But, like the ALL_CAPS_NOTES, those are only in the draft version. Even when I simply format them for myself to print out and do hard-copy edits (cf. https://wandering.shop/@kagan/113391383318970874), that script already reformats stuff to have indents and text alignment, but no more angle brackets.
Someone will doubtless use a hashtag in their text messages at some point, though. That's something that would result in # making it unchanged onto the printed page. 4/5
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Addendum: I just noticed _ is in that list. I write my drafts in Markdown, so I do use _ for italics. But again, that's draft-only. 5/5
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 10: Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
Margot and her family have a pet cat, Pixie. She's a grey tabby, about 5yo.
Carmen Lockhart has a 13yo cat named Random, and a 12yo dog named Shaggy. I still need to figure out their breeds, but I think Shaggy is part English sheepdog and part "some other stuff", leading to his appearance and name.
Hew Morrison has a cat and a dog, both of whom are 12yo; I haven't determined their names or breeds yet.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 11: Do you agree with Samuel Johnson, who said, "What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure"?
I'm not touching that one without knowing more about the context. I can think of ways in which it could make sense, but I'm not going out on that limb.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 12: How many times do you usually edit?
To be determined.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 13: Is there a message that runs through all of your work?
We can make the world a better place. And we should.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 14: What's the most challenging thing about writing characters of a different sex/gender from your own?
I don't honestly find it all that challenging. I just write them like people, but people who have had different experiences than me.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 15: What do you owe the real people you base your characters on?
I'm not sure just what this means. I certainly don't have any character who's just based on one single real-world person; I grab bits and pieces and mix them all around. And I also create a lot on my own. (And some of the bits and pieces I grab are from myself!)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 16: When did you reach the point when you thought: wow, I'm a writer? Are you still waiting?
I still label myself as "an aspiring writer"; I'll take the qualifying adjective off the front sometime between finishing a first draft and getting something out there on the shelves.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 17: Have you ever written anything where the POV shifts partway through to a new MC? Would you?
My WIP is intended to shift among POVs, generally at chapter breaks.
(Though not always; it's looking very much like the end of chapter 2, which will mostly have been told in close 3rd from Kevin Wingard's POV, will shift to Margot Chu's for the last few pages when she and Angel Castillo tell Kevin good-night and get on a streetcar going elsewhere.) 1/2
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It should be pretty smooth, though, because the action supports it.
Later on, the book may get more into switching at scene breaks instead of chapters. I'm not sure yet.
Anyway, if the question means, "would I start off a story in one character's POV and then switch to a second character midway through?", only if it seemed best for the story. But I think my stories tend to be multi-POV, not single. 2/2
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 18: What have you written most different from your usual work?
I only have written one thing so far, so:
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 19: Have still images ever inspired your writing?
I can't think of any that have (so far), no.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 20: Are novel genres helpful or constraining? A bit of both?
They're definitely helpful as a marketing aid/technique — and (unusually for me) I don't even mean "marketing" in any derogatory sense at all. As a reader, I like having some sense of what a book will give me before I spend my money and start investing my even-more-precious time on it. So they're definitely helpful in that way. 1/3
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They can even be helpful for the writer, guiding them in places where they're unsure. Can.
But when a story doesn't fit neatly into an existing genre, that's when a writer needs to say, "Okay, too bad for genres. I'm writing a cross-genre story, or a story-that-doesn't-any-genre, and that's okay." When a genre becomes constraining, that's the time to jettison it and have no qualms about doing so.
Or maybe I'd say, "If genre is constraining you, then you're using it wrong." 2/3
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Addendum: Also, Charlie Stross's advice that "a book's genre is a diagnosis, it should never be a prescription" is 💯🎯; succinct and well-put.
https://wandering.shop/@cstross/113514854998079522
3/3
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 21: Do you have a day job? What is it? Do you wish you could write full-time?
I do, I'm a front-end web developer.
If my writing ever started making me more money than coding does, I'd drop the coding and become a full-time writer, sure. But I have no expectation of that happening.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 22: How did you develop the idea for your first book?
