Friday, May 11, 2012
Link: A terrific article on "The Lie" as a driver in your story
My friend Janice Hardy put me on to this article. It's a good one, and is really making me think. What lie does your character believe at the beginning? How does he or she find the way to the truth by the end of the story?
Thursday, May 10, 2012
My schedule for BayCon 2012!
Do you live in the San Francisco Bay area? Do you love science fiction and fantasy - and steampunk, and slipstream, and magical realism, and all the things in between? Then come to BayCon 2012 on Memorial Day weekend... and as a bonus, you can see me! (Yay! I love to meet blog followers.) Here's my schedule, and I'm super excited about it.
Here it is:
1. Saturday from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM in San Tomas
Fairy Tales and Mythology
with Kevin Andrew Murphy, Ann Finnin, and Valerie Estelle Frankel
What are we teaching our children about the fairy tales and mythology
in today's media, or even as bedtime stories? Are we staying true, or
drifting?
2. Saturday from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM in San Tomas
Getting Girls Hooked on Science and Engineering
with Karen Williams, Kay Pannell, Clare Bell
Ladies in lab coats: Following in the footsteps of Madam Curie.
3. Sunday from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM in Saratoga
Writers Workshop 3
with Adrienne Gormley, G. David Nordley, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff)
Note: This session is not open to general convention guests, but to workshop participants only.
4. Sunday from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Ballroom A [notice room change!]
The Evolution of Female Characters in SF and Fantasy
with Veronica Belmont, Deborah J. Ross, Daryl G. Frazetti, Brandon Sanderson, and Diana L. Paxson
From damsels in distress to sword-wielding, gun-toting, and military
masterminds, have women found their place, or are they 'feminized' men?
Do the women truly reflect the changing attitudes of the roles of
women?
5. Sunday from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM in BallroomB-C-D [notice room change!]
World Building Basics
with Pat MacEwen, Paula Butler, David J. Peterson, Brandon Sanderson, and Eytan Kollin
Panelists discuss the basics of worldbuilding. If you are going to set
your fantasy or science fiction piece is an alien place, what kinds of
things should you think of prior to doing so?
If anything gets added, dropped or changed, I'll let you know as soon as I do. This is going to be a super convention!
Here it is:
1. Saturday from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM in San Tomas
Fairy Tales and Mythology
with Kevin Andrew Murphy, Ann Finnin, and Valerie Estelle Frankel
What are we teaching our children about the fairy tales and mythology
in today's media, or even as bedtime stories? Are we staying true, or
drifting?
2. Saturday from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM in San Tomas
Getting Girls Hooked on Science and Engineering
with Karen Williams, Kay Pannell, Clare Bell
Ladies in lab coats: Following in the footsteps of Madam Curie.
3. Sunday from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM in Saratoga
Writers Workshop 3
with Adrienne Gormley, G. David Nordley, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff)
Note: This session is not open to general convention guests, but to workshop participants only.
4. Sunday from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Ballroom A [notice room change!]
The Evolution of Female Characters in SF and Fantasy
with Veronica Belmont, Deborah J. Ross, Daryl G. Frazetti, Brandon Sanderson, and Diana L. Paxson
From damsels in distress to sword-wielding, gun-toting, and military
masterminds, have women found their place, or are they 'feminized' men?
Do the women truly reflect the changing attitudes of the roles of
women?
5. Sunday from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM in BallroomB-C-D [notice room change!]
World Building Basics
with Pat MacEwen, Paula Butler, David J. Peterson, Brandon Sanderson, and Eytan Kollin
Panelists discuss the basics of worldbuilding. If you are going to set
your fantasy or science fiction piece is an alien place, what kinds of
things should you think of prior to doing so?
If anything gets added, dropped or changed, I'll let you know as soon as I do. This is going to be a super convention!
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
High Culture versus Low Culture (Daily Practices): A worldbuilding hangout report
I was joined for this discussion by Brian Dolton, Glenda Pfeiffer, Erin Peterson, David Peterson, Jaleh Dragich, and Margaret McGaffey-Fisk.
The first critical point of this discussion was that when we're worldbuilding culture, we should make sure to include both high and low culture, because either or both of these can easily be neglected. In our world, in fact, there are very few places where you won't see any sign of high culture, while daily practices (low culture) are all around us constantly.
In my story, At Cross Purposes (Analog Jan/Feb 2011), I had to create an environment where there would be very few signs of high culture, so I put my humans in a terraforming station where there were just enough people to do the job at hand, and very little time for decorating the place. This actually played into the cultural clash that occurred, since for my aliens, "art" and "purpose" were the same word!
Varin is an entirely different story, because there I use a lot of high culture borrowed from our world, such as orchestral music and embroidery and architecture and furniture... but while eating utensils and bathing are similar to our world, quite a few of the daily cultural practices are very different. These similarities are intended to create the feeling that the world is familiar, and that the reader lives there.
Recently I've been reading China Miéville's Embassytown, and that's a case where the elements of both high and low culture are intended to be very different from those we're familiar with; they come complete with alien terms, some of which are entirely mysterious, and others of which use our knowledge of cognates to hint at meanings. This creates a sense of extreme alienness. We also talked about The City and The City, where there were two cities which entirely overlapped, but where culturally the people were taught only to "see" members of one or the other, and they could only acknowledge each other's existence in designated locations, or bad things would happen. These two books are great places to look for inspiration in designing cultures.
Very often in my reading I will notice that elements of high or low culture appear to be missing from a book. Brian said he notices that there isn't much art and architecture in a lot of fantasy and science fiction, leading to the feeling of a blank spot. If you're going to be using a Renaissance setting, he says, use art - because that period was all about art and architecture! Cathedrals are an example of the kind of amazing art and cooperative effort toward high culture that was possible even in very early times - don't forget about it as you create a world with a medieval or Renaissance setting.
