By the seat of my pants…

So, Aethernet, the self-billed magazine of serial fiction. Great idea, great execution, great line-up (for starters they’re running the sequel to Chris Beckett’s Clarke Award-winning Dark Eden, long before its book publication).

So, me: taking a self-proclaimed from science fiction, sick of being messed around by the business side of things in particular, dealing with lots of other shit in the meantime.

Those two… well, they just don’t fit, do they?

Particularly when the lovely people at Aethernet kept reminding me about my invitation to contribute. And when the spec fic part of my imagination has been all fired up again by my Philip K Dick Award shortlisting earlier this year.

So, Memento: a set of four stories about one cataclysmic event on an alien planet. An idea that came pretty much fully-formed in a dream, although now it’s finding its own path in the writing.

Serial fiction: adventure, cliffhangers, real seat of the pants stuff. Which is exactly how I’m writing it: I know where I’m heading, but Hell there’s a lot to fill in! I’m digging myself deep, setting myself – and my characters – challenges and cliffhangers, and working it out with them as I go along.

I rarely write like this; I usually need to know more. But this is fun, it’s exhilarating.

And I hope it will be for readers, too.

You know you live in the 21st century when…

• …you catch yourself swiping at a printed page to turn it over, or when you check middle-top or bottom-right of the page for the time
• …you write something in a notebook and feel horribly exposed when you can’t press Save and have it instantly backed up to the Cloud
• …you recall how you used to get a pale tan band from wearing a wristwatch
• …you communicate with people in the same room by Twitter or Facebook status
• …you fuel nostalgia trips with YouTube because all of life is there
• …you go to work by jetpack. Oh no, sorry, we’re not quite there yet, are we?
• …you feel cheated that life doesn’t have an undo button
• …events just don’t seem genuine until they’ve been validated by Twitter and Facebook, with a healthy dose of Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube
• …some of your best friends are people you’ve never met
• …the kind of conversation you used to have with friends down the pub becomes the perfect topic to blog about

On rewriting

Great stories aren’t written; they’re rewritten.

Maybe that’s a cliche, but that’s because it’s generally true. Very few writers are slick enough that they can get away with an unpolished first draft (okay, journalists are a class of very specifically-skilled writers who often have to do this, but I’m talking about my kind here, the ones who have the luxury to take more time over their lovingly crafted prose); many won’t even let anyone else see their first drafts because they’re aware of just how much needs fixing. I’m definitely in that category: I hate it when an agent or editor asks me to just send over my first draft when it’s ready. For me that’s like the dream where you’re out in public in your pyjamas or your underwear and suddenly everyone is looking and pointing.

I don’t want people to see how bad a writer I can be!

So what kinds of things should you look for when you’re doing your best to cover up how bad a writer you can be?

Of course, we’re all different. Most writers cut their first drafts, often quite drastically. I’ve always tended to under-write, though, so while careful pruning is nearly always required I’ve learned also to look for those places where I’ve skimped and which need to be given a bit more space.

Here’s a checklist of things that I look for (ignoring the obvious things like spelling, grammar, punctuation, typos, continuity and so on). Some of them may work for you, too.

