Might as well just slit my wrists.

Science Fiction author, historian, and statistician Michael Flynn linked a website that will tell you who you write like. I decided to test it out.

For the test, I used the first scene from Father Max, because it is some of my latest work and I figure it is the most representative sample.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Sucks to be me.

And there goes my aspirations of ever being a writer, going down in flames before ever getting off the ground.

Ok, let's try the first scene of Jack Flint: Space Pirate. It is rubbish and desperately needs revision, but, come on, it's hard to get worse than Dan Brown.

I write like
Robert Louis Stevenson

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I'll take that. Probably because of all the pirate slang.

Hm. We need a tie-breaker. How about the first scene from my unfinished Star Trek fanfic?

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

But he's not just any talentless hack. He's a best-selling millionaire talentless hack, proving once again that it's better to be rich than to be good.

Well, it's pretty definitive. I might as well just slit my wrists. No point in ever writing another

It was a dark and stormy night....

The results of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced! Here is a sample (runner-up, detective category):

As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, "Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead."

-- Dennis Pearce

Well, I suppose I should tell my story of the San Diego State University Writer's Conference, for all one of you who are interested (hi Mom!).

Background: every year for the past 26 years, San Diego State University has held a writer's conference, designed to help aspiring writers meet with industry professionals. I first found out about it via my instructor at UC Irvine, who recommended it and has had several students who have had success at the conference.

The conference took place from January 29-31 and, after a year taking classes and working in a critique group, was to be my first foray into the world of professional writing.

The conference started Friday evening (I took a half-day at my day job so I could have time to prepare and not have to fight rush hour traffic to San Diego) with a mixer (alcohol!). The ballroom of the hotel where the mixer was held had tables assigned by genre, so you could meet with people with similar interests. Aside from a bit of not-at-all-awkward-nosiree, when I sat down at the SFF table where the only other person was a 15 year-old girl ("Hi! I'm twice your age and drinking alcohol and we're sharing a table. No, I'm not a stalker or pedo, why do you ask?"), the mixer was enjoyable. I met with some of my friends from my writing classes who also came to the conference. Also, towards the end of the evening a woman—who I later found out was Loretta Barrett, a very, very prominent literary agent—joined the SFF table. While she didn't represent that genre at all, she did mention that it was the fastest-growing segment in the entire publishing industry. She also talked about some interesting things, such as how writing isn't a profession, it's a vocation (that makes me feel better for not getting paid for it!).

The conference proper started on Saturday with a wonderful keynote address by a man named Chris Vogler, who has worked in Hollywood for years. He worked at Disney during their recent *ahem* "Golden Age". (True story: you know that part at the beginning of Lion King where the baboon holds up Simba and the beam of sunlight illuminates him? The lightbeam was his idea. He said he was inspired by his Catholic upbringing when, during morning mass, the sunlight would stream through the stained glass behind the altar and illuminate the priest.) His speech was about "the path," both of the character and of the writer. (His book, The Writer's Journey, is about the Mythic quest of the hero—and of the writer—illustrated most fully by Luke Skywalker's path in Star Wars.) It was pleasing to hear, because I've had the idea for a while that I'm on a path. It started when I decided to write a novel and it ends (hopefully) with me getting published. (I'll write more about "the path" at a later date.)

Almost immediately after that I had my first two meetings. For a non-trivial sum of money, you can arrange to meet with an agent and/or editor for either an advanced reading appointment, where you submit your first 10 pages ahead of time to be read by an editor, or a consultation, where you tell your story idea to an agent/editor and receive feedback about the idea and market viability, or just ask general questions. You could schedule in advance 1 advanced reading appointment and 2 consultations, although additional consultation appointments were available at the conference. Meetings are 10 minutes.

My first meeting was my advanced reading appointment, with an editor from William Morrow.

She didn't like it.

She was polite about it, and used what my instructor calls the "Oreo cookie" or what Stewie Griffin calls the "compliment sandwich" (positive/negative/positive feedback; although the positive feedback at the beginning and the end was basically the same thing repeated, so it was more of half an Oreo smooshed up against a mirror). She gave me a compliment I will most definitely take, that I am a good commercial writer and I keep the pages turning. Her criticisms were that, well, she didn't like it. She said that in a novel's opening pages (which is what you submit for an advanced reading appointment: the first 10 pages of your novel), she looks to discover about the central character's motivations and goals; where he's coming from and going to. Since my central character doesn't even show up until page 16, it didn't really meet her criteria. She didn't like the big action and battle right up front, where we don't even know who's who. She pointed out that there are a number of (as she called them) "sci-fi" clichés (and there's a clue that she might not be my target editor; to people in the industry, it's "SF"; ask John C. Wright): the asteroid field, the technical term with a funny spelling (although I don't think she knows what a "fluyt" is, or that I didn't actually make up that word). She also didn't like the dialect (saying "less is more"), what with the sailor-speak. But she was nice, and offered words of encouragement.

Oh well. I didn't have time to dwell on my failure or how much I suck as a writer and, therefore, as a human being. Because not 2 minutes later (literally!) I had my next appointment, with a real SFF editor, from Baen books, the largest independent publisher of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the world.

This guy knew his stuff and offered some good advice. He wasn't really there to listen to pitches or find bright new writers. He was just pointing the SFF authors in the right direction. "This conference is great and all, but if you really want to meet the science fiction industry professionals...." He told me about all the conferences where the publishers and editors and authors go (not Comic-Con!). I also pitched JF:SP to him, briefly.

"Sounds humorous."

