{"id":31376,"date":"2017-09-07T07:36:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T11:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=31376"},"modified":"2017-09-07T08:33:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T12:33:25","slug":"ferrett-steinmetz-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-uploaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2017\/09\/07\/ferrett-steinmetz-five-things-i-learned-writing-the-uploaded\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrett Steinmetz: Five Things I Learned Writing The Uploaded"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Life sucks and then you die… <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

…a cyberpunk family drama from the ingenious author of Flex.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the near future, the elderly have moved online and now live within the computer network. But that doesn\u2019t stop them interfering in the lives of the living, whose sole real purpose now is to maintain the vast servers which support digital Heaven. For one orphan that just isn’t enough \u2013 he wants more for himself and his sister than a life slaving away for the dead. It turns out that he’s not the only one who wants to reset the world…<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I think Tolkien is one of the most toxic influences on speculative fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s not because of his dodgy racial overtones in making all the orcs dark, degenerate Elves, or the way he pounded Tom Bombadil\u2019s godawful Vogon poetry into our eardrums.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Tolkien\u2019s maps.\u00a0 And his fancy-shmancy languages.\u00a0 And all his meticulous worldbuilding.<\/p>\n

Not that I\u2019m opposed to worldbuilding, mind you!\u00a0 My novel The Uploaded is soaking<\/em> in deep, crunchy cultures, because I take a single idea \u2013 so what happens 500 years after we perfect brain-uploading technologies and no one\u2019s afraid of dying any more?<\/em> \u2013 and follow that concept all the way down.<\/p>\n

But Tolkien\u2019s influence hangs over speculative fiction like its own cancerous Eye Of Sauron, leading thousands of wayward nerds to believe that you need a robust cartography program and a linguistic analyst before you can write your world-busting saga.\u00a0 I have at least ten friends who clutch their painstakingly-imagined portfolio of Coherent Magic Systems and Plausible Alternate Biologies to their chest, believing on some level that if they accumulate enough worldbuilding details, the weight of their imagination will spontaneously cause a novel to form.<\/p>\n

But no.\u00a0 Let me tell you the first thing I learned in writing The Uploaded:<\/p>\n

You Are Not Writing An RPG, So You\u2019d Better Learn To Be Your Own GM<\/h2>\n

“So they’ve invented a digital Heaven,” I thought. \u00a0“Your brain’s uploaded at the moment of death, and saved to a game server where you live forever playing the most awesome MMORPGs in existence.<\/p>\n

“How’s that change society?”<\/p>\n

Bing!<\/em> The worldbuilding centers of my brain lit up.\u00a0 Because when you know as a stone-cold fact that there\u2019s a palpable reward awaiting you when you pass on, life becomes kind of an inconvenience.\u00a0 Everyone wants to be dead – especially when the dead have the votes, and the old crusty racists never die, and the living world becomes only useful as a means of keeping the game servers running.\u00a0 Dead politicians would need to pass laws to prevent suicide, and living would become downright unfashionable, and people would come to hate tangible things because who wants to watch both your creation and<\/em> your meat-body rot when you can craft digital items that will await you in your artificial paradise?<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d been writing a roleplaying supplement, all that shit would be awesome<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0Some DM would get plotbunnied and generate their own adventure, and some players would devise compelling characters, and I<\/em> wouldn\u2019t have to be bothered with coming up with a story that utilized all these elements.<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t.\u00a0 I was writing a novel. \u00a0And while pure worldbuilding is fun for those of us with a what-if nature, you can get lost in generating artificial details.<\/p>\n

Eventually, every story needs two things:<\/p>\n

– At least one person readers will find interesting enough to follow them through 300+ pages of pure Novel, and:<\/p>\n

– A reason to get that person out of the house and adventuring.<\/p>\n

Thus far I had neither.\u00a0 So where would I start?\u00a0 Fortunately, I had a mentor who loved porn.<\/p>\n

