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Joined: 3/12/2011
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Delroy reiterates an important point that Jay made me aware of a few times.
Writing is one skill.
Storytelling is another.
As authors, our goal should be to master both. I'm sure we've all seen beautifully written, pointless non-stories, and I'm sure we've seen great stories that are unreadable because of the writing. Those of us who are storytellers need to work on our writing skills, but those who are writers need to work on their storytelling skills with equal fervor.
My 2c, YMMV.
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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Hey, Delroy, welcome to the party! Glad you spoke up!
I hope you don't mind if I counter-hijack my own thread here and sneak in six of my favorite Samuel R. Delany quotes on good vs. talented writing, the artist's role and function in society and the bitter, never-ending war for cultural supremacy and dominance between the big three "self-perpetuating systems". (You might even enjoy one or two of 'em.) ……………………………..
“The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Empire Star
“It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Equinox
“Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind---vividly, forcefully...”
― Samuel R. Delany, About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews
“In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.”
― Samuel R. Delany, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction
“You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17
“But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. They're all in rather uneasy truce with one another in what's actually a mortal battle. Like all self-reinforcing systems. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups. You know: religion and art are both forms of madness and madness is the realm of psychiatry. Or, art is the study and praise of man and man's ideals, so therefore a religious experience just becomes a brutalized aesthetic response and psychiatry is just another tool for the artist to observe man and render his portraits more accurately. And the religious attitude I guess is that the other two are only useful as long as they promote the good life. At worst, they all try to destroy one another. Which is what my psychiatrist, whether he knew it or not, was trying, quite effectively, to do to my painting. I gave up psychiatry too, pretty soon. I just didn't want to get all wound up in any systems at all.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
Author photos and book covers: http://www.google.com/search?q=Samuel+R.+Delany+pics&hl=en&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DsCMT96gB4zoggei2L3lBg&ved=0CCUQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=975
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Joined: 10/20/2011
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I debated including a sex scene in my romance "The Wedding Game." I ultimately realized that the plot was heading for one. Then I had to decide how to handle it. I actually googled "How to write a sex scene in a novel." Found several good resources. So I hope it works on page.
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Joined: 6/7/2011
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Carl. Thanks for the Delany bouquet. Should've guessed you'd be a fan of the great one.
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Woot! Carl: Dhalgren is one of the great books of the 20th Century. It's poetry, it's truth, it inspires the reader to think and to imagine.
Your post reclaiming your thread made me think of the one thing that makes me sigh & put down a book: No truth. No story without at least some truth in it is worth reading. (I define truth as the unavoidable.) Delaney, like all the great writers, made us confront life's truths in ways that taught us something and that something made their books worth reading.
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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Re: Atthys & GD on Samuel R. Delaney: Hear, hear!
Confession: I attempted to read Dhalgren when I was in eighth grade; found it one of the dullest texts imaginable. Stopped reading after only a hundred pages. I couldn't get anything from the text other than wordswordswords.
Took another crack at the book (three different times, in fact) about eight years later and found it to be an absolute--albeit extremely challenging--masterpiece of speculative fiction. It wasn't the book that had changed . . .
Even so, I never could get past (approx.) page 500. I'm certain the doltish fault was mine; I was far too impatient to gallop through other narratives; other books. One can acknowledge a book's literary value (and composing author's genius) while simultaneously tiring of the extended performance . . .
--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/22/2014, 11:18 PM--
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Oy. I can only imagine how badly I would've foundered trying to read Dhalgren in eighth grade. I didn't discover Delany until college.
Right from the get-go though, I appreciated the writing. He is, from his own definitions, both a good writer and a talented writer. His books are a good starting point for exploring just how compelling a narrative can be without a whole lot happening on every page. His gift, I think, lies in his ability to render the mundane as well as the fantastic with the same level of attention. The same supple, colorful prose is equally at home describing a star exploding, or a sex orgy, or a man shaving in a cracked mirror after moving his bowels. He is, like Nabokov, a writer who can make me catch my breath -- even if nothing much is going on.
