Just The Caffeine Talking

The Editing Paradox

At the moment I have a lot of editing and rewriting to do. I'm finishing up the first draft of a novel and I know I need to go back and make some improvements. And at my last writing workshop the group gave one of my short stories a thorough working-over, so now there's that to revise, too.

I have a suspicion that editing and revising is the hardest part of writing for everyone. How many times have you read a book (or seen a movie) and come away wondering how the creators could miss the obvious flaws? And yet it's incredibly difficult to do that to one's own work. That's why we have workshops, and how editors earn their salaries.

Here's a theory about why that is the case. Writers think of a story as an object. When it's done, it's done, and if they go back and change things it could spoil all their work.

In the days when manuscripts were literally script by mano, or even typed, that was a genuine issue. A story was a physical artifact, and fooling with it was a permanent process. Even if you reversed a change, the scratch-outs and scribbles in the margin were still visible.

Word processing changed that: I can have a thousand versions of each thing I write. I can completely change it, and if I don't like the changes I can revert to before I started. Revision should hold no fear for writers armed with laptops and thumb drives.

And yet it still does! Because we don't think of a story as one permutation of words, to be altered or tweaked. We still think of stories as real things.

Because they are real. If you tell a child the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," then tell it to her with a difference, the child will be outraged. "It wasn't soup, it was porridge!" "She was in the baby bear's bed, not the mama's!"

Stories are real -- and yet, of course, they aren't. They're literally figments of someone's imagination, written down or passed on by word of mouth.

When a writer faces the challenge of editing his own work, he's changing something real. He wrote that story and now he's killing it -- even if there's a saved version on the desktop.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some darlings to murder.

Tales From the Archive: The Transbalkania Affair

This is an adventure I ran for my Space: 1889 campaign back in the 1990s. Because this was written for my own use rather than for publication, it's a bit more sparse and telegraphic than usual.

Transbalkania is a fictional country in the Space: 1889 universe, a tiny Balkan principality wedged in between Bulgaria and Macedonia, bordering Graustark and Ruritania (but not, sadly, Latveria). I don't recall why the player-characters went there; they may have just been traveling around at random, or possibly the aristocratic twit non-player character Lord Nigel Brunswick was asked to represent the British government at the upcoming Royal wedding.

The Situation: Prince Sergei II recently acceded to the throne, and is about to be married to the Princess Von Znk, a minor German princess who has been blind all her life.

The PCs can encounter spies from all over -- Germany, Austria, Russia, Ruritania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Graustark, and Uruguay. All have names which are variations of "Smith" because they are trying to be inconspicuous.

The Prince's Reception:  The castle has a fantastic collection of clockwork toys; the late Prince Sergei I was obsessed by them.  He hired some of the finest craftsmen in Europe to come work for him.

The reception is a splendid affair.  The Prince himself is stiff and polite.  He is quite good-looking, but very taciturn.  He is always surrounded by a small knot of officials, led by the Prime Minister, Pavel Pretorious.

A Mysterious Warning:  As the PCs return from the reception, the Uruguayan agent, "Senor Smito," staggers up to Miss Peabody and collapses, a knife in his back.  His dying message:  "At Borgo Pass . . . the Princess's train . . . danger . . . wolf's head . . . quickly . . . "

Ambush At Borgo Pass:  The Princess Von Znk's train is passing through Borgo Pass when a group of brigands on horseback attack!  There are 12 brigands in all, with Close Combat and Marksmanship-4.  Mysteriously, the bandits all speak English, and most are wearing broad-brimmed hats. If the PCs and some Transbalkanian forces take quick action, they can (of course) head them off at the pass and allow the train to reach the capital safely.

What's Really Going On:  The real Prince Sergei died six weeks ago -- he choked on an olive pit late one night.  Prime Minister Pretorious and the other ministers were desperate to prevent either of Sergei's brothers from succeeding to the throne. Sergei's brother Ivan is a warmonger, who plans to attack Bulgaria and Turkey.  His brother Oskar was a selfish fool who planned to sell the country to Bulgaria for a lifetime stipend.

