E.C. Ambrose's Blog, page 22

Infernal Politics: Dante and the Separation of Church and State

So I am reading up on 14th century Rome, as noted earlier, and also listening to a course on tape about epics, and both have suddenly converged on a curious note:  the Medieval origins of the separation of church and state.

Dante Alighieri

Throughout much of human history, monarchs and religious leaders were strongly linked, and often the same.  Kings had an official role in the church, and religious leaders influenced or controlled political matters.  But Christianity and the Roman Empire had a somewhat different relationship.  Christianity arrived into the Empire, and was ultimately adopted by Constantine (though the old religion persisted in many ways and places).  Through the next few centuries, Church and Empire coexisted, with the Church being given jurisdiction not only over the souls of men, but also over certain territories in Italy as well.

When Charlemagne brought the kingdoms of the area of Germany under his sway and sought to re-establish the Empire, he went to the Pope for support, receiving the crown of Empire from the Pope himself, and beginning to percolate a controversy.  Did the coronation mean that the Pope had the right to proclaim or at least to recognize the Emperor?  And what sort of temporal power did that give him over the earthly lives of men?

Clashes between various popes and various emperors (and would-be emperors) escalated throughout the Middle Ages as they skirmished over who had what power, with the occasional emperor trying to make his own pope, and the pope claiming the right to anoint the emperor.  During my period of interest, this meant Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) Louis IV setting up an anti-pope to do his bidding, being excommunicated by the “real” pope, but still being desperate to be crowned in Rome as a mark of his legitimacy, especially when some of the German electors decided to elect an alternate HRE, Charles IV, who had grown up in the French court, and was likely under French influence.  Now, remember the papacy is actually in France at this time, in Avignon, and HRE Louis was not the only one fearful of a French takeover of both Church and state.

Enter Dante Alighieri, best known for The Divine Comedy.  He also wrote a book called De Monarchia (c. 1312), in which he argued passionately that the Church (as embodied in the Pope) should have no earthly authority whatsoever, but should be the watchdog of men’s souls.  The HRE, on the other hand, was meant to be the just and suitable ruler over the political affairs of men, maintaining peace and presiding over the earthly kingdom.  While both men derived their power from God, they were granted this power for different spheres of influence.  The Pope had been setting himself in relation to earthly monarchs as the king in a feudal structure, i.e., that he granted the powers of those monarchs, rather than keeping to the sphere he had been given.

Naturally, Dante himself had been condemned for heresy and forced to remain in exile–while he was away from Florence attempting to explain to the Pope why the Florentines would not give troops or money to support a papal army.  The new rulers of Florence, sympathetic to the Pope, declared against Dante in his absence:   If he returned home, he would be burned at the stake.

Dante was not alone in his pursuit of the separation of church and state, such notables as William of Occam (himself a monk) and Marsilius of Padua  also wrote on the subject, urging the Pope to back off from his attempts to raise armies, manage lands and engage in earthly politics of any kind.  It’s interesting that these authors come from within the church as well as from the secular world, representing a variety of nations and backgrounds, yet their voices converge upon the same principles, principles that we now consider vital to the just society.

Bilbo Baggins’ Bathrobe: an example of poor world-building

Like many of you, I am excited to see the new film(s) based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  I’ve been following its production from a distance, and was interested to read the Wall Street Journal review of the film that showed up in today’s paper.  However, I found myself utterly stopped by the top image.

If you click through above, you will find it about half-way down the page.  The photo is of Bilbo Baggins standing by a dwarf in the kitchen at Bag End.  But what gets me is his bathrobe.  Yes, I am going to criticize the wardrobe choice of a fictional character–well, actually, of the director and artists who brought the character to life.  You see, Bilbo is wearing a dressing gown made of richly patterned piecework, with a velvet collar and cuffs.  It’s very nice, very attractive–and very wrong.

