Soap Box: Climate Change

Alright, so you and I are in a room. A small, empty room. It's a room with only one way in and out but to get out you have to pay a toll. It's not cheap so you really have to want to get out.

So you're standing there at one corner of the room, beside the toll booth and the door and I'm over here in the opposite corner. And I have a machete. A big machete I'm going to use to hack your leg off. It's going to be painful. You're going to be crippled. There's nothing you can do to stop me or slow me down. I'm coming and your leg is mine. The only thing you can do is pay to leave the room.

But then you start to think maybe I don't have a machete after all. Sure it looks like I have one and I've told you I have one but maybe it's an illusion. Or worse, maybe it's a scam between me and the toll booth guy. Or maybe the machete is blunt. It looks a bit rusty, after all. Yeah, that must be it. It's a real machete and I am coming for you but at most it'll be a little inconvenient or leave a small bruise.

On the other hand you might be wrong. And if you are wrong, you save some money but you've lost your leg. Your leg is gone and you are never getting it back. Assuming you don't die a painful and agonising death from having your leg hacked off, you've got to drag yourself to the hospital. Bad news is, as I said, this is an empty room. There's a hospital that might be able to save you outside the room but you've got to pay to get through that toll booth.

Oh yeah, and it's not a free medical service, either. You want to live, you've got to pay. So now you're not just paying the toll to get out of the room, you're paying a whole lot more for life saving treatment because I just hacked your leg off. And there's no guarantee you live. It could well be all over for you even when you get to the hospital, no matter how much you spend.

Alright. But as we've said, it might not come to that. Maybe you feel lucky. Maybe you want to play the odds. I'm afraid I got some bad news for you. Remember how I said the room was small? Well it used to be bigger. Seventy years ago it was a pretty big room but it's been getting small. It's going to keep shrinking, too. Even if I don't actually hurt you, you are going to have to pay to get out of this room eventually because it's only a matter of time before you don't fit in here, anyway.

You're going to have to leave the room eventually. You're going to have to pay the toll. Not paying that toll isn't an option. You do it now or you do it later. So do you want to pay it now or is this room really worth wagering your money on? How about your life?

Time Is A Beast That Must Be Tamed

It's November. November means, for many people, NaNoWriMo. Not for me. I've never done NaNoWriMo. I'm not interested. I've got other stuff I'm doing, I don't need a month to tell me to write fast and write often. I don't need a month to tell me to work on a project. I'm covered. Thanks but no thanks.

Others, however, really get into it. Good for them. I can see why. But what I really like about NaNoWriMo is that they chose November specifically because it is a busy time of year for a lot of people. The closer you get to the end of the year, the more things pile up in life, at work, at school. It can be hard to find that time.

Which brings us to something I hear all year, but especially around November. "I don't have time to write." or "I just can't find the time." I sympathise, I do. I've been a bit time short this year, too. I've had all kinds of time-sucking black holes open up and stealing what used to be prime writing real estate on my clock. Damn.

But let me share a few things with you about my life. Sometimes I have to travel for my job. On any given day it's different and I might have to spend anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours on a train to get where I need to be. I love those two hour train rides. That, friends, is great time for writing. Sure I could watch some movies on my phone, listen to music or read a book but I stash my laptop in my bag and I use that time to write.

Lunch times. I get about 45 minutes for lunch on a standard day. That's writing time.

I've usually got other commitments in the evenings. Two or three nights a week I practise martial arts so that my brain does not rot. One night a week I've got a gaming group I'm a part of. Great fun. Writing is important but so are these. I set aside time for these things and I'm sure you've got hobbies and friends you do and see (respectively) regularly.

At various times in recent history I've had the opportunity to be a part of another gaming group, learn to play an instrument, pick up another language and be a part of various other activities and groups that would have been fun. But in the end I decided not to. I love playing video games but I rarely finish them and I'm usually a good six months behind in what anyone else is playing. I love movies and I love going to the cinema but I usually only see a handful of films a year. There's a lot more I'd like to see, I just don't.

 You might ask why. Why deprive myself of these things?

Because it was cutting into writing time. I made the decision what was important and what wasn't and whenever I do that, writing usually wins.

If you're struggling to find time, you're doing something wrong. But relax, because I can tell you what it is. Your problem is you're trying to find time. If you want time to write, MAKE time. You look at your schedule and you gut it of all the things that are getting in your way. Find out how important writing is to you and anything that's below it goes under the axe.

