Author Archives: Poseidon's Scribe

Guest Post—Jason J. McCuiston

Remember when I interviewed author Jason J. McCuiston? You’ll be glad to know he has a story, “At Strange Depths” in the anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. And now he’s just had a novel published.

Today, I turn over the reins of this blog to Jason, and here’s his guest post:

Project Notebook: An Origin Story

In the summer of 1947, months before something fell to Earth near Roswell, New Mexico, the skies above the Pacific Northwest were alive with strange lights and unearthly phenomena. I know this because the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum told me so. In fact, according to Don Wildman and crew, less than a week passed between the infamous Maury Island Incident and the Kenneth Arnold sighting above Mt. Rainier which introduced the phrase “flying saucer” into the American zeitgeist.

That connection or coincidence was the spark that led to my novel, Project Notebook. The spark, but not the fuel. The origins of this story may go back to 1947, but they also reach farther back into my own history than a late-night binge-watch in early 2017.

Jason J. McCuiston

Like most kids who grew up on action, sci-fi/fantasy, and horror in the 1980s, I was instantly hooked on Chris Carter’s The X-Files when it debuted on Fox in 1993. Aside from having a twenty-year-old’s crush on Gillian Anderson, I loved the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy vibe of the show. And though I never became more than a casual interloper into the world of ufology, I’ve kept an open mind on the topic and have always found it fascinating.

A decade later, after watching the stunning HBO adaptation of Band of Brothers in 2001, I read not only Stephen E. Ambrose’s book, but also the excellent biography of Major Dick Winters, Biggest Brother by Larry Alexander. These volumes gave me an insight into the Greatest Generation, as well as a glimpse of what my own grandfather, the late Master Sergeant Darius E. McCuiston, U.S. Army, had faced in WWII. While writing Project Notebook, I soon realized that the main character, Captain El Summers is a synthesis of Winters and my Papaw.

In 2006, I found myself in a new life in Knoxville, Tennessee. Part of this new life was my weekly gaming group. We were playing the d20:Modern role-playing game at that time. Wizards of the Coast had just released the Dark Matter supplement for d20:Modern, a campaign setting that leaned heavily into the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy/darker sci-fi atmosphere of The X-Files. That’s when it occurred to me that the first people most likely to be tapped by the U.S. Government to investigate rumors and reports of UFO’s and aliens would be battle-hardened vets of The Big Two.

So I launched a campaign based on this premise.

Sadly, the game tanked after one session, but the premise hung around in the back of my mind for over a decade. And in the summer of 2017—after two years struggling to break in as a “pro” writer and several nights watching Mysteries at the Museum—I decided to throw that premise at the page and see if it stuck. After writing the first draft of what eventually became Chapter One of Project Notebook, I posted it to a Facebook writing group for feedback. Naturally, it drew a troll quicker than a goat on a bridge. After this individual lambasted my abilities and concepts, I thanked him for his opinion, and sat down to write this story. As much out of spite as anything else.

Writing is about passion, no matter where that passion comes from. Remember that.

I’m honestly glad that troll got under my skin. Being more interested in fantasy than sci-fi and in the eleventh century than the twentieth, I may have never written this story otherwise. I may have never learned so much about the era of my grandparents. I may have never delved so deeply into the lore of ufology. I may have never created these characters for whom I have developed an amazing fondness in the ensuing years of revisions and edits.

I can only hope that you will find El, Red, Olivia, and Bill as endearing should you decide to follow their adventures in Project Notebook.

Jason J. McCuiston

Thanks, Jason. I know my readers will seek you out on Facebook and Twitter. Then they’ll buy your book on Amazon.

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 1, 2020Permalink

Mobili or Mobile?

Mobilis in Mobili—the motto of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo. Or should that be Mobilis in Mobile? Let’s consider it.

Why even ask the question? Well, Verne’s publishers went back and forth, using mobili in some versions and mobile in others. It seems even they were confused.

The two are Latin words. I’m no expert in that language, but as I understand it, mobili is pronounced mob´il-ee and mobile is pronounced mob´il-ay.

