Downton Abbey Blues

Writing from Scratch #9

Complex Plots, Part 2: Modifying Plots

The second way we’ll try complicating a plot is through plot modifiers. This happens when a try-fail cycle not only furthers the solution of one plot-problem but spawns a new plot-problem. What these plots actually modify are the stakes. They can give far-off worst-case scenarios more immediacy, which is what the plot analysis we’ll be getting into today does. Or they can show clear examples of what’s at stake for more abstract cases (think of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings clarifies our fears for what could happen to Frodo).

How does this work? Let’s look back at the plot analysis I did for The Expanse, Season 1 Episode 2, “The Big Empty.” A brief recap:

The Background: The Knight, a small, rickety life-boat sized spaceship with 5 survivors is all that’s left of the Canterbury after an attack on the larger vessel.

The Problem: The Knight’s radio is dead.

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Writing from Scratch #6

The Character Plot

The problem of a Character plot involves a character’s worldview – their beliefs, values, desires, and fears. Many but not all stories include a Character plot, often called a character arc, in which a character’s worldview shifts. A Character plot is entirely concerned with the internal state of the character in question and as such is rarely seen on its own. When it is on its own, as it is in “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, you can end up with an extraordinary story.

Because a Character plot is entirely internal, the try-fail cycles don’t work out exactly the same as they do when dealing with an external/physical problem and solution; they are also up for interpretation by the reader when done subtly and beautifully as in “Miss Brill.” Character plot try-fails are often not even done intentionally as typically the character does not realize a change in the worldview needs to occur. So, read “Miss Brill” (it’s short, less than 2,000 words) and try for yourself to determine the problem – it’s not stated directly – and identify the try-fails. After, you can read over my interpretation, please let me know in the comments how our thoughts compare!

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My 90yr old Irish Catholic grandpa doesn’t miss with my gender. He’s never gotten my name wrong, or my pronouns, never even faltered over it.

It’s all so natural too: son, big man, young man…

We’ve never talked about it. He’s the only one who hasn’t pushed for details. He just accepted it and carried on because it’s not a huge deal.

It’s so comforting.

TBC since tumblr’s posting methods changed

Winter Reading Reviews '16

Winter '16 Reading Reviews #bookreviews #amreading

A couple weeks late, but it gave me a chance to finally finish Tigana, which has been haunting me since the fall.  This review has minor spoilers for Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka, The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster, Games Wizards Play (Young Wizards series) by Diane Duane. (more…)

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honey production does hurt the bees. the honey stolen is replaced with a toxic synthetic sugar substance which isn't healthy for them. honey isn't for humans to steal, please educate yourself.

Arright, sit down, you’re about to get some knowledge dropped on you by somebody with beekeepers and meadmakers in the family.

The “toxic synthetic sugar substance” you’re referring to? Is sugar water. Literally SUGAR and WATER. There’s nothing synthetic about it. And the bees only rarely need a LITTLE bit of sugar water to help them get through, because if they’re provided with enough nectar, bees will make a shit-ton of honey. Most hives generate more honey than they can ever use.

And when a hive starts getting too full, the bees may swarm and try to go find a new place to live. Do you know what happens to a more than three-quarters of swarms that leave their hive? THEY DIE. Yup. Either they can’t find a new hive, or they run into predators, or they wind up landing somewhere that humans don’t want them and then exterminators get called.

So removing a few frames from the hive, taking out the wax and the honey, and replacing them for the bees to fill with new comb and honey and larvae is actually GOOD for the hive. The bees stay busy, they’ve got frames to fill, the queen doesn’t feel the need to go anywhere, and their human buddies can help keep them safe from natural predators and pesticides.

The mutually-beneficial relationship between humans and bees has existed for literally thousands of years. People keep hives, bees pollinate crops and make honey, people harvest the honey, the bees get extra protection and can happily buzz away keeping the plants healthy and making more sweet sugary goo.

Honeybees are an endangered species. If they die, not only does your vegan diet become completely impossible, but the entire planet is royally fucked.

And do you know who’s doing more than anybody else to keep them alive and make sure we don’t all starve?

