Author: Bob

Once question I’ve heard over the years is why do I write? There is an assortment of ways to answer the question, some more serious than others. In talking to other writers, it seems there are some common threads. Maybe some of those reasons apply to your writing as well.

The obvious answers are short. Writing is fun. Writing is a cheap hobby. Maybe we have something we want to say to the world and writing lets us do that. If you are skilled, writing can earn money. On top of those, my brain won’t let me get to sleep at night if it is in the mood to write.

Those all make sense, but they don’t discuss the long-term outcomes of our writing. Many of us would like to be professional writers. That would imply that we want enough income from our writing that we don’t need a second source of funds. That would allow us to write full time. Another sign of success is when publishers and agents actively seek us for our writing skill. Once Hollywood starts turning your writing into movies, that’s a good sign as well.

I want other things to show the success of my writing. For example, I want to create a non-obvious phrase that is so good that it becomes part of the language. Not just a short-lived pop culture reference, but I want my phrase to appear in dictionaries throughout the future. I want the phrase be seem so natural that people can’t imagine the language without it.

Similarly, I want at least one character that is so popular that people use the name of the character to reference people with similar characteristics. In the same way that any do-gooder scoundrel could be called a Robin Hood, people should use the name of my character. Honestly, I don’t care if the use is positive, as long as the name lives on as part of culture.

The title of at least one of my writings should be used in the same way. Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is used as a metaphor for love even centuries later. I want the same impact from what I write, even if it is just as wrongly applied as that one.

Finally, I want English majors in colleges everywhere to curse my name. I want them exhausted with the analysys forced upon them by overzealous professors who have completely misunderstood my work. I want them to cry out, “Why do we have to read this garbage?” and have the faculty reply, “Garbage? You’ve missed the whole point!” The only logic response to that is for the students to put funny hats on the statues and busts of me wherever found.

There is a very good chance that I will not reach all of those goals. Given my publishing history so far, it’s unlikely that even techno-archaeologists will find the remains of my blog in the coming millenia. Still, the picture of those motivators can help me through on the odd occasion that the writing has stalled. Hopefully, you have similar dreams.

“G-579, you have stopped moving. Please respond”

I looked over my shoulder to the cockpit speaker on the console and then back to the man pointing the pistol at me. “Well,” I said, “it’s your ship now. What do you want to tell them?”

He didn’t seem prepared for the details of his piracy; my question confused him for a moment.

“Oh, yea,” he said, “tell them what’s going on.” He motioned to the console with his pistol.

It was my turn to be surprised. “You want me to tell them everything?”

He nodded a couple of times.

My copilot, Livesey, raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and then looked at the floor to avoid making any eye contact.

I swiveled my chair back to the console and the cockpit window, careful not to bump into the pirate in the cramped room.

All around us, starships of all types moved to and from jump points, on their way to other stars. That’s what we would be doing if things were still going to plan.

I flicked the switch to use the com. “Jump Master Control, this is G-579. We are currently being pirated by, well, a pirate.”

There was no immediate response; I don’t think I expected one. When they came back, they seemed surprised. “G-579, did you say pirate?”

I looked back at the man standing behind me. “Roger that, Jump Master Control, an actual, story-book style pirate. A young man in tall boots that fold over at the top, a billowy shirt, a scarf around his head, a sword and a pistol. He says he’s taking over this ship.”

Another pause as they digested what I fed them.

I smiled at the pirate.

He smiled back, pleasantly.

That made it weirder.

“G-579, is it one of those old-time pistols with the metal ball?”

I looked at the pistol again. I was pretty sure the image would be with me in detail for a long time. “Jump Master Control, negative, the pistol is a modern plasma pistol”

Most piracy happened near the small colonies where everybody was too poor to defend themselves and had very little to steal. When it happened, the military caught the bad guys and the news showed images of the remains. Those pirates looked drab and worn out. I guess we were lucky to get one who took the time to dress the part.

“G-579, what does he want?”

That was a good question. I spun my chair to face the pirate directly. “You heard the question. What should I tell them?”

He gestured around with his left hand and smiled. “I want this. I’m after this ship. It is my intention to steal and fly off with this specific vessel.”

Livesey looked at me with his face twisted in puzzlement. I’m sure I looked about the same. I piloted this ship for about five years and there was nothing special about it. Any ship with a “G” designation meant that we hauled garbage, usually to a recycle base, and that’s all we did.

