Blurred Line

In a recent post, Melly made reference to the fact that she's not very fond of books about writing, on account of their making her self-conscious about what she's putting down on paper. My own history of using these books is relatively sparse. Back in my early teens, when I'd just started writing, I was given Crawford Kilian's Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. A few years later, when I was in high school, I bought myself a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, written by Cory Doctorow and Karl Schroeder. Since then, I haven't put my hands on any other how-to books.

I remember reading the first book cover to cover, absolutely fascinated with all of the things Kilian had to say about writing. However, I think, at that age, I would've done the same with almost any book. Now, if I ever happen to flip through the book again, I don't find anything I haven't already figured out by myself.

The latter book was more useful, thanks to the fact that it's filled with a vast collection of resources that go beyond simply writing (ie. I never would've discovered this site if it weren't listed in the book). In fact, I still use it. The writing portions, though, seemed somewhat obvious.

Now this isn't to shortchange the authors of these books - I'm not trying to say that they're bad writers. Actually, they're very, very good writers. The point I want to make is that, unless you're a beginner, these books end up doing one thing: slapping names onto concepts that we've already unconsciously picked up through years of practice. The most common feeling I got when I went back through these books was "Oh, so that's what that's called".

Melly's example has to do specifically with infodumps. To quote her: So now I seem unable to write a good infodump only because I am aware that it might be viewed as such and despite the fact that I used to be able to write them seamlessly.

The point she's trying to make, I think, is that when a writing book makes us conscious of a concept we were employing without a care in the world, by applying a name and a negative connotation to it, our ability to write things the way we used to goes up in smoke.

Now, when you're writing SF, infodumps are an unfortunate necessity, but I'm going to suggest that Melly's inability to write an infodump without realizing that it sucks is a good thing. I talk from experience because a similar thing happened to me when I found out about this whole infodump thing. My inner editor, who jabbed my insides with a pointy stick whenever I wrote an infodump, won out in the end, thanks to this how-to book information. As a result, I now write a lot fewer infodumps and spend a good deal of time and effort trying to weave things naturally into plot.

Of course, I still have to write the occasional infodump. And it still sucks.


Profile Writer. Student. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Movie Reviews cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Barnes&Noble.com Booksamillion.com Read it free in PDF Format Blog Exchange Experiment Results Quality Blogs Making Light The Presurfer Scalzi's Whatever Scalzi's By The Way POD-dy Mouth William Gibson Ali's QuixotiQ Writings Dave's Blogography White Screen of Despair Quantum Miss Snark Jack Slyde All Kinds of Writing Aggressive Fiction Architect by Day, Writer by Night Stalkers Not Allowed The Y Logs Totally Unauthorized Bookslut Benjamin Solah Ramblings from the Desert SF Signal Writer Unboxed the0phrastus Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 Et Cetera Feeds Atom Feed	Thursday, March 16, 2006 - On "How-to-Write" Books In a recent post, Melly made reference to the fact that she's not very fond of books about writing, on account of their making her self-conscious about what she's putting down on paper. My own history of using these books is relatively sparse. Back in my early teens, when I'd just started writing, I was given Crawford Kilian's Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. A few years later, when I was in high school, I bought myself a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, written by Cory Doctorow and Karl Schroeder. Since then, I haven't put my hands on any other how-to books. I remember reading the first book cover to cover, absolutely fascinated with all of the things Kilian had to say about writing. However, I think, at that age, I would've done the same with almost any book. Now, if I ever happen to flip through the book again, I don't find anything I haven't already figured out by myself. The latter book was more useful, thanks to the fact that it's filled with a vast collection of resources that go beyond simply writing (ie. I never would've discovered this site if it weren't listed in the book). In fact, I still use it. The writing portions, though, seemed somewhat obvious. Now this isn't to shortchange the authors of these books - I'm not trying to say that they're bad writers. Actually, they're very, very good writers. The point I want to make is that, unless you're a beginner, these books end up doing one thing: slapping names onto concepts that we've already unconsciously picked up through years of practice. The most common feeling I got when I went back through these books was "Oh, so that's what that's called". Melly's example has to do specifically with infodumps. To quote her: So now I seem unable to write a good infodump only because I am aware that it might be viewed as such and despite the fact that I used to be able to write them seamlessly. The point she's trying to make, I think, is that when a writing book makes us conscious of a concept we were employing without a care in the world, by applying a name and a negative connotation to it, our ability to write things the way we used to goes up in smoke. Now, when you're writing SF, infodumps are an unfortunate necessity, but I'm going to suggest that Melly's inability to write an infodump without realizing that it sucks is a good thing. I talk from experience because a similar thing happened to me when I found out about this whole infodump thing. My inner editor, who jabbed my insides with a pointy stick whenever I wrote an infodump, won out in the end, thanks to this how-to book information. As a result, I now write a lot fewer infodumps and spend a good deal of time and effort trying to weave things naturally into plot. Of course, I still have to write the occasional infodump. And it still sucks. Cavan blogged at 8:18 AM \| 1 comments	Progress Mass Romantic Currently: 12k Estimated Total: 30k Cavan Radio Playlist Reading The Beggar's Opera - John Gay "Marriage A-la Mode" - William Hogarth Poetry and Essays - Samuel Johnson Listening Sloan - Action Pact Charlotte Martin - On Your Shore The 88 - Over and Over Watching City of God: A- A Very Long Engagement: B+ Read My Reviews Wishlist Empire of the Senseless - Kathy Acker Brendan Benson - The Alternative To Love Internal Links Under Construction Link Link