New story: Over The Sea

I have a new story, Over The Sea out today in the May issue of Sorcerous Signals from Wolfsinger Publications. It's also in issue 18 of the print magazine, Mystic Signals, which is available from CreateSpace

So, what to say about this one? It's a high fantasy tale, referencing various tropes of the genre but trying to find the real human emotions and stories behind them. Thinking about it, this is also another one that tries to subvert the 'princess needs rescuing' trope. Sometimes there are no eagles. And sometimes the princess doesn't need or want (or deserve) rescue.

On the radio, nobody knows you're an introvert

Here's an interesting experiment: get a randomly selected group of people together to make a short radio program, record it as if live, and then listen to it played back. You might have some expectations about how it'll be. The confident, chatty, extroverted types who love to talk -- surely they'll be naturals at radio, they'll come across great. And the quiet introverted ones, who find this sort of group-work/public-speaking a form of torture -- well, you can imagine...

Recently I was on a science communication course where we did exactly this. An interesting experience in many ways, but for me the most surprising thing was just how badly that 'natural' talkative extroverted style can come across on radio (which ruthlessly shows up all those hesitations, filler words, odd interjections etc that you probably wouldn't notice in face-to-face speech). And how some of the people you'd expect to be awful at this actually sounded quite polished and professional (listening to the recording, you can't tell that they're reading a prepared speech...or that they're maybe literally shaking with fear!).

Maybe the skills and personality types that make for good radio presenters are not the ones you'd think.

Turns out I'm not the first to come to this conclusion. Several people have observed how the same thing happens with public speaking and presentations -- the usual reasoning being that if you're shy and lacking confidence about such things, you tend to prepare better.

But I think it goes a little deeper. Because as an introverted type, everything you say is a performance. Almost everything you ever say is scripted and rehearsed, even if it's only in your head in the milliseconds before you speak. That's pretty much the definition of an introvert: you think before you speak -- unlike extroverts, for whom speaking is essentially the same thing as thinking.

You probably also tend to be an observer of, always aware of how you look and sound from an outside perspective. That's probably why introverts are more likely to be shy or socially anxious. But it also means you're consciously thinking about the technical details of your speech, like pacing and intonation. This is likely why social interactions are so tiring for an introvert: but it can give you a head-start in public speaking. Those who are not naturals at social interaction also spend a lot of time observing others, analysing and mimicking (or avoiding in some cases!) the way they speak and behave.

Apparently many professional actors are self-described introverts.I don't think that's surprising at all.

New story: And Though Worms Destroy

My latest story And Though Worms Destroy is up at Every Day Fiction.  They publish a new flash fiction piece every day: ideal for when you have a spare few minutes during the day!

This story was another idea I had around Christmas-time, inspired by snippets of Handel's Messiah which were playing over and over in my head, and all that related apocalyptic imagery.

I was also wondering about these female archetypes -- the sinful temptress and the pure virgin mother, both defined entirely by patriarchal religion and set up in opposition to each other -- and what they'd actually have to say to each other if it was up to them.

More on lectures

Previous post: Sliding towards a conclusion

So a lot of lectures and presentations are done badly. Overuse of slides and visual aids is part of that. The fact that often people who are good at academic work and research are often not so good at the performance aspect of public speaking is part of it too. But what if the problem is more fundamental than that? Maybe the lecture itself is an archaic and inefficient way of transferring knowledge.

It's difficult to concentrate on a monologue for a full hour. How often do you do that in your everyday life? It's difficult to concentrate on a monologue for two minutes, as you know if you've ever been stuck in conversation with the sort of person who's prone to them.

It's difficult to take in new information in real-time like that, since most people need to reflect on difficult concepts in order to understand and absorb them - but in a lecture if you stop paying attention for a moment you miss something. Sometimes you miss something that means it's impossible to catch up and you don't understand anything that's said for the rest of the hour. Unless you record it - but then why not just have the recording and skip the live performances?
In my personal experience, lectures were the least efficient way of learning I could have imagined. I often left knowing no more than I did at the start.

What was useful for me was studying the handouts and textbooks afterwards, when I had the space and time to think without having to listen to someone talking at the same time (surely that's a challenge to anyone's multi-tasking abilities?). What was also very useful occasionally was going to see the lecturer during office hours to ask for clarification on any point I couldn't fully understand on my own. Tutorials and problem classes were good too.

But the lecture itself seemed irrelevant, a waste of everyone's time. Judging by the amount of sleeping, reading,whispering, texting etc going on, I wasn't the only one to feel that way.For many students, the lecture seemed almost a form of religious observance, as though attendance was what counted, as though knowledge (or credit) would be magically absorbed just by being physically there.

An alternative model could look like this: lecturers provide or recommend materials for students to study in their own time (could be online courses, might be a chapter from a textbook for first-year undergraduates learning the basics, maybe some relevant papers or review articles for more advanced years or postgrads). This would be followed by small-group tutorials for questions, discussion, detailed explanations. All of which would mean more when everyone present was familiar with the material.