I turned back to the console. “Jump Master Control, he says he wants this ship, the G-579.”

“Why?” the response came back quickly.

This would be easier if I weren’t the intermediary. The pirate explained that the G-579 was a secret super ship that his spy father piloted during the war. He needed to steal it to prove that his father was a hero and not just a lowly garbage hauler.

I should have been offended by the “lowly” remark, but the situation was too strange.

“G-579, please wait while we confer.”

That wasn’t good. The discussion back at Control would range from boarding my ship to simply blasting it into particles. Neither kept me on the easy path to retirement. It was time to remember that two-hour “talking down nutjobs” seminar all the new ship captains sit through. That was a long time ago and I’d mostly just talked down drunks since then.

“So,” I asked, “what should we call you?” Having a name makes things personal, they said. It’s harder for someone to shoot you if you get personal. That was the theory, anyway.

“Call me Felix.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Felix, even if the situation is a little awkward.” They also said to downplay the stressfulness of the situation. “My name is Doyle Ross, but everybody calls me Ross.” I indicated my copilot. “This is my first mate, Livesey. He’s a good guy.”

Livesey waved a little and tried to smile.

Felix waved back.

“So, Felix, what makes you think this is your father’s ship?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “Dad had pictures and the call signs, and they even had the number on the sword he wore.” He patted the sword hanging from his waist.

“Did you ask your dad about all this before you snuck aboard?”

Felix lowered his head. “No, he passed away a few years ago. It was sad; they didn’t give him his full military honors because his work was top secret. That’s why I have to expose his work, so they will have to recognize what a hero he was.” A little extra stress crept into his voice.

Things just went from goofy crazy to sad crazy. I had hoped that, with the full pirate outfit, the guy could be tricked into peacefully going off on some adventure with clowns and whoever else from story books. Sad crazy was different. This guy was on an emotional mission and there would be no dissuading him from it. This was going to need more than a spaceship captain’s level of psychology training.

“I’m sorry to hear about your dad passing. He sounds like he was quite a man.” Staying on Felix’s good side was important. “I’m sure he would want you to live up to his morals and level of service.”

Felix switched the pistol from his right hand to his left. That worried me.

With his newly available right hand, he slowly drew his sabre from its scabbard. His eyes glazed a little as he looked over the intricate pattern of gold on the blade. He held the blade at different angles to catch the cockpit lights.

“You said that’s your dad’s sword?” I asked. I hoped the question would snap him out of wherever he was going.

“Hm? What?” he responded, “Oh, yes. It’s his sword. It has the ship designation right there on the blade near the hilt.” He turned the blade so I could see the gold “G-579”.

“The rest,” he continued, “is control circuitry. It has the program that turns this old garbage scow into a super powered blockade runner and spy craft. All I have to do is insert this into the correct slot in the console and the change begins.”

He turned his attention to the console, looking over all the slots, crevices, and other openings.

“You know,” I said, “this ship has been in private ownership for a lot of years. In all likelihood, the military removed any special circuitry after the war, you know, to keep it secret. Even if you could find the right slot, the sword would probably just cut through important wires without having the desired effect.” It was the best I could think of to try to keep him from cramming a random piece of metal through the controls of my ship.

“G-579,” came a different voice over the com. This voice was deeper and a little bit scary. “This is Commander Bittinger of the Battlecruiser Stalwart. Prepare to be boarded.”

The conferring at Control must have decided on not blasting us right away, though the option was obviously still on the table.

Through the cockpit window, I saw a small, gray dot in the distance become a looming monstrosity of armaments sliding into position beside my ship. Those battlecruisers were fast.

I turned to Felix. “I don’t think they are going to give you time to figure out the correct slot. Don’t worry, though; you haven’t really done any harm.”

“I have to prove my dad was telling the truth all those years,” his voice strained.

We were back to sad crazy. His old man really messed him up with those stories. “You know, my dad used to tell me stories when I was a kid. I really believed them back then; still do a little. I tell my own kid stories and he’s old enough for a ship of his own. It’s just one of those things dads do with their kids.”

He turned, a little too mechanically, to stare at me. His eyes were really wide, as was his smile.

My own eyes were locked on his, but in my peripheral vision I saw his plasma pistol pointed straight at my chest. The nerves in my spinal column hummed with tightness and I felt more afraid than I had ever felt before.

“Yes,” he said through his rigid smile, “but my dad’s stories were true.”