How-to-write books always focus on action and conflict – which is, of course, a good place to start and a place where many of us wannabes fall flat – but action and conflict need not be about what's going on at the plot level. A good writer creates conflict and action with words alone, no matter what he or she is describing.
The how of it, though, remains on the level of something akin to magic. I remember Delany talking about (paraphrasing here) how he approaches a descriptive passage, and I've always tried to keep it in my head: don't focus on the big stuff (the castle in the moonlight, the roll of the surf beyond, the distant rumble of the hyperspace planet hopper throttling down.) All of that can be dispensed with in short order. Focus on some small, unique object – a curved bit of glass found in the sand, that holds in its reflective surface the entire scene in distorted miniature, and give that your full attention for a moment. Then have your protagonist slip it into a pocket, only to nick her finger on it forty pages later and pull it out, blood-smeared, for a second examination, for a fresh look.
The genius (operative word, here) is in the details, and again, the how is beyond any mere formula.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
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Dhalgren? OMG yes, read that in college if I remember correctly. Drove me nuts – great writer, Delaney, but my somewhat linear mind wants answers which I never got from Delaney. If I remember one scene from Dhalgren, the characters walk out of a bar and there are suddenly 2 moons in the sky. They were shocked and confused – so was I since he never mentioned it again. Triton too drove me nuts – in the early era of StarTrek novels Delaney was definitely not what you expected to find under “Science Fiction”. I admit I never really understood his stuff, but I couldn’t put it down either. Damn, now you guys have me considering whether it would be worth it to dig into the boxes of old paperbacks in the basement to try to find my copies, or just buy new ones.
My last comment on sex scenes (if you guys keep it up I swear I’ll post a “Stig” sex paragraph) – I use them to tell the reader something about the character (which is, I think what most of you are saying too). In Agony of the Gods there are maybe three scenes in which sex or near-sex takes place, but the only one I’ve up-loaded begins in Chapter 10 (43%) and ends in Chapter 12 (50%). It’s not that long! Basically a “black out” scene in chapter 10 followed by one character’s reaction. The other character’s reaction is in chapter 12 following an epiphany regarding character 1 (well talk about not making much sense! Like lots of things you try to describe from a story, it works better when you read it).
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Joined: 6/7/2011
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Ah yes, Tom. Linear is something Dhalgren definitely doesn't do. The whole book can be conceptualized as a series of loops, some larger some smaller. Time runs at different speeds for different characters, and certain events seem to happen over and over again. I feel fairly certain Delany mapped it out carefully enough for it to have its own sort internal consistency, but there is never any explanation for why so reality has suddenly gone so wonky.
Nor is one needed. It really is speculative fiction at its purest: 1) land your characters in a bizarre landscape (but consistent to its own laws, otherwise all you have is chaos. And familiar in enough ways so we never lose our frame of reference.) 2) let them interact. I reread the thing about three years ago, and found it to be great fun.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
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Why do I have to have no money right now? I must go out and get me some Delaney. I"m sure reading him will make me not want to write for months, but that is a risk I'm willing to take. I would love to struggle through some of his work right now instead of sitting in front of my computer looking like I'm going to rob someone. (Who ever thought photosensitive vampires were romantic or sexy, had no idea what they were thinking.)
Tom, a Stig sex scene? That would be mighty entertaining, but I keep thinking about Top Gear's mysterious racing god in the white suit with that name.
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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@LeeAnna: Whatever you do, please don't start with Dahlgren as an introduction to Delany’s oeuvre—or you may be done with Delany as soon as you’ve begun. The book is intentionally, hyper-literarily difficult: a meta-fictive, reality-warping, bisexually- explicit, poetic, moebius-strip trip exemplum of spec-fic at its most self-consciously studied and “artsy.” Page-turning summer reading it ain’t!
Try his essays or earlier fiction first. (You’ll thank me for this advice later, I think . . . )
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Joined: 4/30/2011
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Thanks for the advice, Carl. I will remember. When I finally get to it I will enjoy the challenge.
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@LeeAnna: No! No! Start with Dhalgren. It is everything Carl said except artsy it ain't. And it creates a world you will never forget.