"Yeah, like Pirates of the Caribbean... in spaaaaaace."

"There's not much market for humorous science fiction novels right now," he told me. But he did give me the name of an editor at Tor and one at Baen who, he said, if I could get my manuscript into their hands, they might appreciate the humor. Useful knowledge, even if I didn't generate interest.

He gave me the advice that I should be writing short fiction. Firstly, there is a market for humorous short fiction; secondly, it's much easier to get short fiction published, and thirdly, it's much easier to get a novel published if you've already published short fiction. This was interesting

There were a few talks and panels I attended that afternoon that were of interest. Every agent at the conference was on a panel at some point through the day, so I attended a panel of one of the agents that I would meet the following day (her name is "Nephele", pronounced "Nĕ'-fə-lē"). It was informative and useful.

Saturday ended with whine and cheese. Social stuff. Y'know, the stuff I hate. (I think that was the hardest part of the weekend for me: always being "on." I can approximate being a social person for brief periods, but to keep it up for nearly three days is taxing. I had no appetite at all over the weekend, and it was almost 4 or 5 days before it came back.) I ended the evening with dinner with the other writers from my critique group.

Sunday began early (again) with the editor's choice awards. Every editor who participated in advanced reading appointments picked one submission that they liked the most and the author received an award (and nothing else). I had already had my appointment with the editor, so I knew I wasn't eligible, but a girl from my critique group did win one.

The awards were followed by another keynote, this time by an author named Robert Dugoni, who again spoke of the "path". He told his own story about how he became a novelist. He said he knew that's what he wanted to be since he was about seven, but he came from a family of over-achievers—doctors and lawyers—so he went to law school instead. He said that three weeks in, he knew it wasn't for him, and that he'd hate it, but he couldn't quit (let his family down!) and continued on, graduating from law school and getting a job at a firm. He was successful, making money, as he says, living the American dream. Trouble was, "it wasn't my dream."

One day, he woke to go to work, but instead of getting up, he just sat in bed and said "I can't do this anymore." His supporting wife told him. "Then we won't."

He recounted the rest of his story, how he learned to write, how he met an agent (then that agent died), how he met the person that helped him write his first book, and how he finally found the agent that helped him publish. He's now a New York Times bestselling author.

After the keynote, I had a meeting with the agent (Nephele) who I spoke with the previous evening. She had said when I talked with her previously that the best use of the consultation appointment wasn't to pitch your story—you can submit it to her any day of the year—but instead was to just ask questions. After all, it's not every day you get 10 minutes of one-on-one time with an editor or agent.

So that's what I did: asked her questions. I asked her if humorous SF could work (yes) and if I'm ruining my opening by starting in the POV of someone other than the main character (maybe/hard to say without reading it). The best advice she gave was this: for authors who are writing a series, don't write the second book in the series before the first is sold. You can outline it, write a synopsis, write down notes, but don't invest a lot of time on it. If the first one is unsellable, then you've wasted a whole lot of time. Instead, she said, I should be working on something else. This tied in well with what the SF editor told me, to write short fiction, and helps me understand, a least a little bit, where the next part of my "path" leads.

Shortly after that, I had my last appointment with an agent. When I signed up for my appointments, back at the end of December, I had already paid for three, but when they released the list of editors and agents in attendance, only two specifically listed SF as an area of interest, so I had to pick one who sounded remotely close for my third appointment. (When I got to the conference, I found that the editor at Baen had signed up late and was conducting consultation appointments, so I added him at the conference.)

So I met with this other agent who I picked, I think, because he said he had experience with book-to-movie deals (delusions of grandeur, I know; DON'T JUDGE ME!).

"Ok," he says, looking at his list of consultations. "Joseph.... Space Pirates?"

"Yes, that's me."

"I don't represent Science Ficiton. No sci-fi, fantasy, or horror."

Me: blank stare.

"Don't worry about it. Tell me about your story and I'll point you to an agent who can help."

I pitch him JF:SP, trying not to stumble too much over the initial shock. I get about half way in to my pitch when he interrupts me.

"So, is there a lot of violence in this?"

"No."

"Any sex?"

"Um, no?"

"You ever think it might be Young Adult?"

Me: blank stare. This blank stare is, like my one from a minute previous, also from shock, but the shock of "Ohmigod I'm such an idiot why didn't I think of that" instead of the more general "Ohmigod I'm such an idiot."

The conversation progresses. He asks me where the idea came from. "A video game I never made." Who plays video games, he points out? (His high school and college aged sons both play WoW. I hide my boldly emblazoned "Blizzard" bag and notebook, just in case.)

How long is it? He asks. "84,000 words." Can I cut it in two? Make a series? (YA tends to be 40,000 words. )"It's supposed to be a series." There ya go.

He points out a couple other things: it's easier for a new author to break into YA publishing, and YA is a much larger market than SF.

I ask him about the agent he promised to point me towards. "That's me. I represent YA. When you've trimmed it to 40,000 words, send it to me." He hands me a business card.

The meeting concludes and I spend the rest of the conference wandering in a daze. How could it have been so obvious, and yet I never saw it? I tried to keep the story clean; language, sex, violence, etc. If you made it into a movie it would be PG. One of the other writers from my critique group would occasionally leave comments that I should read it to Damien when he's old enough. The hang-up of the light-hearted humorous nature doesn't apply in YA. All these little pieces, which to me seemed unrelated, suddenly snap into place. It was staring me in the face the entire time.

(For those of you curious about my rather odd Facebook status update, this is what it was about.)