Here’s the text from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as it appears in the 1993 translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walker:

“Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, plate, bore a letter encircled by a motto, of which this is an exact facsimile:

Motto from Wikipedia

‘Mobile within the mobile element!’ That Latin motto was certainly appropriate for this submarine craft, so long as the preposition ‘in’ was translated as ‘within’ and not ‘upon.’ The letter N was no doubt the initial of the enigmatic person in command at the bottom of the ocean.”

Miller and Walker use their own motto image, with mobile. They state that mobili is plural and mobile is singular. Since Verne’s explanation in French (“l’element mobile”) is singular, they reason that the Latin word should be singular as well, hence mobile.

What does the motto mean? My old copy of Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary gives several meanings for mobilis including movable, easy to move, active, rapid, pliable, flexible, changeable, inconstant, with quick motion, easily, and quickly.

So we have ‘moving in a moving thing’ or ‘living free in a free world’ or ‘changing with change.’ Those first two meanings presume a singular object (moving thing or free world), so the singular mobile seems more appropriate for them.

At this point, many of you are thinking of the Monty Python Latin lesson scene in the movie Life of Brian. Now imagine John Cleese as Professor Aronnax staring at the Nautilus’ tableware and correcting Captain Nemo’s Latin!

Now that your head is spinning from that language discussion, permit me to urge you to buy and read the new anthology from Pole to Pole Publishing—20,000 Leagues Remembered. It’s available in ebook form now, and soon in paperback.

To finish up, I’ll confess to an unscholarly preference for mobili. It looks more like a Latin word than mobile, which is identical to the English word mobile.

Still, despite my preference, I guess I must be flexible and willing to change, and must therefore bow to the experts. Mobilis in Mobile it is. As you can see, there are few people more mobilis than—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 28, 2020Permalink

Author Interview — Maya Chhabra

Having just launched the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, I took the opportunity to interview one of the ‘crewmembers.’ Please welcome author Maya Chhabra aboard our literary Nautilus. Readers will enjoy her story, “The Maelstrom,” and will want to find out more about her and read her other works.

Maya Chhabra is the author of the middle grade historical novel Stranger on the Home Front (Jolly Fish Press), dealing with Indian immigration and the Indian independence movement. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Cast of Wonders, and Strange Horizons. Visit her online at Maya Reads Books, or on Twitter as @mayachhabra.

Here’s the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you? 

Maya Chhabra: I don’t actually know! I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, probably because I liked books so much. I got started with poetry because my aunt is a poet, but I don’t know how I got started with prose.

P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books? 

M.C.: My influences for poetry include Sonya Taaffe, another author of mythological poetry. Prose influences depend on the project I’m working on. For example, for Stranger on the Home Front, I was influenced by Laurence Yep’s middle grade stories about growing up Chinese in different parts of US history, particularly his book The Traitor. I wanted to do a similar sort of story about early Punjabi immigrants. The cross-cultural friendship in The Traitor also influenced my portrayal of Margaret and her best friend Betty.

P.S.: You’ve had a great number of poems published. Do you find your skill as a poet complements your prose writing? Do you find yourself thinking in poetic imagery, rhythms, and word sounds before converting to prose?

M.C.: For me, they’re very different, because a poem is so compact and closed. It has to hit its theme very quickly and hard, rather than a novel where you have time to explore the theme. However, I do try to make my prose aesthetically pleasing and use metaphorical language.

P.S.: Many of your poems touch on classical or mythological references. Why is that?

M.C.: I grew up with D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths and it made a big impression on me.

P.S.: Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together (genre, character types, settings, themes) or are you a more eclectic author?

M.C.: I think I’m definitely pretty eclectic, but my favorite genres to work in are fantasy, historical, and SF. I don’t really write contemporary, not since I was a teenager just starting out. I like the setting of my work to be removed from everyday life.

Clicking image will bring up Amazon page

P.S.: You’ve written a novel, Stranger on the Home Front, to be published in 2021. Please tell us a little about the book’s protagonist, Margaret Singh, and the conflicts she faces.

