The latest anti-Amazon tantrum over at Melville House has really taken spin and smug self-delusion to new heights: Continue reading
Category Archives: Advice From A Dude
Businesses have a bad habit of backing themselves into corners. For example, the way traditional publishers backed away from their promotional responsibilities, pressuring all but a tiny bestselling minority of authors to run themselves ragged promoting their own books.1
Build a platform! Engage your audience! Brand your work! Do a marketer’s tasks instead of writing!
As it turned out, promotion was one of only a few contributions traditional publishers made to an author’s career. Once online resources (including networking between writers, editors, and cover artists) eliminated the other “middle man” contributions of publishers, there really wasn’t much of a role for traditional publishers among authors who, driven by marketing neglect, had already trained themselves to be self-promoters.
And now one of those traditional publishers, the bumbling and stumbling Hachette, is backing itself into a physical corner by adopting the cheapskate “open office plan” architecture (read: low-walled cube farm) despite the massive flaws researchers have discovered about this set-up. Continue reading
I have always been fascinated by the sea (ironic, since I grew up in a landlocked state) and became obsessed with seafaring cultures as an adult. So, when I heard that Disney was planning an animated adventure set in ancient Polynesia, Moana, I knew it was time to talk about the ocean as a fantasy setting.
Of course, we have Le Guin’s amazing EarthSea series, and every pirate tale could technically be considered oceanic fantasy, but I am more concerned with the same vast and largely untapped storehouse that Disney is drawing on: the Polynesian cultures of the Pacific.
Polynesia covers about 16 million square miles. Even though this is mostly ocean between the various islands, this is larger than the landmass of Asia. Nevertheless, the peoples of Polynesia are very closely related, their various “languages” separated by sound differences no greater than those that separate what we call “dialects” in spoken Arabic. The neighboring peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia speak languages that are related to Polynesian about as closely as French, Spanish, and Italian. It’s a remarkably vast area with remarkably similar cultures.
With Disney opening the door on the idea of oceanic fantasy—and researchers uncovering evidence of a vast Polynesian empire, lost to history and centered on the islands of Tonga—the possibilities for epic fantasy set in a quasi-Polynesian setting are before us. And, if you’re unfamiliar with the cultures and mythologies of these islands, you might be surprised to find that the opportunities they present are as rich and varied as any fantasy set in a quasi-European setting.
So here are few cool things you might not have known about Polynesian cultures. Continue reading
Dr. Stephen Carver at Blot the Skrip and Jar It has laid down a list of the “Top Ten Writing Mistakes Editors See Every Day.”
They’re all pretty good, but the most striking bit of advice is number 5, failure to understand dramatic pacing. Carver turns the dead-horse cliché of “show, don’t tell” on its head by examining two complementary narrative styles, the mimetic (showing) and diegetic (telling). These two storytelling modes have actually been around since ancient Greece when they were known as μίμησις and διήγησις.
Just like yin and yang, these two must be in balance. In a good story, you have to go back and forth between the real-time narration of the mimetic mode and the explanatory narration of the diegetic mode.
You’ve gotta love a writing advice piece that drops the first of Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words in the first sentence!
And, it’s debunking what I think is a myth, that you shouldn’t edit while writing. Double win!
Take a look at Electric Literature’s explanation of why you really should ignore those who tell you to “puke up a draft then polish, polish, polish.”
Something odd occurred to me this morning concerning the concept of grammatical number.
Languages have singular forms and plural forms: dog vs. dogs. Some languages have collective words from which the singular (here called “singulative”) can be derived: Arabic baqar “cattle” vs. baqarah “cow.” Some languages even have dual and trial forms for specifically two or three things. And, some languages have a “paucal” form to distinguish a few of something from many.
But what about zero things? Continue reading
“Why do you bother with the follow-up material in some of your elevator pitches? An elevator pitch is supposed to be succinct and easy to take in quickly.”
Well, because elevator pitches alone are worthless, really. Elevator pitches, plot summaries, high-concept narratives, all of these conventional keys-through-the-gateways of publishing and Hollywood? They’re total bullshit measures of the worth (and success potential) of a story.
I belong to a growing faction of writers (including my friends Les Edgerton and John Austin) who feel that publishing and literature are suffering an awful delusion: that anyone can be a writer. This myth is driven partly by an overly liberal, “everybody gets a gold star” desire to avoid negativity and offense (even when warranted) and partly by a cynical marketing strategy aimed at turning aspiring authors into an consumer base.
As usual, it’s the uneasy alliance between licentious Babylon and the exploitative Beast. And, it’s utterly unsustainable.*
Tori Telfer throws her hat in the ring with us at Bustle.com, explaining that “Creative Writing Isn’t for Everyone, And That’s Just Fine.”
Help us spread the word, and save publishing and literature in the process.
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* For more on my take, see the Pyramid Dynamics in Publishing and Authorhood of All Readers sections of my Biz pages.
Recently, I made a statement about editing, and someone asked if it contradicted a complaint I had earlier lodged against Jonathan Franzen. Specifically, I said that concern for nitpicky, sentence-by-sentence details is a cornerstone of “serious writing.”
The reader felt that I savaged John Franzen for a similar sentiment. Continue reading
