Language Habits
The editing process has left me cursing my Minnesotan origins. Anyone who has seen Fargo is witness to the lingual extremes of the region. While the film's fun-poking at dialect is exaggerated to be sure, there is a nugget of truth in the humor.
Most people who have seen Fargo and find out I'm from Minnesota sometimes comment that I don't share the accent of so many northerners. While my speech sounds neutral, my writing bears all the bad habits of Minnesotans. This includes weak modifiers and qualifiers--as many as you can jam into a sentence. Minnesotan English is awful in its passive-aggressive nature.
"Well, I really sorta think we oughta try thinkin to try goin about doing that thing, kinda, ya know?"Why use a few words when you can sorta-kinda-maybe-think-about-tryin' to use 500?
As I go about editing my novel, I feel cursed to have been born in Minnesota. All the native habits are there. Weak modifiers, superflous nouns and pronouns, you name it.
Any way you can pad, fluff, fatten, and otherwise kill good writing--Minnesotans would be the experts.
Curse thee, Minnesota!
Novels Are Overrated
Novelists are encouraged by the format to ramble. They're encouraged to info-dump. They're encouraged to go off inside of a character's head on thought tangents that the reader probably doesn't care about.
Why? Because novels are fat and require a lot of pages.
I got the Sin City special edition for Xmas, and I've been admiring how clean the production was by working from a graphic novel. Both the graphic novel and the movie are squeaky clean--there isn't anything more than needed to tell the story.
Miller did go off into Marv's thoughts for a bit, but it's forgiveable because it's told in First Person by Marv himself and used to demonstrate his mental instabilities. And there's way less of it than there would be in any novel.
Why did I write a novel? I should have written a script, comic book, or graphic novel. When I get done slashing my first draft to ribbons that's all I'm going to have left anyway. Pure action and dialogue are the only things that will be left.
Novels are overrated.
Editing Fury
Editing on Cameron Fields & the Thieves of Time has begun!
And wow, do I ever hate what I've written. Taking a red marker to every single page. It's a strange mixture of corrective fun and self-hatred. I still write WAY too passively. Action! Verbs! These things are my friend. I also explain too much. It's almost painful to read.
I'm trying to keep my head wrapped around everything I need to do. The reason this is difficult is because there are several areas, or layers, that I need address.
Ideas: Private Eye stuff, surveillance, more cool happenings with my McGuffin.
Sectional rewrites; Entire portions that are changed or re-inserted in entirely different, slicker, cooler ways.
Language: grammer, writing itself, etc.
That list is in order for obvious reasons. I don't want to fix language or grammar on sections that are going to be rewritten. So I've got to keep all the layers and contexts of editing in mind.
I'm also reading books on private investigation, special forces, C.I.A., all that great stuff and trying to incorporate cool things wherever I can.
So where writing the story was total fly-by-seat-of-pants chaos, editing is a different kind of chaos. A chaos formed out of several layers of organization mixing with one another. In that sense, it's not really chaos, but a dense web of narrative information.
When my head hurts, maybe it's time for mind-mapping?
Revitalizing Conventions
Crof over at
Writing Fiction has a great post about
Writing in a Genre. It also happens to be a review of John Robert Marlow's Nano. I haven't read the novel, but that didn't stop me from appreciating what Crof had to say on the subject of genre conventions, particularly as they pertain to sci-fi:
"Anyone writing in such a genre must walk a fine line between plagiarism and parody... ... The trick is to recognize why these particular conventions appeal to readers, and then to push the conventions to reveal something implicit in them that other writers haven't understood."
Indeed. Here here, I second that! Especially the part about differential reinterpretation of the genre. In marketing it's called positioning. Find something and make it your own. Frame a new and fresh perspective.
What Does the Author Bring?
What does the author bring aside from the ideas and writing style? When you strip away the ideas and writing style, what's left of author content? Are there any other kinds of content?
I've been having troubled dreams in the last week. Whenever I have troubling dreams, they're always centered around paranoia or lingering fears in my life--things that only make sense from my perspective.
When I woke up this morning, I spent some time thinking about time travel. One of the thoughts was a familiar one I've engaged a few times involving a 'meeting with the self' if you could go back in time.
Bear with me for a little story here. When I was a teenager, I felt very stuck in my small hometown. Trapped. Nobody cared or was interested in entertainment or the entertainment industry.
