Friday, October 7, 2011
Link: What's a smoot?
This is a really cute and culturally/linguistically intriguing article. How do we decide to measure things anyway? What's a smoot?
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Nice rejections count - for a lot
I saw a couple of my friends online discussing "nice" rejections today, so I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the topic, especially since I received one of those relatively recently.
Nice rejections count, people. In a number of ways.
First, they mean that someone took the time to look at your story and really think about it. In the pell-mell world of vast electronic mountains of stories, that's a really important thing. Everything you write that gets some time under an editor's eye should be considered progress, because among other things it enhances the possibility that the editor will remember you should you appear on his or her desk in the future. This year I received a personal email from an editor to whom I had never sold a story, asking me to consider submitting to his new magazines. Now, that may have been because of my published work in Analog, but it may also have had something to do with the fact that I'd also been sending him stories for years at another venue. Every submission you make is a part of your identity in the mind of an editor.
Second, nice rejections mean you're getting close. If the editor really couldn't stand your story, she wouldn't give it a single moment's thought, much less the time it takes to give you comments (however short those comments might be). There was a period of at least a year when almost every rejection I got was "nice," but I had never sold anything. Boy, was that frustrating! But the fact was, I was getting close, even if close lasted a lot longer than I wanted it to.
Third, nice rejections are gold. There's a reason these people are editors. They have (generally) excellent story sense, and so you should listen to what they have to say. I have done rewrites on just about every story that I've gotten a nice rejection for. An editor doesn't have time to tell you what to do in a nice rejection - only to tell you what didn't work for them, and possibly a little something about what they liked. It's your job as the writer to take that information and make something of it. For me it goes something like this: "Gee, he felt confused at the beginning because, as he says here, he lacked a mental image for it at this point. I'd better make sure that I'm giving someone a mental image right about there...and maybe I can start that image right back here at the beginning, so everybody feels more grounded." By the time I'm finished, even though I'll never have a chance to send that same story to that same editor, I still feel as though the story is stronger. And if the story is stronger, the chances that it will land at some other venue go way up.
So writers, be grateful for those nice rejections. Don't feel like you haven't gotten anywhere. It was a lengthy nice rejection that propelled me into the revision that got me my first sale. Those rejections count, and if you treat them right, they can make a difference for your future as a writer.
Nice rejections count, people. In a number of ways.
First, they mean that someone took the time to look at your story and really think about it. In the pell-mell world of vast electronic mountains of stories, that's a really important thing. Everything you write that gets some time under an editor's eye should be considered progress, because among other things it enhances the possibility that the editor will remember you should you appear on his or her desk in the future. This year I received a personal email from an editor to whom I had never sold a story, asking me to consider submitting to his new magazines. Now, that may have been because of my published work in Analog, but it may also have had something to do with the fact that I'd also been sending him stories for years at another venue. Every submission you make is a part of your identity in the mind of an editor.
Second, nice rejections mean you're getting close. If the editor really couldn't stand your story, she wouldn't give it a single moment's thought, much less the time it takes to give you comments (however short those comments might be). There was a period of at least a year when almost every rejection I got was "nice," but I had never sold anything. Boy, was that frustrating! But the fact was, I was getting close, even if close lasted a lot longer than I wanted it to.
Third, nice rejections are gold. There's a reason these people are editors. They have (generally) excellent story sense, and so you should listen to what they have to say. I have done rewrites on just about every story that I've gotten a nice rejection for. An editor doesn't have time to tell you what to do in a nice rejection - only to tell you what didn't work for them, and possibly a little something about what they liked. It's your job as the writer to take that information and make something of it. For me it goes something like this: "Gee, he felt confused at the beginning because, as he says here, he lacked a mental image for it at this point. I'd better make sure that I'm giving someone a mental image right about there...and maybe I can start that image right back here at the beginning, so everybody feels more grounded." By the time I'm finished, even though I'll never have a chance to send that same story to that same editor, I still feel as though the story is stronger. And if the story is stronger, the chances that it will land at some other venue go way up.
So writers, be grateful for those nice rejections. Don't feel like you haven't gotten anywhere. It was a lengthy nice rejection that propelled me into the revision that got me my first sale. Those rejections count, and if you treat them right, they can make a difference for your future as a writer.
Link: Aboriginal Stonehenge: Stargazing in ancient Australia
I came across this wonderful article this morning and knew I had to pass it on to you guys. It's about a formation of standing stones (boulders) in Australia - likely older than Stonehenge - showing that the ancient Aboriginal peoples were stargazers and understood the movements of the celestial bodies. Furthermore, it discusses other evidence of scientific knowledge in the form of storytelling.
