Improving Your Fantasy Weapons: Axes
In most fantasy the most common weapon is the sword. That is perfectly reasonable as it was the most common weapon on a medieval battlefield, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the best or most interesting weapon for all your fantasy stories if for no other reason that they have been used a lot. If you want a weapon that would be used by someone with less money or by a truly aggressive warrior who wanted to do a lot of damage on the battlefield another great option is the axe. And just like swords there are a number of different types of axe and reasons a person might want to carry one.
Unlike a sword an axe is an almost purely offensive weapon. If you are trying to block with an axe you’re going to be at a significant disadvantage. But that isn’t all that important because with a good heavy axe there is little need to be defensive because it’s almost impossible to parry an axe with the sword and even blocking it with a shield is going to be uncomfortable and dangerous.
The danger is because in most cases shields would be wood with some leather and, if you were lucky, metal studs. We all know what an axe does to wood and that isn’t uncommon the battlefield either. But even if the shield is metal or doesn’t break an axe blow hitting a shield is going to hurt and so long as they remain aggressive counterattacks are going to be very difficult. This is a huge advantage for someone with an axe because so long as their opponent is constantly on the defensive they are in little to no danger while a single blow with an axe is likely to end the fight.
For the fantasy writer the primary advantage of the axe is the psychology of it. An axe immediately tells you something about the person or culture who is using it. Anyone using an axe is going to be aggressive and likely not just on the battlefield. The most famous of the axe wielders in history are the Vikings and the most aggressive of them are the berserkers, both of which would make a great starting point for a fantasy race.
But it’s not just going to be the psychology of the people using the axe that is important. In many ways the primary value of the axe is that it is scary. Someone using an axe is likely to be bigger, stronger and more aggressive than almost anyone on the battlefield. In fantasy this effect could be even more impressive if the axe wielder is a troll or giant who is far bigger and stronger and possibly with some more impressive natural defenses making a single enemy or small group a real deciding factor in a battle.
If you truly want to make your axes interesting though you’ll want to make certain they fit the character and what they are used for. Axes come in a wide variety of types. From those used to cut wood on a farm to weapons made specifically for battle. Thinking about this is going to give your weapons far more personality.
In the cases of war axes the primary difference is size. As a weapon they can from a one handed hatchet or tomahawk (including those that can be thrown) to massive war axes. The largest axes used on a battlefield were used by the Saxons. These massive axes were about five foot six feet tall and only the largest warriors would be picked to use them. Weapons like this would be devastating to anyone who got in range of them the bigger they are the more difficult they are to defend against.
In fantasy armor is often overlooked, but if you plan to use armor the axe has some more interesting aspects. That is to say that a well made axe is going to be fairly useful against almost any type of armor. Chain armor is going to be almost useless against an axe because a single blow is going to break bones whether it cuts through the armor or not. Against plate it’s less useful but it can still do more blunt force damage than a sword because more weight is in a smaller area. Also many axes have a spike or smaller blades on one side and an axe blade on the other. This is primarily for use against armor since the spike would go through a helmet or plate better than the blade.
I personally can’t think of a single magical axe in fantasy literature though it was a very common weapon throughout much of the dark ages and a magical axe could have a number of interesting uses. Perhaps a weapon that magically protects the user allowing for even more aggressive use of the axe or one that made them berserk. But even without the use of magical axes there is plenty of room for the use of more axes in fantasy literature and having a few more characters carry one of the most brutal and devastating weapons of the medieval age is likely to add a fair amount to drama to your story especially if the characters personality matches that of the weapon or if you want to add in an entire army of axe wielding men who are an almost unstoppable aggressive force.
Improving Your Fantasy Weapons: Swords
I love a sword. There are a lot of great swords in fantasy. Whether it is the sword that was broken, the sword of truth(from more than once franchise), Excalibur or some massively over-sized weapon from any number of anime and video games they are the heart of fantasy battles. But the problem is that swords have been overused in fantasy and the swords that are used are mostly very similar in type. I’ll talk in another post about using other weapons, but for now I want to focus on why you might want to cut back on the number of swords and how to make the swords you do use more interesting.
