Morally gray heros?

One of my readers told me he thought the villain of Tendrils to the Moon was the good guy until he was almost through with the book. That confusion was not my intention, but I can see why it happened:

• Tendrils has two lead characters, and neither consistently exhibits villainous or heroic behavior. (Tropes would have served me well here, to communicate to the reader how to feel about the characters.)
• During the drafting phase, I understood who the villain was long before I settled on a character for the hero. The tortured choices the villain makes drive the conflict. This resulted in the villain having a stronger presence until well into the second act.

Theoretically the story is a corruption arc for the villian and a redemption arc for the hero, and they're pushed into conflict by the villain's choices. I could have executed the latter a lot better, because it's not clear what Col. Montgomery Ames (U.S. Air Force–retired) needs redemption from, if anything. Writing that book was a learning experience, but I'm glad people who've read it enjoyed it, even if I do rank my second book higher.

The occasion for this is Yakov Merkin's post about the disconcerting trend of morally gray heros in fiction. Here's a highlight:

What’s important is seeing the hero we like face down these challenges, come to the edge of falling to them, but then finding a way to get through. The hero refuses to betray his friends even under intense pressure. The hero refuses to let himself return to being a merciless conqueror when the opportunity presents itself. Consciously deciding to stay a hero. Physical threats don’t give you that sort of opportunity, most of the time.

And before anyone gets the wrong idea, I’m not saying a hero needs to be a literal boy scout. Batman’s policy of never killing his many murderous foes is idiotic and not heroic. There are times when a truly good hero must take harsh action against evil in order to protect the innocent. Don’t mistake that for a falling into darkness.

The moral-graying of heros is a symptom of naturalist and deconstructionist movements to eschew artistic representations of the ideal. In the real world people are complex and do good or bad for a million different reasons. You're drawn to the villain because he's not simply evil; he got to be this way. You often hear how interesting a villain is, like Killmonger in Black Panther. The audience expects there's a reason this person turned bad. (This is so prevalent, it's now considered subversive to have the villain just be the villain.)

The flip side of that is the audience's assumption that all people start out good, or at least okay. Thus the hero's backstory doesn't have as much juice as the villain's. To give the hero's role weight to at least counter the villain's presence in the story, the writer morally shades the hero.

The problem with that? Moral shading diminishes the most powerful emotion an audience can feel: catharsis; the triumph of good over evil. Look at what Zack Snyder tried to do with Superman, perhaps the most idealized hero in American culture. Snyder transplanted him into a darkly shaded setting and narrative. The result? Superman doesn't feel like a hero.

What we can learn from Snyder's failure is you can't have your cake and eat it too. Some characters, like classic heros and villains, can't be moral-grayed without creating dissonance in the audience. If we want better heros, we're going to have to cut down on the moral-graying.

Side bar: I'm no Batman aficionado, but the no-kill principle is indeed idiotic. And I thought the tongue-in-cheek "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" line in Batman Begins acknowledged it as such, until the sequel showed Batman refusing to kill the Joker while the Joker was on a murder spree. Why are we even fighting if we're morally opposed to killing the bad guy in defense of innocents?

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like science fiction, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Hobbit sex

A Twitter mutual brought to my attention a 1958 essay by Murray Rothbard about naturalism, or realism, in modern literature. It's one of the most succinct and pertinent articles written about its subject matter that I've read, right up there with C S Lewis's The Abolition of Man.

But first, a quote from George R R Martin, to give fuller context to Rothbard's observation.

Martin's stock and trade is "humanizing" his characters by shining a light on their most intimate, often illicit, activities. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, leaves it to our imaginations what hobbits do in the bedroom. I wouldn't categorize the writing style as asexual or celibate, but rather chaste in the sense that sex is best undertaken within the frame of conjugal love as part of God's created order.

In answer to Martin's challenge, I find it almost too easy to imagine hobbits falling in love, getting married, and having lots of baby hobbits. They're farmers, and farmers get it on more than any other profession.

But let's get back to this preoccupation with representing sex in detail in fiction. It's indicative of a certain type of writing that leaves no privacy to the characters or to the reader, that relies on carnal impropriety to pivot the story this way or that. It's been known a long time that man is fallen and, left to his own devices, perverts God's order. Why then has this writing style become more popular since Tolkien's heyday?

