Suggestion: Less Wrong Writing Circle?
This community has a recurring interest in “rationalist fiction,” and several members who are writers. I wonder if it would be useful to create a space where Less Wrong members could provide each other constructive criticism and encouragement on in-progress original writing projects?
Disclosure: I’m working on a sci-fi novel right now, and my regular circle of “beta readers” are fantasy fans and aren’t providing much feedback on the new project. I am much, much more productive as a writer when I get steady feedback, so I have a personal interest in looking for something like this. Less Wrong came to mind as a community of intelligent, creative, forward-looking types who are likely to enjoy sci-fi.
I would love to review rationalist or science fiction. my username at gmail :)
I like this idea.
I’m writing a Zelda (OoT) fanfic. It’s not rationalist fiction in the strictest sense, but playing things straight is one of the core ideas; as the mission statement on the first page says, it’s partly about de-gamifying the game.
Comments are welcome on both the content and the presentation. As usual with these things, some knowledge of the original work and the surrounding fandom will be helpful.
I’d be happy to swap chapter-by-chapter critiques with you.
Sounds good. Will you be uploading yours here à la Chapter One Part One up there, or is there another site you’re using?
I’ve been emailing the complete first chapter to interested readers—if you PM me your email address I’ll send it to you.
Should I leave my commentary on FF.net?
I’m also willing to set up a mailing list or a private LJ community if we had enough folks interested in using something like that. I’d rather not use a wiki or a public site because my novel is intended for eventual publication.
PM sent.
ff.net will do fine; the message system there runs faster than my email and a prolonged discussion would probably clutter other formats such as my primary emailbox or the threads around LW.
Some common forum might be necessary for projects whose commentariat consists of several people, so as to avoid people stating the same points over and over, but the idea of mailing lists doesn’t hold much appeal—I get huge noise-to-signal ratios from some of my university mailing lists and I’d rather not add to the list of mailboxes I have to sieve through on a regular basis. I’ve never tried LJ; does it work differently and is it any better?
It’s better for hosting discussions among multiple people. So far I haven’t seen the kind of demand that would warrant setting up a community there, though.
If there aren’t other writers interested in swapping con-crit, equally useful to me would be volunteers interested in following the novel as it’s written and providing feedback. I’m a professional writer and editor: mostly tech journalism, but my short fiction has been published in Dragon magazine (back when Dragon was still around) and my first novel will be e-published this fall. However, for those who haven’t done beta-reading before, it’s probably important to note that first-draft stuff (which is what you’d be seeing) is significantly less polished and professional than a final, edited novel. You’d be witnessing the sausage-making, is what I’m saying.
I can post the first page or so of the book if potential readers are interested.
I’d be interested in seeing the first few pages. I don’t know whether I would be interested in seeing the sausage making but I’m provisionally willing to give it a try.
Okay!
The Dragons of Mars, Chapter One, Part One
Jhalasi, crown prince of Mars, was publicly auditioning a mistress. It was, of course, a highly ceremonial occasion, excruciatingly ritualized, and he was bored. Nonetheless it provided a welcome spectacle for his people. They filled the streets of Arsia Mons, drummers and masked dancers entertaining those who were too far away from the central stage to view the royal ritual. Here and there bonfires flared. On the red planet, burning oxygen was a signal luxury, allowed only during times of special license.
Twelve miles above them, a translucent dome sealed the caldera of Arsia Mons—the ancient volcano that had spewed forth its last fire when Archaeopteryx fluttered among Terran dinosaurs. The first colonists of Mars carved out their settlements in the flanks of Arsia Mons, building out from a natural cavern system that provided some degree of protection from deadly cosmic radiation. Over time, those settlements had been linked, first via a network of tunnels, and finally, triumphantly, when the great Worldhouse dome was erected. Martian citizens could now walk in the open expanse of the vast caldera, free of pressure-suits or breathing tanks. In the wavering red lights of their fires, they drummed, and they danced.
