Pick one book that you want to finish next & post your progress here as you go. Posting progress can promote the book, motivate the author and  provide insight into how writers write a story.

Suggestion only, but maybe your first post could start with where your story came from and why you are writing it. Then say where you are at the moment and what you will do next.

My novel, The Phoenix Diary, began with a series of dreams. They were different but had a common feel. It was years before I realized they were connected by geography and time, taking place in the same imaginary world. I wrote the dreams as scenes, dropped them into a Joseph Campbell plot structure and the story came naturally. The clear advantage is I am able to use my memory when writing most of the story. The writing is easy; time consuming but not difficult. So far, I have 53,000 words completed of a 100k hard science fiction book.

Lately, I've been learning about basic editing. Progress at the moment consists of editing the completed chapters into a "final" draft. Today, I edited chapter 6 of 15. Next edit chapter 7!

Great input!

Amazing, how some of us are completing something that we started years ago. (I began The Phoenix Diary in 2004.)
Nicki wrote, "...Strain was born of a series of failed attempts from many years ago...."
Angela wrote, "I started this book almost 30 years ago...."
LeeAnna wrote, "Where did Hands come from? Well, it was a little high school thing that I did for fun."

Others may be at the beginning of a process that simply cannot be forced.
Laura wrote, "...both of my projects are in their early stages. I only have a few chapters of one and a handful of the other, and they're nowhere near completion."
Mimi wrote, "I'm not giving up on Sly! My thinking is a little muddled at the moment, but I'll pull myself together and persevere."

Maybe for some creativity is not subject to the will and we have no choice but to write as the story comes to us.

I'm with Marc & Niki. Nobody in their right mind shows their first draft to strangers but there's something professional about many people here that makes their advice helpful. Kinda like undressing for the doctor.

Thanks, Laura. That's good insight into how ideas pop. Maybe you positively wanted a better character because you had one in there, somewhere. Interesting too, how a good idea can come with kin.

I spent this morning researching a piece of meteorite shrapnel from Sikhote-Alin because it was radioactive dated to the same time as an important period in The Phoenix Diary. It's age baffled the researchers but made ideas pop into my head. Now, for the first time, I have a detailed plot background that supports my story. And a sequel. Woot!

Alexandria, any editing tips to offer? I just started & useful basics excite me. Like this...

Search & Find the words: was, that, had.
Rewrite to eliminate them if they unnecessarily refer back to something already written, or if it sounds better in the present tense, or, replace them with a specific verb.

Amazing how this helps! Well, I'm amazed

Robert, what is the minimum number of words "acceptable" for a novel? Is it fewer for books in a series?

Well, okay GD, since you asked….

I’m currently going through the 6th draft of “Agony of the Gods, Softly Falls the Snow”.  At this point the novel is complete at 32 chapters and roughly 180,000 words (a bit more than half posted on BC).  At present I’m trying to clean up the writing - mainly “Strunk and White stuff….” to quote Kevin Haggerty, to whom I offer my thanks for a very detailed review of the first 3 chapters (and if I may put in a plug, has an excellent WIP: “The Ravelled Sleave of Care” which I highly recommend to all).

So where did “Agony” come from?  Well, I’ve always been fascinated by evil – not the cartoonish megalomaniac so common in stories and movies, but the everyday narcissistic evil of those who care only for themselves, ignoring the needs (or the very humanity of others).  At first I toyed with the idea of a world devoted to the pleasure of the ultra-ultra-rich where battles were recreated just to let the mega-rich play general.  Not the recreationist style where actors play dead, but real battles where the poor who inhabit the world actually fight, and die, in a recreation of a battle.  Then I saw a concert with Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli singing “Time to Say Goodbye” and the idea for the chapter about the perfection of music was born.

So I had thought out a lot of the basics (this probably started over 10 years ago), but I was just too busy to write.  Then 6 years ago I lost my father, who I had been helping to care for on top of my day job, and suddenly found myself with time on my hands and a desperate need to do something – so I started writing.  I changed things around a bit, instead of a world for the very rich, I made it a universe where everyone who wanted could have their own world – be a god.  You might think Forbidden Planet on steroids.  Well, now I had my stage, but what about a story?  I decided that a murder plot – someone killing off the “gods” was the best way to go. The main characters would be “everyman” type non-gods required to do the bidding of the gods.  Unfortunately, that has also led to the book being very long.  Just the initial setup was difficult because this was a place I’ve not really come across before, so (as one reviewer acidly put it) “all info-dump!”  As a result I decided to intersperse murder chapters with those dealing with the initial training, and learning, of one of my MC’s.  Since every event takes place on a different world, that also adds lots of description.  End result, about 180,000 words. 

