JWC Recap: Setting your story in a foreign country

At the Japan Writers Conference, Ann Tashi Slater did a presentation called "Setting you story in a foreign country( and a few thoughts on getting it published)." I presented on writing multicultural YA, so I was interested to see where we converged and where our opinions were different.

One of the things I didn't concentrate on in my presentation (50 minutes is not really that long) that Ann  highlighted was research. Research is important in any novel where you're not writing what you know. No matter how big or small the unknown factor is.

She used a Michael Ondaatje interview by William Dafoe as an opener.

WD  How does research lead to invention and where does it get in the way of invention?

MO That’s still a very difficult thing to know. You can always f[redacted] up by having too much research. You can paint yourself into a corner by finding out everything about 1926. Or you can hear someone on a bus say something that happened to somebody, and that’s enough to keep you going for 50 pages. It’s difficult to know what’s right and wrong. The kind of research I do, as a result, is quite intentionally random.

In my opinion, one of the perks of random research is that you get to find out things off the beaten track. Like if you look up Shania Twain on youtube, your first dozen hits are probably all her superhits. But if you start at one of those superhits and click around in the sidebar, you might end up at a lesser-known song, like UP, which you would never have found using a typical research method.

Ann pointed out the research methods she used in her novel, set in Darjeeling - she's part Tibetan. Her grandmother was still living in Darjeeling. She was getting older every day, and Ann said she knew a day would come when she wouldn't be there any more. So she spent some time there and did some interviews. She also went through photographs, letters, and diaries - things you may not have much access to if you don't have a family in. And she read lots of books which helped her focus her trip.

As for the nuts and bolts of setting in a foreign country, it's also important to integrate story and setting. You don't want to write every detail you know. That was something that I warned against in my presentation too. You risk writing a glorified travel guide if the multicultural elements are too much stronger than all the other story elements. Filter details through the pov and plot. Setting should influence the story, but it shouldn't bend it into pretzel shapes.

Ann also pointed out the importance of getting the details right. If you set a story in a Japanese junior high school and then had the kids bring lunch, that would pull me right out of the story. [EDIT: Other than the big cities] there are very few places in Japan where students don't get school lunches up until the end of JHS. Also, let Google be your friend. How you do this is up to you. Maybe you want to stop every time you have a question. Maybe you'll just insert a marker (I use hash tags) and come back to it. But the fact is that it's so easy to get information these days. Time and cost are much less of an issue in working with a foreign setting. Why not take advatange of that?

Is anyone working in a setting which isn't the same as where they live or where their main market lives? How are you doing it?

JWC recap: Synaesthesia

Another one of the presentations at the recent Japan Writers Conference was  “‘A noir, E blanc’: How Synaesthesia can Work for You as a Writer” by Li Jiang. It was a craft workshop, so I don't really think it would be interesting to just tell you what we did. Rather, I'd like to talk about the concept behind the presentation.

Just in case you didn't know (and I didn't) synaesthesia is basically when a sensory detail of one sort invokes sensory detail of another sort. In the French poem, "A Noir, E blanc" used in the title of the workshop, the writer is talking about the vowels invoking colours. In other cases visual details can invoke auditory reactions, or vice versa. And inanimate details like the days of the week can take on personalities. Technically synaesthesia is an involuntary reaction (seen in 1 out of 23 persons), but Li Jiang asked us to harness the concept by listening to pieces or looking at pictures and freewriting the stories that came to us.

Knowing how many of my writer friends listen to music as they write, and who  prefer a certain song when they're writing certain scenes, I wonder if most writers - or even most artists- aren't synaesthetes. The fact that psychadelic drugs can also induce synaesthesia and knowing the connection between artists and drugs, also strengthens this belief.

But synaesthesia isn't a given for all of us. I have zero response to many visual stimuli. Stuff fades into the background for me. It's why I love bright colours. Other colours just disappear. And music, while it will elicit emotion, doesn't drive me to think of specific stories.

Using the pieces that Li Jiang presented (visual art and music) and writing short stories off them was a challenge for me. I don't think mine were as good as some of the other people who presented theirs. Maybe they'd get better if I practised opening those sensory pathways more often. I think synaesthesia can be a useful tool for any writer. By 'forcing' synaesthesia, an artist is able to access details, stories, characters that they couldn't before. And with practise, I suppose, you could look at a scene, and know a character's entire life story, their motivations, and their flaws.

Wait a minute, I already create instantaneous stories for people on the street, and instantaneously see things in the now triggering huge catastrophic events in the future. I used to think it was some sort of ESP, but the predictions never pan out.

Maybe I am a synaesthete after all.

Are any of you synaesthetic? (Now that I know the word, I sort of love it.)

JWC recap: Aliens

Two weekends ago was the Japan Writers Conference. I'm going to be highlighting some of the presentations that I attended.

DEVELOPING PLAUSIBLE ALIENS by Dale Thomas ( who writes as Alex Sivier)

I'll be honest, I went to this presentation because my presentation had been in the same room right before. But I'm glad I stayed. I probably learned the most for the conference at this presentation.And even though Dale was talking specifically about aliens, I felt like you could use his guidelines in developing any society/creature you imagine.

Dale talked about how we're fascinated with a bi-pedal humanoid structure, but really there's nothing innately special about it. It's just that's what we look like. While I'm obviously not a believer in Evolution as a creation theory, I could see how evolution theory would make sense in creating races on another planet. For example, giraffes developped long necks in response to trees being tall. Wouldn't it make more sense for the aliens to develop because of their environment?

