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Monday, May 4, 2009

Workshop: Pushing Further

Thank you all for the responses you've given me. (Catreona, will I be seeing more answers coming from you? I hope so. I'm also waiting on Khajidu.)

I'm fascinated by the answers I've seen; I'm also fascinated by how different they are from the ones I got in my last workshop. Last time I started with questions to the author, and moved on to questions from the POV of the character. This time I went straight for the character questions - and the interesting thing is, they turned into interviews with the characters!

This is very cool.

But I'd like to see us, as a group, push our awareness a little further. Maybe the way I'd describe it is instead of interviewing the character, giving the character an opportunity to speak as he or she would in public, go a little further into your own sense of the psychology of the character. Many characters have things they feel instinctively but for personal reasons (embarrassment, standoffishness, shame, lack of self-knowledge) are unable to describe. Many have past experiences that give them pride, strength, or vulnerability. What might some of those things be for your character? Below, I'll respond directly to each person's questions, both to let you know what I'm getting, and to be more concrete about what I'm still looking for.

Catreona and Khajidu, I don't have all your answers and I'd like to address them all at once, so they won't be here below.

Jeanne: Wrai
I loved your answers, because I really got a sense of Wrai's personality from them. At the same time, from a worldbuilding perspective, they left out a lot. I know that Wrai wouldn't go explaining the little details of things, but what would happen if someone asked him to, and he consented? What exactly is "nice" about the southron, for example? What exactly is going on with the "dung-eating father"? I think that's related to Wrai's contempt for nobles. Can you explain some of the backstory experiences to me? Also, are there police in this world, or just "guards?" I'd also like to know a little bit more about Sharista and the extended circumstances around her. What has his relationship been with her? How often would he think of her, and why, and what experiences would he think of? That sort of thing. Because your setting is quite strongly detailed in its physical aspects, I'd like to see about pushing further on Wrai's personal views and feelings about the things he experiences.


David: Jasmine
Wow, David, it was great to see you get into first person answers! The voice is fun. I think you've got some interesting possibilities going in the family of telepaths thing. It makes sense that she'd try to find a way to escape it, given her background. I'm getting the sense from you that engineered abilities are common in her world, and thus that she's part of a larger community where telepathy isn't so unusual? How would that affect her view of herself and her ability? In the Ben situation, you have some serious stakes for whatever it was she did. I think the question of her crime, and her motive, are critical here, and I'd love to see that appear somewhere in your piece. In the musical Chicago, one of the characters says "I didn't do it, but if I'd done it, how could you tell me that I was wrong?" I think that's a little like what I might like to see from Jasmine - tailored of course to voice and circumstances. I like Riko; also it seems her mother (or whoever grounds her) might be an authority figure here. You seem at a certain point to suggest that she dresses in embarrassing clothes intentionally to hone her ability. This is an interesting angle you might want to pursue. I'm not "getting" her father's ability at all, and I wish I knew more about broken mental powers (how were they broken? what broke them? if she doesn't know, then what does she know about others with similar problems?) Is the wardrobe large? Is it with her on her VoidWatch sentence? Finally, I'm curious about the coexistence of high-tech future with the Goddess of Justice. This is something unusual enough that you might want to mention it early, just so people don't get comfortable in a high-tech future mindset and then refuse to go with you when you go there later.


Colin: Lanuz
Your past world seems rather medieval England-y at first glance. I'd like to see you pin down a few concrete details of Lanuz's personal experience, so that he'll have some memories to use to judge the world into which he gets dumped later. You say for example that "in light of our job, petty squabbles are meaningless." This makes me curious, so give me something more. Maybe an instance in which a petty squabble led to something seriously bad (because just because people aren't supposed to squabble doesn't mean they don't). Would Lanuz have been the type to start the squabble and then learn his lesson? Or would he have been the horrified bystander who then became a zealous enforcer of the peace as a result? I hope you see what I mean. He sounds from his voice like the kind of guy who's actually pretty highly regarded in his group; why would this be? What has he done to prove himself? How does he feel about this? What is he proud of, and where might he be vulnerable? Your answer about clothing is vague, simply because for him it's normal, but for us, it doesn't say much. So is he in plate armor? Chain mail? Something else? I like the relation between his possessions and the village. Does he have a strong sense of his vocation? If this is indeed a medieval-like setting, he's got to be pretty well off if he doesn't consider himself lucky to eat meat regularly. Is this sword of his the sword of power? If he's tempted to get rid of it, does that mean he uses another sword in his work? Maybe you could clear that up for me. Also, the Reijak - are they considered a superior, peer, or inferior race? What are the general perceptions of them and what they do? (Are they going to show up in the future world?) I like what you say about the watch feeling estranged from the villagers; they've seen the harder side of life. Do they consider the villagers to be lucky lambs? How might that affect how Lanuz sees the barman and young mechanic in your scene? Finally, about Order. Who embodies Order? Who teaches it? Why is it considered to be of value? Is it something people perceive that they have lost? I'd love to know more about this.