I finished the novel about a year and a half ago, and have been re-writing (and posting on BC ever since).

I admit, I could use a few more reviews just to let me know if it works.

Tom

P.S.  Years ago (typewriter days) I gave a few 1st draft pages of a story I was playing with to a person I thought would be interested. All I got back was laughter over the typos.  Never again!

No Angela! No putting it off out habitual laziness. You may, of course, "let things sift" mentally awhile so the writing is fresh when you do get back to it. But, no needless delay! Bad!

Thanks, Robert. I suspected book length was more publisher's preference than divine law.

Tom, would you say evil evolved along with other human behaviors? If so, in what circumstances would it be a necessity for human survival?

Did evil evolve?  Interesting question GD.  I’m not a behavioral ecologist or evolutionary scientist, but let me give you my take on this.  Evolution works on variation within a group.  When Darwin spoke of natural selection, he didn’t mean survival of the fittest (a term coined later by a newspaper editor, and never used by Darwin), he meant that in a given situation the individuals with the most appropriate characteristics would survive and reproduce.  The point is to have enough variation so that someone survives.

 Okay, let’s look at a simple situation – two friends in a bar.  One is totally Fearless – never scared by anything.  The other is Coward – not a sneaky comic book coward, but a person whose natural reaction in dangerous situations is to be immobilized by fear.  (Most people, of course, fall somewhere in between these two extremes.)  While these two are sharing a drink, they notice that a young woman is being hit on by a bunch of gang types.  She clearly doesn’t want their attention, but the leader won’t take no for an answer and starts to drag the girl out of the bar.  In reaction, Fearless confronts the gang, and Coward runs for the door. Scenario 1:  Fearless kicks the tar out of the bad boys, saves the girl and they live happily ever after.  Fearless is proclaimed a hero, while his friend, roundly despised for not having covered Fearless’s back, slinks off to spend a lonely life in ignominy.  So Fearless is good, Coward is evil.  Scenario 2: Fearless is in way over his head, ends up getting knifed and dies.  Girl is saved when police (having been called by Coward) come in and arrest gang.  Coward, seen as using his head is hero and gets girl. So Fearless is dead, Coward is good.  So selection (in this case who gets the girl) is situational.

I don’t see real evil as being situational though.  I see it as corruption, or an extreme reaction.  Do you know why you get a fever?  It’s the body’s attempt to kill off viruses which cannot survive high temperatures.  Unfortunately, pushed too far the fever does as much damage as the virus.  Evil is like that.  We all have a sense of self preservation.  Some people can put that aside a bit, and we think of them as altruistic (good).  They take care of the sick or poor, share their possessions, etc.  The other side of the spectrum (and that’s what it is) leads to greed, hoarding, etc. (evil).  It is putting the self above all else, and in order to do that you need to diminish the humanity, or value of all others.  That’s evil. In this direction lies slavery, genocide, etc.

So no, I don’t think evil has evolved, I think it’s a corruption of a natural instinct. 

I could go on, but I’ll stop here.  Probably enough holes in this to drive a truck through anyway. J

Hi Tom. Thanks for your reasoned response. It helps me to handle evil as a theme of The Phoenix Diary. "Evil are those who will kill you if they cannot control you, like a cancer that uses or kills other cells," Ambrose Phoenix tells our hero. You nailed the definition of evil, Tom. But I claim it evolved as a necessary behavior. Sometimes, being good isn't good enough to survive and reproduce. (Mitochondrial Eve may not have been wooed.)

LOL Kevin! Anybody who comes up with a good idea for a novel from watching a Dolf Lundgren movie obviously has more imagination than do Dolf's writers I wish you luck with that book.

