The Mutinous Crew: Chapter 7

Chapter seven is a great exercise -- one not quite as contentious as the previous about tense -- and I'm puzzled why. Perhaps it's our binary nature. Tense has only two options: past (inclusive narrative tense) and present (focused narrative tense). With only two sides there must be for any situation a right and a wrong, and so sides are chosen.

The Stone That Sings, Chapter 1 Revision

Chapter 1, Rev 2

The Stone That Sings isn't exactly in first draft, though parts of it are. I tend to write in waves, where I write Chapter 1, then write Chapter 2, then revise Chapter 1 -- This is the process that got the first five chapters on Scribophile.

But now that I've created the first draft, I'm on the second full draft. Things I learned in the first draft by completing it all the way to the end can now be added.

So what did I learn?

I learned that P'nem, Danek, and Lorot are members of a Syrrannite enclave on Vulcan. This makes them different from Vulcan standards, but also held in high regard -- they tend to be the moral conscience of the Vulcan people -- whether they are wanted or not. If it sounds like that might make them scolds, you are right. All this technology and such causing 'deviations' in the Way of Kolinahr, which is why they remain in the desert, even if the desert plays havoc with higher technologies.

The Past Speaks of the Present

In Chapter 6, Subject Pronoun and Verb, Ms. Le Guin mentions references Lynne Sharon Schwartz, whose essay, Remembrance of Tense Past is an insightful analysis of influenza, miniskirts, and of course verb tense with many thoughtful examples of both success and failures of using the present tense (also called focused narrative tense, by Le Guin). In Steering the Craft, Le Guin analyzes the fallacy of 'immediacy' as a reason to use the focused narrative tense. In this post, I'll examine some of the other points Schwartz makes in her essay.

The Mutinous Crew: Chapter 6

I found writing this post really helped me contemplate and understand Chapter Six. Each chapter, I skip ahead to the exercise to get a sense of what the chapter will teach me and focus on those items. Chapter Six was the first chapter I've run into where that strategy was not helpful.  The opinion piece, more a cautionary tale about passive voice -- made me believe I was still going over familiar ground. After all, I knew what past and present tense meant and it was just a matter of using one or the other. So much for that.

I appreciate the fact that Le Guin pointed out that both present and past tense are fictive -- the moment we are reading the story is the only real 'present'. As much as I'd like to adopt the terms "inclusive narrative tense" and "focused narrative tense", it will confuse Scribophilians, and I'll wind up explaining myself repeatedly, even, as I write this article, the terms grow on me with just a few examples:

The Mutinous Crew: Chapter 5

Chapter Five was a very short chapter in Steering The Craft, however, it's a very important chapter. So important, in fact, I completely missed writing a blog post about the chapter.  I really am a terrible  blogger. 

 Adverbs are probably one of the most talked about topics on Scribophile (besides the evils of Social Justice Warriors, whatever those are). But when Scrib talks about writing (a blessed but rare event) the evils of adverbs are invariably a topic of discussion.

I, for one, am glad that adverbs are added to the mix. Because the real topic isn't about the use of a part of speech but in what it means to use adverbs and adjectives in your writing. For the most part, adjectives and adverbs are an indicator of a weak vocabulary. Please note that it's not always so, but I do believe that one has to work from that perspective, and I think this goes for both adverbs and adjectives.

I received a critique that said "I don't know what basalt is. Can't you say 'black rock'?" I think it was a fair question, but I didn't ask Kim Stanley Robinson in his Mars series to call piste a 'road of compacted snow'. As the phrase goes, "Words mean things" and especially now in the age of e-readers, a dictionary is just a few clicks away.

So, even though the idea has a bit of a bad-hair taint to it, I believe the writer is obligated to pick the best word. That means watching out for weak adverbs: quickly, suddenly, great, low. It doesn't mean that picking the obscure word from the thesaurus is the best bet either. There have been instances where I thought one word would be best, and then when I looked up its definition, there was some nuance to it that made it inappropriate. I guess my advice there is not to use the thesaurus without the dictionary. Again, with the online options available, there's faint excuse not to do so.

Sometimes, the adverb is all that's available or using less precise words they may fit the voice of the character as narrator or in dialogue. But even then, your voice should have a vernacular that your reader might have to work for, just a little bit. It's your job as a writer to make that work worth it.

So the exercise with this very short chapter was enlightening, though I found myself wanting to ask more questions -- what about adverb phrases?

We walked very carefully across the floor.

This one is almost the poster child for re-write unless it's part of dialog. "Very" is weak. How carefully? Oh very carefully. Very very, or just very? 