These questions are intended to open a discussion, so I look forward to your comments. I know the workshop has been strung out a bit by my Nebulas visit etc. but I'm working toward suggesting some revisions to the scenes I've seen from you, and I hope to give you my specific requests in the next couple of days. Thanks for all your great responses so far.

More soon...

10 comments:

  1. Jasmine's voice if definitely fun to do. :)

    I do have answers, and I'll post them tomorrow. Right now, real life is getting in the way of fiction yet again.

    PS I have just thought of an excellent way to turn the tables on Jasmine, too. (Evil Mad Scientist laugh).

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  2. Khajidu,

    These answers are fine. I'll have complete thoughts to you tomorrow.

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  3. On the timeline that Jasmine came from, there are quite a few people with engineered abilities. The idea that I'm toying with at the moment is that the genetic engineering companies were limited by laws that stopped them from experimenting on people or most animals. So they engineered artificial humans, effectively assembling the human genome from scratch. Then they conducted all sorts of experiments in engineering various abilities as quickly as possible, before the law ever caught up with the advances in science.

    Unethical? Oh, yes. But there are some people who don't let things like ethics stand between them and money.

    I'm planning several...hmmm, sub-species isn't quite the right word, but it will do for now. There are the Altered - they look human (or mostly human), but they have extra abilities like telepathy. There are Beasts - hybrids of human and animal DNA, they look like both parents (minotaurs, for example). There are Maenads - Beasts where the engineering didn't quite work out as planned, man-beasts quite savage and insane. And there are the Biomechs - they don't look human, they are biological machines with human awareness (if required for their function).

    Collectively, they are called Goblins (it would have been Genies, as a word-play on Genetics, but the marketing department pointed out that calling them Goblins reinforced the view that they aren't really human - and there are laws against selling humans, and since this is done for profit...).

    But they look so human (at least, some of them do). A civil rights movement for the engineered starts. It ends with the Goblin Wars. And the Goblin Wars end with the Plague Years, when the human race is so busy trying to survive a pandemic that there ain't no energy left for fighting. The Goblins win their freedom (partly by default, but that's okay).

    Jasmine grows up in one of the enclaves where the Altered (they don't call themselves Goblins) are the norm. It's not a ghetto – Jasmine's family are quite wealthy, since telepaths have a certain unfair advantage when it comes to business deals. Jasmine's view is that her abilities are “normal”, and when they don't work properly any more, she sees herself as crippled.

    With Ben – the idea is that he died, and she tried to use the time machine to rewrite history. This turned out very badly...but I haven't decided exactly how it turned out badly. But, if I expand that new idea I had about timelines influencing the nearest timelines, then undoing his death doesn't just affect her timeline. She could seriously screw up a whole bunch of timelines with one rescue mission.

    Is that a bad thing? After all, she did have the intention of saving her first love from death, and no one else was supposed to get hurt.

    Well, time travel was outlawed in Jasmine's timeline because her grandmother (inventor of the time machine) travelled back to witness a Great Historical Event. But a Great Historical Event is a moment when timelines split into different future histories. From the POV of a time traveller, history is trying to be all possible outcomes at once. And the mere presence of a time traveller could be enough to tip the balance.

    And Jasmine's parents had to locate the second time machine her grandmother built, in order to prevent just such an unbalanced future history. Their reward for success was that they got to guard the resultant gateway between their timeline and another one. (It is this timeline that the Goddess of Justice comes from – it is what I'm thinking of as a nexus timeline – kind of a crossroads of reality where both science and magic are equally valid. The Gods of this timeline rarely take a direct hand in events, but sometimes...).