• Should I show or should I tell?
  This is one of those things that can make a big difference to your word count, not to mention the quality of your story. In my case, I’ll find passages that I’ve skipped through by telling the reader something instead of describing the scene so that the reader sees it. Usually, showing takes more space than telling, which is more of a precis of a scene. Looking for these passages that need more space, dramatising those elements where in my first draft I’ve just summarised – that’s where a lot of the dramatic tension comes from, and for me, rewriting is very much about making the highs higher, the lows lower, and the tension tensioner. 
• Yawn…
  Conversely, there are always scenes that don’t pull their weight. Am I skim-reading as I go through my story? If so, is this because I haven’t made the most of a scene (see above), or because I’ve made too much of it? Sometimes you have to describe the little girl approaching the ancient, cobweb-covered door and reaching for the handle even though she’s always been told not to open that door… and sometimes you just want to say “Lucy opened the door and went outside”. It all depends on the story, and the effect you’re trying to achieve.
• Cut brutally, mercilessly and effectively
  And any other adverb. When my old friend and collaborator Eric Brown lived a lot closer to me than he does now, I used to drag him down to my university to do guest writer sessions with my students. One of the tips that students and ex-students have reminded me of most often is very simple: when you think your manuscript is just about done, do a search for “ly”. That will pin down almost every adverb in the piece (are there adverbs that don’t end in -ly?), and 90% of the time you can cut those adverbs without detracting from the story, and nearly always you’re improving it. The improvement comes either from the simple fact that the adverb added nothing in the first place, or from the way it forces you to make sure you’re using the most precise, appropriate verb. Adverbs encourage you to use lazy verbs. Why write “he ran quickly” when he could just have sprinted? The “quickly” has not only – ironically – slowed things down, it’s encouraged you to use a dull verb instead of one that is more specific. Again, why write “he burst into the room explosively”, when bursting into the room is more than enough? (Or even “exploded into the room” if you really want to use that image.)
• Amplify!
  As I said above, getting slightly ahead of myself, one of the main things I look for when I’m rewriting is the opportunity to make the highs higher, the lows lower… to amplify things. Twenty years ago, Stephen Baxter read through the manuscript of my third novel for me, and one of the most useful things he said was that I should remember what I did to the protagonist of my first novel: in that novel I’d succeeded in taking my protagonist right down to the lowest of lows before building him back up again; in the manuscript Steve had just read, he told me I should do the same again – take Katya low, before bringing her back up again; make readers care, and they always care more when the stakes are higher, the risks and costs greater. The result was a character who took centre stage in a book with three main viewpoints, and one of my favourites of all my characters.
• Recombine
  Maybe a flat scene still has something to contribute, in which case the obvious solution is to rework it until it’s earning its keep. And one way to rework it is to combine it with another scene. What is it that that particular scene contributes to the story? Can’t that happen in the scene before or the scene after? The same goes for characters, particularly in short fiction where every prominent character really has to justify their existence. Could the guy in scene one who helps the victim also be the witness brought in three scenes later? Making those two entirely separate characters might, of course, be more true to life, but true to life means messier, more confusing, more complicated. Sometimes a story will work far better if you’re more economical with your characters: recycle, reuse, recombine.
• Shake, baby, shake!
  That scene that persists in being a bit flat? That character who never shakes of the two-dimensionality of the page? Sometimes you can analyse and work out exactly where the problem lies. Other times… well, other times you just have to suck it and see. If that scene in the restaurant doesn’t work (just how many scenes have we seen in restaurants and bars?), then put your characters in the queue waiting to go in, getting soaked by the rain and hassled by people who want their place in the queue. That character who really just makes you yawn? Well, simple and crude, but why not make the girl a boy, or the boy a girl, make the young man a wizened old leper. Totally change some aspect of that person and suddenly you have to reassess everything, from simple descriptions to your understanding of why they are now standing in the middle of that scene with a gun and a hostage, surrounded by aliens in long black coats. Okay, I’m getting carried away, but that scene is totally different if the central character is a young girl out of her depth, a heroic – and probably rather bland – action hero, or that old leper. Shake things up and make them interesting again!
• Incomplete sentences
  I see this so often, both in my own writing and in the work of students. A sentence that’s not quite complete, a sentence that dispenses with connectors like ‘and’ and ‘the’. Sometimes this kind of thing can work well for effect, but only when used sparingly. More often than not, it interrupts the flow and forces the reader to re-read to make sure they haven’t missed something. Isaac Asimov used to talk about transparent prose, writing that is like a sheet of glass that you look through, rather than, say, a stained glass window that you can’t. While I’d argue that there’s a place for flashy, clever, lit’ry sentences (some of my favourite writing would fall into that category, and I’ve even – much to my surprise – been accused of committing literature), there’s also a lot of value in Asimov’s argument. Indeed, if you look at any great prose stylist, it’s a fairly safe bet that most of them use a hell of a lot of transparent sentences to wrap around the pyrotechnics. We just don’t see them. What I aim for is exactly that: transparent prose that works, with the occasional perfect phrase or metaphor that will resonate. And clunky, failed, arty sentences ain’t that.