The town I grew up in was a cocoon, protecting everyone in it, sheltered suburbs, from the real world. Not just protecting them from the bad elements, but the exciting elements too! You know, the outside world where people actually exercise their will to power to change, create, or shape things.
As a teenager, that seemed a forbidden outside land from the world I lived in, where the highest aspiration anyone could have was to "Get a job somewhere! Like everybody else!"
It's been a long journey to where I am now working at 3D Realms in the game industry. Some of the luster has lost its shine along the way, working at glamorous corporate behemoths like Electronic Arts. It's not all about ideas and creativity, like I once thought it was.
There's way more follow-through necessary than starry-eyed youth would care to realize. Follow-through meaning; Stick with it to the end. See a job through to the finish. Take care of the lingering tasks, even some of the things that are dirty or not so fun.
In that way, it's a job just like any other. You have obligation. Committment. There is no one-night-stand with creativity and ideas, and then walking away the next morning with no call, phone number, or even a Dear John letter.
In the real world, there are a lot of things you simply can't abandon.
If I could go back to say... 1993 and speak with the Eric Then, what would I say? I might be tempted to bring him back with me to 2005, and to show him that escape from his small town is possible. And to show him a career in the entertainment industry is possible, and that there are droves of people who care about that sort of thing.
But then he already knew that didn't he? Or he had a hunch. ;-)
And that brings me to the point of this post. Finally, you say! We all bring with us lingering hopes, dreams, and fears. Not just our writing style and ideas, but our modes of thoughts, the between-line expression that reveals our identity.
It's more than just words typed on a page. We bring baggage--and that's not a bad thing at all when you're a writer as long as the baggage doesn't take center stage.
The ideas and writing itself will always take center stage. But off to the side, peeking from behind the curtain, are the hopes, dreams, concerns, fears. Keep your identity employed--it makes a good stage hand.
A New Kind of Story...
I've been thinking about a new kind of story. It's called
Christmas and everyone who participate in it are absolutely insane! :-)
Got some time off and I'm cleaning the house, doing last min Xmas shopping, and otherwise partaking in behavior which seems completely insane when you step back and look at it from afar.
People are running around, buying food and gifts, cleaning houses, continuing to decorate and bake til the last minute, and run to the post office, and run all over crazy like chickens with their heads cut off. Why? Why do we do it?
In other news we saw King Kong over the weekend. I'd love to talk about it here but I don't want to give away spoilers for those who haven't seen it. Makes me wish Blogger had some spoiler tags. There were a lot of nice storytelling elements I'd love to comment on...
The editing on my book will begin soon. I'm sure I'll have more thoughtful musings then.
Egri's Premise Returns
I saw over on
Sci-Fi Signal mention of
A Political History of Science-Fiction. The reading is a bit dry (like I'm one to talk) but I did glean some interesting tidbits from it:
"Therefore, hard SF has a bias towards valuing the human traits and social conditions that best support scientific inquiry and permit it to result in transformative changes to both individuals and societies. Also, of social equilibria which allow individuals the greatest scope for choice, for satisfying that lust for possibilities. And it is is here that we begin to get the first hints that the strongly-bound traits of SF imply a political stance — because not all political conditions are equally favorable to scientific inquiry and the changes it may bring. Nor to individual choice.
The power to suppress free inquiry, to limit the choices and thwart the disruptive creativity of individuals, is the power to strangle the bright transcendant futures of optimistic SF. Tyrants, static societies, and power elites fear change above all else — their natural tendency is to suppress science, or seek to distort it for ideological ends (as, for example, Stalin did with Lysenkoism). In the narratives at the center of SF, political power is the natural enemy of the future."
This is where Social Sci-Fi gets its true power. The sci-fi writer, and by association the sci-fi reader, are all about the exploration of ideas. What better villain than an individual or dystopian society that doesn't allow the exploration of ideas? Here you have the greatest benefit of the genre expressed within the works by a clash between exploration and anti-exploration. It is a natural thesis and anti-thesis, protagonism vs. antagonism.
Where authors have the chance to differentiate and define themselves is specifically what ideas they choose to explore, and how the villain or society might oppose that exploration. This is perfectly in line with Lajos Egri's definition of premise--a thesis which is proven true over the course of the story.
Sci-Fi just happens to be the perfect genre for stating a thesis. Of course that's just my opinion. ;-)
Writer Intelligence & Composition?
