Ulysses Plot Peeves: "Padding" or, "The Breakup"

Current Reading: The Bible Repairman, by Tim Powers

Inspirational Quote: "It is better to have loved and lost... Ah, forget it. Give me two beers." -- Me, I guess.

Dear Scribe;

I'm a reader. You're a writer. For the most part, it's been a good relationship. We've had some great times. Remember Chapter 3 of Massive Zombie Death Parade? When Redd Meat decided to clear his block with the customized lawn trimmer and the improvised flame thrower, only to discover that the noise and smell attracted even more undead? I'll always remember that. You kept me up nights, and I love that in anyone I take to bed (to read).

But lately, I just haven't been feeling it. I'm sorry. I hate to tell you this, but I think any relationship has to be built on honesty if it's going to last. So.

It's not me. It's you.

I got into this relationship because I thought you could fulfil my need for a good story. I thought you could excite me, satisfy my desire for a great character and a terrible situation that forced him to struggle every moment, only to have his struggles make everything worse. It started out wonderful. I couldn't wait to riffle through your pages, to soak up every word. But somewhere around chapter 5, we lost the magic. That was when you went into that long passage about Redd's brother, who'd been a Marine before but had been killed by an IUD in Hackysackistan. That was a great bit, and I shed a tear when he realized his first foray into unknown territory was going to be his last, that although there was no risk of pregnancy, there was also no possibility of escape.

But what did it mean? What did it have to do with anything? I spent all 20 pages of chapter 5 wondering how Dedd Meat's death would inform Redd's story, how it would change or at least explain some of his actions. But it didn't. It was just there. A one-night stand which both parties quickly forgot.

How could you do that to me? I put myself in your hands. I trusted you. You promised me a story, and I thought chapter 5 was part of it, but it wasn't. It was just a fling. It didn't mean anything. I suppose I could have overlooked it, but then in chapter 7, your have that bit where Redd goes out to get some groceries, kills a couple of zombies and gets back to his hidey-hole with a crate of twinkies and the last ripe tomato in the city. The presence of the supplies didn't trigger any catastrophe. The trail of bodies he left behind didn't lead the wild dog pack to his door. The whole episode changed nothing in Redd's world.

Do you even know how wrong that is? Do you understand how you cheated? All those words didn't mean anything! The plot didn't move an inch! At the end of those passages, I was right back where I started. I'd wasted 60 pages of my life on something that was going nowhere.

How could you do that to me? You know that every scene has to have a point. You know that every scene has to change the direction of the story, that it has to make victory more unlikely, survival less certain. You know every scene has to challenge Redd's principles, and force him to sacrifice one thing in order to obtain another! You know all this, and yet you ignored it. For what?

Well, I've had enough. That's the last time you disappoint me. I'm putting your work down, and I'm not picking it up again unless I have to dust under it. I've had it with pointless diversions. I've had it with padding that seems to serve no purpose beyond elevating word count. You led me on. You were all promise and no payoff.

So I'm leaving. Good-bye. You can have your bookmark back. I'm going down the the bookstore and I'm going to pickup that vampire novel, "Dusk," that all the kids are going crazy over, and we're going to have a wild time together while I forget all about you.

Sincerely, your Ex-reader.

Ulysses Plot Peeves: Pass the Idiot Ball!

Current Reading: Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain

Inspirational Quote: "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." -- Elbert Hubbard

I've mentioned this before. I'll mention it again. And probably again. And again. Because if repetition causes just one writer to avoid this pitfall, my time on this Earth will have been justified.

Plot-Induced Stupidity occurs when the characters in a story do something that no thinking being in their right mind would ever do simply because the author has decided that the needs of the plot outweigh the needs of common sense. Characters will forget what resources are available to them and ignore previous experiences, all so that the author can move from point A to point B on the plot diagram.

Here's a perfect example: The Fellowship of the Ring. Earlier in the story, Gandalf summons Gwahir to save him from his imprisonment atop Orthanc. But then the wise wizard drops a bucket of I.Q. points and decides that a perilous walk into the enemy's stronghold is the best way to bring an end to the peril facing Middle Earth.

Idiot. That flash of brainlessness got hundreds killed, including himself (even though he got better).

I'd love to present an example from Massive Zombie Death Parade, but really I think I'd have to work way too hard to improve on Tolkien's fine example. And it just ain't worth the effort.

So, if you're a writer, please do your readers (and me) a favor. Remember the Principle of Maximum Character Effort: Every character wants something, and if it's important enough to be in the story, it's important enough for them to hold nothing back in their efforts to achieve it.

If you've got a situation where your plot says a character must act in a certain way, but that character's intelligence and resources make it more likely they'll act in some other way, then you've got a problem.

The problem is either you've got the wrong character for your plot, or you've got the wrong plot for your character. Say Redd Meat used to be a special forces weapons expert, but your story requires him to be unable to shoot an approaching zombie because he's not sure how to fire a pistol.

