#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 18. How do you do research for your writing? Do you ask specialists?
Professor DuckDuckGo. It's not quite as quick on the upstate as Professor Google, but Prof DDG isn't evil, so there's that.
It's fiction, not scholarship (which I also do). For fiction, I treat research as source material. It's super fun to dig into, but it shouldn't get in the way.
#wordWeavers Nov 16. Do you make up words for your books? If so, any tricks you’d care to share?
Only when absolutely necessary. Made-up words pull me out of the story--like, what the fuck is "ser"? GRRM can bite me--so I use everyday words as much as possible. My current WIP is about 150 years in the future, and they call things "phone" and "bus" and "glasses," except their phones convert to glasses and their buses fly.
The word I made up, I don't like. It's "autochef," and I need something better. The autochefs are machines that make one general kind of food: baked goods, soups and sauces, eggs of all kinds, etc. I really need a less "marketers made this up" word, but I haven't come up with one yet.
#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 12. Desktop, laptop, typewriter, pen and paper, quill and parchment, blood and stone?
Scrivener. It's changed everything. I can write out of order. Throw out a landmark of a scene I can see clearly, and then keep filling in scenes I can see based on that one, and eventually I go, hey, that's four chapters! It works for me.
#PennedPossibilities 128: How much research did you need to do for your book?
So, like a fool, I decided to try to make all my "space stuff" grounded. I fudge ALL over the place, and I do NOT our actual measurements of anything in unless there’s no way around it, but I also spent two days looking at how to make artificial gravity with a rotating space station, and now I know a lot more about it than I ever expected to.
So I don't know. A lot of research. I'll tell you how much when I'm done.
I will say this, though, compared to academic publishing, fiction research is a cool breeze! I don't have to find primary documents. There's no ethics board. I don't have to cite a damn thing. I don't have to search through journals. It's lovely.
#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 4: Have you ever seen a movie which was better than the book?
Jackson et al's LORD OF THE RINGS isn't objectively "better," but I agree with almost all their choices in terms of cutting the story down to something watchable. It's easy to forget it takes SEVEN CHAPTERS to leave the friggin' Shire!
#PennedPossibilities 105 — What does perfect happiness look like to your MC or SC?
Home. Getting to be a kid again. Being in a space that's not demanding violence of them or doing violence to them. Being warm and comfortable. Walls made of something other than dull steel. Soft sounds instead of hard noise. Going back in time and getting to have those years back. That's what they all want. So much that it hurts.
#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 1 - Shameless self-promo. What's your WIP? What's it about?
It's the Jedi Academy from a terrified youngling's point of view. A young teen is essentially kidnapped into the order and quickly clocks how deeply screwed up it is. Also, the force drives you psychotic. That's the "dark side." And if you turn, they genuinely believe that it killed you, you're dead.
Thematically, it's about self-appointed heroes creating the violence they claim to protect us from.
#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 19: As a writer, do you always apply the three-act structure? Why/why not?
Not consciously, but I cannot imagine it isn't present unconsciously, esp since I'm an improvisational writer. That structure is implicit in 90% of what we watch, the exception being TV shows with a third act break, creating a 4-act structure. I'm sure most of us are reproducing it out of habit.
Lately, I bail hard on books that don't grab me, and I don't look back. I wonder if it's because I write, now, and I'm like, I could be working on my book (I think) really quite good book instead of reading your only okay book.
My protagonist is bad at it, too! She doesn't have that knack even though all her friends take to it. They all draw on a cosmic power To Be Given A Better Name Later, but they don't all get good at the same things. My protagonist is an athlete. One of her friends is very good at telepathy. Others have honed other skills. I can't stop being a prof and a teacher when I write!
#WritersCoffeeClub 23: Is it okay to use short-form conversational text, i.e. contractions, in a novel?
I mean, yes, obviously, as long as it fits the tone of the book, but now I have to check my WIP to see if my narration unconsciously avoids contractions!
#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 28: Table of contents or no table of contents? Discuss.
On the one hand, as a reader, I like them only if the chapters/sections have interesting names. On the other, I'm an academic. The idea of book without a TOC is disquieting. I think it might drive me slightly mad, and I'd have to write one in.
#WordWeavers Oct 1 Introduce MC from antagonist's POV.
I had heard about her, of course. Her recruiter gave me a report, and he mentioned the trophies on her wall, so clearly had been using her power to win—some do and some do not—but I did not understand until I saw her move. She is a natural. She can do anything physical, any sport, any fighting style. But she lacked intentionality. It was just movement for her, so I knew I needed to make her desire to hurt her opponent. This is necessary.
#WordWeavers 10.18: Do you write characters with different beliefs than yourself?
I write lots of characters, some do some don't. My main characters tend to be one or two of my own character traits turned into a whole person, and my villains certainly don't have my values, but I sense the question is, do I write and humanize like conservatives or capitalists or something.
#Wordweavers Oct 19: Have you ever used sensitivity readers, and if so, how was that for you?
Not yet, but I'm going to need to! I've said before, my protagonist a biracial (white/Chinese) asexual teenaged girl, and I am not any of those things, so I have a writing buddy who is a lot closer to her identity, and I get help from her to make things ring true, but if this thing is ever published...
#WordWeavers Oct 20 Are your MCs good at fixing mechanical things or house maintenance?
One of them probably has some practical knowledge like that. She grew up on a farm in the wilds, so just by being around it, she will have learned some stuff.
#WordWeavers Oct 24: Do your antagonists have any unusual quirks?
Hm. They're terrified to the point of obsession that their students will have any kind of romantic or sexual experiences with each because they think it'll literally turn them into monsters (but I've also strongly hinted that my villains are off doing it in broom closets, themselves). Does that count?