Ken Hughes's Blog, page 10
May 19, 2014
Writing for Five Senses – Combining Them All
Can you write a description with just sight and hearing? No, but those two can organize how all five senses fit together.
Last week I wrote about the classic advice to “describe all five senses,” and how much easier keeping track of description is if we focus on alternating the main two. But of course writing isn’t supposed to be easy. Having two primary senses doesn’t excuse us from keeping all five in mind to cover a scene, or help weave them together to build the kind of high-powered suspense (or warmth, or humor, or whatever your own goals are) a story deserves.
Except, they do.
Sight and hearing aren’t just a shortcut, they’re models for writing all five senses....
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Two Models
Think about it: what’s the basic difference between eyes and ears? Different writers might think of points like:
Sight organizes our surroundings, with sound giving advance signs before something comes into view. (Or as we action writers call them, warnings.)
Sight gives a complete “picture” of surroundings; sound often adds feeling with someone’s tone of voice, or a noisy object’s “personality.” More poetic writers can savor this.
Sight shows everything (in theory); sound picks out which things are moving or active.
All true, and I think they all come back to one rule for organizing descriptions:
#Describing sight is about things’ positions; hearing is about their nature. bit.ly/5SensesBy2
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When I look out my window right now, I see everything from the parking lot up to the sky—which also means I have to (literally) focus on different parts of the view each moment, and it means that if I don’t see someone walking up to visit me, there’s nobody right there. Hearing is more selective; someone standing beyond my door is hidden until he knocks, and I still won’t know if he’s holding a package or anything else until he (or she) makes another noise with that.
–That position vs nature difference is nothing new to any of us, but how often do we really think about it, as writers? Especially one further effect of it: if there is a sound, my hearing might still pick it up through walls and behind my back, and even when I’m not paying attention. (Say when a car alarm goes off when I’m trying to write…
But sight’s power and limits might lead to me walking over to check what’s off on the side of my window frame.
Of the two, focused sight is the one we keep acting on to get a clearer picture of what we need; sound gets broadcast to us on its own. For a writer looking to follow the moment, that difference is pure gold.
And best of all, the other three senses fit right into these patterns.
Touch is as position- and focused-based as sight, the way we have to reach out to feel anything that hasn’t come to us; it even has the same similarity that we already have a skinload of cold air, tight shoes, and other touches we’re always half-aware of and trying to focus past. And taste only has the range of our tongues, except when memory or “the taste of fear” stir something up.
Meanwhile smell works much like hearing: certain things jump right out at us because they—but only they—give off much scent, and they pour those sensations right into the air.
There may be five senses, but all they follow these two plans… and so does a character using them.
Stepping through the Senses
Since I always look at my writing as a chance to build different kinds of suspense, I think my scenes only work if I can build them in the right order. So if I want to drop a reader deep into one moment, I might describe all five senses at once. But more often, I’ll tie it all to the process of how my character is living through that scene:
Step 1) First outside senses: Is there something he can hear, or smell, before what’s important comes within reach of the focused senses?
A crunch of boots on the snow made him whirl around.
Step 2) Surveying: What can he see, touch, or taste as he first tries to take in what’s there? And, which pieces matter most to him, and what patterns (like barriers or possibilities) do they form in his mind?
One of the thugs staggered from the door, blocking the alley. Dark blood soaked his shirt, but Mark shivered to see the “dead” man’s wild eyes gleam brighter than the knife in his hand.
As part of this, sound/smell components: check which few of those sensations would also create a sound or smell, and how those senses might “demand” a bit of our attention. So instead I could start those lines with:
One of the thugs staggered from the door, scraping dully against the brick wall as he blocked the alley….
Step 3) Act & React (focus+changes): As the scene goes on, keep tracking what the character and everyone else do, the same way as Step 2. That is, use sight, touch, and taste to do their best to follow everything worth noticing, but watch for which things are adding a noise or scent to the mix.
Mark edged back, watching his balance as his heels picked through the treacherous bags of garbage piled behind him. The stink of blood as the killer stumbled closer brought sour vomit to Mark’s mouth.
plus Background: For an extra layer, once and a while is there a sound or smell from outside the immediate area that could filter into the mix?
The police sirens faded in the distance.
—Or if those sirens were to turn around, that “background” sound could restart the cycle as a new Step 1 of the police starting to drive into view. (Even if they don’t, if you know my Lavine series, you know Mark has at least four ways to survive that scene.)
That’s how I build suspense, or poetry or warmth or any other mood, by playing up the differences in the “focused” and “broadcast” senses to work them each in at their own places. Because to me (and I make no apology for saying it)—
Losing that distinction would make no sense.
