So, at the Raleigh signing, I asked Brandon about the editing on Elantris, his first novel. What he had to say was actually somewhat cheering, as apparently not only did his pages bleed (which they still do, even on The Way of Kings, just not as much as back then), but his editor actually worked with him on major changes, like removing a character. The reason this makes me feel better is because I have had the impression for so long that the first novel you send in needs to be only a mild line edit from published, especially with how the editors talk at panels. I guess it is good to hear that editors, um, edit? Yeah.

The other thing Brandon had to say was heartening too, which was to not worry as much about there being occasional typos or bad word choice in the story. The first few pages are pretty important, but the editors should be expecting some errors naturally in the story. In the end, it is an overall quality of writing and a good story they are seeking out. Granted, this doesn’t mean to slack, but it also means to not sweat bullets when you see one you missed a month after sending something in. Unless it is on the first page and you are slush submitting. Then you are probably boned. But otherwise, cheer up! Right? Of course right.

Once upon a time, two little boys were out in the woods looking for a spooky house. They had heard it was there, but they didn’t know exactly where. The day wore on, and as it started to get dark, they heard a sound.

Klaka-klaka-klaka

The sound was far away and faint, and they had no clue what it was. Dice rolling? Teeth clacking together? They didn’t know, but they didn’t want to find out, so they started to go the other way, away from the sound. But it followed them.

Klaka-klaka-klaka.

The boys started to run, but the sound continued to get closer. Klaka-klaka-klaka. The boys ran as fast as they could until at last, they reached a clearing. And there, to their surprise, was the spooky house they had been looking for in the first place. They weren’t in the mood to go exploring the house in the twilight, but the sound kept coming closer.

Klaka-klaka-klaka.

With nowhere to run, the boys ran into the house, desperate for a place to hide. Inside, there were spider-webs everywhere, and tall windows and mirrors loomed around and made the shadows seem ever deeper. The noise was just outside, in the clearing.

Klaka-klaka-klaka.

In a near panic, the boys ran up the stairs just as the door slowly creaked open. Klaka-klaka-klaka. They did not even dare to look back, and they ran up to the third floor, where the attic was. Below, they heard door after door open, as if someone was searching every room for them. Creak, Klaka-klaka-klaka. Creak, Klaka-klaka-klaka.

The attic was darker than the rest of the house, with barely any moonlight able to flitter in. The boys ran to the darkest corner they could find and cowered, staring at the door that led down stairs. Eventually, it too creaked open. Klaka-klaka-klaka. A hand reached in through the door, but it was too thin to be a normal hand. Then a person appeared, but he was too thin to be a person. The boys could see right through him. He was a skeleton!

The skeleton walked towards the boy. Klaka. Klaka. Kalka. It looked right at them and smiled a skeletal smile.

“Are you lost?”

The boys, to scared to talk, only nodded.

“Follow me. I’ll take you home.”

The boys, still scared of the skeleton, only nodded again and slowly followed the skeleton outside. It was now very dark, and the moon was not able to reach past the thick trees. The skeleton did not glance back at the boys the entire time, and its long legs let it move much faster than them. Before long, the boys had only the sound to follow.

Klaka-klaka-klaka.

The night only got darker, and soon the boys heard wolves howling in the night. Aroooo. Klaka-klaka-klaka. The boys tried to move faster, but they were tired and scared. All they had was the sound of the skeleton to follow, but they dared not get too close. Then, after they had walked a long way, the sound suddenly was gone.

Klaka-klaka-kla—

The boys froze in their footsteps, worried that the skeleton had abandoned them, and they ran as fast as they could toward the place they last heard the sound. Right as they reached it, they burst out of the woods and saw their house, the lights on and the door open. They ran to it, where their mom and dad gave them tight hugs and worried over them.

“Where have you been?” Their mom asked.

“We were out looking for the spooky house, but we got lost.” The boys said. They did not mention the skeleton.

Their parents worried over them a bit more and then put them to bed. The next morning, the boys went back out to the edge of the woods and looked around. There, in a spot of tried mud, a single footprint was visible: a skeleton’s footprint.

As I recall from my limited political science, patriotism as we know it is pretty new and came about with the concept of “nations” instead of countries. With the nation, you don’t just happen to live in an area and speak a language and share a religion. Nor do you happen to do this with an indiscriminately large number of people, in addition to being ruled by some sort of common body or person. No, you actually acknowledge this and embrace it, making it part of your identity. This, of course, leads to nations that are larger and smaller than their host countries. Larger, in the form of empire and religion, smaller in the form of special-interest-type groups.

