Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Sometimes, while trying to plump up a story to out of the Unpublishable Void, you need to add an event.  In fact you probably have to, because stretching out the existing events to fill the required space often deforms them until the aesthetics of the story break down.
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Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Joseph Conrad

My muse is uninterested in the genre urban romance despite my having read a number.

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Sometimes a story motif is lifted straight from another story.

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Which could also be Why I Like Fantasy Alternate Histories Better Than SF Ones, come to think of it, although the name would have its flaws.

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Which is not, to be sure, as bad as the problem with prequels and how they box you in. Still -- what are you going to do?

 

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Sometimes, your story falls into the Unpublishable Void.  Say, at 45,000 words.  There aren't markets, not at that length.

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Aesthetics decrees that there's one real and necessary stylistic difference between speculative and mundane fiction:  speculative fiction requires you to keep a lid on the metaphors.

It's always wise to avoid metaphors that can be interpreted literally.  The problem is, in speculative fiction, that there's no such thing as a metaphor that can't be interpreted literally.  Fiery hair really can start to strew sparks and smoke over the air.  A growl can be the warning sign that your character is a werewolf (fantasy) or had a good chunk of wolf DNA engineered in (SF).  Indeed, once or twice, I've grabbed a metaphor in a work and ran off to outline a story where it's literally true, and great fun it is.

On the other hand, you can work in associations that you can't get away with in mundane fiction.  Your Dark Lord really can track death and destruction wherever he goes.  Your wise old mentor really can live inside a tree.  Or you can just suggest and hint these things are really in a manner that would be instantly dismissed as metaphorically in a mundane work.

So, you take what you like and you pay for it.

Metaphorically, that is.

Updated:  Hmmm -- I should have mentioned this:  You think that you can set up your world-building and then use the metaphors, as the reader will know by then?

The problem there is that you then have the style shifting in the book.  Like changing genre or character, this can be very hard to do.  Mostly, it causes a jolt to the reader.

I was on this one.

During the introductions, I gave my own favorite one.  Kazumi Kato from Order of the Stick.  Eight-months-pregnant, attacked by ninja who knock out her husband, she drinks a magic potion (she is, after all, a D&D character) and leaps to the attack: Cordelia Vorkosigan came up, quickly; I hit on the advantages of authority and guns, which help mothers be kick-ass without the upper-body strength.

And I pointed out an obvious reason for childless female protagonists:  because the unencumbered character is simplest.  If the family relationship are not an integral part of the story, aesthetically, it's best to leave them out.  Which means for characters of both sexes not only no children, but no spouse, no siblings, and no parents.  Because if they are not integral to the story, they are unaesthetic clutter.

One audience member commented that while he would not have described himself as encumbered after his son's birth, on hearing it, it's very apt; so much of his life is focused on his son; he works, but it's to support his family.  Discussing on how the importance of children to fathers is underplayed.

How Kick-Ass Moms are often rescuing their children, which helps eliminate two issues:  who's looking after the children, and (the less frequently but more serious problem) why is she endangering her child?  How an orphan hero prevents a Kick-Ass Mom from coming to his rescue; even Kick-Ass Mom usually is excused from duty by being dead.  (Though if you read just about any variant of Cinderella but Perrault's, she's not helped by a fairy godmother; she's helped by her mother's ghost, which is embodied in the tree on her grave.)

Bad mothers as kick-ass -- they technically fall under the description even if they neglect their children.

Been pondering some more -- and OTOH, sometimes you do have to carry through stuff.  Local color doesn't exhaust them; even moving the plot forward doesn't; they have to figure later in the story.

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