Category: Musing

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No more happily ever afters.

gir_suit_stand.jpgOver at House of the D, De muses about the nature of conflicts and scenes in a story.

Any scene with NO CONFLICT = DOOOOOOM.
Two characters fall happily in love? One of them has a fatal disease. A mother and daughter quit arguing? The mother has called the men in white coats to come pick up the daughter and wants to keep her peaceful until the girl’s sedated. The villain invites the hero in for tea? Strichnine, my friend. Strichnine.

I honestly think she may have just summarized the entire writer’s bible for the Battlestar Galactica team.
Once faced with a rule like this, what is any writer going to do buy turn ’round and look at their own work with the shiny new microscope.
Result: In Hidden Things, I have two conflict-free scenes in the book; one with Gerschon, and one with Calli’s mom.
Am I going to change them? No, not at this point; the scenes work as they are written — they are pause-points in the narrative where both the reader and the protagonist get to take a short breather. (Also, any added wrinkles in the story at either of those points would require a number of additional scenes to address and resolve, and the story already feels ‘done’ to me.)
However.
There is a tiny bit of rumbling from certain quarters that it wouldn’t really hurt to add a bit more.
“Tight narrative,” say these voices. “Great pacing, but… I wish we knew a bit more about the secondary characters… perhaps about 75 more pages would help flesh that out?”
Now, to my mind, if you finish a book that’s designed to have a sequel, and the reader wants more… well, that’s exactly the response you want.
But if it turns out that those extra pages will sell an otherwise iffy publisher on the book, I’d for damn sure rather get those pages by adding a few more conflicts to the story, instead of filling in the cracks with extra globs of unnecessary exposition-mortar.

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One shoe, dropping

illus0114.jpgI’ve spent a lot of time in my stories poking at certain ideas. Themes, I guess. None of this is really conscious on my part — I tend to realize it after the fact or, at best, midway through the story.
“Oh, look at that, I’m writing about X again. Hmm.”
For one reason or another, one of those “X” topics is the idea of loss; someone dealing with a death (either recent or not-so) and how they cope with it. In Strange Weapons, there’s Michael’s wife as well as Lora’s former partner (whose memory lingers in a very palpable way — he drives her car). In Hidden Things… well, the whole story is really about death and coping with it; after finishing the story I realized I’d broken up the book into sections that directly correlated to the five stages of grief. (Then I noticed I’d done the same thing with Strange Weapons.)
My feelings about this are mixed.
I think it’s a tiny bit fascinating that the structure of grieving naturally (and unconsciously, I swear) integrates into the structure of the story — I think it means that I’m exploring Calliope’s grief in a real way, that her actions are following a pretty natural progression. That’s a comfort; I think any writer wants to write true things, even if they aren’t writing real things.
On the other hand, it’s troublesome to me that I keep going back to that particular instigator. It’s like I keep scratching a bug bite; I can’t leave it alone. Obviously, the idea of personal loss is something that looms large in my subconscious, probably because it’s such an unknown to me — no one close to me has ever died in my adult life — if I’ve never been in a storm, but I can see a number of them massed on the horizon and closing in, of course I’m going to write about storms.
Both my parents are healthy (and only 20 years older than me). I lost one grandparent when I was 10, but the other three (in their eighties) are all fine.
Until now.
During a routine checkup last week, doctors discovered a pretty major tumor in my grandpa’s lung. Since then, tests have revealed the strong possibility that it’s also spread to his liver. The major test results aren’t back yet, but it could be very bad news about a very short time frame.
Now, the fact that the man’s made it to 85 is a bit of a marvel in itself — he smoked several cartons of Salem Menthols a week for 41 years, he had triple bypass surgery in his mid-sixties, and has generally been rode hard and put away wet his whole life. That’s reality. The fact that I’ve had him around to pull my leg for coming up on 38 years is a gift.
And yet… and yet.
My world is tilted, these last few days. My wife and daughter are here, and loving, and healthy. My parents are strong, my sister is brilliant and funny. My work is going well, and my mental playground has all the best toys. Things are good; the platform of my life is solid.
But one pillar is trembling.
I’ve had a look at it a number of times; I’ve known it was eventually, inevitably going to give out, and I could see that time was coming — I’ve done my best to shore up the remaining struts, and I know that things will be fine; the platform will survive.
But this pillar, man… this is one of the old ones. One of the first ones. One of the strongest ones.
It doesn’t matter if I’m strong enough to withstand his absence. It’s the idea – the undeniable, inescapable fact that he could fall. That he will.
That is what shakes the foundations, today.

