On writing – Page 2 – LOUISE PIEPER

Wrap it up, I’ll take it!

banner_book launches I’ve had two weeks to recover and I’m ready for my close-up… so here’s what I got up to at Conflux 14 (theme: the unconventional hero) over the October long weekend.

Panels!

Hero cliches and how to make or break them: I had fun talking clichés with Leife Shallcross and Sam Hawke, ably chaired by Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe of Antipodean SF. I may have pulled on my ranty-pants, mentioning the gendered nature of the etymology of ‘hero’. Which segues nicely to…

Conflux panel Abusive alpha males and sassy Mary-Sues: when heroes go bad: I chaired the feisty panel of Keri Arthur, Annabelle McInnes and K J Taylor who discussed self-indulgent author inserts, alpha jerks, and why male Mary-Sues aren’t seen as entirely unbelievable. (Hint: it’s because of the patriarchy).

The Unconventional Romance: I enjoyed this genre-bending, boundary-pushing session with Freya Marske chairing Leife Shallcross, Keri Arthur and Jane Virgo.

Session on Pitching: There were plenty of dos, don’ts and for-the-love-of-God-nos in this session with Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words, editor Lyss Wickramasinghe and Paula Boer.

Unconventional Hero’s Journey: The panel of Gillian Polack, Dave Versace, Simon Petrie and Abigail Nathan, chaired by Rob Porteous, took us over Campbell’s Hero Journey and discussed other ways of looking at a hero.

Workshops!

I ran a sparsely populated workshop on the hallmarks of heroism on the Monday morning after the conference dinner. Alas, many of the registrants decided another hour of sleep recuperation trumped the appeal of discovering the secrets of how to write protagonists a reader would love.

I went to a fabulous workshop on writing fight scenes with Aiki Flinthart. Not only was it full of fantastic information on the differences between men and women fighting, both psychologically and physiologically, and the differences between trained and untrained combatants – all of which was super useful – I also got stabbed. Well, I volunteered to pretend to be someone who had no combat training and no experience of body contact sports. I was very convincing in the role. My reaction was entirely typical of a clueless victim – shriek and flail uselessly!

I also enjoyed a workshop on worldbuilding with Russell Kirkpatrick looking at maps and how the inclusion of a map in a book influences the way readers see the world.

Book launches!

The Book of Lore by Rob Porteous: Rob did a great job of being the convention’s unconventional MC and also launched his book on writing speculative fiction. This is the distilled wisdom from several years of running the CSFG Novel Writing Group which can be used as a ‘how-to’ guide to writing your own novel.

80,000 Totally Secure Passwords that no hacker would ever guess by Simon Petrie: Simon is a master of puns, cool book titles and thought-provoking science fiction. He launched this best-of collection at Conflux.

Iron by Aiki Flinthart: I can’t wait to get the chance to read this first in a trilogy tale of a world without iron and fossil fuel… and what happens when someone discovers an iron ore deposit. Plus (squeee) everyone who bought a book at the launch got a lovely little sword bookmark.

A Hand of Knaves: In a fittingly dangerous crowd of ne’er-do-wells and ruffians the latest CSFG anthology was introduced by Rob Porteous, launched by editors Leife Shallcross and Chris Large, illustrated by Shauna O’Meara, read from by Dave Versace, Eugen Bacon and myself and sold to the heaving masses by Angus Yeates and Simon Petrie. As well as that hand of villains, other contributors wielding pens for the signing included Helen Stubbs, Maureen Flynn, C H Pearce and Claire McKenna. It was a lot of fun.

But perhaps the best part of any convention (and Conflux 14 was not so unconventional as to be an exception) was meeting the most fabulous writerly peeps: I spent time with my tribe and made new friends. Thanks to the Conflux team for pulling everything together. Glorious stuff!

Crossing the Lines and breaking the rules

Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill has recently won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for the Best Crime Novel. Deservedly so: it’s clever, entertaining and a great example of how metafiction can be fun. It also packs a punch for writers learning their craft.

In the stone-chiselled commandments passed on to writers – almost any version thereof – it’s said you shouldn’t change point of view (POV) mid-scene. “Head-hopping” is poor writing, confusing to your readers and a mortal sin.

It’s also said you have to know the rules to break them.