M.C.: Margaret is a mixed-race girl growing up in WWI-era San Francisco. Her father is an immigrant from India who’s involved with a radical pro-independence group based out of the US, and when the group goes on trial, he’s implicated, leading to difficulties for his family. This is based on the Hindu Conspiracy Trial, at the time the most expensive trial in US history, which exposed a link between the Central Powers and an Indian independence movement to sabotage the British Empire. Part of the conflict has to do with the perception of disloyalty, and that was influenced by my having been about Margaret’s age during the lead-up to the Iraq War. Reading about WWI, I saw many similarities in the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mindset. The friendship and conflict between German-American Betty, who wants nothing more than to prove her patriotism despite the suspicion others have of her heritage, and Margaret, whose radical family is out of step with the nationalistic mood of the country, is really the heart of the novel.

P.S.: Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

M.C.: Often I start with a pre-existing story, like a myth or fairy tale, or a bit of history. I like to show an angle on things that people might not have thought of before, even if they’re familiar with the history or story.

P.S.: Your story, “The Maelstrom” appears in 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Jules Verne would have called it a pourquoi, or origin, story. It tells a version of the backstory of Captain Nemo, (originally Prince Dakkar). How did you come up with the idea for this story?

M.C.: I love 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I’d been fascinated by Prince Dakkar’s story since finding out about it from The Mysterious Island, especially because I basically grew up on the story of the Indian independence movement. Prince Dakkar is obviously fictional and belongs to a generation before the independence movement really took off—he’s royalty, whereas that movement was led by lawyers and other middle-class people. But his feelings toward colonialism as described by Jules Verne definitely resonated. I’d always wanted to explore his story and this anthology was the perfect opportunity. I also appreciated that Jules Verne, despite not really being ahead of his time on racial and ethnic issues, was able to portray the resentment towards imperialism with such feeling, to the point where the original English translator had to tone it down and make the narration more condescending to make it palatable to a British audience.

P.S.: “The Maelstrom” depicts Prince Dakkar’s wife as a strong and determined woman, a very admirable character. How do you see her as different from, or similar to, Margaret Singh of Stranger on the Home Front? 

M.C.: Margaret is a shy girl who knows, as a mixed-race kid in a predominantly white environment, that she’s outnumbered and only conditionally accepted. She learns over the course of the story to stand up for herself, and also to realize that other people are also going through similar conflicts between social acceptance and integrity. The princess, Prince Dakkar’s wife, is far from being shy. She’s been raised in a life of privilege, but also stands out as unusual for a woman of her time. I thought she made a good partner for a strong personality like that of Captain Nemo, explaining his longstanding grief for her.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers, particularly things you wish you had known when starting out?

Maya Chhabra: I’d still consider myself an aspiring writer, as I’m trying to get an agent for my YA fantasy novel Thorns. But my advice would be: send stuff out. Don’t let rejection get you down, and even if it does, keep putting yourself out there. Don’t be shy about approaching editors for opportunities, but do your research first.

Thank you, Maya.

Readers can find out more about Maya at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Goodreads.

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 23, 2020Permalink

Launch Day!

Today’s the day! It’s launch day for the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book was 150 years in the making.

Let me explain. The first publication of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was in serial form. It appeared in two-week intervals in a magazine, the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Starting on March 20, 1869, the magazine printed a chapter or two in each issue, concluding on June 20, 1870.

The first time the public could read the novel from beginning to end was on that Wednesday in June, the first day of summer, precisely 150 years ago today.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial, Pole to Pole Publishing presents 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology of works by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s literary masterpiece. Along with the Senior Editor, Kelly A. Harmon, I co-edited the book. It’s the first book I’ve ever edited.

What will you get when you buy this book? You’ll enjoy sixteen short stories, each paying homage to the Father of Science Fiction and his novelized underwater voyage. They span the spectrum from adventures set at a time contemporary with Verne’s tale, to more thoughtful historical pieces exploring various aspects of the novel, to stories set in our present day, to others that defy easy categorization.

Our table of contents includes:
“The Ghost of Captain Nemo” by J. Woolston Carr,
“Water Whispers” by Gregory L. Norris,
“At Strange Depths” by Jason J. McCuiston,
“The Maelstrom” by Maya Chhabra,
“The Game of Hare and Hounds” by Stephen R. Wilk,
“Recruiter” by Andrew Gudgel,
“Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly,
“The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson,
“Fools Rush In” by Allison Tebo,
“An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd,
“A Concurrent Process” by Corrie Garrett,
“Homework Help From No One” by Demetri Capetanopoulos,
“Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle,
“Last Year’s Water” by Nikoline Kaiser,
“Farragut’s Gambit” by M.W. Kelly, and
“Raise the Nautilus” by Eric Choi.

