perhaps it is the HBO effect and GRRM’s ever-growing fanbase, but even that is older than Grimdark, being in place for two years at least. And so the finger is pointed at Abercrombie (whose First Law books were published in 06,07 and 08), Mark Lawrence (Broken Empire 2011, 2012…), and Richard K Morgan (A Land Fit For Heroes 08, 10…).

Morgan is particularly interesting, because it’s his Fantasy books that see him labelled as Grimdark, but his previous series (published between 2002 and 2005 and focussed on Takeshi Kovacs) wears a label of sci-fi/noir. As Morgan himself points out it is the elements of Noir that he brings to Fantasy which are most likely what is used to label his work Grimdark. The Kovacs novels have been credited with reviving Cyberpunk (the genre spawned, or at least identified, by William Gibson‘s Neuromancer) by grafting “the Gibsonian subgenre” back onto pulp fiction, and I think particularly in this Noir Pulp. It’s a link Abraham makes as well in his Clarkesworld piece, though by Abraham’s distinction I personally see Kovacs as more Hard-boiled than Noir. Kovacs does make moral decisions that go against his self-interest, the difference perhaps is that Morgan makes his protagonist pay the cost of those decisions. Kovacs gets no free pass for having done, or having tried to do, the “right thing”.

Likewise with Abercrombie’s flawed “heroes”.  Logen Ninefingers has a past he wants to escape, but he can’t. In much the same way as Morgan’s protagonist Ringil Eskiath (who shares a name with a Tolkeinian sword), Ninefingers isn’t given the freedom to just put aside the consequences of his past acts. He wants to be a better person, but it’s not going to be easy to change, and will be harder still to convince others of the change. Shivers suffers even more-so. The change in the Northmen is pronounced, from when we first meet him during the final stages of the First Law, through his Styrian experience and his final, decisive, blow in The Heroes. It is not a change for the better. And yet it is a change we, as readers, can understand, perhaps even sympathise with. Is it enough to mean well, even if your actions bring ill consequences? Can we redeem our wrongs by good acts? Would I not too struggle to maintain the finer parts of myself if I had suffered as he suffered? I think these are essential questions for readers of this sub-genre, whatever we decide it should be called. I think these are essential questions for readers of all literature. Especially that last one.

Is it not this question that we ask ourself as Casablanca ends? Would I send the woman I love away, on a plane with another man? Would I risk something of myself for others, even if there was little hope of personal gain and a genuine risk of personal suffering?
When Harry Lime, atop the ferris-wheel in The Third Man, asks how much money it would be worth for one of those specks to simply stop moving, are we not being asked how much we value human life? and being challenged to explain that value, or at least to respond in some way to a character who values it little at all?

Certainly in gritty stories, in amoral characters – or just overly pragmatic ones – we are challenged. I enjoy as a reader that I am. I enjoy as a writer exploring those questions and developing ways in which I can use characters to provide different perspectives on these questions and others like them.

The problem then with Grimdark is that it is used so often pejoratively, and often by those who are seeking to define what they dislike about a certain type of story. Abraham sub-titles his piece “Literatures of Despair” – a phrase he explains, but which I don’t accept. Morgan’s response dialogue is telling. The complaints (of the straw man) become ones of taste and of subjectivity. Some blood, but not too much. Some danger posed to the protagonist, but don’t kill him. Some hint of the enemy being evil, but no rapes or torture. A little military-based murder is ok, but no gore please.

I think allowing anyone, even a readership, to define a genre in such a way, to set up boundaries and borders in which writers should (or must operate), is a stultifying influence. Even more so if those arbitrary borders are then policed by self-appointed guardians, wielding indignation and harking back to a supposed Glorious Age.

