Meanwhile…

Work is crazy! Cat Kitty Pryde is terribly sick!  So not a whole lot else going on. I have a couple of stories laying around I need to fire off somewhere just so I can feel productive.

The Writer’s Ink crew just started up a world building exercise. I have laid claim to the bitterly cold frozen tundras of the north east. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and start naming things, but I think I’ll be aiming for a mixture of Scottish, Finnish, and Welsh. Should result in some stuff that’s got the right sound but not cliche.

World building is sometimes the most fun aspect of writing fantasy or science fiction. You can let your imagination roam and create anything that comes to mind. That’s probably the first exercise in storytelling I ever engaged in; I still have little pencil-drawn maps in ancient spiral notebooks with all sorts of improbable geography and crazy names. Each nation had its own little epic history and a Lego hero to call its own. I remember spending tons of time writing these histories and never actually writing any stories in them, heh.

It’ll be interesting to see what this shared world will generate. At the moment there’s six of working on it, so we should come up with a wide variety of cultures populating this place.

Anyway, here’s a few websites I’ve found massively useful (discovered while working on my first failed NaNo a couple years ago).

Medieval Demographics Made Easy (handy for getting a grasp on how big is big for ancient towns and what sort of tradesmen might be in any given population center)

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

The Language Construction Kit (handy if you’re insane and want to create a language for your people)

http://www.zompist.com/kit

Horses in fiction (awesome little article with a few basic facts about horses)

http://fantasy.fictionfactor.com/articles/horses.html

Guide to Gods and Mythology (useful as inspiration if your people are of a religious nature)

http://www.godchecker.com/

Creating and Earthlike Planet (tons and tons of information about some of the basic science behind climate and geography, with tons of links to other resources)

http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/worldkit/index.html

Many years ago I wrote my first superhero story, for one of my creative writing courses. The premise I originally started with was pretty simple: the story would be about a guy whose neighbor (or roommate) was a superhero, but this poor hapless fellow was completely clueless to the fact. I pitched the idea to a classmate; she (her name was Katherine) loved the idea and wondered aloud at what sort of state the clueless neighbor would have to be in, mentally, for that scenario to be believable. Katherine was completely right. Just look at how unbelievable someone like, say, Lois Lane is. An ace news reporter not seeing that her co-worker is Superman? Puh-leeze. But when you have a character like Reed Richards, Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, miss out on his son playing by the open portal to the Negative Zone, it’s not so ridiculous; Reed is a classic absent-minded professor, so focused on his work that he can miss the mundane around him. (This of course all goes out the window if you’re playing it purely for comedic value.)

So I needed a character like that. Someone who would have the fantastic living next door but be so self absorbed or distracted by his or her own problems that they wouldn’t notice. For those taking notes, this is the sort of thought process that takes you from having just a gimmicky idea to an actual story. Kate booted me onto that process, even if, that summer, she would famously stand me up at the now defunct Dan’s Bar .

Around the same time, I read a story that I’m completely blanking on the name or author of now and it’s killing me. When I get home I’ll look it up. (I’m thinking of a Bernard Malamud story, perhaps?) Anyway, this short story was about a painter who worked for (kidnapped by, maybe? I forget) a gang of art thieves. The thieves would steal a famous painting, and he would recreate it so the museum would be none the wiser. I may have the details wrong, because it’s been a long time, but that was the gist of it. It’s a brilliant story.

Around the same time, one of my closest friends, Robert, was an actual painter. Great guy, he had so many paintings he didn’t have room for them at his place, so many of us had an original Stroud hanging on our walls. We would get drunk and bullshit philosophy like it was the most profound thing in the world. (I don’t make many goals in life, but to someday be able to afford a Stroud is one of my personal benchmarks of success.)

All of this gave birth to my painter character, Jackson. Jackson lived simply, shunning the outside of world and material things. He chose to focus on his art to the exclusion of all else. This of course led to creative stagnation and a general ennui. His new neighbor, whom the story implies is a superhero, causes him to realize the fullness of life, blah blah blah, you get the idea. I love Jackson and I think he’s still one of my better developed characters, but it’s a pretty stock plot, and when I look at the story now it’s hilariously dated. You can definitely tell what movies and music I was into at the time. I’m still pretty fond of that story, though, because I think every good writer has a painter character in them.

