Recommendation
For any of my readers who are interested in the Hugo Awards, a standout story, The Cambist and Lord Iron, has been nominated. It’s by my friend Daniel Abraham, and you can read it at issuu.com/spectra/docs/cambistandlordiron.
It’s by talking with Daniel, and reading his stories that I’m beginning to get the smallest glimmer of understanding of how to write short stories. Daniel is the ultimate triple threat — brilliant novelist, great short story writer, and comic book writer.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Seriously?
“Relative Difficulties.” “Mirrors of the Soul.” “The Crooked Man.” “Degradation Rites.” Stories which have two things in common: they are all short and they all kick ass.
If you’re saying you wrote all those short stories before you had a glimmer of understanding, then maybe the glimmer’s overrated. Know what I’m sayin’?
April 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Oh gosh, golly gee, Jason… Now I’m digging my toe into the dirt and blushing furiously. You are very kind to say so. I think short stories are the most difficult form, and they scare the crap out of me.
I’m pretty much done with a story I’m writing for a workshop. It’s set in my Edge universe, and it’s about a Paladin in 300 a.d. I thought I had it finished this morning, because I went out on a perfect line of dialogue, but then I realized that it’s the other narrator’s story, and so I have to finish detailing what happened to him and how meeting the paladin changed his life. So I guess I have another scene to write tomorrow.
That’s what I mean by getting a greater understanding. Two years ago I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out until folks like Walter, Daniel and Ian who are great at short stories, pointed it out.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:31 am
That’s interesting, and still very surprising to me. I mean, of course I understand that any decent artist of any given craft — be it writing, acting, singing or otherwise — is always honing her skill and working to learn/improve/develop, right up to the end.
But if I hadn’t read what you wrote here, I’d honestly have never guessed that you considered the short story an Achilles heel. Honestly, it’s going to sound like I’m sucking up, but …
One thing I’d wanted to do for years but just could never find the time for was to create a Wild Cards website that really went in-depth with reviews of each individual story from each book. It was such a massive undertaking that I never even got past some preliminary notes, but I remember being very keen to take apart “Relative Difficulties,” for example, and try to figure out just how you did it. It’s so well paced and so cleverly assembled, like clockwork.
I guess now that I’ve found this website, I can just ask you. How DID you do it?
May 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Jason, I’m amazed if that read like clockwork. It was a long time ago, but as I recall it was a desperate struggle. One of the problems was that it was too many aliens, too early in the series. It all started when Walter proposed the Swarm, and I think we didn’t have enough experience with the world and what really worked to say, “No, wait, not aliens. Not yet.” Then I added to the problem by saying, “Well, if there are going to be aliens then I’m gong to bring in the Takisians.”
George should have told both Walter and me to go back into our writer caves, and come up with something else. I truly think what saved us was Roger’s wonderful Croyd story where he had to steal the alien body and alien “football”.
Anyway, I was just skating fast and hoping it somehow hung together. I guess it did, and thank you for that.
Today, I’d look at it and say this is going to be a 7000 word short story. I need five to seven scenes. What’s the beginning and what’s the last scene? What does the protagonist have to accomplish/learn/or fail to accomplish/learn by the end?
And they still scare the crap out of me. *sigh*
May 6th, 2008 at 9:01 am
That’s cool. I love hearing behind-the-scenes Wild Cards stories, ’cause those books have — after a multitude of re-readings — become so ingrained in my consciousness. I’m always particularly intrigued to read things like this, where you authors talk about choices that you consider mistakes, whereas for me they are ironclad parts of the mythology, that I generally could not even conceive of having occurred any differently.
You know, like GRRM writes in his afterward to Book Four something to the effect of, “Having Gregg Hartmann get kidnapped twice in one book might have been a little much,” and I’ll read that and start thinking, “No no, that was the whole point — for Hartmann to survive one kidnapping, that could be attributed to dumb luck, but that he survived TWO is what casts suspicion on him and gets people wondering if he might be a secret ace …” Then I feel silly for thinking I know better than George R.R. Martin about Wild Cards.
I agree with you that Roger Zelazny’s story about the alien corpse and the bowling ball kicks off Book Two with the perfect tone, but I think the rest of y’all definitely kept the good times rolling, so to speak (and the way GRRM brings it all full circle in the final line of the final page was pretty ingenious). Book Two is still one of my favorites of the entire series. I see what you mean about the “too many aliens” idea, but the execution sells it brilliantly.
Among the cool things about “Relative Difficulties” were the introduction of Trips and some of his friends, and the end sequence with the sword fight. For some reason, your explanation for why a space-faring race still settles things with primitive blades (i.e., guns and blasters would wound the living ships with every stray shot) has always stuck with me as fantastically clever.
I also love that Vic Milan follows up your story with an immediate sequel featuring all the same characters and calls it “With a Little Help From His Friends” — a title that not only alludes to 1960s music like all his Cap’n Trips stories do, but also creates the great “Friends/Relatives” linguistic parallel with your title. (Plus there was the resonance struck by Vic’s title being a Beatles reference, when the whole book is interstitially linked by “the Walrus.” Really, y’all were just too dang clever.)
Annnnyway … hope you don’t mind me going on at length about these old stories. And thanks for sharing some interesting back-story!