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
For writers this is an absolute necessity. Along these same lines, it is important to distinguish the objective from the subjective.
"I like this." vs.
"Is this good? Is it an example of fine form?"There are many well-written novels I'm sure I don't like. Just as there are talented, eloquent writers I'm not that fond of, yet my tastes have no bearing on my evaluation of their talent. So I can appreciate something for its qualities, but I do not have to like it on the whole, or even on those qualities alone. I can simply acknowledge that those fine qualities exist, but the composition does not have to be one I enjoy.
The understanding of composition is not terribly complex--it just requires measuring several elements at once, or in juxtaposition to one another.
Oddly enough, this is also related to mental instability, depression, neuroticism, and other afflictions that plague creative people.
The quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald is usually incomplete. Here is the full one:
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise."
To see things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. He's talking about the fighting spirit, the will to live. Maybe even the will to power? It is the ability to find resolution in contradictions. To find order among chaos. To form patterns out of the void. To create coherence out of incoherence. It is the will and ability to create meaning for yourself and others.
P.S. Updates may get more sporadic as Christmas approaches.
Writing at the Strategic & Tactical Levels
What is your overall strategy in writing a story?
What are your tactics?
Strategy being, the battle plans, the map. Tactics being, the singular operations taken on the field of battle--your move, or play.
Strategy is big picture, abstract. Tactics are what you do on a day to day basis in order to get things done and accomplish a daily goal.
Here's a thought; Writers spend too much time in the clouds, or thinking about strategy. That's why contests like National Novel Writing Month exist, because they pull writers back down to the tactical level of a daily word count and just getting things done.
As writers, do we strategize too much?
The Principled Approach to Storycraft and Writing
Principles. You've got to have some. In writing or storytelling this is especially important. If you don't agree there is a Right Way to tell a story, that's fine.
But you need to define Your Right Way. It's the right way relative to you and your perspective. Your perspective can (and probably will) disagree with mine--that's the beauty of relativity. But you need to own a perspective. It has to be yours. Your Way. Your Right Way.
Otherwise, you're following the unprincipled approach. That is to say, anything goes. Everything is relative, everything subjective, and thus nothing matters.
This is where creative people flounder in the sea of wishy washy relativism and can never make value judgments or decide how to progress or proceed in their work. This is where creative block occurs, where things are uninspired, or where things go horribly wrong.
It's when you lose your bearing, your line of sight, your direction. You lose vision. Because there's No Right Way, correct?
You can adopt somebody else's or form your own out of a collection of other peoples' principles. As long as you have a set of principles to work by, everything should be OK.
Lest you fall into the void of relativity, where no judgments can be made and everything is made of the same homogenized substance of equal worth. Trust me, no drama, no inspiration, nothing of value exists there. Because it IS nothing.
Maybe this is some old fashioned morality at work within my secular values. So be it. Everybody's got to believe in something right? I believe for every field of work or form, there is a right or optimal way. I also believe that way is easy for everyone to learn if they simply study.
Save the punk attitude for relativity itself. Say, "I won't accept this wishy washy nonsense for an answer!"
And then don't. Put your writing and stories on firm ground. Establish what its all about.
A lot of creative people are anti-establishment without learning what the establishment is all about. There are rules to writing for a reason. Learn them before you break them! The same is true for story structure and the craft of storytelling. The same is true for painting, as is for music, as is for everything under the sun.
Learn it before you reject it. And if you reject it, do so out of choice--out of style or aesthetic. Make it a conscious thing. Don't do it out of ignorance.
I think most people are smart enough to tell when something was done out of unconscious ignorance or when it was done as a conscious choice. Intent is important--show people that you intended to leave out a rule or guide, that you defied a rule for a reason! Otherwise you're just a punk.
Find your principles, whatever they may be.
An Author's Favorite Themes
All the instructive material I've read on the process of writing has at some point encouraged the would-be author to find their own voice, to establish a tone that is uniquely theirs. This is not only done through the choice of language used, but also in the reoccurring themes or meta-themes that cross through much of an author's work.
When I think of Asimov I think of his fascination with artificial intelligence, robots, and the inherent ethical dilemmas that would face a world where A.I. and robots were an everyday part of reality.
When I think of Alfred Bester I think of telepaths and the crazy construction and deconstruction of what makes a man--themes which are easily seen in both The Demolished Man and in Stars My Destination.