Jhalasi waited to be introduced to his mistress. The Sleepers had not yet revealed to him a wife, though he was nearly sixteen years of age: twenty-nine, in Terran standard years. Such was not uncommon for one of his descent. There had been, of course, liaisons—each one carefully vetted by the royal genealogists before it began, and monitored by the Oracles until the affair had run its course. But Martian politics being what they were, the time had come for a more formal arrangement.
The girl was of House Rao. Jhalasi had never met her, but had been assured at great length of her beauty and virtue. Her name was Siannamar. She modeled advances in filtration systems, and rescued orphan mice.
Siannamar Rao was already seated across the stage from him, though of course he could make out very little of her beneath her layers of veils and sateens. She—and he—would be expected to dance, later, for the crowd.
First, though, came the endless patriotic affirmations. The singing: first a hymn of loss, for Earth; then a hymn of triumph, for the Void; and last, the hymn of thanks, for Mars, the mother planet. Then the three-fold salute to the Sleepers, honoring their blessings of air, soil, and ice; and finally the affirmation of fire and aether, for the transformative intelligence that humanity carried within itself. This last was the only one that Jhalasi found personally moving. Something about the high, wailing notes of the chant—the way one’s hands were lifted, twining, to the heavens, only to fall back again—it reminded him of DNA, and the way that information was carried forward in human bodies, through human love. In its blind, brute way, evolution had created a more durable data storage system than anything scientists had yet devised. That part did, truly, give him chills.
After the singing and the salutes came the re-enactment of the story of the Martian Founding. Jhalasi rigorously stifled a yawn as the actors came on stage. To amuse himself as they stepped through a recital he’d seen several dozen times before, he tried guessing at the identity of the mummers beneath the masks. Each actor representing a Founder would be drawn from that Founder’s noble House. Maculin and Sen, he hadn’t a clue. Rao—that would probably be Siannamar’s brother, he’d met the man at the signing ceremony for the love-contract. Sharp eyes and few words: Jhalasi had liked him. Could probably remember his name, if he really had to.
Sinclair: Jhalasi actually smiled, fractionally. Nothing that the cams would pick up. Still, he’d been hoping for this, and he recognized that sway of hips beneath the awkward, concealing pressure-suit. No, that wasn’t it. He just knew her, knew her nearness. He hadn’t seen his sister Vihanyasa since she’d been moved out of the line of succession and married off to House Sinclair. But once—as children, romping together, pranking the Oracles and giving their minders heart-attacks—he and Vihanyasa had shared one mind.
The last actor to come on stage represented Rajendra, Founder of the royal House. Jhalasi spared him not even a glance. He knew exactly who the actor would be: his own elder brother, Khamsarajan, rendered ineligible for the throne via an accident of birth. Khamsarajan had never joined in the easy hive-mind of the other noble children. Outside, outcast, his bitterness had smouldered, and sought to burn any who came too close.
Jhalasi leaned back on his carved, three-legged stool. It was an artifact of old Earth—“teak,” they called it. It came from a “tree.” He’d seen pictures. It was a priceless artifact. But not very comfortable.
The actors were now going through the discovery of the Sleepers. Four of them mimed terror, shrinking back as the drums beat fast. One—Khamsarajan/Rajendra—stepped forward. The chorus ran onstage from the wings, a dozen dancers each bearing up a piece of the great puppet that represented a Sleeper. Its sinuous, serpentine form glittered with fractal light; its face bore round eyes, a wide smile, and the suggestion of mouse-like fur. It was a beautiful, friendly sight, and one echoed a thousand times in the crowd that surrounded them. The “dragons of Mars” were painted on masks, woven in banners, worked into the very architecture of Arsia Mons. They were part of the royal seal and the central emblem of the Martian flag. Many in the crowd probably even believed that’s what the Sleepers actually looked like.