If Grimdark is Noir come to the Fantasy worlds then it is no new thing. Indeed it’s taken a generation or two to move from the mainstream into Fantasy. In 1991 Silence of the Lambs swept the Oscars:  Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Picture. The cinema-going audience were ready for a story in which the secondary character, an advisor to the FBI (and thus in some way on the side of the ‘good guys’ even if reluctantly) was a cannibal serial-killer. Lector’s escape was celebrated, anticipated not as a defeat of the ‘good’ but as a victory for a character with whom the audience had become fascinated.

On television we watch Dexter, the serial-killer with a ‘Dark Passenger’ and a mission, and hope he doesn’t get caught. We admire Omar Little, a man we have witnessed murder and steal. We hope that Walter White can keep cooking and distributing crystal-meth, because doing so doesn’t make him a bad guy… not exactly… kind of… I don’t know. And that’s the point. These characters are fascinating and exciting and wonderful precisely because I can’t answer that question.

Is it any wonder the audience of modern Fantasy is ready for similar characters? Is it not a good thing that I started questioning why I should still be barracking for Monza to get her revenge, that I should question whether the world wouldn’t be better off if the ‘bad guy’ had’ve just killed her off in chapter one? I want characters who are flawed, who make mistakes, who do things I would never do, who suffer in ways I hope never to suffer. If it serves the story put those guys through the wringer. Carve them up, piece-by-piece, and let’s examine what’s left at the core of them.

All of that’s fine. All of that means that I – now only two chapters into Red Country – honestly don’t know if I want Shy South to catch up to the bandits who took her brothers or not… and surely that uncertainty, that hesitancy, surely that’s a powerful narrative force.

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March 14, 2013

Another milestone

By J Michael Melican

Well, thanks to all of you who have visited my site I have just pushed past the 2,500 views (in the 11 months or so since I started the venture). That’s averaging over 200 views a month!

So to mark the occasion I give you some of the more unusual Google searches by which people have found their way to me:

The gayness of Joe Abercrombie, or his characters, seems to lead down my path. Several people used variants on this theme, including:
“joe abercrombie the heroes gay characters”, ”joe abercrombie gay characters” and “joe abercrombie gay.”

Someone was evidently looking for the “gaiman mieville ghetto”. A scary sounding place indeed.

Someone was hoping for a “midichlorian triumph”

I’m not sure the person who typed in “pet monkey climbing nets” really got much help from my website. Likewise the person who wanted to know “how to summoning the jinni” was probably in the wrong part of the internet.

And then there’s the inexplicable:
“new vw commercial starts with children laughing then adults laughing then elderly laughing”
“short story the toyota with characters,setting,conflict,resolution and theme”
“how does empress wu zetian relate to the disempowerment of women”
“jar jar stretched tongue”

and… drum role please…

“mike tyson gender change”

How the hell did ‘Mike Tyson gender change’ get people to come here? I don’t know. If that was you please comment below. I can’t figure that one out, but they count to the 2,500 views. Hopefully the whole process is interesting enough to keep you cooming back and pushing me toward and beyond 5,000 in 2013.

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March 8, 2013

From an idea to an act of creation

By J Michael Melican

When I really should have been working on other things there suddenly popped into my head a line:

They rode out with the intent to kill Old Man Madigan, and the means to make it so.

This happens to me sometimes. Sometimes a line, sometimes a description, sometimes dialogue – even whole conversations. I use the notes function on my phone, or I scrawl this stuff on scraps of paper that I then keep in a completely chaotic and highly intuitive mess around my house, or occasionally in a notepad I bought, long ago, for the purpose.

And so this line about Old Man Madigan sat ignored for some time, until I came back to it and questioned what I had made. Who is/was this old man? Who was out to kill him, and why? why ‘riding out’?

Initially my answers to that were confused collisions of genre, or reductive allusions to things I’ve liked elsewhere. I wanted them a long way from authority, such that they had to take ‘justice’ into their own hands. I wanted to explore that ambiguity of authority, or its absence. I wanted to question whether these men seeking to deal death were agents of justice or of revenge. Was this a community coming together against a predator, or was this mob rule, unfettered in its attack on an outsider?