What is E. C. going on about now, you may ask?  Let me explain.  Bilbo is well-off.  He’s got a huge hobbit hole to himself, with many pantries and wardrobes, all of which seem to be filled.  We know his pedigree, and the fact that his home is coveted by other hobbits.  I’d say he’s upper middle class, at least.  For his area, he’s got to be close to the top of the social order.  But the garment he’s wearing tells us a very confusing story for those interested in material culture as an indicator of wealth and status.

So let’s talk for a moment about quilting.  My mother is a quilter.  Today, this is an expensive hobby in which thousands of (mostly) women purchase small pieces of specially-made fabric and turn them into bedding, wall-hangings, and garments.  It is a display of wealth simply to gather all of those fabrics.  Assembling a pieced fabric takes a lot of time–another display of wealth because it implies the leisure to design and create the fabric.  (Obviously, there are many quilters who are using scraps of fabric and scraps of time and I don’t mean to imply otherwise.)

However, the history of patchwork is a different thing entirely.  It is founded, not in the leisure activity and disposable income of a well-off population, but in the use-every-scrap, recycling required by a scrimping-and-saving approach to materials.  It is called “patchwork” for a reason:  it likely began with simply adding patches of fabric over holes and worn areas to extend the use of garments and bedding.  If you examine the use of cloth as an indicator of wealth, patchwork suggests a parsimonious approach to materials, the intention to preserve the garment for years of use.

The deliberate assembly of small bits of material as an embellishment or full-cloth requires the labor of many hours, probably by women, then as now. It’s hard to research this online because many sites use “quilting” and “patchwork” interchangeably: they’re not, as my mother is fond of pointing out, “quilting” refers to stitching together layers of fabric (as was done to create the padding worn under medieval armor), but the fabric isn’t necessarily pieced together.

Bilbo’s era likely did have the attitude of preservation of materials–there’s no industrialized textile mills to churn out the product, rather every inch of fabric they use is being handwoven by someone.  So they do need to be careful about their usage, and I would not be surprised to see hobbits in general with patched clothing.  Note there is a difference between “patched” and “patchwork.”  But given Bilbo’s social standing and evident wealth, would he wear patches?  Not likely.

Given the distance of the Shire from any discernible port, city or trading company, even a hobbit of means like Bilbo would be somewhat limited in his choices, and his clothing is likely to be locally made.  In spite of that limitation, the bathrobe in question features at least a dozen different kinds of textiles, mostly of very high-status types (velvets, metallics, brocades). Where is this stuff coming from?  It’s not being made in Hobbiton–to whom would the weavers sell the product?  Not Gaffer Gamgee, that’s for sure!

This garment is exactly the kind of thing that pops up in fantasy fiction all the time to defy the reality of the world that the author is trying to create:  it fails to reflect the culture that supposedly created it, or the character who is wearing it.  Consumers of fantasy might not articulate what’s wrong with it, but it creates subliminal expectations of the society and its levels of wealth and technology that distract from the immersive experience we look for in fantasy.

What makes this slip especially disappointing is the very careful attention director Peter Jackson gave to the textiles in “The Lord of the Rings” films, when a weaving studio was employed to create the special weave of the Elven cloaks.  For those films, many garments were produced in two different materials, one coarse and one fine, to reinforce the changes of scale between hobbits and larger folk.

Bilbo does have leisure time–he has no employment that we know of–so maybe he is a closet quilter himself who has carefully saved pieces of all of his favorite fine garments as they wear out, then lovingly arranged them to make himself this robe, which he would never wear in public, but enjoys in the privacy and modesty of his own home.

In the spirit of Christmas, I have come up with an alternate explanation:  Bilbo has a weaver-girlfriend who works for the elves and saved all their scraps to make him this robe.

Drowning in the Seas of Knowledge: Social Media World-building

This has been my week to make a stab at getting my act together on-line.  The end of the year is approaching fast, I’d hate to miss out on my resolutions.  So now my blog has widgets, my Facebook page actually exists, and I still need to figure out why Goodreads isn’t showing up properly (or maybe this is just me, ’cause my computer is antique).