Erin remarked that people cared about art and beauty far earlier than that, and that beauty can be a mark of status even among nomadic people. As she remarked, "Achulëan tool sets are gorgeous!" It's always a good idea to consider what your people think of as beautiful, and what kind of art they make, whether it's painting on a cave wall or designing fabulous laser-light displays.
One show I have enjoyed for precisely this reason was Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is a great demonstration of how art and architecture can lend a sense of history to an environment. No one should make the mistake of thinking that the existence of fine art and architecture is merely an indicator that some people are stuck up, or that somehow there are no poor people in a society. It can do so much to tell you how people live in a place, and how long they have been there. If there's a completed cathedral in a town, you can be sure that people have been living there for hundreds of years!
Jaleh brought up textiles and fabric. These are a great example of the intersection of high culture and art with daily cultural practices. Norse tablet weaving is an example of a very early practice that reaches a very high level of sophistication. Stories of weavers come from all kinds of real world cultures, and it makes sense for them to exist in many fictional worlds as well. Clothing is an art, and a practical consideration, and interacts with climate and geography, and reveals things about daily practices - in effect, it's a worldbuilding goldmine just waiting to be explored. I also was reminded of when I first learned that the scarves and shawls with money sewn onto them were an indicator of how certain nomadic peoples actually stored and carried their money. I told the group about a visit I took to the Kyoto textile museum. They had a display there where you could watch an incredibly complex metal-threaded obi (waist wrap) fabric being woven, and places where you could learn about dyeing techniques, etc. It was amazing.
Music is everywhere in our world. You have iPods, and people grooving down to their own private music on the streets, and people "sharing" music out of their cars, and playing music in their homes, or taking music lessons... so make sure to go beyond the "bard" (at Brian's particular recommendation) when you're looking at music in your world. Music can happen with sophisticated instruments in orchestras, but it can also happen with hands and feet and voices - or trash cans and plastic buckets and sticks.
Another place of convergence between art and daily practices is personal adornment, i.e. Jewelry and makeup. I recently realized that I had made the appearance of makeup and jewelry very restricted in Varin, and had to think through how I was doing it (I decided to make it subject to both caste trends and personal styles).
When you think about daily cultural practices - low culture - perhaps the easiest place to start is at the table. Forks are incredibly common, but they aren't the only option! I was thrilled to see people using chopsticks in Avatar: The Last Airbender. And still there's more. You can use your fingers, or a trencher, or just a knife. You can have all different kinds of spoons, or drink straight from a bowl. You can use straws to consume liquids. You can use roasting sticks or skewers. What other things can you think of?
Jaleh took us onto the topic of hairbrushes and combs, and hair adornments. These can be made of all different kinds of materials - stone, bone, wood, plastic, metal...the list goes on. Rubber bands, pins, barrettes (even chopsticks!).
This led us to more aspects of personal hygiene. Brian remarked that Queen Elizabeth was known for bathing once a month "whether she needed it or not." Does one use a toilet or a bidet? Is there such a thing as toilet paper? What kind of supplies do menstruating women use? How do people brush their teeth? David told us about a wonderful song by Nigerian musician Fela Kuti called "Don't worry about my mouth" where he described the daily hygienic practices of his own people and why they were superior to (what I'll call) the Western approach - for example, why a chew stick was more effective than a toothbrush and toothpaste. Why toilet paper was an inferior solution to the problem. I noted, and Brian confirmed, that in many Muslim countries people have bottles of water to clean themselves instead of toilet paper. We talked about the "techno-toilets" (my term) in Tokyo homes and how vastly different they are from the minimalist squat toilets that you find in some tourist areas of Japan (Brian encountered them on Mount Koya, but I've seen them in quite a few other places too). I talked about the "flush noise" machines that are very common in Japan, specifically invented to create a sound imitating that of a flush, so that people can cover up the sounds of their visit to the bathroom.
By the end of the hour we were starting in on issues of privacy, so we decided that would be our topic for this Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 11am PDT. See you there!
The first critical point of this discussion was that when we're worldbuilding culture, we should make sure to include both high and low culture, because either or both of these can easily be neglected. In our world, in fact, there are very few places where you won't see any sign of high culture, while daily practices (low culture) are all around us constantly.
In my story, At Cross Purposes (Analog Jan/Feb 2011), I had to create an environment where there would be very few signs of high culture, so I put my humans in a terraforming station where there were just enough people to do the job at hand, and very little time for decorating the place. This actually played into the cultural clash that occurred, since for my aliens, "art" and "purpose" were the same word!
Varin is an entirely different story, because there I use a lot of high culture borrowed from our world, such as orchestral music and embroidery and architecture and furniture... but while eating utensils and bathing are similar to our world, quite a few of the daily cultural practices are very different. These similarities are intended to create the feeling that the world is familiar, and that the reader lives there.
Recently I've been reading China Miéville's Embassytown, and that's a case where the elements of both high and low culture are intended to be very different from those we're familiar with; they come complete with alien terms, some of which are entirely mysterious, and others of which use our knowledge of cognates to hint at meanings. This creates a sense of extreme alienness. We also talked about The City and The City, where there were two cities which entirely overlapped, but where culturally the people were taught only to "see" members of one or the other, and they could only acknowledge each other's existence in designated locations, or bad things would happen. These two books are great places to look for inspiration in designing cultures.
Very often in my reading I will notice that elements of high or low culture appear to be missing from a book. Brian said he notices that there isn't much art and architecture in a lot of fantasy and science fiction, leading to the feeling of a blank spot. If you're going to be using a Renaissance setting, he says, use art - because that period was all about art and architecture! Cathedrals are an example of the kind of amazing art and cooperative effort toward high culture that was possible even in very early times - don't forget about it as you create a world with a medieval or Renaissance setting.
