It’s a Tuesday so it must be time to witter about something. There’s not much book-news to get excited about at the moment. Am rewriting the last quarter of the Order of the Scales after finally figuring out what was bothering me about it (yes, something is getting cut). Am waiting impatiently for Thief-Taker to come back from my editor (impatiently because I have free evenings coming out of my ears at the moment and there’s only so much Bioshock a man can play. Well, actually there isn’t, but there probably ought to be).

Still: Last night was the annual Orion bash, and a couple of comments still ring in my ears. Amid the Amazon vs. Macmillan malarkey, iPads and other shenanigans and the poorly advertised possibly-not-actually-a-fact that the e-book version of The Adamantine Palace will have something pushing 60,000 words of extra material in it, I’d somehow gained the impression that e-books were, somehow, well, y’know, important? Apparently not. According to Peter Roche, chief executive of the Orion Publishing Group, there is the possibility that e-books will expand greatly in 2010, possibly up to a whopping great 2% of total sales. Woo-hoo. Yes, the trend will doubtless continue and yes, it will vary from genre to genre (cookery e-book? Better be sauce-proof). But still. Woo-hoo. I’ll do the bonus material but I’ll not be rushing out to acquire a system developers tool-kit for iPad apps just yet.

This was a statement made during the annual Orion state-of-the-union address. The second most thought-provoking comment came from Adam Roberts, which went something along the lines of ‘What? You’re just going as a tourist? You’re not even doing research?’ This in response to me being off on a little trip in a couple of months. I didn’t have an answer to that, and it’s taken me a full day to realise why. So in lieu of being on the panel about fantasy research at Eastercon, here’s my ha’penny on researching for epic fantasy. It’s simple, really. Everything is research. I’m never a tourist. I was doing research last night in the Royal Opera House, listening to the acoustics and looking at the shape of the ceiling. I will be doing research in the Andes, on the look and feel of mountains. Not all that long ago I did some research on what it’s like to stand on the open top of a tall tower (very windy). Right now I’m researching how to share your lap between a laptop and a cat (tricky and prone to typos). Research for fantasy is endless. Go visit every terrain the world will offer you. Master geography. Understand how every culture works and why. Learn how science and technology developed. Get your head around the sum of human history. Slide into the heads of other people and figure out what make them tick. Do all of that and you’ll have everything you need to build worlds that are effortlessly real. “You’re not even doing research?” Doesn’t have an answer because the question doesn’t compute.

A while back I was invited into the local infant school to teach children a little bit about writing stories. I think what I actually managed to teach them was how to draw a cartoon dragon and a cartoon goblin, but hey, they liked the visuals, so here they are, in case anyone wants to try and do a better job.

The ideas I was trying to present are pretty simple, and are also pretty much how I set about writing a novel:

Start at the beginning of the story

Know who your story is about

Know what problem they need to solve

(or what challenge they need to overcome – remember I’m talking to six-year-olds here)

Know the end of the story

What is their last chance to succeed?

What is the final outcome?

(Between you and me, sometimes I do this the other way around and get the end before I even know to whom it is happening, but remember: 6 years old).

(The “story” we ran through here is pretty obvious: Dragon and Goblin want to make a book. Contrary to popular (6-year-old) opinion, Simon Skeleton in the last scene isn’t Simon Cowell…)

Now you’re ready to start. Think of the rest as setting off on a journey: You know where you’re starting, you know where you want to go, but you don’t know how to get there. You need a map (or a compass and some orienteering skills or some combination of both in practice but we’re keeping it simple, remember?).

This is the bit where you just think of a couple of things that sound fun and exciting and happen between The Beginning and The End. I have to admit I’m not very good at describing what happens here: make some stuff up. Don’t lose track of where you’re trying to go.

Anyway, anyone who fancies using the pictures, help yourself. They’re probably a damn sight better than the words that went with them.

I was having a minor grump over the holidays about how much time the rewriting of Order of the Scales was going to take (Simon, don’t expect to see it early). Well, the rewrite is going OK, but it’s still taking up a lot of time that could otherwise have been spent doing more worthwhile things like playing Dragon Age: Origins or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II or Assassin’s Creed II. But over the weekend, someone dropped me this comment:

“I’ve bought and half finished 5 books in the last month and had thought I’d lost my passion for sci-fantasy. Now I realise I’ve just been picking shitty books to read. Until now that is. I bought and finished The Adamantine Palace today and absolutely loved it. Thanks for giving me what I thought was lost Stephen!”

One happy reader doesn’t make a book good, but it makes an author happy too and not mind that he’s spending his evenings in front of his laptop. Also, he is apparently not alone. Been a while since a new review for The Adamantine Palace came out…

As noted my last post, my the first draft of Order of the Scales is needing rather more work than I’d hoped (largely because it was written about a year ago before King of the Crags went through its edit and the Gazetteer changed a few things). So instead of the usual two re-writes, this one’s going to need three before submission. Usually, there’s a first rewrite to iron out any inconsistencies in the story, character or background and put on the last icing and sprinkles. Then there’s a pause of a month or two while I go and do something else and then a second rewrite that all buff and shine and polish.