Neil Gaiman\u2019s Porno Expertise Comes In Surprisingly Helpful<\/h2>\n

In 2008, I went to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer\u2019s Workshop, and Neil Gaiman was one of my teachers.\u00a0 And I talked to him about some half-baked idea I had for a story, and he brightened and said, \u201cOh!\u00a0 It\u2019s like porn!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhaaaaaaa?\u201d I said, boggled that Neil goddamned Gaiman was sharing his deep-seated lust for The Devil In Miss Jones with me.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr a musical,\u201d he added quickly.\u00a0 \u201cYou want an excuse plot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I do,\u201d I murmured, but by then I was, unfortunately, still stuck on the porn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, all the viewer wants in a porno is to get to the next sex scene,\u201d he explained, not at all lasciviously.\u00a0 \u201cJust like all the viewer wants in a musical is to get to the next musical number.\u00a0 Anything that gets in the way of that is going to annoy them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was, by now, ablaze wondering exactly how many pornography novels Neil Gaiman had written, presumably clever Victorian pornos where gentlemen with monocles were studiously served by prim horseboys in strict adherence to classical mythology, under a pseudonym like \u201cMelmoth The Rogerer\u201d \u2013 but he seemed into this concept of \u201cplot,\u201d so I nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you want,\u201d he told me, \u201cIs a plot that showcases as many of the weird elements of your world as possible.\u00a0 Devise something that draws your characters through the most interesting parts of your landscape and then get out, quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean climax quickly, of course!\u201d I ejaculated.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet out,\u201d he said, flinging his tea at me, and I have never heard from Mr. Gaiman or his erotic Gormenghast fanfic again.<\/p>\n

Still, his advice rang back to me when I began looking at The Uploaded again \u2013 okay, I had a ton of weird subcultures in this world where death had been conquered \u2013 the suicidal LifeGuard squadrons who were tasked with keeping the living in line, the terrorist NeoChristians who violently rejected what they saw (not illegitimately) as a soul-destroying affront to God, the orphanages where kids were dumped after their parents nipped off to the Upterlife, the scientific enclaves where they maintained the servers.<\/p>\n

So I needed a plot that would have someone herded through all of these locales, and then exit stage right.\u00a0 Probably a rescue plot \u2013 a boy on a quest to murder his sister!\u00a0 That\u2019s an excuse if ever I\u2019d heard one.\u00a0 I\u2019d knock this plot off before lunchtime and then return to scouring the net for Neil Gaiman\u2019s porn.<\/p>\n

But I was too clever, alas.\u00a0 Because:<\/p>\n

You Can\u2019t Worldbuild Someone Into Feeling<\/h2>\n

Now, what drew me to this project was how every one of our normal emotions got inverted by the presence of an irrefutable (if artificial) afterlife.\u00a0 Murdering a stranger becomes an act of charity when you know for sure that Heaven awaits your victim!\u00a0 Chain-smoking tarry cigarettes becomes a clever move to bring you to death\u2019s doorway!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s so cool, right?<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 Because here\u2019s the thing:<\/p>\n

In the early drafts of The Uploaded \u2013 and The Uploaded had many, many drafts \u2013 I\u2019d start out with something Very Clever, saying, \u201cAh ha, my lead character Amichai wants to murder his sister!\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is that in this<\/em> world, \u201cWanting to murder your sister\u201d makes you, well, a murderer.\u00a0 People thought Amichai was a dick, or wanted to know how evil his sister was that he\u2019d been driven to plotting her death.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut wait!\u201d I\u2019d cry.\u00a0 \u201cThis world is different<\/em> than ours!\u201d \u00a0And I would dump a nice, steaming load of Infodump on my poor beta reader to explain that in this<\/em> crazy world, murder was kindness and up was down and bell peppers actually taste good (don\u2019t @ me), at which point my reader would check out.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you something someone mercifully told me: If readers do not empathize with what your character wants by the end of your first page \u2013 and that\u2019s the stubby little three-quarter page of text floating under the title \u2013 it will be remarkably difficult to sell your book.<\/p>\n

Now read that again: not just understand<\/em> what your character wants.\u00a0 To empathize<\/em>.\u00a0 As in, to go, \u201cOh, I could want that too.\u201d\u00a0 You need to trigger a resonant emotion within 250 words or so.\u00a0 It likely won\u2019t be a deep emotion by that point, but that first \u201cI get this person\u201d has to be birthed on Page One<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t get emotion by explaining<\/em> things to people.\u00a0 And as such, \u201cEverything is inverted in The Uploaded!\u201d became a liability<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So what do you do?<\/p>\n

Find The Origin Of Your Character\u2019s Greatest Ache<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a lot of ways to generate sympathy, and good writers should know as many of them as possible.\u00a0 But here\u2019s a classic:<\/p>\n

Find the moment that hurt your character so bad they never recovered, and tell<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

For Amichai, I kept starting in the present, just before he broke into a hospital to kill his sister.\u00a0 But that wasn\u2019t where the average reader could emotionally hook in.<\/p>\n

So I went back to where Amichai himself<\/em> learned what the Upterlife was.\u00a0 Back when he was nine years old, having watched his parents die of a new drug-resistant plague, being told that their anguished screams was just temporary meat-trauma, they\u2019d get to paradise soon.<\/p>\n