The way that so much of these people's knowledge and culture was lost or obliterated during European settlement is horrible and a tragedy. I'm pleased that we can at least make progress in understanding things like these stones in order to recapture some of that, and realize that these people have always been worthy of respect.
The way that so much of these people's knowledge and culture was lost or obliterated during European settlement is horrible and a tragedy. I'm pleased that we can at least make progress in understanding things like these stones in order to recapture some of that, and realize that these people have always been worthy of respect.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Guest Post: The Worker Prince, Worldbuilding & The Clashes of Culture by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Please everyone welcome Bryan Thomas Schmidt, whom I met through his #SFFWRTCHT chat on Twitter. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, just came out. I asked him to consider his novel from a TTYU point of view, so here he is!
The Worker Prince, Worldbuilding & The Clashes of Culture
So often when we think of culture, we think of exotic places like Africa or the Amazon jungles. It’s easy in the midst of our own world to forget that culture exists all around us and is most often made up of many smaller subcultures along the way. To create a realistic world, I think it’s very important to examine various aspects that make up the culture and subcultures of your world. It not only creates believability for readers, but it creates a layered world in which to work with plot and characters, providing many different options to use in making the characters and plot multi-layered as well.
Juliette invited me to come here and talk about the culture building of the worlds I created for my Davi Rhii Saga, Book 1 of which, The Worker Prince, released October 4th. In creating the Borali Solar System, I had a set of thirteen planets dominated by humans who had colonized from Earth and overrun the native species. However, these native species had taken on various roles within the large society of the system, so aspects of how those cultures interacted became important to the story.
In The Worker Prince societies, as with many societies we know here on Earth, religion and politics play a major role. In fact, such a major role, they predominate as cultural aspects of the story so we’ll look at them first.
There are two major religions amongst the humans who predominate: Evangelical Christianity and a mainstream polytheism mixing Christianity, Islam, Hindu and other beliefs which is really more secular than sacred in focus. The Evangelical Vertullians are mocked for their simple blind faith in one Superior Being while the Polytheistic Boralians are regarded as unfocused and uncommitted by the Vertullians because their religion is very liberally practiced and defined. The result are two separate cultures who look at the world very differently in terms of faith. For one, it is foundational and a part of their every day thinking, a lifestyle. For another it’s something they practice when necessary or according to tradition. The Boralians think the Vertullians’ idea of a single God is silly because Boralian gods serve men. They have multiple gods for multiple needs who are prayed to or honored in tribute when men need something from them. For the Vertullians, the idea of gods who are not superior to man but serve him is silly and hardly worth considering. Such contrasting ideas, of course, lead to conflict.
The politics are also complicated. First, you have traditions in which a High Lord Councilor makes most major decisions, announcing them to the Council as needed out of respect but assuming they will back him because they always do. Second, you have laws, which the people expect to be practiced, wherein the Council must approve the decisions. When the Council actually starts to act on the people’s wishes, conflict develops. This, too, is a culture clash. Just as ideologies of the Left clash with those of the Right in our country, these two different ideas of how government should function, whom it serves and what its purpose is creates a cultural divide.
But humans are not the only inhabitants of the solar system. There are a number of alien species who also come into play. You have the Andorians, who have found peace with being conquered by dedicating themselves to serving their conquerors as servants, a step up from the forced slavery of the Vertullian workers. Manaen, High Lord Councilor’s major domo, represents them in the story. You have the Tertullians and Lhamors, the first who resemble humans except for their dark orange-tinted skin and purple eyes. The second with four arms and reptilian features whose accents require most of them to use electronic translators to be understood by humans. The strangeness of the Lhamors marginalizes them. How they talk and act and walk and think is immediately seen as separate just by appeareance whereas some Tertullians, like the lead character’s friend Yao, are able to blend in more readily and take a larger role in society. In this case, while the cultures of all three races are different, appearances wind up creating another type of separating culture clash that separates them even before those factors are considered.
Using these various attitudes and ideologies, conflict is created in the story which resembles conflicts in our own daily existence, making the world seem real and plausible to us. The various assumptions employed serve purposes we are familiar with, whether we agree with them or hold them ourselves or not. And thus, the story becomes one that feels familiar and connects with our own understandings of cultural and societal concerns. It also builds characters whom we can identify with, whether like us or resembling someone we know, because the cultures these characters embrace and reject affect their interactions with each other in realistic ways.
