A.J. Maguire

Tag: Science Fiction

  • Choices

    Well, tomorrow I’m going to have a guest post from RJ Blain, who is another relatively insane author I’ve been stalking on Google+ for a while now.  (I don’t think it’s really stalking when she’s in another country, but … eh … we’ll let her decide where the creepy boundary is.)

    Anyway, you’ll love her.  She’s crazy and likes chocolate.

    I thought about putting the post up tonight but had one of those “writer” moments today that I just had to get out.  Honestly, it’s amazing I can remember this eureka moment since a bird quite literally attacked me thirty seconds after I had it.

    I’m not kidding.  This little black bird flew right into my back.  I thought maybe it was an accident but it came back and proceeded to dive bomb me again.  I nearly swung my sandwich bag at it, but thought I might get bird-crazy on my Italian Subway sandwich somehow and decided to just run instead.

    Yeah.  I ran from a bird.  I’m not proud.

    In my defense, it had beady black eyes and reminded me of those nasty crow things from Snow White and the Huntsman.

    Where was I? … Oh, yeah … the Eureka moment.

    One of the elements that is severely lacking in my fiction (or at least my early fiction, I have been working on this) is that of choice.  What I mean by that are major choices, choices that the character knows won’t end well no matter which direction they pursue.

    ALERT:  The following examples are spoilerific!  DO NOT READ if you hate spoilers. 

    Example #1:  Doctor Who The End of Time.  That’s like the last episode David Tennant was in and he gets to a point where he has to choose between shooting the Master, or Rassilon (Timothy Dalton’s character).

    For a dude who has spent the last several years adamant about not killing anyone, this is seriously a bad decision for him.  We get to see him flipping between aiming the gun at Dalton or the Master and then Dalton again and then the Master.  (And in the end he chooses neither, but … eh … it was the fact that he was put in the position to have to make such a choice that added tension to that climax.)

    Example #2: Supernatural What is and What Should Never Be.  Poor Dean Winchester finds himself having to make a very serious decision in the end of this episode.  He was attacked by a djinn and is in this dream world where his mother is alive and his family is mostly intact while the djinn slowly consumes his blood.

    For a guy who has a history of putting his family (and innocent lives) in front of himself, he is suddenly confronted with a choice; stay and live in the “world” that has been created for him, or gut himself in the dream in order to wake up.

    Of course, there’s no guaranteeing that he’s right and that he’s in a dream at all, so the decision also has the fear of mortality laced into it.

    Sweet, holy tension, batman!

    Dean delivers this wonderful line just before he goes to shove a knife into his gut, too —

    “No, I’m sure.  I’m like … ninety percent sure.  I’m sure enough.”

    ….

    You see what I’m saying here, right?

    It’s all about choice.  In fact, we can sum plot up as being Character A must choose Path A, B, or C.

    All right, so that’s an oversimplified look on plot, but it really does work.  Characters are defined by the choices they make — at least the good one’s are.  So my eureka moment today was when I realized that I hadn’t really given my characters tough enough choices to make.

    Rock, meet hard place.

    And then the bird attacked me.

    There might have been more to that eureka moment but I was busy running.

    You can’t get avian crazies when a bird dive bombs you, right?  It’s not like a freaky bird plague I should be worried about?

     

  • Star Trek Into Darkness Review

    That’s right.  This science fiction geek totally went to see Star Trek this weekend. I’ll admit that I sorta knew what was coming because I follow Tor.com and they had some reviews up there (they said not to read the bottom comments due to spoilers, but I read them anyway because … yeah … I just couldn’t help myself.)

    Anyway, I enjoyed the movie.  No, scratch that, I loved the movie.  My mother and I had several debates about it because she is … Well, let’s just say I’m a Trekkie because she was a Trekkie first.  I was sort of born into it.

    She was not so happy about certain plot elements that mirrored the old movies.  Me, I liked the fact that they did this.  As a storyteller myself I can see why they did it and where they were going.  My mother, on the other hand, was hoping for something new.

