seawasp | Musings on reviews...

Any author gets reviews of their work in locations ranging from someone's blog to Amazon to the New York Times. Overall, I can't complain about the reviews I've gotten.

I don't particularly mind negative reviews (as long as the majority stay reasonably positive); it's not POSSIBLE to write something that's universally liked, and if you see NO negative reviews of something, either not very many people have read it, or I'm suspicious that someone (author or his/her friends) is loading the dice. It's somewhat amusing, of course, to read Review A, which says "Characters were wonderful... I really empathized with X... Wonderfully drawn people avoiding stereotypes..." and then see Review B, which says "Characters were scarcely defined... nothing but stale cliches and stereotypes... no reason to care about any of these people..."; such reviews reinforce my belief that, to a great extent, "good characters" are a matter of opinion, not writing.

But there are a couple of types of reviews that seem just odd to me, both of which were most clearly delineated for me in the reviews of Digital Knight.

The first type complains that the book *ISN'T* delivering a stereotype. A couple of DK reviews boiled down to "I expected a normal vampire and/or werewolf story, and this CHANGED things! It wasn't the proper stereotype AT ALL!" Well, yeah, I'd think that having some different aspects would be a good thing, right?

The second type complains about the book "not being a novel" because it's comprised of several separate stories; at least one said that these should each have been novels themselves. But... I can't see, say, "Gone in a Flash" or "Photo Finish" as a novel. They'd be padded, fat, sluggish things, not doing their jobs, so to speak. And while it's episodic, well, aren't some novels? The stories are all told from the same point of view, they're in a chronological sequence, they feature the same viewpoint character and reference -- and are affected by -- the prior events in the sequence, and so on. I suppose I could have spent some time to eliminate the explicit divisions, but that would have amounted to what, adding a couple of paragraphs and leading into the next adventure rather than labeling the start of the next section?

My only concern with the episodic nature of Digital Knight was that it was comprised of stories written over a span of about 20 years, and without doing serious rewriting the change in writing style would become fairly clear. It hadn't really occurred to me that just having separate stories -- though directly connected -- would in and of itself be a problem. After all, The Stainless Steel Rat was exactly that, three separate major stories without even interludes to bridge them.

How many people have a problem with that structure?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

brooksmoses

Both of those amount to, "The book wasn't what I was expecting it to be."

Sometimes people read to be challenged, and there unexpected changes are (often) a good thing. Sometimes people read for comfort-of-the-familiar, and there unexpected changes are as much a bad thing as they are in the familiar well-worn chair that one's relaxing into to read the book. And those things are not always occurring at separate occasions; a lot of people have conceptual places where they like interesting changes, and conceptual places where they want the familiar, and they can want both at the same time. See, for instance, some of Julia Jones's posts (at least, I think they were hers) about how romance novels all fit the formula of the expected man winning the love of the expected woman at the end, but there's a significant amount of variation within those and that variation within the structure is something most romance readers like to see. Similarly, I think your first reviewer was wanting something that had variation within the standard werewolf/vampire novel, and this was different from that formula in a way that poked them in the ribs somewhere they weren't wanting to be poked.

Both of the reviews sound good as reviews, though, in that they identify the parts of the novel that the reviewer had strong emotional reactions to, and they describe them in ways that a reader of the review can determine for themselves whether they'll like or dislike them. And that seems like a good thing, at least.

From:

dsrtao

No problem in theory; in this case, no problem in practice. I am occasionally upset when a promising introductory story turns out to have focussed on a likable character given little screentime later on.

From:

xander-opal.livejournal.com

Personally, I rather liked the divisions as separate stories, compared to chapters or the like. It just fit the stories you had to tell best.

From:

nuranar.livejournal.com

I've never had a problem with the episodic nature of DK. Actually, I remember really enjoying it when I read it online because it was in episodes instead of one long, involved novel. Granted, that was partially because I was reading online and I don't like reading long things online. But I'm also a very fast reader, and most "short stories" as such are too short for me to really get into. I like being able to read a fully fleshed-out, complete story in one sitting.