Erin remarked that people cared about art and beauty far earlier than that, and that beauty can be a mark of status even among nomadic people. As she remarked, "Achulëan tool sets are gorgeous!" It's always a good idea to consider what your people think of as beautiful, and what kind of art they make, whether it's painting on a cave wall or designing fabulous laser-light displays.
One show I have enjoyed for precisely this reason was Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is a great demonstration of how art and architecture can lend a sense of history to an environment. No one should make the mistake of thinking that the existence of fine art and architecture is merely an indicator that some people are stuck up, or that somehow there are no poor people in a society. It can do so much to tell you how people live in a place, and how long they have been there. If there's a completed cathedral in a town, you can be sure that people have been living there for hundreds of years!
Jaleh brought up textiles and fabric. These are a great example of the intersection of high culture and art with daily cultural practices. Norse tablet weaving is an example of a very early practice that reaches a very high level of sophistication. Stories of weavers come from all kinds of real world cultures, and it makes sense for them to exist in many fictional worlds as well. Clothing is an art, and a practical consideration, and interacts with climate and geography, and reveals things about daily practices - in effect, it's a worldbuilding goldmine just waiting to be explored. I also was reminded of when I first learned that the scarves and shawls with money sewn onto them were an indicator of how certain nomadic peoples actually stored and carried their money. I told the group about a visit I took to the Kyoto textile museum. They had a display there where you could watch an incredibly complex metal-threaded obi (waist wrap) fabric being woven, and places where you could learn about dyeing techniques, etc. It was amazing.
Music is everywhere in our world. You have iPods, and people grooving down to their own private music on the streets, and people "sharing" music out of their cars, and playing music in their homes, or taking music lessons... so make sure to go beyond the "bard" (at Brian's particular recommendation) when you're looking at music in your world. Music can happen with sophisticated instruments in orchestras, but it can also happen with hands and feet and voices - or trash cans and plastic buckets and sticks.
Another place of convergence between art and daily practices is personal adornment, i.e. Jewelry and makeup. I recently realized that I had made the appearance of makeup and jewelry very restricted in Varin, and had to think through how I was doing it (I decided to make it subject to both caste trends and personal styles).
When you think about daily cultural practices - low culture - perhaps the easiest place to start is at the table. Forks are incredibly common, but they aren't the only option! I was thrilled to see people using chopsticks in Avatar: The Last Airbender. And still there's more. You can use your fingers, or a trencher, or just a knife. You can have all different kinds of spoons, or drink straight from a bowl. You can use straws to consume liquids. You can use roasting sticks or skewers. What other things can you think of?
Jaleh took us onto the topic of hairbrushes and combs, and hair adornments. These can be made of all different kinds of materials - stone, bone, wood, plastic, metal...the list goes on. Rubber bands, pins, barrettes (even chopsticks!).
This led us to more aspects of personal hygiene. Brian remarked that Queen Elizabeth was known for bathing once a month "whether she needed it or not." Does one use a toilet or a bidet? Is there such a thing as toilet paper? What kind of supplies do menstruating women use? How do people brush their teeth? David told us about a wonderful song by Nigerian musician Fela Kuti called "Don't worry about my mouth" where he described the daily hygienic practices of his own people and why they were superior to (what I'll call) the Western approach - for example, why a chew stick was more effective than a toothbrush and toothpaste. Why toilet paper was an inferior solution to the problem. I noted, and Brian confirmed, that in many Muslim countries people have bottles of water to clean themselves instead of toilet paper. We talked about the "techno-toilets" (my term) in Tokyo homes and how vastly different they are from the minimalist squat toilets that you find in some tourist areas of Japan (Brian encountered them on Mount Koya, but I've seen them in quite a few other places too). I talked about the "flush noise" machines that are very common in Japan, specifically invented to create a sound imitating that of a flush, so that people can cover up the sounds of their visit to the bathroom.
By the end of the hour we were starting in on issues of privacy, so we decided that would be our topic for this Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 11am PDT. See you there!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
TTYU Retro: How and where to begin a story
How and where to begin a story is always - always - a hard question. I have gone back and changed the beginning for nearly every story I've written. In some cases, I have changed the beginning multiple times over the course of revision. It's enough to make one go batty!
The fact is, while there is no absolute rule, a story generally should begin with:
I put the main conflict first because the main conflict is what drives the story forward, and sometimes the main conflict does not start in the same place that the main character does. Often in works where a murder mystery occurs and where the antagonist is mysterious, the book will start with a segment from the antagonist's point of view. This establishes the stakes, i.e. why exactly it is that a reader should care about what the main character is going to try to accomplish. Thus, when we get to the point where we're seeing the main character - likely doing something far more innocuous - we already get a sense of danger, anticipation, and most importantly, curiosity about what happens next. When, as in Janice Hardy's The Shifter, the character has a secret and her safety depends on nobody finding out about it, it makes perfect sense for the story to begin with a scene that results in this secret being discovered. That's what I would call a tributary scene, where the scene has its own natural stakes and drive, but delivers us into a place where the main conflict has clearly begun. For my current work in progress, the opening scene is one that shows the main character in a situation where it is important for him to pay attention to how he and his reputation are perceived by others, and then shows him being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns into a place of extreme danger, not because of the antagonist, but because of a contagious disease and the fear that the disease causes in people around him. The disease then becomes a driver that leads to a second major change, the death of a person in power, that propels the story toward its conclusion.
I'll return in a second to the issue of "being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns," but before I do that I want to address the question of backstory.
I often feel like choosing an opening scene for a story is like trying to create a see-saw. You have a big piece of story (it might even be your protagonist's whole life!) and you have to balance it on that opening scene. The part that chronologically precedes the opening scene is the backstory; the part that follows is the story. My rule of thumb is this:
Any piece of backstory that contributes directly to the identity of the protagonist, his/her culture, his/her self-awareness, and his/her basis for decision making can be portrayed indirectly through the protagonist's actions, and thus need not be included in the main story.
