tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19409304793037132152024-03-05T04:53:52.589-05:00The Writing of Christopher RivanWelcome to the short fiction and excerpts of longer writing from science fiction and fantasy author Christopher Rivan.Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-87643990026571017762010-07-26T09:00:00.005-04:002010-07-26T09:00:03.809-04:00Essay: Ideas out of Chaos.The World Wide Web is a very strange place.<br /><br />I'm not talking about the porno, by the way. Look, I don't know how long that stuff has been there, but a) it's not my fault, and b) if I ever vanish for, like, a year, and you can't find me it's probably because someone got me a subscription to <span style="font-style: italic;">Girlz Gone Goofy</span> or some crap.<br /><br />Actually, the most scariest thing is that I just pulled the name "<span style="font-style: italic;">Girlz Gone Goofy</span>" out of my ass just then-- and now I'm afraid to Google it. Some<span style="font-style: italic;">where</span> out there is a website with that name, and some<span style="font-style: italic;">one</span> out there is paying $19.99 a month to download whatever is on it.<br /><br />So, you want to be an author, but you can't think of anything to write about? Are you frickin' serious?<br /><br />The history of mankind is replete with borked up situations and compelling drama, if you only know where to look.<br /><br />I'm going to give you just four short examples. <span style="font-style: italic;">You</span> get to take those examples and run with them. Make them into something great.<br /><br />1) The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorke%27s_Drift"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Battle of Rorke's Drift</span></a>. In January of 1879 the British Army got their ass handed to them by a group of extremely pissed off Zulu warriors. Suddenly, the Zulu, who had largely been obliterated by the firepower the Brits could bring to battle, recognized that their discipline and training under Shaka could actually bring them victory.<br /><br />And the British? They realized that a poorly defended fort with 139 soldiers was about to get swarmed by a human wave attack on a scale they'd never before imagined. On 22 January the Zulu steamrolled the British at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Battle of Isandlwana</span></a> and kept going, arrowing straight at the fort-- with 3,900 Zulu warriors, most of whom were in a Bad Mood.<br /><br />I'll say that again. 139 defenders standing their ground against <span style="font-style: italic;">four thousand</span> irate Zulu attackers.<br /><br />History records what happened next. After ten hours and after expending all but 900 rounds of shot out of the 20,000 the garrison started with, the defenders were relieved by a column of troops led by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Thesiger,_2nd_Baron_Chelmsford"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Lord Chelmsford</span></a>. Unfortunately, the reinforcing British saw the Zulu as little more than animals, and slaughtered the wounded and battle ready alike.<br /><br />Just so you know, The Battle of Rorke's Drift has been used by at least four Military Science Fiction authors in one manner or another. The basics of the plot are fairly straightforward: a numerically superior force is attacking a few, well-armed defenders in a defensible position. Relief is either not expected, or at the very least, not expected for some time. In fact, the original <span style="font-style: italic;">Starcraft</span> mission "Desperate Alliance" hearkens back to this very concept. You are required to hold an outpost for thirty minutes against increasingly powerful wave attacks from an enemy that outnumbers you considerably, but is poorly armed compared to the firepower you can bring to bear. Unless you know what you're doing, trying to sally forth and take the battle to the Bloody Hun is a great way to get the absolute crap kicked out of you. (Dammit! Now I want to play <span style="font-style: italic;">Starcraft </span>again... Must finish blog...)<br /><br />2) The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_Box_Fight"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Wagon Box Fight</span></a>. A few years before Rorke's Drift, just after the American Civil War, in fact, there was a lesser known battle of similar nature. In August of 1867 a force of three thousand Lakota, Sioux, and Cheyenne attacked <span style="font-style: italic;">thirty-one</span> troops of the US Army's 9th Infantry near Fort Phil Kearny. In a battle that lasted for five hours, the defenders repulsed wave after wave of assaults, and credited their survival to a new piece of military hardware: a .50 caliber breech loading rifle that cut reload and refire time by more than twenty seconds. The defenders lost five killed and two wounded. Estimated casualties among the attackers were between 30-60 killed and 120 wounded, but some accounts claim the casualties were in the 1100-1300 range. (I find that difficult to believe. An assault force is generally considered combat ineffective at 7% casualties, combat routed at 9%, and combat destroyed at 13%. 30% casualties would be an unheard of number just to erase one small force of defenders.)<br /><br />You can see examples of the Wagon Box Fight (and the next day's battle, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayfield_Fight"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Hayfield Fight</span></a>) in games such as HALO and the accompanying novels, where one significant advantage in technology provides a vastly smaller force (The 9th infantry was outnumbered 96 to 1!) with the means to not only stay in the fight, but to prevail.<br /><br />Not everything is about combat and battles, though. Howzaboot we delve into the realm of mystery?<br /><br />3) The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Lead Masks Case</span></a>. In August 20, 1966 two Brazilian electronics technicians were found in a field outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by a small boy flying a kite. Both men were wearing suits, waterproof coats, and <span style="font-style: italic;">lead masks</span>. Near the bodies was an empty bottle of water and two towels. Also next to them was a note, written in Portuguese, that read, "16:30, be at agreed place. 18:30, swallow capsules. After effect protect metals wait for sign mask."<br /><br />The police put together a timeline of their last hours based on witnesses who saw them in town, where they purchased the bottle of water and the waterproof coats. One of the men looked nervous and kept looking at his watch.<br /><br />All right, storyteller, <span style="font-style: italic;">why were they there? </span>What were these two men hoping to achieve with this "meeting" in a field? What did they take? (An autopsy found no trace of poison in their systems due to improper storage of their organs before the toxicology report could be made.)<br /><br />Conspiracy theorists go batshit (batshit-er?) with this one. Was it aliens, demons, demonic aliens, or a suicide pact designed to leave the rest of the world scratching their heads and saying, "WTF?"<br /><br />We'll probably never know-- but since you're an author, I'll leave you to tell their story.<br /><br />4) The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Taman Shud Case</span></a>. Lest you think that all weird shit happens in the Americas, I'd like to introduce you to the Taman Shud Case. In 1948 in Adelaide, Australia (Somerton Beach, to be precise, so you can also look this up by searching for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Somerton Man</span>.) a middle-aged male was found dead at 6:30am on December 1st. The description in the Wikipedia article referenced above seems to indicate someone in fairly good shape for his age, who did little to no manual labor, judging by the state of his hands.<br /><br />He was dressed well, although for some reason he was dressed for a colder climate, wearing a "fashionable" pullover and suit. Oddly, he did not have a hat, which was particularly unusual given that he was wearing a suit at a time in history when they went together like Forrest and Jenny.<br /><br />He not only had no identification on him, his clothing labels had been painstakingly removed. Throughout the month of December there were <span style="font-style: italic;">eight</span> positive identifications of the man, one of which was recanted when a witness got a second look at the body and noted the absence of a particular scar.<br /><br />Things took an interesting twist when the police discovered that a suitcase with its label removed had been checked into the cloak room of the Adelaide Railway Station on the evening of the 30th of November. The clothes in the bag had also had their labels removed, but oddly there were two names, "Keane" on a tie and "Kean" on a singlet. Police theorized that these names had been left because they were <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> the victim's, and therefore intended to lead the police astray.<br /><br />It gets weirder. Inside a <span style="font-style: italic;">secret pocket</span> in the man's trousers police found a scrap of paper with the words "Taman Shud." These is actually the last words written in the collection of poems called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam</span>.<br /><br />Also adding to the general sense of creep, the scrap of paper was traced to a book left in a man's unlocked car also on the 30th of November, the same night the bag was checked into the cloak room. In the back of the book was the following "coded" message:<br /><dl><dd>MRGOABABD</dd><dd><s>MLIAOI</s></dd><dd>MTBIMPANETP</dd><dd>MLIABOAIAQC</dd><dd>ITTMTSAMSTGAB.</dd><dt><br /></dt><dt>You can see an actual picture of this <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/SomertonManCode.jpg"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">HERE</span></a>. </dt></dl>There were also <span style="font-style: italic;">two additional</span> connections to other unexplained deaths in the area. I'll let you look them up, but they are the <span style="font-style: italic;">Mangnoson</span> case and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Marshall</span> case.<br /><br />I'll also tell you that in 2009 a college professor named Derek Abbott at the University of Adelaide started working on solving the case by cracking the code and exhuming the body. He's made some progress, including discovering that the autopsy report and original investigation notes from 1948 have gone missing. Hmmmm...<br /><br />Personally, I think the man conspired with Elvis to shoot JFK while exterminating the dinosaurs. He may also have been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kaspar Hauser</span></a>.<br /><br />In 2005, Stephen King published a book called <span style="font-style: italic;">Colorado Kid</span> that has similarities to this case, which was also referenced in the novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Hill of Grace</span> by Stephen Orr. Since my name is not Stephen, I don't know if I am allowed to write about this or not, but doesn't this sound like a fascinating start to a storyline-- or even an <span style="font-style: italic;">end</span> to one?<br /><br />With a few minutes research on the web, it's possible to discover dozens of storylines like this. Best of all-- they are <span style="font-style: italic;">all true<span style="font-style: italic;">!</span></span><br /><br />Leaving only one question out of many: How are you going to explain them?<br /><br />Write On!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-58437827481991009802010-07-19T09:00:00.003-04:002010-07-19T09:00:07.211-04:00Picking the Right NameAs I was fumbling about on the web the other day it occurred to me that Shakespeare was wrong.<br /><br />Now, this isn't something I generally say about the Bard, but he said "The play's the thing." I think that, perhaps, the <span style="font-style: italic;">name</span> may be the thing.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eddieizzard.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Eddie Izzard</span></a> happens to be one of my favorite comedians. He has a bit on the album <span style="font-style: italic;">Dressed to Kill</span> where he discusses the 1950's rocker Arnold George Dorsey, better known by the name of the German composer he adopted: <span style="font-style: italic;">Englebert Humperdinck</span>. His bit includes a "discussion" between Dorsey and his manager:<br /><br />"But I like being Gerry Dorsey. It's a good name!"<br />"But you need a better one. How about Hinkleburt Slapdiback?"<br />"What? NO!"<br />"Satliborg Fistibuns?"<br />"NOO!"<br /><br />And so on. It's a remarkably funny bit that also, like much of Eddie's comedy, tends to have two levels, including a level where it's no longer a parody and is actually quite true.<br /><br />As writers, we need to seek out names that have some kind of connection to us, and to our characters. Names can demonstrate ethnicity, such as Jaime Tavala, the unfortunate soldier in the <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/04/flash-fiction-first-contact.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">prologue to </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Counterattack</span></a>.<br /><br />Names can indicate power and strength, or be a source of amusement. Depending on what you're writing, you can place emphasis on either aspect. Terry Pratchett is a master of this. His characters include:<br /><br />Sergeant Colon<br />Samuel Vimes<br />Captain Carrot<br />(Of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.)<br /><br />Esmeralda "Grannie" Weatherwax<br />Gytha "Nanny" Ogg<br />(Of the Lancre Coven)<br /><br />and of course:<br /><br />Moist Von Lipwig. (Yes, his first name is "Moist." Is it there any doubt why he grew up to be a con man who changes names and identities like underwear?)<br /><br />Names change based on time periods as well as ethnicity and location. Consider Larry Niven's excellent work, <span style="font-style: italic;">A World Out of Time</span>. The basic premise is a man dying of cancer in 1970 has himself frozen until he can be safely revived and cured. Two hundred years later he is "revived" by the State and his personality is "injected" into the body of a mindwiped criminal. He is then sent on a lengthy star mission to expiate his debt to the State that brought him back to life.<br /><br />The main representative of the State is a man who introduces himself to the main character as "Pierce, for the State." Later in the book, when the main character steals the spaceship and decides to chart his <span style="font-style: italic;">own</span> course through the stars, we discover that over two hundred years the name "Pierce" has changed somewhat to "Peerssa."<br /><br />I'm sure it takes only a few moments to consider which genres each of the following names should be placed into:<br /><br />Tynust<br />Vace Berakon<br />Ted Philson<br /><br />If I were writing a fantasy fiction story, Tynust would be a good name for an aging smith. It seems to have a gravitas associated with it, like that of a master craftsman, with scarred and strong hands that are curiously gentle.<br /><br />Vace Berakon almost <span style="font-style: italic;">has</span> to be a hotshot starfighter pilot, probably too young to really comprehend the dangers of ship to ship combat in a vacuum, and convinced that he's immortal.<br /><br />Ted Philson would make a good detective. Slightly corrupt, but only because he needs to be to get the job done, Ted's not above using "dropsy evidence" to gain a conviction when he knows the perp is guilty and he just can't prove it.<br /><br />Each of these names were generated randomly from the following sites:<br /><br />Tynust - <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/fnames.cgi?d=checked&f=3">http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/fnames.cgi?d=checked&f=3</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>(Reload the site to generate new names.)<br /><br />Vace Berakon - <a href="http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/</span></a> (This site also features a fantasy name generator, as well as some <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> name generation as well, if you're interested in writing fan fiction.)<br /><br />Ted Philson - <a href="http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm</span></a> (This site uses census data to generate random names, and allows you to set an "obscurity level" to determine how uncommon the name you generate is. At last! A use for census data that doesn't involve seeking excuses to give our tax money away!)<br /><br />I'd like you to take a moment and continue to work on your character development. Use the random name generators to generate one name from each genre: SciFi, Fantasy, and Modern, and write a brief description of the character you think the name describes.<br /><br />I'll bet you end up using one or more of them down the road.<br /><br />Write On!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-53357022705870634192010-07-05T09:00:00.002-04:002010-07-05T09:00:08.427-04:00Essay: Why You SHOULD Use Real People as CharactersMaking believable characters is a difficult process for any writer. In <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/03/essay-on-importance-of-character.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">previous essays</span></a> I've discussed how important it is to know your characters, inside and out, but today I want to talk about something a little different.<br /><br />I am of the mind that the most realistic characters come from life. The four tightly-knit characters of <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> are actually modeled on a semi-professional paintball team I played with from 1994 through 1999. Although it was actually a ten man team, there were four of us; Shawn and Mike (two brothers), my roommate Ted, and myself, who spent most of our off-the-field time together. In fact, in 1995 when my home was flooded thanks to a group of environmentalists whining so loudly that Pierce County decided not to dredge the river for gravel (causing a mere $122 million in property damage and rendering hundreds of families homeless-- but at least the Dolly Varden trout population had safe spawning grounds) I moved in with Shawn and Mike for three weeks, and then Ted and I got an apartment together.<br /><br />It was during this time that the inspiration for <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> came to me-- literally in a dream-- and there was never the slightest bit of question who would be the "stars." They were in the dream after all.<br /><br />Unfortunately, there's a certain <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Mary Sue</span></a> element to this. The arguably "main" character is David, who is, for all intents and purposes, me. There are certain notable differences. I've never in my life wanted to be a ranger. While I've done the Boy Scouts thing, the idea of running around in the woods getting rained on, far from a gaming rig, copy of Unreal Tournament, high speed internet connection, and a bunch of geeks to headshot just isn't my bag, baby. I'm also not particularly attracted to elves (nor is Michael).<br /><br />These things aside, if you can honestly look at the people around you, I think you'll find some great examples of characters to include in your writing. The problem is, you have to look <span style="font-style: italic;">honestly</span>. Stephen King is a master of this. His characters are generally lifelike and multi-dimensional. They have hidden flaws and quirks of personality. They get horny. They eat McDonald's. They drive 2003 Nissan Sentras with dented fenders from that time when they pulled into the Lowe's parking lot and there was a cart out there that they didn't see.<br /><br />There are hundreds and hundreds of little details that real people have in their lives, from the clothes they wear to the schools they attended and the activities they choose for hobbies. More than that, real people are <span style="font-style: italic;">consistently inconsistent.</span> We all have things we do that are the opposite from what we believe. (I'm not talking about flat out lying. After all, there's only one Barack Obama-- thank God.)<br /><br />Here are a couple of cliche' examples you've probably seen in your life:<br /><br />1) The athletic coach or PE teacher constantly admonishing you to push harder or eat healthier or work out more-- while he munches a doughnut or simply looks like an egg with feet.<br /><br />2) The parent who smokes/drinks/does drugs but tries to convince his kids these are bad habits.<br /><br />3) The boss who pretends to know what you do and therefore micromanage it, while complaining all the while that the echelons above him meddle in his sandbox too often.<br /><br />4) The bleach-blond bimbo gossiping that her friend is "two-faced and shallow."<br /><br />These are just a few quickies out of the pageant that is life. We all have inconsistencies and gaps in our logic that cause us to react in certain manners to certain stimuli. It's part of what makes us human. The trick, when developing believable characters, is to find those inconsistencies and use them as the foundation for your characters.<br /><br />A few months ago I found a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Realms-Characters-Creatures-Settings/dp/1581806825/ref=cm_cr-mr-title"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Fantastic Realms: How to Draw Fantasy Characters, Creatures, and Settings</span></a> in a local discount store for $2.00. I was about to put it back on the shelf when I knocked over a book across the aisle and a $1.50 sketch pad landed at my feet-- with a package of pencils on top of it. Not one to piss off the gods when I don't have to, I decided that $3.50 was worth it to try something new and interesting that I'd never done before.<br /><br />As I've been learning to draw (which is precisely as difficult as I thought it was-- and I wish I'd picked this up years ago, along with music and programming, instead of concentrating quite so hard on theater and drama in high school) I've discovered what most artists and authors knew all along: it's a <span style="font-style: italic;">hell</span> of a lot harder to draw (or create a character) from scratch than it is to create one from a model.<br /><br />I can generally duplicate most of the pencil sketches in the book, and I have a number of saved panels from webcomics that I particularly love and work on duplicating, such as <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Oasis.png"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Oasis </span></a>from <a href="http://www.sluggy.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Sluggy Freelance</span></a> and backgrounds and some characters from <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.pawn.se/Webpages/Comic/Pawn%2001/part_01.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Pawn</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>(Warning! Adult themes and artwork. May be NSFW!) However, to just sit down and say, "I think I'll draw a goblin..."<br /><br />...Let's just say I'm not that good and leave it at that.<br /><br />So what I'm recommending is that you look around you at the people you interact with. Think about why they are where they are, doing what they do. Why is it that your waitress at the Waffle House spends her break reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/String-Theory-M-Theory-Modern-Introduction/dp/0521860695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275251849&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">String Theory and M Theory: a Modern Introduction</span></a>? (No kidding. I actually saw this!) Why does the painted Barbie-Bimbo in the mall carry a camera with her wherever she goes?<br /><br />In <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/03/essay-getting-job-done.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">another essay</span></a> I advised taking your notebook out and just sitting somewhere to watch life go by while you wrote and made notes. This is an amplification of that concept. Go sit on a bench at the mall and observe one person that walks past. (Try not to stalk them. I am <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> bailing your ass out of jail!) Try and find one or more things that are directly observable and <span style="font-style: italic;">contradictory</span> about your model: A business suit and a belt buckle with Spider-Man on it. A $50 pedicure on dirty feet. A hat that says "Fuck You!" and a rosary.<br /><br />After you've observed these visual inconsistencies and written them down, write a brief backstory to explain them. Think deep. For example:<br /><br />The business suit/Spidey belt <span style="font-style: italic;">could </span>be a salesman who just likes comics and has to dress professionally.<br /><br />Or, it could be an act of quiet rebellion against the authority that forced him to grow up and assume adult responsibilities. It could be an overt act to connect with a younger generation-- as a classroom teacher I believe that my students deserve the respect of having someone in the front of the room that looks their best every day. When I taught 6th grade social studies and 7th grade computers I wore a tie <span style="font-style: italic;">every day</span>. However, those ties ran a gamut from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/MARVIN-MARTIAN-Angry-SILK-NeckTie/dp/B000B77GNG"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Marvin the Martian</span></a> to Dilbert to Grover to The Cat in the Hat. The tie was there to demonstrate respect for my students. The silliness was there to connect with them.