On Scientific Writing

“The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.” (Oscar Wilde)

           1. Adopt the Right Attitude

Just like everything else, before we start, we have to believe what we do matters. If we can’t persuade ourselves, how are we going to persuade others? Writing scientific essays should not be considered as an obligation, or a pain we go through to create a nice-looking CV. It is true that we have the duty to publish what we have done. “If you don’t publish, you didn’t do it,” my PhD advisor used to tell me. But bear in mind that the development of any discipline would not have been possible if people didn’t know what one another was doing. Consider the current stage of a research field as a mansion, and your publication as a brick that may appear anywhere from the basement to the roof. Insufficient details make it difficult for others to replicate your work; ambiguous phrasings can cause misunderstandings. A single badly crafted brick may deteriorate into a leaky passage.  Too many substandard materials can cause the mansion to collapse.

Let’s not treat essay writing as a burden. Maybe you are lucky to have worked in a modern lab with cutting-edge equipment, or not that lucky like me who sits surrounded by antiques and cockroaches. No matter what, after conducting your experiments for months or years, now it is the time for you to reach out to other smart people, to show your findings and gain their respect. Your writing doesn’t have to impress people---although, if you can, by all means do it! At least it should provide them with a fair chance to judge your work. You deserve it.

The good part about writing a paper is that, unless you give up, it usually ends up being published somewhere. Another form of scientific writing is to prepare research proposals for funding applications. Given the fact that both governmental and private budgets for non-clinical projects are shrinking almost universally, it can be quite frustrating to spend months collecting data and writing a proposal just to have it rejected. But don’t be so pessimistic. There are several benefits of writing grant proposals.  First, it helps you clear your mind and nail down what you really plan to do. “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.” (Joan Didion) You may have a vague idea about a brilliant project. By writing it down you are forced to work through your logic and examine its feasibility.

Second, it garners valuable opinions from your peers. A pair of fresh eyes can help catch flaws in your design; somebody might have done similar work that you are not aware of; you might have overestimated your ability to step into a field without having acquired relevant expertise … It can be painful to face criticisms, but you always learn something. Even if all the reviewers misunderstood you, you know you need to tell a better story (to the lesser men, if that makes you feel better).

Third, it makes things happen, not just being dreamed of. To collect preliminary results, you can’t wait for the best time to come. You gotta start it right now! Nothing inspires us more than an approaching deadline. And remember, in the worst case that your application is dismissed, you may have a manuscript ready to be submitted.

In short, attitude is important. "Love the writing, love the writing ... the rest will follow." (Jane Yolen)

2. Hone your craft

Here I urge everybody to learn the basic techniques of creative writing. It’s true that we need to write professionally, but a boring article may discourage the readers from digging out the treasure buried in your monotones and sloppy grammar. Right off the top of my head I could think of several tips.

First, use active voice. I know, scientific writing is one place where passive voice is indulged, if not encouraged. There have been constant debates about whether active or passive voice better serves scientific writing (like this one: https://cgi.duke.edu/web/sciwriting/index.php?action=passive_voice). I don’t want to go in depth to discuss their pros and cons. Here is an example from one of my old papers: “Activity evoked by low-level background noise is reported to be more suppressed by inhibitory inputs than is tone-evoked activity”. If I were to rewrite this sentence now, it would be: “Inhibitory inputs generate stronger suppression on activity evoked by low-level background noise than by tones.” The original sentence has 19 words, whereas the revised has only 15 words. In addition, it is clearer which is compared with which in the revised sentence. In my experience, changing a passive voice into active usually introduces a strong verb (e.g., generate), which is better than “is found, is observed, or is reported to be”.

