Essay: Ideas out of Chaos.

The World Wide Web is a very strange place.

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 Girlz Gone Goofy or some crap.

Actually, the most scariest thing is that I just pulled the name "Girlz Gone Goofy" out of my ass just then-- and now I'm afraid to Google it. Somewhere out there is a website with that name, and someone out there is paying $19.99 a month to download whatever is on it.

So, you want to be an author, but you can't think of anything to write about? Are you frickin' serious?

The history of mankind is replete with borked up situations and compelling drama, if you only know where to look.

I'm going to give you just four short examples. You get to take those examples and run with them. Make them into something great.

1) The Battle of Rorke's Drift. 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.

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 Battle of Isandlwana and kept going, arrowing straight at the fort-- with 3,900 Zulu warriors, most of whom were in a Bad Mood.

I'll say that again. 139 defenders standing their ground against four thousand irate Zulu attackers.

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 Lord Chelmsford. Unfortunately, the reinforcing British saw the Zulu as little more than animals, and slaughtered the wounded and battle ready alike.

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 Starcraft 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 Starcraft again... Must finish blog...)

2) The Wagon Box Fight. 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 thirty-one 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.)

You can see examples of the Wagon Box Fight (and the next day's battle, the Hayfield Fight) 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.

Not everything is about combat and battles, though. Howzaboot we delve into the realm of mystery?

3) The Lead Masks Case. 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 lead masks. 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."

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.

All right, storyteller, why were they there? 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.)

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?"

We'll probably never know-- but since you're an author, I'll leave you to tell their story.

4) The Taman Shud Case. 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 Somerton Man.) 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.

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.

He not only had no identification on him, his clothing labels had been painstakingly removed. Throughout the month of December there were eight 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.

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 not the victim's, and therefore intended to lead the police astray.

It gets weirder. Inside a secret pocket 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 The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

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:

MRGOABABD

MLIAOI

MTBIMPANETP

MLIABOAIAQC

ITTMTSAMSTGAB.

You can see an actual picture of this HERE.

There were also two additional connections to other unexplained deaths in the area. I'll let you look them up, but they are the Mangnoson case and the Marshall case.

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...

Personally, I think the man conspired with Elvis to shoot JFK while exterminating the dinosaurs. He may also have been Kaspar Hauser.

In 2005, Stephen King published a book called Colorado Kid that has similarities to this case, which was also referenced in the novel Hill of Grace 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 end to one?

With a few minutes research on the web, it's possible to discover dozens of storylines like this. Best of all-- they are all true!

Leaving only one question out of many: How are you going to explain them?

Write On!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Picking the Right Name

As I was fumbling about on the web the other day it occurred to me that Shakespeare was wrong.

Now, this isn't something I generally say about the Bard, but he said "The play's the thing." I think that, perhaps, the name may be the thing.

Eddie Izzard happens to be one of my favorite comedians. He has a bit on the album Dressed to Kill where he discusses the 1950's rocker Arnold George Dorsey, better known by the name of the German composer he adopted: Englebert Humperdinck. His bit includes a "discussion" between Dorsey and his manager:

"But I like being Gerry Dorsey. It's a good name!"
"But you need a better one. How about Hinkleburt Slapdiback?"
"What? NO!"
"Satliborg Fistibuns?"
"NOO!"

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.

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 prologue to Counterattack.

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:

Sergeant Colon
Samuel Vimes
Captain Carrot
(Of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.)

Esmeralda "Grannie" Weatherwax
Gytha "Nanny" Ogg
(Of the Lancre Coven)

and of course:

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?)

Names change based on time periods as well as ethnicity and location. Consider Larry Niven's excellent work, A World Out of Time. 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.

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 own course through the stars, we discover that over two hundred years the name "Pierce" has changed somewhat to "Peerssa."

I'm sure it takes only a few moments to consider which genres each of the following names should be placed into:

Tynust
Vace Berakon
Ted Philson

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.

Vace Berakon almost has 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.

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.

Each of these names were generated randomly from the following sites:

Tynust - http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/fnames.cgi?d=checked&f=3 (Reload the site to generate new names.)

