September Schedule

SO! Schedule of the next month! We're going to see how this goes, but usually if I have a schedule, that gives me a deadline, and I'm very good about my deadlines. 


September 1 — Reinventing the Wheel (or the Dragon, or the Vampire)
September 6 — World Building
September 8 —  Epic Quests
September 10 —  How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
September 13 —  Good VS Evil
September 15 —  The Hero(ione)
September 20 —  Post-Apocolyptica
September 22 —  We're All Just Misunderstood (But We're Still Going to Fight Each Other Anyway)
September 24 —  On Writing by Stephen King
September 27 —  The Choosen One
September 29 —  Metropolis 


So, see you in a few days on the first!

She's Not Dead Yet

Yes, the obligatory post in which I update you as the to the happenings in my life as an excuse as to why I have not updated in a while (a while, in this case, being nearly twenty days). My main excuse is this: on the twelfth, a week after my last post, my dad and I embarked on a journey to Roanoke, VA (my current place of residence) so that I could return to Hollins University and continue my post-secondary education. I went back early because I needed to begin training to become a residence assistant (RA). We spent two days driving, I then spent a day unpacking and then five days in training, which after the weekend break wrapped up this Monday, but I still had some stuff to complete yesterday and today, so I really feel like this is the first moment I have had to myself where I have not felt the need to completely veg out. I suppose one could argue that I did have seven days to post something, however, I was dog sitting then, also trying to finish up my self assigned summer reading list (sadly, not completed), and listing and packing the things I needed to take to school with me. So...

I do believe in the course of all this taking place I have yet to have a moment to say I'm basing one of my senior thesi off of this blog. (I'm double majoring and I actually want to undertake the effort of doing two thesi [theises? I think that one is correct, but both of them are not making it past spell check], but I'm starting and sticking with this one now, and I also have a fairly well outlined idea of what I want to do for my Communications Studies thesis as well.) Another thing to give me incentive to keep the blog running is this: I found a scholarship that will give me $10,000 to submit a blog about me or things I like (/to do). (And it should be noted that this is not the only reason I continue to write my speculative writing blog. This is really an exploration for me into speculative fiction, writing, and my own style and knowledge.)

Anyway. That schedule I mentioned a few posts back. Actually going to sit down and do that now. I'll post it here tonight or tomorrow to keep myself honest. See you then.

Bird By Bird

This past semester in my creative writing class my professor brought in a book that she would read to us (hypothetically) at the beginning or end of each class. This was, of course, Bird By Bird: some Advice on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.It is probably the first instructional book on writing that I paid really close attention to, probably because I enjoy being read to. But also partly because of the way Lamott writes. The book does not particularly feel like a text book, which is good in my opinion. The way Lamott draws on her personal experiences really drives in the points she tries to make, because she knows what she's talking about.

Particularly because as far as writing instruction goes, a lot of what is said is repetition. Almost ever writer I've ever read who has said a thing or two about writing at the very least will tell you to sit down every day at the same time and write. Lamott tells you this too, but I like the way she says why you should do it, "you're training your brain to be creative at the same time everyday." So many times I think people leave a "because," off of their infinitive. But it doesn't really feel like Anne does that, she actually gives really good reason why you should do what every other writer in the world advises you do.

Plus I think she gives some really helpful advise and encouragement. For instance, she advises if you're not really into something to take a one inch picture frame and just write one inch of something. Just do one thing for the story. And she says the first draft is going to be shitty, just get through it and write it (another universal truth, but I kind of really like the way she puts it).

I'm doing a bad job a analyzing, forgive me, but the book was due back at the library. Yeah, I know right. Anyway, I think it's an especially good book for beginning writers. 

The Speculative Divide: Supernatural

Think about the word "supernatural," for a moment. Super- is a prefix meaning greater than, and natural means existing or formed by nature. When you put these two together, the word means something greater than what already exists. This is the reason why the genre is so hard to pin down as its own genre, and even as another genre's subgenre. All speculative fiction falls under the realms of things we do not find in natural today. Humans cannot do magic like the way it is presented in books, unicorns do not exist, and science fiction by definition falls out of the category, "things created by nature." The only exception that may be made to this are the parts of the horror genre which involve people as the things which terrify, because we tend to specify people who kill out of something that feels like necessity or pleasure unnatural (not natural, rather than greater than natural).