Well, Sulari definitely knows the rules – her Rowland Sinclair historical murder mysteries are nothing short of an ongoing delight and she has three YA adventures based on the Greek myths in her backlist. (I may have waxed lyrical in the past…)

Which is all to the good, because when Crossing the Lines breaks the POV rule it smashes it out of the park.

What’s going on in the novel? Well, it begins with Madeleine d’Leon, who writes crime novels. She creates Ned, a literary author to be the detective character in her latest murder mystery. Or does she?

Edward McGinnity is writing a story about a mystery-writing lawyer called Madeleine, whose seemingly comfortable marriage contains dark undercurrents. He’s a literary writer, after all. Or is he?

As the two stories enmesh it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who is writing who. The narrative slips seamlessly between them, sometimes crossing from one to the other mid-sentence. And while they’re blurring the line between what is real and what is imagined, the reader is absolutely hooked by this story. Read it, and let me know if you managed to put it down, because I couldn’t.

As a writer, I think Crossing the Lines is not just a fantastic example of smashing the POV rule and of metafiction doing some heavy lifting in a very nonchalant and polished way . It’s also a lesson in how a story can be a whole lot of fun.

sulari and christine Sulari knows how to have fun – in fiction and outside it. That’s her, on the left – with Christine Wells on a panel at GenreCon in 2015 – admitting she writes in her pyjamas while watching old Midsomer Murder shows. She’s obviously had some fun blurring the lines between herself and her character Maddie, who’s also a lawyer turned writer who writes crime in her pyjamas.

So, whether you’re looking for a clever crime novel, a masterly metafiction lesson, or some fun fiction which will definitely get you thinking, grab yourself a copy of Crossing the Lines, published by Pantera Press, and enjoy.

Heroine chic

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I’ve been polishing my gauntlets and buffing my boots in preparation for the Heroines Festival and Heroines Anthology launch.

The fearless protagonists at Neo Perennial Press have teamed up with the South Coast Writers Centre, the Wollongong Book Festival and Culture Bank Wollongong to focus on speculative and historical storytelling and showcase women writing about women – strong and brave and smart and unstoppable.

How could I not want to be part of that?

The first festival is on Saturday 8 September, 12 to 5pm at Thirroul Neighbourhood Centre – all the details about the program and guests like Kate Forsyth, Catherine McKinnon, Claire Corbett and Pamela Hart are here.

Leading up to that, though, is the launch of Heroines: an anthology of short fiction and poetry. The anthology has been edited by Sarah Nicholson and Caitlin White and I am thrilled that it includes my short story Bits and Bolts and Blood.

The launch will take place at Philanthropy Tribe Book Café in Wollongong on Wednesday 5 September, 6 – 8pm. You can find out more about the launch, and about the seven writers who will be reading from their work in the anthology on the night, here and follow the link to book tickets for the free event.

Yes! I’ll be reading from my short story at the launch.

So, what’s the story?

The anthology called for reimagined myths, fairy tales and legends. Bits and Bolts and Blood takes a few of my favourite things – the Grimm’s Little Redcap tale, Tarot cards and fairy changelings – and mixes them together to make something new.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the anthology and discovering what stories all the contributors have chosen to tell.

If you’re in or around the ‘Gong on the 5th of September, come to the launch! It should be fun and fabulous. Even if you’re not, I’ll put details of how you can get your hands on a copy of the anthology, ~~as soon as possible~~ right now (only $19.99).

A bonfire of my vanity

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Tonight, I’m off to a bonfire of my vanity, rather than a more generic bonfire of the vanities which would call for the righteous roasting of anything which might encourage sin.

Let me explain and, since it’s Wednesday and there’s always time for a little wordsmithery, before I set fire to the pyre I’m going to investigate some history and wordalicious etymology.

Back in the 1490s, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was ruining his former patrons, the de Medicis, by preaching that luxury and ostentatious excess were sinful. (And, yeah, those Medicis knew a thing or two about ostentation.)

The good people of Florence, egged on by Savonarola, in the spirit of abstinence called for by the upcoming Lent, spent Shrove Tuesday 1497 chucking anything that might tempt them to sin – mirrors, cosmetics, musical scores and instruments, playing cards, paintings, books – onto a fire.

