Immortals

On this lovely afternoon I've been thinking about immortality ... not so much as a personal preference, but the way it's presented in fiction.

You can't dip your toe into a paranormal without coming across some character who is an immortal vampire or minor godling. My problem is, these folks don't seem to have learned anything from their centuries or millennia of life. There ain't no wisdom on display, no accumulation of knowledge, no self-control, no long view.

I mean ... I'm not the same person I was fifty years ago. I don't say half a century has made me noticeably wise, but I have some perspective.

I don't think this shortfall in characterization is an authorial failing. It's authorial choice. The fiction I read is created for amusement and gentle distraction. Readers want to see characters they understand and identify with. This kinda precludes writing characters who could realistically have been around for centuries.

ometimes Dr Who gets this right. Mostly not -- but they make plausible choices.

Neil Gaiman Talks About Writing

 A casual, wandering, interesting interview with Gaiman that touches on his writing methods.

Find it here in a small review of American Gods, number 22 on a list of recommended Fantasy genre novels/

The Non-violent Heroic Confrontation

I came across this in my reading. 

The article considers,
"How does the hero confront violence without becoming violent themself?"
and,
"How intrinsic is violence to the idea of heroism?"

Interesting to me. Maybe a thought-provoker for others who write or review.

The Setting as Story

I’ve been thinking about “The Setting as Protagonist.” That is, when setting acts in the story. When it has its own narrative.

Fr'instance, consider All Clear by Connie Willis. This is a Time Travel SF that moves from a small town in the English countryside in WWII, to the evacuation at Dunkirk, to Bletchly Park, to the coastal defenses, to London during the Blitz. Time travelling protagonists see the era's awfulness and bravery through modern eyes.

Willis' use of London-as-a-character is clearest about midway through the book in scenes of the air attack on St. Paul’s Cathedral.

How does she do this? Well ... Lots of prior description of St. Paul's physicality. Vignettes of members of the Fire Guard. She purpose-builds two Cockney moppets for use in the Blitz subplot. The protagonist argues that destruction of the cathedral would be a final blow for British morale.

So. Not just extended metaphor. Setting can be a symbolic equivalence. Can clarify and add an emotional gloss. I find myself rooting for St Paul's as if it were an old friend.

 cf Tolkien's the "Cleansing of the Shire." Burnett’s Secret Garden. 

Ingredients of Character

I was thinking the other day about how we create characters, since I'm trying to do some of that.  

What are the ingredients we knead and stir and bake into characters? How do these people end up knocking around inside our brains, anyway? Where do they come from?

Some of the sparks that grew into Marguerite in Forbidden Rose were real spies.

Consider Marie-Madeleine Bridou. (She ended up Marguerite in the book instead of Madeleine as a nod to The Scarlet Pimpernel. Jo waves. Hello, Scarlet Pimpernel.)

Read about Bridou here, here, and here.

She chose the code name Hedgehog because, as one of her colleagues put it, “it’s a tough little animal that even a lion would hesitate to bite.”

 

You will be pleased to know Bridou worked for a publishing company.  Heroic people, those who work in publishing.

Rurouni Kenshin

Netflix is showing two Rurouni Kenshin flicks. The first, Ruroumi Kenshin: The Beginning, gives us interesting plotting, subtle acting, complex reveals, unexpected assumptions.

Always nice to see a new cultural take on familiar material. Lovely photography. Fairy tale level of realism. Glacially slow in places. Full of folks getting killed.

Glad I saw this.

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81313229

Computer Stuff

An exciting weekend in which I set up my external hard drive.

On a Mac this means buying a black plastic box the size of a good novel, fiddling through my barely finite collection of twiddly wires, and then blindly following the directions of Some Guy on the Internet.

The problem with getting advice from YouTube videos is that they're all for systems five or seven years old. Every two minutes the nice geek with the oddly untrained voice tells you to, for instance, "Click on Options" and you discover there is no Options key because they threw that out in the 2015 OS.

Once again, the world betrays you.

You prove inadequate to a task that is completed handily by 16-year-olds.
(Don't ask me about my cell phone.)

You lose.

So you go to Google to figure out where Mac has hidden the action you wish to undertake. And you

have to decide whether you want your GUID (whatever that is) to be a table or a map.

Half an hour later you close your eyes and pick at random
because the hell with it anyway.

This is like ordering in an Azerbaijani taverna far, far off the beaten path where nobody speaks any language with which you have a nodding acquaintance,
except less prone to moments of delightful surprise.

