Category Archives: writing

Halfway There

After the brief suspension of daily writing while I looked after my sweetie-wife and then the week and a half it took to return to full speed clocking in around a thousand words per day at lunch, I have passed the halfway point of my current novel in progress.

This novel certainly has had a long meandering and strange journey. The central core concept, a telepath that planting ideas in your head but your inner monologue remains in your ‘voice’, so you are unaware that it is not your thought, dates to the late 1980s. Since then, the whole setting has been crafted, short stories, both of this idea and others in the same setting, have been written, and more than one novel has been written.

Yesterday the word count passed 53,000 words and with the momentum back I hope to have the first draft completed in about two months. Luckily for me my first drafts in terms of character, plot, and events, are fairly close to my final drafts. (An advantage to detailed outlining.) And subsequent drafts are principally about editing and proofing.

I will be thrilled to finish this novel and get it out the door. (Though sadden because one editor who had seen a novel of mine in the same setting and liked the character has now retired.) I am thrilled because I can’t wait to research and write my next novel a d dark noir sf set on Mars.

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Finally Getting Back my Rhythm

 

The last month has been quite hectic. Early in March my Sweetie-Wife underwent a total hip replacement for one of her hips and I took two weeks of paid family leave to look after my sweetie as she recovered.

She has recovered and the medical procedure went swimmingly, so all is good there.

Before the surgery I was writing north of 1000 words a day on my next Military SF adventure novel but braked to a complete stop as I transitioned to care giver for the recovery period.

When I did return to work, I found it difficult to regain my writing’s momentum. This is a fact of my writing process. A project that gets paused or halted becomes very difficult to restart. It is why I cannot write more than one project at a time. One with always end up the preferred one and the project ‘paused’ simply dies.

Last week I was averaging 800-900 words a day but yesterday I passed the 1000 words at lunch mark. The momentum is back and now I just have to keep the thing rolling.

It’s a particular challenge right now because a second surgery will be taking place and my mind has been racing on a new novel idea that has me very excited but requires a ton of research.

 

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Series Review: HALO

 

Adapted from the 2001 Xbox game HALO: COMBAT EVOLOVED Paramount + debuted yesterday the pilot episode of their Sci-Fi series HALO.

While I have played the game and its sequel I have never dived deeply into the lore or worldbuilding for HALO and as such my interpretation of the series is not a comparison but as a new viewer.

Set in the distant future of the mid 26th century, HALO is concerned with both a conflict between the Interstellar human government, breakaway rebel/insurrectionists colonies the war between the humans an alien coalition known as the Covenant. The story centers on a cybernetic warrior Spartan 117 ‘Master Chief,’ part of an elite unit of cybernetic fighters.

When the Covenant attack the separatist world of Madrigal, the Spartan intervene and discover in addition to a sole survivor of the massacre that the aliens were seeking some device on the colony. Factions with the human government splinter and contest each other for the best methods in dealing with both the Covenant and the Separatists with Master Chief, acting on an element of his reawakened humanity, finding a measure of independence from his programing.

HALO boasts impressive production design and special effects with many of the game elements both faithfully reproduced visually and credibly for today’s discerning audiences. The storyline is not a direct adaptation of the game’s plot and I believe I read somewhere that the show runners have no intent to adapt the already existing lore and story from the games.

The pilot episode seems to be unable to make up its mind what it wants in terms of tone. The action sequences are fairly well staged and fast paced but with the tangled political plotlines leaving the viewer without any clear faction to support the action is undercut. In the pilot it is unclear if any of the factions deserve the viewers sympathy or emotional investment.

Pablo Schreiber performed quite well as Master Chief but with and without his helmet. However, I found Natascha McElhone’s performance as Dr Halsey, creator of the Spartan Program, stiff and unconvincing. Several times we have her looking directly down the camera lens and I was at a loss to understand just what emotion or thought she was attempting to convey. This may be a directorial issue as I had no such troubles when she was in the American version of Solaris.

The episode’s dialog is best described as serviceable. While the exposition is not as heavy handed slapped into your face as JMS’s on Babylon 5 there were repeated instances where the characters spoke more for the audience benefit than from any inner need.

Overall, there is enough there to hold my interest and bring me back for another episode, but the series has failed to truly hook and me and leave me with anything more than a mile interest. Hopefully that will change with more and better episodes.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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The Past is Not Today

 

I can’t be counted as among the great fans of historical fiction. There are plenty of historical dramas, comedies, and even some fantasies, I’m looking at you Tim Powers, that I enjoy but it is not my primary genre of fiction.

