Converging with Convergence

There will be a time in the not-too-distant future when a true space station with gravity and room for 10,000 inhabitants will float somewhere between here and the moon. Imagine a giant spinning wheel that uses centrifugal force to generate its own artificial gravity.

Land your rocket on such a station and you may find a mechanical world like a large hotel or office building with endless hallways and side halls wandering off to who knows where in level upon level of circular floors. Life on that distant space station will be much as Karen T. Smith (a contributor to this blog) presents it to us in Convergence, except for the unlikely sentient computer.

In Smith’s Convergence, a family enters the world of the space station after a flight up from earth. The story focuses on Anya, the new teenage girl in school, as she makes friends, including that sentient main computer.

Convergence combines teenage romance with a stunning whodunit mystery packed with what-happens-next suspense. Once you are into it, you’re not likely to put this book down, so settle into this delightful story when you have the time to spare for a lengthy read or you may find yourself losing sleep.

I wish Convergence was available when my kids were young because it paints as accurate a picture of near future science as you’re likely to find in books for young readers.

Holy F@^#ing S#!?

I have been in some discussions about the use of swear words in writing. There are authors who love them in general, others who use them as just an extension of some of their characters’ personalities, and some authors are limited (usually by genre) as to how many and which words they can use.

Swears words are just like any other word in the English language. They have power when it is given to them. When it comes down to it, swear words are really just words that show a degree of emotion.

A swear word compared to its non-offensive counterparts operate in the same manner ‘good’ and ‘amazing’ compare to each other. If someone uses the word ‘darn’, in most cases, they aren’t usually that upset about something. Now if that person were to use ‘damn’ instead, then it would be understood that the person had a stronger connection to that thing. So there is a time and place to use them. A swear word should really be used in situations where it could actually be left out and still have the sentence make sense (when used as an adjective/adverb). If it’s used as a noun, it gets trickier to test if it was used appropriately. It’s more dependent on the context in this situation. For instance, the phrase ‘That’s bullshit’ would have to be tested by replacing ‘bullshit’ with words like ‘crap’, similar to the same test as ‘darn’. All in all, swear words should be used when they portray the appropriate emotion, with the exception of it being a characteristic of a character that does not use them at appropriate times.

There have been stories which use profanity in them that are completely clashing to the motif of the book. I have read books in which halfway through a swear word was used. While it fit the appropriate reaction to the event for the character, it created a dissonance in the book. The character was a noble of a city set in a medieval locale and he went off swearing up a storm. Up to this point, no profanity had been used in the book and even the main characters, who were assassins, didn’t use such language. So to go from no use what so ever to four f-bombs in a row was very distracting and caused me to lose my flow. The scene had such a disruptive effect that I put the book down.

Often the problem of using them for the portrayal of a character’s personality is the overuse of them. A character that drops an ‘f’ bomb every other word or tries to use it in every part of speech that is possible, can become annoying to a reader. The repeated use can, but doesn’t always, create a jarring effect and ends up ‘breaking up the illusion’ of the book. Similar to typos and plot holes, when a jarring effect happens, it can cause the reader to break their flow. If a reader’s flow is disrupted, it detracts from their reading experience. This often causes them to lower their opinion of the book and possibly go as far as to stop reading it, if it has happened on multiple occasions.

The other consequence of overuse is the loss of meaning in a word. In an episode of a TV show several characters confronted another character about his use of the word ‘divine’. They pointed out that ‘not everything can be ‘divine’’. If people use swear words too much, they eventually degrade the meaning of the word to the level of their less obtrusive brethren. Which is, of course, simply no good. ‘Darn it’ should be used in a sense of disappointment, while ‘Damn it’ should be used when one seeks to call forth the wrath of the gods down upon their intended target to have it smitten into the nether.

I also believe that swear words are something that should not be used by children, not until they understand the word’s true meanings. Of my experiences with children who use swear words, I’ve noticed that they use the words as filler words or simply adjectives. Because it’s seen as ‘cool’ to use the words around their peers, children use them without knowing what they are actually saying, which of course leads to the misuse of the words. No person should have to suffer through that.

The use of profanity in literature has its purposes but should, above all, be used with consideration. It can be used tactfully to enhance a character or situation in a book. But if used without thoughtfulness, profanity can really deteriorate the quality of a book.

Putting it to paper.