<br /><br />Which of these two brief inconsistencies would make for a more rounded character in a story about a divorced dad trying to regain custody of his kids?<br /><br />The $50 pedicure on dirty feet <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span> be a lady who was out working in her yard and had to run a quick errand before taking a shower.<br /><br />Or, it could be a manifestation of a mild schizophrenic behavior because she was sexually abused as a child and therefore has a disjointed view of attraction and repulsion. On one level she wants to attract male attention, hence the desire to have pretty feet, and on the other she wants to drive them away so they don't further abuse her, hence the unconcern for keeping herself clean.<br /><br />Which one makes a better character in a story about a group of students trying to survive life in a dysfunctional high school?<br /><br />Where Stephen King is so great in his storytelling is that he could take either or both of those characters and stick them in an untenable situation. This is where the masterwork of narrative really shines. These little inconsistencies in our character may be considered flaws. Like any flaws-- such as the fault lines in the earth's crust-- enough pressure causes fractures along them.<br />Consider what might happen to our divorced dad if his children tell him they'd rather stay with mom because she let's them do whatever they want, while he is trying to teach them self-discipline and respect for authority. How might his character "fracture"? Would he devolve in a desperate attempt to reconnect to his children, abandoning the suits in favor of jeans and tee shirts? Would he ossify, moving further down the path to "adulthood"? Think about Tom Hanks's character in <span style="font-style: italic;">Big</span>. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that he starts out as an adult child (which is what he is), dressing in tee shirts and jeans and not really knowing how to present a mature appearance. By the end of the movie, however, just before he returns to his childhood, he is wearing professional attire with the aplomb of an adult, even though he desperately longs to return to just being a kid.<br /><br />What would happen to our young lady with the dirty toes if she were assaulted again? Would she continue to spiral into a hell of self-hatred? Begin drug abuse? Finally confide in her family what happened to her and seek help that would let her overcome what happened?<br /><br />These inconsistencies in character that we have observed are purely physical and external in nature, but they give us insight into the internal workings of the characters we are creating. I can't tell you for certain whether the real <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_lisa"><span style="font-style: italic;">Mona Lisa</span> </a>ever walked around with a smirk, but I <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> tell you that to Leonardo Da Vinci, there was a real and important reason to paint her with her famously enigmatic smile.<br /><br />If you know someone well, you may be able to use aspects of their character in your writing with more success. Because I spent so much time with the other Three Horsemen, it becomes easy to write with their voices. Ted was a consummate smart ass who lived to play the guitar. Shawn is a bit of a clown and a relentless romantic as well as a computer whiz kid who now writes video games in Germany (and still can't grow a beard to save his life). Michael is a natural leader and takes responsibility very seriously. (He was a college graduate at age 21 with three majors, a business owner at age 24, and currently owns several mixed martial arts schools in Washington and Oregon.)<br /><br />Mark and Steve are not just Michael and Shawn, they are different people in their own right, but as you read <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> I hope the realism of the characters will shine through.<br /><br />I hope I'm slightly less of a screw up than Dave.<br /><br />Next week we'll further examine the idea of characters from life, while we explore reasons to <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> use real people as character models.<br /><br />Write On!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-79244768246246939422010-06-28T09:00:00.005-04:002010-06-28T09:00:02.386-04:00A Castigation of the Publishing Industry Part FourOver the last three weeks I've bitched about the traditional publication methods and the way ignorant and sometimes damnfool editors and publishers crap on writers. I've complained about how badly they pay you for something that takes a large portion of your life to produce, and I've also shown where some of that money they <span style="font-style: italic;">don't</span> pay you is used to make your book better through proofreading, graphics design, and other mechanical work, which is a worthwhile use of your money and time and something you should do yourself.<br /><br />Last week I talked about self-publishing, and got you through the galley proof process. I left out a few things intentionally, because each self-publishing company has its own ways of doing things like cover art. When my friend Niki Morock published her book <a href="http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/the-perfect-circle/6032195?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/4"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">The Perfect Circle</span></a><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>through Lulu.com she took her own cover art photo with her cell phone because she wanted a particular effect. When I submitted my non-fiction to Authorhouse, I had perfectly fine cover photos in place, but they substituted similar ones that I ended up liking more than the originals.<br /><br />Go through all of this with the company before you commit to publish with them. A reputable publisher, even a "vanity press," will have someone available to speak to you at any time you have questions, and they should be able to tell you step-by-step what they are going to do to make the book come out right. In some cases-- <a href="http://www.authorhouse.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Authorhouse</span></a>, where I am published is one-- you can even ask for example books to be sent to you so you can check out bindings and print styles.<br /><br />One thing I recommend right now: go grab a random book off your shelf and open it to any page with text. What font is that?<br /><br />I'll tell you: it's Times New Roman or Garamond or another "oldstyle" font. Stay away from fonts like Comic Sans and Arial. While these look cute, they don't present a professional appearance in your work, and you're already combating the derision of the traditional publishing industry that thinks your writing sucks because you chose to self-publish. Plus, a lot of these fonts are harder to read and take up more page space, which means it can actually cost you money to use a different font because it kicks you from 230 pages for $450 to 260 pages for $475. That's not much, but it's one more thing to pay for that you don't have to.<br /><br />Also, stick to no smaller than 11-point for trade paperback or 10-point for mass-market paperback. Honestly, I'd go 10.5 as the smallest size for paperback.<br /><br />Note one more thing about that book: the text is fully justified on the page. <span style="font-style: italic;">Never</span> let your publisher or book manufacturer print a book that is only left justified unless there's a specific reason for it. It looks like ass and it's unprofessional. I've seen traditionally published books that look worse than "vanity press" ones because someone thought it would be neat to single justify the print. While we're on the subject, double spacing is for term papers, not publication, unless, as I said, there's a specific reason for it.<br /><br />But by now all the scutwork should be done. Your book is exhaustively proofed, the galleys are approved, and the only thing left is the go-live date, right?<br /><br />Wrong. Now is where the real work begins. Now is where you need to start marketing.<br /><br />The first thing you need is a website. This can either be a blog page, like this one, or it can be a traditional website, but it absolutely must feature examples of your work, and it <span style="font-style: italic;">must be updated regularly!</span> (Says the guy what just took a two month hiatus!)<br /><br />Search engines on the web are designed to look for relevant-- and <span style="font-style: italic;">current</span>-- information. If you search for "science fiction author blogs" you will not see see blogs that haven't been updated in eight months. You <span style="font-style: italic;">may</span> see some that were updated in the last week. Ideally, you need to update daily. You're going to want an archive of at least fifteen updates before anything you publish for profit goes live, so start writing now.<br /><br />I've used both Livejournal and Blogger, and I have to say that I like Blogger the best. I particularly like how I can draft a post or set it to automatically publish at a date far down the road. I've also used a web site called <a href="http://homepagenow.com/#homepage"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Homepagenow</span></a>. The problem with a lot of these free sites is that they tack advertisement banners all over your page that you don't necessarily want.<br /><br />For example, I used a teaching blog specifically aimed at educators in order to link with parents. I posted assignments and class schedules and the like. I stopped using it because a parent called me and told me that advertisements to adult dating sites were popping up in the banners on the site-- banners I didn't see because I run <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html?from=getfirefox"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Firefox</span></a> with the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Adblocker</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>extension.<br /><br />I dropped that blog site like a prom dress, I can tell you!<br /><br />Some publishing companies, again, Authorhouse is one, will actually set up and maintain a web space for you. Since I already had my own I never bothered, but it may be worth the price, particularly since some of them also pay you click-through advertisement payments if you put one of their banners on the site. See what the publisher can do, and don't be afraid to negotiate for a better deal. Unlike traditional publication, "vanity" press is a business that <span style="font-style: italic;">needs</span> the authors and sees them as customers. They work for <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span>, not the other way around, so in a lot of cases you get to drive and sit in the big boy chair.<br /><br />Even though I do not have published fiction for sale... and may never do so, since I'm toying with the idea of making <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> a completely free eBook series and I'm not sure what to do with <span style="font-style: italic;">Counterattack</span> yet, one of the purposes of this blog is to get my fiction out there and read. In the event that I ever <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> decide to publish for profit, I want a readerbase that has successfully enjoyed a bunch of "try-before-you-buy" examples of my writing.<br /><br />This is also why I post on Twitter. Not only have I built a number of followers and friends, like <a href="http://julieduck.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Julie Duck</span></a> and <a href="http://temporaryinsanitybykym.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kimberly Vanderhoorst</span></a> and <a href="http://jmstrother.com/MadUtopia/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">JM Strother</span></a>, but I've also used the site to market my blog posts and interest other writers and readers in my work, some of whom are professionally published and/or may even <span style="font-style: italic;">be</span> publishers, agents, or editors. In fact, <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> probably came here because of twitter or a recommendation from another writer or you were running a search for "ravens" and screwed up the spelling. Why you're <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> here is a bit of a mystery, but I'm told I'm very good looking, so that's most likely it.<br /><br />Although I rail against traditional publishing a lot, I also recognize it as an industry with a great deal of potential if they manage to overcome their current inertia. If an agent or editor were to contact me with an offer, or even a suggestion, I'd listen to whatever they have to say, but they're going to need to come to me... I'm not interested in going to them.<br /><br />You need to build the brand. Think of your writing as a product and consider how you're going to get that product out there for the consumer to sample. Have faith in your talent and your skill, and take confidence in the fact that what you have to offer <span style="font-style: italic;">rocks balls!</span><br /><br />As I mentioned <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/04/essay-cart-before-horse-or-is-it.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">before</span></a>, it might be a good idea to make a short trailer for your book. Make it exciting and make it moving. Post this to your web site, your blog, and on <a href="http://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">every video site you can find</span></a>.<br /><br />Get the word out. Your paycheck depends on it! Link directly from your site to the purchase page at your publisher's site.<br /><br />Another benefit of self-publication is that "vanity" presses don't try to tell you what to do with your book. Traditional publishers will decide <span style="font-style: italic;">for you</span> if you're going to be e-published or not, based on what <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span> think will work best. Screw that! This is <span style="font-style: italic;">your</span> book. If you want to try e-publication, then try it! As I mentioned before, an author named Paul Coelho "pirated" his own work when his publisher wouldn't let him e-publish. His pirated work then outsold his traditionally marketed work by a 2:1 margin!<br /><br />If you offer eBooks that you created yourself you can offer them for download directly from your site. By using <a href="http://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Paypal</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>you can set up an online marketplace. You might have to hire a webmaster for some of the coding to make sure everything is in the right place, but you're looking at about $250 to set up a checkout basket and download form-- and a really good webmaster can even help you set up a digital imprinting method to mark each download, so if you find later that 10,000 copies of your book popped up on a file sharing site, you know which buyer is giving away his copy.<br /><br />This is all web marketing, which, truthfully, is the future of commerce. Books are a commodity that doesn't need to be tried on and doesn't need to be stored in a refrigerator, so unlike clothes, shoes, or celery, you don't need to go to the store to get one. This is especially true for eBooks that can be paid for and downloaded instantaneously.<br /><br />But don't overlook the local bookseller market, either. You may or may not be able to break into Barnes and Noble or Waldenbooks or Wal-Mart. Those places have merchandisers whose sole job it is to purchase items to be sold in the stores. Talking to a store manager does you no good. You need to talk directly with the product buyer, and most of those cats don't talk to anyone other than a direct manufacturer or publishing house. <span style="font-style: italic;">However</span>, that doesn't mean it's impossible. Stores like Wal-Mart, in particular, make a big deal out of supporting local townships-- they give away millions every year to local schools and have special funds set aside for sponsoring little league teams. Go to your local Wal-Mart and tell them, "Listen, I'm a local author. I'd like you to sell my books in your stores. Help me out and make money at the same time." The worst that can happen is that they reject you-- and weren't we willing to deal with that from a publisher already?<br /><br />A better choice is the used bookstore or the mom-and-pop bookseller rather than a chain store. Most vanity press publishers will produce promotional materials for you, like signboards and those flatfront shelves that hold your books cover out instead of spine out. You have to buy them, but it's worth it. Take them into the mom-and-pop store and tell them, "Hey, I'm a local author. These are my books. Please let me put this signboard shelf in your store. I'll put ten books on it and come back in two weeks to restock it. The cover price is $5.99. If you sell any, you keep $4 and give me $1.99. I'll do everything except for ring up the customer. Also, here's an eleventh book for you to read and keep, free. If you think it's worth it, please recommend it to your customers."<br /><br />Make sure that the sign board has your website address on it, or even a pocket for your business cards so people can take them home and look for your books online if the store runs out or if they just happen to also think you rock balls.<br /><br />One bookstore isn't going to sell a lot, so find as many in your area as you can. Another idea is to take the multi-level-marketing approach. Find someone you can trust to <span style="font-style: italic;">also</span> hit bookstores. Tell them that they get to keep $1 out of that $1.99. True, you only get 99 cents, but if you can get three people hitting twenty bookstores apiece selling ten copies of your book a week (that won't happen, but it makes the math easier) that's 3x20x10=$600 every week coming in <span style="font-style: italic;">while you sit at home and work on writing the sequel!</span><br /><br />Get six people, quit your job, and work on marketing your book half time while you write half time.<br /><br />On a small scale, this is exactly what traditional publishers do. They send out marketers and connect with retail buyers who buy books by the lot. They may have fifty marketers talking to book stores about buying lots of 100 books, but it boils down to the same thing. Plus, the nice part about this is that you don't get assraped by the buybacks if your book doesn't sell. you simply go pick up the extras, thank the store for their time and their expensive retail space, perhaps browse their fiction section while you're there, and then try a new location.<br /><br />There are a lot of ways to market good fiction. One of my problems with traditional publication is that the editors and the agents want to "weed out" bad writing. What they are really doing is eliminating consumer choice. There are some books out there that I'll hate, but you will absolutely love. (<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22I+hate+kevin+j+anderson"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kevin J. Anderson</span></a> has a following, after all. Admittedly, most of the people following him have horrified expressions on their faces because of what he's done to their beloved science fiction series...) Do I have the right to prevent you from ever reading that book that would change your life for the better simply because I "think" it's not marketable fiction?<br /><br />I've heard the argument that the cumbersome and mercenary process of submission and rejection weeds out the books that aren't strong enough for publication. They are either returned and rewritten to become stronger, or they die out before they hit press.<br /><br />Guess what? Basic economics does the same thing. Ever hear of HD DVD or New Coke? Neither of these products were strong enough to compete with their opponents, and so they failed.<br /><br />Books are like any other product. Good ones will sell. Bad ones will vanish. If you put your time in the right places and make sure the mechanics of your book are strong-- there are no glaring errors of punctuation, spelling, or grammar in the text; it's in a readable font; it's professionally bound and printed ("manufactured" in a quality manner)-- then the only thing left is the quality of the writing and the strength of your creativity when it comes to marketing the book.<br /><br />You seriously mean to tell me that you are creative enough to write a frickin' novel, disciplined enough to carry it through 280 pages and 65,000 words, but you're <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> disciplined enough to make sure it's proofread and copyedited properly or creative enough to come up with a marketing plan for it?<br /><br />I doubt that. I doubt that very much. After all, as I said before; <span style="font-style: italic;">you rock balls!</span><br /><br />Thanks for sticking with me through four weeks of this madness. We now return to our regularly scheduled erratic randomness punctuated by brief flashes of insight and emotional beauty. Plus, there may be a wet nightie contest by the pool at lunchtime!<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-15456595220874353162010-06-21T09:00:00.005-04:002010-06-21T09:00:02.892-04:00A Castigation of the Publishing Industry Part ThreeLast week I talked about getting your manuscript ready for self-publication, and why traditional publication is more likely to screw you than to make you into the next Stephanie Meyer. This week I want to talk about what to do once you've completed the book, edited it with some help from your local critical writer's group, and hired proofreading help to stoppunch any grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors you may find.<br /><br />Your next step is to look for a publisher that specializes in your preferred medium and has a reputation for making decent quality books. Let's not forget that you're also going to be paying for the publication, so you want a decent value.<br /><br />I looked at a large number of publishers before I selected <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.authorhouse.com/">Authorhouse</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>for my non-fiction. In addition to being reasonable on the front end (meaning that they only charged about $700 to publish my 420-page behemoth), they also offered great royalties on the back end, allowing me to set my own prices. Because I was aiming to assist a class of people without a lot of cash, I deliberately set my trade paperback price to about four dollars less than most comparable books of that subject matter and length. Despite this, I still ended up with a 50% royalty return!<br /><br />Compare that to the 3-7% that traditional publishers will give you.<br /><br />Another good thing about Authorhouse is that they don't require me to hold large amounts of overhead. <a href="http://www.johntreed.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Jack Reed</span></a>, a non-fiction author and one of my mentors on several subjects, self-publishes his books, and has them manufactured by a company in Illinois. The problem is, he has to buy his books in job lots of 200 and store them himself. For a lot of people this isn't feasible.<br /><br />Authorhouse uses print-on-demand publication. Need 200 books for a signing or for marketing? Great! They can do it. Or, you can link to their site from your home page and send buyers to their online purchasing section and they can print just one!<br /><br />Best of all, my books are also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites (and several smaller e-tailers. Instead of having to sell to bookstores, I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> a bookstore!<br /><br />On the right hand side of this blog you'll see another link to a publisher, in the guise of an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad application called <span style="font-style: italic;">Fastpencil</span>. Although I link to it, I'm not particularly impressed with it so far. For one thing, the application doesn't offer landscape typing mode, which is just damnfool stupid in a writing application, and second, it crashes constantly on my iPod Touch.<br /><br />I'm hoping that a new release will be pushed out soon and fix those problems. The Chief Technical Officer assures me that's the case, but I haven't seen it yet.<br /><br />If you use Fastpencil, though, you'll find that they are also a self-publishing company. In fact, if you have a blog like this one, you could write your book in that and then import it directly into their engine for publication.<br /><br />Unfortunately, their prices are steep. $1,200 to publish anything like the length of my non-fiction, and their royalties were much lower than Authorhouse.<br /><br />Please note that these are for traditional publication on paper. You can self-publish an eBook using Adobe Acrobat in just a few minutes. If you're going to do this, I strongly, <span style="font-style: italic;">strongly,</span> suggest that you obtain an <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Get-an-ISBN-Number"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">ISBN number</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>for your work.