Second, expand your vocabulary. In scientific writing, we tend to use the same words again and again. Next time when you want to write the verb “show”, consider its synonyms such as “demonstrate”, “display”, “exhibit”, “indicate”, or “suggest”. I’m not saying you should randomly choose a synonym just to avoid repetitions. These words differ from one another and depending on the context, one of them will be the most accurate. For example, “display” and “exhibit” give a more passive feeling, whereas “demonstrate” implies some kind of proof. “Suggest” sounds more active than “indicate”. By doing so, your writing will slow down. But, here is one of my favorite quotes: “Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.” (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)

Third, pay attention to the melody and vary the sentence length. It’s very tedious to read an article that has one long sentence followed by another. Short sentences are punchier, but too many in a row gives the impression of lacking sophistication. The best is to have long sentences interleaved with short ones, but by all means, avoid complex structures with layers of meanings. It’s hard enough for others to understand your basic science. Don’t play word games here. In fact, for more skilled writers they would even vary the structures of adjacent sentences. Another commonly overlooked aspect is what the word sound like. Many novelists believe that the sound of a word is, at least, as important as its meaning. This might be a high standard for scientific writers. I would say, the least you can do is to stay away from mouthful phrases.

Fourth, avoid repetitions. Here is a perfect example. At the end of the last paragraph, I initially wrote “the least you can do is to avoid mouthful phrases.” Then I realize I have another “avoid” just below it. So I changed one of them. Another idea I want to get across here is that you don’t have to repeat in the text what is already there in the figure captions. In the captions, we tend to write, “The x-axis is … The y-axis is … The closed symbols are …” I have seen many authors who constantly repeat those phrases in the Results. Not necessary. Another bad habit is to repeat the entire results in the Discussion. The Discussion should really discuss. It should expand. If readers forget about a result, they can go back to look up for it.

Fifth, refrain from using adverbs or modifiers. Replacing a weak verb followed by an adverb with a strong and accurate verb is the number one golden rule of creative writing. For example, “He was walking leisurely in the garden,” should be rewritten as “He was rambling in the garden.” We also tend to say, “The change is very large.” Some people believe that, in scientific writing, any change should be either statistically significant or not. This rule is kind of hard to follow (note: delete “kind of” for better writing), but comply with it whenever you can.

Last, use informative subtitles, especially in the Discussion. Like what I’m doing here: “1, Adopt the Right Attitude”, rather than “1, The Attitude”. Instead of saying “The Negative Level Effect”, make it clear that “The Negative Level Effect Is Only Found for Localization in Elevation.” Under each subsection, instead of plunging into the results, first use a few sentences to tell the readers what to expect, such as in what order will the data be presented. Some people even suggest adding a summary sentence to the beginning or the end of every paragraph in the Results. Your choice. I would always have a summary sentence at the beginning of each figure caption.

In short, never underestimate the power of language. If you aren’t careful with what you say, people would wonder if you have been careful with what you do. Unless you are in a hurry, treat every email as an opportunity to improve your skills.

3. Tell a story

For research articles, different people write in different orders. I always start with the straightforward part, the Methods, which merely needs to be organized and presented in the clearest way. Then I describe the results. Although I tend to think I understand the results by the time the experiment is finished, there are always surprises waiting for me in the finalized figures. Then based on the results, I select what I want to include in the Introduction. Here is a tip: like writing a novel, instead of revealing all the findings, adding a little bit of suspense to the Intro usually keeps the readers more engaged, although they do know what to expect in general, assuming they have read the Abstract.

（插入作者高妹/Fiona的话：向大家推荐我正在连载的玄幻---武打---佛道---言情故事《魅羽活佛》，晋江链接：http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4880087  故事简介：鬼道中的魇荒门，七个师姐妹都以绝世美颜著称。然而这次的任务中，二弟子魅羽却要化作一个中年油腻肥秃僧，卷入佛国、道门，和修罗界的斗争. 还要让咱们古往今来文采武功都称霸天下的帅哥活佛，对她一见倾心，矢志不渝。）

Now it comes to the critical part, the Discussion. Many people tend to organize the Discussion based on how they present the Results. I can’t say this never works, but why not give it another thought? Ask yourself several questions before you start. For example, “Why did we do this?” In fact, a better question would be, “Why did we have to do this?” Using my PhD advisor’s word, every study we do is a must-do; if it’s optional, we should’ve found a better way to spend the taxpayers’ money. You can argue that your study helps discover something new, or fill a gap between things we’ve already known. A common mistake people often make here is the assumption that anything unknown is worth studying, e.g., “We are the first to …” Well, it’s true only if you are paying for the experiment out of pocket. Otherwise, it needs to be a critical piece of information that solves a long-lived myth, settles ongoing arguments, or links segregated knowledge into a whole picture. Some prestigious journals may even want you to elaborate how your field will change once people get to know your work. Don’t be intimidated by this request. Changes rarely happen overnight. Know your strength, and talk about it with confidence.

