movies with the same little troupe of actors/family/friends. These days Iâm more likely to collage together a variety of observed traits to make my characters, like a magpie gathering up bright scraps for a nest.
Iâve come to think that you can in fact write transreally without overtly using your own life or specific people that you know. Even without having any characters who are particularly like myself, I can write closely observed works about my own life experiences. And if Iâm transmuting these experiences with the alchemy of science fiction, the result is transreal. So I might restate the principles of transrealism like this.
Trans.
The author raises the action to a higher level by infusing magic or weird science, choosing tropes so as to intensify and augment some artistically chosen aspects of reality. Trans might variously stand for transfigurative, transformative, transcendental, transgressive, or transsexual.
Realism.
The author uses real-world ideas, emotions, perceptions that he or she has personally experienced or witnessed.
PLOT AND EMERGENCE
In the tableâs next column, I present a fourfold range of plot structures. At the low end of complexity,we have standardized plots, at the high end, we have no large-scale plot at all, and in between we have the gnarly somewhat unpredictable plots. These can be found in two kinds of ways, either by mimicking reality precisely, or by amplifying reality with incursions of psychically meaningful events.
A characteristic feature of any complex process is that you canât look at whatâs going on today and immediately deduce what will be happening in a few weeks. Itâs necessary to have the world run step-by-step through the intervening ticks of time. Gnarly computations are unpredictable; they donât allow for short-cuts. Thus, as I mentioned before, the last chapter of a novel with a gnarly plot will be, even in principle, unpredictable from the contents of the first chapter.
Although I believe this, over the years Iâve come to feel that itâs not a bad idea to maintain an outline, however inaccurate. The detailed eddies of the storyâs flow will indeed have to work themselves out during the writing, but thereâs no harm in having some sluices and gutters to guide the narrative process along a harmonious and satisfying course.
Iâve learned that if I start writing a novel with no plot outline at all, two things happen. First of all, the readers can tell. Some will be charmed by the spontaneity, but some will complain that the book feels improvised, like a shaggy-dog story. Second, if Iâm working without a plot outline, Iâm going to experience some really painful and anxious days when everything seems broken, and I have no idea how to proceed. My mentor Robert Sheckley referred to these periods in the compositional process as âblack points.â
These days, writing an outline makes writing a novel easier on me. Perhaps itâs a matter of mature craftsmanship versus youthful passion. Or maybe Iâm just getting old. Iâve developed a fairly elaborate process. Even before I start writing a new book, I create an accompanying notes document in which I accumulate outlines, scene sketches and the like. The notes documents end up being very nearly as long as my books, and when the book comes out, I usually post the corresponding notes document online for perusal by those few who are very particularly interested in that book or in my working methods. (Links to these notes documents and some of my essays on writing can be found at www.rudyrucker.com/writing .)
It goes almost without saying that my outlines change as I work. Things emerge. Itâs like life! After writing any scene in a given chapter, I find that I have to go back and revise my prior outline of the following scenes.
In the end, only the novel itself is the perfect outline of the novel. Only the territory itself can be the perfect
Iâve come to think that you can in fact write transreally without overtly using your own life or specific people that you know. Even without having any characters who are particularly like myself, I can write closely observed works about my own life experiences. And if Iâm transmuting these experiences with the alchemy of science fiction, the result is transreal. So I might restate the principles of transrealism like this.
Trans.
The author raises the action to a higher level by infusing magic or weird science, choosing tropes so as to intensify and augment some artistically chosen aspects of reality. Trans might variously stand for transfigurative, transformative, transcendental, transgressive, or transsexual.
Realism.
The author uses real-world ideas, emotions, perceptions that he or she has personally experienced or witnessed.
PLOT AND EMERGENCE
In the tableâs next column, I present a fourfold range of plot structures. At the low end of complexity,we have standardized plots, at the high end, we have no large-scale plot at all, and in between we have the gnarly somewhat unpredictable plots. These can be found in two kinds of ways, either by mimicking reality precisely, or by amplifying reality with incursions of psychically meaningful events.
A characteristic feature of any complex process is that you canât look at whatâs going on today and immediately deduce what will be happening in a few weeks. Itâs necessary to have the world run step-by-step through the intervening ticks of time. Gnarly computations are unpredictable; they donât allow for short-cuts. Thus, as I mentioned before, the last chapter of a novel with a gnarly plot will be, even in principle, unpredictable from the contents of the first chapter.
Although I believe this, over the years Iâve come to feel that itâs not a bad idea to maintain an outline, however inaccurate. The detailed eddies of the storyâs flow will indeed have to work themselves out during the writing, but thereâs no harm in having some sluices and gutters to guide the narrative process along a harmonious and satisfying course.
Iâve learned that if I start writing a novel with no plot outline at all, two things happen. First of all, the readers can tell. Some will be charmed by the spontaneity, but some will complain that the book feels improvised, like a shaggy-dog story. Second, if Iâm working without a plot outline, Iâm going to experience some really painful and anxious days when everything seems broken, and I have no idea how to proceed. My mentor Robert Sheckley referred to these periods in the compositional process as âblack points.â
These days, writing an outline makes writing a novel easier on me. Perhaps itâs a matter of mature craftsmanship versus youthful passion. Or maybe Iâm just getting old. Iâve developed a fairly elaborate process. Even before I start writing a new book, I create an accompanying notes document in which I accumulate outlines, scene sketches and the like. The notes documents end up being very nearly as long as my books, and when the book comes out, I usually post the corresponding notes document online for perusal by those few who are very particularly interested in that book or in my working methods. (Links to these notes documents and some of my essays on writing can be found at www.rudyrucker.com/writing .)
It goes almost without saying that my outlines change as I work. Things emerge. Itâs like life! After writing any scene in a given chapter, I find that I have to go back and revise my prior outline of the following scenes.
In the end, only the novel itself is the perfect outline of the novel. Only the territory itself can be the perfect
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