I liked the idea of a posse.

So the US perhaps? A western? Shane, or The Searchers? It made sense of the ‘riding out’, but it just didn’t grab me. A space western? Perhaps Joss Whedon’s fault. I could almost see Nathan Fillion sneering my line. Awesome… and yet not my own. The space thing was interesting though.
So they’re in space, a long way from Earth. Colonisers then? Something between LV426 and the Wild West writ extra-planetary? Barely more original than channelling Mal, but perhaps something I could work with. If I could steer clear of a Takeshi Kovacs analogue. No horses I suppose. Are they riding out on bikes? Hoverbikes?

I followed this path for a while. Researched light-speed, the fastest man-made objects, the nearest goldilocks planets. Nothing there unless I’m prepared to have spacecraft travelling up to percentages of light-speed  and even then the travel time is decades. So perhaps a moon, Saturn has plenty, Jupiter too, some potentially life supporting. But these men riding out should not be in space-suits. That’s not what I see. That doesn’t work for me.

Back to the notepad and disorganised filing then. For weeks. Months. I start writing other things. I’m in the middle of something that’s pretty hefty. Novella at least, perhaps room to grow. And then Madigan’s back.

Australia. Red dust. Post the exploration, pre-Goldrush. Madigan’s an impossible survivor from the prison fleets, fled or released upon his term and free now either way. He’s impossibly old, and the means of his longevity have earnt him the antipathy of the young community nearby his secluded home. He had fled other men, at least the white ones, but now the communities are growing, the Europeans spreading, and it has brought him into conflict. How? A young girl, missing, killed perhaps, perhaps used by this secluded old man. An angry father then, a community of angry fathers. The men of a fledgling town drawn together by their hatred and fear against Madigan, their common enemy.

But if Madigan is so long lived? Will he be so easily killed? What means do these men have? What assumptions do they make, and are they valid? And what is the role of the local inhabitants, considered fauna, shunned, ignored. What do they think of Madigan, what is he – this European interloper who will not die?

The images were coming thick and fast now. Red dust, hard men worn by weather and work, stern women with determined jaws, children casting off their parents’ culture for one all their own, the Aboriginal tribe, shifting and displaced, those caught in the middle – part of both worlds and neither…  and in this Madigan – a spider in its web. Or is he? Is he really the villain of the piece?

So I started writing. And suddenly I had 4,000+ words and a couple of thousand to come. A short story. Not yet born, but gestating nicely and not far off.

Excerpt here.

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February 17, 2013

On corruption and salvation

By J Michael Melican

I recently finished Chuck Wendig‘s ‘Double Dead‘. I liked it pretty well (full review later), and especially liked the concept: vampire wakes up and finds himself in the middle of zombie apocalypse. It seems so simple and obvious, and yet I can’t think of another example of it.

I got to the end and wanted to read more about Coburn, the vampire protagonist. As a character he really grabbed me, despite their being a pretty fundamental shift in the dynamic of his character in the final pages (I’m trying to keep this spoiler free – I will kinda hint at a few broad thematic points though, so there may be a bit of spoiler slippage. Sorry). It got me to thinking on how he had changed and what it was that still made him interesting to me, and I found it was quite a different kind of interest to that which had initially drawn me to the character and kept me there at his side throughout. And it set a nagging little question in my mind.

As a reader I seem readily to accept that people can be changed by a corrupting influence. I don’t think I’m alone or controversial here. Power corrupts, etc… but it’s more character relations I’m thinking of here. It seems utterly plausible that a basically good person can be brought low, can be turned to the dark-side, can be corrupted by the influence of an evil person. Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings (seriously – don’t trust guys named ‘Wormtongue’ – rookie error), Emperor Palpatine – firstly on young Anakin and unsuccessfully on Luke, the corruption of Jack Torrance during his time at the Overlook, all these things we (or I) accept because it seems we (or I) believe / fear that there is an evil in all people, perhaps even within ourselves, a malevolence that must be kept in check, and which can be brought from us by outside influences. This is perhaps a negative view of humanity, but there you have it.

