Connecting Scenes

These scenes connect action A with B. If the character is physically going to another place, a break can serve the purpose, and the action begins anew with scene B. Overuse of this technique yields an effect similar to watching Sesame Street. Enter the chase scene, exciting for the reader-but an exacting task for the writer. But since we aim to please.... Other connecting scenes involve motivating people. Since people thinking can be as fascinating as ink drying, conversation is often employed--it reads faster. But unless the writer uses humor, exposes more about the characters, and keeps the dialogue on topic, these scenes read like bad amateur theater. Essentially every scene , even a connecting scene has to be enjoyable to read and is therefore as important as that final scene you are driving the book towards. A good novel isn't just a great opening idea rushing to fulfillment, it's all those scenes in between.

You see a photograph of a flower and understand the play of shadow and light. No one tells you the sun was shining or the day was warm. A novel should expand beyond the words on the page in an exchange between the writer and the reader.

Flowers from Longwood Garden's Orchid show

Writing: I just read Robert J. Sawyers' "Flashforward." I have been watching the television show inspired by the book. And they do mean inspired. The book and the show are about an event that causes everyone to blackout and flash on what they are doing in the future. One character doesn't have a vision because he had been murdered. A single character makes the transition from the book to the small screen. Other than that the stories are different. The series follows FBI agents trying to figure out why people flashed ahead six months. Sawyers' book is from the scientists' point of view. They caused the flashforward and people see more than twenty years in the future.

Lesson for writers: When an author sells his book to another media, his story is no longer his.
Lesson for readers: Read the book! The book will add depth to your enjoyment of the story you saw on the screen.

Another View

A writer needs to know if his words are portraying the meaning he is trying to convey. That's why it is necessary to have readers who can tell you what they need in the book, including good grammar. But a writer should also critique other writers' work. It's amazing how easy it is to spot your writing difficulties in another person's work. Think of it as another way to view your work.

Odds and Ends

The computer isn't always our friend.

I lost my book in a file that didn't allow me to email it or copy it. Not sure what to do, I did as I have seen the computer literate do --I tried everything until I found something that worked.

Lesson: Don't be afraid of your computer.

Question: Why do some agents who represent science fiction ask you to mail your query rather send than sent your query via email?

Science Fiction:

I wanted to learn about science fiction and lucked into a copy of David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels; An English-language Selection 1949-1984." Nearly three years in (I have read other books besides science fiction) I'm down to the last fifteen. I realize the shortcomings of this list and am taking suggestions as to what contemporary books to read. But I can say I have read your favorite golden oldie SF.

There is a subdivision in science fiction for utopia and dsytopia books. It seems to have been easier for writers in the past to imagine utopias. Dystopias have become much more common, perhaps they fit our sense of the world better

...Recently I read Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backwards 2000-1887, published in 1888. Then I read Mack Reynold"s "Looking Backward, From the Year 2000" published in 1973. A month ago I had read Ursula Le Guin's "Dispossesed." The last two books came from Pringle's list.

...In Bellamy's popular book (people loved it way back when), the hypnotized hero, Julian West, is awaken over hundred years later to a nationalist (socialist) utopia where everyone works according to their ability in the corporate army and all their needs are met. His hero happily falls in love with the descendant of his fiancee. The mechanized and steam-powered world Bellamy imagined speaks more to steam punk than to prophecy.

...Reynold's hero, cured of heart disease after thirty years in the cryogenic chamber, is a stranger in a highly advanced world that is run by computers. Energy is limitless (how good is that!). But people speak a universal language he doesn't know. They even use the metric system! Education, not work, occupies these people. In case the reader doesn't notice the similarity to Bellamy's title, Reynolds used the same names for his characters. Only in this case Julian West does not live happily ever after.

...Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" also depicts a egalitarian utopia set in the far future with aliens, who are very much like us. Anarres was settled as a result of a labor revolt. There everyone works and has equal housing, food, (what little there is on this improvised world). Problems still creep in: conformity replaces creativity, people playing favorites, some taking more than their share. Shevek, a math genius and our hero, travels to the home world, Urras to share his mathematical discovery and learn from other scientists. Urras is a corrupt capitalistic society of excesses that somehow encourages discovery and invention. Shevek discovers he belongs to neither world.

...Science fiction writers often build new worlds, whether in the future or on other planets, but to imagine a plausible utopia has to be daunting. Man's own psychology gets in the way. And oh, yeah, there's that limitless energy problem to crack.