Vace Berakon - http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/ (This site also features a fantasy name generator, as well as some Star Wars and Star Trek name generation as well, if you're interested in writing fan fiction.)

Ted Philson - http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm (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!)

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.

I'll bet you end up using one or more of them down the road.

Write On!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: Why You SHOULD Use Real People as Characters

Making believable characters is a difficult process for any writer. In previous essays 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.

I am of the mind that the most realistic characters come from life. The four tightly-knit characters of Crossed Swords 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.

It was during this time that the inspiration for Crossed Swords 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.

Unfortunately, there's a certain Mary Sue 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).

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 honestly. 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.

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 consistently inconsistent. 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.)

Here are a couple of cliche' examples you've probably seen in your life:

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.

2) The parent who smokes/drinks/does drugs but tries to convince his kids these are bad habits.

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.

4) The bleach-blond bimbo gossiping that her friend is "two-faced and shallow."

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.

A few months ago I found a copy of Fantastic Realms: How to Draw Fantasy Characters, Creatures, and Settings 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.

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 hell of a lot harder to draw (or create a character) from scratch than it is to create one from a model.

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 Oasis from Sluggy Freelance and backgrounds and some characters from Pawn (Warning! Adult themes and artwork. May be NSFW!) However, to just sit down and say, "I think I'll draw a goblin..."

...Let's just say I'm not that good and leave it at that.

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 String Theory and M Theory: a Modern Introduction? (No kidding. I actually saw this!) Why does the painted Barbie-Bimbo in the mall carry a camera with her wherever she goes?

In another essay 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 not bailing your ass out of jail!) Try and find one or more things that are directly observable and contradictory 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.

After you've observed these visual inconsistencies and written them down, write a brief backstory to explain them. Think deep. For example:

The business suit/Spidey belt could be a salesman who just likes comics and has to dress professionally.

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 every day. However, those ties ran a gamut from Marvin the Martian 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.

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?

The $50 pedicure on dirty feet could be a lady who was out working in her yard and had to run a quick errand before taking a shower.

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.

Which one makes a better character in a story about a group of students trying to survive life in a dysfunctional high school?

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.
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 Big. 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.

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?

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 Mona Lisa ever walked around with a smirk, but I can tell you that to Leonardo Da Vinci, there was a real and important reason to paint her with her famously enigmatic smile.

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.)

Mark and Steve are not just Michael and Shawn, they are different people in their own right, but as you read Crossed Swords I hope the realism of the characters will shine through.

I hope I'm slightly less of a screw up than Dave.

Next week we'll further examine the idea of characters from life, while we explore reasons to not use real people as character models.

Write On!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: 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 Sluggy Freelance by Pete Abrams. Since 1997 this webcomic has updated five times per week and featured several volumes worth of storylines and character development.

Incidentally, it also has the honor (such as it is) of affecting my life in a deeply personal manner. In 2008 I began reading Sluggy 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 student teaching. (The only thing that consoles me about how much time and money I wasted on my student teaching is that it was slightly more worthwhile than the two years of theoretical study and pointless essay writing that preceded it.)

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 mini-lop rabbit. (Where does a mini-lop keep a switchblade and a Glock-19?)

I'm leaving one character out. Kiki, 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.

If I could just stop the little weasel from raiding my paranormal investigation kit for toys, I'd be much happier.

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 Ferrets for Dummies. 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.

All right, enough! I promise...

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 Something Positive, 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.)

Some comics, like Penny Arcade, 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 Penny Arcade 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 any medium that has made me laugh out loud hard enough to not be able to stop).

For those gifted with a sense of altruism, Penny Arcade 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 website. If your eyes don't well up then you're a stronger man than I.

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.

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 Ctrl-Alt-Del, 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 develops. As you read the comic, you'll see him grow into something new, something different... possibly even something wonderful.

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 That Which Redeems 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 cojones to leap off a mountain of bones into the teeth of a demon lord carrying nothing but a sword and a heart full of furious rage. (By the way, that last panel is my all-time favorite comic artwork E-V-E-R!)

If you're looking for further sweeping storylines, check out another comic on the list to the right, Order of the Stick. Rich Burlew was a writer for Wizards of the Coast (the company that screwed up Advanced Dungeons and Dragons when they bought out TSR 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.

