Research Break

A few months back I decided to start this blog as a way to promote any books I might put out there for the general public to buy. It has turned out that keeping the blog current is far more demanding than I thought at first. It also turns out that I have been using writing for the blog as an excuse to avoid working on the books. Talk about a real “Catch- 22.”

So I’ve decided to take a little time off to research one of the books that’s been lying on the pile waiting for me to get back to it. I hope that those of you who have been dropping by every so often will forgive my lack of posting. I don’t expect that it will be a very long time, but I’m determined to not have the blog block the books.

I hope those of you who are preparing for the return to school have an interesting beginning for the new school year. Since this blog is read by a number of very nice people who do not live in the United States [Side Note #1: Thank you friends in Russia, Germany, Korea, and Denmark.] let me explain that here in the United States we close our schools during the summer months. This was originally started to let the children return to their family farms and help out during the main growing season. Of course since the United States is no longer primarily an agrarian country and many of the regions that still maintain farms are actually mega-farms that are run by companies and not families, you’re probably asking why do we still maintain the closing of the schools during the summer?

Well we have turned from a country that had our main employment during the summer months on farms, to one where the main source of seasonal employment is in what we call amusement parks. You know, that collective of scary rides like roller-coasters, really bad foods like deep fried Twinkies, and crowds that force you to wait in lines in the hot sun for hours to ride on one of those scary rides that will turn that bad food lunch you had before you entered the line into a projectile you toss over the side of the car on the ride. [Side Note #2: Today we have rides that have no cars at all. Just seats, that hold you in while the ride tosses you around and turns you upside down. A sure fire guarantee that the lunch, your twelve year old blackmailed you into letting him eat since it was after all a vacation, will soon be scattered all over the area under where the rides tracks lie.] [Side Note #3: Yes, you’re right. I rarely took my children on those rides. They had to wait until they were old enough to go by themselves. I’d like to point out in my defense against charges of child deprivation, that when they were old enough they avoided the rides all by themselves.]

It is in those amusement parks that our young people find work during the summer months. Coincidently their teachers also work in those parks during the summer. The teachers are trying to make enough money during the summer so that next year they can be good parents and take their children on trips to places that have those same amusement parks they worked in. It does seem to be basically the same thing as before, where during the summer children worked on the farm to earn enough for their family to be able to afford food.

As you can tell I clearly need to stop writing. Until we meet again, good luck and keep writing

DEATH

It’s something that without a doubt we will all have to face someday. A neighbor of mine has recently been told that he has a form of cancer that is incurable, and that with treatment he will have about a year left. He is not the first person who I’ve known that has been told that he will face death in the near future.

We all know that we will die. Alright there seems to be a widely held belief that teenagers do not believe they will die, and that they act as if they can live forever..  [Side Note #1; This belief is perpetuated by the way they drive when they first get to use the family car, and other daring things that they do that of course adults, or at least those of us who have past 19, would never think of doing. First: Almost all inexperienced drivers do things that others might call stupid. The amazing thing is not that teenagers drive poorly, but that the rest of us can’t remember that we drove the same way when we first got the keys to the car.  Second: There have been a number of recent studies that have shown that the ability to see that there is a future, develops later in life than the teenage years. In other words young people have difficulty judging what will happen as they age. Since death is a future event (and if it’s not in the future, you won’t be around to worry about it) the young can’t properly anticipate that they will die. All of which brings us back to the aside, that not everyone realizes that they will die.

[Side note #2: What the heck has all of this got to do with writing you’re asking? Good question. Just hold on I’m about to answer that in the immediate future]

Despite that it is a part of all of our lives, and most of us have known someone who has died, it’s surprising how often death isn’t a part of the stories we read. Even if it is in the book that you’re holding, it’s probably the villain who will die. We have a long tradition of not seeing our characters die. Think back to those first stories that we read, or that were read to us.  How did they end? Why the heroes and heroines lived “Happily ever after,” didn’t they? “Ever after,” seems to imply the same thing as “forever.” So if they were to be happy forever, they weren’t going to die. At least some of those sweet little tikes, who had grandparents around, must have thought that somewhere there was an old folk’s home, where a very wrinkly, two hundred year old Snow White was hobbling over to give Prince Charming a cup of tea.

Now I’m not advocating that children’s books have a bunch of dead people lying around. Just mentioning, that we are conditioned from first light, to be willing to put aside the idea of dying.

