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SF critique lexicon
From FritzWiki
Section 1 is from the Turkey City Lexicon, with the exception of the Dialogue section.
Section 2 is from A Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction by David Smith.
Currently I am working on transferring the definitions to the Writer's Glossary.
Contents |
Critique Categories
- Words and sentences
- Dialogue
- Paragraphs and prose structure
- Common workshop story types
- Plots
- Background
- Characters and viewpoint
- Miscellaneous
Words and Sentences
- Describing action that is introduced to the reader for the first time by saying that so-and-so 'began to' <verb>. Eliminating the 'began to' almost always strengthens the text. A detail of style. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- This useful term is taken from SF's cousin-genre, the detective-pulp. The hack writers of the Mike Shayne series showed an odd reluctance to use Shayne's proper name, preferring such euphemisms as "the burly detective" or "the red-headed sleuth." This syndrome arises from a wrong-headed conviction that the same word should not be used twice in close succession. This is only true of particularly strong and visible words, such as "vertiginous." Better to re-use a simple tag or phrase than to contrive cumbersome methods of avoiding it. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Use of brand name alone, without accompanying visual detail, to create false verisimilitude. You can stock a future with Hondas and Sonys and IBM's and still have no idea with it looks like. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A cheap technique for false exoticism, in which common elements of the real world are re-named for a fantastic milieu without any real alteration in their basic nature or behavior. "Smeerps" are especially common in fantasy worlds, where people often ride exotic steeds that look and act just like horses. (Attributed to James Blish ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Writing that uses too many or too large words just because the writer can. Also known as verdant greenery. (Source: Fritz Freiheit) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Useless ornament in prose, such as fancy sesquipedalian Latinate words where short clear English ones will do. Novice writers sometimes use "gingerbread" in the hope of disguising faults and conveying an air of refinement. (Attr. Damon Knight ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A here-to-there mistake is over-describing interim stages because of a mistaken belief that the reader will not infer them. A writer whose character's eyes are closed, for example, wants to describe something visually and feels compelled to say, 'he opened his eyes'. Omitting this phrase usually works better -- the reader can infer the eye-opening from the visual description. Similarly, 'he got into the car, put the key in the ignition, started the engine and backed out of the driveway' is too much description: 'he got into the car and backed out of the driveway.' (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- "ing disease" is the excessive use of gerunds (verbs transformed into nouns by adding "-ing"). -- (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- The mis-use of the present participle is a common structural sentence-fault for beginning writers. "Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau." Alas, our hero couldn't do this even if his arms were forty feet long. This fault shades into "Ing Disease," the tendency to pepper sentences with words ending in "-ing," a grammatical construction which tends to confuse the proper sequence of events. (Attr. Damon Knight ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The tendency to use a big word for effect even when a small word is better. (CSFW: David Smith ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Words used to evoke a cheap emotional response without engaging the intellect or the critical faculties. Commonly found in story titles, they include such bits of bogus lyricism as "star," "dance," "dream," "song," "tears" and "poet," cliches calculated to render the SF audience misty-eyed and tender-hearted. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The authorial habit of describing things only after they've figured in the action, never before they're used. "She dodged behind the boulder that she'd just seen out of the corner of her eye." The effect on the reader is that the description isn't seen for itself, but rather as if glimpsed only in the rear-view mirror. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The ludicrous overuse of far-fetched adjectives, piled into a festering, fungal, tenebrous, troglodytic, ichorous, leprous, synonymic heap. (Attr. John W. Campbell ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Dialogue
- A form of authorial laziness where long sections of talk have no physical background or description of the characters. Such dialogue, detached from the story's setting, tends to echo hollowly, as if suspended in mid-air. Named for the American comic-strip in which dialogue balloons were often seen emerging from the Manhattan skyline. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An authorial laziness where the dialogue is supposedly loaded with portentous significance to all participants - contorted facial expressions, heavy word emphasis, significant looks - but completely opaque to readers because relevant facts are neither stated nor inferable.
- "But when you told me that - "
- "-s! And thus he couldn't - "
- "Of course, and I was such a fool, so now if -- "
- "not if, but-when! And -- "
- Such conversation is infuriating to the reader and also cheat him of the genuine emotional conflict and change that are core to viable fiction. (CSFW: David Smith ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- An artificial verb used to avoid the word "said." "Said" is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than "he retorted," "she inquired," "he ejaculated," and other oddities. The term "said-book" comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word "said," which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An unseemly compulsion to follow the word "said" with a colorful adverb, as in "'We'd better hurry,' Tom said swiftly." This was a standard mannerism of the old Tom Swift adventure dime-novels. Good dialogue can stand on its own without a clutter of adverbial props. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Paragraphs and Prose Structure
- A sudden, alarming change in the level of diction. "There will be bloody riots and savage insurrections leading to a violent popular uprising unless the regime starts being lots nicer about stuff." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A form of expositional redundancy in which the action clearly implied in dialogue is made explicit. "'Let's get out of here,' he said, urging her to leave." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Countersinking is expositional redundancy, usually performed by a writer who isn't confident of his storytelling: making the actions implied in the story explicit. "'Let's get out of here,' he said, urging her to leave." (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The unwitting intrusion of the writer's physical surroundings, or the author's own mental state, into the text of the story. Writers who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs. In subtler forms of the Dischism, the characters complain of their confusion and indecision -- when this is actually the writer's condition at the moment of writing, not theirs within the story. "Dischism" is named after the critic who diagnosed this syndrome. (Attr. Thomas M. Disch ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An ailment endemic to genre writing, in which soap-opera elements of purported human interest are stuffed into the story willy-nilly, whether or not they advance the plot or contribute to the point of the story. The actions of such characters convey an itchy sense of irrelevance, for the writer has invented their problems out of whole cloth, so as to have something to emote about. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A cheap labor-saving technique in which the writer, too lazy to describe the surroundings, afflicts the viewpoint-character with a blindfold, an attack of space-sickness, the urge to play marathon whist-games in the smoking-room, etc. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An element of motivation the writer was too lazy to supply. The word "somehow" is a useful tip-off to fuzzy areas of a story. "Somehow she had forgotten to bring her gun." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Hand waving is an attempt to distract the reader with dazzling prose or other verbal fireworks, so as to divert attention from a severe logical flaw. (Attr. Stewart Brand ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- In this form of authorial laziness, the characters grandstand and tug the reader's sleeve in an effort to force a specific emotional reaction. They laugh wildly at their own jokes, cry loudly at their own pain, and cheat the reader of any real chance of attaining genuine emotion. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A cardinal principle of effective writing. The reader should be allowed to react naturally to the evidence presented in the story, not instructed in how to react by the writer. Specific incidents and carefully observed details will render authorial lectures unnecessary. For instance, instead of telling the reader "She had a bad childhood, an unhappy childhood," a specific incident -- involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey -- should be shown.
- Rigid adherence to show-don't-tell can become absurd. Minor matters are sometimes best gotten out of the way in a swift, straightforward fashion. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A signal or message from Fred is a comic form of the "Dischism" in which the writer's subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: "This doesn't make sense." "This is really boring." "This sounds like a bad movie." (Attr. Damon Knight ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The failure of an writer to realize that his/her own weird assumptions and personal in-jokes are simply not shared by the world-at-large. Instead of applauding the wit or insight of the writer's remarks, the world-at-large will stare in vague shock and alarm at such a writer, as if he or she had a live squid in the mouth.
- Since SF writers as a breed are generally quite loony, and in fact make this a stock in trade, "squid in the mouth" doubles as a term of grudging praise, describing the essential, irreducible, divinely unpredictable lunacy of the true SF writer. (Attr. James P. Blaylock ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Chekhov said that if there are dueling pistols over the mantelpiece in the first act, they should be fired in the third. In other words, a plot element should be deployed in a timely fashion and with proper dramatic emphasis. However, in SF plotting the MacGuffins are often so overwhelming that they cause conventional plot structures to collapse. It's hard to properly dramatize, say, the domestic effects of Dad's bank overdraft when a giant writhing kraken is leveling the city. This mismatch between the conventional dramatic proprieties and SF's extreme, grotesque, or visionary thematics is known as the "squid on the mantelpiece." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A clear and common sign of the failure of the writer's imagination, most often seen at the beginning of a story, before the setting, background, or characters have gelled. "She awoke in a white room." The 'white room' is a featureless set for which details have yet to be invented -- a failure of invention by the writer. The character 'wakes' in order to begin a fresh train of thought -- again, just like the writer. This 'white room' opening is generally followed by much earnest pondering of circumstances and useless exposition; all of which can be cut, painlessly.
