Tag Archives: Luc Reid

Brain Hacks for Writers

Writing Differently: Picking Up the Scary Tools

If all has gone well with your writing so far, by now you may have some favorite practices: maybe you always outline your pieces, or you just start writing with a vague scene in mind to get to, or you scribble a bunch of scenes on index cards and then try to figure out what order they should go in. You may have a sense of some special strengths and weaknesses: maybe people tell you you have an ear for dialog, or you have trouble with action scenes, or your settings come out convincing and vivid, or you couldn’t write romance if Jane Austen were sitting in your lap.

So, good: you have some favorite techniques to use. This now gives you an opportunity to do something very productive–specifically, to violate them. Continue reading Writing Differently: Picking Up the Scary Tools →

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Brain Hacks for Writers: new Futurismic column from Luc Reid coming soon

I very nearly didn’t bother emailing Luc Reid earlier this week. “C’mon, the guy’s probably waaaay too busy with other stuff to take on a monthly column for Futurismic, Paul,” I told myself… but I’m very glad I ignored that inner cynic, because he mailed me back just a few hours later, pretty much asking when he could start.

So, allow me to introduce Futurismic‘s newest columnist! Luc Reid is a short fiction author whose writing advice I’ve read (and linked to) frequently, and he also runs The Willpower Engine, a blog about self-motivation. As its title should suggest, his Brain Hacks for Writers column will cover the area where those two fields intersect. Here he is explaining it in his own words:

Unlike most writing resources […] BHfW will be solely about the practice of writing and not the craft of writing: it will cover topics like productivity, writing motivation, goals, and learning, but generally won’t touch on style, voice, point of view, characterization, or other features of actual stories. It’s not about what you write, but about how you approach the job of writing.

Speaking for myself, I think I’ve read more advice on the craft of writing than I’ve ever needed (indeed, I think I’ve read so much of it that it’s made me a worse writer rather than a better one, because I find myself trying to obey a multitude of contradictory instructions). But advice on the practical side is much harder to find. Luc’s plain talking style and deep interest in motivational psychology should make it an enjoyable and educational topic, too… and a fine addition to the Futurismic stable. I’m really chuffed to have the man on board. 🙂

The first Brain Hacks for Writers column will be published next month. In the meantime, if there are any burning writerly topics you’d like Luc to cover, why not mention them in the comments here?

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Neuroscience fiction: what do we really know about the mind?

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In case you don’t follow Clarkesworld Magazine already (and you really should do, because they’re one of the finest genre fiction webzines about, managing to pay pro rates for about five times as much material as this humble organ every month, and still delivering it to you for free), you might have missed Luc Reid’s essay that went up earlier this month – and it’s time you amended that situation. “Neuroscience Fiction and Neuroscience Fantasy” looks at the leading edge of neuroscientific research and refers back to some of the more common mind-related science fiction tropes – like mind control, brain uploading, or memory replay and editing – in order to show how likely they are to ever come true. [image via Hljod.Huskona]

Understanding these things about memory — that we extract details instead of making recordings, that memories are stored in fragments all across our brains, and that a lot of what seems to be memory is really our brains filling in the blanks — it becomes clear that we’ll never be able to download or view memories per se: that would be like trying to show a film when all you have is a capsule review. However, it might be possible eventually to view someone’s imperfect recollection of a memory, along with other thoughts they have.

Well-researched and clearly written, it even has a list of references at the bottom! It’s a great overview of the topic from the layman’s perspective… even if it does debunk a lot of our favourite sf-nal tropes. 🙂

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Luc Reid suggests a type of ebook DRM that actually might not suck

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The eBook future looks pretty bright for consumers, with devices improving and dropping in price, and a wealth of material to read thereon. But writers are worried, with some justification – after all, if the Kindle does for publishing what the iPod has done for the record labels, no one’s going to get much money for writing short stories any more.

Writer Luc Reid has been scratching his head over the Digital Rights Management question in an attempt to satisfy his requirements as both a writer and a reader, starting from the premise that DRM is necessary to enable authors to be paid for their work:

In general, the biggest argument against DRM seems to be that it provides positive things for the seller but only negative things to the buyer. Here’s a DRM proposal that actually helps the buyer, while taking away some of the biggest nuisances. I’m sure I’m not the first one to come up with it. It’s account-based DRM.

What I mean by “account-based” is that when a person buys a book, that person gets a permanent license to read that book on any eReader device they own, from a smart phone to a dedicated eReader to, who knows, their wide-screen TV with a little black box attachment. Computers might or might not be included; that would be mainly a technical issue.

This “account-based” idea is different from what’s usually talked about when people talk about eReader DRM, which is “device-based.” That is, much of the thinking about DRM has been that when I buy a book, I get to read it on the particular device I bought it for and nowhere else.

It’s a well-thought out set of ideas, and Reid has worked hard at including the flaws and objections. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s predicated on too many ‘ifs’ for it to be viable. An industry-wide standard retail structure complete with hardware and software that supports the system may sound easy on paper, but the real world is a little more messy, and getting competing companies to work together is like herding cats.

That said, Reid’s piece is one of the most honest defences of DRM I’ve ever read; maybe the publishing houses should get a think-tank of smart writers and readers together to boil up new ideas instead of leaving it to the beancounters and engineers?