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Joined: 6/7/2011
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LeeAnna: Actually Dhalgren may not be the best starting place. It depends on what you're looking for. There are some more accessible things. A masterful longish short-story called the Star Pit is a gem, as are most of the stories in his anthology (called Driftglass. Other particular favorites include Aye, and Gomorra and We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line. And the lighter Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.)
If you're looking for classic Space Opera, hard to beat the novel Nova. I also particularly like novella Empire Star (talk about your mobius strips) and the poorly named (by his editors) The Einstein Intersection.
Enough? I'll chip in one more. His memoir The Motion of Light in Water is very compelling reading, and of special interest to aspiring writers, though it is frustrating sometimes hearing how a dyslexic teenager got his first novel published.
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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Great suggestions, Atthys!
@GD: re: "No! No! Start with Dhalgren."--Lol!
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Joined: 4/30/2011
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Thanks, Atthys. Now I have write down that list somewhere where I won't forget it's there.
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Joined: 6/7/2011
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LeeAnna: It's always a good feeling trying to launch a new Delany fan into the world. For the record, I read Dhalgren first (in college) because the book had a pretty good buzz going about then. I do think it's a great book but he's written many others equally worth the read.
Even his fantasy series (Neveryona) which I did not like much when it first came out (Hey, he was a sci-fi writer! What's with all the swords and servants?) has grown on me and I now find them very intriguing and important works.
(He is also the author of several books of pornograpy. Still beautifully written but very disturbing. It is far too graphic and violent and frankly disgusting to be called erotica.)
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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@Atthys: re: Delany’s erotica. True dat! Now we're back on topic, having come the loooong way around. It's hard to believe (or maybe not, ever read Joyce's love letters?) that "Chip" Delany could have committed to paper such depraved, excretory Id-like fantasies. I ignore his "revoltica" (a couple of pages read way back once-upon-a-time was enough for me, thank you very much), treating it as nothing more than an extended literary joke—albeit an unspeakably vile, unwary-reader-punishing, demented one. (Personally, I draw a strong, inviolable line of demarcation between evacuation and reproductive activities. But that's just hopelessly staid and conventional bourgeois me.)
Perhaps we can broaden the discussion a bit. Ever been reading an otherwise perfectly serviceable, fairly well-executed book only to encounter a scene that seems to have been shoe-horned into the narrative solely for its shock value? Or blinked twice at an odd, puzzling comment that came out of left field from a character? Have you ever frowned at a bit of extended narrative rambling—bad philosophizing, ham-handed political commentary, strident religiosity—in an otherwise tonally- and thematically-consistent text?
Two quick examples from my own experience/perspective: (1) I find it very difficult to read Dean Koontz with the same enthusiasm I once had for his pitch-perfect control of craft because he’s taken shot after cheap, groan-inducing shot at liberal-humanist thought and philosophy in his recent novels. (2) Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil was almost more than I could endure: a cartoonish, cerebrum-crippling, theological tract of airy theorizing and assumptive fallacy disguised as a vampire novel.
Anyone else got an example? Feel free to reverse the politics and tell me about an author you can’t read anymore because you feel he or she is taking cheap shots at conservatives. A cheap shot is a cheap shot, regardless of ideological perspective.
Btw: I am not arguing that erotic, political, philosophical and/or religious elements and themes are not proper fodder for literary explication and exploration. I am asserting that clumsy, ill-thought out, ham-fisted forays into the aforementioned topics can only result in the production of shallow and manipulative propaganda, muddled and/or magical thinking, logical error, non sequitur, bad metaphor and compromised narrative.
Two examples (from opposite sides of the political spectrum) of authors I respect who always (IMHO) got it right: Robert A. Heinlein and Hunter S. Thompson.
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Joined: 3/12/2011
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@Carl - Don't have a long time at the moment, but I had to comment - I was actually going to posit Heinlein as an example of getting hamfisted.
To clarify, I agree with you in some of his novels, especially the earlier ones, but the ones near the end of his career... not so much.