    And, let’s face it, the whole point of Star Trek is to see something new.  They “boldly go where no man has gone before” and encounter “new life and new civilizations.”  So I do see where she is coming from.

    (Mild spoiler: the very end of the movie seemed to suggest that any future movies within the Star Trek genre were going to head out into unexplored territory.  At least I hope that’s what that whole sequence meant.)

    That said, I’m going to have to agree with some of the other reviews I’ve read on this subject and that is on the matter of James T. Kirk himself.  The last movie left his character rather smug.  I mean … of course, they were going to make him Captain.  He basically saved Earth.

    This movie ripped that smugness away from him.  It helped him grow up.  The Captain Kirk that is now at the helm of our beloved Enterprise is one we can rally behind more fully.

    So!

    I loved the movie.  I loved the character growth within the movie.  I even loved all the tongue-in-cheek brushes we had with the older films.

  • All Part of a Balanced Diet

    In the terms of a friend of mine (L.J. Cohen, author of The Between, which I totally recommend for any YA fans out there) I managed to finish the “gut-renovation” of my latest science fiction novel.  It’s only on the second draft and is now in the hands of my Alpha Readers.  (I love you, Alpha’s!)

    As I was in the middle of this gut-renovation I found myself yanking out several info-dumps in the middle of the manuscript.  While it was necessary for the rough draft to have all that information in there because I’m not exactly a scientist (as in, my brain nearly melted during science class last semester), I knew I couldn’t keep it all in the novel.

    Info-dumps are notoriously boring.  And a boring book is nearly always relegated to propping up an uneven table or, in the case of Armageddon, kept for fuel during the subsequent nuclear winter.

    However, I did have to find new and clever ways to explain the science behind space travel and the notorious “tapped” soldiers who star in the novel.

    At least I like to think some of it was clever.  My Alpha’s will let me know here in a couple of weeks if I succeeded.

    But it really got me thinking about how novelists have to find the appropriate balance between how much information is too much information.

    Let’s go ahead and assume the novelist in question has taken a permanent marker to all the info-dumps in the manuscript, they still have to find a way to get the truly important stuff on the page.  And preferably in an interesting way.

    For me the trick came in two parts.

    Part One : Identify what the (highly intelligent, wonderful) Reader needs to know for this book in particular. 

    Tapped is the first installment of a much longer series.  It is the introduction and therefore has to set the ground rules for the rest of the books.  For those of you who are writers, you know how difficult it is to introduce a world, or in this case a galaxy, that is complete with political systems, travel considerations, scientific progress, and the impact everything has at the individual human level.

    So!  I boiled everything down to three main points of interest that the Reader would need to understand in order for the novel to make sense.

    #1) They had to know the human race was stretched across the universe and that inter-stellar travel was a regular thing.  (This was easily achieved since 3/4 of the book takes place on a “jumper class hauling ship.”)

    #2) They had to know there was a war that split the human race into two different factions; that of the Consulate, which regulates everything from Jupiter through Gliese (an earth-like planet very, very far away) and that of the League, which regulates Mars and Earth (the last bastions of freedom.)

    Author’s note:  I totally wanted to use “Coalition” instead of “League” but it sounded too much like “Consulate” and I wanted to make sure they were all separate in the Reader’s mind. 

    #3) They had to know how “tapped” soldiers were made and what they could do.  (This was also easy and fun because … yeah … most people know I love a good fight scene.)

    Part Two : Identify the least amount of information needed in any particular scene. 

    The first part looked at the book as a whole, the second part looked at each individual scene while I was editing.  In this part, I really only asked what was affecting the individual characters on the page.  Because if the character’s weren’t affected by the science or politics, then the Reader didn’t need to be either.

    The result is that the characters actually interacted with the three main points I needed the Readers to understand for the book.  Which, I hope, made for a more solid and interesting book.

    Like I said, I’ll know here in a little bit if I actually succeeded at this.

  • Dreaming Word Choices

    Well, I was have a great time editing Tapped before school got in the way.  I’ve got an Environmental Science final next week and a MASSIVE reading list for two other classes as well.  I’m going to call this a mixed blessing because I was starting to see words in my sleep.