I like re-writes when I’ve finished them. I don’t like doing them. They’re treading familiar paths and rarely taking me anywhere new. Bleh.

Right. And that really is about it for any ’system’ I use.

Someone asked me a couple of days ago whether I plan in detail or use the ‘travel-hopefully’ method. Now being asked questions like that makes me feel all unnaturally important, as if my words and methods might carry some weight and I was all set to write a lengthy post on how to set about writing a story. Fortunately some sense prevailed; the fact is that everyone seems to write in different ways and I think everyone probably has to find what fits the way their head works.
That said, ‘travel hopefully’ does describe the way I write quite well once I get going, but having said that, there does have to be some sort of framework in place before I start; everyone has to have something, right? Otherwise how do you know where to begin? I don’t think I know anyone who sits down in front of a keyboard knowing nothing more than that they are about to write a story…

So what do I need? I need:

• A world. It doesn’t have to be fleshed out an detailed, but it needs to be there in skeleton form. In particular, I think what matters are the general rules by which the world operates. The big things that will shape it need to be thought through. The Adamantine Palace may not have that much world-building actually in it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t thought about. For a fantasy world, is there an analogous period in history? I will always start from something real and then add bits (magic, dragons, the fact that the moon is made of cheese, whatever). These bits need a little basic thinking through, too, about what the consequences are for the base society when you add the extras. I’ll do most of this as a go along, but I need to know how the rules that govern the way the world works have changed because of whatever I’ve added (or taken away). Same principle goes for Science Fiction and technology. If you’re going to set a story in the real world, then which part of the real world and which time in history?
• Some driver characters. A few main protagonists with what they are trying to do and why and very roughly what they’re like. These might be characters who will be in the foreground of the story (example: Prince Jehal: Intelligent, cynical, callous, wants to be top dog (because being the top dog is the only place that’s safe), deep down also wants to be… <spoiler deleted>) or they might be in the background (Saffran Kuy in The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice). They are the characters who are shaping events. What they are trying to do and why they are trying to do it will define the way the world changes during the course of the story.
• Some front-line characters. These might be the same as the above or they might be different, but these are the characters who are in the foreground of the story. I find they tend to acquire their own personalities and colour themselves in as the story goes on, so all I have here at the start are a few seed characteristics that make them stand out from those around them (Angry, guilty, can swing a sword. That sort of thing).
• An end. In some ways most important of all, I need to know how the end is going to feel. Someone has to either achieve something or fail to achieve something. It’s not so much the specifics of what that I have up front, it’s how it’s going to feel for the reader (bitter-sweet is always a favourite with crushing despair a close second, but there’s always the possibility of a happy success). There may well be several ends for several different story-lines.

And that’s it. After that it’s travel hopefully time. Which has worked extremely well on some occasions and less well on others. This year’s submissions will be The Order of the Scales and The Warlock’s Shadow, both already written in draft straight off the back of their prequels (on the grounds that all the preparation work had already been done) and both examples of FAILURE of the method, dammit! The Order of the Scales in particular has rolled a fumble (er, I mean has a lot wrong with it). I can see at least three re-writes being necessary before it’s good enough to be submitted. The first one started this week, along with the stress headaches.

This would also be the time when some sort of review of the year would appear, but I haven’t got time for that right now. Here’s one someone else made earlier.

Hints and tips brought back from Fantasycon 2009 and a few reminiscences.

So you’ve written a novel. You’ve got the craft of putting words together into coherent sentences, choreographing those sentences into scintillating paragraphs, corralling your paragraphs into scenes and assembling a story. How do you get from there to seeing your name up on the shelves in the local Waterstones? The internet will fall over itself to tell you what you can do. All sorts of books will do that too. Trouble is, do any of them really work?

1. Write such a good novel than no one can possibly turn you down.

Yeah, but what do you do if they do? The rewriting trap seems to be one that a lot of people fall into, and that certainly included me once upon a time. It’s true that there are first novels out there that were worked on for years and eventually got noticed and turned out to be exquisitely good and immensely successful. The trouble is, there are several reasons why this might fail (the powers that be think the market is already saturated for whatever you’re writing; the powers that be think the market isn’t ready for what you’re writing; the powers that be just don’t like it for reasons you will never understand; the power that be don’t even get around to picking it up off the slush pile until after your grandchildren have started drawing their pensions).