The dancers swirled around Khamsarajan and the others, weaving the sinuous form of the dragon around and among them. In choreographed unison, the Founders all slumped down, miming unconsciousness. Jhalasi let his eyes focus slightly over them, and over the dancers of the chorus, as they quickly and precisely changed out the stage scenery. It would be better if he could close his eyes, but that, the cams would pick up.
Vihanyasa, he thought, with all his specialized intent. How are you? How are you?
The thought would take some time to pass to her. And if she caught it at all, it wouldn’t be received as words. The message had to be transmitted by the microorganisms in his own body, coordinating with the microorganisms in hers. They would pass a complex chemical signal that, when taken up by her cerebral cortex, would trigger relevant emotions and memories in her brain. He couldn’t predict which ones, exactly, but she’d probably get a memory of herself and him, playing together as children. She’d know he was thinking of her.
That is, if he’d succeeded in activating the transmission mechanism, and if the meaning could pass at all. Touch, between royal siblings, was a fairly reliable method of communication. A gap of meters, as existed between them at the moment, could kill any message. Especially with the crowd pressed so close, and other noble Houses on the stage.
Jhalasi waited. It would take time, in any case, for the communication to work. He watched the show, as the terraforming of Mars continued. “Rajendra” was the first to wake. Khamsarajan pulled off his helmet, and Jhalasi schooled his own features to impassivity at his brother’s absurd mimicry of surprise and joy.
It wasn’t true, of course, that House Rajendra could survive on the Martian surface without pressure-suits or breathing tanks. It was only propaganda. Or as the tutors had carefully put it, after Jhalasi and Vihanyasa had been caught trying to execute a very dangerous experiment—it was myth, a kind of truth that uneducated people took literally, but princes and princesses should understand in a more sophisticated way. They should not try to escape the Worldhouse dome without adult supervision: not that it was possible, but they should not try. The story taught that House Rajendra was uniquely bound to Mars, steeped in its biosphere. They heard the will of the Sleepers more clearly than any other lineage. That’s what the “Rajendra breathed the air of Mars” part of the story meant—it didn’t mean that they, his descendants, should try it.
(They hadn’t been planning to, of course. They weren’t that stupid. They had suits and tanks. They had both spat into a pressurized container, and they were going to unseal the container on the surface, to see if the liquid in their spit boiled away at once, even in the vastly cold temperatures. That would’ve told them all they needed to know. Still, they were both whipped for the disobedience, and Khamsarajan laughed at them when they couldn’t sit down after.)
I might be interested in giving a fuller critique of this at some point (but then who the hell am I), but for now I’ll confine myself to just one point:
The reader knows that the narrator knows more about this world than they do. The reader is okay with that. Trying to impart information by pretending that the reader already knows it seems clumsy and distracting to me. Compare with:
I think this is fine. No need to pretend you’re the reader’s chum.
Thanks for the note—and I’d be very happy to see any other comments you might have.
Okay, I wrote up my thoughts, but it’s pretty long and I’m not sure it’s fair to post it here (also it’s too long for a PM). Do you have an email I can send it to?
It’s my handle @ sonic.net. Thanks in advance!
Sent.
Apparently you now come with references. Any interest in joining my betabet*? (It generally meets on IRC and betas in realtime; I don’t know if that works for you. You would also need to be caught up on Elcenia, unless you want to do only short stories the way my thetabeta does.)
*My betas get Greek letter designations (alphabeta, betabeta, etc.) and are collectively a betabet, analogous to an alphabet.
I guess so, although looking at it now Elcenia seems to be pretty massive. It will take me a couple of weeks to catch up at least (unless it’s exceptionally compelling, it which case damn you in advance for taking up all my time), and we also have to allow for the possibility that it’s not just my kind of thing, in which case trying to finish it will make me miserable and I won’t be much use to you anyway. But sure, I’ll give it a shot.
Yeah, this was fantastic. Note to other Less Wrong readers: APMason is an excellent beta reader.
