Quicunque

This is my entry for this season's drabble challenge at Pan Erotica - 100 words on the theme of 'winter'. I based this on one of my collaborative fiction characters, a werewolf named Winter, whose story I wrote in 'Love Bites' in the Doors novel at PE a few years ago. It was nice to revisit him, albeit in a brief vignette.

Winter solstice; a far-off bell strikes the midnight hour.

Ash-grey and moon-silver, a wolf runs along the wood’s snow-shrouded edge. Pausing to snuff the familiar woodsmoke drifting across the frosted air from the tumbledown farm below, it raises its head to howl a night-song that pierces the glittering stillness like an arrow.

In the darkness of an upper window, a light flares up before banking to a steady glow. The wolf’s lover tends the beacon-torch that guides him home from his wilderness, until the night he too can shed his skin and dance with his mate in the moonlit snow.

A fiction genre is an artificial construct of conventions that affords us some idea of what to expect from a work, but can also prevent us from experiencing it as an individual experience rather than merely an example of a defined "type". It's both safety net and strait jacket.

Most popular fiction can be squeezed into a genre or mixture of genres, and while some authors readily market themselves as a horror writer, or a fantasy writer, many others resist being pigeonholing into just one genre. Margaret Atwood and J G Ballard denied they wrote science fiction, J K Rowling ingenuously claimed she didn't realise she was writing fantasy, and Stephen King has expressed disappointment at being seen purely as a horror writer. I think some authors are a little too quick to disassociate themselves from unfashionable genre labels, but I can understand why they might want to avoid typecasting.

I can see there is some definite value in genres. Mostly importantly maybe from the author's consideration is that genre fiction is easier to market because it can be aimed at a targeted audience. Genre readers head for genre sections of the library or bookshop. Publishers prefer works that have a ready-made niche. And yet the value of quantifiable creative criteria also comes with a definite downside.

An author defined strongly by genre is at the mercy of fad and fashion. As I write, YA horror fiction with sparkly vampires is all the rage. Next month, the trend may be (forgive the pun) dead. Being pigeonholed into a genre also means a restriction on creative range. Readers have specific expectations of genre authors and trust them to adher to an established formula. Many published writers say that if they become known for work in one genre it can be difficult to find a publisher for anything else without using resorting to a pseudonym.

As a non-published writer who will never be published, the very last thing I should be worrying about for myself is getting typecast in a genre! But I do write collaborative fiction in several online communities, and even at this very amateur level, I have never liked to be put into a box and neatly labelled.My reading tastes are eclectic and diverse, and when I write I am inspired by and incorporate many different influences. Creatively and socially, I don't want to feel myself pushed into a box, or stuck with an outmoded label long after I want to move on to something else. Why feel obliged to stay on one island when there is an entire archipelago to explore?

So when people ask what my favourite fiction genre is, or what genre would I place myself or wish to be placed into, I answer, none of them, and all of them. When I go into Waterstones I don't look at the horror section, or the crime section, because I don't read 'typical' horror or crime fiction, yet I have loved individual novels that I suppose would fall within those genres. When I was younger, our small local library didn't have genre fiction sections. It was all just "Fiction". Science fiction novels rubbed shoulders with Westerns, Tolkien sat near Tolstoy and I read widely, both popular and literary, unconstrained by classification labels. And that's how I like me and my amateur collaborative writing to be defined now. Not as action-adventure, or romance, or fantasy or science-fiction-with-a-twist-of-homoerotic-mystery. Just "fiction".

While waiting for my friend to come online and amuse me, I was idly reading through some of the collaborative science fictions novels I used to write in and it struck me how many of the characters were assassins or bounty hunters or both. Almost invariably female and kick-ass. Probably with big bazookas. They are beautiful, lethal, do mercenary work on the side, are 'not to be crossed' and 'not to be trusted'. The future is gonna be a very dangerous place to live in because if one of these sexy yet bad-ass (and almost invariably female) assassins don't get you, a sexy yet bad-ass (and almost invariably female) bounty hunter will.

And I am left scratching my head over these clichéd character types...

Every angle of the feisty (and almost invariably female) assassin/bounty hunter stock character has been pre-digested and overused so exhaustively that unless employed as a clever parody, I can only assume that it's a rather sad and dull lack of imagination that makes people keep on cloning carbon copies. And what's so appealing about mass-murders anyway? (in case anyone thinks I'm unfairly prejudiced against assassin characters, I use the same argument for vampire-fanciers *grin*).