The conference ended rather anticlimactically. I skipped the last sessions (too tired, nothing interesting). Most people had already left, and I didn't even get to say goodbye to my friends who were there.

So the conference was completely different from what I expected, but probably exactly what I needed. The Path, previously unclear where it lead from San Diego, is a little more obvious. There are two branches to follow, short stories and young adult. Now I just need to figure out how to trim Jack Flint: Space Pirate in half. And figure out what to write next. (Checks notebook of ideas. Hmmmm.)

New post on my literary blog for those who are interested in Space Pirates.

Just sayin'. You might check it out.

...then again, maybe if I'm a bad enough author, I can make millions and get a movie deal.

Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences.

And I Seem to Call Myself a Writer.

An actual line I seemed to discover while editing that book-thingy I'm working on: "And by the way everyone else seemed to ignore her, it seemed they already knew who she was, so it seemed pointless to introduce herself."

And some of you people actually seem to like my writing?!

It seems that "seem", along with "technically", "pretty", "actually", "little", "began", and "really" are some of my favorite words. 'Cause those are the ones that I'm finding overused a lot (seemingly).

(The sentence now seems to read: "And by the way everyone else ignored her, it seemed they already knew, or didn't care, who she was.")

Sentence of the day: "The author seemingly was actually pretty wordy because, technically, he began to really overuse some words a little bit too much."

Yaaaargh!

Ok, I wanted to have Space Pirates Episode II done by today.

That didn't happen. Not nearly. So I will tide you over with some excerpts.

Firstly, the whole of chapter 1. (Very long; 16,500 words). I have not yet gone through it with the fine-toothed comb of editing, so this does not represent my best writing style.

Secondly, the scene below. I am introducing a new character, who I think will recur through the rest of the series. (Bonus points: Count how many inside jokes and references you can find.)

* * *

Jack scanned through the list of names on the directory, but did not see a mention of Chris White anywhere. He then browsed them by apartment number, looking for the number on the card Damian had handed him. He found the listing for apartment 472 next to the name J. Galt, and pressed the intercom button.

A voice sounded, speaking in a very fake French accent. “Allo?”

This caught Jack by surprise and he stuttered over his response. “Um, hi.... uh—who is this?” he finally blurted out.

“I don't know. I can't see you,” the voice said. Jack wasn't sure what to make of that and stumbled some more.

“Um, yeah. I'm trying to reach Chris White. Is this he?”

“Who wants to know?” By this time Jack was beginning to clue in.

“Me name is Jack Flint. Me first mate, Damian Braun, sent me.”

“What's the password?”

“Excuse me?” Jack asked, once more completely lost by the conversation.

“What's the password I told Damian? The password to get in?”

Jack's brain searched frantically, trying to remember some lost part of the conversation, fearing that he may have forgotten some crucial detail. He stammered once again. “Um, I don't, uh, recall a password being given in the conversation.”

“That is correct,” the voice solemnly replied. “I also would have accepted 'swordfish' or 'xyzzy'. Bottom floor, second door on the left,” the voice said before being cut off by a buzzer, indicating the front door had unlocked.

Jack proceeded into the complex. It was the type of thing that would have been built with government funding for low income people, except that Arcas didn't have that type of program. So instead, it was probably built by someone who, unable to squeeze any additional money from the middle income class, decided to see what he could get from those with less. Even still, some aspects of the design didn't make sense. He could understand some of the cost-cutting measures, like not fixing the flickering lights, or cleaning the vandalized walls. But he really had to wonder if paint in a color that could only be described as “baby shit green” was that much cheaper than, say, white.

He made his way down the stairs to what was the fourth floor down from the entrance. Judging by the directory, this building also had two floors going upwards from the entrance as well, which would mean there was at least one floor that protruded through the surface into the air-less sky of Callisto. Due to safety considerations, such floors were usually more expensive, and must have catered to the upper-lower-class.

He stopped outside the second door on the left and raised his hand to knock, but paused upon noticing the sign that said “Utility Closet”. He thought it through a moment but before he could come to a decision, there was a click sound and the door slowly opened inwards with a creak. There was no one immediately on the other side.

He stepped into the rather dark, cave-like interior. The smell was the first thing that greeted him. It gave the general impression of a closed, confined space with poor ventilation, inhabited by a creature that did not bathe frequently, and only rarely deposited the remaining morsels of food from its meals in a waste receptacle, which was rarely emptied; and only when the lingering smell became so overpowering that breathing became difficult was an air freshener liberally applied.

Only after his eyes became adjusted to the dim light was he able to take in his surroundings. “Utility Closet” was not a bad description for the place. It was a single room apartment, deeper than it was wide, stretching away from the door. To the left of the door was a small kitchenette, with a sink piled with dishes that clearly—judging from the new civilization of mold emerging on them—hadn't been washed in some time. The recycling receptacle was so over-piled with disposable dishes that it was hard to discern exactly which ones qualified as “in” the container. To the right of the door was—well Jack had to assume it was there somewhere, as all that dirty laundry surely couldn't just be floating—presumably a dining table of some sort, although Jack couldn't imagine it having been used for that purpose in a past time measurable on a calendar. At the very back of the right wall was a door that Jack assumed led to a head. Judging by the state of the rest of the apartment, he was very glad he currently had no urges of that nature.

But all that was window dressing. Inconsequential trivialities to the main attraction, the real attention-grabber in the room. For filling at least half the room was perhaps the largest and most robust computer set up that Jack had ever seen. Zack would surely have wept had he seen this, Jack thought, upon the realization that all his engineering and technical pursuits were mere dust when compared with this monument to sheer geek ingenuity. It easily cost more than the apartment itself, perhaps more than the whole complex.