You may have noticed that I've arrived at "the main character" here.
Point of view is my ultimate ally in this. I think about it in the following terms: we judge our experiences and choose our actions on the basis of our personality and experience; thus, aspects of personality and experience can be included at points where our protagonist judges events, and chooses to act.
Here's an example from For Love, For Power of me doing the backstory thing with character judgment. Tagret (my main character) is going to a concert in the ballroom and one of his friends tells him that a new Cabinet member will be announced at the event, and that it might be Tagret's father. Here's how Tagret responds:
"It wouldn't matter," Tagret said. "My father wouldn't risk coming all the way back across the continent just for a Cabinet seat. He's too happy ruling Selimna where nobody can reach him." No Father meant none of Father's nasty surprises, and it would be preferable to keep him there, except that his last and worst surprise had been taking Mother with him.
The fact that Tagret's parents have been gone in a place so far that they can't come back to visit, that he hates his father and loves his mother, and that his father is important enough to consider a Cabinet seat not worth his while - all of these are important pieces of information for understanding the story as it continues. They are relevant here not because Tagret stops out of his ordinary concerns to muse on them, but because he's using them as a basis for his evaluation of the ongoing talk, and his response.
The fact is that an opening scene is strongest when it's a point of convergence. It shows conflict, it shows character, and it shows world (you didn't think I'd forget world, did you?) all at once in an active and engaged way. At the beginning of the story, a reader needs to be grounded in all three.
Grounding is absolutely critical in an opening scene. This is the word I give to basic reader orientation. The reader needs to be oriented - in some way - to the who, what, and where of the story. These elements can be presented in different sorts of balance, as when our protagonist is feeling disoriented and not knowing where he/she is, but they are very important. Imagine the main character as a runner, and you're about to be tied to that runner with a rope so you can follow along at (possibly breakneck) speed for the entire story. If you are going to be able to do this, you have to have your feet on the ground. Otherwise the runner will end up dragging you, spinning and yelling, until you manage to untie yourself and get away.
This is why starting in the middle of extreme action is not a good idea. Everett Maroon had a good post on this issue, here. In your opening scene, your main character should be doing something that requires him/her to indicate to readers who he/she is and what his/her normal concerns are. Until "normal" is established, the abnormal will have no meaning. Even if your character is disoriented, he/she can still try to make sense of what is going on around him/her in terms of what would be normal under ordinary circumstances.
Similarly, starting with simple introspection or gazing out at views is not a good idea either. It's not just that you've omitted the conflict. It's also that you've shackled yourself in terms of backstory and world. It's not only that people don't sit down and contemplate the basic normal conditions of their lives for no reason. It's that backstory and world belong in the background, and if there is nothing going on, they will necessarily take the front seat. By starting with your main character in a situation of conflict that leads directly to the main conflict of the story, you do several things:
Dive in and go for it. These are just a few things for you to think about as you prepare to do so.
The fact is, while there is no absolute rule, a story generally should begin with:
- the main conflict, or some event that is a direct tributary of the main conflict
- the main character
I put the main conflict first because the main conflict is what drives the story forward, and sometimes the main conflict does not start in the same place that the main character does. Often in works where a murder mystery occurs and where the antagonist is mysterious, the book will start with a segment from the antagonist's point of view. This establishes the stakes, i.e. why exactly it is that a reader should care about what the main character is going to try to accomplish. Thus, when we get to the point where we're seeing the main character - likely doing something far more innocuous - we already get a sense of danger, anticipation, and most importantly, curiosity about what happens next. When, as in Janice Hardy's The Shifter, the character has a secret and her safety depends on nobody finding out about it, it makes perfect sense for the story to begin with a scene that results in this secret being discovered. That's what I would call a tributary scene, where the scene has its own natural stakes and drive, but delivers us into a place where the main conflict has clearly begun. For my current work in progress, the opening scene is one that shows the main character in a situation where it is important for him to pay attention to how he and his reputation are perceived by others, and then shows him being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns into a place of extreme danger, not because of the antagonist, but because of a contagious disease and the fear that the disease causes in people around him. The disease then becomes a driver that leads to a second major change, the death of a person in power, that propels the story toward its conclusion.
I'll return in a second to the issue of "being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns," but before I do that I want to address the question of backstory.
I often feel like choosing an opening scene for a story is like trying to create a see-saw. You have a big piece of story (it might even be your protagonist's whole life!) and you have to balance it on that opening scene. The part that chronologically precedes the opening scene is the backstory; the part that follows is the story. My rule of thumb is this:
Any piece of backstory that contributes directly to the identity of the protagonist, his/her culture, his/her self-awareness, and his/her basis for decision making can be portrayed indirectly through the protagonist's actions, and thus need not be included in the main story.
You may have noticed that I've arrived at "the main character" here.
Point of view is my ultimate ally in this. I think about it in the following terms: we judge our experiences and choose our actions on the basis of our personality and experience; thus, aspects of personality and experience can be included at points where our protagonist judges events, and chooses to act.
Here's an example from For Love, For Power of me doing the backstory thing with character judgment. Tagret (my main character) is going to a concert in the ballroom and one of his friends tells him that a new Cabinet member will be announced at the event, and that it might be Tagret's father. Here's how Tagret responds:
"It wouldn't matter," Tagret said. "My father wouldn't risk coming all the way back across the continent just for a Cabinet seat. He's too happy ruling Selimna where nobody can reach him." No Father meant none of Father's nasty surprises, and it would be preferable to keep him there, except that his last and worst surprise had been taking Mother with him.
The fact that Tagret's parents have been gone in a place so far that they can't come back to visit, that he hates his father and loves his mother, and that his father is important enough to consider a Cabinet seat not worth his while - all of these are important pieces of information for understanding the story as it continues. They are relevant here not because Tagret stops out of his ordinary concerns to muse on them, but because he's using them as a basis for his evaluation of the ongoing talk, and his response.
