Avoiding flat earths

Posted on October 4, 2013 by knlistman

A few years ago, over the holidays, I stayed at a hotel on a scenic bend in the Riverwalk in San Antonio. It had been build in little over 200 days. How? Concrete cast room units, already decorated, were stacked in place. The rooms were still very nice, just identical. The prefab structure even had little wrought iron demi-balconies that evidently only the pigeons could access as evidence by the multiple layers of white bird excrement.

Sometimes, science fiction/fantasy authors would like the same kind of pre-fab world–an intriguing, complex landscape already laid out for them. Simple plug in characters and start the action. On the other hand, if that has  occurred, the reader must somehow be familiar with this particular world. People picking up this fantasy must have encountered it before, and obviously not everyone has read the same canon of literature. Lack of common knowledge among readers is especially true of fantasy. Each society has developed it’s own mythological backdrop, which often becomes the basis of fantastical literature.

Part of this trend to have an established fantasy world is based on public demand for works such as. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. He wrote this second venture into Middle Earth at his publisher’s insistence because his prior novel The Hobbit became unexpectedly popular. He based much of his made-up world on mythology–Germanic, Norse and Finnish. But, that did not mean that he got away without completing the tedious process of world building. This meant constructing the physical characteristics, flaws, and temperament of the world and its societies.

For example, in The Hobbit he gave details about the mountain in which the dragon Smaug lived. This story came to life with minutia about the appearance, the habits, and even the smell of this fire-breathing beast. Tolkien was somewhat restrained by the general ideas about mythical gold-hoarding dragons held by his audience. This was actually a benefit, which allowed him to elaborated even further, giving the dragon a unique personality and explaining the motives for his reign of terror on the local people.

Tolkien took these personalities of places even further in The Lord of the Rings. Regions within Middle Earth have unique characteristics–the humble homey Shire, the angry Misty Mountains, the eerily unnerving Dead Marshes, and the delicately balanced Isengard trying to flourish on the border of a wasteland.

For me and a number of other readers these passages detailing the imaginary world piques our interest. They are not simply pages of unnecessary exposition. Basing a fantasy world loosely on some existing culture or mythology that has been transported to another time and space does not do away with the need to flesh out the culture. The author must include ironic details about the society and describe the uniqueness of the environment to provide a well-rounded world for all readers. A fictional world can be flat, round or well-developed, just like a character.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Listman

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Unhuman geography

Posted on October 3, 2013 by knlistman

pen estonians (3)cScience Fiction and Fantasy do not describe the type of plot as much as the setting – a world in which imagination changes some of the rules. It is a world in which coming of age, adventure, mystery, romance, war or philosophical musings still take place. (Science fiction and fantasy novels should really have dual genre classifications.) It is actually a world that shares much more in common with the ‘real world’ than it differs from it, or it simply would not make sense to the readers.

Before embarking on creating your own world, you need to decide exactly what those differences are, as well as the limitations imposed on them. What kind of things need to be considered? How about a brief human geography lesson:

Population: Who lives there? Are they like earth-like people, animals and plants, or something else? If they are something else, limit your species drastically to prevent writing an alternate biology book.

Settlement: What kind of places do they live in? Metropolis, cities, villages, nomadic camps or massive hives?

Culture: How do language, religion, and education differ between groups in the society?

Political: How is the state organized? Even in a small group such as a family there has to be structures of leadership and division of labor.

Economic: How do they gain sustenance, protect themselves from the elements, produce goods and trade with others? Denizens of imaginary worlds must do some kind of work to survive.

Health: The medical rules depend on the species inhabiting your world (are they like earth or not) and their level of development. Characters will have to deal with the challenges of illness and death.

Development: What is the standard of living and quality of life in your world? Is it changing…. for better or for worse?

History: This is an area that I like to spend a lot of time on which prevents me from actually writing. Most readers don’t want lengthy back stories, so it often works best just to give hints about the history as needed,  unless it is a very intriguing history.

In fact, the final challenge is informing your audience of the differences without writing an alternate history for your world at the beginning of the novel.  The rules of your world should be introduced sporadically but before they are actually needed. If one or more of these imaginary characteristics (especially super human powers) are going to get your characters out of a sticky problem, make sure to introduce them far enough in advance.  In business just-in-time training is all the vogue, in writing just-in-time solutions are the mark of an amateur.