Truth is impartial. It shouldn’t depend on the person who pursues it. But science is more than absolute truth. How individual researchers approach the same topic from different angles, how they test their hypotheses and interpret the results, make science colored with all kinds of human factors. We try to write as impartially as we can, but meanwhile, don’t be afraid of expressing your opinions---they might be wrong, but you’ll never know without them being articulated. “Let who you are … what you believe, shine through every sentence you write.” (John Jakes)

Now a bit off topic here. When addressing reviewers’ comments, there are two typical tendencies. One is to be overly flattering in hopes that the reviewers or editor will simply let it go. The other is to answer with strong emotions, almost getting personal.  Neither is the appropriate approach, especially the second one. I know you might be indignant for being misunderstood or mistreated; you might be shocked at the reviewers’ hostility or stupidity, but it does you no good to start a heated debate due to the nature of peer reviews. When you can’t exchange arguments with the other party in a freely and timely manner, things are frequently misinterpreted. Remember, don’t get personal. Just answer the questions, as calmly and concisely as you can. They may have acted unprofessionally, but you wouldn’t. And no need to be flattering either. Acknowledge their expertise, and say that the manuscript has been greatly improved due to their help. Note the last sentence is the key. It makes you and the reviewers collaborators, not enemies.

All right! That’s all I wanted to say. In short, you have to love what you do. And why not? Science is not only about inventing fancy machines or conquering diseases. Through scientific activity we learn to free our mind, we try to find out where we are from, and survive as better human beings.

Author Interview with DJ Edwardson

Fiona: It’s a real pleasure to have DJ Edwardson here and learn about his newly released science fiction, Through the Viscera, the second book in The Chronotrace Sequence. So, DJ, what inspired you to create the original story? A person, the idea of the bioseine/esolace, or simply the desire to explore post-apocalyptic life?

DJ: First off, thanks for having me for this interview. The original concept was to take the promise of science for the future and make it real---to make everything faster, better, more efficient, to stretch those things out to their limits and imagine what such a world might be like. For instance, computers are getting smaller and smaller, and it seemed logical to think that people would eventually want to just absorb the computer into their bodies so that they would be always “connected”. I took it to the extreme so that in this series there really is no distinction between people and computers. People become the computers. And yet it’s not what you’d think. They don’t look like robots, they still look just like normal human beings.

It was sort of that “what if science could do almost anything?” question that was the basis for creating the world of the Vast. And yet, just as strong was the concern that if mankind really did have that kind of power, what would happen if we reinvented ourselves and basically created our own ideas of right and wrong.

Fiona: Interesting! I found your world of the Vast horrifying yet enchanting. A constant praise you receive from your readers is the fantastic world building. How did you develop this type of skill? Are you always a person sensible to the environment?

DJ: Hmm…I’d like to think that the reason the Vast is an interesting place for people to discover and explore is because of all the work that went into creating it. I wanted the environments to feel very different from standard post-apocalyptic books. I didn’t just want New Los Angeles or a shelled out New York City, but something the reader could explore from a blank slate. The fact that the main character Adan has lost his memory made that even more of a necessity.

In one sense this made it harder to write the book because everything is brand new to the reader and almost everything has to be reinvented and explained. But I think this has the potential to help readers identify with the struggles of the characters without being distracted by pre-conceived ideas about how things should be.  The idea is for the readers to place themselves inside the story so that they’re thinking, “What would I do in that situation?” And the more familiar things are, the more sometimes I think we compare it to our own experience and start to think how it should be this way and that gets in the way of the story. That’s one of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy. It is the other-worldliness that draws you in and you’re free to experience the events of the story on a more primitive, purely imaginary level, which I think enhances the story.