What I had a harder time accepting was the reverse, that an evil character, a nasty misanthrope, un-empathetic, revelling in his ways, could be redeemed by a character of pure goodness. In some small way I felt unsettled by this, not quite cheated, not really unfulfilled, but just that it seemed a little far-fetched.

And so having finished a book about a vampire in the zombie apocalypse, I’m left feeling that the ‘unrealistic’ part of the narrative was that a good person could influence and evil one to be better.

Is this just some deep underlying pessimism of mine? Or is it that we are more ready to accept the ‘gritty’ truth of corruption, and less prepared for the more optimistic process of salvation?

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January 25, 2013

On Cover Art and the Judging of Books Thereby…

By J Michael Melican

At last year’s Genrecon one of the undoubted highlights was a snark presentation of covers given by Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Of course her particular focus was the Romance novels, an easy target perhaps for snarking, what with Fabio and man-titties (as opposed to man-boobs) and various other such tropes. It came to me though that Fantasy was as easily lampooned, the Hooded man, the enthroned King, the busty and poorly armoured warrior woman.

Covers are vitally important, despite the old adage that does not bear repeating. Perhaps in the ebook market this is less true, as opening a new ebook usually will take you to page one rather than to a cover, but with the flood of product a good cover is still an effective way to draw clicks to your Goodreads, or Amazon, or Kindle store presence.

I was surprised to hear from published authors how little control they had over the covers with which their novels appeared. I did here some anecdotes of cover artists communicating with the author, or perhaps even reading the book, but these were told as exceptions, remarkable precisely because they were not the rule. In some cases the author hated the cover which the publishers used.

Some years ago my sister recommended a book to me:

A-Game-Of-Thrones-George-RR-Martin-Book-Cover

This is (I think) the 1997 edition.

On the back cover, below the blurb, there’s an image of a white wolf running through the snow.

Here, I thought, is everything I hated about Fantasy.

The swordsman in black, the black warhorse, the snowy castle, the raven…

Could these images look more hackneyed and clichéd?

It looked terrible.

I read a chapter or so in case she asked me about it, then it was shelved.

Some years later I found this book in a book store:

AGoT_UK_Current

This is the 2003 edition under the Voyager imprint.

There’s a few extra endorsements, as over the intervening years and sequels Mr. Martin’s work had gathered a following and some rave reviews, but they’re mostly the same.

The blurb is much better on this than on the original, and I’m certain that that played a role in my selecting it too.

I bought it and began reading it without ever making the connection to the book my sister had given me.

It was only when I was several chapters into the book, and hooked, that I started to make connections with the earlier book I had shelved (or in fact, by that time, boxed-up and stored under the stairs).

For five years I had ignored a great Fantasy novel because of its cover.

Another example of a cover leading me to great fiction is Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes

The-Heroes-HB2front

I had a voucher to a bookstore sent to me as a Christmas gift, and I went in to buy China Mieville’s collection of short stories “Looking for Jake”, but I had some money left over and no real plan so I browsed the shelves.

Abercrombie’s views on maps have been well explained, and he included none in his First Law trilogy (which also have great covers), but this cover (as with the covers for “Best Served Cold” and “Red Country”) manages to convey I think a very real sense of Abercrombie’s world and the style of Fantasy he writes.

I like them far more than the hyper-real close-ups of the US covers.)

I bought it, loved it, and went back through the First Law and “Best Served Cold” in a matter of weeks.

