Heroic Apology and Virol vs Doctor part 2

Well this post is at some point going to contain an embedding of the video I have on my phone but can't figure out how to post from mobile. So while I'm waiting on that I figure I'll do that other thing I said I would do.
First, a text version of the apology:
It came out late and wasn't even done
My next apology should use a pun

Edit: here's the video

Now. When I left off Virol and the Doctor were both established as being very old and very clever. Smart fogeys. They also both happen to appear young. Or at least not nearly as old as they really are.
This could look bad, but there are several reasons no one is going to make a stink about it.
The first reason is that it is highly unlikely than Virol will ever be a character known to more than one hundred people and so there will be no exposure. The second, tiny reason is that I came up with him long before I had ever encountered Doctor Who.
That second ties into the third reason, which is the one I'm aiming this week's blog for. Most people are aware that two people can think of one creative idea separately and without influencing each other. It's a fairly common occurrence as coincidences go. This is because of archetypes, symbols embedded in our cultural makeup. The Doctor is himself made up of a few archetypes sort of spliced together.
One of these is the wise elder. There's a reason that one exists. Old people have seen more than you have, and it's good stuff to know about (not always pleasant mind you). There are some characters that take this archetype straighter than Virol or the Doctor. Gandalf and Merlin are prime examples. These elders are both wise and powerful, and just a little eccentric.
What the Doctor adds to this is the old-as-dirt pipe dream of eternal youth. Of course in his early incarnations he appeared as an old man, but in this day and age he's young and active. There's also a bit of rebirth thematics to it since he gets a new face every time he regenerates from death/near-death. These are key features of his character but don't get quite as much play as the central tenets (almost wrote Tennants there) I introduced him with.
Virol also plays into the ideas of the wise elder and eternal. Like the Doctor, he also has a jocular facade covering a much darker center. However, Virol never changes his face, and he has to live in cycles of youth and decrepit old age, prolonged over centuries.
It might also be good to note that Virol, like the Doctor, is close to the last of his kind. The difference there is he knows there are more out there somewhere, where the Doctor believes there are none. It is also pretty explicitly not much of a hang-up for Virol. He has lived most of his millennium-long life in this state. The Doctor, in the New series, recently cam into his bereavement. He hides it well considering, but you know.
One of the larger differences between the characters is that the Doctor is from science fiction, and Virol is entrenched deeply in fantasy. He's closer to a snarky well-dressed Merlin than to the Doctor.
The other important difference is that Virol is no time traveler. His power doesn't come from a space ship. It's just him for the most part. And the stuff he knows.
At this point it's pretty easy to see how different the characters are, but without the full context it looks a little sketch. But maybe it shouldn't. The Eternally Young but Ancient Wiseguy serves a certain purpose. The idea fascinates people. Of course the Doctor is the more well known and better executed, but I made Virol because I thought it would be interesting to see him interact with the rest of the world my cousin and I created.
I think that's enough for now. Talk to you on Monday with something else.

Virol and the Doctor part 1

So for my first(ish) post back  I wanted to talk about character archetypes. I had an idea in mind and it was just waiting for me to write it. Then I spent the weekend visiting family because my niece was born and Monday I squandered in typical first world internetian behavior. So. There's gonna be a poetry video. Also, I might post a more truncated post before Monday officially ends if I can.

So about character archetypes, I am going to be talking about two circumstantially similar characters. This may be an exercise I have performed before but it's happening nevertheless.

The more recognizable character is of course the Doctor of Doctor Who.   The other is a man called Virol, my own creation whose public existence only perpetuates in my self-published novella Ashes of Silver.

For those people who aren't familiar with the Doctor (and they do exist) there are two basic aspects of his character you need to know about him. One, that he is very clever. Two, that he is very old. It gets more complicated than that obviously, but that is a boiling down of things that make the Doctor the Doctor, more so than his face for sure.

Just so happens these are the two same important things to know about Virol. That he is both brilliant and ancient.

Now that I've established that I have to go. Next half goes up tomorrow or else very soon.

Pax.

Religion and World-building

When you're creating characters of a different religious philosophy than your own, my best advice is to avoid stereotypes like the Contagion.  And yes, you'll have to read Ashes of Silver to understand that reference.

Here are some examples to illustrate what I'm talking about.  The Believer Who Never Asks Questions.  The "Believer" Who Grasps for Power.  The Ultra-skeptical Non-believer.  The Non-believer Hero Because Heroes Aren't Stupid Enough to Believe.

You may notice that there are people in this life who absolutely fit into the schema presented by those stereotypes.  I don't care.  Reality holds more straw men than fiction is permitted.  I'm also not saying that you can't have a believer with a strong faith or a non-believer who feels strongly about his unbelief.  It's just that you need to be very careful when deciding what a character believes or you can end up with a flat, uninteresting character really fast.

Here's something I've observed.  You can call Boopy Shenanigans if you want, but here it is:  readers get bored really fast with characters who one-note on the opposite line of what they believe.  For atheists/agnostics, that means characters who grapple with real faith issues can get dull because they perceive these struggles as a meaningless facade, and vice versa for people who are (relatively) sure of what they believe.  It's even possible for people in the middle (not willing to discount the supernatural, but not willing to jump off the fence) to lose interest in anything not thoroughly steeped in gray.