Practically the entire back wall and half the left wall were covered in large, vibrant displays; some continuations of one large image; others displaying their own image, ranging from local video programming, games, news, and some other highly technical data that Jack couldn't make heads or tails of. There was a large desk—the word being used in the loosest possible sense, only conveying the description of a surface on which one does work, but continent may have been more appropriate to describe its size—on which, and under which, were at least a dozen computers, three portable computers and five servers, not to mention the associated keyboards, pointing devices, and at least a few game controllers.

Jack couldn't really appreciate it, not having been born with the Gene—that gene which compels young boys or girls, when presented with a device that performs some function, to take it apart to verify its operation—but the only suitable term to describe the computer set up, assuredly used by any professional in the field, would be “awesome”.

And in the middle of it all, seated in what had to be the most well-sat-in chair in the history of chairs, was a disheveled, moderately overweight, pale-skinned man, his clothing wrinkled, his long unkempt hair pulled into a pony tail, and his chin unshaven.

“Larger than I expected a utility closet to be,” Jack finally said, finding himself talking in an elevated tone, to be heard over the dull roar of what sounded like a jet engine.

“What? Oh, the sign. Yeah, I just put that up to fool the ninja assassins so they couldn't find me.”

“Does it work?” Jack asked as he crossed towards the back of the apartment, stepping around a large couch which must have served double duty as the bed, before stopping a few feet from Chris. He really didn't want to get much closer.

“I'm still here, aren't I? Hold on,” Chris said, before fiddling with one of his controllers. On one of the displays, a control panel opened up and he made some adjustments to it. The background roar died down to a volume almost suitable for indoors.

“Sorry about that. I just wanted to turn down the compressor for the liquid nitrogen cooling system,” he said, waving a hand towards a piece of industrial equipment tucked away in the back corner of the room.

“What, are you running a furnace to power all this?” Jack's limited experience with liquid cooling systems was in starship engineering, where a chemical that was usually a gas at standard temperature and pressure was liquefied to cool the several tens-of-thousands of degrees reaction inside the furnace.

“No, I steel the extra power from my neighbors,” Chris said, waving a hand over his shoulder, then adding, “it's savvy, though. They don't know about it. The coolant is for the computers.”

“What do you use all this for?” Jack said, looking around the displays again.

“Anything and everything. Over here, I've got a buffered feed of all the Earth's interplanetarily broadcast video and audio programming—on a thirty minute delay, of course—so you can catch all the reruns of all your favorite shows,” he said, indicating one display in which the image was split into easily hundreds of smaller images. “From that box, the feed goes over to my content hosting server, which holds a one-year archive of everything for anyone on Callisto who's watching. Except, of course, for Space Voyages. I keep archives of all the episodes of that show.”

He pointed at another display. “This box is currently running my clan's multiplayer server for the Littoral Operations expansion to Starship Combat. I'm in a pretty well-known clan. Ever heard of Plutonium Knights?” Jack, who hadn't followed much of what he had said since the words “anything and everything”, shook his head. “No? Well, they're pretty famous. Number one ranked on Callisto and, I think, number twelve in the system.

“On this server, I'm trying to assemble the system's largest collection of porn,” Chris continued. Jack rolled his eyes in disgust.

“And this server—this is the one that's soaking up most of the cooling; I had to slow it by a factor of ten while the cooling system is running on low—this is the one I'm using to try and find the next Mersenne prime. Well the main one. The others are all set up in an ad hoc Beowulf cluster—which is simple since they're all running my own home-brewed Torvix distro of course—and they'll share some of the processing load during low usage.” Jack just shook his head. It was all geek to him. “But ninety percent of the processing is done on her.” Chris looked longingly at the display of numbers rapidly scrolling up the screen. “She'll find it one of these days.” Somehow, Jack wasn't surprised that Chris had anthropomorphized his computers as female.

“Nice set up, but do you really need all this?”

Chris gave Jack a look as if he was equal parts surprised and offended. “Did... did Alexander the Great need to conquer the world?” he started. “Did Amundsen need to go to the South Pole? Did Cromwell need to invent the fusion propulsion engine?” He continued to hold his stare at Jack for several awkward seconds. “Well, did they?”

Jack, assuming it was a rhetorical question, fumbled for the answer. “No?” he finally blurted out.

“Of course they did! Who would remember them if they didn't?”

He had a point, thought Jack.

It was a dark and stormy night....

The rain fell heavily around the footsteps of the tall man. The tail of his long coat was soaked with the water that splashed from his heavy footsteps. He walked with purpose, never glancing backwards. Never looking to see if he was being followed. He rounded a corner and walked down a darkened street. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated his chiseled face, and reflected off his round spectacles, obscuring his eyes behind the white circlets.

The thunder clap that followed nearly drowned the sound of the shop's bell, as he quickly stepped inside the warm and dry interior. A florescent light flickered, making the droplets on his hat appear to dance.

"Welcome to Uday and Qusay's Surplus Torture Goods. Can I help you find something?" The shopkeeper spoke evenly, his tone contrasting with his wild, unshaven and unkempt appearance. His dark eyes flicked up and down, sizing up this new man in his shop.

"Yes, I want to make men suffer." The man in the coat spoke so softly, yet infected his voice with so much vitriol.