Here’s the jacket of Heroes in all its glory (click the image to enlarge):

The-Heroes-HB_jacket

Recently the author Mark Lawrence responded to some suggestions comparing his cover for King of Thorns to GRRM’s Game of Thrones (specifically the Sean Bean cover that was released to tie-in with the success of the television series)

2013-01-03-book-cover-twins

Lawrence’s response was to refer to similar covers back through the history of genre and still being released:

Conan_the_LiberatorPromise_of_Blood
His point of course is well made. The mere similarity of having your protagonist (if Ned is the protagonist) sitting a throne is as much a part of Fantasy as the heroine swooning in the strong arms of her hunk is a part of Romance.

It’s always tempting of course to judge these covers. Whether they are examples of the best the genre has to offer, or some of the worst covers in the history of literature, there’s no denying their effect. It was suggested that the success of Fifty Shades of Grey in breaking beyond the Erotic Fiction market and into the mainstream was (in part) because it didn’t look like a typical Erotica cover.

It’s also worth acknowledging that the covers do not always reflect or represent the novel in the way the author would wish though, so in the interest of dispelling that hoary old cliche and admitting that of course we all do judge books in this way I invite you in the comments to nominate others.

What covers have made you pick up a book you went on to love?

What covers have drawn you to a book that you hated?

What covers have chased you screaming away swearing never to inflict such rubbish upon yourself… at least until they repackage it?

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January 14, 2013

The re-write is complete

By J Michael Melican

Phew!

Now that was more an effort than I realised it would be.

I removed about 40,000 words from my manuscript over the past few months. That’s nearly a quarter of its weight!

Many of these were removed on a line-by-line edit: clarifying sentences, dealing death to adjective clusters, seeking out adverbs remorselessly and casting their brutally beaten bodies from my work. I did away with many dialogue tags. I found ways to say with ten words what I had said with twelve or fifteen. I found all of these little slivers of fat that still clung to the meat of my tale and I carved them off with a wicked sharp blade.

Then I had to really get stuck in.

This wasn’t my first pass with the scalpel, and on a project this size trimming fat didn’t shrink the manuscript by the requisite amount, so I started cutting away at the muscle, the flesh, in some cases the connective tissue. That hurt. I lost some good stuff I think. A character was erased from existence. Another had his role cut significantly. Two characters became so peripheral that to survive they had to undergo a melding of bodies and minds and become one. Details were lost, poignant moments, not-quite-salient anecdotes, slightly obscure back-story, geographical references, subtle foreshadowings… but these things ultimately were bloating the story into something more than what it should have been.

So now I have 131,000 words. Still big by the standards of a debut novel, but it’s a manageable big.

I asked a few agents (through the wonder of Twitter) what would be a maximum word-limit they would consider as a submission from an unpublished novelist and the answers were in the range of 140,000 to 150,000. I’m happily below that upper limit, and I’m sure the manuscript is much better for it.

I said at the outset that my goal here was not necessarily to become a professional writer, not even necessarily to become published, though both of those are measures of success. My goal is to become a better writer, and whatever comes as an outcome of this process I feel that the process has already achieved some success toward that goal. I made brutal decisions, but they were the right ones. Some years ago, perhaps even some months ago, I would have baulked those decisions, and I would have remained in a comfort zone of bloat and easy-living. That is not a good place for a writer to remain.

I also now have a much clearer delineation of writing and editing. When I was starting I would open the document and start editing the material I had just written the day before, and so writing was a crawl. I would write a couple of hundred words in a day, but then spend a day or two editing those before adding another couple of hundred and restarting the edit process. It’s a dysfunctional approach. It’s the wrong one. To borrow from Chuck Wendig:

“Writing is when we make the words. Editing is when we make the words not shitty.”

I believe I have done that. I believe my words are not shitty.

And now? Now I get the query letter dressed up. Now I nail that synopsis. Now I go back to Chapter One, Page One, Paragraph One, Word One. Now I make that opening irresistible. Because this week the queries go out (agents be warned) and I think I’ve got a good chance now of putting my best foot forward. That might or might not lead somewhere, but at least I’ll be stepping out knowing I’ve put the work in to make it possible.

