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darwin

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 9, 2014
820
5
The rules of this section of the forum state that we can talk about books. So let's talk about a book, mine.
http://thecenterpunch.blogspot.com/2018/08/purest-sea.html
The book is in PDF form and is free to anyone therefore the mods should not object on commercial grounds. My blog post is dated Aug. 2018 but the piece was finished in 2016.
Respectfully submitted.

 

darwin

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 9, 2014
820
5
My blog post provides a bit of info but a detailed precis would need a lot of spoilers. It is nominally science fiction but of an unusual but not threatening or bloody sort.

 

mityahicks

Part of the Furniture Now
Nov 18, 2018
616
3,310
I read the first few pages and will be back for more. Congratulations on finishing! Thanks for sharing.

 

darwin

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 9, 2014
820
5
Thanks mityahicks. Since I finished it I've added a sequel to it and am working on a third book. Neither are standalones thus they would make no sense read out of order. They are also very different from the first although the original cast of characters remain throughout but many new ones are added. I've had a great deal of fun writing them. If you or anyone makes it through the first book and wants to read the second contact me with a PM here or a comment on the Purest Sea blog post. Comments here or on the blog post, positive or negative, are welcome. To anyone reading the book I recommend finishing it first before commenting substantively because there are many surprises in it that could change one's appreciation of it.

 

unadoptedlamp

Part of the Furniture Now
Mar 19, 2014
742
1,368
Congratulations darwin. That is a feat. Anyone who can write a first draft, let alone continue on to publishing is ok in my book. It's a hell of a lot of work.
I haven't read your book, so don't take any of this as comment. I only add it because it seems like you're starting out and it's also for anyone else looking to hop into the fire.
Elements of style

Story engineering

Story fix (Only useful if your story stinks)
I think the elements of style is indispensable. That one should be read by every writer at least once a year.
The others by Larry Brooks have some interesting ideas about story mechanics. That's sometimes offensive to some story tellers (especially anyone who loves to write draft after draft without a plan so that they can discover the hard way where their story is really going), but unless you're going for some real obscure literary fiction -which is a whole other racket- then understanding the story telling process is incredibly useful.
When we read, we often overlook the fact that stories have been told in a very similar way for thousands of years. Overlooking this is easy, because of how many different voices and stories there are out there. There's just something to the underlying process that works... when it works. When it doesn't, it's usually because someone either had an idea for a short essay that they wrote into a book or they didn't know how to tell a story in the ways that humans have subconsciously expected for thousands of years.
I don't agree with everything in Larry's books, but I do agree that the fundamental story structure is virtually impossible to change. Being said, within that structure, you still need endless creativity and interesting thinking to pull off a great story.
Maybe you find these books interesting. I look forward to reading yours.
Congratulations!

 

darwin

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 9, 2014
820
5
Thanks for the feedback unadopted. I set out not to violate or ignore the imperatives of story structure but I did set out to outright sabotage some of the more common tropes of current hard SF. Specifically there are no mass quantities of blood, guts, and death and no gratuitous killing off of characters simply to generate conflict. And there are few if any dystopian themes as all. The central macguffin is, as far as I'm aware, unique and I had a lot of fun exploring it plus the secondary macguffin revealed in the last third of the piece was loads of writing fun. The last trope I attempted to subvert in The Purest Sea is how to make a story interesting without fierce implacable villains. This is a tough one to sidestep, in this genre especially. Any success in that particular endeavor is for others to judge.
In the second tome I opened up the stage dramatically and it is somewhat more conventional but, I hope, equally entertaining. The third volume has been even more fun to work on and concerns an interesting aspect of the idea of the "Gestalt", as I call it, which informs the last of the first volume and much of the second. The working title is The Prometheus Project.
I am retired and don't really need the money so this series of tomes is not expected to be a remunerative project unless lightning strikes several times in the same spot. I have however been reading science fiction since the mid 1950s and a better way to prep for actually writing it I can't imagine. All that reading, and the reading of perhaps ten thousand other books of wide ranging subject matter, including the classics, has, I hope, given me a modest organic feel for story structure and for knowing when something sounds awkward or strained. I will admit that my literary models are Heinlein and Asimov, for whatever that is worth.

 
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