Yeah. I'm done reading now. You've pretty much trashed my suspension of disbelief, and honestly, I'm a little insulted.

This isn't to say you can't handicap your characters in order to make their stupidity believable. Robert Ludlum elevates this to an art when he gives super assassin Jason Bourne amnesia on the very first page of Bourne's very first book.

I'll let you get away with it if you're as good as Ludlum. Otherwise, I'm closing the covers and we're done.

Maybe Redd's been partly blinded by some chemical the Military dropped on the city in hopes of dissolving the undead. In that case, a weapons expert with a bogus aim makes perfect sense.

There is always room for extenuating circumstances.

Sometimes, when you're writing, you've got to trust your instincts about the character. If they wouldn't take action A, which is called for by your sense of plot direction, what would they do? The answer to that kind of question can often lead to some very interesting places, sometimes more interesting places than action A was going to take you.

On the other hand, if action A is really cool, maybe there's a better character you could use to run your plot. Instead of a weapons specialist, make Redd a cross-eyed hairdresser, or an Imperial Stormtrooper, neither of which are known for their facility with weapons.

This doesn't take into account stories where the character is actually meant to be an idiot. Maximum Character Effort means maximum for that character. If Redd's color blind, he's going to have some trouble jump-starting a car with red and green wires. If Redd's a moron, he's as likely to shoot himself as the approaching zombie, which makes me wonder how he got this far, so you've got to be careful.

So, summing up: Dumb character acting dumb for plot's sake, okay. Smart character acting dumb for plot's sake, not okay.

Next up: who knows? I'll go read some more. I'm sure something will occur to me.
Or not.
Life's a crap-shoot.

Ulysses Plot Peeves: If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body, Would You Do Nothing?

Current Reading: Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain

Inspirational Quote: "We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!" -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.

I read a fair bit, although nowhere near as much as I'd like. I also read a fair number of manuscripts as part of belonging to various critique groups. So, from an avid reader to those who (like me) aspire to write well, I present:

Ulysses Plot Peeves.
These are things I keep coming across that really string my bow.

To illustrate them, I'll refer to a fictional work of fiction (uh... what?) entitled "Massive Zombie Death Parade," Starring Redd Meat.

The first is the PASSIVE PROTAGONIST.

These are the guys (and gals) who don't do anything. They're the dull eye of the storm while things happen all around them. They don't cause anything, they just suffer the effects.

Redd Meat is walking down the street (hey! A rhyme!) and he sees a zombie trying to drag a still-living victim from a car. A few minutes later, he passes an alley and attracts the attention of a zombie horde which chases him (very slowly) into an abandoned apartment building. He barricades the door and waits until the zombies lose interest. Then he leaves to see if there's any pizza left in the restaurant across the street.

So far, I find MZDP undeadly dull. As a writer, I just want to show you this cool zombie world I invented, so Redd's a tourist. He doesn't actually DO anything. He just sees and experiences a lot of stuff that's really interesting.

Except it's not.

As a reader, I don't care. I don't care about Redd because he's not interesting. I don't care about your world because my tour guide is boring. I'm not involved in anything that happens, so I'm going to put down MZDP and go read my horoscope.

It's not enough for a character to be a Reactor either. A Reactor is someone who reacts to everything. The car incident? Horrible! Redd recoils! Zombie horde? Terrifying! Redd runs! Reactors are the Scream-Queens of the literary set, without the skimpy costume. They're fun for a minute, but any story you try to build on them is going to collapse before the end of the first act.

For a character to be interesting, I believe they've got to do SOMETHING. They've got to be proactive. For them to be proactive, they've got to WANT something, and be willing to go to exciting extremes to get it in every single scene... because a story is all about the getting, or failing to get.

Let Redd want to save the car victim, the only other living being he's seen in a week. Let him want to off both the zombie and his victim/soon to be comrade because his hate of the walking dead verges on the pathological. Let him show his determination and THEN you'll pique my interest. You'll capture it by making it almost impossible for him to get what he wants. Instead of having him just wait until the zombies leave, force him to escape. There's a window, but he's on the twelfth floor, although he might be able to make it by jumping from balcony to balcony. The only other way out is crawling through the space between the drop ceiling panels and the real ceiling, right out over the milling horde.

Either way, he's going to take action, and that action is likely to be dangerous, and I'm going to keep reading even though it's three a.m. and I've got to be up for work in 4 hours.

So, summing up: Don't be dull. Give me a character who wants something and goes after it.

Next, I flog a dead (not undead) horse: Plot-Induced Stupidity.

In Defence of Books About Writing

Current Reading: The Bible Repairman, by Tim Powers

Inspirational Quote: "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult that it is for other people." -- Thomas Mann

One of the criticisms leveled against books on writing, frequently by writers themselves, is "You can't TEACH art."

It's a blanket statement and an absolute. I can't argue with it. I can give you a paintbrush, but you're not going to paint Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper.' I can give you a guitar, but you're not going to play the Beatles 'The White Album.'