Good guys wear the white hats and the bad guys get the black hats. Black is the color of mourning, just think of poor Queen Victoria and that closet of black dresses that she had. Black hats, mourning, death, all lead up to a willingness to accept the death of the bad guys, and the opposite expectation for the good guy.

Now of course there’s a certain practicality involved here. If the good guy dies, the whole idea of a series goes out the window. Not that every author plans on a series of books, each time they make up a story. However, there is a certain comfort available from the idea that at the end of the story the good guy or gal is left standing.

So after you’ve read the first fifty pages or so, who do you want to die? [Side Note #3: If you answer “the author,” you’re excused from the rest of this piece.] If the author has done a good job, you’ve already been attracted to the main character. That should mean that you won’t nominate him/her to meet their end. It’s possible the villain hasn’t been introduced yet so your answer might well be “No one.” It’s also possible that you may not want anyone to die, no matter how vile the bad guy/gal, and no matter how heinous the crime committed. In that case good for you.

However, I would recommend that you stay away from detective novels, true crime mysteries, and almost anything labeled “adult.” For it seems that every book published lately in those categories has a murder in it. In fact even young adult works have people killing other people. [Side Note Last: Sorry Ms. Rowling but even your wonderful stories of the boy wizard have death dealers. True most of the good guys kill in self-defense, and only the bad guys take a life when not threatened. Still, there are an awful lot of bodies stacked up in the final scene. No, not the Epilog, which actually is added to the rest of the story and I personally think it could have been left in the editor’s waste bin. I mean if you’re going to tidy up at the end, for goodness sake answer all of the questions you readers wanted to find out about.]

Time Machine

“We can see the past, but we can’t change it.  We can change the future, but we can’t see it.” That’s a quote from an upcoming book by that brilliant new writer Cliff Tomaszewski. I’ll identify the book title at a later date.

So what’s all this talk about the past and the future, you ask? Well I was just thinking about a time machine that I have access to. No this one is different from the one that the Doctor owns in that British science fiction series that’s been around for almost fifty years. [Side Note #1: This series, which I first started watching back in the seventies, is a perfect example of what can be done with good stories, and a minimum use of special effects. Not that I’m against special effects in movies, but I find the story to be much more interesting than what the movie people use to illustrate it. Sorry, but this is true even for my favorite author’s stories about the boy wizard. The books were so much better than the movies, especially the last one.]

Neither is it related to the one created by H.G. Wells, although that one was spectacular. It did, however, violate the rules stated in the quote that opened up this piece. We can indeed change the future, but we can’t see what those changes will accomplish. [Side Note #2: Don’t believe me? Then think about all of those fore thinking people who saved a lot so that they would have money for their later years. Of course they knew that money will suffer from the effects of inflation, so they invested their savings in rock solid stocks like Enron. Too conservative perhaps, so they took occasional fliers on new up and coming stocks like “Face Book.” If they could see the future, would they have picked those stocks? Probably not.] [Side Note #3: Don’t get the idea that I’m against saving for the future. But since we can’t see the future, from our comfortable arm chairs in the present, we have to apply the rule that considers that inability. Restaurants have to consider “Location, location, location.” Investing in the stock market requires “Diversification, diversification, diversification.”]

When is he going to get back to that time machine? Well, there’s no time like the present. This time machine is controlled by anyone, and everyone, who has ever written a story. If the hero of your tale is fighting the bad guy, and the villain pulls out a ray gun that will dissolve the hero and the girl who he is protecting, then the hero must activate his personal super-duper nuclear powered electronic shielding devise. But wait a minute. When you wrote about the equipment the hero had grabbed to go on this adventure, you never mentioned the shielding device.

Here’s where the time machine comes into play. For some, this time machine will be activated by an eraser and a pencil.  For others, like me for instance, I have my computer go back to that page where the hero is gathering his equipment, and add in a last minute thought that he might encounter a force so diabolically strong that he can’t overcome it by him, or her, self. So he slips the shielding device into the equipment bag, and suddenly he is back in the future and he has the answer to the villain’s ray gun. It’s just that simple.

Of course for those foolish enough to deal with only historically accurate information their hero is going to be toast, or maybe a puddle of goo.

So if you want to be able to have a time machine that will allow you to change the future, by changing the past, start writing. Then like Wells and Rowling, and yes even me, you too can face problems in the future that you can solve by traveling back to the past. For an interesting treatment of how time can be affected read “Time Out” by clicking on the picture on the right hand column.

Why do we read, what we read?