Oh, there are probably a lot more things that I look for and find, but these are the main ones that I’m aware of, developed from a couple of decades or so of getting familiar with my own bad writing and trying to make it better. What are your  failings? What do you look for to make sure you’re not going to be that person out on the High Street in his or her underwear with everyone pointing and staring?

The return of the serial story

Serial fiction is not exactly a new form. Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, Henry James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… they were all at it a long, long time ago. In the last few decades the serial story has been very much out of favour. Indeed, in most genres short fiction itself has dwindled to almost non-existence.

Short science fiction has persisted, and while short stories often return to previously-used characters and settings, true serial fiction has been a rarity.

Is the rise of the ebook changing this?

Perhaps.

Serial fiction, and short fiction, have generally been viewed by commercial publishers as dead areas, but one significant change with the advent of e-publishing has been the rise of the long tail: previously unviable niches are now sustainable, with production costs minimised and global reach maximised.

For the writer, serial fiction is an intriguing proposition.

For starters, the form is different. Serial fiction isn’t just a novel cut into shorter blocks and published at intervals. With a novel, the reader has generally invested up front and is more likely to give a book a chance. With serial fiction, readers have only invested one episode at a time: if that chunk doesn’t deliver, and if it doesn’t hook the reader, then why should the reader bother with subsequent episodes? Think of serial TV drama: most aim for that Eastenders ending, the set-up for a big revelation or dramatic conflict that the viewer can’t afford to miss and then, duh, duh, d-d-duh the theme music kicks in.

Some writers will wing it with their serial fiction: write an episode, wait until it has been published and then write the next one – real seat-of-the-pants writing. Others take a more planned approach. But however you do it, the considerations are different, and for me that makes it fun.

It also lets you try new things. You’ll often find that writers really push the limits with their short fiction, while their novel-length work plays it a bit safer. This is partly a result of commercial pressures, of course, but is also because a one-off short story gives you the opportunity to push boundaries; failure with a short story does not usually end careers.

Serial fiction lies somewhere in between: in my Ragged People serial (written for teenagers with my Nick Gifford pen-name), I’ve started with a fairly self-contained story. I have some ideas for what will happen next, I have characters I want to write about, and I’d love to carry on, but then there are lots of writing projects I’d like to work on. By publishing the first story I can gauge response before committing to writing more. (Or, of course, I can ignore response and just plough on regardless…) My hope is that I’ll keep getting nudged for more episodes until I find that I’ve written a novel, almost by accident.

The new Aethernet Magazine showcases serial fiction from some fabulous writers (Eric Brown, Chris Becket and Tony Ballantyne for starters) taking a variety of approaches, from the carefully plotted to the winging it approach, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it develops. What’s more the Aethernet blog is publishing interviews with the authors about their approaches to serial fiction, which promises to be particularly interesting for writers interested in the form – most recently Chris Beckett, talking about his serialised sequel to Dark Eden (shortlisted for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award).

As a writer, it’s great to see serial fiction getting a new opportunity. Let’s just hope that readers find it just as exciting!

The Harmony buzz

I’ve written here before about how it often feels as if we publish into a vacuum: a book goes out, you get a handful of reviews, eventually some sales figures, and that’s it.

On its publication last June, my alien alternate-history novel, Harmony (UK title alt.human), definitely followed this pattern. There were a few nice reviews, a handful of nice comments, and then… nothing.

This year, though, things changed. First there was the short-listing for the Philip K Dick Award, which was pretty damned nice. Then, in the last two or three weeks the book has picked up some lovely responses.

There was the Battle of the Books, for starters, an interesting review format that pairs books up into a knockout competition where the book hardest to abandon gets through to the next round. Harmony was up against the likes of China Miéville’s Railsea in one round. Given the competition I’d have been more than happy with just being reviewed in the same bracket as some of these books; to go on and win was a lovely bonus.

Earlier this month a reader posted about Harmony:

I just finished reading Harmony and I was enthralled by the story. I want more! I was intrigued to see that you mostly publish via Kindle. I don’t have one, but because I want to read more of your stories, I’m going to go get one. Please keep writing! Just my two-cents worth.

You don’t get a much better response than that!

Then, following this run of good comments, Bridget McKenna (a rather good author and one of the Philip K Dick Award judges) posted a review at Amazon, which said, among other things:

The English language is a remarkable thing, and Keith Brooke is a remarkable writer who can make it do his bidding with the best of them. In alt.human (US title: alt.human aka Harmony) he has not only created an exciting and believable world full of fascinating, realistic characters and situations using his native tongue, he has also dug down into the nature of language itself and brought back surprises (and prizes) to create layers of meaning and subtlety and emotion in a way most writers would’t have thought to approach. … You won’t soon forget Brooke’s cast of characters or the world he created to test their resolve to be human on the brink of extinction, by whatever ways and means they can create for themselves. You won’t soon read a better, more completely realized science fiction novel.

And then Tony Daniel (one of my favourite SF writers, who very kindly stepped in on my behalf to do a reading from Harmony at the PKD Awards ceremony), said to me on Facebook:

Harmony is a dense, rewarding vision of a possible future and the story of a young man’s quest for human-graspable meaning in a highly expanded, often incomprehensible world. It’s got echoes of all sorts of great influences. Very Dickian, but also very Dickensian. It’s real science fiction, and it’s a success as a novel. The whole thing is a grand philosophical view of a weird-yet-plausible reality that you got across marvelously, with marvelously chosen words. I’m just glad of the fact that you trusted me to read a bit of it aloud and talk about it with people, or I might not have gotten around to reading it through. Everybody who likes science fiction should read it soon if they haven’t.

Most of the time, yes, we work in a vacuum. After all, writing is not a spectator sport: we shut ourselves away and hit that keyboard for hours on end.

And no, we don’t write for the acclaim and the praise.

But hell, when they come along, all those little pats on the ego that tell you someone out there has got what you were doing, it really is appreciated!

After the Dick, what next?

I wrote here last year about how I felt tired with writing hard and not getting much response, and the need to recharge after twenty-five years in the business:

All this work, all those fantastic reviews, and yet still I seem to be the kind of writer very much admired by a smallish number but unknown to most; I’ve published regularly, but have rarely had a regular publisher for more than a few years; I’ve had at least one pretty big bestseller, but that was nearly ten years ago now; I think I have a reputation as someone who works away and achieves a lot; and I think my last four novels are among the best things I’ve written.

Is that enough?

I don’t know. It’s not that I’m craving awards and media attention (although it’d be nice not to feel that each book is published into a vacuum), but I really do wonder if all the personal sacrifice is worth it.

… I’m just bone-tired of slogging away writing on spec when my editing and pseudonymous writing bring more regular and guaranteed response and reward, even when what I regard as ‘my own’ writing is what I really love to do.

So I said I was taking a break from writing new me material and concentrating on other work, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. This decision did also coincide with a long period of depression and all kinds of other crises, which did nothing to put me in a writing place.

And I concluded by saying that while I felt that way at the time of writing the blog post, it was entirely possible that I’d change my mind at some point.

So: have I changed my mind?

Not entirely, but I’m wavering.

Getting shortlisted for this year’s Philip K Dick Award was a big ego boost: people out there really got what I was doing with that novel (Harmony, aka alt.human). And beyond feeling flattered and understood, it did something else, too.

You know those little nagging thoughts writers get? Those what if…? moments. They started happening again. And I had that writers’ equivalent of restless feet.

The bug was biting again.

I’m still torn about committing to an on-spec novel (although if someone was to drop me an email commissioning one I’d certainly consider it), but I think at least some short fiction will be committed this year.

In particular, I’ve agreed to write a four-parter for the new serial fiction magazine Aethernet. My take on serial fiction will be a set of three stories giving different perspectives on a momentous event, and a concluding story pulling them all together. So not serial fiction in a linear sense, but certainly in spirit.

And now that part of my brain is starting to nag me again, I think more might happen. It’s like starting all over again.

It’s a good feeling, and it’s good to be enjoying life the way I am right now.