But on the other hand, if I plunk you down in front of Vermeer's 'The Music Lesson,' or put Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumors' on repeat, sooner or later you're going to learn something about painting or about music, about how it's done.

Count on later. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it's a slow way to learn.

If someone comes along and shows you how to use the brush, how to mix paint, how to create texture and depict light and draw the human form with some degree of accuracy (not required for Cubism, BTW), then your learning time will be considerably shortened. Those are valuable skills that can be applied not just in recreating an Vermeer, but in painting a Chagall or even something wholly original. Learning them will do more for your development as an artist than taking a magnifying glass to any number of Vermeers.

The same is true of writing. And by writing, I mean more than just putting correctly-spelled and gramatically-used words down on paper. I mean writing something compelling, something that readers want to read. I've read the Great Gatsby, and the Lord of the Rings and Watership Down and The City and The City, and Pinion and... well, there's a partial list to the left. I've read a fair bit, and after all that, I can honestly say only this:

I don't know art, but I know what I like.

If you can read these books, or other books, and absorb their lessons on technique and construction and rhythm, then congratulations. I hope you will use your genius for niceness instead of evil. I, however, am a bit thicker. Ideas don't readily penetrate my skull. I appreciate having someone peel back the skin and show me how the muscles work. Books on writing do that for me. It makes it easier for me to go out and bring some life to my own creations.

I believe I'd be a fool to denigrate or ignore anything that makes me think about what I'm doing and that gives me some ideas about how to do it differently (possibly even more effectively).

Well, This Is Awesome

Most readers are familiar with my fondness for Terry Pratchett's work. The man combines outrageous humor with tight plotting and a humanistic outlook to create some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking work I've ever read. Video adaptations of his work have been, in my opinion, inferior affairs mostly because you cannot take everything that makes the books amazing and transfer it to a screen (what's the video equivalent of a footnote?). However, they've been pretty darned enjoyable.

And now, this! Terry Pratchett's world and characters in a series scripted by a Monty Python alumnus. It is possible to get better than that, but only by coating the whole thing in Belgian chocolate.

I am pretty excited, although I guess I'd better get working on earning my British citizenship if I want to see it. I can only hope that at some point it makes its way across the pond.

The Means to Meaning

Current Reading: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Psychology of Happiness, by Arlene Matthews Uhl

Inspirational Quote: "We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our minds create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime." -- Edward Magorium, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (written by Zach Helm)

Words aren't worth much. They're about the only things you can still buy at a few cents a pop. And if you look at the straight economics, you'll see that supply greatly exceeds demand.

So why are there so many words? Why do we go through so much trouble to find the right ones when, really, the right ones are worth pretty much exactly the same as the wrong ones?

Because words are priceless, really. They are one of the most eloquent ways we connect to each other, they are the way we convey experience and knowledge and insight and all those things that raise us above the level of animals, that mark us as unique individuals.

The right word in the right place can change a mind. The right word at the right time can fortify a heart and turn despair into hope. We produce so many words in the belief that somewhere in all that verbiage is a collection of them with the power to affect another human being.

"Although the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. For words offer a means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth." -- V, from "V for Vendetta," written by Alan Moore.

I've never heard (sorry, I've only ever seen the movie) the point made more beautifully than that. Words have the ability to inspire, to open the mind to the vistas of the possible, to reorder our perspective and make us see new things in new ways.

So, in a celebration of that, I present a handful of movie clips that contain words I've found inspiring. If you've come across clips, passages or other collections of words that have stirred your blood, please leave them in the comments.

William Wallace's speech stirring the pride of his countrymen in Braveheart...


Henry V giving courage to his men before the battle of Agincourt. Although the filmed version is dramatic and moving, it is an edited version of the one that appears in the play.


I stumbled across this recently, from the movie Rocky Balboa. Unfortunately, I can't embed it, however, the link is worth following. "Life is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

And, last for no particular reason, Red's words from the Shawshank Redemption...

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get busy livin'.

Beiber's Book Bid

Justin Beiber, the pop phenomenon, has just released a book.
No doubt it is another celebrity book that will sell magnificently.
No doubt it is a book that was dying to be written.
No doubt it is a book I shall die before reading.

Book Report: The Tales of Ibis, by Hiroshi Yamamoto

I'm fascinated by languages, not just what they say but how they say it. When I was a kid, I read somewhere that the Eskimos had 21 words for snow. Southern Ontario English has two: "snow," and "d*mned snow." It's amazing because there are some things that simply can't be described in English, while they can be depicted in Innu with amazing accuracy. Add to the different volcabularies the wealth of context and idiom built up by every different culture and you begin to see Orwell's point: if you don't have the language for a certain thought, then you can't think it.

So I was excited to read Yamamoto's book not just because it sounded interesting (AI in a realistic future), but because I wanted to see how the translator dealt with words and idioms that are unique to Japanese. What I found was a beautifully-written book in any language.