 

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December 9, 2012

Gender, History and Fantasy

By J Michael Melican

This one’s a multi-headed beast, so bear with me.

I guess this has been percolating away since I read The Mary Sue article  exposing James Gunn’s misogyny and homphobia. I’ve gotta say it took a lot of the shine off the Guardians of the Galaxy announcement.

Then I became aware of The Hawkeye Initiative on Tumblr, which does a disturbingly good job of depicting the inherent problems with the portrayal of female superheroes (and villains) as objects posing sexily (in impractical outfits).

I’ve been trying to sort out my thoughts on the matter and apply them to the world of Fantasy Fiction… but then Tansy Raynor Roberts up and does a better job than I could have done in her blogpost picked up by Tor.com.

At the same time(ish) Cracked.com publishes Luke McKinney’s article about the ridiculousness of calling out fangirls.

So I’m left with little to say, having to follow in the footsteps of those who have said it so well already. But when has that ever stopped me having my say?

In my own work I thought I had drafted a strong female character. She was a POV character (in a novel with several POV characters) and she was smart and independent and strong. The reader would have known this because I attached these adjectives to her repeatedly. I did this while she was pushed through a narrative in which she showed almost no agency, made no meaningful decisions for herself, was considered (by a patriarchal culture) to be superfluous, and appeared in scenes where women discussed what men did. But she was sassy. And I did several times describe her as strong, independent and smart.

The reviews from my test-readers (and one in particular) forced me to sit back and look, really look, at what I had written for her. I didn’t like what I saw. So changes were made and I believe there has been much improvement. I have also given another character gender re-assignment, and this has been one of my personal favourite improvements in the rewriting.

Ellen Ripley was, in an early draft, a male. (S)He was to be the ship’s security officer (an obviously male role on the ship) and would probably have been cast by an athletic, muscled square jawed type, who would have killed the Alien and survived (with or without the grey panties – damn you Hawkeye! Must you ruin everything?) to fight another day. And the film wouldn’t have been terrible, but I doubt it would have been as good. It certainly wouldn’t have featured in articles in The Guardian celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ‘first action heroine’.
Why does Ripley endure so long after the two Alien films were made? (There were only two weren’t there – I’m pretty sure that’s right) I believe it’s because she wasn’t written as a gender stereotype. She’s a woman, but she’s not defined by that, and nor is she the pendulum reaction of Velasquez in Aliens (who is one of my favourite characters, but in many ways just a different stereotype).

The film Salt is forgettable (I’m not even sure I’ve seen the whole thing, I’ve seen bits), but it is interesting for the fact that the central character was written as a man. Tom Cruise was meant for the role, but withdrew because it was too close to his MI character of Ethan Hunt. At the same time Angelina Jolie was determined that she didn’t want to be a Bond girl – she wanted to be Bond. So a chance came up for her to be the action hero. Contracts were signed, but the deadlines were looming and there wasn’t time for a full re-write. They started shooting with the script for a male Salt and a few shifted pronouns (they did manage to take Salt’s children away from him/her – because while it’s ok for a father to risk his life as a CIA Agent fighting Russians a mother would never do such a thing – so it’s not perfect). The outcome is a film in which the character is played by a female, but not saddled with the gender stereotypes that are written for Strong Female Protagonists. (and some confusing scenes where a rake thin Angelina overpowers goons with brute force).

I met Tansy RR at Genrecon recently (in the sense that I nervously said hello once or twice and joined in a conversation with about ten people – of which she was one). Her take on history is fantastic – and backed up by an impressive academic resume. If history is sexist, so be it. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t stories in which women played important roles. Hell, that doesn’t mean there weren’t women playing important roles in every story. It just means they were ignored. To take that fact and use it to justify continuing to ignore them is reflexive… and just straight-up dumb.