Now I think I’ll just sit back and wait for that flood of emails asking me to write something new. I can dream. I’m a writer, after all; a science-fiction writer.

The People of the Sea – a novelette of mermaids, smugglers and alternate worlds by Keith Brooke

Just published: a standalone ebook edition of my novelette, “The People of the Sea”. It’s a story of duty and adventure, in an eighteenth century England where worlds collide and mermaids might just wash up on the beach. The ebook includes an afterword about where the story came from.

A brief extract:

He paused where the scrub gave way to salt-marsh. He would be a fool to follow the trail any further. A few years ago, when he had first been employed as a Riding Officer, he would have mounted his horse and set off in search of one of the regular patrols of dragoons and they could have returned to confront the smugglers on the beach. But circumstances had changed: the soldiers were in Europe, fighting the French, the Spanish and the Prussians over the succession to the Austrian throne; those that remained were too few for the protection of a mere officer of the Revenue.

He tied the mare deep in a thicket of gorse and pine, then emerged and climbed to the top of a low ridge, from where he could survey the saltings. The overgrown mud-flats extended for maybe three furlongs ahead of him, before being cut through by the silver ribbon of a tidal creek. Beyond, the shaggy grey-green mat extended to Pewit Island and across Hamford Water and more saltings to the earth cliffs of the Naze three miles away, now smudged grey by the clouds and drizzle.

He was about to go for his horse and ride out to investigate when he saw a line of dark figures returning across the marshes. He had decided there must be nobody out there, but they had merely been obscured by a ridge of dunes formed where the first creek joined a larger one. Wheatley scrambled back into the thicket. If he rode off now he would be seen and pursued. His best hope was to stay hidden with his horse and hope they would be too distracted to notice him.

He waited for what seemed like forever and then he heard the voices growing steadily louder. He had guessed right: they had been drinking while they worked, the liquor part of the payment for their labour.

Wheatley peered out from his hiding place. It was a group of about thirty — men, women and children. Most would work on the farms: their pay — and other benefits — from a few hours unloading boats in the saltings would probably double their week’s wage. He watched closely, willing his horse to remain quiet as he committed the evidence of his eyes to memory. He had only been in Harwich for a year, but still he was able to identify a number of those who paraded so unwittingly before him. Tall, cadaverous Robert Ames from Little Oakley was a man they had suspected for some time. So too were Robert Crompton and Forbes Clay from Dovercourt. And although he was not here in person, Wheatley was certain that the single chaise loaded with several half-ankers of spirit and two mud-daubed infants belonged to Thomas Cann, landlord of the King’s Head in Harwich.

As he watched, Joseph Wheatley considered that if he could prove charges against these people, they would be transported to the colonies and all their goods seized and sold. He knew they would do almost anything to stop him.

He froze, aware that movement would be the surest betrayal of his presence, as he saw four men following a little behind the main party. They were talking and laughing, but there was something in their expressions that marked them apart from the group they trailed. That, and the guns and broadswords they carried. The locals were merely the paid labour: these men were the real bandits, along with their colleagues out at sea.

If these men saw him, they would kill him without compunction. Under the Act of 1736, the penalty for any assault on a Revenue man was death on the gibbet, but he knew that the King’s law carried little weight out here. This was smuggler’s country and the laws people obeyed were the laws of the smuggler. The gangs were far more efficient than any force marshalled by the King or his Parliament.

(continues…)

The People of the Sea is available from: 

• Amazon US 
• Amazon UK
• Barnes and Noble
• Kobo

The Greatest Game of All – a story of love and test-tubes by Keith Brooke

Just published: a standalone ebook edition of one of my favourite back-list stories, “The Greatest Game of All”. It’s a love story, a near-future drama, an exploration of one man’s insecurities… with test-tubes. The ebook includes an afterword about where the story came from.

At first I believed her in her proclamations of love. I couldn’t believe her when she promised it would last forever, but sometimes I thought Maybe.

Once, when she told me in the throes of orgasm that she would always love me, absently I said, “Will you really?” She looked at me, hurt, eased her grip on me and turned away. Why was she angry? If her words were true she should have reassured me, she should not have been so hurt.

