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URL: http://boingboing.net/#85506002
Date: Not supplied
After the talk at UT Austin, I spent Saturday at the Turkey City science
fiction writers' workshop at Bruce Sterling's place. Turkey City is a venerable
science fiction workshop that has spawned many good writers and a lexicon of
science fiction critical terms that is the de facto standard for understanding
what works and what doesn't in a work of science fiction:
Squid on the Mantelpiece
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 levelling 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."
Card Tricks in the Dark
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 author. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and
very gratifying to the author, but it serves no visible fictional purpose.
(Attr. Tim Powers)
I had the cold from hell all weekend and I'm jetlagged, but I wanted to get
some links up before I hit the sack. Until tomorrow! Link[1] Discuss[2]
[1] http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html
[2] http://www.quicktopic.com/boing/H/cgivZf3AAhKkk

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