And, of course, since you actively identify with these groups, you have pride in them, because they are part of you. But, I think we all have heard that famous bible quote: “Pride goeth before the fall.” What does nationalism and patriotism do?

Well, first the good. It does help bind a people together. Witness the USA post 9/11. Because of nationalism and patriotism, we swarmed to our collect wounds in NYC and DC and that field in PA. We comforted and consoled, and did what we could to get through the devastation. We then deployed our might against those responsible.

Of course, the bad. Riding that same “we’re number one” attitude, we are then duped into attacking another nation that, while annoying and not exactly led by a nice person, was not directly causing us, or even our interests, harm. I remember watching the live footage of Baghdad in the first ours of Shock and Awe, and wondering what the Hell we were thinking.

And let us not forget some of the other outcomes of severe patriotism. The unilateral attack by the “American” public on anyone even remotely resembling a Muslim. The paranoia that still grips us when we fly or attend major events. The polarization between “parties”, another wonderful invention of our era, of doves and hawks. Patriotism, my friends, is the fuel that burns ideological wars. I find it ironic, in fact, that we always teach our children good sportsmanship, and yet we cannot accept that maybe another country does something better than us, and when they do, we marginalize the thing, such as soccer (but my god, swimming! Now that is important.)

So, how do I celebrate the most patriotic day? In what I think is the right way, and with a mood of reflection. I do not, as it happens, think I live in the greatest country on Earth. I do think that I live in an awesome country though, and I am duly appreciative of that fact. And, for the record, I do not think there is such a thing as “the greatest country on Earth.” Or, perhaps, it just doesn’t exist yet. Because if it did exist, it would have to be the only country on Earth. And yeah, we are a ways off from that.

I read a quote earlier today that went something along the lines of “the next major step in societal evolution will not happen until war is abolished.” Well, I take it a step further: war will not be abolished until patriotism is dead. You can have pride and respect for your country, but this blind idolatry is just that.

Now you may lynch me.

Now, tell me, is there any way that even the most inobservant of people who are at least looking at you would miss the sheer forced nature and utter facetiousness of that smile? Is there any way that there is anyone that doesn’t know that you aren’t smiling on the inside? Well, maybe if you are a clown and a kid is looking at you. After all, we all know clowns don’t smile on the inside, but only after we become adults.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, I have started to wonder at how this has become an accepted writing tool. There are typically two types of people that typically have smiled that don’t touch their eyes. One is catty people, the other is complete manipulators.

The catty people I don’t mind. After all, these are people who are trying to pretend but fail miserably at it. They wear their emotions on their sleeves and stab backs before said backs are even turned. For them to have that funny looking smile you just saw in the mirror, no problem from me at all.

But manipulators, really? Not only is this person’s fake smile supposed to be a sign of their ingenious and masterful ability to hide their true motives, the observation of said smile is supposed to speak to the ability of the observer to see past the manipulator’s game. Gah!

A real manipulator would know how to actually squint a little when they smile to make said smile look genuine. A real manipulator would force a smile in a time where said smile would be suspicious, even if it does touch the eyes. I guess it just gets back to my usual gripe that manipulators are always “evil” and must have their disguises casually ripped off by the morally upright and usually “stupid” hero. I won’t even get into my normal diatribe on the anti-intellectualism that is prevalent in novels, nor the irony that the writers of said novels are usually very intelligent people.

And, I think this is one reason I enjoyed A Game of Thrones better this time through reading it. The heroes, the Starks, actually really annoyed me for the most part, while the villains, the Lannisters, had me rooting for them. Why? Because the Lannisters were practical. There was a line in there, near the end, that I loved. One of the Starks, the older daughter who thinks life is a fairytale, realized that it isn’t, and thinks to herself “In real life, the monsters win.”  Well, maybe monsters is a little harsh of a word, but yes, the people who are willing to play the game win. What is wrong with that, honestly?

Caveat: The Fife in no way endorses complete and total Machiavellian means. He says this with a smile that touches his eyes. Honest.

See, The Long Price Quartet (as the series this book starts is called) exists in a world where some people communicate using both words and accompanying poses. Alright, interesting concept, especially when dealing with such people and others who are not as adept at the poses so miss nuances, if not complete understanding. But, here is the hitch: presentation. I cannot think of any way to actually do these “languages of fans” to an excessive degree without making them trite and slightly annoying.