- It remains to be seen whether the "white room" cliche will fade from use now that most writers confront glowing screens rather than blank white paper. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A genre ailment related to "False Humanity," "Wiring Diagram Fiction" involves "characters" who show no convincing emotional reactions at all, since they are overwhelmed by the writer's fascination with gadgetry or didactic lectures. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An attempt to diffuse the reader's incredulity with a pre-emptive strike -- as if by anticipating the reader's objections, the writer had somehow answered them. "I would never have believed it, if I hadn't seen it myself!" "It was one of those amazing coincidences that can only take place in real life!" "It's a one-in-a-million chance, but it's so crazy it just might work!" Surprisingly common, especially in SF. (Attr. John Kessel ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Common Workshop Story Types
- Nauseatingly common subset of the "Shaggy God Story" in which a terrible apocalypse, spaceship crash, etc., leaves two survivors, man and woman, who turn out to be Adam and Eve, parents of the human race!! (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story in which horrific events are overwhelming the entirety of human civilization, but the action concentrates on a small group of tidy, middle-class, white Anglo- Saxon protagonists. The essence of the cozy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off. (Attr. Brian Aldiss ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story based on some arcane bit of science or folklore, which noodles around producing random weirdness. Then a loony character-actor (usually best played by Dennis Hopper) barges into the story and baldly tells the protagonist what's going on by explaining the underlying mystery in a long bug-eyed rant. (Attr. Howard Waldrop ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Or "God in the Box"
- A story featuring a miraculous solution to the story's conflict, which comes out of nowhere and renders the plot struggles irelevant. H G Wells warned against SF's love for the deus ex machina when he coined the famous dictum that "If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting." Science fiction, which specializes in making the impossible seem plausible, is always deeply intrigued by godlike powers in the handy pocket size. Artificial Intelligence, virtual realities and nanotechnology are three contemporary SF MacGuffins that are cheap portable sources of limitless miracle. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Deus ex machina -- Miraculous (often offstage) solution to an otherwise insoluble problem. "Look, the Martians all caught cold and died!" (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Similar to the "poor me" story, this autobiographical effort features a miserably quasi-bohemian writer, living in urban angst in a grubby apartment. The story commonly stars the writer's friends in thin disguises -- friends who may also be the writer's workshop companions, to their considerable alarm. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- "For you see, we are all living in a jar of Tang!" or "For you see, I am a dog!" A story contrived so that the writer can spring a silly surprise about its setting. Mainstay of the old Twilight Zone TV show. An entire pointless story contrived so the writer can cry "Fooled you!" For instance, the story takes place in a desert of coarse orange sand surrounded by an impenetrable vitrine barrier; surprise! our heroes are microbes in a jar of Tang powdered orange drink.
- This is a classic case of the difference between a conceit and an idea. "What if we all lived in a jar of Tang?" is an example of the former; "What if the revolutionaries from the sixties had been allowed to set up their own society?" is an example of the latter. Good SF requires ideas, not conceits. (Attr. Stephen P. Brown )
- When done with serious intent rather than as a passing conceit, this type of story can be dignified by the term "Concealed Environment." (Attr. Christopher Priest ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- SF story which thinly adapts the trappings of a standard pulp adventure setting. The spaceship is "just like" an Atlantic steamer, down to the Scottish engineer in the engine room. A colony planet is "just like" Arizona except for two moons in the sky. "Space Westerns" and futuristic hard-boiled detective stories have been especially common versions. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story overwhelmed by the inclusion of any and every new idea that occurs to the writer in the process of writing it. (Attr. Damon Knight ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An SF story which posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, ie apple pie and motherhood. Greg Egan once stated that the secret of truly effective SF was to deliberately "burn the motherhood statement." (Attr. Greg Egan ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An autobiographical piece in which the male viewpoint character complains that he is ugly and can't get laid. (Attr. Kate Wilhelm ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A novice writer goes to enormous lengths to create a science-fictional situation already tiresomely familiar to the experienced reader. Reinventing the Wheel was traditionally typical of mainstream writers venturing into SF. It is now often seen in writers who lack experience in genre history because they were attracted to written SF via SF movies, SF television series, SF role-playing games, SF comics or SF computer gaming. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story in which incredible craftsmanship has been lavished on a theme or idea which is basically trivial or subliterary, and which simply cannot bear the weight of such deadly-serious artistic portent. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story based on a role-playing game adventure. While these stories can be quite good in a role-playing context, there are serious issues with how multi-viewpoint story can be translated into a story format. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- A piece which mechanically adopts a Biblical or other mythological tale and provides flat science-fictional "explanations" for the theological events. (Attr. Michael Moorcock ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Non-SF story which is so ontologically distorted or related in such a bizarrely non-realist fashion that it cannot pass muster as commercial mainstream fiction and therefore seeks shelter in the SF or fantasy genre. Postmodern critique and technique are particularly fruitful in creating slipstream stories. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Didactic SF story which consists entirely of a guided tour of a large and elaborate gimmick. A common technique of SF utopias and dystopias. (Attr. Gardner Dozois ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Story produced by a confusion of SF and Fantasy tropes -- or rather, by a confusion of basic world-views. Tabloid Weird is usually produced by the writer's own inability to distinguish between a rational, Newtonian-Einsteinian, cause-and-effect universe and an irrational, supernatural, fantastic universe. Either the FBI is hunting the escaped mutant from the genetics lab, or the drill-bit has bored straight into Hell -- but not both at once in the very same piece of fiction. Even fantasy worlds need an internal consistency of sorts, so that a Sasquatch Deal-with-the-Devil story is also "Tabloid Weird." Sasquatch crypto-zoology and Christian folk superstition simply don't mix well, even for comic effect. (Attr. Howard Waldrop ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A story related in such an elaborate, arcane, or convoluted manner that it impresses by its sheer narrative ingenuity, but which, as a story, is basically not worth the candle. Like the whistling dog, it's astonishing that the thing can whistle -- but it doesn't actually whistle very well. (Attr. Harlan Ellison ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Plots
- Takes its name from a mainstream story about a medieval cloister which was sold as SF because of the serendipitous arrival of a UFO at the end. By extension, any mainstream story with a gratuitous SF or fantasy element tacked on so it could be sold. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Also see Slipstream
- Picaresque plot in which this happens, and then that happens, and then something else happens, and it all adds up to nothing in particular. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- List of actions a character could have taken, but didn't. Frequently includes all the reasons why or why not. In this nervous mannerism, the writer stops the action dead to work out complicated plot problems at the reader's expense. "If I'd gone along with the cops they would have found the gun in my purse. And anyway, I didn't want to spend the night in jail. I suppose I could have just run instead of stealing their car, but then ... " etc. Best dispensed with entirely. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Cumbersome narration of infeasible actions which a character didn't take because it would mess up the story. Usually goes overboard and includes long-winded explanations why. If you're going to handwave past a dumb choice, the faster you do it, the better. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html ) -- Cumbersome narration of infeasible actions which a character didn't take because it would mess up the story. Usually goes overboard and includes long-winded explanations why. If you're going to handwave past a dumb choice, the faster you do it, the better. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia relevant only to the writer. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the writer, but it serves no visible fictional purpose. (Attr. Tim Powers) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Card tricks in the dark is authorial cleverness to no visible purpose. Wit without dramatic payoff. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- This occurs when a writer sets up, either intentionally or not, a contract with the reader, such as Chekhov's gun, and fails to fulfill the contract by resolving the plot element or using the story element. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the writer's convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own. (Attr. James Blish) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A plot which weaves and curls and writhes in weedy organic profusion, smothering everything in its path. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The basic building blocks of the quest-type fantasy plot. The "hero" collects sufficient plot coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off to the writer for the ending. Note that "the writer" can be substituted for "the gods" in such a work: "The gods decreed he would pursue this quest." Right, mate. The writer decreed he would pursue this quest until sufficient pages were filled to procure an advance. (Dave Langford) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- A variation on the idiot plot where the plot involves an entire invented SF society which functions only because every single person in it is necessarily an idiot. (Attr. Damon Knight) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Also see bolt-on.
Background
- "As you know Bob" is a pernicious form of infodump through dialogue, in which characters tell each other things they already know, for the sake of getting the reader up-to-speed. This very common technique is also known as "Rod and Don dialogue" (attr. Damon Knight) or "maid and butler dialogue" (attr. Algis Budrys). (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The solution to the "Info-Dump" problem (how to fill in the background). The theory is that, as above, the mechanics of an interstellar drive (the center of the idea) is not important: all that matters is the impact on your characters: they can get to other planets in a few months, and, oh yeah, it gives them hallucinations about past lives. Or, more radically: the physics of TV transmission is the center of an idea; on the edges of it we find people turning into couch potatoes because they no longer have to leave home for entertainment. Or, more bluntly: we don't need info dump at all. We just need a clear picture of how people's lives have been affected by their background. This is also known as "carrying extrapolation into the fabric of daily life." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The places where technology and background should come onstage: not the mechanics of a new event, gizmo, or political structure, but rather how people's lives are affected by their new background. Example of excellence: the opening chapters of Orwell's 1984. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Vivid, telling details that create a kaleidoscopic effect of swarming visual imagery against a baroquely elaborate SF background. One ideal of cyberpunk SF was to create a "crammed prose" full of "eyeball kicks." (Attr. Rudy Rucker) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An 'eyeball kick' is perfect, telling detail that creates an instant and powerful visual image. (Rudy Rucker) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Piling too much exposition into the beginning of the story, so that it becomes so dense and dry that it is almost impossible to read. (Attr. Connie Willis) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Incluing is a technique for world building, in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set. The idea is to clue the readers into the world the writer is building, without them being aware of it.
- This in opposition to infodumping, where an undigested lump of background material is dropped into the story, often in the form of a conversation between two characters, both of whom should already know the material under discussion. (The so-called As you know, Bob conversation.)
- Both incluing and infodumping are forms of exposition and are frequently used in science fiction and fantasy, genres where the writer has the task to make the reader believe in a world that does not exist. Writers in other genres have less use for these techniques, as they can often depend on the reader's familiarity with the "real world".
- Incluing can be done in a number of ways: through conversation between characters, through background details or by establishing scenes where a character is followed through daily life. The most famous example of incluing is the door irised open, a phrase created by Robert A. Heinlein and used in several of his stories and novels. In real life, few if any doors do iris open; by mentioning it offhandedly without explanation the reader gets a picture of something both familiar and strange, without calling attention to its strangeness. (Attr Jo Walton) (Source: incluing at Wikipedia )
- Jo Walton defines incluing as "the process of scattering information seamlessly through the text, as opposed to stopping the story to impart the information."