Or like when your car has an extra bobble on the PRSNL to put the stick in and you have no idea what it does but the car seems to run okay either way so you ignore it.

I now have an operating back up and a Time Machine
or I don't
and I am back to limping along with my severely crippled version of Word except for (probably) backup.

This is not exactly adulting, but I muddle along.

The Latter Stages of Editing

I was talking to a friend who is looking at the final stages of her Southern Gothic manuscript. She says, kinda doubtful, "What do I do next?"

I thought about what I do in the later production stages.
"Well," says I, which gives me a moment to organize my thoughts, "I pick out the five or six Emotional High Points of the story and then I look back to see how I have prepared the reader for them."

I expand on that, since we're neither of us in a great rush with something burning on the stove and she is willing to be patient with me.

I says -

You got a few couple places in the manuscript where you want the reader to FEEL^TM .  

-- Not solve a problem or enjoy the sunset or ponder the mysteries of the universe, but get angry or jealous or guilty or sad or ashamed or lustful or horrified
or something. 

FEELS^TM ya know. Words with emotion attached to them. 

Because the reader is there for the FEELS^TM, this being fiction.

These five or six scenes of important Feels are almost always going on in the protagonist's POV, btw,
because why would you want to waste this storytelling emotional charge on a minor character's subplot anyhow?
Unless you do want to, in which case that is also cool.

Look at Annique when she discovers her mother has been lying to her about everything important for years and years and years. 

The actual scene attempts to tug the emotions. Yes.

But it does that by having a foundation made of solid blocks of Feels,
rather than just blocks of information. 

It's built on scene after scene of Annique missing her mother and hearing her mother's wisdom in her head.

We see Maman again and again through Annique's eyes, with all of Annique's Feels firmly attached.

-- Now Maman was dead in a stupid accident that should not have killed a dog. Maman. Maman, how I miss you. -- p. 5

--The mindless optimism of the English. Who could comprehend it? Had not her own mother told her they were all mad? -- p. 6

-- She laughed, a deep, throaty sound copied exactly from Maman. -- p. 55.

And so on and so on.

The reader's emotional belief in Annique's pain and shock at Maman's betrayal comes not from explanations and reasons, not information or backstory or assumptions about a mother and daughter relationship.
It's dozens of little Feels scattered everywhere.

 

TL:DR version: When you want to punch up a late stage manuscript, consider looking at the big-ticket Emo scenes. Track back to make sure the emotion of that scene is supported by previous Feels.

*****

photocredits Deedee86, Sarah Richter, press 👍 and ⭐, Peter H

Reading Order

Here's the publication order of the six books of the Spymaster Fictive Universe. It's a perfectly fine order to read them in, IMO. 

I mean, that's the order in which I learned about the characters.

 

So. Publication order is:
 

Spymaster’s Lady  

My Lord and Spymaster
Forbidden Rose
Black Hawk
Rogue Spy
Beauty Like the Night 

 

The chronological order of events is:

Forbidden Rose  (1794)
Spymaster’s Lady (1802)
Rogue Spy (1802)
My Lord and Spymaster (1811)
Black Hawk (It covers several time periods between 1794 and 1818)
Beauty Like the Night (1819)

 And that's also a good order to read them in. So you win either way.

And there are some minor works in the Spymaster's Fictive Universe:

Gideon and the Den of Thieves (novella) (1793)
Not currently available.

Intrigue and Mistletoe in the anthology Mischief and Mistletoe (1815 and a bit)

My True Love Hath My Heart in the anthology The Last Chance Christmas Christmas Ball.

Her Ladyship's Companion (30-year-old Regency) (1818)

Technical Topic - Thinking About Saying Stuff Twice

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tl:dr summary:

Don’t say stuff twice.

I don't know about you, but I do this all the time. My final editing is full of me sitting in coffee shops muttering, 
"I've just said he can see over the crowd. I don't need to say --'Because he was tall he could see over the crowd.' 

What's the reader going to think? 
That he got up on a chair? That he went jump jump jump? That he has a periscope?
They've figured out he's tall. 
This is how I tell the reader he's tall.
Jeesh."  

Take this early draft example of a man walking into a room. The purpose of the two paras . . .
(Every paragraph and page and scene has a purpose and you should be able to figure out what it is) . . .
is to show the reaction to his entry and to make the reader wonder What Is Going On Here?