The shopkeeper inhaled as he let out a sharp, short laugh, such that he sounded like he was wheezing. He picked up a small, sharp, and painful-looking item from a bin filled with blood-encrusted tools. "Well, then you've come to the right place. Perhaps I can interest you in the Cast-R8or™? One prick and," the shopkeeper emitted his wheezing laugh once again, "well, let's just hope he's already banked."

"No, that's not what I need," the customer said so forcefully that the shopkeeper jumped. He leaned in close to the shopkeeper and whispered, as if he wanted to prevent the walls from hearing him. "I hear you're the man to speak to about couches."

The shopkeeper's eyes opened wide and a sly grin oozed its way across his face. "Yes.... Yes. I believe I can help you there." The shopkeeper stepped behind the small wooden counter on which stood a cash register so ancient that Judas Iscariot may have used it to store his thirty pieces of silver. He stooped low and pressed a button.

There was a shuddering, then the small shop shook and the wall behind the counter opened wide to display a massive room, filled floor to ceiling with grotesque and hideous deformities that could only be called couches by a man so mad as to welcome death in for tea.

The shopkeeper ushered his patron inside an slid the massive iron door shut behind them. He tried to direct his audience's attention to one specimen. Sharp spikes, coated red with either rust or blood—or perhaps both—protruded from the sandpaper-like upholstery. "This is a very fine model here. One of my finest. I think you'll be quite pleased. The last man to sit on it was sent to the asylum. They have a special cell on the east wing for him, where he screams—"

"No, too garish," the shopper cut him off, and strolled off in another direction.

The shopkeeper ran in front of the man and tried to lead him to a pile of twisted metal, across which electric arcs jumped at seemingly random intervals. "Er, then how about this one? At the touch of a button, you can send 10,000 volts through the body of your victim. I like to watch the horror in his eyes as his body convulses uncontrollably."

A look of scorn crept onto the man's face. He shook his head. "No, this just won't do. I need something... something like...." He pursed his lips as he gazed about the room. His eyes came to rest and the corner of his otherwise expressionless mouth curled in a sneer of malice and contempt. "Something like that one," he said, pointing the finger from one black glove.

The couch was revolting. Hideous. Ghastly, grim, and gruesome. It had a paisley print in a shade of green that could only have come from a deep, dark, and forbidden corner of the '70s..

The shopkeeper kept his distance from it and hid behind his customer, as if he was afraid that the couch might leap up and charge the twenty feet across the room at him.

"Oh.... Oh." The words escaped the shopkeeper's lips in a nearly inaudible whisper. He knew that this man who had come into his shop must have the rage of hell pent up inside him, waiting to come screaming forth.

The shopkeeper took a moment to compose himself. "That one." He looked distant, as if he was looking through the couch to a gaping maw beyond. "That one was made by three men who toiled in a darkened cave deep inside the earth, where mortals ought not to go. They slaved over it for three years, pouring their hatred and malice for all that is right and good in this world into their abomination. It is a cursed couch, and the makers themselves have paid the price with their blood. One fell to a most wretched illness. His flesh decayed over a fortnight, while he screamed for death to take him. One was driven mad by his creation, and hung himself on a meat hook, impaled through his jaw. The police say it took him two days to bleed to death. The third was smote by the might of God, struck down by a lightning bolt on a clear night. It is said that whoever sits on it shall be wracked with a most unbearable pain, and whosoever sleeps on it shall awake screaming in agony, as if every bone in his body was broken, every muscle torn, and every ligament severed.

"It is an evil couch," the shopkeeper added in a whisper.

"It is perfect. I'll take it."

The shopkeeper looked up at the man, suddenly broken from his trance. "Of course, sir. And where would you like it delivered?"

The man reached deep into an inside coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to the shopkeeper, who carefully unfolded it.

Scrawled in hastily written letters were two words: Hoag Hospital.

Reaction -> Dilemma -> ...Indecision.

If you're reading this, it means I probably accidentally hit "Publish Post" instead of "Save Now".

Being open to advice or criticism is a very important life lesson, and much of one's character formation should be about learning to graciously accept advice and learning how to apply it (the extent to which this trait is developed in today's society is a whole 'nuther topic, for a whole 'nuther day). This is especially true for the aspiring author or learning writer.

But one thing that I have trouble grasping is this: how do I know which pieces of advice to take to heart and which to discard?

To let you know where this is going:

During my writing class, the instructor and other students have been giving me lots of advice—very good advice, really—on ways to improve Space Pirates (and if you did not see that coming as the topic of the post, then... well... then you are clearly not even remotely clairvoyant). So far during the class, we have been covering the classical plot structure and bringing in explanations of the Plot Point decisions, events that shape those decisions, character reactions, etc. During the previous class meeting we covered the climax of the novel, and our homework explained how the focal character fought the protagonist (intellectually or physically), the loose ends to tie up, and the denouement.

(The rest of this article assumes you've read Space Pirates, so you may be lost or spoiled if you have not already. Well, I don't really consider anything that happens in Episode I a "spoiler", as the "twists" are mere trivialities compared with the real plot twists in the coming installments. It would be like calling the fact that R2-D2 and C-3PO escape the Tantive IV and reach Tatooine in an escape pod a spoiler. )

(There are also minor, trivial plot points from later episodes mentioned as well, so don't read those if you don't wants ta know.)

Some very good questions were asked, which I had to explain, and some good advice given. For instance, one fellow student, after asking why Tim wants the MacGuffin disk (minor spoiler: to sell to Gregory, as established in the ending), pointed out that both Tim and Jack want the same thing for the same reason, so why should we want Jack to "win" in the climax? Why does the reader have an emotional investment in Jack's victory? The instructor came to my defense on this point, explaining that in many stories, the hero and villain want the same thing, it's just a question of how they go about doing it. She then said that Tim would then have to be a really evil or sleazy character, and Jack had to be very virtuous in order to make the reader have a vented interest in one over the other.

