I'm not sure how far I can go with this, since I am ambivalent about looking closely at my writing...
Ten things that tell me I (and not someone else) wrote a story:
1) It's science fiction or fantasy. Everything I write is science fiction or fantasy, even if it doesn't entirely seem to be.
2) It will be funny. As far as I am concerned, everything I write is funny.
3) There may well be people covered with fur, though I also like feathers and scales.
4) I was writing about medieval fantasy perils in my previous post and came up with dragons and aardvarks. The aardvarks came out of nowhere as I wrote. But they sound funny and not perilous, unless you are an ant. (If you look for the aardvarks now, they are gone. I edited them out.) There must be a technical word for this, created by experts in rhetoric or English Lit: lists which include something that obviously does not fit in and makes the rest of the list look a bit silly. It's a kind of a pratfall, a way of pulling the rug out from my story. I do this a lot, though never completely. A story should be serious as well as funny.
5) There will food and drink.
6) There will be bathrooms.
7) There will lots of words that describe light: gleam, glitter, shine, flash, shimmer, glow...
8) The characters will not fit into their society. Especially, they will not be comfortable with established roles for men and women or ordinary, decent sexual behavior. They will be gay in a straight society or straight in a gay society.
9) The main characters are usually more good than bad, though now and then I try to write a jerk. But mostly I write about people I would enjoy spending time with: smart, verbal, thoughtful, mostly honorable and kind.
10) The protagonist will be alive at the end and able to keep moving on. I don't write sad endings. There is too much sadness in real life.
11) A bonus characteristic. This one really comes from my subconscious. I noticed it years ago and decided, what the heck. The characters I indentify with will have names that begin with E, A, L or N. The reason for E and A is obvious. Why L or N? Sound out Eleanor.
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5 comments:
#2, #9 & #10 are the most important elements to any book that I'm going to like. In fact, I'm not sure I'm capable of liking ANY book that doesn't have all 3.
Thanks for sharing your list!
I see several of your books at Amazon. Which would be a good first choice? (probably an impossible question)
Eleanor,
I thought you were in MINE (subconscious) through the first several of those! I especially enjoyed #4 as I have stories morph on me all the time. In fact, the one I'm preparing for its flight from the nest today has outgrown even its title. And it was such a cute one, too. Short People Have More Reason. Okay, so, I like Randy Newman. Anyway, the tiny aliens now behave too stupidly to be called smarter.
Katiebird -- Most people think Ring of Swords is my best novel, and I would probably agree. Though A Woman of the Iron People is the one that won a Tiptree Award.
Hi Eleanor, and thanks for suggesting which books of your's one might start with. I see you at cons, at art museums, even at the coffee shop sometimes, and I always think I should ask you which book of your's I should read first, and I never actually even say hello (very shy here). But now you answered my question and I didn't even have to interupt your social life! :-)
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