These are just a few examples of how I used culture to invest my world with familiarity and realness for readers in writing “The Worker Prince.” Perhaps you can employ similar ideas in your own writing. What are some techniques you’ve used to create cultural interactions?
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the newly released space opera novel The Worker Prince, the collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. He'll be blog touring all this month, and reviewed tomorrow at Jaleta Clegg's blog.
The Worker Prince, Worldbuilding & The Clashes of Culture
So often when we think of culture, we think of exotic places like Africa or the Amazon jungles. It’s easy in the midst of our own world to forget that culture exists all around us and is most often made up of many smaller subcultures along the way. To create a realistic world, I think it’s very important to examine various aspects that make up the culture and subcultures of your world. It not only creates believability for readers, but it creates a layered world in which to work with plot and characters, providing many different options to use in making the characters and plot multi-layered as well.
Juliette invited me to come here and talk about the culture building of the worlds I created for my Davi Rhii Saga, Book 1 of which, The Worker Prince, released October 4th. In creating the Borali Solar System, I had a set of thirteen planets dominated by humans who had colonized from Earth and overrun the native species. However, these native species had taken on various roles within the large society of the system, so aspects of how those cultures interacted became important to the story.
In The Worker Prince societies, as with many societies we know here on Earth, religion and politics play a major role. In fact, such a major role, they predominate as cultural aspects of the story so we’ll look at them first.
There are two major religions amongst the humans who predominate: Evangelical Christianity and a mainstream polytheism mixing Christianity, Islam, Hindu and other beliefs which is really more secular than sacred in focus. The Evangelical Vertullians are mocked for their simple blind faith in one Superior Being while the Polytheistic Boralians are regarded as unfocused and uncommitted by the Vertullians because their religion is very liberally practiced and defined. The result are two separate cultures who look at the world very differently in terms of faith. For one, it is foundational and a part of their every day thinking, a lifestyle. For another it’s something they practice when necessary or according to tradition. The Boralians think the Vertullians’ idea of a single God is silly because Boralian gods serve men. They have multiple gods for multiple needs who are prayed to or honored in tribute when men need something from them. For the Vertullians, the idea of gods who are not superior to man but serve him is silly and hardly worth considering. Such contrasting ideas, of course, lead to conflict.
The politics are also complicated. First, you have traditions in which a High Lord Councilor makes most major decisions, announcing them to the Council as needed out of respect but assuming they will back him because they always do. Second, you have laws, which the people expect to be practiced, wherein the Council must approve the decisions. When the Council actually starts to act on the people’s wishes, conflict develops. This, too, is a culture clash. Just as ideologies of the Left clash with those of the Right in our country, these two different ideas of how government should function, whom it serves and what its purpose is creates a cultural divide.
But humans are not the only inhabitants of the solar system. There are a number of alien species who also come into play. You have the Andorians, who have found peace with being conquered by dedicating themselves to serving their conquerors as servants, a step up from the forced slavery of the Vertullian workers. Manaen, High Lord Councilor’s major domo, represents them in the story. You have the Tertullians and Lhamors, the first who resemble humans except for their dark orange-tinted skin and purple eyes. The second with four arms and reptilian features whose accents require most of them to use electronic translators to be understood by humans. The strangeness of the Lhamors marginalizes them. How they talk and act and walk and think is immediately seen as separate just by appeareance whereas some Tertullians, like the lead character’s friend Yao, are able to blend in more readily and take a larger role in society. In this case, while the cultures of all three races are different, appearances wind up creating another type of separating culture clash that separates them even before those factors are considered.
Using these various attitudes and ideologies, conflict is created in the story which resembles conflicts in our own daily existence, making the world seem real and plausible to us. The various assumptions employed serve purposes we are familiar with, whether we agree with them or hold them ourselves or not. And thus, the story becomes one that feels familiar and connects with our own understandings of cultural and societal concerns. It also builds characters whom we can identify with, whether like us or resembling someone we know, because the cultures these characters embrace and reject affect their interactions with each other in realistic ways.
These are just a few examples of how I used culture to invest my world with familiarity and realness for readers in writing “The Worker Prince.” Perhaps you can employ similar ideas in your own writing. What are some techniques you’ve used to create cultural interactions?