The instructor's advice was to "raise the stakes". She asked me why Jack needed this job so badly, I explained that he didn't have much money and he couldn't afford continued maintenance on his ship. She countered that it needed to be more than that. His ship should be falling apart, barely flying. Also, she was pretty insistent that Jack should find out what's on the disk that's so important. (I tried to explain that I was trying to mimic the feel of Ronin, in which after 2 hours of searching for a silver case with unknown contents, the heroes get it, but never is the audience allowed to know what it contained; in that movie, the story is about the mercenaries themselves, not what they're after.) After explaining to her what's on the disk, (trivial Ep. III spoiler: research on efficient and inexpensive anti-matter creation, for the purposes of building an anti-matter bomb) she said that when Jack discovers this, he should then do the right thing and turn the disk in to the US Navy for a reward. Also, Tim should be planning to sell it to the "North Korea" analogue: the enemy, terrorist nation-state that would do heinous things if they got their hands on it.

One of the ladies in the class also seems pretty adamant that their should be some romantic element, and this was seconded by the instructor, either between Jack and Regina, or perhaps between Regina and Tim.

Now, all this seems very good advice, and would put Space Pirates more in the vein of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Serenity, or any of the other great SF/F tales, wherein you have a noble hero who is drawn (typically against his will) into battle against the ultimate foe, where he must do the right thing and keep the evil enemy from obtaining that item that would bring about an end of the world as we know it. Usually along the way, there is some romantic interest to either help or hinder the hero.

There's just one problem: that's not the story I want to write (at least, not to begin with). Jack is not the noble hero, Tim is not the evil villain. They're both just space pirates. They both just do a job. They're both jerks, in their own right. They both have good qualities, in their own ways. There really isn't one supreme reason why Jack should win out over Tim, and that's the way I want it.

Joss Whedon said of the creation of Firefly that he didn't want to tell some grandiose SF tale, about the movers and shakers of the universe: the people who save civilization as we know it, day in and day out, like in Star Trek. Instead, he said that he wanted to tell a tale about the people that the Enterprise would blow right by without a moment's notice: ordinary people doing ordinary things like finding a job to make ends meet, but in a SF setting.

(Author's disclaimer: to my credit, I came up with the entire plot and setting of all six SP novels before I ever saw any episode of Firefly, so no, I'm not just ripping off Joss. I prefer, coinciding with him.)

I don't think this could more perfectly describe my ideas for SPE1. Perhaps a better title would be "A Day in the Life of a Space Pirate" (or a month and a half, as the case may be). I just wanted to show what an average day was like in the life of average Joe Space Pirate. He gets a job. He does the job. He doesn't get paid. He has to go back and do it right. He meets a bully who's not particularly evil, just sort of a jerk. He has his own problems and his own vices. This is supposed to be real life, just in space.

Jack doesn't care what's on the disk, nor would he give it to the US Navy even if he did. They wouldn't pay as much as he can get from Gregory and they wouldn't offer him the steady employment he can get from Gregory. And even if the information on the disk was potentially harmful to someone, somewhere, why does he care? He's a space pirate! He's not paid enough to care.

But then, if Jack isn't that great of a guy, why does Dear Reader care if he wins or loses? Why would you be emotionally invested in seeing this guy come out the victor? Why do you care?

So my dilemma boils down to this: do I tell the story that the reader wants to read, or do I say to hell with the reader and write the story I want to write?

* * *

Perhaps my problem is that I told the tale to my class from Jack's point of view. He is the focal character of the six-book series, after all. But he's not the character that the audience is supposed to like the most. That distinction goes to Regina (who is my favorite character from the series). So perhaps we should tell the tale from her point of view. I think it makes it a little more palatable that way.

It also makes more sense this way. The Plot Point II decision is hers to make. Jack's decision is easy: steal the disk from Tim. I mean, come on, what else is he going to do? But Regina's the one who has to suffer the hard choice. Who does she side with in the end, Jack or Tim? Jack really isn't that different from Tim. They're both (same spoiler as the first one) working for the same guy; they're both jerks towards Regina; they both have redeeming qualities; they're both ambitious and willing to sell the other guy out to make a buck. Why root for Jack and not Tim? Of course, in the end, she chooses Jack because Tim is merely nice to her on the surface, while being a jerk underneath. Jack is a jerk on the surface, but always has her best interests at heart. My hope is that Dear Reader, associating with her, will agree with her decision and reasons, and thus be more endeared towards Jack, and root for him to be the victor. I hope.

But even then, it's still a weak emotional attachment. It's not the ultimate climax of good vs. evil, but the fight between a jerk with a heart of gold, and a jerk with the heart of a jerk. Why should the reader give it any more than a passing "meh"?

* * *

Again, in my defense, the story doesn't stay the same throughout all six episodes. Jack doesn't stay the same through all six episodes. Of course my classmates and my instructor are right. It would be a better story if the protagonist is the virtuous hero, battling the evil overlord. A morally ambiguous character really can't carry a series.

Since deep down, Jack is the virtuous guy, of course he does the right thing in the end. While the battle between him and Tim is ambiguous, the battle becomes more clearly defined as things go on. In later episodes, he comes against real moral struggles, and of course he does the right thing and fights for truth, justice, and all that jazz. It goes without saying.