I'll say it again. You don't find time to write, you make time to write.

Or you stop complaining. If being the top Call of Duty Deathmatch player in town is more important than writing then you've got no problems. You've got all the time to write that you need.

Okay. Now before you get carried away, let me make a few things clear. You NEED time for other things, too. You need time to do some kind of exercise. Your body needs to be healthy to function so get up and do some yoga or something. You also need other people. How much time you need to be with other people so you don't go insane is up to you. I, personally, don't need much. I get more than enough between my martial arts classes and my gaming group. But you need to be around friends. Not only does it keep you sane, you learn how to write people by being around people. You also need at least one other hobby. Bonus points if it is creative. Bonus point if it puts you around other people. But something that you enjoy that isn't writing.

There's a lot of hours in the day. Don't tell me you don't have time to write every one of those days. You do have time, you're just spending it on something else. There are times when you genuinely do not have time to write. That's okay too. It will happen. "Write every day" is a bullshit rule. But write often. As often as you need (note I did not say want) to so you can reach you goals.

You don't FIND time to write. You MAKE time to write.

Carl On The Air Again

A little while ago the Winter City writing team were invited to be guests on the podcast Behind The Panels. Now you can listen to us talk about making comics.

http://behindthepanels.net/behind-the-panels-issue-74-winter-city/

The World According to Deviant Art: Literature Edition

Deviant Art is a website for artists. Artists of all kinds: Writers, painters, photographers, etc. I have been a member for many years now and for slightly less time, I have been an active voice in the writing community. I like Deviant Art but like any community it has evolved its own unique culture. Every now and then I like list my observations about that culture.

A few years ago, in my first entry on The World According to dA, I said that nothing interesting ever happens in the forums. This is still largely true. The differences these days is my grip on my sanity is much weaker and so I actually spend more time than any man should on dA's literature forum. And much like the rest of dA, I've noticed certain trends. There are things in the literature community which are true. This is just how it is. This is how things are done, how they have always been done and how they will always be done. I'd like to explore some of these with you now.

1. Don't write until you have permission. You might think your idea is good but you won't know how good it is or if your story will be good until you ask strangers on the Internet if they think it will be good. Whatever you do, put off starting any new project until you've got the go ahead from a handful of literature forumites.

2. On second thought, don't write stories at all. Stories don't matter. Nobody wants plot. Just write characters and settings. All anyone wants in a book is some expansive world-building and characters with long, dramatic histories. Remember those chapters in Moby Dick where Melville just writes about the history of Nantucket and he describes the officers on the Pequod? The whole book should have been that. Only more detail, like what their blood type and favourite food.

3. Stickies are for chumps.

4. Everything is personal. That's why you have to keep reminding anyone you talk to that your disagreement is not a personal attack - even when it is. Because there is no way you can have a debate, a discussion or even a small disagreement without it being a personal attack on a person. So be offensive and get defensive because the shit storm's-a brewin'.

5. Forum regulars are all arrogant trolls out to make you feel bad. This is, of course, related to above. When the experienced and worldly writers of dA try and tell you something, you must respond by calling them names. Then blocking them. Bonus points for threatening to report them or implying they suck at life and ending your sentence with a smiley face.

6. The best way to be a successful writer is to follow trends. Not current trends, mind you, dead trends. Find something that is at least six years old (Twilight, Naruto, The Walking Dead) but you are still obsessed with/just discovered and rewrite it. Bonus points if the setting is psuedo-japanese. The other trends you must be aware of are hate trends. Keep up to date with whatever ancient shit people are still bitching about (Twilight, Naruto, The Walking Dead) and make a point to complain about it whenever possible.

7. Expect feedback. Expect in-depth criticism and review. Expect to be given a "How To Not Write Crap in Ten Easy Steps" manual every time you upload something to dA. You are entitled to help from strangers on the Internet. That help should also be printed clouds, wrapped in rainbows and delivered by unicorns just so it makes you feel extra special good. But YOU don't have to give anyone feedback. You're far too busy wondering why your comments are late to read somebody else's work and comment.

And finally, the most important lesson of all that dA can teach an aspiring writer:

8. Don't write short stories. Don't even write novels. Only plan to write series - three books AT LEAST! Put them up on dA one chapter at a time and submit those chapters to every critique request thread and group you can find. This is both quick and easy because chapters only need to be about two hundred words long. And if, while writing one series, you happen to think of something new just abandon that project and start a new series. Finishing stuff never did anyone any good, anyway.