It’s not necessary to have read Verne’s book first. You can still enjoy these stories on their own. You might gain a deeper appreciation of them if you dive into the original first, though. For dedicated Verne scholars, be aware that some of our authors scattered ‘easter eggs’ in their stories for you—little references (some quite obscure) that will make you smile.

Where, you’re wondering, can you get your own copy of this book? I thought you’d never ask. It’s available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  

We’ll launch a paperback version as soon as we can, likely in a month or two. If you read my blogposts or follow me on social media, you won’t miss that announcement.

As Ned Land said, “Professor Aronnax…You talk about some future day… I’m talking about now.” Now, as in today. Launch day. After 150 years, the Nautilus sails again, thanks to Kelly A. Harmon and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2020Permalink

How Deep is a League?

We all know Professor Aronnax and his companions traveled 20,000 leagues under the sea in Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus. Just how deep is that? It turns out, that’s the wrong question.

Let’s set that aside a moment.

You can certainly sense the excitement building—on the web, in the bookstores, and in conversations with everyone you meet. Less than a week to go, now, until the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. On Saturday, June 20, you can celebrate the 150th anniversary of the marvelous Verne novel. Remembered is a brand-new collection of stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Pre-order it here.

Back to our question. What, exactly, is a league? Like most obsolete units of measurement, there is no precise answer. It dates from ancient Rome, when the leuga meant about 7500 pedes (Roman feet), or about 1.4 of our statue miles.

According to Wikipedia, the league has taken on a wide variety of lengths over the millennia. It ranged from the Roman length of 1.4 miles all the way to the Norwegian league of 11.3 miles.

That doesn’t help us much. Maybe the better question is, what did Jules Verne think a league was? Even in his time, the unit was falling out of favor. It had taken on a vague, almost poetic meaning. At one syllable, it rolled off the tongue much easier than ‘kilometer’ did.

According to the annotated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, Verne used a league of 2.16 nautical miles, or 2.49 statute miles.  

So, 20,000 of Verne’s leagues would be nearly 50,000 miles. The deepest known spot in any ocean is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, with a depth of 6.79 standard miles or 3.14 leagues.

Let’s say we stay in Verne’s fictional world. In the chapter titled “The Sargasso Sea,” the Nautilus reached a depth of 16,000 meters, which Verne translated as 4 vertical leagues.

Even if the ocean stretched all the way to Earth’s center, it could only be about 3,963 miles, or 1,592 leagues deep.

Clearly, Verne intended that the Nautilus travel 20,000 leagues horizontally in its path through the oceans. Verne later wrote a novel titled La Jangada – Huit Cents lieues sur l’Amazone, or Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. Nobody would expect anyone to travel 800 leagues downward in a river.

For a humorous treatment of the question, we can turn to the TV show Saturday Night Live. They ran a skit, and I believe it was in Season 19, Episode 17, which originally aired on April 9, 1994. It satirized the 1954 Disney movie (then 4 decades old), and had Kelsey Grammer as Captain Nemo, Phil Harman as Ned Land, Mike Myers as Professor Aronnax, and Rob Schneider as Conseil. Here’s the transcript, and here’s a partial video clip.

The next time someone asks you how deep a league is, you have a good answer. Or, you can simply refer them to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 14, 2020Permalink

Writing for Jules Verne

Here’s a thought experiment for you. It’s 1868, and your close friend, Jules Verne, is deathly ill. Since you’re an author too, he’s asked you to write a novel in his stead. All he’s got is a concept—a ship that travels underwater—and a title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. You cannot refuse your friend. What will your novel be like?