Strings of stories aren't a form that most modern readers are accustomed to. I've read Saint stories for years, and the majority of those are episode length, or as author Leslie Charteris called them, novellas. He wrote that he often chose that form for the Saint because the nature of most of the Saint's adventures fit so well into it. When he did write Saint novels, Charteris had a much bigger, worthy plot, and the entire feel of the writing was different from the novellas. I think it was Charteris (or perhaps Asimov; it's the sort of thing he would come up with) who wrote that the demise of the fiction magazines also ended the commercial feasibility of the novella form. A side effect of that disappearance is that modern readers, never having experienced it, don't know how to react to novellas.

From:

seawasp

You know, I hadn't thought of that aspect of it. The movement of the SF genre from predominantly short story/serial to novel changes the overall perceptions of the readers. I had run into the problem of selling novellas with Jason Wood; I sent the first couple of stories to several places, all of which sent them back with "this is good stuff, but it's too long for the magazine and obviously not a novel either -- nor could it be reasonably padded to novel length".

From:

groblek.livejournal.com

Personally, I really enjoyed the episodic nature of the book, it worked well, I think. It was nice to have a book with places where I could easily put it down at need.

From:

technocracygirl.livejournal.com

The only time the episodes really bothered me was in the division of the fist and second story. There was a recap of the first story that was a paragraph for two long, which, within a book, is way too long for ten pages ago. That really broke the spell for me there. If there had been a "previously published in blah" in the copyright page (I went and looked; that's how jarring it was) I would have shrugged and gone on. Without the idea of short stories, though, it felt like someone had missed something in the editing process.

Other than that, though, I don't mind the episodic structure, once I get used to it.

From:

seawasp

There was one place where the recaps weren't removed, yes -- around page 80 in the book, I think. The others were either removed or toned down to represent Jason's natural Recap thought process -- he thinks that way, it's one of the reasons he can solve puzzles; he constantly re-examines the pieces of what he knows, the sequences of events, and this often leads to seeing a new perspective as new pieces are added.

From:

denelian.livejournal.com

does this mean it is being re=printed? my copy is rather battered and is missing a page...

i loved it. but then again, i adore Heinlein's "Future Histories", which are short stories and novellas, so i was pretty used to/comfortable with the construction.

From:

seawasp

When/if the rights revert to me (which I believe is this year) I can look into reprinting them. No one's going to pay much for the reprint rights, but if I can find an amenable small press I'll do so.

Right now, alas, all you can do to get another copy is go to Amazon and order either a few expensive new copies (last I looked selling at $9.00 each, which was pretty startling) or used copies at about $1.25 and up.

From:

denelian.livejournal.com

i try to avoid buy from amazon. everytime i do, they "sign me up" for something that is inevitably charged to my card a month later. it's always something i don't want, and it takes me 3-4 days to get rid of it, one time it sent me over my credit limit (which was also my fault, because i had just the week before lowered the limit again. i like have the CC for online purchases that won't go through immedietly, but... they keep raising the limit, so then i go through the hassle of making them lower it again. sigh)
erm. that was a whole lot o' nuthin. sorry :) i have ppl at Half Price books keeping an eye out for a copy for me :)

From:

seawasp

I'm puzzled. Amazon doesn't, as far as I can tell, sign anyone up for anything unless they ask for it directly. I've bought literally HUNDREDS of things from them and they've never charged anything I didn't order. And anything that I decided I didn't want, they let me return, no questions asked.

In any case, there's a ton of other used book sellers. Abebooks.com is one, I know they had DK copies last I looked.

From:

denelian.livejournal.com

it's amazon prime (i went and looked) literally everytime i order something from amazon they enlist me in this "free trial" - even when i tell them not too - that is a pay-by-the-month get free shipping thing. it's happened 6 times. including the time i called the amazon customer service, the last time i ordered, to figure out how to NOT be automatically enrolled.
i had not hear of abebooks - going to go browse around not :)

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

I can understand your frustration, but honestly, both points of view are valid. The particular structure in DK, short episodic stories, does have some problems. Okay, I really liked DK so my opinion is somewhat prejudiced, but here goes anyway.

The episodic format was a bit of a problem because the stories were short. Very clever indeed, but the main attraction of most of the stories was the clever twist in each story. That and big V. :)

Character development suffered in the stories a little because of the attention paid to the big twist. The fairly long dialog sequences in some of the stories addressed this issue a bit. The sheer number of stories in the collection addressed it further, but it was/is still an issue.