<br /><br />By the way, don't worry too much about copyrights. By law, the moment you put anything down in permanent or semi-permanent form it's legally yours. Your only concern is proving that you are the original author of the non-derivative work. The easiest way to do this is take your rough draft and mail it to yourself. Don't open the envelop. Ten years from now, if someone says that they were the original author of your book, take that unopened envelop into court and hand it to the judge. Problem solved.<br /><br />By the way, also by law, schools own the copyright to anything produced in the classroom. If you write a best-selling novel in your English class your school is legally allowed to sue you for a cut of the action. As I keep saying, there's a lot of stupid going around.<br /><br />With the prevalence of eBook readers like the Amazon kindle and the new one that I think is going to be taking over, the <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/150-kobo-ereader-the-real-kindle-killer/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kobo</span></a>, which is $150 and <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> reads books, without a lot of wasted electronics to use cellular or WiFi technology, <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> natively reads PDF format, you may be interested in making eBooks. If you are, there are a couple of things to consider:<br /><br />EBooks are cheap to make. Make one and copy it and you're good to go. This means a lower overhead, but it also means you need to set a much lower price. (Another reason the Kindle is getting its ass kicked is the $10 price of books and the fact that it doesn't read books you may already have in PDF format, the most widely used document format on the web, without running it through a conversion software.)<br /><br />The other downside of eBooks is piracy. One electronic copy becomes dozens... except, as I mentioned last week, that may not be a bad thing. If you offer both an electronic and a traditionally bound version of your book there's a nice chance that you could give away your eBook for free and only charge for the bound paper and make a tidy sum. It works for the books in the Baen eLibrary, all of which are on the Baen top-seller's list.<br /><br />So you've finally sent your book off (emailed, generally, or otherwise uploaded to your publisher), and now it's time to review your galley and cover proofs to make sure that everything is the way you want it. Folks, please read every damn page. I promise you something will be buggered and neatly hidden-- like the repeating page that threw off my indexing. I also recommend that you have someone <span style="font-style: italic;">else</span> review your galleys looking for any final errors.<br /><br />Treat this like a second round of proofing. Pay someone another $50 to read it and $5 per error spotted now. There's a typo on one page of David Edding's <span style="font-style: italic;">Magician's Gambit</span>, one of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Belgariad</span>, that kicks me out of my willing disbelief every time I read it... it's even present in the blasted eBook! One of my college professors published a book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573929220/ref=kinw_rke_tl_1"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Don't Get Duped!</span></a> about the nutritional supplement and exercise industry. Unfortunately, Dr. Forness has eye problems, so he usually dictates into a computer and he didn't have a good copyeditor to catch homonyms. As a result, there are dozens of typos and misspellings in his otherwise excellent book. (Although I believe it was recently reprinted and I think the most glaring errors were corrected.)<br /><br />After all this work is done, then, and only then, can you sign off as ready for publishing. By the way, this is all work that the traditional publisher usually does for you, so is it going to be worth it?<br /><br />We'll find out next week when we talk about marketing.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-21038710463436169872010-06-14T09:00:00.006-04:002010-06-14T09:00:08.775-04:00A Castigation of the Publishing Industry Part TwoLast week I crapped all over the traditional publishing industry. I described them as a complete waste of skin and a complete mess as the leader of the most powerful country on earth.<br /><br />Wait... sorry. That was my description of Obama once I saw that, despite his claims that the oil spill mess in the Gulf was his highest priority, he'd spent more time on vacation and fund raising for Barbara Boxer than actually making any effort to do anything. What do you expect of a man that orders $400 Kobe beef while everyone else suffers from a recession that he prolonged with idiot economic practices?<br /><br />Anyway, last week I talked about how traditional publishers are out to get you. They aren't looking for <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span> writing; they are looking for <span style="font-style: italic;">salable</span> writing. They'll take a dismal book by a well-known author over a great book by a complete unknown in ten out of ten chances.<br /><br />There are other things that traditional publishers do that irritate me as well. There's a little practice known as "buybacks" that ought to be outlawed. Here's the way they work: Publishers send booksellers to marketplace retailers like Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks. These booksellers pitch your book and tell the retailers, "You should be able to sell 500 of these books by August 15th!" The retailers agree to purchase 500 books from the publisher.<br /><br />August 15th rolls around and the retailer has only managed to sell 450 books. This means that 50 are still on the shelves. Since that's valuable retail space, someone has to "buy back" those unsold books from the retailer. Guess who does that?<br /><br />For some reason the traditional contract between author and publisher makes the <span style="font-style: italic;">author </span>responsible for buying back the books from the retailer, even though it was the <span style="font-style: italic;">publisher</span> that got overzealous in convincing the retailer what they could sell! Even worse, the author doesn't even get the books himself. He gets covers that were torn off (for mass market paperbacks) or dust covers that were removed by way of keeping count, and the actual printed books themselves get <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">thrown away!</span></span><br /><br />One of my mentors, a guy named <a href="http://www.johntreed.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Jack Reed</span></a>, commented in his book on self-publishing that when he traditionally published his first book on real estate investment and was forced to purchase buybacks he demanded the books he was paying for. As an "I'll show him for demanding his property be returned to him if he's paying for it!" method, his publisher deliberately left his books out in the rain before shipping, and then billed him for water-weighted, soggy, destroyed books!<br /><br />Jack has been self-published ever since. He writes non-fiction, but Piers Anthony, bestselling author of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Magic of Xanth</span> series (among others) has similar stories to tell on his blog.<br /><br />For another entertaining read, pick up a copy of Anthony's <span style="font-style: italic;">But What of Earth?</span>. Commissioned in 1976 by now defunct Laser Books, Anthony wrote the novel and sent it in for publication. Roger Elwood, his editor, called him and said, "There are a couple of things that need minor changes. I've got a copyeditor working on it so I don't waste your time." Imagine Anthony's astonishment when the book was published in 1977 and the copyeditor, Robert Coulson, was listed as <span style="font-style: italic;">co author!</span> (Coulson was not to blame. Elwood told him he was working with Anthony's approval.)<br /><br />In addition, Elwood promised Coulson 50% of the royalties. Anthony's response, particularly when he got his hands on the book again and republished it through Tor in 1989, is damn near legendary.<br /><br />One of my issues with traditional publication is also that I'm a mercenary. I believe in being paid for my hard work. I'll put this very simply: money is a physical representation of actual time taken from your life. If you make ten dollars an hour, then spending ten dollars on a video game had better deliver at least one hour of entertainment just to break even on the deal, right? (What does sending 40% of your life in the form of your income to the government mean to you? Maybe you should stop voting democrat, eh? Not that Republicans have been much better lately...)<br /><br />The standard publishing contract for a new author gives them 3-7% royalties on profits for fiction. (Nonfiction is closer to 20%.) This means that, for a book selling at $8.99, you would only make 62 cents-- <span style="font-style: italic;">if they gave you a percentage of the retail price!</span><br /><br />Unfortunately, for <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span>, they pay you based on the profit, so the book that cost about $1.75 to print and about $2.25 to "publish" (edit, copyedit, cover design, and typeset) rakes in about $4.99 in profit. You get 7% of <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>, which is about 34 cents.<br /><br />To make the same salary as a teacher in North Carolina, $30,000, you must sell 88,236 copies of your book. For selling that many books, the publisher raked in $410,297.<br /><br />Now, they aren't paying salaries out of that profit, by the way. Those were taken care of by the $1.75 in book printing charges and $2.25 in publication costs.<br /><br />It doesn't seem right to me that you write a novel over the course of five to eight years, usually giving up your free time because damn few jobs will let you work on your own projects while working for them. (Although I know a long-haul trucker who wrote three novels while driving cross country, using a cigarette lighter-powered laptop and voice dictation software.) This expensive, non-returnable time from your life is represented by a series of words on paper.<br /><br />These words are submitted to agents, who reject them, essentially telling you over and over again that your life is unimportant. Finally, when you find an agent who accepts you, they begin the submission process anew, sending your life to publishers.<br /><br />Who <span style="font-style: italic;">also</span> reject it. Again and again.<br /><br />Finally, usually right before you give up hope and go back to waiting tables or turning in TPS reports, a publisher takes your life in. However, because you're a complete unknown and unable to negotiate a better deal for yourself, (because the publisher can always say "Piss off," and leave you out in the cold again) they give you 3-7% of the profits they make from your life.<br /><br />Now, I don't feel that it's worth it. Others may disagree. One thing that money gets you is a vast and powerful marketing system. <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span> didn't become a hit overnight. Someone had to stick that stupid goth apple on a bunch of posters and cardboard standups at the local bookseller's. Marketing is very hard work, particularly in the world of entertainment.<br /><br />Movies can be made or broken on the backs of a decent trailer. How many times have you seen a really atrocious flick because the "best parts were in the commercial?" DVD sales are largely dependent on how well the movie did in theaters (although some really, really bad movies gather cult followings, like <span style="font-style: italic;">Snakes on a Plane</span>).<br /><br />Book sales... what are those based on? I'm not completely certain that <span style="font-style: italic;">anyone</span> knows. Eric Flint, Baen eLibrarian, commented in 2000 that his best selling books were the ones he posted for free download on the site.<br /><br />An author by the name of Paul Coelho decided to pirate his own books and uploaded a Russian translation of his work to Bit-Torrent. He sold over a million copies of his books in Russia.<br /><br />Harlan Ellison may be a cantankerous drunkard, but he's also an asshole. He really tries to rip into people that have asked that his books be electronically published. He's afraid of piracy and losing sales.<br /><br />Okay, he's got that right. They're his words, after all, and that's time out of his life we're talking about. Except... honestly, I'm not going to buy his omnibus at $35.00 on the <span style="font-style: italic;">off chance</span> that I'll enjoy his work! If I still made ten bucks an hour, that's <span style="font-style: italic;">three and a half hours out of my life!</span><br /><br />Libraries may allow people to read books for free, which cuts into Harlan's profits, but they also allow people to try before they buy. My first exposure to my all-time favorite author, Terry Pratchett, was in 1991 when I found a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Pyramids</span> in my local library. Since then, I've not only purchased <span style="font-style: italic;">Pyramids<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>for myself, but also copies of every book he's ever published that I could possibly get my hands on, some of them multiple times thanks to a flood that destroyed my book collection or friends that failed to return them. Pratchett has probably made $3,000 off of me over the years, not counting the dozens and dozens of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and random boobs on the street I've cajoled into buying his books. Thank you, Bonney Lake Public Library!<br /><br />Publishers do a lot of work for you on the back end. The problem is that they make you do a lot of work on the <span style="font-style: italic;">front</span> end. While they typeset, copyedit, edit, occasionally rewrite, graphically design, and format your book before marketing, presenting and actively selling it to the retailer, they make you jump through an awful lot of hoops to get there.<br /><br />What about another way? What about self-publishing?<br /><br />Traditional publishers really don't want you to self-publish. They call it "vanity" press. They pretend that it doesn't matter. As long as they hold the hoops you have to jump through, then they also control the profits your leaps may generate.<br /><br />Traditional publishers were one of the primary reasons why electronic publication took so long to take off. Amazon finally had to tell the largest publishing houses, "Listen, you arrogant asshats. We are the largest retailer of your products in the damn world. We are <span style="font-style: italic;">going</span> to make an electronic book and make it marketable. You can either get on board with that or find someone else to sell your books."<br /><br />Publishers <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> resisted. This is why there's so much stupid about the place. For example, an eBook of David Eddings's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Belgariad</span> is available on Amazon for the Kindle. Unfortunately, someone thought it would be cute to only epublish the last two books in the series, not the first three. Then, when the series fails on the kindle, Del Ray can stand there and point and claim, "See! We <span style="font-style: italic;">told</span> you eBooks wouldn't sell! That's one of our hottest books by an established author!"<br /><br />That's sort of like refusing to allow an oil company to drill in shallow water or on land, and then blaming them when they're forced to drill in 5,000 feet of deep water and they have an industrial accident that causes an oil spill. As I said, there's a lot of stupid around.<br /><br />Here's the main problem with self-publication: there aren't enough checks and filters. Traditional publishers are about <span style="font-style: italic;">half</span> right. As I mentioned last week, getting into the King's Chamber of traditional publishing means that you're one of the best.<br /><br />To self-publish, all you need is a few hundred bucks and enough discipline to finish a manuscript.<br /><br />To <span style="font-style: italic;">successfully</span> self-publish takes a bit more work. Here's how to do it right:<br /><br />First, master your craft. Practice writing constantly. Write fiction and read fiction. Participate in writing groups and accept critiques gracefully, even when you don't agree with them. (The only acceptable response to a critique is "Thank you.") Learn how to use the blasted comma. Eliminate all forms of text-speak from your writing; no "LOL" or "ROFLMAO" or "C U L8R QT!"<br /><br />Second, proofread constantly. Force yourself to read every word and not to skip anything. This won't be easy, but you'll catch letter drops like "an" in place of "and" and some of the more embarrassing mistakes, like accidentally typing "know" instead of "no" (which I have done on this very blog at least twice) or vice versa because your inner monologue was moving faster than your fingers.<br /><br />Third, get someone else to proofread your work. Get friends to read it. Have your critique group read it with an eye towards <span style="font-style: italic;">proofreading</span> rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">critiquing</span>. Failing all else, seek out a college campus and post a sign on a bulletin board in the commons:<br /><br />"Proofreader needed to read novel. Will pay $50 for read and $1 for each confirmed typo, grammatical, or punctuation error you find. Must have applicable knowledge of English rules and good spelling/grammar skills. Serious inquiries only."<br /><br />You may be broke, but you'll have damn few spelling mistakes in your book.<br /><br />That takes care of the front end. Your book is ready to go to the publisher and get printed. Next we'll talk about who to send it to and why, and how to make money from it.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-45989198051054368842010-06-07T09:00:00.003-04:002010-06-07T09:00:02.911-04:00A Castigation of the Publishing Industry Part OneThis month kicks off a four part series on self-publication versus traditional publication. I've had experience with both. In another life I'm a self-published non-fiction author whose work is actually rather well known and highly rated.<br /><br />I also have the indistinct pleasure of being accepted for traditional publication twice, once without my knowledge or consent, but I've actually had everything I've submitted be accepted. (This sounds cooler than it is. One stolen short story submitted by a college professor against my will, and one young writer's award published in a magazine that went defunct three days before press is hardly a professional writing career!)<br /><br />However, I <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> have experience in writing and publication, and most important, as we'll see in week four, also in published marketing. I think, if you're willing to put in some work, you might be able to not just publish your novel, but <span style="font-style: italic;">market</span> it as well.<br /><br />Let's begin.<br /><br /><br />Today I want to kick a few spokes out of your wheels. I know that most of the people reading this blog are writers who desire to become authors. Many of you look to JK Rowling and Stephen King and think, "I want to be like them!"<br /><br />I am not that way.<br /><br />For every King and Rowling, there are a thousand authors whose work doesn't take off. For every novel converted to screenplay, there are a million that languish in the mass-market paperback bin for 99-cents.<br /><br />I'm going to share a dirty little secret with you today. I'm not going to label it like an infomercial, as the "SECRET PUBLISHING COMPANIES DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!!" In all truth, they don't give a rat's ass whether you know or not.<br /><br />Here's the secret: publishing companies, editors, and agents don't care one whit about you or your work. They're in it for the money and the money alone. An editor would rather buy a piss-poor book by a known name than a groundbreaking page-turner by a newcomer. (This is how Kevin J. Anderson keeps getting published despite his notable lack of talent. Well, that and his ability to con rightsholders into letting him rape beloved series like <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Dune</span>.)<br /><br />I mean no disrespect to the authors who <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> traditionally published. I know of at least two who read this blog on occasion and who I also call friend. I don't even mean disrespect to the editors and agents-- several of whom <span style="font-style: italic;">also</span> read this blog regularly.<br /><br />Here's the simple facts of product advertisement for you. Stephen King has published about a billion novels. Some are good (<span style="font-style: italic;">Eyes of the Dragon, IT</span>), some are bad, (<span style="font-style: italic;">Gerald's Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon</span>), and some are great, (<span style="font-style: italic;">Bag of Bones</span>).<br /><br />However, no matter <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> good a new book by King is, certain things are unassailable to the publisher:<br /><br />1) There are people who will buy it just because it has his name on the front. They are rabid fans and love his work, or collect everything he's published.<br />2) There isn't a person in this country that hasn't heard of Stephen King.<br /><br />This translates into simple terms for publishers: a certain number of guaranteed sales and no need to engage in expensive advertising to get the word out about a new author. It's vastly easier to promote an unknown new <span style="font-style: italic;">book</span> by an author known to be excellent than it is to promote an <span>excellent </span><span>book</span> by a new <span style="font-style: italic;">author</span> who is unknown.<br /><br />This is the uphill battle you need to fight. Anything you send in to a publisher or agent has to be of superior quality to <span style="font-style: italic;">whatever they have laying around the office at that moment!</span><br /><br />It has to be good enough to overcome the reluctance of the publisher to write checks for marketing materials, and it has to be good enough to overcome the customer's desire for Stephen King. In fact, if you were to submit to King's publisher, whatever you send in <span style="font-style: italic;">must be good enough to guarantee more sales than a Stephen King novel!</span><br /><br />Um. Good frickin' luck with that.<br /><br />I mean, let's be realistic. You're here reading this blog because the writing of Christopher Rivan interests you for some reason. If you had a chance to publish my <span style="font-style: italic;">best </span>book or Stephen King's <span style="font-style: italic;">worst</span> book, which would you choose?<br /><br />I know which one I'd pick if my business and my ability to feed my family were riding on the outcome. Chris Rivan is a great looking guy (word is, he's a hot biscuit!) but King's name puts asses in theater seats and eyes on pages. I'd publish <span style="font-style: italic;">him</span>. Mama Rivan didn't raise no dummies. I'd publish Stephen King over my own work <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> time.<br /><br />There's another way though. I've mentioned several times that I'm also a non-fiction author. My non-fiction is self-published (what traditional publishers derogatorily term "vanity" publishing). I'm going to explain a few things to you about <span style="font-style: italic;">both</span> publication methods so you can make an informed choice.<br /><br />To start with, in 2007 a writer's group I was participating in had some goob post a bunch of excerpts from the blogs of Robert Sawyer and some chick named "Rappaport". I haven't the faintest idea who either of these people are (Let's be fair, they probably don't know who I am, either.) and I'm so disinterested in their opinions that I can't be bothered to even Google them. (Although I think the Robert Sawyer in question is <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Sawyer">this one</a>, author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Wake</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Far Seer</span>.)<br /><br />I <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> tell you that they are involved in the traditional publication industry. They are <span style="font-style: italic;">emotionally validated</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">financially concerned</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">personally involved </span>in publishing professions.<br /><br />Put it like this: I know there are crappy teachers out there. However, since I'm a teacher, I don't take kindly to people blaming life's problems or even school's problems on bad teachers. I am <span style="font-style: italic;">emotionally validated</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">financially concerned</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">personally involved</span> with the profession of educator, and I tend to turn green and rip out of my shirt when people start blaming bullying and school shootings and MySpace harassment on hardworking education professionals, most of whom work their asses off to teach the little bastards that mommy and daddy can't be bothered to correct or discipline.