BEEKEEPERS. And they treat those bees like their own damn children. They’re not going to feed them toxins or “steal” all their food, they want the bees to be happy and healthy and THRIVING.

Being vegan is absolutely fine, but don’t go trying to tell other people how to eat and don’t sound off on shit until YOU educate YOURSELF. Try talking to an actual beekeeper sometime. Or at the very least, read an article by a beekeeper instead of relying on someone else’s scare tactics.

Mr. Gaiman, I love your writing and your tumblr presence. If I can ask your advice, I’m a writer and I feel like I’ve lost inspiration for plot. I want to write emotions and relationships, but the story always escapes me. What do you do when you know your characters and how they relate to each other but not the story? Thank you!

The quickest way, if you have two characters you like and want to see succeed, is to have them want mutually exclusive things. And that’s a plot.

Why I’m Team Cap (and It Really Couldn’t Be Any Other Way)

#TeamCap and the big problem with the superhero genre #Arrow #Daredevil #CivilWar #MCU #DC

I recently started watching Arrow on Netflix; everyone on Tumblr seems to think “Olicity” is the greatest OTP since The One True Way or at least Destiel (neither Destiel nor Olicity reaching the heights of OTW obvi) and I wanted to understand (this is also how I ended up watching 9.5 seasons of Supernatural, but that is a story for another time). I also recently, like everyone else with a Netflix…

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On Liking Stuff (or not)

So, back when Ancillary Justice was essentially sweeping that year’s SF awards, there was some talk from certain quarters about it not really being all that, people only claimed to like it because Politics and SJWs and PC points and Affirmative Action and nobody was really reading the book and if they were they didn’t really enjoy it, they just claimed they did so they could seem cool and woke.

My feelings were so hurt that I wept bitter, miserable tears every time I drove to the bank with my royalty checks. I mean, those people must be right, it’s totally typical for non-fans who don’t actually like a book to write fanfic or draw fan art, totally boringly normal for students to choose to write papers about a book that just isn’t really very good or interesting, and for professors to use that boringly not-very-good book in their courses, and for that book to continue to sell steadily five years after it came out. I totally did not laugh out loud whenever I came across such assertions, because they were absolutely not ridiculous Sour Grape Vineyards tended by folks who, for the most part, hadn’t even read the book.

Now I am sorry–but not surprised–to see some folks making similar assertions about N.K. Jemisin’s historic (and entirely deserved) Hugo Threepeat. Most of them haven’t read the books in question.

But some of them have. Some of them have indeed read the books and not understood why so many people are so excited by them.

Now, Nora doesn’t need me to defend her, and she doesn’t need lessons from me about the best way to dry a tear-soaked award-dusting cloth, or the best brands of chocolate ice cream to fortify yourself for that arduous trip to the bank. Actually, she could probably give me some pointers.

But I have some thoughts about the idea that, because you (generic you) didn’t like a work, that must mean folks who say they did like it are Lying Liars Who Lie to Look Cool.

So, in order to believe this, one has to believe that A) one’s own taste is infallible and objective and thus universally shared and B) people who openly don’t share your taste are characterless sheep who will do anything to seem cool.

But the fact is, one doesn’t like or dislike things without context. We are all of us judging things from our own point of view, not some disembodied perfectly objective nowhere. It’s really easy to assume that our context is The Context–to not even see that there’s a context at all, it’s just How Things Are. But you are always seeing things from the perspective of your experiences, your biases, your expectations of how things work. Those may not match other people’s.

Of course, if you’re in a certain category–if you’re a guy, if you’re White, if you’re straight, if you’re cis–our society is set up to make that invisible, to encourage you in the assumption that the way you see things is objective and right, and not just a product of that very society. Nearly all of the readily available entertainment is catering to you, nearly all of it accepts and reinforces the status quo. If you’ve never questioned that, it can seem utterly baffling that people can claim to enjoy things that you see no value in. You’ll maybe think it makes sense to assume that such people are only pretending to like those things, or only like them for reasons you consider unworthy. It might not ever occur to you that some folks are just reading from a different context–sometimes slightly different, sometimes radically different, but even a small difference can be enough to make a work seem strange or bafflingly flat.

