Interview with moi

In advance of the release of Costume Not Included, the second novel in the To Hell and Back series about Chesney Arnstruther, autistic superhero with a demon sidekick, I've done an interview with the 42webs blog.

http://42webs.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/panic-view-matthew-hughes/

Locus Magazine review of The Other

The estimable critic and Jack Vance aficionado, Russell Letson, has given my PKD Award shortlisted novel, The Other, a long and positive review in Locus Magazine, and put it on his recommended reading list.  He says the novel ". . . is as convincingly and pleasingly Vancean as Hughes's earlier Archonate stories -- together they constitute an homage that manages to maintain its own particular flavor and sensibility."

Review of Limbo, by Bernard Wolfe

My review of Bernard Wolfe's 1952 classic sf novel, Limbo, has been posted on the SF Site.

http://www.sfsite.com/02a/lm361.htm

Interview with me (again)

A couple of months ago, Stephen Theaker interviewed me for his downloadable magazine, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.  He's now posted the interview on his blog.

http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.com/2012/01/every-dialogue-scene-is-duel-matthew.html

A confabulation debate

I posted a link to the confabulation piece on rec.arts.sf.composition, a remnant of the old usenet.  It prompted a debate with another author, Ryk E. Spoor, that I found interesting.  

I don't know if many people have newsgroup readers anymore -- I don't -- but you can always get there by way of Google groups. 

Our friend, confabulation

"A ship out on the ocean."

When I was teaching genre writing, I would say this line to the class, wait a couple of seconds, then say it again, just in case anyone had missed it.

Then I would ask if everyone had a mental image of a ship out on the ocean.  And, yes, everyone did.

I would then do a "hands up" session:  "hands up, everyone who saw a sailing ship."  A few hands would go up.

"Hands up everyone who saw a warship."  Another few, usually all male.

"A tanker or freighter?"  "A yacht?"

And so it would go.  I'd ask if the ship was coming toward them or sailing away or going left-to-right or right-to-left.

Was the sea calm, choppy, stormy?  Was it day or night?

Each person had a well realized image of a certain kind of ship on a certain kind of sea, doing this or that, under sun or moon or cloud.

But none of that extra information was included in "a ship out on the ocean."  So where did it come from?

From the writer's invaluable friend:  confabulation.

Confabulation is a deeply human quality, although we surely had it even before we became human.  It's the inherent power of the mind to take a small piece of information and fit it into its more complete context.

It was the power that let us glimpse a sliver of yellow or orange through a screen of leaves and know that the full image was of a piece of fruit that we could eat.  Or to see a tawny patch between the stalks of the long grass and know that it was a lion that could eat us.

It's also the power that, in a famous psychology experiment, convinced several students in a classroom that the person who had just burst in, threatened the professor, then run out again had been brandishing a gun.  In fact, it had been the professor's grad student assistant wielding a banana.  But, because the situation seemed to call for a gun, the beguiled undergrads' minds had conjured one up.

Interesting stuff, confabulation, and part of the reason why the courts are now understanding that they can't rely on eye-witness identification as iron-clad evidence.

But, to come back to writing, the reason why confabulation is our friend is because it means we don't have to create long, tedious descriptions of our characters and settings.  Instead, we need only concentrate on the few details that will become the dots our readers connect for themselves.

An old king on an even older throne, with hands that knew how to grasp and ears tuned against flattery.  For most readers, that's all that's needed.  Now show the king in action, doing what he does that makes him who he is -- and especially what part he plays in the story -- and you can get on with telling the tale. 

All the rest of it -- the lines on his face, the crown on his snowy hair, the brocaded robe, the carvings on the throne, the throne room itself -- will be confabulated-in by each reader.  They will, like the ships and the ocean, be different as to detail.  But that doesn't matter, does it?

It doesn't matter, because this is no real-world king that needs to be described accurately.  It is only a character that exists in the reader's mind while reading the story, and perhaps in moments of reflection when the book is closed and put on the shelf.

So choose your details carefully, get them down, and keep the story moving.  Let confabulation do the heavy lifting for you.

More observations about characters

In a response to an earlier post, Robert noted how many writers who are still learning their craft devote too much energy to describing the physical appearance of their characters.  Some thoughts in response:

Yes, description is a bugbear for many beginners.  They believe that the reader won’t be able to picture the character unless they’ve given a complete physical description.  Which, of course, is not true.  And it compounds the error to stop the story, or at least throw it into low gear while a succession of unneeded details about hair and eye color, height and weight, and so on are doled out.

I’ve written entire novels in which the lead character’s appearance is not described.  I mean, not at all.  Not a single word.  In The Damned Busters, for example, Chesney Arnstruther is described merely as a young man.  The reader probably gains the impression that he has not spent any time in fitness centers or on playing fields, but his physique is not dwelt upon.  Nor are his eyes or hair or lips or chin.

He is described by another character as “high-functioning autistic,” but the astute reader will have grasped that facet of his personality long before the phrase is uttered.  Yet he carries the story along because he is constantly doing something to address the problems that, inwardly and outwardly, confront him.

But, for those writers, who don’t feel comfortable unless they give at least a minimal description, here’s a technique I use:  give a general description, add two or three details that say something about the character’s character, then add one characteristic motion.  The motion is important, I think, because it is easier for us to envision moving objects than still ones – something to do with our evolution as creatures that were more likely to be prey than predators.

Here’s an example from The Damned Busters, describing Billy Lee Hardacre, the labor lawyer/novelist turned tv preacher:

He was broad-shouldered, tall, and fiftyish, with silver hair that looked as if it had been poured into a mold and let to set overnight. He wore tailor-made suits with western-style piping on the lapels and a big gold and diamond ring that flashed as brightly as his piercing blue eyes whenever he raised his hands to call down divine blessings--or, more often, wrath--on some celebrity whose behavior had caught his attention over the preceding week.

If I've done that right, you should have a pretty good mental picture of Billy Lee, and at least the beginnings of a sense of what kind of guy he is.