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@Sir Robert: It's fine to disagree! I hate group-think and toadying. I knew mentioning Heinlein might draw a reaction from some quarters (I'd love to hear your reasons why you feel his later novels got a little "ham-fisted" in the politics dept.; please share!) but here's the thing for me: Bob Heinlein always wrote, I feel, from an irreducible core of scientific competence, genuine love and hope for humanity and honest, rock-ribbed conservative principles.
I didn't always agree with Heinlein but I never lost my respect for the man. How can you not love a guy who writes about a proletarian uprising of oppressed workers against their corporate masters (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress); how can you not admire the strait-laced, four-eyed bookish conservative who penned perhaps the underground novel of group sex, Martian messiahs and societal revolution of the 60s (Stranger In A Strange Land). I grok him, water-brother! There were more facets and sides of Bob Heinlein than people who unthinkingly hurl the charge of "fascist!" at him give him credit for.
(Btw: I am not saying you are one of those; want to make that perfectly clear. Which is why I welcome your elaborative comments: I look forward to hearing things from your perspective.)
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Joined: 4/30/2011
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I can't think of any at the moment who ultimately failed in their attempt to write political commentary. I can only think of my friend who spat on my critique as an example. She was trying to write something anti-oil, but it had the subtlety of a superhero's fist. She is very anti-conservative despite that she says that she has a connection to nature, a connection that should include balance and openness.
I know there are many that have made me groan and roll my eyes, but I just can't think of them at this moment. It could be because I forgot about them on purpose.
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@LeeAnna: A tangential thought, riffing at 90-degrees from your posting: When we demonize "the loyal opposition” (howsoever we see and define that group) by turning them into malevolent, conscienceless creatures of unmitigated evil and unreasoning hate we only succeed in caricaturing ourselves. I enjoy good jeremiad, cri de coeur, heartfelt rants and/or satirical savagery as much as the next already-convinced member of a choir nodding enthusiastically at their self-selected preacher’s tirades, but does such rhetorical group-think circle-jerking ever get anyone else off outside the circle?
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Joined: 5/25/2011
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Carl, I think your question is more one of ham-fisted writing versus subtle. By its very nature Science fiction or speculative fiction is subversive because it always starts with the basic question – “what if?” – as opposed to accepting the status quo. Ask the question in a more specific way, and then set out to explore possible answers through your imagination. The pre-sixties pot-boilers all had heroes and heroines who were right out of Master Race Comics – blue-eyed, blond haired godlings – who saved all us poor inferiors (and of course defeated the darkie aliens) - matched up with what some folks would now-a-days call a secular humanist religious belief in the all knowing scientist, acolyte of the God Science who will answer all our questions and solve all our problems (remember “Better Living Through Chemistry”? Ah for those halcyon pre-Love Canal days!). Then along comes the 60’s. Gene Roddenberry put it very well in describing what scifi did for tv plots – if you tried to write a script about race hatred in the south, it would never see the light of day (on tv), but if you move the plot from the southern US to Mars, and make the green guys the bad guys oppressing their little purple brothers – hey, this is good stuff and all make believe!
When the writing is good, it’s subversive because it shows us people we may not know much about (or accept for that matter) acting like normal people, so we begin to accept them as normal, flawed human beings. Delaney’s MC’s in Dahlgren and Triton (in this one he struggles with his sexuality and ends up having a sex change operation) are people struggling with their very nature, but they are recognizable people, not the demented deviate freaks that many “mainstream” groups portray them as. The other side is there too. The scifi hero as rugged individualist, able to take care of him or herself, always thumbing their nose at authority (remember how J. T. Kirk beat the unbeatable Kobiashi Moru test? Ever wonder if Kirk was a card carrying member of the NPA (National Phaser Association)?
So as I said, Scifi is subversive. When the writing is good it gets you to at least consider things you might otherwise dismiss. When it’s bad…well, it’s bad. What more can I say?
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Joined: 4/27/2011
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You said it very well, Tom. Your own writing tests boundaries (and flirts with subverting "the established order" at times, eh?) but I never doubt that there is a keen, active, probing moral intelligence at work behind the words.
