From The Page To The Canvas: SF Writers Make Art

It used to be , everyone who write science fiction was a scientist , or full - clock time scribe . But now , authors likeAudrey Niffenegger , Rudy RuckerandMary Robinette Kowalalso make art . We talked art / SF with them .

Audrey Niffenegger is the author of The Time Traveler ’s Wife , soon to be a picture show , and the extroverted Her Fearful Symmetry . She ’s also an creative person , engraver and bookmaker , part of the T3 artists and writers ’ collective . She instruct Interdisciplinary Book Arts at Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts , and has published two graphic novels : The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress .

And Niffenegger say that being a visual creative person has definitely aid her to make storytelling that ’s more visually orientated . “ I think that lottery , in peculiar , has trained me to follow and to be able to visualise thing clearly . I instruct a writing course for visual creative person and I have found that they almost always surpass at verbal description , they seem to often own the ability to orchestrate and evolve their railroad train of thought very tangibly . I imagine this is due to constantly having to organise 2D space , it does carry over into the laying out of fabricated worlds . ”

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Rudy Rucker , meanwhile , is the author of numerous science fiction novel , including the Ware series , The Sex Sphere , Mathematicians In Love and Postsingular . He ’s been taking photos forever and has been doing picture , often connect to his fabrication , for several years , and has had somegallery shows recently . “ All along , I ’ve made little pen and newspaper drawings of my scene before writing them , but now I enjoy the more heavy - duty cognitive operation of breaking out my kit of acrylic paints . I take up painting when I was write my historic novel about the catamount Peter Bruegel , and I started using picture for pre - visualization while I save Frek and the Elixir . A painting takes longer than a drawing , and I get more deeply into it . My sense is that I ’m using a different part of my head when I paint a picture , as react to when I ’m revising my compose outline . It ’s like visiting a different muse . ”

Mary Robinette Kowal get ahead the Campbell Award for ripe new SF writer , and has a story ingathering coming presently , called Scenting The Dark And Other Stories . She also has a novel come out , called Shades Of Milk And Honey . And she work as a professional puppeteer , both making and operating puppets . She explains :

perform and building puppets definitely has an impact on how I see the world and that directly shape what is authoritative to me when I ’m writing . But really , to resolve this properly , I should probably back up a bit and explicate what it ’s like to execute as a puppeteer . Puppetry is a kind of acting . The primary departure between an puppet actor and a “ meat ” worker is the tool we use to communicate with the interview . In both cases , it ’s about creating a believable fibre . A traditional role player inhabit their tool — their body — and learned to use it unconciously since the day they were born . Some might have to retrain it , but for the most part , it ’s so conversant , one does n’t reckon about the body as separate from the self . Make horse sense ? With a puppet role player , my tool is external to my trunk . I had to learn to apply a puppet as an adult and very consciously had to shape to learn what makes something await alive . I had to learn to give physical structure oral communication down into pieces of discreet information so I could reduplicate them with this tool . in the end , a puppeteer want to teach to do all of this so of course that it requires no more thought than a traditional actor requires to work their own body .

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Here ’s her demonstration reel :

envision part , imagining plots :

And Kowal say that the grownup impact of her puppeteering experience is in how she imagine about creating credible characters , and plot that flow from their actions . That focus on “ body language ” has allowed her to portray lots of unlike characters , whether a heel , a badger , or a little boy . And one aspect of dead body speech communication is that “ every movement counts , because most puppets have no facial expression . ” That carries over to fiction , because every crusade her character make have to count as well . “ If my character picks up a spyglass , it has to be for a reasonableness , sooner one that express an aroused state as well as a plot of ground pointedness . ”

Lesdilley

And likewise , Rucker aver that his painting has helped him reckon out where a story should go next : “ Painting gives me a different way of being surprised . ” Sometimes , when he ’s not sure what should happen in an upcoming scene , he ’ll get out the paints and “ see what fall out . ”

“ If a tale is ‘ storyboarded ’ — even in one ’s imagery — then the action of the patch will be more grounded , ” saysStephen Stanley , the only SF author ever toplace in both the Writers Of The Future and Illustrators Of The Future contestsand the artistry director of Shimmer Magazine . “ draftsmanship and sketch of setting , scenes , characters make fantabulous acknowledgment materials ( non - visual writers can do the same by pull in photographs and images from cartridge holder and web lookup ) . Perhaps the act of in person pull in extension material makes the component more real to me , and therefore more real when written . It does n’t hurt . ”

Stanley says he ’ll pre - visualize a case or a background , before he writes , and one crucial question is how much optic point to include : too much and the account gets bogged down . But not enough , and the story loses vividness .

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