Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 65

What Ruth Wants

I’m working through Story Genius by Lisa Cron and I thought I’d share some of the process.

Here’s the fifth exercise in the book.

“Write a short paragraph about what your character enters the novel wanting,”

Ruth wants to see Johnnie Magician in stripy pajamas, rattling the bars of his jail cell. Once Ruth takes that kingpin down, it will be a signal to all of the trafficking network from the street enforcers to the crooked politicians to the migrants themselves. Don’t take advantage of people – don’t let them take advantage of you. Carve out a place for yourself in the world so you don’t need anybody any more. Wouldn’t that be nice?

(in case you didn’t know, the book I’m writing is called The Centuries Unlimited)

 

Writing about sugar and colonialism

The alternate-history competition from last week has a winner!

2. Molasses Empire: sugar-fueled Bantu Merchant-Kings colonize the world (5 votes)

Now I have to figure out a story that takes place in this timeline. Any ideas?

Chapter 6 is done!

Chapter 6 of The Centuries Unlimited, bringing us up to 21% completion.

Chapter quote: “Why are you perpetuating a childhood you grew up despising?” — Mona Rodriguez

First line: “I opened my eyes to find myself facing a buffalo skull.”

Next chapter, we finally get to The Centuries Unlimited and do some time travelling!

The Protagonist Before

I’m working through Story Genius by Lisa Cron and I thought I’d share some of the process.

Here’s the fourth exercise in the book.

“Write a thumbnail sketch of who your protagonist is before the novel starts.”

Ruth was about to enter a marriage of convenience before the Time Line arrived and she found out that in canonical history she accomplished nothing and drank herself to death as soon as her daughter turned 18.

Armed with this grim warning, Ruth also armed herself with some down-time weapons and ran away from her fiance, her family, and everyone they sent after her. She became a private investigator and champion for the lower classes of the Station that became Black Chicago.

Ruth tried to stop migration down time and the human trafficking syndicates that grew up around it. She failed. Every year, more people leave Black Chicago and the gangsters become more powerful. Ruth is banging her head against an impossible problem. And when her enemies or her own bad habits finally kill her, she will have accomplished nothing except maybe keeping her conscience clear.

Then a woman walks into her office…

(in case you didn’t know, the book I’m writing is called The Centuries Unlimited)

The Choice of Lady Yu

A girl from a stifling culture gets rescued by the Mongols and finds a place for herself in the Mongol meritocracy, but is self-fulfillment worth killing a third of the population of Eurasia?

American dialect research

Hey does anyone know of a book or database or something that documents the change in American English over the course of the 20th century?

Here’s what I got so far

google n-gram viewer

American Dialect Society

Dictionary of American Regional English

Current Changes in English syntax (pdf)

The OED

The US dialect map 

“What’s your What If?”

I’m working through Story Genius by Lisa Cron and I thought I’d share some of the process.

Here’s the third exercise in the book.

“What’s your What If?”

What if there’s a technology – a time train – that carries you to a world thirty years in the past. It’s not your past, though. You can’t change things there and expect yourself to change. And of course as other tourists from the future interact with the past, it diverges ever more from canonical history. What you can do, though, is meet your parents when they were your age. Or travel forward to meet your adult children.

Ruth hunter has given up on everything but justice. That’s because everything in her life has flown in justice’s face, from society to the police to especially her family. She works alone, well-connected, but friendless, trying to chip away at the suffering and cruelty growing unchecked in her city. Until the teen-aged version of her mother walks into her office.

Emily Gallagher, from up the Time Line, knows that Ruth is her potential daughter and hopes to use that relationship to get Ruth’s help. Emily is looking for her son, a child born two years before Ruth, of whose existence Ruth has been entirely unaware. Worse, Emily’s efforts to track down her son have entangled her with the crime boss who runs Ruth’s city.

Trying to protect Emily, Ruth is forced back into contact with her family, both up and down the Time Line. Trying to rescue her lost baby brother and the hundreds of others like him, Ruth is faced with an impossible choice: her family represents everything that is getting worse about the world, but they are the only people willing to help her improve it.

(in case you didn’t know, the book I’m writing is called The Centuries Unlimited)

Flying Gangster Cars

I’ve been thinking about The Centuries Unlimited’s flying cars.

Black Station split off from canonical history when a bunch of 22nd-century technology was dumped on it in 1929, so it has a Diesel-Punk aesthetic with gangsters and trenchcoats.

I considered plating the bottom of the cars in cavorite and putting a propeller on the back (top picture), but that just looks silly. I might use the design for the Steampunk aesthetic of Knickerbocker Station, but for diesel-punk I’m sticking with my original idea (bottom).

An engine pumps superconducting fluid through a pair of maglev coils, one oriented along the car’s Y-axis, which swings back and forth to steer the car (controlled by a yoke). The other is much larger, oriented along the car’s Z-axis, and provides lift and thrust. Its default position is facing downward (repelling the Earth and thereby pushing the car upward), but it can also rock up and down to change the car’s pitch and therefor forward thrust (it’s controlled by pedals).

The result is something that looks like a gangster car and even controls like one. I will have to make some changes, though, to the way you pilot it. Instead of changing gears, there’s a series of knobs you have to turn to adjust the speed of fluid through the coils. When you go up, you don’t point the nose of the car forward like a plane, you turn the Z-axis coil up to 11 and levitate roof-first. Going forward at great speed, the nose of the car will dip. Steering works like a car (the nose slides sideways) rather than a plane (which can bank). There will be very little friction, so breaking requires thrust (tipping the nose up).

Driving one of these things will probably feel like piloting a motorboat. In three dimensions. On ice. Sound properly greasy and horrifying?

“Why do you care about your story? That’s what it’s about.”

I’m working through Story Genius by Lisa Cron and I thought I’d share some of the process.

Here’s the second exercise in the book.

“Why do you care about your story? That’s what it’s about.”

I care about The Centuries Unlimited because it is rooted in things I think are important and interesting: family relationships, culture clash, and how economics forms the hinge between technology and society.

No, that’s not right. I care about Ruth because she’s wrong and her life would be so much better if she realized it. I care about Emily because she wants to be a good mother and fix the world around her children. Plus there are car chases and explosions.

Lazy-ass Fantasy names

A follow-up to yesterday’s post about lazy vrs. rigorous fantasy names:

You know what bugs me? Fantasy names for things with obvious predecessors. Like fantasy-Japan being called “Naponia” or something. Bleh!

It’s so lazy. Especially when obscuring those predecessors is so easy.

For example, I’m in Starbucks right now, so let me tell you a tale of a hero. A hero named…

Tropp. Tropp Fey from the village of Tamogue in the kingdom of Cauve, ruled by the cruel tyrant Rannelot. But Tropp is special! The power of the ancient K’vii runs through his blood, and with it he can save fair Jeena and perhaps, even the world.

Or perhaps our story comes from the far-off land of Taba in the sea of Tomou. The Hahei clan have usurped the throne and kidnapped the infant emperor Deira. But their vaulting ambitions do not go unopposed! The wise Wein clan gathers its armies to meet the Hahei on the storied field of Bura-wa-shino.

Or even the tragic comedy of Est Rabaques, the impoverished noble who read too many tales of romance, went insane, and declared himself a knight. Accompanied by his sarcastic servant Tejo Maccan, Rabaques rides forth from the town of Ha Véjene on his faithful horse Totullánte, hoping to win the heart of his neighbor, the widow Fara Patina.

Now, can anyone figure out where those names came from?