It is a collection of five short stories loosely bound together by a narrative thread. A storyteller from a culture of AI-hating humans is captured by an intelligent robot who, to his surprise, doesn't kill him. Instead, while he recovers from an accidental injury, reads him stories written by humans about machines.

What came through in this book was the brilliance of Yamamoto's imagination. He's taken thoughts about artificial intelligence and its impact on human society to place I never imagined existed. In telling the story of the emergence of electronic people, he tells the story of humanity's paranoia, illogic and foolishness (at one point, a medical care AI decides that the only way to understand and accept human behavior is to assume that we are all suffering from various degrees of dementia), yet he manages to extoll our virtues as well, the best qualities that the artificial children of our intellect proudly carry into the future, and eventually to other worlds.

Ulysses Rating: 4 - I loved this.

Faith and Fiction

Current Reading: The Stories of Ibis, by Hiroshi Yamamoto

Inspirational Quote: "When you have come to the edge / Of all light that you know / And are about to drop off into the darkness / Of the unknown, / Faith is knowing / One of two things will happen: / There will be something solid to stand on or / You will be taught to fly" -- Patrick Overton

I was born and raised an atheist. As I've grown older, though, and been exposed to science, philosophy and the hammer/anvil relationship that is life, I've found belief in nothing to be quite difficult to maintain. I don't think you can go too far in modern science (which consists essentially of asking, "Why?" with the persistence of a 2-year-old) before you run straight into "Because that's the way it is." Substitute, "Because it's God's will," or, "It's random," or "It's predestined, fate," if you like. It all boils down to the same thing. Quantum mechanics is math wrapped around "I don't know," and you can bet Schroedinger's cat was praying the lid would stay shut.

In spite of my skepticism about skepticism, I don't consider myself a Christian, Muslim, Hare-Krishna, Scientologist or anything else, really. If anything, I'm a Zen Buddhist by way of Groucho Marx (who was Jewish, by the way).

You may agree. You may not. Whatever. This isn't about me or what I believe.

This is about faith, and people of faith, and speculative fiction. I don't mean faith in oneself, or faith in science, but spiritual faith: the belief in a higher power. Faith has shaped our history and our present (not always for good). Conflicting ideologies have shaped our maps. But it's surprising, when you look at speculative fiction, how little an impact faith has on our imaginings of other worlds.

Just looking back over the books I've read (see the list to the left), only a handful touch on the impact or importance of faith. In Coyote Horizon, a fanatical bishop does a terrible thing because he cannot abide a challenge to his faith. In Mainspring, it is Hethor's faith that compels him onto his quest. American Gods, paradoxically, is about gods, but not about faith, and Shadow remains skeptical even while his life becomes bound up with the Gods of the title. Very few speculative fiction novels contain people of faith, or are about people of faith.

When people of spiritual faith appear in speculative fiction, they often get characterized as misguided zealots (see Coyote Horizon). Science fiction is full of religious people who oppose just about everything, especially the march of progress (I love Sagan's treatment of this in Contact). In fantasy, religion often gets demoted to cult status and most of those cults are evil organizations worshiping things with tentacles. They exist so that Conan can pillage them. Occasionally, the good cults are showcased for their ability to heal (which seems to be the distinguishing mark of "good" religions). They exist so that the protagonist doesn't have to deal with their injuries. Messiahs are, strangely, a favorite topic for speculative fiction. Stranger in a Strange Land and Dune are two monumental works about messiahs. They always come to a bad end, though.

I have yet to see a speculative fiction story about a good Catholic whose faith helps sustain her through his trials, or a Muslim whose peaceful practice of his faith is key to his ability to withstand the tragedies that befall him. Instead, false Gods appear all the time while true ones only pop up occasionally. There's very little speculation about God in speculative fiction. We don't ponder his/her/its existence except obliquely. We don't wonder about his species or gender, whether he's one or three or three hundred. And yet these questions are central to a great deal of our society.

When religion appears in speculative fiction, there is a predominance of monolithic cultures: all members of a species belong to the same religion. Looking at humanity, that seems ridiculously unlikely. Even within Christianity, which dominates here in Canada, we have Catholic and Protestant, United, Jehovah's Witness, Mennonite... more variants than I can count, each one claiming to worship the one true God in the only right way.

Once in a while, I come across a thoughtful treatment of religion and faith. Speaker for the Dead included a Catholic priest who took very seriously the spiritual well-being of the human settlers on a distant planet... and of the aliens who shared that planet with them. Babylon 5 lampshaded the monolithic spirituality of its aliens in one episode where, to showcase Earth's dominant religion, the commander filled a hangar bay with a line of spiritual leaders that stretched out of sight.

I think faith is an important aspect of character. I know people whose faith has led them to be more tranquil, more tolerant and wiser. I also know people whose faith has appeared to justify their prejudices and allowed them to be abusive without shame. I find it curious that faith, which plays so big a part in our world, plays such a small part in the worlds we imagine.