Soap Box: A Christian in Support of Gay Marriage

I'm going to do something I almost never do. I'm going to talk about Religion. More specifically, I am going to talk about my religious beliefs.

I am a Christian. I am an all believing, all praying, church going, God worshipping 100% pure Angus Beef Christian.

And I support gay marriage.

I'm doing this because I feel like I'm in something of a minority and this pro-gay marriage Christian view isn't being heard as loud as it should be.

The biggest obstacle any Christian faces is that some scripture reads a lot like it is forbidding gay marriage. Some scripture seems to come out in plane and simple English and say that homosexuality, or at the very narrowest interpretation homosexual sex between men, is a sin. That is to say it is against the law of God. But there's a problem with that. The bible wasn't written in English, it's been translated that way. And where SOME bibles have been translated to name homosexuality, others have not. Now I won't go too much into this because I am not a bible scholar by any stretch of the imagination. Still, obviously if we've got different translations then the original scripture wasn't so cut and dry and one has to start thinking. I certainly did.

And I did what all Christians should do if they're not sure what to do with the scripture in front of them. I did some research, I did some reading and I did some praying. And in all that time, nothing convinced me that an anti-homosexual interpretation of the bible is the only valid interpretation. The truth just isn't so black and white.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Because “I'm just not sure” isn't a helpful answer. There's also the possibility that I'm wrong. What I'm talking about here is two directly opposed readings of the Bible and in circumstances like this, somebody has to be wrong.

It's important things to remember here that marriage existed before the Church. Marriage exists outside the Church. Christianity in all its forms does not hold either a copyright or a monopoly on marriage. I can't imagine many homosexuals want to get married in a Church that doesn't approve of them, anyway. What they want is legal recognition of their relationship, just like all the heterosexual relationships want. They want the same rights and privileges we get.

But that's not what I want to talk about. The politics of this debate are lengthy and mostly very stupid. So I won't go into that now.

What I do want to do is talk about what I am sure about. This is what I think Christian scripture makes undeniably clear again and again and again.

It is not my place, my duty or even my right to judge. I have no business telling homosexuals that they are sinning and going to hell. I have no authority to tell them that they are in the wrong and that their way of life is damaging to the world.

If God does not want to recognise a gay marriage, He won't. Just because a gay couple have a legal marriage or even if they got married in a church God is under no obligation to accept their marriage as valid. God can do that because He's God. God is a big boy and as much as He appreciates your efforts, in the end, He'll do what He wants and He can take care of Himself.

If I am standing in the way of two people expressing their love then I am at fault. How much more obvious could Christ have made it to us that we must be loving and compassionate? How is the hatred and anger Christians have shown to the LGBT community in line with what Christ taught? How do you love someone while condemning them? How is telling them they are an abomination showing compassion? That's not even tough love. That's just being an ass hole.

Christians are called upon to make more Christians. Sometimes it seems like we forgot that we don't need to breed to make more Christians. There are plenty of people out there who are not Christians. Some of them never will be. Some of them once were and stopped. Some haven't had the chance yet. Some of them want to be but don't know how. God has told us to try and save them. Now I could write a whole extra entry on how being an obnoxious, pushy, holier-than-thou fuckwit is poor witnessing in the modern world. But I'm not going to do that. The point I want to make here is: God wants everyone to be saved and that includes the homosexual community. Do you really think any of them are going to come to God if you keep abusing them? Do you think any of them will want anything to do with God if you can't be nice to them? Or would they much rather hear about Christ if you're an open, friendly, accepting and generous person because of your faith? We must not just believe, we must practice.

I don't believe homosexuality is a sin. Nobody has convinced me that this is God's teaching. But even if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter. Because the treatment of the gay community and denying them the right to a marriage is not what Christ has taught us. I have gay friends in a relationship and I can see, just looking at them, that they understand love more than some Christians seem to. It would be tragic if it wasn't so beautiful.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have something far less controversial to write.

EDIT: I felt that this needed a conclusion. It's a tricky topic and I think it's too important to leave it without being 100% clear. A Christian's first and foremost duty is serving God. God has made it clear how we serve him and what he expects us to do. We have guides for our behaviour.