Here is where I was born. That’s it. Right there.

Hmm, this one is different. The wording here seems to generate a confidence between reader and writer, and I would probably skim right by this without worrying about adverbs or adverb phrases.

So is there a rule here? Probably not. Just that using adverbs and adverb phrases probably deserve a second look, with the case needing to be made for keeping rather than getting rid of.

So what about Adjective Phrases? Let's play with some examples:

That’s a lovely cake.

I would personally rework this if it wasn't in dialog, or it fit the narrative voice. For a narrative voice, I'd want to understand what made it lovely? Was it the pink rosettes along the edge? The ziggurat design in the tiers? Insert more cake terms here. I'm not a baker. Then again, if your narrator or speaker isn't either, they might just call it 'lovely' or 'colorful' or 'a mountain of sugar and lard'. In short, that can't be all that's said about the cake.

That soup is pretty cold.

'Pretty' in this sense is like 'almost' or 'very'. Kind of nothing words. How about tepid, or lukewarm, or chilled? In dialog, this is fine, but as narration, it seems weak.

Some people weren’t willing to pay extra to book a seat on the plane

Now this one is a completely different kettle of fish. This adjective phrase is needed, and shouldn't invoke the same sense of outrage that 'pretty cold' does, because it qualifies the people. So its not cut and dried, and I think while there are some adverb phrases that are necessary, for purposes of the exercise, where one is to write 'chastely' it seems we have to use some adverb and adjective phrases, or else we're doing some interesting gymnastics to avoid them. I tried to come up with an example here for the above sentence, but I wasn't able to.

So, at the end of the chapter, not much changes. There are no rules, but guidelines, which probably won't change. The examples of what to look out for are very helpful, and the exercise is enlightening. I'd recommend it for anyone.

The Stone That Sings: Chapter 22

Chapter 22 is A Sehlat and her Girl

If that makes you think of "A Horse and His Boy" well, good. I certainly thought of it when I wrote the title, and that's where any Narnia similarity ends. The sehlat does not talk, nor is The Stone That Sings any kind of Christian allegory.

And I don't write nearly as well as CS Lewis, who was able to hide all sorts of allegory in his books and still make them a great read. His fans really are the most heavy-handed part of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Technically, this ending is falling action and an epilogue to tie up loose ends. My initial draft of this was almost entirely exposition, along with a form of reunion with Danek. T'Mar faded into the woodwork, and things were kind of explained along until the family arrives.

I did't like that. First, T'Mar is probably the most important Vulcan in Juliette's life. She's from a matriarchal society, one that is bonding goes, a lot more 'free flowing' than the clearly more binary Vulcans. This doesn't mean there's a sweet utopia of sisterhood -- at least no more of a utopia than any other Federation Planet, where the advent of warp travel all of a sudden makes us better sentient beings -- but it does mean that Juliette will be driven by female role-models.

So leaving T'Mar out didn't make sense, and I didn't like a long exposition. I am pleased at how that was resolved, and I think it establishes a far more interesting read. I suppose you can tell me if it does.

So what next? Well, at some point, fix up the beginning chapters to put them more in line with what I learned in later chapters. Flesh out some of the descriptions of Vulcan -- and toss the mirror out of that beginning paragraph. I might migrate the finished story over to Scrib, to get that final bit of polish. Scrib can be hit and miss when it comes to critiquing fan fiction, but I have gotten some very helpful critiques there.

This is the second novel I've completed. The first, A Perfect Join is probably still a perfect mess. But there are elements there I like and things I want to use. It was a backstory that very much needed to be written. And, with each novel, I learn a little bit more.

I hear good and bad about WattPad. But I think it might be a better home than FanFiction, if only because the reading interface for FanFiction.net seems a bit clunky. But even with a clunky interface, I'm pretty it'll have a home there.

The Mutinous Crew: Chapter 4

Our crew has picked up two more! Which is good, since of the original six, there are two posters. But this week was a challenge for me, wanting to complete The Stone that Sings and getting ready for a convention which is related to writing only in the fact there are copious amounts of alcohol involved.

Chapter 4 was about repetition, which, when used correctly, gives a section or a piece extra gravity, and even a mythic quality. Of course, most of us use it incorrectly because we do so accidentally. I am one of those writers who stops, thinks, forgets the previous sentence, and writes it all over again. So I am happy the grammar checking program I use helps me find those repetitions.

But I enjoy thematic repetition. It's the reader's reward for paying attention -- a universe that does not repeat itself, but rhymes.  I have the large repetitions outlines, but the smaller ones tend to happen organically.