I think the main problem with this is that you don’t catch the reader’s interest fast enough. Ideally, your very first sentence or two should make the reader hooked. Various collections of good opening lines have some great examples of this: 1 2 3 If that doesn’t work, at least make them interested by the end of the first paragraph.
In your piece, by the end of the first paragraph we know that the main character is the crown prince of Mars in what seems to be a rather generic sci-fi/space opera setting. That was still pretty much all I knew by the end of the fourth paragraph, at which point I started skimming. If this was a book I was looking at in a store (or reading a sample of on my Kindle), I’d have put it away at that point.
The main issue seems to be that the characters seem quite bland. If you look at those collections of great opening lines, nearly all of them say something about the characters that make them seem fascinating enough that even if the author doesn’t always do a good job of keeping the story interesting, the reader is willing to tolerate that because they want to find out more. Like the my second link describes the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude, “that’ll buy at least a hundred pages of curiosity.” Simply knowing that the crown prince is bored isn’t enough to make me curious, nor to make me care about him—which means that I have little interest in reading forward. By the end of your piece we start to find out things about the characters, but it’s too little, too late.
Of course, in sci-fi you can substitute interesting characters with an interesting setting, but there was little in the setting to make me curious, either.
I hope this doesn’t come off as too harsh. Hooking the reader from the start is difficult, and I struggle with it myself.
It doesn’t come off as harsh—but it does sound as if this story falls into the broad category of “not for you”.
Yeah, that’s very possible. A story can be good even if there are people who don’t like it. :-)
Though upon reconsideration, I do have to soften my judgement a little. That the first sentence says that the prince is auditioning for a mistress is interesting, and could have managed to get my interest if it had been followed up on quickly enough. But there’s something about his boredom that’s catchy—he’s bored with the ceremony, so the reader gets bored with it as well. Or something, I’m not sure how reliable my introspection is here. :-)
I suspect you’re picking up on the same thing that drethelin did: the heavy exposition dump that comes right at the beginning.
Some of that can and will be smoothed out, but yeah, the interest at the beginning is mostly supposed to come from the setting and the culture. So the reason I actually suggested the story is not for you was your offhand reference to “generic sci-fi/space opera setting.” If you’re sick of sci-fi and space opera conventions—if you’re not the kind of reader who’s approaching the set-up with some degree of interest just because, “cool, it’s Mars, let’s find out how things work here, hunh, the Sleepers, what are they, they’re not really dragons are they, that would be stupid—whoa, what’s happening here, was that telepathy-via-bacteria? Gonna have to see how that’s handled before I decide what to think of it...”
If you’re not that kind of reader, then the story probably isn’t for you.
That sounds right.
Hmm… yes and no.
I’m perfectly willing to read/watch/play space opera if it’s executed well. For example, despite having heard it praised for long time, I never got around watching Firefly until a few months back. When I finally did, I loved it. Also, right now I’m playing a character in a game that’s set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and finding it enjoyable. Heck, I’ve been known to still buy the occasional Star Wars novel.
So it’s not like I’d get an instant allergy from anything space opera-ish. But at the same time, you’re right in that I don’t have an intrinsic interest in exploring the details of just any space opera setting (or just any fantasy setting, for that matter) - I’ve seen enough of them that most of them tend to register as “just the same old”. Telepathy-via-bacteria is a neat and pretty original idea, but by itself minor enough detail that it doesn’t make the entire setting interesting. Being shown that the setting incorporates a dozen (or even half a dozen) other ideas on the same level of neatness and originality would be another matter. Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space setting strikes me as fresh and original, even if one might reasonably argue that he doesn’t really have that many original ideas in his world. It’s all in how you combine them.