      There are many ways a person can write a story.  There is no proper way or way that it has to be done.  Writing just more or less happens.
      I've found that the style I use best is the form in which you map it out first, find out where I'm going with the story before writing too much.  I started out with the 'write by the seat of your pants' style.  I couldn't figure out how I wanted to start my book so I started somewhere in the middle and just kept writing.
It wasn't until I took History of Theater in college that I figured out that I could start my book in the middle of the story.  The professor shared that when you watch a play you are witnessing a snippet of the character's whole story.  What he meant was that you weren't watching the character's entire life ie: birth, childhood, adolescence, and so forth.  So what you are seeing is the portion of the character's life pertinent to story of the play.
      Once I learned that, I decided that I would use what I've written as the beginning of my book.  From there I realized that I wasn't sure where I wanted the story to go.  Some writers are okay with that and it's fine.  My writer's blocks tend to deal with me not writing because I don't know what is going to happen in my story.
So my method is the story boarding style.  I have several white boards that I map the whole plot line of my book out on.  These plot points are not set in stone and I have changed them as I've gotten feedback and found out some plot points are weak or irrelevant to the story or characters.  You just can't set it in stone.  That will limit you too much, especially if your story takes a turn you hadn't anticipated earlier (which happens quite often).
      When I actual go to write, I pick a plot point that I feel like I can tease out into a scene.  It might be a large scene that is several pages in length or it could end up being only half a page just so I get the plot element into the story.  Once I'm done writing it down and typing it up, I go back to my white board and update the point with a little more elaboration so that when I go back to look at the board later I can remember easier how I expanded it.
      I am very visual with my planning.  I've drawn maps of the areas my characters have gone so that I can describe them better in the book.  When creating a new world it helps to remember where all your landmarks are in relation to each other.  Or while writing the second book of my series, I realized that I had a hard time remembering where certain characters were in their own story lines, relative to each other.  So I took one of my white boards and drew out a timeline for each character.  One time line above the other so that when I plotted the points of the timeline for each character, the points then showed, in more readily available format, where each character was.
     I'm not saying this is the best way to write a story, and I'm sure it doesn't work for everyone.  This is the way I set it up though and it keeps me on track.  That being said, I'm always curious about other writer's methods and ways I can try differently to keep the creativity flowing.

The Ending of Mass Effect

(If you haven't finished the game I apologize there are some SPOILERS in this discussion)

There has been this huge discussion about the recently released game Mass Effect 3.  It was a huge hit with game critics and an absolute turn down for players.  The biggest reason being the ending of the game.

I have played it through once and seen the possible endings of the game afterward from people recording their choices on YouTube.  While there are a lot of holes in the endings, particularly pertaining to the scene with the Normandy flying between Mass Relays, there is something that a lot of the people who played the Mass Effect line have left out.  The fact that not every story has a completely happy ending.

I felt fine with my choice and the end of the game.  With a series so immense as the Mass Effect series is, to accommodate for all the choices a player could have chosen while playing would have been astronomical.  But the true fact of the matter is, it is the writers of the story that have planned out what ending it will ultimately be.  The fact that the writers left an Easter egg at the end of one of the choices just means that that ending was the one they had planned the whole time.    Not to mention the possibility for future games and spin offs.  

Yes, I know that the game was made to shape the galaxy into how the player wanted to, like deciding which species gets to live and which doesn't or who you want to befriend or not.  But its similar to the saying, "you can't bring money with you".  Meaning that you can't take money with you through the grave.  So whatever you do in the game will ultimately not matter at the end because the threat you have to face at the end will either destroy you or leave you limping and bleeding afterwards.  Yes, limping and bleeding is better than being dead but what I'm saying is even if you've won you still had the crap beat out of you.

As many of the players who really looked into the game, aside from playing it through to romance some alien chick or shoot up space meanies, should know from the Star Trek franchise that there is sometimes a no win situation.  So when Shepard dies at the end and strands the massive fleet he brought with him to Earth that is a no win situation.  Yeah, the threat to the galaxy is gone but sacrifices had to be made to do so.  That's what Admiral Hackett had been saying for the entire game.

You may say you hate the ending of the series but what you're not seeing is that the writers did exactly what writers are supposed to do.  Draw out your emotions and feelings so that they can be felt by you and, if they can pull it off, those around you as well.  What the players are kicking and screaming about is that they didn't get a 'Hollywood Ending'.  Not every story has a 'Hollywood Ending' and that's great. Not having happy endings is something that people remember.

All of this is not to say that writers shouldn't take into consideration what their audience feels.  If they didn't, they would get lazy.  As we've all seen with absurd amount of remakes and reboots of older movies coming out of Hollywood.  If writers didn't take their audiences' views into consideration the literary world would dissolve into too few actually creative books.  Much like what is coming out of Hollywood.  This point may not be pointed at the writers as much as producers not willing to put out movies that are original either way there has to be new ideas to promote growth.  But back to my main point.  What I'm saying is that even though a story is the work of a writer, the writer still writes the story so that other people will read it.  There has to be a trust for the writers to write something that will move the audience, whether to make them happy or sad or even angry, and an understanding that if something is written with an upsetting ending that it will still be well written and not just a cop out.