Go Angela! It's refreshing to know someone who can write, and, have a life

Hello Again GD,

        Actually, I think you’ve got things backwards.  Evil hasn’t evolved, intelligence has.  Since you mentioned mitochondrial Eve, we can consider procreation.  As far as I know, there is no such thing as rape in the animal world.  Amongst mammals either the female goes into heat (frenzy) and mates with whomever comes along, or there might be rutting combat among the males (see fight scene in Bambi of all places) with the winner getting mating rights.  In birds, of course, there are all sorts of display rituals to attract a mate, and generally the female chooses. 

        Now along comes intelligence and self-awareness.  How does that change things?  Well, consider a peacock.  A normal bird displays his glorious tail feathers in order to attract a mate.  If the female rejects him, he eventually gives up and goes off looking for another potential mate.  Now add in intelligence and self-awareness to our scenario.  The peacock could still give up, but instead he thinks about it, gets angry (how dare she reject me!), maligns her (stupid slut!), picks up a rock and bops her on the head and has his way with her.  The choice (and choice requires intelligence) to put his desires and needs above any recognition of the worth or value of others equals evil. 

       Here’s another example – take a cat.  We’ve all seen cat’s play with mice.  It appears to be very cruel, what with the poor terrified mouse being toyed with prior to being killed.  Of course the cat knows nothing of this because it has no sense that the mouse is terrified, and actually playing with it is an instinctual means of sharpening its hunting skills (when two kids play catch, is the ball terrified?).  Okay, now give the cat intelligence and self-awareness.  It’s still going to eat the mouse (it is a carnivore after all), and it might decide that lacking a good alternative, it still needs to play with the mouse a bit to keep its hunting skills sharp.  But at what point does playing with the mouse become torture?  And what happens when the cat starts to take a sadistic pleasure in abusing its terrified prey?   This is actually what happened to cause such a protest regarding experimentation with animals.  There were numerous documented cases where experimentation tuned into torture for the amusement of the experimenters.  At this point a choice is made “Hey, this is cool! Let’s do another!” and we’ve crossed the line into evil.

     Overall, I think evil is a choice (we can argue nature versus nurture forever too as a complicating factor) since humans (oops, this is scifi)…er, intelligent beings understand what they are doing.  You may be confusing Social Darwinism with evolution though.   

 BTW Ambrose Phoenix is correct.  I think he would nod his head in agreement with the peacock example.

     Back to you, GD.  

Tom

Hmm. No quarrel here w/the definitions &/or sources of evil behavior. But behavior we deem evil is part of human nature, not some supernatural force outside of us. It evolved as surely as any other manifestation of human behavior. (I may be wrong of course, but writing fiction allows me to create a world where I ain't )

Take Carl, for example. If Carl gets excited by big breasted women in daisy-dukes, that's a human behaving naturally. If he lures several into his basement for Schadenfreude, that's a human behaving evilly. To deny that evil has not evolved is to deny that evil is human (the devil made me do it.)

Schadenfraude!  Okay, now you’ve done it.  You’ve moved into nature versus nurture.  Worse, you’ve entered the complex realm of personality.

Let me go back to a cat example.  My son has four of the little beasts.  If you visited one day while I was away, and later told me about it I’d know which of the four cats you were talking about if you simply said “the timid one”, or “the nasty one”,  “the friendly one”, or the “cautious one”.  They all have personalities which define them as much as their fur color or markings.  But they are neither self-aware or have the intelligence to tell right from wrong.  I have no idea what controls personality, although I assume it is some combination of brain chemistry (nature) and life experience (nurture).         

The “nasty” cat has a habit of scratching people.  She’s cute as a button and tiny (runt of the litter), but when you pet her she seems to have this idea that swatting you with her claws out is okay.  Is she evil?  No, she has no idea that what she’s done is wrong.  An even better example is a cat my mother had years ago.  She’d lay on your lap and let you pet her, but her way of saying “I’ve had enough.” Was hissing and scratching you suddenly, without any warning.  Again, evil? No.  Just a lousy personality.

