Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


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The formula

This morning I spent a few minuted talking with a friend and colleague about a book he has abandoned halfway through and about which I never went beyond the Amazon preview. In about of self-assuredness, I mentioned the fact that a book like that I can write in two weekends. Which was not meant literally, but close to it. Let’s say I can crank out ten thousand words a day – two weekends, starting on Friday evening, would mean 50.000/60.000 words in two weekends.
Nice and smooth.

I mentioned this to another friend, about half an hour ago – she’s writing a series, and she was taking a break, and we exchanged a few messages. The point of the discussion was – the time-consuming part is not typing (and she’s a much faster typist than I am), but coming up with good ideas.
Ideas about plot twists, character traits and interactions, ideas about dialogue.
Good ideas and the research to stimulate and back them are the critical point, and they are time consuming.

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The Mako Mori test

The Bechdel Test has been used in these last few years as an index of the degree … something.
Basically to pass the Bechdel test, a story (originally a movie, but it works for any narrative) must feature two female character, both with a name, that share a dialogue in which they do not talk about a man.
It’s been pointed out that the Bechdel test – that originally started as a joke in a satirical comic strip – is a useful tool to spot gender inequality, but beyond that, it’s very much a matter of hand-waving.

A story can pass the Bechdel and still be a pile of drivel, while a story can fail it spectacularly and still be a good, solid, fun and significant story.
Case in point?
Debbie does Dallas passes the Bechdel, Fistful of Dollars does not.
Ouch.

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That time I became a fascist

This is one of those “fun and surreal” stories it was suggested to me I should share to build my author platform. The ridiculous things that sometimes happen to a writer, oh my, what a cartload of laughs. I should do a brief cartoon of this one. But I can’t draw so here we go, it went like this…

I wrote the first Aculeo & Amunet story as a very first submission to an American anthology. It was, if I remember correctly, 2012. The story bounced back – deservedly, I should add – and I let it sediment for a while and then revised and rewrote it for self-publishing. Without a word-count limit and with the freedom to push the story in directions I wanted to explore.

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Cross-training

Back when I was a geology student (yes, I wax nostalgic these nights), we went on a field trip in the Alps, in the Aosta Valley, to study the Matterhorn. Due to some sort of deal our teacher had struck, we were staying as guests in a religious institution. It was a very serious sort of place, verging on the positively dreary. The sort of very strict place in which a state of the art audio system was used every morning at 6 am to wake us up with a selection of Gregorian chants. It was something.

Until the last day. The previous night a commando of geology students sneaked in the control room and changed the tape and the following morning at 6 am we woke up, the amps turned up to 11, like this…

This, too, was something.

The above, just to explain I always had a soft spot for David Lee Roth.

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Epic

There are three stories I want to write this month, to submit to two different anthologies and a magazine. Checking the calendar, I see I will have to write one story per week, seven days from first draft to submitted text. It’s OK, I can do it – we are talking stories in the 3000-5000 words range. Two fantasies and a mystery – which is good, because it means there will be a modicum of variety.

One of the three stories should be, according to the publisher’s guidelines, “epic fantasy” – and I have heard some ask, how can you fit an epic fantasy in roughly 4000 words?

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Deserted places

You might remember the post I did on the 14th of February about a story featuring a man and a woman meeting for years in a deserted, modernist city in their dreams. The story I will write one day and call Still My Favorite Song (if you don’t, I’m sure WordPress will place a link at the bottom of this post – ain’t technology wonderful?)

Well, I did some very marginal work in these two weeks, say ten/fifteen minutes a day, sort of outlining how a novel might look based on that idea, and also did some minor, very minor research.

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