- Large chunk of indigestible expository matter intended to explain the background situation. Infodumps can be covert, as in fake newspaper or "Encyclopedia Galactica" articles, or overt, in which all action stops as the writer assumes center stage and lectures. Infodumps are also known as "expository lumps." The use of brief, deft, inoffensive info-dumps is known as "Kuttnering," after Henry Kuttner. When information is worked unobtrusively into the story's basic structure, this is known as "Heinleining." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) (Updated by: Fritz Freiheit)
"I've suffered for my Art" (and now it's your turn)
- A form of info-dump in which the writer inflicts upon the reader hard-won, but irrelevant bits of data acquired while researching the story. As Algis Budrys once pointed out, homework exists to make the difficult look easy. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Similar to the edges of ideas keyhole curiosity is when the writer weaves the background into the story in such a way that the reader sees only partial aspects of the background, as if they were looking through a keyhole into a mansion, glimpsing only a fraction of the possibilities. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- A more specific form of monoism, this form authorial laziness is where the physical setting has a single environmental characteristic, particularly at the planetary level. Examples include the jungle planet in Alan Dean Foster's Midworld or the desert planet Tatooine in Star Wars. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- Putting too little exposition into the story's beginning, so that the story, while physically readable, seems to take place in a vacuum and fails to engage any readerly interest. (Attr. L. Sprague de Camp) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An 'ontological riff' is a passage in an SF story which suggests that our deepest and most basic convictions about the nature of reality, space-time, or consciousness have been violated, technologically transformed, or at least rendered thoroughly dubious. The works of H. P. Lovecraft, Barrington Bayley, and Philip K Dick abound in "ontological riffs." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Frequently invoked in discussions of science fiction, the "sense of wonder" is an experience unique to the genre. It is an emotional reaction to the reader suddenly confronting, understanding, or seeing a concept anew in the context of new information. John Clute and Peter Nicholls associate the experience with that of the "conceptual breakthrough" or "paradigm shift" (Clute & Nicholls 1993). In many cases, it is achieved through the recasting of previous narrative experiences in a larger context. It can be found in short scenes (e.g., in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, it can be found, in a small dose, inside the line "That's no moon; it's a space station.") and it can require entire novels to set up (as in the final line to Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn.) -- (Source: Sense of wonder at Wikipedia )
- The most pernicious suite of "Used Furniture". The grizzled space captain swaggering into the spacer bar and slugging down a Jovian brandy, then laying down a few credits for a space hooker to give him a Galactic Rim Job. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Stapledon is the name assigned to the voice which takes center stage to lecture. Actually a common noun, as: "You have a Stapledon come on to answer this problem instead of showing the characters resolve it." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Use of a background out of Central Casting. Rather than invent a background and have to explain it, or risk re-inventing the wheel, let's just steal one. We'll set it in the Star Trek Universe, only we'll call it the Empire instead of the Federation. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Character and Viewpoint
- A character distinguished by a single identifying tag, such as odd headgear, a limp, a lisp, a parrot on his shoulder, etc. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Switching back and forth between different characters' thoughts and opinions.
- Homoism is similar to nowism, the mistake of making aliens behave in inappropriate human ways, use inappropriate humanoid gestures or facial expressions, or generally manifest their emotions in human terms. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html ) See men-in-rubber-suits syndrome.
- A form authorial laziness where the members of an alien race all act like humans in rubber suits. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- The Mrs. Browns are the small, downtrodden, eminently common, everyday little people who nevertheless encapsulates something vital and important about the human condition. "Mrs. Brown" is a rare personage in the SF genre, being generally overshadowed by swaggering submyth types made of the finest gold-plated cardboard. In a famous essay, "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown," Ursula K. Le Guin decried Mrs. Brown's absence from the SF field. (Attr: Ursula K. Le Guin) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Stock character syndrome is a critique of the over dependency on stock characters to carry a story. -- (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- Classic character-types in SF which aspire to the condition of archetype but don't quite make it, such as the mad scientist, the crazed supercomputer, the emotionless super-rational alien, the vindictive mutant child, etc. (Attr. Ursula K. Le Guin) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The writer loses track of point-of-view, switches point-of-view for no good reason, or relates something that the viewpoint character could not possibly know. Also known as head popping. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
Miscellaneous
- Engineer's term distinguishing the inevitable clunky real-world faultiness of "Actual Machines" from the power-fantasy techno-dreams of "Fucking Magic." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Useful term for the purported world in which the majority of modern sane people generally agree that they live -- as opposed to the worlds of, say, Forteans, semioticians or quantum physicists. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The intoxicating glamor of a novel scientific idea, as distinguished from any actual intellectual merit that it may someday prove to possess. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Kill your darlings (or murder your darlings) is advice to writers to not be afraid to be ruthless with the characters, or more generally, with any favorite aspect of their writing. As a critique, kill your darlings is similar to a powderpuff or pitty-pat critique with an exhortation to be more daring, to dare to be stupid and do the unexpected with your favored characters (or some other aspect of your prose). Attributed variously to: Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, G. K. Chesterton, William Faulkner, and George Orwell. -- (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- "Science Fiction" as a publishing and promotional entity in the world of commerce. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Parsimony of detail is an attribute of writing where the author has been frugal or conservative in what they tell the reader, generally in a positive way, such that any detail given is significant to the story in some way. It is a more narrowly focused aspect of economy. Contrast with chrome. -- (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
Writing Glossary
This is only a partial list of the terms we have found most useful in critiquing SF. The glossary is issued now and then ... but it is a living document. Amendments are welcome. If you use additional terms, or have better examples than those listed here, please suggest them.
A
- Action outline presents the plot and conflicts with little regard for staging. The writer is describing a world idea, not telling the story. An action outline is a synopsis of a book not yet written; it is a precursor to a scene outline. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Drama is powerful if something is at stake: that is, if the characters involved have something to gain and something to lose. The reader must have something at stake as well -- a desire to see the outcome. Usually this is either a stake in the theme, in the characters and their aspirations, or in the resolution of the conflict. When nothing is at stake, there is no drama. (Jim Morrow) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- An author surrogate (or writer surrogate) is a character who acts as the writer's spokesman. Sometimes the character may intentionally or unintentionally be an idealized version of the writer. A well known variation is the Mary Sue or Gary Stu (i.e. self-insertion). (Source: literary technique at Wikipedia ) (Source: author surrogate at Wikipedia )
- A character whom the writer, consciously or unconsciously, models after himself. Such characters (e.g. Jubal Harshaw, Stranger in a Strange Land) often dominate the story when they should not, or acquire too many positive attributes, too few faults. Author surrogates often hog the point of view to the detriment of other characters. See Mary Sue. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Authorism is an inappropriate intrusion of the writer's physical surroundings, mannerisms, or prejudices into the narrative. Overtly, characters pour cups of coffee whenever they're thinking, because that's what the writer does. More subtly, characters sit around doing nothing but complaining that they don't know what to do ... because the writer doesn't know either. (Tom Disch) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
B
- Backfill is the process of providing background in the storyline flow, rather than in a prolog. Many devices are available: flashback, lecture (generally static and to be avoided), dream sequence, explanation to an ignorant character. A subset of Exposition. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Bait and switch is when a writer encourages the reader to invest attention in a developing emotional or suspenseful situation ('bait'), only to substitute ('switch') a high-action payoff which has nothing to do with the previous development, or a POV cut so that the expected climax is unresolved but instead left to the reader's imagination. A bad habit because it leaves the reader feeling vaguely unfulfilled and unwilling to invest energy in future setups, because the reader doubts that paying attention will be rewarded. (CSFW: Alex Jablokov.)
- Describing action that is introduced to the reader for the first time by saying that so-and-so 'began to' <verb>. Eliminating the 'began to' almost always strengthens the text. A detail of style. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A big scene is 'big' when its drama is powerful and when the drama is central to the theme. Big scenes should occur at regular intervals, neither bunched too closely together nor strung too far apart. (Jim Morrow) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Black box scene analysis is a convenient means of evaluating how important a scene is. Think of the scene as a black box: characters go in to it and come out of it. What have they gained or lost? What irrevocable things have happened? How are they different people afterwards than before? The black-box scene analysis is a useful means of separating local dexterity (entertaining imagery) from important plot or character development. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Blood and guts describes an event or scene which involves characters in their fundamental, primal desires, stripped of convention, artifice, or propriety. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- List of actions a character could have taken, but didn't. Frequently includes all the reasons why or why not. In this nervous mannerism, the writer stops the action dead to work out complicated plot problems at the reader's expense. "If I'd gone along with the cops they would have found the gun in my purse. And anyway, I didn't want to spend the night in jail. I suppose I could have just run instead of stealing their car, but then ... " etc. Best dispensed with entirely. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Cumbersome narration of infeasible actions which a character didn't take because it would mess up the story. Usually goes overboard and includes long-winded explanations why. If you're going to handwave past a dumb choice, the faster you do it, the better. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html ) -- Cumbersome narration of infeasible actions which a character didn't take because it would mess up the story. Usually goes overboard and includes long-winded explanations why. If you're going to handwave past a dumb choice, the faster you do it, the better. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A bridge is a sentence or paragraph which connects two different scenes together. Often used to get into and out of flashbacks. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
C
- Caesar's palmtop is a handy device a writer introduces, in all innocence, whose existence in this particular fictional universe implies a huge offstage infrastructure that demands so much overhead explanation that it knocks the reader out of paying attention to the story. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia relevant only to the writer. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the writer, but it serves no visible fictional purpose. (Attr. Tim Powers) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Card tricks in the dark is authorial cleverness to no visible purpose. Wit without dramatic payoff. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Characters who are over-emoting for their situations. The term is adapted from the theater, where it is used to describe poor actors who ham it up. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The term chrome is derived from the chrome decoration on an automobile. Scenic detail which has no plot significance but brings a place, character or period to life. Contrast with parsimony of detail. (CSFW: David Smith) -- (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html ) updated by (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- Clever-author syndrome is where a writer shows off with some literary fireworks -- ten-dollar vocabulary, obscure references, overly artful constructions -- which remind us how smart the writer is but detract from the story. (CSFW: David Smith). (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- To conflate is 'to blow together'; to combine two similar dramatic elements (such as characters or scenes) to eliminate dramatic redundancy. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Conflict is a necessary element of fictional literature. It is often classified according to the nature of the antagonist. These include Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. God, and Man vs. Machine.