A.E. Van Vogt's work, or what little I've read of it, seems imbibed with every individual's true potential. Along the journey the individual or self is meant to fully realize or actualize their true power.
When I think of Philip K. Dick, I think of all our personal insecurities and doubts growing and seeding into tremendous paranoia--and to see that fully realized in a dystopia. The fear and distrust of authority is always there in Dick's work, as is the nagging thought that maybe the world is a fake, a sham? Dick has this to say about his own themes:
I, in my stories and novels, often write about counterfeit worlds, semi-real worlds, as well as deranged private worlds inhabited, often, by just one person, while, meantime, the other characters either remain in their own worlds throughout or are somehow drawn into one of the peculiar ones. This theme occurs in the corpus of my twenty-seven years of writing. At no time did I have a theoretical or conscious explanation for my preoccupation with these pluriform pseudoworlds, but now I think I understand. What I was sensing was the manifold of partially actualized realities lying tangent to what evidently is the most actualized one, the one that the majority of us, by consensus gentium [general consent], agree on.
Although originally I presumed that the differences between these worlds was caused entirely by the subjectivity of the various human viewpoints, it did not take me long to open the question as to whether it might not be more than that -- that in fact plural realities did exist superimposed onto one another like so many film transparencies. What I still do not grasp, however, is how one reality out of the many becomes actualized in contradistinction to the others. Perhaps none does. Or perhaps again it hangs on an agreement in viewpoint by a sufficiency of people. More likely the matrix world, the one with the true core of being, is determined by the Programmer. He or it articulates -- prints out, so to speak -- the matrix choice and fuses it with actual substance. The core or essence of reality -- that which receives or attains it and to what degree -- that is within the purview of the Programmer; this selection and reselection are part of general creativity, of world-building, which seems to be its or his task. A problem, perhaps, which he or it is running, which is to say in the process of solving.
In each of these authors I share perspective as a writer. I enjoy the obsession with logic featured in Asimov's robot series, the psychological and sociological dissection and deconstruction of men in Bester's work, the feeling of a character growing into their own in Vogt's work.
I perhaps share more closely the paranoia, distrust, and the wonderful absurdity of peeking behind the curtain and catching the wizard at work within Philip K. Dick's stories. This is probably why he is one of my favorites.
I share a little bit of perspective with all of these authors. As for my own themes, it is difficult to say. I'm afraid I haven't written enough to even hazard a guess. I'm sure my tropes will reveal themselves over time as I write more.
What are your recurring themes?
Wonderous Writing?
I read a lot of business blogs, as I've got a keen interest in the subject. Whether it be as a game developer during the day or a writer at night, we're all 'in business' so to speak.
Tom Asacker had an interesting post called
Socrates on wonder which is really just a collection of observations about peoples' self-worth and self-opinion, and how the best salesmen and businesses appeal to the customer's self-worth. Tom summarized the effect this way:
People believe that they are better than they really are, and they want YOU and your people and your business model to validate those feelings. If you're really smart, you'll make them feel even better about themselves and their decisions.
When it comes to the creative arts, everything from video game design to writing a novel this gets even more difficult. Because our art, our forms, by their very nature aren't a direct appeal to the individual's self worth. Or are they?
Perhaps they are if you think about it in a different kind of way. People identify with well-conceived characters in a story because it reminds them a little about themselves or the way they might like to be. Or maybe an exciting plot in a story can remind people that life can be adventerous, or at least give them a glimpse into that adventure.
But I think it goes even deeper. As writers we're trying to appeal to people on an emotional level. However, it doesn't work to mash and hammer in contrived melodrama in the hopes that the reader will identify. All of us know that won't work, at least not in any graceful way.
When I think upon my own reading experiences, the parts that really grabbed me in a novel, or really spoke to me during a story were the little moments, the little realizations. When a cryptic sentence or two shot like a grappling hook into the back of my mind where a pre-thought or hunch was developing. Granted this is more an effect of the well-crafted suspense plot, but it's one of many 'effects' that a well-told story can have.
Another thing that jumps out at me is the sense of progress, accomplishment, or a goal. Maybe this is more the caveman male instinct but, when a character in a story struggles, and then works to build an empire or slaves towards something great and the story depicts their ascension to true power, perhaps crushing an old enemy who used to beat them down--it tugs at me on many levels.
