Writers, Beware

I mentioned John Scalzi the other day, and his commentary on the dastardly dealings of Random House and their e-book only imprints. He’s done multiple entries on the subject now that are very much worth reading, and being the conscientiously helpful gentleman that he is has put them all together in one post here.

As a non-published writer, my advice is clearly of limited value. I haven’t succeeded at the job myself, so why would anyone else listen to me tell them how to do it?

But this I do know, and think everyone should know. There are a lot of scams out there. As Agent Pleakley says on the subject of mosquitoes ‘Here, educate yourself‘, because there are plenty of people out there who will take advantage of you if you don’t. Don’t be put off by the fact that most of my links are genre-skewed – this stuff applies to everyone.

Once you’ve perused Writer Beware, there’s more you can do. Such as:

1. If you have a local or otherwise writer’s centre, guild, whatever, check out their website for a section like this one. They’ll usually offer at least a few words of advice. You can also contact them for help if you do get offered a contract but don’t have an agent, which is useful.

2. Read sites and blogs written by those in the industry! Not just writers, but agents and publishers. Their advice can be very helpful, and if they say something is a scam, it likely is. (But if they say something isn’t, well, do keep your critical faculties engaged. You don’t actually know this person, after all)

3. Remind yourself early and often that a bad book deal is worse than no deal at all. The harder you can hammer this into your own head, the less likely it is (I hope) that you’ll be suckered by a vanity publisher or scam artists like Hydra because they’re offering to publish you and you want it so bad.

Be wary. Swim up that stream towards publication carefully, because there’s a lot of sharp rocks on the way, and an injured salmon swims slower. Be the strong, wily salmon who avoids the sharp rocks, and reaches the spawning ground of Publication relatively unharmed!

The Right Message

“If you want to send a message, use Western Union.”

This quote is attributed to Sam Goldwyn, though I discovered it via John Scalzi. Goldwyn was talking about movies, but I think it’s equally applicable to all forms of fiction. It’s a clever and memorable phrase. Do I agree with it… well, yes and no.

If the purpose of a movie, or novel, or whatever, is to convey a Very Important Message, then unless that Very Important Message is that good dialogue is crucial, that book or movie is probably going to suck. Nobody likes being pounded over the head with a Very Important Message – among other things, it’s very annoying to be treated like an idiot. When a book takes me by the hand, leads me to its core conceit, tells me at great length how important it is, then follows with a series of examples, then tells me again – let’s be honest, at that point I’ve already put the book down and walked away. It’s horribly prevalent in YA fiction – drugs are bad, kids! Be nice and pretty so boys will like you! – but it sneaks into adult-oriented fiction too, usually in the form of dreary ‘realistic’ Literature that leaves you just terribly, terribly depressed. (This trend is why I almost never read Lit anymore)

But you can’t create a full narrative without conveying some kind of message, even if it’s ‘Robots are extremely cool but perhaps not quite so cool as Michael Bay thinks they are’.  And I think it’s very important to be aware of what message you’re sending.

Take the Dragonlance series. A flawed but still beloved masterwork that I adored as a teenager and still fondly revisit. But there are bits I have to skip over, including nearly all the references to the Gods. See, in the Dragonlance series, the True Gods have turned away from humanity because humanity became arrogant, and the Kingpriest of Atlantis Istar gave them attitude so they destroyed the whole city and went off to sulk. Oh, and ditched all the other sentient races too because ask the humans that’s why they fucked it up for all of you.

Really. The whole city. In a hissy fit because one priest was mouthing off. And now the sentient races have to come crawling back and prove that they’re penitent and humble enough to deserve the gods’ attention again. These supposedly good and noble gods who are acting like toddlers throwing a tantrum.

I hate this so much.

If you want to write gods who are petulant douchenozzles, fine, go ahead. If you want to write gods who are wise and noble and pure and everything, cool. But for the love of all that is textually appropriate know the difference. Add in Tika being a doormat to Caramon’s massive self-absorption, Tanis being a raging twerp who lets his penis do his thinking way too often to make a convincing leader, and the Solamnics and the elves being utter assholes and people just being stupid for plot coupons…

Let’s just say that I tend to come out of the books thinking ‘you know, Raistlin was evil and all, but I can really see why he made those choices’. When your villainous traitor who abandons his twin to die and later decides to become a Dark God is making more consistent moral choices than almost everyone else, and isn’t even in the top five for Characters Making Bad Bad Decisions, you need to think about what you’ve done.

I haven’t actually read Twilight. I’ve tried, but the prose-style really does not work for me at all, and I didn’t like the story nearly enough to put up with it. However, the not-so-subtle themes of ‘creepy stalker = romantic’ and ‘love means letting him assault you repeatedly’ have been reasonably well documented. And may I just say, eeeyuch.

There are way too many circumstances in which the Good Guys get away with doing incredibly ethically questionable crap because they’re the Good Guys so whatever they do must be okay. No. It’s not. I don’t care how heroic your hero has been until now, if he turns around and stabs an old lady or utterly lets down someone who’s had his back for the last two hundred pages, I want consequences. I want it acknowledged that he’s fucked up and to see him have to fix it. There are no moral passes, not for anyone, not ever.

Take the movie Thor. Thor is an arrogant jerk who tramples blithely over his little brother’s feelings repeatedly and acts like a jackass in general and then tops it all off by starting a war in a fit of pique and then mouthing off to Odin Allfather. And what happens to him? His brother tries to kill him, Odin strips him of his powers and casts him out and he gets tased by a cute intern who does not care to have big burly men staggering towards her shouting. And rightly so. Thor is a petulant douchenozzle god done right – the consequences of his actions hit him hard and he has to actually deal with them and stop being a spoiled brat. And he knows that Loki’s fall is in some part due to him, his fault for being a selfish jerk and a lousy brother, and that’s something he has to deal with too. ‘Actions have consequences, and sometimes it’s something that you can never undo’ is the message of both Thor and Loki’s character arcs, and it’s a good one.

In conclusion – don’t write just to send a message. But please, please be aware of what message you’re sending.

[Edited because Mel is right – writing with a message in mind isn’t bad at all. But writing only to send a message is not generally a good idea.]