I’m not sure how many people that have reached this blog are actually writers. Though I devote a lot of posts towards the inner workings of the profession as I see them, from tropes to alternative mythologies, I can’t be sure who’s reading it. There is no survey that has you tell me your profession and I’m not entirely sure who does follow the links more often than not. Still, in my heart, I like to think that there’s at least a few of you out there who are writers and appreciate where I’m coming from. And I want you to know I appreciate you too.
Group hug time
Almost every writer I’ve ever talked to has had a similar problem in their life: feeling accomplished. Even Isaac Asimov, famous as he was, still feared the idea that he could be rejected with his next manuscript. JK Rowling started writing new books under a pseudonym so she could see if she could sell her writing and not just her name. Even the most successful of us feels they stand in a precarious position overlooking a pack of hungry wolves.
Years ago, when the eBook market was just beginning to form, there was a problem that everyone faced: what the hell do you charge for digital content? To this day, we still don’t have an absolutely settled price-point and it’s hard for all of us to come to a decision just what our work is worth (especially for independents).
But then along came this strange stigma that made some sense in a way but in truth was a fabrication. According to conventional wisdom; if it’s priced low, it’s a shitty book that wasn’t ready for prime-time. This perception is guided primarily based on the fact that the higher-end authors came onto the market with books that were near or completely full-priced compared to their print companions. In essence, the stigma of the vanity press started to bleed into the image of independently published eBooks.
And it makes sense, doesn’t it? Obviously, those big names were offering their books at full price and managing to do really well despite competing against each other. The traditional publishers were right: quality material didn’t have to drop below a certain price to get a market shar-
The fantasy genre is a domain of great imagination and potential, drawing not only from personal creations but ancient religions and mythology, but at times it starts to feel a little well-trodden. Maybe it was the bombardment of at least 12 hours of Tolkien film (great as those hours were). Maybe it was the cheap knockoffs of those movies that got churned out in their wake.
I dare you to try to remember the name to this movie.
Or maybe it’s because almost all of the stories draw from the same basic lore.
As I started with in the last entry, I’m going to continue touring other regions of the world that aren’t part of the lands involved in the Crusades and give a small taste of what makes those places interesting source material too. With our last entry I pointed out a few interesting but often overlooked ideas from the far east with lore from China and Japan. But today, I move a little south of there and look into the regions more influenced by Hinduism. It’s time to take a look at…
Haha, the news media is talking about there being a new novel from the “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” brood. Stupid media, they did that years ago, polishing up their lives with “interesting” bits and releasing it as a novel called Dollhouse. Yet you guys are acting like it just happened. We all know the Kardashians haven’t gone back to reading and writing since disagreeing with the dietary advice they got from “Green Eggs And Ham“. Man you guys are slo-
Oh crap, there’s more of them?
Who the hell is that? Jenner? What the hell is a Jenner?! And what do you mean they have a publishing deal for a book that releases next year? They look like they’re still in high-school!
Apparently, if you’re in that bloodline it doesn’t matter if your manuscript is written in crayon. Though it wouldn’t be the first time a member of the family managed to make a lot of money with only a 9thgrade reading level.
One of the things that sometimes makes the fantasy genre a bit stagnant is the lack of new source material. There’s a lot of work required to just write a novel, movie or television series, let alone build your own mythology from scratch. So when you look at anything within the genre you’ll typically find they have all of the same earmarks and it can seem impossible to come out with something different.
The problem with that thinking is that we definitely haven’t tapped into all of the world’s mythologies. There’s still a lot of room for the genre to grow. In an effort to broaden my horizons, I often look to the world at large and see what exactly we’ve missed. Seeing all the great lore out there, I decided to share a small glimpse of the other interesting folklore, legends, and mythologies in the world. But first, let’s take a look at the problem…
The future of humanity is going to see a lot of changes as to what it means to be human. We’re going to create new versions of ourselves that we didn’t previously believe to be possible. But more than that, we’re going to create new things that look like us which may eventually even begin to think like us.
And we know this, we can’t escape it. Every time we successfully produce a robot that can walk on two legs or even fake an awkward smile, we’re stepping closer to that day when we may have to redefine humanity. And so, it makes sense that we have a lot of stories in science fiction that explore these things. We need to write them to explore the possibilities and address the issues we have with the ideas of a new, unfamiliar world that may be come.
One of the best examples of these sorts of stories is the film Robocop. Alex Murphy, killed in the line of duty, is brought back from the dead in a Cyborg shell, stripped of his memories and his sense of identity. The people who created his new body, OCP, don’t want him to have that humanity intact because it would get in the way of making him a cold, calculated law enforcement machine. But in the end, isn’t that free will and sense of compassion part of what makes a good police officer? It’s a fascinating question to explore and seeing Robocop’s new life unfold is both inspiring at points and incredibly tragic at others.
Seen here: gathering the pieces of one’s soul
But when looking at the remake, it becomes clear that the new take on Alex Murphy’s life is going to go in a very different direction. The new Alex is aware of who he is and how he has been changed. The new Alex remembers his family and he remembers what they mean to him. There are decisions clearly made in the production of this new film to try to make Robocop more human than he was before. But does it really help make him more human? Wasn’t the tragedy of the original Alex Murphy already human enough?
As I mentioned last time, L Ron Hubbard was a science fiction author in what a lot of people refer to as the “Golden Age of Sci-Fi”. The thing that I made a note of then, which made his accomplishments in cult-building hard to fathom, was the fact that he is also one of the least remembered writers of the era. I don’t mean people have forgotten him when I say that, I mean they’ve forgotten his work. Why? The man never wrote a true sci-fi classic in a time when people were creating sci-fi classics left and right.
During the “Golden Age”, writers like Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke were writing books such as I, Robot, Starship Troopers and 2001: A SpaceOdyssey. There were dozens of other award winning authors throughout those years. But among them, the one I found the least real recognition for was L Ron Hubbard (besides the countless awards he’s been given for unrelated things, likely by his followers). He won a single Saturn Award throughout his career that I can find any record of. And considering the man wrote for five decades, that’s saying something.
So I scoured the internet, my memory of the guy and what culture I could find on him and realized that a Scientologist happened to point me to just the story I needed to decipher why L Ron Hubbard had to make a cult to make a living.
As I said yesterday, violence in our media is necessary in our culture for an open discussion. We should try to avoid censorship whenever possible because that only tends to make it worse. But then we have the fact that not everyone does violence well. In fact, one of the hardest things to do is to create an action scene in writing without losing the reader or making it seem silly. So for today’s “Tuesday Tips” (yeah, I’m dedicated to this bit) I’m going to be talking about things to keep in mind when writing action scenes. Continue reading Punch it! Writing Tips for Action Scenes→
So as I just posted, I believe that the Bechdel test misses some strong feminine characters while letting some very negative women portrayals through. But as I finished posting that, my significant other pointed out to me something damning.
Why are the strong female characters almost universally mothers?
It was something I hadn’t been considering as I was looking at the characters I felt were unjustly excluded from the Bechdel test. So often, the female characters who end up showing feminist qualities require that status of being a mother to achieve that goal. Even Ryan Stone, trapped in space, is early on depicted as a mother (a fact I’d forgotten until it was pointed out to me in our conversation).
As I stated yesterday, I proudly support equality among all people regardless of their race, creed or gender. But along the way I have had trouble calling myself a “feminist” because there were certain parts of the community that I felt had been too extreme. One of those things is the frequent misuse of something infamously known as the “Bechdel Test”. Continue reading Equality in Writing: Why the Bechdel test isn’t enough→