I like writers who take chances and illuminate the human condition, who push boundaries and at-one-and-the same-time communicate their uneasiness and distrust of social revolutionaries who proffer absolutist, easy answers to age-old thorny questions of morality and justice.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
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I agree with Carl, Tom. You did say it very well. Good writing in SF is subtle and subversive. It makes you scratch your head and think instead of punching you in the face with the obvious while screaming, "The Demopublicans are evil! They must go down! Anarchy! Anarchy!" Or something similar.
I prefer to question both sides of the fence (something that some of my former professors didn't like about me), and works that do so. We don't live in a world that is this and this. Like I said, balance. One work that made me look differently at gender was Ursula K Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. Gender and sexuality is a huge topic right now. It always has been. This book was written in 1969 and holds just as much relevance today as it did back then.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
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Read Left Hand of Darkness many years ago - great book.
I'd appreciate it if you gave my story "And the Last Shall Be First" a look, LeeAnna. I would value your feedback.
Tom
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Joined: 3/17/2011
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I got two words for you, Carl: Julian Freakin' Comstock. Ham fisted? Let's try side o' beef fisted. It attempts to convince you that it's answered the question "What if the Right Wing won?" It's simplistic answer is that we'd be living in the 19th century all over again. All knowledge destroyed, the SCOTUS replaced by "The Church," the moon launch and most of modern technology generally considered to be a commie hoax perpetrated by "the Secular Ancients." Ooh, so scary, boys and girls. Steam punk without the punk. Wilson writes in a vacuum where The Handmaid's Tale never existed.
The worst part is that it completely undermines it's own ideology. The best argument the left has against the more regressive elements of the right is that the goal of "returning to a simpler time" is actually impossible and the "simpleness" of former days is a lie. So, by positiing that we really can turn back the clock and erase all scientific progress, he's actually saying that the regressive forces in the world are correct and their goal is achievable. Ooh, this shoots right past sighing heavily for me, and goes straight to seething cauldron of fury. Idiot book!
Sigh. Thank you. I feel better now.
-Kevin
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Sure, Tom. I put your story on my list. I hope to get to it in the future. Maybe when I get tired of writing tomorrow. I have a lot of reviewing to catch up on. If you have time, I do have my novel Hands of Ash up, but since it's under construction, feel free to avoid it as long as possible.
Kevin: What you have described gives me the willies. It sounds like the awfulness of the book is the true evil, and not the world that he has created. I think I'll put it on my pile of work to avoid due to lack of deftness and subtlety next to my friend's awful story and Cameron's Avatar.
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Heinlein's first novel, "For Us, The Living" was (is) a series of what we might call info dumps which Rah Dna describes in her introduction, "As thinly fictionalized lecture series...." and calls one passage "...a two-page footnote...." All this was unbeknownst to me when I bought that gobbler.
I didn't read it all; just scanned the last 75%. What did come through was that Heinlein was a man of conviction using SciFi to imagine the worlds his convictions might create. Sometimes, I just do not care about the writing so much as the ideas.
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Joined: 2/27/2011
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Bumping this up!
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Joined: 11/17/2011
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No sooner said than done. Not that my comments are pertinent, but maybe someone will notice that a sleeping giant has stirred. I'm sneaking a plug in here. I'll make up for it by creating my own list of no-nos.
I'm close to posting a new book. I proclaim it to be for children, though that's a questionable assertion. Nothing I write is for knee-highs. I only pretend that it is, until I can come up with a better angle.
Gaudy is an account of critters having their way with a cottage garden on Midsummer Eve.
Folks! It's animals in pants, in an intricate verse. Here's your chance to add to your Ten Things list: Goofy (I prefer quirky) rhyme by a delusional pinhead (possibly) who apparently thinks it's terrific (that I do).
On Gaudy Night will appear shortly, in ... Children's Fantasy, I guess.
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@Kyoko - good comments, excellent use of examples. Some of them I knew, some I didn't, some I agree with, some I don't (Lex has been written by too many people to blame any one for the gestalt), but I see what you're saying very clearly.
Riffing on #7, though, how do you decide what's 'worthwhile'? How do you decide if a character is being strong or just bitchy? I'm curious, because I write a lot of female characters, and I can never figure out where the lines are.