Sure, unoriginal stereotypes can sometimes still be enjoyable. Sometimes a clichéd character type can suddenly come become more interesting if an unusual or unexpected angle can be found to them, although if the angle is too obviously contrived and/or whacky and it can just feel staged and unconvincing. Superficial, recognisable stereotype characters can also be useful (even essential, some would say) in a story to provide a familiar level of comfort and reference for the reader. But not as main characters, please! A lead character needs a certain amount of uniqueness and complexity to interest me, and I don't just mean she might do tricks with a shuriken that would make a crime-lord's eyes water.

Maybe the assassin stereotype is just a high-tech replacement for the Tart with a Heart of Gold? Whatever, my ennui with the cliché has reached the stage I automatically read no further if I find one in a story - and that applies to both amateur collaborative fiction and published fiction.

Although I generally don't write fanfic, I have dabbled. One of my forays, back in 2003, was writing a couple of original characters in a Highlander novel at Panhistoria. The fact I'd never seen any of the TV series - and indeed only the first of the movies, many years previously and well forgotten - didn't stop me. What did stop me, was when the novel was lost in the infamous Crash of '04. Many the novels at Pan were rebult from the ground up, including the Highlander one, but I never revived my characters there. They went into space in a science fiction story instead.

Recently, myself and several of my original writing partners from that first venture into Highlander territory have started to pick up our story again, after a 5 year hiatus. This time it's at Pan's sister novel, Panerotica, even though the story is no racier than it ever was (ie not really at all *chuckles*). We've started by undertaking to repost everything we had saved from Version 1 before picking up where we left off - and it's been an interesting exercise to say the least. I have managed to frighten myself with the realisation I wrote much better 5 years ago than I do now.... *laughing*. Oh, and I still haven't see any of the TV series at all!

Since you have to be a member to read everything at Panerotica I thought I'd share a brief excerpt from the story here. So here is my Watcher character, Dante Sparda, newly arrived in Rome to take up his new (and first) field assignment - observing the Immortal known as Zaekim Sanburd - and harbouring a private agenda that threatens to distract him...

Making notes

Roma, August 21st in the Year of Our Lord 1585. The Woman hath taken a House in the Monti District of the City, at the corner of the Via del Boschetto, where she doth now go by the Name of Margarita and passeth freely amongst the Artisans and all People. Your Servant hath taken a Lodging nearby, and doth Keep close her close in Observing her though she knoweth him not…

Old archive entries from long ago that had been encrypted in code by an unknown Watcher and buried deep in the dusty chronicles, until Dante had found and deciphered them. He had read them hundreds of times, using them to painstakingly plot Marguerite Chauvelin’s route across Europe and three hundred years. Now he read them again on his laptop in the small room of his pensione.

Dante sighed in wry self-amusement as he realized he’d got distracted again while painstakingly transferring the handwritten notes on his present assignment to the computer. Almost without thinking he had brought up the codeword-protected files that contained information on another Immortal, one that held a deeply personal interest for Dante. Though the chronicles asserted she had been dead these last hundred and forty years, she was the reason for his existence and his secret obsession, just as she had been his father’s.

He lit a cigarette, leaned back and closed his eyes, letting his mind slide back to how it had all begun: himself sixteen years old and left without family or means after the violent death of his father in mysterious circumstances. No one had known what to do with him, until a man he’d never seen before had turned up to “tell the boy his heritage”. This was Tomas Le Haine, and what he had told Dante had changed his life forever.

“I am here because of what your father was, and because we look after our own. Andreas Sparda was not just a bookseller, he was also a research Watcher, Dante,” Le Haine had smiled at the grief-numbed boy gently. When he returned to the Watcher Academy in Geneva, he had taken Dante to train him to follow in his father’s path.

But although he was studious and often found pouring over old manuscripts in the library, there proved to be a secretive and wild streak in Dante. He was often missing for hours or even several days, from which he would return inexplicably cut and bruised as if from a fight.

He told no one, not even his beloved mentor, that he had now discovered something to focus his bitter vendetta on. It was in his father’s personal notebooks recording their own family history that he had first found the name of the obsession that had drawn Andreas Sparda into this secret society, and hence to his death.

… Shit! The forgotten cigarette had now burned down low enough to threaten Dante’s fingers and he quickly stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray on the writing desk. A glance at his watch showed he had spent longer simply sitting here mulling over the past than he could afford. Shaking his head and muttering at himself, he closed the Chauvelin file, and dutifully began a new one to continue transcribing notes on the one who called herself Zaekim Sanburd instead.

[from Highlander: For All Eternity, all rights reserved]

For many of us who write in places like Panhistoria and Pan Erotica that are collaberative/roleplay communties - call it what you will - a character whose mantle we assume often becomes more than simply a fictional being. Over the years we become so familiar with that character that it becomes ourself. The avatar and name we've chosen becomes our public representation; we are known, measured, and often influenced by our alter-ego. They are more real than a childhood invisible friend, and yet insubstantial as a daydream.