Why did you pick out the latest book that you read? Was it the cover art that attracted you, and kept the book in your hands all the way to the check-out stand? Probably not, although that art may have been why you picked out the book in the first place.  Most likely, after you marveled at the picture on the front, you opened the front leaf and read the synopsis of the story contained within the pages of the book. Perhaps you picked the book because of a favorable review in the newspaper or magazine. It might even have been a discussion on television or radio that interested you and caused you to acquire the book mentioned.

[Side note: For the moment I’m going to leave aside the question of why we read what genera we tend to prefer. Science fiction readers may never understand why Romance fiction readers go for the ripped bodice or torn shirt front. Historical fiction readers won’t be able to understand why Scifi readers go for the shiny space ships. We’ll leave that an open question, answered by the “To each his own” response that may be the only logical response.]

Allied to the first question of “why we chose the book in the first place,” is why we would choose another book in the series, or by the same author? Here other factors come into play. Was the lead character, or characters, in the first book appealing enough for us to want to visit with them again? Was the author tricky enough to leave unresolved issues on the table, which we want to see resolved? Were the methods used by the character interesting enough, that we want to see if they will work the next time?

Of course there are other reasons we would go back to the same author. Just the style of writing can be enough to bring us back to the next book from that pen. Were the issues raised by the author enough to bring us back to that spot on the book shelves looking for more? Did the author treat subjects that we found so interesting, that we want to find out more about how the author will handle them? Were they perhaps so titillating and tantalizing, that we would rush back for additional thrills?

Many of the most successful authors have employed some of these methods, to draw us back to their works. Certainly the methods of observation used by Sherlock Holmes were intriguing enough to bring millions of readers back, book after book to find out how the sleuth would discover the evil villain the next time. The same can be said for Agatha Christy characters. Who else would be able to create two such different characters such as Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and make them so interesting as to drag us back for more and more of their adventures?

As of late, we have J.K. Rowling as the queen of the “unresolved issue” method of keeping her readers coming back for more. To be fair she also utilized the “appealing character” method to keep us interested in the adventures.

Are there draw backs to utilizing these methods? Well the problem with the “unresolved issue” is that eventually the author does have to resolve the issue, and then what have you? In Rowling’s case it produced millions of readers who wanted more. She has said that she has told the story of the boy wizard, and that there isn’t anything else to say. She even included a sort of epilog at the end of the final book, to show that the characters had completed the cycle. Readers didn’t buy that and thought that she was simply setting them up for another series of books. So far, she has resisted all pleas for more of the world of magic that she created.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a character so irresistible that he was unable to stop writing stories for him. He decided to end the Holmes stories and move on to other endeavors, so he killed off Sherlock. Not so, said his fans. After a reasonable period of mourning, eight years, Holmes was resurrected and lived on to solve again.

So it appears that for some, a successful method of bringing readers back for more can backfire. For those of us aspiring writers the idea of being too successful is an appealing problem. One which I’d be willing to undergo, so go over to Kindle and download “Time Out.”

Family, Whose Got Em, Who Don’t?

I was recently at a family affair, where people gathered who were related. Some were related by birth, or blood. Some were related by marriage, or law. And some were related by long lasting close friendships. This got me thinking, and of course that’s always a good thing for someone who aims to be a writer. After all we remember that famous saying, “I think, therefore I write.” Alright I changed it, but only after I thought about it.

As I sat there, I looked around and tried to figure out which relationship was the strongest. Strongest, not the longest. It was easy to see those who had been related the longest. They were the seniors at the tables, who were related by birth and blood. Although as I thought about it, some of those who were related by birth, had come close to shedding some of that blood which made them into a group. They didn’t have that show on TV called “Family Feud” for nothing.

I saw those who were related by law or marriage, and realized that if they were together after a number of years their relationship had to be strong. Of course there were those who had already ended their married relationship, but who were still related by birth, and thus could stay at the function even though they had ended the true reason they were there. It was fun to see the youngest members of the related- by-marriage group, with their shiny new rings, and for some shiny new babies. They were both inspirational and cute.

Young marrieds have that special something that gets to the rest of us. Of course in the past, before young people lived together for months or years before they exchanged vows, there was always that fun period when they were just getting used to each other. Back then, at one of these family functions you could see the mother of the new bride whisper to the just minted husband, that his new wife was looking tired and he should get her a cup of coffee, or a caffeinated soft drink before she got past the recovery stage. Or the mother of the new husband would tell his brand new wife, that she should get him to dance and away from the open bar.

