Fiction Writing, World Building, Etc.

So I started writing the first few pages of a science fiction story, using as my starting point the questions I asked awhile back. The first cut was four pages, around 2,500 words, just to introduce my character and get myself used to writing fiction again (I'm a technical writer for my day job, and that uses the brain cells in a similar way). I have a story path laid out, but I keep going back to those first four pages. My second cut at them was to tighten up the writing and add or subtract useful/useless bits of prose.

However, I'm still not happy with it. If this is to be my introductory text, I need it to do a few things:

• I need to establish my character. In this case, the scene begins with my protagonist, Mike, doing something atypical for him. A California sun-lover, he is not particularly fond of the cold, so I have him snowboarding. Why is he doing this? In the future I'm writing, people grow up in peer groups of ten ("tens," in fact), where the group will is more important than the individual. Mike does not like being in the cold, but he doesn't want to be disagreeable, either. The social sanctions against noncompliance are too strong. This gives Mike color and attitude because snowboarding rubs him wrong a couple of ways--he's independent-minded and doesn't like complying with his peer group and he doesn't like the cold. As a final layer of character development, Mike is a klutz. He has been genetically designed for intelligence, sociability, and health, but athletic ability appears not to been in his particular mix. So snowboarding presents him with a level of uncertainty and danger. It might sound sadistic, all this stuff I'm doing to poor Mike, but if he began the story happily and well-adjusted, how boring would that be? Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, in How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction, challenges new writers to ask, "Who hurts the most in your world?" As a rule, I'm anti-drama in my personal life, but I've learned that my fictional worlds need conflict or the reader gets bored.
• I need to establish my style. I've read some absolute balderdash over the years, much of it because I was drawn into a narrative by the language of an author's opening paragraph. I've also struggled with or not bothered to buy books that failed to win me over in the first page, paragraph, or even sentence. Effortless or graceful writing takes work, as I've noted from reading the works and the writing habits of one of my favorite contemporary writers, Mary Doria Russell. She'll put a story through 50 drafts or so. Yikes! But the results are truly astounding. Her prose slips over my mind like water, and her stories are a pleasure to read. So the stylistic edit involves what Michelangelo might have called chipping away the unnecessary stone until the figure he saw within the marble appears.
• I need to establish my world. This is where I need to go next. I've established my character in my mind and how he communicates--I've decided to go with a first-person narrative this time--but now I need to help the reader and myself better "see" the world of 2117. Snowboarding is a contemporary activity, somewhat familiar to a 21st century reader, so what would be different in the future? Several things can change: the board, the rider, or the environment in which the individual rides the board. I've already touched on why Mike is on this mountain, doing something he doesn't want to do. Do I need to do other things to show that social pressure? He's wearing a sapphire implant in place of one eye, and in that eye lives an artificially intelligent adviser that talks to him and provides a head-up display (HUD) to give him guidance and information on everything from the ambient temperature to the state of his health, as for example when he slips and falls while attempting to avoid a rock outcropping. If it's the future, would the board have safeguards to prevent that type of accident? That would reduce the danger and thus the tension. Is the implant really necessary, or has technology advanced to the point where some other mechanism can provide the HUD? Is the climate different? Maybe the future world climate is colder and he's snowboarding in June or July. How "different" do I make my world or character? Science fiction readers are used to being immersed in unusual environments, slang, and technology, with the expectation that the author will explain them at some point. Make things too different or indecipherable, however, and the reader might give up out of sheer frustration. 

The bottom line is, I don't think my scene is quite "there" yet. I need to put my character and through them my reader into the future I have in mind. I'll try to keep these entries going as a way to keep myself honest and help the interested reader or writer understand my personal creative process. If you have specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Book Review: Doc

One of my favorite writers, hands down, is Mary Doria Russell, who is, like me, a native of Lombard, Illinois. The first book of hers I read, The Sparrow, was a work of science fiction and was startling in its characterization and sheer literary brilliance. What startled me most, I suppose, was that the book moved me, something that doesn't happen very often, as I am a very detached reader. Her subsequent books, Children of God, A Thread of Grace, and Dreamers of the Day, were each a treat as well. Russell's latest work, a biographical novel about John Henry Holliday, better known as the dentist who fought alongside Wyatt Earp and his brothers at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. As with other books by Ms. Russell, I breezed through this book in a couple of sittings. The reason for this rapid read was not that I was speed-reading but simply because she's that good and the story is that absorbing.