"Jerry Cornelius" or "Jerry C" or even "Jerry" is not my real name, but I have travelled under it to the extent where it feels like it is. It's no longer anything to do with the selection of the name of my favourite Moorcock character for my new Staff persona at Panhistoria, since my Jerry swiftly took on an identity all of his own. He was always much more outgoing and cheekier than his shy and introspective creator, and maybe sadly, he was also outspoken *chuckles*. But he was for a brief time even popular I believe, and he opened doors for me and grabbed me by the hand and dragged me through winding corridors and dusty attics and soaring ivory towers.

And now I don't know what to do with him.

He was never a character I wrote in fiction, with one brief exception (a role as mad scientist Professor Willi Van de Graaff in the pulp scifi episode of Pan's version of Survivor!), and the purpose for which he was created is no longer valid. Baldly, he is excess to my now-modest requirements, a shadow, a relic no longer needed. I considered terminating his existence, but even as my fingers hovered over the 'delete' button next to his name, I just couldn't go through with it *chuckles*. I've always been sentimental and nostalgic about even my lesser alter-egos, so it's probably unsurprising.

Maybe one day I will have grown away from him enough to sever the umbilical cord, but for the moment, my beloved brat continues to linger in precarious limbo, endlessly chain-smoking his hand-rolled cigarettes and passing wry observations on life, the universe and everything else he's not at all qualified to judge.

Today when I went out for my walk, I took along a small notebook tucked snugly into my hip pocket. Ideas for my next collaborative fiction posts, snatches of conversation and description often come to me as I’m walking along with my brain disconnected, but by the time I get home I’ve forgotten them and they’re lost for good. So, I thought I could perch on a stile or fallen tree and scribble these flashes of brilliance down in the notebook as-and-when I think of them. Okay, so this idea is probably a no-brainer to any creative writing gurus who might happen to read this, but it was a giant mental leap for Jerry-kind.

Tomorrow, I will even remember to take a pen too….

Thinking about the notebook idea, it occurs to me to wonder if, after declaring for years that I am a humble roleplay writer, with neither talent or aspiration to be anything more literary, all these writing tips and advice I’m surrounded by in the communities I frequent might not be rubbing off on me – am I starting to take my writing seriously, egads?! No, no, I can quickly reassure myself on that account! Writing is, and always will be, nothing more a modest outlet of personal creativity for me. I admire those with ambitions, but I’ve long since learned that for me, the moment I undertake something too seriously it becomes a duty and not a pleasure.

I leave you with one of my favourite thought-provoking quotations from Jung: “But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.”

Another piece of fiction from me. The beginning of a fantasy story that started out as the familiar old 'portal between the worlds' scenario but was beginning to incorporate all kinds of wierd, disparate elements just before it's host 'novel' at Panhistoria came to an end.

Yes, I suppose really one day I should post a sample of what I'm writing NOW rather than older, defunct stuff. But this is as much for me as it is for you (my hypothetical reader, maybe I have one!) and I am shamelessly prone to nostalgia. I can see the faults in these pieces now, and even ways to improve them (though I haven't), but that's half the point of this exercise for me.

So with no further woffle, here is Burn - a Fire Elemental, resident of Faerie, and reluctant guardian-to-be of that pesky portal.

The Earth Moved in Faerie

Something was terribly wrong. The Land knew it too, and moaned and trembled with its unease. The rumbling echoes of the groundquake and following rockfall faded back into silence, and after a brief pause during which everything seemed to hang in tense stillness, the birds began to sing again, though tentatively. The black horse, which had lifted its head from cropping the sparse grass to stare with anxiously pricked ears at the mountains facing them across the forested valley, gave a soft snort and stamped a hind-hoof, nosing at its master’s shoulder.

Burn absently murmured soothingly to it and patted its strong arching neck. “And what was that?” he mused. It was a rhetorical question – he knew what it was, just not what had caused it.

I don’t know but I don’t like it, said a small leathery voice from inside his jerkin. I think we should move on. Wherever we’re going.

“Hmm.” Burn looked across the valley at the hillsides beyond and frowned. There wasn’t much that could make a more-or-less immortal fire-elemental uneasy, but the series of unusual events he’d encountered over the past few days were getting close to it. Two days ago, he’d been drawn by the smell of fire and smoke to a meadow down in the valley below them, where he’d found nothing but ash blowing amongst the trees and long grass. The work of dragons, he’d assumed, scenting sulphur and brimstone on the hot breeze, but the mighty creatures generally kept to the mountain fastnesses and were rare visitors in the valley without good reason.