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the newly released space opera novel The Worker Prince, the collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog. He'll be blog touring all this month, and reviewed tomorrow at Jaleta Clegg's blog.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Google+ Worldbuilding Hangout Report: Crime and Criminals
Sorry that it's taken me a few days to get this up! However, I've had this idea that it's too much work for me to write a worldbuilding post and hold a worldbuilding hangout on the same day, and then write the report... so in the future I'm going to be issuing the report on the Wednesday following the hangout, so it will be hangout and hangout report day at once.
I will be holding another hangout this coming Wednesday (tomorrow), October 5th, at 11am PDT. The topic this week was decided at the end of the last hangout: Economics! It's a bit of a forbidding topic for some, but we won't be at all forbidding, so do come and discuss.
Last week's hangout was awesome. I had three visitors: Kyle Aisteach, science fiction writer, Leigh Dragoon, writer and illustrator, and David Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language (Game of Thrones). Leigh did not have a working camera or microphone, so we included her by keeping one eye on the side chat bar, and she made some great contributions. David arrived partway through the session, but we really enjoyed having him. I encourage anyone who would like to drop in this week not to worry about whether you have a camera/microphone, or whether you will be interrupting. I'm sure we will find a way to include you!
When we're talking about crime and criminals in worldbuilding, the (perhaps obvious) first question is "What are the types of crime in your world?" Once you get started, though, the effects can be widespread. What defines a crime? Well, generally, crimes are defined by a set of laws. Then of course you end up with institutions whose job it is to deal with crime. There is also the "culture of crime" which can be very different in our world across countries, and so can differ across your world as well.
Kyle mentioned that you can get interesting results if you have a system where there are different laws for different planets. Smugglers and interstellar criminals would then have to deal with sneaking around different legal systems depending on which part of the galaxy they were in. The idea of smugglers made me think of how different the concept of a "smuggler" is in science fiction versus fantasy. Smugglers are much more common in sf in my experience (but perhaps some of my readers know more fantasy smugglers than I do). What are they smuggling? From where to where, and why?
Crime also brings up the question of punishment. What is considered appropriate punishment? What kind of punishment "fits" the crime? This is a question related to authority structure. In societies which mete out extremely draconian punishments, the likelihood is great that crime will be hidden as much as possible. An "underground" becomes quite likely, since criminals (or law-escapers, depending on your point of view) may want to support each other more to avoid the axe.
Kyle brought up, but didn't answer, the question of what crime and punishment would look like in an anarchistic society. It's definitely food for thought - with no government to create institutions of law, who decides what is wrong? Who decides how to punish people? Is it a recipe simply for endless personal vendettas, or something entirely different?
Certainly for any society, the general social contract will have impact on how crime manifests itself and how it will be treated, how it will be punished. Japan is famous for having low crime rates, so that you will never be mugged on the street. But it's not that it has no crime. To put it simplistically, our American society is very individual-focused, and Japan's society is group-focused, so our "specialty" crime is individual crime (muggers etc.) and their "specialty" crime is group crime (the Yakuza). Furthermore, there can be different assumptions across cultures about whether people will lie to authorities or not (here, yes; in Japan, not quite as much). Kyle mentioned how the Sarin gas attacks of 1995 significantly changed Japan's self-image as it related to crime.
This led us immediately into how the attacks of September 11th, 2001 changed our own self-image, and how we lead our lives. We talked about airport security, and how it has made travel much more difficult, and made it the exception for many people rather than the rule. What other effects might law enforcement have on society as a whole due to a single event? Our view of travel may have changed, but this isn't the first time. Kyle noted that in medieval times the probability was quite high that you would meet bandits or highwaymen on the road, and so you would "lock yourself in a chastity belt" and put your money "in a secret compartment" in your carriage. At that time, travel was inherently dangerous. Is that the case in your world, or can people move relatively freely?
The presence of laws in a society can also create crime. I mentioned caste-marking in my Varin society, where everyone is required to mark themselves with their caste identity or be punished. Kyle saw a parallel with the military, where people are required to wear rank insignia. Leigh mentioned the Stars of David that Jews were required to wear in Germany before WWII. These are cases where the presence of the laws can create lawbreakers of people who would not be considered lawbreakers in other contexts.
This led us to the idea of decriminalization. If a law can create a criminal, and cause the entire society to treat that person as different from law-abiding citizens of other stripes, then can the removal of a law remove the criminality of certain elements of the population? We knew of experiments with decriminalization of prostitution and of drugs in northern Europe. I had heard about the change of law in Portugal which made it illegal to sell drugs but not to possess them for use. Apparently this has had some success there.