Similarly, how could I possibly write a story where the hero is an author insertion, and the heroine is an analogue of the author's wife and not have a romantic element? Of course Episode II starts building romantic tension; it goes without saying!

But can I really use that excuse? "Yeah, the first couple books really are sorta ambiguous, and there's no real reason to root for the good guy, but trust me: it gets better. Just give me 800 pages and 15 hours of your life, and you'll get to the good parts." To quote John Gabriel, I didn't even know you could do that.

P.S. TVtropes are fun! Have fun with that link. You're welcome. No, you can't have those hours of your life back.

P.P.S. How many tropes can you find in Space Pirates? There's the obvious ones: Jack's the Lovable Rogue and The Captain, Regina the Mary Sue (or to be correct, the Canon Sue) and Gamer Chick. I haven't found the tropes for the others, but I'm sure they're there. Redemptrix (I hope) is a Cool Starship, and Regina's gleeful dispatching of Tim's mercenaries, I think, qualifies it as More Dakka. I think Tim's plan was a foiled Xanatos Gambit, and Jack's a successful one. And of course, the disk is a Grade-A, pastuerized, homoginized MacGuffin.

P.P.P.S. TVTropes on The Mary Sue:

She's exotically beautiful (a-yup, the only character to be described in detail), often having an unusual hair or eye color (Regina's blue eyes are mentioned several times), and has a similarly cool and exotic name (I think so). She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas (fantastic pilot, cook, engineer, singer, flutist....), and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws (only one that comes to mind is that Regina is an adrenaline junky) — or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story (a-yup; more on that later). The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues (check, check, check, and check), and are quick to adopt her into their nakama, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting (*cough* Zack *cough*); if anyone doesn't love her, the character who dislikes her will get an extremely unsympathetic portrayal. (*cough* Jack *cough*)

P.P.P.P.S. She scores a 93 on the Mary Sue Litmus test. "Irredeemable-Sue. You're going to have to start over, my friend. I know you want to keep writing, but no. Just no." The internet hates me :(

Homework, week 1.

So, I decided to ignore all of your advice and went with a sligthly modified version of paragraph #1. Screw you people.

Here's what I finally submitted.

“Hold course. Steady as she goes,” the captain barked. He looked intently through the view port of his fluyt. To avoid attention from the authorities, they were staying away from the main shipping lanes, but that meant during this leg of their journey they'd be traveling particularly close to a region of the asteroid belt notorious for pirate activity. This was going to be his least favorite part of the cargo run.

It was generally well received by the class, even though no one knew what a "fluyt" was. I had to explain that it was 16th century Dutch cargo vessel, and I was trying to evoke the feeling of the age of sail in space, so I used ship classifications from the 16th through 18th centuries. The instructor said that it was fine if I used obscure terms from time to time, and that I should keep it to add flavor.

In addition to that, we had to list the name, age, two positive and two negative traits, and three or four quirks of our focal character. The instructor explained that "traits" are those behaviors that we can't see, but quirks are what we can. Here's what I submitted:

Jack Flint, age 30

Traits:

-Chivalrous
-Perseverance
-Pessimist/Realist
-Contradictory sense of morality

Quirks:

-Strokes his goatee when thinking
-Says “me” instead of “my”, “be” instead of “is”, and other pirate-isms
-Insists he's a privateer, not a pirate

Lastly, we had to bring a picture of our focal character. The instructor indicated that we should look through magazines and such, but I brought a picture I had made about a year ago using UGO's Hero Machine. The instructor thought it was terrific.

Maybe later I'll post the picture I made of Regina.

Since everyone seemed to like the fourth option so much (the first paragraph of Episode II), I'll go ahead and post the rest of that section, from the first chapter. I think Dave will get a kick out of it. (Keep in mind, this is rough-draft and has not yet been edited.)

The Marine on duty lazily flipped the coin and watched as it bounced off the ceiling of the guard shack and gently floated back down, pulled by the weak Rhean gravity. He caught it in one hand and slapped it onto the sleeve of his extra-vehicular suit. He looked down at the engraved image of President Ronald Reagan staring back up at him. That was the tenth heads in a row, and brought the total to three hundred fourteen heads and two hundred seventy-one tails. It was a slow day. 

He briefly looked up. Saturn loomed large in the pre-dawn sky. It hung there in the same spot, day in and day out. Currently, it was about half-full, being last quarter, and would be "new"—a thin, bright crescent—sometime late the next night. Well, night universal time. It would be just after noon, local time, in Rhea's four-and-a-half day rotation. 

Thinking about it made the Marine's head spin. It was one more thing he hated about this God-forsaken moon. Rhea was about as boring as a ball of ice and rock could be. Most of the interesting places in the Saturnian system were either farther out, such as on Titan—home to some of the largest cities off of Earth, and where the vast majority of the solar system's hydrocarbon mining took place—or farther in, on Mimas or Enceladus, which housed the hydrogen refineries where the skimmer ships would take their gaseous cargo after skimming it off the upper-most layers of Saturn's atmosphere. Rhea, by comparison, was the middle of nowhere, which was exactly why he was there. There wasn't much point to building a super top-secret and high-security special weapons laboratory on one of the busiest moons in the solar system. And as long as the US government needed super top-secret and high-security weapons labs, they needed Marines to guard them. 