Now, I’m sure that there are people somewhere at some time who have in fact claimed to like a thing they didn’t, just for cool points. People will on occasion do all kinds of ill-advised or bananapants things. But enough of them to show up on every SF award shortlist that year? Enough to vote for a historic, record-breaking three Hugos in a row? Really?

Stop and think about what you’re saying when you say this. Stop and think about who you’re not saying it about.

You might not have the context to see what a writer is doing. When you don’t have the context, so much is invisible. You can only see patterns that match what you already know.*

Of course, you’re not a helpless victim of your context–you can change it, by reading other things and listening to various conversations. Maybe you don’t want to do that work, which, ok? But maybe a lot of other folks have indeed been doing that, and their context, the position they’re reading stories from, has shifted over the last several years. It’s a thing that can happen.

Stop and think–you’ve gotten as far as “everyone must be kind of like me” and stepped over into “therefore they can’t really like what they say they like because I don’t like those things.” Try on “therefore they must really mean it when they say they like something, because I mean it when I say it.” It’s funny, isn’t it, that so many folks step into the one and not the other. Maybe ask yourself why that is.

This also applies to “pretentious” writing. “That writer is only trying to look smart! Readers who say they like it are only trying to look smarter that me, a genuine,honest person, who only likes down-to-earth plain solid storytelling.” Friend, your claims to be a better and more honest person because of your distaste for “pretentious” writing is pretension itself, and says far more about you than the work you criticize this way. You are exactly the sort of snob you decry, and you have just announced this to the world.

Like or don’t like. No worries. It’s not a contest, there’s no moral value attached to liking or not liking a thing. Hell, there are highly-regarded things I dislike, or don’t see the appeal of! There are things I love that lots of other folks don’t like at all. That’s life.

And sure, if you want to, talk about why you do or don’t like a thing. That’s super interesting, and thoughtful criticism is good for art.

But think twice before you sneer at what other folks like, think three times before you declare that no one could really like a thing so it must be political correctness, or pretension, or whatever. Consider the possibility that whatever it is is just not your thing. Consider the possibility that it might be all right if not everything is aimed at you. Consider that you might not actually be the center of the universe, and your opinions and tastes might not be the product of your utterly rational objective view of the world. Consider the possibility that a given work might not have been written just for you, but for a bunch of other people who’ve been waiting for it, maybe for a long time, and that might just possibly be okay.

____ *Kind of like the way some folks insist my Ancillary trilogy is obviously strongly influenced by Iain Banks (who I’d read very little of, and that after AJ was already under way) and very few critics bring up the influence of C.J. Cherryh (definitely there, deliberate, and there are several explicit hat tips to her work in the text). Those folks have read Banks, but they haven’t read Cherryh. They see something that isn’t there, and don’t see what is there, because they don’t have the same reading history I do. It’s interesting to me how many folks assume I must have the same reading history as they do. It’s interesting to me how sure they are of their conclusions.

(Crossposted from https://www.annleckie.com/2018/08/27/on-liking-stuff-or-not/)

Submitted via Google Form:

I am quite intrigued about how animals seem to have higher tolerance for pollution and germs while humans seem to lose it. Animals still just eat off the ground and drink straight from streams. However isn’t that exactly what our ancestors did? I absolutely do realise the world in the past also was less polluted than now. But past humans and animals did that in the past in the same environment, while in the present day environments only animals do this and humans can’t. Yes, animals and humans are of course always getting sick, but animals have way less access to healthcare than humans and manage to thrieve while humans need all this heathcare. Also, it is very evident in humans in human communities lacking healthcare being worse off. But with animals, I don’t seem to see the problems occuring as I’d expect for almost no healthcare for them. At least in this way.. the only biggest issues are like lost of land/hunting, and if health is the main issue? Basically, no heathcare affects humans worse than wild animals. And attitudes are if humans eat something off the ground it’s panic, an animal.. nope. So for actual story writing, I want to address these things in my story where both people and animals are time travelling. Also, I suppose how environmental changes would affect these out of time people.

Feral: there are a lot of assumptions in your ask that just don’t hold up.