See, all the descriptive texts for the conversations—those little beats between the actual dialogue—were eaten by the poses. He says something, then takes a pose that is kind of “duh”, like he asks a question and takes a pose of query. There might be a little more detail than just “of query”, but like “a pose of query that implied a formal frankness”, but all of this was usually present in the dialogue. In the events where there was only a pose and no dialogue, it felt like poor attempt at making the characters more eloquent than the writer felt himself capable of.

Another instance of this in writing, one where I am actually pulling the title of the post from, and that is the Wheel of Time. One of the nations in that book series has an entire language of fans (which I want to think is drawn from a real nation somewhere that did the same thing), where you could non-verbally communicate. In The Wheel of Time, Faile, the character that uses the language, only does so on rare instance due to the fact that almost no one else in the series knows it, and the one person who does know some is her husband, who she has been teaching it to. There, it makes sense as a means of subterfuge. But if it was all over the place, well, I’d probably be annoyed by it too.

The related problem, of course, is how to relate massive use of such a thing, especially when it is required to understand the dialogue, on a movie screen. Yeah, baseball movies have the call-sign things between coaches and players, but all you need to know there is that communication happened, not what it was. Imagine, though, having to work in some explanation for poses or fan-motions so that the audience could have a chance at knowing what is being said, and then having to expect them to remember more than one or two meanings. Gah!

So yeah, Language of Fans is right there on my “cool yet bad idea” list. Can anyone think of a counter-example? I’m hard pressed.

Well, I’ll start with the good things. The movie actually had pretty decent acting, from the two brothers who were betrayed and react differently, to the prince who was framed, to the Priestess-Princess that has her own motives and designs and isn’t just there to be a love interest.

There is also, honestly, a pretty strong plot. Granted, I pretty well every twist as it was foreshadowed, from who the real villain was to what the Prince would have to do to save the day. I even called the heart-wrenching extremes he was pushed to. I also do not feel that the time-travel thing at the end cheapened the story at all. So yeah, plot was perhaps a hair generic, but it delivered one at least being structured and whole.

The first thing that hurt the movie, I think, was the thinly veiled modern commentary, from the invasion of a country looking for weapons that aren’t there to an amoral businessman who is just dodging taxes and takes up a fairly large part of the screen time for his character’s actual worth.

Some of the dialogue betrayed the modern call-forwards much like watching an old episode of Hercules or Xena, and much of the dialogue was extremely contemporary. Which, honestly, was very jarring since the characters were not tongue-in-cheek contemporary themselves. Imagine King Leonidas complaining about work unions or a Fair Tax. Yeah.

But, I think the number one thing that hurts this movie is how pretty it is. Now, I love pretty things. I’m attracted to them like a moth to flame, which is probably why I watched The Golden Compass, Avatar, Clash of the Titans, and Prince of Persia. Yet, all of these have a similar failing, and that is far too strong of a desire to show of what they can do on the big screen with special effects and computer graphics, and not enough of a feeling for telling a story. Several times in this movie, I felt like I was watching someone playing a videogame, either for in-game play or watching cinematics for the game. And that, my friends, is what I feel hurt this movie the most because it was the most jarring.

But, what to do? I mean, this movie is, much like any SpecFic movie, about the world as much as it is about the characters.  We need to feel the epic nature and grand vistas, but is it really worth the amount of screen time that is given to sweeping panoramics of cities or deserts or ruins? After all, aren’t we supposed to be marveling at the beauty of what they can do on the big screen?

Well, here’s an idea for you. If you want to see those kinds of video-game style graphics, play a video game. The movie screen shouldn’t be about showing off the budget they had for special effects. It should be about producing the highest of quality story in two to three hours that a TV show just couldn’t handle on the scope. You want amazing special effects, make them invisible. The audience should not be aware that they are there. I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have giant sandstorms, towering cities, or over-large scorpions, but don’t dedicate 10 minutes to a fight that features these things.

I want story. I want to see how the characters of this world are reacting to it, not how the world simply is. Show, don’t tell, they say, and that doesn’t mean let me see it on the screen. That isn’t showing. Figure it out, Hollywood. Please. And leave the vapid eyecandy where it belongs, as the backgrounds for fancy video-games (which I will gladly play).

Now, I understand that in fiction, we need to pat/kick the dog to show our moral fiber, and that we want to believe that a good heart and well-intentioned plan will, in the end, win the day.  Even in the cases of stories about rebellions, the Big Bad is typically a much meaner, more devious, and super-powerful foe who will nearly topple the whole thing single handedly (or with the proper application of military force), thus making the machinations of the heroes somewhat justified, as that was the only way to get at them.