Artwork by S.L. Listman

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sci-fi delineated

Posted on October 2, 2013 by knlistman

sci-fi copyI, Robot is a collection of short stories that trace the development of robots until they take over running the world while humans remain blissfully ignorant of this fact.  In Perelandra, an earth man is sent to Venus  on a mission from God to counsel to the ‘Eve’ of that planet so she does not fall prey to the wiles of Satan’s agent. What does a work like Isaac Asimov’s, I, Robot  have in common with Perelandra by C.S. Lewis? Both are considered science fiction. That is the general classification for variety of seemingly disparate literature. What defines science fiction? Also what separates sci-fi from its twin, fantasy? It is a matter of time, travel, technology and transformation. These are the aspects that change the world in the book from the one we know.

Time: If a story takes place in the future, it is almost always considered science fiction in a broad sense. This allows authors to play with new technology (like cloning) or explore the possible outcomes of today’s issues (like global warming) when constructing their story. If the future society is regressing, that typically weighs heavily in the plot. However, if it appears to be advancing new technology is likely to contribute to the action. Our course, there is a third option. It could be a society just like ours, only with driverless cars and hover boards in widespread use. Novels in which the action is driven by magic (the basis for fantasy) can also occur in the future, but rarely do.

Travel: Many of the early sci-fi novels dealt with travel to unimaginable places, such as the moon (which we finally reached). However there is still a wealth of settings not visited by humans except in fiction, such as the center of the earth, the deep ocean trenches, or other planets. Jules Verne’s goal in his work was to describe the world through a series of Extraordinary Voyages. Of course, journeys that occur through time are a hall mark of science fiction. Also, works in this genre maybe be set on an imaginary planet, not only in the future but in the distant past. However, if the imaginary inhabitants of that place use magic more than machines, you have fantasy, such as Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series.

Technology: The best way to flaunt convention and write a science fiction novel set in the past, is create your own technology. Base the story on an intriguing invention that doesn’t exist in reality and is secretly possessed by a small research group, an ingenious inventor or even a mad scientist.  It doesn’t have to be confined to mechanical advancements–such as in the play, The Water Engine  by David Mamet. Bizarre biological and drug experiments are repeated themes and found in works like Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G Wells.

Transformation: As mentioned earlier science fiction changes the world as we know it. When I was younger radiation was a favorite cause for special powers, until it became obvious that radiation simply weakens and eventually kills organisms. However, this idea stills shows up among rehashed super heroes.  In Sci-fi works, transformation is not caused by magic (as in fantasies) but the results could be the same. Advanced technology, visiting aliens, or a new microbe could result in humans becoming fairies, elves, vampires or shape-shifters. But, then you lose part of the fun of sci-fi in which you decide how humanity is changed, unrestricted by a cannon of fantasy creatures.

These four characteristics may define science fiction, but that is not all that is required. An imaginative, altered environment without a plot will not go far. There must be a hero with a problem to overcome, a problem that cannot be easily wiped away by the advances of science.  In fact, the problem may even be caused by these advances.

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The problem with no problems

Posted on October 1, 2013 by knlistman

shadows that follow me (5)Dystopian novels  are much easier to write than those set in a utopia. Typically the main character manages to lift the veil hiding the ugly truth behind the society. For example in H.G. Well’s novella, The Time Machine, an English scientists travels to a distant future of dainty people living in an Eden-like setting.  First he perceives their lack of concern for each other and their fear of the dark, before realizing that they serve as cattle for the industrialized subterranean dwellers. The book is occasionally philosophical; the protagonist wonders if this warped society resulted from the upper class becoming dependent on the former slave class that was banished to the underground. However, the main character spends a lot more time running from the subterranean people than thinking about their origin.

A Modern Utopia, also by H.G. Wells has a fictional framework–the protagonist meets a man from a Utopian society on a distant island. But to a large extent the book is a philosophical essay. It describes the economy, the rights of women and so forth on this mythical stranger’s island. H.G. Wells kept trying to the Utopian novel right. First with In the Days of the Comet, which chronicles how an exploding comet from outer space wipes out the capitalist powers, so surviving humankind can rebuild the world correctly. Then, by writing Men Like Gods, set in a parallel universe, followed by the Future of Things, which is not really a novel in format but an imagined future history.

So has anyone actually managed to write about a Utopia with character development, rising and falling action, conflict, crisis and all those other reasons that I read books? Actually two of my favorites are Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis, and Lost Horizons by James Hilton. In each case the main character doesn’t search out or stumble upon the land of contented people but is kidnapped and taken there against his will. Naturally they view the place with the some suspicions as they are from a world full of greed, hatred, crime and war. The surprise is discovering the true nature of the society whether it be hidden in the canyons of Mars, or a valley in the Himalayas.