Rothbard writes (click to enlarge):

By employing this rationale, the GRRMs of the world absolve themselves of responsibility for the contents of their books. "Are people, especially those in power, not depraved?" they argue. "If so, you have no reason to object. I'm just writing to reflect reality."

Not so fast. One of the most underrated responsibilities of the writer is to choose what to put in and what to leave out of his book. Chekhov's gun dictates that every story element should contribute something to the story. If you fail to discriminate what goes in your book on large scale, everything will come out looking muddy and meaningless.

For the sake of argument, let's say Middle-Earth appeared to Tolkien's imagination fully formed, hobbit sex and all. He left that part out, preserving the characters' nobility in a tale of epic moral scope. As difficult it is for Martin to imagine hobbits having sex, can you imagine how absurd it would be to read about how Sam ravaged Rosy Cotton after years of pent-up longing?

Those who have waited to be inspired to write a book know that's not how it works. The writer creates what goes on the page. It's hard enough work to not take credit, whether the audience loves or hates it.

Rothbard continues:

The fact of the matter is Martin writes about sex because he wants to write about sex, and he'd rather you not treat him like a guy who likes to write about sex. So he employs a red herring, detracting from Tolkien because the latter, to his credit, didn't write about sex.

I suspect the reason we have more popular writers like Martin and fewer popular writers like Tolkien today is because atheists and secularists subverted the art landscape and reshaped readers' expectations. There's no time like the present to reverse that trend. I encourage you to patronize indie creators listed or otherwise engage their work, as they have engaged mine.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like science fiction, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Did Han shoot first?

In the 1990s, during the runup to the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas released the special editions of the Star Wars original trilogy. Since then, multiple versions of the OT special editions, as well as prequels, have received DVD/Blu-Ray releases—but not the OT theatrical cuts. In 2012, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, which decanonized the Expanded Universe and called on Chuck Wendig to write three books to bridge the OT and sequel trilogy. They also scrapped Lucas's notes and script treatments for the ST. For 8 years Kathleen Kennedy has run Lucasfilm and Star Wars, some say (myself included) into the ground.

More people have seen Blade Runner than read Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the book Deckard takes a Voight-Kampff test and passes; therefore, he's not a replicant. The movie's original cut is ambiguous at best, but Ridley Scott's director's cut hints strongly that Deckard is a replicant. Scott has come out and said that's the case, no two ways about it. But Blade Runner 2049, produced by Scott, omits this certainty and embraces ambiguity.

JK Rowling's writing style matured along with her core audience through the late 90s and 2000s. Book and movie ticket sales lifted her from poverty to the most read author in the world. Since the 7-book Harry Potter series concluded, she's maintained Dumbledore is gay, something that's yet to be shown in any of the actual books and movies.

The Wachowski Brothers became the Wachowski Sisters years after the Matrix trilogy came out. Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry) now claims the movies are a trans allegory, not a reimagined allegory of the cave like we all thought at the time. You may assume the trans allegory will be the operating ethos of the upcoming fourth movie. It's unclear how breaking free from machine-induced mind control aligns with using medical technology to posit the will over reality, but what do I know?

I claim ignorance about all things Trek, but more TV and movie content has been produced after Gene Roddenberry's death than before. There's been an alternate timeline with two different Spocks, and a weird IP split that I still don't understand.

The problems with most of these franchises revolves around the legitimacy of canon. What is it, and who defines it?

Is it defined by quality, continuity, consistency, or all three? Is it defined by the IP owner? In Star Wars's case, that would be Disney, who say that Anakin Skywalker didn't kill Emperor Palpatine, and that Luke Skywalker abandoned his friends in their time of need. Or is it defined by the IP creator? Again, in Star Wars's case, that would be George Lucas, who said in 1977 Han shot Greedo first but who maintains for the last 23 years that he hasn't. Is he allowed to change what happened decades after we experienced the story a hundred times over in our imaginations?