I've always been sympathetic to the revenge plot. Maybe it was from being picked on in school, or the sense of injustice that goes along with it, but I'm a sucker for justice or the due rise of a character to fill their true potential.
The other is very well crafted interactions between characters. Through those interactions you get to know exactly what defines the character's personality. They not only stand out from other characters in the story but also other characters, period.
Take Wash from the series Firefly for example. He was the ultimate light-hearted, wise-cracking buddy as the ship's pilot. It was for that reason that many people cited him as their favorite character. He's the type of character if he existed in real life, you'd love to be around because he makes people feel good by being upbeat and always cracking jokes.
Through the characters, or what the characters do, or what happens in the story, you can make the reader feel good.
Who wouldn't reward the author that made them feel good?
When the Novelist Strikes Gold
Whether a writer writes well or writes poorly seems to matter less than the grammar Nazis would like you to believe. In recent years, I've wondered how greats like Robert A. Heinlein or Philip K. Dick got by with their often wooden prose, characters, or sentences full of adverbs.
That's because in the end, nobody cares. It's important to focus on the language itself, but inevitably it's more about the ideas as Philip K. Dick explains in his 1977 piece
If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others:
A novelist carries with him constantly what most women carry in large purses: much that is useless, a few absolutely essential items, and then, for good measure, a great number of things that fall in between. But the novelist does not transport them physically because his trove of possessions is mental. Now and then he adds a new and entirely useless idea; now and then he reluctantly cleans out the trash -- the obviously worthless ideas -- and with a few sentimental tears sheds them. Once in a great while, however, he happens by chance onto a thoroughly stunning idea new to him that he hopes will turn out to be new to everyone else. It is this final category that dignifies his existence. But such truly priceless ideas. . . perhaps during his entire lifetime he may, at best, acquire only a meager few. But that is enough; he has, through them, justified his existence to himself and to his God.
An odd aspect of these rare, extraordinary ideas that puzzles me is their mystifying cloak of -- shall I say -- the obvious. By that I mean, once the idea has emerged or appeared or been born -- however it is that new ideas pass over into being -- the novelist says to himself, "But of course. Why didn't I realize that years ago?" But note the word "realize." It is the key word. He has come across something new that at the same time was there, somewhere, all the time. In truth, it simply surfaced. It always was. He did not invent it or even find it; in a very real sense it found him. And -- and this is a little frightening to contemplate -- he has not invented it, but on the contrary, it invented him. It is as if the idea created him for its purposes. I think this is why we discover a startling phenomenon of great renown: that quite often in history a great new idea strikes a number of researchers or thinkers at exactly the same time, all of them oblivious to their compeers. "Its time had come," we say about the idea, and so dismiss, as if we had explained it, something I consider quite important: our recognition that in a certain literal sense ideas are alive.
Indeed the most brilliant ideas we come across do seem alive, don't they? For many reasons I've wondered the same thing; Did you get an idea or did the idea get you?
Ever since I read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, I've had a thing for memes. A few years ago I went on a meme-crazed search through the major books about memetics to see if I could glean anything new. I didn't. The meme meme never goes very deep. It's like a metaphor--it works well enough for one sentence and to get a point across, but you don't get much mileage out of it.
At that time though I was reading a lot about marketing where memes play a huge part in whether something succeeds or fails. The ease of which people can identify with or remember your characters, story, or product is of huge significance and something that the creator has a fair degree of control over. Some people don't like to focus on memorability, instead choosing to follow their muse into the dark depths of poorly selling creations.
I've always loved to think of marketing as a science even though it's more an art or a craft. The best thing a novelist can hope for is a novel idea that allows their work to stand apart from the rest of the pack. This is not the same as originality. There are no original ideas, only original reconceptions of the age-old ideas.
But when it comes to characters especially, this is where I feel a lot of authors fall short. We remember batman because of the association with bats. We think of his mask with the pointy ears, and the long dark cape. Comic books had memorable characterization down long ago, yet authors still struggle with it.
Think of all the action, thrillers, or suspense movies that come out every year. How many feature hero's that are memorable? Most of the scripts are one-offs, meant to be executed once and then dumped into the archives.
At its core what we are as authors; Branding experts. Or we should be. The heart of a good novel is interesting ideas, but those ideas need a good package and a hero to sell them. This takes a lot of brainstorming and real creative synthesis work. Dare I say this is tougher than just writing a novel.
