And the Winner is ...

I was planning to announce this earlier in the day, but one of my judges took until now to get back to me. Also, as there previously weren't any agreements on a single entry, I ended up having to wait for her to choose before I could write this post.

That said, I have to report that the judges loved the concept and enjoyed reading all your entries. I'll start with the honorable mentions first (because I'm evil like that). These are the entries that were chosen by at least one judge.

Honorable Mentions

Bane of Anubis for "Euthanized monkey for sale. Won't bit. Doesn't like children."

Adam Heine for "Our satellites crippled, invasion was only a matter of time."

Christine H for "Shots, surgery and six months later, Snoopy gleefully strays again."

robert l'oiseau for "Even in his great agony, he mustered up a laugh." and "They came, they saw, they conquered. They had cool horns."


The award for funniest contest entry not chosen as a winner goes to Susan R. Mills for "Matt had a contest I couldn't win. I killed him." Three of the judges were amused by it, but didn't pick it to win because they felt it didn't fulfill the contest requirements adequately. I thought it was funny though.

And the winners of the First Free the Princess Ten-Word Novel Contest are ....

*drumroll*

Adam Heine for "The aliens took our chickens. Afterward, nothing tasted the same."

and

fairyhedgehog for "They came in peace. If only we'd known."

Winners: Please email me via the address in my Blogger profile with your mailing address and the title of the book you'd like as your prize.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone for participating. I loved reading all your extremely creative entries, and appreciate the contest pimpery that people undertook to do for me.

Let's do this again next year!

P.S. This marks the 100th post on Free the Princess. Tomorrow we will resume our regularly scheduled programming. (Wait a minute, this thing has scheduled programming? Why didn't I know this before?)

The Value of Summary

There are times when you can have too much detail in a story. A perfect example that I saw awhile back (I forget where) is describing your character's morning routine.

Just off the top of my head:

Stan woke at 6 a.m. He rolled out of bed, scratching an itch in his side, and walked to the bathroom. He put the toothpaste on the toothbrush and scrubbed his teeth like they'd been caked in dirt. He undressed and turned the shower on. Stan waited for the water to heat before stepping in. He squirted some body wash into one hand and scrubbed at his torso. Then he moved to his legs; then to his arms. 

See how monotonous that is? And there are some writers who can go on for a page or more like that; describing every little detail of every scene, every action, and every setting. It wastes a lot of words composing something like that when the only desire is to show the character is A Normal Person.

Much better to use summarizing sentence(s) to show the same details. Let's look at my rewritten "Stan" paragraph again.

Stan woke at 6 a.m. He went to the bathroom first, where he brushed his teeth like they'd been caked in dirt. Stan turned the shower on and undressed while he waited for the water to heat. He washed under the soothing warmth of the strong spray.

Neither paragraph is tremendously great writing, but the premise still holds. The same information is communicated in a much shorter space than it was before, though the paragraph would probably be cut if I were writing a story about "Stan" for real. It doesn't really drive the story forward, and I'd rather not (as a reader or as a writer) see monotonous stuff included simply to pad the word count.

Summary is particularly effective in scenes where there's a lot going on. If you can touch on everything the character sees in one or two sentences each, then you can still communicate the details without getting into unnecessary description about how the battle fared or some such.

On the other hand though, there are times where too much summarization can kill suspension of disbelief. This is especially true when trying to succinctly describe an emotional response. Not everything can be summed up in one or two sentences, and the details need to flow where they create an engaging experience for the reader and not exist because the writer loves their own flowery prose (which I've also seen).

And before I forget, the Ten-Word Novel Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time tonight (December 31). This is also the last blog post for this week, so Happy New Year to all my returning and new blog readers!

See you in 2010!

Holidays and Religion in Fiction

Christmas being last week and all got me thinking about the inclusion of holidays in fiction. Now, as with any scenario in your story, the holiday scene should move the tale forward or communicate something about the character via a seemingly peaceful interlude.

A perfect example is the Christmas scene in Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (Philosopher's Stone in the British edition). This scene, with Harry waking to more presents than he's ever seen in his life, is reflective of the character of the Dursleys and the past that Harry is dealing with. It communicates something about the character without feeling thrown in there at a whim.

Many other fantasy stories don't include holiday/feast day scenes at all. In considering that, I lean toward the thought that the main reason is the possibility of that holiday/feast day scene not moving the story forward at all. But perhaps another reason is that authors tend to not include holidays in fantasy because religion is one of those topics than can be almost totally ignored in any story that doesn't deal directly with it. I think that's why the religious fiction genre exists really. To give writers and readers the opportunity to create and enjoy stories focused on religion as a primary topic.