To my mind, the idea format is novel length stories in an episodic format. Think in terms of hour long TV episodes that have multi-episode story arcs. Each episode generally stands alone, but the reader has plenty of previous "contact" with the characters and expects them to react a certain way. And the main characters will be returning for the next episode!

So, your apparently conflicting reviews do not really appear to be conflicting to me, they are both complaints that there was not enough "time" to connect with the characters, and learn what to expect from them. See? Same complaint expressed in two different ways.

The fun part of the stories is the twist, the un-fun part is the shorter time for character "contact" with the reader. I'll give an example of pretty extreme character development in a short story, and whole set of connected short stories that really work, at least for me.

Zenna Henderson's 'People' stores are an excellent example. They all build upon previous stories - and that is true even of the stories that slip back in time to fill in backstory.

In the collection _Pilgrimage : The Book of the People_, read the story _Gilead_. When I read it, I was taken by how well I "knew" Peter and Bethie at the end of that very short story. And as a reader, I was led to care about them. Indeed, later ns the series of stories, we run into Bethie several times, and even Bethie Two. And each encounter is a delight.

Your stories are significantly different of course, and the clever Agatha Christie like "twists" in your stories are an add much enjoyment to the stories. But I can see where the character development could be viewed as a bit of a problem. Remember - *you* live with Jason and crew in your head, the rest of us only get to meet them in the stories.

But, do check out _Gilead_ if you have not read it already. It isn't your style, but it is masterful, in my not so humble opinion.

Oh, one caveat; avoid the Robert Jordan thing; his novels were long enough to hold two or three simultaneous stories, but his character development was spotty and inconsistent, making it more of a chore than a joy to read through those books. I don't think you will ever have that problem. :)

Yours,
-Paul

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

Ack! I am new to this LiveJournal thing, and I thought I was previewing that previous post. Instead it slipped through with a ton of half-edits and typographical errors.
Apologies... I *can* spell, I just can not type!
-Paul

From:

seawasp

Part of the problem may simply be the view of what's sufficient "acquaintance" with the characters. You get to learn some things about the main characters with each episode/section, but not many details in each, because the real point of the stories is the twist or trick of the week, so to speak. There IS an overarching storyline that begins in Digital Knight, but the whole storyline can't be done in one book. In fact, it'll span two more Jason Wood books and, before I can write the FINAL Jason Wood book (which I always think of as "The Grand Finale" but would probably be called "Wolf Hunt" or "Wolf's Dominion"), two other stories (probably trilogies) set (mostly) on Zarathan: the Spirit Warrior sequence and the Balanced Sword.

Another part is probably the age of the stories. Gone in a Flash was written well before 1991 -- I think 1988-89. Cry Wolf was written some short time later, and Viewed in a Harsh Light perhaps three years after that. The only significant surviving piece of my writing that's actually likely to ever see print is a portion of the story currently titled "Demons of the Past" (which was first written in 1984-85).

The other three pieces -- Lawyers, Ghouls, and Mummies, Live and Let Spy, and Mirror Image -- were all written in early 2002.

And my writing NOW is a lot more polished, I think, than it was then (compare Digital Knight with "Trial Run", for instance). So if I was writing the original stories now, possibly they'd have more of whatever it is that would be needed to make the characters "come alive" for more people.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

Yep- you write a lot better now than then, but the writing then was pretty good. :)
You probably would craft the stories a little better today, and _Trial Run_ is a good example of that.

Still, _Trial Run_ would have been hard to understand and appreciate without reading the preceding stories, and even then, it seems Jason's personality has changed a bit. (Probably in response to all that wealth, but still, a bit. :)

Questions that did flitter through my mind included "What made him change so?", "Why did Sylvie let him get away with it? She is a much stronger character than that!", "Why is Verne being so standoffish - not like his character to NOT be pulling the strings in *everything* he is involved with?", "How the hell did that damn wolf get on the plane and back off? And why would Jason relax just because he cannot see big V?", "If Verne's people were star traveling folk, how could a mere planetary event keep them away for a half million years? Surely there have been contact attempts before now, why has Verne been ducking them?"

