Abigail Nussey, Writer Science fiction (sociological, literary, speculative)

December 24, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 5 Comments

Lazy Villain-Building (or, How To Spice Up Your Bad Guys)

Categories: Characters, The Craft, Writing

Some of the red flags of lazy villain-building:

1. Moustache-twirling.

You’d think this one would be obvious, but whether it’s social conditioning via Looney Toons and old movies or something else entirely, all too many great authors fall prey to this cartoonish artifice. Moustache-twirling is a category I use for the apparent body-language of a villain: stroking facial hair (if male), filing fingernails, caressing a globe as he openly dreams of world/galactic domination, being ooey-gooey with a favorite pet, eating messily, being either very fat, very thin, very short, or very tall.

2. The laugh.

Villains are apparently quite jolly. This artifice is typically a shortcut for showing some kind of sociopathy. It’s apparently one thing to want to kills lots of people, but it’s quite another to do so with a big ole smile on your face. Gratingly, authors tend to go into lavish detail when describing the villain-laugh: chuckling, har-har-ing, roaring, and the ironic mwahaha are examples.

3. The parade of evil.

Sometimes I wonder how some of these cartoonish villains got as far as they did, given how open they are with their evil tendencies. They might as well have a giant fireworks display of rockets colliding into planets hovering over their heads at all times. From casual threats of murder and genocide to loose morals and addictions, it’s like the author’s trying to convince his readers: “This is a super evil awful guy, see? See?!” by piling on as much apparent evil qualities as he can.

4. The blustery dick-sidekick to the effeminate, ultra-evil true villain.

Sometimes I wonder how this got to be an actual thing. I think it has something to do with latent homophobia/sexism on the part of the author, though that’s a giant can of worms I’m not about to pop at the moment.

How to Spice Up Your Bad Guys:

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November 27, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, Leave a comment

About Abigail Nussey – This Thing Called Writing

Categories: My Story, News, Writing

I blame Jack London for the writing thing.

I met Jack when I was seven or eight; we were solid by the time I was nine. We sat in my drafty corner-room winter nights, words popping off the page in time with a flickering candle (I liked reading by candle. Thanks, L. M. Montgomery). He introduced me to other books, mostly about the harsh, inner lives of wolves and dogs and horses in nineteenth century America. The dirt and grime of the Yukon were under my fingernails in 1991; my leg was mangled by a bear trap, left to bleed out on the snow; my hands stretched their living tendons in the orange light of a final fire, as the wolf pack closed in.

Jack made me want to write. His explication of the ordinary and extraordinary made me realize what brilliant, untold stories live behind the eyes of people and animals. Each person, thing, and place is its own world, and sometimes many worlds (as we—people and places—are fragmented things that often don’t know our own selves).

Jack made grit and blood as beautiful as that last can of beans warmed over a fire by a man doomed to die in the Alaskan wilderness.

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November 25, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 5 Comments

The Writer’s Character Sheet

Categories: Characters, Templates, The Craft, Writing

This summer I had the opportunity to attend the 49th Cape Cod Writer’s Center Conference. I met several fantastic writers, took four courses, and had my manuscript evaluated. If you ever have a chance to attend the CCWC Conference or a similar event, please do. It’s well worth it.

One course I took was “Fearless Characterization” with Anne Sanow (buy her award-winning TRIPLE TIME here). She provided a character sheet to the class, which we had to fill out first for a protagonist, then a villain.

I’d never used proper character sheets; sure, I took character notes and had some images corkboarded in my Scrivener character folder, but I didn’t have a templated sheet with questions and answers.

Like I’ve said before, there are no rules of writing as such, but as writers we generally want to communicate our story as clearly and accurately as possible, avoid stereotypes and cliches, and draw our readers into the tale. And, if we deviate, we deviate with malice and intent, not out of ignorance. That being said, a templated character sheet was just what I needed to drill down into my characters in a way that not only gave them life but let them live (because characters drive your story).

Templating my characters resulted in subtle, far-reaching improvements to my story. I’ve provided the character sheet that I use, the sheet from my class with some modifications, in-text below. You can also download it as a PDF and .rtf.