Remember, nobody has ever written a novel involving a submarine. Yours will be the first. You jot down some plot ideas:

  • A single nation is the first to build and use a working military submarine. Perhaps it’s your beloved France; or the mighty seapower, Great Britain; or the science-loving and adventurous United States.
  • Some wealthy and inventive person builds a submarine and uses it purely for exploration and the advancement of Science.
  • A wealthy and evil man builds a submarine and uses it for vengeance against those who have wronged him.
  • A man is convinced Atlantis exists, and builds a submarine to search for it.
  • A sailor lost someone close (a brother?) to a specific and recognizable giant squid, and builds a submarine to pursue and destroy the creature. (If Melville’s Moby-Dick was successful, this could be too.)
  • Perhaps combine the scientist and the vengeance-obsessed pirate, and tell the story from his (or her?) point of view.
  • A sailor falls in love with a woman he believes is a mermaid, but she dives underwater. He builds a submarine and travels 20,000 leagues in search of her.
  • A treasure-hunter builds a submarine and recovers gold and other valuables from sunken ships.
  • A nation announces a huge prize for whichever privately-built submarine wins a 20,000-league race.
  • A clever criminal builds a submarine and robs banks along various coasts, escaping underwater. A detective hero must track him down.

After an hour, you’ve written down these ideas and another 20 more. Now you must select the best one. Will your eventual novel be as good as the one Jules would have written, had he not become ill?

We’ll never know, of course. It’s just a thought experiment. In real life, Verne wrote his marvelous novel himself, without your help. For its first publication, it was serialized in the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The issue containing the final chapter came out on June 20, 1870.

That means June 20 of this year, just 13 days from now, is the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of that undersea classic. To commemorate this date, I’ve partnered with Kelly A. Harmon, Senior Editor at Pole to Pole Publishing, to edit an anthology of short stories inspired by Verne’s masterwork.

Titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, it will launch on June 20. We’ve chosen 16 wonderful stories for the volume, each taking a different approach, but all born from a love of Jules Verne’s fantastic adventure novel. Each one captures some aspect of the adventure, the wonder, and the drama of Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Perhaps Verne’s book is no longer new to you, but these 16 stories will be. Beginning on June 20, you’ll be able to buy the ebook version of our anthology at Pole to Pole Publishing’s website or at other online booksellers. Pole to Pole will put out a paperback print version as soon as possible after that.

Back to that thought experiment. I’m sure you thought of some possible story ideas yourself, in addition to the ones I listed. Feel free to add a comment to this blogpost, sharing one or more of your ideas with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 7, 2020Permalink

Writing—Routine, Habit, or Ritual?

As a writer, you’re trying to form a daily routine of writing well. Or is that a good habit of writing well? Or a ritual? Let’s clear this up.

According to neuroscience expert Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs, all three are periodically repeating actions, but there are differences. I’m going to put my own spin on the ideas Ms. Le Cunff presented in her article.

Routine. This type of action is conscious and deliberate. A routine requires thought and willpower to do. If a strong intent isn’t there each time, you’ll just stop doing the routine, or you’ll delay it until the last minute.

Examples of routines include exercising, cleaning your room, and paying taxes.

Habit. This is an action prompted by an automatic urge, usually triggered by some cue. The closer your mind connects the action to the cue, the more fixed the habit becomes. Habits can be good or bad, and human nature makes it easy to slip into bad ones and easy to slip out of good ones.

Examples of habits include getting up with an alarm clock, brushing teeth after eating, and checking email first after turning on your computer.

Ritual. An action intended to better yourself, not just maintain your existence. It gives you purpose and fulfillment. Your focus is on enjoying the task, not just getting through it.

Examples of rituals include meditation, learning a new language, and practicing a musical instrument.

If you intend to be a good writer, which of the three are you aiming for? To answer that, you need to understand one more concept first—the Habit Loop.

I believe all habits start off as routines. For example, the first time you brushed your teeth, you had to think through the process. It was a routine, requiring intent and concentration. Later, after it became a habit, you performed it automatically, usually right after eating.

How do routines become habits? By using the Habit Loop.

The idea here is to use a cue of some kind to trigger the task, and then reward yourself for completing it. By shortening the time of the cycle, particularly the cue-routine gap and the routine-reward gap, you help ingrain the routine as a habit. That’s what the inward-pointing arrows signify.