His eyes turned back to the console and he plunged the sword into a slot normally reserved for maintenance scanners.

The cockpit lights dimmed to emergency levels, making the sparks seem even brighter as they erupted from the console.

The vibrations of the engine stopped.

Felix stared at the sword hilt protruding from the console.

Livesey looked at me.

I nodded slightly toward the door at the back of the cockpit.

We both rose slowly to avoid disturbing our pirate. He didn’t seem to notice as we scooted by.

We left the cockpit, closed the door behind us and headed to the escape pods near the crew quarters.

The vibrations of the engines returned, but not in the normal way. They pulsed, as though out of phase. I felt it the same time as Livesey.

“They’re going to blow,” he whispered.

I motioned to the pods. “Hurry.”

We climbed inside, strapped in, and pushed ‘go’. My G-579 jettisoned us into space.

With the pod’s communications, I made contact. “Battlecruiser Stalwart, this is escape pod from G-579. Regular crew are in the pod, but the pirate is still on the ship. He’s started some sort of phase pulse in the engines. There’s a good chance they are going to explode.”

“Do you think they’ll get us?” asked Livesey.

“Control will probably send somebody; we’re too small for a whole cruiser.” I unstrapped myself and floated to see out the porthole.

There was my ship, tiny and a lot more clunky compared with the cruiser. Still, it was home for a lot of years. I hoped they could save it and I could return. There would be an inquiry and I should probably be grateful if they let me fly anything when it was done.

A bright flash filled the pod.

It took a moment for my eyes to recover from the shock. Still dazed, I clumsily floated back to my seat and strapped back in.

Livesey asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yea, I’m fine; just a little shook.”

He seemed to take me at my word. “Did the ship explode?”

I blinked a couple of times. “The ship is gone.”

“It exploded then?” he asked again.

“The ship is gone.” That was about all I really knew.

The ability to visualize things has been a great help to me over the years. Talking with others has led to the conclusion that not everyone has the same level of skill in doing this. I contemplated this to determine why I had strength in the area. I believe that particular exercises from my teens helped. Those exercises may be able to help you too.

In earlier jobs, I fixed everything from photocopiers to life support equipment. Being able to visualize the inner workings of the machine let me model exactly what caused the “break” and fix it quickly. Later jobs involved build databases and software. Again, I could visualize the patterns and avoid potential problems by seeing them in my model. My writer friends say I am very visual, and this is a manifestation of the visualization because I see the scenes in the same way I could see the inner workings of a blueprint machine.

In junior high school, the standard practice was to send me to the counsellor’s office. Apparently, awesome grades don’t make up for obnoxiousness or general weirdness. The counsellor was a great guy who taught me things like biofeedback and meditation. One of the meditations developed into a visualization exercise that I think really helped my ability to develop complex, detailed mental models.

Start here

As with all meditation things, make sure your medical people are okay with it. Once that’s out of the way, find yourself a mostly dark area where you can sit or lie down comfortably without being disturbed. Try to breathe slowly and steadily, with deep breaths. So far, this is all standard meditation stuff.

Try to picture an old, wooden ruler, such as we used to use in school. Those rulers were one foot long and had a thin, brass strip running along one edge so you could use the ruler for drawing straight lines. The hatch marks (the lines denoting the sections of distance) were pressed into the wood and filled with black paint. It didn’t take long for these rulers to develop chips on the corners or dents in the wood. The brass strip never stayed straight.

Picture this ruler just floating in the blackness of space. Don’t worry about stars or any other space stuff, you only want to have a void in which your ruler can float freely. Really look at every detail of the ruler. See every bit of the wood grain. See where the paint left the hatch marks or numbers, making them uneven. Try to hold all of those details in your mind.

This can be difficult. It seems like each new detail on which you focus causes the previous details to fade. That’s okay, keep trying. As you repeat the exercise over time, the ability to retain more of the details will increase.

As you get more of the details, let the floating ruler gently rotate so you can see the other sides. Those sides have details as well; try to see and retain them. If you want, you can try to imagine how the evidence of the wood grain on one side relates to the grain on the other.

Once you can manage one ruler, add a second ruler so they are floating end to end. The second ruler will have completely different dents and chips; the paint will be uneven in completely different ways. As you come to grips with each ruler, add another to the line. Back when I did this exercise regularly, I got to about thirty rulers at a time, though that was in much younger days.