I suppose most people of my generation know of Doc Holliday and the Earps through the 1990s movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. The two actors who portrayed Holliday in these films were Dennis Quaid and Val Kilmer, both of whom took the time to get the Georgia aristocrat's accent right. I'm more familiar with Kilmer's interpretation of the man, as Tombstone is just a more entertaining movie. Kilmer portrays Holliday as a thrill-seeking, cynical, drunken gunslinger and criminal. The most memorable lines among many Kilmer utters as Holliday are "I'm your huckleberry" and "I have not yet begun to defile myself." Quaid's portrayal is hazier to me (It's really hard to watch a Kevin Costner film, let alone one that lasts for three hours), but he does different things with the role, portraying Holliday as more of a fallen aristocrat than an out-and-out bad man. Quaid is more of a professional card sharp. One of his first lines is "Make sure you take good care of your teeth, son." Holliday was, after all, a doctor of dental surgery.
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the events leading up to it have been portrayed in several other films (including one starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas). Ms. Russell does not portray this fight, except by flash-forward or foreshadowing. Doc concerns Holliday's early life over a couple of chapters before focusing primarily upon his time in Dodge City, Kansas.

I like what Russell does here. By covering a generally unknown part of Holliday's life, we get a different look at the character. This is actually a happier time for him, as he comes to a place where he can practice his professional craft and had yet to become notorious as a participant in an infamous gunfight. His consumption--tuberculosis, as it is known now--was less painful, at least for most of the book, which occurs in 1878. What Russell gives the reader is the story of, yes, a fallen Georgia aristocrat, but one more known for his quick tongue than his quick draw. He was educated well for the time, knowing French, Latin, and Greek. He played piano with proficiency and had a Southern gentleman's touchiness about matters of honor and propriety. He is portrayed as a man of great insight and sensitivity, which could have been born from any number of reasons. But one thing Russell makes clear is that the man was not a cold-blooded killer.

And yet despite all this, he became caught up in the wild, roustabout life of a Western cattle town, dealing faro, living with a prostitute, and carrying a gun in a town where carrying guns was illegal.

Russell’s marvelous at characterization because she depicts the good and bad in people in all their complexity. Sometimes she does not even bother trying to explain how both can exist in the same person. But what she does with almost every character upon which she turns her literary attention is something that is marvelous: she grants each one their own moment of hope or grace. That is what touched me about her first book, The Sparrow. Whatever bad things had happened to him, no matter his understandings or errors, he was privileged to have a moment of hope about his existence. Holliday, too, has such a moment, and it is wonderful to behold. Again, for reasons that elude me, Doc had the ability to move me. Impressive.

And here’s the part that always impresses me about Ms. Russell’s writing: the ease with which the reader can absorb it from the page. I engaged in a little correspondence after reading one of her books expressing my appreciation and thanks. That sort of smooth, effortless-to-the-reader experience isn’t too complicated to figure out: “You just need 50 or so drafts,” she wrote, or words to that effect. That is craftsmanship of a high order. And the narrative voice for Doc is unique as well. As with many of her stories, she writes in a variant of third-person-unlimited narrative voice, in that she does not depict events strictly from Holliday’s point of view, but sometimes from a generalized collective voice of the people of the time. Take this passage describing winter in Kansas:

“The first sign of what you were in for? Just a shift in the wind. Right before Christmas, usually. Huge clouds the color of spent charcoal would pile up on the far horizon. Suddenly the temperature would drop like a rock, and the first blizzard of the season would roar across the plains and hit you like a damn train. Men would get caught outdoors—fixing a fence, maybe—no coat, just wearing what seemed sensible that morning when the sun was shining and it looked to be another pretty day. Happened so fast, you didn’t hardly know what to think.

That’s how it was the year John Riney took over a farm from a Dutch fella, out north of Dodge.”

I also like Russell’s proficient way of characterization through dialogue. As with the narration above, so too with her dialogue: she gets across the intent and flow of a character’s voice without resorting to bad attempts at “dialect.” What she will do occasionally is give the reader a flavor for how someone speaks. She also has a natural ear for the spoken word, even when she writes soliloquies, like this one that she puts into the mouth of Wyatt Earp:

“There can’t be one law for rich Texans and another law for broke Texans, and another law for Negroes, and another one for Chinamen, and squaws, and Irishmen, and whores, and another one for everybody else. I can’t parse it that way, Dog! I am not that smart! There’s got to be one law for everybody, or I can’t do this job.”

I made the mistake several years ago (during my brief correspondence with Ms. Russell) of questioning her affection for one of her characters--specifically, T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia," whom I saw, and still see, as an instigator of many of the West's problems in the Middle East. Not one of my more diplomatic moments, perhaps, but that takes away nothing from her mercury-quick writing or her believable and even likeable portrayal of the man. Live and learn.

I think what Russell did for me with this book was make these legendary figures of the American West more human, more real. And not just more real, but likeable, each with their own capacity for attaining some sort of peace, or grace, this side of the grave. You can get a sense of the author’s religious convictions (whatever they might be) in these moments, and Russell’s work abounds with them.

