Viable Paradise Glossary

Here are some useful writerly terms that we picked up from Viable Paradise. You may recognize some of them.

Waxing the cat: A phrase describing the writer proclivity to procrastinate, as in "After I've waxed the cat, I'll start this story." Usually waxing the cat is followed by cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush, organizing your spoon collection, and a variety of household chores in a cyclical procession until it is once again time to wax the cat. Note the low word count that results.

As you know, Bob...: Expository prose inserted in a particularly obvious fashion, derived from the old 50s SF rhetorical device of explaining your theory to another scientist named Bob. My favorite variation on this theme was two supernatural beings expositing to one another, or "As you know, Zeus..."

Adverb Killing: Hunting down and ruthlessly destroying adverbs in your fiction.

Shiny Soup: Also known as a beautiful mess. A story which has gemlike nuggets, but is a bit muddled in its intent.

Whorelord: A particularly strong writer at Viable Paradise XIII wrote a great story with too many characters. One was a prostitute who had risen to warlord status, or, as Laura Mixon coined the term, the whorelord. It turned out that this character was the author's favorite, and this became the nickname for the rewrite (which will be beautiful, and nothing like this makes it sound.) That said, Scalzi said that Whorelord would be published by Baen, and the author herself adopted a pseudonym for it: Curry McCarnage.

I hope others remember snappy conversation and add to the list. Well, gotta go wax the cat.

Catherine

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

Drollerie Blog Tour: JA Howe

Writer Tamago is pleased to host JA Howe on the Drollerie Blog Tour. While Jessica is here, I'll be over at Imogen Howson's. And after you're done at this stop on the tour, please be sure to continue on over to Fraser Sherman's place.

Enjoy!

***

Greetings to all readers of Catherine's blog; it's a neat place to be!

I thought of a few sweet ideas for this entry, but I kept coming back to the land of Perriwinkle, my newest place to play -- well, new-old. And so I think I will give you folk a tour of the land where fairy-tale and Candyland meet.

I collect ideas, I really do; I've idea books dating back into the late 1990's that I keep around in a little box just in case -- somehow -- there comes a day when I have no idea what to write. One of these ideas went screwy a few years back, when I tried to write about a wizard who adopted two baby dragons. It was a terrible story, I finally realized, and so I scrapped it; just another of my melodramatic over-the-top writings. Seriously, it was bad. But, the idea wouldn't leave my mind. And well, a couple years ago I put it down as an outline in my computer... but I STILL couldn't figure what to do with it. At some point last year I was watching TV, and there was something on that gave me the concept for "twisted Candyland." I swear, that's what I got. And it grew and grew, like the little green man in "The King of Ireland's Son," one of my favorite Irish tales, till I had Perriwinkle.

Map and all.

I wrote of Perriwinkle with the help of many fairy-tale books and nursery rhymes, which is why I'm happy to be at Catherine's site this month, since I know she shares my love of tales from around the world! Seriously, I don't know how often I went through my extensive collection while writing it, from Japan to Germany to Ireland... And then I stuck in my own versions: For instance, there's a veterinarian in Perriwinkle who is really a vampire in therapy, there are Candy-Flour-Fighting-Fairies which every baker has nightmares about, the gingerbread men of the land work construction or are specially baked to be part of His Majesty's guard, and there's a few districts in the capital at Cookie Cutter which are devoted to Asian-esque culture. There are also some seriously nasty clans of families of Cinderella and Snow White, which are the cutthroat upper crust of the land....

...and there's my dragons. I've only just begun to play in Perriwinkle, though hearing about Halloween everywhere has started me thinking about it again (of course right when I'm working on something else!) I'm hoping that sometime soon I get to share it with the rest of the world -- it's already seeped into my wedding for next week, because my fiance and I wanted to have a theme of music and writing, our two respective fortes. Trouble is, well, while he has some lovely lines such as "through all the dischordant times..." I had nothing in my head till I started thinking well "I want to share with you my knights and goblins, protect you from the Candy-Flour-Fighting-Fairies..."

Durned things won't leave me be!

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.