I’m guessing schadenfraude is a personality disorder.  The difference is that unlike the cat, a person with this disorder knows the difference between right and wrong.  Think about it.  Everyone rubbernecks when passing a horrendous accident on the highway.  Why? Curiosity (intelligence), a subconscious joy that this did not happen to us (intelligence).  But there is a big difference between rubbernecking and deciding to feed our curiosity and joy, to self-gratify,  by tossing a large rock off an overpass to cause a collision. Let me give you a person example: I collect antique photo stuff (cameras, photos, etc.).  Every so often a person comes to me with something to sell.  The game is simple – always ask them how much they want for the item.  They generally have no idea of the value and often will ask a price that is ridiculously below value.  Getting an item like this can be a real steal, and an emotional charge too! You just made a killing! I know many people who jump at such a chance.  I can’t.  I make the judgment that I will not take advantage of this person.  I don’t give them full value, but I give them a lot more than they asked.  You can imagine the shocked looks I get when in response to “Can you give me $25 for this?” my response is “No, I’ll give you $50.”

Evil by evolution? Hardly.  If it were so we would have to accept an “evil gene” passed on from parents to offspring.  But then, considering there are what? 5 – 6 billion people on earth, we’d have to expect thousands of Jeffrey Dahmers  and John Wayne Gacys running amok.  Oh, there are a lot, but since they generally don’t reproduce offspring – how do their genes get passed along?

Combine nature, nurture, intelligence and  human nature and you get evil.  GD, I’d submit to you that calling upon the evolution of evil is the “devil made me do it”.  Looking upon the witch’s brew of intelligence, needs, ego, etc. leads to the true source of evil. (All the better too, since it gives writers so much to work with! J)

Tom

Carl: Good to hear from you. Hope all is well, or at least trending that way.

You guys sucked me into this one; can't resist chiming in.

Here's what I see as evil behavior: The infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering on others. (By "others" I mean both animals and people—but then that's a redundant tautology, eh?)

We can argue about what constitutes “unnecessary” suffering, but I trust the judgment of the people in this thread to know what I’m talking about.

Here’s my thumbnails of Good and Evil:

The Good: Possessed of a self-deprecating sense of humor, intellectually curious, high degree of empathy. Recognizes that morality is a very difficult thing indeed: the right thing, at the right time, with the right person, for the right reason. (Aristotle) Puts people over ideology, exercises prudent judgment, balances emotion and logic in dynamic tension. Tolerant, reflective, engaged. Low narcissism.

Evil F*cks: Possessed of no (or a cruel) sense of humor. Anti-intellectual, low (or no) degree of empathy. Has a black-and-white, “rigid-thinking”, childish view of morality (or eschews and denies the notion of morality altogether.) Puts ideology over people, engages in impulsive behavior and/or exercises poor judgment, is either hyper-emotional or coldly and callously “logical”. Intolerant, superficial and shallow, cynical and/or disengaged. High narcissism.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing of good vs. evil traits; I’m merely riffing on the conversation here.

PS. All is well, Tom. (Thanks for asking.) Recovering my energy and enthusiasm—slowly . . . (When that black wall hits . . . sometimes it’s all you can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other, ya know?)        

Niki posed the most insightful question, "...in order to buy the evolution argument, I would need to see proof that being evil is beneficial somehow to the survival of the species...."
Is evil part of human behavior because it is beneficial? Or do we have evil people because they managed to survive and procreate? If we track them down and kill them, do we become evil in the process? And if we have to become evil to overcome evil, is that an example of evil as beneficial? What if we just say to hell with the whole question, is it evil to ignore the horrors perpetrated by evil people in our world every day? Clearly, I could use some guidance here.

Athys wrote "Perhaps we need to explore the possibility of mitochondrial evil." Now there is a idea for you Athys. It even comes with an obvious title.

Welcome back, Carl It is always good to hear from you.
What do you think, is Niki right to say there are thousands of Evil Jr.s running around our world, (mostly with AK47's these days, I think, but some so poor they had to behead, oh, 800,000 of their neighbors with machetes and let the rivers bury the bodies.) Can we explain the Rwandan Genocide as mass hysteria, an anomaly unrelated to human nature? Are families murdered in Syria by Evil F*cks exercising poor judgment? Or do the killers mourn the deaths of their own families and evil behavior is just one part of evolved human nature?

Oh No Tom! You posted, "But they [cats] are neither self-aware or have the intelligence to tell right from wrong." I'd let this slide but my Bengal caught it and I had to explain anthropocentric to a cat.
Seriously, intelligence is a central theme in The Phoenix Diary. What happened, apparently 50,000 years ago, that makes us intelligent? This being fiction, I made up my answer but that begs the question, "What is self awareness, imagination, intelligence? I think they are all related but, hey, I'm just making stuff up here.