He was late for dinner. They’d started without him. Their plates were already full and the footmen had finished serving the vegetables round. Everyone fell silent when he walked in. They turned, their forks in the air, looking annoyed and more than a little offended that he’d been so impolite. Well, he was here. They’d have to make the best of it no matter what reservations they harbored. His seat was midway down the side. Empty, of course. Waiting for him. His father and brothers and the guests turned to watch him as he found his place. The footmen pulled out his chair and settled him among the others. They’d been well trained. Blank faced, they bustled to bring the platters back and offer him what the others were eating. Roast duck and vegetables. Sauces to go with them. Spicy garnishes along the side of the plate.

He didn’t bother to make apologies.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily read my way through that with any care and I wouldn't pick up what's important if I did and most of it is boring because it blathers on and doesn't say anything new.. 

Let's cut the wordage in half.

When he walked in, everyone fell silent. His father and brothers and the guests turned, forks in the air, annoyed and offended. Well, he was here. Let them deal with it. His chair waited for him. Blank-faced footmen bustled to seat him and offer roast duck and vegetables, sauces, spicy garnishes along the side of the plate.

He didn’t bother to make apologies.

I’d argue that the second version keeps the action and conveys the feelings. It shows the visuals of the scene. Most importantly, it still poses all the questions that are supposed to draw the reader onward. 

Questions like:

Why is he late?
Why do family and guests have to like it or lump it?
Why do they keep his chair empty and ready for him?
Why doesn’t he apologize?

There's no change much in the order of action or the responses. The difference is that the second version hacks away the kudzu of needless repetition. There is so much the reader will assume even when you don't say it.

Trust the reader.

So.

Lookit the first three sentences of the original passage:

He was late for dinner.

They’d started without him.

plates were already full and the footmen had finished serving the vegetables round.

Now, none of this is throw-the-book-at-the-wall-awful stuff, 
but “Forks in the air,” is all we need. 

That four-word phrase contains late for dinner,
they haven’t waited for him,
they’ve started eating, 
and
he's not VERY late, they’ve got as far as the first bites but not further. 

“But” – you may say – “I want to paint a picture of what’s going on.
I need to give the reader details."

And there is much to be said for doing that. But sometimes description can more usefully be wielded in a spot where it serves a couple of purposes and also doesn't get underfoot.

I will talk about that in the next post.

Technical Topic -- Fiddling with Words in the Second Draft

 

There are folks who get the words right the first time they lay them down. I am not one of those people.

Think of it as shooting an arrow. Some folks let it fly and it hits in the gold. I shoot and the arrow lands all bent up at an angle and it's somewhere out in the third ring, which is blue. So I go over and take it out and try again. Or I sneak it out and move it a bit inward and decide whether I like it there.
And I usually decide not and move it a bit ... and move it a bit more.

Because that’s how I roll.

So anyhow, here's the process.

I've taken a paragraph of the new WIP and put down the decisions that lie in the slow, tedious process whereby I move Draft One to Draft Two.

I’m sure you will all be fascinated by this.

This paragraph is way early in the first scene.
Its purpose is threefold:
-- I lift the top of the POV character’s skull and show what she’s like.
-- I describe some scenery.
-- I signal the reader that we got a Time Traveller here.

what the jug/pot would have looked like

The Draft Two paragraph:

A jug nudged at her from the left, passed over by Hishisha who was at the blinky, giggly stage of mead imbibing. She was fifteen or sixteen, tall even in this crowd, snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer, [anthropological  skull type]. She was one of the unmarried sisters, half sisters, cousins, and god knew what who lived in the house of Medkarratu, chief man of the village. They’d amiably gathered in a stranger, here for the festival. More than gathered her in. They’d shoved over and shared the furs of their bed with her, chatted with her endlessly and incomprehensibly, sprinkled generous helpings of fresh seeds and berries on her gruel, and combed and braided her hair into the same knots and interweavings they wore.

Here’s how I arrived at it:

First DraftL:

Hishisha who was at the blinky, amiable stage of mead imbibing

In the Second Draft it becomes:

Hishisha who was at the blinky, giggly stage of mead imbibing

Why:

Giggly is visual and specific. Amiable is less so. And I probably want to use amiable somewhere else.

Draft One:

 She was fifteen or sixteen, marriageable in this wherewhen, tall and slender as a New York model, (or tall for this ethnic,) blue eyed, snub nosed, fair skinned but brown with the summer, [anthropological  skull type].

Draft Two:

 She was fifteen or sixteen, tall even in this crowd, snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer, [anthropological  skull type].

Why:

The sentence is supposed to give an immediate picture of one person, and by extension, the crowd that surrounds the POV character. I want to put the one person in a historical context.

And I want to pull out every word I can. This “person description” is exactly the sort of thing the reader’s eye skips right over.

