Author Archives: fictorians

A guest post by Tereasa Maillie.

That overly quoted English tome, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defines mercenary as “one that serves merely for wages; especially: a soldier hired into foreign service”. I’m not a soldier, although my forthrightness and commanding voice usually gets me the title of “El Generalissimo” or at least “Sir”.

I am a mercenary writer. I write ‘merely’ for wages. I have and continue to take contracts purely based on pay. I don’t really care if it’s on the fish industry, crocheting with your feet, or how to get stains out of your cat. Those are some of the ‘foreign’ topics I could write about without prior expertise. I write or edit in cold efficiency. I have very little emotion towards the subject or the writer I’m editing for. I parachute in, do my job, and get out. Is there a pay cheque involved? Will you pay me fast? These are the questions a mercenary asks.

That does not mean I don’t research the snot out of the topic I’m writing about. That’s part of the deal. As a mercenary I will know the topic inside and out to get it right. One contract I just finished was editing a MA thesis on Public Transportation in Israel. Three days in and out and a ton of cash at the end. I suddenly had to grasp and understand the topic. There was blood (red pen ink) and tears (the writer who thought all words are sacred), but the result was a defendable paper. They will receive their degree.

Mercenary writer does not equal freelance writer. I do have some freelance writing gigs. Freelance has a soft, kind consultation. I’ll work with you to make your copy beautiful. I’ll give you tea and cookies and a snuggy while we look at your first novel about your grandma during the war. But don’t mistake me for the cute and cuddly type when I have a deadline on copy ad to be delivered in 5 hours, and you’ve hired me to edit your software specs in one week.

Mercenary writing came out of a necessity to eat and a need for personal freedom. In 2009, I had just finished my time in purgatory working on my MA in history. It was soul crushing as the whole university system and my own advisor were neglectful or abusive. Who can be creative in that environment? My research contract job then turn the same worm: a stressful and meaningless existence with little creativity. This job was all about legal matters and projects that never ended. In a fit of misery, I quit my contract job and started working at a library, but all I could get was part time work. I needed work that was going to fit into my library schedule but help pay bills. Thank toast I had been writing short stories, essays and plays for years, which got my foot in the door to prove to myself and to the clients that I could write.

Can you trust a mercenary? I was at a full-time writing job, and one company point-blank stated that they did not want any freelancers, as they wanted you to be loyal to them only. I was angry: I can be loyal. I am loyal to each project and client as I have to bring all my talents and professionalism. This is the cost of being a mercenary in any field. You are a hired gun, for money. Your loyalty lasts as long as the cheque comes in. That means next week you could work for their competitor. That does not sit well with everyone.

The paid work can take over your life. Mercenaries always are looking for the next gig, the next cheque. That cuts into your personal writing time. It cuts into your creative energy. I have not finished one play since I started. I have been able to focus enough passion on my short story work that a few are done and making the rounds. However, because I’ve taken so many tours as a mercenary, my finances are stable. I can now make plans to take all of this month off just to write my novel. That is the payoff.

But maybe my heart is a little colder than it used to be.

Tereasa Maillie is a writer and researcher. She also has a very un-secret life as a producer and playwright. Her work has appeared in various poetry and short story anthologies, most recently in the Found Poetry Review and Beyond Imagination. She has a background in historical research, having attended the MA program at the University of Alberta. Her previous work includes the history of oil and gas in Alberta, Chinese medicine, First Nations and Métis history. Currently, she is a lead researcher on the Governor General Award nominated Calgary Gay History Project, focusing on the history of Calgary’s LGTBQ community.

Learning from Non-Fiction

November 16, 2015

fictorians

Non-fiction writing 1 Comment

A guest post by Billie Milholland.

NON-FICTION
In the 1980s when I wrote magazine and newspaper articles, the ‘reporter’ style was still fairly standardized. The inverted pyramid. You plunged right in with the ‘who, when, where, why, what, and how’; using the most newsworthy bits of information. The ones that delivered the highest impact.

Then you added the most sensational details. If the details seemed less than provocative (they most often did), you elevated them by stating in ways that suggested there was something more just below the surface that might be revealed later. “The bus driver neglected to mention her reason for….”. “It is interesting to note that the first person on the scene had the least to say about …”.

You wrapped up with general, background information that wouldn’t be missed if the reader didn’t get that far. The word count was tight and the belief that most readers were under-educated and overly fickle was strong. The biggest sin was ‘burying the lead’ – not waving around the flashiest information first. Bottom line… you informed people. Quickly, efficiently and with little commentary.

Direct quotes were prized, but longer anecdotes, not so much. I found it interesting however, that when I added a few anecdotes, and my beleaguered editors let them pass, I received actual fan mail.