How to use this in writing

The point of the ruler exercise is to stretch out your mind and exercise your ability to visualize. You can now apply that to writing by visualizing the location of one of your scenes. Don’t worry about action at the time, just get the details of the setting.

You can write down your details, or set up a recorder and describe the details as you see them. For this exercise, no detail is too small. Don’t limit yourself to visual details, denote what you smell, feel and hear as well. Try to get everything.

When you actually write your story, you will not use all of those details. By knowing all the details, you can pick the more relevant ones to include. The goal is for your mind to automatically build the complete model of the scene and then instinctively gather the ones that go into the story. The brain building done by the meditation makes your brain stronger and more skilled for the things you want it to do.

Example

So, here’s an example scene that I’ll describe. It’s from a short story I’m working on.

The walls are concrete. The ceiling is low and dark. The room is about eight meters by five. There seem to be heavy wood beams supporting the ceiling; they run through the darkness the length of the room. They are only about three meters above the floor.

The long wall to the right has four restaurant booths, with room for a fifth in the corner nearest the point of view. A rough wooden wall separates each booth, but they don’t reach all the way to the ceiling. The booths have wooden tables and benches. The tables have a central pedestal leg with four stabilizing legs emanating from them. The table of the second booth from me has lighter colored wood on one of its stabilizing legs, suggesting a relatively recent repair.

The seats of the benches are padded and covered with cloth made up of different colored pieces. They are sewn together much like a quilt. Some of the patches sit proud of the surface and have rougher stitching, suggesting that they are repairs. Some parts of the cloth has stains. (NOTE: I’m seeing individual stains. I see their shapes and colors. Many haver the dark color of wine. Some have the crusty pale color of gravy or dough. A couple have the dark brown of dried blood.)

A candle sits inside a tin holder on the middle of each table. The holder is crudely shaped cubes with holes punched in the sides to let air in and the light out. Soot covers the insides of the holders. The candles flicker, providing some light in strange patterns in the rest of the booth. Black smoke rises from the holder, suggesting a tallow candle and explaining the slight acrid stench in the air.

There are three round tables in the middle of the room, making a row in the long direction, though not perfectly aligned (the middle is further away from the wall with the booths, but less than half a meter.). Each has five wood chairs around it. The chairs all have backs with an open framework, but they are in different styles. A heavy rope leads from the central pedestal of the table to each chair. The rope is long enough for the chair to slide out to accommodate customers, but would not let the chair be used as a throwing weapon. The tables are rough wood, though they may have been smooth once. There are signs of impacts and gouges. Each of these also has a candle.

The bar runs along the other wall, with a little over a meter of space behind for a bartender. The top of the bar is wood. The support is faced with old metal sheeting of some sort. A geometric pattern of diamond shapes covers the metal, with some dents in it here and there (if you look down its length, the surface looks more like the cracked surface associated with dried mud). On the employee-side, there are wood shelves with ceramic mugs and a few bottles of about a liter in size. Two small, wood casks sit on stands made of crossed boards. The cask closest has a wood tap but the other still has the bung in place.

The boards of the floor behind the par show signs of a lot of wear. The boards close to the wall are dark with age and they fit well. The ones where the bartender walks are lighter, newer, and ill-fitting. The repairs were obviously cheap and done at different times. That part of the floor sits lower than the rest of the floor just from the damage over time.

Several post rise from the floor, through the bar and to the ceiling. Each is about two hand-breadths square. They seem to be support posts, holding up part of the ceiling. Thin wires wrap around the posts and up to the joist that runs over the bar. Small lights hang from the wire at regular intervals. The wire comes down to a wood box behind the bar. A crank handle protrudes from the side of the box.

In the center of the wall behind the bar, there is a small, wooden door, a little lower than head height. This is the door to the neighboring restaurant where the bar has contracted to get food if one of the bar patrons wants something. The cement of the wall around the door has been patched in a way suggesting a much larger door was there at one time. Now there is the wood frame, the hatchway, the sturdy metal hinges, and the latching mechanism. The wood is stained old and shows signs of regular polishing. The area around the latch is a lighter color and is worn into the surface from years of use. I think the restaurant is closed; I can’t hear any sounds from there.

At the far end, opposite my position and aligned with the bar, there is a large door. The vertical planks seem thick. Horizontal planks cross just below the top and just above the bottom. There is a diagonal plank from one horizontal to the other, bracing the door. The strap hinges reach far into the door, held on by large bolts or rivets. The other parts of the hinges are bolted to the cement of the wall. A large plank bars the door shut, suspended by iron brackets on the walls. A small puddle of water has built up at the bottom of the door, probably because of the rain outside.