However, if your historical fiction, be it fantastic or not, gets some very basic things wrong, so wrong that I am noticing, then you are in trouble.

It is important to remember that the people of the past, while still very much people, had utterly different world views than people today. The further into the past you set your fiction the further removed from modern thinking and speaking will be the characters actions. And that doesn’t get into the little trick of language that are more modern than you might expect.

‘Hello’ as a general greeting is a product of the telephone and as very nearly ‘ahoy.’ (Something C.L. Polk dropped into her Witchmark series without explanation that I just adored.)

‘Point of no return’ is a turn of phrase coined with the coming of the age of aircraft.

‘Hands of time’ is something you only say once clocks have become common.

And the ahistorical element that bugged me last night.

People conquered by Imperial Rome did NOT become citizens of Rome. That was a vastly tiny number of people they became subjects of the empire. Getting that wrong displays, a vast ignorance of Rome, its history, and its people.

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Odds and Ends

 

So here are a few tidbits of personal news and happenings. Nothing earthshaking just life.

My novel in progress is coming along nicely. It is a military SF novel and this week it will likely pass 38,000 words written out of a total that should land somewhere in the area of 100,000. This version — I have written the story before to less than satisfactory results — is flowing much better and perhaps is even coming out better. I am averaging just over 1100 words a day five days a week.

Saturday, I ran the last session of my Space Opera for probably a month. Health concerns in my household are going to take up the majority of my time until late March. I am very pleased to say that the session was a success and while we ended in the middle of an adventure people seemed happy.

Royalty statements show sporadic sales of my published novel, Vulcan’s Forge but there is apparently no recovery from having the book released the same week that the world closed for the 2-year pandemic. Such is life. I can only move forward from here.

 

 

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Stop Calling Frankenstein Science Fiction

 

It may be heretical of me, but I do not consider the 1818 novel Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley to be a work of science fiction.

That is not to take anything away from this groundbreaking, culturally impactful, piece of art. Shelley laid out a horror novel that possesses deep philosophical themes on the nature of humanity and responsibility. However, in my opinion it is not science fiction.

Science Fiction is the genre of art that looks at the current scientific and technological state of the world, extrapolates from that starting position along possible advances and uses that extrapolation to explore themes, stories, and plots of a possible future. Frankenstein for all its inventions does not do that.

Shelley makes no attempt in the novel to elaborate on the scientific process that leads to the creature’s creation. There is absolutely no, ‘because we have this bit of technology or science, we might have this thing in the future’ which is the beating heart of SF. The creation process used by the titular character is described in a manner that is more akin to sorcery than science. Mary Shelley was not interested in the process that might leads a scientist to the creation of life, and that process is science fiction, but rather her interest spring from the deep and troubling moral questions raised by the concept. Questions that are so profound as science and technology reach heights unimagined we find ourselves grappling with the same issues she raised. There is no doubting her brilliance. But she did not extrapolate and that is what separates, genre-wise, her work from that of Wells and Vern. Philosophically Wells tried to keep up with her, but she beat him on that front handily and Vern always seemed more concerned with the engineering than the ethics. All three giants were critical in laying out thematic and conventions that we now accept as science-fiction by Shelley did not invent the genre.

 

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The Power of Mystery

When an audience or reader has a deficit of information one of two possibilities is likely. They may become frustrated and confused, disengaging with the piece or they may become intrigued and start filling in the missing bits from their own imagination.

In 1975’s Jaws, the mechanical shark worked rarely, and the filmmakers were forced to scrap plans that would have shown the beast on screen much more than the final film. With clever tension building techniques they crafted a taunt masterpiece around not seeing the shark until the final act.

In the television series Babylon 5 the Vorlons and Shadows were powerful mysterious being playing at some struggle that stretched over eons. They captivated the imagination and speculation. Then, once their background was explained, these master races were reduced to disappointed children of a cosmic divorce.

Hannibal Lector, pulled from a supporting role in the novel The Silence of the Lambs to a central thematic element in the film adaptation sparked endless fascination now neutered by endless backstory excavations and explanations.

This brings me to Boba Fett.

Fett, ignoring the animated sequence in the Holiday Special, first appeared in Star Wars: The Empires Strikes Back as the laconic bounty hunter that outwitted Han Solo and captured him for Darth Bader and the Empire. Other than showing a cleverness equal to or greater than Solo’s and successfully backtalking to Darth Vader the character did very little and never revealed his face. A perfect combination to create mystery and fascination with exploded almost immediately. The characters casual end in the next film ignited outrage as already a myth had grown up around him.

