Book review: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy is a book by Orson Scott Card. I snagged it out of the books my ex took with him after the divorce, since it was one of the few I thought I might get around to reading some day. So after I was finished with the monster of Mind/Body Health, I picked the shortest book on my 'Books I Have Not Read' shelf and this was it.
It has 135 pages of standard size text, telling the reader the peculiarities of the science fiction and fantasy genre, with the issues that pertain to writers. Card talks the reader through world-building, picking a genre, and developing a beta reader. That last was particularly interesting to me as it applies to any genre and it wasn't quite the same as I'm used to. I'm used to a beta reader checking for grammar and punctuation, and if you're lucky, they'll help you out on word choice and sentence structure. Then if you're really lucky, they'll help you with characterization and plot. Card talked about none of that. Instead, he said a good beta reader would give the writer feedback on how they felt throughout the process of reading your work, with special emphasis to the parts where they couldn't put the book down or the areas where their attention wandered. Also, whether they liked or disliked various characters, for the writer to compare to how the writer wanted those characters to come across. One very intriguing part of his role for a beta reader is that they're never wrong - they're telling you how they felt about the story and that is simply not a right or wrong thing. Unlike, for example, your beta reader pointing out that you use too many commas or the word 'that' too often.
I will certainly be paying more attention to how I read stories, especially other people's works, and I will probably alter the sort of beta reading I offer. It would be a hell of a lot easier to just read straight through, once, and tell the writer which parts stood out to me good or bad, and then be done. Rather than what I usually do, which is read it once to find out what's going on and mark obvious grammar/punctuation stuff, then a second time for plot, realism, characterization, sentence structure, diction, narrative voice, etc. And sometimes a third time, so I can add in enough encouraging comments and not have my beta'ing look like a horror show.
A lot of what Card had to say is rather dated, unsurprising for a book published in 1990. There's nothing about the internet and all the fandom he speaks of is of the old guard variety, where people circulated 'zines printed at Kinkos, folded and stapled together, sent through the mail to the fans whose names graced lists which were zealously protected by fanzine editors, for they often included the home addresses of important writers or other bigwigs in the fan community. (Plus, control of the list gave you a great deal of power to shape and influence the fan community by choosing what to publish. My ex published a fanzine for most of the '90s and I helped with it.)
But now with the internet, blogs, Livejournal, Tumblr, Google circles, Facebook groups, old Yahoo groups, FanFiction.Net, AO3, and so on, there are scads of easily accessible outlets for written fanworks and/or original fiction, as well as access to readers. Plus, the whole game has changed around where writers often actively engage with their readers. I follow GRR Martin's Livejournal account, for example, and know far more about him and his adventures and causes than I have about any author in the past. It's not because I'm obsessively interested in Mr. Martin, but rather because it was so easy to find his page and add him as a friend so his posts show up in my feed. I usually don't open his posts, but I could if I wanted to. My point is how different the relationship is between creator and consumer. That email I had a couple weeks ago from an author whose book I'd reviewed is another example.
So the 'how to get published' stuff Card went over is mostly too dated to use, but the rest is useful. Considering that my original fiction (if and when I get around to writing it) will be either SF or fantasy (not romance or erotica), the issues peculiar to the genre are things I needed to think on.
It's a good book for those who intend to write SF or fantasy, but hardly necessary. It won't help you write a good story, for example, or sharpen your prose. But it will remind you of some core things to keep in mind. Plus, it's a short, fast read, so there's that.
It has 135 pages of standard size text, telling the reader the peculiarities of the science fiction and fantasy genre, with the issues that pertain to writers. Card talks the reader through world-building, picking a genre, and developing a beta reader. That last was particularly interesting to me as it applies to any genre and it wasn't quite the same as I'm used to. I'm used to a beta reader checking for grammar and punctuation, and if you're lucky, they'll help you out on word choice and sentence structure. Then if you're really lucky, they'll help you with characterization and plot. Card talked about none of that. Instead, he said a good beta reader would give the writer feedback on how they felt throughout the process of reading your work, with special emphasis to the parts where they couldn't put the book down or the areas where their attention wandered. Also, whether they liked or disliked various characters, for the writer to compare to how the writer wanted those characters to come across. One very intriguing part of his role for a beta reader is that they're never wrong - they're telling you how they felt about the story and that is simply not a right or wrong thing. Unlike, for example, your beta reader pointing out that you use too many commas or the word 'that' too often.
I will certainly be paying more attention to how I read stories, especially other people's works, and I will probably alter the sort of beta reading I offer. It would be a hell of a lot easier to just read straight through, once, and tell the writer which parts stood out to me good or bad, and then be done. Rather than what I usually do, which is read it once to find out what's going on and mark obvious grammar/punctuation stuff, then a second time for plot, realism, characterization, sentence structure, diction, narrative voice, etc. And sometimes a third time, so I can add in enough encouraging comments and not have my beta'ing look like a horror show.
A lot of what Card had to say is rather dated, unsurprising for a book published in 1990. There's nothing about the internet and all the fandom he speaks of is of the old guard variety, where people circulated 'zines printed at Kinkos, folded and stapled together, sent through the mail to the fans whose names graced lists which were zealously protected by fanzine editors, for they often included the home addresses of important writers or other bigwigs in the fan community. (Plus, control of the list gave you a great deal of power to shape and influence the fan community by choosing what to publish. My ex published a fanzine for most of the '90s and I helped with it.)
But now with the internet, blogs, Livejournal, Tumblr, Google circles, Facebook groups, old Yahoo groups, FanFiction.Net, AO3, and so on, there are scads of easily accessible outlets for written fanworks and/or original fiction, as well as access to readers. Plus, the whole game has changed around where writers often actively engage with their readers. I follow GRR Martin's Livejournal account, for example, and know far more about him and his adventures and causes than I have about any author in the past. It's not because I'm obsessively interested in Mr. Martin, but rather because it was so easy to find his page and add him as a friend so his posts show up in my feed. I usually don't open his posts, but I could if I wanted to. My point is how different the relationship is between creator and consumer. That email I had a couple weeks ago from an author whose book I'd reviewed is another example.
So the 'how to get published' stuff Card went over is mostly too dated to use, but the rest is useful. Considering that my original fiction (if and when I get around to writing it) will be either SF or fantasy (not romance or erotica), the issues peculiar to the genre are things I needed to think on.
It's a good book for those who intend to write SF or fantasy, but hardly necessary. It won't help you write a good story, for example, or sharpen your prose. But it will remind you of some core things to keep in mind. Plus, it's a short, fast read, so there's that.