But if you can do it, you will strike gold.
Catharsis in Writing
I was reading over on
Melly's site about
creativity and depression. I've often thought about this myself, and in fact did
a post on my regular site about it back in July.
A lot of this ties into philosophy, and when it comes to writing and creating tension there is the notion of the dialectic--circling between two opposing perspectives that challenge one another.
The dialectic is a philosophical concept, and when it comes to the subject of philosophy, creativity, and writing, I think of a passage from an essay in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick;
What helps for me -- if help comes at all -- is to find the mustard seed of the funny at the core of the horrible and futile. I've been researching ponderous and solemn theological matters for five years now, for my novel-in-progress, and much of the Wisdom of the World has passed from the printed page and into my brain, there to be processed and secreted in the form of more words: words in, words out, and a brain in the middle wearily trying to determine the meaning of it all. Anyhow, the other night I started on the article on Indian philosophy in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an eight-volume learned reference set that I esteem. The time was 4:00 A.M.; I was exhausted -- I have been working endlessly like this on this novel, doing this kind of research. And there, at the heart of this solemn article, was this:
"The Buddhist idealists used various arguments to show that perception does not yield knowledge of external objects distinct from the percipient. . . . The external world supposedly consists of a number of different objects, but they can be known as different only because there are different sorts of experiences 'of' them. Yet if the experiences are thus distinguishable, there is no need to hold the superfluous hypothesis of external objects. . . ."
In other words, by applying Ockham's razor to the basic Epistemological question of "What is reality?" the Buddhist idealists reach the conclusion that belief in an external world is a "superfluous hypothesis"; that is, it violates the Principle of Parsimony -- which is the principle underlying all Western science. Thus the external world is abolished, and we can go about more important business -- whatever that might be.
That night I went to bed laughing. I laughed for an hour. I am still laughing. Push philosophy and theology to their ultimate (and Buddhist idealism probably is the ultimate of both) and what do you wind up with? Nothing. Nothing exists (they also proved that the self doesn't exist, either). As I said earlier, there is only one way out: seeing it all as ultimately funny. Kabir, whom I quoted, saw dancing and joy and love as ways out, too; and he wrote about the sound of "the anklets on the feet of an insect as it walks." I would like to hear that sound; perhaps if I could my anger and fear, and my high blood pressure, would go away.
Perhaps this applies to science-fiction more than it does other areas of fiction. But I believe that for all types of fiction it applies to some degree. Fiction is entertainment, and what is more entertaining than various forms of irony and the absurd?
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Research During Second Draft
Crazy, right? Well, that's the inevitable consequence of National Novel Writing Month. I've started reading my research material for Cameron Fields & the Thieves of Time, which seems insane given I've already completed the rough draft.
When you're forced to write a novel in thirty days, what choice have you got? So I'm reading the Mammoth Book of Special Forces, and I've got my CIA and other spy books loaded up. When it comes time to do a second draft I'll be ready to shoe-horn in all this wonderful detail.
Has anyone else ever done research *after* they've written a rough draft?
It seems like a silly way to do things, but that's what happens when planning and research stage comes later rather than sooner. It has to get into the writing somehow, so better late than never.
Judgmental About Stories...
You can go and take
this test to find out what kind of personality you have. This is an abbreviated version of the full psych test. I took the full test from the Please Understand Me book when I was around 14 or 15 years old. I scored INTJ. In recent years I've scored INTP. I just took the test again and scored INTJ yet again. Seems I vacillate between Perceiving and Judging. It's no suprise I'm more judgmental these days, especially when it comes to stories!
Introverted 67%
Intuitive 38%
Thinking 50%
Judging 11%
Judging is only 11% which shows I'm not that far off from being a Perceiver, as per my previous INTP scores.
Some of the most accurate parts come in
this description and
this other description of the INTJ personality type. The most telling bits:
"Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead."
"To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know."
The second part is especially true. You see, prior to writing the rough draft of my first novel last month I had only written short stories in high school. Yet, since getting in the game industry and landing at 3D Realms I've become an avid student of characters and intellectual property creation, including the positioning and marketing aspect of characters and stories.