The arts are not terribly different, and we tend to write what we know, even when it’s clothed in something fantastic. That’s why you see so many stories and movies about the process and difficulties of creating art. It’s just us venting or working through things. If you go by the Hollywood, 80% of the world makes its living off writing or directing.

For me, painting is more than just that, though. I think the creative process itself is similar. We both start with a blank page into which we pour something personal that we hope will entertain, please, and maybe even stir up thought. The process of getting your work out to the public can be just as frustrating. The same forces of commercialism and freedom of expression tear at both the writer and painter. The very tools we each use, whether it’s word selection or acrylics versus watercolor, can be as important as the final product. There’s a lot of common ground.

Any writers out there agree? If not painting, there must be some artisan talent near and dear to you other than writing. Look for it, and you’ve got a story there.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen Once, do so. Beautiful movie.

I’m still in the murk and mire of revising my urban mage story, so not too much exciting to report.

I’ve also come up with a rather nifty idea for an anthology that wants speculative fiction involving movies. I hadn’t intended to write anything for it, but the idea struck me, unbidden. We’ll see if it pans out. Luckily, I have a cinema friend to run my cinema speculative fiction by for accuracy and believability. That will no doubt make the inevitable rejection all the more bitter.

In other news, my inability to attain the seventh and final issue of Dan Dare is killing me. I must know if the noble Brits under Dare’s command managed to repulse the Venusian invasion!

While out on vacation Jens has solicited guest columns from a few of his writer-type pals. Mine is up today! It is, unsurprisingly, about comics. While you’re there, check out Jens’s “Tales to Titillate” and his most recent published work, “Corazon,” a Dixie O’Dell adventure.

So a couple of weeks ago we were critting one of friend Stephanie’s latest stories, an excellent work about a pair of demon-powered superheroes. The story is a blast and will make a fine addition to whatever market *cough*A Thousand Faces*cough* accepts it.

One of my comments on the story was this: she used the term superhero (and supervillain) a couple of times in the story. I suggested she find better words, but I don’t think I really explained myself very well. Over the past couple of days I was checking out both Mercedes Lackey’s The Secret World Chronicle and Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps, and the terms popped up in both of those otherwise perfectly entertaining stories as well. I have a number of reasons why I don’t like seeing it in fiction, so I thought I’d lay them out.

1. Superhero is a literary term, in the same way, say, protagonist, epilogue, or deus ex machina are literary terms. We use these words to describe fiction, or scenes, or archetypes of people. But you don’t usually use them within the story, unless you’re doing it in some sort of winking, breaking-the-fourth-wall sort of way. Or you’re Deadpool.

2. Superhero has baggage. Like any broad character archetype, the word superhero brings to mind certain images and conventions that you don’t necessarily want. For most people, saying superhero will bring to mind a big guy in tights and a cape, who flies around saving people from burning buildings. But if your character isn’t anything like that, it may hinder your attempts to make them unique and interesting.

3. Superhero is generic and unhelpful. As much as the term may conjure up stereotypes you don’t want, it’s also a pretty broad category that doesn’t really tell the reader much about this particular person. It tells me they have powers, and that they are supposedly heroic (or villainous). That’s not even necessarily accurate; Batman is certainly a superhero, but has no supernatural abilities. What I’d rather see is a description of the powers or whatever is remarkable about their skills, and a reason why they’re considered a hero or villain. Better yet, show me. You can usually kill two birds with this one scene by showing them using their powers for good or ill.

It’s not that the word doesn’t have its uses. It certainly does. As with everything, context is important. But as a shorthand description as I often see it used, it’s pretty weak. There will always be a better word to use as a descriptive. This is English; we probably have fifty words for “good guy” and “bad guy” that will better apply to any particular character.

At least, that’s my opinion. Agree or disagree? Chime in!

It seems like, with every story, there’s the “Aha!” moment during the writing process. It’s the moment where these loosely connected scenes and half-formed characters and all the (what you hope is) clever dialogue comes together and a story is formed. You’ve just discovered the little element that the story was missing and it all suddenly becomes something that might just be readable.

Some people have stories leap from their head fully formed. I have “Aha!” moments.

Anyway, last week during the impromptu write-in I had my “Aha!” moment for my Sevastian Dušan, Mystic Extraordinaire, story. I hadn’t intended to delve into the good magi’s origins quite yet, but it appears I will, at least in part. It’ll make the story quite a bit longer, of course, but I’m hoping it will be more interesting and satisfying.

Reading: Off Armageddon Reef, by David Weber, Whiteout by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber