TRY SCIENCE BABBLE IN YOUR SCIENCE FICTION

By Rex Hurst

For the three of you who know who I am, then you also know that one of the two genres I write in is science fiction. Aliens, lasers, beehive hairdo’d women saying “Show me more of this Earth thing called kissing.” This is my playground. The problem? Well, I don’t actually know much about science and what I do know all tells me that the stuff I write about in “the future” is completely impossible, or unlikely, or ridiculous. One of those.

Of course, this might not be the impediment that it appears on the surface. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction is easier to write if you don’t  know any science. Then you aren’t limited by all sorts of nasty facts and figures, and are only hampered by a lack of imagination. Most writers aren’t big on hard science, and despite what some might claim, most science fiction readers just want to explore the fantastic without a trip back to their high school science class.

But if you want the illusion of hard science, there is a way to fake it. As science today is expanding at an incredible rate, imagine how much it will continue to do so in two to three hundred years from today. Therefore, it would be perfectly believable for new scientific terms, devices, and jargon to come into being. This is something I observed in old school episodes of Dr. Who. I’m talking about the good ones from the 1970s starring Tom Baker. In these they simply invented techo-babble to cover the fact that most of what they were doing (time travel not the least part) was preposterous. The entire series was rife with such talk and I drank it all in. If it's presented in a straightforward manner, people will instantly believe.

Science today tells us that most people’s organs would be liquified if they tried to accelerate out into the planetary orbit. Well good thing they invented the Corvala Anti-Gravity Pump or the Gravtic Analysier or the Spacio-Cotray Junction, all of which allows people to zip away into space. Try it out. Make up your own. If you get stuck, take a current product and make an anagram of that. You will surprise yourself with what you can come up with.

THE INS AND OUTS OF DIALECT

By Sharon May

So you are interested in dialect. You must be one of those writer fellers, trying to figure people out so you can create a believable character. Using a dialect is a great tool for making characters different from each other. Writers often spell words phonetically to capture the pacing and cadence of a character’s speech or thinking. This is generally what we think of when we say dialect. But remember vocabulary builds dialect too.

The use of dialect by American authors primarily came out of the Realistic period, particularly the Regionalism movement in the late 19^th century. Realists were dead set to record to the nth degree how a person spoke. At times, these writers were indeed making fun of the characters who were markedly different from themselves. “Funny” spellings and enunciation, miscommunications, and misunderstandings added humor. Think of the Northerner in the south in the 1800s.

I come from a region known for its mountain speech. Some folk say its roots are in Elizabethan English. That’s them people who believe it has some linguistic worth. Then there’s folks who make fun of hillbilly speech. “You talk funny,” “What’d you say?” or “Where you from?” are their usual responses when we open our mouths. They think we are dumb, stupid, ignorant, uneducated just because of our dialect. Ironically, we have lots to say about their dialect too, but they are so egotistical or ignorant they think they don’t have a dialect. Remember, everyone has one, some closer to Standard English than others. If you use the dialect of one character, why not depict the dialects of all characters?

Don’t use dialect in a way that insults a character. I write mostly in Appalachian dialect, particularly that of the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Yes, each region of Appalachia does have its own dialect. I don’t use phonetic spellings because they tend to dumb down the characters, making them appear less educated and less intelligent than they really are. I’ve known lots of very smart hillbillies who couldn’t come close to speaking the King’s English if they tried. If your point in using dialect is to dumb down a character, you might want to find another way to depict intelligence rather than risk insulting readers who speak that dialect too.

Also, make sure you actually understand the grammar of the dialect you are working with. If you don’t speak the dialect you plan to depict, then study it first. Additionally, you have to decide if it is important to be realistic with phonetic spellings even if they confuse your audience. Think James Joyce or William Faulkner.

Know the purpose of using a dialect before you start. Some writers of disenfranchised groups use dialect to mark separation from mainstream society and to explore their heritage. This use of dialect is related to theme, a purpose the reader can understand. Dialect for showmanship may be interesting, but may lead the writer down the primrose path.

The FEAR of WRITING: Three tips to overcome the beast

By Jodie Cain Smith

I believe fear is healthy, for the most part. Fear prevents us from petting poisonous snakes, hugging sharks, and driving blindfolded over bridges. Fear tells us to read the expiration date on the milk carton and to put down the big, metal stick in the middle of a thunderstorm. Any fear that keeps me alive, physically intact, and free of food poisoning, I’m a’keepin’. However, one fear I must get rid of is the fear of writing.

What? Wait. Fear of writing? That’s dumb. Yes, yes it is, but it is an emotion I’ve experienced quite a bit recently.

My fear song plays out like this:  I get an awesome idea, a premise that sucks me in. For a couple of days I bask in my brilliance. I research the heck out of it, ensuring every detail is accurate, plausible. I imagine the cast of characters and setting. After all of this, there is only one thing left to do – write the story. This is when fear grips my throat and the lightning that is anxiety pulses through my veins. My idea is too complex. My writing game is subpar. If I attempt to write this and fail, my whole career is over. My fraud as a writer (yep, we all feel this at some point) will be revealed.

Over the course of the last three months, as I have pushed to finish two current projects, I’ve experienced this fear time and again. Through this experience, I was forced to design ways beyond it because, well, my fear of failure beats all other fears. So, if you find yourself in a secluded corner hiding under a blanket sure that the blank screen boogeyman is coming for you, here are a few defenses I have deployed to beat the monster that is performance anxiety. (Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about writing, perv.)

1. Listen to your character even if that little tramp has ideas that in no way fit into your original plot scheme. It’s her story. Let her be a part of it. Let her tell it.

2. Just write. Everyday. (Well, at least Monday through Friday. Even creative genius needs a day off.) If the words are awful, write them anyway. Tomorrow is for fixing. Today we write!

3. Don’t be afraid to abandon a story and move on to a new one. They’re not all winners. Sometimes “killing your darlings” means abandoning the whole thing.

Now, don’t we all feel better? And, no one had to pay a therapist.

READ LIKE A WRITER

By Kasie Whitener

This is a summary of my talk given at The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s Lowcountry Book Club Convention on October 6, 2018.

Voraciously. Inquisitively. Judgmentally. That’s how to read like a writer.

My first book addiction was VC Andrews. I read everything I could get my hands on and not from the library, either. Each fat paperback cost $4.95 at the grocery store. The covers were these haunting graphics of scared young women. They were gothic family drama novels and I couldn’t get enough of them.

Reading voraciously is part of being a writer. Exploring other worlds, savoring word choices, character builds, and plot arcs are all part of being addicted to storytelling. Just as professional athletes hit the gym daily and politicians are always campaigning, writers learn their craft by immersing themselves in it.

All this reading is an investigation. Like a detective in a mystery novel, I’m assembling the clues as to what makes a novel readable, bingeable, and ignore-my-family good.

I read genre fiction to learn the conventions and expectations of the genre. Genre novels satisfy their readers by playing out their story according to specific patterns. We talked extensively about this on Write On SC episode 12.

I read literary novels to see how the greats are playing with the form. Awards like National Book Award and Pulitzer and Man Booker identify writers working at the top of the craft.

Toni Morrison advised we write the book we want to read. In scholarship, this is called finding the gap in the knowledge. We know A and we know C but B is unknown, so we must investigate. For writers, this is the sense that although you enjoyed the book you’ve just finished, it could have been better. You would have done some things differently.

Investigation can mean identifying a specific theme and working through a list of books associated with it. For a while I read every World War II novel I could get my hands on which meant seeing the Great War in every theatre including Shanghai, Charleston, Paris, Massachusetts, England and England again, occupied France in this novel and again in this novel, even Australia.

Judge the novel. How did it begin? I picked up a book recently that began with a character on a plane (cliché) and just as I thought to forgive the author, she began the second chapter with a second character being woken up by an alarm (another cliché). If every man is devastatingly handsome and every woman has a tinge of self-doubt, if the personal conflict just happens to mirror the external conflict, if the dialogue is wasted on greetings like, “What’s up?” and “How’ve you been?” just close the book. Mark it as “never finished” on Goodreads. Give it back to the Kindle Unlimited library.

You can expect better. There are so many books out there, we can never read them all. So we don’t have to settle for the one that Book Bub or Amazon or a mailing list or even our local librarian foisted upon us. Know when to bail.