This might even help us move towards real learning, instead of the current exam-driven model where the lecturer reads stuff out, the students write it down, memorise it, and write it all over again in the exam.

It's not just undergraduate teaching though. The lecture in some form can be found in research-group meetings and journal clubs, and at academic conferences as well. It even exists in industry and business, where often the standard format for meetings is someone delivering a presentation (usually accompanied by the dreaded slides). It's such an established way of doing things that it's difficult to imagine these occasions without someone standing up and delivering a lecture. But is it the best way?

My experience of these meetings is that the most productive time is the ten or so minutes at the end for questions and discussion, especially in smaller groups. Where people actually interact with each other, where real engagement and understanding take place. Imagine if the full hour could be like that.

Sliding towards a conclusion

In some ways, the CDT Festival of Science at Imperial College was your usual university-based science symposium. Long day of over-running PowerPoint presentations: check. Needlessly male-dominated line-up of speakers: check. Bored students whispering, fidgeting and Facebooking: obviously, check.

But an interesting thing happened when the last speaker of the morning, Professor Lord Robert May, got up to talk about his experiences as a government science advisor. Because there was no PowerPoint, no slides, no visual aids of any kind. He just stood at the front and talked.

 This was unusual enough in itself, but the really interesting thing was the audience reaction. During the first few talks, the usual general general hubbub of chatter and disturbance had prevailed, at the back of the lecture theatre at least. But as Lord May's talk got underway, it slowly diminished and then stopped. People actually started sitting still, looking at the speaker, and apparently listening. In fact certainly listening, because they laughed when he said something funny, instead of the usual awkward silence.

So what was going on here? Was it the lack of slides that somehow changed things? This is just one anecdote, of course. More data needed. Correlation is not causation, and there could be other reasons.

Maybe presenters who don't use slides tend to be more confident (and accordingly more experienced and skilled) speakers. So their talks would be more engaging regardless of the presence of slides. Maybe though, having no slides tends to change the way people present. Their style becomes more informal, more conversational, and that is usually going to be more engaging than an over-rehearsed formal presentation.

But looking around at what was happening, I couldn't help but feel that not having the slides there was changing the dynamic between the speaker and the audience somehow.

It's interesting what happens when a lecturer stands up to present material to a class of students. Because in a way, it's as though they're not there. Judging by the student's behaviour, there's rarely any sense that the lecturer is an actual person, that normal rules of politeness apply (like at least pretending to listen when someone is speaking to you). No one is really looking at the lecturer. They're looking (if not at their laptop or phone or the person next to them) at the screen.

But without slides, it becomes more like a normal conversation. People actually look at the speaker, react to tone and body language, relate on a human level. Whether that means they absorb the information better is a different question, but being more engaged surely can't hurt.

Even when I was an undergraduate, it was rare for a lecturer to speak without slides. I believe it is very unusual now. This may not be a good thing. My view tends to be more that the lecture as a way of teaching or delivering information is inefficient and archaic —but that's a separate issue. If the lecture format is here to stay — and with the growing popularity of MOOCs it looks like it might be, we might as well try to do it right.

New story: Victoriana

Another new story: Victoriana, published on Mirror Dance, the fantasy blog/magazine edited by Megan Arkenberg.

Mirror Dance is a non-paying market, however unlike many such, it generally publishes a good quality of writing and always looks beautiful.

This one is a historical fantasy/alternate history. It was inspired by the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, which is really quite a bizarre and extraordinary thing when you stop to look at it. And also by the delightful walk from Kensington to Westminster, past two palaces and through three Royal Parks, which I'm lucky enough to have as an optional part of my regular commute.

New story: Christmas in Space

My short story Christmas in Space is now out in issue 17 of Silver Blade, an online science fiction and fantasy magazine.
I love how they illustrate their stories!

This one is basically what it says on the tin (as was the previous one now I think about it, maybe I need to work on more imaginative titles?), in that it's a now slightly unseasonal Christmas story. In space.

It's just a little idea that occurred to me on my commute one evening, crammed on a Tube train full of Christmas shoppers, thinking about the upcoming solstice and what, if anything, it means. I guess I wanted to say something about solitude and isolation (also becoming a bit of a theme for me!), but this time looking at a situation where two people are trapped in that isolation together.

This is also a bit of an experiment with point-of-view, an attempt to use first-person present-tense to put the reader in the narrator's shoes rather than for them to feel they're having the events related to them by the 'I' of the story.

In other writing news, my first story 'The Princess in the Tower' won the Aoife's Kiss competition, which means it will be re-published in their Wondrous Web Worlds 11 anthology, probably next year at some unspecified time. With all the changes going on at Sam's Dot Publishing recently, it's difficult to predict!