He thought he understood the reason for the dragons’ presence when he went a little further, and in a small clearing in the woods he found a rift in the fabric of the world, a rippling shimmer in the Spring sunlight that as he stepped closer revealed a view into another world beyond. The world of the humans, Burn had decided, creatures he generally had nothing to do with, not even those who had passed into Faery years before and stayed. He never went near their small, scattered settlements. He saw no point in it although he didn’t resent or regret their presence in the Land.

Small rips in the continuum were not uncommon and generally easily sealed, but Burn could see this one was something different. It had a force of its own that hissed in the wind and rippled in the aether, as if in defiance of any attempt to close it. Not that Burn did even think of trying to close it: he was Fire and this was not his responsibility. He had simply ridden away, assuming those who could, would deal with it.

But since then, he had begun to wonder. The next day he had found something wandering about in the valley that had no right to be there and had aimed a small metal weapon at him that spat fire. Burn had retaliated in kind and left the ash to mingle with that already lightly dusting the leaves of the trees. And then today—the Land itself had spoken and Burn realized that the rift he had ridden away from was of more ominous significance than he’d thought.

But still, he was a fire-elemental and such things as holding the boundaries between the Worlds were not his business. He gathered up his horse’s reins and swung into the saddle, careful not to squash the salamander that lay quietly beneath his jerkin. Normally Pyro would have been up riding on his shoulder and filling his ears with its chatter, but today the little creature was silent and hiding.

The big black horse moved sure-footedly on the rocky slope down to the valley floor, ears flicking back and forth as if it too had caught some of the salamander’s unease. As the ground levelled out and became more thickly wooded, Burn turned its head into the trees and crossed the valley floor at its narrowest point, fording the small stream that meandered along its length until again the land began to rise towards the foothills on the other side. What had made him decide to see for himself the aftermath of the Land’s protest he couldn’t say, and he never asked himself because he never questioned his own motives for anything.

Like many other creative fiction writers, I have a virtual cigar-box full of beginnings that have no endings. A good collaborative fiction writer tries on many different types of character and ventures into a variety of scenarios and histories during his journeys. Although my experiments have not always worked, I would like to think I have at least voyaged, and my virtual cigar-box contains a collection of old posts from my early days at Panhistoria when I was trying on various characters and novels as if they were hats.

Some of these posts are the only ones I wrote for that particular character. Sometimes I found the hat I tried on just didn't suit me, or it was too constrictive or cut from the wrong cloth. Several of the posts are for novels long since lost to posterity. None of these characters exist in my current fictional dabblings, although some of the names live on in different roles.

But I cling to these outdated and defunct introductions, not simply to revisit them and (hopefully!) consider how I might have improved since, but also because although they are no longer tied to their original novels/storylines, maybe they will one day fly again as something else altogether or provide inspiration for future stories.

This one is relatively 'recent' - from 2004. It was the beginning of a story in the pirate-themed collaborative fiction group at Panhistoria called Ile de Torture, and although neither the character nor the story came to anything, I was fond of him - Christophe Malheur, mixed-blood plantation foreman and local voodoo priest. Somedays, I feel he may still have a story to tell....

Answering Marie's summons

On this wildest of nights, the boy sent to fetch Christophe Malheur found him sitting on the storm-torn wooden verandah of his house with the wind whipping his long black hair about his face and lightening reflecting a yellowish hue in his ebony eyes. Thunder rolled back from the hulking black mass of Mont Pelée and lightening twisted in brilliant flashes through the torrential rain, but Christophe’s quiet observation of the storm’s wrath was more of appreciation than concern. They said he had been born at the height of just such a storm, his mother’s agonized cries muffled by the roll of Shango’s vengeful drums while the mambo-midwife called on the loas to give life and protection, and something of the storm had always remained in him.

He didn’t seen either surprised or much concerned to see the boy appearing on his doorstep in such weather, but simply got to his feet, took hold of the boy’s thin arm and hauled him inside the house out of the tearing wind and rain before remarking softly, “Not a good evening for a stroll, mon p’tit, so what’s wrong?”

“Madame Leveau sent me,” stammered the child, breathless with the force of the storm and the exertion of running. “They found a man washed up by the storm at Anse Ceron and took him to Colline Plaisante.” He danced from foot to foot nervously under the steady regard of Christophe’s ebony gaze, wide-eyed with awe of this man the gens de couleur called Nwa Kònèy, the black crow.

Most people on first meeting the facteur of Marie Leveau’s plantation tended to assume from his looks that Christophe Malheur was white—maybe even one of those pure-blood but dirt-poor haute Français one could find around the island. But he never troubled to conceal the quarter of his blood that was Dahomean or his servitude to the loas, and this had brought him a certain respect amongst the people of color, both slave and free, around Anse Ceron.

Christophe nodded his understand of the situation, calmly pushing long wind-tangled hair off his sharp-featured face. “I’ll go straight away. Has the doctor been sent for?” he asked the boy. “Good. Now you stay inside, mon p’tit, you may shelter here til the storm’s passed. But mind you don’t touch anything.”