<br /><br />Which is why when Rappaport and Sawyer both blogged in 2007 that self-publishing "hurts authors" I nearly hit the roof. Of course they want to deride and undermine the self-publication industry. Their personal fortunes are irrevocably tied to the self-publication industry's direct and most obvious opponent: <span style="font-style: italic;">traditional </span>publishing.<br /><br />Their claim was fairly simple, and if you streamline the weasel words out of it, it amounts to this:<br /><br />"Don't tell me that your work was self-published. Only bad authors who write horrible books choose that route. I will automatically reject your work for publication, without even taking the time to read it and form an intelligent and informed opinion of my own."<br /><br />Ms. Rappaport even went on to claim that she once rejected a novel based on a query letter because the author wrote that he liked bacon. Four lines down she then said, "But try not to make your query letter sound vanilla. We have to wade through dozens of these every day, so make it stand out by being a little quirky."<br /><br />Um... didn't you just say that using that tactic resulted in a summary rejection of a 350-page novel, not based in any way on the content of its pages or the skill of the author, but on a single "quirky" line from his goddamn <span style="font-style: italic;">query letter?</span><br /><br />Now, call me silly, but I still adhere to the concept that a submission editor's entire <span style="font-style: italic;">job</span> revolves around finding good, marketable fiction to publish. If one of those clowns is going to reject me, is it too much to ask that it be on the strength (or lack of it) of the <span style="font-style: italic;">novel</span> and not the damn <span style="font-style: italic;">letter of introduction?!</span><br /><br />What's next? Do publishers reject otherwise outstanding novels because the submission envelope was the wrong color? Do they bash out "We're sorry to inform you..." letters simply because a manuscript was was 232 pages and not 235, or whatever today's magic number is?<br /><br />And what business is it of yours-- Mister Publisher, Sir-- if I choose to self-publish my work? Rappaport and Sawyer both stated, "Don't put 'I'm self-published and have sold XXXX number of books...' in your query letter. That tells me immediately that your book isn't worth my time."<br /><br />Really? Most people have to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">open</span> a book to make a determination like that. Simply telling you that I self-published and there are 2,000 active readers out there who <span style="font-style: italic;">have already read and enjoyed my work</span> is enough to tell you that it's no good? You must be maaaaaaagic, then, particularly since, in <span style="font-style: italic;">any other industry and with any other product</span>, information like, "There are already XXXX number of happy users of this product!" would be a <span style="font-style: italic;">selling point!</span><br /><br />You've probably guessed by now that I don't care for the traditional publishing industry as a whole, and you're absolutely correct. I read once that <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> was rejected nine times. That's nothing. I know a guy who was rejected 130 times before finally self-publishing a <a href="http://www.abdielproductions.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">great kid's book</span></a>. Now he's up to <span style="font-style: italic;">four</span> books in print! <a href="http://www.dailywritingtips.com/famous-books-rejected-multiple-times/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Here's a list</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>of famous best-sellers that publishers and agents were too damnfool stupid to recognize at first glance--or even second, third, fourth, fifth...<br /><br />By the way, one of the nine editors who rejected Harry Potter took the time to write a scathing letter of rejection in which he said it was "completely unmarketable drivel." I seem to recall he said she should go back to waiting tables.<br /><br />I wonder where that moron is today? If I were Rowling, I'd hire that rank bastard to do nothing but wax my: <span style="font-style: italic;">Nestle Smarties Book Prize; British Book Award and Children's Book Award; ALA Notable Children's Books, 2000; ALA/YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, 2000; Booklist Editors' Choices, 1999; Booklist Top Ten Fantasy Novels for Youth, 1998-99; CCBC Choices 2000: Fiction for Children; International Reading Association: Children's Choices, 2000; International Reading Association: Young Adult Choices, 2000; Publishers Weekly: Best Books of 1999; School Library Journal: Best Books 1999; CBC Not Just for Children Anymore! List; British Book Awards 1998 Children's Book of the Year (NIBBY); Shortlisted for the 1998 Guardian Children's Award; Shortlisted for the 1998 Carnegie Award; Nestlé Smarties Book Prize 1998 Gold Medal 9-11 years; Scottish Arts Council Children's Book Award 1999; FCBG Children's Book Award 1998 Overall winner and Longer Novel Category; North East Book Award, 1999; North East Scotland Book Award 1998; The Booksellers Association / The Bookseller Author of the Year 1998;</span> and my <span style="font-style: italic;">Whitaker's Platinum Book Award 2001. </span><br /><br />There's more, but I didn't feel like going past the <span style="font-style: italic;">first two books!</span> Besides, that's enough awards to keep someone with that particular editor's limited mental faculties busy for a while.<br /><br />Here's the rest of the dirty little secret, folks: editors and agents reject about 90% of what they receive. publishers then reject about 95% of <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>. Never, and I mean <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> assume that the publisher is looking for good books to print. They are looking for <span style="font-style: italic;">marketable</span> books to <span style="font-style: italic;">sell</span>. They are seeking reasons to reject books, not reasons to accept them.<br /><br />Now, the good news is that, if you make it past the dragon, across the moat, through the portcullis, around the guards, and into the King's Chamber, you're one of the elite-- the best of the best. (Or you're sleeping with the publication editor. I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">trying</span> to use that method but Lee Boudreaux won't return my calls.) More than that, it means that the massive resources of the publisher to promote and market your book will then be brought to bear. Unfortunately, you'll pay much more for them than you would if you chose "vanity" press, but that's for another essay to explain.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-90526238160545557942010-05-31T09:00:00.005-04:002010-05-31T09:00:06.130-04:00Essay: What can you learn from a webcomic?I've been reading a lot of webcomics lately. You'll find links to some of my favorites to the right. I particularly recommend <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.sluggy.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Sluggy Freelance</span></a> </span>by Pete Abrams. Since 1997 this webcomic has updated five times per week and featured several volumes worth of storylines and character development.<br /><br />Incidentally, it also has the honor (such as it is) of affecting my life in a deeply personal manner. In 2008 I began reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Sluggy</span> over the Christmas Break, knowing that in a few short weeks one of the most stressful times in a young teacher's life was going to crop up. I'm speaking, of course, of the monumental waste of time that is <span style="font-style: italic;">student teaching</span>. (The only thing that consoles me about how much time and money I wasted on my student teaching is that it was <span style="font-style: italic;">slightly</span> more worthwhile than the two years of theoretical study and pointless essay writing that preceded it.)<br /><br />At the same time I was trying to cajole 33 sixth graders to study Ancient Rome and learn fractions, I was unwinding at night by reading the antics of Torg, Riff, and Bun-bun, a homicidal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oreo_rabbit.jpg"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">mini-lop</span></a> rabbit. (Where does a mini-lop keep a switchblade and a Glock-19?)<br /><br />I'm leaving one character out. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Sluggy_Freelance#Kiki"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kiki</span></a>, one of the most adorable anthropomorphic characters in comic history, literally changed my life when I became so interested in ferrets that I finally adopted a starving little girl rescued from the wild. Ankhesenamun (or "Mun" as I call her for short) is just about everything that Kiki is: sweet, naive, difficult to potty train (well, only in one spot, really), and the only thing that really keeps me sane most of the time.<br /><br />If I could just stop the little weasel from raiding my paranormal investigation kit for toys, I'd be much happier.<br /><br />Lest this blog degenerate into a Livejournal-ish diary and my blatherings drift towards similar styling to that of a 14-year-old emo chick, I'll stop talking about my personal life now. I'll say only that ferrets are wonderful pets. There are far too many of them in animal shelters that need good homes. They are nothing like dogs and cats and take a lot more work than both, and if you are even remotely interested in one as a pet then you need to read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ferrets-Dummies-Kim-Schilling/dp/0470139439/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275180881&sr=8-1"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Ferrets for Dummies</span></a>. I also strongly recommend that you volunteer at a local ferret shelter for at least two months before you adopt one. Not only will that give you a chance to get to know them and meet your soulmate, but it'll also help that shelter out. Most ferret shelters are run by private individuals who receive no assistance from local government-- no funds and no equipment. They exist by private donation and volunteer support.<br /><br />All right, enough! I promise...<br /><br />Back to webcomics. There are hundreds of webcomics out there. Most are free, some are dropped after only a few days or weeks, and some of them go on for years. Some, like <a href="http://www.somethingpositive.net/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Something Positive</span></a>, cover themes ranging from homosexuality to suicide and grief (and yet still manage to make me laugh out loud when they aren't bringing tears to my eyes. Read S*P and see if you can keep your eyes from clouding when Davan's father is trying to tell his beloved wife that he has Alzheimer's.)<br /><br />Some comics, like <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Penny Arcade</span></a>, are devoted to video games. (BTW: that link will take you to the blog. Each comic has a blog post attached to it, and their home page points to it for some reason. Look to the upper left hand side for a link to the comic.) While <span style="font-style: italic;">Penny Arcade</span> is ofttimes insanely violent and strangely tangential to the world of gaming, it also happens to be utterly hysterical (one of the few examples of <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> medium that has made me laugh out loud hard enough to not be able to stop).<br /><br />For those gifted with a sense of altruism, <span style="font-style: italic;">Penny Arcade</span> is also the source for "Child's Play." This wonderful charity raises money to buy gaming systems for kids in hospitals. If you ever spent any time in a hospital as a child, like I did with an utterly destroyed knee at age six, you can appreciate a charity so devoted to easing the pain of children in that situation with a diversion like a Nintendo DS. Read a few of the letters on the Child's Play <a href="http://www.childsplaycharity.org/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">website</span></a>. If your eyes don't well up then you're a stronger man than I.<br /><br />This post isn't just a bunch of commentary about how great webcomics are when you've worked a 16 hour day that includes four hours of lesson planning, spending $250 of your own money on teaching materials, and a two hour meeting with an administrator that hasn't been in a classroom as a regular teacher in six years who wants to shred your teaching methodology. There's a lot more here than that.<br /><br />Webcomics can also give you insights into character and plot development. On the right hand side of this blog you'll find a list of links to my favorite webcomics. (Except for some NSFW ones.) On this list is <a href="http://www.cad-comic.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Ctrl-Alt-Del</span></a>, another gaming webcomic. One of the reasons I like this comic, other than the strangely twisted humor, is Ethan's growing maturity throughout its run. Beginning as a gamehead with no concept of responsibility, who spends his rent money on new game releases, Ethan grows up, loses a child, accidentally ends up as the owner of a game store and business owner, gets married, and <span style="font-style: italic;">develops</span>. As you read the comic, you'll see him grow into something new, something different... possibly even something wonderful.<br /><br />Going back to Sluggy Freelance, Torg begins the comic run in 1997 as a rather naively innocent goofball, more interested in beer and chicks (if he could find one) than in personal responsibility. However, as time marches on he becomes wiser, more focused, and in the <a href="http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=040622"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">That Which Redeems</span></a> storyline he steps into the role of action hero in a manner that touched my heart. Let's just say that I have an enormous soft spot in my heart for anyone with the <span style="font-style: italic;">cojones</span> to leap off a mountain of bones into the teeth of a <span style="font-style: italic;">demon lord</span> carrying nothing but a sword and a <a href="http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20041121"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">heart full of furious rage</span></a>. (By the way, that last panel is my all-time favorite comic artwork <span style="font-style: italic;">E-V-E-R!)</span><br /><br />If you're looking for further sweeping storylines, check out another comic on the list to the right, <a href="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Order of the Stick</span></a>. Rich Burlew was a writer for Wizards of the Coast (the company that screwed up <span style="font-style: italic;">Advanced Dungeons and Dragons<span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span> when they bought out <span style="font-style: italic;">TSR</span> several years ago.) Not only does Burlew break the fourth wall more or less continuously to make references to gameplay mechanics, but he's managed to create character depth where at first glance there is nothing but stock fantasy.<br /><br />Don't be fooled by what appears to be simplistic artwork, either. I defy you to find another comic artist, online or otherwise, that could show a battle every bit as broad in scope as the battle of Helm's Deep from Peter Jackson's <span style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Rings</span> trilogy-- using stick figures.<br /><br />Because I am most interested in fantasy and science fiction, I am deeply impressed with Burlew's ability to develop complex and far-reaching "quests" for his characters. His MacGuffins are not merely magical plot devices used to get characters moving. He develops a real resonating purpose for each character's focus on the plot goals. (One caveat of this webcomic: I recommend staying out of the online forums. The rabid users there are every bit as pig-ignorant as the commentators on Yahoo News, and have no problems flaming to a crisp anyone that doesn't agree with their point of view. Moderation is usually done after the fact and makes no attempt to be fair or even reasonable. I was very disappointed in my brief sojourn there, and have not returned since October of 2008.)<br /><br />Of course, the next question I can hear you thinking is, "Why a webcomic, Chris? Why not just read a book to get examples of characterization, plot development, and action sequences?"<br /><br />Of course you can do that. I don't discount that much of my writing comes from influences like Chris Bunch, David Eddings, Simon Green, and Terry Pratchett. I'm all for reading as much and as widely as possible in your chosen genre and trying to absorb as much as you can from it. This is just one more example of that in action.<br /><br />There was a time when webcomics were laughed at. United Artists-- the same company that forced Bill Watterson to stop making <span style="font-style: italic;">Calvin and Hobbes</span> because they insisted on licensing his merchandise against his will, openly laughed at webcomics in the early 1990s, claiming that the medium was not only not profitable, but it was only effective for comic writers who couldn't get published any other way.<br /><br />By the way, this is the same miserable bullshit argument that professional editors and publishers use to to defame self-publishing. They were the ones to call it "Vanity Press," and they still insist that self-publication means that you weren't good enough to make it in the "real" world of publication. Rich Burlew (<span style="font-style: italic;">Order of the Stick</span>), Tim Buckley (<span style="font-style: italic;">Ctrl-Alt-Del</span>), Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (<span style="font-style: italic;">Penny Arcade</span>), and Dave Kellet (<span style="font-style: italic;">Sheldon</span>) may disagree that the medium isn't successful, since they make their livings off of it. (In fact, you can simply go <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self_sufficient_web_comics"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">HERE</span></a><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>and check out a list of comics that pay handsomely enough to keep their writers solvent.)<br /><br />My point here is a simple one: as an author, you should probably be seeking out examples of good writing wherever they may lurk. Just because it's bound to a simplistic form and also uses pictures to convey meaning rather than expository description doesn't mean that comics aren't also a source of good writing. Since most webcomics are freely available, including archives that go back more than a decade in some cases (like <span style="font-style: italic;">Sluggy</span>), you can read them as you choose, unlike buying a $2.99 comic book every month, or shelling out $9.99 for a novel. (Not that I am trying to discourage either of those purchases, but free is always good.)<br /><br />In addition to some laugh out loud humor and some incredible artwork, you might find something else as well...<br /><br />... you might come home with a new family member.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYp2hj4De9r7IlFk1wVcuAFjSN7d-_-XX8OSbeYUD_rgfWNCPS5PtEXFbqLW3qFi04ks7H_fXUWfzRUtLBAGRbTwI2ANMqGnfTDVbC-G-rn_SXj6A4VxNwXb_gzkuD7hTFK_7N1jD5vIY/s1600/MasterThiefDreams.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 424px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYp2hj4De9r7IlFk1wVcuAFjSN7d-_-XX8OSbeYUD_rgfWNCPS5PtEXFbqLW3qFi04ks7H_fXUWfzRUtLBAGRbTwI2ANMqGnfTDVbC-G-rn_SXj6A4VxNwXb_gzkuD7hTFK_7N1jD5vIY/s320/MasterThiefDreams.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476858871333533634" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Write On!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-35797902463384440932010-04-23T09:00:00.003-04:002010-04-24T04:10:01.711-04:00Essay: How Twitter Helps You Write BetterThomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, and a man who would definitely be ashamed of the current administration and their power-grabbing and excessive taxation, once wrote a letter to his friend John Adams.<br /><br />At the conclusion of the letter, Jefferson wrote, "I must apologize for the length of this letter. I had not the time to edit for brevity."<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Dragherian Chronocles</span>, fantasy author Stephen Brust has a character declaim, "Brevity! Oh, but I could write for pages and pages on the need to curb the excesses of language and contain the wit such as to present the thoughts clearly, remarkably, and in such straightforward manner as to make obvious the need for brevity in speech."<br /><br />In less tongue-in-cheek manner, William Shakespeare wrote in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span>, "Brevity is the soul of wit."<br /><br />If I have a fault other than my amazing good looks and blistering charm, it's that I never seem to be able to say in one sentence what I could just as easily say in a paragraph-- or six. Not forgetting that my first published work was a 423-page behemoth of non-fiction, I'm just one wordy sumbitch.<br /><br />I'd like to introduce you, if you're not already familiar with it, to a site called <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.Twitter.com"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Twitter</span></a>. Twitter is a social networking site developed to take advantage of SMS; otherwise known as text messaging. For each post, called a "tweet," you are limited to just 140 characters, and you can mini-blog to your account from your cell phone. (Although it's difficult to follow the message stream and the "conversations" using that device.)<br /><br />I've met some great people on Twitter. <a href="http://julieduck.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Julie Duck</span></a>, an editor-turned-author. <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://temporaryinsanitybykym.com/">Kimberly VanderHorst</a>, lovely and brilliant. <a href="http://ejkwritingspot.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Eric Krouse</span></a>, expert at the short story. <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://jmstrother.com/MadUtopia/">JM Strother</a>, who brought us the idea of the <span style="font-style: italic;">FridayFlash</span>. These are all people I met on Twitter and interact with every day. They've offered comments, criticism, and encouragement to my writing. (Guys, thank you so much. I really appreciate it!)<br /><br />Believe me, there are others, but if I were to take the time to individually mention every wicked cool person on Twitter I'd have no time to complete this post.<br /><br />Another thing that Twitter does is <span style="font-style: italic;">hashtags</span>. By sticking a pound sign (#) in front of a tag, you can make it stand out and be easily searched. This allows you to create discussions. For example, the Young Adult Literature Chat hashtag is <span style="font-style: italic;">#yalitchat.</span> At certain times of the week a dozen or more young adult fiction authors will congregate to discuss the problems and methods of that genre.<br /><br />For a writer, this is free professional development, and I encourage you to drop in. I tend to follow anyone who follows me, so if you think I might have something worth saying now and then, you can check out my twitter posts by clicking on the link to the upper right of this blog window.<br /><br />When I first got a text message capable phone I made a couple of promises to myself. The first was that I would never, ever, <span style="font-style: italic;">E-V-E-R</span>, use text message abbreviations. I will never "C U L8TR! QT!" I may, "See you in a few, you sexy beast." I do not ever replace the words "to" or "too" with the number 2, and as much as possible I will stick to standard literary conventions with regard to when to type out numbers. (Anything under the number twenty-five should be typed and hyphenated, if memory serves, so that's what I do.)<br /><br />As much as possible, I even try to stick to sentences that contain subject, predicate, and punctuation and only standard abbreviations like "lbs" and "Dr". This makes writing concisely something of a challenge.<br /><br />Applying this to Twitter, I've noticed that some aspects of my writing are improving because of the way I approach the social networking scene. I'm more concise and more focused in my delivery. I rely more on impact statements, including a judicious use of the fragment. (Think of Hemingway: "He died. In the rain." The second, incomplete sentence is an impact fragment.)<br /><br />I am coming to believe that using sites like Twitter not only connects you to other authors and even editors and agents while simultaneously allowing you to attract people to your blogs/pages/writing and increase interest, but it also helps you to improve your writing itself.<br /><br />I even ran across one author who spent an entire Saturday writing the ultimate in flash fiction: 140 character stories. Could you condense <span style="font-style: italic;">your</span> writing down far enough to tell an entire story in just 140 characters?<br /><br />Yeah. Me neither.<br /><br />Let's see if I can condense this blog into a Twitter post:<br /><br />"Twitter is a social networking engine that allows you to network with other authors and improve the brevity of your own writing. Try it!" -136 characters.