But what about the noble weasel? I have been wracking my brain all morning, trying to think of a solid example of a person who is a manipulative bastard but uses it not for his own selfish ends, but instead to help out the good guys (or further a good goal)?  Can playing, even with difficulty, playing the villain for a fool and getting away with it be a bad thing? I am sure we would say it is in real life, so why not in fiction?  Well, I guess it is because Good Is Dumb, and Dumb is Good.  Look those up on tvtropes to get what I’m saying.

So, I’ve been doing research for a book I want to write shortly, and I always find it a little funny, doing research for a narrative fiction, especially a fantasy.  I mean, OK, I know I’ve complained before about the guy who used “rapier” to describe every type of sword under the sun, but ya know what, dude was still published and I still bought his book.  Granted, I won’t buy any more of his books, but that is neither here nor there.  Anyway, so what I’ve been researching (in an almost literal sense), is Sun Tzu. I say in a literal sense cause this is hardly the first time I’ve read Sun Tzu.  I’ve owned a copy for some years now, and I find myself looking up passages here or there fairly often.  But tonight, I was actually sitting at my favorite bar, drinking some wine, and reading the the book and notating my own thoughts.  The point is that the book I want to write is going to have a bit of a “learning the Sun Tzu the hard way” feel to it, so I want to go through the thought process of the Sun Tzu and see if I can pull a plot out of it. That’s right, I am trying to pull a plot out of an instruction manual (for all intents and purposes).  Funny thing is, I think I can do it.  Granted, it will be a loose translation, not like each chapter is going to be a different stanza of the original, but I think I can, with some re-arranging and creative interpretation, take the Sun Tzu and develop a plot around it.  The chapter I am looking forward to the most?  Employing Fire.  Fire always makes everything better, right?  right.

Now, I’ll say, I typically believe Karma to be a real thing.  Not that I think there is a mystical force out there, keeping a check to see the universe weighs the same as a duck, but I do full well believe that the way you act dictates what opportunities come your way.  Buy someone a beer, good chance they will buy you one back.  Let someone shelter under your umbrella, and they’ll offer you a coffee.  Etc, and so forth.  But what about all the random, nasty stuff?

Well, I think that is really just unbalanced.  Example.  Let’s say you made a mistake in associating with someone for a time.  They cause you all sorts of pain as you associate with them, and even after you break the association and do everything you can to not let them affect your life, this person still manages to cause drama and heartache.  Not that I’m talking from personal, recent experience.  Nope, not me.  Nuh-uh.

See, it always seems that we get far more crap for bad than we get gold for good.  And, oh crap, I’m going to start talking about writing.  Yeah, it needs to be like that in stories too.  I have read far too many stories (or fragments of stories cause I couldn’t make myself finish), where the author tried to change the balance of Karma.  That is to say, tried to make the universe less of a cold, unfeeling, uncaring, prick.  Either by giving less crap for bad or more gold for good.  And yeah, that is one fantasy that belongs in your head while you shower or sluff off at work and not on a page.  And I’ll just end it there, cause right now Karma has thrown me a boulder to deal with, and boy does my back hurt holding it.  I guess I’ll just go watch some more Lost or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I will admit that I try and write catch phrases, although they are more of a secondary to me.  Truth is, people in real life have sayings they live by, be it Murphy’s Law for most engineers, or The Golden Rule for elementary school teachers (which I must admit, I still am not 100% sure what that is).  Heck, even I have a few one-liners I like to throw out from time to time.  So why shouldn’t a character have a credo or zinger they like.

The trick I’ve found when trying to write these is to let them come naturally.  If it is one thing that will kill the phrase fast, it is being thrown out because of a contrived situation.  Characters need to find themselves as you write them, in my opinion, and to decide when doing the initially pre-writing brainstorming that Character X is going to say Y a lot is a good way to make Y a pain.  Cause then you are thinking of how to make Y useable, and it breaks the other characters around Character X as authorial fait takes over to force the catch phrase.

But did the best phrases come that way?  Well, without interviewing a buttload of authors, I can’t say one way or the other, but I’m going to be almost all of the “super-memorable” kickers were accidents or natural growths out of the characters (that they didn’t get looked at by a doc? *rimshot!*).

So, if you are writing, my advise to you: don’t worry about the catch phrases.  They will come on their own, but do look for them.   If a character says something quotable in the natural creation of a dialogue, don’t be afraid to have them repeat it later.  I have found that trying to make characters say things in new ways all the time actually loses their voices.  A little repetition is actually very natural, so run with it.  And that is about all I have to say about that.