Fiona: In the world you created for us, a group of people can read one another’s minds and communicate instantly. What are the pros and cons for this type of society? Do you think it would make us happier? Is efficiency worth the price of individuals’ privacy?

DJ: You know, it would obviously have benefits in terms of the clarity of communication. One of the hardest things about writing is getting what’s inside your head onto the page in a way that readers understand. So in that sense it would be extremely helpful if we had something like that!

On the other hand, I tried to show in the novel some of the real problems such technology would create. Because just like with physical computers today, for these devices to be able to communicate and function properly, you need a shared system through which to communicate. And because it’s not natural, this system needs to be maintained. So you need system administrators and “developers”, technical people who will keep the thing up and running. But if people are really just computers, then the people who are in charge of this system would have inordinate power over the lives of the people on the system. And what do you do when there are “errors”? What if someone is starting to think violent thoughts? As the administrator it would be your job to spot that and fix it before it causes a problem. Ultimately, I think such a role would dehumanize people in the minds of the gatekeepers. They would tend to see them more like objects to be manipulated rather than people. Efficiency would be the only standard and things like human dignity and worth would be useless concepts. It’s not a pretty picture!

Fiona: We definitely need to think twice before taking that step. So far, both books in the series are hard sci-fi. What was the biggest challenge you encountered when making up the science?

DJ: One of the parts I most enjoy in writing science fiction is getting to invent and think of names for all of the different technologies. I spent a lot of time coming up with names that I thought were unique and evocative of what I was trying to convey. While there are certainly scientific ideas and concepts underlying what I wrote about (organic computing, for example), it seems to me that science is always changing and shifting and the sorts of nomenclature in use today might not still be around in the distant future. I felt a lot of freedom to sort of strike out on my own with new ideas.

My approach was to assume that science will reinvent itself in the future. I think down the road it’s very possible that there will be entirely knew paradigms and ways of understanding the universe, and I tried to hint at that by shying away from using standard scientific terms. I felt more comfortable imagining what science could do rather than being constrained to what current understanding says it can do. At the same time I worked very hard to make the technology operate in a consistent manner and to seem as plausible as possible without going into all the minute details of how everything works.

Fiona: From your first book, Into the Vast, I got the essence of friendship, love, and faith, which prevents us from becoming slaves of our own creation --- technology. Is there a similar theme in the second book, or are you going to present us with a surprise?

DJ:  I think you’ll find the themes pretty similar. There’s a quote by C.S. Lewis that I put in the front of the new book where he talks about how man’s conquest of Nature is paradoxically Nature’s conquest over man. Because this technology does not really change all of the baser things about humanity, if anything it makes them more pronounced.  The more sophisticated we become, the more danger there is that people will use this technology to remake the world according to their own designs, to impose their will on others, even for “good” reasons. Such endeavors will ultimately end up in tragedy if there is not some sort of outside moral, corrective force to intervene and I wanted to show that theme throughout the entire series.

At the same time, in the wake of the tragic events at the end of the first book, the characters also explore this idea of how to respond to tragedy. What do we do when things don’t make sense? How do we cope? How do we move on through loss? You’ll see a variety of different responses to that in the next novel and not all of them are good ones.

Fiona: I like the concept that during our conquest of nature, we risk becoming nature’s captives. I know that Into the Vast had some success on Amazon during the last year, reaching #1 on the Metaphysical Science Fiction chart over the summer. As a new author, could you tell us how you’ve met the challenge of getting your book out into the hands of a wider audience?

DJ:  Well, the first year certainly had its ups and downs. I do think I have ended up doing things a bit backwards, leaping first and looking later. I tried a little of everything the first year, doing interviews, getting involved in social media, just trying to connect with readers. I put a lot of work into my website and at one point was writing a weekly column there. But I think I still haven’t really found a consistent audience for my work despite some blips on the sales charts here and there. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to see my book shoot up for a while next to other, more well-known authors, but when it’s all said and done, I have to realize that I’ve only got one full-length book out (well, two now), and that things don’t usually happen overnight.