I’ve also been looking behind the scenes.  I’ve noted that I feel like a noob in the social media realm.  Now I have all of these dashboards and statistics to scrutinize, not to mention new systems to learn and integrate into my already busy schedule.  But the process is not unlike world-building for a book.

I start out with some basic knowledge, maybe an idea I want to play with.  So I started with a bunch of general knowledge about England during the Medieval period, and was able to generate characters, plot, twists and settings for a whole book that way.  As needed, I researched specific areas where I needed to know more, to refine what I had written, to understand the material better and make the character stronger.  So far, so good.  Now, the series is expanding into areas where my basic knowledge is pretty slim.  Less stuff to bounce around, collide and transform into concrete scenes that will carry the book forward.

Social media is the same thing.  There’s a surface level at which I know enough to get along.  I can tweet, post on Facebook, write up a Goodreads review and even send it over here without much trouble.  But in order to use this stuff better, I need to know more.  I need to understand the dashboards and widgets, just the way I need to understand the politics of Medieval Rome if I’m going to write about it effectively.

I find Guelphs and Ghibellines, widgets and dashboards equally arcane and suddenly essential.  And in both cases, I have the same problem:  I have no patience with my own ignorance.  I want to already know exactly what I need so I can just leap right in.  Doesn’t work.  My brain is not plug-and-play, no matter how hard I try.

Any advice on how to shorten one’s learning curve?  Or perhaps, to learn to accept it?  In the meantime, I shall endeavor to keep my head above water.

Saints Alive!

Newsweek magazine this week had a squib (a short article) about the politics of making saints, and in particular, the making of American saints.  Apparently, they’re still waiting on second miracles from folks like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul.

Saintly relic

The idea of making saints seems rather quaint in this day and age, perhaps because it depends upon a belief in miracles.  Popes are encouraged to hold back and not make very many saints, to preserve that special allure.  The last thing you want is for a saint to be demoted, like poor Saint Barbara, if someone supplies evidence that one of the miracles was invalid.

In order for a holy individual to make it all the way to sainthood, he or she must first be recognized for some great works or devotion.  Such a person might earn the title “Venerable”.  After that, if a miracle or vision is associated with him or her after death, the process moves up to “beatified”–the stage at which both Teresa and John Paul are stalled. In order to make it all the way, and be acknowledged as dwelling in Heaven, two genuine posthumous miracles must be associated with the deceased.

I was intrigued by the fact that the miracles must be posthumous.  What if the holy individual was associated with miraculous healing prior to death?  Apparently such miracles are considered to be an intervention of God through that person, rather than an effect of his or her own holiness.  Nowadays, it must be proven that the recipient of the miracle was actually sick, and was cured through interaction with the proposed saint:  prayers, visits to the gravesite, etc.

In many areas, holy people were venerated shortly after death, with chapels, churches, cults and offerings made in their name based on a local reputation for holiness and healing.  Local priests and bishops might encourage this practice because it brought fame, pilgrims, and possibly patrons who gave money to support the nascent cult.  During the early Middle Ages, the Church started to crack down on local saints, with papal legates trying to either convince locals that their saint wasn’t valid, or to submit the claims to the Church at Rome to be examined.

In modern times, the Church seems a bit squeamish about the issue of sainthood.  Like those local clerics, they like the fame and fortune arising from declarations of holiness, but they must be careful about the presentation of miracles in a scientifically-minded world.  Then, too, the last few centuries have discouraged the display and veneration of relics to quite the same degree they had been before, especially in America.  American Catholics may be excited about new possible American saints, but they may also feel reticent to embrace the ancient practice of sending bits of the dead out to churches, and almost nobody carries their own reliquaries any more.  (Which makes me think of an idea for a story. . . which is what I’m all about!)

Three-act Structure Eureka!

