skepticlysm

Tag: Fiction

  • Poorly Drawn Bullet Points

    Poorly Drawn Bullet Points

    • Watched a bunch of Andor season two yesterday.
    • Such a damn pretty show.
    • Which got me thinking about the shitshow that is The Wheel of Time.
    • I know, I know.
    • I’ve been rereading some of it.
    • So the discrepancies between the two are … vast.
    • More than that, however, you can tell Amazon threw money at WoT, but … it’s all terrible.
    • The writing is bad.
    • The characters have been made two-dimensional.
    • It looks like it was shot by amateurs.
    • I finished season three of The White Lotus, and that is the most beautiful show I have ever seen.
    • Andor is also beautiful.
    • They both look like they were made by film professionals, not streaming-TV crews.
    • Like, did no one tell the WoT crew how to frame a bloody shot?
    • Hell, they don’t even seem to know the Rule of Thirds.
    • And the lighting is crap.
    • It’s all crap, is what I’m saying.
    • Hi!
    • (Waves hand)
    • Do we actually talk Andor?
    • Not yet.
    • I’m only three episodes in, so … we’ll wait.
    • Books, right?
    • So much slower this year than last, and I’m doing a shit job of writing down what I read.
    • I’ve read four or five of those Dungeon Crawler Carl books by Matt Dinniman.
    • Four?
    • Maybe I’m on book five.
    • Either way, they’re fun.
    • LitRPG is bizarre to me.
    • That the genre even exists.
    • I’ve read two series so far.
    • Cradle by Will Wight and Carl.
    • Carl has blown up.
    • It’s like dramatization of a D&D campaign, only the setting is different every book.
    • And there’s a talking cat.
    • They’re fun.
    • Disposable.
    • I’m taking a break with The Wheel of Time.
    • Books three and four, then I’m out on that for awhile.
    • That series is … daunting.
    • Fourteen books of 700-900 something pages each.
    • I reread the whole series back in ’21.
    • Started in April, finished in June, reading nothing else in between.
    • Was a good time.
    • I read them as they came out, which was challenging.
    • That was my first “waiting desperately for the next one” experience.
    • For books anyway.
    • In real life, that was probably the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.
    • Mom got me out of school early on the last day of sixth grade to go see Jedi.
    • I think it was sixth grade.
    • … I don’t want to look it up and do the math.
    • Braining is hard at the moment.
    • I think all the surgery drugs wore off finally and now my body is fighting to repair the skull hole and killing whatever the “thing” is at the same time.
    • Resting HR is up about six, seven points.
    • Sleep is for shit.
    • Healing fatigue sucks.
    • But … healing.
    • YOLO!
    • We talk about music in here a lot.
    • Delivery of said music, however …
    • I have a pair of Pixel Bud Pros.
    • I cannot live without them at this point.
    • First, I can’t wear any of my over-the-ear headphones right now because they smash my brains.
    • Necessary.
    • But also, these things have fantastic noise cancelling and work amazingly on Zoom and whatnot.
    • They can connect to two devices at once.
    • They actually have bass.
    • I wish I got paid to shill for this stuff.
    • Coming soon.
    • This recovery life … I gotta admit, I need to figure out how to get paid to live this way.
    • Get up. Have coffee. Write. Have lunch. Write some more.
    • Yes, I write for a living.
    • But there’s a gulf between that and what I’d rather be writing.
    • These lists are a bridge for sure.
    • They have saved my mental/professional life.
    • Which gives us another segue.
    • Maybe.
    • Have you read the research on the four-day workweek?
    • No loss of “productivity,” fewer taken sick days, an increase in contentment and happiness in the workforce.
    • Not here in America, mind you.
    • …
    • I can’t end this thing on a rant, so I’m going to stop there.
    • Stop buying into the bullshit.
    • Okay.
    • Where was I?
    • (Consults the notebook …)
    • (Yes, I actually made a list for the List today.)
    • (The hell is the matter with me.)
    • Playlists?
    • The new mixtape or burned CDs.
    • Problem I’m running into is how to share songs.
    • The Teenager converted us to a Spotify family after a successful psych campaign.
    • We were all Amazon Music.
    • So I sling Spotify links around like candy.
    • But not everyone can listen to them.
    • What a pain in the ass our subscription-based world can be, you know?
    • Glad some asshole who doesn’t create the music’s getting richer!
    • (This is what differentiates the Black List from the Work List.)
    • (Like, here, I can say I’d like to punch a certain State Superintendent sycophant in the face. Multiple times.)
    • (Yes, fighting is bad.)
    • “If you could fight anyone, who would it be?”
    • I could do a top-five on that.
    • But it’d be a Kali fight because I never got to where I liked punching people back in my sparring days.
    • Hitting them with sticks and knives? Sure.
    • Would need to talk to my therapist about that.
    • OMG I loved doing Kali, btw.
    • Became the ninja I always wanted to be.
    • I have stories about that, too.
    • Now this one’s gone long, and I only hit like half the stuff I wrote down.
    • Snap. Back to reality.
    • I gotta go water the veggies in the pocket full of sunshine.
    • And then probably pass out from skull fatigue.
    • High five.
  • Elevator Doors