This wasn’t the first falò delle vanità, bonfire of the vanities, but it is the most well-remembered, at least in part because it was said that the great Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli consigned some of his own paintings to the pyre. Che cavolo!

Things didn’t end well for Savonarola – only fifteen months later, after being excommunicated and tortured, he was hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, along with two other friars. Their ashes were dumped in the Arno to prevent his followers from making relics of his bones.

And, yeah, that’s the Arno in Pisa – stop being picky. Its the same river and it brings us to the etymology of bonfire which is that it is a bone fire. That is a fire in which you’re burning bones.

Why, you might ask. Or even, what sort of monster are you?

Firstly, they don’t have to be human bones. Don’t go all wicker man on me, alright?

Secondly, burning bones is a great way to turn them into a nice, friable fertiliser. So, you bring the beasties in from their summer pastures after harvest, knowing there’s not enough feed for them all for the winter, and after the butchering and everything is done you’ve got a pile of carcasses which need burning to make fertiliser for the fields for the next year’s crop.

And, oh, is that the time? Somehow it’s the end of October and time for Samhain, so you build up bonfires – bonefires – and make a party of it. You drive the rest of the cattle between two of the bonfires and you pass through them too, as a cleansing ritual. The wall between the worlds is thin, so you make sure you appease the spirits of the fae and of the dead.

So the bonfires (with or without their bones) were being lit at that time of the year (preferably by a fire made by friction = force-fire, needs-fire or neatsfire, neat being an Old English word for cattle) long before the Catholic Church moved its celebration of All Hallows from the 13^th of May to the 1^st of November, and long before English justice saw Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators drawn, hung, mutilated and quartered for their conspiracy to blow up King James and the parliament on 5 November 1605. A ‘guy’ has been burnt in effigy on that date – Bonfire Night – ever since.

Because what’s a bonfire without at least a few (notional) bones?

And what’s it all got to do with my vanity?

Well, I’m off to have one of my manuscripts critiqued, tonight, by the CSFG novel critiquing group. If producing a book is like producing a child, which it really isn’t, this is like asking some other parents to tell you how ugly your kid is. No, honestly, tell me. I can take it.

Actually, it’s more like taking all the things you’re proud of in your work and watching while others throw them onto a bonfire.

Well, it will be cold tonight, here. About 4 decrees Celcius. Books, as Mr Bradbury told us, burn at 232 Celsius. And bones, as it happens, will become friable due to the breakdown of collagen at around that temperature too.

Still, even if all I’m left with is the charred remains, they’ll make a good fertiliser for the next version of my manuscript.

Word*: the villains are revolting!

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Darling, I know! **

Today’s word has a wain’s worth of class attitude: villain.

It seems logical to think that villain would share some sort of etymological root with vile and vilify – all the nasty things in one bucket, what ho?

But English is a language which defies logic. No, it snatches logic down from the tree and squeezes the life out of it, adding logic juice as a spicy flavouring to its hot-pot melange of the half dozen other languages it has smashed together. Tasty!

So vile and vilify come to English from French and originally from the Latin vilis meaning base or worthless. And villain comes via the same route, but not from vilis. Villain comes from villa, as in a Roman’s country house. Someone attached to – working at – the farmhouse or villa was a villanus.

Wait. We’re getting there. It makes as much sense as insulting someone by saying they are churlish or a boor.

By the time the Norman’s conquered their way across the Channel in 1066 villanus had become villein – meaning a low sort of peasant. In the feudal world even peasants had hierarchies and the villein/villain was above a serf, but below a thane. Clear as muck? Excellent!

Soon there were villains all over England – raking muck, sowing and reaping, wassailing and morris dancing. Of course it wasn’t all filth and giggles. They had plague and pestilence to keep things real.

But the point is that villains were peasants and they weren’t too clean or too fussy about what they found entertaining. It didn’t take long before the word villain meant not only a peasant but anyone who was low-born, rude, coarse, base and with no manners or taste.

A yokel, a hick, a hayseed.

And, as has ever been the way, it’s a short skip from low manners to low morals. You know: you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. As well as a general insult meaning common as the muck they raked, villain started to mean an immoral, criminal and dangerous person. A knave and a rascal.

Etymologically speaking:

knave = male servant (Old English/Germanic),
rascal = rabble/people of the lowest class (Old French),
churl = peasant(Old English/Germanic),
boor = peasant (from the Latin for cow).