I'm still developing it, TBH. At first, it was a lot of world-building: figuring out how City shaman society has developed over the years, what groups and cliques there are, what spells there are, how training is done, etc. 1/3
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Next came the vignettes I've been working on for ~7 months. Those get me into the minds of various characters, and have helped me fill in various aspects of recent history. Many of them have led me to ask myself questions that looped back into the world-building, so it's been kind of iterative. 2/3
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Along the way, I've also been making notes about things that I want to happen in the plot. Most of those have been in the first 5 chapters, though there are definitely some later ones. More recently, those vague plot notes have been coming together into an outline for the first 5 chapters. 3/3
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 23: Do you write under a pseudonym? Would you?
No. I suppose I might, if there were some good reason to do so, but I don't currently have one.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 24: What's the most challenging part of the writing process for you?
I haven't yet been through the whole writing process. So far, the most challenging part has been maintaining my motivation over such a long time, and especially after the election.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 25: How do you decide on character names?
A combination of sound/feel, meaning, and what was popular at the time the character was born.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 26: What's the best feedback you've ever received on your writing?
Given that "best" doesn't always mean "most joyfully received", I think the best feedback I've gotten may well have been when my partner let me know that a couple of moments in vignettes, where I intended one character to be sincerely comforting another, did not land the way I'd hoped, and actually made the efforts at comfort look really awkward and feigned. 1/2
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I'm still trying to fix those situations, but I'm glad to at least know about the problem. 2/2
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 27: If Hollywood wanted to adapt one of your books but change almost everything, would you do it?
Fuck no.
If they want to change everything, then they don't want my book at all. They want their own thing. They can damned well do that without me.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 28: Do you try to give readers what they want or strive for originality? A balance?
Well, some readers say, truthfully, that they want to read things that are original...
Really, I don't see them as in opposition. I'm really just trying to write what I feel moved to, and I trust that there will be people out there who want to read that.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 29: What did you edit out of your most recent book?
I gather this intends something bigger than a couple of words here and there, and is more along the lines of chapters, plotlines, or characters who had to be removed. So, I'm not yet at the point where I'm making big edits like that; all I've done is minor edits on vignettes.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 30: As of now, how many stories have you written? How many more do you have planned?
So far? Something like 0.01.
Taking the loosest possible interpretation of "planned"... 5 for sure (well, 4.99), and some of those might grow into more, and also I might get more ideas somewhere along the way.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 1: Does your work make you laugh when you read it back?
Only the funny bits.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 2: From all your work, who's your favourite character?
I don't really "do" single favorite things.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 3: Do you agree with Tolstoy, who said, "The best stories come not from the conflict between good and evil, but from the conflict between good and good."
I've learned to be very wary of these quotes, but this one seems straightforward enough, regardless of context.
Anyway, I disagree with it regardless. 1/4
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Sure, Casablanca had an element of good-vs-good (although it sure as hell also had good-vs-evil, and that was the underpinning of one of its most powerful and iconic scenes — the Marseillaise overcoming the Nazis' singing).
But how about some other timeless and highly-regarded tales?
No matter what you think of the rest of the series, Star Wars episodes 4 and 5 are epic and excellent, and they're both straightforward good-vs-evil stories. 2/4
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The Lord of the Rings has some complexities and sub-conflicts on both the good and evil sides, but overall, it's another good-vs-evil tale.
How about the Iliad? It's difficult to identify a real "good" (or "evil") side there, but it'd be almost impossible to call it "good versus good". The Epic of Gilgamesh has stood the test of time even more than Homer's work, and it's not really good-vs-good, either. 3/4
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How about Shakespeare? A couple of his most highly-esteemed plays are Hamlet and Macbeth. Neither of those could remotely be considered good-vs-good.
Basically, Tolstoy sounds pretty full of shit there. I'm honestly curious what stories he had in mind. 4/4
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 4: Have you ever written anything you thought was terrible and saved it in the edit?