First, swords weren’t as common as you might think. There are a number of reasons that at many points swords were not the dominate weapon on the battlefield. Thinking about these reasons and adjusting the battle can help make your fantasy world more interesting.
The most basic reason for less swords is that a good sword is hard to make and it becomes harder with longer swords. This is important because a badly made sword will shatter as soon as you use it in battle. A good sword will require not only a very skilled blacksmith but the right materials and a lot of time. (It can take a few weeks or even months for a blacksmith to make a sword and it takes a well trained and skilled blacksmith to do it.)
Of course this changes dramatically depending on the technology level of your world. In the medieval world there were technology advances that made swords cheaper, but even then cheap weapons were cheap. A good sword would cost several years worth of wages for a typical person and while you didn’t have to be fabulously wealthy to have a sword someone who was poor would almost certainly use a far less expensive weapon.
The other reason is that swords generally aren’t the best weapon against someone who is wearing armor. This isn’t generally an issue in most fantasy as most fantasy ignores the concept of armor completely or ignores its real impact on the battlefield. This is a great opportunity for a smart fantasy writer to tell some interesting stories but I’ll cover that later. For now it’s just worth noting that the point is that a traditional sword isn’t really very good at piercing well-made plate armor and any slashing blow is going to slide off plate and may not even be effective against chain mail. You can adjust the sword to be better against both of these, but often it’s better to just use another weapon.
The real point for this post isn’t to say not to use swords, but to consider how to make them more interesting. The problem is that in fantasy a lot of the swords are very similar. The longsword is an interesting enough weapon but over hundreds of years and huge distances there was a lot of variety in weapons. If you’re going to have medieval weapons in your story it’s worth considering what type of sword you want to use.
One simple point that can add a bit of variety to a sword is how many hands are used to wield it. There are three basic options here. One handed swords that are typically used with a shield, or something else in the other hand, two handed swords which are much larger and likely used with armor to defend the person using the weapon and the more flexible hand and a half handed weapons. The third is a weapon small enough to use with one hand but with a hilt long enough to allow the use of two so that you can fight in whatever way is most useful at the time.
But that is by no means the only way to distinguish a sword. Another common distinction is the way you want to use a sword to attack. For most swords there are two types of basic attack, the thrust and the slash. The reason a sword is useful is because of it’s good with both types of attack, but it’s still worth having something specialized for the type of fight you expect to have. If you’re expecting to fight people in armor then you may want to give up much of the slashing value of the sword by making it thinner and tapered to a smaller point so it can go through the armor rather than bouncing off. On the other hand, if you’re in the aforementioned armor-less fantasy world a curved slashing weapon is actually very useful. A slash is less likely to get stuck in something and you can fight more enemies at once with it. Also a curved slashing blade will cut deeper easier and likely be lighter.
Finally there is the point of weight. A well-balanced sword is generally considered ideal and lighter is in many ways better. Both of these are true in many cases but not all. Swords are heavy and balancing it will make it easier to use and faster and it’s clear that a lighter sword is going to let you fight longer. But there are other points to be considered. If you add weight to the end of a sword by making the blade wider you can give it some of the advantages of an ax. Primarily that it will hit with a bit more force. Of course you’re going to get tired much faster. This is also true of making a sword heavier, but a thicker blade will also tend to be a bit more rugged and survive longer. Again the decision you use one over the other is going to depend on what you’re using the weapon for. If you’re fighting unarmored men then fast and light is the way to go, but if you have men in armor then extra weight in the right place can let you actually do damage to them.
None of this is to say that the centerpiece weapon of a fantasy shouldn’t be a sword I’m just saying that it doesn’t have to be. Swords were one of many weapons used at the time and one of the most important weapons on the battlefield and there are advantages to using them. A sword is well understood so requires less work to do as a writer when describing it. But it’s well known and everyone has read stories with a sword it in. That makes it less interesting so if you want to have the weapons in your fantasy that are interesting consider what the sword is being used for and that should let you make some adjustments to the basic weapon to make it more interesting or perhaps you should just consider a weapon that isn’t a sword at all.