Naturally, I'm interested in your thoughts on the matter. Particularly any counterexamples: speculative work where faith is an important and positive aspect of character.

Beginning Again

Current Reading: Coyote Horizon, by Allen Steele

Inspirational Quote: "I've seen worse things start off better, and better things start off worse," -- Me, in a philosophical mood.

For this, I wish you could follow along with me in the pages, but I don't want to do Mr. Steele the discourtesy of quoting a significant portion of his work. If you have read Coyote Horizon, or can be convinced to go out and buy it, please do, because I believe studying its structure will be very informative.

I was reading this in the tub this morning (I read in the tub a lot. Usually until the water gets cold). I've enjoyed Mr. Steele's work, starting with Labyrinth of Night a number of years ago, and I've particularly enjoyed his Coyote novels. It's hard science fiction, and I've found his tale of the first human colony both compelling and believable, so I've really been looking forward to reading the latest installment in the series.

This morning, while developing submersion wrinkles, I delved into the prologue. Unlike my earlier post, I'm not going to concentrate on the first paragraph, but on the prologue as a whole. Nor will I quote it verbatim.

The scene opens in front of a house on an escarpment. The first paragraph is a bit dull, although the first line mentions that it is the home of two former presidents of the planet Coyote. I didn't find it as compelling as I found the openings of most of the books I mentioned in that earlier post, but to this point, Steele has never disappointed me and the promise of another of his stories is sufficient motivation to hook me.

It's the second paragraph where the questions start cropping up: why is the POV character told to arrive early? Why is the house so inaccessible? What does she want that makes climbing to the house a reasonable action?

The main conflict of the prologue is introduced right away. It looks like reporter vs. mountain, but the geography is just a manifestation of the ex-president's desire to avoid visitors. It's actually reporter vs. ex-president, with an interview as the stakes. The reporter suffers two setbacks: her recorder is taken away, and the president side-tracks the conversation. Only when the reporter rises to leave (takes action) does she get her recorder back and permission for the interview.

She has achieved her goal, but the interview she gets isn't quite what she was hoping for. Her first question elicits an explanation of the forces active on Coyote and the pressures on its people. This is for the reader's benefit, although it doesn't feel like an info dump. It feels like the reporter is challenging the ex-president with these facts, daring her to make a statement or take a stand.

Instead, the reporter gets challenged instead. The ex-president points out a ship being built to explore Coyote's equatorial river, and lets slip that the expedition is causing some trouble for the ex-president and her husband (who is also an ex-president). Far from getting an answer to her questions, the reporter leaves the encounter with a whole new set of questions.

By the time the prologue ends, the reader knows something about the backstory, has met some of the main characters, and has broad hints about the coming conflicts likely to be triggered by the ship's expedition. It's an effective setup driven by a pattern of goal, obstacle, setback.

They're Paving Paradise...

Current Reading: Nothing.

Inspirational Quote: “Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.” -- John Lennon

Greetings from my front porch. Thanks to the miracle of my netbook, I'm capable of reporting from the front lines, writing out in the fresh air although not in the sunshine because it's cloudy right now and because too much sunshine makes it impossible to see the screen. Stratus clouds are blowing in from the northwest with a scatter of cumulus underneath. Rain's coming. Probably tonight.

Anyway, right now I'm watching a cement mixer do something cement-ish to the road allowance in front of my house. See, back in 1998, a builder got the bright idea of creating a sub division in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, right about the time he was ready to commit, the economy tanked and people stopped buying. He ended up with a couple of show-houses facing a road allowance and a dozen acres of marshy ground. He sold the houses, and went off to wait until things got better.

The Kingdom of Ithaka occupies the northern most of the show houses. The grounds of the kingdom are quite extensive, if by “extensive,” you mean, “small,” although we make up for it by living on the edge of a small village surrounded by forested hills and farmer's fields.

Things got better, because the moment the frost was out of the ground this year, surveyors showed up on my property and began tagging everything from gas mains to children's toys. Two weeks ago, a portable lumber mill moved in and reduced the swamp thicket to pulp. Last week, a back-hoe, bull-dozer, something that looks like a steam-roller with cleats, and a dozen men with hard hats moved in and turned the swamp into a landscape that wouldn't look out of place on the moon. They've buried sewage tanks and lines and torn up the street nearby. I'm told I'm getting anywhere between three and 200,000 neighbours in the next few years.

My joy at the prospect cannot be measured.

...Segue...

Yesterday, I read a book. A whole book in one day. I'm rather pleased about that. I'm a little disappointed in the book itself, but the accomplishment was nice. I haven't read a book in a day since I was a teenager with no responsibilities. I'd sprawl on my bed and read for hours. Now, I can't sprawl anywhere for more than a few minutes before someone steps on me, or comes to tell me that I should give them a ride somewhere or that the cat's thrown up / Aeneas has decked Telemachus / Cassandra's speaking in tongues... you know, the usual father stuff. But for a few hours on a Sunday, everyone was elsewhere, silence descended on the kingdom, and I read.