    Elevator Doors

    • Yesterday …
    • Okay, maybe it was Saturday.
    • Yeah, definitely Saturday.
    • We went to Mi Tierra for dinner.
    • Had fajita leftovers.
    • They were not my leftovers, but I was told I could have them for lunch today.
    • Which is nice.
    • Nice to not have to worry about spending $17 for lunch downtown, you know?
    • I had my bag slung around my chest, my coffee in one hand, the styrofoam container with the fajitas in the other.
    • (Who still uses styrofoam?)
    • (Well, lookie there. Apparently “Styrofoam” is a brand name like Kleenex or Xerox.)
    • (No, you environment killing thing, I will not give you a capital S.)
    • Scanned in, went to pull open the big glass door to the 14th floor …
    • Which slipped.
    • And caught the fajita container and my arm, flinging it from my grasp.
    • Fajitas everywhere.
    • Everywhere being mostly the floor.
    • And my hand.
    • Which after multiple washings still smells like fajitas.
    • Sigh.
    • Apologies to the cleaning staff.
    • My fault.
    • How’s your Monday?
    • Mini fiction:
    • He nodded to the woman behind the security desk as he entered the building.
    • “Good morning,” she said.
    • He echoed the greeting, lamented for the moment he did not know her name. Well, if it were really a she? It looked like a she, but he knew it was one of the latest bots from Boston Dynamics. Probably had a model designation and not a real name like Sally or Veronica. Maybe he’d give it a name. Later, though. The timeclock waits for no one, however, and he needed to get upstairs for a meeting … which started in four minutes. At least it was a Zoom meeting.
    • He stopped in front of the elevator bank, mashed the Up button with the pointer finger on his right hand while the rest clung to the coffee tumbler. His other hand held a small square box of “gourmet” donut holes.
    • The button’s yellow-orangish light lit up.
    • He leaned around his left arm to check the time.
    • Two minutes.
    • Ugh.
    • The elevator beeped. He fought the urge to step forward, reviewing stock footage of all the times he tried to rush onto the opening elevator while people tried to get out. All the awkward apologies to people he didn’t know.
    • The doors opened.
    • No one got out.
    • He stepped on, looked at the bank of floor buttons and the card scanner.
    • Oh, right.
    • He fumbled with the ID lanyard, snaking his thumb behind the ribbon to extend the card toward the scanner. He wondered how ridiculous he looked if the security guard happened to be watching from their console.
    • Card mashed against the scanner. The light turned green. He dropped the lanyard and thumbed the button for his floor, then stepped toward the back of the elevator, started to rehearse what he might need to say in the Zoom meeting.
    • Then realized the elevator had not moved.
    • He glared at the floor buttons. None were lit.
    • He sighed, loudly.
    • “Work, you stupid thing.”
    • He repeated the card scan/button process. Why did they even have to scan a card still? Couldn’t they code these things with biometrics? Or even scan your card in your pocket? Why the old school tech? Maybe the building supes spent all the money on Sally.
    • He refocused.
    • Again, all the proper lights lit. Again, he stepped back, this time keeping his eyes on the buttons.
    • The lights, which lit for a moment, went off.
    • “Seriously?”
    • He repeated the watch dance.
    • Late.
    • Officially.
    • He stepped forward, tapped the “open door” button.
    • Nothing happened.
    • “C’mon, you dumb thing. Work!”
    • Talking to himself on a Monday morning while trapped in an elevator …
    • The elevator dinged, lurched upward for a second, then stopped, bouncing.
    • He struggled to keep his coffee in his hand as his arm whipped out to catch the wall for balance.
    • He glanced around, looking for a camera.
    • “Help?”
    • Again, it lurched upward, stopped. Lurch. Stop.
    • He crouched back against the wall, waited. Counted to 100. Why he counted to 100 he didn’t really know, but it seemed a reasonable amount of time to make sure everything was … stable.
    • He stood, stepped toward the buttons, then repeated the card swipe process and reselected his floor. The buttons lit up like they were supposed to. The elevator began to climb.
    • “Thanks for nothing, dumb elevator.”
    • He felt an increase in upward velocity in his knees, which flexed a bit. He flicked his eyes to the floor indicator as his floor came and went.
    • He gritted his teeth.
    • The elevator stopped at the top floor.
    • He waited for the doors to open, visualized the door to the stairs.
    • The doors did not open.
    • He leaned forward, mashed the “open” button.
    • Nothing happened.
    • “Open the doors, you piece of junk!”
    • He stomped on the floor.
    • Which opened. He slipped into the dark of the elevator shaft, coffee and donuts flying from his hands as he flailed. As he fell, he looked up and watched the yellow light of the elevator vanish.
    • Mondays, he thought.
    • …
    • End.
    • Yeah, I dunno. That’s what popped into my head this morning getting on the elevator here at the Arvest Tower.
    • I have never written list-based fiction before now. Nor let anyone read that kind of thing without massive edits. That’s a first draft. Heh.
    • Also, that was before the Fajita Fiasco of March 2025.
    • Also, I have to go read the comments from the Millennials in Friday’s list. I see there are new ones, but I have not gotten there yet. Been a busy Monday, even without the fajitas.
    • Also, this was all written to Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time (album, not just the song.)
    • Dunno, man. I listened to another of their albums over the weekend, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which is one of those concept albums.
    • I have memories of the day that came out when I was in junior high.
    • Sorry. Middle school.
    • I really haven’t listened to Maiden since seeing them in Tulsa a handful of years ago.
    • They played too much of their new stuff, which stinks.
    • Purged them from my system for a while.
    • Okay.
    • I’m out.
    • You have a Monday.
    • Try to keep a good grip on your lunch, right?
    • Stay safe!
  • info dump