FICTION
Leaving non-fiction behind for a while, my first foray into writing fiction led to realms of endless options. I could start slowly, building up expectations as I went along. I could dive right into the deep end of a pool of sharks and bloody up my protagonist right away. I could then wander into a stream of consciousness, before I sent my protag over a thundering waterfall clutching the last piece of her grandmother’s embroidered tablecloth.

I was giddy with freedom. Story poured out. I entertained people; informing them was secondary. I could use facts, but my story didn’t have to be based directly on facts. I could play with time and space.

NON-FICTION
Returning briefly to non-fiction, after about a decade away, I was pleasantly surprised to see that magazine writing, and to some degree, newspaper writing as well, had evolved to a more conversational style. Apparently the inverted triangle had been an American aberration, brought about by reporters trying to communicate stories during the American Civil War. Since the telegraph service could be interrupted unexpectedly, they had to make sure they top-loaded their news.

The rest of the world didn’t do it that way, and now we don’t either… well, not as much. I wrote a few cook books during this time and a small book about the North Saskatchewan River. Using a more casual, conversational style, along with a seasoning of anecdotes made those books more fun to write and they were reasonably popular.

FICTION
When I started writing fiction again, I felt very experimental. Producing successful non-fiction had taught me more about what people wanted to know. Bits of interconnected trivia could work in fiction too, if they were stitched carefully along the edges of the theme. People are information junkies at heart, but still wanted the rise and fall of a good story. I played with that in my novella in Women of the Apocalypse. The feedback I received from readers was encouraging. The feedback I received from readers of some of my short stories validated my tendency to use quirky bits of trivia in fiction.

NON-FICTION
After another decade away, when I returned to non-fiction, I found daily news tossed into endless Twitter streams; bits and pieces about immediate news, interspersed with links to longer discussions about what’s happened, what’s happening, along with various versions of ‘who, when, where and how’. Many longer discussions showed up in blog form. A brilliant system.

Because reading text online is harder than it is in traditional hard copy, I learned that blogs worked better if broken up into digestible portions by subheadings and images.

More experimentation. Information bulletins about specialized scientific studies and initiatives written for a general audience. Successes I had with those, culminated in my most recent book, Living in the SHED, which is full of bits and pieces of information, broken into digestible portions by subheadings and images. Will it be successful? Time will tell.

FICTION
2016 will be all about fiction for me. I haven’t completely processed everything I’ve learned from writing non-fiction this time, but what I do know is the rush of ideas about how to edit the first drafts of two novels I left simmering on the back burner are much different and more exciting than the ideas I had when I left them there.

Billie Milholland has bobbed back and forth from non-fiction to fiction and back again. She’s written for newspapers, magazines and had stories produced on CBC radio. Women of the Apocalypse, in which one of the four novellas is hers, won an Aurora Award in 2009. She has a short story in Bourbon and Egg Nog, the 10th Circle Christmas anthology, which won an Aurora Award in 2012. More recently, Green Man She Restless, her story in the Urban Green Man Anthology was nominated for a 2014 Aurora Award. Her most recent project, a non-fiction, environmental book, Living in the SHED, will be out in December 2015 and can be ordered at www.nswa.ab.ca. Visit Billie at www.billiemilholland.com.

Fiction and Technical Writing – What’s the Difference?

November 4, 2015

fictorians

Guest Post by Adria Laycraft

Writing is writing … right? All you do is put one word after another on the page. This fact doesn’t change, no matter if you use a pencil scratching paper or fingers tapping at a computer keyboard. It also doesn’t change whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction.

You’re all rolling your eyes at this over-simplification, aren’t you? We all know there’s so much more to it than that. As any writer can tell you, it’s a simple process, but it is not easy.

So what are the differences between the writing processes of fiction versus non-fiction? If you’re like me, working by day as a copywriter and by night as a storyteller, you probably have some interesting ways to mentally shift gears when moving from one style to the other.

I learned early on that I experience better results bouncing between freelance contracts and fiction projects if I kept them separate in obvious ways, changing not only my mental ‘headspace’ but also my physical setting. I work on tech writing at my desk, in an office chair, on a large screen laptop with a second monitor hooked to it. A true workplace environment. I have an upright posture and a logical mindset.

Then, when it’s time to scribble some fiction, I curl up on the sofa with a little netbook in my lap, a blanket, low lighting, quiet music. I’m reclined, ready to be entertained and taken away to a different place. Sometimes I even revert to pen on paper, somehow connecting even more deeply to the emotional well.

So, different rooms, different computers, different posture even…all results in a different structure of words.

This blog post request got me thinking.

Just what are the main differences between these two types of writing? Why do they require such a dramatic change in setting for me to accomplish them effectively? Instead of differences, however, I started seeing how they are similar.