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Dawning of a new era

diffeng2.jpgThis weekend marked Kaylee’s third birthday. While she’s enjoyed the parties of past years, this was clearly the first time she really understood the central concept.
“This is a special day for me, and everyone is here and eating cake and singing because of me. Also, I get to wear a crown all day. Bonus.”
Another upgrade (considerably less significant in the grand scheme of things, but still nice) was that I got a new computer system (see picture, which is entirely accurate). This new Dell XPS comes in as a replacement for my five and a half year old workhorse (getting quite wheezy and easily overheated in its later years), which has served me very well (easily the best run of any of my previous machines).
I’ll be completely honest — this new comp is primarily a gaming rig — it’s got a lovely (and huge) video card, obscene amounts of storage space and memory, a quad processor setup, and runs all my current games and entertainment with a kind of flawless perfection that makes me waste fifteen minutes taking screenshots of the intricate stitching on my avatar’s leather pauldrons.
So, clearly: gaming. Which is fine, since I’d rather do my writing on a laptop most of the time anyway, and I now have a fair number of options in the house for doing just that.
One other thing that makes writing on my laptop(s) preferable to writing on my PC: Office 2007. Specifically, my new desktop has Office 2007, my laptops don’t, and I think Word 2007 should win some kind of not-award for discouraging the actual act of writing in what is (still) rumored to be a word-processing program. I’d honestly rather write a full novel in Notepad just to avoid the intensely intrusive tool bars at the top of the window – massive Publishing and Layout buttons that seem to scream ‘WHAT YOUR NEW STORY REALLY NEEDS ARE SOME EYE CATCHING FONTS, DONCHA THINK?”
No. No, I really don’t. For writing, I need a program that:

  • Spellchecks with some degree of intelligence.
  • Allows you to boldface and italicize type.
  • Allows you to center the occasional line.
  • Saves the file into a format that pretty much anyone on the planet can read.

And that’s about it. Everything beyond that is probably a distraction.
For my money, Rough Draft (a free, 1.6 megabyte program with both American and British English dictionaries installed) is all I really need, For that matter, there are a couple good reasons for me to at least consider writing Little Things my next story using Google Docs.
How about you? What’s your preferred sandbox?

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Mamihlapinatapai – A book title and story idea all rolled into one.

Longing.jpgFrom Wikipedia (via kottke), mamihlapinatapai is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start. This could perhaps be translated more succinctly as “eye-contact implying ‘after you…‘”.
A more literal approximation is “ending up mutually at a loss as to what to do about each other”.

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Cooking and writing, eating and reading.

gourmet plus table setting.jpgLet’s say you’re really good at eating food. You’re a gourmet consumer. You know what’s good… if you’ve done your homework, you might even know why it’s good.
And then, at some point, you try to become a cook.
Maybe you’re cooking is bad, or maybe it’s okay — maybe it’s even good, and people compliment you on it.
But no matter what, that first major dish you cook? Even if it’s good, it’s not going to be great, not by the standards that you, as a consumer, judge such things.
That is the point where people often decide to not work on cooking as a serious endeavor anymore, rather than working on getting their cooking to catch up to their taste. If they need to make themselves some food, they do it, workmanlike, from a prepackaged thing out of the pantry, or they have some soup and a sandwich; they make it well enough to do the job, and that’s it — it’s just meant to fill you up. If they want great food, they feed that desire by consuming someone else’s cooking.
But if you’re really gung-ho about becoming a great cook (or if you sort of like your cooking anyway, even if it’s not the best thing you’ve ever had), time and practice and the long, slow teaching of years will eventually improve your end product to the point where… well, you might still be able to nitpick it to yourself, but you can usually step back and stay, objectively, “This is pretty great.”
Make sense? Okay.
Rather than make you reread that top bit and play mental word-substitution, I’ll do it for you:

Let’s say you’re really good at reading. You know what’s good… you’ve done your homework, and even know why it’s good.
And then, at some point, you try to become a writer.
Maybe you’re writing is bad, or maybe it’s okay — maybe it’s even good, and people compliment you on it.
But no matter what, that first novel you write? Even if it’s good, it’s not going to be great, not by the standards that you, as a reader, judge such things.
That is the point where people often decide to not work on writing as a serious endeavor anymore. If they need to write something (maybe for work), they do it, maybe following an established formula for the genre or topic; they do it well enough, and that’s it. If they want great stories, they feed that desire by reading someone else’s work.
But if you’re really gung-ho about becoming a great writer (or if you sort of like your writing anyway, even if it’s not the best thing you’ve ever read), time and practice and the long, slow teaching of years will eventually improve your end product to the point where… well, you might still be able to nitpick it to yourself, but you can usually step back and stay, objectively, “This is pretty great.”

(Ira Glass talks about this whole process in this YouTube video, (mostly) unflinchingly using his own old work as an example. It obviously inspired this ramble.)
I know the people who’ve done this, both for their cooking and their writing (in one special case, it’s the same person), and it’s really something to see.
I am lucky to be someone who likes the food they cook and the stuff they write even when it’s not that great, and when it’s only actually even good after some work — the actual cooking and writing is enjoyable enough, I suppose (it’s just the cleanup/revision that I dislike). Even when it’s the literary equivalent of bachelor omelets in the microwave, I like it, and like it enough to keep fiddling with it. I think it must be so much harder for someone who doesn’t feel that way, and works to get their skill to catch up to their taste while disliking all the products that come from that learning period. Rather defines the term “tortured artist” for me.
Or maybe there aren’t people like that; maybe we all secretly like the taste of our own horrible culinary experiments, even when we know they’d make most people sick to their stomach?
No, I’m sure that’s not right — people throw their ‘bad’ stories out all the time (or so I hear).
I don’t, but that’s me.
You?

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Unexused Absence

origami_jediLike the picture?
It’s like my life at the moment: cool, but complicated.
I didn’t mean to be ignoring you, internet, and as a matter of fact, I really haven’t been — there have been a number of emails to large (and not so large) groups of people going out, and lots of posts to various forums, and even a couple posts to my gaming-related blog.
I just … ahh … forgot to post anything HERE. Right, then, moving on?
Work (in which I am currently building an interactive online course for basic Outlook use… which is a lot cooler and MUCH harder than it sounds) is going swimmingly, though it is jamming up quite a lot of my FM dial, so to speak.
We, the newlyweds are good — we’ve got almost everything unpacked that needs unpacking, and next week my parents are in town and we’re going to replace almost all the carpet on the first floor with laminate flooring, because there’s nothing I like better than coyotes on iceskates excited dogs on a hardwood floor.
Kaylee begins preschool next month. She is very excited. We are very excited. I think it’s going to herald a true sea-change for her in terms of development. And diapers. Did I mention the excited?
Anything else? A lot of geeky gamer type stuff, but nothing worth noting at the moment.
Oh, just as a historical note: Obama’s going to be our Democratic nominee, and I’m voting for him. Also, someone in the House filed papers of Impeachment for George W. Bush. Now if Cheney would only resign for medical reasons, it’d be a pretty good month.
It’s going to be very interesting around here, come the election time — mine might be the only Obama sticker in the parking lot at work… perhaps in the whole neighborhood. At least they’re all relatively cordial about it.

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It’s not so much a sunburn as it is a slow baking

We got back from Cabo late last afternoon, mostly no worse for wear; Kate had a run in with a jellyfish (as did I to a much smaller degree) that left her less than a hundred percent, and I think we’re both running a little low-energy, but otherwise, everything is good. The trip was a lot of fun, though it was more of, say, a “resort vacation” than a “Mexico vacation.” In either case, it was a wonderful chunk of quality together time, interrupted at scheduled times with parasailing, snorkeling, and sunset sailing excursions.
While driving up the Pacific coastline in a rental car on Sunday, Kate and I discussed the different kinds of a vacation options a person really has. Those options we boiled down into a kind of grid on which “Things to Do” was one axis and “Things to See” was the other. Our Prague trip was very strongly on the “Things to See” end of things, which Cabo was definitely full of “Things to Do” (even when those things are “sit around the pool and read while people bring you margaritas”).
Some vacations or vacation locations are more successful at blending the two basic types. Likewise, certain people might enjoy a mix, or at least can do one and then the other and enjoy both (we are two such people).
Trouble arises, however, when you try (for instance) to fill a day with Things to See in a locale that’s entirely (and unapologetically) geared for Things to Do (or vice versa). Ironically, we were actually en route to make EXACTLY THAT MISTAKE on Sunday, while we were having this conversation. Lesson learned — something to file away for the next grand adventure.
Right. We’re home again, the little girl is wonderful, the dogs are exuberant, and Other Things are going on…

* The author of one of the games I’m editing is wilting in the face of unenthusiastic playtest reviews. I’m trying to shore up his resolve and enjoyment for the game he himself invented, but I don’t know if I had much impact. It may be as he says — that I am one of the game’s biggest fans and truest member of its target audience. We’ll see. For now, I’ll work on other things.
* The little writing project I mentioned last week is ch-ch-chugging along. One person (of course) was told what it was, and was visibly nonplussed, but I’ll keep at it at least for a little while, because I’m enjoying it, and I like it when I can entertain myself.
* Gregory Frost, best known and recognized for solid short story work, has turned that knack into a full length novel through the charming and engaging trick of making a storyteller his main character. That novel is Shadowbridge, the first in a two-part fantasy that I want to recommend. You’ll find I don’t recommend books nearly as much as I do movies or television, so take from that what you will. It’s good. It’s entertaining, and it often interrupted other good vacation activities (drinking, napping, sleeping) so that I could read a bit more. For those who don’t like starting unfinished series, rest assured that the sequel is already out.
* My sister seems to think Kate and I should run a half-marathon. In the middle of summer. In South Dakota. She’s absolutely, wall-bouncingly mad, but I love her. Family, you know…