Banned:I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
I regularly see articles on the Internet about school libraries or public libraries banning books. There are lists of banned books that include lists of libraries that have “banned” books by not putting them on their shelves. I want as many people to have access to as many books as possible, but in virtually every case that I have seen either the people writing the article don’t know the meaning of the word ban or they are deliberately misleading someone in order to get attention.
What these articles almost always mean is that a library has removed a book from circulation or in some even worse cases, chosen not to buy the buy and put it on the shelf. Now I’m not a librarian but I know something about libraries and one of the things I know is that not every library has every book ever written. So, in the second case the article should really read, “Library chooses not to buy a book I think they should have.” More importantly in those cases it really is basically calling people names because they made a decision you didn’t agree with. Should Huckleberry Fin be in a school library. I think so, but there are plenty of other books that should be too and in most cases the libraries are very small and they have to pick very carefully, so why put books on the shelf that are going to be controversial.
But the real question is about people taking books off the shelves because of complaints. To be clear, this is not by any stretch of the word banning a book. Banning has a very simple definition. The one relevant here reads “To prohibit (an action) or forbid the use of (something), especially by official decree.”
You’ll probably see the problem. First, the library doesn’t make decrees and secondly no one is prohibiting the reading of the book. It’s like saying that the government is banning the use of Pepsi because they aren’t giving it to people for free.
Now I’m not saying that librarians should remove books from shelves because someone complains. I’m saying that when you say they banned the book you’re being at best disingenuous in order to get attention. If what you’re saying is important you should be able to tell people without having to be dishonest in the way you present your argument.
But it isn’t just that people misuse the word ban, though that really does bother me, but they don’t present the whole case. One good example is that there were a number of articles about dictionaries being banned from a school classroom because it had words that some parents had complained about in it. (I honestly don’t remember what the words were.) What the articles that were trying to get people worked up didn’t say was that they were removed temporarily while someone looked at them to decide if they were inappropriate or not and then returned. It simply said that evil people had banned dictionaries from a classroom.
I think that people in general, and children especially, should read books that challenge them and sometimes that means pushing the limits of good taste. I also do not believe that it is the job of the government to ban books or limit access to any information beyond that which is very dangerous. (Feel free to limit the books on how to refine uranium if you feel that’s important.) But no matter how much you might dislike it if they remove The Catcher in the Rye from a high school library it hasn’t been banned. It’s just been made marginally more difficult to find and when you misrepresent that you’re crying wolf and when there really is a problem people are going to assume it the same old cries for attention and ignore you.
How Long Does it Take to Write a Book?
I was looking around Amazon and I saw a book title that, to its credit, caught my attention. Since it might seem that I’m being a bit critical of the book I don’t want to call it out directly. It might be a great book. All I really know is the title which is basically, how to write a book in four days. I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but I will say that it’s probably a bad idea.
Now I understand the point. Writing doesn’t have to be scary. National novel writing month (NaNoWriMo) is a great idea. But it’s also a month long, not four days. And beyond that most people who have done it haven’t edited their book yet.
Let’s examine the most basic problem. If you type a hundred words a minute and if you write a novel just 40,000 words long (which isn’t long) it will take 6.6 hours of just typing to write a first draft of your novel. And 40,000 is basically the minimum length to call a book a novel. Any less and it is considered a novella in the publishing world. Still, assuming the very basic to write a book you’re looking at 7 hours of typing.
