Read-aloud Editing

Posted on September 10, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

As anyone who’s been reading my site for a while has probably noticed, I’m a terrible copyeditor.  My posts are filled with typos, missing words, and all sorts of other errors.  I know I’m a poor copyeditor, and knowing this, I try very hard to catch my errors, but I simply can’t.  I’ve tried a lot of the tricks: reading sentence-by-sentence backwards, reading aloud, setting the piece aside for a day or two before going back to it.  None of them seem to work for me, and it’s not because I don’t care or don’t try.  I’m just crappy at it.  The only thing I’ve found that consistently works for me, is getting someone better at it to do it for me, but that’s often inconvenient, and I feel it imposes unduly on my writing colleagues.

For the last week or so, I’ve been trying something new.  Fellow author Ian Creasey (we’re both members of Codex) suggested using text-to-speech software and having my work read back to me.  I decided to give a few of the free/demo text-to-speech programs a try to see if this would work for me.

I’ve tried the software with the past few posts here, and with a couple of stories I’ve recently finished.  The results aren’t perfect, but I think there’s been a definite decrease in the number of copyediting errors.  It’s still not as clean as I would like, but part of that, I’m sure, is the quality of the speech software I’m using.  Free/demo software don’t have the best quality reading voices—the programs for sale have more and better voices available—so it’s not always easy to catch the errors.  But I did manage to catch a lot of additional errors that I had missed after proofreading.  This might not be the perfect panacea, but I think it might be worth the investment in better software.  Cutting my errors in half (or more) would be a huge step forward, and would make me less self-conscious about sending stories out that haven’t been edited by someone else.

For the record, I ran this post through the free version of Natural Reader, and caught six additional copyediting errors.  That’s six fewer mistakes for the world to see.

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Some Nice Words about “Portraits from the Shadow”

Posted on September 7, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I don’t usually seek out reviews of my work, but someone pointed me to Tangent’s review of the issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show containing my story “Portraits from the Shadow.”  I was gratified to see the reviewer, Michelle Ristuccia, had some kind things to say about my story:

“Minton brings us a wonderfully fleshed out paranormal story that thrives on its connection to a real past event – the Vietnam war – and the emotions that such a tragedy evokes. Trung’s search is everyone’s search for meaning after the carnage of war. I highly recommend this moving story.”

I try not to read too much into reviews (good or bad), but it’s nice to get a glowing one every once in a while.

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Galen Dara Gets Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist

Posted on September 5, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I mentioned the Hugo Award winners for fiction a few days ago, but I missed noticing that Galen Dara won a Hugo as Best Fan Artist.  I first encounter Ms. Dara’s work in the Dagan Books’ Cthulhurotica anthology.  The cover for that book is creepy, erotic, and simply stunning.  She also created the covers for other Dagan Books anthologies, each different and beautiful in its own right.

She’s been doing illustrations at Lightspeed Magazine for a while now, and she provided the stunning illustration for the “The Schrödinger War“—in fact she was working on this illustration when she won the Hugo!  I’ve spent quite some time staring at that artwork, seeing more and more details, and appreciating how effectively she captured the heart of my story.  If you need more proof, her illustration for “The Ballad of Marisol Brook” captures what I like about Ms. Dara’s work; it’s powerful and haunting.  Ms. Dara has quickly become one of my favorite artists working in speculative fiction—it doesn’t hurt that she tweeted some kind words about “The Schrödinger War,” too—and I hope that she’ll have the opportunity to illustrate more of my stories in the future.

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Inspiration: “The Schrödinger War”

Posted on September 3, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

“The Schrödinger War….”  This was a hard story to write, probably one of the hardest I’ve ever written for a variety of reasons.  It took me a year to get this one right.  Not all at once; I would periodically pick the story up and put it down again after failing.  I struggled with the speculative element a little, but mostly I struggled with Sam’s internal conflict.  I failed a lot with this one.

“The Schrödinger War” came out of a call for an anthology about extreme planets (due later this year from Chaosium) back in February of 2012.  The topic intrigued me, so I started brainstorming ideas for a badass placed to set a story.  Mind you, I had no story to go with that location; at this point it was all about the setting.  I worked through the usual places most people would think of, discarding them as quickly as they came.  I then came upon the idea of a proto-planet—a planet in the early stages of its formation—and this captured my attention, even more so after I decided that planet would be primitive Earth (called Hadean Earth).

The plot elements fell together quickly: a seemingly futile war, a man who’s lost himself as he fights over and over, the speculative element of incars and the physics of wave functions.  What was missing, however, was Sam’s true reason for being here and any sort of cohesive character arc for him.  It was missing that human element that it needed, so the story went on the shelf when I couldn’t find it.  I’d pull it down and re-read it every few weeks, hoping to find the missing piece before the anthology call closed.  I tinkered with it, gradually adding bits of Sam’s past: his wife and the shifting landscapes of H-station.  The anthology deadline passed.  I continued to work on the story.  “The Schrödinger War” finally came together when I figured out how it needed to end for Sam, and I re-wrote his last meeting with Kim and the final scene of the story in a single sitting.  I spent a hard week cutting it into final shape.  I got enthusiastic responses from my critiquing group, and sent it to John Joseph Adams at Lightspeed Magazine who accepted it in about six hours—the fastest I have ever gotten an acceptance.

If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll take the time to read “The Schrödinger War” in this month’s issue of Lightspeed Magazine.  I’m particularly proud of it.  Enjoy.