That led to learning about the principles of storytelling. There are plenty of books out there by which a writer can learn the craft. So if I seem judgmental, it's because I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. I feel I have a broad perspective of storycraft, and combined with my own tastes I know what I like vs. what I don't like. Some mistake this for arrogance when it is merely an aura of 'definiteness' as the INTJ description explains.
I am the mastermind of my universe and characters. Beyond that, I can't help but lend a bit of rational dissection to other stories out there. My criticisms may be brutal and harsh, even in the face of reknowned artistic genius. So be it.
I'm only interested in what works. Why do some movies/stories fail and others succeed? How can supposed 'brilliant writers' put something out and have it universally panned by critics and the masses alike?
There is no such thing as 'undiscovered genius' -- If the world doesn't know about it, it might as well never have existed.
If it weren't for a friend pestering him about his formal theories, Isaac Newton wouldn't have written his Principias Mathematicas which launched him into the history books. Think about it. The difference between writing and publishing one book or not writing and publishing it. Isaac Newton, no Isaac Newton. In that alternate universe where he didn't write and publish the book, he would have still existed but who would be proclaiming his genius? As far as the world and history is concerned, he wouldn't exist.
In Newton's case all he had to do was show up. Nobody had written anything like it before. In other cases, such as the information overload noise pollution of the twenty first century, you have to do a little more than just show up.
So I tend to poo poo that special form of relativism people allow for subjective tastes and leanings. We all like different stories. But not all of those stories are equally successful whether you like them or not. There are good reasons for that success or lack of it.
If you know the principles of storytelling form in addition to marketing principles such as branding or positioning, it is easy to look at a novel/film and determine which elements resulted in its success or not. Wherever there are principles of form, one merely has to look at the adherence to or breaking of those principles and see where they shaped the success or not.
As for the ever-popular "Nobody knows!" -- I don't have a very high opinion of that stinky contradiction in nihilism. If nobody knows, then how do
you know that nobody knows? It reeks of incoherent insecurities playing out like the nervous gambler's twitch.
But enough psychology and philosophy for today. Go ahead and
take the test for yourself and see where you fall in the spectrum.
P.S. My bossman Mr. Broussard recently suggested using this test for creating/reinforcing characters. Not a bad idea.
Ambiguity in Stories?
My wife and I watched Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate last night featuring Johnny Depp. Somehow both of us had missed this title when it came out in 1999.
It was interesting, and had a neat style to it. I won't ruin it for those that haven't seen it, but I have to say the ending was a disappointment. Why?
Because it didn't make any sense!Granted the ending could be interpreted various ways by the viewer adopting great leaps of imaginative interpretation, but that is the job of the author, and why the writer is called an author in the first place.
I don't have a problem with the catch ending or twist ending, much like many Twilight Zone episodes but they do the work up front through the story so that when the ending comes, you know exactly what has happened.
I felt the ending of Ninth Gate had no such explanation or buildup. There's no way to know what's happened for sure, if anything. The movie ends on a totally inexplicable, bewildering note and just leaves you to figure out what happened.
I guess this is filmmaking as an ART, rather than as a medium for popular entertainment. If this is art, I'll take the pop entertainment thank you.
Ambiguity only works when the viewer understand what is intentionally being presented as ambiguous or vague, and what isn't. Unless we're talking about David Lynch films, where everything is up for grabs and open to interpretation.
The Ninth Gate opens and runs through a compelling occult detective story, and then degenerates into a David Lynch film in the final scenes. Why oh why?
Coherence is your friend.
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Update: Apparently
Ebert agreed with me, saying:
"After the last scene, I underlined on my note pad: What?"
"It's just that a film of such big themes should be about more than the fate of a few people; while at the end I didn't yearn for spectacular special effects, I did wish for spectacular information--something awesome, not just a fade to white."
Writing Yourself Crazy!
Yikes!
From Wikipedia:
Hypergraphia is an overwhelming urge to write. It is not itself a disorder, but can be associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and mania. Neurologist Alice Weaver Flaherty, in her book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, describes its relationship to writer's block and to compulsive reading or hyperlexia.
Now, I don't exactly have this problem. But I can empathize with it. Since I finished the first draft of my novel I've been increasingly neurotic, and my urge to start something new and crank out another novel has been almost overwhelming at times. But I've had the self-control to enforce a break through the month of December. The down side is that it doesn't really change the thoughts racing in my head.