Alright, so the previous paragraph would seem to mean that the parent/child relationship was the strongest. But even the bible would tell us that the married couple’s relationship will trump the parent/child one. After all there’s something about “a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” Of course that was before king size beds and a growing divorce rate.  Still it’s rare to find a husband who will stand against his wife and support his mom or dad.

OK so blood and birth may not always produce relationships that stand the test of time. Taking vows may produce a pretty good thing in the beginning, but those relationships also can flounder. So whose left in the relationship game, to claim the prize for the strongest bonding. Yep you guessed it; pals, buddies, friends for so long that they can’t really remember not being together.

The wives sit together watching the old men laughing and drinking and say to each other, “There they go again. Every time those two, or three, get together they always find something to laugh about. I wonder, what it is that they find so funny?” Of course if the wives could hear the husbands talking they would realize that the men are saying, “Look at those women. Every time we have one of these family functions, they sit together and look so serious. I wonder, what they find that is so serious?”

Friendship can trump all the others, because no one can force you to be a friend.  You can see the longtime friends. They don’t care who made the most money, or has the biggest car.  They may not even know whose wife had the biggest ring, or who took the best vacation. They’re just happy to see each other. It could have been five years since they last saw each other, but they pick up their conversation just where they left it. Their hair may be thinning, but not the strength of their bonds.

Next time perhaps we can look at the differences between familial relationships and friendship, among characters in a story.

In The Beginning

Where does the story start? Does it start with a scene? Certainly many TV dramas and crime story’s begin with the crime, or at least one of the crimes that will have to be solved. Perhaps the screen writer wants to lull us into a false sense of security, and so has the opening be a calm scene of small children and puppy dogs playing the back yard. If we are watching a crime drama, we sit there waiting with bated breath, expecting someone to run into the yard and snatch one of the children, or at least a puppy.

Of course if it’s a comedy, we expect that the swing set, the children are playing on, will collapse and the father will come running out to the yard holding a screw in his hand. He will be saying “I knew that this wasn’t just an extra screw.” His wife will follow, yelling that he should have gotten the guy from the store to assemble it. The father will defend his assembly abilities by responding that he could have done it, if the instructions hadn’t been in Chinese. [Side Note #1: If you are reading this in China, change the father’s comments to “I could have done it, if the instructions hadn’t been in American.] [Side note #2; Yes, there really is an American language, that is different from English. Otherwise why do you go to the “bathroom,” while they go to the “loo.”]

A romance drama might have the following scene be the next day, where the swing set is being repaired by the guy from the store. He’s working out in the back yard under a sweltering sun, and has taken off his shirt. The sweat runs down his sculpted chest, as the wife watches from the kitchen window. She’s stirring a pitcher of lemonade, and is planning on how long she will stand there watching him, before she goes out with a glass for him to drink. She brushes the ice cold glass over her perspiring forehead in an attempt to delay, what she hope will be the inevitable meeting of their hands in a meaningful back yard liaison.

Of course if we go back to the comedy version, just as she has cooled her brow, the kids suddenly come home from school and cool her ardor.  Each of the little tikes demands a glass of the lemonade that she was hoping to use in her seduction of the repairman. A quick sigh and she greets the returning horde with “Lemonade, coming up.”

Flip back to the crime drama and the scene changes to the kitchen, empty of all except the near panting mother. Suddenly a hand reaches around from in back of her and a gloved hand covers her mouth. She is being dragged backwards out of the scene. What follows is the police detective interviewing the repairman. The detective is saying, “So you expect me to believe that even though you and the victim were alone, someone snuck in and killed the victim without you hearing a sound. The windows are open and the front door is locked. Did the killer just walk past you working out here, and go into the house without you, or Mrs. Smith noticing?”

Back in comedy land, the repairman is yelling that he can’t finish the job because there’s a screw missing.

The crime drama has the crime scene investigator finding a screw clasped in the hand of the victim.

In the romance drama, the word “screw” has taken on a whole different meaning.

Of course away from the action filled world of TV, or the movies, we might pick up a book. Instead of rushing into the action, the author might give us a detailed description of the woman watching the yard. Her blond hair hanging loosely over her shoulders is blown backward by the slight breeze coming through the trees that shield the backyard. Her upper lip is covered with the dew of anticipation. Of course the repairman is still shirtless, and his chest is still sculpted, as we can tell from the picture on the cover of the book.