Now we are treated to a limited series The Book of Boba Fett centered on the character and as he is seen and heard more and more, he has lost nearly all of his mythic standing.

Having watched 3 of seven episodes I can’t say that anything about the character is worthy of his legendary status. As a guest character in The Mandalorian he was able to maintain that air of mystery that supported him as a mythic character. Front and center of his own series, his own story, he cannot remain an unexplained mystery and like Hannibal Lecter he shrinks in stature.

Mystery is a delicate element in storytelling. Use too much and your story if befuddled and confused, reveal too much as is happening here and there is little to entice.

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The Artistry of Endings

 

A brief and pleasant interaction with professor and author Tananarive Due on Twitter yesterday has me thinking about endings of stories, both prose and film, and art that is required to land on the right one for the tale.

Our interaction had centered on Jordan Peele’s fantastic directorial debut with his horror film Get Out. Peele’s original vision had a much darker ending in mind for Chris, one that was a more likely outcome given the circumstances but when tested audiences rebelled against. A new ending, the one the film was released with was crafted, and the movie was a hit. A similar sequence happened around Emerald Fennell’s 2020 revenger film Promising Young Woman where a less probable victory of sorts is added to the film’s end over a more downbeat conclusion. Again the film is praised and while Promising Young Woman did not see the sort of box office magic Get Outproduced it is a very well respected and an amazing piece of art.

The wrong lesson to take away from these examples if that your story should avoid bitter or tragic endings.

1968’s Night of the Living Dead is famous for its bleak and uncompromising ending. (Spoilers ahead) Ben, the sole survivor of the characters besieged in the farmhouse, at the film’s end cautiously climbs out of the basement as roving bands of deputized citizens clear the area of the walking dead. Seen only at a glimpse through a window one mistakes him for a ghoul and shoots Ben dead.

One could easily imagine an alternate version where the vigilantes rescues Ben rather than kill him and I believed that if that had been released instead the film would be mostly forgotten. It is that futility that is at the heart of the movie and without that final punch the piece loses much of its power.

Invasion of the Body Snatcher played it both ways. The original 1956 film had the framing story with it implicitly hopeful ending added after audience screenings and the 1978 remake took a darker tone with no hope for humanity’s future.

Knowing the right ending for a story is pure art. There are no formulas, charts, graphs, or calculations that can determine correct tone and it is often the critical alchemy that elevates or dooms a piece.

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Back to the Spice Mines

 

Last year after I finished my science-fiction murder mystery and sent it out on submission I turned somewhat lazy.

Oh, I wrote detailed outlines for two novels, one a ‘no contact’ SF story where the aliens come to Earth and have nothing to do with humanity and the other a military SF space adventure but despite to large outlines and detailed plotting I did not turn to the pick and shovel work of prose on paper.

That changed this yesterday.

Finally shaking off these damn doldrums I began writing that outline military SF adventure. And it’s not a bad start, nearly 1000 words written on my lunch, flowing easily from brain to fingers to screen. And despite being a vomit draft not received horribly by my writing group.

One thousand words a day is not an unrealistic goal. In fact, it is one I can often exceed, even with the demands of a day-job. Should I maintain this pace the first draft will be complete in late May.

The time for laziness is past, the time of the writing has begun.

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Improving Dune (2021)

 

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed Dune, seeing it twice, once as the theater and again at home, on the same day. It is an excellent adaptation of half the novel but there is room for some improvement.

A common complaint is that the film doesn’t feel like it has an ending but rather simply stops. This is because there is no arc for the character Paul and the final act lacks an objective for the protagonist to strive for. Both of these elements are simple fixes that could have been done in ADR and maybe a couple of pick-up shoots.

First, when Duncan is telling Paul about the Fremen  it is here that they should have established that the Fremen were bribing the Spacing Guild with spice to keep the skies free of spy satellites. This gets glossed over far too quickly in the current edit.

Next, when Paul and his mother Jessica escape, their guards they should make it clear their goal, now that the House has fallen and the planet is under the control of their enemies, is to make contact with the Fremen to bribe their way off Dune and back to Caladan where they have allies. This give the final act an objective and direction.

In the final scenes after Paul’s duel, the arc is completed when Paul makes the affirmative decision to not run for safety off-world but he will throw his lot with the Fremen. Now there is an emotional payoff to his decision giving the film a better overall shape.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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