But even if we take patriarchal history as a basis, why should that apply to Fantasy? When Joe Abercrombie spoke at Genrecon he described his work as ‘Realistic Fantasy’ and admitted the concept sounded silly. I was relieved – I’ve been trying to define my own writing for some time now and I kept coming back to ‘Realistic Fantasy’ and getting caught in the oxymoron. The point is that as realistic as we want it to be its still our world to build. If Joe can be inspired by history and then have a character using magic spells to defeat his enemies then why is having a powerful woman going to break the story. How could a reader complain that women have too prominent a role on the basis of history, and yet happily accept the wizards?

And don’t think it doesn’t happen. Some readers make this complaint. It’s ignorant on two counts:

1. History is full of women doing cool stuff that could be the basis of Fantasy novels.

I’ll skip Cleopatra and move straight on to Lucretia, Cornelia, Vibia Sabina, Boadicea, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora, Catherine II of Russia, Queen Elizabeth the First! – and that’s just Western Europe. A quick googling will open up possible tales inspired by Hatshpsut (a female Pharaoh) or Empress Wu Zetian. Hell, tell Penelope’s story. Sure she’s just waiting at home for Odysseus, entertaining courtiers, but surely there’s an interesting tale to be told there. Tell the story of Queen Gorgo – just not one where she gets boned by Jimmy McNulty.

2. It’s Fantasy.

History might have cast women in certain roles, but the history of my fictional world has not – or more accurately it has cast them in different roles. And even if it’s a misogynist fictional world with a patriarchal hegemony, good fiction will come from the conflict of putting a powerful woman in there. How will she cope? How will society cope? What cracks will emerge? What conflicts? Will she be defeated? Forced into submission? Will the power structures shift, compromise? Will she inspire a revolution? This is what drives narrative. This is what makes it a fictional story worth the reading.

I’ll leave the last word to Scott Lynch, who here responds to complaints about one of the female characters in his second ‘Gentleman Bastard’ novel Red Seas under Red Skies.

Comment, criticise, condemn, condone, as you will.

Or debate me face-to-digital-face / pat my back on twitter @jmichaelmelican

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November 25, 2012

The continuing importance of editing

By J Michael Melican

I’m under 150,000 words now on the continuing project to bring my manuscript down to a publishable size. Given that the upper limits (especially for an unpublished author) are in the 130 – 140k range I still have some work ahead of me, but I feel it’s going well.

Most of the words cut so far came from some major changes:

I cut a character. In one sense he was minor, but I had a plan to develop him much further later in the story. When some of that got chopped he became even less significant in his earlier scenes, and so, brutally, I cut him. Not an early death… he never existed.

I have restructured the opening chapters. Originally they were all weighing in between 3 and 4 thousand words and most had more than one narrative POV, so I changed the structure of the chapters to have each be a single narrative POV. They’re shorter, punchier and arranged so that there is a more logical flow. I think it has done wonders for my pacing and has  also removed the last vestiges of their being a really clear dominant POV character, so that now several POV characters each progress the narrative and each give us insights into the events from their own perspective.

I also restructured the plot in the opening, partly to facilitate the narrative changes, and partly to streamline the plot. In one chapter in particular the various changes I had made over time had caused a great deal of confusion. This chapter was (and is) a crucial nexus for the characters and I think it now does a better job of drawing the threads together and scattering them, where before it just drew them in and left me with an ugly tangled mess.

So the process is a positive one. I have lost a lot of words to the cutting-room floor and many of these I believe were quite good ones. I’ve lost scenes I liked, because they no longer were needed, or no longer made sense. I’ve lost some nice prose, some sharp dialogue, some insights into the characters and how they maintain themselves in the world… but in return I’ve got a leaner, fitter plot, I have thinned out some of the exposition chunks into a nice exposition stew (there’s a better metaphor for that I’m sure. Perhaps I’m hungry? Certainly I’m tired).