But of course it’s not just typing. Whether it’s a novel, which requires you to focus on a story or a work of nonfiction that requires you to be factually correct it’s going to be a lot more work than just typing. Beyond that, while I can type a hundred words a minute, that is largely because I’ve been writing every day for ten years. The average typing speed is actually around 33 words a minute. That’s going to make that 7 hours of tying into something more like 21 hours. If you’re working 8 hours a day you’re into your third day just typing. But I’m going to be generous and assume that you’re working much longer than that. After all this is a passion project. Still, assuming you sleep and eat 15 hours a day means you’ve used up a day and a half with nothing but typing.
Of course that’s assuming you’ve got something to type. If you want your book to be anything more than rambling you’re probably going to want to have a plan for what you want to write. So let’s assume that each chapter of your book is 2500 words, that is 16 chapters. A fairly standard number of chapters for a short book. For each of those you’re going to want to have some type of a plan. To be generous, you could probably write a very basic outline for each chapter in 15 minutes. Any less than that and you’re going to have to think about what you’re writing while you’re writing and that’s going to slow you down anyway. That’s four more hours and you’re up to two days.
Now each page of a book you should expect to be about 250 words. That means your novel is going to be about 160 pages long. Now the average person can read about 50 pages an hour, give or take. This is important because you haven’t edited your book yet. Assuming you’re going to do a second and final draft (which is the absolute minimum) it’s going to take you about six hours if you can edit at the same speed you can read. Editing should take longer. For a professional editor it’s generally considered fast to do 20 pages an hour of just proofreading. Your first draft is going to require more than proofreading. But let’s be generous and assume you are excellent at grammar on your first pass and don’t need any major rewrites on anything. It’s going to take you eight hours for the second draft and another four for the third. And again, that is absurdly fast.
That’s your third day gone. So you’ve written and edited your book assuming you’re able to type quickly while writing, edit at speeds faster than the professionals and don’t spend any time doing anything else besides sleeping and the occasional bathroom break. You even have another whole day left so you could have spread out your work more.
Now of I’m really not trying to call out someone for a catchy book title. I really do understand why the book exists. There are a ton of people who want to write a novel. But there is something about the idea that you can just bang out a novel in a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks does bother me just a bit. Not just because trying to do that is going to result in something that is, most likely, unreadable, but because it propagates the idea that anyone can write a book. Technically it’s true of course. If you can read you can write a book and I don’t want to discourage anyone who wants to write a book from doing it. I just want to discourage the idea that it’s easy or doesn’t require skills beyond that of being able spell words correctly and use grammar. It’s an art and trying to publish a book when you haven’t put in the hours isn’t all that different from picking up a paint brush and expecting someone to buy what you make.
But even if you have the skill writing isn’t easy. In traditional publishing, it is generally accepted that you should put out one book a year. There are writers who are faster than that of course. That’s why Stephen King used a pen name for years to publish more books. On the other hand, George R. R. Martin, who many people say is a good author writes at a slightly slower pace. His first book was published in 1996. A Clash of Kings came out in 1998. The next book was clearly a rush as a storm of swords was published in 2000. Of course he couldn’t keep up that pace and the next book was 2005 and (much to the dismay of many of his readers), his next book was published in 2011. He’s written other things of course, but my point is that speed is not the mark of a good writer and neither is writing slowly.
So how long should a novel take to write? I have no idea. My calculation of taking 21 hours to type a novel isn’t entirely wrong. I often type first drafts very quickly to avoid editing and can write the first draft in a couple of weeks assuming the story is working and if you’re focused on a first draft of a reasonable length NaNoWriMo is actually a fairly good measure. If you simply sit down and write 1500 words every day for a month you could have about 45,000 words written in a month and if you’re anything like me you’re going to feel far better about that than the 40,000 words that you wrote over a long weekend by doing almost nothing but typing.
Is Editing Yourself Possible?
I’ve seen a number writing articles popping up recently that say you absolutely must have an editor. It is, according to them, impossible for a writer to edit their own work effectively. They are too close to the work and only a professional editor can see the problems and help fix them. Of course these articles are written generally by people who are professional editors and want work but that isn’t what is upsetting about the articles.