- When an entity is in conflict with his, her, or itself, the conflict is categorized as internal. Otherwise, it is external. (Source: Conflict (narrative) at Wikipedia ) (Updated by: Fritz Freiheit)
- Conflict -- The opposition of forces between focus characters and their surroundings: either other focus characters or 'natural forces' (which include, in addition to the elements, peripheral characters). One can have conflict without drama, but it is almost impossible to have drama without conflict. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A cookie is an element, not necessary to the plot, which rewards the reader who has been paying careful attention. Ideally, a cookie is a clever turn of phrase, an image, an allusion, or some other element of richness which the lazy reader will pass by Then the careful reader, who finds it, realizes that the writer has left this small package just as a reward for paying attention ... and that, in turn, encourages the reader to pay even more attention. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A form of expositional redundancy in which the action clearly implied in dialogue is made explicit. "'Let's get out of here,' he said, urging her to leave." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Countersinking is expositional redundancy, usually performed by a writer who isn't confident of his storytelling: making the actions implied in the story explicit. "'Let's get out of here,' he said, urging her to leave." (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
D
- 'Dare to be stupid' is an exhortation by a critic to a writer whom the critic thinks is not stretching enough. Writers grow by daring to write bolder, more imaginative, more personal, or more emotionally powerful situations and confrontations. Since writing that stretches is by definition unpracticed, the result may be rougher than a less ambitious effort. The writer must trust the critics to recognize the stretch and help the writer build or expand his talents. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Destage is to move offstage action which has been shown onstage. Things can be intentionally destaged (when they're undramatic) or unintentionally (when the writer's staged the wrong things). (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Destination is the emotional endpoint of a story: where the writer's intent coincides and rings with the action in the story, where the experiential contract between writer and reader is fulfilled. The writer sets out to create certain responses in the reader; the destination is the place where the writer does so. One may have plot destinations (Frodo gets to the Crack of Doom), character destinations (Frodo masters the Ring and himself), or understanding destinations (Frodo learns he's adult and strong enough to scour the Shire). But stories must always have destinations. In the best writing, the characters' struggle involves multiple destinations that relate to one another (inner and outer journeys echo each other). (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Or "God in the Box"
- A story featuring a miraculous solution to the story's conflict, which comes out of nowhere and renders the plot struggles irelevant. H G Wells warned against SF's love for the deus ex machina when he coined the famous dictum that "If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting." Science fiction, which specializes in making the impossible seem plausible, is always deeply intrigued by godlike powers in the handy pocket size. Artificial Intelligence, virtual realities and nanotechnology are three contemporary SF MacGuffins that are cheap portable sources of limitless miracle. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- Deus ex machina -- Miraculous (often offstage) solution to an otherwise insoluble problem. "Look, the Martians all caught cold and died!" (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Disengage (to) -- A reader who is not paying close attention to the text is disengaged. Offstage action or a poorly-realized fictional dream disengage the reader: he skips or skims sentences, paragraphs, pages or whole chapters. The ultimate disengagement is the reader who puts down the book without bothering to finish it.
- A writer must use both carrot and stick with the reader. Punish a reader who disengages, by making sure that necessary material is woven throughout the book, so that nothing may be skipped. Reward a reader who engages, by making every scene alive, tight, and well-written. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Drama is the ability to create powerful scenes, to present conflicts in a way which grips the reader, whether or not the storyline is believable. The tension of conflict forms the bedrock of drama. Example: Bester, The Demolished Man. Drama differs from conflict because drama takes place exclusively onstage, and in a manner the reader engages. Drama differs from staging to the extent that the drama is the conflict present in the situation, staging the extent to which it is realized in front of the reader. Badly staged conflict loses most of the force of its inherent drama. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
E
- An Easter egg is some hidden aspect of a work that even a careful reader will miss, but once deciphered, reveals some message from the writer. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- Adapted from computer programming, a specialized form of cookie in which the writer 'hides' some surprise, not germane to the story (indeed, often irrelevant or irreverent), deep within the text, to be discovered only by the closest possible reading. For instance, in Quest of the Three Worlds, Cordwainer Smith encoded, as the first letters of consecutive sentences, the phrases KENNEDY SHOT and OSWALD TOO, without disrupting the flow of his narrative. Tuckerizing is a form of Easter egg. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Economy at the beginning of a story, the writer invests words in introducing characters, premise, plot. The reader invests time. By the end of the story, those elements should pay off. A story is economical if all elements introduced pay off, preferably in many different ways. Stories which introduce elements that later prove largely irrelevant are uneconomical, lead the reader to disengagement. Good Varley (Millennium, Ophiuchi Hotline) is extremely economical. The epic form can sustain a certain intentional use of uneconomic structure; indeed, it may be said to be part of the epic form. Wolfe, Book of the New Sun, is lavishly and deliberately uneconomical. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The solution to the "Info-Dump" problem (how to fill in the background). The theory is that, as above, the mechanics of an interstellar drive (the center of the idea) is not important: all that matters is the impact on your characters: they can get to other planets in a few months, and, oh yeah, it gives them hallucinations about past lives. Or, more radically: the physics of TV transmission is the center of an idea; on the edges of it we find people turning into couch potatoes because they no longer have to leave home for entertainment. Or, more bluntly: we don't need info dump at all. We just need a clear picture of how people's lives have been affected by their background. This is also known as "carrying extrapolation into the fabric of daily life." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- The places where technology and background should come onstage: not the mechanics of a new event, gizmo, or political structure, but rather how people's lives are affected by their new background. Example of excellence: the opening chapters of Orwell's 1984. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- An emotional circuit breaker is a tendency in a writer to cut away from a scene when the stakes get high, just as it is reaching its emotional peak, often followed by a lower-stakes retelling or narration of the same events (but safely removed in time or space). Generally speaking, the emotional circuit breaker is a bad thing, because it deprives the reader of the tension and excitement created by the immediacy. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Emotional disturbance is the internal corollary to the out-of-whack event, it represents a character whose inner state is fundamentally unstable and who must do something assertive to restore equilibrium. Often the out-of-whack event triggers the emotional disturbance, but sometimes a character's emotional disturbance can be the reason the out-of-whack event occurs. (CSFW: Pete Chvany) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- An empathic universe is a common feature of melodramatic or romantic writing, it occurs when the writer customizes the environment to match the protagonist's moods. Lightning flashes as a Gothic horror opens; fog descends when the protagonist is confused; rain falls on funerals but the sun returns when the mourner becomes hopeful. Usually overused. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- 'Engage (to)' is used intransitively, it means a reader who is paying close attention. Used transitively, it means a writer or a piece of fiction that forces the reader to pay close attention. A reader who is engaged is following closely, intent on capturing everything that occurs in the story. The stronger the reader's engagement, the stronger the fictional dream. Stories which are economical, and in which the important events occur onstage, engage the reader. Readers are also engaged when scenes are so vital, alive and well realized that the reader cannot skip past them. See Local Dexterity. Setting action offstage, or including inefficient material, causes the reader to disengage. Puzzle-oriented mysteries engage the reader, because anything and everything may be a clue. The primary objective of the first four pages of any story is to hook and engage the reader. Whatever its flaws, Dune accomplishes this by the striking visuals of its early scenes. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Exposition is a literary technique by which background information about the characters, events, or setting is conveyed in a novel, play, movie, short story or other work of fiction. This information can be presented through dialogue, description, flashbacks, or directly through narrative.
- Because exposition generally does not advance plot and tends to interrupt action, it is usually best kept in short and succinct form, though in some genres, such as the mystery, exposition is central to the story structure itself. The alternative to exposition is to convey background information indirectly though action, which, though more dramatic, is more time consuming and less concise. (Source: Exposition_%28literary_technique%29 at Wikipedia )
- An expository lump is a chunk of exposition that, whether or not relevant to the plot, is insufficiently integrated into the story being told. As such, is seems to come from left field, as if a page from an encyclopedia accidentally got shuffled in. Asimov is famous for these. A subheading, known as "I've Suffered For My Art (And Now It's Your Turn)" occurs when the writer, having done masses of boring research, proves this by unloading them on the stunned reader. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Vivid, telling details that create a kaleidoscopic effect of swarming visual imagery against a baroquely elaborate SF background. One ideal of cyberpunk SF was to create a "crammed prose" full of "eyeball kicks." (Attr. Rudy Rucker) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon )
- An 'eyeball kick' is perfect, telling detail that creates an instant and powerful visual image. (Rudy Rucker) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
F
- The literary convention of shortcutting things the reader already knows but the characters may not. Example: Rex Stout's Archie Goodwin: "I got home and told Wolfe everything that had happened since I stumbled over Helaine Bradford's body in Adam Roberts' room. He grunted occasionally and belched when I was done.") Especially handy in mysteries. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Writing that uses too many or too large words just because the writer can. Also known as verdant greenery. (Source: Fritz Freiheit) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Ficelle, from the French 'string,' is a term used by Henry James to denote a (secondary) character who exists to help the reader and move the plot forward. In Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Rosencranz and Guildenstern are ficelle characters. Vladimir Nabokov called them peri characters. (Source: Fritz Freiheit)
- A fictional dream is the illusion that there is no filter between reader and events, that the reader is actually experiencing what he is reading. The stronger the fictional dream, the more immediate the story. Disrupting the fictional dream is usually bad. Pointless digressions, expository lumps, lists, turgid prose, unrealistic characters, or a premise with holes in it, all disrupt the fictional dream. (John Gardner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Also see suspension of disbelief.