“Non, m’sieur, I won’t!” The boy glanced nervously round the room, which was dimly lit by a single candelabra standing on what appeared to be a small shrine against the wall: Nwa Kònèy’s djab-spirit was said to be possessive and fierce if you were not safely protected with its garde.

“Mesi,” Christophe smiled at him and touched his head gently, then like a storm-crow was gone into the raging night.


If you wish to explore the stories told in Ile de Torture further, you can use the guest login option at Panhistoria to read there.

I have decided that one of the surest ways for me to hitting a writer's block is to be over-critical of what I'm doing. I've spent the last few weeks reading what a number of admirable writers have to say about writing, absorbing their tips and tricks, their good advice and even the conflicting advice. I've even re-posted some of the tips! (see previous entry...) But the net result for me personally has not been what I wanted or expected.

Remember that scene in A Knight's Tale where Count Adhemar (the effortlessly sexy Rufus Sewell) contemptuously dismisses our hero? "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

That's how I feel *chuckles*. I've never been a confident writer as I fell into collaborative storyplay quite by accident, and I have never thought of myself as being anything more than an averagely entertaining two-bit hack. Although naturally, I like to try and do the best I can (I am a prideful two-bit hack!), I've never had pretensions to write for publication or anything high-falutin' like that. It's just something I do to entertain myself and my co-writers. But lest anyone think I am being overly or falsely modest here, I will add that I consider myself to be at least as 'good' a writer as many of my louder peers *grins*

Anyway, the Christmas holiday gave me an enforced break from my post-writing schedule, and as always when my routine is interrupted, it takes me a little while to get back into the flow again. But this time, I've felt strangely more reluctant than usual. And now I've finally managed to crack the posting drought, I think I've nailed why.

Somewhere, amongst all this good writing advice, I almost forgot that for all my admitted writing sins, I do still enjoy my modest forays into storytelling. I was starting to evaluate my simple little collaborative stories with a serious intensity that, for me, risked negating the fun I had in writing them. To put it baldly - I was starting to scare myself off. I was looking at my words on the screen and weighing them, measuring them, and finding them wanting.

Nope indeedy. My writing just doesn't withstand that level of critical scrutiny and come out of it undented *chuckles*

Well, I don't need to make myself feel inadequately gifted, or to market what I don't have! Most of what I write will never be read by anyone other than my writing partner because even in the Pans, I'm not a high profile roleplay writer in high profile novels. That's okay by me, and it even gives me a sense of relief and liberty to know there are only two people I truly need to improve my writing for and satisfy - myself and my writing partner.

So although I shall continue to read, and maybe even comment on, all the excellent creative writing tips and advice, I'm going to cheerfully chill out about it all and not worry about being serious or competitive, because that’s not why I personally do it. For me, the bit of writing I do will always remain a modest hobby. I want it to stay an enjoyable one, or it just wouldn’t be worth doing.

Good writing advice from an author whose succinctly clipped and immediate style (a style she calls "very tight limited third person") I have always envied as much as her imagination.

All following text is copyright © 1995 by C.J. Cherryh who gives permission it to be reprinted with full credit.

Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find 'em, root 'em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.

1. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been....combined with "by" or with "by....someone" implied but not stated. Such structures are passives. In general, limit passive verb use to one or two per book. The word "by" followed by a person is an easy flag for passives.

2. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been....combined with an adjective. "He was sad as he walked about the apartment." "He moped about the apartment." A single colorful verb is stronger than any was + adjective; but don't slide to the polar opposite and overuse colorful verbs. There are writers that vastly overuse the "be" verb; if you are one, fix it. If you aren't one---don't, because overfixing it will commit the next error.

3. florid verbs. "The car grumbled its way to the curb" is on the verge of being so colorful it's distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}

If a manuscript looks as if it's sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is "unusual," if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story...fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don't use an odd expression. This is prose.

This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs.

4. odd connectives. Some writers overuse "as" and "then" in an attempt to avoid "and" or "but," which themselves can become a tic. But "as" is only for truly simultaneous action. The common deck of conjunctions available is:

- when (temporal)
- if (conditional)
- since (ambiguous between temporal and causal)
- although (concessive)
- because (causal)
- and (connective)
- but (contrasting)
- as (contemporaneous action or sub for "because") while (roughly equal to "as")

These are the ones I can think of. If you use some too much and others practically never, be more even-handed. Then, BTW, is originally more of an adverb than a proper conjunction, although it seems to be drifting toward use as a conjunction. However is really a peculiar conjunction, demanding in most finicky usage to be placed *after* the subject of the clause.