Kyle mentioned a time when he was on jury duty where he ended up teaming up with a medical doctor who was also being interviewed for inclusion, and giving the lawyers and other prospective jury members a lecture on addiction.
When I heard that I thought, "Jury duty!" I find jury duty to be a fascinating thing - how juries get selected, how they get paid, how people feel most often like this is something to be avoided at all costs. Not every country picks juries the same way. Some countries just pick twelve people randomly and those people are the jury. In American somehow having knowledge of or a stake in a particular societal issue is considered grounds not for debate on the jury but for exclusion from it. Does that make the jury fairer, or less fair? Is it more representative of the society as a whole, or less so? In Japan, the Americans tried to institute the use of juries after the end of WWII but it was a resounding failure because the jury members didn't want to divulge their opinions or argue them - they were simply unfeasible culturally, and finally they went with having a panel of three judges.
David mentioned he had once been on a jury trying someone for "possession of syringes" which he thought was really not something fair to prosecute.
How do we as a society decide what is harmful to us and what is not? What is fair and what is not? Kyle mentioned a line from Camelot where someone complained, "How can I get a fair trial from someone so impartial?" David told us about the Icelandic "Saga of Njal" in which the supreme court of Iceland was established because of a manufactured dispute across the four "corners" of Iceland. Because the issue couldn't be decided fairly in any of the four "corners," a higher body had to be created...and this created a position for a new chief, which conveniently let Njal get his son promoted. Could he have been behind the whole thing? Individuals can certainly have a big influence on justice, depending on the circumstances.
There is a lot more we could have said. We were not able to get into the question of different societal groups and how they can be treated differently by the justice system (that would have been a rich direction to go). I encourage you to consider brainstorming on this topic.
At this point in the meeting we introduced ourselves to each other and ended up talking about highways for a few minutes, such as the way highways in Northern California are called "Highway 5" etc. where in Southern California they are called "The 5" etc. Leigh remarked that nobody ever resurfaces roads inf Fantasy! Kyle told us about Pompeii where carts had worn grooves in the stones of the road, and that actually had influence on how people built their carts. David asked whether that might have inspired rail. Who knows?
This got us onto populations who travel. The Dothraki of Game of Thrones are nomads, but David says, "they wouldn't travel like that." That most nomads actually have hunting grounds or places of rest between which they travel, or they follow the herds. Kyle mentioned forced migration for work in China. Leigh mentioned how Mexican workers come to work in the US during the summer.
David mentioned how in Jamaica, because of the mild climate, people will often build houses very slowly over fifteen years or so, starting with the roof to keep off the rain. Kyle contrasted this with Egypt where many places will have walls but no roof because the government defines a completed structure (for tax purposes!) as one with a roof. So in the end, we circled back around to the idea of laws. Where there are laws, people will be looking for loopholes (tax loopholes in both Egypt and the US!).
It was a great hangout. Thanks again to everyone who came. I hope to see more people this week to talk about Economics as requested by Leigh!
I will be holding another hangout this coming Wednesday (tomorrow), October 5th, at 11am PDT. The topic this week was decided at the end of the last hangout: Economics! It's a bit of a forbidding topic for some, but we won't be at all forbidding, so do come and discuss.
Last week's hangout was awesome. I had three visitors: Kyle Aisteach, science fiction writer, Leigh Dragoon, writer and illustrator, and David Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language (Game of Thrones). Leigh did not have a working camera or microphone, so we included her by keeping one eye on the side chat bar, and she made some great contributions. David arrived partway through the session, but we really enjoyed having him. I encourage anyone who would like to drop in this week not to worry about whether you have a camera/microphone, or whether you will be interrupting. I'm sure we will find a way to include you!
When we're talking about crime and criminals in worldbuilding, the (perhaps obvious) first question is "What are the types of crime in your world?" Once you get started, though, the effects can be widespread. What defines a crime? Well, generally, crimes are defined by a set of laws. Then of course you end up with institutions whose job it is to deal with crime. There is also the "culture of crime" which can be very different in our world across countries, and so can differ across your world as well.
Kyle mentioned that you can get interesting results if you have a system where there are different laws for different planets. Smugglers and interstellar criminals would then have to deal with sneaking around different legal systems depending on which part of the galaxy they were in. The idea of smugglers made me think of how different the concept of a "smuggler" is in science fiction versus fantasy. Smugglers are much more common in sf in my experience (but perhaps some of my readers know more fantasy smugglers than I do). What are they smuggling? From where to where, and why?