- Film it is a form of self-test for critiquing. To judge a scene or chapter, mentally convert it into a movie or screenplay. This effectively subtracts all narration and exposition and leaves only description, dialogue, and action. Things which shrink dramatically when filmed are heavy on telling, light on showing. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- First-draft-itis cause various flaws, primarily manifesting themselves as inconsistencies, which everyone, including the writer, agrees immediately should be corrected. E.g.: a character who has blue eyes in Chapter 2 has brown eyes in Chapter 7; or an important feature of the society which is first manifested in Chapter 20 and implicitly contradicted in what was written before. See Retrofit. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The focus character is a character who serves a dramatic purpose greater than simply illustrating or illuminating the world -- a character about whom the reader cares even when he's offstage. Focus characters have distinct personalities; they further the themes and interact directly with other focus characters. In Lord of the Rings, for example, Saruman is a focus character but Sauron is not (he's a natural force). (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A reader fog is the reader's state of inability to imagine clearly the setting or action the writer is presenting. Usually arises because the writer has skimped on tactile description or otherwise shortchanged the reader of critical external clarity. Stories can (and should) sustain motivational ambiguity but they should blow away fog. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Foreground (to) (v.t.) is to draw attention to for artistic effect, or make the central element in a scene or story. (CSFW: Sarah Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A frame is a structure which puts boundaries on a story about to be told -- as, for example, a character announces to another character, I'm going to tell you a story. Often used in a prologue. Sometimes used to link many stories together into a novel form, as in The Canterbury Tales, where the pilgrimage is the frame, or The Bridge of San Luis Rey, where the bridge collapse is the frame. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A freeze-frame, adapted from the movies, is a brief pause for description of a new person, object, setting, or event. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
G
- Unnecessarily unrealistic detail that blows the credibility of the story. "I can accept a Neanderthal going to Harvard, but a Neanderthal with a middle name? Gag." (CSFW: Sarah Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Prose over which the writer, in his eagerness to finish a work, has taken too little time or care. It implies that the writer can easily fix the problems if he concentrates on them. (CSFW: Sari Boren)
- Named after the grouper, which eats by opening its capacious mouth and swallowing a huge volume of water, toothlessly capturing its prey in the resulting suction, the specialized form of get-it-in-the-mail syndrome which results when participants in a workshop feel get-it-in-the-mail pressure to submit works to the group. A pun. (CSFW: Alex Jablokov)
H
- Hand waving is an attempt to distract the reader with dazzling prose or other verbal fireworks, so as to divert attention from a severe logical flaw. (Attr. Stewart Brand ) (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A head fake is a plot action that appears to be significant but is rapidly proved to be a net null, leaving the plot moving in exactly the same direction. Excessive head fakes undermine the reader's engagement because the reader becomes trained that they are not real. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A here-to-there mistake is over-describing interim stages because of a mistaken belief that the reader will not infer them. A writer whose character's eyes are closed, for example, wants to describe something visually and feels compelled to say, 'he opened his eyes'. Omitting this phrase usually works better -- the reader can infer the eye-opening from the visual description. Similarly, 'he got into the car, put the key in the ignition, started the engine and backed out of the driveway' is too much description: 'he got into the car and backed out of the driveway.' (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Homoism is similar to nowism, the mistake of making aliens behave in inappropriate human ways, use inappropriate humanoid gestures or facial expressions, or generally manifest their emotions in human terms. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html ) See men-in-rubber-suits syndrome.
- Honorable near miss is a description of a work which aims at a worthwhile objective but fails to achieve it. (Quoted by Darrell Schweitzer) -- (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A hook causes the the reader engage quickly. In a novel, the reader must usually be hooked in the first chapter; in a short story, by the end of the first page. -- (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
I
- The common trap of trying to make the narrative imitate the personality of the protagonist. When the novel is concerned with an unlikable or inaccessible protagonist, the narrative is also unlikable and inaccessible. Since the reader cannot figure out the protagonist, nor is the reader given any reason to care about the protagonist, the reader disengages. The prose must transcend the imitative fallacy. Two examples of excellence are Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (hypocritical evangelist), and Babbitt (smug placid businessman). (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A metaphor should serve two purposes: create a tactile image and also convey an emotional or contextual subtext. A metaphor is inappropriate when the subtext is inconsistent with the writer's intentions: "The desert cowboy blew out his bearded cheeks like a startled puffer fish." Puffer fish in the desert? (CSFW: Alex Jablokov)
- A writer will often use mystery as a means of propelling a reader forward: characters speak of things that are opaque to the reader, a character goes offstage to do something important, or a development is referred to indirectly ("I was just heading out the door when the phone rang, with terrible news"). Mystery is inappropriate when the expected dramatic followup is lacking: the offstage action proves to be a diversion, or the suspense proves false. (CSFW: Steve Popkes)
- Incluing is a technique for world building, in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set. The idea is to clue the readers into the world the writer is building, without them being aware of it.
- This in opposition to infodumping, where an undigested lump of background material is dropped into the story, often in the form of a conversation between two characters, both of whom should already know the material under discussion. (The so-called As you know, Bob conversation.)
- Both incluing and infodumping are forms of exposition and are frequently used in science fiction and fantasy, genres where the writer has the task to make the reader believe in a world that does not exist. Writers in other genres have less use for these techniques, as they can often depend on the reader's familiarity with the "real world".
- Incluing can be done in a number of ways: through conversation between characters, through background details or by establishing scenes where a character is followed through daily life. The most famous example of incluing is the door irised open, a phrase created by Robert A. Heinlein and used in several of his stories and novels. In real life, few if any doors do iris open; by mentioning it offhandedly without explanation the reader gets a picture of something both familiar and strange, without calling attention to its strangeness. (Attr Jo Walton) (Source: incluing at Wikipedia )
- Jo Walton defines incluing as "the process of scattering information seamlessly through the text, as opposed to stopping the story to impart the information."
- Info dump, or infodump, is an another accurate term for an expository lump.
- Unnecessary description of how futurist technology works. Best discarded entirely, because they usually signify that the writer is so proud of his device he can't risk describing its operations. "Bob spoke into the telephone, where his sounds vibrated the compressed charcoal, producing an electric current that traveled over the wires ... " See how silly that sounds? (CSFW: David Smith)
L
- Laputa is named after Gulliver's floating aerial island, this is a fictional construction introduced without foundation. Readers will initially delight in Laputas but, the longer they float along without foundation, the more their suspension of disbelief erodes. They thus tend to work best in small doses like short stories. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- An authorial facility with the micro-units of fiction -- lines, images, paragraphs, even scenes -- so that they are a pleasure to read and are vivid to the reader. Example of excellence: anything by Ross Thomas. Local dexterity can occasionally disguise the absence of drama or conflict in a scene. A symptom of this: after reading a piece, the critic thinks, "I really enjoyed reading it but nothing happened."
- Local dexterity is an authorial facility with the micro-units of fiction -- lines, images, paragraphs, even scenes -- so that they are a pleasure to read and are vivid to the reader. Example of excellence: anything by Ross Thomas. Local dexterity can occasionally disguise the absence of drama or conflict in a scene. A symptom of this: after reading a piece, the critic thinks, "I really enjoyed reading it but nothing happened."
- A character is locked in to a situation when he cannot escape from its conflict, usually because the stakes are high enough, and the consequences of non-participation so onerous, that trying and failing to better than doing nothing. For example, Robinson Crusoe is locked in; he must survive. Usually there is an irrevocable action, early in the story, which locks the character into his problem.
M
- Maid-and-butler dialogue is dialogue in which (probably ficelle) characters tell one another things they should already know, so that the reader can overhear them ("So sad that Madame had her cardiac arrest in the parlor and was carried out on a green stretcher last Thursday, June fifth, Nineteen Thirty-Four," or, "Gee, Rod, here we are on Mars. It's a good thing we were able to flee the wreckage of our burning spacecraft.") Usually manifested by apparent simple-mindedness of the characters forced to deliver these inanities. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Another term for protagonist / narrator. -- The most important (sole?) focus character.
- A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but has little or no actual relevance to the story.
- The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hitchcock explained the term in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is most always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." (Source: MacGuffin at Wikipedia ) -- An external constraint (object, fact, person) whose sole dramatic purpose is to force a character or characters into actions which serve the writer's dramatic theme. Examples: the Maltese Falcon, the One Ring (in Tolkien). (Alfred Hitchcock)
- The theatrical genre of melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "melōidía", meaning "song") and "drama"(Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma; meaning "action"). While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the characterizations will accordingly be somewhat more one-dimensional: Heroes will be unambiguously good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-sounding, ominous chords.
- Melodramas tend to be formulaic productions, with a clearly constructed world of connotations: A villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat and/or rescues the heroine. The term is sometimes used loosely to refer to plays, films or situations in which action or emotion is exaggerated and simplified for effect. As against tragedy, melodrama can have a happy ending, but this is not always the case. -- Source Melodrama at Wikipedia -- Melodrama comes in two varieties Melodramatic Settings and Melodramatic Actions.