"To me, [the original movie] doesn't really exist anymore. ... I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be." -George Lucas

For fans, these discussions are not superfluous. Movies and books are content, and what do fans fall in love with but the content? Retcon the content, and you test the fans' suspension of disbelief. It's not all that different from a Christian losing his faith after marrying another Christian. At the very least, it strains the marriage.

I'm not really involved in fandom. I never was. Star Wars mattered the most to me, but now I refuse to care. Nevertheless, Lucas, Rowling, and the Wachowskis have forced me to take the position that even the creators of these IPs can't be trusted to define canon. Creators aren't static, and the successful ones are frequently vain. They change their minds. Are fans supposed to change as well?

For me, canon is the art's content in its original form. Han shot first, Deckard isn't a replicant, and Dumbledore isn't gay. (As someone who saw the director's cut of Blade Runner first, the second statement of these three has been the hardest to accept.) Fans who contend otherwise must reckon with how the creators told their stories the first time. Were they wrong? Even taking into account the compromises inherent in the creative process, I'm not prepared to say they were.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Women's books are for women

In an information age, you should filter new information by asking these two questions:

1. So what?
2. Is it true?

"So what?" usually should come first, because it filters out more crap than a simple fact-check does. Instead of 2), some will ask "Is it problematic?" Avoid these people like they have COVID-19.

We all know women dominate the fiction book market. Up to 80% of fiction readers are women. So what? Well, knowing the audience is the first step to writing what the audience wants. Knowing more about those women, and the men who comprise the other 20%, is important to the writer and the publisher.

I know this is obvious. Bear with me.

What if I told you these women readers were fairly uniform in terms of age, race, education, economic status, and social attitudes? It would matter yet more. But is it true?

That's the question Lucy Scholes keeps avoiding in this review for the Times Literary Supplement. Her subject is a book by Helen Taylor, a writer who wanted to know more about her audience, and so did some research. Scholes did not like her findings.

The image of Taylor’s composite woman reader really couldn’t be more stereotypical if one tried. We could look to the New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal, for example, whose reading habits can’t be mapped onto Lee’s binaries.

An aggregate of 428 women readers aren't like the New York Times book critic? Gee, what are the odds?

This wasn’t the only occasion I found myself wondering about the undeclared age range of Taylor’s interviewees; the thinking of many of them seems to be rigidly bound up in rather outdated gender norms.

Don't these sheep women know how much happier they could be if they were liberated?

Taylor veers from a Stepford stereotype to this: “Once a month I wake up with booze on my breath, guacamole in my hair and an ill-defined sense of shame”, one of her interviewees writes. “If I were 21, this might indicate a cracking night out. As I’m 43, it means I got drunk again discussing Jodi Picoult on a near-stranger’s couch. Because like 99.9 per cent of middle-class, middle-aged women, I belong to a book club.” On one hand, this is rather funny, but on the other, the cliché is pretty damning, and maybe untrue; Taylor seems all too willing to accept the often not particularly complimentary feminization of all things bookish.

"Maybe untrue"? What verbal sorcery is this? That's an awful big criticism of a nonfiction book to hang on a "maybe." Maybe Scholes merely wants Taylor's observations to be false because they conflict with her social and political interests. Maybe the Times Literary Supplement's lawyers put that phrase in there in case Taylor sued for libel.

Scholes wraps it up:

We like to think we live in a progressive world in which traditional gender stereotypes are slowly loosening their hold, but if the picture painted in Why Women Read Fiction is anything to go by, there is still a long way to go. What we see here is a literary culture that has been feminized to the point of strangulation, which is both demeaning to many women readers and could explain, at least in part, why women readers, when it comes to fiction, remain in the majority. Is it any wonder that more men don’t feel that there is a place for them in it?

If I had a nickel for every time I heard "there's still a long way to go," I'd be rich. At last Scholes reveals her true intent for this book review: to agitate for a new woman reader, a woman uprooted from family, home, and God so she can throw herself into the god of this age, Self.

What I'm curious about is how making fiction books more "progressive" attracts more male readers. As a male reader myself, I like my male characters masculine and my female characters feminine. I've found most people in the real world are hardwired that way. That's who I write for as well.

You can judge for yourself whether I've succeeded by reading the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.