"Heads up," the Marine heard through his two-way. He looked up at his partner, standing just outside the guard shack. He was pointing towards a small, open-top vehicle approaching from the direction of the spaceport. The Marine stepped out of the guard shack and held up his hand, signaling the vehicle to stop. The vehicle slowly decelerated and came to a halt just in front of the gate. There were three people in it. The driver looked to be about thirty years old and had black hair and a devilish looking goatee. Seated to his right in the front passenger's seat was a very tall dark-skinned man with a thin face. Behind the two of them, in the back seat, was a very young looking man with messy, sandy blond hair. 

"Name and purpose of visit," the Marine demanded into his two-way on a commonly-used communications frequency. 

The Marine could tell by looking through the visors of the EV suits of the vehicle's passengers that the driver was the one responding. "I'm escorting Doctor Gordon Frohman, here on business to see Doctor Kleiner."

 

"Can I see a government-issued photo ID, Doctor Freeman?" the Marine asked. 

"Frohman," the young man in the back seat corrected as he produced an ID card, which he handed to the Marine. The Marine took it and inspected it. He returned to the guard shack and checked the schedules. There was an entry that a Doctor G. Freeman would be coming to see Doctor Kleiner, but no mention of a Doctor Frohman. It was probably just a typo on the schedule, but the Marine still felt it necessary to call it in. 

He touched a control on his suit that set his two-way to use the base's secure frequency. "This is Corporal Calhoun, at the main gate. I need to speak with Doctor Kleiner." 

"One moment," came the reply from the base communications officer. 

The Marine waited for about fifteen more seconds before another voice came over his two-way. "Doctor Kleiner here." 

"Hello, Doctor Kleiner, this is Corporal Calhoun at the main gate. I have a Doctor Gordon Frohman here to see you. Are you expecting someone by that name?" 

"Yes, absolutely. He should be on the schedule. I made sure to let base security know he was coming." 

"Thank you, Doctor. The schedule lists a Doctor Freeman. I figured it was an error but wanted to confirm with you first." 

"That's not right," said the voice at the other end, sounding very annoyed. "I don't know any Doctor Freeman. Why would I have said a Doctor Freeman was coming when I don't know one?"

 

"Sorry to disturb you, Doctor. I'll send him right in." 

"Thank you, Corporal. It will be exciting to see Doctor Frohman again. It's been twenty years since I last saw him, at graduate school." 

The Marine had already been moving to press the end transmission switch, and his mind was further slowed by the sheer boredom of the day and the fact that so many of his brain cells had already been lost to counting coin flips, so that he had already ended the call to the doctor before he had fully comprehended his last sentence. Twenty years? He looked down at the ID card, still in his hands. It listed a birth date of March 14th, 2157. Twenty years, indeed. He didn't think too many universities were in the business of conferring doctorates on toddlers. He began to reach for his assault rifle when he felt a sharp prick in his arm, followed by a sudden and overwhelming feeling of drowsiness. He tried to fight it, at least long enough to lie down on the floor, but gave way very quickly to the desire to take a nap right then and there.

So I finally bit the bullet, took the advice of Mom and Dad, and enrolled in a UCI Extension course: Intermediate Novel Writing. (Now that I've already written one, I'll learn how to do it right.) I may from time to time post the homework, when it doesn't have extreme spoilers, and if there are any who are interested.

Part of our homework assignment for the first work week is "write an opening paragraph for a novel incorporating a dramatic "hook". (Maximum 100 words)

In the interest of laziness, I don't plan to actually write anything new for this, but instead will just recycle stuff I've already written. And in the interest of extreme laziness, I don't even plan on choosing the pre-written material myself. Instead, I'll just put it up to a vote for my flock of loyal fan (hi, Mom!).

So, which of the following opening paragraphs do you think is best written and has the best dramatic hook. In essence, which one of these paragraphs most makes you want to know what the next paragraph says?:

1. “Hold course. Steady as she goes,” the first mate barked. The captain kept a close watch through the viewport of his fluyt. This was going to be his least favorite part of the cargo run. To avoid attention, they were staying off the main shipping lanes and in this leg of their journey they were traveling through an uninhabited stretch of the asteroid belt.
   
   
2. Captain Jack Flint floated through the docking hatch of his corvette Redemptrix, and into the spacious cargo hold of the fluyt. After that debacle of a boarding attempt, he was amazed that he and his crew had made it inside. The attack and disable operation had gone flawlessly; just about the best he'd ever seen. But of course, the whole job couldn't go that smoothly. No, that would have been too easy.
   
   
3. "Miss Burke, take us up." As if eager for the Captain's command, Regina gently yet firmly eased the throttle forward. The Redemptrix gracefully lifted out of bay three-two-seven of Arcas spaceport and began her skyward ascent. The hot helium gas streaming from the four thrust nozzles left a yellow trail keelward and behind the ship.
   
   
4. The Marine on duty lazily flipped the coin and watched as it bounced off the ceiling of the guard shack and gently floated back down, pulled by the weak Rhean gravity. He caught it in one hand and slapped it onto the sleeve of his extra-vehicular suit. He looked down at the engraved image of President Ronald Reagan staring back up at him. That was the tenth heads in a row, and brought the total to three hundred fourteen heads and two hundred seventy-one tails. It was a slow day.
   
   
5. Ensign Thomas Beckett had practically been raised on Star Trek. As a kid, he would religiously watch the weekly adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew, making sure to catch them as soon as they were broadcast. Later on, he followed Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew in their battles for the good of the Federation. By the time Voyager aired, he did not have much time to watch it—but did so whenever he could—because he was attending Star Fleet Academy.

(In case you hadn't caught it, that last one isn't from SPM3DoF: The Novel, but from a short story.)