Don't forget the correlatives, either...or, neither...nor, and "not only...but also."
And "so that," "in order that," and the far shorter and occasionally merciful infinitive: "to..{verb}something."

5. Descriptive writerisms. Things that have become "conventions of prose" that personally stop me cold in text.

- "framed by" followed by hair, tresses, curls, or most anything cute.
- "swelling bosom"
- "heart-shaped face"
- "set off by": see "framed by"
- "revealed" or "revealed by": see "framed by." Too precious for words when followed by a fashion statement.

mirrors....avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. But it doesn't count if they don't reflect...by which I mean see the list above.

If you haven't read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

limpid pools and farm ponds: I don't care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it's a mirror.

As a general rule...your viewpoint characters should have less, rather than more, description than anyone else: a reader of different skin or hair color ought to be able to sink into this persona without being continually jolted by contrary information.
Stick to what your observer can observe. One's own blushes can be felt, but not seen, unless one is facing....a mirror. See above.

"as he turned, then stepped aside from the descending blow..." First of all, it takes longer to read than to happen: pacing fault. Second, the "then" places action #2 sequentially after #1, which makes the whole evasion sequence a 1-2 which won't work. This guy is dead or the opponent was telegraphing his moves in a panel-by-panel comic book style which won't do for regular prose. Clunky. Slow. Fatally slow.

"Again" or worse "once again." Established writers don't tend to overuse this one: it seems like a neo fault, possibly a mental writerly stammer---lacking a next thing to do, our hero does it "again" or "once again" or "even yet." Toss "still" and "yet" onto the pile and use them sparingly.

6. Dead verbs. Colorless verbs.

- walked
- turned
- crossed
- run, ran
- go, went, gone
- leave, left
- have, had
- get, got

You can add your own often used colorless verbs: these are verbs that convey an action but don't add any other information. A verb you've had to modify (change) with an adverb is likely inadequate to the job you assigned it to do.

Colorless verb with inadequate adverb: "He walked slowly across the room."
More informative verb with no adverb: "He trudged across the room," "He paced across the room," "He stalked across the room," each one a different meaning, different situation. But please see problem 3, above, and don't go overboard.

7. Themely English
With apologies to hard-working English teachers, school English is not fiction English.
Understand that the meticulous English style you labored over in school, including the use of complete sentences and the structure of classic theme-sentence paragraphs, was directed toward the production of non-fiction reports, resumes, and other non-fiction applications.

The first thing you have to do to write fiction? Suspect all the English style you learned in school and violate rules at need. Many of those rules will turn out to apply; many won't.

{Be ready to defend your choices. If you are lucky, you will be copyedited. Occasionally the copyeditor will be technically right but fictionally wrong and you will have to tell your editor why you want that particular expression left alone.}

8. Scaffolding and spaghetti. Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many "which" clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.

"What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation." Flowery and overstructured. "What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They'd never seen anything like it." The second isn't great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in "which" and "who" clauses.
In other words---be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of "which" and "what" and "who." Dump the "which-what-who" and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

9. A short cut to "who" and "whom."

Nominative: who
Possessive: whose
Objective: whom

The rule:
1. treat the "who-clause" as a mini-sentence. If you could substitute "he" for the who-whom, it's a "who." If you could substitute "him" for the who-whom it's a "whom."
The trick is where ellipsis has occurred...or where parentheticals have been inserted...and the number of people in important and memorable places who get it wrong. "Who...do I see?" Wrong: I see he? No. I see "him." Whom do I see?

2. "Who" never changes case to match an antecedent. (word to which it refers)
I blame them who made the unjust law. CORRECT.
It is she whom they blame. CORRECT: The who-clause is WHOM THEY BLAME.
They blame HER=him, =whom.
I am the one WHO is at fault. CORRECT.
I am the one WHOM they blame. CORRECT.
They took him WHOM they blamed. CORRECT---but not because WHOM matches HIM: that doesn't matter: correct because "they" is the subject of "blamed" and "whom" is the object.
I am he WHOM THEY BLAME. CORRECT. Whom is the "object" of "they blame."

Back to rule one: "who" clauses are completely independent in case from the rest of the sentence. The case of "who" in its clause changes by the internal logic of the clause and by NO influence outside the clause. Repeat to yourself: there is no connection, there is no connection 3 x and you will never mistake for whom the bell tolls.

The examples above probably grate over your nerves. That's why "that" is gaining in popularity in the vernacular and why a lot of copyeditors will correct you incorrectly on this point. I'm beginning to believe that nine tenths of the English-speaking universe can't handle these little clauses.