Note that almost all the questions center around why a character is behaving. At least for me, I have difficultly in predicting how some of the characters will behave, which is not something that is a positive point in a long series. Or at least, not always. :)

-Paul

From:

seawasp

Well, answering those questions would require a bit more detail on your part. As in "what changes"? with respect to "what made him change so?" and "What was it that he got away with" that you don't see Syl as letting him do? (I personally don't see any significant changes in his personality; he's dealing with a lot of issues that his younger self didn't have to, most especially the sheer size of the problems that get brought to him, but he's basically no different as far as I can tell.) Insofar as Verne, you won't get the answer to that (or even worse changes in his personality) for quite some time. The CAUSE was something that happened in "Photo Finish".

The answer to the Star Travelling is addressed to some extent in Demons of the Past (I hope one day I can actually get that published), and I've discussed other stuff about it elsewhere. In "Shadow of Fear", Verne gives a large chunk of it: it's not a "mere planetary" event. It was THE ENTIRE CIVILIZATION OF ATLANTAEA. It all fell in a matter of hours, across the entirety of the Galaxy, an event of such terrifying impact that the only enemy Atlantaea was fighting at the time (aside from the Demons) was so horrified and shocked that they fled the Galaxy in terror, afraid that the same inexplicable disaster would catch them as well.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

Jason starts off a pretty normal computer geek. (Now there is a contradiction in terms...:)
What is there about him that attracted him to Silvie, or more particularly, her to him? You don't find gorgeous new age ladies running around with many computer geeks, not in the real world.

Surely there are a ton of sparks and hurt feelings flying around in that relationship, but we do not see them.

As for an entire galaxy wide civilization being mowed down in a matter of hours, well, that would take some doing Be interesting to see what you come up with. I reserve judgement, as the thought of such is terrifying, but the actuality of it would take resources beyond imagining, at least for me. Unless they were only spread on a few hundred planets, then it is a whole different ball game.

-Paul

From:

seawasp

Well, part of that is the mystery. I have no idea why girl A likes Guy B, and I'm married. The sensible answers rarely seem to hold.

For Syl, Jason is good looking, honest, loyal, dependable, smart, and devoted to her. Sylvia never went through the Silly Girl phase, though she might look it, and even act it, at times. Her "feelings" are accurate indicators of truth, nearly all the time.

This is mentioned several times in the book and in the subsequent stories (you read both Shadow of Fear and Trial Run too, right?). Jason actually mentions that there are times it's a pain, perhaps even slightly creepy, to deal with a girlfriend/wife who KNOWS what you're doing, and often going to do. Syl pretty much knew Jason was the one as soon as she met him. They have very few fights, etc., because SHE DOESN'T LET IT HAPPEN. She knows -- even if she doesn't know the details ahead of time -- that things might blow up, and her instincts guide her to an effective resolution.

You can actually piece together the answer of the Fall of Atlantaea if you combine all the commentary on it from both DK and Shadow of Fear, but in a nutshell what happened is that Kerlamion Blackstar -- using the energy of the deaths of the Atlantaeans on Earth in their capital city -- sealed off the "conduit", so to speak, from Zarathan (the World of Magic) through Earth. But that was the critical "choke point". All magic of significant level passed THROUGH there; the connections to the source of magic for ALL OF ATLANTAEA's techno-magico-psionic devices came THROUGH EARTH.

By sealing off that connection, Kerlamion did something equivalent to "shutting off" electricity -- making it so electricity SIMPLY DOESN'T WORK. Imagine doing that to our world today. Now imagine doing that to a civilization a hundred thousand years old, that's been dependent upon ever-more-advancing technology for all that time, to the point that even people doing "primitive backpacking" are probably carrying around technology more advanced than anything we can imagine, and have no experience existing WITHOUT it.

A hundred million planets fell, quadrillions or quintillions died, and Kerlamion looked upon his work and found it good.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

I will re-read the first few stories. Perhaps my memory fails me. :)

I do know you had Jason mention things like that in the book, but they did not really connect to me; it didn't appear to me like he was terribly upset by them, and the mentions seems forced, rather than the natural introspection a thoughtful and intelligent man has, especially about those kinds of subjects.