My Controversial Opinion on the Hugo Awards
I know I’m a bit late commenting on the Hugo awards, but the recent Hugo awards controversy annoyed me enough I wanted to comment with my own super controversial opinion on the Hugo awards. I apologize before I tell you because I know that it’s going to surprise and possibly upset some people, but the award for the best science fiction story, novel, etc should go to the, wait for it… Best story.
Basically what I’m saying is that most of the people involved in the argument are wrong regardless of which side you’re on (though I’ll admit if it makes you feel better that some are more wrong than others). If you’re voting for people instead of the work of fiction they wrote you’re wrong. I can understand not voting for someone if you really dislike them simply because you don’t want to support them. But voting for someone because they are a white male, a black Hispanic woman or an aboriginal Australian when you don’t believe their story is the best is just wrong and it doesn’t really matter why you’re doing it. Ignore the author and vote for the story you like the best. That’s what the award is for.
There are plenty of authors around who make fantastic work who I wouldn’t want to spend time with. H. P. Lovecraft wrote some of my favorite horror stories and he’s a racist who couldn’t live in New York because there were too many minorities. I’ve heard stories that Isaac Asimov wasn’t easy to be around, A lot of people dislike Orson Scott Card for reason’s I won’t get into here and anyone who has been around science fiction has heard stories of Harlan Ellison but Nightfall, Ender’s Game and City on the Edge of Forever are still fantastic stories even if you dislike the author. (I’m also aware of the issues around City on the Edge of Forever and have looked at both versions.)
I have no problem with people putting together a list of stories that they think are the best though it seems clear that isn’t going to be a good idea. I’m also very pleased that more minorities and women are writing science fiction. Part of the reason I read science fiction is to see the world from the point of view of people who see it different from me. And if they write the best science fiction story in their respective categories they deserve to win, but honestly anyone who votes for them because they are a minority or a woman when they don’t believe it’s the best story is voting wrong.
So that’s basically it. My controversial opinion about the Hugo Awards is that the rabid people on both sides of this are idiots. If I heard someone saying that women or minorities shouldn’t be involved in science fiction I’d have a hard time not punching them in the face. It’s 2015 and we are supposed to be past that type of thing. But I really don’t feel much better about the people on the opposite extreme. If you won’t vote for someone just because they are a white male then there is no difference at all. If you assume someone is racist because they disagree about what the best story then you need to consider that they might just like something different than you and that’s O.K. and if you vote for someone who didn’t write the best story to make a political point you’re helping to prove the people on the other side right.
Overall I really hope that in the next years the Hugo can return to an award that is about the best in science fiction stories and not about who is writing those stories because in the past I have always enjoyed the ability to read some very good stories and get a feeling for the state of science fiction. Honestly, in a perfect world I would love to have people read the stories without knowing who the authors were, but that isn’t feasible so people just need to get over it and vote for the best story so I have something good to read.
When is a Novel Done?
Yesterday I decided to add a short author’s note to the end of one of the books I have on Amazon. Because of this I had to check to make sure the copy I was changing was the most recent version. So reading the first page of a novel I wrote several years ago I found myself really wanting to edit the entire novel.
The things I saw weren’t necessarily wrong, but they were bad writing. There were sentences that were too long had extra words or other basic issues that could be improved. I'll admit I changed a couple of things that I couldn’t bring myself to leave, but this led me back to an old problem I have, and I suspect a lot of writers find themselves with the same issue. A novel is never done, just abandoned. That is, of course, true of all art, as anyone who recognizes the paraphrase will recognize but if you work on a statue or painting long enough you're going to run into limitations of the physical material. There is only so much stone and if you keep chipping away at it there won’t be anything left. That isn't true with a novel. I can literally work on it forever and the last draft would likely be better than the previous draft.
So how do I know when to move on? For me, the first clue is when I'm simply tired of working on something. I like editing. Often I enjoy it more than writing, so I'm generally not in danger of becoming bored too early. But once a piece of writing becomes a chore I find myself getting less done and putting much less passion into it.