Hi GD,

Let me start with intelligence versus self-awareness by combining cats (again!) and something I remember from the joy of a Catholic elementary school education.   I was taught that when one confesses their sins, there are actually two types of contrition: perfect and imperfect.  In perfect contrition, you are sorry for your sins because you have offended and injured God, while in imperfect contrition you are sorry because you don’t want to end up in the celestial barbeque pit for all of eternity.  In an odd sense, this is the difference between human and animal intelligence.  Tabby learns quickly that if he scratches the couch he ends up having his furry little butt drop-kicked across the room.  In his dim little mind he soon associates scratching with pain and stops (at least while anyone is around to see him).  This is, in effect, imperfect contrition – I won’t do this because I’ll get hurt if I do.  Interestingly enough it also works on dogs and small children (see: Rod, Spare and Spoil Child).  Of the three (cat, dog, child), only the child ever develops the sense of a perfect contrition in the sense of not doing something because it is wrong, immoral, unethical, etc.  Tabby, for instance, will never think, “Oh, it really hurts the big critter’s feelings when I scratch this thing he sits on.  He seems to really like it, so I won’t damage it from now on.” Of course, along with that intellectual breakthrough comes the ability to make a decision to “screw the ethical implications, I’m going to do what I want to!”  The sense of self (self-awareness) takes on dimensions never reached by animals.  (Sadly though, I do know some people who actually think that cats do think these things through and are simply “giving you the middle claw” and doing what they want to.)

Now let’s ratchet up to Rwanda-style genocide.   Robert is spot on about how we have the ability to define groups as “the other”, and this also blends in LeeAnna’s,  Nicki’s, and Atthys’ comments.  Intelligence also gives us a unique ability to ignore (or deny) the obvious.  If I start teaching children at a very young age that red-haired people are evil demons because the red in their hair is a mark of the flames of hell they cannot hide, by the time they reach maturity that idea will be as natural to them as the fact that the sun rises in the morning (Counterpart Theory LeeAnna?).  If a higher authority (government) prevents them from taking any action, they will live with and interact with red heads, but at the same time they will always believe them to be evil, and if the chance arises, they will act on it.  Some people will make the observation that red heads act like normal people, have normal families and live normal lives and using their intelligence reject the red head = demon ideology, but many (some of whom may never have even met a red headed person) will continue to believe it.  That is basically what happened in Nazi Germany (which had a long heritage of anti-Semitism going back at least to the 18th century), and also Rwanda, Northern Ireland, etc.  As Robert put it, they are the “other”.     As the saying goes: “We need to be trained to hate.”  (as noted by Nicki and Atthys  when it comes to training children to respect all forms of life). Unfortunately, that goes on all the time.  You know, I often wonder if the “I was only following orders” defense originated because someone explained to those on trial that the “Well they weren’t human in the first place so what’s the prob?” defense wouldn’t fly.

Of course now we’re really stuck in the swamp.  If we can eradicate mosquitoes because they spread disease, why can’t we do the same to the (name of ethnic or religious group of your choice) because they are (sub-human, filthy, lazy, treacherous, traitorous, drooling rapists, cannibals {choose one or as many as you like})?  Isn’t this where intelligence is supposed to kick in? If it looks like a human, talks like a human, walks like a human, etc., isn’t it human? (Ignoring 1950’s B movie characters of course).  So in this case, the ruling authority that allows these things to happen is evil for allowing people to be evil by following  things they believe to be true because they’ve been taught them through tradition. (Oh my!)

Well, I guess you guys can really see that this whole question fascinates me (and I explore it quite a bit as subtext in Agony of the Gods). 

Last point, Carl’s definitions are great end points, but they are end points on a spectrum.  You can almost take all of the characteristics Carl mentions, put them into a tumbling barrel and then randomly put a few together to create a personality.  (Quick example: we had a local teacher who was very well respected, great person, wonderful, caring teacher, unfortunately also a pedophile).  Of course this is great for writers, but not so great for the real world.  Maybe the end result of intelligence (evolution GD?), personality, and nurture is the infinite ability to produce screwed up, damaged individuals.

Well, on that cheery note, I’ll bid you all good-day! J

Tom