Let me go back and unpack my choices, phrase by phrase:

fifteen or sixteen. This imprecision is consistent with the POV character not being well acquainted with the girl. This works.

marriageable: This is true and interesting and it’s the sort of thing an anthropologist or other  scientifically trained observer would think. It sets us in a historical context.
But it also takes us haring off with the girl’s marriage prospects in our teeth and we’re not going there. This info is not visible in the immediate scene. We want to stay in the scene.

Wherewhen: One of my made up words. I’ll use it later in dialog, not here in narration. We don’t expect the narrator to be the first to drop jargon on us. When the word appears in dialog, it’s the character laying a neologism down and dialog has looser expectations and rules than narrative.

tall and slender as a New York model. Oh Pleeeease! Jo, this is dreadful.
I put this in to emphasize we have a modern POV here. But my POV character wouldn’t think in pop culture terms. This is (1) imprecise, (2) not appropriate to the character’s mind, (3) not suited to the mind-set of my likely readers. Tawdry phrasing. Ugly. Kill it with poison.

tall even for this ethnic. which I put in to see if it was better, isn't. It's maybe something an anthropologist would say -- I'd have to find out -- but “ethnic” is a quagmire into which I do not want to step. Let’s just not.

tall even in this crowd. I like the informality of “crowd”.  It's idiomatic, modern phrasing. But this isn't right either.  But it doesn't sing. I dunnoh.

blue eyed, snub nosed, yellow haired, fair skinned but brown with the summer

becomes

snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer.

This is fewer words and fewer images but it conveys the same picture. Nine words instead of thirteen.
If I say she’s tanned I don’t have to say she’s fair skinned. If she’s pale blond we can assume she has light-color eyes. Who looks at or thinks about eye color anyway unless they are gazing at length, close up, into the eyes of their beloved?

Fair skinned is another clumsy-footed word choice in 2018. 

Draft One:

one of the unmarried sisters or half sisters and cousins, women who lived in the house of

Medkarratun, chief man of the village.

Draft Two:

one of the unmarried sisters, half sisters, cousins, and god knew what who lived in the house of Medkarratu, chief man of the village.

Why:

I changed the name Medkarratun because I’m trying for a made-up Celtic name that doesn’t look so much as though it’s been filtered through Latin.

The line up of relatives who live in the chief’s house is fiddled around a bit for clarity and to simplify sentence structure.

Draft One:

They’d amiably adopted the visitor, here for the festival.
Draft Two:

 They’d amiably gathered in a stranger, here for the festival. More than gathered her in.

Why:

When I look at some bit of writing and say “This is not good writing” it’s usually because the wording is not exact. One common type of "not exact" wording is exaggerated, overstated, overdramatic, purple prose.

The women in that chief’s house didn’t “adopt” her. They gave her a warm, sincere welcome, not a lifetime commitment of sisterhood. Let us be prosaic for 99% of what we're talking about. This makes the occasional forays into purple pack a little more punch.

Draft One:

given her generous helpings of fresh seeds and nuts on her gruel

Draft Two:

sprinkled generous helpings of fresh seeds and berries on her gruel,

Why:

"Sprinkled" is a more exciting and visual verb than "given". And if it’s midsummer they won’t have many nuts yet, but they will have berries

Draft One:

braided her hair in the same complex of knots and interweavings they wore.

attrib kwarner

 Draft Two:

 combed and braided her hair in the same knots and    interweavings they wore.

Why: I added “combed” because I have so many pictures in my head of Celtic combs. They’re a big part of the toolkit for these folks.

(We are not going to mention lice. No. This is a Romance-y sorta story and we are not even going to think about them.)

I pulled out “complex of” because I just wrote that bit so I could use complex as a noun. This is me showing off. I convey that the hair is complex plenty fine when I talk about knots and interweavings. I don’t have to say this twice. 

Time to simplify and toss out my fancy usage.

Also, if I use interweavings that’s enough showing off for a couple of pages.

Should I make that" braided into knots and interweavings" Hmmm ...  Can you braid an interweaving? Whatthe hell is an interweaving anyway?
This is why I have Third Drafts.

[anthropological  skull type]. Brachiocephalic? Whatever. I do not mind going all science-y but I have to look it up. I think a nice long technical term fits nicely here for cadence or something. 

So there you have it. That's what I was thinking as I moved from earlier words to later

ones. While this is a single case here, working on a single paragraph, it's pretty much how I do this part of wrestling words.

It's a lot faster to d than to  write about, thank goodness.