    Yes, dreaming word choices is sometimes a problem for me.  As crazy as it sounds, I always know when I’ve been staring at the same manuscript for too long when I start arguing with my internal editor during the REM cycle.  It normally goes something like this —

    Me: “He reached for the small …”

    Enter Editor’s voice: “You mean half-inch.”

    Me: “Fine … He reached for the half-inch computer drive …”

    Editor: “Are you sure you want to say ‘computer drive’?  I thought it was a hacking device.  You should keep it standard and just call it a hacking device.”

    Me: All right, all right.  “He reached for the half-inch hacking device …”

    Editor: Well, that sounds funny.  Too many “H’s” right next to each other.

    Me: (with a growl of frustration) “He reached for the half-inch device …”

    Editor: Now that’s too ambiguous  you need to tell us what kind of device it is.

    Me: I hate you.

    Editor: Oh, and isn’t the character sore and beat up at this point?  So wouldn’t he really be straining, or stretching, or fighting past his injuries to try and get the hacking device?

    …..

    Yeah, that’s about how those dreams go.  As funny as that sounds, it’s really not very restful.  I normally wake up feeling like I’ve been working all night … and in some respects I have.  In any case, that’s why I’m thinking this whole school issue is a good thing, because I might be overwhelmed by homework, but at least I’m getting sleep.

  • The Importance of Positive Reinforcement

    Dead Magic is officially in the hands of my publisher.  (Woo!  Happy confetti is getting tossed about my apartment right now!)  I’ve also started poking around review sites to see about getting the book out there … and there will probably be Giveaways and all that jazz when it’s time for the release.

    But as a special treat for myself for finishing the edits and meeting the deadline, I totally got my hair done.  First time getting it professionally highlighted and all that jazz.  It was definitely an experience.

    Is it morbid that the first thing I thought about when they put me under the dryer thing was that episode of Supernatural where the lady totally got fried under one?  (Relax, those machines can’t really do that to you.  The Winchester boy’s were hunting a witch at that point.)

    Anyway, that was my positive reinforcement for meeting the deadline.  Rewards are so very important for writers.  Yes, we love good reviews (and by that I mean our hearts flutter) and finishing a book in itself can be a reward, but physical rewards are important too.

    Let’s face it, the act of writing is a solitary event.  It requires that we agonize over verbs and nouns and fighting between active versus passive voice, and it’s really frigging hard.  And most of us never really think what we’ve written is worth the paper to print it out, even if the marketing people insist that we pretend it’s incredible.

    So after weeks and months of self-imposed solitary confinement, staring at words until they burn into our retinas, struggling to make a clear statement out of messy plot complications, and fighting tooth and nail to make a believable character arc appear on the page … we writers really do deserve a reward.

    It’s all about the positive reinforcement, people!

  • The Editing Domain

    The single greatest lesson I’ve learned as a writer is how to eat humble pie.  Editing, even self-editing, forces me to look at my own silly nonsense and try to make it something readable.  I mean, there are honest mistakes like the one I ran across this morning …

    “Staring at hew as though …”

    Which should have read like this — “Staring at him as though …”

    (By the way, thank you Word Program for assuming I meant “hew” there.  Go team failure!)

    Typo’s happen.  I know that.  I write everything by hand first so when I’m actually typing things I’m not really looking at the screen.  So I can forgive myself — and often laugh — at such mistakes.

    But there are other mistakes that make me blush.  Mistakes dealing with a very broken mythology that require an Alpha/Beta Reader to come along and tell me the harsh truth in the nicest way they know how.  And really, my Alpha’s and Beta’s are awesome.  They know me well enough to know how to crush my soul without making me cry.

    Or … well … I cry on the inside.  But normally it’s a frustrated — “Why would I write that in there?” cry and not a “They all hate me and I want to go eat worms” cry.