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-81920363629301057562010-04-19T09:00:00.008-04:002010-04-19T10:35:15.240-04:00Essay: The Cart Before the Horse... or is it?I was chatting with a friend of mine on Twitter the other day, the lovely and talented <a href="http://temporaryinsanitybykym.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Kimberly VanderHorst</span></a>, and I mentioned that I was about to begin work on a new piece. You've seen the <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/04/flash-fiction-first-contact.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">prologue</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>last week as my #fridayflash.<br /><br />When Kim asked me what it was I was working on, I sent her the link to this trailer:<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='366' height='304' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwZ9WWhP_9RNDA1M4EH98tvIPxFxril3EYENax3bX0UWLLZEwtIHHbmrvX8KMlG4UFT4zC8kb6evfCwcxT1Kw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Now here's the interesting thing. I mentioned that I did this for all of my books (The one for <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords </span>is <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/03/video-trailer-crossed-swords-book-one.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">HERE</span></a>) and that I also did it <span style="font-style: italic;">before the book was written!</span> Kim said it was a stroke of genius.<br /><br />Stop laughing. She really said that.<br /><br />Now Kim is as brilliant as she is pretty, and she's awfully dang pretty, so having her say that really made me pause for a second. I never considered for a moment that my somewhat narcissistic approach to writing would be helpful to others, but I do know how I use the trailers.<br /><br />There are two parts to it. The first part is that I usually attach a publication date to the trailer (I didn't for this one for a specific reason I'll tell you about down the road.) What this does is force me to keep to a regular schedule of work. In order to get Crossed Swords out the door by August 2011 (while also getting my non-fiction out on approximately the same time line) I need to write about 1,000 words a week just on that story alone.<br /><br />The trailer then becomes a sort of motivational contract. I put some of my favorite music and some stirring images on there so I'm inclined to watch it, and every time I do, I see that stark reminder: August, 2011, and I realize I better get my ass on the keyboard.<br /><br />The second reason I do the trailers is entirely different. Think back to movies you really wanted to see and what the trailers showed. <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars Episode III</span> is a good example. Let's be honest; we all pretty much knew that the Star Wars prequels were going to be about as delightful as an ass-flavored biscuit. We were largely watching them out of love for the original series and a desire for completeness. What we wanted to see was Obi-Wan kicking twelve colors of crap out of Anakin. In the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Cdj3GpobM"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">trailer</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>we see just <span style="font-style: italic;">one </span>lightsaber slash of that fight (albeit from two different angles.)<br /><br />The rest of the trailer fires our imagination. Why is Bail Organa screaming "NO!" over the cockpit of his fighter? How does Senator Palpatine go from a fifty-something to a decrepit beast in just a few scenes? Why does Yoda look so pissed?<br /><br />If you're like me, and I know I am, you wrote that movie in your head about three dozen times after seeing the first trailer for it. I connected all those little dots in my imagination and hoped like hell that Lucas was up to the task of making a movie that was better than the one I saw on my own eyelids.<br /><br />This is the secret behind why I make book trailers: <span style="font-style: italic;">Counterattack</span> is not written yet. In fact, it exists solely as the 854 word <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/04/flash-fiction-first-contact.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">prologue</span></a>, two 400 word chapter precis, a <a href="http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">yWriter</span></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> file</span></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span>named Cntrattk.yw5, and the trailer above.<br /><br />But every time I watch that trailer, I get an idea. Every time I consider the fight of eight humans against an alien race, I get inspired. Every time I think about what might happen if our world <span style="font-style: italic;">was </span>destroyed by an alien civilization and the only thing left to fight for was vengeance, a few more words sear themselves into my mind.<br /><br />I can't promise that the technique will work for you, but if you have a few minutes and some knowledge of iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, this is just something to think about trying out.<br /><br />Oh, and if you need help making a trailer, shoot me an email. I've taught iMovie in the classroom and am experimenting with WMM. I'll do what I can to help you.<br /><br />Until then, Write On!<br /><br /></div></div>*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-21519232644347335322010-04-16T09:00:00.010-04:002010-04-17T17:21:20.564-04:00Flash fiction: First ContactThis week's Flash Fiction is late. Sorry about that. There are a number of reasons why, and one of them is that this is more than just a stand alone story. This is the prologue to a science fiction project I'm now working on. You're welcome to come along with me every step of the way.<br /><br />+++++<br /><br />He didn't know who they were. They weren't the Krauts. That was for sure. It hurt to look at them; their strange proportions and shapes made him ill to think about.<br /><br />He'd seen a lot in his twenty-five years, but nothing like this before. Six weeks ago he'd watched the waters run scarlet at Sword Beach as the invasion finally began into occupied France. Two weeks after that, he'd been part of the breakout. <span style="font-style: italic;">Cobra</span>, they'd called it. He'd heard the plaintive whimpers of German wounded, begging for water, "<span style="font-style: italic;">Wasser. Bitte nur ein kleines wasser.</span>"<br /><br />He'd seen his friends, buddies, brothers, vanish in a spattering eyeblink or sink slowly to the ground, sometimes not even realizing half their head was gone, dreams, hopes and loves vanishing in a pink cloud from a sniper's bullet or piece of shrapnel no bigger than a grain of sand. When the initial breakout had begun with such ease after the botched landings, he'd allowed himself to hope that maybe it would be over soon, maybe he'd make it through after all and see Oregon again.<br /><br />He'd wanted to be a teacher once, and coach track. If only he could run now, but trophies and medals mean little when you're pinned to cold metal.<br /><br />The war was over for him. He knew that. His eyes leaked despite being screwed shut until they hurt. One moment he was on patrol, looking for that damn German armor that intelligence <span style="font-style: italic;">swore</span> was there.<br /><br />The lieutenant had been the first to die. Something awful out of nightmares had reared from the darkness in front of him. While the men stared in horror it had flashed some kind of beam from the end of a misshapen arm and slashed it once across the officer's body. Unable even to scream, the lieutenant had come apart in a grisly flood of blood and worse as the glowing blade sheared through bone, cloth, flesh-- even the steel of his carbine-- without even a hint of resistance.<br /><br />True to training and experience the squad had spread to combat positions and opened up, peppering the thing with .30 caliber rounds from their Garand rifles. He remembered seeing the bullets <span style="font-style: italic;">spatter</span>, like hose water from a jeep.<br /><br />Then it was in among them. The giant thing made no sound of its own, but its energy blade <span style="font-style: italic;">hissed</span> as it tore men apart.<br /><br />He was the only one left. It had stopped in front of him, almost seeming to regard him thoughtfully, and stared down at him from its enormous height. Something like a hand, but with too many fingers, closed around his throat with a precise movement that was almost delicate, and he felt himself rise into the air until his face was mere inches from its staring baleful eye.<br /><br />As his feet kicked helplessly more than a yard from the ground he realized with revulsion that it wasn't an eye at all. It was some kind of window. Behind it was a face.<br /><br />He struggled fitfully against the bonds that crucified him to the cold plate. That face had been the last thing he'd remembered before the horror and nausea had dragged him down into darkness.<br /><br />Mercifully, he'd stayed there until the pain started.<br /><br />That face was there now, in front of him again, angles and shapes and proportions that made no sense and hurt the eye to look at. It <span style="font-style: italic;">chittered</span> something at him. Speech? Breathing? Was it asking a question? Making a demand? He didn't know if it was a directive or a curse.<br /><br />"Jaime Tavala, private, United States Marine Corps, 538-03-53--" The rest vanished in a scream. The agony was like a physical blow. He could feel skin charring, knotted muscles searing, bones cracking with the heat even though nothing was touching him. He tried to keep screaming through grinding teeth, but the broken glass in his throat wouldn't let him.<br /><br />It went on for a long time before the end. Such a very long time.<br /><br /><br /><br />At one end of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial</span>, where the fallen American soldiers of the Normandy Campaign lie,<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>is a headstone marking the final resting places of those yet unknown. It bears the inscription, "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God."<br /><br />In one of those graves sleeps a soldier who was found weeks after the invasion. There was no marking on his body to indicate how he was killed, and he was uninjured except for his broken and worn teeth, as if he'd ground them in fury or agony for many years. The advanced stage of decomposition made identification impossible.<br /><br />What would he say to us, if we could speak to him? Why was he found so far from the main battlefield and so long after the combat ended and the Germans were pushed back? Where was his weapon? Was he a deserter? Why didn't he have his dog tags, or even a letter home to identify him?<br /><br />What would he tell us, if only he could speak?<br /><br />He would give us a warning.<br /><br />The Talari are coming.<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-922243591144168732010-04-12T09:00:00.007-04:002010-04-12T23:07:18.075-04:00Essay: Chekov's GunAndre Norton has written about 150 books. Fun fact: if you were to spend a million dollars on each one of her books, you'd still not have spent as much money as Obama's budget calls to be spent in the first <span style="font-style: italic;">nine seconds</span> of fiscal year 2011! (Just a reminder that the games he, Pelosi, and Reid are currently playing are being played with <span style="font-style: italic;">your</span> tax money. What they choose to do with their own cash is up to them, but I'm getting sick of paying for their hair brained schemes.)<br /><br />But despite the absurd number of books Andre Norton published in her 71 year career, I refuse to read any of them. Nope. Sorry. Tried it once and I won't do it again. (Well, never say never. I'm arguing through hyperbole here. Please don't send me lengthy emails about <span style="font-style: italic;">Voodoo Planet</span>.)<br /><br />The reason why is very simple. Yes, I understand that I'm probably costing myself some great fiction. I'm probably missing out on some wonderful stories. Unfortunately, once, a long time ago, I tried one of her science fiction books and she dropped the ball so horrifically that I just can't bring myself to risk it again.<br /><br />I can no longer recall the title. I was around eleven years of age. I can recall that one of the plot points of the book was an ancient alien city in the middle of the jungle. About thirty years previous to the story an archaeologist took a crew in there with a new piece of technology that was supposed to be able to replay historical events on a screen. This would show you why the aliens abandoned this city to the weeds.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the archaeologist and his crew vanished after sending one terrified shrieking message for help-- similar to the events of the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Event Horizon</span>, only without the piss poor acting.<br /><br />This is where things went wrong for me. This type of plot device is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekov%27s_gun"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Chekhov's Gun</span></a>. Anton Chekhov (not to be confused with Pavel Chekov, navigation officer of the <span style="font-style: italic;">USS Enterprise NCC-1701</span>.) was a playwright of the late 19th century and possibly one of the greatest writers of short fiction in world history. In a letter to a friend, <span class="new">A. S. Gruzinsky</span>, (Under a pseudonym), Chekhov simply said: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."<br /><br />Other authors have also restated this:<br /><br />"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." From Gurlyand's <i>Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov</i>, in <i>Teatr i iskusstvo</i> 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.<br /><br />"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." From <span class="new">S. Shchukin</span>, <i>Memoirs</i> (1911)<br /><br />This literary technique goes all the way back (and probably farther) to the Arabian Nights. Scheherazade tells her husband the story of the <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Three_Apples"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Three Apples</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>in order to keep him from cutting off her head (Don't those muslims show total reverence for women?). In the story, the apples function as a repetitive designation and foreshadowing technique.<br /><br />The best way this is done is by the introduction of a seemingly irrelevant prop. I can recall an example in the sitcom <span style="font-style: italic;">WKRP in Cincinnati</span>. At one point, during a bomb threat, the station DJs decide to broadcast from the transmitter rather than the repeater site in the office. Johnny trips over a tool box on the floor and spends the rest of the episode beating the hell out of it, kicking it around, etc.<br /><br />After the bomb goes off and wipes out the transmitter (fortunately while they are outside for a smoke break), they find out the next day that the bomb was hidden in a tool box-- which causes Johnny to sprint for the bathroom.<br /><br />Another example would be the color red in M. Shyamalan 's <span style="font-style: italic;">The 6th Sense</span>. If you watch carefully, any time there is a ghost on screen, the color red is featured somewhere within the frame. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> series is also <span style="font-style: italic;">rife</span> with the use of this technique, from characters you find later are defenders placed to protect and watch Harry, to one of the horcruxes itself, casually tossed away as trash when cleaning an old house.<br /><br />Andre Norton's example is rather extreme: an entire alien city is placed within the novel to serve as a plot point, and you <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> that whatever else the story will be about, at some point the main character is going to enter that city and find out what happened to the archeological crew.<br /><br />What actually happens is that the main character, a runaway slave, if memory serves, starts at one end of the magnificent city and <span style="font-style: italic;">walks completely through to the other side without incident</span>.<br /><br />Um. I think you <span style="font-style: italic;">forgot something, Andy!</span><br /><br />I recall being so bitterly disappointed with the resolution of this plot point that I haven't read an Andre Norton novel in twenty-six years as a result.<br /><br />Perhaps the best possible genre to elucidate the use of Chekov's Gun would be the mystery. It's usually not until the big reveal, when the detective has the suspects gathered in the study, that the insignificant little dust he noticed on the victim's clothing in passing turns out to be chalk dust, leading him to the inescapable conclusion that it couldn't be the teacher who was the murderer, since most classrooms use whiteboards, but most definitely is the sidewalk artist.<br /><br />Using a <span style="font-style: italic;">Chekov Gun </span>properly is an art form in and of itself. It's very easy to over stress your <span style="font-style: italic;">Gun</span>, making it stand out in the reader's mind. It's also easy to make it so subtle that it never clicks to the reader, so the reveal seems more like a tacked on afterthought than anything else.<br /><br />Here's my challenge to you: try and find a way to work a <span style="font-style: italic;">Gun</span> into your current work in progress. Properly applied <span style="font-style: italic;">Guns</span> really make the reader sit up and take notice. It gives them a sense of accomplishment, even if they didn't quite solve the riddle themselves. It can be described as a sort of "reverse MacGuffin" in that the apparently insignificant becomes the driving plot device.<br /><br />Maybe your <span style="font-style: italic;">Gun</span> will be a character who wanders in briefly, and turns out to be the main reason for the story. Maybe it'll be something completely different. Find a way. Make it fit.<br /><br />I think you will find that it enriches your storyline considerably.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-81373637260822903032010-04-05T09:00:00.002-04:002010-04-05T09:00:09.914-04:00Out of touch...Hi folks. This is just a little note to let you know that the week of April 5 through April 9 I will be fulfilling a military commitment and may not be able to blog.<br /><br />If you're seeing this message, it's because my internet access isn't consistent enough for me to get my posts up... or typing on my netbook has finally driven me batshit. Either way, regularly scheduled essays and fiction will resume on April 12 if not before.<br /><br />Take care. Try not to cause any natural disasters that may result in my needing to come drag your ass to safety. It's okay to pine for my presence until I return.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-74832924546604252702010-04-02T09:00:00.003-04:002010-04-02T19:15:21.885-04:00What Can You Do In Six Minutes?I want to shout out about a friend from Twitter who has a neat writing site called "<a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://sixminutestory.com/">Six Minute Story</a>." I haven't used it fully yet, since at the time I went there I actually didn't have six minutes, but I'm gearing up to use it every day next week while I'm drilling.<br /><br />Here's the premise: when you decide to write, you click on where it says "write" and a box opens up that offers you a hero, a villain, and a goal. A timer starts and you have six minutes to write the story. At the end, you can save it to the site and publish it, or keep it private.<br /><br />This is a neat idea. One of the main problems with writing, as I see it, is that I am more or less constantly writing <span style="font-style: italic;">non</span>-fiction. Sometimes I sit down to work on fiction and I'm stuck-- and then I start thinking about <span style="font-style: italic;">why</span> I'm stuck and the next thing you know I've kicked out another damn blog about writing-- but no actual writing.<br /><br />The only way to get good at writing fiction is to write it. Write it as often as you can. Ingest it wherever you can find it, stories, webcomics, novels, historical perspectives (which are mostly made up out of whole cloth by people who <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span> they know what happened). Assimilate all these methods and means of fiction and then hork out some of your own.<br /><br />Here's the best advice I can give: don't get attached to it. I've written stuff I thought was great and had people say it was flat, boring, and tasteless, sort of like Diet Coke. I've also written stuff I thought was dead dogshit and had people offer me publication and money for it.<br /><br />The more you write, the less attached you get to your individual words, and the more practice you get at fixing/adjusting/altering when things aren't quite the way you want them to be. It also helps you take critiques more easily. People are <span style="font-style: italic;">going</span> to criticize your work. David Eddings is one of my favorite authors and I have ripped him to <span style="font-style: italic;">shreds</span> for everything he published from 2003 to his death last year. Chris Bunch is another one I love, but there are a few of his series that flat out stink. David Drake is probably the nicest man I've ever met, but I can't get through all of his writing. Some shines like a star, and some glitters like talcum powder.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And that's okay!</span><br /><br />None of those writers were writing for me, personally. I'm glad that some of their books resonate within me and take me to places I'd never see on my own, but not everyone is going to do that.<br /><br />You're going to be criticized. Get used to it. Don't hide your stuff away. Get it out there where people can see it and comment on it and make it more gooder.<br /><br /><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://sixminutestory.com/">Six Minute Story</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>can help with all of that. It'll get you actively writing, and it'll get you a place where your writing can be read and commented on. Ask for criticism. <span style="font-style: italic;">Beg</span> for criticism. Every time someone tells me, "I couldn't connect with that character." or "You spend too much time telling without showing us," my writing gets better.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-6881569233301251432010-04-01T20:18:00.014-04:002010-04-02T01:31:05.164-04:00Essay: Paranormal Vs. UndeadMy prediction for the match: paranormal by technical fall in the first round.<br /><br />Today I want to talk to you a bit about something that's been aggravating me for some time. I get irritated over little things sometimes, but as an amateur ghost hunter I need to clear some things up.<br /><br />Yes, what we do is like <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/">TAPS</a>, except that we don't go to a commercial break every time someone trips and falls down. I mean, I love the show, but Jebus their editing is predictable. And why is it that I have recorded some 500 hours of audio and gotten two EVP in sixteen years, but those dudes get three or four in every show?<br /><br />I hear, particularly on Twitter and in authoring blogs, the wrong word attached to zombies, vampires, and other bad guys all the time and it irks me, like that naggling itch right before your big public speaking engagement.<br /><br />A physical body shambling around without a soul, consuming the flesh or blood of humans is <span style="font-style: italic;">undead</span>. They are not <span style="font-style: italic;">paranormal</span>. While there is a great deal of evidence for paranormal activity in the world, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">EVP</span></a> and some video and stills, there is absolutely <span style="font-style: italic;">zero</span> evidence that vampires exist. Zombies, the jury is still out on, given that they are a major tenet of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_Vodun"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Vodun</span></a>, and I have <span style="font-style: italic;">no</span> intention of starting off the Zombie Apocalypse just because I kicked the props out from their religion and pissed off a priestess. I'm way too damn close to New Orleans now to play that game.<br /><br />While we're on the subject, let me address something else that's been bugging me for a long time. Vampires are not sexy. Dead things rot. Rotting things stink. Vampires and leeches share a common trait: they chew through your skin and parasitically attach themselves to your bloodstream. If there's anything more disgusting than that I don't know what it might be, but I suspect it's in favor of Obama's health care policy.<br /><br />I don't have a clue why 45-year-old women line up to see movies about 17-year-old vampires. ("Oooh! He's <span style="font-style: italic;">thparklee!</span>") I think if it were a bunch of 45-year-old men lining up to see a 17-year-old girl take her shirt off you'd be calling the police. If Edward was 37 and slept with 17-year-old Bella we'd call it <span style="font-style: italic;">Lolita<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>and probably be disgusted, but 107--<span style="font-style: italic;">and dead</span>-- gets a free pass. I don't get that.