Okay, I’ve heard about the three-act structure for quite some time, from a variety of sources, and had it sketched out for me in at least one workshop.  Quite frankly, it didn’t seem all that relevant.  But I finally picked up a copy of Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat:  the Last Screen-writing Book you’ll Ever Need (on the advice of Mercedes Lackey, among others), and found a more coherent breakdown of what the structure means–and discovered something interesting.

Snyder offers a Beat Sheet, which not only includes the three act structure, but also the main beats in between, followed by a description of each and his rules for when they must occur (yeah, “must”–he’s pretty firm about this stuff).  His version is, of course, for the standard 110 page screenplay, but I’m writing novels about 120,000 words, so I wanted to translate his story proportions into my medium.  This is what I came up with:

 

act descriptor
Beat number
Beat name
Description
Page number


Thesis:
1
Opening Image
sets the tone for the work, shows the hero “before”
 


The
2
Theme stated
by another character to the hero
21


World
3
set-up
6 things that must be fixed (trouble with “before”)
 


Before
4
Catalyst
forces the hero to change
52


 
5
Debate
how/why to change, asks a question, answered by pt. 6
 


 
6
Break to act 2
hero chooses a new course
108


Antithesis:
7
B-story
the love story that carries the theme
130


The
8
Fun and Games
set pieces that display the premise
 


World
9
Midpoint
all appears lost or won (opposite of pt. 11)
240


Inverted
10
Bad Guys Close in
 
 


 
11
All is Lost
Worse off than at the start
326


 
12
Dark Night of the Soul
 


Synthesis:
13
Break to act 3
Hero dusts himself off to fight back
370


Two worlds
14
finale
 
 


combine
15
Final Image
 
480

So I’m going to poke around with this tool and see what it can do for me.  But the thing that jumped out at me right away was that Act 2 entry point, at about 108 pages.  See, it’s long been my experience that a book will stall out at about page 100.  Pretty much every time. Why?  Because that’s when you’re done laying the foundation.  You’ve got all the actors on stage, set the scene, sparked the conflict–now you have to work with all the elements you’ve already established.  The hero must step forward from the world “before,” the world you likely put a lot of work into, and across the boundary to discover what it really means.

It’s the moment when your Mom says you’ve got plenty of toys already–now you have to play with the ones you’ve got.  If you’re persistent, have already given yourself lots of cool toys to play with (and don’t spend a lot of time moping around), you will find a way forward.  But many books, at this stage, are simply done.  And, if you credit Blake Snyder, that’s because you have to embark into Act 2.

After making this observation, linking the three-act structure to what I’ve already noticed about fiction, I’m curious to see what else I can learn–for instance, by looking at the entire series through this new lens.  It’s also part of an on-going effort on my part to be more deliberate about what I do and how I do it.  Once more unto the breach!

 

Great Characters of the Middle Ages: Cola di Rienzo

Part of the fun of researching other times and places is discovering fascinating people who have, for one reason or another, failed to rise to the attention of the wider public, even those with some interest in the milieu.  “Great Characters of the Middle Ages” will be an occasional feature of this blog, in hopes of revealing some of these extraordinary people and spreading their stories.

Today’s unsung hero is the son of an innkeeper and a washerwoman, who led a popular revolution and, for a few short months, made himself Tribune of Rome.  Born around 1313, the young Niccolo delighted in rambles through the countryside of Italy, exploring the numerous ruins of earlier days.  He seems to have been a bright young man, who learned to read Latin and enjoyed translating the inscriptions he discovered on his journeys.

His talents did not go unnoted, and he became a notary, and was eventually dispatched as part of a delegation from Rome trying to convince the popes to return from Avignon.  At the time, Rome was a dangerous place, torn between two factions ruled by powerful barons–hence the papacy’s departure in the first place.  Pope Clement VI was so impressed by Cola that he made him a member of his court and sent him back to Rome in 1344.  Also in Avignon, Cola met famous Italian ex-pat, Petrarch, another who wished to see the Eternal City returned to her former glory.  They exchanged letters for years, while Petrarch used his influence with the Pope to encourage a return to Italy.