    The editing domain for me comes in two parts.  The first part is the most extensive and it requires absolute focus.  I sometimes loathe myself for the fact that I have to print out the pages so that I can mark on them, but I try to make up for that by recycling.  (What can I say?  I have a Go-Green spirit and a ruthless work ethic warring each other.)

    Anyway, during that first editing pass I can’t split my attention between projects.  Which is frustrating because I like to have multiple projects going on at the same time.  But when I hit the second editing pass things go really quickly.  Generally, all the work is already done and all I have to do is transcribe it onto the computer.

    Which, in turn, frees up my brain power.  And since I’m on the second pass of Dead Magic right now I was able to finish the rough draft for Tapped this week.   I have to admit that I surprised myself with Tapped.  I wasn’t expecting to have it done until the middle of the summer.

    But hey!  It’s done!  That leaves me with Usurper to finish before the end of the year and a couple of mountains to climb.  I’m starting to think I didn’t challenge myself enough with my New Year’s Goals or something.

    All I can say is … I own 2013.

  • Tragedy

    As I’ve been consumed by Doctor Who for the last few weeks I couldn’t help but start dissecting what it is about that show that I truly love.  Aside from it being funny and quick, the Doctor stands as one of the most tragic characters I’ve encountered.  He is alone, the last of his kind, floating around all of time and space in a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and armed with nothing more than a sonic screwdriver and an indomitable hope for humanity.

    In the midst of all the fun and quirky bits of the show, Doctor Who maintains his tragic streak.  Perhaps the most profound episode I’ve found so far is the one titled Midnight by Russell T. Davies.  This one is in the middle of the fourth season and I have to admit that Davies is a genius.

    WARNING : There are spoilers ahead.  If you haven’t seen that episode, don’t read further.

    Davies put the Doctor in a little box that is not bigger on the inside than it is on the outside with a group of strangers on their way to see some diamond falls.  And then he broke the box — Davies, not the Doctor — and watched as the human elements of the story spiraled out of control.  We get the lady Sky suddenly possessed by some other kind of life-form that learns very quickly by mimicking the people around it.  Granted, it is creepy to have someone copy everything you say as you’re saying it, but the real genius of the story isn’t the alien trying to learn so much as the reactions of the rest of the people on board.

    Basically, we had a whole show that didn’t really move out of the box and managed to remain intense and profound.  By the end we’ve seen a breakdown in humanity as the focus turns from stressful “Well, now we have to wait for rescue” to “Survival of the fittest” until nearly everyone is trying to throw the Doctor out of the ship (where he will die).  The tragedy of this story isn’t necessarily the death of one of the characters, but the ugly desperation that infected everyone.

    These humans that the Doctor finds so much hope and affection for are also capable of horrible things.  He’s not naive enough to not be aware of their capacity for evil, but there is so much disappointment in him when he sees them turn the wrong direction.  So the tragedy comes around when his hope for the best in humanity is tarnished by the actions he sees.

  • End of Week 3

    Is it really week 3?  Well, I suppose the first week was only two or three days long, so I won’t feel bad that I’m only sitting at 19762 words.  And I really, really won’t feel bad about that number since it is finals week and I have 1.5 projects left to do and a lovely multiple choice test waiting for me.  (The .5 project is mostly just gathering some pictures and the other one is an essay, so I should be able to finish relatively quickly.)

    I am seriously excited for the next two weeks, though.  Because after TODAY my summer classes will be done and I can play with my Camp NaNoWriMo project with more intensity.  And I do mean intensity because I just found out that one of the passengers currently on board Jorry’s ship the Zephyr was actually hired by Devon’s real mother to track him down.

    Sweet holy conflict, batman!

    In Jo’s defense, she sorta thought Devon’s real mother was dead.  And the lady did leave her three month old baby behind when she got arrested, so … yeah … Jorry feels fairly justified in her choice to keep him.  (Fairly justified.  She does have the moral capacity to see how murky the situation really is.)

    But, let me tell you, the scene where she gets confronted with this information was super fun to write.  Here, I’ll cheat and leave a snippet on this board as well:

    “That boy’s name is Devon Barlow and he is my son,” she said very quietly. “He is more a part of me than my own skin.  If I ever hear you even whisper such a story on this ship again I will disembowel you.  Are we clear?”

