Turkey City Lexicon, anyone?

Or: How to Avoid an Eyeball Kick from a Whistling Dog

The Turkey City Lexicon, edited by Lewis Shiner and Second Edition by Bruce Sterling, focuses on the special needs of Science Fiction writing and is intended to help workshop participants recognize and discuss common SF problems, an informative if not amusing read. You probably know it already.

You are not suffering from “White Room Syndrome,” you adhere to “Show, not Tell,” and you are not handing out “Plot Coupons,” well, maybe once in a while.

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 author for the ending. Note that “the author” can be substituted for “the Gods” in such a work: “The Gods decreed he would pursue this quest.” Right, mate. The author decreed he would pursue this quest until sufficient pages were filled to procure an advance. (Nick Lowe)

This is what most role-playing games do ever since we crawled out of the MUD and entered dungeons in all their coloured pixel glory, procured ham for the farmer, who, thankful for our deed, rewards us with a flimsy dagger, a dagger of great import nonetheless and in its hilt… a clue! To the next quest, anon.

And so it goes, and why not? It’s fun. The player or your hero in your story goes from point A to B, uncovers stuff, finds more stuff, gets better, almost dies, finds the ark, which was not lost after all, promptly melts the faces off of Nazis, and the rest lives happily ever after, until the sequel or prequel.

If there were a Thanos event on books, comics, movies, games, or entertainment media in general that snaps all “Plot Coupon” or “And Plot” works out of existence… oh, cruel universe.

Someone should make a comic strip out of those 30+ hilarious pitfalls most works are filled with. Why did you call a rabbit a “smeerp?” Why? You will find that many popular SF stories are filled with “ontological riffs” to the wazoo. Which means? Do your thing. Write your story, warts, riffs and all.

Ontological riff

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.”

No story is free from those Turkey City predicaments. Any story is at its core a sequence of events strung together by the author and as such will always be the construct (with one structure) of one person’s mind following inescapable patterns, ingrained in our DNA since the dawn of time. There aren’t that many stories or plot types. How many? Four? Two? John Gardner wrote in his posthumously published “Art of Fiction:”

As subject, use either a trip or the arrival of a stranger (some disruption of order—the usual novel beginning).

Or there is only one story, one story to rule them all (OK, no ring analogy). It’s all in the variations. Hero goes on a journey, a stranger arrives in town, the hero comes home, the stranger leaves… Maybe they hang out for a while and chill before hopping on a boat to do stuff legends are made of, but don’t let me put a Squid in your Mouth, unless you want an Eyeball Kick from a Whistling Dog, offering Bogus Alternatives and trying to sell you a Jar of Tang. In any case, You can’t fire me, I quit!

Good luck with your projects, and remember, in writing, there are no rules.