A&A The Official Matthew Woodring Stover Discussion Thread

xx_A_xx --

See, I had a feeling.

What you say about "rigidly assigning admirable motives" is, I hope, included in the statement to which you are responding. And the differing interpretations of the evidence is more-or-less the point of the exercise. Like a trial, where prosecution and defense each present differing narratives to connect the facts in evidence; one of these narratives may be true and the other false, they both may be partially true, or they both may be entirely false . . . but in any case, the jury faces a decision about which narrative they will believe.

In trying to see inside Vergere's heart (at least, insofar as Traitor -- and, I think, Destiny's Way -- goes), one eventually comes up against a level of irreducible ambiguity. I will tell you, because I believe I actually revealed this some years before you started to hang out around here, that the "irreducible ambiguity" is a conscious narrative strategy: to place the reader in the same position that Jacen's in -- having to look at her only from the outside, and make decisions (or, as a reader, choose interpretations) based not on what you know about her heart, but on what you know about yours. In the final third of Traitor, Ganner faces the same issue, but about Jacen; he never even meets Vergere.

To me, one of the most interesting features of Traitor has always been reading what people say about it, especially when heated discussions erupt; few people who read the book seem to be able to accept her ambiguity, and so simply decide for themselves who she was and why she did what she did, which is, ironically, exactly what Vergere would want them to do. One of the Old Timers here -- Mastadge, I think, or the ParanoidAni_droid -- used to have a phrase in their sig that captured the reaction admirably:

"Often wrong, but never in doubt."

Many people are more comfortable with error than with not knowing.

DStroyer --

Caine's future is now dependent upon factors beyond my control; I have an outline and about 5,000 words of a one-shot that falls between BoT and CBK, and I have notes for a work to follow CBK, which (if it comes to pass) will be known as the Act of Faith Trilogy. So Caine could top out at eight books . . . but Caine does not make enough money to take care of my groceries, much less pay my mortgage. He's got a couple of fans out in Hollywood who are trying to make something happen for him, and I have a few projects that might be lucrative enough that I can afford to continue the Acts of Caine. So the answer is a definite maybe.

And here we are back with irreducible ambiguity . . .

 

lol, and yes.

I think that worked very well in Traitor because Jacen and Ganner were in circumstances that allowed for the strategy to logically function. However, I had a problem with that in Destiny's Way relative to Luke's talks with Vergere, because I felt he was made to 'drop the ball' while interrogating her (is that a fair construction of his intent?) in order to achieve this same type of ambiguous rendering.

To this day I have most discussions about Star Wars, and actually all forms of literature/media, outside of forums, and I have to say that the idea of a discussion eventually reaching a level of 'irreducible ambiguity' is less appreciated in frank, uncensored conversations, lol. However I do feel that it is a frequently used narrative strategy.

In terms of Traitor, I find it most enjoyable to pick apart various arguments rather than try to definitively establish who she was or why she did what she did. How she did what she did is another matter; I am more decisive in my conclusions relative to her methodology. However, that just leaves me with an overall darker take on the character than others might have (which is not saying much - i.e., I have a darker take on Kyp as a character than Luke, albeit seeing both as heroic Jedi.) I agree that the best of it are the discussions themselves.

 

Matt, is this a good stance for a writer to have:

 

Absolutely. It is unquestionably a good stance for a writer to have, and I unconditionally recommend it to any aspiring writers whose inclinations take them that direction. (I'm presuming here that your use of "good" is meant to reflect its usefulness and general value in producing appealing, high-quality narrative, as opposed to some sort of moral judgment, which I'm sure you know I try to avoid.)

It's not my stance -- I am deeply invested emotionally in both my characters and their stories, at least in part because most of what I write about is how my characters struggle to survive the psychological wounds inflicted by the difficult lives they lead. Which, of course, doesn't stop me from tormenting them with a casual brutality rarely seen outside the Old Testament, but that's a side issue. It's what I do, and at this stage in my career, I have given up trying to change (except perhaps to shift toward a somewhat lighter tone). On the other hand, it makes writing a slow and painful task, one which I do not recommend to anyone capable of doing anything else.

The fact is that for most writers, crafting quality fiction is an incredibly difficult activity, and all writers have different tricks and tools to help them keep the tale moving. I, for example, imagine myself in my characters' lives (it's a Stanislavsky Method thing), and write about what I/they see, and feel, and think. This is a strategy that helps me sort out what needs to be detailed, what can be evoked, and what can be skipped altogether.

The writer that you're quoting above sounds kind of like Karen Traviss (I'm not familiar with the series named, but I do recall that Ms. Traviss was a journalist before turning her hand to fiction), but the identity of the author is irrelevant. The only relevant issue is whether or not you enjoy the stories this writer produces; if so, then it's a good stance. If not, you should be reading somebody you like better.