It *really* strains my suspension of disbelief to accept that Sylvie simply does not let those kinds of arguments happen. I don't personally know any women like that; the ones I know will come out and tell you if they have a problem with you. Usually at the most inopportune time.

I'm not sure what mechanism could funnel enough energy for an interstellar civilization though one single point, meaning earth. It will be fun to watch as you develop one. That is, of course, assuming that magic is energy of some kind.

-Paul

From:

seawasp

Well, with respect to Syl, you don't know any women with honest-to-god, pure-quill, functioning precognition and clairvoyance. Sylvia Stake can sense the future. Not PRETEND to sense it, SENSE it. That's how she knew that "Renee", the cop guarding her hospital bed, was in fact a Werewolf, and was thus able to warn Jason with her expression just in time. You CAN'T see through a Wolf's disguise, not even with psionics... but if you can sense future time tracks and sense something bad's about to happen to your friend Jason, you can make a damn good guess.

So you can also KNOW what words will make things work out best, make both of you feel better about what's happening, etc.

That won't necessarily make it work any better for you as a reader, though. The fact is that the exact same character, portrayed in the exact same way, can be viewed as cardboard, unconvincing, and unrealistic by one educated reader and as deeply realistic and convincing by another, similarly educated reader. There were a number of such in Digital Knight; perhaps the ultimate example being one portion in which several people mentioned to me that Jason's choices and actions resonated well with them, told them a great deal about what he was like, etc., while another reader told me that the exact same part of the book feel totally flat, was clearly totally artificial and unreal, etc. The first joker in that pack? The experiences/choices in that particular case were MINE; i.e., they were areas in which I was simply giving Jason the same choices/preferences in action that I had, and therefore there could not be ANY actual debate over whether they were "realistic"; they were drawn directly from a real person's beliefs, actions, etc. The second joker in the pack? The one who found the part in question unbelievable was my own brother.

So, ultimately, I came to the conclusion that characterization is... too personal for me to worry about. I write the stories, have the characters say what I (as their creator) thinks they would say, try to be consistent (in my own head, anyway) with what they do, and after that it's all up to chance and the reader as to whether it's a CONVINCING character or not; if not, I have to hope that the Kewl Ideas and action distract the reader from this failing.

With respect to the funneling of energy... there is no... mechanism, so to speak. That is, Zarathan is the source of magic, and magic is restricted to Zarathan and its sister world, Earth (Zaralandar), which has/had a mystical connection between itself and Zarathan. The only way to spread magic farther is to carry it as an active connection from Earth outward -- sort of like plugging in an extension cord and paying it out behind you, or running a pipe from the nearby river, to use a really crude and simple analogy (there's a lot more complexity behind it). In theory you COULD do the same thing from Zarathan but for various reasons no one (or almost no one) does.

So what Kerlamion did was the equivalent of cutting off the main generator line, or collapsing a canyon wall to dam up the river. Little bits and spurts of magic still occasionally get through, usually during the Chaoswars on Zarathan, but essentially it was all cut off except for the very basic level of magic necessary for the existence of life itself.

In terms of "how much", magic is -- in essence -- the ability and power to rewrite the rules of reality. There's no limit to how much power it can concentrate in one point (Idinus of Scimitar, Archmage of Zarathan, is pretty much the personification of this when on his mountain), so piping as much magic as a Galactic civilization would need through Earth's... ethereal representation, so to speak... wasn't a problem.

At their ULTIMATE forms, technology, psionics, and magic (often written as the three M's, Matter, Mind, and Magic) eventually become the same thing, touching on the Ultimate, the power of Creation, but that's a bit above even where Atlantaea reached, though that was where it was heading and why it had to be destroyed.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

Good point on Slyvie sensing the future, I can see that.

However, strong emotions will cloud anyone's judgement, and more. A girl like Slyvie is going to have strong emotions, especially where Jason is concerned, and especially when he is in a threatening situation.

Anyone would be.

Anyways, you can see where the characters can come off a little flat, you noted that your brother picked up on it. :) How did it make you feel when he told you that? I would suspect you let it roll off your shoulders like water on a duck, but at least for a second or two, it make you angry, or disappointed, or sad, or something.

That is what I find missing from Jason. Even if he controls his emotions perfectly, we (the readers) would benefit greatly by seeing more of those tiny moment of insight.