Crime also brings up the question of punishment. What is considered appropriate punishment? What kind of punishment "fits" the crime? This is a question related to authority structure. In societies which mete out extremely draconian punishments, the likelihood is great that crime will be hidden as much as possible. An "underground" becomes quite likely, since criminals (or law-escapers, depending on your point of view) may want to support each other more to avoid the axe.
Kyle brought up, but didn't answer, the question of what crime and punishment would look like in an anarchistic society. It's definitely food for thought - with no government to create institutions of law, who decides what is wrong? Who decides how to punish people? Is it a recipe simply for endless personal vendettas, or something entirely different?
Certainly for any society, the general social contract will have impact on how crime manifests itself and how it will be treated, how it will be punished. Japan is famous for having low crime rates, so that you will never be mugged on the street. But it's not that it has no crime. To put it simplistically, our American society is very individual-focused, and Japan's society is group-focused, so our "specialty" crime is individual crime (muggers etc.) and their "specialty" crime is group crime (the Yakuza). Furthermore, there can be different assumptions across cultures about whether people will lie to authorities or not (here, yes; in Japan, not quite as much). Kyle mentioned how the Sarin gas attacks of 1995 significantly changed Japan's self-image as it related to crime.
This led us immediately into how the attacks of September 11th, 2001 changed our own self-image, and how we lead our lives. We talked about airport security, and how it has made travel much more difficult, and made it the exception for many people rather than the rule. What other effects might law enforcement have on society as a whole due to a single event? Our view of travel may have changed, but this isn't the first time. Kyle noted that in medieval times the probability was quite high that you would meet bandits or highwaymen on the road, and so you would "lock yourself in a chastity belt" and put your money "in a secret compartment" in your carriage. At that time, travel was inherently dangerous. Is that the case in your world, or can people move relatively freely?
The presence of laws in a society can also create crime. I mentioned caste-marking in my Varin society, where everyone is required to mark themselves with their caste identity or be punished. Kyle saw a parallel with the military, where people are required to wear rank insignia. Leigh mentioned the Stars of David that Jews were required to wear in Germany before WWII. These are cases where the presence of the laws can create lawbreakers of people who would not be considered lawbreakers in other contexts.
This led us to the idea of decriminalization. If a law can create a criminal, and cause the entire society to treat that person as different from law-abiding citizens of other stripes, then can the removal of a law remove the criminality of certain elements of the population? We knew of experiments with decriminalization of prostitution and of drugs in northern Europe. I had heard about the change of law in Portugal which made it illegal to sell drugs but not to possess them for use. Apparently this has had some success there.
Kyle mentioned a time when he was on jury duty where he ended up teaming up with a medical doctor who was also being interviewed for inclusion, and giving the lawyers and other prospective jury members a lecture on addiction.
When I heard that I thought, "Jury duty!" I find jury duty to be a fascinating thing - how juries get selected, how they get paid, how people feel most often like this is something to be avoided at all costs. Not every country picks juries the same way. Some countries just pick twelve people randomly and those people are the jury. In American somehow having knowledge of or a stake in a particular societal issue is considered grounds not for debate on the jury but for exclusion from it. Does that make the jury fairer, or less fair? Is it more representative of the society as a whole, or less so? In Japan, the Americans tried to institute the use of juries after the end of WWII but it was a resounding failure because the jury members didn't want to divulge their opinions or argue them - they were simply unfeasible culturally, and finally they went with having a panel of three judges.
David mentioned he had once been on a jury trying someone for "possession of syringes" which he thought was really not something fair to prosecute.
How do we as a society decide what is harmful to us and what is not? What is fair and what is not? Kyle mentioned a line from Camelot where someone complained, "How can I get a fair trial from someone so impartial?" David told us about the Icelandic "Saga of Njal" in which the supreme court of Iceland was established because of a manufactured dispute across the four "corners" of Iceland. Because the issue couldn't be decided fairly in any of the four "corners," a higher body had to be created...and this created a position for a new chief, which conveniently let Njal get his son promoted. Could he have been behind the whole thing? Individuals can certainly have a big influence on justice, depending on the circumstances.
There is a lot more we could have said. We were not able to get into the question of different societal groups and how they can be treated differently by the justice system (that would have been a rich direction to go). I encourage you to consider brainstorming on this topic.
At this point in the meeting we introduced ourselves to each other and ended up talking about highways for a few minutes, such as the way highways in Northern California are called "Highway 5" etc. where in Southern California they are called "The 5" etc. Leigh remarked that nobody ever resurfaces roads inf Fantasy! Kyle told us about Pompeii where carts had worn grooves in the stones of the road, and that actually had influence on how people built their carts. David asked whether that might have inspired rail. Who knows?