I don’t count a setting registering as “just the same old” (JTSO) as a minus by itself, and I can grow attached even to a rather generic setting if the characters or the writing is good enough, but it’s not a plus either. On the other hand, even though a setting being JTSO isn’t a minus by itself, it’s often a warning sign. There are more mediocre sci-fi authors than great ones, and mediocre sci-fi authors often tend to have rather generic-feeling settings. So if I see a story start with what seems like a generic setting, and it isn’t accompanied by clearly exceptional writing, my instinct tends to be to assume that this is a mediocre work. I think my judgement might have been subconsciously influenced by that as well.
It feels a little exposition heavy. Maybe move the childhood anecdote to a later section? There have been more historical paragraphs than descriptions of what’s happening in the current story.
That’s a perceptive comment, so thank you. The exposition dump is something I’d already flagged in my own head as a potential problem—it’s part of what I meant by “sausage making,” as that’s exactly the kind of thing that will get smoothed out in a second draft.
The action does pick up by the end of the chapter (the first raygun shows up on page 8) but hearing from readers exactly where the exposition starts to get wearisome is quite valuable, so thank you again.
Are you interested in reading more?
sure
first immediate thought: Arsia is a terrible name for a city and Olympus Mons is only called Olympus Mons because it’s a mountain and not because Mons should be a martian naming convention.
I didn’t make it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsia_Mons
On finishing I guess it’s in a mountain but I stand by being put off by a city named ass mountain
I was sort of hoping someone else would point this out, but for the record—there’s no city named Arsia Mons. The story says there were seven original settlements formed in the caves of Arsia Mons, and eventually they were all linked. But each of the seven cities still has its original name. They’re just not all given in the first five pages.
I’ve noticed that if I’m paired with the right person and we write roleplaying-style (i.e. both writers adopt some of the characters as their own, and we write out their dialogue interactively in a chat), I can produce lots of good fiction fast. However, all of my attempts to produce longer works of fiction when writing on my own have failed, even though I have several short stories that I’m happy with.
If anybody would be free during evenings, European time, and would want to try writing something with me in that style, let me know.
Assuming I read the conversion table I looked up correctly, eight pm GMT is noon Pacific. The roleplay style you describe is how the first go-round of Elcenia was produced. I’ll do some of this with you to see how it goes—no long term promises.
Meh, I can’t seem to manage catching you on weekend evenings either (by the time you might be online, I become too aware of the fact that co-writing tends to take time, and then if we would get started or even started planning I might end up being up really late, and I’m actually starting to get a little sleepy and would prefer an early bedtime...) But I’ll still try to manage it some day.
Okay, I don’t seem to have enough energy to even consider writing fiction when I’ve already spent my writing energy at work. I’ll try catching you on a weekend instead.
I thought you’d previously said that although you produced the beginning of Elcenia this way, it wasn’t enough of your thing that you’d want to try it again. But maybe I misunderstood.
Today I probably won’t have the time, but I’ll see if I’ll manage to catch you tomorrow evening. (Or some day after that, if you’re busy tomorrow.)
It depended heavily on the rapport between me and my co-creator, but it worked pretty well for a couple of years and at peak we could gleefully write at each other for seventeen hours a day. We produced a couple million words of usable plot and character development and had a great time through most of it. I think I’m probably not good enough at Playing With Others to do this with arbitrary people, but you’re worth a try, and if the finished product is clearly intended to be yours, I think I can back off on my steamroller tendencies.
Hearing (well, reading) this gives me warm fuzzies. :-)
Elcenia is not really rationalist fiction, but I use some rationalist-y tropes (like big results not always having big causes). I’m not out of Greek letters to assign to betas yet. If you’re caught up on the series, let me know if you want to read in-progress chapters via IRC and comment on them.
I should also clarify that mine isn’t really intended to be “rationalist fiction” either, but I would like it to be something that rationalists can enjoy.
Unfortunately I don’t really do IRC (I have two small kids so real-time communication is usually kinda stressful and fraught with interruptions). Most of my work/reading time comes during naps or whenever the kids happen to be occupied with something.