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 Lord of the Rings trilogy-- using stick figures.

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.)

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?"

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.

There was a time when webcomics were laughed at. United Artists-- the same company that forced Bill Watterson to stop making Calvin and Hobbes 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.

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 (Order of the Stick), Tim Buckley (Ctrl-Alt-Del), Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (Penny Arcade), and Dave Kellet (Sheldon) may disagree that the medium isn't successful, since they make their livings off of it. (In fact, you can simply go HERE and check out a list of comics that pay handsomely enough to keep their writers solvent.)

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 Sluggy), 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.)

In addition to some laugh out loud humor and some incredible artwork, you might find something else as well...

... you might come home with a new family member.

Write On!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: How Twitter Helps You Write Better

Thomas 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.

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."

In The Dragherian Chronocles, 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."

In less tongue-in-cheek manner, William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

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.

I'd like to introduce you, if you're not already familiar with it, to a site called Twitter. 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.)

I've met some great people on Twitter. Julie Duck, an editor-turned-author. Kimberly VanderHorst, lovely and brilliant. Eric Krouse, expert at the short story. JM Strother, who brought us the idea of the FridayFlash. 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!)

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.

Another thing that Twitter does is hashtags. 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 #yalitchat. 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.

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.

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, E-V-E-R, 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.)

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.

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.)

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.

I even ran across one author who spent an entire Saturday writing the ultimate in flash fiction: 140 character stories. Could you condense your writing down far enough to tell an entire story in just 140 characters?

Yeah. Me neither.

Let's see if I can condense this blog into a Twitter post:

"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.

Write on!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: 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 Kimberly VanderHorst, and I mentioned that I was about to begin work on a new piece. You've seen the prologue last week as my #fridayflash.

When Kim asked me what it was I was working on, I sent her the link to this trailer:

Now here's the interesting thing. I mentioned that I did this for all of my books (The one for Crossed Swords is HERE) and that I also did it before the book was written! Kim said it was a stroke of genius.

Stop laughing. She really said that.

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.

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.

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.

The second reason I do the trailers is entirely different. Think back to movies you really wanted to see and what the trailers showed. Star Wars Episode III 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 trailer we see just one lightsaber slash of that fight (albeit from two different angles.)

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?

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.

This is the secret behind why I make book trailers: Counterattack is not written yet. In fact, it exists solely as the 854 word prologue, two 400 word chapter precis, a yWriter file named Cntrattk.yw5, and the trailer above.

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 was destroyed by an alien civilization and the only thing left to fight for was vengeance, a few more words sear themselves into my mind.

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.

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.

Until then, Write On!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: Chekov's Gun

Andre 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 nine seconds of fiscal year 2011! (Just a reminder that the games he, Pelosi, and Reid are currently playing are being played with your 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.)

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 Voodoo Planet.)

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.

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.

Unfortunately, the archaeologist and his crew vanished after sending one terrified shrieking message for help-- similar to the events of the movie Event Horizon, only without the piss poor acting.

This is where things went wrong for me. This type of plot device is called Chekhov's Gun. Anton Chekhov (not to be confused with Pavel Chekov, navigation officer of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701.) 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, A. S. Gruzinsky, (Under a pseudonym), Chekhov simply said: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Other authors have also restated this:

"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 Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.

"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 S. Shchukin, Memoirs (1911)

This literary technique goes all the way back (and probably farther) to the Arabian Nights. Scheherazade tells her husband the story of the Three Apples 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.

The best way this is done is by the introduction of a seemingly irrelevant prop. I can recall an example in the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. 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.

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.

Another example would be the color red in M. Shyamalan 's The 6th Sense. If you watch carefully, any time there is a ghost on screen, the color red is featured somewhere within the frame. The Harry Potter series is also rife 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.

Andre Norton's example is rather extreme: an entire alien city is placed within the novel to serve as a plot point, and you know 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.

What actually happens is that the main character, a runaway slave, if memory serves, starts at one end of the magnificent city and walks completely through to the other side without incident.

Um. I think you forgot something, Andy!