The fact is that an opening scene is strongest when it's a point of convergence. It shows conflict, it shows character, and it shows world (you didn't think I'd forget world, did you?) all at once in an active and engaged way. At the beginning of the story, a reader needs to be grounded in all three.
Grounding is absolutely critical in an opening scene. This is the word I give to basic reader orientation. The reader needs to be oriented - in some way - to the who, what, and where of the story. These elements can be presented in different sorts of balance, as when our protagonist is feeling disoriented and not knowing where he/she is, but they are very important. Imagine the main character as a runner, and you're about to be tied to that runner with a rope so you can follow along at (possibly breakneck) speed for the entire story. If you are going to be able to do this, you have to have your feet on the ground. Otherwise the runner will end up dragging you, spinning and yelling, until you manage to untie yourself and get away.
This is why starting in the middle of extreme action is not a good idea. Everett Maroon had a good post on this issue, here. In your opening scene, your main character should be doing something that requires him/her to indicate to readers who he/she is and what his/her normal concerns are. Until "normal" is established, the abnormal will have no meaning. Even if your character is disoriented, he/she can still try to make sense of what is going on around him/her in terms of what would be normal under ordinary circumstances.
Similarly, starting with simple introspection or gazing out at views is not a good idea either. It's not just that you've omitted the conflict. It's also that you've shackled yourself in terms of backstory and world. It's not only that people don't sit down and contemplate the basic normal conditions of their lives for no reason. It's that backstory and world belong in the background, and if there is nothing going on, they will necessarily take the front seat. By starting with your main character in a situation of conflict that leads directly to the main conflict of the story, you do several things:
- You give your main character an opportunity to introduce him/herself through action and judgment
- You give your main character the opportunity to introduce his/her world through action and judgment
- You orient readers and establish where the story will be going next
- You place the drive (the hook!) of the story front and center so readers can catch hold
- in what context could the main character best demonstrate his/her core motivations, possibly through indirect reference to backstory?
- in what location the main character could best portray the conditions of his/her world that have the greatest bearing on the story as it goes forward?
- in what situation would the significance of the main conflict to this character become most evident?
Dive in and go for it. These are just a few things for you to think about as you prepare to do so.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Suspension of Disbelief & the "Show, Don't Tell" of Worldbuilding: a Google+ Hangout Report
This was a great discussion with a rather long title! I was joined by Brian Dolton, Glenda Pfeiffer, Kyle Aisteach, Liz Arroyo, Janet Harriett, and Jaleh Dragich.
I invited Kyle to open the discussion since this was a topic he had proposed. Kyle noted that many books he's reading for his MFA degree, such as My Antonia, he finds affidavits or other statements about how the book was based on a true story, and found this kind of thing strange because coming from a background of science fiction and fantasy he doesn't feel that any guarantee of truthfulness is necessary for people to "buy into" a story. I noted that a similar kind of thing was done with the movie FARGO, which was fictional but for some reason had a similar disclaimer of truthfulness attached to it.
My first instinct was to consider the possibility that there are cultural constraints on imagination. As Glenda mentioned, we're considering a time period (at least in the case of the earlier literary works) when science fiction and fantasy were not nearly as huge as they are today. However, even today there are cultural groups where true stories are seen as more valuable than fictional ones, and kids particularly are discouraged from engaging in creative narrative. I mentioned "What no bedtime story means," a very interesting piece of anthropological research by Shirley Brice Heath.
Brian asked, "Didn't someone freeze to death looking for the money they buried in FARGO?" A Google search turned up this article - so yes, someone did get taken in (in a most awful way). Jaleh mentioned that people keep contacting Spider Robinson to ask if Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon is real (it's not!).
In fact, when we're writing science fiction or fantasy, we're often mixing things that are real with things that aren't. The technique helps our fiction seem more real, and be more involving. If things are too real, though, the sense of wonder may be lost. On the other hand, if they're too unreal, readers may be knocked out of the story. It's a tough balance. And while we're at it, how do we decide what to show and what to tell?
My guests were ready to jump in and consider these issues, of course. Jaleh says what throws her out of a story is seeming inconsistency in the world without any apparent reason for it. We all agreed that if something really unusual is going to happen, its abnormality should at least be acknowledged by the point of view character, and the author should consider building in some kind of explanation. Kyle said he objects when it appears that an author hasn't thought through all the ramifications of something - as an example he asked why it is that in the game of Quidditch, all the players aren't constantly on the lookout for the snitch on the Seeker's behalf (since it's so incredibly valuable).
We also discussed what I playfully called "worldbuilding TMI." Just because you've designed a world with great breadth doesn't mean you have to travel to every location. You should not include explanations of every social detail. It's very important to find a method of filtering the vast amount of information available in a world (like ours!) and making it consumable by a single mind. The best method I've found for this is character point of view. By allowing our characters to have a logical amount of ignorance, we can help to keep the information burden from being overwhelming, and also leave surprises and revelations for our readers to discover.
Kyle brought up a really interesting point about screen acting against green screens (with CGI backrounds). Apparently it's really important for the actor not to try to visualize everything around them, but simply to try to see one single detail very clearly. This more than the macroscopic approach lends believability to their acting. Visually speaking, this kind of single-detail focus provides a great link between the character and the background, and since both the actor's performance and the CGI environment can be seen by the audience, that is usually enough to bring the whole thing together. In writing, the scenario is a bit different, because we don't have the visual medium to bring everything into our senses at once. However, there is a similarity inasmuch as we are very often using single details to evoke much larger knowledge sets - as when putting a cell phone in scene one implies an entire world of available technology. I compared it to releasing water, as follows: by putting in the single detail, you open up the flow of water into the available set of assumptions that comes with it. If you don't want the water to fill the space completely, you have to be very careful to block and channel it in critical areas. Thus, if I have a scene with stone arches and embroidered hangings on the walls, I'm going to be evoking a medieval castle or renaissance palace, and if I don't want people also to assume that there will be no advanced technology, I have to make sure to tell them that there are electric lights on, right up front. If you let your reader fall into an unwarranted set of assumptions and expectations by not guiding them sufficiently at the beginning, then the presence of the unexpected will disappoint rather than excite them. Brian mentioned that this can be a particular issue with stories in which the author doesn't make specific the gender of a first-person narrator.