In the first half of this year I’ve been focusing more on writing and less on promoting and my book hasn’t done so well, but I’m in this for the long haul. I think it’s important for me at this point to focus more on my craft and to maybe let things happen more slowly. I believe the most important thing is to write great stories that will connect with readers. Not everyone will like your work, but if you do that on a consistent basis, I think the readers will come back for more. That’s the plan, anyway, to just keep the ink flowing and the words coming and to try and write the best stories I can possibly write and to let the books fall where they may.

Before I go, I just want to say thank you again, Fiona, for having me for this interview. Your questions were really great and I had a lot of fun answering them!

Fiona: Thank you very much, DJ! Over the years I’ve been very impressed with your persistency and professionalism. I wish your new book a big success!

Book Review: Lend Me Your Ears --- Great Speeches in History

Writing a review of this book takes some courage, for this is a book coauthored by hundreds of remarkable characters throughout the human history.

I first borrowed this book from one of NYU’s libraries because I needed to write political speeches for a science fiction. It soon became clear that this is not a book that can be skimmed through in a few days. Not a beach read or a diversion you bring to an airplane. It desires a slot on my bookshelf and is well worth the $35 I spent on Amazon. There are more than 200 speeches  presented in 14 categories, ranging from Napoleon’s exhortation to his soldiers to Clinton’s memorial of Martin Luther King. My favorite is the category of War and Revolution, as “The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost” (William Carlos Williams), although I do learn a lot in any of the other categories, about economy, democracy, religion, etc.

But this is more than a collection. Preceding every speech, the author, William Safire, gives a brief background of the speech and the speaker. For historical events, you may argue that anyone could easily “google” something out, but the intros written by Safire are not mere facts; they are the distillate of abundant knowledge combined with personal insights. I’ve tried reading some of the speeches without first resorting to Safire’s intros. Always ended up clueless. Some of the events awoke my old memories. When I learned those events in high school, they were numbers and names and exam questions. Now reading the actual speech, I become face to face with the speaker, fearing his fear and smiling at his smile. There is no force stronger than the mind of a remarkable human being. And that’s how people achieve eternity --- “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” (Benjamin Franklin)

Quotes for Today: I

 “If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.” ~ Emile Zola

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” ~ Gustave Flaubert

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” ~ Gustave Flaubert

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.” ~ Gustave Flaubert

“Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.” ~ Gustave Flaubert

Where Is Self Publishing Heading?

Imagine that you have to decide whether or not to marry a stranger in less than a day. You know where she is from (publishing house), what others say about her (editorial or customer reviews), and you do have the chance to talk to her for a while (sample chapters). Are you ready to marry her, given that you are always free to divorce if things don’t work out (abandoning a book)?

As a self-published writer I know how hard it is to get editorial or customer reviews. Harder than writing the book. But I have to; otherwise why would readers trust me, someone they’ve never heard of, especially when there isn’t a big publishing house to back me up? “A best seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.” (S. Boorstein). More reviews will bring in more readers, who will further write more reviews, good or bad.

Now paid customer reviews are generally considered unethical, but to get editorial reviews, self-published authors do need to spend hundreds of dollars. Even CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing platform, encourages you to purchase those editorial-review packages, each costing $400 or so. To get customer reviews, you go through the list of indie-blog reviewers and beg everyone who accepts your genres to write a review. Normally those bloggers are already bombarded with hundreds of review requests every month and, in the end, you get about a handful of reviews if you are lucky. Authors who could afford it use services like NetGalley to distribute review copies; others simply give away thousands of free copies to readers, hoping that some of them may eventually read and review it. And mind you, those readers typically have dozens if not hundreds of free books already stored in their Kindles. I never liked the idea of distributing free copies on a massive scale like this. Why shouldn’t writers be paid for their work?

That’s why I saw hope when I encountered the pay-per-chapter platform (http://www.novkey.com). This is like dating: you no longer have to make a “life-long” commitment to a stranger. You put in some small investment as you go through each chapter. Whenever you feel this is not for you, you simply move on to another book. Readers don’t have to consider what others say about the book---even if everyone likes a book, it may not suit them.