10. -ing.
"Shouldering his pack and setting forth, he crossed the river..." No, he didn't. Not unless his pack was in the river. Implies simultaneity. The participles are just like any other verbal form. They aren't a substitute legal everywhere, or a quick fix for a complex sequence of motions. Write them on the fly if you like, but once imbedded in text they're hard to search out when you want to get rid of their repetitive cadence, because -ing is part of so many fully constructed verbs {am going, etc.}

-ness
A substitute for thinking of the right word. "Darkness," "unhappiness," and such come of tacking -ness (or occasionally - ion) onto words. There's often a better answer. Use it as needed.

As a general rule, use a major or stand-out vocabulary word only once a paragraph, maybe twice a page, and if truly outre, only once per book. Parallels are clear and proper exceptions to this, and don't vary your word choice to the point of silliness: see error 3.

CHERRYH'S LAW: NO RULE SHOULD BE FOLLOWED OFF A CLIFF.

Wyatt has posted in his blog - Plotting Between Collaborative Writers - about the fact that most collaborative fiction stories at Pan Historia are presumed to keep rolling on eternally into an indefinite future, which can make coming up with new plot ideas all the time a real challenge.

I have to confess that I personally often find difficulties with very long-term stories because I run out of inspiration, or get bored and distracted by something new and fresh. Sometimes you just have to accept you have hit the end of the story's trail and know when to call it a day - to continue dragging it out beyond its natural end would be akin to aging rockers trying to wring out one last tour for a yawning audience before they kick the bucket.

The first time my co-writer gently explained to me the story we'd been writing for years was to all intents and purposes now told and that we should write "The End" beneath it, I felt - weird. I had learned to write in a culture where stories didn't end (at least not deliberately). I had grown to love our characters and feel comfortable in their world - how could I simply set them aside?

We compromised. We told ourselves we would close this story arc and put our beloved characters into retirement, a little hiberation period, give them a holiday - just until we had fresh ideas for them, you know? The next time was easier, and the time after that it was I who suggested "The End" was due.

Now, I don't embark on a storyline with the assumption it's going to be a forever thing. I have learnt that ending a story can be a virtue, not an admission of failure. Since I generally write one-on-one, my partner and I now set off knowing our story is likely to have a definite end, and that when we reach it, we will sign it off with a cheerful flourish and start a new one. There are so many stories we want to tell, and only a limited amount of time to write them, after all!

For this reason I am a huge fan of the anthology novels (a 'novel' in this context is Panspeak for a collaberative writing group) that we have at both Pan Historia and Panerotica. Like their fleshspace equivalents, anthologies such as Tempest's Sanctuary for horror/fantasy and Shadows and Smoke for speculative fiction are volumes of short stories rather than a single full-length work. They are ideal for those who want to write a finite story, and also great places for writing solo, or for those new to collaberative writing to dip their toes without committing to a long-term relationship.

So if you think you want to give this collaberative fiction writing lark a try but are daunted by the prospect of narrative eternity, why not grab a partner (or two) and run through a short story first?

I do all my creative writing in the “novels” (which is what we call our collaborative fiction stories) at Pan Historia or Panerotica. Over the years I have tried my hand at a number of roles and genres, some of which might surprise people who think of me only as that “that queer science fiction guy” *grins*.

Perhaps the most unusual character I ever attempted was created for a very short-lived historical novel at Pan Historia, which if I recall correctly was called "Circle of the Kurgan". My character, Askuzai, was a warrior of the historical Pazyryk culture which inhabited the Altai Mountains and Southern Siberia c 4th century BC, and was intended to travel to join up with the related Scythian culture around the Black Sea (where the rest of the novel's writers were assembled!). He never got that far, due to a number of reasons that were beyond my control *grins* But I thought it might be interesting to re-post his very brief appearance, so here it is, first time seen in public since the winter of 2003!

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1.
The ground flowed like a river under the dark mare’s compact hooves, an endless path that stretched before and behind. She paced untiringly, sinew and bone strong and enduring as the mountains, swift and nimble-footed as the deer whose carven images danced in the amulets upon her bridle. Each sinking of the moon saw us a day’s length further towards its cradle, as she bore me lightly far away from the high river valley where both of us had first drawn breath in the shadow of snow-clad peaks.

Two full moons ago, my sister-brother She Who Walks in Smoke had considered my question, then twisted the lime-bark about his tattooed fingers, eyes like those of a snake silvered by the thick spiraling smoke that filled the yurt. “I see a new horizon for you, Askuzai my brother.”

“Where do I look for it?”

He cast another handful of hemp seed into the hot stones that glowed red within the copper censor, and as the smoke rose and curled he inhaled deeply. “In stone, in cloud, the earth: Apia will guide you.”

It had still been the cold time of the year when I had turned my horse’s head west with the shaman’s enigmatic words ringing in my skull. It was bitter crystalline mornings crunching under hooves, sharp air holding the breath like a mist. The snows were harsh, the wind cruel like a sharp wooden splinter. The journey was both long and lonely with no companion or felted yurt for shelter.