Another issue that came up is where to put your focus as an author - and this is where "show, don't tell" comes in. Some elements of the world are simple to show, and others are far more complex. Relevance is also an important consideration. If you have an important social issue that is integral to the progress of the plot, then typically you'll want to take the time to place readers close to it and observe it in action, or "show." On the other hand, if it's something like the fact that all the undercaste people in Varin wear hoods to mark their status, that's something you'll want to spend less time doing. Don't show a hooded person here, and one there, and make readers work to draw the conclusion for something so simple. If it comes up, show a hooded person and have your character remark on how that is the undercaste mark. A quick little "tell" and you're good to go, and so is your reader. If you have your reader spend a lot of time deducing things that are ultimately trivial in terms of the story's plot, they will likely be irritated with you. As Janet said, "certain information isn't worth a whole sentence."
There's a certain process of instruction you can develop to introduce key world concepts. The first goal is to get them noticed - to "hang a light" or "stick a flag" on them and include some very brief explanation (by brief I mean two or three words if possible) in a subordinate clause. Thereafter the flag will be the first thing the reader thinks of when the feature appears, and you can if necessary spend more time exploring other aspects of it, gradually expanding the reader's knowledge until all the connotations have been covered in characters' reactions, etc. and the reader knows how to react along with the character.
Kyle says that every story's beginning is a promise to the reader about what they will experience going forward - I agree, and have been known to call it a "contract." Either way, you want to make sure your promises and contracts are being carried out properly. Jaleh remarked that she felt the world exposition in the Valdemar books was really well done and allowed the world to expand gradually. Kyle also had good things to say about the Pern books in this regard, particularly their eventual blossoming into science fictional territory.
It's important that the things you show your reader make sense in context. This is one reason why you don't want to start out showing something very unusual - because you haven't got enough established context for readers to assess its significance. For "difficult" discoveries anywhere in your story, and for places where expectations are violated, you want to make sure that you treat them carefully so that readers can tell you've thought this through. I particularly like to encourage an "on the ground" feeling in my narratives and each event must grow out of that, rather than feeling slapped on by the author.
Kyle mentioned that Berthold Brecht had the exact opposite opinion, that he would deliberately put things in the story to knock readers out and made them think. Well, ok - so it can be done. But it's not necessarily the right choice for most people.
I mentioned a strange spot in the book Watership Down, where the buck rabbits are discussing the two new does who have just joined the warren, after being liberated from a nearby farm. One buck asks another, "Are they any good?" meaning, "Are they able to bear litters?" And the author then explains to the reader why it makes sense for the rabbits to be thinking this. My own impression was that the explanation was unnecessary. We've seen a lot of things at that point in the story to show us that rabbits don't think like people do, and the odd thing that happened with the explanation provided was that it ended up sounding more human-sexist than the original rabbit comment did in context. Remember that the context you create, once established, requires a lot less energy and effort to maintain than it does to create it in the first place.
The character serves as an anchor, but also as a guide to the emotional and cultural context of the story. Use them as such. They must have a psychology that makes sense in the story's context, and which is integrated with it. Characters can show a reader when it's okay for them to be ignorant about something in the world, or satisfied with questions, or burning with desire to learn. If a character is in denial, that can be exceedingly useful too, as a gauge of general world attitudes.
Of course, not everyone has the same thresholds for being kicked out of a story. Maybe one person will have trouble following a protagonist who isn't likeable, or another person may not be able to read a story because it deals with things that trigger severe anxiety. We can't guarantee everyone a pleasurable experience without making our stories bland. However, it's worth putting some effort into watching out for focus issues and the integration of world, culture and character so our stories can be more successful.
Thank you to everyone who came to the discussion! I look forward to seeing you again, and hope to meet more folks in the future.
I invited Kyle to open the discussion since this was a topic he had proposed. Kyle noted that many books he's reading for his MFA degree, such as My Antonia, he finds affidavits or other statements about how the book was based on a true story, and found this kind of thing strange because coming from a background of science fiction and fantasy he doesn't feel that any guarantee of truthfulness is necessary for people to "buy into" a story. I noted that a similar kind of thing was done with the movie FARGO, which was fictional but for some reason had a similar disclaimer of truthfulness attached to it.
My first instinct was to consider the possibility that there are cultural constraints on imagination. As Glenda mentioned, we're considering a time period (at least in the case of the earlier literary works) when science fiction and fantasy were not nearly as huge as they are today. However, even today there are cultural groups where true stories are seen as more valuable than fictional ones, and kids particularly are discouraged from engaging in creative narrative. I mentioned "What no bedtime story means," a very interesting piece of anthropological research by Shirley Brice Heath.
Brian asked, "Didn't someone freeze to death looking for the money they buried in FARGO?" A Google search turned up this article - so yes, someone did get taken in (in a most awful way). Jaleh mentioned that people keep contacting Spider Robinson to ask if Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon is real (it's not!).
In fact, when we're writing science fiction or fantasy, we're often mixing things that are real with things that aren't. The technique helps our fiction seem more real, and be more involving. If things are too real, though, the sense of wonder may be lost. On the other hand, if they're too unreal, readers may be knocked out of the story. It's a tough balance. And while we're at it, how do we decide what to show and what to tell?