Yes, absolutely make your novel as good as it can possibly be, but what are you going to do after you submit it? For the love of god don’t be sitting there twiddling your thumbs imagining you’ll ever get a quick answer to anything. Write something else while you’re waiting. And then something else. In fact a good plan would be to have your next project loosely figured out so you can get right on with it when the first one goes out. Reasons to do this include a) it keeps you occupied as you grow old and grey waiting for anyone to respond b) through writing something different you might learn something new you can feed back into the next rewrite of the novel you just sent. c) you might  write something better. d) Your typing fingers won’t atrophy and become useless. e) planning for your inevitable success. Think about it; it is very, very unlikely that anyone, including you, wants to publish exactly one of your books. f) planning for your inevitable failure: Best to get right back in the saddle, eh?

At the very least, if you have two ‘Best Novel Ever’s on the go then you can alternate so there are no awkward gaps between rewrites.

2. Write the most commercial novel you can.

Also has definitely worked for some. If you can still love the story you’re writing and the characters in it then do it. Seriously. Writing a story about <insert The Next Big Thing here> is vastly more likely to result in success that writing an equally good story about, say, an action-adventure romance about a were-piano, it’s battle against a secret society of super-evolved flat-pack bookshelves and its secret angsty relationship with a broken trombone.

Two little catches. The ‘equally good’ and the <insert The Next Big Thing here>. Equally good is up to you. If you don’t love your work then neither will anyone else and nor will it love you back, but if you love both ideas, then for the sanity of everyone around you, pick the commercial idea first. You can always write that story about the were-piano later. The Next Big Thing is a bit harder, but not as impossible as some people make out. Research (it helps to work in the genre section of a bookshop). Find out what’s coming out soon. Find out what new authors various publishers are excited about. Really what you want to be able to do is simultaneously mind-meld with all the genre editors and agents in the field and find out what they’re thinking, what they’re excited about that’s coming out soon, rather than what’s already a big hit. Do the work to get to know who all the relevant people are and keep track of who they sign and what they’re putting out (these things are generally announced well before books hit shelves). There’s nothing editors like more than enthusing about their latest great find (and they mean it too – they have to, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a deal in the first place). If you can get hold of an editor or an agent, they will usually be willing to talk and they will have a better idea of where the genre is going than most. Since they’re only human and thus still get it completely wrong from time to time, spread your bets. This is what conventions are good for (although not Fantasycon this year for some reason). Alternatively skip all that hard work part and write about some spunky woman in complex relationships with some sort of supernatural creature. My tip for for The Next Big Thing is currently Kung-Fu Vampire Dragons In Love. But that’s my idea and if you steal it, you deserve all the rejection letters you’ll get :-p

Yeah. Don’t imagine The Next Big Thing will be several of the current Big Things mashed together. Someone always tries it, someone always publishes it and it usually sinks like a depleted uranium balloon[1] [2].

3. Promote yourself to death at conventions and over the internet.

Oh there are so many ways to do this, aren’t there? Where’s a budding writer to start? There’s Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and LiveJournal and Blogging and Podcasting and LuLu and Self-Publishing and Conventions and and and and and…

There are a lot of stories about people having built a successful publication deal on the back of some form of self-promotion. These are the exceptional people. They are the exceptions to the rule and that is why they get talked about. Anything might work, but anything also very probably won’t. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. If there was a magic bullet then everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t be magic any more. I know there are some very successful writers who have squillions of Twitter followers or else have very popular blogs; in almost all cases, the successful writing came first and the on-line following came later. In microcosm – are you reading this blog because of The Adamantine Palace, or are you going to buy The Adamantine Palace because you’ve read this blog?

The one thing I’ve (very slowly) picked up from talking to people at Fantasycon and the like is that the people who’ve been picked up and had some success because they managed to promote themselves into a publishing deal generally had two things going for them. The first is that they had genuinely good material to back up the self-promotion. The second is that they not only worked bloody hard at promoting themselves, they also had a particular something at which they were particularly talented and exploited that talent. So if you’re going to promote yourself, don’t try and do it in some particular way because it happened to work for someone else – chances are they were a lot better at that particular thing that you are and worked a lot harder then you think to get where they got. Look at your own talents. Start with what really interests you and what you happen to be good at. Then figure out how to use it.

4. Make statistics work for you.

My personal favourite, since this is what worked for me. Do all of the above. Fail at most of them but don’t let that bother you. Write shit-loads of material. Try and try and try again and don’t stop. Luck has a lot to do with who gets published and who doesn’t but you can at least make luck work for you a little bit. I tend to think of it as throwing darts at a dartboard while wearing a blindfold and then someone stuck legs on the dartboard and made it into a sort of dartboard-spiderman hybrid that scrabbles all over the wall shouting abuse. Being able to write a good story is the equivalent of being able to throw a dart accurately and have it land exactly where you want it to: Necessary but no damn use when someone keeps moving the board. When that happens, all you can do is throw lots of darts.

[1] Like a lead balloon but heavier and with more environmental protesters.

[2] And anyway, there’s almost certainly already a bunch of films from Hong Kong about Kung-Fu Vampire Dragons In Love.