So I need to cut at least another 10,000 or so, possible 15,000, and I’ve made the major changes. I’m back to the start and going through, chapter by chapter, finding superfluity and error. It’s difficult and at times tedious, but it’s necessary and ultimately a very positive thing. Today I cut 750 words from a chapter. That’s probably a higher than average edit.

If I can cut 500 words from every chapter by this process I’ll get to the end of the book having carved out another 17,000 words or so, and I’ll be right on target!

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November 5, 2012

Genrecon Australia 2012

By J Michael Melican

Last weekend I went to the inaugural Australian Genrecon and I have to say WOW! What an excellent decision that was. Yay me!

Of course the real congratulations should go to the likes of Peter M Ball, Meg Vann, and the ninja team from Queensland Writers’ Centre. What a magnificent event they organised and managed!

This was my first ever convention, and I have to admit I had no real idea what to expect (or what I was doing). I read a few tips. Chuck Wendig’s were pretty helpful. A lot of common sense of course but a good guide nonetheless. (He was also quoted in a panel by P M Newton: ‘Plot is Soylent Green’)

The other massive help was Twitter. I was flying basically solo… I knew a couple of people from online interactions, but only one person I’d met face-to-face. So when I walked in to the opening function on Friday night it was a massive relief to start recognising some twitter handles on name tags.

One face I did recognise was International guest of honour Joe Abercrombie. He was surrounded, and congenial and charming and gracious and relaxed and just a wonderful international guest. Full credit to him.

I managed to spark up a chat with Ginger Clark, about whom I knew enough from twitter to give me some icebreakers. We discussed zoos and Australian fauna and Sandy and suddenly the crushing weight of Curtis Brown NY was lifted a little. She’s really a nice person and I had a lot less fear for my Sunday pitch.

The adults only panel was excellent. Good natured and great fun. I worried that I had made a fool of myself in a discussion of the C-bomb, but everyone was great. I’d never considered the difficulty romance writers had choosing between descriptions which were either twee or coarse.

Afterwards I met some great Romance writers who were kind enough to explain to me some of the subtleties of their craft and how careers are forged from one’s writing. Thanks to Denise Rossetti, Nikki Logan, Anna Campbell and Alexis (sorry Alexis – I forgot your surname).

I’m on the right, with idiot grin!

Saturday morning was a great highlight. I was running a little late, stopped in for a quick toast and a take-away coffee with the intent of sneaking into a 9am seminar moments late, but Joe was alone at a table, enjoying a pretty good approximation of a full English brekky… what’s a fanboy to do?

Joe was great. We chatted like old pals for nearly an hour. Talked black pudding, Lancaster accents, kids, nappies, travel, Australiana, First Law, Red Country, westerns, my fledgling attempts at a career, Batman as vigilante and Superman as fascist. I got a photo in which I’m grinning like an idiot child on Christmas day.

That an author of his stature should be so welcoming and open, and for him to show such interest in what I was writing, was magnificent and I am so grateful!

The panels were universally excellent. Special mention goes to: Kim Wilkins and her impressive (to me especially) use of Old English; Crime author P M Newton for being so erudite and articulate in the face of Joe Abercrombie’s wise-cracking; Peter Ball and Alex Adsett for their insights into writing as a career; Ginger Clark for her excellent presentation on what an agent does (and how);  the Saturday night Snark from ‘Smart Bitch’ Sarah (Platypus of Doom, Gay Tarot Reading Vampire Were-Roos, Mr Darcy’s horrible secret…); the conversation with Joe Abercrombie (of course).

Thanks also to Peta Freestone and Amie Kaufman for helping me hone my pitch, and to Lindy Cameron of Clan Destine press for her encouraging feedback.

Thanks to everyone who made the weekend so wonderful (especially my wife, who looked after our two boys solo all weekend! How did I get so lucky to have such support?).

It ended with a successful pitch (with a caveat for length) to Ginger Clark and an invitation to submit pages. Could not have hoped for anything more!

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