Marriage equality is not a threat to you, it is not a threat to God, it is not a threat to Christianity. Nobody is trying to change the Christian definition of marriage (we're still assuming the traditional, conservative reading is the only valid reading) and nobody is trying to force Christianity to be something it is not or do something it does not want. We are not under attack by people who want the freedom to express love for each other.

By standing in the way of marriage equality, you are hurting people. Even if hurting people achieved a righteous end, morality is not subjective. If you do wrong to achieve good, you have still done wrong and that goes on your record. But hurting people by stopping marriage equality does not serve any righteous end. Even if homosexuality is a sin, by not allowing homosexuals to have legally recognised marriages, you are not stopping them from being homosexual. By hurting them you drive them away from Christ. You are Christ's ambassadors and don't ever forget it.

What You Know

"Write what you know" is one of those things writers like to say ad infinitum and like most things writers say ad infinitum it becomes more of a pointless chant than an actual lesson. How does one write what they know? Can you only write well what you know? What does this mean for writing about fighting dragons or stabbing prostitutes? Does this mean we have to go out and do something before we can write it well? As it always is with this kind of one-line writing advice, there's truth but you need to go into detail. Delve. It's never as simple as it sounds.

Right now I'm working on a story that involves a car chase through an American city. It's set in the early 1930s. Now as a 20-something, Australian suburbanite I have not been to America, I have not been in a car chase and I did not live through the 1930s. So how can I possibly write it well if I don't know it?

Well first of all I like to think that I can rest easy knowing that the majority of my audience for this story will also not have been in a car chase or lived through the 1930s. It's also a fictional city so there's no risk of them having been there. But this doesn't mean I can make up any shit and sell it to them and they'll accept it because they don't know better.

So here's where I start to think about what I do know.

I live in a city, I've seen lots of other different kinds of cities both in my own country and around the world. So I think I know enough to write about a city. Thanks to the library and Google I can pretty easily find pictures and information about the 1930s. Populations, fashion, architecture etc are all things I can study and learn. So in fact, not having experienced this fictional 1930s city is no problem because learning what I need to know is cake. But wait, this is also an American city. How do I know what America is like? Well, let's say I set my story in the Autumn (the best season). My fictional American city occupies a similar place, geographically, to Seattle. So again I go to my various founts of wisdom and read about Seattle. Wikipedia tells me that Seattle is temperate and that in October the average temperatures are 15, high and 8, low in October and that Autumn is typically a rainy season for Seattle. Well damn, I've been in 8 - 15 degree weather heaps and I know what rain is like. So even though I've never been to my fictional city - or even Seattle - I can learn about them and find the common ground between the things I do not know and the things I do know. I need to write about a 10 degree autumn night? Bitch, I got this.

But sure, that's the easy stuff. What about the car chases? What do I know about car chases? Well I know my protagonists will be in a convertible with the top down. I know they'll be going fast. I know they'll be taking corners hard, the air will be cold, shit will be getting in their way so they'll be swerving and dodging. Now I go through the same formula. I look at what I do know and find common ground. Going fast with the top down? I've been on roller coasters. That's going fast in an open car. I've been in traffic where people drive poorly and the car I'm in has had to stop suddenly or swerve. I've been on high speed freeways where the world starts to lose clarity because I can't look at anything for long enough to make out the detail.

From my earlier years as a motorcycle and Go-Kart hobbyist I know what it's like to be in control of an engine going faster than any man sensibly should drive. I know what it's like to struggle against a steering wheel, to lose control, to weave around other drivers and take corners hard. I know what it's like to have my vehicle fish tail, spin out completely or crash side on into a wall. This is all on a small scale, full of safety equipment but hey, nothing is perfect.

Now I can reflect on all these relatively safe and domestic experiences of mine and I can mix in big spoon fulls of imagination, scale things up and BAM, there's my scene. I'm writing and I'm writing everything based on what I know.

"Write what you know" is an invitation to cheat. It rests on the idea that there is in fact a finite ways we as people can perceive, process and thus experience the world around us. We all have the same emotions, we all have the same senses. When we're told to write what we know, we're not being told to limit ourselves. We're being told to be conscious of the human condition and apply the experiences we have in life to the experiences of our characters have in the story.

And now you know.

The Golden Rule

Alright, kids, put your seat-belts on. I'm about to blow you and all your preconceived notions right out of the water.

What's the number one rule of writing? Show of hands.

I'm betting a good portion of you out there in Internets land are saying "Show, don't tell."