So Pretorious had old Peteggio, the Royal Toymaker, create a clockwork King with the aid of Mangialente. They arranged the marriage to Princess Gertrud, who is blind. Her parents were pleased to find a catch like Sergei for her.  Pretorious hopes that a royal heir can be arranged (with the help of an impostor), and then the King can "die" conveniently.

BUT:  Princess Gertrud Von Znk is not keen on marrying Prince Sergei.  She loves Otto Schmidt, a stableboy on her father's estates.  Otto went to America to get rich, and she promised to wait for him but he never returned. Actually, Otto has made out rather well raising cattle in Texas. When he learned of the wedding, he and some of his partners from the Lazy 8 ranch came to Transbalkania to take Gertrud away.

Clues:  If the PCs don't notice something wrong with the Prince, Princess Gertrud will (being blind she relies on smell and hearing -- Sergei smells like machine oil, and ticks and squeaks as he moves).

• The Italian superspy Count Fogliani is present, in disguise as a street puppeteer.  He is on the trail of a missing Italian dollmaker, Luigi Mangialente.

• The Prince's wolfhound has been driven from the castle, and wanders the streets whining.  It will lead the PCs to Sergei's tomb beneath the castle.

• Notice the "Wolf's Head" brandy label, illustrated with a picture of a rock formation of that name northeast of Bunjskoe.  (The cowboys have their camp at the Wolf's Head.  Senor Smito spotted one of them in town, followed him, and found the camp.  He overheard their plans but was discovered.  Nevada Bob put a knife into him before he could escape.)

Climaxes:  Otto will appear at the wedding itself, stepping forward to claim Gertrud.  Pretorious will have his deadly bodyguard Bayezid deal with meddlers. 

Transbalkanian Names:                    

Anton Dvremic, Engli Janoschko, Petro Vladimiroff, Katerina Homuk, Jan Lebbov, Mikel Stambulov, Ugo Wallachnik, Yirina Bulgrava, Georgi Ivanec, Nikol Stravno, Wictro Antonoff, Helena Karloff.

Transbalkania is ALLIED with Serbia, Greece, Russia, and Italy.

Transbalkania is OPPOSED to Bulgaria, Turkey, Ruritania, Romania, Austria, and Graustark.

Local Color:  The Prince's Lifeguards in their blue uniforms and black fur hats; the Bujsko Battalion in their red fezzes; the Nevrekop and Dschumaja Battalions in their blue shakos; the cavalry in fur hats and tight white breeches; and the militia armed with muskets and pikes. Peasant men in their embroidered vests and knee-britches, old women wearing dozens of petticoats, shepherds in wolfskin cloaks.

Otto Schmidt, Poor Boy Made Good Out West

Str:  5            Fisticuffs 4, Throwing 3, Close Combat 4 (edged)

Agl:  6         Stealth 5, Marksmanship 4 (pistol)

End:  4            Wild. Travel 6 (mountaineer), Tracking 3, Fieldcraft 3

Int:  4            Observation 3

Chr:  4            Eloquence 3, Linguistics 2 (English, Spanish)

Soc:  3             Riding 4

Hit Points:  9/7

Motives: Love for Gertrud, Cowboy Code

Bayezid, Pretorious's Henchman

Str:  6            Fisticuffs 8, Throwing 5, Close Combat 6 (edged)

Agl:  4         Stealth 4, Marksmanship 4

End:  4            Wild. Travel 4 (mountaineer), Fieldcraft 1, Tracking 1

Int:  2            Observation 1

Chr:  1            Theatrics 1

Soc:  2 Riding 1, Medicine 1

Hit Points:  10/7

Motives: Cruelty for its own sake, Loyalty to Pretorious

Wears an armored leather vest (save roll of 1)

Reporters:  Bailey, Chicago Daily News; Morris, Manchester Guardian.

The Wedding:  The Princess Von Znk will be given away at the wedding by her teenage brother the Prince Etzel Von Znk.  The ceremony begins with an Orthodox Mass, followed by the marriage vows.

Just after the Mass, but before the vows are exchanged.  Otto Schmidt and his Lazy 8 cowboy pals will come riding into town, ride right into the Cathedral of St. Kyril, and abduct the bride.

