Category Archives: writing

The Body Swap Hypothesis

 

Exchanging two people’s minds is a fairly common fantasy and sf trope with it propelling storylines in everything from Freaky Friday, Star Trek, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As an aside let me state that in my opinion it is fantasy one born out of our misconception that our minds and our bodies are separate and distinct phenomena. Our minds and a sense of awareness emerges from our biology and doesn’t exist independent of it, so it is something that is quite impossible to transplant. But it does make for fun entertainment.

Back in the 90s when I lived with a roommate who was equally into geeky entertainment as I was, I once asked the hypothetical questions if he could switch bodies and live for 24 hours as a woman would he do so? I was quite surprised by the speed and absolute finality with which he answered ‘no.’ I am a vastly curious person and that very much extends to how other experience their lives. I would, presuming an assured return to myself, take the chance without hesitation. I have a difficult time contemplating such a lack of curiosity about such an experience.

I am under no illusion that a brief excursion into someone else’s body for such a short time would provide a total understanding, but I think it would yield some new insights and empathy. It’s quite possible that my roommate rather than lacking curiosity rather feared emasculation. I suppose our cultural misogyny may run so deep as to make even a fantastic hypothetical threatening but if so, it doesn’t appear to have taken that deep of a root with me.

Still, the idea of the body swap is really an invitation to tryand envision life from someone else’s point of view which at its heart is the point of storytelling as well.

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Talking About My Novel

Talking About My Novel

 

Late March 2020, right as the pandemic strangled the world into a global shutdown, FlameTree Press published my debut science-fiction novel Vulcan’s Forge. It is not a Star trek tie-in novel, though as a fan of the series from the 70s onward I have enjoyed a few, nor is it about a champion racehorse or a communist plot to erupt volcanoes but rather a blend of SF and film noir about stellar colonization and a critique of idealized 50s America.

In the book, following the destruction of the Earth and the inner solar system by a rogue brown dwarf, humanity had colonized the local stars by way of automated slower-than-light ships that constructed the colonial infrastructure and then begat the first generation of colonists from stored eggs and sperm.

On the colony of Nocturnia, which has had no communication with any other successful colony and may be the only one that has survived, the third generation of colonists are just now taking their places in this new society modeled on mid-twentieth century urban Americana. Jason Kessler, the book’s protagonist, helps mold the culture by carefully curated mass media promoting the ideals and morals of this outpost of humanity. The problem for Jason is that he doesn’t fully believe in this family-oriented repressive suffocating society but wants a life free of the obligation to be nothing more than a ‘productive member of society’ and father of a nuclear family. When the seductive, sensuous, and mysterious Pamela Guest sweeps into his life offering him a way to have everything he’s every desired with the ever-present eye of the authorities every knowing he leaps at the possibility and suddenly find himself in tangled in a vast conspiracy that threatens his life and everything he thought was true.

Vulcan’s Forge is fairly well reviewed currently holding a 4.9 out of 5-star rating on Amazon and is currently available in Hardcover, paperback, and eBook from any bookseller.

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I Am Back

 

Well, this has been an interesting week. Tuesday, I went for an out-patient procedure to have cataracts removed from both eyes.

I admit that I was quite apprehensive about the operation. Yes, these are routine, and surgeons perform them daily, all that is very good in the abstract but when it is your eyes getting sliced, well abstract becomes concrete quite quickly.

Overall, things went well. The most irritating aspect of the surgery itself was that it took three nurses 5 attempts to get the IV needle into my vein. One the table and thanks to the drugs pumped into my system I was awake for the entire procedure but relaxed and calm. The visuals were off, bright indistinct shapes as the doctor removed my lenses and replaced them with artificial ones.

That afternoon and evening I was unable to see anything clearly and light sources presented rainbows induced by chromatic aberrations and I passed the time listening to podcasts. Sleeping was far more difficult.