She signed the contract in ’16. She vowed to love me forever and, upon breaching the contract, to relinquish any claim on my property or person, all couched in expensive legalese. I should have been satisfied but I was not. Broken contracts were not unheard of, paper could never seal our bond.

The Greatest Game of All is available from: 

• Amazon US 
• Amazon UK
• Barnes and Noble
• Kobo

New: Aethernet – the magazine of serial fiction

Serialised fiction from Tony Ballantyne, Chris Beckett, Eric Brown, Juliet E McKenna, Philip Palmer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ian Whates and more. Aethernet, the magazine of serial fiction, launches over the Easter weekend. And yes, I’ll be contributing a four-parter later this year.

Here’s what it says on the Aethernet website:

Nowadays, fiction is instantly available. There are many short fiction magazines available for download, you can download a story collection in ebook form and be reading it in under a minute.

Aethernet Magazine aims to satisfy a different need. Aethernet Magazine is aiming to reintroduce the pleasures of delayed gratification. Aethernet Magazine stands for the slow burn, the building excitement of waiting to see how a story plays out. We want to reintroduce the pleasure of the cliffhanger ending; the gradual reveal on lives building up to a bigger picture; the leisurely float down the river leading to some mysterious destination.

Our stories are presented over time. Aethernet Magazine is here to help you rediscover the pleasure of anticipation…

Aethernet Magazine will run for 12 issues. The first issue will go on sale on 30th March 2013, subsequent issues will be on sale on the first of the month from May 2013 onwards. Aethernet Magazine will be published as an ebook in mobi, epub and pdf formats.

Find out more:

• Aethernet website (for more details, how to subscribe, the Aethernet blog)
• Aethernet on Facebook
• Aethernet on Twitter

Battle of the books

It’s not often you come across a new and interesting way to explore books, and for all I know this has been done before elsewhere, but the Fantastic Reviews blog’s Battle of the Books is fascinating.

The premise is this: take 16 books, pair them up, and then for each pair read the first 25 pages; out of that pair the winner is the book the reviewer most wants to continue reading at that point. In the next round we’re down to four pairs and the cut-off point is 50 pages; then in the semi-finals the cut-off is at 100 pages; and finally the last two standing are judged overall.
At first sight this is a bit of fun, lifting a game-show format and applying it to reviewing. But the reality is far more than that. For the successful books you have a step-by-step extended review, picking out various aspects of a book as they emerge, giving a wonderful insight into the reading of that book as it unfolds, rather than a review written with hindsight. It also provides a very interesting angle for each review; in the most recent entry, for example, my own Harmony (as published in North America; UK title alt.human) is up against China Miéville’s Railsea. Naturally enough, the focus is on how the two books portray the weird and, as the reviewer says, nobody does weird better than China. Earlier rounds have focused on the reader’s engagement with characters and a book’s sheer unputdownability (that is officially a real word: I just told my spellchecker so).

As a writer this whole process has been fascinating; for the reader it should be equally so, although as with any detailed review there’s the danger of spoilers, particularly in the later stages of the battle.

And as an aside, even after around 25 years as an author, it still surprises me when someone really gets one of my stories. That the reviewer in this contest gets Harmony so well is fantastic; that this comes in the week leading up to the announcement of this year’s Philip K Dick Award winner really brings it home. It’s not so much that I’m suddenly thinking I’m in with a shot (Harmony is one of seven on the shortlist, so I have around a 14% chance), but simply that it’s finally, after all this time, starting to sink through my thick skull that there are people out there – like the team at Fantastic Fiction, like the PKD judges – who really do get what I’m doing.

And that’s kind of cool.
Incidentally, it gives nothing away to be posting this: to reach the semi-final against a writer of China Miéville’s calibre, and for my novel to have received this kind of detailed attention, is pretty damned good, in my reckoning. For the results, and the excellent analysis, you’ll have to go to Battle of the Books, Bracket Five, First Semifinal :: Railsea by China Miéville vs. Harmony by Keith Brooke.

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