And first person narrative is absolutely perfect for doing that.

Certainly the characters are going to be viewed in a spectrum, no matter how you write 'em. But where is the audience at? I can understand and appreciate your writing more, knowing about the RPG viewpoint you use. But a lot of your potential audience, a very large part of that potential audience, will never have experienced playing an RPG.

The great majority of your audience doesn't have the skills necessary to enjoy playing in a RPG. That means they do not have the skills necessary to "connect" with your characters the way you do in an RPG either. At least, that is what I think. :)

Do not misunderstand, I like your stories a lot, but in some ways, I like the older stories better. They have a bit more character to them.

_Trial Run_ is well written, You might be able to tighten up the word count a bit and make it a little better, but it *is* well written.

But it doesn't reach out an make me care about the characters as much as the earlier stories, at least, not quite as much. I think that is just the RPG thing; by this point in the game/story, you ought to know the character(s) you are playing pretty well. Perhaps that is not as true for static, written stories as it is for interactive stories. :)

I've never been all that good at magic technology, so I get a bit stuck on the magic thing. I will just take it as axiomatic that it works the way you say it does.

Think of the energy needs of just this one planet, and then multiply it by the needs of 100, 1000, 1000000, or millions of planets. Plus travel and communications. Ack!

You are talking about the kind of energy you get from a star, or more likely, a bunch of stars, all converted into a useful form, and transmitted FTL throughout some kind of magical power grid.

That's a LOT of power. You might be able to channel it, but to *control* it? Lordy. A distributed grid would be much more managable. Pump the power into "hyperspace" from multiple sources, and distribute it via a "hypergrid" or something. But that would not work with getting it universally "turned off" at the source. Or at least, not as well.

Well, like I said, I will enjoy watching how you solve this one and put it together. Keep writing. :)

-Paul

From:

seawasp

Syl's emotional reactions INCREASE her forward vision to some extent; which means that any time the emotions threaten to make her do something stupid, she gets louder warnings, so to speak.

How did I feel when my brother told me that? Amused. "No one would do that? *I* did."

To me, that doesn't mean the character's coming off as flat; it means that your perception of what makes a character realistic simply doesn't jibe with mine. I have the same experience with other types of literature; for instance, my most-hated book Lord of the Flies paints children in a way I find just completely unbelievable; others think it's a devastatingly accurate sketch.

I'm surprised you find less connection with the characters in "Trial Run" as I had more effort in PUTTING characters into that one than I did in any others of the Jason stories.

Most of the ENERGY generation was being done by Dimensional Tap, which can be done by purely technological means. But magic was used as an integral part of sensing, control, weapons, medical, etc., technology.

But you're thinking of magic as being ... well, IDENTICAL except for a label with the mundane energies, and it's NOT. It's the power of living forces, of the ability of Will to change what IS. The conduit, in a sense, channels the POTENTIAL. You have to actually USE it. (Sort of like a near-field energy transmitter; the potential energy is always there, but you have to have a perfectly tuned resonant receiver to actually tap it). Zarathan is the world that is -- in a very real sense -- the center of the multiverses. It is the world from which magic flows, the wellspring of power for all Reality. It is shielded and cut off from most other worlds, as hard to reach for them as reaching the core of our planet is for us. Only one other world, its sister world Zaralandar (which we call Earth) is directly connected to it (due to the way in which the universe's history played out).

And yes, that's a lot of power. But it's not CONTROLLED in the sense you're thinking. Maintaining the connection -- i.e., "dragging the extension cord" -- simply requires that you're DOING something magical that requires a significant connection to the source. So running a starship that has a large proportion of magical technology in its engines would -- by default -- be maintaining a connection to the source. And once such a connection reaches your new world, and you keep building and running new technopsionimagical devices, it will continue to be maintained and grow.

No one has to actually MAKE those connections grow or administer them. They didn't even THINK about it. It wasn't something they were aware of, for the most part, it just all WORKED. Magic is a NATURAL FORCE, and was an integral part of their civilization for a hundred thousand years. Only a couple of their most advanced wizards ever considered, in idle contemplation, the fact that all magic had to be passing through that conduit. It wasn't a matter of concern because it was utterly laughable to contemplate the idea of someone shutting it off. As you point out, the power scale is ... insane. It would be as though we, today, used solar power for everything, and you were contemplating the idea that someone would shut off the sun.