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November 7, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 7 Comments

Why I’m Not Worried About Being Original

Categories: Process Notes, Writing

An idea might not be original, but a well-thought-out approach surely will be.

Us writers always exhort each other to “Show, not tell!” So I will show what I mean by the above through example. Note that I’m not pulling ideas from anywhere in particular—I don’t have a repository, nor have I written out the various approaches ahead of time. I’m going into this cold.

IDEA 1: Man meets dog, dog belongs to pilot, pilot becomes the first female entreprenuer on the moon.

APPROACH 1:

Gerr Nodstom stood in the pouring rain. He hated the expression ‘raining cats and dogs’ but, doggone it, it was true in his case. The bedraggled pup’s doleful expression, like Gerr had all the answers to who the hell owned it and how to get him back, irritated him. But he couldn’t leave the ugly thing just shivering there. Time to find its owner.

Before he could initiate his quest a woman in a black jumpsuit turned the corner, sneakers squeaking on the sidewalk. “Doxie! You horrible twit, you stupid dog…I’m sorry, is she bothering you?”

The dog waved its sodden tail like a windshield-wiper. Was it Gerr’s imagination, or did the dingy beast wink at him before turning to jump and slobber on its mistress’s face? And what a face, that. Gerr caught the flash of a gold pin near her collar. A pilot of Wight & co. Doggone it, indeed. This lady was serious business.

“No bother. I’m just glad she wasn’t a stray,” Gerr said, cursing himself for such a stupid response.

“Hey, I’d give you a little tip for keeping Doxie company, but I’m saving for my own ride, if you know what I mean,” the woman grinned.

“Your own ride? You mean, like your own spaceship?”

“Oh, he’s a sharp one, he is! Yep. I’m going to taxi people back and forth to Luna colony. Grand idea, eh?”

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September 22, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 10 Comments

Shedding Abstractions in Your Writing – or, a Story is Born

Categories: The Craft, Writing

Abstracting instead of making details concrete may be one of the most insidious forms of telling rather than showing. Here are three examples of abstract statements being made concrete. We’ll analyze them below. (Thanks to William Wenthe for the original statements)

ABSTRACTION #1. “They picnicked in a peaceful spot.”

CONCRETIZATION: Grey bodies squeezed through the cracks in the cement, cracks in the steel casings, cracks in the iron pipes; wriggling pink pearls alighted on burnt wood, burnt garbage, a burnt digit torn at the knuckle.

ANALYSIS: This one is my favorite. It shows just how abstract the concepts are in the original statement. There are four concepts: ‘they,’ ‘picnicked,’ ‘peaceful,’ and ‘spot.’

Why that might conjure an image of a couple in a field on a checkered blanket, black ants carrying away their delectables piece by piece, that is not necessarily what’s being conveyed. This is evidenced by how I chose to interpret it: rats snacking on human flesh in the peaceful, human-free aftermath of a major war.

‘They’ — the rats. Immediately you know many things: there’s definitely more than one, and there’s probably several, if not thousands. Not vague.
‘Picnicked’ — Rats are eating human flesh. Not vague.
‘Peaceful’ — A dead human implies the obliteration of whomever populated that particular area. Not vague.

When a statement is made which could describe many different things—a couple in a field on a blanket, as well as rats in a destroyed city snacking on human flesh, for instance—then the statement is not conveying that much information. It isn’t allowing the reader to live inside the story; I’d argue that there really isn’t a story in that statement. So instead of relying on abstractions, show your reader the details. A story is born!

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July 21, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 5 Comments

Writing With Malice and Intent (or, To Know and To Trust)

Categories: The Craft, Writing

Some time ago I read the first fifty pages of Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer. It was good; I stopped reading not on its demerits but because I was itching to start a new rough draft. There were lots of gems I took from those first fifty, some enshrined in ink-and-post-it fame on the wall above my desk. One gem above all others has reared its significant head from time to time in my own writing:

“Deviate, if you must. But do it with malice and intent.”