This got us onto populations who travel. The Dothraki of Game of Thrones are nomads, but David says, "they wouldn't travel like that." That most nomads actually have hunting grounds or places of rest between which they travel, or they follow the herds. Kyle mentioned forced migration for work in China. Leigh mentioned how Mexican workers come to work in the US during the summer.
David mentioned how in Jamaica, because of the mild climate, people will often build houses very slowly over fifteen years or so, starting with the roof to keep off the rain. Kyle contrasted this with Egypt where many places will have walls but no roof because the government defines a completed structure (for tax purposes!) as one with a roof. So in the end, we circled back around to the idea of laws. Where there are laws, people will be looking for loopholes (tax loopholes in both Egypt and the US!).
It was a great hangout. Thanks again to everyone who came. I hope to see more people this week to talk about Economics as requested by Leigh!
Link: A Town Without Poverty?
I found this interesting article this morning through my friend Samala Ray. Canada did a one-town experiment with guaranteed income back in the 1970s, but it was brought to an abrupt close due to an economic downturn - and here's the interesting part for me - the data were never analyzed, but they are being analyzed now. The researchers are finding some effects they didn't expect, and you might not either. It's a good link on the topic of economics, which will be the Google+ Hangout topic tomorrow at 11am PDT. So check it out!
Monday, October 3, 2011
Is it all right to use words repeatedly?
Many of you will probably hear this question and think, "No!" Others may hear it and say, "Yes!"
Both sides are right. I'll explain.
The first thing to remember about repeating words is that human beings are wired to be very sensitive to repetition. Ever heard of the rule of 3? We can usually tell whether we've seen something more than once without even thinking about it. The first instance might pass almost without notice, but a second repetition will get our attention, and a third will make us think it's supposed to mean something.
If you're repeating words, people will notice. But it's not inherently good or bad. Everything depends on which words are getting repeated and in what context. I'll look at a few types. Warning: the first few will have you saying, "repeating is bad." Be patient, if you will.
1. Function words. These are little tiny words that don't carry major content. Words like "that" or "which" or "when" or "the" or "in"... or "or"! Since these words are generally given less attention than the others, readers are less likely to notice when they repeat. However, it's good to watch out for them if you find your repetition sensor going off in a particular passage. I often find I've used a preposition more times than I feel comfortable with in description: "the top of the door of the passage" has too many "ofs" for me, and I'd probably go to "the top of the passage door."
2. Verbs. Often in a first draft I'll use a verb like "keep" twice in close succession without noticing. This can also happen in what Janice Hardy calls "revision smudge." You can be going through changing the text and take a few words or sentences out, and suddenly two instances of "tumbled" will end up within two lines of each other and stick out. This kind of repetition is best avoided because it is accidental and comes across as awkward.
3. References to characters. It doesn't make any sense always to refer to characters the same way. That's what pronouns are for! Generally you'll see references occur in a sequence where the first instance will be the name (or a description like "the man with the yellow hat"), and thereafter you'll see the pronoun "he." If for some reason readers need to be reminded which "he" we're talking about, you may return back to the original name, or a briefer description like "the man" or "the alien." There are times when it's good to repeat, however - if you're in a paragraph where you have multiple characters of the same gender, you can let one of them (the main character) take the pronoun ("she") and have others be "the woman" or "the tall woman"/"the dark-haired woman" consistently to keep it teased apart. Thus, usually you will progress rapidly down the sequence of reduced complexity until they reach the basic pronoun and stick; however, in places where there is ambiguity (two or more characters of the same gender), repetition can be vital to keep readers from getting confused.
Now we come to the place where we find the real words we want to use repeatedly.
4. Talismanic words. These are words that possess "spirit." They are content words, like nouns or verbs, rather than function words. When they repeat, they create atmosphere. "Lamplight." "Pearl." "Darkness." "Typhoon." They can also occur in webs of associated words that all appear when a particular atmosphere is being created. These words can also repeat across contexts to create greater cohesion in a story. You don't want them repeating just any-old-where, but if you pay attention to where you put them, they can create parallels in the reader's mind between different parts of the story. In fact, I find that there is a certain correlation in the use of talismanic repetition with genre. It is more common to find this kind of repetition in fantasy, in my experience, than in science fiction. When I write science fiction I find myself deliberately trying to avoid word repetition, but when I write fantasy it doesn't happen as much. A really wonderful example of an author who uses talismanic repetition is Patricia McKillip. If you look at her books The Changeling Sea or The Tower at Stony Wood (my two favorites) you will see what kind of powerful effect this kind of repetition can have.