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I agree with much of what you're saying, Kyoko, but like Robert said, how do you decide if a character is being strong or just bitchy? I write a lot of female leads as well, and I can tell you that is quite difficult. I noticed that you didn't mind characters where bitchy was a character flaw, but not those where the writer was trying to make them angst-ridden, but only ended up making them bitchy to the readers eye. Is that right?
In defense of the bitch character, I have one that is quite successful. I purposefully wrote her to be a difficult, disagreeable bitch, and yet there is not one person who has read this character that didn't like her. She smokes, drinks, says rude and often crude things at other characters' expense. Yet why is she loved? I think it is that she's unapologetic. I was talking with another female writer the other day, and she said that she preferred unapologetic female characters to strong ones. Those that aren't ashamed of doing things that are "unwomanly." I think that is where the true problem is. Most bitch characters don't have the confidence or self-assuredness to back up a likable bitchy personality.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
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I think "strong" versus "bitchy" is pretty easy, really. A strong female character talks trash when the person she's talking to deserves it. If she goes too far with something she says, or directs cutting remarks at the wrong person, a strong female character recognizes her mistake. She feels bad about it, and she either apologizes or finds some other way to make amends. In contrast, a bitchy character talks trash to everyone and doesn't care whether her words are deserved or not.
Another difference: a strong female character will play rough with people who know she's playing. A bitchy character actually is rough, and is almost never playing.
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Oh, and one more thing...
It's perfectly possible for a strong female character to be really nice. Strength and conflict don't always go hand-in-hand, and in truth the strongest possible personality is the one who can confront and resolve issues without being antagonistic. That takes some doing.
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In all honesty, I think it takes more strength to be a nice person and help people. It's so easy to grow cynical and angry at the world. Keeping hope and helping others without expecting anything is a strength.
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@Kyoko: I haven't watched much anime in a long time, but I used to be a big Miyazaki fan, and he has a lot of very strong female characters who aren't mean in the least.
@ LeeAnna: Exactly right. I think a lot of writers rely too much on sarcasm and one-liner put-downs to demonstrate that their characters have wit or spunk or a sense of humor. There's not enough of a premium put on having a good nature these days.
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@Herb: Exactly. I have characters that have acidic wit, but I'm not delusional enough to think that they're nice people. I admit that I'm not good at writing characters who are just nice people because it's so hard to write someone like that without them coming off as their own cliche. I try. I have a male character who is the best guy in his heart, but he's having trouble forgiving himself for doing a job that he's good at.
@Kyoko: All that's on my Netflix cue right now is anime. And that include my DVDs. I blame my husband. I had sworn off it in high school so that I could study more literature, but he re-hooked me when he convinced me to watch the rest of DBZ, which I had abandoned due to pacing issues. (Speaking of good hearted protagonists...)
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Joined: 6/28/2011
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For me, the key to portraying niceness is to understand that it is an impulse, not a desire, that acting on the impulse often requires bravery, and that acting on the impulse effectively often requires creativity and imagination in addition to bravery.
I think it's only when you try to portray being nice as an easy thing that it appears cliched, because it's not easy to be nice. It's really quite hard.
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Posts: 192
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Herb, well said. I had just been thinking that even "nice" characters have flaws - just like people. And it's certainly much harder to write a genuinely good person, who is still compelled to do good things for others without question or complaint, than it is to create a nasty, snippy, cynical, sarcastic, selfish character. At least for me, it is. My reflections on the degradation of society tend to manifest in my meaner characters, and unfortunately I seem to have a lot of fodder for them these days. But maybe that's another thread entirely!
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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I agree with almost everything you've said there, Laura, except that I recoil a little at the phrase "degradation of society." I don't think society is degrading over time. I think it's the same as it ever was. What I think is happening is that we have more and more information about the negatives in society, and more and more emphasis on those negatives. This is because a modern technology- and information-based society allows certain personality types to rise to prominence more readily than earlier agrarian and industrial societies.
I think that in terms of overall values and decency, society is probably as good as (if not better than) it has ever been. But we have better windows into society's dark side than before, and our heightened moral sense causes us to be even more sensitive to what we see through those windows.
