The Fine Art of Steampunk

My latest project is a steampunk novel entitled The Demon of Butcher's Row, and in light of this it seems like a dandy time to go over exactly what the heck steampunk is. It's one of those weird little subgenres of science fiction and fantasy that seems to be making a minor resurgence these days, but it has a couple of cousins with which is is occasionally confused.

So, to start: what makes a work steampunk? Steampunk is any work that takes place between 1850-ish and 1910-ish that combines historical details with science fiction elements. A lot of early science fiction would be considered steampunk today, simply because it was contemporary to that time. Of course, modern steampunk tends to use the Disney version of Victorian England, polishing away the grittiness of the era to something that Phil and Kaja Foglio have called Gaslamp Fantasy. True steampunk embraces rather than ignores the dirty underbelly of Victorian society, much like cyberpunk does with its near-future societies. Of course, the full spectrum of gritty-to-shiny encompassed in steampunk ranges from A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Girl Genius, so the reader is free to choose how they like it.

So why is it called steampunk? A lot of the tech used in steampunk fiction is based on steam technology, the main source of power under development and thus takes place right on the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, in real-world terms, steam and coal turned out to be a technological dead-end, so many steampunk works handwave this with an element of magic or occult assistance. Since we sci-fi nerds love our cool gadgets, a lot of modern steampunk works will be heavy on the awesome dingbats and light on explanations of how sustainable they are.

Magic in a steampunk setting may come in many forms, if it is used. The main interest of the society of the day was occultism and spiritualism, in particular communicating with the spirits of the dead or generally contacting other worlds. As such, a steampunk spellcaster may find himself called upon to summon or communicate with beings from the afterlife of distant planes, or else to identify and clean up after a supernatural menace that some nimrod called up and couldn't control. There may also be some overlap with alchemy, using quasi-scientific processes to transmute Substance A into Substance B, or to bind elemental forces in ways that augment the technology of the setting (see above). Magic can also cover the ways that certain scientifically-minded individuals can do inadvisable or flat-out impossible things with Science, in much the same way that Dr. Frankenstein was able to create a human being out of spare parts and a nebulously-describe process, Dr. Jekyll was able to unleash his own dark side, or the average Igor in the Discworld universe is able to generally tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.

Gender roles in real-world Victorian society were strictly regimented. Women were often the property of the nearest male relation or husband, and typically were not allowed out and about without an escort, to prevent the potential sullying of their honor. By contrast, women in steampunk works are often in active roles in the story beyond damsels in distress. They may work as spies for the government, assassins, spellcasters or other subtle roles which wouldn't be considered ladylike. This can set them up in a contrast against male characters, such as male intellectuals vs. female intuitives, male bruisers vs. female persuaders, or obvious male menace vs. subtle female menace. Of course, their active role has a darker side, as it may be caused by or result in a female protagonist being put into greater danger--and if she can't defend herself ably from the start she better learn in a hurry.

Steampunk can be a fun genre to read and write if you're interested in that general time period and really dig the idea of beating history over the head with the spec fiction stick. When done well, it is a fun look at what might have been, if technological advancement had taken a left rather than a right. You might even have read some steampunk without knowing it, as much of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne fits tidily into this category, as do some of the later Discworld novels, as mentioned above. Done badly, though, it can easily turn into an anachronistic, incomprehensible mess (though I won't name any names). Like with most of the smaller genres, my best advice for a hopeful steampunk author is to start with the classics and find your way from there.

Plotters vs. Pantsers

This week's article will be on the two major types of fiction writers I keep hearing about: plotters and pantsers. The difference in approach between the two seems to define how the first draft of anything is done, and there have been heated arguments over the merits of their respective style. Which one is right for you? Have a look.

Simply put, plotters are writers who plan the heck out of anything before they begin writing. They have complete character profiles on absolutely everyone in their book, they have a detailed outline of every chapter, scene, interaction, and implication, and can weave the whole thing together into a complex whole when they start writing. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They get an idea and start writing to see where it leads them, discovering new characters as they go and generally letting the characters and plot do what feels natural.

Plotters take a while to actually get to the writing. They invest a lot into the front-end stuff, from outlining to researching, and generally collect a healthy file on their book before they actually start writing. Pantsers don't do a lot of front-end stuff, but launch into the story right away. Any research or notes they need to address happens either during the writing, or during the back-end stuff like revisions.

One a plotter gets to the writing, their preparation level tends to allow them to blast straight through the rough draft, with only minimal pausing due to unrelated writing issues like writer's block or even a bad case of Can't-Be-Arsed. A pantser may start quickly, only to have to stop and go back to fix a research error or look something up or work out how this that or the other detail would work within their setting. Occasionally their characters will simply stop cooperating, forcing the hapless pantser to figure out what's going wrong with the story or where it needs to go next.

Plotters may plan out a lot of books at once (see: James Patterson) or even had the entire course of a series mapped out (see: J.K. Rowling), but it seems logical that with the amount of prep they have, they would actually write one book at a time. When you know exactly where your book is going to do, there is nothing to stop you from focusing on that project until it's done (at least the rough draft) before moving on to the next thing in line. Pantsers... frequently have to improvise. They might have a whole pile of works in progress lying around because of some combination of writer's block, attention deficit creator disorder, or because they just got stuck in a plot hole and couldn't figure out how to dig their way out. This is not to say that they don't finish anything, of course--they just are more likely to have multiple irons in the fire.

