Science Fiction! “The Book is the Boss”!
oscillon says he will buy a copy of Null-A Continuum if I write a post about Science Fiction instead of about politics. Fair enough!
Over at SFSignal, they asking SF writers what is the best writing advice they ever received.
You will be fascinated by Robert Silverberg’s answer to the question. Lester del Rey told him not to sell himself short.
Here is Silverberg:
From Mike Resnick:
Gene Wolfe:
Kage Baker:
Ben Bova:
"If you want to write for newspapers," the old man told me, "you’ve got to be able to take the most complicated things happening in the world and write it so that they can understand it."
My answer is there too, except I spend most of my time not answering the question: instead I make fun of Robert Heinlein’s writing advise. Like everyone else, I am a contrarian (and I will contradict you if you say I am not).
Rule number 1 and 2 are paramount and cannot be over-praised. The Dean of SF is exactly right. Rule 4 and 5 are paramount and cannot be over-emphasized. The Dean of SF speaks words of wisdom more precious than gold, more to be treasured than refined gold.
Rule 3 is just bad advice.
Perhaps if you are a writer who is so tempted to rewrite and rewrite that you will never post your manuscripts in the mail, by all means, obey rule 3; better to send out your first draft than to send out nothing. Perhaps if you are a weak-willed writer who listens to teachers are writer’s workshops that tell you to rewrite and rewrite until all your adjectives, as well as your personal style, are gone, by all means, obey rule 3; better to send out your rough and uncut diamond, provided it sounds like you, than to cut and polish and re-cut and re-polish until there is no stone left.
But if you are a professional, go through as many drafts as you need to create a workmanlike product. Don’t be a perfectionist: that way lies madness. But, by thunder, if you do not rewrite, then you are stuck with whatever your first instinct puts on the page. Heinlein had good first instincts. Do you? Good instincts or not, your first draft is likely to be unpolished, awkward, and gaping with plot holes you forgot to establish in chapter one, and plot threads you forgot to tie up in a knot by chapter twenty.
It is clear enough what comes of following Heinlein’s advice. Reading a Robert Heinlein novel is like reading a first draft.
While he from time to time writes a tight, well-plotted novel (for example, see Door Into Summer or Citizen Of The Galaxy) Heinlein’s typical output is merely a disorganized mess without plot, plot-twists, or character development, and the events in one chapter could have been moved to another with no change in wording. (See, for example, Glory Road or Podkayne of Mars or Farmer in the Sky or Starship Troopers or Stranger in a Strange Land). Glory Road comes to a conclusion, and then dribbles on for three or four more chapters. Each chapter is perfectly good, but has no connection to what goes before. Podkayne has a subplot concerning a bomb smuggled onto a spaceship that goes nowhere and means nothing, and ends in a pointless death and a pointless speech by Uncle Tom. Each scene is memorable, and speech is stirring, except that it is irrelevant, if not contradicted, by what the author previously established. Farmer enjoys well-written and interesting scenes that bear no relation to each other. Starship Troopers is preoccupied with speechifying about civic virtue, but there is no plot. Stranger starts out as a police-state thriller and wanders into being a satire against organized religion: it could have made two different and perfectly fine novels. Somewhere in the middle is a scene about art appreciation that goes nowhere and means nothing.
Now, on the other hand, Heinlein not only sold these books, but won plaudits and awards for them, so take my caution with a grain of salt.