Embrace tropes in your writing

I've written about stereotypes before and how my writing would benefit from using them. I came across this writing advice video about fantasy tropes and thought it deserved a response.

Many of the character stereotypes, or tropes, she hits on apply to Harry Potter. Let's say she's right on all of them. You'd think, if tropes were a bad thing, this would have held the Harry Potter series back.

Why didn't it? Because JK Rowling used these stereotypes to create an identifiable and memorable character. She didn't just use tropes to construct Harry. Hermione, Ron, Snape, Dumbledore, and others are etched into my generation's cultural memory in a way that Luke, Han, and Leia are etched into the cultural memory of my father's generation. It's an achievement that deserves in-depth analysis, not scorn.

The best advice with regard to tropes is to study them to understand how they work so you can create the effect you want for your readers. If you don't give readers something they recognize, they can get lost and confused, if not upset. Furtheremore, there's a ton of wiggle room to mold a stock character into a fully fleshed person. No one mistakes Harry Potter for Pip in Great Expectations because they're both orphans.

Funnily enough, the writer/former literary agent giving this advice admits at the 19-minute mark that a lot of readers like their expectations to be fulfilled (i.e., they like tropes), but you're not going to snag a agent unless you shun tropes in your writing. That's the failure of tradpub in a nutshell: middlemen refusing to give readers what they want.

In my last book, Seeds of Calamity, I brought more craft to my characters and plot. This included intentional use of tropes. My hero is, you guessed it, an orphan. He's also kind of a hothead. His older brother is more mature and deliberate, a point of tension between them. Their best friend is a sage/surrogate father type. The two main bad guys are an officious weasel and a cunning rogue. Someone the brothers are forced to work with is a driven career woman and love interest.

These tropes serve as markers for the reader, which I think is more important in fantasy and sci-fi than in other genres. I don't have to explain the character dynamics for you to understand them. The act of explaining would just dull the emotional edge. You can predict how the characters get along in the beginning, but you can't as easily predict how the plot will change those characters and their dynamics.

Read and see for yourself. I've made the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity available for free here. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

As always, leave a comment below. I'll respond to you as soon as I can.

Yes, write every day

I've seen some caterwauling on Twitter from writers who are pushing back against the common advice to write every day. Below is an example of that pushback. I'll leave the attribution off:

There are a wealth of valid reasons not to write every day. Writing is a muscle you have to work, yes; but too many people are made to feel failures against unrealistic standards.

The use of passive voice here is telling. No honest giver of advice is so Pharisaical as to claim failure to follow his advice will result in absolute failure. Anyone who "is made" to feel a failure is putting that onus on himself.

If you can't take advice without putting more pressure on yourself than you can stand, and you suffer for it to the point that you resent the advice, you may have bigger problems than an inability to write every day. Or, if a particular piece of advice doesn't help, maybe that advice wasn't meant for you; feel free, then, to ignore it.

Every writer wants to be better. One way to accomplish that is to establish a daily routine. That means writing even when you don't feel like it. It also means not getting so hung up on mediocre plotting or subpar prose that you paralyze the rest of the creative process. Move on and fix the mistakes later. That's what writing every day amounts to.

I was 40,000 words into my draft of Tendrils to the Moon when my brother-in-law got married. I didn't write at all that weekend. Am I a failure because of that? No. Life happens. I still finished the book, albeit a month late and 33,000 words over budget.

Writing a book is like running a marathon. It takes discipline. There are times during the process where you don't think you'll finish. Failure is only guaranteed when you stop trying. I'm convinced most writers fail not because they lack talent, but because they get discouraged and stop trying.

Suffering is how you know you're growing. If a goal doesn't require at least a little bit of suffering, you're not growing to reach it.

Am I being too harsh? Let me know in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can. I invite you to read the first 4 chapters of my new sci-fi book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Having fun with attribution

Brian Lee Meyer held a fun little contest on his blog, where he challenged writers to craft a scene around some dialogue he had written. You could do anything you wanted, as long as you didn't change a word of dialogue.  

It was a test of how to attribute dialogue without a boring stream of "he said"s. My preferred method is to describe character's nonverbal actions before they say something and to give character's distinct voices within a conversation (e.g., one person is calm and one person is upset) so that attribution is unnecessary. Another thing I sometimes do is establish a default "he," usually the point of view character of a particular scene.  