- Template:Melodramatic Settings -- Melodramatic Settings are when the environment too-visibly reflects, often in a pushbutton fashion, the characters' emotional state (Bogart in the pouring rain on the Paris train platform, being stood up by Ingrid Bergman).
- Template:Melodramatic Actions -- Melodramatic Actions are taken by peripheral characters for the principal purpose of making the protagonist's life miserable and without furthering the peripheral character's own objectives; indeed, they are often nonsensical or contrary to the peripheral characters' interests. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Template:Microwaving the soufflé -- A tendency to rush past important setup material in the writer's haste to get to the payoff. Generally leaves the reader feeling frustrated on two counts: (1) the setup, being rushed, is uninteresting, and (2) the payoff, being insufficiently set up, is not earned. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Template:Milepost character -- A character who is absolutely unchanging throughout a story. A focus character's different perspectives on him or him show us, in emotional parallax, how the focus character has changed. Examples include Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield and Bill Ferry in Lord of the Rings.
- An authorial laziness where the dialogue is supposedly loaded with portentous significance to all participants - contorted facial expressions, heavy word emphasis, significant looks - but completely opaque to readers because relevant facts are neither stated nor inferable.
- "But when you told me that - "
- "-s! And thus he couldn't - "
- "Of course, and I was such a fool, so now if -- "
- "not if, but-when! And -- "
- Such conversation is infuriating to the reader and also cheat him of the genuine emotional conflict and change that are core to viable fiction. (CSFW: David Smith ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- More ink around the dogs is a colloquial exhortation to emphasize a bit of chrome, taken from an otherwise dreadful story featuring fascinating dogs, the only feature the critics found worthy in the entire tale. -- (CSFW: Sari Boren)
- Template:Motif -- A recurring visual objective correlative of the theme. In Catch-22, for instance, the theme is that war is insane, so the recurring motif is one character calling another character crazy, under a wide variety of circumstances, so that we continually revisit the same element, each time with a different view. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Template:Motivation -- Characters act for two reasons: (1) the writer wants certain things to happen in a story, and (2) the actions further a character's objectives. The latter is motivation; when it is bad, the reader becomes angry with the apparent stupidity or illogic of the character, and disengages. See Plot-Driven.
N-0
- Template:Nowism -- Short for 'now-chauvinism'. The tendency to export present-day forms, conventions, technology or morality to a future setting where they are inappropriate or unlikely. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Objective correlative -- Objective correlative is the tangible manifestation of an intangible, created and used by the writer to help the reader grasp the intangible concept. Most literature is about emotions or ideals -- things that you cannot see or touch. So the objective correlative becomes a focus, a tangible surrogate. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the painting becomes the objective correlative of Dorian Gray's soul -- it shows the invisible rot. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester's child is the objective correlative of her sinful passions.
- An important characteristic of objective correlatives is that they are usually vested with attributes which tilt the reader toward the emotion the writer wants him to feel in relation to the intangible being staged. (T. S. Eliot) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Offstage -- Events which occur other than onstage. Examples: reminiscence, narration, indirect quotation. Events which can only be inferred are the ultimate distance offstage. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Onstage: Events which are shown directly to the reader, who becomes a real-time observer while the action takes place. Onstage events are more dramatic and the reader weights them more important than events offstage. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Organ music -- Details which seek to countersink an emotional response in the reader even before anything happens (such as crackling lightning and rain outside a window before anyone's murdered). (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Out-of-whack event -- In Aristotelian drama, the story concerns a character whose stable life is knocked out of whack by an external force. The remainder of the story concerns his attempts to put his life back into whack, and his success or failure. The out-of-whack event inaugurates the struggle.
- Commonly the out-of-whack event occurs at the novel's opening (e.g. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, Valentine Michael Smith is brought to Earth; or Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber, Corwin recovers his powers but not his memory). It may already be in the past (e.g. Silverberg, The Man in the Maze, the aliens tamper with Muller's brain to broadcast evil emotions).
- If the out-of-whack event is delayed too long, the story seems to move slowly. "Shoot the sheriff on page 1." (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Overhead -- The amount of reality-bending in a science fiction or fantasy story which the reader must absorb as a precondition of enjoying the work and appreciating the dramatic point. Science fiction has more overhead than mainstream fiction: the writer is building a world that does not exist so as to stage something which cannot be illustrated in the world that does exist. Staging overhead unobtrusively but unmistakably is always a problem; the shorter the work, the harder the problem (see Info Dump). Well-balanced stories have no more overhead than necessary to make the dramatic point; part of the difficulty in writing SF short stories, thus, is the need to provide overhead in a cramped space. This may in part contribute to the proliferation of used furniture, which (however tacky and cliched) is at least familiar and thus requires less overhead. (CSFW: Alex Jablokov) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
P
- Template:Pace -- The timing by which the major events in the plot unfold and by which the big scenes are shown. Dramatic tension is largely a function of pace. Pace is also the process of stretching out the big scenes (slowing down time) and compressing the offstage action (speeding up time) to match the reader's emotions. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Packing peanuts -- Elements included in a story to fill out spaces between big scenes or important events. All stories need some packing peanuts; be wary of stories which are nothing but packing peanuts. (CSFW: Alex Jablokov) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Pay off (to) -- To be employed later in the furtherance of the dramatic or thematic intent of the story. Under the principle of economy, elements which fail to pay off weaken the story and cause the reader to disengage. (Jim Morrow) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Perception fallacy -- If a scene is told from a particular character's point of view (that is, no omniscient narrator), everything shown in that scene must be perceivable by the POV character. The perception fallacy is the common mistake of assuming that, if this is so, all description must be filtered through the senses of that character, rather than being presented directly. ("I got into the cab. I saw that the steering wheel had blood on it. I looked under the seat and found the knife." rather than "I got into the cab. The steering wheel had blood on it. The knife was under the seat.")
- The difference is whether the POV character is intrusive and disruptive or unobtrusive. This often has several unintended negative consequences:
- Reality is filtered through an extra lens. Instead of saying "rain poured down" the writer writes "I felt the rain pour down". A story always has one filter -- writer telling reader -- and good writers generally try to make the writer as unobtrusive as possible. Adding this second filter -- writer telling character to tell reader -- is not only uneconomical, it is also often intrusive.
- Feeling trapped into the restriction that all information must come to the point-of-view character, with the result that characters often rush onstage to tell the point-of-view character something. This is even worse than the first problem, because now we have a third filter: character telling character telling writer telling reader.
- Confusion between the perception of the writer, the narrator (if any), and the POV character. See Author Surrogate. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Peripheral character ego -- The antidote to superman syndrome, the legitimate desire of peripheral characters to be doing something even when being ignored by the protagonists and writer. Every peripheral character should behave (whether onstage or off) as if he or she is the most important actor in the story, with his or her own genuine motivations and independence. Tom Stoppard, the maestro of this conceit, built it into a whole play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Phildickian -- Named for Philip K. Dick, a surrealist science fiction writer, it describes situations in which reality and illusion become indistinguishable, or moments when the reader's perception changes so that reality becomes illusion or vice versa. 'When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion' -- Philip K. Dick. (CSFW: Sarah Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- In fiction a plot or storyline is all the events in a story, particularly towards the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect. In other words, it's what mostly happened in the story. Such as the mood, characters, setting, and conflicts occurring in a story. (Source: Plot (narrative) at Wikipedia ) -- The external motivation, the narrative melody around which the story is told. Plot is the action that dramatizes premise or makes characters come to life. Example of excellence: Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and many others. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Plot-Driven -- Plot-Driven is action which occurs, not because the characters are motivated to make it so, but because the writer wants to yank the story in a particular direction. Usually manifests by the characters refusing to act in the way that the writer has programmed them to, or by being wooden when performing the actions in question. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Plot inversion -- Events are meaningful to the reader when the reader understand what they signify. Thus for a scene to be meaningful, there must be (1) table-setting to establish what is at stake, and (2) the action itself. Normal plot construction puts the table-setting first, so the reader is prepared. Plot inversion reverses this order, so we have the events and only later learn what they mean. Although this can sometimes be very effective (it's a standard device in whodunit mysteries, where deceiving the reader is part of the game), usually it's a mistake. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Need to update from Template:Point of view (literary) article from Wikipedia (2008/04/05)
- Point of view (or POV) and point-of-view character. The 'hidden camera' through which the reader perceives a scene. It may be inside a focus character (we see that character's thoughts and reactions to events), it may move among characters, or it may remain outside of all characters as either an omniscient narrator or an active, present author-voice (e.g. John Fowles, Italo Calvino) commenting on the action.
- Point of view is a scarce resource, since it may be only one character at any one instant. Almost by definition, the reader will perceive the point-of-view character as the most important in a scene, and will be sympathetic to the point-of-view character (see Author Surrogate). Identical action will be perceived very differently by the reader if the point-of-view character is shifted (e.g. Rashomon; or Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quincunx). Granting a character point-of-view status for a scene usually signals that the character is a focus character, and is an easy way to separate focus and peripheral characters at the beginning of a story. Among the common points of view are:
- Third person omniscient: The narrator knows everything, can shift in time and place at whim, from character to character, inside people's thoughts, feelings and motives.
- Third person intrusive: The narrator editorializes on the story being told (Dickens, Fielding, Dostoevsky, John Fowles).
- Third person unobtrusive or Third person impersonal: Presents the story without comment (Zola, Flaubert, Dashiell Hammett).
- Third person limited: The narrator is confined to a single character, sitting on his shoulder or inside his head, observing only what is available to that character (Henry James, Raymond Chandler).