Cola spent the next few years building support and striving to improve his city.  Finally, on May 19, 1347, he sent heralds to announce him and lead the people of Rome to a great meeting where he declared a new republic.  The barons, initially caught by surprise, fought back–but the level of popular support for the movement surprised them as well, and the Colonna family army was expelled from the city.

At first, all was well.  Cola, a brilliant orator and visionary, effectively rallied the populace to their civic duty.  Then, he seems to have taken his new role a bit too much to heart.  He wanted to unite all of Italy in this new Republic–and started to defy the Pope’s secular authority, in spite of the Pope’s support.  Between Spring and Autumn of 1347, he went from a vibrant, popular leader, to a self-aggrandizing madman who bathed in the Emperor Constantine’s baptismal font and executed dogs named for the barons who conspired against him.  Even Petrarch fretted over the fate of the once-promising rebellion.

Finally, the Pope lent his own considerable support to the Colonna family to return, and the weary, confused citizens of Rome were more than willing to step aside.  A pitched battle was fought on November 20, an apparent victory for Cola, but one which gave him no respite, for Pope Clement VI declared him a criminal and a heretic, issuing a call for his arrest.  On December 15, 1347, Cola fled Rome seeking refuge first with his allies in Naples, then hiding in a mountain monastery for two years.

That sounds like an ignominious end, however, his tumultuous life in the public eye was not yet over.  Cola left Italy for the protection of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in Prague, only to be imprisoned there for a year, then sent to Avignon in chains.  In a trial presided over by three cardinals, Cola was condemned to death–but the sentence was not carried out.  He languished in prison, despite Petrarch’s pleas for his release–until Clement was succeeded by Pope Innocent VI who wanted to shake up the powers in Italy.

Returned to Rome, once again as a papal ambassador, and with the acquisition of mercenary troops, Cola entered Rome in August, 1354 and resumed his former title.  Alas, this reign lasted only until October, when his rash execution of a captive soldier inflamed the populace against him.  He was dragged from his palace and stabbed to death.

Racism and the Problem of the Hybrid Hero

It has been said that there are really only two plots:  A stranger comes to town, and someone leaves home.  What I want to look at today is the first one, the stranger–but not just any stranger, the stranger who rises to lead the town.

This concept of the outsider who enters an established community and becomes its leader is very popular.  I think it stems from a variety of attractive ideas, as well as real-life experiences.  Two things typically happen to the new guy, whether he’s new in school or new to a job which already has its own corporate culture, office politics, and ingrained structure.  The first thing is, he’s a rube.  He knows nothing, makes a fool of himself by running afoul of the unwritten rules everyone else knows,  and is utterly humiliated.

But the second thing is (and this is especially true in a work environment) that he shakes up the culture with new ideas and insights.  He’s likely to immediately see the solutions to problems that have been bugging the home team for months.  Why?  Because he brings a new perspective.  Precisely because he is not indoctrinated into the culture, he is able to see its potential shortcomings and offer a vision that may overcome them.

Okay, so what does this have to do with racism, who is the hybrid hero, and what’s the problem anyway?  Members of minority groups used to the imposition of outside control likely already know the answers to these questions.  The hybrid hero is the outsider who has a special relationship with the insiders:  he is the lost king who appears from the wilderness to claim the crown, the mystic born in another culture meant to lead in this one, the white man who is able to negotiate between the tribe and the dominant culture.  Are you starting to see the problem?

The moment a hybrid hero appears, one who bridges some gap between the cultures, there are some who perceive his presence as inherently racist.  Why does the subculture *need* an outsider?  Why are they seen as too ignorant or too innocent or too inept to lead themselves out of whatever the conflict is?  These questions lead to anger on behalf of the subculture, whether they are the orcs of Morgan Howell’s “Queen of the Orcs” fantasy series, or the Na’vi in Avatar.  The basic question is, why do we need saving?  And if we do, why do we need *you* (the outsider) to do it?