I’m seeing a pattern emerging here.

By early in the 19th century, villain had been attached to the idea of a character in a book or play whose evil actions drove the plot forward. From there it became a more general word for a wicked or malevolent person, and by the 20th century it had also acquired the gloss of being a criminal mastermind.

A defamatory transformation for those poor peasants, but what’s the take-home message for the writers in the room?

Well, you’re no doubt aware that your villain/antagonist shouldn’t be a moustache-twirling cardboard cut-out, who is evil for the sake of being evil and has no reason for stopping the hero/protagonist from achieving their goals other than that someone has to or, hello, no plot.

Villains need depth and motivation and they need to believe in their reasons for doing the evil things they do.

The best villains see themselves as heroes.

Also… check your assumptions.

Are your villains perpetuating class, race or gender stereotypes? Are you thoughtlessly writing white hat/black hat characters. That is, are all your good guys good-looking? Or slim? Or polite, educated, well-groomed, gainfully employed, whatever other virtue you prize, while the villains are ugly, physically deformed, thuggish, fat***, stupid, etc, etc.

You can do better than that. Great antagonists are often a shadow mirror reflecting back the opposite of the hero – what the hero could be if they chose the dark side. But you don’t have to take an either/or approach to every aspect of these characters.

And you really shouldn’t leap in and assume the antagonist is a peasant because all villains are, aren’t they? Make conscious choices about your antagonists and your protagonists – don’t just have default settings.

The etymology of the word villain is a lesson in class prejudice – it permeates our language without us even realising it.

Words are your tools, writers – know what they mean and what they imply and use them with intent.

*It’s Wednesday word time again. This could get to be a thing.

** I know – that’s not a photo of villains or peasants! They’re Skaven and they’re revolting.

***Someone I know has stopped reading a best-selling thriller author because anytime a character is introduced and described as fat it’s a giveaway that they’re the bad guy. Kind of kills the thrill.

Word for Wednesday

Wed shelf What do Wednesday Addams, Sir Garfield Sobers, Hannibal Lecter and Count Tyrone Rugen from The Princess Bride have in common?

That’s right! They were all polydactylous.

Polydactyly is the congenital physical abnormality of having more than the usual number of fingers or toes.

Polydactyly. Now there’s a good-looking word.

When writing, you want to make your characters memorable. According to the exhaustive TV Tropes, polydactylism is one of those shorthand (ba-dum-dum) tropes for difference – your character is either shown to be adorably quirky and unconventional or their mutation is a metaphor for being a monster. For example, the allegation that Anne Boleyn had six-fingers (and an extra nipple to feed her demonic familiar) circulated after her execution and was (probably) false.

In terms of plot, being able to say “I’m looking for a six-fingered man” definitely narrows your field of suspects, as demonstrated in the detective series Monk and by Count Rugen. You know the routine:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

They didn’t bother with Hannibal Lecter’s extra finger in the films. In Thomas Harris’s book, The Silence of the Lambs, he is described as having the comparatively rare central polydactyly on his left hand. Sinister! More common is ulnar or postaxial polydactyly, where the extra digit appears on the side of the hand, by the little finger.

In real life, many people born with ulnar polydactyly (like ‘Bond girl’ actress Gemma Arterton) have the extra digit surgically removed when they are children. Or, in the case of West Indian cricket legend, Garfield Sobers, they remove their own littlest little fingers – with the aid of catgut and a sharp knife. *shudders*

So what about Wednesday?

You may not be aware, because she isn’t the sort of girl to traipse around barefoot, but according to Charles Addams, writing in 1963, Wednesday Friday Addams has six toes on one foot. Of course, an extra toe is easier to disguise than an extra finger. Fans of classic sci-fi author John Wyndham’s book, The Chysalids, will recall that Sophie’s ‘blasphemous’ mutation was hidden for years by the simple expedient of not removing her shoes and socks in public. Until she did.

In Hungarian folk belief a person born with a sixth finger on one hand could be a táltos and capable of supernatural power. In fiction, extra digits can be good or bad omens, signs that characters are secretly related, or the reason why the character can do something that no-one else can.