Another clue is how much each draft changes from the previous draft. In my case first and second drafts are often very different. It's not uncommon for me to throw out entire chapters and rewrite them or change the ending of a story. The next draft typically is about tightening the story and connecting things. I add foreshadowing, make certain character descriptions are uniform, and cut out everything I don’t need. In most cases the story will get about ten percent shorter after a third draft.
From there I tend to go back in and add more words into the prose in the next draft. This is because when I'm telling a story I often don't put in all the details. I'll have a conversation between two talking heads with no connection to the area they are in and have scenes with almost no details about the location. (I know what the place looks like but that isn’t much help to a reader).
After that the question of being done begins to become more important. At this point the story is basically done. I'm not going to change any major plot points and character changes are going to be in detail and scope if there is any change at all. All I'm really doing at this point is polishing the stone. That needs to be done, but in general I’m just adjusting words and grammar. Both of those are important but they're certainly not my strengths and I like to play to my strengths.
I don't care enough about grammar to ever be great at it. (I hate it being wrong, but I can't get worked up over a comma) and I'm never going to be the guy who looks spends an hour deciding if I should use the word red, crimson, cherry or magenta. I might change between them in different drafts, but probably not for any deep reason and the people who care deeply about those things are almost certainly going to find problems in my writing no matter how much I edit.
But that isn't to say that editing for grammar and words doesn't help. I have a number of bad habits which, at the very least, add extra words to sentences. I will see and fix those problems in subsequent drafts and every time I replace two words with one or cut out an unnecessary part of a sentence I know it makes things better. The question is how much better.
And that really is the point. Every draft of a story has a diminishing return. Very few people will ever see the first draft of anything I write. I tend to edit emails and twitter posts several times unless it's to someone I know very well. And I suspect that in many cases it would be difficult for anyone but me to really see the difference between late drafts of a story.
But that isn't really the reason I stop. I abandon my writing mostly because there are other stories I want to tell. By taking what I have learned and moving forward I will, hopefully, avoid some of the errors I missed until the fifth draft of my last novel and make something better with deeper characters and a better plot.
Of course there are people who would say to spend more time on the novel and others who can afford to pay a professional editor. Perhaps there are even a few people who would say I spend too much time focused on minutia (though I suspect not many). But in the end the only thing I can say is that I know it's not perfect. I know it's not close. If I'm not my own worst critic then there is someone out there who is way to mean. But at some point every author has to abandon his work and as much as I want to go back in and add that scene between Jaba the Hut and Hans Solo back into the story (metaphorically speaking) I know that my time would be better spent making something new and better. (Well perhaps the metaphor breaks down there.)
So you write, you abandoned and you hope that the work you did years ago is enjoyable and embarrassing. And if you're like me you do your best to avoid looking at it too carefully later because every time you do you find yourself with that urge to begin to edit again.
Yesterday I decided to add a short author’s note to the end of one of the books I have on Amazon. Because of this I had to check to make sure the copy I was changing was the most recent version. So reading the first page of a novel I wrote several years ago I found myself really wanting to edit the entire novel.
The things I saw weren’t necessarily wrong, but they were bad writing. There were sentences that were too long had extra words or other basic issues that could be improved. I'll admit I changed a couple of things that I couldn’t bring myself to leave, but this led me back to an old problem I have, and I suspect a lot of writers find themselves with the same issue. A novel is never done, just abandoned. That is, of course, true of all art, as anyone who recognizes the paraphrase will recognize but if you work on a statue or painting long enough you're going to run into limitations of the physical material. There is only so much stone and if you keep chipping away at it there won’t be anything left. That isn't true with a novel. I can literally work on it forever and the last draft would likely be better than the previous draft.
So how do I know when to move on? For me, the first clue is when I'm simply tired of working on something. I like editing. Often I enjoy it more than writing, so I'm generally not in danger of becoming bored too early. But once a piece of writing becomes a chore I find myself getting less done and putting much less passion into it.