This is, of course, not intended to be an indictment on the quality of writing produced by either pantsers or plotters, as both are equally capable of producing quite wonderful works of fiction. Pansters are not universally disorganized, and plotters are not universally anal-retentive neat freaks. With sufficient editing, both can produce perfectly enjoyable stories. They just go about it in different ways.

What style suits you? Let me know in the comments!

Progress Update:

8 / 1000 (0.80%)

Obscure Genres, Explained

As you browse the fiction categories of Amazon, you probably notice that a lot of the stuff has been sorted into neat categories: Horror, science fiction, romance, mainstream, whatever. Then there are those that people might not be familiar with, genres who are an actual thing, but might be a subset of one of the big categories or (gasp) a mix of two or more. You might have heard about these and wondered what the hell they're all about, because otherwise they're intermixed with the Big Categories and otherwise really damn hard to search for. Here is my humble attempt to explain them to you.

The "Lit"s

• Chick Lit: Let's start with one of the lighter ones. Chick lit is a relatively modern genre focusing on modern womanhood, generally through a filter of humor. It typically features a female protagonist whose womanhood is the central focus of the plot. In other words, a chick flick in book form. 
• Examples: Bridget Jones' Diary, The Devil Wears Prada.
• Misery Lit: And of course, way over at the other end of the idealism/cynicism scale is Misery Lit. This is supposedly biographical literature focusing on the protagonist overcoming trauma or abuse of many different kinds, to offer a literary catharsis for others who has suffered abuse. This genre has been rife with hoaxes (believed and confirmed alike), but regardless, if you can read one of these books without losing your faith in humanity, you have no soul. 
• Examples: A Child Called It.
• Boomer Lit: Boomer lit focuses on protagonists from the baby boomer generation. It typically explores all the elements of an aging population, but is also prepared to challenge the stereotypes that go along with it.
• Examples: The Hot Flash Club.

The "Punk"s

• Bio Punk: Bio Punk mixes organic technology and genetic engineering with the science of an earlier time. This was actually fairly popular in early science fiction as the smart guys were learning how the human body worked, and it's carried through to modern works as well
• Examples: Frankenstein, The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Cattle Punk: Cattle Punk is to the Western what Steampunk (below) is to the Victorian setting. Imagine a Western novel with robotic horses, rayguns, and a gunslinger with a mechanical eye, and you've got a fair idea of what Cattle Punk is all about.
• Examples: Wild Wild West (movie)
• Clock Punk: Clock Punk is old-school Steam Punk. Yes, I know Steam Punk is old-school already, but this is even older-school--like pre-Industrial Revolution. Replace steam power with clockwork, applied to the same general results. Imagine the sort of crazy shit that Leonardo da Vinci might be up to if he had the ability, and you've got Clock Punk
• Examples: Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
• Cyber Punk: This is the big one that launched a dozen sub-genres. Cyber Punk added the grittiness of the underclasses to what had previously been the shiny, chromey futurism of contemporary science fiction. In Cyber Punk you have underground hackers railing against The Man with the aid of cybernetic implants that let them do neat things like mentally interface with a computer.
• Examples: Half of everything by William Gibson.
• Diesel Punk: With the dawning of the Twentieth Century came the Industrial Revolution (yay!), mass manufacturing (yay!), and a little thing called World War One (boo!). Diesel punk does funky things with internal combustion engines and electricity, making for an interesting sort of Zeerust (that is, things that would be futuristic if they weren't set in the past).
• Examples: Bio Shock, Captain America: The First Avenger
• Steam Punk: This is the big one: Steam-powered gizmos in a Victorian setting. Imagine if steam, not electricity, were the medium to catapult humanity into a new age of technology, producing wonders like automata and other man-made servants of that type, alongside terrors like advanced war machines running roughshod over a world that isn't ready to counter them. Steam Punk covers not only literature, but film, music, comic books, and a fashion subculture, and strangely side-steps all the unpleasant issues of Victorian morality and gender roles
• Examples: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Other Stuff

• Weird Western: Where Cattle Punk is a science fiction take on the Western Genre, the Weird Western is more fantasy or horror. The frontier of that era was paved with ghost stories and legends, both from the settlers and the Native Americans, and the Weird Western works on the conceit that some of them are real.
• Examples: Desperadoes, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sheep's Clothing
• Bizarro Fiction: Hoo boy. Bizarro fiction is one of those genres where either you get it, or you don't. And the trouble with getting it is finding it half the time. Bizarro fiction typically takes place in a dreamlike parallel world where bizarre stuff is commonplace, and it works on its own logic that generally only makes sense if you just sit back and roll with it. Imagine if a novel dropped acid. The fun part is searching for these books, because some of the titles are downright profane.
• Examples: Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, The Ass Goblins of Auchwitz (... Told ya.)

Now, this is by no means a comprehensive list of the more obscure genres out there, but hopefully it will offer some help in figuring out what the hell is meant by these terms. I may make another post of this sort if my readers need help figuring out other subgenres.