Read her work. Any of her work. You won’t be disappointed.

Movie Review: Star Trek

I could have also subtitled this

The Franchise Reloaded

or

Portrait of a Starship Captain as a Young Man

or simply

Wow!

The new Star Trek is a really great movie. If you like action-adventure science fiction movies with a touch of humor and maybe a little romance thrown in, you can safely like this film without ever having been a "Trekker" or "Trekkie." This movie will make Star Trek fandom socially acceptable.

I am, unsurprisingly, a full-blown Trekker--not someone so far gone as to wear Vulcan ears to the premiere, but someone who has watched enough of the series to catch three "continuity" errors in the very first trailer--that is, technical details that didn't match the official Star Trek history (or, as some might call it, the catechism). There are all sorts of things for the nitpicking fan to go after, if they so chose. The starship Enterprise is both more and less "modern" than the 1960s TV show ship. The characters, costumes, and situations both are and are not of Gene Roddenberry's "world." And yes, there are some serious time-travel issues here that will drive purists nuts.

None of it bothered me. I just loved this movie.

Here's why I liked it, as a fan and a writer: I finally understood the character of James T. Kirk, the take-charge, womanizing, @$$-whupping ball of testosterone who commanded his crew of well-mannered, multicultural misfits. It took a good actor to bring it all together for me, the new-to-me actor Chris Pine. What Pine does is make you understand how Kirk became the "living legend." He's brash, he's fearless, he's not above taking a cheap shot at some guy or making a pass at some girl. He goes after what he wants, and you believe him.

Don't misunderstand me, I've enjoyed William Shatner's Kirk, but the mensch never quite seemed real to me because Shatner tried to do it all at once--the tough guy stuff I've already mentioned--but also be the officer and gentleman with a hint of easy charm about him. Pine isn't like that. He's brash top to bottom, with the uniform barely containing the wild spirit that drives him to be a leader of men. He reminds me of some of my military buddies. They're all kind of wild, and the service never quite tamed them. And what makes Pine's Jim Kirk so cool is that you can almost understand why he got to be captain: it's got to be hell to be the smartest, toughest, most impressive guy in the room, and know it. It's that undeniable sense of confident ego that makes you see what propels him. The little continuity changes they make to Kirk's "official history" bothered me not at all.

Next we might turn to Zachary Quinto, a near dead-ringer for the young Leonard Nimoy, in face and stance, if not voice. Quinto has a bit of edge to him as well. The human half of this Vulcan-human hybrid is not nearly so well contained as it was in the old show. But, again, I believed him. As with Kirk's reimagined past, the movie gives a brief glimpse into Spock's childhood and youth, and how he turned his back on logic and the Vulcan way to become a Starfleet officer. Winona Ryder takes a turn as a middle-aged Amanda Grayson and is somehow prettier than she's been in some of her more glamorous, youthful roles.

And lastly I'll touch on Karl Urban as Leonard "Bones" McCoy," who doesn't get nearly enough screen time, in my humble estimation. DeForest Kelley, the charming, middle-aged country doctor, had moments of irascibility, but that couldn't quite cover the obvious decency beneath. The curmudgeonly comments seemed more like a pose. Urban's McCoy is more of a pessimist. He's got Kelley's soft drawl nailed, and throws in a little extra helping of complaining snarkiness to animate his McCoy in a way Kelley never did. You can feel the edge and the hurt in the man's voice, and you can understand what drives him.

Perhaps it's that edge again, which the old series often lacked. Roddenberry was trying to show humanity as better in the future, more capable, and still likeable and believable. It's a restrained, rather square kind of believable, though, which can prevent some viewers from understanding why these otherwise mild-mannered people would dare go out into space with each other. Urban's McCoy, along with the reimagined Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, and even Captain Christopher Pike, all have a certain restlessness about them, a little impatience and desire for action that makes you believe that they're adventurers. As Kirk said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young, Doctor." This is an awful lot of character analysis for a two-hour-plus film, but the acting really got to me, probably because I was ready to accept a re-interpreted Star Trek. These are not stiff-upper-lip, officers-and-gentlemen sorts of characters, but more like (original) Star Wars heroes: balls and bravado, high-energy players.

What about the story? Well, it's actually pretty standard Star Trek fare: a little time travel, a villain hell-bent on destruction, a lot of danger, and more than a few nods to previous incarnations of the series. The movie does a lot, including give most of the major characters their own small moments to shine, and still manages to tell a science fiction story with a minimum of "technobabble," a recurring sin of the later Star Trek franchises. The point of this review isn't to slice and dice the story, though it moves forward well enough, making sure not to leave too many unsolved mysteries or dangling plotlines. Given my commentary to this point, it should be no great surprise that I highly recommend this movie. There are many reasons to like it, even--no, especially--if you're a fan of the original series.