But Kerlamion Blackstar, Lord of the Shadow City and First on the Throne of Hell, had the power and knowledge to arrange it -- if he could penetrate the defenses around Earth and Atlantaea's core. THAT required a traitor, of course. But once he could gain that access, he and his demonic troops could do the rest.

From:

seawasp

By the way, let me emphasize I'm not trying to argue with you, say that you're wrong, etc.

My style of writing is probably most influenced by the writers of the Golden Age -- i.e., Doc Smith, Asimov, Heinlein, etc., and a lot of those people were Idea Story writers, not particularly into characters as such.

From:

seawasp

Also, in reference to The People, I've read ALL of them. I have the collection "Ingathering" which AFAIK has every single one of the People stories ever written. I love them. They're wonderful stories, with I think the most poignant one still being "Pottage".

The People stories are significantly different, as you say, and -- very importantly -- their difference is BASED on people. The People stories are -- appropriately -- almost universally ABOUT people.

The Jason Wood stories are almost universally about PUZZLES. They're about the universe changing around us (thus the title I *wanted* for the book was "Paradigms Lost") and how the same laws of reason still apply even in the most outrageous circumstances. The people are illustrated in these stories more by how they react than by their specific role in the plot as such.

So the idea that one Jason Wood story would not show nearly as much "people" in it as a People story is one that is born of the basic nature, I think, of both types of stories.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

Thought you might have. :)

Yes, the stories are very different in purpose and design, but I disagree with your assumption the nature of the stories precludes deep character development.

In fact, I think it requires it more than in a novel, because you have to catch my attention and make me like this character far more quickly than in a novel length story. You cannot afford to burn 100 pages to get me to like (or dislike) someone. Zenna Henderson does that better than any other author I can think of.

If you will, the Jason stories are somewhat like mysteries, each having at least one delightful twist in it.

The very best mystery stories are ones where we learn to love one or more of the protagonists, and also learn what to expect from the bad guys. Agatha Christie again I suppose - people would buy her books simply because they loved the main characters, Ms Jane Marple, for example.

Now given that, I am far from being a good enough writer to be able write that kind of character development. Much less so in a shot story!

As I said, I like the stories - you done good. But I think the main criticism is still with character development. I mean that from an engineering sense, as the weakest part of the work. Any inconsistency at all in the characters will show up in episodic short stories.

MMM trying to think of another example. Oh yes, Doc Savage. The stories were written by a stable of different writers, but in almost every story, the characters were described and made familiar to the readers. This was quite intentional, and part of the writing guidelines.

Every story had to have Monk and Ham feuding over something, pulling pranks on each other, or something similar, and a few paragraphs of explanation that they were really good friends, served in the military together, and why Ham got his name. ;) Or Rennie of the big hands punching through a door, and explaining that he was an electrical genius. Or Pat wandering by, looking for trouble. Even though the explanations took up precious page space, they were *necessary*, and appreciated even by fans who had read the entire series. :)

Same thing with Jason, Verne, Sylvie and crew. Their characters are still a little - ah - unformed is the only word I can come up with. Just a little though. :)

-Paul

-Paul

From:

seawasp

Well, part of it clearly comes from the approach of the authors, and the venue, and the intent. The Doc Savage stories, while very short from a modern novel POV, were still MUCH longer than the individual Jason Wood stories (I think the longest of those is less than 20,000 words long, about half the length of a very short novel. Doubling the length would give lots more room for character stuff.

But -- and this may be a weakness, but it's simply the way I write -- I don't view the characters as principal elements in the sense of something I focus on, unless the story IS about the character. Otherwise, the characters exist to be vehicles of the plot. They should behave consistently, yes, but -- especially in an idea-oriented story -- the characters GET IN THE WAY of the story if I have to stop and have time spent explaining them. Their ACTIONS should explain everything you need to know about them. If the actions don't, yes, I'm failing there, but even if I succeed, this approach will -- I think pretty much of necessity -- end up with characters which are much less heavily defined in every individual story. If you take the various stories and add them up you'll get some more definition, but not as much as you would from the same length of stories by someone more focused on the characters as such.