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.

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.

Using a Chekov Gun properly is an art form in and of itself. It's very easy to over stress your Gun, 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.

Here's my challenge to you: try and find a way to work a Gun into your current work in progress. Properly applied Guns 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.

Maybe your Gun 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.

I think you will find that it enriches your storyline considerably.

Write on!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: Literally Wrong!

People, please remove the word "literally" from your lexicon.

Overheard in a shopping mall yesterday (from a woman in her 30's, no less!), "My mom is literally a bitch!"

A radio program I listened to over the weekend had a caller say, "They literally took my head off!"

From a book: "He literally exploded in fury."

Unfortunately for these users, the word literally isn't what they think it is:

lit·er·al·ly

/ˈlɪtərəli/ Show Spelled[lit-er-uh-lee] –adverb

1. in the literal or strict sense: What does the word literally mean ?

2. in a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.

3. actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy: The city was literally destroyed.

4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

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.

As authors, it's our responsibility to walk a certain line. On the one side, we have what is called colloquial usage. 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.

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 literally turn readers away from our writing.

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 not necessarily due to any lack of intelligence or education on their part, can't put a subject and predicate together to save their lives.

"I don't got no money."

"I seen it."

And so forth.

This essay isn't an indictment of those people. In some cases I've read brilliant, brilliant, writing from students who speak as if their mouths are full of sand paper and real English hurts them. They obviously know how the language connects together, but they choose not to use it verbally for some reason.

Actually, the reason is that the people around them speak in that manner, and so do they.

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."

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."

In other words, the way we speak is not necessarily the way we write.

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 To Serve Man rather than commenting on how attractive I am in the above quotations? Guess what? You were wrong! I'm a hot biscuit!)

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 Huckleberry Finn 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 anyone, 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 "Person Jim.")

Remember what I said about non-fiction digressing tangentially?

The Sten 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 drives me crazy!

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 hinder the story.

You must keep this in mind. The word literally gets on my nipples because it doesn't mean what people think it does. (Sort of like the Facebook dingbat that called me redundant when she meant ironic.) The word they are actually trying to use is figuratively. Unfortunately, they are seeking emphasis, and 'figuratively' seems to de-emphasize their point rather than strengthen it.

I might write such phraseology into dialog, but I would literally never intentionally or willingly write it into prose or exposition.

Write on!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: On Punctuation

Katie 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 video blog about the use of emphasis in your writing.

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.)

In the comments Katie and I had a little discussion about what a professor I had in college called "Alphabetic Kudzu." Kudzu is a plant that grows around trees and stifles them, sometimes growing so thick that it chokes out all the nutrients in the soil.

Here's an example. You tell me which passage is more powerful.

"With a snap of his fingers, Rincewind released a spell that arced across the field and detonated on the wall."

"With a snap of his fingers, Rincewind released a spell!!!" It arced across the field and detonated on the wall!!!"

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.

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.

Here's an example from the above passage: An exclamation point has no meaning in and of itself, it must be placed in context to achieve meaning.

I specifically mentioned that passage because I have a tendency to use comma splices. I catch one or two on every read through of every thing I write. Pisses me off, but apparently that's the way my internal monologue speaks.

Remember that the purpose to grammar, punctuation, and spelling is to be invisible 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.

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 other than the story.

There are times when this rule is not always applicable. For example, in Dune Frank Herbert uses phrases like this: "Paul rolled to his feet, raised the crysknife."

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 grammatical conjunction between the sentences to make a single compound sentence.

So why do it that way, and why did editors allow it?

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 all the time. 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.

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.

When you are 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."

This is a bit longer post than usual on a Friday, but I didn't blog yesterday because I was super-hella-mega busy.

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 The Perfect Circle, 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.)

Niki is a great person and a wonderful writer, so please check out her book by clicking on the picture below:

Write on!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: Getting the Job Done

Consider 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 creative process while sitting at the computer. Writing is not mere typing. Creative thinking is, as the word implies, the action of creating something where there is nothing. This is not easy to do.

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?)

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.

Get a spiral notebook and a pen. I'm partial to the graph-paper composition 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.