Although I didn't win Meyer's contest, I like what I turned out with only about an hour of effort. Here's the scene. Again, the dialogue is all Meyer's. I merely wrote the scaffolding.”  

Trudging home, stooped by the weight of his bulging backpack, Joe heard footsteps thudding on the pavement, growing louder. Bob fell into step next to him, his fat, pale face sweating bullets in the late summer heat.

"Mr. Smith came down on you pretty hard today," Bob mumbled through a mouthful of Crunch candy bar.

Joe winced. The failing grade on the assignment was bad enough. Mr. Smith had to go and emasculate him in front of the whole class. He had tried his best to pretend it didn't phase him. It seemed that he had failed that, too.

"I’m used to it," Joe said insouciantly. "He’s never liked me no matter what I do."

He considered his words, how weak and unconvincing they sounded in his own ears. He felt the suppressed rage bubbling up inside him, demanding release.

"I try. I really do," he said, biting down on each word. "Nothing’s ever good enough for him."

Bob swallowed and took another bite of milk chocolate mixed with crisped rice. "Smith’s okay. I think he’s just trying to get the best out of you."

Joe rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."

"No, really. It’s flattering if you think about it." Bob dropped the Crunch wrapper in a garbage can sitting on the curb. "He must think you have a lot of potential to push you so hard."

"That’s not it, Bob. It’s my dad. Smith hates him, so he hates me too. He probably says it’s for my good so he doesn’t look like a jerk in front of the other teachers, but really it’s just plain prejudice."

Despite Joe's exasperation, he felt better after getting his feelings off his chest. He karate-chopped the air, envisioning Mr. Smith's lean, smug face. "Even if I solved cold fusion for the science fair, he’d find something wrong with it!"

Bob shrugged. "Well, don’t let it get to you." He punched Joe lightly in the shoulder. "You’re still the smartest guy in class."

"I don’t care what Smith thinks," Joe said. "It’s just that he’s bringing my GPA down. You ever notice how he gives assignments like he did today? There’s nothing he can do about it when I get every question right on a test, but he can give me whatever grade he wants on these reports and projects." He couldn't stop his voice from rising to the level of a shout. "I should have straight As, but these assignments are pulling my grade down to a B. It’s not fair!"

They came to the end of the block and waited for the pedestrian light to turn green.

"What are you going to do?" Bob asked.

Joe spotted Mary, his neighbor, who was a grade higher than him and Bob, on the other side of the street. She stood with her hands on her hips and waited on the corner.

"What can I do?" Joe said.

The pedestrian light turned green, and he and Bob crossed the street. As they drew closer to the street corner, Joe noticed a distressed look scrunching Mary's pretty face.

"Hey, Mary," Bob said brightly, his step quickening. He had been smitten with the older girl for as long as he and Joe had been friends.

"Where have you two been?" she demanded.

"We had band practice after school. We were just walking home." Bob's smile faltered under her unwavering glare. "What’s wrong?"

She ignored him. "Joe, why haven’t you been answering your phone?"

"Sorry. It’s in my bag." Joe slung his weighty backpack off his shoulders. He unzipped a flap to retrieve his old flip phone. He had six missed calls.

He looked at her warily. "I didn’t hear it buzz. Is everything okay?"

Her lips trembled and she broke eye contact with him. "No." She sniffed and wiped her cheek. "I’m sorry, Joe, it’s your dad. He was in a car accident. He’s dead."

 

Meyer wrote back to say my imagery was sharp and he liked how I introduced Mary into the scene. He dinged me on the use of the world "insouciantly," which didn't surprise me. That is such a show-off word. I shared this scene with my wife and she laughed when she got to that part. This probably means I need to get her to edit my work in the future!  

Anyway, Meyer just published a book called Sons of Zeruiah. He's a swell guy, so if you're reading this, at least preview his book it for free.

Let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can. I invite you to read the first 3 chapters of Tendrils to the Moon for free, and see if the last 9 chapters are worth your time. The paperback version is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is still a mere 99 cents, and is available in a variety of formats via Smashwords.