The air feels slightly damp. The slight odor of the tallow mixes with the scents of alcohol, the fresh stuff as well as centuries of spills. The seats also carry the oils and sweat of countless patrons who’ve visited over time.

The lights over the bar dim a little. I turn the crank on the box and the lights brighten. The scent of ozone joins the others for a moment, and then it’s gone.

I know that there is a sidewalk outside. It is made of blocks of stone and cement from different places. Looking up from the walk, the outer wall goes up several stories. The old windows are boarded against the rain. This is an old building, maybe even built before the Storm. Who knows how all of its room has been used in those centuries. The bar was an early occupant and will probably stick around. There is always a need for a bar.

If you are like me, you probably have too many projects going at the same time, and probably need therapy. One of my back-burner writing projects called for attention and wouldn’t let me ignore it. Since it had just a vague outline and some notes, I decided to apply the strategies from the book Mastering Suspense, Structure, & Plot by Jane K. Cleland. This is a different strategy for me.

The book targets stories of suspense, such as crime fiction or horror, but looks applicable to other genres. Like many writing books, it delivers good advice about any writing. The difference is “Jane’s Plotting Road Map” in Chapter 3. This Map attaches important plot points to specific pages/word counts in a typical suspense story.

I wanted to apply this road map. As of today, I’m not a famous novelist; I lack confidence in my novel structure. The stories look good to me, but they aren’t bringing in that retirement money I’ve been wanting. Having something more concrete gives me a reference.

In my day job, our students give presentations. In their final courses, they present software projects to their “clients” like the pros would. The presentations lacked polish and structure. To help, I added curricula focused on presenting in the I. T. industry. With guidelines, the student presentations took off, and the students come across like they are delivering real products to real customers and have been for years.

That’s what books like Cleland’s do; they provide a concrete framework to use as a starting point. My finished story may not follow her Road Map precisely, but it’s good to have that template so I know what to shoot for.

I don’t have all the structure of the story worked out yet. In the first go, I ended up with about three thousand words of new notes and another twenty-five hundred of experimental scenes. It also became clear that I would need to define a lot more of the story world if the plot is to be defined so clearly up front. That’s okay; I tend to do that already.

If you aren’t sure about your current story’s structure, you may want to read this book. If nothing else, the concepts introduced may help fire your neurons with some brilliance. Give it a try. I’ll let you know how my story works out.

I’ve been trying to get an agent for my novel for over a year now, off and on. Along the way, there has been some awesome agent feedback, for which I’m grateful. That means I’ve made changes to the novel along the way. The suggestions for changes don’t just come from agents, though. Far too often, something in my mind tells me I need to adjust just one more little thing.

Honestly, I think most of the ideas shouldn’t be done. I’ll make note of them and sometimes I’ll write them out in a separate file. That’s when the analysis has to start. I have to ask the (sometimes) hard questions:

1. Does this help the main plot?
2. Does this help a subplot?
3. Does this provide insight into character development?
4. Would a reader really appreciate this extra bit or consider it an unnecessary detour?

In almost all cases, the answers tell me not to add the change to the novel as it is. In fact, there have been very few cases where I did make the change. It was still necessary to get the new story out of my head, mostly so it would let me sleep. The new part usually does help me understand more about the characters and the actions, just in way more detail than needed for this story. One or two may be the seed for another story later.

Currently, I’m developing on of the ones that may actually make it into the final novel. My brain first pointed out that one secondary character’s motivation is a bit vague. Looking back, I can see where that could be an issue. The solution is to add one or two small scenes, and change a minor detail about another. If I do it correctly, it should be good.

These new suggestions have gone through the questions listed above. It helps the main plot. It helps a subplot. It helps with two characters, and I think the readers will really like the new version better than the original.

The thing I must avoid though is the never completed novel. It is well established that no work of art is complete until the artist is dead. Our target then is “complete enough”. In general, I think that the novel is done, but I really could keep working on it the rest of my days and still be polishing little pieces. I can’t let that happen, or I will never accomplish anything.

So, I’ll make the few changes, make sure I didn’t screw anything up, and then go back to getting it sold. I think it is pretty solid at this point, so I should focus on other stories. Anything that I add after this can be notes that others can profit from after I’m dead.