I wouldn't trade fatherhood for anything, but sometimes it's nice to have a day wherein one can read an entire book.

Book Report: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

I don't know if you could consider this a proper prequel to Anansi Boys, although it was written before and some of the same themes and ideas are present here as well. It's the story of Shadow, an ex-con who only wants to settle back down with his wife and his job and get back to the business of living. Unfortunately, his plans are derailed first by accident, then by the machinations of a man who calls himself Wednesday.

It's interesting ground for mythology buffs, because Gaiman gives us a glimpse into where the gods, ancient and modern, came from and he has some fun putting them into lives that aren't out of place in modern America. It's also the story of a true hero, in the Joseph Campbell monomyth sense, who manages to be wounded and human and still archetypical.

Ulysses Rating: 3 - (I enjoyed this)

Book Report: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

It is what it says on the cover.

It's been some time since I read the original Pride and Prejudice, so my recollection of the book is a little hazy. However, I remember finding it slow going at first and then I remember warming up to the story about half-way through and being satisfied with the read overall by the time I finished the book.

What we have here is the original Pride and Prejudice enlivened by the presence of Oriental martial arts and a plague of the undead. Is it good? Well... I guess. If you're looking for an illumination of the human condition in the depths of horror, or revelations about the meaning of life when death is no end to existence, then you're going to have to look very far afield from this book. If you're looking for a comedy farce of manners and mores set in a Regency England beset by the undead, well... again, you might want to look elsewhere although not quite so far afield. If, however, you're looking for Pride and Prejudice that a self-respecting geek wouldn't mind being seen reading, well... this is the book for you.

It's essentially one joke carried on at length for many pages. It's entertaining enough and I laughed a couple of times because I appreciate absurd comedy, but there's nothing new here. I think I went into it expecting something more than just Pride and Prejudice and zombies, which was foolish. I hoped for an original spark, something that would make the work wholly its own, and I didn't get it. I got exactly what was advertised.

Of course, that's the point.

Ulysses Rating: 3 - I enjoyed this.

Book Report: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

I had some difficulty with this, as I have mentioned previously. That has entirely to do with my own reaction to tragedy, and this book has tragedy enough to satisfy Shakespeare. A man loses almost everything. That's not a novel, it's a country-western song.

However, this is a beautiful book. The odd charm of a tale entirely narrated by an unusually intelligent dog named Enzo ought to lend it more to comedy or farce, but the premise is taken seriously and it works. I found myself drawn into Enzo's narrative and affected by his second-person observations of his master's life and his obsession with racing. It's a story of courage under duress, about love and death and how evil can be done with the best of intentions. It brought my wife to tears when she read it (sorry, don't cry much myself).

I could write a lot about the structure of this book. The sequence of events that lead up to the eventual resolution and the device of framing the book as a recollection of past events ought to be used as textbook material for writing drama. If I have a beef with this, it is that so many of the events that befall Denny (Enzo's owner) don't seem to come out of his own actions, but out of the actions and desires of others. He's not passive. We see him making choices, but it's always a choice about whether to remain firm in the teeth of a gale rather than to "take arms against a sea of troubles." Enzo himself, within his limited capabilities, manages to take action a number of times, but I just didn't feel that his involvement in the story was sufficient to qualify him as the protagonist. He is too often merely an observer.

But that's a quibble. This is a beautiful book beautifully written. Stein's observations about racing and what it takes to be a racer are nothing short of distillations of Zen teaching and they are rendered beautifully.

Ulysses Rating: 4 - I loved this (it would rate a 5, but I doubt I'll read this again).

The Right Words in the Right Place

Current Reading: Myths of the North American Indians, by Lewis Spence

Inspirational Quote: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." -- Benjamin Lee Whorf

I went to visit a friend of mine a few years ago. He was being visited by a friend of his, an Ojibwa man from around Lake Simcoe. The three of us sat around the fire in my friend's living room and sipped tea while discussing whatever entered our heads. The Ojibwa told a story about something that happened up on Lake Simcoe back in the seventies. The details, the story itself, isn't important. What is important, is that I sat there riveted. There was music in his voice, and rhythm. He took a simple story and turned it into something epic and mythic and resonant and the manner of his telling it is likely to stay with me for the rest of my life. The man was a storyteller of the highest calibre and I could have listened to him read all twenty volumes of the Annotated History of Accounting without nodding off even once.

Also a number of years ago, I read an article by Orson Scott Card in which he talked about language and story. As I understood his thesis, it was that story is more important, and the language is just the way the writer chooses to insert the story into the reader's mind. At the time, I couldn't see how I could not agree with him. Stories are timeless (and many are archetypal), but words are ephemeral and vary from teller to teller with the passage of time.

