Writing

The End Of The World As We Don’t Know It

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

My friend Serdar talked about about his disinterest in writing post-apocalyptic fiction at his blog. I wanted to add my own thoughts on this because most apocalyptic stuff and even post-apocalyptic stuff feels boring and inaccurate. As Serdar puts it, its best to take things as Mad Max like mythology, a sort of lesson or metaphor.

As for the rest of the apocalypses . . .

Most fictional post-apocalypse tales are boring, repetitive, and the same stuff. I’ve been watching enough bad-movies that took Mad Max and gave us so many battles in tight leather pants that it’s like 80’s hair bands went to war. There’s so many Zombie movies it’s a running joke that rarely explores the implications of having zombies. Most of our fictional apocalypses have been done so over and over again there’s nothing to learn or take from it – if there ever was much in the first place.

We’ve recycled our apocalypses and our post-apocalypses, so most of them are going through the motions. Most of the apocalypses are zombies, even if they lack zombies.

In addition, real post-apocalypses don’t fictionalize well.

First, some apocalypses are boring. We’re living through a low-level apocalypses now with COVID-19, and it’s not that interesting. Disasters are often not action-packed or dramatic tales, they’re the slow grind, the surviving-enough, the unending grayness of endings. Fiction doesn’t cover that.

Other apocalypses and post-apocalypses ignore or glorify the horror. We’ve had plenty of apocalyptic bombings and and disasters, we’ve had horrors and terrible mass deaths. So much fiction either grinds our face in the blood and turns it into a show, leaving us with that queasy sense of watching apocalypse pornography. Others try to ignore the horror, because it’s so horrible, building fiction around it until it’s drained of meaning.

Good apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction exists, but it takes a person that can write, that explores, that understands the subjects. It is rare, because it is difficult.

This is why my current fiction, the Avenoth series, is what I call post-post apocalypse. I’m not interested in the end of the world (in this case, a devastating war that killed 3/4 of the planet) or the immediate post-apocalypse. Instead it’s about a rebuilt world, so we see the impact of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse, but are far enough in the future to see the meaning of it all. I want a tale of healed scars and a new society with memory, where we understand the past by looking at the present.

Besides, some of these post-post apocalypses have powerful impact. When the world is grinding away or the blood is spilling, it’s hard to see what it means in the whole.

But afterwards? Afterwards is when you can look back on the works of the past, and despair properly.

Steven Savage

My Book Roundup 4/2/2020

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I’m going to post a roundup of them for interested parties!

My sites:

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Culture

  • Her Eternal Moonlight – My co-author Bonnie and I analyze the impact Sailor Moon had on women’s lives when it first came to North America.  Based on a series of interviews, there’s a lot to analyze here, and surprisingly consistent themes . . .

Why I Wrote It: Resume Plus

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Resume Plus was a weird book to write. It takes a bit of explanation.

First, I began deciding to write more. The thing that struck me as a writer is that I could just do the occasional book or I could really dive into it. Diving into it meant I did more, could sell more books, and I dug the challenge.

But the question was what to write. I was still getting into this whole rythm of “writing all the time.”

(By the way, by now I have so many ideas for books that I’m fine. I’m always writing as you noticed.)

One idea came from my blog.

I’d done a series on really awesome resumes that stood out. Some were made of code. Others had neat formatting tricks. Yet others got wacky and outrageous like being printed on a candy bar. I called it 50 Shades of Resume because I figured It’d be funny and . . . well anyway, we can judge that later.

Those analyses were perfect for a book. Plus, let’s face it, you didn’t have to read a ton of blog posts, and got more than the summary I’d written up.

So I returned to my blog posts and began cataloguing the advice I could get out of them. Fortunately, I’d had written summaries and advice on each of the fifty posts, so I had a good starting point.

However, a book is a way different format than a bunch of blog posts. So I had to collate all the advice, extend some, cut out others, and in general fit as a book. I’d taken resumes, written blog posts about them, then turned it into a book.

Some of this meant I had to ask myself “hey just what matters here” and “what did I actually mean here.”

The result though, after much thought, was a pretty good book! It’s one I’m proud of, though I fear some of it hasn’t aged well. I’m happy I also managed to do more with the advice, because despite all the predictions, the resume hasn’t gone away . . .

Steven Savage