My guests were ready to jump in and consider these issues, of course. Jaleh says what throws her out of a story is seeming inconsistency in the world without any apparent reason for it. We all agreed that if something really unusual is going to happen, its abnormality should at least be acknowledged by the point of view character, and the author should consider building in some kind of explanation. Kyle said he objects when it appears that an author hasn't thought through all the ramifications of something - as an example he asked why it is that in the game of Quidditch, all the players aren't constantly on the lookout for the snitch on the Seeker's behalf (since it's so incredibly valuable).
We also discussed what I playfully called "worldbuilding TMI." Just because you've designed a world with great breadth doesn't mean you have to travel to every location. You should not include explanations of every social detail. It's very important to find a method of filtering the vast amount of information available in a world (like ours!) and making it consumable by a single mind. The best method I've found for this is character point of view. By allowing our characters to have a logical amount of ignorance, we can help to keep the information burden from being overwhelming, and also leave surprises and revelations for our readers to discover.
Kyle brought up a really interesting point about screen acting against green screens (with CGI backrounds). Apparently it's really important for the actor not to try to visualize everything around them, but simply to try to see one single detail very clearly. This more than the macroscopic approach lends believability to their acting. Visually speaking, this kind of single-detail focus provides a great link between the character and the background, and since both the actor's performance and the CGI environment can be seen by the audience, that is usually enough to bring the whole thing together. In writing, the scenario is a bit different, because we don't have the visual medium to bring everything into our senses at once. However, there is a similarity inasmuch as we are very often using single details to evoke much larger knowledge sets - as when putting a cell phone in scene one implies an entire world of available technology. I compared it to releasing water, as follows: by putting in the single detail, you open up the flow of water into the available set of assumptions that comes with it. If you don't want the water to fill the space completely, you have to be very careful to block and channel it in critical areas. Thus, if I have a scene with stone arches and embroidered hangings on the walls, I'm going to be evoking a medieval castle or renaissance palace, and if I don't want people also to assume that there will be no advanced technology, I have to make sure to tell them that there are electric lights on, right up front. If you let your reader fall into an unwarranted set of assumptions and expectations by not guiding them sufficiently at the beginning, then the presence of the unexpected will disappoint rather than excite them. Brian mentioned that this can be a particular issue with stories in which the author doesn't make specific the gender of a first-person narrator.
Another issue that came up is where to put your focus as an author - and this is where "show, don't tell" comes in. Some elements of the world are simple to show, and others are far more complex. Relevance is also an important consideration. If you have an important social issue that is integral to the progress of the plot, then typically you'll want to take the time to place readers close to it and observe it in action, or "show." On the other hand, if it's something like the fact that all the undercaste people in Varin wear hoods to mark their status, that's something you'll want to spend less time doing. Don't show a hooded person here, and one there, and make readers work to draw the conclusion for something so simple. If it comes up, show a hooded person and have your character remark on how that is the undercaste mark. A quick little "tell" and you're good to go, and so is your reader. If you have your reader spend a lot of time deducing things that are ultimately trivial in terms of the story's plot, they will likely be irritated with you. As Janet said, "certain information isn't worth a whole sentence."
There's a certain process of instruction you can develop to introduce key world concepts. The first goal is to get them noticed - to "hang a light" or "stick a flag" on them and include some very brief explanation (by brief I mean two or three words if possible) in a subordinate clause. Thereafter the flag will be the first thing the reader thinks of when the feature appears, and you can if necessary spend more time exploring other aspects of it, gradually expanding the reader's knowledge until all the connotations have been covered in characters' reactions, etc. and the reader knows how to react along with the character.
Kyle says that every story's beginning is a promise to the reader about what they will experience going forward - I agree, and have been known to call it a "contract." Either way, you want to make sure your promises and contracts are being carried out properly. Jaleh remarked that she felt the world exposition in the Valdemar books was really well done and allowed the world to expand gradually. Kyle also had good things to say about the Pern books in this regard, particularly their eventual blossoming into science fictional territory.
It's important that the things you show your reader make sense in context. This is one reason why you don't want to start out showing something very unusual - because you haven't got enough established context for readers to assess its significance. For "difficult" discoveries anywhere in your story, and for places where expectations are violated, you want to make sure that you treat them carefully so that readers can tell you've thought this through. I particularly like to encourage an "on the ground" feeling in my narratives and each event must grow out of that, rather than feeling slapped on by the author.
Kyle mentioned that Berthold Brecht had the exact opposite opinion, that he would deliberately put things in the story to knock readers out and made them think. Well, ok - so it can be done. But it's not necessarily the right choice for most people.
I mentioned a strange spot in the book Watership Down, where the buck rabbits are discussing the two new does who have just joined the warren, after being liberated from a nearby farm. One buck asks another, "Are they any good?" meaning, "Are they able to bear litters?" And the author then explains to the reader why it makes sense for the rabbits to be thinking this. My own impression was that the explanation was unnecessary. We've seen a lot of things at that point in the story to show us that rabbits don't think like people do, and the odd thing that happened with the explanation provided was that it ended up sounding more human-sexist than the original rabbit comment did in context. Remember that the context you create, once established, requires a lot less energy and effort to maintain than it does to create it in the first place.
The character serves as an anchor, but also as a guide to the emotional and cultural context of the story. Use them as such. They must have a psychology that makes sense in the story's context, and which is integrated with it. Characters can show a reader when it's okay for them to be ignorant about something in the world, or satisfied with questions, or burning with desire to learn. If a character is in denial, that can be exceedingly useful too, as a gauge of general world attitudes.
Of course, not everyone has the same thresholds for being kicked out of a story. Maybe one person will have trouble following a protagonist who isn't likeable, or another person may not be able to read a story because it deals with things that trigger severe anxiety. We can't guarantee everyone a pleasurable experience without making our stories bland. However, it's worth putting some effort into watching out for focus issues and the integration of world, culture and character so our stories can be more successful.
