Avatar photoSteven Savage

All My Good Bad Influences

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As I edit away on A Bridge To The Quiet Planet, my tale of a techno-magical world and an interplanetary road trip involving holy books, I am busy finding out how I mishandled my good influences.

This is not due to my own genius, this is due to my amazing editor, who I am willing to introduce to anyone who wants to pay her money to edit.  She is fantastic at pointing out flaws in my work, leaving comments, and using search-replace to highlight all my common errors.  Some pages of my book look like a vengeful highlighter achieved sentience and attacked common word combinations it had a grudge against.

Between her feedback and her markup, I began to realize that my major influences were also ones influencing my flaws.  Allow me to explain:

First, there’s a chance if you’re inspired by an author or a creator, you won’t do it quite right.

Second, you may make the same mistakes your inspiration makes – and likely being less polished than they, you’ll make them worse.

Third, your inspirations together may not sit quite right.  You need to find a way to fuse them into a whole.

So what happened with me?  Well my editor noticed passive voice (lots of was), strange asides, weird wordplay, and moments I was abstract from the characters.  Nothing unusual, but then I looked at my inspirations and realized where I’d stumbled.

My core influences are Sir Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Dave Barry.  If you read my fiction, the inspiration is obvious – I love playing with words, exploring settings, and deconstructing ideas.  Take these trends too far and you end up with infodumps and trying to be too witty.

I was also influenced by anime, with the fantastical elements, fusions of genres, and passion for characterization.  Again, you can take these things too far – it took watching My Hero Academia to realize that I too liked to do giant flashbacks that could be handled better when not animated.

Finally, I love oddball character stuff of all kinds – indeed one sub-theme of A Bridge To The Quiet planet is that it’s basically several parties of unusual personalities having an adventure and colliding with each other.  Its a tale of magic and super-science and demons, but is basically about the people in this world.  You can get distracted by the oddities and details and loose touch with the fact these are people.

So I did too much infodumping, wrong details, wrong approach, and got a bit too full of  myself.  But there’s one more thing I forgot.

I was following several styles – I was not combining them into one.  I was doing a story of intimate character portraits and giant weird worlds, of human eccentricity and complex societies.  There was a feeling of discord, of the two not blending – or of one dominating the other.

In short I took some of my inspirations too far or in the wrong direction – and forgot to find a style that fit to realize all my inspirations.

As you edit your work, look to your inspirations.  Then find out how you might be doing them wrong – or doing them right and not harmonizing them.

-Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 9/2/2018

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Here’s the latest.  And would you believe it’s still busy.  A lot of August was overloaded.

So what have I done the last week?

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:  Editing of course.  I have yet to get it up for pre-readers, but plan to this week.  It’s going quite well overall – but probably updates are gonna get a bit boring for awhile.
  • Way With Worlds: Keeping up on the Organization book.  Right now my guess is that one is out in October.  Again this is a side thing to the novel, but it is a good relaxer.
  • Seventh Sanctum: I’ve updated The Nexus with a change.  Instead of linking to other generators, I liked to assorted creative resources, including other generator sites.
  • Other: My car died so I had to get a new one.  Took a bit of time.

What am I going to do this week?

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: It’s gonna be editing and more editing.  And I’ll post chapters for pre-readers.  I also plan to use Grammarly to help me out – I hear its spectacular.
  • Way With Worlds: More writing (I’m seeing a trend here)
  • Other: I’m speaking on self-publishing this weekend – if you’re in the Bay Area let me know.  I also hope to do some Sanctum stuff.

-Steven Savage

No More Heroes – But A Legion Of Them

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Giant tentpole movies and famous book series everyone loves and knows about are a bad idea.

Yes, I’m thinking the Marvel Cinematic Universe might not be a good idea. I’m concerned that Megaseries like Harry Potter and Twilight may have been too widespread. I’m happy that My Hero Academia may be the new gateway anime, but I’m concerned it could become too big in an age where everyone wants to find the “right” thing to see or read.

Why do I think this? Well, you’re lucky because I have a reason for my ranting.

First, I think we’ve become conditioned to produce and look for The Big Hits. What’s the hip thing to get in on? What’s the thing I must make to corner the market? The drive to make The Big Thing becomes not about what it’s about but marketing and social positioning – it degrades the literary elements.

Secondly, I think it encourages repetition and unoriginality. Because we are trying to make What Works and What Sells and What Gets Big, everything ends up the same soup of warmed-over ideas. It’s probably easier to make the Big Thing in a mix of doing the same with a few twists or famous faces or advocates.

Third, because people are trying to make What’s Big and follow What’s Big, people burn out. Do you want to watch another by-the-beat film? Do you want to read another story like the last? I once left SF and fantasy for years because it seemed All Alike.

Four, it leads to pathetic fan wars and academic arguments. When everyone is advocating to be King of Mediocrity Mountain, no one asks if they actually want that.

So, what do we do?

I do believe that we should read historically important fiction and appreciate important movies and so on. We don’t have to make it required, we don’t have to force it, we should just advocate for understanding. Besides, some of this stuff may be important but it can be limited, bigoted, or honestly kind of be bad.

I do believe we should share literature and media, but no more preaching. Let’s encourage people to enjoy things but let’s stop pursuing the next big thing – it’s wearing us out and wearing us down. It’s tiring to have so many must haves. Let’s make offerings not demands.

I do believe in standards for literature and values, but none of those are embodied in one book or one show or one movie. Let the values and standards have multiple forms and manifestations and stop looking for the Holy Grail Of The Right Thing.

I do believe the ideal media future is not people pursuing imitating each other or What’s Big in the hope of being the Next Big Thing. Let’s actually push for more authors getting exposure, have more literature and film and shows for different people. Let’s stop trying to be J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin levels of fame, and just focus on being good and making a good living.

Let’s not enocurage the Big Thing or preach the Big Thing or dream of making the next big imitative Big Thing. Let’s work for diversity and high standards, history and new things, that make life interesting and dynamic.

Take down the tent poles. Let’s walk under the open sky.

-Steven Savage