Wednesday, April 4, 2012

What's in Your Head?


“I don’t see why you had to cook for him,” a voice grumbled sullenly from across the room. Shooting an unfriendly glance over my shoulder toward my roommate, letting him know with a look he was being childish, I went back to concentrating on the stove. My food might not be five-star worthy, but when I set out to do something I tried my best to make sure it was done well.
“I’m cooking for him because it's polite; especially since I might be turning his life ass over teakettle soon for my own benefit.”
Tasting the sauce, I judged it acceptable and poured it over the chicken sitting in another pan. The liquid sizzled and spat at me when it hit the heat, much in the same way I'm sure my grumpy companion wanted to at the moment. 
“That's fine and dandy, but you could have ordered pizza.”
His voice was closer, and I turned around completely to face him this time. Crossing my arms over my chest, he spoke before I could say anything. 
“You always cook real meals for the ones you truly like.” His words came out soft and bitter, like someone who had their heart broken; only to find the person who left them had moved on without a second thought.
I started to deny his proclamation, but the serious look in his eyes made me swallow the words before they passed my lips.

-Nyx, and her roomy, Sorren.  


I watched a tutorial today by the lovely Kristin Nelson, and it was about the way to properly submit a Science Fiction & Fantasy query; on top of letting us know why they fail so much. That isn't the point I wanted to touch on, though. One of the things she brought up was about the Science Fiction and Fantasy community in general. Apparently, compared to a couple of other genres, there isn't as much support on teaching fledgling writers in these two genres on how to improve their writing. Even the tutorial I watched by Ms. Nelson was apparently met with little fanfare or interest. 

This got me wondering: why?

Not to psychoanalyze an entire genre of authors, especially since I want to write in said genre, but I have a couple of theories. They could be completely off-base, and obviously it doesn't apply to everyone. 

However, one of the ideas I came up with was the fact that we create entire worlds, races, and so on, making our writing highly individualized. Yes, there are sub-genres of fantasy and science fiction that work off preconceived or existing elements, such as alternate history stories like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Even with that, there is a highly creative element that goes into fantasy and science fiction I can't see coming into most other forms of writing. Call me narrow-minded, but there is just a 'wow' factor I get from reading SF&F because I know the good authors had to come up with all of this in their heads, and I just don't get that same feel from other categories. Not that authors from other groups aren't amazing writers, because they are, they just don't spark my interest the same way. 

The point being: is it possible to teach that level of creativity? I'm not so sure. Of course there are the basic structures a person follows when writing any kind of story; events that need to happen for the reader to enjoy the novel. Formulas. But there is an extra step I feel SF&F writers need to take in order to make their book unique. Everything else just feels so...limited. All they have to work with is this reality, the one we live in. 

The second theory plays off the first one. Due to the (hopefully) highly individualized nature of SF&F writing, and pardon the cliche, it turns our mentality into that of a lone wolf. Trite, I know. 

Actually, I might go out on a limb to say that we guard our ideas and creative methods like dragons hoarding gold.


Not all writers, and not everyone can explain how they get their ideas. You'll hear a lot of, "It just came to me one night/day." Which I can relate to. Some of the stories I've written happen after gnarly dreams, or downright nightmares. The novel I am writing has evolved, an inordinate amount of times, from an idea I had when I was twelve. If I compared the two stories now, they wouldn't resemble each other at all. Which is a great thing, believe me.  

Or maybe we're all crazy and grumpy? 

 -link

Any way, those are just my thoughts on the matter. Like I said, they could be completely wrong; but I'm sure there is one person out there it applies to. 





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