Another clue is how much each draft changes from the previous draft. In my case first and second drafts are often very different. It's not uncommon for me to throw out entire chapters and rewrite them or change the ending of a story. The next draft typically is about tightening the story and connecting things. I add foreshadowing, make certain character descriptions are uniform, and cut out everything I don’t need. In most cases the story will get about ten percent shorter after a third draft.
From there I tend to go back in and add more words into the prose in the next draft. This is because when I'm telling a story I often don't put in all the details. I'll have a conversation between two talking heads with no connection to the area they are in and have scenes with almost no details about the location. (I know what the place looks like but that isn’t much help to a reader).
After that the question of being done begins to become more important. At this point, the story is basically done. I'm not going to change any major plot points and character changes are going to be in detail and scope if there is any change at all. All I'm really doing at this point is polishing the stone. That needs to be done, but in general I’m just adjusting words and grammar. Both of those are important but they're certainly not my strengths and I like to play to my strengths.
I don't care enough about grammar to ever be great at it. (I hate it being wrong, but I can't get worked up over a comma) and I'm never going to be the guy who looks spends an hour deciding if I should use the word red, crimson, cherry or magenta. I might change between them in different drafts, but probably not for any deep reason and the people who care deeply about those things are almost certainly going to find problems in my writing no matter how much I edit.
But that isn't to say that editing for grammar and words doesn't help. I have a number of bad habits which, at the very least, add extra words to sentences. I will see and fix those problems in subsequent drafts and every time I replace two words with one or cut out an unnecessary part of a sentence I know it makes things better. The question is how much better.
And that really is the point. Every draft of a story has a diminishing return. Very few people will ever see the first draft of anything I write. I tend to edit emails and twitter posts several times unless it's to someone I know very well. And I suspect that in many cases it would be difficult for anyone but me to really see the difference between late drafts of a story.
But that isn't really the reason I stop. I abandon my writing mostly because there are other stories I want to tell. By taking what I have learned and moving forward I will, hopefully, avoid some of the errors I missed until the fifth draft of my last novel and make something better with deeper characters and a better plot.
Of course there are people who would say to spend more time on the novel and others who can afford to pay a professional editor. Perhaps there are even a few people who would say I spend too much time focused on minutia (though I suspect not many). But in the end the only thing I can say is that I know it's not perfect. I know it's not close. If I'm not my own worst critic then there is someone out there who is way to mean. But at some point every author has to abandon his work and as much as I want to go back in and add that scene between Jaba the Hut and Hans Solo back into the story (metaphorically speaking) I know that my time would be better spent making something new and better. (Well perhaps the metaphor breaks down there.)
So you write, you abandoned and you hope that the work you did years ago is enjoyable and embarrassing. And if you're like me you do your best to avoid looking at it too carefully later because every time you do you find yourself with that urge to begin to edit again.
Internal Consistency-- the unbreakable rule in science fiction and fantasy
I like to find ways to circumvent the rules of storytelling and often enjoy it when others do so as well. The rules of writing keep things consistant, but another word for consistent is predictable. But while most rules can and should be broken from time to time when it makes a story better there is one type of rule that can never be broken in a good story. That rule is the one that you create for the story.
Internal consistency is important in all fiction, but it becomes doubly important when you are dealing with speculitive fiction with internal rules that often break the rules of the world as we know it. But while it is important in worlds of high magic and fantasy they are important in all stories. You can't write a romance set in the 18th century and then have one of the characters call for help on a cell phone.
An example of a movie that fails in its internal consistency, at least in my eyes is "Next". The main character can see two minutes into the future, except when it is directly connected to a specific woman then he can see farther. But as the movie nears it's conclusion the rules are stretched and then ignored. And while the writers were aware of the problem for me they weren't successful.