    info dump

    Here’s the kinds of conversations I get into with Kaia, just don’t ask me how they get started.  

    Out of the blue yesterday, or perhaps the day before, she said, “I really don’t like first-person.” 

    I said, “Some of my favorite books are written in first-person, but I’ve always thought about it as a cheat.” I think one of my writing profs in college called it that and it stuck. Or screwed up my brain. I do not like writing fiction in first-person. Always third-person limited.  

    And then we went on from there for a good 10 minutes. 

    Here’s the thing. Everyone has opinions, right? But opinions don’t make you … right. In terms of writing, I default to calling my opinions preferences. Because I am not a published author. What the hell does my opinion amount to?  

    If you ever want to have a fun time as a reader, get into some of the forums and subreddits about writing and publishing. Lots of unsolicited advice.  

    Some of the fun stuff that always makes me chuckle … how long do you give a book before you bail on it? As a reader, if you know, you know. I’m apt to bail on a book even before I finish Chapter 1, and I can’t always tell you why. The kid has this mental mandate to finish any book she starts. She’s young. She’ll get over it. 

    Sometimes, the story does not hook me. Sometimes, it’s the prose. Sometimes, it’s how they handle internal monologue, which ultimately is why we’re gathered here today. 

    There’s a trend it seems in modern fiction for authors to include huge paragraphs of internal monologue in third-person. Paragaphs that span pages of tell, but not show. I have no patience for it. 

    For instance, Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six. I made it through the first book, but by the second, I could not handle it anymore. I want things to actually happen in the stories I read. I do not want to spend the majority of a chapter sitting there watching a character think. Shit should be going down, man. Set the scenario, give your character something to react to, and then show us how they react. Simple stuff, really.  

    Show, don’t tell, is one of those subjects in writing that’s talked about all the time, and it sure feels like many modern published authors are not getting the message, or not being taught about it properly, or something. I hate it. I skim/skip pages, which even a decade ago I would’ve thought was one of the worst offenses a reader could commit.  

    An argument can be made for exposition, I guess. They’re using these huge internal monologues to convey information about their worlds and their characters history.  

    I’m in the William Gibson school on that. Throw your readers into the fire and let them figure it out as they go, like a constantly unwrapping present. Don’t explain it, let the world and narrative show it to them. It creates that feeling of anticipation and discovery far better than a goddamn info dump. Show them your world.  

    I’m reading like … six books … at the moment. Mostly because I’m having reading a.d.d., maybe?  

    • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,  Hunter S. Thompson (haven’t read it since ‘94?) 
    • Servant of the Shard, R.A. Salvatore 
    • Burn to Shine, Jonathan Maberry (just finished that one) 
    • #NSFW, Tosca Fasso 
    • The Third Rule of Time Travel, Phillip Fracassi 
    • The Gate of the Feral Gods, Matt Dinniman 

    The difference in styles is crazy. One of those is a work manifesto, so not fiction at all, but I find myself studying and comparing … writing styles? Makes me wonder what doing an MFA in creative writing would’ve done to me. At the very least, it would’ve taught me how to finish writing a goddamn book. Probably. 

    (No, I cannot write these kinds of things without swearing. Also wtf am I going to do with this when I’m finished with it?) 

    Anyway, this morning, I made the decision to leave my phone in the bedroom on the charger. I’ve spent too much time on my Spring Break looking at the damn thing. I trundled out to the couch, sat down, talked to Steph a bit, and then noticed Kaia’s copy of The Deathly Hallows sitting next to me. She’s got the whole thing marked up, colored post-it note tabs sticking out all over the place. 

    Picked it up, opened it to a random spot, and started reading. The spot turned out to be where Harry, Ron, and Hermione (almost left out my Oxford comma right there, which is another conversation the kid and I have had recently) are going in to question Olivander about the Elder Wand.  

    I have not reread the Potter series in at least a decade, and my memory of Rowling’s prose was slippy. Adverbs and the like. What I just read this morning? Not bad at all. I’d even go so far as to call it pretty good. Sure, it’s book seven. But in this particular scene, she’s info-dumping wandlore, but it’s not a whole page of anything. It comes out through conversation in the midst of scene demanded by the story. It’s … well done.  

    I mean, Rowling? Really? 

    I may sit here and read this freaking book today. Harry Potter and the Properly Written Prose.  

    Happy Spring Break, y’all!