It seems there have been bad examples regarding similar models years ago, e.g., some author charged unreasonably high prices for the last few chapters (http://www.novelr.com/2009/05/01/why-pay-per-chapter-sucks), but this is easy to fix. We can ask the authors to set the price from the very beginning. And I think most authors would not do that to risk their reputations. Every new business needs regulations, and this is already a popular model in other countries, like China. Even Kindle can adopt this model by instantly examining how far the reader is in a book. We can also collect objective “customer feedback” by knowing how many readers are currently reading a book, and how many chapters they’ve finished. These are technically realizable.

In summary, I believe that authors deserve to be paid. Amazon’s free promotions are doing no good to the health of the publishing world, be it Indie or Traditional. Nor is their Kindle Countdown Deals (http://fionarawsontile.blogspot.com/2013/12/truth-about-kindle-countdown-deal.html). It’s time for a change.

Shut Up, and Write

No, you don’t have to shut up or stop whatever you are doing, unless you want to be a serious writer. Writing is an innately contradictory business. I know it doesn’t look nice if we shut ourselves from the rest of the world for months or years. Unfortunately, that’s usually how great things are done. But that doesn’t mean we stay as a loner. Once our work is published, we share our most intimate feelings with strangers we never know existed, and subject our souls to their worship or contempt.

If you don’t believe me, a self-published author, here are quotes from well established authors.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking. ~ Jessamyn West

Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprenticeship to books and not to living masters of the craft. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

Now with all the convenience and distractions brought to us by the Internet, socialization can be a quick and yet satisfactory act, or it can be time consuming, depending on how you treat it. It’s only beneficial to our mental health to stay connected with friends or strangers, and we all have things to say and opinions to ask for. Meanwhile, do remember that you do these things for the sake of your mental health, not for writing. I frequently hear writers saying how much she/he has learned about writing from a writer’s forum/community. The truth is, he/she would’ve learned more if the same amount of time had been spent in writing the current or next book.

To me, an online critique group is best for work that is far from publishable---for easily noticeable issues such as too much info dumping in the first chapter, dialogue rambling on and on, frequent changes of POVs (unless that’s intended, which is rarely the case). Once it’s past this stage, I don’t know how we could possibly judge a portion of work without knowing the whole picture. After all, every writer would write the same story differently, and something that reads meaningless now may proof its necessity fifty pages later. Needless to say, you may get completely opposite opinions. The best scenario is that you post something and everybody says good; your ego is boosted and you feel more confident continuing your work. You don’t learn anything but … good, if this is what you need.

If you can’t decide whether or not to join a community, take a look at its members. How well are they accomplished? Business people know this rule: we tend to develop into the same type of people we hang out with. Books are written, not spoken of. Many writers have a rule of not talking about their work-in-progress. It’s not because they are afraid that others may steal their ideas (note: ideas don’t matter; there is no such genius idea with which a mediocre writer fails to write a mediocre book). To them, talking about work-in-progress breaks the “magic”.

If your work is self published, you do all the marking yourself, which takes away a lot of time. That’s what you have to do, but be aware of the amount of time and money you spend as well as the payback of each method. The best marketing tool is to write your next book, and write better. When a new book is launched, both the title and the author receive maximum attention. Every custom review posted for a book will affect people’s opinion toward the author and his/her other books.

We often say, it’s hard to make a living as a writer. Maybe the truth is we aren’t that productive yet. I’ll give an example of what I mean by being productive. “Ni Kuang (born May 30, 1935) is a Hong Kong-based Chinese novelist and screenwriter, with more than 300 published wuxia and science fiction novels and more than 400 film scripts.”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_Kuang)

Some people say he can write up to 10,000 words a day. I can’t say all of his works are great, but I read some and am a big fan. Alternatively, he could have spent his time on forums or Twitter or Facebook. If you are as productive as he is, you will be able to make a living, be it self-published or not.

Therefore, it’s time for me to shut up and … write!