Not yet. I'm sure it'll happen at some point.
[Edit: Actually, after seeing many other, more experienced writers' responses to this question, I'm no longer sure it'll ever happen. It seems to be a rare thing!]
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 5: Add one word to the name of a famous novel to completely change the meaning.
The Lord of the Onion Rings
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 6: Sentence fragments? Punchy? Cliché? Essential? Wrong? What's a sentence fragment?
Fine. Useful, oftentimes! But not a thing that should be overused.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 7: What do you think is the most critical element in storytelling?
Having a story? And telling it?
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 8: Are you inspired by the state of current world politics, or is your writing an escape from dark reality? A bit of both?
Definitely a bit of both.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 9: Is it like slay to use sick street talk like in your lit literature, or is that just gonna give you salty vibes?
Ye Gods. If you're gonna do that, get it right, already!
Obvi, it can make sense, or even be indispensable, in dialogue, especially if said dialogue is set in the here-and-now. (Which my WIP is.) But it's easy to overdo, so be careful. 1/2
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In other settings? If you can accurately depict the slang of the time, it can be a powerful addition to your work's feel and verisimilitude. (Georgette Heyer was such a master at this!) This can also work in future or fictional times; John Brunner did this well in The Shockwave Rider. But again, don't overuse it, and also in these cases, it needs to be understandable by the reader. 2/2
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 10: Do you set out to write a series of a certain number of books, or does it evolve into a series?
It's too early in my writing career for me to tell yet.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 11: When did you first start reading? How enthusiastically (or not!) did you take to it?
I don't recall how young I was. Something like 3 or 4? Anyway, I was definitely a voracious, enthusiastic reader through my school years; I can recall sneaking my books under my desk and reading in class as early as 3rd grade, and might have been doing so earlier.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 12: Do you have a favourite author? Is your style influenced by them?
As per day 2 (https://wandering.shop/@kagan/113583965132146765), I don't really do single favorites of anything. I have various things that I like a lot for different reasons and in different ways.
I will note that... 1/2
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...I found some of my early vignettes were influenced a bit by one of my favorite authors, Dashiell Hammett: I was too reticent to dive into characters' minds, being unconsciously influenced by The Maltese Falcon's absolute refusal to explore the thoughts of any character, even Sam Spade. But I shook that off after a bit. 2/2
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 13: Which novel to TV or movie adaptation was the most disappointing and why?
The movie that I could best describe as "loosely inspired by Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising". It was absolutely awful. Why? The movie-makers failed to understand nearly anything that had made Cooper's book a beloved classic.
Thread/rant incoming... I'll talk a lot about the setting, tone, and themes of the book, but will try not to spoil the plot. The movie, I will rip to shreds. 🧵 1/7
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In the book, Will Stanton is a British boy who comes from a loving family. He discovers, on his 11th birthday, that he is one of the Old Ones, servants of the Light, sworn to protect humanity from the Dark. He's inducted into a secret world of magic, steeped in ancient British lore.
As he's drawn deeper into the conflict between the Light and the Dark, his family life starts to form a sort of counterpoint to the magical world, and occasionally almost an anchor. 2/7
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There's one (non-spoilery) scene in particular that's always stuck with me, and that I'm sure was entirely intentional on Cooper's part. Will's learned that a magical artifact he has with him reacts to evil influences in the vicinity by growing cold, and if it feels warm, that's a good sign. One evening in his family's living room, as people prep for Christmas and enjoy each other's company, it winds up feeling actually hot. 3/7
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His parents explain that away as being from him having been near the fireplace, but the import is clear: the loving environment of his family is a good one.
The movie throws that all away.
I understand the movie makers said they wanted to give Will more of an "outsider" feel. They say that's why they made him and his family Americans living in England for some reason. (Dad's job? I forget.) Anyway... suuuuure, we all believe that load of shit. 🙄 4/7
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But that's nothing compared to what they did to his family life. There's no warmth. His older brothers range from dismissing and ostracizing him to outright bullying him. It's a stark and disgusting contrast to the way his brother Paul treats him kindly in the book when he's terrified by a Dark attack.