How does one create a gripping drama in a practically perfect world? Introduce some very imperfect humans.

Art by S. L. Listman

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literature, Story structure, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Highly desirable?

Posted on September 28, 2013 by knlistman

DSCN0762a wedding copyThere is a flood of dystopian novels compared to those that feature utopias because a society without problems has a tendency to be boring.  However, if you start reading The Republic by Plato, and you may discover that his ideal society has some pretty disturbing aspects.  The discourses that comprise The Republic supposedly record the discussions of the sage Socrates, who would eventually be executed for corrupting the youth. We really do not know how much Plato hid his own opinions behind the words that he claimed Socrates spoke.

The Republic proposes equal education for men and women, both physical and mental, so they could perform the same work. Then, he states what seems to follow logically. If men and woman are to have a status of equality, then marriage and the family must be abolished. The rulers will determine which people can mate and produce children. These children will be raised in state nurseries. There, they will be educated in the manner that the guardians of the state determine … this is beginning to sound a lot like a plot for a dystopian novel to me.

Thomas More‘s views of the family in Utopia is quite a bit different.  He used a device to make his book resemble factual reporting by quoting fake letters by real people about this mysterious island. On Utopia, marriage is alive and well. In fact the punishment for premarital sex is required celibacy and the punishment for adultery is the same as for many other crimes–slavery.  Every family on the island has household slaves wearing gold chains. I wonder is More knew how soft and malleable pure gold actually is. They would make chains that could be easily escaped.

Tommaso Campanella, a Dominican monk and theologian from the 17th century had curious ideas for family and reproduction in his Christian communist society described in City of the Sun. Men and women could be friends but sexual regeneration would be strictly regulated and follow set times determined by an astrologer–no emotional involvement allowed.

Of course, if you ask any group of people what their ideal society would be like, you will  get as many different beliefs as there are people, and some of them will be in direct opposition.  In the same way, reading books describing Utopian ideals through the century will show you the major concern of authors in times past–but not give you any clue on the formula to achieve the highly desirable, perfect society. 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Too bad to be true

Posted on September 27, 2013 by knlistman

17 smog 023cSir Thomas More, a scholar, lawyer and statesman published a novel in 1516 describing a perfect civilization. According to the book, this too real to be true society existed on an imaginary island that he dubbed Utopia.  Of course, More was not the first to attempt to do this; he was heavily influenced by Plato‘s Republic, written over 18 centuries earlier. The utopian novel is an ancient idea.

The word More coined was used a few hundred years later by John Stuart Mill to create another new term, dystopia, a society too bad to be true. Dystopian literature is by no means new either. There are ancient texts that describe a society which is deeply flawed, and yet citizens continue to serve the powers that be, unaware of their enslavement.

The creator of modern works in this vein is often credited to the Russian author Yevgenv Zamyatin. He created a future world of complete human conformity in his novel We.  However, Jack London published Iron Heel over a decade earlier. London’s book described the rise of unscrupulous big business in an economic dystopia.

Dystopian novels almost always take place in a future society based on false ideals resulting in oppression. The particular flaw the society varies widely, based on what the author perceived as the existing threat to humanity. They often detail how humans are required to live in an enforced conformity to support theses skewed ideals, which  masquerade as the path to utopia. The environment that people inhabit is frequently artificial as well, highly urbanized with wild or natural areas restricted to the perimeter. The hero is typically awakened to the hidden controller of the flawed society by another character, an individualist that often does not survive. For the protagonist there is no going back. Once enlightened, the only options are escape, bringing down the society, or death.

Except in the case of one of the most famous dystopian novels 1984, which ended in a type of brainwashing. George Orwell feared the rise of authoritarian governments under the guise of protection of the common people. He depicted how this situation would result in a small oligarchy reaping all the benefits at the expense of the working class in Animal Farm, an allegory that is uniquely without an individual protagonist as well as his more frightening novel, 1984.

In Brave New World, the worship of technology allows the upper classes to experience lives devoted to pleasure and possessions at the sacrifice of the genetically engineered lower classes. Aldous Huxley introduces an upper caste man raised in the savage regions into his dystopian world to show the hopelessness of being free to live selfishly but forbidden to feel any kind of moral qualms.