Excerpt

    A group of ships were flying in outer space, a place where sound made no sense and speed was difficult to judge. Inside the bridge of a destroyer escort, Sterling Presley was sitting in front of a computer. Despite the military-cut brown hair, he resembled nothing of a stereotypical soldier. His slim figure could be a little stronger. The brown eyes were too calm and solitary to hold patriotism. His skin wasn’t rough enough to match the cruelty of war. If he weren’t wearing a uniform, he would have looked like a junior college professor.

    Weird … He confirmed his suspicion and closed the image on the computer. The recent Battle of the Stony Band was considered a victory, their first victory since the war spread to this system eight years ago, but something about that battle wasn’t right.

    He picked up a phone from the table and said a few words. A moment later an officer appeared at the door. “Sir?”

    “Get ready for unloading at Turning Point Station.” Sterling left his desk and stopped in front of a window. Nothing existed outside, except lights from distant stars. The small planet RA-5 was not distinguishable yet from its background.

     “Unloading?” The officer hesitated. “Sir, I thought we were heading to the fortress.”

    “We are, but …” Sterling wasn’t sure how to explain it. To him, logic and reasoning were most meaningful when one studied a case de facto; at the front, everything should yield to intuitions. Or, things that appeared like intuitions but were outcomes of one’s subconscious logic and reasoning.

      “Just do what I said.” 

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Book Review: Medieval Swordsmanship – Illustrated Methods and Techniques

Rating: 5/5 stars

I don’t usually read about martial arts except when I need to do research for my novels. The only other work I’ve read on a similar topic was a book about boxing, which contained about 10% of the information you can find here. To me, this book is amazing. It’s not something you can learn by going to a school for a training class. It requires studying tons of historical records, pretty much anything that’s remotely related to Medieval swordfights, because, unlike Asian martial-art experts, Medieval fighters did not have the habit or discipline to create detailed documentation. A good comprehension of the social background is also critical for the study.

The illustrations are very clear. Sometimes for a basic posture more than one figure are presented from different angles. Even a layman like me found no problem understanding the principles. The writing is also very good, unlike those scientific papers that merely present facts in a boring way. Font sizes, layouts, everything is reader friendly. This is a classic and I’d like to thank the author for taking all the efforts to do this!

Truth about the Kindle Countdown Deals

Since Amazon launched the new Kindle Countdown Deals for KDP Select members in late October, indie authors seem to have various degrees of success. Some sold an astronomical number, some none. Below is what I’ve figured out about this program based on recent experience.

If you go to the Kindle Countdown Deals page, you’ll see somewhere around 2,800 titles. And if you choose, for example, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Category, there are 377 titles for the moment arranged on 24 pages. Pay specific attention to the “Sort by” option. Although you can choose different sorting algorithms, readers normally go with the default, with is “New and Popular”. I don’t have the exact formula, but I’ve heard that the popularity of a book is not determined by the current rank, but by the amount of books sold in the past 30 days, with a weighing factor of the book’s price.

I’m not saying that visibility determines everything, but if a book is listed on the 5th page, there is no way you can go to that page directly without browsing through the previous pages (you can jump to the second or the third). A title listed on the first page can have 10 times more sales than a title listed on the second page, and who would bother to explore the later pages except the author himself? However---I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this is what happens---the rank of a book on this list is determined (and remains fixed!) by the popularity before the book enters the Countdown. Let me give you an example.

I first ran a Countdown with my science fiction, The Starlight Fortress, during the week of Nov 3. Since the book was selling very well in October, it appeared on the second page of the Sci-fi & fantasy category, even though there were 34 pages at that time, and stayed there for the entire week. Consequently, I sold 26 copies of the book with only 6 customer reviews and no extra promotions. Yesterday I started my second Countdown. Because I only sold two copies in the past 30 days, my book appeared on the 5^th page. Although I have other paid promotions yesterday and today, and have already sold 11 copies by far, the book keeps falling in the Sci-fi & fantasy list, making room for new entries that have much lower ranks but were presumably selling better before they entered. There are still several days to go, but I can predict that once the effects of my paid promotions fade away, the Countdown won’t work alone.