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Joined: 3/12/2011
Posts: 376
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@Herb - Well said, again!
I've read a bit where someone commented on the difference between social and tech progress using the novel 2001: a space odessy. In that novel, we're going to Jupiter in 2001, but everyone involved is a white male. We're not perfect, but we're better than reality TV makes us out to be.
As for character types, using two spectra (nice / mean | good / evil) I find the easiest to write is the mean + good.
Mean + Good: Easy to write, but hard to write as anything but shallow.
Mean + Evil: Nearly as easy, but become cliche very fast.
Nice + Good: Harder to write, also become cliche very quickly.
Nice + Evil: These are hard to write, but if done right have an impact out of proportion to their place in the novel, simply due to the dissonance.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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I agree that society hasn't changed. It's the same, we just know more. People think that what goes on is new, but it's not. It just so happens that we human beings are egocentric beings, and thus have problems fathoming that anything we do we've done before. Living in the moment and only thinking about ourselves is probably part of that survival instinct we've always had, but as we developed technology and political societies, it morphed. That's another reason why I believe it's harder to be "nice." It goes against our baser instincts to do so. On Maslow's Hierarchy they are defined as food, water, and reproduction (i.e. sex). Until we have those, we don't strive for anything else, but what happens with that drive when we have that? What happens when we have all the money in the world, or the power? Or the time? They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I believe that. It takes a person with a strong will not to abuse such devices.
But people like that also don't get as much credit. They're almost taken advantage of. I saw a meme someone did recently with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs says, "You know how everyone looked up to me like I was a god after I died?" and then goes on to list all of Bill Gates' charitable achievements that have all been looked over because people are too in love with their iWhatever to care. Sure, Jobs did his share, but did everyone know, or where they only looked up to after he had given us gifts in the form of a shiny new consumer item to place in our pockets? Of course, this is just a theoretical example of how fickle our society really is. I apologize if it comes off a bit cynical or political.
I have written my cynical character, but I try to make her strong enough to be a good person. Even though she comes across as someone who wouldn't give on single flying fuck if you gave her a million for it, she cares, and that is really half the battle. Turning away is so easy, it does take strength to allow our selves to feel the necessary emotion to make us good people. Being shallow and self absorbed is easy, it's the kiddy pool. Taking a step outside of human nature and society's expectations is like jumping into the middle of the ocean; it scares the shit out of just about everyone.
I do recommend a nonfiction book called War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. It is so absolutely necessary and yet saddened me deeply because it's true. The work is mostly philosophical, so for anyone who has characters who love to fight, or must, read it now.
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Joined: 1/10/2012
Posts: 192
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@Herb - I can absolutely respect your thoughts and your disagreement with me on that one. It is true that a lot of what colors our lives these days is due to technological advances. I still fondly remember the days when we used a land line to call home; there were no cell phones; parents told kids to come in when the street lights came on (and didn't worry about them getting abducted-at least not in my neighborhood); folks wrote letters instead of emails and texts; and kids were raised to respect their elders.
But I've still witnessed behavior that I never used to. Maybe it's because of technology that we seem to have lost the little personal things. We're all so much in a damned hurry to get somewhere, do something, be somebody. Maybe I'm just getting old. 
@Robert - I like the character formulas you listed. Of course, I prefer my equations a bit more complex:
sarcastic + loyal + mostly good + a little bad + sometimes nice + but usually not = a hot mess or an interesting character
I have no idea if any of that made sense, but I enjoyed writing that little equation!
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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I'm with Kyoko here. Some of the most interesting ideas I've seen over the last few years have come out of anime/ manga (in particular their light novel scene which seems to exist entirely to output utterly insane ideas). Stuff like Haruhi Suzumiya just feels so incredibly original.
Affably evil villains are fun because their motives are often so utterly unpredictable. I've lost count of the characters who seem utterly untrustworthy at first glance, act as villains, but turn out to be a good guy at the last moment. They're fun, even when you want to hit them.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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I'm not ashamed of the anime thing, trust me. I just got out of the loop for a while because I was busy getting into other story telling formats from my own country of the USA. When I got into anime, I really hadn't studied American and English literature and story telling. Because of it, I can watch anime or read the manga and see the western influence. It's amazing how much we influence each other.