How does all this apply to writing? For simplicity, let’s separate writing into three tasks:

  1. Initiation—sitting down to write. I recommend making this a daily habit. Use the Habit Loop to ingrain it, if necessary. For beginning writers, Initiation is the most important task. After all, the other two can’t take place if you don’t plunk yourself down in the chair to write first.
  • Conceptualization—choosing a genre, constructing a plot, fleshing out characters. I think of this as a ritual, in the sense of being done for the sheer joy of writing. This requires considerable conscious thought and creativity, and should not be considered a chore. Don’t get into a habit rut by writing stories with the same theme, similar characters, common settings, etc. Keep things fresh.
  • Mechanics—stringing sentences together, choosing words, etc. Some days, this may seem like a ritual, an enjoyable task done for its own sake. Other days, it may seem like a routine, a task requiring thought but one you look forward to completing. Perhaps for truly experienced authors, this becomes more automatic, like a habit.

Is writing a routine, habit, or ritual? Apparently, it is all three. It’s a routine/habit/ritual much loved by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 31, 2020Permalink

Picking Up Where You Left Off

You’ve carved out some time to write, and you’re enthused about adding a new scene to that story you’ve been working on. You sit down and look back over what you wrote yesterday, so you can resume writing in that same mood and mindset.

But wait. As you review yesterday’s work, there’s a mistake you need to fix. And another. That whole paragraph needs to go. And you forgot to add some character motivation here. Some scene setting detail there.

Before you know it, your valuable time—the precious hour you’d planned for adding a new scene—has been squandered while you edited previous scenes. What a waste!

Or was it?

It’s an interesting question, and your writing style will determine the answer for you. Consider the two extremes:

Style A. There’s a time for writing and a time for editing. Turn off your inner editor when you write. Free yourself to write first drafts as quickly as you can. When you sit down to write, give only the briefest glance over what you wrote yesterday, ignore mistakes, and charge into your work on the next section, writing as fast as you can. Set aside other days for editing. Otherwise, you’ll be editing forever and never writing.

Style Z. Editing is part of writing. When you sit down to write, you shouldn’t ever ignore problems you see in yesterday’s draft. The changes needed there will affect what you plan to write today. If you ignore the mistakes you see in yesterday’s draft, you might miss them later; best to correct them now. Time spent in some light editing today is time saved, and consistency preserved, tomorrow.  

There’s an entire spectrum of options between Styles A and Z. Moreover, you can choose different options every day. Perhaps your choice will depend on the answers to questions like:

  • How terrible was yesterday’s draft?
  • How clear in your mind is the scene you plan to write today?
  • How much will yesterday’s draft affect today’s?
  • Do you have a deadline?
  • Do you outsource the editing chore to someone else?

A recent facebook post by author Lyn Worthen inspired today’s blogpost. Judging from the comments Lyn received, many authors aren’t bothered by the idea of reading the last few pages and editing as needed before continuing with unwritten portions.

If it really irks you to spend time editing previous sections first, but you can’t resist the urge to do that, well, don’t think of it as editing. Lyn suggests calling it a warmup, a method of re-entering the world of your story. She says you may find this cyclic looping process has the benefits of (a) refreshing your memory, (b), alerting you to previous mistakes, (c) maintaining consistency of tone and voice, and (d) saving you from an enormous pile of editing work when you’ve finished.

New day. Time to finish writing this blogpost. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to close with my typical sign-off as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 24, 2020Permalink

Why You Bound Out of Bed

The reason you scramble out of bed each day, wide-eyed and raring to go, is simple. You’ve got things to do. More specifically, you have goals to achieve. As Snuffy Smith always said, “time’s a’wastin’!”

What’s that? You don’t bound out of bed? You (shudder) don’t have any goals?

Hoo boy. We’ve got to talk.

There is enormous power in the practice of committing to goals. There are also numerous side benefits for you, incidental to achieving the goal itself.

I’ll offer two examples from my life. Many years ago, my younger sister called me; she was excited because she’d decided to train for, and run, a marathon. Prior to her call, I’d given no thought to running a marathon myself. After that brief phone call, I was committed.

I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C., at that time about nine months in the future. I bought a book about training for a marathon and followed its plan, including maintaining a running log. Often during that year, I thought I’d never be ready in time. However, I knew the Marines were unlikely to postpone their race just to accommodate me. Still, I ran and finished the race.