Furthermore, supernatural fictions tends to recreate ideas rather than generate new ones. After all, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, angels and demons (the major players of supernatural fiction) have all been written about and filmed before, in horror, fantasy and science fiction. What changes within the supernatural genre is the way a creature is presented. Where they once would have been called monster they are now called human. Supernatural writing not only humanizes the classic monster it romanticizes them.  Because supernatural takes old ideas and reinvents them in this way (which is not wholly a new idea itself, fiction does this quite naturally over time in any genre), it is equal parts horror, fantasy and science fiction, those these parts may ebb and flow in their involvement in a piece of literature.

I would like to further propose that supernatural is not even a subgenre, but rather a supplementary genre. It classifies things that fall under all three of the speculative genres, and most often you see it after other genre tags like: romance, action, adventure, thriller and mystery. I think that is why it really is not its own genre, because it supplements a genres that regularly have nothing to do with any other kind of speculative fiction.  In other words, it's an easier tag to place instead of writing all three speculative genres after another tag.

It leaves room for wonderment, though, why didn't they just place a speculative tag after the primary genre?

The Speculative Divide: Science Fiction

At long last! My post on science fiction.

How to define science fiction? Well, it mostly has to do with the science, but people still get confused and still even a little angry about science fiction. Many people think that because it has "science," in its distinction everything must be one-hundred percent accurate. I do agree that the more accurate the science, many times it assists the fiction in its purpose and creates a better story. However, that really only applies to provable science, and by provable, I mean science that currently exists in the modern day. One of the most important parts about science fiction is the science that could be (and in recent years the science that could have been). Science fiction isn't always necessarily about science that currently is or was.

Now, this does contain a probability meter. Pure science fiction has to have some sense of probability to it. IE: Meeting Aliens on a foreign plant in 100 years would be science fiction, based on the fact that we have conducted space travel and our space programs around the world continue to grow. As long as the principles of the science that base the fiction are fairly sound. You have science fiction.

The divides on this become fairly blurred as with fantasy. When blending with fantasy (or horror for that matter), as long as it still has some kind of science that can be traced back to actual theory, it's technically a science fiction lovechild. There are many different names for these love children, science fantasy coming out into the forefront. One thing I did not mention about science fantasy in my fantasy post is something that happens as the science theory the fiction is based in degenerates: it becomes more of another genre. Science fantasy, for instance, can have almost none of the fantastic elements I mentioned before, but can have scientific principles not all that well based in modern theory OR just become a little far fetched but still use some kind of science (insert quotations as your mileage varies).

Horror, interestingly enough, while it began it's journey with fantastic leanings in it's monster films, now begins to turn to scifi leanings. (Don't get me wrong though--there's still a lot of fantastic horror and just messed up people with knives). I Am Legend gave a new take on vampirism, where the whole world became infected with a plague which turned them into vampires. Later media, such as the Resident Evil franchise used the same concept for zombies, only this time the plague was of man's creation. Then there are also media such as The Stepford Wives (released in print in 1972, in film in 1975 and 2004), a horror where men replace their wives with androids rather than deal with real women.  Another such film, (These Are) The Damned, based on H.L. Lawrence's novel The Children of Light, reveals a set of children who are product of radioactive fallout. Each are radioactive and quite poisonous to the world around them. They must live underground controlled by the government and problems arise when they are discovered by people from the town nearby.

These, in a sense are almost darker than fantastic horror as they imply that the circumstances are completely man's fault. In situations with magic, magic has always existed, and darkness tempts man into a fall. Man usually dives into the discovery of science as these films may show: many of the plagues and horrors which occur begin as "accidents" of discovery.

I mentioned above that some time ago (around the seventies, I believe) a series of subgenres emerged about what could have been. Over all this is called alternate universe genre, and I think that depending on the kind of alternate universe one creates (and what is used to create the shift from what is to what could have been). The reason I bring this up falls in one to two words, depending on stylization: steampunk. Steampunk works began with the idea of the steam engine evolving so that it became the greater power. Everything was powered by steam; cars, guns, boats. Eventually clockwork also became included in this movement and then it became a popular fashion movement (victorian wear and a lot of gears). But it was originally an intriguing science fiction literary movement and remains so. After all, there are many different variants of what happens with advance steam technology. Most of them stay in the Victorian era, for the clothing, though.

I'm not sure what else I can say about science fiction at the moment, so I'll have to leave you here and keep you tuned for the next (shorter) installment: Supernatural.