Assumption #1: Animals have a higher tolerance for pollution and germs than humans do. Animals do get sick and die. In the case of pollution, higher pollution in a given area is more indicative of human life than animal life. Humans and our domesticated pets are the creatures living in cities with horrible smog conditions and the like, and while pollution definitely causes illnesses and disabilities in humans, one of the reasons you don’t see wild animals as much in these areas is because the development and pollution it causes has killed them off. As for germs, it is true that in industrialized countries, humans are probably more susceptible to germs, bacteria, viruses, etc, due to the inhibitions sterilized environments place on the development of natural immune systems. But animals still get sick and die, too; they may not die as frequently from illness as humans (I have no data one way or another), but I would argue that many also just don’t live long enough to die of illness over another cause.

Assumption #2: Animals eat straight off the ground and drink from streams, and that’s what our ancestors did. Our ancestors always cooked - eating straight from a raw carcass means more bacteria, more difficult digestion, and less calories. And it’s very likely that humanity didn’t exist before cooking, and only exists because of cooking. Our reticence to drink directly from natural water sources has a lot more to do with human pollution than any naturally occuring bacteria; see the multiple cholera outbreaks in history. Also, a polluted water source will usually kill the animals that live in that water source, the decaying carcasses of which further pollutes the source, and animals drinking from that source will also absolutely become sick.

Assumption #3: Humans can’t forage and drink from streams in the same way animals can in not overly polluted environments. There is a whole community of wilderness survival experts who disagree with you. The knowledge of what is and isn’t safe to eat and drink isn’t taught to us by elders anymore (again, in industrialized places), but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t learn it and survive just fine.

Assumption # 4: Animals don’t require healthcare the way humans do. Animals also don’t pack themselves into crowded stadiums during worldwide pandemics and otherwise tend not to do stupid shit that will almost certainly cause them harm. A broken leg on a wild land-based animal is a death sentence, so access to healthcare would definitely keep more animals alive. We know this because we offer animals healthcare - wildlife rehabilitators exist. Meanwhile, a broken leg, even in a human community without good or any healthcare options, would probably not result in death.

Assumption #5: Wild animals thrive. Not really. I mean, there are populations that do better than others. This is often due to human intervention and interaction. Prey animals will “thrive” when humans have killed off all their natural predators. Scavenging animals will “thrive” when there’s plenty of human food waste and refuse for them to eat. An invasive species will “thrive” after humans introduce them into an environment where they don’t have any natural deterrents to population growth. An animal community “thriving” is very different from a human community thriving. And an animal community that is afflicted by a virus is far less likely to survive it than a human community. Here’s a list of mass animal die-offs that occured just between January 1 and June 1 of 2015; literally tens of millions of animals dead in 5 months.

Assumption #8: You don’t see these problems occuring or dead animals all over the place therefore, wild animals are not dying everyday everywhere from disease and pollution. You probably do not live in a place where you see massive wild animal populations; the thriving wild animal populations you claim exist are in your imagination. In a truly balanced, natural ecosystem, homeostasis is achieved; you have neither mass die-offs nor population explosions. But due to human intervention in the environment, those ecosystems are becoming far less visible. And most population centers don’t have nearly the wild animal populations necessary to make any judgements based on anecdote and personal observation on how wild animals survive or don’t.

Assumption #7: Humans eating off the ground as a “panic” response due to environmental reasons. This is 100% societal. We have moralized cleanliness. Eating something off the ground is seen as demeaning and dirty, and you have to be in really desperate straits to do it. You know, unless you follow the 5-second rule. Because that’s totally how germs work. If I drop something on my kitchen floor while I’m cooking versus outside while I’m grilling, there isn’t really a difference except that I feel gross about eating the thing that dropped on the ground outside that I immediately picked up even if there is nothing that is actually harmful on it - meanwhile my kitchen floor could absolutely have bacteria on it because I’m really lazy about mopping.

I think a lot of what you’re putting forth in this Ask is more socialized or due to industrialization than having anything to do with wholly naturally occurring environmental factors.

As for how the narrative will address these things, that’s a plot issue that I don’t have any advice on, but I hope this has given you some food for thought.