<br /><br />I don't have a clue why Anne Rice's <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampire Chronicles</span> are supposed to be so erotic. There's no sex in the books I read at all. There's a lot of murder and bloodspatter, though, which I don't find sexy in any way. Laurell K. Hamilton's <span style="font-style: italic;">Anita Blake</span> books <span style="font-style: italic;">almost</span> got it right: vampires are weird humans subject to the same laws as the rest of us, so if they murder then they need to be executed.<br /><br />Great idea-- until the books degenerated into a full on whore-o-thon. Plot and character are abandoned in favor of penetration every thirty pages. While I'm not <span style="font-style: italic;">completely</span> against erotica in my vampire fiction, the name of the series is not <span style="font-style: italic;">Anita Blake, Vampire Whore</span>, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">Vampire HUNTER</span>.<br /><br />I actually have a point here; this isn't just a rant. Books about the paranormal are <span style="font-style: italic;">ghost stories</span>. Stories and writing of that nature are usually accompanied by little blood and guts and less sex. The stories are <span style="font-style: italic;">suspense</span>. Usually there is an accompanying <span style="font-style: italic;">mystery</span> as well. People read them to discover <span style="font-style: italic;">why</span> the ghost is there. Traditionally, ghosts are people who died leaving unfinished business or through great trauma. (Think of the dead in <span style="font-style: italic;">6th Sense</span>.)<br /><br />Zombie and most vampire stories are focused on <span style="font-style: italic;">horror</span>. Can there be anything more horrifying than an attack by the legitimate undead? You can't kill them. They don't stop, and they want to either eat you alive or make you dead enough to <span style="font-style: italic;">become one of them</span>. (By the way, the "romantic vampire" is now its own genre, so the "horror"--or as I call them: "real"-- vamps are now called <span style="font-style: italic;">nosferatu</span> tales.)<br /><br />Part of what makes it so awful is the thought that your mom might actually still be trapped in that rotting body, consumed by a maddening hunger for flesh your flesh anyone's flesh I must<span style="font-style: italic;">EAT!</span><br /><br />As <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Shaun </span></a>says, "She's not an evil monster! She's my mum!"<br /><br />The problem is, <span style="font-style: italic;">horror </span>is what happens when you've seen the decapitated body, or the severed hand flops in your face and you recognize what it is, or the figure turns around and you recognize what it is in a shivering eyeblink that rips your sanity away in one taloned stroke.<br /><br />From <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_and_terror">Wikipedia</a>: "<b>Horror</b> is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs <i>after</i> something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced."<br /><br />These are two entirely different aspects of fear. <span style="font-style: italic;">Dread</span> was wonderfully described in Orson Scott Card's book of short stories <span style="font-style: italic;">Maps in a Mirror</span>. Card said, "Dread is the <span style="font-style: italic;">anticipation</span> of fear. It's knowing what is about to happen and being powerless to stop it. It's the realization that the oncoming headlights are in your lane. It's hearing a sound downstairs when you know you're home alone and the doors are locked."<br /><br />The funny thing is that <span style="font-style: italic;">dread</span> is a lot sexier than <span style="font-style: italic;">horror</span>. Ladies, remember that first tentative touch under your bra? You felt the fingers stealing slowly up under that shirt, and you dreaded it but at the same time you yearned for it. What if he thought they were too small? What if he thought they were too big, or (shame) thought you were some kind of easy?<br /><br />Just like I was dreading that you would let me continue and silently pleading for it at the same time. What if it wasn't good? What if I fumbled and embarrassed her or hurt her somehow?<br /><br />What if her dad walked in and beat the hell out of me?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dread</span> is sexy. Dread comes from anticipation. <span style="font-style: italic;">Horror</span> is not sexy. Horror comes from revulsion. Vampires and other walking corpses inspire disgust, not enticement.<br /><br />Stephen King's excellent book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Bag of Bones</span> may be one of the best works he's ever penned. Along with a touching story of love and way too much loss is a twisting ghost story with all the right elements. As a ghost hunter, I can tell you that many of the things we see (or think we see, being a skeptic) are there and gone in an eyeblink with little or no warning. A character in <span style="font-style: italic;">Bones</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>walks into his home late at night, sets his keys on the table and <span style="font-style: italic;">the sudden scream that split the air reverberated through the house!</span><br /><br />You soon learn to <span style="font-style: italic;">dread</span> turning the page. You are terrified that the next line will be the one to make you leap up and run to cower with your dogs.<br /><br />Can you sense the difference in these two aspects of literary bad guys? For one thing, ghosts are not usually bad folk at all. In some cases they serve as the MacGuffin, providing an impetus for the story to move forward. Consider Joseph, the murdered little boy from the George C. Scott movie <span style="font-style: italic;">The Changeling:</span> drowned in a bathtub and replaced with another little boy so his stepfather could manipulate his inheritance. Like any child, Joseph lashed out eventually, but the eeriness of the movie has nothing to do with spraying bodily fluids or severed limbs.<br /><br />Consider also the surreal terror and dread that was <span style="font-style: italic;">The Others</span>. (Good goddamn but Nicole Kidman is gorgeous!) There is no blood in that movie. No one even dies on screen.<br /><br />By contrast, vampires don't inspire dread. They inspire revulsion. The brutal attack of a nightwalker in <span style="font-style: italic;">Blade</span>; the fleshrend of teeth on skin in <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Underworld;</span></span> the repugnant slaughter of innocents on stage in <span style="font-style: italic;">Interview with a Vampire</span>-- these things don't make me dread them, they make me want to punch them in the teeth whether they sparkle or not.<br /><br />Vampire books have been done to death. Even if there actually was anything remotely sexy or erotic about them, it's a song that's been sung over and over and over again.<br /><br />According to psychology, vampires are supposed to be seen as sexual because a) they have power over lesser mortals, including, presumably, members of the opposite gender to the vampire, and b) they exist by exchange and ingestion of bodily fluids.<br /><br />Here's the challenge for you, folks: write a good <span style="font-style: italic;">ghost</span> story. Vampire love stories, lost in "endless night after erotic, evil night," have been written so many times that it makes my head hurt to contemplate. Try a ghost story where the ghost falls in love with a living person. Try a story where the living person falls in love with a ghost. Try a ghost story that scares people!<br /><br />Remember, ghosts are <span style="font-style: italic;">para</span> normal. "Para" is a word borrowed from Greek that means "to one side of." The paralegal in your office is an assistant to the lawyer. A para-educator works to one side of the teacher.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Para</span>normal means something that is just slightly outside the norm. Since no one knows where we go when we die (But it sure as hell isn't Forks, Washington.) ghosts and residual spirit energy are merely unexplored aspects of our known reality. Paranormal lies "outside the realm of what current science can explain." Ghosts and esp are dis-corporal examples of these phenomena.<br /><br />Before James Randi calls me up to scoff, let me say that 1,500 years ago a modern computer was inconceivable. Who knows what breakthroughs in dimensional science may be made in the next twenty years? Maybe on Tuesday scientists will discover that dead uncle Bob didn't go to heaven, he just went... over <span style="font-style: italic;">there</span>.<br /><br />Undead are physically dead corporal forms that behave as if alive. You can hit them. They can eat you.<br /><br />Vampires are undead. They probably smell like something dead, and they eat you to survive. They see you as meat. If you think that's sexy, then... well... I'm a little at a loss.<br /><br />Perhaps a picture will explain what my thousand words cannot:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDx2UrO6WntbaeYgQlPkjlHFYGmQapLu0fpJGwZLIGCWLP5Ki8poXXnWWM_rAf2iBLnChC-Tzb94ZNffJtBn9A2lcFFbGF1S9E2tOPVALnNeRA508cEKKa0zU7IGmWENB7olGGKYsUNzY/s1600/Twilight4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDx2UrO6WntbaeYgQlPkjlHFYGmQapLu0fpJGwZLIGCWLP5Ki8poXXnWWM_rAf2iBLnChC-Tzb94ZNffJtBn9A2lcFFbGF1S9E2tOPVALnNeRA508cEKKa0zU7IGmWENB7olGGKYsUNzY/s320/Twilight4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455358207257975906" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuPCqeZhnOfjUnfyos0bfeGJXyjidrgYpF0pNg-iv3EPZRoSmTNz3GmYD2uMgn4SwxSwTJXHGTRwuT-i5v5F0460Z-uAt8vqvzGiEtti_1kt-E9C2i2JPH1llxHYwioFernWyTEWCxIMY/s1600/twilight3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuPCqeZhnOfjUnfyos0bfeGJXyjidrgYpF0pNg-iv3EPZRoSmTNz3GmYD2uMgn4SwxSwTJXHGTRwuT-i5v5F0460Z-uAt8vqvzGiEtti_1kt-E9C2i2JPH1llxHYwioFernWyTEWCxIMY/s320/twilight3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455358195639478930" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6AkpM3c8pTpwQcE9mXxmXyzejVK3Tp1A8SY-E9AvAWH84DAoMj64mKro14wWuWq7ldRayt3f8u5GuSZClvwekvjRuOSsY1Vi-xfAr2CyWadrh7GZd3ddUroeuvhuAec2iqkglSTV_rk/s1600/twilight2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6AkpM3c8pTpwQcE9mXxmXyzejVK3Tp1A8SY-E9AvAWH84DAoMj64mKro14wWuWq7ldRayt3f8u5GuSZClvwekvjRuOSsY1Vi-xfAr2CyWadrh7GZd3ddUroeuvhuAec2iqkglSTV_rk/s320/twilight2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455358191377723618" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepZ1_QAi54RAmk60TiOjqKapxjWDbop-C3DCzjECZETnQQm3BMUmgxsLtZNbezbk35agGZCZcxwD_3KSmxW0XdamHwillGCQDWM9Sdxq0XVb22ELw6nXQqFbRmlKaGAFJfuoEOXoS5Hk/s1600/twilight1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepZ1_QAi54RAmk60TiOjqKapxjWDbop-C3DCzjECZETnQQm3BMUmgxsLtZNbezbk35agGZCZcxwD_3KSmxW0XdamHwillGCQDWM9Sdxq0XVb22ELw6nXQqFbRmlKaGAFJfuoEOXoS5Hk/s320/twilight1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455358189883937970" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Hate me yet?<br /><br />BTW: This has to be one of the most rambling and disconnected essays I've ever written and I'm sort of embarrassed about the lack of flow and rhythm. I had two really bad things happen to me yesterday: my house was broken into and a laptop with my personal credit information was stolen, and at the same time I discovered that my renter's brother was hit by an IED in Afghanistan that was set by one of those animals we're trying to exterminate. He lost three fingers and both legs are shattered. The legs are expected to recover, but the fingers are gone, obviously.<br /><br />I hope the person that set that IED and the person that stole the laptop meet in their own circle of Hell... and there's a real fucking vampire around.<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-14856392108335671592010-03-31T09:00:00.006-04:002010-03-31T09:00:10.673-04:00Author's Comments: Unbounded RageI don't usually explain my writing in an author's comment-- I feel that it should stand on its own, but this one does need a little backstory.<br /><br />What you're reading in "Unbounded Rage" is actually a character description. I originally wrote this in 2008 as the prelude to a <span style="font-style: italic;">Dungeons and Dragons </span>3ed campaign that a friend of mine was running. Davian Urthradar was my character, a member of a new class called <span style="font-style: italic;">sorcerer</span> that may be the only thing the writers have gotten right in the DnD settings since they left behind all pretense of tabletop gaming and made the world's first role playing game with a fucking <span style="font-style: italic;">physics engine!</span><br /><br />You'll have to pardon me. I started playing DnD when I was six years old and recovering from a broken knee. That was in 1980. I watched the game improve in 2nd edition, and expand mightily with the dozens of sourcebooks that offered new rules and even new ways to develop your characters.<br /><br />Then I saw TSR get sold out to the assclowns at <span style="font-style: italic;">Wizards of the Coast</span>, inventors of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Magic: The Gathering</span> game. From there, the game has gone straight downhill. Worse than that, WotC has gone on to purchase every RPG they could get their hands on and convert them all to their overly complex d20 system. The original <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span> RPG once had the simplest rolling system ever devised-- and the rest was in your imagination.<br /><br />WotC has largely forgotten (if, indeed, they ever knew) that RPGs are about imagination. You don't <span style="font-style: italic;">need</span> 400 skills for each character to roll. What you need is the imagination to play out the scenarios rather than simply rolling dice. When you add a mathematical percentage to everything, what you get is a tabletop video game. It leads to fewer arguments of the "But I critical hit that ancient wyrm red dragon! He's dead in one blow!" variety, but it also depletes the splendor of the game.<br /><br />Having bolted along that tangent about as far as I want to for today, I want to return to "Unbounded Rage." Sorcerers use the same spells as regular mages in AD&D 3ed, but they create the magic spontaneously. Xykon, undead lich of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Order of the Stick</span> webcomic (See the link to the right) is one of my favorite examples of a sorcerer.<br /><br />I'm explaining this in order to tell you that sometimes the words are only part of the story. In the case of "Unbounded," the original draft scattered the words across the page, making it look more like a prose poem than a piece of general fantasy fiction. I wanted it to look almost as if you were in Davian's head, trying to make sense of his scattered, scarred memories and flashes of linkage between them.<br /><br />While I love Blogger, it does have some limitations. One of them is that it took my random scattering and arranged the lines neatly instead. The result of this is that I think much of the impact of the actual piece is now gone. Instead of a glimpse into a young man's questions of memory and self, you're instead left with a rather stale freeform poem with too many ellipses, most of which are in the wrong spots.<br /><br />Anyway, if this ever hits paper publication it'll be published the way God intended: free and without clothes (Like me!) or rules (Like Obama and Pelosi!). I may try to monkey with it and see if I can make it look something like it's supposed to look, but I don't want to completely bork it, so we'll see what happens.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-29904249756924276072010-03-30T09:00:00.007-04:002010-03-30T11:51:29.119-04:00Flash fiction: Unbounded RageBefore I do <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span> else here, I want to take a moment and thank you for dropping by.<br /><br />More than that, if you look to the lower right corner of this site you should see a series of links to people who are following me. You're already giving me the precious gift of your time and energy to be here reading this, but if I may plead for just a little bit more, please take a moment and investigate those followers as well. Most of them are better writers than I am by far, and each of them has something important and wonderful to share with you, whether it's a story, a tip, or something else.<br /><br />Thanks for your time.<br /><br />CR.<br /><br />*****<br /><br />Yesterday's writing prompt was: "<span class="status-body"><span class="status-content"><span class="entry-content">Consider a person who has lost their memory. How do you show this to the reader? Try to do it from the eyes of the person with the missing memory.</span></span></span>"<br /><span class="status-body"><span class="status-content"><span class="entry-content"></span></span></span>+++++<br /><br />Flashes...<br /><br />...of memory...<br /><br /> ...things I...<br /><br />...can barely see...<br /><br />...father... drunk (again)...<br /><br /> ...no, father... I'm like...<br /><br /> ...the others...<br /><br /> ...not really different...<br /><br /> ...you'll see... someday...<br /><br /> ...mother... at her funeral... sleeping, looks like she's sleeping...<br /><br />...bruises don't show...<br /><br /> ...other children...<br /><br /> ...I begged them to...<br /><br /> ...stop...<br /><br /> ...STOP...<br /><br /> ...<span style="font-style: italic;">STOP!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span>...town... smoke... screams... crying...<br /><br /> ...she was different...<br /><br /> ...she made the fear go away...<br /><br /> ...her... my ring... why couldn't I...<br /><br /> ...control this?<br /><br /> (The ring!)<br /><br /> ...where is she?<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">...I don't know what it means!</span><br /><br />My name... is Davian Urthradar.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span><br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-12563215796385378062010-03-29T09:00:00.006-04:002010-04-03T13:34:57.578-04:00Essay: Literally Wrong!People, please remove the word "literally" from your lexicon.<br /><br />Overheard in a shopping mall yesterday (from a woman in her 30's, no less!), "My mom is literally a bitch!"<br /><br />A radio program I listened to over the weekend had a caller say, "They literally took my head off!"<br /><br />From a book: "He literally exploded in fury."<br /><br />Unfortunately for these users, the word literally isn't what they think it is:<br /><br /><div class="pbk"> <h2 class="me">lit·er·al·ly</h2><span class="pronset"><span class="show_ipapr" style="display: none;"><span class="prondelim">/</span><span class="pron">ˈlɪt<img class="luna-Img" src="http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png" alt="" border="0" />ər<img class="luna-Img" src="http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png" alt="" border="0" />ə<img class="luna-Img" src="http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png" alt="" border="0" />li</span><span class="prondelim">/</span> <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/help/luna/IPA_pron_key.html" target="_blank"><img class="luna-Img" src="http://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif" onmouseover="swapLunaImage('default', this);" onmouseout="swapLunaImage('selected', this);" border="0" /></a> <span class="pron_toggle" style="display: inline;"><a class="pronlink" onclick="javascript:show_sp()" onmouseout="status='';return true;" onmouseover="status='Click to toggle pronunciation';return true;" alt="Toggle for Spelled" title="Click to show spelled">Show Spelled</a></span></span><span class="show_spellpr" style="display: inline;"><span class="prondelim">[</span><span class="pron"><span class="boldface">lit</span>-er-<span class="ital-inline">uh</span>-lee</span><span class="prondelim">]</span><span class="pron_toggle" style="display: inline;"></span></span></span><span class="pg"> –adverb</span><div class="luna-Ent"><span class="dnindex">1.</span> in the literal or strict sense: <span style="font-style: italic;" class="ital-inline">What does the word </span><span style="font-style: italic;" class="ital-inline">literally </span><span style="font-style: italic;" class="ital-inline">mean ? </span></div> <div class="luna-Ent"><span class="dnindex">2.</span> in a literal manner; word for word: <span class="ital-inline">to translate literally. </span></div> <div class="luna-Ent"><span class="dnindex">3.</span> actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy: <span class="ital-inline"><span style="font-style: italic;">The city was literally destroyed.</span> </span></div> <div class="luna-Ent"><span class="dnindex">4.</span> in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually. </div> </div><div class="body"> </div><br />In other words, the mall shopper's mother must literally be a female canid still within breeding age, a zombie decontamination team must be sent to the home of the male radio caller, and the next scene in the described book should probably involve a mop and bucket for cleanup.<br /><br />As authors, it's our responsibility to walk a certain line. On the one side, we have what is called <span style="font-style: italic;">colloquial usage.</span> Twenty years ago "Google" was something babies said. It was not a verb and it was not a noun. Today, Google is the most successful search engine on the web, and we use the term to describe searching for anything from directions to adult movies.<br /><br />On the other side of that line is traditional English. The language has changed a lot in the last few hundred years, and it further evolves every day. However, when we drive the colloquialism bus too close the guard rail, we risk a drop that will <span style="font-style: italic;">literally</span> turn readers away from our writing.<br /><br />In my country there is a certain class of people who tend to use incorrect grammar in speech. These people, usually with the best of intentions and <span style="font-style: italic;">not necessarily</span> due to any lack of intelligence or education on their part, can't put a subject and predicate together to save their lives.<br /><br />"I don't got no money."<br /><br />"I seen it."<br /><br />And so forth.<br /><br />This essay isn't an indictment of those people. In some cases I've read brilliant, <span style="font-style: italic;">brilliant</span>, writing from students who speak as if their mouths are full of sand paper and real English hurts them. They obviously <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> how the language connects together, but they choose not to use it verbally for some reason.<br /><br />Actually, the reason is that the people around them speak in that manner, and so do they.<br /><br />Before you tell me I'm on some kind of moral high horse (or make an asinine indictment of racism against me), I want to point out that very few of us use the third person indefinite pronoun "one" to indicate themselves in normal conversation, as in, "One feels that Mr. Rivan is, perhaps, the finest example of manflesh in North Carolina."<br /><br />Nor do we refer to ourselves in the third person as used to be required for formal essays way back in the day (1990) when I was taking AP English: "This author agrees that Mr. Rivan is a quite tasty dish."<br /><br />In other words, the way we <span style="font-style: italic;">speak</span> is not necessarily the way we <span style="font-style: italic;">write</span>.<br /><br />In the case of non-fiction, this isn't an issue. As you can see from these essays, my non-fiction is written to be a conversation between myself and the individual reader. (Your fly is down, by the way.) I keep a fairly informal tone, and I sometimes step aside for humor or other reasons tangential to the discussion (How many of you realized that I was alluding to <span style="font-style: italic;">To Serve Man</span> rather than commenting on how attractive I am in the above quotations? Guess what? You were wrong! I'm a hot biscuit!)<br /><br />When we write fiction, however, we're sometimes locked into tighter roles than in non-fiction. In dialogue, I have no problem with poor grammar, or even spelling in most cases. Sometimes this even works for exposition. Much of the charm of <span style="font-style: italic;">Huckleberry Finn</span> came from Huck's mangling of the English language that still painted such a vivid picture of words. (It's a shame that such a wonderful piece of anti-racist writing could be twisted by race baiters with an agenda and used as a propaganda piece for them. Anyone, and I mean <span style="font-style: italic;">anyone</span>, that has read that book and claims it is racist obviously lied when they were asked if they read it. The whole damn book is about how Huck stops seeing "Nigger Jim" as a slave and instead starts to see him as "<span style="font-style: italic;">Person</span> Jim.")<br /><br />Remember what I said about non-fiction digressing tangentially?<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Sten</span> series by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch has a character who speaks with a Scottish accent. Although this is one of my all-time favorite series of books, Alex Kilgore <span style="font-style: italic;">drives me crazy!</span><br /><br />There are at least four points in the eight novels where Alex is talking about something, and punching through his damn accent is so unwieldy that I just turn the page and go on. In this case, the dialectal conventions the author chose to use <span style="font-style: italic;">hinder</span> the story.