At this point I can hear in my mind's ear the voices of people saying, "But science fiction does this too!" I think it does, to some extent. However, it uses different kinds of words - it skews toward the use of alien words, or neologisms, or technical vocabulary. These words possess an atmosphere too - indeed, it is the atmosphere of science fiction! - but if I may speak metaphorically, they are shallower than the words that fantasy uses. Because words access all of their possible meanings in our minds at once, the words that we have heard all our lives resonate deeper into the reaches of our minds, and need less support from the immediate story context in order to invoke their "spirit."
It's something to think about.
Both sides are right. I'll explain.
The first thing to remember about repeating words is that human beings are wired to be very sensitive to repetition. Ever heard of the rule of 3? We can usually tell whether we've seen something more than once without even thinking about it. The first instance might pass almost without notice, but a second repetition will get our attention, and a third will make us think it's supposed to mean something.
If you're repeating words, people will notice. But it's not inherently good or bad. Everything depends on which words are getting repeated and in what context. I'll look at a few types. Warning: the first few will have you saying, "repeating is bad." Be patient, if you will.
1. Function words. These are little tiny words that don't carry major content. Words like "that" or "which" or "when" or "the" or "in"... or "or"! Since these words are generally given less attention than the others, readers are less likely to notice when they repeat. However, it's good to watch out for them if you find your repetition sensor going off in a particular passage. I often find I've used a preposition more times than I feel comfortable with in description: "the top of the door of the passage" has too many "ofs" for me, and I'd probably go to "the top of the passage door."
2. Verbs. Often in a first draft I'll use a verb like "keep" twice in close succession without noticing. This can also happen in what Janice Hardy calls "revision smudge." You can be going through changing the text and take a few words or sentences out, and suddenly two instances of "tumbled" will end up within two lines of each other and stick out. This kind of repetition is best avoided because it is accidental and comes across as awkward.
3. References to characters. It doesn't make any sense always to refer to characters the same way. That's what pronouns are for! Generally you'll see references occur in a sequence where the first instance will be the name (or a description like "the man with the yellow hat"), and thereafter you'll see the pronoun "he." If for some reason readers need to be reminded which "he" we're talking about, you may return back to the original name, or a briefer description like "the man" or "the alien." There are times when it's good to repeat, however - if you're in a paragraph where you have multiple characters of the same gender, you can let one of them (the main character) take the pronoun ("she") and have others be "the woman" or "the tall woman"/"the dark-haired woman" consistently to keep it teased apart. Thus, usually you will progress rapidly down the sequence of reduced complexity until they reach the basic pronoun and stick; however, in places where there is ambiguity (two or more characters of the same gender), repetition can be vital to keep readers from getting confused.
Now we come to the place where we find the real words we want to use repeatedly.
4. Talismanic words. These are words that possess "spirit." They are content words, like nouns or verbs, rather than function words. When they repeat, they create atmosphere. "Lamplight." "Pearl." "Darkness." "Typhoon." They can also occur in webs of associated words that all appear when a particular atmosphere is being created. These words can also repeat across contexts to create greater cohesion in a story. You don't want them repeating just any-old-where, but if you pay attention to where you put them, they can create parallels in the reader's mind between different parts of the story. In fact, I find that there is a certain correlation in the use of talismanic repetition with genre. It is more common to find this kind of repetition in fantasy, in my experience, than in science fiction. When I write science fiction I find myself deliberately trying to avoid word repetition, but when I write fantasy it doesn't happen as much. A really wonderful example of an author who uses talismanic repetition is Patricia McKillip. If you look at her books The Changeling Sea or The Tower at Stony Wood (my two favorites) you will see what kind of powerful effect this kind of repetition can have.
At this point I can hear in my mind's ear the voices of people saying, "But science fiction does this too!" I think it does, to some extent. However, it uses different kinds of words - it skews toward the use of alien words, or neologisms, or technical vocabulary. These words possess an atmosphere too - indeed, it is the atmosphere of science fiction! - but if I may speak metaphorically, they are shallower than the words that fantasy uses. Because words access all of their possible meanings in our minds at once, the words that we have heard all our lives resonate deeper into the reaches of our minds, and need less support from the immediate story context in order to invoke their "spirit."
It's something to think about.
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