On the one hand, I can understand the outcry about this trope of the outsider-savior.  The idea that any given group is not able to save itself can be offensive.

On the other hand. . .if you look at the use of the outsider hero in a broader literary sense, you’ll find he crops up all over the place.  Luke Skywalker is a talented outsider who shows up to save the day for the Rebellion.  Aragorn is an intruder who claims the city where the Stewards have ruled for centuries.  We, as readers, seem to like them.  We respond to the idea that a society set in its ways may require a stranger as a catalyst to achieve a new level of success.  The problem arises the further apart the two cultures become.

The hybrid hero–the one who fuses two disparate cultures–is a special class of stranger because the two cultures are very distinct and separate (in fantasy, often represented as different races, as in Queen of the Orcs).  The hybrid not only has the insight of the stranger, but possesses some peculiarity that gives him or her the ability to understand and relate to both cultures, to mediate between them.  The result in the plot might be a war-leader who expels the other outsiders, a negotiator who finds the middle ground that allows the societies to co-exist, or even a failed ambassador who ends up assimilated to the subculture as they move even further from the strangers.

The hybrid hero compels our interest because he or she is like us, giving the reader a way to relate to the subculture, and also has secret knowledge.  He becomes the translator between an exciting, unusual people we want to know more about and the more ordinary language of home.  She fuses the two poles of the newcomer by both making the mistakes we fear we would, and also providing the insights we hope we would, an inherently engaging start for a fictional character:  already rife with potential conflicts as she tries to reconcile the two sides of her nature, to navigate the unfamiliar subculture and overcome their resistance to change, and to reveal the truth about that subculture to the dominant one in the hopes of creating a new understanding.

This hybrid character is the hero more or less by default:  crafting a compelling narrative for our readers requires that the most interesting person be center-stage, that the person with the most to lose is the one we want to follow, that the reader is drawn to trouble, and the hybrid hero is inherently troublesome.

Far from being racist, the impulse behind the creation of the hybrid hero is an attempt to bring two cultures closer together, to reveal them to each other, and, in particular, to display the truths and spirit of the subculture in a way that excites and engages a distant reader.  Is there a way to craft a hybrid hero who will appeal to the dominant culture readership and serve as their avatar in the subculture, while not offending minority readership?  I’d love to know your thoughts!

Writer’s Blech

Over the weekend, I had a chance to talk with a writer-friend about one of the problems we all seem to face:  the moment we realize the work-in-progress (WIP) is, in fact, crap.  I think there is at least one of those moments in every WIP, and perhaps tracking the number and magnitude of the conviction that the work is crap would result in a useful crap-index, and, at some very high number, cause the author to actually discard it this time around.

The nice thing about this conviction is that we usually get over it, to a greater or lesser extent.  Orson Scott Card has gone so far as to say that the successful writer can hold two ideas simultaneously in mind:  1. the WIP is absolutely brilliant, and 2. the WIP is absolute crap.  He argues that the first will keep you excited about it, while the second keeps you striving harder to improve it.

But what often happens is that these two beliefs slide apart, so at times you believe in your own genius, and at times, you want to throw your computer off a cliff and go to work at McDonald’s.  The conviction of crapiness can also lead to a more intermediate state I think of as “Writer’s Blech.”  In Writer’s Block (which I believe is mostly mythical) you can’t think what to write next.  If you suffer from Writer’s Blech, on the other hand, you know what’s meant to happen, what you’re meant to write, but you just don’t see the point in carrying on with this drivel.  Why simply pile on crap?

The short answer is, it’s fertilizer.  Sometimes, rolling up your sleeves and going to work even when the WIP seems to stink to high heaven will lead to the discovery of something new and exciting about it.  Sometimes, the ongoing collision of ideas as you try to work through this bit results in a much stronger scene.  And sometimes, you keep on writing–without revising, without changing the plan, thinking you will make it better at some later date–only to find that the section is actually quite good and the crap was all in your head, a manifestation of the writer constantly feeling that he’s an impostor, not worth reading at all.

