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So apparently, Mark Twain left instruction in his will that his autobiography, written in the last several years of his life, not be published until 100 years after his death.

Well. Guess what.

Start Writing Fiction blog offers up a compendium of techniques, tricks, and methods to avoid at all costs if you ever want to get published.

I have already learned of a number of these, but a few are still up for debate... case in point:

Brand Name Fever: Use of brand name alone, without accompanying visual detail, to create false verisimilitude. You can stock a future with Hondas and Sonys and IBM's and still have no idea with it looks like.

Most of the writing advice I read says exactly the opposite: that instead of gun, you should use something more specific like handgun, thin-barreled pistol, or best of all, Luger semi-auto.

I tend to agree more with the avoid-the-brand-name side; read fiction from one hundred years ago, and come across some phrase like "he split his frothingtons using an icepick," and you have no idea what in the hell that means. Okay, so lose some of the hipster cachet that comes from slinging brand names, but gain timeless understanding for your fiction.

Ode

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

-Arthur O'Shaughnessy

This strikes right to the heart of my inner grammar cop: The Vanishing Subjunctive.

Allow me to introduce you to tv tropes, a website that lists in sometimes excruciatingly full detail, the devices, conventions, or memes that a TV show (or movie, or book, or whatever) uses. As the site points out, they are not necessarily cliches. For example, from the "Battle Cry" trope:

* Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear: "To Infinity and Beyond!"
* He-Man's "By The Power of Greyskull!"
* The GI Joe team uses "Yo, Joe!"
* And on the other side: "COOOBRAAAAA!"
* Starship Troopers: "Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever!?"
* From The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of the King, before Theoden and the Rohirrim charge at Minas Tirith: "Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now!... Ride now!... Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! Death!! Death!!! FORTH, EORLINGAS!!!" (Perhaps due to it being a fancy way of saying, "Let's all go get killed", this has been described as "worst... speech... evar". Of course, the delivery makes up for it, but see Literature, below.)
* Braveheart: "FREEDOOOMM!"
* Hot Shots! lampshades this with soldiers jumping out of an airplane : (Soldier 1) Geronimo!!! (Soldier 2) Geronimo!!! (Native American) Me!!!
* Wolverines!!!

On a side note, my own crew at work has amassed a few battle cries over the years, most of which are direct pulls from some modern-day meme or other. "To the hovercraft!", abbreviated as "hovercraft" or "HC" is the current call to go forth and conquer... usually the prey is a plate of quesadillas, or a close relative of that. But it's essentially the same thing. But I digress.

I apologize in advance for all the time you will lose browsing this site.

• The coolest name in all of literature: Hrothgar.
• As far as names go, literature shot its wad over a thousand years ago.
• Tolkien came pretty close: Aragorn, Fangorn, Rohirrim, Ungoliant, Ancalagon, Morgoth, et al.
• Even Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore veers close, from a certain point of view.
• There is hope still for someone to top Hrothgar.
• I'm working on it.
• My closest entry so far, Ludwig C Funk, isn't quite there yet.

ten overused words in writing. I am guilty of using all these, I confess.

Mark Twain made this comment about using very: "Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." Very is a crutch for finding the right word to describe what you mean to say. Find the right word.

Not all sci-fi is mind candy, even though it may be clothed as such. An essay on perhaps the coolest, most widely-read science fiction novel written in these latter days points out this serious moral challenge: Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality. Mind candy because the book showcases some of the coolest concepts in science fiction ever: the battle school, the ansible, the little doctor, hive intelligence; yet decidedly not mind candy because of the moral questions it raises: deliberate cruelty as shaper of character, intent versus action, guilt as redemption.

The author of this essay points out that Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, has been criticized by some as an apologia for Adolf Hitler; but he is quick to also assert that he does not, in fact, believe this. But have a look. Rather thought-provoking discussion.

JK Rowling spoke at the Harvard commencement for 2008, talking about the fringe benefits of failure, and the necessity of imagination. Quite a thought-provoking address, I thought.

check out cult-pop.com, a highly-imaginatively-titled show about our pop culture. Or maybe our cult popture. Of most interest is (are) the John Scalzi interview(s) in the video menu. So that's what Heinlein's heir apparent looks like... damn. I guess I should've expected a geek.

[ed: after watching the full Scalzi interview, I am struck that he says he writes precisely the way I can't: largely making it up as he goes along, and seeing where it leads. I have tried this many times, and I always, always end up so tangentially astray that I quit in frustration. Planning from the top down is working much better for me.]