Then they died.<\/p>\n

And they didn\u2019t call.<\/p>\n

And his sister was stuck trying to keep them in their apartment while Child Protective Services kept threatening to put them in the orphanages, and she<\/em> was only twelve, and she kept telling him that Mom and Dad still loved him, but if they loved him then why were they spending all their time playing stupid Upterlife games, why did Mom and Dad get to go to this awesome place and leave my stressed, impoverished sister to struggle alone…<\/p>\n

And then Mom and Dad called.<\/p>\n

The opening chapters are here<\/strong><\/span><\/a> – but the point is that \u201cfinding the moment where someone discovers why their world is unfair\u201d is a time-honored way of cutting to the bone.<\/p>\n

And by the time we get to \u201cWhy is Amichai breaking into a hospital to murder his sister\u201d in chapter two, well, that question\u2019s been established.\u00a0 The emotional line of \u201cWhy he cares\u201d and \u201cWhy he\u2019s upset\u201d is clean.<\/p>\n

Except there\u2019s one final problem….<\/p>\n

Know Which Tropes Are Offensive, And Do Your Best To Avoid Them<\/h2>\n

You know what people with disabilities are fucking sick of seeing?<\/p>\n

The story that tells them they\u2019d be better off dead and \u201chappy\u201d than alive and with a disability.<\/p>\n

And man, do they get that one a lot<\/em>.\u00a0 Too many stories involve anguished, paralyzed people peacefully put to rest by their lovers because you couldn\u2019t possibly<\/em> want to keep breathing in a wheelchair, amiright?\u00a0 Having dirt shoveled on your dead face is better than being blind, right?<\/p>\n

So even in a world where everyone<\/em> is measurably better off dead, where even the healthiest people long for the electronic grave, a plot like \u201cAmichai wants to kill his plague-stricken sister\u201d is gonna poke a few buttons.\u00a0 Maybe volcanically.<\/p>\n

Now, I know people with disabilities are sick of this storyline because I follow a lot of people with disabilities on Twitter.\u00a0 Which is, honestly, the least you can do if you\u2019re gonna write a book about people.\u00a0 And so I wisely realized before<\/em> feces impacted the fan that this plot needed to be retooled.<\/p>\n

So things got switched around a bit.\u00a0 Amichai has a bit of a grudge, which fomented when his fucking parents abandoned him \u2013 he hates<\/em> the Upterlife.\u00a0 He hates how everyone\u2019s ignoring the wonders of our world to stare into a goddamned monitor.\u00a0 And he hates how the dead only value the living for their muscle, not their brains.<\/p>\n

Which, thankfully, made it easy to make Amichai\u2019s quest not<\/em> to murder his sister, but rather to help convince her that life was still living even if the dead didn\u2019t value her.\u00a0 (A quest that rapidly transforms into him uncovering and then interfering with a plot designed to brainwash the living, but spoilers<\/em>, people.)<\/p>\n

Furthermore: I had some of my friends with disabilities read the text to ensure that it didn\u2019t kick them in the jimmies.\u00a0 Then I paid a sensitivity reader \u2013 or, as I think of it, \u201cA super-informed reader\u201d \u2013 to check my goddamned privilege.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying The Uploaded is perfect, of course, even if it features two wheelchair-enabled leads very prominently.\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna fuck it up somehow.\u00a0 And even then, \u201cpeople with disabilities\u201d are not a hive brain and just because the four readers with disabilities I got to spot me were cool with it doesn\u2019t mean that every single one will be.\u00a0 Someone might get offended.<\/p>\n

But I did as much due diligence as I was capable of.\u00a0 I asked people.\u00a0 I know the tropes.<\/p>\n

That is, I feel, what you owe people when you write about, you know, their existence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Ferrett Steinmetz\u2019s debut urban fantasy trilogy FLEX (and THE FLUX and FIX) features a bureaucracy-obsessed magician who is in love with the DMV, a goth videogamemancer who tries not to go all Grand Theft Auto on people, and one of the weirder magic systems yet devised. His latest book THE UPLOADED, well, you just read about it, didn\u2019t you?\u00a0 He was nominated for the Nebula in 2012 and for the Compton Crook Award in 2015, for which he remains moderately stoked, and lives in Cleveland with his very clever wife, a small black dog of indeterminate origin, and a friendly ghost.<\/p>\n

Ferrett Steinmetz: Twitter<\/span><\/a> | Website<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Uploaded: Excerpt<\/span><\/a> | Indiebound<\/span><\/a> | Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a> | Powells<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life sucks and then you die… …a cyberpunk family drama from the ingenious author of Flex. In the near future, the elderly have moved online and now live within the computer network. But that doesn\u2019t stop them interfering in the lives of the living, whose sole real purpose now is to maintain the vast servers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8a4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31376"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31390,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376\/revisions\/31390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}