Like I said, I could be wrong about this observation.  It also makes writing really difficult, because I would like for my audience to be a bit more general than "Christians interested in reading Christian fantasy fiction."  Because that means the only people who read my books will be the ones who specifically go looking for them, because the books sure as Tartarus won't be found in a secular book store like Barnes and Noble.  At least not in the same section as all the other fantasy.

Another reason I don't want to go down that road is because not everything I write is going to have overtly Christian subject matter.  For example, Ashes of Silver's universe doesn't necessarily have a God (at least not one that the people of Hearthstead are aware of) so the subject of service to Him is kind of a non-issue.  That could be an issue if I let it be, but the world of Hearthstead wasn't exactly set up to tackle those sorts of questions.  My cousin and I have always been a little too light-hearted about Hearthstead to delve into a theological mire in a world created originally as a stick-figure comic.

I want as many people as possible to read my work.  Honestly, the money that would come from that is secondary or tertiary for me.  What I want is the discussions.  The "that was awesome!" and "this made me sad."  I want to see people invested in the stories I tell.  So that may be why I hesitate to launch into heavily theological themes in my writing.  I want to be able to handle it in a way that keeps even staunch atheists invested in the story.

You may have noticed by now that I want to be able to have my cake and eat it too, then maybe have some pie afterwards.  I certainly don't make things easy on myself.

So you can ignore my advice about the religiosity of your characters if you want.  I think I originally intended it for a different purpose.  Namely, that if you are an atheist you shouldn't make believer-characters in such a way as to make them easy targets for an agenda, and the same goes for believers and characters who don't believe the same.  In my own writing life that means I tend to leave atheist characters less explored than I might, because I want to avoid characterizing them in a way that's inaccurate and two-dimensional.

When you're creating a world, it's also important to keep matters of theology in mind, even if that's to explicitly exclude an all-powerful deity from having created the universe.  It's fiction, and you can do that.  Especially if it's fantasy, because then you can explore what a world would really be like without God or followers of Him.  You can also leave the question as open-ended as it is in reality, with great debates going about it.  You can skip out on the wars.  That would be nice, but unlikely if your people are anything remotely like humans.  Then there will be war, whether it's over God or cheese.  Sorry, but that's the cold hard truth.

The more time you invest into the metaphysical makeup of your fictional world, the better-sorted those issues are likely to be.  That's a prediction, not a fact, by the way.  But it stands to reason that since preparation rules in the rest of world-building, it should here too.

Well, that's all I've got this morning.  I've been typing without contacts in long enough, and there's only so much of that to be stomached before I start punching faces that aren't my own.

Ciao.

Modesty

One of my professors senior year pointed out a funny (odd more than humorous) truth to the class.  When you buy branded clothing (like American Eagle, Hollister, Abercrombie, etc.) you're paying to advertise for the company.  Now in theory this isn't so terrible a notion.  For example, I would love to pay to spread word of mouth for Tobuscus, or Minecraft, or Legend of Korra.

But here's the deal:  clothing companies follow fashion trends.  They make short shorts and low-cut shirts because they're popular.  And even if you happen to find something modest to wear (or if you're a guy) from the same clothing monopoly that caters to popular fashion, you're supporting that decision and advertising for others to also support that decision.  If you don't buy the clothes but you wear them, it's still your fault.

Now, not everyone agrees that women ought to dress in a way that doesn't draw attention to the part of their bodies we actually communicate with.  But if you're a reasonable person you'll agree that women of any age should have the option to buy and wear modest clothing without shopping at a thrift store or making their own clothes.  I continue to hear more and more reports that this simply isn't possible—in fact, I've heard that it's even difficult to find something reasonable for my nine year old sister to wear.

There ya go, that's a bit of a ranty thing.  I could try to tie it in with writing.  In fact, I think I can, in a way.

You don't need to describe your dearly loved characters in exact detail.  I used to be bad about this.  I'd give every single detail of the person's height, hair color, eye color, and skin tone in the first paragraph they appeared in.  Now, I tend to be bad about it the other way.  The reader starts trying to guess at those details, and trying to compare the characters to each other.  A middle ground is a good idea.

But if appearances have very little to do with the story you're telling, don't belabor them.  Yes, unique appearances can make for some very memorable characters, and there is a reason that Hearthstead's stories are going to be told in more than just prose.

And sometimes, it's better to say that a woman is beautiful than to describe her feminine features in detail.  Frankly, dwelling on that too long has no value to any story I'm interested in.  So there's the tie-in to my modesty/anti-giant-corporations rant.

And that, folks, is a blog post.

Outs.

Character and World-building

I said yesterday that there's a beta event for Guild Wars 2 this weekend.  I am immensely excited for this, and hope to spend a large amount of time playing.  Maybe that old computer can even get set up for GW2 so I can play with my wife!

