StoryCrafting and StoryTelling

“Interesting” is subjective. What doesn’t interest some people may excite others. 🙂

I take part in book review groups – you review mine, I’ll review yours – and I let people know going in I’m a tough reviewer.

The reason I’m a tough reviewer is fairly simple: I review books based on an author’s storycrafting and storytelling skills, not a book or story’s genre.

…good writing is good writing is good writing.

 
I’ve reviewed romance, poetry, chicklit, adventure, MG, and early readers, along with sf/f/h, and regardless of genre good writing is good writing is good writing.

Likewise, sometimes a writer is incompetent and their work sucks.

Storytelling – does the author have an interesting story to tell? Storycrafting – does the author tell the story in an interesting way?

 
For me, it comes down to storycrafting and storytelling. Storytelling – does the author have an interesting story to tell? Storycrafting – does the author tell the story in an interesting way?

Someone can have an amazing story to tell and do it poorly, kind of like a college prof who’s expert in their field and boring as heck in the lecture hall. That’s good story to tell told poorly. The prof who isn’t expert in their field and keeps the students interested has craft but no story.

Then there’s Door #3 – The prof who is both expert in their field and keeps the students interested, enthused about the subject and wanting to know more has both crafting and telling down cold. This is where you want to be if you want to be (in my opinion) an author worth reading.

The statement “What’s interesting is subjective” is true to a point. But yell Fire! or Rape! or Gun! and you’ll get people’s attention because some things aren’t subjective. Get someone’s attention first, they’ll decide if what got their attention is interesting enough to keep their attention.

But the key is getting their attention first, and that is done through good to excellent storycrafting and storytelling skills (and if you’re wondering what gives me the right to talk about such things, take a look at my patents and/or read Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History).

You’re sharing this because…?


Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!

(Video published – see link below) Join science fiction, fantasy, alt-history, steampunk, YA science fantasy, speculative fiction, and military science fiction authors F. Stephan, Geoff Genge, Claudia Blood, Theresa Halvorsen, C.G. Hatton, special guest alt-history and dystopian author Liz Tuckwell and myself in a two hour talk on #worldbuilding this Saturday, 6 Mar 21, noonET on Facebook

UPDATE: You can watch the panel discussion at both Litcon 2021 World Building Panel with Science fiction, fantasy, alt-history, steampunk, YA science fantasy, speculative fiction, dystopia, and military science fiction authors F. Stephan, Geoff Genge, Claudia Blood, Theresa Halvorsen, C.G. Hatton, and Liz Tuckwell and YouTube


Watch it live Saturday, 6 March 2021, noonET on Facebook!

 
About Minnesota based Claudia Blood
The Relic Trilogy – Which is YA sci-fantasy (or soft sci-fi)
Book 1: Company Assassin
Book 2: Horizon Found
Book 3: Time Rift — Goes live March 15th

 
About PEI based Geoff Genge
Terra Obscura series
My genre is alt-history/steampunk/sci-fi. What can I say… I’m complicated.
I like romantic dinners, stiff drinks, and long walks down abandoned country roads. Ya’know… since you asked.

 

About Temecula based Theresa Halvorsen
heresa Halvorsen has never met a profanity she hasn’t enjoyed. She’s generally overly-caffeinated and at times, wine-soaked. The author of multiple spec-fiction works, including Warehouse Dreams and River City Widows, in addition to various short stories and non-fiction articles, Theresa wonders what sleep is. Because she didn’t have enough to do, she also started No Bad Books Press with S. Faxon and edits for other spec fiction writers.), Theresa enjoys board games, geeky conventions, and reading. Her life goal is to give “Oh-My-Gosh-This-Book-Is-So-Good!” happiness to her readers. She lives in Temecula with her amazing husband, occasionally her college-age twins, and the pets they’d promised to care for.

 
About Lyon, France based F. Stephan
I have now 4 science fiction books in the same universe
The first two will tell you of Brian’s path to become a fully qualified starpilot and to overcome his worst fears
The third brings you back to Earth and the first trading space station above it, unsupported by the planet below
The fourth introduces you to a new character. She is forty, her birth has been deleted from the databases by the Federation until now and suddenly she has to find out what happened then.
I have pushed back the anthology of short stories
I am writing a fantasy book, set up in an alternate roman-styled world. When Giants attacks Antiago’s ally and northern border, General Torkal has only one choice. Step in. But the Giants are only the first threat he faces. We follow Allus Vernal, Scout Master of the First Legion, protegé of the General, from reconnaissance to battles, from throne rooms to secret fortresses

 
About North East England based C.G. Hatton
I write fast-paced action adventure military scifi (Thieves’ Guild), far future, galaxy at war, lots of intrigue, character-driven, complex, six books in main series, two so far in YA origins series set ten years before the main drama, new book out in April is the 3rd in that origins series…
Also editor of the Harvey Duckman Presents series of scifi, fantasy, steampunk and horror short story anthologies…
Background is degree and PhD in geology, worked at Durham Uni for five years, worked as a journalist, sub editor and editor on local newspapers for six years or so… started Sixth Element Publishing in 2009… mentor writers, run writing workshops, edit work, publish stuff… did some other stuff here and there

 
And from Special Guest alt-history and dystopia author Liz Tuckwell
I have written one dystopian short story and I’ve written several alternate history fantasy short stories about an alternative Rome. And a urban fantasy novella.

null

World-Building – Process

What goes into creating a world and sharing it with the reader?