    Well, alright, so that’s more of a quote than a snippet.  If you want the actual snippet you have to go over to the Camp NaNoWriMo page.  At any rate, I need to run off and finish my finals so that I can breathe again.

     

  • Day 3 of Camp NaNoWriMo

    Alright, so it’ll get a little crowded up here if I post all of my word counts every day.  I’ll be putting that up over on the Camp NaNoWriMo page anyway, so there’s no need to be redundant.  However, I also want to spend most of my time trying to … you know … write the novel I’m trying to write for this thing … So I’ve decided that on Friday’s I will post a quick recap on what I’ve done for the week.

    This will be taking the place of my regularly scheduled blog posts.  But I figure the title of my blog is “Writing Mayhem” and what is more chaotic and resembling mayhem than the idea of trying to write 50k words in one month?

    Pfft!  Nothing!  Nothing at all, I tell you.  It’s craziness personified.

    So!  Here is my recap for the first (half)week of Camp NaNoWriMo ::

    I have been introduced to Ms. Johanna Rorry, otherwise known as Jorry or Jo, to her compatriots.  She is, as she has told me, a deserter from the military.  She and her best buddy Seach Barlow (don’t ask me, that’s what he said his name was) both ran away from the military after receiving a distressing call from Jo’s husband — Relo Bomani (I recognize that the names are weird, but in the spirit of NaNoWriMo anything goes) — that they needed to run for their lives.

    I don’t know what was threatening their lives just yet, but I imagine I’ll find out later.  Whatever it was has kept them in hiding for 80 years or so … and I explain the science behind their freakishly long lives within the book.  They are the futuristic equivalent of truckers, meaning they haul food, provisions, and fuel to each of the space stations peppering the galaxy (also explained in the book). This keeps them mobile and anonymous, which is exactly what two deserters from the military would want.

    But .. uh-oh … I have to upset their balance in Chapter One to keep the plot interesting.  So I threw a baby at them.  (Not their baby, they’re not romantically inclined, and I didn’t have it fly through the air, so calm down.)

    In any case, I am ending this week with a word count of 5,076.  Which is super-fabulous.

  • “I hate Mars”

    As you know, I’ve been hard at work smacking Deviation into shape.  It’s my first science fiction attempt and, quite frankly, scares the spit out of me.  I am not a scientist, though I do find science interesting.  I’ll be sending Deviation to an editor on the 15th of February and sincerely hope she can point out where her suspension of disbelief was stretched a little too far.

    Also, on March 1st, I will be sending out a submission package to TOR.  It should take them 4 to 6 months to get back to me with the rejection letter and in the interim I will be working with this editor to tighten the writing and story line.  In the slim chance that TOR sends a positive note asking for the full manuscript, it will be ready for them.

    But what about my other works in progress?  I know I can’t leave you all with the way Saboteur ended.  (No, I’m not going to spoil it.  Those who’ve already read it are aware that there is a third book in the works.)  Rest assured, I am creeping my way through Usurper.  It’s slow going because all of the plot lines have to come together.  And it’s frigging huge.  But it is still coming along … albeit only 500 words or so at a time.

    Dead Magic, the sequel to Witch-Born has hit that critical turning point in the story line.  I have the last ten chapters mapped out and am getting approximately 3,000 words done a week on it.  I’d be doing more, but you know I’m in school, too.

    So!  Why have I titled this post as “I hate Mars”?

    I’m so glad you asked!

    While I was doing the dishes yesterday, I caught a “soundbyte” from the Deviation edit.  (Meaning I was imagining a certain scene and a snarky bit of dialog caught my attention.)  Because it amused me, I’m going to put it down here as a snippet —

    “I hate Mars.” Newbill said, his hands busily smacking another magazine into his weapon. 

    “Mars hates you back.” Chamberlain had to shout over the report of weapon fire. 

    “Something always tries to eat us!” Reloaded, Newbill took aim and fired.