Sometimes the human desire to erase the memory of any unpleasantness or pain is what leads to the twisting of a civilization into a dystopia. Such is the case in Ray Bradbury’s book burning society in Fahrenheit 451, and the deceptively innocent looking community in The Giver by Lois Lowry.

Of course, there is currently the flood of newer dystopian novels on the market. But, as the popularity of this genre rises many have forgotten the original use of it as a warning, and not simply a high adventure account of the overthrow of an evil government.

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Glare of the limelight

Posted on September 26, 2013 by knlistman

Dscn0139crop

While watching a recent bone crunching pro-football game on TV, I saw a player dive into a fracas and come up the fumbled football. He took off for his goal, running for the sidelines to avoid being pummel by a pile of opposing players.  With the TV camera in close I could see his grin as his teammates gave him congratulatory fists to the his helmet. It looked like his head was being knocked around inside his helmet.

“Doesn’t that hurt him?” I asked.

“Players frequently do things to their own players that would result in a penalty if they did  it to an opponent,” was the response of a more sage sports aficionado.

If you read many of the current sports books you will find there is a much darker side to sports than the painful  celebratory punching that occurs between team members. The same sports aficionado advised me that “There is probably a greater percentage of felons who have worn an NFL uniform than the percentage of felons in the general public.”

So I decided to look back at classis sports novels to trace the “cultural development” of this bad reputation, only to find that there is a paucity of sports novels written before 1950. One of the most well-known, The Natural by Bernard Malamud, loosely based the life of Eddie Waitkus, was published in 1952. The novel has a darker, more realistic ending than the popular movie. The baseball prodigy, who loses his best years is a more reckless character that doesn’t succeed in his comeback and fails to win the big game for the pennant.

Occasionally there are more light hearted views of the sporting life such as George Plimpton’s Paper Lion, a real account story of how he gained access into the Detroit Lions’ training camp practices despite obvious ineptitude as a athlete.  But other than the scrubbed clean sports books for preteens and younger, many of the current “true stories” in sports describe a litany of gambling, dirty dealing and drugs that make the opponents seem like the least of the player’s worries.

Even in Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger’s candid coverage of one dramatic season for the Permian High School Panthers,  there are painful revelations about high school football. The town gathers ritualistically to cheer on its athletes, who lose much in their gamble to become a stars, and are discarded as soon as they are no longer useful.  Sports have been around since ancient times, but their imprint on anything resembling literature has been fairly weak until recently. I suppose the heroes of the playing field have replaced the heroes of battle. And you are probably well aware of all the novels about the darker side of war.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The distant lands of home

Posted on September 24, 2013 by knlistman

Biltmore (77)aIn grade school I would skim the readers for something intriguing, passing over stories of everyday American life and fun science facts for narratives about other countries. As  junior high student I soaked up Jules Verne adventures in distant places such as the famed  Around the World in Eighty Days, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and the lesser known Michael Strogoff: Courier of the Czar.  As an adult I discovered he chafed under the formulaic requirements imposed on him for writing these shallow adventure novels. But they were the right stories to get me hooked on reading at that time. (Maybe, if these same requirements were followed by some of today’s YA novelist their works would actually improve).

Often in secondary education, we foist the best works of classic authors on students when they are not ready for the abstract thinking required to appreciate it. There is another option to turning off students or only giving them modern authors to read. It is introducing them to the more accessible, popular early works from which classic writers went on to build their reputation.

Many American authors start their career by describing their travels, and returned to novels set in their own backyard later. These works are largely autobiographical with little or no symbolism and deep meaning to uncover – just a record of their own real life. Three of the most famous started off writing on long passages on the sea:

  • Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame, first wrote largely autobiographical works such as Redburn and White-Jacket to describe his adventures as a sailor.

  • Mark Twain wrote Innocents Abroad, a humorous view the naiveté of Americans on a cruise to the Middle East and Life on the Mississippi to describe his own days as a river man.

  • Jack London wrote the purely adventurous John Barleycorn before completing The Call of the Wild and Sea-Wolf on which his fame rests.

Sometimes, however, travelogues are the work of a mature writer, John Steinbeck, widely known as for his stories of the Great Depression also chronicled his 1960 trip across the country in Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Steinbeck doesn’t simply describe the new scenery, he reflects on his own life, and the flood of changes that had washed over the country that he knew as a much younger man. But this nostalgia is a more recent one that students may be able to connect to.

One of the more current travel novel for adolescents is Into the Wild by John Krakauer. The journalist traces the path of a self-disenfranchised wealthy young college grad as he attempts to reinvent himself in a quest to live a life free of society’s trappings. Despite initial success, Chris McCandles’ follows the lure to go farther into the wild, which up ends up being deadly. Not particularly optimistic – but real.