Running is my go-to idea for exercise, but I'm really bad about doing it.  I should probably do it soon, but the internet!  And the things!

And pizza!

Friday and Saturday I talked at length about diction and word choice and how they relate to writing (with a focus on Fantasy because, well, I'm me).  I wanted to talk today about characterization and its utmost importance.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to tell a compelling story it requires at least one person at the center of things, experiencing and interpreting the world, and influencing it with agency.  If there  isn't a person involved, it's not a story in my estimation.  That isn't to say it isn't art.  There's quite a few poems where there's hardly an author's voice, let alone a narrator (though this is most often a finely crafted illusion because, you know, there's an author or at least an editor where there's words involved), and that doesn't detract from the artistry of the poem.  Similarly, visual arts don't need human subjects to be artful or beautiful.  They just aren't stories in my eyes.

Now you might mention wilderness documentary stories, like that Chimpanzee movie.  But here's the thing:  in those works, the creatures depicted are anthropomorphized.  They're not people, and I believe they shouldn't be treated like people.  That's why movies like that bother me.  When things get more metaphorical it bothers me less, but animal movies annoy me because the stories pretend that these creatures are people.

I am making sure to use the word "person" because that is a more significant catch-all than human being.  In my worldview, the only "people" are human beings (aside from God and maybe angels).  However, there is a rich tradition of giving a non-human the aspects of personhood (self-cognizance and the like) throughout human history.  It's a good exercise for the imagination.  So I should clarify that the stories that bother me the most are the ones that are direct documentaries, especially of primates, that try to sell them as people when they're not.

So anyway, people are at the center of storytelling, because people are the origin of stories we tell.  I also believe that God is a storyteller, and that he has imparted stories to us, and that our penchant for storytelling is part of His image in us, but that does not detract from the centrality of people in our storytelling.

I've said all this to contextualize why doing your characters right is as important to the world you build with your story as diction and word choice.  It's also not one of the things you think about when you think "world-building."  That phrase conjures to mind the imagining of geography and infrastructure and special laws outside the ones that govern our universe.

But all that mind-blowing stuff has no meaning and no purpose when not considered through the lens of character.  It's hard for me to say this.  I love world-building for the sake of it.  Coming up with places and types of magic and different political systems is really fun.  But I realize that if you don't have a character who reacts to the circumstances you've invented for him (or her, or it) you don't have a story.  You just have a world.  And it's harder to sell or spread the word about a world you built aside from within a story.  You need a medium to convey the world you've carved in your mind.  That's where the art comes in, and fantasy writing relates to world-building as a medium for that creation you've done.

In the series I worked on for most of my adolescence, called Talas Ke, there are two characters who come from (a slightly alternate version of) Earth, but spend the vast majority of the series on Talas Ke, the world I built.  They bring all their prejudices, experiences, memories, mannerisms, and so on from Earth with them, and view the differences of Talas Ke in light of that paradigm.  It's a fairly common formula, and because I started writing it when I was about twelve I wrote to discover, building the world as I went.  Looking back, I see the world-building and storytelling I did when I first wrote that story as sloppy and sometimes ill-conceived, but I've been told by many of those who've read it that it works.  Why?

Because they cared about the characters.  I plunged my characters into the world that I had made, as shoddily as I might have made it, and made them live it.  Because they lived it, and they reacted as fully as I could make them react, and as fleshed out as I could make them, I had invested readers.

Now, as I reflect to friends and family on my disappointments with that story, and express my need to revise it to a tremendous extent, I likely have some disappointed, invested readers.  It's because of them that I haven't given up on Talas Ke and intend to return to the world soon, to finish what I started almost ten years ago.  It's also because, in my slightly-insane writerly way, I owe it to those characters to finish their story.

Most of my short stories fail because I can't give the characters the roundness they need.  Epic, mainstream, AAA endeavors in writing or in film fall short because the characters aren't written true to themselves and to the world.  And do you know why the Avengers was such an awesome movie?  Why it's a record-breaker?  It's because Whedon wrote the characters well, and gave them their fullness to live in the world that was made.  If the characters weren't well written, they couldn't have been well-acted, and then no amount of fancy special effects shots could have saved the movie.

If you agonize over anything when you're writing, let it be the characters.  If you believe the characters, you'll believe the story, even if the world-building sucks or is just plain mind-raping.  Homestuck, as another example, has characters I am invested in for better or for worse, and it's that investment that has me reading through all the appearifying antics and yellow yards.  Characters are why I'm still reading the Wheel of Time series, and why after the first season of Game of Thrones I wiki-walked through what remains of the story, and might even read the remaining books as they are released.  They're also why A Song of Ice and Fire hurts me deeply to consume as a story, because it punishes you for caring about characters.

And if it sounds too painful to agonize over your characters, know that it gets better over time.  Maybe it's because you get more heartless, or maybe it's coming to terms, but unless you're a children's author you're very likely going to kill off a character you love at some point when you're writing.

I'd give some pithy saying, like "invest in your characters, and..." but I can't come up with the second half.  So just that.  If you're telling a story, invest in your characters, then build your world for them.