Aside from that, the magic in the book feels mystical, special, and numinous. In the movie? It's just random comic-book superpowers. The sense of connection to English mythos is totally lost. 5/7
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The movie had not the ghost of an idea of what made the book so special and beloved. It trampled on many things that were at the heart of the story.
It was awful in every way, and not even "so bad it's good"; it was just bad. Honestly, even if you don't know the book, I think it would just feel like a lackluster, formulaic modern fantasy movie with nothing special about it.
But if you do know the book, you can see just how awful a travesty it is. 6/7
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I whole-heartedly recommend the book¹. The movie deserves to be consigned to the pits of anonymity and utterly forgotten.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 14: Is it OK for a book to be purely entertainment, or must it have meaning or a lesson?
I personally like my own works to have some kind of meaning, but I adamantly defend the rights of stories to exist purely for entertainment. Hell, I'll even enjoy reading them! Just because I want to write Thing X doesn't mean I want everything to be like that, and I enjoy reading Things Y and Z.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 15: Do some readers over-interpret your work? Do they get messages you weren't sending?
Nobody's had the chance to yet! 🤣
(Okay, my alpha reader conceivably could've with the few vignettes and the one scene they've read. But if they were inclined to do that kind of thing, I wouldn't trust them as my alpha reader.)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 16: What would be the best writing-related Solstice present someone could give you?
I haven't the faintest clue.
I don't use things like Scrivener or Grammarly, so a subscription to them wouldn't help me any. Ditto for pens or notebooks; I'm digital-only, as writing by hand makes my hand cramp very quickly and my handwriting is atrocious.
I suppose maybe a good book on writing? But I never seem to finish reading those; I always wind up writing instead…
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 17: Which writing conventions do you ignore, if any?
I've written before in this hashtag (and WordWeavers) about my utter contempt for prescriptive "grammar rules" based on Latin, but I don't think most other writers follow those, either, so I wouldn't grant them the status of "writing conventions" at all.
In that case, I think I'm mostly following conventions. No real boundary-breaking, convention-defying stuff going on in my work. And that's okay.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 18: What are your biggest turnoffs or turn-ons when reading?
One huge turn-off for me is exclamatory comments in the narrative voice. (Of the myriad things that were horrible about Piers Anthony's writing, those were the first one I picked up on.)
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 19: Do any of your stories occur in Winter? What do you take from the season?
My WIP is my first work, and it runs from early spring to mid-autumn. Just to contrast with that, I plan to make sure to have the next one cover winter for at least part of its duration, but I have no idea when it'll start or end, or what will happen.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 20: Is anyone getting a copy of your latest book for Solstice?
No, there's nothing ready to give as a gift.
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[#]WritersCoffeeClub Day 21: Disney is making a musical animation of one of your stories. How well does that go?
O_o Wow. That's an... interesting concept. I have no idea. I mean, they'd have to get over the queerness of my story and cast to even start on this, but if I assume they must have done so (according to the parameters of the question), then... I'd be incredibly curious to see what they did with it. 1/3
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@kagan I honestly do not remember "learning to read", as I was young enough that it's always been something I could do. If you listened to my (possibly overly) proud mom and aunties, I was reading and speaking clearly before the age two - I have my doubts about THAT, but I was definitely "reading above grade level" upon entry to kindergarten.
I read at a novel-a-week pace throughout middle and high school - only slowed by the requirement to read textbooks or technical papers for school, later.
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@kagan I loved this book as a kid (and still do) and never saw the movie (luckily). I first read it in German (and over and over again), later when I had learned English, I read the original and only then discovered it was part of a series. I really enjoyed all of the books, but The Dark is Rising will remain my favourite. It ignited my imagination.
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@kagan "I suppose maybe a good book on writing? But I never seem to finish reading those; I always wind up writing instead…"
Fucking fantastic. That's awesome.
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