Well I mean duh, right? That's first grade. Nobody wants to read a book and get told. Paint a picture with words. Show what's happening, let the reader see it and understand. Readers are smart people, right?

WRONG!

Wait, no. Readers are smart people. You're right about that.

I'm talking about the other thing you said. "Show don't tell." is NOT the golden rule. Don't get me wrong, it's important. It's vital. But this is the silver rule. Rule number 2 on the list of rules. It's the first rule you can and should break. When the revolution comes, that rule will be up against the wall.

You get it?

So what is Rule #1? I believe it was Hitchcock who put it so elegantly as: "Drama is life with the dull parts taken out." I like to take this a step further and say "Fiction is life with the boring parts taken out." Because people tend to get stuck on the word drama for all the wrong reasons and also because I like to speak broadly on the process of creating fiction. Oh and if this isn't direct enough, the other way I like to put it is: "Cut the crap."

Cut it right out. Find all those bits that are boring and you scrap them.

Sadly it's not easy. Quite often the boring bits hold the excitement together. Sometimes you just have to let the world know that your character went and took a nap. It's not interesting but sadly it is important and if you took out the part where he/she takes a nap then you end up with a broken narrative.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is when you tell. Nobody wants to be shown all the little details about how your character took a nap. Just tell us he went and took a nap. If you show us all the steps and all the details involved then we're going to get bored. I'm already getting bored just thinking about this hypothetical nap focused prose.

So tell. Tell the shit out of it. That should take you a couple of sentences and then we can get back to something interesting. You can start showing again, now. Much better. Aren't you glad that-

"But Carl, how do I know if it's interesting or not?"

Huh? Oh, okay. Sure, let's touch on that for a while. I've got some time to kill.

This is no secret but it's still nice to have things spelt out for us. The interesting part of your story is the conflict. This is more or less what Hitchcock was talking about when he mentioned drama. The essence of drama is conflict. At the heart of every interesting story is a conflict.

Here's a simple conflict: Your protagonist wants to do X. An antagonist doesn't want them to do X. Your protagonist and antagonist come into conflict. Usually the protagonist does Y to the antagonist so he can then do X.

But more importantly, the heart of most scenes should also focus on a conflict. When there is a conflict going on, there is something interesting to read about. This is when you should show. So in effect what we have is a central conflict that defines your plot. This is established in the first act of your fiction. In a very straight forward story like Indiana Jones and The Raiders of The Lost Ark the conflict that defines the plot is Indie wants to get the Ark of The Covenant and the NAZIs want to get the Ark of The Covenant. Indie and the NAZIs both can't have the Ark so they are in conflict. This is the Central Conflict. One scene requires Indie to get a jeweled talisman off an old flame: Marion. However Marion wants to keep the talisman to herself because she's still mad at Indie over past events. To make matters worse, the NAZIs send an agent to get the Talisman first. Now we have a three way conflict that must be overcome to move the plot forward and bring the characters closer to the resolution of the Central Conflict.

In very broad and easily usable terms there are two kinds of conflicts. External Conflicts and Internal Conflicts. The first involve multiple characters and include fights, arguments, races and the like. The latter involves only one character and includes struggles against addiction, making hard decisions and over coming powerful emotions or motivations. External and Internal conflicts can and often do occur together or side-by-side.

Alright, so let's take a second to recap.
- It is often important to Tell instead of Show
- The interesting scenes are the scenes you Show.
- Interesting scenes are the ones that involve Conflict.

But while you can write fiction that is just conflict after conflict this can be tiring for the writer and the audience. The majority of scenes should be conflict but between the conflict you can still have interesting scenes. These are still scenes that you show and, most importantly, there is still movement. The plot progresses, characters change, stuff is happening.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about these Rest scenes right now but I will touch on them. The scenes between conflict should primarily be used to develop characters, set-up or foreshadow later scenes and include exposition. Returning to Raiders of The Lost Ark one such rest scene involves Indie explaining to two military intelligence agents what he thinks the NAZIs are up to and what the Ark of The Covenant is. This scene and the classroom scene that precede it are conflict free but the show us a lot about the character of Indie, they give our protagonist a new goal and point him towards more conflict and they reveal much of the world our characters live in and what the story is about. All of this makes it interesting.

Okay, that's enough on that for now. I'll talk more about Rest scenes another time (Foreshadowing). This should be enough for you to chew for now. Happy writing, kids!