But I look at Shakespeare, who is endlessly quotable out of context because his words are so resonant. "To be or not to be..." "The quality of mercy is not strained..." "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers..." I look at the Bible and compare the King James version to the Good News version, and I shake my head at the loss of poetry like: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." or "speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. for I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it."

Or, to offer a more recent example, from the graphic novel V for Vendetta: "Although the truncheon may be used in leiu of conversation, words will always retain their power. For words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth."

These are words, not stories, but they resonate. Stripped of their story, of their context, they still speak to us about faith and love and beauty and strength.

I don't write literary fiction. I write genre. As a consequence, I tend to place more emphasis on plot and pacing than on language. I use the words that seem to work best with greater regard for their function than for their poetry. I don't think it is a mistake, I think that for me it is a necessity, and yet I can't help but look with envy on those who choose their words with talent and flair that causes them to live fresh in the mind long after the book is closed and the story faded.

Fairy Tale Endings

Current Reading: Best New Fantasy, ed. by Sean Wallace

Inspirational Quote: "The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy." -- John Galsworthy

"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending." -- J.R.R. Tolkien

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending." -- Maria Robinson

Happily ever after.

That's the way fairy tales always end, with the witch defeated, the princess rescued and prince having earned her hand in matrimony. That's it. Story over. Close the book. We're done. Nothing more to see here, move along.

It's the nature of human existence that we see everything in terms of our own mortality. We are born, we live, we die: beginning, middle and end. The stories we tell reflect that, but that's about as accurate as the reflection gets.

The stories that we live rarely come to an end. One "adventure" just leads to another, and the chapters of our lives don't come to an abrupt stop. If they stop at all, they trail off. Friends lose touch, events become memories. The chapters terminate in an ellipsis.

There's really only one period in a life, the full stop, "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns," as Shakespeare put it. It's an ending, but it's not often a happy one.
By that definition, human life is a tragedy. Everything ends with a death, whether deserved or not, a passage that is mourned by those who are left behind to carry on. In the story of their life, the end of the protagonist's story eventually becomes a memory, a chapter that trailed off and is left behind.

But, as Santayana said, "There is no cure for birth or death, save to enjoy the interval between."

I think we write stories to change all that, to present a world with happy endings. We put periods in. We write the end. We give characters a happily ever after that trails off into imagined bliss. When death occurs, it's necessary for some higher purpose. It serves the plot by spurring action, provoking sympathy or punishing the villain. More often, the end of the story is an affirmation of life, of the potential of human existence. The reader is given the illusion that the characters have a blissful life beyond the end of the book, an immortality of sorts.

It's a nice illusion.

Other things on my mind:

The 2nd was my twentieth anniversary. Ulysses took twenty years to return to Ithaka, where Penelope waited. I've been around the whole time, but I still look forward to coming home. It hasn't exactly been twenty years of bliss, because you can't tell how strong something is unless it's stressed. It has, however, been strong and comforting. It's a refuge in which two people who know each other as thoroughly and intimately as two people can somehow still manage to think better of each other than they do of themselves.

Telemachus started high-school today. That can't be right. He's only... what, nine? Ten? Who the heck is this stranger who left my shaving stuff all over the bathroom and set off for school this morning with his hat on backward? Nope, sorry. Aliens arrived last night, took my boy and left a young man in his place.

When I catch them, I'm going to give them such a kick...

Books Read 2008

The following are books I completed in 2008. I'm putting them here in order to keep the Reading List from growing so large that I can't get useful, at-a-glance information from it.

081226-Nation, Pratchett[5]
081219-Last Lecture, Pausch[4]
081212-Agent to the Stars, Scalzi[3]
081207-Digging Leviathan, Blaylock[2]
081107-The Write Track, Wylie[2]
081030-Slipt, Foster[3]
081022-Sad Cypress, Christie[3]
081019-Ice Station Zebra, MacLean(3)
081002-Doomsday Book, Willis(3)
080812-The Last Colony, Scalzi(4)
080719-Incompetence, Grant(3)
080703-Making Money, Pratchett(5)
080622-The Return of Santiago, Resnick(3)
080620-Fat, Grant(4)
080616-The Ghost Brigades, Scalzi(4)
080614-Old Man's War, Scalzi(4)
080608-Chindi, mcDevitt(3)
080519-The Android's Dream, Scalzi(4)
080510-Archaeology Magazine May/Jun08(4)
080505-Winter Tides, Blaylock(2)
080425-Coyote Frontier, Steele(4)
080228-Mind Over Mood, Greenberger(4)
080220-Whitechapel Gods, Stirling(3)
080208-F&SF Dec07(3)
080126-Recovery Man, Rusch(3)
080123-On Writing, King(5)
080122-The Aeneid, Virgil(2)
080110-Fullmetal Alchemist #9, Arakawa(3)

Chaos Ain't Just a Theory

Current Reading: Marching As To War, by Pierre Burton

Inspirational Quote: "Discontent is the first necessity of progress." -- Thomas A. Edison

Things that have been on my mind:

I'm 5 days behind on my writing. I'm not concerned, just chagrined.

