Quantum Storytelling

Crof over at Writing Fiction has a great post about Writing in a Genre. It also happens to be a review of John Robert Marlow’s Nano. I haven’t read the novel, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating what Crof had to say on the subject of genre conventions, particularly as they pertain to sci-fi:

“Anyone writing in such a genre must walk a fine line between plagiarism and parody… … The trick is to recognize why these particular conventions appeal to readers, and then to push the conventions to reveal something implicit in them that other writers haven’t understood.”

Indeed. Here here, I second that! Especially the part about differential reinterpretation of the genre. In marketing it’s called positioning. Find something and make it your own. Frame a new and fresh perspective.

What does the author bring aside from the ideas and writing style? When you strip away the ideas and writing style, what’s left of author content? Are there any other kinds of content?

I’ve been having troubled dreams in the last week. Whenever I have troubling dreams, they’re always centered around paranoia or lingering fears in my life–things that only make sense from my perspective.

When I woke up this morning, I spent some time thinking about time travel. One of the thoughts was a familiar one I’ve engaged a few times involving a ‘meeting with the self’ if you could go back in time.

Bear with me for a little story here. When I was a teenager, I felt very stuck in my small hometown. Trapped. Nobody cared or was interested in entertainment or the entertainment industry.

The town I grew up in was a cocoon, protecting everyone in it, sheltered suburbs, from the real world. Not just protecting them from the bad elements, but the exciting elements too! You know, the outside world where people actually exercise their will to power to change, create, or shape things.

As a teenager, that seemed a forbidden outside land from the world I lived in, where the highest aspiration anyone could have was to “Get a job somewhere! Like everybody else!”

It’s been a long journey to where I am now working at 3D Realms in the game industry. Some of the luster has lost its shine along the way, working at glamorous corporate behemoths like Electronic Arts. It’s not all about ideas and creativity, like I once thought it was.

There’s way more follow-through necessary than starry-eyed youth would care to realize. Follow-through meaning; Stick with it to the end. See a job through to the finish. Take care of the lingering tasks, even some of the things that are dirty or not so fun.

In that way, it’s a job just like any other. You have obligation. Committment. There is no one-night-stand with creativity and ideas, and then walking away the next morning with no call, phone number, or even a Dear John letter.

In the real world, there are a lot of things you simply can’t abandon.

If I could go back to say… 1993 and speak with the Eric Then, what would I say? I might be tempted to bring him back with me to 2005, and to show him that escape from his small town is possible. And to show him a career in the entertainment industry is possible, and that there are droves of people who care about that sort of thing.

But then he already knew that didn’t he? Or he had a hunch. ;-)

And that brings me to the point of this post. Finally, you say! We all bring with us lingering hopes, dreams, and fears. Not just our writing style and ideas, but our modes of thoughts, the between-line expression that reveals our identity.

It’s more than just words typed on a page. We bring baggage–and that’s not a bad thing at all when you’re a writer as long as the baggage doesn’t take center stage.

The ideas and writing itself will always take center stage. But off to the side, peeking from behind the curtain, are the hopes, dreams, concerns, fears. Keep your identity employed–it makes a good stage hand.

I’ve been thinking about a new kind of story. It’s called Christmas and everyone who participate in it are absolutely insane! :-)

Got some time off and I’m cleaning the house, doing last min Xmas shopping, and otherwise partaking in behavior which seems completely insane when you step back and look at it from afar.

People are running around, buying food and gifts, cleaning houses, continuing to decorate and bake til the last minute, and run to the post office, and run all over crazy like chickens with their heads cut off. Why? Why do we do it?

In other news we saw King Kong over the weekend. I’d love to talk about it here but I don’t want to give away spoilers for those who haven’t seen it. Makes me wish Blogger had some spoiler tags. There were a lot of nice storytelling elements I’d love to comment on…

The editing on my book will begin soon. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughtful musings then.