Aside from blood and sweat?

Research
Research everything. You may not use everything you’ve learned, but your increased subject matter expertise will come through in your writing and (probably) you’ll have more confidence in what you’re writing. One of my greatest joys is having veterans and specifically helicopter gunship captains contact me after reading The Augmented Man to ask where I served and/or where I learned to fly. Anthropologists and other social scientists constantly read my work and ask if I worked with one culture or another. Such questions let me know my research paid off; when experts talk with you as if you’re an expert, you’ve done your job convincing the reader they’re in good hands reading your work.

On the other side of this, I’ve heard authors say that when they get to a point in their writing where something occurs they don’t understand or know or aren’t sure how something happens, they write “[XXX]” (or something similar) and move on, looking things up later.

Such writing shows (in my opinion).

I’m told that my work is so tightly written that it’s tough to remove stuff without throwing everything else out of whack. It’s like Story-DNA. Sure, you can switch a genome here or there, but that one genome and its placement affect the entire story. You may change hair color from chestnut to dark brown but now you’ve got three fingers that look like toes and a penis growing out of the middle of your forehead.

I stop writing when there’s a piece of something – tech, location, language, culture, anything! – in which I feel my knowledge is lacking.

And I always feel my knowledge is lacking.

Revealing the Story’s World
Reveal as the story requires. That’s the author’s job. Don’t front load, don’t back load, definitely don’t waste the reader’s time or stretch their patience, and always keep them moving forward through the story. This is something I wrote about in World-Building – Getting Readers Interested in Your World.


Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!

World-Building – Miscellaneous

Something is crucial to your world-building if your story is dramatically changed when you remove that thing.

 
Not everything tied to world-building is major. Except when it’s a central element to a story, meaning removing it dramatically changes your story.

That noted, here are some miscellaneous world-building items to be aware of.

Fun (Sports, Leisure, Music, Free Time Activities)
“Fun” is based on culture and language. A funny joke in English bombs in Mandarin and is completely flat in Hopi. All “leisure” time activities will be culture based, and much of that will be predicated on climate/weather.

However, leisure time concepts may translate well. Fishing is both a vocation and avocation on Earth. Imagine a water planet or a planet where the dominate life is aquatic in nature. They may go mammaling. Transpose everything from this world’s fishing to that world’s mammaling and you could have a fascinating first-contact story.

A telekinetic culture may have sports like ours but players will be heavily penalized if they use telekinetics. They may be allowed to bludgeon opposing team members with their hands and feet (if they have them) but hurling rocks at them telekinetically results in a 3-game penalty.

Music is heavily culture based, but beyond that we have “music” because our environment supports the transmission of longitudinal (compression) waves. Western music is based on the thirteen notes but non-western music systems vary on the number of notes and variation is reflected in the difference in tunings and instruments themselves. Other worlds may support lifeforms with hearing vastly different from ours, hence their music will be vastly different. If those cultures developed in environments that don’t support longitudinal waves, is there music at all? Or what would they have that we’d consider “music”?

Leisure time activities tend to be sensory-dependent as a rule (hence music would be different if the other culture’s ears weren’t designed to detect longitudinal waves). A Jovian would “paint” using radium-based “paints” as their “vision” developed on a planet where our visible spectrum couldn’t penetrate the clouds and the planet radiates like a sun-in-the-making; they wouldn’t have eyes like ours, or what served as eyes would be radiation detectors (perhaps Geiger counter like stalks?).

Life forms


Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!

World-Building – Belief Systems

Belief systems are part of the anthropologist’s triad – culture, language, myth (belief). These three are so intertwined I can’t imagine studying one without drawing deeply of the others. Our personal library contains ~300 books on different belief/faith/mythological/folkoric systems. If you count ebooks, the number goes over 1,000 volumes (and note my bias there).

But what about using belief/faith/mythological/folkoric systems as part of your world-building?

Margaret Atwood postulates a radical cultural change brought on by an exaggerated belief system in The Handmaid’s Tale, and that culture’s language evolves to sustain the belief system. Probably the best known blend of culture, language, and belief system is in Tolkien’s Trilogy. Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia series does an excellent job of blending these elements, but it’s all predicated on Helliconia’s weather (and perhaps you’ll appreciate how intertwined everything is when one builds a world from scratch).

Create a mythology only if such is necessary to move the story forward or is integral to the plot.

 
But again and to me, it comes down to “create a mythology only if such is necessary to move the story forward or is integral to the plot.”


Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!