Book ramblings

[db2305]

I've finally figured out what the book I'm writing is about. It's kind of abstract and abstruse, and I've surprised myself with that. I thought I was more of a storyteller, an adventure writer with no deep thoughts, but here I am, actually having some

Comments

[myfeetshowit]

Well, I missed Charles Stross along the way, but I was right there for Gibson and Sterling.

You are correct about possibly losing writers, but I think that happens no matter what genre you write. Most readers tend to stick with one, or at most two.

I was bemused when I read Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy and he started talking about experienced science Fiction readers, and how he could tell which of his students were and which weren't by testing them on a little bit of metaphor (the experienced took it literally). I've been reading Sci-fi forever, and hadn't realized it actually is a skill!

Still, there's a great need for good science-fiction these days. So much of it is derivative, and stale. Those are two things that I know your work won't be.

[db2305]

I think that is just weird, when experienced readers take metaphors literally! But maybe it has something to do with Scott Card's strange simple way of writing? Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just doesn't.

[myfeetshowit]

I don't remember the example he gave exactly but it was another author's metaphor. Something about soldiers riding 'a reptile bus' across an airport. Without knowing anything else about the story except that it was science fiction, some students saw a bus painted in camoflauge, and some saw soldiers riding a huge reptile.

The example was from the first page of the story, before readers would have a chance to know the parameters of the world in which the story takes place.

[db2305]

Oh, then it's really cool. It indicated a willingness to suspend disbelief, and to accept three kinds of strangeness for breakfast. I am now completely reconciled with your anecdote...

[myfeetshowit]

The example that floored me was from an opening paragraph of Octavia Butler's Wild Seed:

Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages.

I would have thought nothing about this sentence, assuming the context would be clear later, but evidently many readers lose interest at this point. They don't know what a seed village is, and believe they are supposed to know. They feel the author is being obscure.

I suspect this isn't as true as it once was, but still something to think about. Who is your audience?