I freely admit this; Jason isn't, and won't be for quite a number of additional stories, a character whose depth and complexity will be strongly defined. The readers know a bunch of things about him (he's an information specialist with a knack for finding the right data; he likes to do his own cooking when he can; he can be scared but he doesn't back down, he keeps his word, he's got a strong sense of duty that often gets him in trouble, he likes helping people, he's been a bit diffident/clueless in his earlier relationship with Syl, etc.) and quite a few things, though a lot less, about Syl and Verne, and bits and pieces about some of the other characters. But none of them go into depth. We know that Jason isn't Catholic, but was willing to work with a Catholic priest to go through with a wedding that didn't upset his in-laws, but we don't know really what beliefs Jason has. We know that he was a virgin (at least in the strict sense) until he was married, but we don't know WHY. And so on.

Thinking on it (this is an interesting conversation to me), that's ALSO partly due to the fact that it's written from JASON'S point of view. He's here to tell you a story about a case he solved. Talking about himself is... well, IRRELEVANT. And perhaps embarrassing. If you don't need to KNOW something about him for the sake of the story, he's not going to TELL you. And of course what he tells you about other people will depend on how he views them. Syl, of course, is at first seen as a sidekick and a (not so) subtle romantic interest, a flaky but endearing New-Agey gypsy girl who does, somehow, "have something". It isn't until "Viewed in a Harsh Light", however, that he sees her as FORMIDABLE and a potential equal in the events that he keeps getting involved in. And even so, he's not the sort to let his wife into a dangerous situation if he can in any way get her out of it.

From:

paulbearman.livejournal.com

You are more or less right, and how you view the story is the overriding factor. It is not necessarily a weakness either, but it is perhaps, a factor that will garner you some complaints.

I wonder, could it be that you are viewing the story more like a role playing game than a story?

While the actions do indeed tell the story, it is how the characters react to the happenings and actions, their own as well as other people's, that defines their character and presence to the reader. First person is not a limiting factor to doing that, not at all. In fact, first person is a fantastic vehicle for filling in backstory, and it is not a problem to have the protagonist explain what is happening to the reader. Indeed, in first person narration, you have an inside view of the characters head. It is harder to write well in first person, at least for most people, but when well done, it is usually excellent.

The Jason we see blows off the reactions that Sylvie is going to have to him leaving for a few weeks, as in _Trial Run_, We see a faint hint of it in the story, but at least with my wife, that would have entailed one or more serious discussions. With Sylvie being a formidable and competent person in her own right, and being still fairly newly wed to Jason, I would have expected more of a problem. :) Sure it would take up page space, but then, the cool twist is the story is one reason to read it. But the characters, and how they re developed, is what will make people come back and re-read it, and buy new stories. :)

At least in my opinion, YMMV and your opinion is really the one that counts. You have to do the work to write the stories and get them published. I really disagree with any notion the characters are at all irrelevant. I think they are far more relevant than the actions.

-Paul

From:

seawasp

I approach even OTHER novels as RPGs, let alone my own; I watch movies and figure out how they translate into whatever system seems appropriate. With my own writing, I stat out a lot of the characters, creatures, and so on, so I have a handle on what they do and how they do it. So yes, of course I do, because to me they're essentially the same thing; a well-run RPG campaign should be a great story, and a great story should make an excellent basis for an RPG, so to speak.

In the case of Jason going off in Trial Run, the "fireworks" would be minimal (as I described in the prior post) because Syl would anticipate it. Jason's concern about her reaction probably caused him more angst than the actual reaction.

And insofar as argument about going away, this is business. My wife may not LIKE me going away for business, but if I have to, I have to. It's not something to argue ABOUT, and one area in which Jason and I *are* alike is that neither of us would put up with arguments about things that aren't arguable, so to speak. The only alternative for Syl was to come along, but as long as she's trying to keep her own business running, that's not really an option. Jason's business is information and consulting -- he can do at least a fair amount of that "on the road"; Syl's running a retail shop.

Thus, Syl wouldn't have done more than a token protest and make sure he felt properly chastised but also heavily appreciated -- i.e., the reason she doesn't want him going away is that she misses him when he's gone. But then she'd send him off happy, because boy, will he need it.