Writer’s Blech is an invitation to dig deeper and stretch further, and, above all else, to have faith in yourself and in your vision.  You know what you need to do, so go do it!

It was a Dark and Stormy Night. . .

Those of us in the Northeast are bracing right now for the “storm of the century” (yep, another one), and thinking about that old saw on New England Weather, if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute.  Me, I am afraid of losing power, especially in the midst of such a productive writing period.  I’m doing my blog a little early, in case I can’t do it later.

Weather is one of those things that is important in the lives of many, and yet writers tend to hit the extremes:  either we ignore it completely, because it’s not inherently interesting, or we transform it into Prospero’s tempest, a whirling monster created of our will to drive plot events the direction we want them to go.

It’s time to take a more balanced approach.  We must move beyond either the cliched foreboding of wind and rain, or the utter blankness of an ordinary day, and allow the weather into our worlds in a coherent, believable way. Some authors, like Tony Hillerman, are accused of delivering weather reports at the start of every scene. It’s nice to show the weather, but not in a scripted fashion. It should be allowed to influence action and to establish mood, but perhaps in ways more subtle than a thunderclap. I am aware that I fall victim to this myself, giving my historical London somewhat less drizzle than it was likely to have.  However, I am striving to do better.

I am also informed by the historical experience of soldiers during the first World War, who often had to fight the mud as well as the enemy.  That’s the kind of gritty, real-world experience that I want my characters to undergo, and I think my reader can invest in.  Fictional weather should be allowed all of the breadth it possesses in our own lives:  a sunny break can lift spirits, even if you’re travelling to Mount Doom, a dreary Autumn can dictate fashion choices for the ladies of court.  And I’m willing to permit the occasional thunderstorm or blistering drought that enhances the characters’ predicament

However, as fantasy writers, we sometimes have the ability to manipulate the weather more directly through magic and other arcane influences. One of my favorites is Douglas Adams’s hapless rain god character, Rob McKenna, in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish who can prove that it’s rained on him every day of his life.  Eventually, he makes a good living being paid by resorts to stay away.  Weather magic, applied for humorous effect. There are a number of works about magical control over the weather, and I wonder if fantasy writers indulge in a little wish-fulfillment when they give someone this power we all so often long for.

Next time you enter a scene, consider the weather.  What sort of weather is likely in your place and time?  What sort would make the scene more rich and can it be used judiciously instead of becoming overbearing?  Finally, if your characters have any influence over the weather, when and why do they choose to apply it–and what consequences does that have for others?

Let me conclude with another of my favorite weather quotes, “Everybody’s always talking about the weather–but nobody ever does anything about it!”  One cool thing about fiction, and fantasy, is that we can.

Review: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Anyone interested in survival of either body or spirit should read this book! This is the story of an Olympic runner who ends up in the WWII equivalent of the air force. His plane fails and crashlands in the sea, leaving three survivors sharing two rubber rafts in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

What I loved about this book is the extraordinary resourcefulness of the protagonist, Louis–even more striking because we’re talking about a real guy. From the minute he survives the wreck, he is always thinking about how to survive a little bit longer, finding advantages in their meager supplies and developing systems to enable him and his companions to live through another day in these extreme circumstances. I don’t want to detail all of it here: really, you should read the book.

Hillenbrand does a marvelous job of segueing between the story she’s telling and the historical background information you need in order to both understand the story and place it in context. Historical novelists and fantasy writers take note! Too much backstory is an easy way to kill the momentum of a book. The advice is to include the backstory only–and exactly–when the reader wants to know.

So Hillenbrand can take you from the scene in the air–a riveting bombing raid over Japanese territory–to the story behind the airplanes they fly, what makes them work, and what makes them fail. How does she do this? Because the reader now needs to know. The events of the story make the historical details compelling. Those details will add up to significant moments in the lives of characters she has already gotten us to care about. I may need to read this one again to absorb the lessons she can teach.

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