He also spoke of different types of selection: natural, sexual, kin, etc. (At this point, he made the hilarious comment that "Peahens like big tails!") In sexual selection, weaker/less pretty individuals die off, because noone chooses them as a mate, and this is how the species becomes stronger and prettier. How does your alien race evolve?

He also spoke of diversity in alien worlds. Earth has at least 3 racial categories. Further to that, all of those have subsets. On top of which, there are continents and countries. People look differently and act differently. Yet, pretty much every alien planet in Star Trek sports one race who all look alike and all revere the same things.

But it's not just humans that need to be diverse. The planet should also be diverse. Different locales should have different traits. Plants should be diverse, as well as animals.

Dale also touched on the biology of changing the scale of creatures. It got a little technical here, but I'll keep it simple. (I only understood it simply.) Certain traits are dependent on surface area, and some on volume. Like heat loss, is all about exposed surface area, but heat generation is about volume. (Think about how skinny people are always cold.) So if you shrank a human down to the size of your finger, then they'd have to eat constantly to generate enough heat not to die.

Also, when you double length, you quadruple surface area, and end up with 8 times the volume. So if you make something twice as tall, then its weight distribution and it's weight are affected. But weight is a volume factor, so it's now 8 times as heavy, but it's feet are only 4 times the area. Chances are this creature would fall over or have some kind of arthritis or something.

Dale divided literary (and screen) aliens into 5 categories:

1. totally human
2. modified humans (think Superman)
3. modified animals
4. bio-inspired
5. totally alien

His parting comment stuck with me. Showing a collage of good and bad facets of human society,  he said something to this effect, "Alien culture should have things to be proud of and ashamed of."

Does your writing include imaginary races or societies, alien or otherwise? How do you go about constructing them?

My JWC prezzies

This year's Japan Writers Conference was held in Kobe City. I was really psyched about this year, because I was scheduled to present TWO topics.

My presentations were:

Into the Melting Pot: Writing the Multicultural YA

and

Brick by Brick: Building your blog

The MCYA (I so want to make a remix of the song YMCA with that) presentation was interactive. So the attendees worked to come up with their own definitions and lists.

First we defined multicultural YA. This is my definition:

Multicultural YA is literature marketed for a teen audience where two or more cultures interact. 

Why I went with this definition:

- not specifying that the interaction had to be in the book included books written wholly in one culture, but transposed into another- like Harry Potter.
- not saying that the cultures clashed, included situations where a protagonist is doing fine with balancing the cultures
- by specifying the word culture, I felt like I excluded stories about different races where race and/or culture plays no role.

There were two main premises of the presentation:


1. Multicultural stories are about differences and similarities. As you research and as you write, you need to consider how things are the same for the protag as in the culture you're writing for. And you also need to consider how they're different. From a YA point of view, some things you might want to consider are school, free time, family, after-school activities, styles, pop. culture, body image...

2. Writing a multicultural story is about balancing multicultural elements against all the other elements of the story. Too much muliticultural and you're a travel guide. Too little and you're a regular story which happens to live in one country, but which has no ties, and could move to another country at the drop of a hat. As you decide where on the multiculturalism vs. story graph you want to fall, then you also have to decide if to include things which would be familiar universally (like sushi in a Japanese story), touristy (like going to Tokyo Tower) or everyday things that are less familiar (like specialty KitKats).

I felt really confident about my blogging presentation. I've been doing this blog for 2 years, and I've earned quite a few friends and professional acquaintances through it. If I'm qualified to talk about anything, I'm qualified to talk about blogging basics. Thank you guys for the role you've played in that.

I was surprised to find the room almost full when I got there. I'd specifically applied to do a blogging workshop because I knew that noone else here does them, and because I love blogging. I did not expect the majority of attendees to come.

I started out with WHY you should blog. I gave all the reasons you hear everywhere, along with a few often overlooked, but really important to me: motivation and support, feedback, and a chance to write. Then I got into the nitty gritty of how to set up a blog: hosted vs stand-alone, money and tech issues (not deeply), and what should be in your side bar or your tabs.

In the final section of the presentation, I looked at content - how often, how long, audience, tone, etc -and comments/ traffic/ followers.

I wrapped it up with a few words on cashing in on your blog, professionalism, being obnoxious, and the fact that if you don't like it, then you should find another social media outlet. A bad blog is worse than no blog, IMO.

Once again, I was surprised by the response. People came up with almost 15 minutes of questions to ask. And that was only because I stopped them so the next presenter could set up. Afterwards people kept coming up and thanking me and saying they'd never thought of some things I'd mentioned. Someone asked a social media question in a subsequent presentation, and  was directed to me as the resident "expert"! Even after the conference the next day, a lady came up and asked me if I'd done the blogging presentation. She'd had to work on Saturday and said her friend had told her she'd missed a good one.  I've even gotten emails telling me about things people have adapted on their blogs or asking more questions.

And the best vote of confidence is that I've been asked to re-package both presentations: the multi-cultural one as an article, the blogging one as a longer presentation for a workshop.

2 more reasons why I need to work harder on bringing a novel to market.

Big thanks to the attendees of JWC for being such a fantastic audience, and to the conference organisers for giving me the opportunity. Tomorrow, I'll offer a round up of some of the other presentations at this year's JWC.