This is the part where I admit that my character Adamar was inspired by Vash the Stampede from Trigun. That is why he wears a red cloak. And my world's no gun powder rule, Meiji Era (probably spelled that wrong) Japan. I'll eventually blend it into the tech boom much like that seen around the American Civil War. I never intended to give it a steampunk feel, but someone told me it's going in that direction. Oh well. Thank you anime.
I need to rewatch Yu Yu Hakusho since I never got to finish it and I'm rewatching Cowboy Bebop right now (I have the manga), otherwise I'm proud to say that I've seen the rest on your list, Kyoko. For zombie fans, I recommend High School of the Dead. Great for a Romero style zombie apocalypse. Darker Than Black, I love. For those western space fans, that is practically a genre in itself in Japan.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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@Laura: I do agree that manners are in decline relative to the era of my upbringing, but I think a large part of that is because people are no longer taught "their place" from an early age. For several generations now, children have been learning that they can "do anything" they "put their minds to." That's a very different message than the "keep your head down and stay out of trouble" and "children should be seen and not heard" lessons that they learned prior to the advent of mass media and modern egalitarianism. I think it's very hard to teach kids, "you can do anything, and no one is better than anyone else" while also teaching them, "everyone older than you should be able to boss you around and have you say, 'yes sir' and 'yes ma'am' in response." I also think that once women were allowed out of the kitchen and the classroom, a certain decline in manners became inevitable, because fewer children had full-time stay-at-home disciplinarians watching over them, while the number of role-models for subservient behavior shrank significantly. That's a trade-off that I think is entirely worthwhile, even though I do wish we could have both modern equality and more vintage politeness.
@LeeAnna: That Chris Hedges book looks chilling. I don't know that I have the backbone these days to read it; I already have a pretty glum view of the human propensity to get caught up in militarism and saber-rattling. I recently switched projects away from a novel whose villain was a self-serving revolutionary. I was stumbling on the book for a number of reasons, but one of them was definitely the fact that the bad guy was just too creepy and contemptible for me to take.
@Robert: I've never read the novel 2001, but I love the way the film juxtaposes the ape-men blustering and screeching at each other around the watering hole with the Americans and Russians posturing over drinks on the space station. It's a great statement on how little impact civility and technology have had on basic human nature, although I also think there's tremendous wisdom in that observation on the progress we've made since 2001 was written.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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@Herb: Chris Hedges' book is not in support of war. If anything he warns against it even though it's a chillingly necessary part of human existence. We can't avoid it. It's good theory. Just read it. It's mercifully short too, so you won't have to suffer long. It's probably the best research for a writer or reader of military anything to look into for a healthy mindset at how wars get started and why. Philosophy is a good thing. It should help that he used to be a war correspondent who woke up one morning in a war zone and decided that he was nuts for being there. So, he knows first hand, and yet from an "outside" point of view.
@Kyoko: In all honesty, I think we have influenced them more than they have us. Americans invented the modern superhero when Superman was released, even though his creators were Canadian. That changed comics forever. The interesting thing, on of the first comics was from 1920 (maybe 1921) called Il Ideal. It was a woodblock comic that showed how an artist's pure idea can be corrupted by money grubbing corporations. Sound familiar? It eventually became one of the first animated films done. (I saw it in a class, and can't seem to find it.) Anyway, the comic format actually goes back to the early 19th century to a swiss artist, but that's just getting nit picky.
I use anime as research on "spiritual" horror. Their demons and zombies can be much more interesting. I know that it's linked to their dominant religious beliefs, but it's more fun than having a bunch of pseudo-Catholics running around burning people at the stake. (I have exorcists in my book, just in case you were wondering.)
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Sorry I wasn't clearer. I totally got the thesis of his book from the Amazon.com summary, and I'm in complete agreement with it. It's just not a thesis I'm in the mood to have reinforced right now.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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I totally understand. It's hard to think about. War is an ugly subject, but I have a twisted fascination with it. It's so very human in that it brings out the very best and very worst in people.
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