It is sometimes suggested that Philip K. Dick had hypergraphia due to the frequency of his work plus his 8,000 page journal which he titled Exegesis.
I have not subjected myself to manic levels of writing, or hypergraphia, but I admit that I do feel the tug, the compulsion to go down that road. National Novel Writing Month sparked something in me, a kind of theraputic obsession with the craft that perhaps wasn't there before. Or if it was there, it wasn't as strong.
Since finishing the first draft and stuffing it in a drawer, I've had a hard time avoiding thoughts of it, or thoughts of the universe I've started and the future stories I have planned for it.
This also touches on another subject that's been bouncing around in my head for a few years now. I've been a fan of Philip K. Dick for a while, and I'm perpetually drawn to the paranoid elements of his writing. I don't consider myself a very paranoid person, but the kinds of thoughts entertained in his novels are things that have crossed my mind many times.
From the fright of robots monitoring the behavior of every citizen in The Man Who Japed to the "What if we're all dead?" flavoring of UBIK. There is Eye In The Sky, where the characters are trapped in the hell of their own and each others' worldview and God is symbolized by a giant eyeball, always watching.
One of my favorite movies is The Truman Show, because I think it touches on the roots behind this style and is very similar to Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint or The Cosmic Puppets.
It's taking a paranoid idea like
"What if the world was fake, a show just for me?" and turning it into reality. Or the notion that, because an idea is so out there, so crazy, so unbelievable, that just maybe it could be true!
This is the type of thinking that made The Twilight Zone, although the writing of the show rarely (if ever) followed the egocentric or hyper-self-centered paranoia of a good Philip K. Dick story.
Philip K. Dick was obsessed with strange ideas, and the philosophy behind them. I think it is easy for writers to become obsessed not only with writing, but the ideas themselves.
Parhaps this is why it is often said that genius and insanity are never very far apart. As a writer, can you reach for one without grabbing the other?
National Novel Writing Month is OVER
Final word count: 53,646
Wow. I've been talking my friends and family's ears off about the experience, so I'm not even sure what to say here.
The first draft of Cameron Fields & The Thieves of Time is complete. I made the final touches to the rough draft at 3:00AM this morning, loaded the printer with a massive stack of paper and hit PRINT. Then I collapsed in bed and fell asleep immediately.
I will be taking a short break of roughly three weeks, which puts me back in the game around Christmas time. Then I will read all 124 pages and start marking it, dissecting, rearranging, rewriting, and maybe some prose editing too. Time off at Christmas has to be good for something other than watching movies, reading, and playing video games right?
It's been an interesting month. The drafting process works, just don't get too cocky about the results. It's called a rough draft for a reason.
Some thoughts:
More plotting and a stronger outline would have helped the process go more smoothly. I only completed half of an outline/plot before the contest started, so the entire second half of the novel was improvised. That's not entirely true... I had "big moments" ideas, which were included when their time came. But all the little in between stuff, you know how situations are set up and how characters get to and from places, or end up in confrontations with one another--all that had to be made up on the fly.
It's ugly. Very ugly. I'm not happy at all with some parts of the book and I'm already committed to trashing them and rewriting.
Improvisation is a fun and useful skill, but don't ever trick yourself into believing it's what makes a GOOD novel by the definitions of composition. Or at least, that's my semi-qualified opinion.
The better parts were the portions I researched, the parts I knew exactly what was going to happen and how, and I was bursting with excitement to reach those parts of the story so I could hammer them into place.
Those were the golden moments for me.The worst moments were the in between spaces, the valleys that exist between the peaks of major events. The uninspired places, where I asked myself,
"What should my characters do and why?" because there was padding and dead time to fill if I didn't want my story to end prematurely.
Some of those moments were truly gut-wrenching because I'm the worst faker in the world. I can't fake anything to save my life, and if it isn't genuine I know it deep down. Thankfully those moments were the exception, not the rule. And they were the consequence of incomplete planning and plotting which can be easily addressed in the future.
In absence of that, I will just have to rip things out, rework some of the plot, and rewrite. I would have to do that anyway, as a first draft will always be a first draft. But I still believe strongly that the errors of a first draft can be minimized with rigorous preparation. Just don't forget to actually write! ;-)
And that was exactly the point of National Novel Writing Month. Benefits reaped, lessons learned. I'm going to begin another novel in a couple months but I will also be participating next year's contest.
I hope to see some of you there!