So, here is the logic. Let’s say we have Book A, which hasn’t been selling well at a regular price; after it entered the Countdown, for some reason, it is doing well. Then here comes Book B, which has been selling but is currently ranked lower than A. Amazon does not want to put B after A, because B is considered a more promising title. In other words, A has already been deemed as an inferior title at the time it entered, and they do not want the performance of the Countdown to affect the performance of the Countdown (is this clear?). We have to admit that doing so will likely maximize Amazon’s profits. After all, it’s an online retailer, not an author-nurture program.

In summary, if your book hasn’t been doing well on a regular basis, you shouldn’t expect too much with the Countdown, unless you pair it with other promotions.

On Rewriting

What is the so-called voice? The one thing that easily distinguishes a writer and makes him memorable, the one thing itself being so difficult to define and comprehend. Most writers believe they cannot teach how to find or create a unique voice, but one should be able to find his voice through writing constantly and writing well. According to my experience, voice shows up most frequently during rewriting. This is because, in the first draft, we are too engaged in developing the story and the characters, too eager to deliver our messages, too awed by all the possibilities, or too desperate to put something on a blank page.

This is why a good writer may not be a good speaker (most writers are actually shy and nervous when speaking to the public). Speech is improvisatory and requires different skills. To me, writing is not a linear process; it has both feedforward and feedback stages. Sometimes I’m unable to write a sentence without knowing how to write the following chapters. Same thing with dialogue. Now it is commonly accepted that good dialogue should both characterize the speaker and advance the plot. If it fails to characterize, it is “info dumping”. If it doesn’t advance the plot, well, let’s just say there are better ways to do it. However, more than often, it is difficult to achieve both goals in the first draft.

Never fall in love with our first drafts. We may have rehearsed some of the sentences so many times that they have become reality to us, but keep this in mind: few people prefer reading accounts of reality to fiction. Even for historical books that are supposed to accurately relate the past, great efforts have been made in searching the right way to present it. Reality doesn’t need to make sense; fiction does. Things cannot happen out of the blue in a novel, although that’s how things happen in real life. We need to put foreshadow earlier on. Readers need to build expectations, so that they can be either satisfied or misled. That’s what keeps them reading. Sometimes we plant those seeds subconsciously without knowing their purposes until a hundred pages later; sometimes we do need to go back and forth to add them in. There should be no irrelevant information in the dialogue, no random person being paid much attention. These are all to be fixed through rewriting.

Note that I didn’t say revising. I meant rewriting, which includes, but is not limited to, reevaluating the theme and its realization, reconstructing the whole narration, combining or deleting characters. It sometimes means throwing away hundreds of pages. I once read about a writer who would finish the first draft and toss it completely before beginning the rewriting. Many of us don’t have the courage!

I can only imagine how many potential masterpieces have been abandoned in the beginning because the (novice) writer felt he/she wrote something crappy and meaningless. Experienced writers know that a first draft is allowed to be crappy, and it may appear meaningless before going through the nonlinear process I mentioned above. Experienced writers are even happy with a crappy first draft, knowing that this will only add to the pleasure later on when they turn it into a shining piece. In fact, if you happen to write a brilliant first chapter the first time, it can be a bad thing, because in the following chapters you might try too hard to live up to the standard you’ve just set for yourself, or you might be too afraid to explore all the possibilities just to keep the beginning.

Once we are satisfied with the rewrite, we can start revising it. I would suggest refraining from fiddling with it too many times, because doing so may hurt the voice. Once there was a writer who posted a paragraph on a forum, and other writers tried to help him polish it. After a few posts I said, keep your original. It reads like a stranger breaking into your house with a dead wolf on his back, while the revisions are like salesmen gently knocking on the door (unfortunately he didn’t get my metaphor). Writing is not to find the best word from a thesaurus, or to construct the perfect grammar. A language can be bent to the extend that a little more pressure may have it crushed. Someone said, art is to know what to keep and what to delete. We can add, it is also to know when to stop.