Slushpile Sins #3 …
Filed under: Slushpile Sins/Writing
This continues a series of posts outlining things I’ve noticed in reading short story slush for our upcoming Carnvah House anthology, “The Infinity Swords,” and in reading slush for ezines and submissions for critique groups. I’m going to highlight things that got stories bounced from consideration. I won’t identify authors or specific stories, because my purpose isn’t to embarrass anyone. And I should add I’ve committed most of these slushpile sins myself, so if you recognize yourself in any of these posts you should realize you’re not alone.
Deja Vu
Anyone who reads much fiction knows the feeling. “I’ve seen this before.”
Well, nothing turns up the volume on that deja vu feeling like reading slush. Guaranteed. By the time you’ve gotten to your third or fourth sexy elf wench in one reading session, you’ve had more than enough. You never, ever want to see a sexy elf wench again.
I know what some of you are saying. Everything’s been done, it’s impossible not to repeat something somebody did before, all the good plots are taken …
Well, maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But I do know that writers absorb pretty much everything they read, watch, encounter, hear, etc. It all goes into a blender-brain, and it comes out when we write. Something we saw or read decades ago — so long ago we don’t remember knowing it — can end up in a story we wrote yesterday. That happens, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With artistry, you can make all those things mere brushtrokes in something new. I mean, painters all use the same colors, right?
But, for crying out loud, when your brain starts tossing that stuff into your fiction go back into the story and get rid of the stuff that everyone saw in the theaters just a few years ago. and definitely eject the stuff they’ve probably seen on DVD a dozen times. Yes, I’m talking “Lord of the Rings.”
Some submissions for “The Infinity Swords” could almost have been cut-and-pasted from the screenplay. I recall reading one story and wondering why the writer didn’t just go ahead and call his character Aragorn.
I have no idea how many subs featured mass combat at a portcullis, a la the siege at Minas Tirith. One or two even featured winged creatures swooping down on the combatants. One story, full of really strong prose, lost me when the giant battering ram was drawn up to the city gates.
I recall a while back reading a story in which a man turned into a big snake — the author thought it was the most original thing ever, but all I could think of was James Earl Jones doing the slither in “Conan the Barbarian.”
So stay away from iconic movie images — especially recent ones, especially from blockbusters, and most especially from blockbusters directly related to the genre you are writing in. Because the last thing you want to have happen when an editor is reading your story is to have him stop and think, “Damn, I really need to watch ‘Conan’ again.”
– Steve
Hello, and welcome to the blog of a sword-and-sorcery writer. Most of the stuff here is about writing fiction, but you'll also find some stuff about beer and Godzilla, a few bits of Zen, really short film reviews and my now-and-then rants about social injustice.Use the box below to search for topics within this blog.You also can find topics by category, using the list further down in this sidebar.
“So stay away from iconic movie images — especially recent ones, especially from blockbusters, and most especially from blockbusters directly related to the genre you are writing in.”
Hear, hear.
On the other hand, you can get a lot of mileage out of crossing genres, letting movies, or other kinds of written fiction, inspire you.
Case to point: One of the short stories Rudyard Kipling penned for his “Black and White” collection led me to create a sci-fi story. Different characters, different plot, different resolution, but the shell for the piece was inspired by a late 19th-century story by RK about old soldiers reminscing about campaigning in the Indian foothills.
So, go review “Mrs. Doubtfire” and spin an S&S masterpiece. Or an S&M masterpiece, if that’s how you party.
So sexy elf wenches are it these days. I still remember the feisty wenches with ah heart of gold working in a pub you could find in every quest story.
But how do you force the gates of a castle if not with a battering ram? Sure, you better don’t give it a wolf’s head and call it Grind.
“But how do you force the gates of a castle if not with a battering ram?”
…Light the gates afire by piling the dessicated corpses from the catacombs and igniting them…
…Hurl grenadoes against them filled with witchfire and the corrosive, magic-seeped bowel juices of constipated gryphons…
… Use magic and manpower to reroute a river…
… Summon a spectral fleet and have the ships ram the gates…
… or, all of the above: Fill ghost ships with dessicated corpses after filling said corpses’ bowels with corrosive witchfire and sail them up a rerouted river against the castle gates…
Or, better yet, AVOID the castle-storming scene altogether and simply have the vassel (i.e., the guy in the red Starfleet uniform) rush in and say to the protagonist, “My Lady/Sire [kind of kinky, but it works], the castle gates have fallen to the evil Demjanjuk! We must flee! Aieee!” … and then have his head/intestines/knee joints explode with crackling sounds accompanied by the smell of roasting meat.
Seriously, don’t evoke classic, well-known scenes. Just don’t. Write around them and plunk the action elsewhere. And if you must have a storming-the-gates scene, focus on a single character and his role, again, “off-center” from the battering ram, etc.:
“Miramax felt the blood seeping under the crude bandage swathing his forehead. He inhaled deeply — more pain, and the iron smell of spilt blood, mixed with the sick-sweet stench of roast flesh. The great tree from the forest of Yule lay cloven at his feet, its rune-carved surface pitted and scored.
‘So,’ he said through gritted teeth, his face a rictus of pain and despair, ‘Our attempt fails on the ill-kept promises of false mages. The Realm is lost. Hie thee to Dunkin Donuts.”
I did a critique this week and the first several grafs of the story were a 14-year-old girl being summoned from her magical herbs class to meet the headmistress — seems she was in trouble. No, her name wasn’t Harrina Potterette, and the story did take off on a different tack after that — not an especially good one, but different — but most editors (unless they HAD to, like I did) wouldn’t have given it much leeway.
sorry so long-winded.
You could also takes some pages from history and tunnel beneath the walls or the gates to weaken their foundations. Or, just keep the seige going until the people within are starved, as happened a lot.
Or get really bizarre and use catapults to lob indestructible golems over the walls …
Or summon some Godzilla-like beast to rip through the gates …
Or call on supernatural aid from a dark god …
yah, all good suggestions — but where are the Dunkin Donuts in those approaches?
Lol, I do use other ways than forcing a gate - that’s what the enemy expects, after all. So dangling some battering ram in front of the main gate all the while some guys are busy digging a mine under the opposite wall can be fun.
Too bad the idea of the giant wooden horse has been used already.
I know! Throw doughnuts at the walls!
A lot of historical gate breaches were inside jobs. A rope dangled over the wall by an unhappy citizen that allowed the attackers to gain entrance and then capture and open the gate from within. Citizens also revolted and opened the gates themselves. This mostly happened because the local Dunkin Donuts had to start rationing a few days into the siege…..
Throwing donuts at the walls would work in a Homeric (Simpson) epic. Donuts…. Ummmmmm…
Maybe throw acid at the gates and watch them dissolve.
In the middle ages, weren’t there instances of catapulting plague-ridden corpses over the walls?
I think I read a story once where the army chopped up the fallen & catapulted their body parts over the walls to demoralize the besieged.
Or conjured up bat wings and dropped body parts from above in the dead of night (pun intended).
While all sorts of bizarre things did happen during seiges, a lot of the historical ones I’ve read about were just plain LONG. The invaders camped outside the gates, cut off the supply lines and waited. As long as the invaders were able to keep their own supply lines open, they didn’t need to fight. Just wait for the locals to starve.
Not the most likely setting for a rolicking adventure, I admit. But then again, unlikely settings are often a writer’s best friend…