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2013 Hugo Award Winners

Posted on September 2, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

The winners of the Hugo Award were announced last night at Worldcon in Austin, Texas.  Congratulations to the winning authors:

Novel: Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi
Novella: “The Emperor’s Soul” by Brandon Sanderson
Novelette: “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan
Short Story: “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu

Often there is overlap between the Hugo and Nebula Award winners, but not this year.  I hate to admit, but I’ve not read any of these Hugo-winning stories, so it’s difficult to comment.  I noticed that all are by big name writers, but I would suspect they’re worthy of the accolade.  This is Ken Liu’s second Hugo in a row—he won the award last year for the “Paper Menagerie.”  Ken’s win surprised me a little because Aliette de Bodard’s “Immersion” was simply a stunning story.  I’ll have to see if I can locate “Mono no Aware” as well as these other works.

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“The Schrödinger War” Now Available at Lightspeed

Posted on September 1, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

For those with a subscription, my story “The Schrödinger War” is now available in the September issue of Lightspeed Magazine.  It will go live on their website this Tuesday for free reading.  As this month’s featured story, it will simultaneously appear on the science fiction website io9 as part of their “Lightspeed Presents” feature.  I’m excited about that because (a) I like io9, but more importantly (b) it will get my work in front a different, larger audience.

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All Systems Orange

Posted on August 30, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Since Duotrope went to a subscription service at the start of this year, I’ve been using The (Submission) Grinder to track what slush piles my various stories are visiting at any given time.  If you’re not aware of The Grinder, and your serious about submitting your speculative fiction, I suggest you check them out.  Much like Duotrope, they have a searchable market database and easy submission tracking.  Unlike Duotrope, they don’t charge for the service, believing your data are what make the site valuable and thus are payment enough.  They’ve also been around for over 8 months now and continue to have a growing user base, so it looks like they’ll be around for a while.

My apologies if this sounds like an advertisement—I guess it is in away—but what I really wanted to talk about was response times…again.  A while ago I looked at my response times because I felt markets had gotten slower in responding in 2013.  The data didn’t support my feeling, however.  But dang it!  Every submission I currently have out has turned orange or red in The Grinder, which means that it’s either been out longer than the average response time (orange) or longer than the publisher’s response time listed in their guidelines (red).

I should be viewing this as a positive sign, right?

That would be Rejectomancy, says that little voice in my ear.  You know, reading into how long a story has been sitting in a slush pile like it were a scattering of tea leaves.  I know it means nothing.  The overall rejection rate doesn’t change no matter how long my story sits unread on an editor’s virtual desk.  Most of those orange and reds will still come back with some version of the authorial Dear John letter—you know the form rejection I’m talking about.

I guess all there is to do is get back to writing and editing.  That novel isn’t going to edit itself; neither will those short stories.

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Alive and Well and Writing

Posted on August 27, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

I’ve been neglecting my website for a while now.  I’ve been busy editing my novel-in-progress and trying to get a short story finished and out the door at the same time.  As always, there’s not enough time for everything.

So in case anyone was worried, I am alive and well and writing—three good things to be.

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Where Should I Begin?

Posted on August 15, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

So what makes a good beginning to a story?

I’ve been asking myself that since I starting revising my novel-in-progress.  The beginning of the first draft was okay, but I didn’t feel it grabbed me hard enough, shook me twice, and dragged me into the story.  It was lacking that…I don’t know…something.

My experience is predominantly in writing short stories, but they are fundamentally different from novel beginnings?  Many short stories seem to start with a bang, right at the event that incites the story’s main action.  There isn’t time for a gradual build up, no time to get to know the characters before the bad things start happening, and little place to wax poetically about love, life or the setting.  Yet I’ve seen all of these in novel beginnings.

So what makes a good beginning for a novel?  A killer first sentence?  A solid first page?

I think short story and novel beginnings are fundamentally the same.  At the most basic level, I think beginnings need to tell the reader that something is off; that something is wrong.  It should instill in the reader a sense of tension.  In a short story I think this is done in that first sentence or paragraph at the most.  Ideally it’s the same for a novel.  That first line doesn’t need to be an overblown hook (same in a short story, in my opinion, but I think you see the big hook first line more often in short stories), but it should promise that something is not quite right.  A couple of my favorite speculative fiction beginnings are 1984 (“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”) and Neuromancer (“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”), both of which convey a sense of something wrong with the world.  They both suggest something ominous and make me want to keep reading.  And how about this opening from another one of favorite books, The Forever War: “Tonight we’re going show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”  Wow, I need to read on.

So, as I was saying, I’ve been working on the opening of my novel, and I don’t have anything I like quite yet.  What I have after some work is better than what I started with, certainly, but it still doesn’t leave me with that unsettled feeling.  If I were a reader, I think I could still put it down.  Guess I’ll have to keep working on it, and working, and working….

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A Shameless Plug and Happy Birthday to Dr. Schrödinger

Posted on August 12, 2013 by D. Thomas Minton

Leave it to Google to tell me something I didn’t know, but can now use as shameless promotion for my work.  Today would have been Erwin Schrödinger’s 126th birthday (if he were still alive, that is, or maybe undead—do zombies have birthdays?).  Most of you have probably heard of Schrödinger, or at least his most famous thought experiment—you know, the one with the cat.  Schrödinger was one of the great minds working in quantum physics in the early and mid-1900s, and was responsible for much our theory on wave functions.

I’m far from an expert in quantum mechanics, but Schrödinger’s work was part of the inspiration for my story forthcoming story “The Schrödinger War.”  Having said that, I realize I’ve opened myself up for scrutiny from the real science types (not like the title didn’t already do that) as to whether I got it right.  Likely I haven’t, but I think it’s still a good story, and I hope you’ll check it out when it’s available in early September (I’m guessing 9/3) as the featured story in Lightspeed Magazine.

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