Writers tend to be fiercely individual -- it's what gives us each our own distinctive style -- and what works for one may have nothing at all to do with what anyone else does.

 

Sounds like Karen Traviss doesn't have any problem with her characters taking up valuable space in her Monkeysphere.

 

Best of luck in regards to that, then. I still get chills imagining Caine looking directly into the camera and outing the audience as his enemy. There's so damn much cinematic potential in those books. I've had a teaser trailer in my head for an unhealthy amount of time.

 

Like I said before. You sir, are diabolical.

 

You have no idea how happy it makes me that I'm not the only one.

 

yes you're right. Probably why it kept me hooked

I particularly liked the Palpatine and Anakin scenes.

 

Hey Matt,

Josh/PAd here. I found a brief second-wind and thought to pop by for my annual well-wishing. Hope the past year has been kind to you, it's certainly been creatively-inspiring for us readers. I thought Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor was a fresh example of how much room there is for innovation when so many are willing to accept that it has all been done with only nostalgia to look forward to.

I've only had the opportunity to dip into Caine Black Knife but am ready to get more than just my feet wet (this sounds unintentionally sordid), once I get a hold of a copy. The facet that will likely be most interesting to me is that its told in two tenses, so to speak, with Caine's past and present converging with resonance (its the sort of device that made me actually finish Oliver Stone's "W." for instance). I was wondering if it changed the process at all for you, especially during the transitions between time lines.

Also, a random sprinkling of unrelated questions:

1. Word 'round the campfire's that we'll see your take on some crime fiction soon! I'm actually prepping my own Pulpy film Short for a January production and wanted to immerse myself in some of the past masters if any shorts or novels spring to mind, particularly with the Killers in the forefront.

2. I happened to blunder into your blog about the Higgs boson a couple of months back, and was wondering if you knew of any good reads on Quantum Theory or simply Physics in-general, I guess. In Fiction, all I'm aware of is M. John Harrison's Light and a few scatterings here and there by Alan Moore.

3. Is there still a Dead Cities or S1ngularity forum where those folk gather?

4. lastly, sorry to ramble but have you had a chance to catch Avatar yet? Curious about your thoughts on that one...

-Joshua

 

Mr. Stover, I was wondering if you read The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher? It's set in your hometown of Chicago, and the themes of life, faith and religion sound similar to something you might write. Think Spencer for Hire meets Merlin.

 

Heya, PA-d! Long time.

Shifting between verb tenses has become something like a touchstone of my style, as fans of Traitor and RotS have noticed. It is a longstanding stylistic feature of the Acts of Caine -- ever since Heroes Die, the Actor's transmitted Adventures have been recounted in present tense . . . which is nifty as hell for giving action sequences immediacy, but is clumsy for exposition, so the rest of the story (-ies) reverts to a fairly standard 3rd Person Limited. Every once in a while I get tricky with it -- say, Deliann's "download" of his experiences to Kierendal in Blade of Tyshalle, where the story is not only present tense but in reverse order.

The main New Trick in CBK is a certain amount of playing around with psychological closure (the tendency of the mind to imaginatively -- often half-unconsciously -- fill in narrative connections between events). So I crafted the story with nothing but story, if you see what I mean. Hitchcock famously described narrative art as "Life with the dull bits cut out." So I wanted to see what I could get away with not saying.

Haven't seen Avatar yet; I'm still struggling with an overdue book. The crime fiction is going to be at least a year or two down the road, since it's out of my Publishing Niche and thus will have to be written on spec. The Next Big Thing I'll be on will be the second part of Act of Atonement.

Good books on quantum theory and weird-ass physics in general for Regular Folks wuld include Kaku's Hyperspace and Gleik's Chaos; there's a new one out called How to Teach Physics to Your Dog that's been getting very favorable reviews.

For crime fiction, you need to turn to the Big Guns: Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and James Crumley. Maybe Donald Westlake's Parker books as well. Read all of each of them (which ain't all that much -- Chandler wrote only four novels, and Hammet about the same, though they each wrote a lot of shorts. Crumley only has five or six), and you'll discover that everything else in the genre is basically ringing changes on those guys; most of what isn't a nod to them involves Competent Women Stalked by the Serial Killer They're Hunting.

And no, sadly, I don't read The Dresden Files. Maybe if I ever get a week or two off . . .

 

In your opinion Matt; what is more valuable as a writer:

A life spent reading or a life spent living?

 

Both. They are not mutually exclusive.

The more you live, the more you'll probably have to say. Or at least what you have to say will more likely be worth saying. If you're not living, you may find you're not going to have a whole lot to contribute to other people's lives in your writing. Also, you're likely to encounter far more bizarre situations and conversations in life than in literature!