For pens I prefer the pilot precise V5. Although I detest sharpening pencils, I don't like to write with mechanical pencils very much, so I use the pentech triangular pencils, 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 pentel twist-erase QE415 is a good one for the money.

Now go find someplace you can write. Notice that I didn't say "someplace without distractions" or "someplace quiet." I specifically look 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 Crossed Swords 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:

"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."

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 life and how we live it. If you're not somewhere that life is visible, then how can you write about it?

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.

Write on!

*****

Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Link: Basic Plots

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.

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 Crossed Swords.

Fridays I think I'm going to link to other writing information I've discovered throughout the week.

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 HERE.

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 Deathstalker. 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 all of them!)

What if you took three basic plots and wove them together? Would that enrich your current project?

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.

Another idea, from the character development standpoint, is to use two different plots for two different characters at the same time. Consider the Harry Potter 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."

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.

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.

Write on!

*****

Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

Essay: Vocabulary is Important.

Yesterday I was accosted by a madwoman.

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.

Let me define stupidity as I see it, which has nothing to do with the dictionary definition. To me, ignorance is not knowing something. I am ignorant of particle physics. I am ignorant of the rules for curling. I am ignorant 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.

I am not stupid. Being stupid is willful ignorance. Stupid is knowing a fact, but ignoring it and hoping that it goes away. Stupid is also having access to knowledge and information but refusing to use it.

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 wrong, and if you are wrong, then it means that you are wrong despite being connected to the largest repository of knowledge, information, and wisdom in the history of mankind!

That's just lazy, which is why I frickin' hate it. Stupid is a passionate defense of ignorance and it burns my nipples to deal with.

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.)

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.”

That's an obvious joke, if you happen to be stupid, which I know you are not.

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!”

My reply was, “I understand grammar. Do you understand humor? I'm not interested in your opinion of the jokes I tell my friends.”

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.”

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.

What I was leading up to was her incorrect use of the word “redundant.”

This silly ass story is my way of explaining why I choose to post a vocabulary word every single day on my twitter account.

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.

Redundant: adj. 1: characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition in expressing ideas.

What she was trying to go for was the word ironic, which most people confuse with coincidental.

Irony: n. 1: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. (“How nice that you have to work all weekend.”)

Coincidence: n. 1: a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance. (“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.

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 ironic. Her use of the wrong word makes her ignorant, but not necessarily incorrect.

I can clearly recall a series of books I read when I was a child by the amazing author of the Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol. Along a similar vein to the EB works, Sobol also wrote a series of 2 Minute Mysteries. 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 Encyclopedia Brown series did things the same way).

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?

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!”

Why? Turn to page 64 for the answer!

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.

Scan: v. 1: to examine the particulars or points of minutely; scrutinize.

The word that should have been used was skim.

Skim: v. 1: to read, study, consider, treat, etc., in a superficial or cursory manner.

Now we enter the use of colloquial phrasings. If you check Dictionary.com, you'll discover that scan does mean “to read hastily.” Why? Because language changes, sometimes drastically, over time.

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?)

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 can 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.

Another example is when certain characters speak. If I were writing dialog for a rough tradesman in London at the turn of the 20^th 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.)

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!)

The following is an excerpt from the prologue to the Crossed Swords video game played by the characters. It's the story Lolyanni tells them of her world and their quest.

“Now the Artekkians worshipped the God Vaargus, who was desirous of dominion and power over the world. Vaargus gazed upon the stone, 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 power that bringing forth such a shape would unearth. He took the stone 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.”

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.

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 reason. 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.

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 jade, which kept me away from my three-use-in-a-paragraph limit and brings to mind a specific type of stone.

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 pimped!). I definitely don't want to see a doctor who smokes or an obese nutritionist.

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 offline, 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.

So here's my challenge to you, writer friends. Are you smarter than a 6^th Grader? When I taught 6^th 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 you, author that you are, to do is learn one new word every day.

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.”)

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.

Or is that “bestest”?

Write on!

*****
Christopher Rivan

Virgins Slain, Dragons Rescued.
Reasonable rates for all budgets!

http://chrisrivan.blogspot.com/

Chris.Rivan@Yahoo.com

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