There are many things that Brandon Sanderson said in his interview with the guys from speculates.com recently but the thing that caught me was a concept he borrowed from George R.R Martin (epic fantasy master, of Game of Thrones fame). He said writers generally fall in to one of two categories: architect or gardener.
THE ARCHITECT
I recently watched this great talk by Andrew Stanton when he addressed the TED conference. For those of you who don’t know, Andrew Stanton is the script writer for Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Wall-E and more recently, John Carter. This talk is short but covers some great aspects of story. I’ve summarised some of the most basic points below but I would suggest that you go and take a look for yourself (warning: the talk contains some bad language).
On Saturday I attended the South African Writers’ Circle awards lunch. We were privileged to have Gcnia Mhlope in our midst – one of South Africa’s finest storytellers, with a voice as rich as honey and a face so expressive you find yourself sitting forward on your seat as she draws you in. She is so natural at this that you can imagine she came out of her mother’s womb telling stories.
Opportunities are marvellous things... but sometimes even opportunities end up becoming something that chews into your writing time. I’ve made some unfortunate decisions these past few weeks and by doing so, pretty much strangled the life out of my writing plans for this year.
I’m about to go into some muddy waters and tackle the curse of the info dump. I’m spending eight weeks finishing the bare bones of a novel and as I am writing I’ve become aware of some of my more blatant weaknesses – info dumps being one of them. According to my research the info dump is especially prone to sci-fi writers because there is so much to “explain” about their world. Still, it’s clumsy and boring at best and would serve the story better if it was just cut.
What is an info dump?
I recently read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Whatever opinions I have about the book there was one thing that struck me: I need to know what my characters immediate needs are. What is the character’s most vital concern at the moment? Their most desperate desire? As I reader, this is what keeps me reading because I understand how high the stakes are for the character and I want to see the resolution – is their need fulfilled or not?
Today was a day so full of writing I felt as though I was bursting at the seams. It began with a Youth Novel workshop run by Maskew Miller and Longman publishers in order to prepare the entrants for their upcoming Youth Novel competition. The competition brief says that the novel should interest South African young people between the ages of 16 and 18 as well as something that can be prescribed in a high school curriculum. We spent a lot of the time discussing how to do that practically.
I am in that strange place in my journey as a writer where I am contemplating becoming even more specialised in the kinds of stories I write. Up until now, I have merely written what came to mind and those stories have ranged from fantasy to science-fiction and from adult stories to YA and young reader stories.
I feel as though I need to make a decision regarding what I write – a career choice, if you will – so that I can better focus on those kinds of stories and not spread myself too thin.
This morning I received some more good news... my short story, Inactive, was given first place in the Nova Science-Fiction and Fantasy short story competition. Again, I am ridiculously excited about such an accolade, especially with it being my first science-fiction win.
It’s that crazy end of year time again. The shopping centres are over-crowded, there is a plethora of social events to attend and at work you’re usually wrapping up all kinds of things so that you can just be on leave for a week or two. I go on leave on Monday and I had planned to spend that first day writing up a storm…
