#WritersCoffeeClub 30. How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories?
I hope that my fantastical landscapes, scenes, and places in which characters interact can instill a sense of wonder. There is a bit of mystery, not everything is explained to the reader, but it provokes thought or even a sense of wonder. As hyper-realism has never been my forte, it's my leaning in on the weird and wild shit my characters can do. Shit that can at times defy explaination, which hopefully creates wonder.
#writerscoffeeclub May30. How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories?
A sense of wonder is one of two possible responses that emerge from a sense of alienation (distancing from the world-as-understood: the apprehension of something vast or alien that's normally just out of sight when viewed from a mundane perspective).
Of course, the alternative response is a sense of cosmic dread (which is what Lovecraftian horror relies on).
Whether you feel wonder or dread is a matter of tone.
#WritersCoffeeClub 30/5: How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories?
Uh.
This is not something I plan and plot on purpose. I just go and explore the world and watch my characters run into trouble and try to survive it.
All of my worlds have some kind of magic in it (or science, which is close enough), and all of them have an element of discovery, of something hidden and unknown to be revealed.
I suppose that works for me, and I hope it works for the readers.
#WritersCoffeeClub 30/5: How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories?
My MC is very self aware and keyed into being alive, in part because her job brings her into contact with death and grief on the reg. She also has an 11 y.o. daughter who is a bundle of emotions, including happiness and awe on occasion.
The MC is also my narrator, so the story reflects her worldview, thoughts, etc. — allowing for wonder, worry, or any other feeling or mood I want to create.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 30 — How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories? CW: Intimacy
I don't have a formula, and it isn't something I try to create arbitrarily. It's usually written by accident (or incidentally), and almost always requires tuning of the found passage to make it truly wondrous. It's the right words in the right order. [Not helpful, R.S.!] If anything, wonder is usually tied up with emotion, a sense of achievement, or something well deserved, maybe even something so perfectly crafted by people or nature that it would make a person stare or feel goosebumps. However, I find simply being human can evoke the best sense of wonder—for example:
I woke to dawn rays filtering through lace draperies. A cool jasmine-scented breeze tussled the soft fuzz on my arms and brought the sounds of twittering robins and sparrows. My bombastic bedmate had not molested me. Perhaps she had heard me when I said I preferred men. That, however, did not prevent her from snugging up to me in her sleep.
I grew aware of warmth against my back. I commended myself for not flinging myself from the bed like a crazy person this time, but instead lifted my head and looked back. She lay there, sheets kicked off by one of us, her golden back against my paler one, making us a pair of Cs. Her usually poofy hair matted against her face and spread out in night-sweat glued-together curly tresses across her pillow. She snored imperceptibly, and somewhat daintily for such a large-boned woman.
When I shimmied to break contact, she began to shiver. Even after I gently replaced the sheets over us, she continued. She twitched. After a few moments, I heard the faintest whimper.
I lay my head on the pillow and felt bad. I shimmied back, until our skin made contact. In a minute she quieted and fell deeply asleep. I didn't move. Didn't want to. Because, I knew. She had felt terribly alone—worse, I realized, so had I.
I admit, looking back, there were a number of red flags for depression. I should have reached out. I should have cared. But one of the things about depression is you don’t care. It’s not all tears and rage, sometimes it’s simply an emptiness. I couldn’t summon the will to care, so I hadn’t. And there’d been no one else to pick up the pieces.
#WritersCoffeeClub 5/29: What's the average time to complete a writing project between the idea and publishing it?
I'm trad published: production takes 12 months, in lockstep with hundreds of other authors.
Time to write a novel … I started next year's "A Conventional Boy" started in 2009 and finished it in 2023, which is a new record for me. But 2015's "The Annihilation Score" squirted out in just 18 days (then a couple of weeks for fettling and polishing)!
#writerscoffeeclub May 29. What's the average time to complete a writing project between the idea and publishing/making it available?
Well... it's between 15 years and 1 year. I don't think I've ever been faster than a year. The idea means - I've got to find the time to start writing it, then write and finish it, edit, beta reader feedback, proofreading, covers, blurb, formatting and some basic marketing in place - yup, a year at least.
#WritersCoffeeClub May 28 - Do you have advice for other authors that you haven't heard from different sources?
Think of your readers as co-creators! These are imaginative, resourceful people who will inhabit your characters and bring new levels of meaning and creativity to your work. It's through them that your work will truly live.
That means, among other things, give them vivid and evocative information to get their engines revving, but don't micromanage their perceptions and reactions. I used to struggle with this, giving too many dialogue directions and descriptions in general trying to control every beat, every note, and every pixel of the imaginative screen. Between my beta-reader pointing out this tendency and Robert McKee's advice in his screenwriting classic Story to leave room for the actor to act, I was able to tone down my description by thinking of my readers as actors even though I don't write for the screen.
#WritersCoffeeClub#writing 29. What's the average time to complete a writing project between the idea and publishing/making it available?
Depends on the project. Drabble I can finish in a day, though two is nice for a final edit. A 1-2K story ideally will take two weeks, 3-4 if I have it betaed. A 12K novel or series of volumes has usually taken me about a year from start to finish.
#writerscoffeeclub 28 May Do you have advice for other authors that you haven't heard from different sources?
This is what I was told by my best friend in the whole wide world when I was talking about what other writers have done: “Never compare yourself to others.”
#WritersCoffeeClub May 28: Do you have advice for other authors that you haven't heard from different sources?
Yes: "there's more than one way to do it." (For almost any value of "it" that doesn't involve mathematics or formal logic.)
This is actually advice from a programmer, Larry Wall (inventor of Perl) but it applies especially strongly to writing fiction. Whatever you're trying to do, consider alternative ways of doing it.
#WritersCoffeeClub Do you have advice for other authors that you haven't heard from different sources?
Every time you get edited, take a second to add things to a general list that have come up in the editing process. I call mine my "Foible List" to feel a bit better about it.
That way, post-draft, you can pull out that list and check all the things on it before you hand it to your editor. Saves time—and lets them find new mistakes you make instead of old ones! ;)
#WritersCoffeeClub 27 April Have you ever written a section and subconsciously plagiarised another work?
Not a whole section, just an idea. Do you recognise this?
‘Are you happy?’
It’s the only question she asks these days. I have never lied to my mother.
‘In our own way.’
She reaches out a thin hand. ‘You can’t be happy in your own way, only unhappy. I want to know about you.’
‘I am happy.’
It’s the first time I have ever lied to her. She smiles her disbelieving smile.
#WritersCoffeeClub 5/29. What's the average time to complete a writing project between the idea and publishing/making it available?
Since giving up the day job, my target is to publish the next in the series within a year of the previous book and for the French language version to be out before the English sequel.
My stories are character driven and conversation heavy. Descriptive passages sit like pearls at the introduction of a scene where I hope they evoke a sense of wonder as well as place.