<br /><br />You must keep this in mind. The word <span style="font-style: italic;">literally</span> gets on my nipples because it doesn't mean what people think it does. (Sort of like the Facebook dingbat that called me <span style="font-style: italic;">redundant</span> when she meant <span style="font-style: italic;">ironic</span>.) The word they are actually trying to use is <span style="font-style: italic;">figuratively</span>. Unfortunately, they are seeking emphasis, and 'figuratively' seems to de-emphasize their point rather than strengthen it.<br /><br />I might write such phraseology into dialog, but I would <span style="font-style: italic;">literally never</span> intentionally or willingly write it into prose or exposition.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/">http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-77835074518283111552010-03-26T11:10:00.007-04:002010-03-27T16:12:18.874-04:00Essay: On PunctuationKatie Weiland, who is fast becoming one of my favorite people (if for no other reason than because she actually seems to understand my warped sense of humor) has a fantastic <a href="http://wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com/2010/03/do-you-know-how-to-use-emphasis-in-your.html"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">video blog</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span>about the use of emphasis in your writing.<br /><br />There are three reasons you should rundon'twalk to check it out. First, Katie knows her craft, with some six or eight published novels in a broad spectrum of fiction. Second, grammar, spelling, and punctuation are the tools we need to master to make our writing better, and c) Katie is a very pretty girl, and if you won't take two minutes to look at a pretty girl who wants to make you a better writer then I question your sexuality. (Gender is irrelevant in this case... because I'm being a wise ass.)<br /><br />In the comments Katie and I had a little discussion about what a professor I had in college called "Alphabetic Kudzu." <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu">Kudzu </a>is a plant that grows around trees and stifles them, sometimes growing so thick that it chokes out all the nutrients in the soil.<br /><br />Here's an example. You tell me which passage is more powerful.<br /><br />"With a snap of his fingers, Rincewind released a spell that arced across the field and detonated on the wall."<br /><br />"With a snap of his fingers, Rincewind released a spell!!!" It arced across the field and detonated on the <span style="font-style: italic;">wall!!!</span>"<br /><br />Although the two phrases are virtually identical, one carries a lot more weight to the reader because it is easier to get through on a visual level. An exclamation point has no meaning in and of itself. It must be placed in context to achieve meaning. Multiple exclamation points do not increase this meaning they detract from it.<br /><br />Another technique that sometimes gets away from people is the use of the comma splice. A comma splice occurs when you have two sentences that should be separated by a period (or semi colon) but are instead separated by a comma.<br /><br />Here's an example from the above passage: <span style="font-style: italic;">An exclamation point has no meaning in and of itself, it must be placed in context to achieve meaning.</span><br /><br />I specifically mentioned that passage because I have a tendency to use comma splices. I catch one or two on <span style="font-style: italic;">every </span>read through of <span style="font-style: italic;">every </span>thing I write. Pisses me off, but apparently that's the way my internal monologue speaks.<br /><br />Remember that the purpose to grammar, punctuation, and spelling is to be <span style="font-style: italic;">invisible</span> to the reader. Just as the camera is not visible when you're watching a movie (unless you look closely and see it reflected in C3PO's metal skin-- Lucas, I love you but you're a dumbass), the mechanics of writing should also be hidden from the reader.<br /><br />Punctuation and spelling mistakes, in particular, jar the reader out of the smooth flow of information from page to brain. They make the reader pause and think, "Huh?" When that happens, generally there is a second or two-- which usually equates to a paragraph or more for faster readers-- that the reader is thinking of something <span style="font-style: italic;">other</span> than the story.<br /><br />There are times when this rule is not always applicable. For example, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dune</span> Frank Herbert uses phrases like this: "Paul rolled to his feet, raised the crysknife."<br /><br />Grammatically, this is not correct. The subjunctive clause "raised the crysknife" needs another subject and should be its own sentence. At the very least, there should be a <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_conjunction">grammatical conjunction </a>between the sentences to make a single compound sentence.<br /><br />So why do it that way, and why did editors allow it?<br /><br />Simple. As you can tell from that simple sentence, Herbert was writing an action scene. While I'm a dedicated anal-retentive when it comes to punctuation and spelling, I intentionally misuse grammar to make a point <span style="font-style: italic;">all the time</span>. I use that exact technique in fight sequences more or less consistently as a device to demonstrate how people think while they are in a life and death situation.<br /><br />Most people don't realize how thoughts flow in combat. Sometimes there are periods of "no-mind." These are scary, because you're usually just reacting by instinct with no reason whatsoever.<br /><br />When you <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> capable of thought, it's usually twisted, shadowdark humor that would make a normal person cringe, or it's flashes of sentences and concepts. By eliminating conjunctions and other "kudzu" from the action words, we can get right to the essence: "I threw myself flat, sword whipping away, fireball flashburning my hair."<br /><br />This is a bit longer post than usual on a Friday, but I didn't blog yesterday because I was super-hella-mega busy.<br /><br />Now that you've read this, I want you to take a look at a book written by a friend of mine. Niki Morock is the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Perfect Circle</span>, a book about paranormal experiences. The book is fiction, but the experiences have actually happened to her. Next month she will be at a book signing on April 8th. (I'll post more information as we get closer.)<br /><br />Niki is a great person and a wonderful writer, so please check out her book by clicking on the picture below:<br /><img src="file:///H:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Derek%20Wade/Desktop/320_7907811.jpg" alt="" /><br /><img src="file:///H:/DOCUME%7E1/DEREKW%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.png" alt="" /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-perfect-circle/6032194?productTrackingContext=search_browse_right_secondary_search"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 121px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQU5SdI8LIFQ00uaTI_YkdoJksGDi7XiZ73v_MuRZqY6mcccoQAeMmgFaojP9d-7LFiZdUnvc3l34ugHbBcgfVNELof8lmr0cyjkkpNAZ2Qi0CoHq_2dvMej1dv0mCYedtEs156JAOWM/s320/320_7907811.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5452968661070618802" border="0" /></a>Write on!<br /><br />*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/"><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-53136519859406779542010-03-24T18:10:00.010-04:002010-03-26T10:53:49.710-04:00Essay: Keepin' it realWhen we think of fantasy fiction, we usually think of action sequences combined with long-range quests... lots of horseback and camping and seeking the MacGuffin or the bad guys or running like hell from evil or something.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I have to admit some private astonishment that many action scenes are... boring. There is a rhythm and a rhyme to writing good action. I've been fortunate in that my action sequences, particularly fight scenes, usually receive highly positive comments and reviews.<br /><br />I think part of this is due to my background in competitive martial arts and athletics. All you mommies that want to take sports away from your kids might consider that each experience you deprive him of is one less experience that he will eventually be able to describe.<br /><br />One thing I've commented on before is that most authors honestly don't have any idea what it's like to be punched, kicked, or hit with something. In <span style="font-style: italic;">Battlefield Earth</span> Johnny is struck in the head by a piece of metal thrown by a psychlo warrior. The object is thrown with enough force to leave fragments of superdense metal embedded in the <span style="font-style: italic;">interior</span> of his skull.<br /><br />Yet Johnny manages to pull himself to his feet, fight back, and accomplish his mission. I'm sure that I'm not the only concussion survivor to read that scene and think, "Horse Pucky!"<br /><br />Part of the problem is that author L. Ron Hubbard was much better at creating asinine false religions than he was at understanding the workings of the human body (Really. Alien ghosts make us feel bad, Mr. Cruise. Are you sure it's not your lame-ass movies?)<br /><br />Human joints only bend in certain directions. This is the secret behind joint manipulation martial arts like Aikido and Jujitsu. No one resists <span style="font-style: italic;">nikyo </span>any more than they expect the Spanish Inquisition.<br /><br />A human being can only absorb so much damage before experiencing what Dungeons and Dragons referred to as "System shock." This is basically a trauma so massive that it causes the brain to black out in response.<br /><br />In 1992 I broke my arm. Three months later, two days after getting the cast off, I was in a biking accident and broke it again. The second break did so much damage that I blacked out. In D&D terminology I failed my system shock roll. (Yes, I'm a nerd. Get used to it now because if I could find a damn gaming group here in North Carolina I'd still be playing D&D. If you have a group, send me an <a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">email</span></a>. I'm in Raleigh/Durham.)<br /><br />These little bits are important to understand when we construct a fight scene. Yes, our heroes are larger than life. Johnny was able to force himself to remain awake and fight back (although somewhat improbably) because he is "da man." He is literally the reason the story was written, and it's possible for us to believe that if the damage he incurred had severed one more brain cell, or if he'd lost three more ounces of blood...<br /><br />However, we need to consider the alternative view as well. When I read <span style="font-style: italic;">Earth </span>I was less than pleased because it was obvious to me that Hubbard had no idea what he was talking about when it came to massive brain trauma. This is the number one killer of Americans in vehicle and biking accidents and falls. Fractured skulls generally kill you within minutes.<br /><br />To continue putting this in perspective, I'd like you to realize that three years ago I was substitute teaching in an 8th grade class that was assigned to watch the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Clash of the Titans</span>. I made an error in timing and shut down the DVD player about ten minutes early. While I was waiting for it to boot up again I fell back on my <a href="http://www.sos.net/%7Edonclark/hrd/bloom.html"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bloom's Taxonomy </span></a>and asked a couple of redirection questions of the class to keep them focused. The second question I asked was, "What have we learned here?"<br /><br />A very bright young lady in the third row said, "<span style="font-style: italic;">Anyone </span>can be a hero if the gods give you a magic shield, magic sword, magic helmet, flying horse, and a robot owl that knows everything."<br /><br />Um.<br /><br />I'd like you to keep this in mind when you think about your own fiction. After all, it's very easy to make your heroes superhuman. It's very attractive to load them down with advantages that we don't have. Think about Superman. Nice guy though he is, where's the drama and the suspense in one of his comics? I certainly don't see any. Superman can walk slowly into a jewelry store holdup, ignoring the effects of automatic weapons fire directed at him, grab the bad guys by the neck, and wander just as slowly back outside to the assembled police cars.<br /><br />In fact, the only thing that stops him is chunks of what must have been the biggest damn planet in the universe, considering that the bad guys manage to find a piece of it in every frickin' episode.<br /><br />Now think about Daredevil, the "Man Without Fear." Double D (not to be confused with my high school girlfriend), was flippin' <span style="font-style: italic;">blind</span>. Yes, he could hear heartbeats, but the man couldn't <span style="font-style: italic;">see!</span><br /><br />In this case, the authors gave a pretty serious handicap to our hero, for all that they compensated him with some other gifts.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> the heroes are given powers and gifts "as of a native of this world." What they are <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> given is immortality, invulnerability, or even any idea what the hell is in store for them. While Steve can cast spells that turn enemies to stone, and Dave can literally sneak up on sleeping horses and examine their hooves for injury without waking them, every action, even the slightest one, risks injury and even death. David ends up with broken ribs. Steve ends up with a concussion. They each run in absolute mortal terror from the same things that would scare the fur off of us (Like a fifty-foot lizard horking a fireball in your direction.)<br /><br />The best stories are about people in conflict, fighting to overcome the odds. There is a scene I will never forget from the mini-series <span style="font-style: italic;">V.</span> A lone woman, on crutches in fact, stands with nothing more than a pistol against an alien fighter on a strafing run. Around her are dead and dying. She's a doctor, who refuses to fight, but she picks up the gun and, holding it inexpertly, stands firm while the fighter locks in on her and blaster fire creeps closer.<br /><br />The tears on her cheeks are not of fear or even sadness, but of anger, and as each round snapcracks out of the gun the recoil seems to set her teeth even further in determination.<br /><br />I was <span style="font-style: italic;">ten</span> when I saw that mini series, and I have never forgotten that dramatic act of bravery. I hope like hell that if aliens ever invade my planet I'll have the <span style="font-style: italic;">cojones</span> to stand there and empty a magazine at them. One woman, against an interplanetary attack craft piloted by an advanced civilization?<br /><br />A less obscure example is the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars<span style="font-style: italic;">: Episode 1 A New Hope</span></span>. As Luke begins his final run into the Death Star trench, Wedge (We've talked about Wedge <a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/03/essay-organizational-software-for.html">before</a>.) is hit in the forward stabilizer and starts to lose control of his X-Wing. He pulls out, leaving Luke and Biggs Darklighter (Luke's friend from Tattooine, who is barely mentioned in the original movie, but actually has a considerable backstory.) by themselves.<br /><br />A few seconds later, Vader takes out Biggs and then hits R2D2 on the back of Luke's fighter, leaving him completely alone.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This</span> is drama. <span style="font-style: italic;">This</span> is "man against the world." Luke Skywalker is attacking a space station the size of a small moon, in a tactically poor position (with three enemy fighters on his six) <span style="font-style: italic;">by himself!</span><br /><br />His only advantage is a dead guy he knew for about a day and a half telling him to use some wacky-ass mystical power he's never tried to channel.<br /><br />My favorite author, Terry Pratchett, says, "Million to one chances succeed nine times out of ten." I think, for real action and suspense, you look to your action scene to be something like a <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orange,_10-sided_die.jpg"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">ten-sided die</span></a>. (I told you I play D&D.)<br /><br />If you roll that die 100 times, in 90% of the rolls your main characters should fail-- and fail badly, with real consequences like death, maiming, or serious loss (of battle, freedom, loved one, etc.) Your action scene is about that one time out of ten when they beat the odds.<br /><br />By the way, today's blog was written using Dr. Wicked's online "<a href="http://writeordie.drwicked.com/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Write or Die</span></a>." 1402 words in 35 minutes, not too shabby. Check it out!<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/"><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a><br /></p>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-10331829212854312582010-03-23T09:20:00.001-04:002010-03-26T10:55:15.131-04:00Author's Comments: Calling HomeFirst I want to give a little shout out to Jon Strother of <a href="http://www.jmstrother.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Mad Utopia</span></a>. Jon's put together a really cool idea called the <span style="font-style: italic;">Friday Flash</span>. This is a list of online stories that authors post links to on his web site. Every Friday these examples of short fiction are released on a flash list, which you can find on twitter and other places by searching for"#fridayflash."<br /><br />Last week my horror story <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/2010/03/response-to-writing-prompt-315.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Awakening</span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span> </span>was my debut contribution. It was written in response to the writing prompt I tweeted last Monday.<br /><br />Every Monday there's a writing prompt, and every Tuesday I'm posting my response to it. Yesterday's prompt was: <span class="status-body"><span class="status-content"><span class="entry-content">"Examine the cliche of a soldier who fled from battle. Does he redeem himself or punish himself or...</span></span></span>"<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Calling Home</span> is the story of a survivor, a man who made it through combat without a scratch-- that shows.<br /><br />Every battle has a story like this. Every war has a tale of woe and dread. It doesn't make war unforgivable, as some people suggest, because there are times when societies, like people, have to defend themselves.<br /><br />What is important to the author, though, when making a believable character, is to recognize that battle changes people. Whether it's a fistfight in a bar that turns ugly or an all out invasion of a planet, even the survivors die a little... or a lot.<br /><br />*****<br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><a href="http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/"><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="mailto:Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com">Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</a></p>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-15884969625002051272010-03-23T09:15:00.003-04:002010-03-26T10:55:20.290-04:00Flash fiction: Calling Home[COMM CHANNEL OPEN. ENCRYPTED – RED LINE]<p></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[1698.778.5454.DEC-TOAH]</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Mrs. Toah, this is Sergeant Rakir, Dondass Rakir, of the 21<sup>st</sup> Mobile Infantry Battalion. I can't see or hear you, even though this is vidphone. Golgotha is fourteen hundred light years from Earth, located in the <span style="font-style: normal;">[SECURITY INTERRUPTION] sector, </span>and what you're seeing is a recording that will take sixteen hours to get to you. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">Mrs. Toah, the Mobile Infantry regrets to inform you (<i>nice phrase means nothing</i>) that your son, Shtad was (<i>butchered</i>) killed in action (<i>it hurts mama</i>) on Golgotha.<i> </i>The Imperial shock troops from out of [SECURITY INTERRUPTION] hit us from behind. We held [SECURITY INTERRUPTION] for three days without resupply. The goddamn [SECURITY INTERRUPTION] but we had to wait for a lifter to get us out of there.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">I want you to know (<i>no i don't shut up!</i>) that Shtad didn't suffer. He was hit by a displacer round while covering (<i>my</i>) our retreat (<i>he was my man my boy shut up!</i>). He died (<i>screaming for you</i>) instantly. There were no final words (<i>mama! where are my legs? mama help me, godhelpme MAMAITHURTSSOMUCH!</i>) but he told me at chow the evening before that he was thinking of you. (<i>why wasn't it me? should havebeen should have beenmeshould havebeenme</i>)</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">We of the Federation Armed Forces (<i>don't run we never run i was so scared should have beenme</i>) would like to extend our deepest sympathy for your sacrifice (<i>her son my son my boys i left them i ran my boys</i>) to our planet in her hour of greatest need. (<i>left them me should havebeen me</i>) I would like to remind you that our war continues. I promise that Shtad (<i>screamed blood while i ran</i>) did not lay down his life (<i>for anything</i>) in vain.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">Unfortunately, [SECURITY INTERRUPTION] was dusted from orbit and his remains are (<i>glowing</i>) not recoverable. We are sorry for your (<i>my</i>) loss, Mrs. Toah. (<i>my boys</i>) </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">[TRANSMISSION ENDS]</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">[COMM CHANNEL OPEN. ENCRYPTED – RED LINE]</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">[1351.921.1584.DEC-LADROM]</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">Mr. LaDrom, this is Sergeant Dondass Rakir of the 21<sup>st</sup> Mobile Infantry Battalion. What you're seeing is a recording that will take sixteen hours to get to you. I can't see you or hear you...</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">*****<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</p>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-66064051205158418792010-03-22T19:09:00.001-04:002010-03-26T10:55:27.150-04:00Essay: Getting the Job DoneConsider the average 6th grader. She has spent most of her life writing on a tablet using a pen or pencil. By the time she graduates from her twelve years of school she will have used computers for writing projects in six or seven classes. Few teachers, especially in poorer areas of the country, require students to type more than one or two papers per quarter-- and usually only then after the prewriting and revision process is complete. Typically, rough drafts are done by hand on notebook paper, and finals are typed and printed.<br /><br />Our student is used to an analog method of communication. We have trained her to do this so well that when she is constrained by a computer she has invented her own writing technique and abbreviations: "R U gng 2 meet me @ hm?" She may doodle in the margins of her test papers and brainstorm with a bubble cloud.<br /><br />This sort of creative thinking is very difficult on a computer, if for no other reason than because we are largely constrained by the limits of our software. I can't, for example, easily attach a simple stick figure to the side of this blog to illustrate a point. I could draw it, scan it, and attach the picture by adding a bunch of extra steps-- but on notebook paper I could just jot it down.<br /><br />This limits the creativity of writing on the computer. Outside of specialized software, you can't develop a map for your fantasy fiction world, and it's difficult to brainstorm unless you use specific methods of doing so, such as stream of consciousness or word association methods.<br /><br />I'm not discounting the usefulness of the computer to writers. You're here because you did some kind of search on the web for "writing" or "fiction" or something of the kind, and whether that search brought you directly here or by roundabout path you arrived, you're now reading this. (And thanks for visiting, by the way.) However, it is much harder than most people realize to engage in a <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>creative process while sitting at the computer. Writing is not mere typing. Creative thinking is, as the word implies, the action of <span style="font-style: italic;">creating</span> something where there is nothing. This is not easy to do.<br /><br />Take non-fiction authoring, for contrast. Non-fiction is essentially nothing more than synthesizing information you've taken in from a myriad of sources and producing a synopsis or a rebuttal. While the actual writing may require some creativity in how you turn a phrase and how you present your argument, the facts rarely need to be reupholstered unless you're writing speeches for Obama and Pelosi, in which case you can pretty much write any "fact" you like with the understanding that they'll ignore it as soon as it becomes convenient to do so. (This makes twice that the "most transparent administration in history" has passed health care legislation against the wishes of 66% of the American people at midnight on a Saturday without having read the bill. Now do you understand why I am conservative?)