Someone to learn from who's not the "don't do as I do" one like me

[shalanna]

Here's willshetterly (Will Shetterly) on writing lessons he learned from watching a film that he liked but didn't love *grin*. Good points, too.

("1. If your story isn't about dreams, don't start with a dream." This seems sensible. Then he goes on to explain why. My novel, _Paladin Spellbound_, which starts with my heroine awakening from a recurrent dream, actually *is* all about her prophetic dreams, and I don't tell the dream in full--so it avoids some of this. I have also read works that just have a dream in there "because it's cool," and *facepalm*. Go to the link for the full article.)

The title of his upcoming book is _The Hidden Academy_. That makes me think of the magical academy in my novel, _Dulcinea_, which is magically hidden (sort of the way that Hogwarts is, but my book was written before the Harry Potter books hit this side of the Pond.) Will is the writer who did a pro critique of _Dulcinea_ many years ago in an attempt to figure out how to make it palatable to New York (and, of course, what he felt needed to be done went against my artistic conception of the work--namely, cut the word count in half and make it all about the action rather than about her coming-of-age that takes place and triggers/is triggered by the action. In my view, the action is a maguffin and her change is what's important--in THAT book.) I learned stuff I used in later works from reading his remarks.

So you can see why it's cool for me to pretend that I presaged a couple of important writers in the field with the concept of a hidden school. (GRIN) Frankly, I don't know where I got the idea; I think it was from Linda Donahue, the fantasy writer, when we had formed a critique group together and she said, "You'd better be sure the Society of Mages doesn't have easy access to that magic school. You should have them put a spell on it to hide it." Anyway, I have always loved school stories like Pamela Dean's TAM LIN and Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY*. I'll be looking forward to seeing what kind of hidden academy his book's world revolves around. It seems to be an idea that intrigues many of us. Maybe we were fascinated by the idea of colleges that are kind of secreted away in the middle of a town but never actually toured or cut through by the town's residents . . . the academy is there, yet most of the townspeople never set foot on campus or think about it all that much. (Or perhaps I am overthinking things once again.)

* (And camp stories. _Donna Parker at Cherrydale_ and the same series' _Mystery at Arawak_ and Brent Hartinger's _Society of the Poison Oak_, to name a few. I am a sucker for these. Don't know why.)

He and his wife Emma Bull (coffeeem) will hold one of their weekend SF/F writing workshops in Tucson on Sept. 22-24. See her journal for details.

I had them halfway-sorta signed up to do a session here in Richardson last year (or was it the year before) when they were going to come to another event nearby during the week prior, but as it turned out, they couldn't make the other event (and we couldn't afford to fly them out; my little group of fans could afford to get a nice venue and snack trays and do the honorarium, but that was all.) You can even earn college credit (is this continuing education credit? I assume it is, but you could ask.) They are cool teachers, according to Pamela, and if she says so, it's true! (I also believe that because I had talked to Will Shetterly quite a bit in e-mail about the workshop we hoped to offer. He's cool.)

Thus, if you are able to get to the Tucson area for the workshop, I recommend that you go! Then I command that you write up the experience and post it on your journal, or at least send it to me. I was rather looking forward to the workshop. I want to know about the three kinds of stories. (I'll take a shot: yours, mine, and ours. Mine are the ones that don't sell. *wink*)

[EDIT: While I'm talking about people who can give you useful pointers--here's another How to Write a Novel, this time from llygoden. She chimes in with a couple of new ideas, such as using Lars Eighner's (hi, Lars!) plot points (I used to communicate with Lars on the old FidoNet WRITING echo all the time) and various graphic thinking-aids. Cool!]

[FURTHER EDIT: Eek, Lars is retiring from the Web? You should read his memoir of homelessness, _Travels with Lizbeth_ by Lars Eighner, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-09926-6. GO GET IT NOW. BE THERE. ALOHA. My copy's autographed, nyah. You might still be able to catch his website: http://www.larseighner.com/index.html before it goes away, if it's going to. He has (for now) Patricia C. Wrede's Worldbuilding Questions online, a dauntingly thorough exploration of things you might need to know if you are creating a fictional world. I used to have the site mirrored, but that was lost in one of my many "lost drive D:" events. Aha--I just found Patricia's questions on the SFWA site.]

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hidden schools have been around forever. I wrote about one in my teens--and I'm sure i got it from somewhere else, but I liked mine better, so it replaced the original memory.

That's not to say we can't work with the trope. But anyone who says that Rowling invented it is not paying attention.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't really saying that. Just saying that it's interesting, that synchronicity, the meme or trope that took off and told me to have a hidden school, put Hogwarts on Station Seven-and-a-Half or wherever it is, and inspired the other hidden schools. I thought it was kind of neat that we all had a different take on the same idea!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah..it's interesting, what cool ideas kind of float around in the zeitgeist for any given generation. Or in this case, two generations!

FYI

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Lars' guide on writing erotica is actually a very good writing book, period, with info applicable to fiction of any genre.

Long out of print, but used copies often show up on the web.