I had been given the two plastic shields to cover my eyes, they were transparent with holes to allow gas exchange and served as a barrier to prevent me from accidentally rubbing my healing eyes. Meaning I had to wear them to bed and these shields were too close to my lips with my lashes sweeping across them every time I blinked. Worse still was they tended to direct sweat into my eyes, frequently waking me with burning sensations. Luckily, I saw my Doctor the next morning and when I told her the issues, she gave me a new set of metal ones that were adjustable, and these work a hell of a lot better.

Wednesday I could see much better and by the evening I could watch TV, yay LOKI!, and playing video games. Thursday I was very nearly back to normal and today I have returned to my day-job.

Now I can get back to work on my novel, edit the first few chapter and write a new one for the tail end of the story based on the feedback my beta readers kindly gave me.

 

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It’s Hard Being Defenseless

 

Saturday, I held the Zoom meeting and discussion for the beta readers of my most recent novel.

Beta readers for those who may not be aware are people who are willing to read a work that is complete but may, nearly always, need additional editing or writing to correct flaws that were invisible to the author.

The discussion was fruitful and represented a diverse set of opinions, some things worked for some and not for others, but there was enough commonality to give me some direction in edits, alterations, and revisions.

The most difficult element of the process is also one I consider to be the most vital; never defend the work.

As an author you will not be present when an editor, agent, or person skimming books off a shelf is reading your work. The work stands alone, and you cannot expand or explain or clarify anything. When beta readers have comments that something was missed, that it might have worked better if you had established this or explained that you cannot stop the feedback and point out where you did exactly that. Whatever it was you did it clearly did not work and defending your choices, your text, or your edits will not change that. Also, once you start defending it is very easy for the conversation to turn into attack and defend as people construct fortresses of logic for their position. At that point all valuable feedback has been lost. An author who is out to be ‘right’ about an interpretation has stopped truly listening. Defending is the antithesis of hearing.

It is hard to be defenseless. Author often are opinionated people and as such used to vigorously supporting their position but when it comes back to a reader’s feedback it is more important to remember that no honest feedback can be wrong it is what they person honestly took away from the work and if that’s not what you intended then it’s your job to diagnosis why and to fix it.

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The Gravest Feedback Mistake

 

I am engaged in a regular writer’s group that meets twice a month and of course as a novelist I also solicit for beta readers for works in progress all of which gives me a prime perch to watch and hear people giving feedback on a writer’s work.

Now, there are plenty of different styles in how to give feedback, personally whenever possible I try to sandwich the critique as good stuff – stuff that didn’t work for me – and more good stuff. Opening and closing with things worked and that you like I think makes it much easier for the harder material to be heard and digested.

There is one approach that see repeatedly used and it’s not one that the critique is choosing but rather falls into without be actually aware of it that hampers giving good feedback, and that is wanting the story to be a different story all together.

Except for a few beta readers those giving feedback are usually writers themselves and there is often an unconscious attempt to mold the story being critiqued into one they would have written and that is not helpful to the author.

Say I am critiquing a story about a woman on the American Plains in the mid 1800s and it’s about her coming to grips with her sexuality and desires for women after the passing of her husband. Okay that is one story and one with lots of potential but if I come to author and suggest that it’s not exciting because there isn’t lots of combat with the local native tribes and it would be much more interesting if we had more characters from the cavalry involved then I am not critiquing the story before me but rather trying to get one written that I might write.

(Not that I have ever had a desire to write western fiction this is merely example.)

It is vital that even if it is not the kind of fiction you would ever write you keep in the forefront of your mind what story that writer is actually trying to tell and not the one you wish for. Critiques that fall into the trap aren’t bad or trying to sabotage the work they have simply fallen into a very natural but not helpful case of mirroring. They are thinking of the story they would write and not this one. Once you are aware and on the alert for this you can give much better critiques that will help your fellow writers.

 

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Reading TENET

 

Using the application ‘Weekend Read’ developed by scriptwriter John August’s company, I am reading Christopher Nolan’s script for last year’s film Tenet.

