What the Heck is Going On?

Seems I'm doing a lot of posts directly in Blogger, which is weird for me: I usually prefer to write them in Word, then paste. I don't know why. Probably for the same reason I don't converse much: what the heck do I say, and what if I say something really stupid? You can't take it back. Well what if I write something stupid?

And all the critics say: "Too late."

Nasty weekend/first two days of the week. Ick. Homework, housework, work work -- and no write work? That's just wrong. I've neglected most of my friends, my fiancee a little, my work-outs, and God. Funny that in chapel today the speaker talked (spoke?) about extravagant devotion to God. Gee, just when I wasn't doing that.

Thursday on a Saturday

I promised you guys a short story on Thursday, and through no fault of yours, you didn't get it. Mostly because I was spending most of Thursday writing the story. So I decided to break with tradition a little bit here, and post it now. This myth, running mostly in the Endolin Mountains, took a little longer to present, so you're only going to get a snippet of it. In the short story, a boy named Doliger has been sent to a cabin deep in the mountains to learn falconry from a man named Garutan.

Whose Story, Again?

I've had two questions pop up that, put together, give some interesting thoughts to ponder. They're theological questions, ones which I assume will have no answer this side of Heaven; and I'm not advocating a religious stance upon these questions. But they're questions that, I think, are fun to think about.

The first one came up in Bible class last semester as we were talking about consummation and the new heaven and new earth. I wondered, suddenly and for the first time, if God can renew the heavens and earth, and if in these new heavens and the new earth, sin will be no more, why couldn't he make it that way to begin with? Why originally create a world that sin can enter?

Literature

So let me jump right out the gate here: Why don't we burn books? If there's a book in the library I disagree with, that just rubs me the wrong way, that I really feel is bad -- why can't I burn it? We might answer: Because that's what the Nazi's did. Generally, if the Nazi's did it, we probably shouldn't. There are exceptions: They had an extremely disciplined military force, which is generally a good thing.

So why can't we burn books?

Emotion du jour: Excitement

Excitement. “I’m excited: are you excited?” “I could go for a beer.” As with just about any emotion, it’s always easiest to just say, or make the character say, what they’re feeling. But also as with any emotion, there are generally physical and verbal cues that go along with the emotion. These are what will lend “showing” to your story instead of “telling.” That’s the very definition of that oft-used literary admonition. With setting, show the character interacting with the pieces of the set; with emotion, show the character living the emotion. An easy place to start is, of course, with yourself: how do you act when you’re excited? Do you forget things, everything else except what you’re excited for? Say random bits of nonsense that pop into your mind? Laugh uncontrollably and without normal reason? Split your cheeks with grinning? And again, find ways to show this, not just tell it.

Work

The short story I’ll be working on this week is skating two different edges. It first begins to resemble the myth of Prometheus, being tied to a mountain. Then it switches to the story of Elijah, when the protagonist is kept alive by birds. At least, as much of a synopsis as I have right now: today is brainstorming day, so all sorts of plot details are yet to be worked out.

Research, What?

I played around (swiftly, and in my mind) with putting the comma in that title. It really could go both ways. See, I started writing fantasy because I didn't want to do the research necessary to write military fiction like Tom Clancy. I didn't want to do research at all -- and in fantasy, the question may be: "Research what?"

And, for a long time, that worked. I had an itinerant love for the medieval period, so I had a basic working knowledge of castles and swords and knights and the like; and dragons and other beasties are easy to write in. If I had to write combat, I did what I could and made the rest difficult to follow.