They set the character apart, with an abnormality far more subtle than other supernumerary body parts – polycephaly (extra head), polymelia (extra limb), polyorchidism (extra testicle…although I guess that would only be unsubtle if you took your pants off in public). Moving on…

I don’t have any supernumerary body parts, and have to make do with a mere congenital anomaly – the atavistic swelling of the posterior helix of my right auricle. That’s right, I have a unilateral Darwin’s tubercle, which Charles Darwin called a Woolnerian tip when he wrote about it in The Descent of Man. It’s my vestigial pointy ear.

I’ve yet to read any fictional characters who are marked out as destined for greatness because of their tubercle, but I live in hope. Recommendations, anyone?

An equinoctial day of doggerel*

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It’s equinox and World Poetry Day:

Check your clocks and locks, be sure all’s okay.

With an equal time for both day and night,

It’s a time to rhyme, and no crime to write.

Unless,

I guess,

Your poem is a mess.

In other words…

I had a clever concept, as clever as could be,

That I’d fill my book with poems and lies

And dire uncertainty.

And I’ve nearly got it finished but…

It just might finish me.

Because…

It’s too unkind – I’m in a bind – my wretched mind just will not find

The rhyme, the rhythm, meter or beat, to write the poem, complete and neat.

Instead…

Howling doggerel is let slip, from the leash of my pen,

It chases down the troika, rips the will to live and then,

It spatters bad rhymes on the snow,

Relentless, devouring, as though

It will eat the world. It won’t go

Unless I stop feeding it words….

I guess that would work.

*Sorry. It’s all, unfortunately true. Except for the troika. I’m trying to write a poem for my current work in progress, but it’s just a steaming pile of naffness. So Happy World Poetry Day, damn it – why don’t you go and read something good. If you need a little inspiration (get to end of the queue) The Independent kindly assembled 28 of poetry’s most powerful lines. You could start there. I can’t join you. I have to walk the doggerel.

Write on top of the world

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I’m back to reality, after last week’s flights of fiction in the heights of the Australian Alps.

Five days – two spent mostly driving, which meant hours of plotting, and three spent writing (and plotting, and character soul-searching, and – because I had a writing partner along for the fun – laughing at the self-induced madness that is writing.)

It was great.

But I defy any writer to imagine themselves sitting in one of these very comfy chairs in front of the fire (it was just chilly enough to justify one) and not being inspired to write…

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18Fairhaven I’m pretty damn happy with how it all went, because the work in progress is now 47 out of 51 chapters done, so just 4 chapters and 146 hashtags away from being a finished first draft.

Buckets of thanks to my family for doing without me, and my writing buddy for coming with me, and the lovely staff at Ramada Dinner Plain for keeping us caffeinated.

I know I’ve said before that the writing life has highs and lows, but it’s worth remembering that, sometimes, the highs put you on top of the world.

Or at least on top of the mountains.

So, wherever you are this week, I wish you good writing!

Everything I know about writing I learned…

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It’s my fondest dream, that one day my ridiculously talented child will say that everything he knows about writing he learned from me.

Yes, it would be reflected glory, but you take what you can get, right?

I’m super proud that he has again been shortlisted in the Somerset Novella Writing Competition. He submitted a crime thriller, called Red Ridge, White Snow, and was one of four shortlisted entries from the ACT, NSW and Western Australia.

A crime thriller? Wasn’t his story last year an historical mystery with a fantasy twist? Well, yes, but he likes playing around with genre, and he took some advice on writing from a workshop with Sulari Gentill – that it’s always good to start with a murder.

And, well, that means he definitely didn’t learn everything he knows from me….

Ssssssss-boom! Another dream crashes and burns.

But at least there’s fireworks from the impact.

And I am so very pleased for him.

High, low, everywhere we go

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Here’s a perfect demonstration of the highs and lows of a writing life:

In the same week of receiving confirmation that my short story would be published in the upcoming CSFG anthology, A Hand of Knaves, I’ve also had my historical fantasy novel rejected.

The publishers requested the full manuscript, on the basis of my unsolicited submission, so I sent it off and kept my fingers crossed for three months. Uncomfortable.

Alas! They said they liked it. But they did not love it.

There’s nothing to be done except take comfort from their comment that the main character was ‘likeable, engaging and well-rounded’, pull on my big girl writey-pants, and (like all wordsmiths practised in the dark arts of rejectomancy) get back to work.