If the cowboys can get away for even five minutes, they can conduct a wedding marrying Otto to Gertrud.  One of Otto's pardners is Daniel Webster "Preacher" Jones, an ordained Seventh-Day Adventist minister.  They even have a marriage license issued by Deaf Smith County in the State of Texas. 

Forces inside the Castle:

One company of the Lifeguard Foot battalion (20 men) and one troop of the Prince's Escort cavalry squadron (9 men) are quartered in the castle.  The rest of the Lifeguards (73 men) and the other cavalry troop (11 men) are based at Bunjskoe Barracks, east of the city.

For the  wedding, one company of each of the three line infantry battalions (30 men each) has been sent to Bunjskoe.  They are encamped in a field on the west bank of the Strava.

 

How I Did It #9: The Eckener Alternative

I am ridiculously proud of this story. Back in 2004 I heard that David Moles and Jay Lake were putting together an airship theme anthology, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories. Now, I've been an airship nut since fourth grade. I've written nonfiction articles about them for Airpower and Balloon Life magazines. So I decided that it would be morally wrong for someone to publish an airship anthology without a story by me in it. Unfortunately, I didn't have an airship story, so I sat down and wrote one.

I don't recall exactly how long it took to write "The Eckener Alternative," but it can't have been long. The deadline for submissions was close when I heard about the anthology. I think the whole thing took about a week from start to finish.

To actually create the story I had to fall back on my usual intellectual brute-force approach: what story can one tell about airships? I didn't want to do a standard-issue romance or adventure which could just as easily involve an ocean liner or a 747. The airship had to be central to the story.

Airships have become the icon for alternate history. When you look in the sky and see one, you know you're in an alternate universe. (Ken Hite has observed that according to this rule, our own history was an alternate universe from 1900-1940, and that actually explains a lot.) This meant that my story had to involve alternate history and/or time travel.

At that point I decided to get "metafictional." Any alternate history with Zeppelins tends to require an awful lot of author-fiat tinkering with the timeline. The sad truth is that airships were a practical technology for about 20 years, and hung on another 20 years mostly due to Hugo Eckener's combination of marketing genius, piloting skill, and sheer stubbornness. We modern writers create fictional worlds with airships because we like airships.

So I made that the focus of the story. The main character is John Cavalli (and no, he's not Jesus -- he's me), a trainee time traveller who starts making extracurricular trips into the past, trying to save Zeppelins as a viable form of transport. He makes increasingly drastic changes to the timeline, and finally gives Hugo Eckener a fortune in synthetic diamonds to fund a run for President of Germany in 1932. Apparently Eckener really did consider running in our history, but abandoned the idea. My time traveller shows him what will happen if he doesn't.

By averting World War II, my protagonist completely alters subsequent history, and the time travel organization he's working for ceases to exist, leaving him stuck for good in the 20th century -- but at least he's got Zeppelins.

I sent the story in and got an almost immediate acceptance. Coming on the heels of my Hellboy story, I felt absolutely bulletproof, selling everything I wrote as fast as I could put stories in the mail.

Protip for aspiring writers: when you're submitting to an original anthology, keep it short. Anthology editors want to have a lot of names on the contents page, and that's hard to manage if all the contributors want to submit 20,000-word novellas. But there's always room for a 3,000-word short-short.

Another useful tip. Remember that advice in every writing manual about "write what you know?" Well, this is a classic example. I know a lot about airship history, so I wrote a story about someone monkeying around with airship history.

The All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories anthology was extremely well-received when it came out. The caliber of stories in the book is much, much better than one would expect from a gimmicky theme anthology. I have to say that "Eckener" isn't the best story in the collection -- that's "You Could Go Home Again" by Howard Waldrop, or possibly "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes'" by Benjamin Rosenbaum.

Still, evidently other people liked "Eckener Alternative" as well. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer selected it for Year's Best SF 10, and an audio version is due out some time soon on Escape Pod. Not bad for a story I wrote out of sheer egotism.

I Recommend You Read This

Locus magazine just released its 2011 "recommended reading" list for SF and fantasy. My novelette "Object Three" made the cut. You can read it in the November/December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

UPDATE: Don't forget, Hugo Award nominations for 2012 are open until March 11!