Happy Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving, everyone!  I've seen God working a lot in my life and in my family this past year, and for that I am thankful.  

I'm posting a picture I did while resting up after the holiday.  I hope you all like it.

Handing out Fish

Okay, so once again I've let too much time pass between posts.  Not only because I've been busy (and now I'm catching a cold and feel like my head is stuffed with moth balls) but also because I haven't felt like I have anything to say.  I'm doing too much thinking of the sort that doesn't reach a conclusion.  But since I need something to post about....

I've been thinking about problems and root problems.  It's best summed up in that old proverb `give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.'  It seems to me that right now so many people I know are struggling, and the only thing I can do is hand them a fish.  That is, I try to help, but all I do is scratch the surface.  It's frustrating because I know tomorrow they'll just need another fish.  

Then there are the even deeper root problems; people who are angry at other people and take it out on a third party (those sorts of stresses always seems to crop up near the holidays.) or people who make bad decisions but you can't stop them because they're adults and you have no control over their lives.  The best you can do is pray for them, and feel like smacking them up the back of the head to knock some sense into them (only it probably wouldn't work).  

I all you can do is give what help you can, pray a lot, and trust that God can take the little bit of fish you offer and multiply it into something of actual use.     

Blogging

It's an interesting thing, writing a blog.  It feels like I'm writing a letter to a friend, except there's the chance that some of the readers are people I've never met.  (A slim chance.  This isn't exactly a widely publicized blog.)  At the same time, they're letters to my future self, reminding me what I happened to be thinking that day.  
For example, I wrote a post on playing with that old `It's a Wonderful Life' scenario of what if this or that character was never born?  Only to realize, looking back, that I probably just thought it was a nifty idea because I was outlining a story about parallel universes at the time.  

Then there are the book and movie musings that only cover one aspect of the story.  I wrote a post about the love story in Megamind.  If I'd written about the character arc instead, I would have pulled on completely different points -maybe even contradicted some of my thoughts from when I was dealing with the love story.  (Like whether or not Megamind was evil in the opening.  I still say he was never as evil as he thought he was, but he was definitely selfish and needed a good kick to make him shape up and stop feeling sorry for himself.  But hey, that's what character arcs are for.)  The best thing about book and movie discussions is that stories are open to so many interpretations.    

I haven't exactly been a consistent blogger.  Life keeps tossing me distractions.  But I do enjoy these letters.  I hope you all do too.

Untrustworthy characters

I've been thinking about untrustworthy characters.  You know the ones: Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow, Dustfinger from Inkheart.  The guys the hero shouldn't trust, but somehow do anyway.

It occurred to me that one thing these guys all have in common is that they're highly motivated.  Take Han Solo in the first Star Wars movie (Or Episode IV if you count the prequel trilogy).  If he doesn't get lots of money quick, every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be after him.  Sure, he took care of Greedo no problem, but eventually superior numbers will get him.  To save his skin, he needs cash.  Rescuing princesses pro bono publica goes against his story goal.  (So does returning to save the Rebels from the death star instead of rushing back to Tatooine to pay off Jubba.  In fact, Han blows his story goal so badly that Empire Strikes Back ends with him in the clutches of a ruthless bounty hunter.)

Captain Jack Sparrow in Curse of the Black Pearl is equally motivated.  He wants his ship back, and he'll do whatever it takes to get it.  Sure he doesn't want to see Will and Elizabeth hurt -he's not heartless- but that doesn't keep him from using them as bait.

As for Dustfinger, he's pretty driven.  Not only does he betray our heroes early on, but when he learns that if he reaches his goal he'll die, the discovery doesn't actually change his mind, it just makes him a bit depressed.

I think what makes these guys come across as unpredictable is that they don't have the same goal as the rest of the heroes.  We know they're highly motivated, what we don't know is how far they'll go to get what they want.  Will they betray the hero to get what they're after?  Maybe they like the hero.  Maybe they make an effort to save him -but still betray his cause, then wonder what he's so grumpy about.  Or maybe they decide their personal goal isn't so important after all and put all their energy into making sure the heroes win.

If they decide to throw over their own goal out of loyalty to the heroes, it shouldn't be an easy choice.  After all, they've wanted whatever they want since before they met the heroes.  Letting it go now should be hard -hard enough that your audience doesn't know until the last moment which direction they'll go.  Maybe (as in Star Wars) that choice ripples through the rest of the story, causing future problems for the unpredictable character and the heroes.  Your heroes might have to decide if they're loyal back -or if their cause is more important.  If they decide it is, does their friend resent being hung out to dry?  And how does that affect his loyalty?  Or the other character's perception of his loyalty?  Will they still trust him if they know they turned traitor on him?  Should they?  

