Category: Writing

Aaron Sorkin & Competence Porn

Spent some of yesterday evening getting caught up on “Newsroom” with my daughter Toni.  I liked it about as much as I liked “Studio 60,” but not as much as I liked “Sports Night” or “The West Wing.”  I’m one of those in love with Sorkin’s dialogue, and I can ignore his Rodenberryesque didacticism and get past his evident belief that women are a strange species that men will never understand.  The difference between the shows I love and the shows I only like is simple: how engaging the characters are.

But what is it, exactly, that makes the “Sports Night” and “The West Wing” characters so much more engaging?

Toni is the one who suggested the answer.  I first heard the term “competence porn” from Elizabeth Bear and understood it immediately.  It is delightful to watch someone be good at something, both in real life and in fiction. In real life, it fascinates us, and in fiction it pulls us closer to that character.  We loved watching Josh work his magic, and CJ turn everything around, and, well, like that.  The moments of competence porn in “Studio 60” and “Newsnight” are rare.  Sorkin’s interests clearly lie in ethical decisions made by people you don’t expect ethics from, and that’s cool. But it doesn’t pull us in as well as watching someone be brilliant.

Competence porn isn’t the only way to make a character engaging–but if, as Sorkin does (and, come to think of it, as I do) you create characters who are prickly and dysfunctional, you need to find some way to make the reader care about them, and watching them be good at things is one of the better ways.

 

Less Than a Week, Now

This little blog feels like a community to me.

To be sure, you are not all my friends, nor am I yours. Some of you make me grit my teeth and scowl a lot; others make me roll my eyes. But all of you–regulars and occasional visitors and people I admire and people who just barely tolerate me–are part of the little world that makes up this blog. Those people (I believe there are three total) that I’ve banned, I’ve banned because they interfered with that feeling.

That’s what gives me the freedom to talk about what’s on my mind, whether politics, philosophy, writing, whatever. I’m comfortable here. If I want to talk about my feelings regarding the upcoming release of The Incrementalists, I trust you people to let me ramble and not assume I’m trying to publicize it (I’ve done enough of that, for chrissakes)–in short, to understand that I just kind of need  to organize what’s in my head.

I want to talk about my feelings regarding the upcoming release of The Incrementalists.

Jen and I are in Austin where Skyler, Scott, and Egan White have graciously put us up. Skyler and I have been working. In between sections of the new one, I’ve been checking my email to see if samples of the audio book have arrived yet, and going to Goodreads to see if the rating has maybe climbed a bit, and watching the counter at Incrementalistsbook.com tick down, and checking to see if there are any new reviews.

Those are things I never do.

I honestly do not  understand why this book feels so different to me.  I’ve had books that were as much fun to write (The Phoenix Guards), and books that gave me the same glow of a job well done (Agyar) and some that filled me with the same combination of humility, awe, and pride at what I’d been a part of  (The Gypsy, Freedom and Necessity).  But this one is different in ways I do not understand, and many of the effects are not good.

I have taken “marketing” myself well beyond the point I could ever imagine I’d do.  I am working with a publicist at Tor. Me. Working with a publicist. WTF? I’ve never done that. I’ve never felt the desire to do that. I could never have imagined myself doing that. Yet, here I am. Now, I have to say, that part is (for now) a lot of fun, and it feels really good to be treated like a bit of a star. No complaints. But why am I doing it, and why do I care? It isn’t a career thing, because I am still woefully incapable of thinking in career terms: it’s about the book.

In some measure, one is always--always–blind to the quality of one’s own work, or at least to how it will be received: look at how many people like Yendi or Cowboy Feng; at how many people do not like Teckla or Agyar.  That’s part of the biz.  But this time, I can’t keep the difference between how I feel about it and how the reader will feel about it  from getting into my head.  Just for the record: if you are a writer, don’t do that. Don’t let that happen. It is a bad thing.

In my head, this book is special–an achievement in which I went beyond myself–a master work.  In my head.  Only in my head. That is hard to grasp. By now, I’ve seen several reviews. Some of them are all I could wish for, and more (“call it genius at work”!!! and the one by the Little Red Reviewer that I’ve reread twenty times). And of course, some of them just pan the book, and those aren’t terribly upsetting.

But many reviews, like the wonderfully perceptive one by Stefan Raets at Tor.com, are saying, in essence, “Yeah, I liked it. Flawed, but not bad.” The question of, “Why are  you reading reviews, you idiot?” is valid, but beside the point.  What is dawning on me is that the book is, well, a solid, fine, decent novel I can be proud of. It is not the potential award-winner that I’ve always craved more than I’d like to admit; it is not the book that will turn the entire sf community on it’s ear; it is not the book that will go out into the world and leave huge footprints. It is a good story well told; some will come to love it as much as I do, some will hate it, and some will go, “Oh, that one. Yeah, I enjoyed it.”  Just like other books.

It is not a problem that the book is like that; it is a problem that I care that the book is like that. And it is a problem that I don’t know why. Why this one and none of the others? All of the stupidities and insecurities of the first-time author are popping up in me, right down to the urge to obsessively call my editor and say, “How are pre-orders?” I know better than to do these things; I just don’t understand why, after thirty years, I suddenly want to.

This post constitutes an effort to get past that, to put it away. Right now, it is not interfering with my ability to work–work on new stuff is going extremely well.  But when, in just under 5 days, the book hits, and the entire universe does not instantly change, that’s when I fear it’ll start fucking with my work. And I cannot let them happen.

So I’m telling you about it, in hopes that just expressing these things will help alleviate them.

Thanks for listening.

 

Random, disorganized, scattershot thoughts on Cook’s post

I’m talking about this post.  And, yeah, my blog post makes no pretense of being organized or coming to any conclusion.

1. I think I need a new category tag that goes, “I’m not a feminist, but…”

2. Just because a bunch of people all get upset about something, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong.

3. In his post, giving examples of pure SF writers, he starts with this: “Issac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein to name but four…”  Um, excuse me.  Theodore Sturgeon?  Is there a different Theodore Sturgeon than the one who put human love and sexuality at the center of more stories than I’ll live to write?  Because surely he can’t mean that Theodore Sturgeon as an example of writers who avoided romance.  Am I missing something?

4. I DO agree with him about false advertising, however. I mean, when I pick up a book that claims to be well written, and, in fact, it turns out to suck galactic moose, I get really annoyed.

5. Book of the New Sun, fantasy or science fiction:  Apparently it’s fantasy, on account of the failure of the Earth to wobble properly.  Well, glad we’ve got that settled.  Let’s not talk about Doc Smith, all right?  Next up will be Lord of Light.

6. I really am uncomfortable when I find myself on the same side as so many people I so vehemently disagree with on so many issues.  It’s like when I say something on a panel and the audience applauds–it makes me think I’m taking the easy way out.  I don’t have a pathological need to be in a minority, but not being in the minority makes me twitchy, and I have to wonder if I’m letting myself fall into groupthink.  But then I remind myself that I agree with Republicans on some things–like a passionate hatred for Roosevelt (in my case, because he saved Capitalism), so I guess it’s all right.  And, you know, see point 2 above.

7. What kicks it over the edge for me is the phrase, ” the attention to detail that only women would find attractive: balls, courts, military dress, palace intrigues, gossiping, and whispering in the corridors.”  There is something so utterly, well, EWWWWW about that, that as an admirer of Bujold, I am just unable to not say something.  So I’m saying something.  Here’s what I’m saying: EWWWWWWW.

Okay, that’s all for now.  More later on how women are ruining science fiction.