Thank you to everyone who came to the discussion! I look forward to seeing you again, and hope to meet more folks in the future.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Link: English text highlighted by etymological origin
My friend Pat McEwen put me onto this terrific article. Mike Kinde has created a program that highlights English text in color indicating the word's etymological origin, and you'd be amazed at how colorful a paragraph can be! What fun... check it out!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
TTYU Retro: The Importance of Pathos
I confess I have a tender spot in my heart for a pathetic character. When we hear the word "pathetic" these days, it's usually derogatory - as in, "Oh, that was pathetic," or "What a pathetic attempt that was." But that's not a definition that fits with the original concept behind "pathetic," which is pathos.
Wikipedia says (warning: this will be heavy, but the discussion afterward will not!):
Pathos (pronounced /ˈpeɪθɒs/ or /ˈpeɪθoʊs/; Greek: πάθος, for "suffering" or "experience;" adjectival form: 'pathetic' from παθητικός) represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric (where it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and logos), and in literature, film and other narrative art.
Emotional appeal can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:
Whew! But I bet you know a lot of characters who make an appeal to our emotions. Possibly the best known is C3PO, from Star Wars. He goes through the whole sequence of IV V and VI doing what he needs to do, all the while saying things like "We're doomed!" and always expecting the worst. Other pathetic characters include Eeyore, from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books, Dory from Finding Nemo and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle from C.S. Lewis' book The Silver Chair.
Interestingly, these characters are not cynics, nor are they pessimists (who can be spiteful). They simply feel suffering and expect to have to endure. They feel a certain gloom about their prospects and lament the deterioration of the situation, but they are extremely grateful when things turn out well.
When you're putting together a story, it's worthwhile to consider whether any of your characters have aspects of pathos. Pathos can be a hugely strong draw for a character who would otherwise be unrelatable (see my earlier post on likeable characters here). That points of course to antagonists, but also to others. My friend Josephine pointed out the character of William Randolph Hearst in The Aviator as someone who was fascinating because of the extent of his suffering, even when his behavior in general was off the charts and hard to relate to. My own character Nekantor from "The Eminence's Match" is a "twisted piece of work" to quote my author friend Lillian Csernica (she notes that she meant this in a positive way!). He does cruel and evil things but is motivated at least partially by his own obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I can't leave the topic of pathos without discussing Star Wars again - specifically, the fact that there were no pathetic characters in I-II-III that I could identify. Even C3PO had lost his pathetic outlook and turned into a kind of one-line fall guy. I can't watch those movies without thinking how differently Jar Jar Binks would have turned out if they'd actually allowed him to be pathetic instead of just goofy. Think about it - banished for being clumsy! If the movie hadn't just dropped that backstory by the wayside and it had actually made Jar Jar a bit more hangdog - a person who tries not to be clumsy but causes trouble inadvertently and suffers terrible guilt as a result - it would have made a big difference for the film, in my opinion. Think about how Dory came across because of her lack of memory. If she hadn't been pathetic, it would have been awful - instead, she was transcendent (in my opinion!).
What about your writing? Is there anyone whom you would describe as pathetic? Is there any character who might benefit from having pathetic elements added to his/her character?
It's something to think about.
Wikipedia says (warning: this will be heavy, but the discussion afterward will not!):
Pathos (pronounced /ˈpeɪθɒs/ or /ˈpeɪθoʊs/; Greek: πάθος, for "suffering" or "experience;" adjectival form: 'pathetic' from παθητικός) represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric (where it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and logos), and in literature, film and other narrative art.
Emotional appeal can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:
- by a metaphor or story telling, common as a hook,
- by a general passion in the delivery and an overall emotion and sympathies of the speech or writing as determined by the audience. The pathos of a speech or writing is only ultimately determined by the hearers.
Whew! But I bet you know a lot of characters who make an appeal to our emotions. Possibly the best known is C3PO, from Star Wars. He goes through the whole sequence of IV V and VI doing what he needs to do, all the while saying things like "We're doomed!" and always expecting the worst. Other pathetic characters include Eeyore, from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books, Dory from Finding Nemo and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle from C.S. Lewis' book The Silver Chair.
Interestingly, these characters are not cynics, nor are they pessimists (who can be spiteful). They simply feel suffering and expect to have to endure. They feel a certain gloom about their prospects and lament the deterioration of the situation, but they are extremely grateful when things turn out well.
When you're putting together a story, it's worthwhile to consider whether any of your characters have aspects of pathos. Pathos can be a hugely strong draw for a character who would otherwise be unrelatable (see my earlier post on likeable characters here). That points of course to antagonists, but also to others. My friend Josephine pointed out the character of William Randolph Hearst in The Aviator as someone who was fascinating because of the extent of his suffering, even when his behavior in general was off the charts and hard to relate to. My own character Nekantor from "The Eminence's Match" is a "twisted piece of work" to quote my author friend Lillian Csernica (she notes that she meant this in a positive way!). He does cruel and evil things but is motivated at least partially by his own obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I can't leave the topic of pathos without discussing Star Wars again - specifically, the fact that there were no pathetic characters in I-II-III that I could identify. Even C3PO had lost his pathetic outlook and turned into a kind of one-line fall guy. I can't watch those movies without thinking how differently Jar Jar Binks would have turned out if they'd actually allowed him to be pathetic instead of just goofy. Think about it - banished for being clumsy! If the movie hadn't just dropped that backstory by the wayside and it had actually made Jar Jar a bit more hangdog - a person who tries not to be clumsy but causes trouble inadvertently and suffers terrible guilt as a result - it would have made a big difference for the film, in my opinion. Think about how Dory came across because of her lack of memory. If she hadn't been pathetic, it would have been awful - instead, she was transcendent (in my opinion!).
What about your writing? Is there anyone whom you would describe as pathetic? Is there any character who might benefit from having pathetic elements added to his/her character?
It's something to think about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)