Quantum Storytelling

So I’m trying to read this third robot series book, The Robots of Dawn. And I just can’t get into it. Why? Because even sci-fi greats like Asimov make the fatal mistake of rambling too much about stuff the reader doesn’t give a crap about.

He’s devoted pages and pages to arguing between detective Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel. They’re debating the ‘murder’ of a robot, and whether a robot can be murdered. R. Daneel, programmed to think of only humans as ’sacred’ believes that a robot cannot be ‘murdered’ in the human sense. Bailey is of course trying to argue that robots can be murdered.

It’s an ironic situation, and interesting in theory. The problem? It’s some of the most boring reading of the entire series, and I’d rather go read something else.

I’m about two paragraphs away from throwing the book in the trash and reading something else, because I can’t stand the pedantic hair-splitting that Asimov seems so fond of in these books. Two characters are arguing about something that has little or nothing to do with the story itself. Get on with it. Action! Action!

And he feels the need to cite his famous Third Law of Robotics on every other page.

The Robots of Dawn is 435 pages. I’m on page 50 and almost nothing has happened yet except the basic setup and the hero arguing with a robot. Failure… pure failure.

50 pages is almost HALF of a typical film script. Now, I’d be forgiving of this sort of thing if the setup was very detailed, and those details were crucial to the main thrust of the story. But in the case of Robots of Dawn, it’s not. Asimov is taking his time, rambling here and there on misc. topics, info dumps, and self-amusing intellectual masturbation.

Nobody should do this to the reader. Not even sci-fi greats. This is the epitomy of what I hate about writers and novels. It makes me sad to say that, because I enjoyed the first two books of the series and have no doubts that Asimov earned his credibility. This is just such a disappointment.

Some people may be tickled by this sort of thing, but I’m not. If this were adapted to film, this argumentative rambling would be gutted. Nobody would watch the hero arguing with a robot for 30 minutes, no matter how ironic or interesting the situation might be.

I’m starting to understand how Asimov wrote 400 books. Writing 400 books is easy; Just ramble.

Melly had an interesting post on which characters are hardest to write. In the comments I said villains were the hardest for me.

I often find myself thinking of evil acts for the villain to pull. But then I think, “Why would anyone do that?”

And the obvious reasons are of course, power, greed, arrogance, etc. But a person doesn’t say, “I want to be powerful. I’m going to hurt someone.”

It’s just something they do along the way, a byproduct of the way they live their life.

So crafting a villain is less about creating an evil person, and more about creating negative patterns in that character’s life that affect other people, including the hero.

It is that creation of believable negative patterns that makes the villain, not the arbitrary labeling of evil.

When somebody goes on a murderous rampage, they don’t often say beforehand, “Hmm. I think I’ll go on a murderous rampage.”

They may find themselves at wit’s end or under strain in their life, and they crack a little. Their behavior becomes erratic or antagonistic towards others. They may lash out. And in the course of ratcheting tension and pressure, they find themselves sitting in their car outside the pawn shop, contemplating the purchase of a gun.

So it is a series of little steps that are part of a bigger pattern. We all go through these patterns in our lives. We are all both heroes and villains.

It is the people who reach the peak of that negative or positive pattern and make it the defining moment of their life–that is what makes them either a hero or a villain.

Characters are patterns mapped out on the page.

I’m having trouble finishing up the vacation story, which may be fine because I’m honestly not sure how many people care?

But there is something else I want to talk about concerning travel, and that’s how it affects a writer’s perspective.

We all get buried by our routines and habits. Sometimes it’s difficult to break out of our own perspective and write something fresh. There’s the old writing rule, “Write what you know.” But that’s pretty obvious isn’t it? And it doesn’t apply in every case. I think back to when I was a janitor working nights. I didn’t have much of a life, and really the only thing going on in my life was being a janitor. Write what you know, eh? Well that would have been the most mind numbing story I can possibly imagine.

So yes, we have to break from routine and experience new things in order to put some spark in our perspective.

Travelling does this really well. Each time I go to Mexico, I marvel at all the tiny differences between Mexico and the United States.

Building codes for one. There, a person can choose to live in a 5×5 adobe shack with a corrugated tin roof. If they want to ‘expand’ their house, they just toss on a second level, or knock down a wall and build a new room.

In the U.S., we are smothered in beauracracy. Want a new room on your house? Well, that requires a permit from the city with full approval and 500 point inspection. Do you still want to build that room?

This encourages some crazy random construction in Mexico. You will see things that you would never see in the United States. Things like rebar poking up from the tops of buildings. Ya know, those steel rods they set as a guide for the concrete? Yeah, well in the U.S. they cut that stuff off and patch it up when they’re done with the construction. In Mexico, literally every building has rebar poking out of the roof. Why? Because they might want to expand someday…

How does this apply to writing and fiction? Imagine two societies at opposite extremes. One of them is badly beauracratic in the name of public safety. Everything you do is subject to the permit, approval, and inspection of others. The second society requires no permits or inspections, and allows you to do pretty much whatever you want.

Since I’m interested in sci-fi, it’s fascinating to see how this might apply. If I was going to write about an alien culture, I’d start closer to home as a basis. I’d look at the differences between cultures that exist here on Earth, and then I’d extrapolate that on another species and take into account millions of years of separate evolution.

They might have all kinds of bizarre customs and rituals, or things that seem insane from a human perspective. You almost can’t go too far with this, because we’re talking about aliens, right?

So traveling is definitely good for the perspective. My only problem now is that I’m back in the same old routine, which feels a bit stifling after a nice vacation. Now I’ve got to find ways to freshen my perspective here at home.

What tricks do you use to change your perspective?