There’s a lot in this statement. Let’s unpack. “Deviate” — from what? From structure, rules. Which structure, what rules? Structured story telling, and rules of style and grammar. Ah, okay! So it’s okay to deviate from these nuisance restrictions, eh? What a relief! — but not so fast. (more…)

May 28, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 6 Comments

Writing is Hard: Or, Delusions of Delusion

Categories: The Craft, Writing

I recently came across this post on the Advanced Fiction Writing blog, and thought it made a lot of great points —

What If You Think You Might Be a Mediocre Fiction Writer?

Each of us experiences the occasional listlessness and aching dread that we may not, in fact, have any talent, or at least as much talent as we hope. (If you don’t, congratulations! You win one internet. Collect at any time.)

Speaking to my own experience, the worst episodes are what I call delusions of delusion — when I’m nearly convinced I’m deluding myself with any aspirations to publication; when I’m nearly convinced that I’m the crappy-writer-fish in the fishbowl who can’t see herself for what she is. Everyone who can tell how very little talent I have is outside my immediate environment of local critique, breathing air as I breathe water; no one, that is, who has actually read my stuff. (It’s probably not the best analogy. Does that mean I really am a crappy-writer-fish? And if crappy-writer-fish existed, don’t you think they’d be heavy whisky drinkers who refused to work on anything but a typewriter with a few stuck keys? — important keys, like ’s’ , ‘e’ , and ‘.’).

Then there are the attacks of special snowflake inabilities. This is when I believe that though so many others can both master the technical aspect of the craft and the story-writing aspect, I’m the special snowflake who has some innate inability to make it all work. This last episode is something that runs deeper than writing, for me — it’s cropped up all throughout my life, and it’s a load of dangerous bunk that persists in rearing its bunky head from time-to-time, until I stuff it back down again.

What are your writing fears, and how do you struggle through the lows?

May 9, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 13 Comments

Eight Points on Realistic Characters

Categories: Characters, Process Notes, Writing

(not comprehensive or complete — please add your own in the comments — but hopefully you find them useful)

1. Villains don’t know they’re villains. It’s a rare individual who thinks himself completely or even mostly bad, a lovely example of that old chestnut called “rationalization.” Rationalization is the magical thinking that allows characters to engage in all sorts of irrational behavior with confidence. However —

2. Most every man with flaws knows, deep down, that he’s flawed. And it eats away at his soul. These flaws are often justified on the surface to some degree (see #1). They can be completely covered through a series of complex rationalizations, with the ‘knowledge’ of the flaw residing solely in the subconscious. An extreme example of this is a split, Gollum-like character with topside dual at war with internal dual.

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April 18, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, 8 Comments

A Little Thing Called (the) Love (of Writing)

Categories: Process Notes, Writing

Lohengin: Act III. "The Love Scene" Henri Fantin-Latour, 1886

Writer’s tips. They continue to be both beneficial to and plague of this thing I’m chasing called ‘good writing.’ ‘Good’ is efficiency, technical aptitude, trufax, living characters, and a story that’s as strongly oriented as any single character. Make up your own definition, of course; mine won’t be yours, just as my book won’t be yours, as my talent isn’t yours.

So yes, writer’s tips. I’ve cultivated what I call a generous skepticism; that is, something like the fusion of incredulity and eager study. I could blame my scientific training, but that would ignore what an argumentative little girl I (once?) was. It is, like most things, a product of both nature and nurture. With respect to writer’s tips, that means I approach articles by writers (unpublished and published) with both: the understanding that I’m less experienced than them, and hence will likely have something to learn; and an eyebrow on a hair-trigger.

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April 2, 2011, Author: Abigail Nussey, Leave a comment

Writing Blogs on Writing, and Updates

Categories: Updates, Writing

First of all, my sporadic updating has been entirely too sporadic, and for that I apologize. I will endeavor to post more than once every few months. For those with author blogs, you’ll know what I mean — take an hour or two to write a good blog post, or spend that time on some book or story? So much work goes into a book, its demands can seem endless — conceptualization, research, notes, outline, summary, putting down actual words, editing, gap-filling, more notes, revision, editing, revision, revision, revision…

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