The Multiple Perspective Approach

There are various ways to write a book, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, a first-person perspective book is great for character development but the problem, as I see it, is that that is the only way a writer can show things happening in the story.  It seems to me that characters end up hearing things or being present to events almost haphazardly.  I know there are writers who do this well and can pull it off amazingly, but that's the case with all writing.  Some authors can pull off writing styles amazingly.

The omniscient third person where the narrator can tell the reader everything they need to know about the character the first time the character is introduced.  This makes it easier to describe things that happen that are pertinent to the story without forcing, in some manner, the main character to be there.  The drawback to this style is that it tends to give too much away to the reader.  Some readers like this, of course, because some people like to know what's going to happen or they enjoy the feeling of what I like to refer to as 'Game Show Syndrome'.  What I mean by that is, when someone watches a game show and they know the answer but the person on the screen doesn't, they sit there yelling the answer at the person even though they can't hear them.  This same thing happens with books and movies.  The classic of course being, "Don't open that door!"

There are many other ways to write than the two I listed above but those are two common ones.

The perspective I use and personally love is the multiple perspectives.  This approach still is kind of a meshing to some of the others.  It allows the writer to still be able to draw the reader in and influence their opinion of the character while allowing the freedom to show things happening in other parts of the story that may still be important to the overall story.  If done well, the story will come together and mesh well while still providing some good intrigue.  If done poorly, like when I first started writing my story, all the characters just end up seeming like the same person or different character attributes of the same person.   To me it seems that using more than one main character allows the writer to toy with the reader's emotions and get them to second guess who the 'bad guy' is in the different character relationships.

About my first book.

   I realize in my last post I spoke of my book, He Came Around the Corner, and that was the first mention of it anywhere.
   So who cares?
   Well the hope for all writers is that people will care when they write a book and I, like most writers, write to influence those around me.  The purpose of writing is not always to make someone think about something profound and philosophical, although that is sometimes the case, particularly with some classic novels.  Sometimes writers will write just to make the reader feel enjoyment from what they read.  This is why I write.
   The funny thing about writing fiction is even though books are put into archetypes, they will often fit other archetypes as well.  For instance, a mystery novel could have a strong romance element in it.  My book is a Young Adult (YA) Fantasy but it still has other elements in it.  The next secondary element, after being Fantasy, in it is the romance.  The romance of the book actually causes one of the profound questions to appear in the story: What exactly are we capable of?

   My book is about two teenagers, Drake and Athena, at the end of their senior year of high school.  On the night of a school dance, what they know as the world they live in changes.  They find themselves alone in their town, everyone they knew and who lived in the town vanish.  The power is gone and only things on batteries and generators will work.  On top of all that, the two of them have to fight for their lives because where ever they go in town, there are orcs who want to kill them.  The only thing keeping them alive are Drake's new magical ability to summon a sword and their knowledge of the town they grew up in.

Movies have them, why can't books?

I've been writing my book for several years now and when I write I listen to music. There are several scenes in my series so far that have been greatly influenced by particular songs. Songs like Jenny Was a Friend of Mine by The Killers and Adele's Set Fire to the Rain. Adele's song actually inspired a scene for the second book in the series. I also listen to soundtracks to movies as well and a group that, much to my laughter, itunes categorized as soundtrack music, Two Steps from Hell.

Which leads me to my topic. There aren't a lot of soundtracks to books out there. I'm not talking about soundtracks to movies that were adapted from books and I have heard that some books do it but it's still a small amount. So I plan on making a list of the songs I listened to while writing my book, He Came Around the Corner. I also figured I could put on the list when the song came into play in the book or even when to listen to the song when someone is reading it.

I feel that if the music made that much of an impact while writing it then it would enhance the scene while reading it. When I had my friends read excerpts to give me feedback, I suggested they listen to the soundtrack to the Lord of Rings movies while they did. They said that some of the scenes were really more pronounced when the music was playing.

I'm sure there's some science behind this, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with stimulating different parts of the brain at the same time. I've also heard a lot of discussions on how music affects people which of course is fascinating. What I'm getting at though is, if the opportunity is there, why not enjoy the music?

Welcome Aboard

Our Dwarven Phaser may be missing or it may simply be that weird looking flip phone in the back of my desk drawer (I have no idea how it got in there which is what makes me suspicious that it may just be the missing alien light shooter), but we have discovered blogging. We're the Write Time Writer's Group from Geneva, Illinois. Our meet up is about 35 miles west of downtown Chicago.

If all goes according to plan, you'll be reading posts from our members. They'll introduce themselves as they come aboard. I'm Paul R. Lloyd, leader of our little tribe of scribes. I write suspense novels. My reading habits include other people's suspense stories as well as a healthy dose of horror, sci-fi and mystery.

The Missing Dwarven Phaser is about writing and editing. Here you'll find our best thoughts on the craft along with bits of braggadocio, writer's humor and the sharing of tidbits of our work, depending on how each of us chooses to participate.