Reading about the stupidity that permeated Canada's involvement in the First World War has convinced me that, when we look back on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, historians will realize that we have learned nothing in eighty years.

Miss California may soon lose her title because she appeared without clothing in a few pictures. Beauty pageants, as I understand them, are all about selecting a winner based on physical attractiveness. I find it absurd that she can appear with her full attractiveness concealed in evening gowns and bikinis, but not with said charms fully visible. This is because beauty pageants now present contestants as paragons of intelligence and virtue instead of just eye-candy. This is also absurd. Her views on same-sex marriage compound that absurdity to the point where I can only shake my head and pray we Canadians never come to take such things seriously.

Elizabeth Edwards, husband of one-time Presidential hopeful John Edwards, has penned a tell-all book, "Resilience." In this book, she candidly discusses discovering her husband's affair with a video producer while he was campaigning for the Democratic nomination. I'm conflicted on how to feel about this. On the one hand, I figure a writer's life is fair game for their work. I have read that Mrs. Edwards wrote the book herself, without benefit of a ghost writer, and if this is true, then she qualifies as a writer and therefore is allowed to recycle her personal garbage in literature. However, I question the purpose and value of a work that airs dirty personal laundry in public.

In related news: apparently the National Enquirer was the first to break the story of the affair. That says something about the state of modern journalism. I'm really not sure what conclusion one can come to on the basis of this evidence, but it can't be good.

The new Star Trek film is a lot of fun. Before seeing it, I spent some time wondering if there was any way they could integrate the "canon" of a forty-year-old failed television show (it was canceled twice) with a story that would appeal to a modern audience. I think they did a good job. This prequel is neither Enterprise, nor The Phantom Menace. It starts with a bang (several dozen, actually), has lots of good character moments and humor. It's a story which calls back to episodes of both the original show, the Next Generation, and the movies, but takes a logical twist which makes it clear that this ain't the same Star Trek that's been re-run for the better part of half a century.

Children. Quantum theory and Schrodinger's work indicate that for each and every probable event, a universe exists in which that probability manifested. Thus there is a universe in which Ulysses knows exactly how to raise children in such a way that they grow up happy and healthy. He does not guess. He does not fudge. He does not agonize over the road not taken or the road that should be taken. I hate the bastard.

A Principle

Current Reading: Marching As To War, by Pierre Burton

Inspirational Quote: "Once you have invented a character with three dimensions and a voice, you begin to realize that some of the things you'd like him to do to further your plot are things that such a person wouldn't, or couldn't, do." -- Thomas Perry

Dr. Carnage plans to kill off much of the city by poisoning the water supply. Ryan, a shape shifter, and Rachael, his intrepid reporter girlfriend, infiltrate Carnage's lair through an unguarded side entrance. They are captured and Ryan is knocked unconscious. He awakens tied to a chair in time to see Rachael being lowered into a vat of poison. Ryan struggles to free himself before Rachael goes for her last swim.

It's dramatic, but it's also proof that Ryan's an idiot. An intelligent hero wouldn't storm the villain's lair without an army for backup. A shape shifter would sneak in for reconnaissance before making a move, and he'd never take along a character who couldn't do the same. But then, Dr. Carnage ties up someone who can change shape, then waits for them to wake up before threatening someone else. Ryan's not alone in moron-land.

Thankfully, so far as I'm aware, this is not a real-world example.

I've seen worse, though.

I've been encountering a lot of examples of Plot Induced Stupidity lately. Most of them show up on television, or in comic books, which are not known as bastions of intellectual entertainment. However, I'm ashamed to admit that I've seen some examples in print as well. The writer has a plot in mind, and the actions of the characters are restricted by what the plot requires. They'll make stupid choices, forget things they know, and refuse to take advantage of powers or resources at their disposal.

And I wish they'd stop it. It's frustrating.

I believe every writer should stick to the Principle of Maximum Character Effort: every character must use all their abilities and resources to attain their goal. No holding back, no convenient amnesia.

The corollary to this is that plot should never be imposed on characters. If a writer finds they must rely on Plot Induced Stupidity to tell their story, then either they're writing with the wrong plot or with the wrong characters.

Guides to Conventions and Cliches

A couple of valuable and entertaining references for writers:

The Turkey City Lexicon - A handy guide to common writing mistakes. It's a wonderful resource which provides a common language for discussing storytelling glitches. When I critique work, I run into a lot of Fuzz, a number of As You Know, Bobs and far too many idiot plots (which I refer to as plot-induced stupidity).

TV Tropes - Don't let the name fool you, because this wiki of storytelling conventions applies to every medium. When you're crafting character development, are you Flanderizing minor characters? Does your protagonist perform a Heel Face Turn? This isn't about things to avoid, it's about things that exist, a beastiary of story features and it's a fascinating read.