- Second person: An uncommon view point where the reader is focus. "You open the door and enter the room."
- First person: narrator is almost always intrusive and limited: confined to a single character who may be a witness (c.f. The Great Gatsby), a minor participant (Doctor Watson), or the central character (Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe). First person narrators are frequently either reader surrogates, author surrogates, or both. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The tendency to use a big word for effect even when a small word is better. (CSFW: David Smith ) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Acronym for point of view.
- Template:Powderpuff -- The authorial habit of being too nice to characters about whom the writer cares. Violates the basic principle, if you want your reader to care about your characters, do horrible things to them early on. Also called Pitty-Pat. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Premise -- The science fiction universe. In mainstream fiction, the premise is almost exclusively the present, real world. Science fiction uses the real world as a springboard or boomerang; it changes one or more major elements, then builds from that difference, showing us the shadow-side of changing human biology, technology, sociology, or psychology. Example of excellence: LeGuin, Left Hand of Darkness, the planet Winter populated by human beings who are hermaphroditic neuters for most of their lives; Huxley, Brave New World, regulation in the guise of hedonism; Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy or I, Robot. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The main character in a story, on whom the writer focuses the narrative. (Source: Fritz Freiheit) -- The central character of a story. Often the protagonist is a POV character or the sole POV character, but not necessarily (Sherlock Holmes is the protagonist, but Doctor Watson has the POV throughout; same for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin). (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Pump up (to) -- Expanding a scene's staging to give it more impact on the reader: foreshadowing it, placing it onstage, stretching out time, increasing the stakes. It is the literary foreplay that allows a scene to deliver its maximum dramatic impact. (Jim Morrow) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Punish the careless reader -- An authorial device to make a reader engage: to sprinkle throughout the story information vital to understanding subsequent events; this punishes the careless reader by making him retreat and reread. Punishment works only when matched by rewarding the careful reader. See Cookie. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Words used to evoke a cheap emotional response without engaging the intellect or the critical faculties. Commonly found in story titles, they include such bits of bogus lyricism as "star," "dance," "dream," "song," "tears" and "poet," cliches calculated to render the SF audience misty-eyed and tender-hearted. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) -- Words used to evoke an emotional response without engaging the reader's intellect or critical faculties, like 'song', 'poet', 'tears' or 'dreams'. They are supposed to make us misty-eyed without quite knowing why. Commonly found in romance novel titles. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
R
- Template:Reaction shot -- From the movies, a cutaway shift inside a bundle of narrative action which shows us the emotional or other responses of a character, usually a reader surrogate. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Reader cheating -- Producing a result (a surprise, a deduction, an unexpected denouement) without having given the reader a fair opportunity to foresee the result. For instance, having a detective deduce the murderer based on evidence the writer has willfully concealed from the reader is reader cheating. (Example: a point-of-view character who knows things and acts on them but lies in internal narrative so as to distract the reader.) (CSFW: James Patrick Kelly) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Reader surrogate -- A focus character who voices or experiences the thoughts, reactions and emotions which the writer desires the reader to have. Usually the point-of-view character, usually observing a scene or being acted upon (e.g. being tortured or interrogated). (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- The authorial habit of describing things only after they've figured in the action, never before they're used. "She dodged behind the boulder that she'd just seen out of the corner of her eye." The effect on the reader is that the description isn't seen for itself, but rather as if glimpsed only in the rear-view mirror. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Red velour shirt -- A character (usually a ficelle character) whose sole purpose is to die or otherwise be abused as a means of demonstrating that a situation is dangerous. Usually used in indicate that the character in question is insufficiently realized. From the old "Star Trek" television series, where the faceless crewman who beamed down with Kirk, McCoy, and Spock inevitably wore a red velour shirt and died before the opening credits. See "He's dead, Jim." Rosenkranz and Guildenstern wear red velour shirts. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Replacement principle -- The axiom that, in the future, everything we know now will be replaced with something more technological and better. Often an important means of avoiding nowism, it can sometimes be taken to absurd extremes. (Kathryn Cramer) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Retrofit is an editing term. To rewrite a previous chapter or scene for the purpose of making a later scene work better, by setting up something that is needed later, introducing a premise, situation or character so that its presence later in the story is justified. To revise a previous chapter or scene to conform details to what is necessary later in the story. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Reward the careful reader -- Reward the careful reader is the counterpart to punishing the careless reader: rewarding means, in this case, providing extra bonus details, small bits of readerly pleasure. Tuckerizing (see below) is a simple example; others are eyeball images, resonant metaphors, throwaway jokes, and so on. "As for you, the writer, never forget the following: the reader is like a circus horse which has to be taught that it will be rewarded with a lump of sugar every time it acquits itself well. If that sugar is withheld, it will not perform." -- Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars. (CSFW: David Smith) See Cookie. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Rhinoceros -- Abbreviated from "there's a rhinoceros in the room," this is an attribute (a story element or of the writer's writing) which is shriekingly obvious to everyone except the people closest to it. (In horror movies, the idiotic willingness of characters to split up and search dark mansions is a rhinoceros.) The term is most useful in a critiquing context as a means of helping a writer identify recurring tropes, [[tics], or fetishes in his own writing. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Rubber science -- An explanation which, although probably false according to what we know of the universe, sounds technical and convincing. Rubber science is acceptable in all forms of SF except hard-core hard SF, where the main dramatic point is the complete credibility of the science shown. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Rules of engagement -- An element of overhead: the definitions of permissible and impermissible contact and behavior of a fictionally-created device or being. Aliens are most real when they have consistent rules of engagement, which operate according to logic not easily visible to the reader, but which is nevertheless clear to the aliens (and, most likely, to the writer). Often when designing aliens or rubber science, it is helpful to write a separate description of the rules of engagement, not to be included in the story (where it would be an info dump), but rather as a guide to the writer as to what the new creation will and will not do. (CSFW: Steve Popkes) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Runaround -- Frenetic activity by characters we don't care about, usually in search of objects or goals we're uninterested in seeing them achieve. Usually injected into action stories when the writer realizes that he's failing his dramatic objectives. Can be recognized when, although the action is fast and furious, the reader skims along with a glazed eye. Often the more spectacular the gore -- e.g., the more bodies left on the battlefield at scene's end -- the greater the runaround, and the weaker the story. A tipoff of weak characterization. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
S
- Template:Said-bookisms -- Large words that mean 'said,' designed to connote additional information not conveyed in dialogue or description. If used to excess, they result in overwriting: "I'm climaxing!" he ejaculated. See also Tom Swifty. (CSFW: James Patrick Kelly) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Scene -- Scene is the basic dramatic sub-unit -- an interaction involving one or more focus characters. Scenes are usually ended by the announcement that time has passed ('a week later'), by a termination of the dialogue ('she left then'), a shift in point-of-view character, or an external event ('the room exploded'). A scene which straddles a chapter break is a guaranteed tension-maintainer.
- Template:Scene outline -- Scene outline is a blow-by-blow description of the onstage events. It covers everything the action outline covered, but also (1) segregates background information from the narrative flow, (2) identifies point-of-view characters, (3) addresses what is shown onstage, what offstage, (4) is subdivided into scenes or chapters. A scene outline is often a useful successor to an action outline: it can help a writer avoid staging scenes which are undramatic. The following things typically go into it:
- Expression of the theme
- Background information, broken into convenient subheadings
- Scene-by-scene description of the story.
- Any outline should define any jargon it intends to use. Focus characters should be introduced with solid capitals so the reader-critic knows to pay attention. An outline should be edited and polished, if not for drama, at least for clear economical exposition. Often scene outlines are written in present tense. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Template:Segue -- Another term for bridge: a phrase or sentence which links two different scenes. In general, the smoother and less obtrusive the segue, the better.
- Template:Shadow staging -- Presenting a crucial event (such as an out-of- whack event) by its consequences rather than showing it directly. In Sophie's Choice, for example, Sophie's choice is shadow-staged throughout the whole novel. (CSFW: Steve Popkes)
- Metaphors or similes can be considered as a means of coining adjectives by repackaging nouns: "He was as strong as a bull, rosy-fingered dawn, it was as easy as pie." Metaphors are relatively seldom used to convey adverbs, and especially seldom to convey intention. It can be done in a few words if you know what to look for: namely, a simile in a structure such as: "He <verb> as if he was <metaphoric verb>ing," as in a sentence like "he regarded the outstretched hand as if it were a day-old fish." This has the extremely desirable result of describing intention without shifting narrational point of view; the technique can be used with high frequency without becoming obtrusive. (CSFW: David Smith) (Source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Smart subconscious -- Term used when a critic (or the writer) reviews text in light of a new approach or theory and discovers, much to his or her surprise, that within the previous text are a whole series of small items or details which help express this approach or theory; the smart subconscious was planting them in hopes that they would eventually be discovered. Smart subconscious is a possible explanation for subtext. (CSFW: Paul Tumey)
- Template:Snark rule -- "I tell you once, I tell you twice, what I tell you three times is true." Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark. When three or more critics concur on an element in a story, it is highly likely to be true. (Jennifer Jackson)
- Template:Sorcerer's apprentice's mop -- A device or gadget which, if introduced into a society will spread, become pervasive, and change every aspect of society (cf. the telephone or the nanobots in Greg Bear's Blood Music). Writers who intend such devices as throwaways introduce them into their stories at great peril, because eventually the writer must either abruptly chop off exploration of the gadget (frustrating the reader) or make it the focus of the entire story (frustrating the writer). (CSFW: David Smith)
- The most pernicious suite of "Used Furniture". The grizzled space captain swaggering into the spacer bar and slugging down a Jovian brandy, then laying down a few credits for a space hooker to give him a Galactic Rim Job. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) -- A pernicious form of used furniture where every Martian or Jovian town looks and sounds like Dodge City (Lewis Shiner).