    So Jasmine grew up knowing just how dangerous the whole time travel thing was. And she took the risk anyway.

    More soon...

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  4. Oh, and by the way, David,

    Jasmine's voice seems quite Young Adult to me. So consider that angle, depending on your intended story content.

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  5. Juliette,

    The band formed when the members were teenagers and Tsumw was attending university to learn medicine. In the beginning it was just a hobby, but it kinda took over. Despite this, Tsumw is still an active doctor (he is more into psychiatry) and is alternatively the band's doctor (during tours) and a hospital doctor (between tours). Tsumw is about 50 (equivalent to 40 on Earth as years are shorter there). He was born in Orlêzh and has two grandparents coming from another continent, which accounts for his somewhat different beliefs. Orlêzh is quite multicultural, and people from all over the world live there. It's also one of the biggest ports in the world.

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  6. Jasmine spent her last years at school in that nexus timeline next door to her home universe. One of her school friends, Chariss, was a fugitive with engineered abilities. When the bounty hunters tracked Chariss down, they used a neural disruptor on her (it's like being drunk, without all the fun of getting into that condition in the first place) to try to stop her from using her abilities on them.

    In the chaos that followed, Chariss hit Jasmine with her ability. Now, it may be possible for Chariss to undo what she did, but she has to work out EXACTLY how she did it, first (curse that neural disruptor!). And although I haven't fully-defined Chariss' ability, the fact that she can nullify, delete or surpress biological functions means that it's not an area for casual experimentation.

    Her father's ability? Genopattern-specific polymorph. Which means that he absorbs DNA (usually by eating it, although he can absorb through the skin, too), and he can then shape-shift into an exact genetic copy of whatever creature donated the DNA. Complete with their memories (how's THAT for a Universal Translator?)

    But it takes a lot of energy to shapeshift, and so they get very, VERY hungry...

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  7. The issue of Goblins a major plot element? Not so much in this story, though it will be a greater point in her father's story.

    The time paradox? Yes, since she is being punished for it, I need to decide EXACTLY what she did. Even if she doesn't remember it, the enquiring minds of readers have the right to know.

    I'm glad you picked up on the age of Jasmine's voice. In the original version, I had her arguing with her journal in the opening scene - her birthday is Feb 29, and since that date doesn't exist three years out of four, she can't convince her wristcomp journal that today is her 21st birthday (though I may lower her age by a couple of years).

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  8. David,
    Lots of interesting stuff; seems consistent enough with the genetic engineering origin. I really don't think Jasmine sounds 21; you could easily lower her age to 19, or even as far as 17, depending on your plans for the story.

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  9. Wrai is a bastard. His father denied him and his mother help when it was desperately needed and even beat Wrai when he asked for it. His mother died because Wrai couldn't manage enough money to care for her when she was ill--so yeah he doesn't like his father and it affects his attitude toward all nobles.

    His wife died when Sharista was three, two years before the start of the story while Wrai was gone--gambling which isn't something he does for fun principally but he's always felt guilty that he was gone when she needed him. Sharista's cared for by friends but this is something that is a constant worry to Wrai and he goes there whenever he can. He's convinced that on some level that something will happen to his daughter while he's gone so finding some way to have her with him is a big issue.

    Police as such are a very recent -- even modern-- development. They don't exist in this world although most rulers have guards of some kind that serve at least somewhat as police. Penalties for lawbreaking are extremely harsh and with no appeal: beheading for murder, castration for rape, losing a hand for theft of anything worth more than a few farthings. It's a world with both good and bad sides.

    Southron is rather like southern Italy--what's not to like? :-) Good food, nice weather, some nice cities--and plenty of gambling.

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  10. Ah, Juliette. You do get me thinking.

    I made Jasmine's abilities the result of breeding, simply because I wanted her to have the abilities of both of her parents.

    So, how do I make abilities inheritable when the motive is profit? How does a biocorp give away it's product?

    My thoughts - No profit-driven organisation is gonna give away it's product.

    They assert legal ownership of the intellectual copyright on the genetic re-design. They have their designs on your genome, and you are gonna pay for it.

    Same goes for the children of the Altered. There may be no cost to the biocorp as far as installation of the Altered genetic code, but they still have to pay royalties on that imporved genome. A win-win from the biocorp POV - the Altered breed new payers-of-royalties at no cost to the company.

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