For science fiction I often find a problem that I like to call collective amnesia syndrome. There is sometechnology, superpower, or other element that is in the show. Perhaps a time machine, or a character who can heal people with her blood, but while they may use that ability occationally if i isn't useful to the plot they ignore it entirely. I mean how can you find a time machine in one episode of a show and he next week not point out that it could easily solve the problem they are facing. I understand you can't expect the writers to always remember everything, and some story elements are so powerful they become a problem, but good writing will explain why it doesn’t work rather than simply pretending it doesn’t exist?
When writing you can trust that a reader will in general accept any stretch of logic so long as it is written into the basic premise, but nothing will turn off readers and viewers of a show faster than the writers ignoring the rules of the universe they created. So while the other rules of writing can be ignored, the rules you create for your story have to be sacrosanct.
Robots, Emotions and Science Fiction
Robots have been a part of science fiction almost since the beginning. You can even make the argument that Frankenstein's monster is in some ways a robot and that story helped set up one of the most important uses for robots in science fiction, as a way to examine humans and human emotions more carefully and they have been foils for human emotion ever since.
One early example is the 1938 story Helen O'loy by Lester del Rey. What this story does that is brilliant is that it isn't the robot in the story that is having trouble with the emotions, the reader simply assumes it is because of a general prejudice towards robots. This story is dated some as the idea of a wife being largely a servant exists but she is also the emotional core of the story and helps us examine human emotion not because she doesn’t have them but because of our own assumptions.
More famous is Isaac Asimov's "Bicentennial Man". This is almost certainly the influence for Data on Star Trek. The robot in "Bicentennial Man" is more of an accident than Data and it takes him longer to discover what he wants but the ideas are similar. He has to fight for his freedom, fight for his rights and eventually has to fight to be declared a man.
Both of these characters allow us to examine human emotions in a unique way because we have characters who don't take them for granted. Having a typical character speak of these emotions the way the robots do would be odd. We all know what the emotions are yet never discuss them in clinical terms while this is the only way a robot can really understand them. This leads to the question that if emotion is programmed into someone are they real and how can we say that emotions like a parents love for a child aren't in some way programmed in?
More recently the Cylons have been used in large part this way. Slaves to humanity they rise up to become their own race but they have learned the lessons of humanity too well and they seek revenge. As the Cylons become characters on the show rather than enemies we begin to examine their motivations and ideas in a way that would be difficult with humans. We get arguments about turning off their free will, and why they feel the emotions they have that gives us new dimensions and in the end it seems that the humans realize that they really aren't different. They have the ability to make choices and that makes them as human as anyone.
Emotions are tricky when writing. The authors desire to examine why people feel the way they do is confronted by the desire to make people act and think naturally and robots are an excellent way to allow for both.
Books about Writing Science Fiction
In addition to reading and watching science fiction and fantasy I like to create my own stories. This is something that i have been doing for years and truly enjoy. In those years I have read many books on the subject, but most writing books aren't written with the science fiction author in mind and so while there may be some good advice there is plenty that simply isn't relivent and thing that the science fiction author needs to know that arn't mentioned.
if you want to avoid the literary snobbery of some books on writing as well as get advice that is relivent to writing science fiction and fantasy here are a few books worth picking up.
1> Steven King's: On Writing
There is far less actual writing advice in this book than you might expect but don't let that deter you. This is a book about creativity with plenty of ideas about writing as well. If you're not interested in books of rules about writing but want to send some time with someone who knows about it then pick up On Writing.
2> The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells by Ben Bova
This book teaches writing through the four basic points of storytelling, character, conflict, background and plot. But what this does truly well is give you questions to ask and examples of Ben Bova's work that shows how he does this. This is a book that will help you read every book you read with a writer's eye and that will help make every book a writing book.
3> Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe, by George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier
This is a book about creating worlds and ideas more than about writing. Each chapter focuses on an aspect of creating a world that is important to consider. From orbits and ecosystems to technology this book will help to ensure that you don't miss anything vital when creating a world.
4> Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity
A classic writing tells about writing. If you like Ray Bradbury's work then you'll enjoy this well written book and you'll learn something both about how to write and about Bradbury himself.