- Template:Staging -- Staging is bringing scenes to vivid life, making them so tangible and evocative that the reader is transfixed, bringing out the inherent drama or magnifying it so that it hits with great force. Example: Peake, Titus Groan, Steerpike in the kitchen with the chef Swelter; Orwell, 1984, O'Brien interrogates Winston Smith.
- Template:Stalling -- When a writer, knowing a big scene or crucial event is upcoming, writes desultory here-to-there scenes as a means of deferring the more difficult (and emotionally charged) task of writing the big scene. Common in first drafts. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Stapledon is the name assigned to the voice which takes center stage to lecture. Actually a common noun, as: "You have a Stapledon come on to answer this problem instead of showing the characters resolve it." (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) -- A character prone to holding forth, at length and without interruption, while various info dumps are unloaded on the helpless reader. Often surrounded by sycophantic peripheral characters whose lines are generally limited to, "Why, it certainly seems so, Socrates. No man of sense could dispute that." (Lewis Shiner)
- Template:Storyboard -- Adapted from the movies, a visually-oriented simple description of the events in a scene. Often useful for writers wishing to structure or restructure their plots and separate these elements from dialogue, narration and other details of technique. (CSFW: David Smith)
- Template:Style -- Style is using words to create an aura, an effect that permeates the story. Extreme style becomes baroque, obtrusive stylization, but when handled deftly, the words become part of the fabric of the world. Examples: Cordwainer Smith, Norstrilia; Zelazny, Lord of Light or Jack of Shadows; and Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun. Example of style run amok, disguising melodrama: late Hemingway.
- Template:Story clock -- The pace at which action is internally described. See fast forward and travel time. (CSFW: James Patrick Kelly)
- Template:Subtext -- A secondary level of action or content in a scene. Not stated overtly -- that is, not perceived by the characters -- and sometimes not even consciously perceived by the writer.
- Template:Superman syndrome -- The habit of magnifying the good points of focus characters and either giving them no bad points whatsoever or obscuring and rationalizing the minor ones they have. Usually leads to melodrama and heavy-handedness. (CSFW: David Smith)
T
- Template:Tense -- The dominant verb-tense in which the main story is told. Most are told in straight past tense, although in a few cases (e.g. Tiptree, Brightness Falls from the Air; Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale) the present tense is sustained throughout. Tense is a very powerful way of distinguishing point of view or voice. Giving the present-tense solely to one character immediately makes that voice unique, whenever and wherever the reader encounters it. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Texture -- Texture encompasses both crispness of prose and efficiency of delivering images to the reader. At one level, it is word choice: at another, image choice. (E.g. when dealing with aliens in whom smell is the dominant sense, most things should be described by their aroma, and the characters should respond to aroma rather than to other attributes.) See Inappropriate Metaphor.
- Texture often completes the circle by building a whole-book, macro-level vision of the premise by sustained, consistent micro-level evidence. Examples: Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, where the Russopunk vocabulary is laced throughout the book; and John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, which intercuts storylines with news broadcasts, ads, and other vignettes of existence. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Thematic Redundancy -- Retelling essentially the same story without changing any major element. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Theme -- Theme is the underlying element which governs the writer's selection of dramatic events to show onstage. Can be a belief (e.g. Catch-22, war is insane, only lunatics fight in wars), a proposition to be proved, a moral dilemma, or an attribute of human character.
- The theme of Left Hand of Darkness is sexuality; Dragon in the Sea, neurosis; and Lord of the Rings, the evil of power. Implanting the theme in every aspect of the story -- setting, characters, plot, texture -- often strengthens its power. In Left Hand, beings who are sexually indifferent live on a planet named Winter. Cold affects every aspect of the story just as neuter androgyny affects the personality of every character. Just as the point-of-view character -- a normal human who serves as the reader surrogate -- becomes physically cold, he becomes sexually neutral. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Three-act structure -- The classic plot:
- Act 1. The protagonist's life is knocked out of whack. He confronts an obstacle which he is locked in to solving or being vanquished by. In great literature the obstacle is tied directly into a specific theme.
- Act 2. The protagonist investigates the obstacle, tries to solve or conquer it, and is repulsed, leaving him worse off than before. The situation is desperate.
- Act 3. Using the knowledge gained in Act 2, the protagonist formulates a new plan and risks all. The story's resolution may be heroic (the main character succeeds and the reader is uplifted), tragic (the main character is destroyed but the reader learns something about the theme from his destruction), or nihilistic (the main character is destroyed and no one learns anything). (Aristotle) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Tic -- A minor mannerism -- verbal, visual or otherwise -- which is uniquely assigned to a particular character as a means of identifying him. One character twirls his hair; another ends many of his sentences by saying "right?" Used properly, they help the reader distinguish among characters in the early going and can, by the finish, be sufficient to identify a character even without further attribution. (Jane Yolen) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Toon -- A comic relief character generally intended to be recognized as such -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are toons (most of Shakespeare's comic relief characters are toons). Toons have a limited place in fiction; an excess of them can render an otherwise serious work trivial. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Travel time -- A component of pacing. Characters don't reverse important decisions in their personalities overnight. The emotional distance a character travels should generally be proportionate to the amount of travel time -- measured in words -- the change requires.
- Travel time can be increased by intercutting a different story, by filling the intervening space with straight action, or by developing other characters, description or thematic material. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A literary trope (from Greek τροπή - tropē, "a turn, a change" and that from τρέπω - trepō, "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change") is a common pattern, theme, motif in literature, or a term often used to denote figures of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning. -- (Source: Trope (literature) at Wikipedia ) -- A figure of speech, usually used to describe overworked images, literary or dramatic conventions, or stale ideas borrowed from other writers. See Used Furniture. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Named after Wilson Tucker, the practice of introducing as peripheral characters, or offstage icons, names recognizable to the reader. (For example, naming the Moon's capital 'Heinlein' and its main street 'La Rue de la Professor Bernardo de la Paz'.) A subclass of rewarding the careful reader. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
U
- Template:Underserve -- When a writer gives an element less stage time than it deserves. Most often underserved are peripheral characters or those for whom the writer feels little sympathy. Stories are strong in proportion to the obstacles -- events or bad guys -- that the good guys overcome. If you underserve your peripheral elements, you undercut your drama. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- Template:Unperceived source -- An inspiration for a writer's creation which the writer does not recognize until it is pointed out to him. Many writers resist acknowledging their unperceived sources. (Geoff Ryman) See smart subconscious.
- Template:Unreliable narrator -- A narrator who is eventually revealed to have been concealing the truth, or even mis-stating it (unintentionally or deliberately). A development of twentieth-century literature (first made famous in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), the unreliable narrator is often used to force the reader to reinterpret events previously experienced. (CSFW: Steve Popkes)
- Template:Unstage -- To destage something intentionally. Often used as a rewrite term.
- Template:Use it or lose it -- A critiquing comment. A story or novel will introduce many elements, some of which are put onstage at an early point in the proceedings with the apparent implication that they will figure in later action. If the element is later unused, the reader feels dissatisfied, because he has not been rewarded for paying attention to it. Thus a critic will often note an element in a story with a recommendation that it either to pumped up to play in the themes or plot (use it) or that it be deleted (lose it). (CSFW: Steve Popkes)
- Use of a background out of Central Casting. Rather than invent a background and have to explain it, or risk re-inventing the wheel, let's just steal one. We'll set it in the Star Trek Universe, only we'll call it the Empire instead of the Federation. (Source: Turkey City Lexicon ) -- A background out of Central Casting, often chosen by a writer too lazy to invent a good one. (Lewis Shiner) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
V-Z
- Voice is the narrational form used. Often confused with point of view, but it is distinct. The same scene, told from the point of view of the same character, will have a very different texture if done first-person-singular ("I raced down the alley") rather than third-person-singular ("Our hero raced down the alley"). In very rare occasions (e.g. McInerny, Bright Lights / Big City), second-person is used ("you open the door and are hit in the head; lights explode in your brain"). In a story with multiple points of view, each character may have his own tense and voice, and thus distinguish characters on a textual level.
- Adjusting voice can increase or decrease the distance between writer, reader and character. Using first-person, for example, brings reader and character practically into the same head. Using a narrative-reminiscence style shortens the distance between reader and writer. (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A Watson character is a supporting character whose principal purpose is to voice the reader's confusions and concerns, so that the protagonist is given an opportunity to answer them without resorting to an expository lump. "My God, Holmes, you mean the bell-pull was a snake?" (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
- A zipper story is a particular form of story involving two (or more) alternating strands, which in the story's beginning appear completely unrelated but which over time come closer and closer together until their connection becomes the story's climax. Fred Pohl's novel Gateway is a zipper story. (CSFW: David Smith) (Original source: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/glossary.html )
Also see
- Writer's Glossary
- The Turkey City Lexicon, Annotated (1998)
- Turkey City Lexicon @ critters.org (with additions)
- Turkey City Lexicon @ OnSpec.ca (with additions)
- Turkey City Lexicon @ sfwriter.com
- Turkey City Lexicon @ TvTropes.org
- Postmodern Terms
- Glossary of Writing Terms
- Paradigms writers workshop - http://w2.eff.org//Misc/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/paradigms_workshop_sterling.lexicon
- A Workshop Lexicon: The "RevolutionSF" Iteration by Bruce Sterling
- rec.arts.sf.composition Frequently Asked Questions || lshelby.com
- http://www.google.com/search?q=sf+critique+lexicon
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