But the better read you are, the better chance you'll have of being able put your life experiences into a bigger context, the more likely you'll be to see whether what you want to say has already been said and how you can say it differently and relevantly, and the more you'll probably pick up nifty writerly tools to employ in your own writing.

Anyway, that's how it seems to work for me. Could work entirely differently for you. But I seem to be able to balance reading plenty of good books with the living of my social, academic and professional lives.

 

Reading is part of living. Book knowledge or experience can influence "life" experience, and "life" experience can bring you further insight regarding what a book can offer you.

 

It's a false choice.

One's life is spent living regardless of what one does while living, or for a living, if you see what I mean.

Hemingway, generally considered the epitome of "real experience" writers, was notably bookish -- reading his memoirs (i.e. A Movable Feast), one cannot mistake his casual familiarity with all the great writers of his time (English and French-language writers, at any rate). His advice to young writers was simple: "Get up before dawn and write like hell. Once your wife wakes up, spend the rest of the day making her happy." [Ladies: I hope you'll excuse the reflexive sexism of the advice; when he wrote that, it was common to address people in general as male.]

Joseph Conrad is known to have read voraciously, at least of certain Polish writers he admired; he retired from the sea in his early thirties for health reasons, and spent the rest of his life reading and writing and making friends.

Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, spent his entire youth in libraries. Never even went to college. Scared to death of flying, and so doesn't travel anywhere he can't reach by car, train or ship. Doesn't even have a driver's license. And yet he is considered (arguably) America's greatest living master of short fiction.

If one spends one's life living instead of reading, however, you won't have a prayer of producing competent narrative. You won't even know what competent narrative looks like. If you become exceedingly famous in another line of work, you might hire one or more of those bookish types to do the actual writing (worked for Shatner, for example -- though Shatner was, even at the time of his infamous Tek novels, an incredibly experienced actor of stage and screen, and thus was exposed to Actual Narrative every day he went to work).

Hope this helps.

 

So, random question, Matt -

Since Overworld/Home is basically an alt-Earth, does the geography roughly match up with ours? Caine's Adventures all take place on the "north-west continent" - does this literally mean North America? I've noticed that Overworld's flora and fauna have a distinctively new-world feel, and the geographical cues you give us match up pretty well too, for the most part...

 

Not-so-random answer:

The places where the terrains of Overworld and Earth actually match are notably few, and individual -- these are what folks in those stories call dillin (singular dil), and are the spots where someone may, by force of magic rather than technology, cross from one world to the other. On Earth, these points are often recognizable by their long local traditions of magical creatures and events. There are, for example, several dillin in Ireland, hence their surviving traditions of the Fair Folk.

The "northwest continent" of Overworld is notably short on dillin; while its climate and (non-magickal) fauna are similar to those of North America, the geography is not. If one were to, say, rotate the map of North America ninety degrees, to put California up into the Arctic Circle, one might find Memphis in more-or-less the position of Ankhana, with New Orleans as the Empire's primary seaport, Terana, and the Black Hills roughly (very roughly -- on Overworld they are forbiddingly jagged mountains) corresponding to the Gods' Teeth. But this is only an approximation for purposes of illustration; it's generally best to consider Overworld and Earth to be entirely different planets.

 

Since 2001 - its all over now. Funny tho how when Stover missed that FG my mind recalled the conversation in THIS thread - considering I chat on a few football forums, lol. But your namesake and all. Was great to see the Colts lose tho. NE fan - so maybe that's no surprise.

 

About one of your future works...

I was wondering if this was it: found as part of the advertising in one of the sample chapter books for Magic the Gathering:

And from Amazon.com:

Sounds quite fascinating... unfortunately, I know little about the character.

 

Good eye!

More on Tezzeret. And Nicol Bolas.

Also Robert E. Vardeman is a coauthor for God of War.

 

Sweet, more MWS goodness. I do hope, though, that one doesn't need to be versed in the M:tG books/universe to follow this book.

 

I did a little looking yesterday and it looks as though the Planeswalker books pretty much stand alone, each telling the story of a different Planeswalker. Who or what the Planeswalkers are I do not know. But they seem to be standalone, done-in-one novels.

 

For those of you interested in such things, Wizards has free webcomics featuring most of their current roster of planeswalkers, and some other background stuff. The one for Tezzeret takes place prior to his appearances in the novels, and is a major turning-point of his life.

And Bob Vardeman is more than just a co-author on God of War. He single-handedly rescued that book. And me.

 

Never played any Magic, but from a quick perusal of the game world it seems like a pretty decent place for Matt to spin a tale. If this can do for Wizards what Shatterpoint did for Star Wars, sign me up immediately!