Tenet was Nolan’s venture in the globe-trotting super spy genre starring John David Washington as the story’s protagonist battling a world threatening conspiracy implemented by a Russian arms dealer played by Kenneth Branagh.

This wouldn’t be a Christopher Nolan movie if time didn’t play a critical aspect in how the story unfolded, in Memento to simulate Leonard’s inability to make new memories Nolan sequenced events backwards and in in The Prestige extensive use of flashback reordered the tale in Tenet time itself is a critical element of the plot. Deploying hand waving science-fiction about ‘reversing entropy’ objects and people are ‘inverted’ and experience time backwards leading to visually stunning and mind-bending sequences of action throughout the film.

But how does this read?

First off Nolan’s decision to leave the character unnamed is much more ‘in your face’ in the script. In a prose story, particularly one recounted in the first person, it’s fairly easy to hide the fact that the viewpoint character is unnamed, script format doesn’t allow for such subtleties hence often and glaringly Washington’s character is ‘The Protagonist.’ And when he refers to himself as the protagonist of the operation this is only heightens the effect that breaks the spell between document and reader.

Secondly the mixing of forward time and reverse time events in the script are no clearer than when first viewed in the film. Text is dreadfully limiting in recounting simultaneous events and doubly so for such events running in opposite directions through time. Where a piece of prose can slow down and provided critical and essential exposition a script just as a film cannot and must delivery that information vis visuals and character dialog.

Tenet’s script perfectly captures the experience of watching Tenet and in that manner is an exceptionally well written scrip and just as with the film it requires repeated readings to fully see all of the intent.

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Back From my Time Off

 

Friday was my birthday and after a year of pandemic restricted travel and not yet ready to travel again I decided to take both Friday and Monday off to celebrate and simply luxuriate in a long weekend. So here are some quick thoughts and reports to bring everyone back up to speed.

Birthday Haul: My lovely sweetie-wife presented me 3 Blu-rays as gifts, The Fog, John Carpenter 1980 horror classic on a Shout Factory special edition, The Invasion the 2007 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and The Night of the Big Heat which sounds like a film noir title but is a Hammer-ish Sci-Fi film starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee about a far north island on the UK in the dead of winter suffering an extreme heat wave due to an alien invasion.

I had originally planned to have friends over for movies and gaming, but our guest bathroom is currently disassembled due to water damage from the unit above and so the weekend was just me and my sweetie-wife.

However, on Friday I did for the first time in over a year go out to theater. I watched Nobody an action film starring Bob Odenkirk. It was a lot of fun. What could have been tedious was made fun because the film makers understood that humor and a light touch can carry an audience through over-the-top action.

Writing: The Work in Progress novel has been copy-edited and proofed and my SF murder mystery clocks in at 102,000 words, making it longer than my noir Vulcan’s Forge but still trim compared to so many genre novels these days. Now I just need to wait for the feedback from the beta readers to see if it requires any serious surgery.

My mind continues to work on the next book though I am not yet to the outlining stage so writing-wise things are not too bad.

Ta Ta For Now

 

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Narrative Gravity

 

As I wait for m beta readers to complete my latest novel and hope that the piece survives the process my mind chews over the problems, characters, and themes of my next project.

While I am a plotter, creating outlines of varying detail for my novels, there’s a lot of pre-work that happens in the background of my grey matter before I ever get to the butt-in-chair & fingers-on-keyboard stage of outlining. Not only do I have to I know the ending I need to have a strong intuitive sense of the characters. The key word there is intuitive. While aspects of the character may be derived from plot or designed for thematic purpose large aspects simply fall into place by some sort of narrative gravity. If I attempt to deviate from that aspects there’s a psychic pushback that produces a force trying to return the character or plot to what fell into place.

This new story forming up in my head has already exhibited such a factor. The manuscript off to the beta readers now has my first female protagonist in a novel length work and I had thought that while I wait for the verdict on that work it would be best if I returned to a male protagonist for this new piece.