Consider this as an example of religion being pretty much ignored in fantasy fiction: The gods of the Lord of the Rings trilogy are modeled on Norse tradition -- chief god Ilúvatar is called the "All-Father" as Odin was -- but the only reason we know this is because of materials published later. I'm specifically talking about The Silmarillion and other works. Nowhere in the main text of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings do we hear even a mention of the gods of Middle-Earth. No invoking of the gods even to swear that I can recall, which is something fantasy authors are wont to do (myself included).

Religion has been a part of human existence since the first thinking people evolved. It explains the world around us, and gives the believers something to look forward to after death or strive for in this life. Why then do authors tend to ignore that facet of society in fiction? Is it because religion only sells in religious fiction? Or is it because the focus of the story doesn't require religion as a touchpoint? 

What do you think dear readers? 

P.S. The Ten-Word Novel Contest will close on Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time. Get your entries in!

Holiday Break

Christmas is easily my favorite time of the year. Snow, presents, spending time with the people you care about, presents, eggnog, hot chocolate, and did I mention presents? *grin*

I'm also looking forward to having several days off where I don't have to be at either job. Now that's the true spirit of the season -- getting all the sleep you possibly can in a short time span. In the spirit then of much of the rest of the blogosphere (or at least my little corner), I'm going to be on a brief two-day hiatus for the holiday.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukkah, Happy Kwanza, and Merry Yule! I'll see you all on Dec. 28, when we've got three days to the end of the year, and three days until the end of the Ten-Word Novel Contest!

Cyborgs and Steampunk

Cyborg /siborg/ noun -- a fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.

— ORIGIN blend of CYBER- and ORGANISM.

Cyborgs are one of the more common variations on the human condition that you see in science fiction. They are typically found in situations where the integration of man and machine has been taken to what some see as a logical "next step" along the technological advancement timeline. This can mean a robotic hand (Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi) or any other sort of technological integration up to, and including, an almost wholesale replacement of organic pieces with mechanical pieces (the Borg of Star Trek fame).

If you read any significant amount of science fiction, you've seen cyborgs at least once. Whether they're good, bad, or indifferent, there are enough stories that you're bound to run into them.

Steampunk has its own version of cyborgs. Any search for steampunk artwork will in fact bring up this picture:

This picture of Lincoln is the kind of thing you can expect to see with steampunk cyborgs. Gun arms with multi-barreled machine guns, a few metal plates here and there, and maybe some steam-powered accouterments such as mechanical legs or even mechanical innards. One of the best examples I can think of is Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters. It's more clockpunk than steampunk, but the theories Peters presents in creating the gold cloaks and black cloaks are sound examples of cyborgs in steampunk.

Now, the science-knowledgeable among us might dispute the possibility of people integrating so fully with machines. And they're right to do so. The current level of technology we're at doesn't allow for the wholesale integration that the creation of a cyborg would require. Look at the movie Robocop. There's no way the technology of the 1980s could've possibly created someone like the titular character. Robotics at that time could, and still can, barely manage to make robots do what is required of them without constant commands. That said, recent news reports and advancements in the science of cybernetics are bringing cyborgs closer and closer to reality.

But what, you may ask, does this mean for the writer of steampunk?

Well the burden of proof is both higher and lower for a steampunk writer. Higher because you're potentially working with less-advanced science (although the Ancient Greeks had robots), but lower because people accept that certain advances need to be made before cyborgs (bionics in CALLARION AT NIGHT) could be created. You need merely say that person X made these discoveries in order to ensure that the reader isn't drawn from the story.

This is, of course, the opinion of only one humble writer. But I am curious about one thing. With the ubiquitous nature of cyborgs in science fiction, is there anything you can think of that would make you not believe in the possibility?

P.S. Don't forget about the Ten-Word Novel Contest! The deadline is December 31, and the winner gets the lovely New Year's gift of a book of their choice. Ten people have already entered, so the competition is growing.

Day 2 of Contest Pimpery

I admit to being eager about the results of the Ten Word Novel Contest. We've already got a total of twelve people who have entered or said they were going to enter*, with an unlimited number of entries per person (it's ten words, why would I limit it to one entry each?). Oh, and remember to post your entry in the comments of yesterday's post.

I also have a panel of judges willing to help me select the lucky winner(s) from the available ten-word novels. These are folks whose writing talent I admire, people that I respect, and also the ones that I know how to persuade (read:bribe).

As I said before, the contest will close on Thursday, December 31. You have two weeks plus a day to get those entries in.

Overwhelm us.

* EDIT: Because I realized I said that wrong.