<br /><br />This is why I am going to advocate doing something unusual here. Periodically, even the best and most prolific authors get writer's block. Continuous creation is not easy. However, I'd like to remind you what you used to do, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago.<br /><br />Get a spiral notebook and a pen. I'm partial to the <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/333648/Mead-Marble-Composition-Book-7-1/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Paper_Forms_Envelopes-_-333648&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=plusbox-beta&mr:trackingCode=ED4EDB1A-EC81-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA"></a><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.rapidsupplies.com/ampad26-251compositionbookgraphruled5x580sheetsgreencoveramp26251amp26-251.aspx">graph-paper</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span></span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/333648/Mead-Marble-Composition-Book-7-1/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Paper_Forms_Envelopes-_-333648&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=plusbox-beta&mr:trackingCode=ED4EDB1A-EC81-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA">composition </a>books, which allow for easy doodling. The second link provides an interesting style of book for those of you working on illustrated books or doing storyboarding; it's a sheet with graph paper on the top, and college ruled note paper on the bottom.<br /><br />For pens I prefer the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Precise-Retractable-Extra-Rolling/dp/B001E6A9M8"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">pilot precise V5</span></a>. Although I detest sharpening pencils, I don't like to write with mechanical pencils very much, so I use the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pentech-Triangle-Woodcase-Pencils-28150/dp/B000TUW9RI"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">pentech triangular pencils</span></a>, which are much more comfortable than round or octagonal pencils for extended use. If I am going to use a mechanical pencil, it must be .5mm or smaller and have a twist out eraser, since revision is going to chew hell out of it. The <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.greenlightoffice.com/office/stationery/819324820-pentel-twist-erase-qe415-automatic-pencil-0-5-mm-lead-size-green-barrel-1-each.html">pentel twist-erase QE415</a> is a good one for the money.<br /><br />Now go find someplace you can write. Notice that I didn't say "someplace without distractions" or "someplace quiet." I specifically <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> for distractions when I'm writing, particularly by hand. I don't drink coffee, but I'll happily sit in a Starbucks for two hours watching life wander by. Most of <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span> was written while sitting in a Shari's restaurant from 3am to 8am after working second shift. My notebooks are full of doodles and quick notes about passers-by who came in... like this description:<br /><br />"Black man with a broken walk. Deerstalker cap pulled low over gray eyebrows. Dirty pants hanging from coat hanger hips. Flannel flaps from wire shoulders. Exhaustion echoes from his sighs, and his cough hurts me too."<br /><br />There is nothing wrong with sitting at your computer and typing madly away, and if that's working for you then get down with your bad self. However, I think it's important to note that the best stories are about <span style="font-style: italic;">life</span> and how we live it<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>If you're not somewhere that life is visible, then how can you write about it?<br /><br />And if you're having trouble getting started, maybe all you need is to change your work space and try something a little different. Trust me, at 3am, the Waffle House is worth visiting for the entertainment value alone.<br /><br />Write on!<br /><br />*****<br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</p>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-22959340181685808902010-03-19T23:26:00.001-04:002010-03-26T10:55:33.337-04:00Link: Basic Plots<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sorry the blog is so late today, gentles. My middle school girls won a soccer game 5-1 and then I was a chaperon for their dance this evening. Interestingly enough, my responsibility as a chaperon is to prevent the identical behavior that I myself was desperately trying to engage in when I was their age.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I'm also still trying to balance out the blog here on some kind of regular schedule. My plan is to provide fiction examples on at least two days a week, Tuesdays will be a response to whatever the twittered writing prompt was on Monday, and later in the week will be an excerpt from <span style="font-style: italic;">Crossed Swords</span>.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Fridays I think I'm going to link to other writing information I've discovered throughout the week. </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Over at the IPL (Internet Public Library) there's a list of basic plots at which you might want to take a look. The link is <a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html">HERE</a>.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What I like the most about this particular link is that, with a little thought, we can use the plots in all manner of ways. Consider Simon Green's epic space opera <span style="font-style: italic;">Deathstalker</span>. At least six of the "20 Plots" list are used in that book. (With 1.5 million words in the series, I'm surprised he didn't hit <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> of them!)<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What if you took three basic plots and wove them together? Would that enrich your current project?<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To me, the question then becomes, "Can I pull this off without making it so complex that the reader needs a Valium and an aspirin to get through?" If the answer is yes, then there's a good chance it might add a nifty little twist in there.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Another idea, from the character development standpoint, is to use two different plots for two different characters at the same time. Consider the <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter </span>series. While Harry had a specific plotline in each book, as well as an overarching plot that encompassed the series, Snape had another plot that he was following. If we were to use the examples from the list, Harry would be following the "Quest" or "Crime Pursued by Vengeance," but Snape (without giving it away if you haven't read the final book) may be considered as following the "Self-sacrificing for an ideal (love)" or "All Sacrificed for Passion" or even "Obstacles to Love."<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To further understand character motivations I have sometimes written the same scene from the point of view of two or even more characters. The easiest way to do this is in first person, but third person works just as well if you're more comfortable with that. By doing this scene rewrite and explicitly following a different plot line with the second character, some surprising developments come to light.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This was supposed to be a simple link and somehow turned into a mini-essay, so I'll break it off here, but take a moment and see if some of your secondary characters (and the antagonist is usually one of them) could benefit with the addition of a plot line that specifically provides them a focus and raison d'etre.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Write on!</p><br />*****<br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com</p>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1940930479303713215.post-79745293377620690032010-03-18T10:43:00.002-04:002010-03-24T18:12:22.548-04:00Essay: Vocabulary is Important.Yesterday I was accosted by a madwoman. <p></p>Stick with me; this is relevant. I detest getting involved in online arguments. The problem is that I am very, very good at them, as well as very, very prickly on certain subjects on which I consider myself well-informed. I also don't take stupidity well.<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Let me define stupidity as I see it, which has nothing to do with the dictionary definition. To me, <i>ignorance</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is not knowing something. I am </span><i>ignorant</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> of particle physics. I am </span><i>ignorant</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> of the rules for curling. I am </span><i>ignorant</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> why women carry such gigantic-ass handbags and have six times more shoes than I do even though they have the same number of feet. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I am not </span><i>stupid</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Being stupid is </span><i>willful ignorance</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Stupid is </span><i>knowing a fact, but ignoring it and hoping that it goes away.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Stupid is also </span><i>having access to knowledge and information but refusing to use it</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This is why arguing on the Internet is a waste of time, by the way. Either you are right, which means you're probably me, or you are </span><i>wrong</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and if you are wrong, then it means that </span><i>you are wrong despite being connected to the largest repository of knowledge, information, and wisdom in the history of mankind!</i></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal;">That's just <i>lazy, </i>which is why I frickin' hate it. Stupid is a passionate defense of ignorance and it burns my nipples to deal with.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">As you can see, there is a special place in my heart for stupid. In the case of the maniac, I was on Facebook, which I also barely tolerate. (People, I don't give a thin shit about your damn farm. I'm on Facebook to stay in touch with my family, not to play your silly ass games. The Mafia is a blight on Americans of Italian descent, not a frickin' game! Sororities are literally sophomoric. Why you'd want to emulate the grossest forms of coed behavior is beyond my ken.) </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">A friend of mine had posted that he was waiting for his wife to come home. Since both he and his wife are friends of mine and both have a great sense of humor, I posted, “I prefer to simply wait for 'A' wife to come home. It takes less time.” </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">That's an obvious joke, if you happen to be stupid, which I know you are not. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Enter the madwoman, who accosted me, correcting my grammar to tell me, “No, he's waiting for THE wife to come home! He means HIS wife!” </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">My reply was, “I understand grammar. Do you understand humor? I'm not interested in your opinion of the jokes I tell my friends.” </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I told you that story to tell you this one: Her response to me was, “Well, since you decided to reply to me you obviously *DO* care about my opinion, so your post was redundant.”<br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Stop here. The rest of the argument ends with me excoriating her, particularly after she called me 'boy' while demanding that I show her proper respect(!), and my friend kicking her clean out of his friends list. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What I was leading up to was her incorrect use of the word “redundant.” </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">This silly ass story is my way of explaining why I choose to post a vocabulary word every single day on my <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" href="http://twitter.com/ChrisRivan">twitter</a> account. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Writing is sculpting with words. You must understand the use of every word you wish to commit to paper. Failure to do so results in blunders like the one she committed. Now, I didn't rub her nose in the fact that she was word-stupid; there were much better attributes of her character for me to assault, like her insistence on bleating out her opinion where it was neither needed nor wanted. Not everyone is a writer, even on an Internet that is 90% textual, so I don't go round correcting grammar and spelling very often, but I certainly notice incorrect word usage.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Redundant: </span><i>adj</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. 1: characterized by verbosity or </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>unnecessary repetition in expressing ideas</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What she was trying to go for was the word </span><i>ironic</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which most people confuse with </span><i>coincidental</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Irony: </span><i>n</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. 1: the use of words to </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">. (“How nice that you have to work all weekend.”) </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Coincidence: </span><i>n</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. 1: a striking </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">. (“Bob and Jamie were both listening to different stations when the same song came on and they started singing together.”) Much sarcasm is ironic. Very little is coincidental.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">There was no repetition to my expressing to her that I was not interested in her reply, however, her attempted point was slightly valid in that replying does, in fact, confer some kind of importance to the original post, making my response </span><i>ironic</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Her use of the wrong word makes her ignorant, but not necessarily incorrect.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I can clearly recall a series of books I read when I was a child by the amazing author of the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_brown"><i style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Encyclopedia Brown</i></a><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> </span>series by Donald J. Sobol. Along a similar vein to the </span><i>EB</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> works, Sobol also wrote a series of </span><i>2 Minute Mysteries</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Each of these were short fiction with a detective who was great at spotting hidden or slightly hidden clues. Rather than give them away, the answers were in the back of the book, (the </span><i>Encyclopedia Brown</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> series did things the same way).</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In one of the stories a man was impersonating a famous author, writing critic, and English professor who was coming in to a publisher to get a look at a new contract. Problem is, the author was supposed to be dead, so was this guy actually who he said he was? </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The author seated himself and asked, “May I have a moment to scan the contract?” After briefly looking over the document, he reached for a pen to sign, but the detective snarled, “You sign that, you leave here in cuffs!” </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Why? Turn to page 64 for the answer!</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Here, Mr. Sobol carefully explained another fallacy of the English language. No expert in the use of words like a professional author and English professor would ever misuse the word “scan” in this context.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Scan: </span><i>v.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> 1: to examine the particulars or points of </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>minutely</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">; </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>scrutinize</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The word that should have been used was </span><i>skim</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Skim: </span><i>v.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> 1: to read, study, consider, treat, etc., </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><u>in a superficial or cursory manner</u></span><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Now we enter the use of colloquial phrasings. If you check Dictionary.com, you'll discover that scan </span><i>does</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> mean “to read hastily.” Why? Because language changes, sometimes </span><i>drastically,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> over time. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Consider the use of the word “villain.” To us it means a horribly evil bad guy. To the people of Europe in 1275AD it meant, “villager.” There is a reason that both words start with “vill-”. They come from the same root word, like “diversity” and “divide.” (Do people understand now why I hate diversity training?)</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Sometimes it might be necessary to use a word incorrectly. I do it often when I work with my students, where I frequently tell them to make something “more gooder.” I use this as humor-- and to let them know that on occasion, when there is good enough reason (like making a funny!) you </span><i>can</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> break the rules. It also helps reinforce to my students how inane incorrect grammar actually sounds. Even though that is a joke, when you're in a serious conversation and you use a word incorrectly, you can sound just as silly.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Another example is when certain characters speak. If I were writing dialog for a rough tradesman in London at the turn of the 20</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> century, I wouldn't use language that made him out to sound like an Oxford professor. (Unless, of course, that was one of his inconsistencies-- the little unusual things about us that make us real. Perhaps an Oxford professor decided to stop teaching after a horrible question of competence and scandal and went to work down at the docks... maybe there's a story behind the story.)</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Another thing I try not to do is overuse words. Not only does this keep me away from cliches (mostly), but it also keeps my writing more fresher. (Hee, hee!)</span></p><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The following is an excerpt from the prologue to the </span><i>Crossed Swords</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> video game played by the characters. It's the story Lolyanni tells them of her world and their quest. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<i>Now the Artekkians worshipped the God Vaargus, who was desirous of dominion and <u>power</u> over the world. Vaargus gazed upon the <b>stone</b>, and his black heart leapt with joy, for he and he alone could see the lion’s shape within it, and he and he alone could feel the <u>power</u> that bringing forth such a shape would unearth. He took the <b>stone</b> in his hands and, with tools of human bone and the blood of thousands of sacrifices he twisted and shaped the jade into the semblance of a great maned cat.”</i></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In that paragraph, the word 'power' is used twice (underlined). That's about my limit in a single paragraph. I think if a word, particularly an attention grabber like 'power' is going to take place more than twice in three sentences then you need to break it up with a synonym like, “supremacy” (first use) or “might” (second use). Otherwise the word sort of sings out to the reader and hangs them up on the text. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">However, you also want to be careful that you don't go overboard. Terry Pratchett once said, “Cliches are the hammers and nails in the toolbox of literary convention.” Cliches exist for a </span><i>reason</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. They are metaphors that have been used frequently because they fit certain circumstances. Don't be afraid to use them when you need them, and don't go looking for a four dollar word when a penny parcel will do the job. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In the same clipping from XS above, look for the word “stone” (boldfaced). There's no real reason to go out looking for words like boulder, crag, crystal, gem, grain, gravel, jewel, masonry, metal, mineral, ore, pebble, rock, or stonework. While these are all good words, they don't really move the story along. Instead they would sound forced or contrived. The only synonym I used was the word </span><i>jade</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which kept me away from my three-use-in-a-paragraph limit and brings to mind a specific type of stone.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Are these hard and fast rules? Absolutely not. The only real rule is that any craftsman must be skilled with the use of his tools. I don't want to see a carpenter with band aids on his thumbs. I don't want to see a mechanic who drives a Yugo (unless that sumbitch is </span><i>pimped!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">). I definitely don't want to see a doctor who smokes or an obese nutritionist. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Here is what I do for my twitter account and the Writer's Word of the Day. First, I downloaded the incredibly practical and completely free Dictionary.com app from the Apple Store. Not only is this a fully functional dictionary and thesaurus with 500,000 words when it's </span><i>offline</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, but when it's connected to the Internet it automatically accesses the web site on lookup, giving you access to millions of words. It also offers a word of the day, but I don't use that one (for several reasons I won't go into here, although there's nothing wrong with it.) The groovycool thing about this particular app is that to get a random word you simply shake the device. If it's a word I already know, I usually skip it, but if it's a word that's obscure or interesting enough, I'll post it to my Twitter account. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So here's my challenge to you, writer friends. Are you smarter than a 6</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> Grader? When I taught 6</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> grade language arts, I went well beyond our required curriculum. I taught the spelling, definition, part of speech, and use in a meaningful sentence of five words, every day. All I challenge </span><i>you</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, author that you are, to do is learn </span><i>one</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> new word every day. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Concentrate on the proper meaning and the proper spelling, and focus on words that have bitten you before. For example, I can never remember how to spell “bureau,” and when you bitch about the Obama government as much as I do, you need to be able to whip out the word “bureaucracy” when you need it. (You also need to be able to spell “incompetent,” “inexperienced,” and “asshattery.”)</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">When I realized there was a red line under it every time I wrote it, I decided it was time to do something. I sat down with a pencil and piece of paper and wrote the word fifty times. Now I can spell it. Thank you, Miss Briscoe for making me do the same thing in second grade with antidisestablishmentarianism. Sometimes the old tricks work the best. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Or is that “bestest”?</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Write on!</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">*****<br />Christopher Rivan<br /><br />Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.<br />Reasonable rates for all budgets!<br /><br />http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com<br /><br /><br /></p><div align="center"><a href="http://www.hit-counts.com/"><img src="http://www.hit-counts.com/counter.php?t=3&digits=4&ic=0&cid=686888" alt="free html visitor counters" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.hit-counts.com/">hit counter</a></div>Christopher Rivanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17908525147481033462noreply@blogger.com2