But with each cycle of days that passed, the air became kinder and warmer, the dark mare’s hooves rang not now on solid frozen ground but fleetly trod the thickening grass of the lowland steppe over which black crows wove an esoteric pattern of flight.

Here on the fringes of the territory of the Kati-Skuda I found encampments made skittish by raiding Sauromatae and paused my journey only to sleep or hunt, avoiding those to whom my dialect and the manner of decoration of my trappings might mark me too much the stranger.

My mind was as open as the sky and a strange restlessness drew me ever on into the grassland plains. I let Apia guide my trail as my sister-brother had told me, and the journey’s end was indefinite. But I would know it when I found it, somewhere between the clouds and earth.

2.
As I rode ever towards the west, my whole world became a horizonless sea of rippling grass. The mountain peaks and wooded highlands of my birthplace were far behind me now: each day I rode across a treeless land where eagles soared across the endless dome of the sky, and I remembered the sharp tang of pine-needles in cold bitter air distantly, as if it was a hemp-dream I had once had.

Tired of my own company and only the mare to talk to, for a while I fell in with a small group of Sarmatian hunters with whom I traded a fur pouch sewn from the pelt of a snow leopard for a place by their fire and a share of their meat. There were some women amongst them, armed and riding with their men as is their custom, and one of them was glad enough to share her felt blankets with me fiercely for the two nights I spent in their company. When we parted, they told me if I continued west within three days I would reach a great wide river which a good horse could easily swim across, and beyond that was the homeland of the Kati-Skuda.

Was it my intention to join with my western kindred? I didn’t know. My shamanic sister-brother hadn’t told me what I should do save follow where Apia directed my mare’s steps. It was all the same to me, and I didn’t see any reason to make a decision.

The river was reached exactly as the Sarmatians had told me. A broad expanse of silver ripples that tumbled forcefully over rocks but was shallow enough in places to consider a crossing possible, if I so chose, and I made camp there for the night.

Once the sun sank at the end of each featureless day, it was still cold enough to make me glad of the warm felts I unrolled in front of the fitful fire I lit to keep the night-wolves at bay. A little distance away in the twilight the dark mare stamped and snorted as she grazed hock-deep in the flowering grass. She was annoyed with me because I’d put the hobbles on her. Usually I didn’t always care to hobble her at all even at night, as she never strayed far and would always return to my call. But we were so far from anything or anyone I knew now, I couldn’t take the risk of a hunting animal scaring her into flight and thus losing her.

Tomorrow, I told myself, as I pulled the felts closer against the chill, tomorrow maybe I would cross the river and see what lay beyond.
.....

I am not ambitious, and not a person who thrives in a competitive environment. Never being one to want to grab attention to myself (too shy), and not as self-assured about my fabulousness as some, I tend to prefer relaxed milieux where I don't feel the pressure to join in the clamour for kudos or shout to be heard. Yes, I am aware that refusing to participate in the scrimmage is a form of arrogance in itself maybe, but heck, you can’t avoid all ironies in life!

Just as this applies to my working life, it’s also one of the reasons I tend to chose non-competitive leisure activities too I suspect. The only sport I was good at and reluctantly competed in was long-distance cross-country running – definitely not a glamorous or spectator sport, no cheering crowds on the sidelines or squealing fans outside the clubhouse! I don’t run any more – I hike, and I am one of those people who hike just for the pleasure of the beautiful woods and moors, the wind in my hair and the sun on my face (even if that is a rare occurrence!) and the company of a like-minded companion to share the experience with. I despise those self-righteous hikers I frequently encounter on route who boast about their 30-miles-a-day habit and expect me to swoon in admiration at their astonishing superiority. Pricks need to get a goddamned life more like, is what I think! *chuckles*

Creative writing (either solo or collaborative) can be competitive too. Some writers thrive on the competition, either because it genuinely fires their enthusiasm and encourages them to produce the best they can, or because they just like to grab up some praise and awards. It will come as no surprise I’m sure that it has an opposite effect on me *chuckles*. I don’t think I am a very good creative writer - a middling role-play hack at best – and I tend to withdraw from the front lines when the environment becomes more about one-upmanship and attention-seeking than self-expression and interaction. I am quietly appreciative of any unsolicited support and feedback, but I have no ambition to write a great novel or get published, and no false opinion of my own worth– I write happily for the pleasure of creating something from my imagination and of playing make-believe with a companion.

Today's quotation for the day over at Panerotica is, "There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings." (Quentin Crisp).

I would add a fourth reason: "Collaberative writing is the most fun you can have with someone you've never got naked in fleshspace."