As a second example, I recognized, about a year ago, that June 20, 2020, will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I set a goal of launching, on that exact date, a sesquicentennial anthology honoring Verne’s novel. I’ve never co-edited an anthology before, but goals should push you outside your comfort zone, beyond your known limits. They should be big, audacious, and grand.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

So far, progress toward that goal has been good. Things are proceeding well. We’ve received wonderful stories and look forward to publishing the anthology on time.

Enough about me. What about your goals?

According to this article by Anya Kamenetz, there are mental and physical health benefits to setting and achieving goals. A University of Toronto study showed performance in school improved for all ethnic groups and genders of students who wrote down and worked toward goals.

When you decide to set a goal, I believe it’s important to write it down, not just memorize it. Performing that simple act:

  • Cements the goal and affirms your commitment to it;
  • Gives direction and meaning to your actions;
  • Paints a picture, a vision, of the future to which you aspire;
  • Creates an urge within you that prods you to achieve daily progress and nags you when you fall behind;
  • Helps you overcome setbacks, laziness, disenchantments, and obstacles;
  • Provides immense satisfaction when every milestone and the final goal are met;
  • Boosts confidence in your ability to achieve; and
  • Spurs you on to setting a new goal after each achieved one.

What’s that you say? You have a problem with the entire ‘goal’ concept? You say you don’t set goals anymore because you feel bad about yourself when you fall short?

Well, you may not achieve all your goals. I haven’t met all the goals I’ve set either. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up over failures. Missing a goal doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

Learn what you can from that failure and set another goal. Consider a smaller one, easier to achieve. Celebrate when you achieve it. You’ll build your confidence one win at a time.  

Pretty soon you’ll be bounding out of bed each day, just like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 17, 2020Permalink

Characters Say More Than They Say

When we talk, we don’t often come right out and say what we feel. That should be the same with your fictional characters. There should be meaning below the words. That’s known as subtext.

I’ll come right out and admit this: I’m still learning how to employ subtext in my characters’ dialogue. As a trained engineer, I tend to speak plainly and strive for exactitude in meaning so I can be clearly understood. Unfortunately, many of my characters sound like me. Not good, but I’m getting better.

Let’s learn about subtext in dialogue together, then, shall we? There are some wonderful blogposts you can read, including this one on the Industrial Scripts website and this one by author K.M. Weiland.

These two sites give us techniques to practice, including having characters say:

  1. what they mean, but in a different way,
  2. something unexpected,
  3. something understated or ironic,
  4. something with actions instead of words,
  5. the same words or phrases again later to gain additional meaning, and
  6. the bare truth in a moment of high emotion.

Each blogpost also provides excellent examples from movies so you can analyze how scriptwriters accomplish the intended purpose.

The technique you choose should be consistent with your character’s motivation and personality.

Every major character has a motivation. The character wants something, or wants to avoid something. Let’s say female Character A is speaking to male Character B. A knows B can help her get what she wants, can interfere with her getting what she wants, or is neutral. Her motivation can guide you in infusing her dialogue with subtext.

Your characters also have distinct personalities. Those personality types influence both what the character says and the subtext beneath that. Therefore, both the dialogue itself, and the subtext beneath will help the reader become familiar with the character as the story proceeds.

In this blogpost, screenwriter Charles Harris discusses steps you can use to improve your use of subtext in dialogue. When you read his post, you’ll learn the details of how to:

  1. Practice writing subtext to hone your skill.
  2. Write straight text first, then alter it to suit the characters and the situation.
  3. Study real-life dialogue; try to detect subtext in what real people say.
  4. Study dialogue in fiction.
  5. Complete a simple exercise to develop your technique.  
  6. Get better acquainted with your characters. Give each one a distinctive speech pattern, favorite phrase, or habitual saying. Hear their voice in your head.
  7. Use idle moments to imagine (and write down) ideas for subtext-filled dialogue.
  8. Eliminate excess words. Keep dialogue to bare bones.
  9. Know when to have a character spill out actual thoughts when in an extreme emotional state.

Now you know. When I say I’m Poseidon’s Scribe, I mean I’m either much more than, or not really—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 10, 2020Permalink