There are lots of possibilities as soon as you have a character with a different goal from your hero.  The guy doesn't even have to look shifty.  There may be lots of other things that make those wonderful, lovable rogue characters, but different goals is one that's definitely worth playing with.    

Camping

My family went camping in Pennsylvania over the beginning of the week.  We had a wonderful -and memorable- time.  Our campsite was right beside a stream.  There were enough boulders for the water to froth and flow around to make all sorts of interesting rills.  It would have been the perfect place for white-water rafting if you were a mouse!  One of the boulders was (to my best estimate, which admittedly isn't very good) about four feet above the water and I could just picture mouse adventurers standing up on the `cliff' and gazing down at the foam, bracing themselves for the trip down stream.

Our fire ring was iron but didn't have a grill, so my brother Justin fished some wide, flat rocks from the stream and a few smaller rocks for the flat rocks to set on, poured the coals around them, and cooked our burgers on top.  They were quite tasty, and of course the grease dripped off the rocks and made the fire burn hotter -which was fortunate.  We'd forgotten how much of a temperature difference there is, traveling a few hours north!  It got quite cold, especially the first night.  I usually like a bit of nip in the air, but there is a huge difference between the kind of cold you go out in before returning to a nice warm house and the oppressive sort of cold that remains heavy in the air when you sleep in a tent.

We visited the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, which nobody around here has heard of.  Mom knows about it because she and dad stumbled across it on their wedding trip.  It's a beautiful, tree covered gorge.  It actually probably would have been more impressive in a few weeks when more of the leaves changed color, but we didn't mind billows of green.  We walked the Turkey Trail, which travels down the gorge in a series of switchbacks.  There were about two places where streams were flowing down the mountain (or maybe we passed the same stream twice) and divided into a dozen or so tiny trickles falling down among the rocks.  It made me feel like I was in a (rather chilly) rain forest.  Farther down we reached the actual waterfall. 

We had taken the scenic rout to the gorge (meaning we got lost) and so arrived right around lunch.  We ate before we actually started down the trail, which was nice since it meant we didn't have to carry our food for the entire hike.

The whole vacation was exactly what our family needed: a chance to just get away and enjoy God's creation for a few days.   

Bioluminescence

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to spend a little time on the Patuxent River, one of the tributaries leading into the Maryland bay.  The awesome thing about being there this time of year is that the water is full of tiny  bioluminescent creatures that light up if they bump against anything.  

After dusk I went out, swished the water, and watched the sparks flare wherever my hands passed.  The creatures are so tiny you don't really feel them except every once in awhile, when a slightly bigger one bumps against you.  Those feel like blobs.  Watching them in the water is like watching stars swirling under you -or like watching fireflies, when it feels as if the stars decided to come down and play closer to earth, to dance in the woods and the flowerbeds and get caught just for an instant, glowing between your cupped hands. 

It can be like touching a miracle.  

The thing about these creatures is that you can't see them until after dusk.  It's the darkness that reveals the things that carry their own light.

Research and that sort of thing

Wow, my last real post was at the beginning of August, and now it's September.  I knew I was letting things slide, but this is ridiculous! 

I recently read Writing the Novel from Plot to Print by Lawrence Block.  One of the things he said made a lot of sense to me is that if you realize your subject is too far away from your experience to write convincingly there's nothing wrong with figuring out some way to bring the story closer to home.  

I tend to get frustrated because I'll come up with an idea and just know that no amount of research is going to make me able to write it convincingly.  I once mentioned a trunk novel where part of the story took place on a ship.  I've been on rowboats and motorboats, but I know nothing about actual sailing.  My plan was to take sailing lessons, only that didn't work out.  

Now, I could have look at diagrams and read old captain's logs and really get a sense of sailing that way.  But another thing I could have done was change the setting.  My story took place on a small island so my heroine would be trapped (the idea was to be Gothic) but surrounding a castle by an ocean isn't the only way to make it remote.  I could have set the castle on a crag, or in the depths of a dangerous forest or swamp.  

I think you have to have a certain amount of confidence in yourself to research a setting or plot point.  If in my heart of hearts I was convinced that I couldn't write my story without actually spending time on the water -if I didn't feel that I knew what I was talking about- how could I convince my readers?  

I had an idea for a story once that had me looking for information on crafting bronze swords.  I didn't feel like I had to take up sword-making in order to understand what I read.  I'd previously taken a couple pottery classes, which gave me a feel for what goes into hands-on work.  

When I first started pottery I was given a textbook.  There was a lot about glazes and chemical reactions, but all it did was show me that I knew even less about pottery than I thought.  It wasn't until I was halfway through the first semester that I had a clue what the writer was jabbering about.  If I'd tried to write about a potter based on text-books I would've gotten halfway through that book, then decided to give up and hide under my bed forever.  

Research is a tough subject because it varies from project to project.  How much you need is however much it take to feel confident in your work.