Writer, critic and essayist Paul Di Filippo is the author of many short stories, novels and novellas, including Ribofunk, the Steampunk Trilogy, A Year in the Linear City and, most recently, “How to Write Science Fiction”, currently available from 40K Books. The following is a guest post from Di Filippo.
I currently have an 11,000-word essay for sale in e-book format. The title on the e-book is “How to Write Science Fiction”. The title on the actual essay therein is: “How to Write Wild-Eyed, Overstuffed, Multiplexed, Maximalist, Recomplicated, High-Bandwidth Science Fiction, or, ‘Realize I won’t wanna be a miser/How Come Everybody Wanna Keep it Like the Kaiser?’”
So maybe that’s the first lesson I can impart: don’t be a wiseguy when it comes to titling your story, thus frustrating your editors and audience.
But wait a minute! What about such classics tales as “Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman” or “Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones” or “Why I left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers…”? Those are fairly rococo titles and the stories they are attached to won major awards.
So it seems as if my advice on titles is nonsense.
And that’s the real lesson I’d like to pass on.
My essay is one writer’s journey through a process that worked for me–to produce one particular kind of story, out of all the many of things I write. Too many times, writers impart rules and advice with an air of definite finality, as if only their way was correct. But the process of self-discovery and self-education is really the only way to achieve greatness and uniqueness in fiction.
So while I hope you buy and enjoy my e-book if you feel so generously inclined, and that it helps you along your path, I have to warn you that it contains no guaranteed secrets of composition.
Except in the title department.