Narrative gravity disagreed.

A female character is the one that appears in my mental wanderings as I consider the story. She’s the one clearly driving the plot, making the decisions, and while I had wanted to return to a comfortable zone for this writing it is clear now that I do not always get what I want.

 

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The Itch is Back

 

For me part of the writing process is ‘the itch’ I get as an idea grows from a vague concept to a near obsession returning to my thoughts again and again like guilt. As I wind down the process of my current work in progress and begin the search for publishers and agents, the horror film section of the writing process, I find quite faster than normal this time my mind is already mining the next novel.

The core idea was generated last year when it was one of a few I submitted to my then editor for consideration as a follow to my novel Vulcan’s Forge not a sequel just the next book by me. He wasn’t thrilled with the ending and frankly at the time the idea hadn’t become all-consuming for me either, so I set it aside to work on the manuscript now nearing completion.

In that time the behind-the-scenes processor apparently kept working on the concept, finding the genre it really belonged to, and supplying me with a character to drive that had conflicting wants and needs that cemented the story dark ending.

So, my little vacation from writing looks to be ending sooner than I expected and a new outline is about to be born.

 

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Wants, Needs, and Character Arcs

Wants, Needs, and Character Arcs

 

StudioBinder is a computer application for film production but they also host a YouTube channel about film that can be very enlightening into all aspects of cinema including story structure. Recently I came across a series of video they made on story endings and how they break down into 4 large categories. That has spurned a lot of thought some of which I’m sharing here.

First off, the core concept they put forward is that characters have wants and needs. I would describe wants as what drive plot and needs as to what fulfills story.

The want is the character defined objective and its associated obstacles. The wants are malleable and often change as the plot progressed. In Moonraker Bond starts out wanting to know who stole the missing space shuttle but by the third act his want is to prevent Drax from killing humanity. The want is what the character is actively trying to achieve.

The need ties directly to character and their growth or fail to grow across the story. Need is the elements of the character that changes and what they need defines the nature of their change. In Moonraker as with many movies in the Bond franchise, Bond has no need. Psychologically and emotionally, he is complete and exits the story as exactly the same character that entered it. However, setting aside episodic story telling most characters have an arc, a change that transforms them in the story and that is tied to their need. Often a character is blindly unaware or in denial of their need. It is the lack of self-awareness about their need that hobbles the character and holds them back from achieving a more well-rounded emotional level.

If you follow the link, you’ll see that the people at StudioBinder define a happy ending as one where both the character’s wants and needs are fulfilled but I will voice an objection to that. Yes, it can be true, but it can also be true that meeting the need alone makes a happy ending. There are stories where what the character wants is wrong and the need when fulfilled supersedes the want and it is something that the character no longer desires and so failing to achieve it is not bitter-sweet or semi-sweet, but actually sweet. A good example of this is The Sure Thing an early romantic comedy from Rob Reiner. In it Gib’s, John Cusack’s character, want is to have commitment free sex with a blond bombshell, his need is to learn to have a deep emotionally adult relationship. Being a rom com, he achieves this when he learns to truly love and never has the free sex he chased after. His want is unfulfilled but satisfying his need changed his character so dramatically that the want simply sublimated away.

In Iron Man Tony Stark’s wants change and evolve with the plot, starting out he wants to party and have fun, then he wants to escape, and he wants to stop selling weapons and eventually he wants to stop Obadiah. His need is to find a purpose to his life and that is fulfilled by becoming Iron Man.

The results are flipped for Steve Rogers Captain America: The First Avenger. Steve’s want is to do his part in the war, and he does, spectacularly. His need is to ‘find the right partner’ the woman that loves and understands him as he is. Peggy is that woman but to fulfill his want Steve has to sacrifice his need, placing his duty before himself, because the need is tied to character not plot, and puts the plane down into the artic to what he believes will be his death.

Wants, Needs, characters and plots, there is a lot to think over here.

 

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