Most would say one is logical and the other emotional, and while it’s easy to see why that makes sense, I’m not sure I can agree completely. It is just as important to involve the reader emotionally in technical writing. Take for instance a sales letter. If you do not elicit the right emotion from the reader, they aren’t going to buy the product or click through to the website. On the flip side, fiction written without any logic is painful to read because plotting and consistency are lost.

And while writing a sales letter (or any other non-fiction technical piece) requires careful structuring of certain key elements, what novel doesn’t? Each document has goals that are strikingly similar: to inform, inspire, educate, and entertain. A novel has an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a conclusion. A sales letter has a great headline (inciting incident), a list of benefits with testimonials to add credibility (rising action), a reason to act now (climax), and a call to action with a risk-free promise (conclusion).

So maybe the difference lies in the tone and content of each? Yes, that must be it. Fiction is often lyrical, introspective, and dramatic, while technical writing involves more facts and figures, and a more straightforward language with which to present them. Yet both require strident research to achieve the best results. That lyrical prose needs the perfect word choice…and so does the technical paper. Good research is crucial to both, so in this way they are similar once again.

What I’m trying to get at is while fiction and non-fiction may seem to have very different goals, voice, and content, when it comes time to sit and do the work of writing it all looks the same to me–elicit the desired emotion from the reader, create a good structure of all the necessary key elements, and research your subject(s) thoroughly to ensure proper word selection and the best possible content.

That said, I’ll keep writing fiction in the cozy spot in the living room, and completing my copywriting projects at my desk in the office. Somehow it makes a difference.

Adria is an author and freelance editor that once upon a time earned
Honours in Journalism at SAIT. She co-edited the popular Urban Green Man anthology in 2013, which made the ballot for the Aurora Awards. Look for her stories in Orson Scott Card’s IGMS, the Third Flatiron anthologies Abbreviated Epics and Only Disconnect, FAE and Corvidae anthologies, Tesseracts 16, Neo-opsis, On-Spec, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and Hypersonic Tales, and a few others. Adria is a grateful member of IFWA (The Imaginative Fiction Writers Association) and a proud survivor of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. She is also a member of the Calgary Association of Freelance Editors (CAFÉ).

Mixing Horror With Other Genres

October 26, 2015

fictorians

Conflict Horror Petra Klarbrunn No Comments

Guest Post by Petra Klarbrunn

Horror is more than just a genre on a tiny shelf at your local bookstore. Horror is an emotion, a revulsion, a reaction to something that triggers the baser instincts. After you read something that got under your skin, you have physical reactions. Your heart rate increases, your breathing quickens, and you might even get some goosebumps. Every sense is heightened, to the point where you hear things such as the house settling, where you see little shadows out of the corner of your eye, where your mouth gets dry, and when your skin feels oddly chilled. They’re caused by your natural instincts ramping up to a possible threat.

It’s this reaction that separates horror from other genres. Romance, with its chocolate-like endorphin rushes, comes in at a distant second place. Some even say horror and romance are the flip sides of the same coin, but I’m not that cynical to declare it true, perhaps because I’m a hopeless romantic.

Horror and romance also have something in common — they can be used within any other genre. There are arguments that the movie Alien is a horror movie first and foremost. It certainly has all the hallmarks — life and death struggles with an unknown monster that just won’t die, people who disappear, shocking events and revelations caused by man’s inhumanity towards mankind. Many folks liked the sequel, Aliens. More of the same, plus add in a kid in trouble and wave after wave of monsters attacking. The folks who saw the movies in the theatre probably left exhausted from having their bodies in a two hour fight-or-flight state, plus the ultimate shock at seeing how much a popcorn and soda would cost for each member of the family.

One can mix in horror or romance to shift the tone of the book. Romance can be used sparingly to build tension, such as the creepy love triangle between Luke, Leia, and Han Solo. Be careful not to let it derail the plot. If you’re writing a western, make sure westerny things go on while the characters woo each other. The same goes for horror. One can mix horrific things into the plot to build tension, to raise the stakes for the protagonist, or to even show how desperate some of the characters are.

“I don’t think we should unleash the world-devouring creature because your rival king made a remark about your nose, Sire.”

Releasing the Kracken should be reserved when all seems lost, and you want to add in one straw to your camel’s overburdened back at the end of the novel. Of course, make sure your heroine also has a way to defeat it, even if it means they fall in love…but that drifts off into hentai territory, which you should think long and hard about before venturing there.

No matter what genre you write, horror is something that can change the dynamic of your story. If your protagonist’s opposing army general too blah? Have the leader send in some assassins equipped with poisoned arrows — to kill the heroines love interest. Have the general unleash a paranormal entity that can’t be stopped. Those will push the general up the “evil villain” scale and certainly ramp up the tension for the heroine we’ve all come to love over the last 200 pages.

And if you really want to cause panic, add in a romance to the middle of your seven-volume military hard sci-fi epic. That should scare most of your readers to death.