Into the Wild also discusses Chris McCandles’ connection with transcendentalist philosophy. Most teenagers become bewildered trying to pin down the defining elements of this intellectual revolt against traditional religion. A quick look into the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (or any other member of the Transcendental Club) can help to enrich this book. However, students will discover that although the Transcendentalists idolized nature and decried the negative influence of society in their writing, they never managed to live off of nature separate from society. And learning to see the difference in what is said and done is a good introduction to abstract thinking.

Photo of Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC

Posted in Literature, Writer's resource | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ten top reasons not to read classic literature

Posted on September 24, 2013 by knlistman

grimm's grave w10 – There are so many choices of books to read now, why bother with less relevant writing from the past. There is also a lot more to learn in the fields of history, science and math so while we’re at it, why don’t we just pare them down to the important events of the last fifty years, too.

9 – Most of the people who wrote this literature stuff are long dead. This is also another good reason to eliminate the all the history we now have to study now.

8 – The people who wrote classic literature, do not really know what our life is like. Of course, the most influential people alive now–political leaders, business moguls, movie stars–probably don’t know any more about the way we live.

7 – We want to read about what matters to us now. However, if we read only what is current we tend to think everyone’s writing is tied to the fads of their time.  What do you mean by claiming that some past authors actually captured the nature of humans across the ages?

6 – Classic literature is just too difficult for most people. Of course, if you ever tried to hit a curve ball, pass a football to a surrounded quarterback, throw a basketball through a hoop twenty feet away, or skate without falling down and failed, you should had realized that these things are just too difficult and given up on them, too.

5 – Movies are much more enjoyable. It’s true, if you start reading and find that movies are simplified, action driven versions which leave out much of what’s interesting in a book, you won’t enjoy watching movies as much.

4 – Reading takes too much time. It’s ironic but people can read about three times faster than they can listen. So if a TV series like Survivor was transcribed (dialog and description of action) to be read, you would spend one third of the time reading it that you would spend watching it, but it also might seem less interesting without the scheming intonation of their voices.

3 – They take too long to say things and nothing much seems to happen. Sort of sounds like a season of Whales Wars. Some old classics can be wordy. Remember they were serialized and should not be read in one sitting, but in stages like a TV series is viewed.

2 – The publishers need the money now that people can self-publish on the internet. Let’s make the students go out and buy copies of recent best-sellers to keep the publishing industry solvent.

1 – After reading enough paranormal teenage romance and dystopian gladiator stories, everyone will be so tired of the same stock characters and plots that they’ll actually want to write their own books.

(Yes, it’s satire)

Photo of Grimm’s brothers graves by S.L. Listman

Posted in Literature | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to play the words well

Posted on September 20, 2013 by knlistman

Meister des Codex_Manesse (Grundstockmaler)Do a little bit of research on the internet and you will soon come up with vast lists of literary devices in addition to the ones that I have discussed. But it is too overwhelming to start employing them all. Mastering literary devices is like playing an instrument – you must practice to improve your performance and work on only a few songs at a time.

So how do you practice?  First, start with your own writing. Check to see which devices you are already using. For convenience I usually sort usually categorize them according to the following:

I have seen students with an interest in writing use a device without any idea that it was a defined concept. One elementary aged student began the narrative of her first overnight camping trip telling how she grasped the pretty red fruit of the prickly pear and howled in pain. After a rather rambling list of events, she ended the account with another camper teaching her how to prepare the spiny fruit to eat. When asked how she decided to organize her story she said “I started and ended with the prickly pear ‘cause I know how to camp now.” Creating the envelope as a plot device to show her progress made sense to her.

Then, take a few things that you’ve written that seem bland and tasteless. It helps to have works from more than one genre, such as a narrative, a essay, a persuasive presentation, or poetry. Look at two to three types of devices that grab your attention. Incorporate a couple of each into the existing writing. Return to the list, find some more devices that you have not tried and do the same again. And then repeat again.

As you continue to layer on literary devices to a single piece of writing you will find it reaches a saturation point. After which it becomes something you must slog through, rather than an interesting composition.  Learning how to handle and apply literary devices with the right touch is part of the process if you want to learn how to play the words well.

Art work  Codex Manesse (public domain)

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Posted in Literary devices, Teaching writing skills, Writer's resource | Tagged , , | Leave a comment