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May 12, 2014
Writing for Five Senses – Description on the Run
It’s one of the most common writing tips: “Write the scene using all five senses.” But whenever I hear one writer give another that advice, I feel like one of my own trickster characters, and not just the ones with enhanced or extra senses. It’s more that I have to keep my smile in place while inside a part of me will wince.
Sure, it’s an important idea. The problem is—who’d have thought?—how that advice describes it.
Tweet This: The problem with “describe all five senses” is how it describes the idea. #writing http://ctt.ec/f0aGe+
Because… five, seriously?
I think we all cringe a little, at the idea of keeping that many of anything in our minds all at once, at least when we’re doing something as focused as creating an impression out of thin air. For favorite books or grocery lists, five is a small number; for senses to juggle in one description, it’s huge. (Plus, taste? In a chase scene?)
Yes, yes, the tip doesn’t mean every sense needs equal time. But it keeps us thinking about how hard it is to keep track of that many senses in writing, instead of how we could get more of them in by using how they relate to each other.
Quick Check: the Big Two
Tweet This: All five senses are not created equal. #description #writing http://ctt.ec/A2eUb+
We all know which two of the human senses do most of the work in a story. In fact, you can probably divide your scenes into “mostly hearing” (usually dialog) and “mostly sight” (everything else).
—Just don’t stop at that.
It’s the easiest way I know to bring description to life: keep some sounds in with the sights.
Sight being what it is, it’s the main sense we use to organize our surroundings—especially if we’re trying to describe something and have the space to only mention so much. But it’s all too easy to see (there’s that word again) the scene just in terms of the eye.
When my hero was infiltrating an apartment complex in SHADOWED, I could have opened with:
Trimmed trees and brush lined the paths around the buildings, but Paul saw none of the families walking around it now that the sun had set.
Not too shabby, I think; in twenty-six words it shows different pieces of the place and conveys a larger picture, including how Paul has been waiting to make his move.
Except, all of it is that visual “picture.” This is the kind of one-sense writing it’s easy to slip into, that leaves the description a bit flat. So instead I used:
Trimmed trees and brush lined the paths around the buildings, and Paul could hear a baby crying, probably part of one of the families he’d seen walking when the sun had been out.
Six more words, but just having that second sense in there drops the reader into a more real place. You can start imagining how Paul would pass other sounds as he walks in, and you might even be halfway to filling in the hard concrete under his shoes or the fading smell of barbecue, because the description won’t let you settle back into seing the neighborhood as just a painting. Sound goes with sight like, well, thunder with lightning.
Tweet This: Sound #description goes with sight like thunder with lightning. #writing http://ctt.ec/f8aMu+
Naturally this works the other way too: dialog and other sound-focused passages can get the same depth by working in some visuals. A page of pure conversation never feels as complete as a page sprinkled with faces, background images, or a full “walk and talk” of what the characters are doing or passing by as the chat goes on. Imagine how much this line from the next page of SHADOWED would lose if it had stopped with the sound:
“Who are you?” Koenig gasped as he groped for the drawer.
(If you’re a dialog-centered writer, you may have worked out the sight-sound combination starting from this end. Add enough gestures to conversations and you start to see the need for noises in a landscape too.)
Writing would be easier if there were one rule of thumb about this—maybe one sound per paragraph or three sentences of sight and vice versa. But of course the real fun is each of us working out our own mix, and just remembering how much mixing in one other sense fleshes out the moment.
That’s my one-step tip for deepening descriptions. I hope you’ll keep it mind when you read, write, or you come across the flat “use five senses” statement.
Next week I’ll go further into how comparing those two senses can help all five work together in a description, and some of the patterns that can steer pacing and suspense. After all:
You can’t see everywhere.
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February 28, 2014
Flying – Is The Sky The Only Limit?
So you can fly…
Where? Where do you let it take you, just what might have drawn you to that particular superpower or gadget or spell, and what’s out there that might bring you down again?
And–is it worth it? For everyone who’ll gush about the joy of personal flight, you’ll find someone else who warns you this power doesn’t live “up” to its reputation. So let’s take a closer look at how you might really use that ability, and how you might master it if it’s what you need.
First of all, let’s not lie to ourselves: as long as most of our world is the open space over our heads, flight can’t stop being awesome. Having cars never stopped athletes from pushing themselves to run faster, or hikers from searching the countryside for hidden corners. Or stopped anyone from tearing up the road with a Maserati, if we get the chance. And that’s only the start of what flying can do.
But more than that, ask yourself whether you want
to travel a wider world, and search it for just the edge you need
to get the jump on threats–or openings–anywhere, before anyone else can react
to leave your enemies in the dust below you, or chase them down or outmaneuver them
to do it all as a living symbol everyone’s likely to see
(Watch that last one, because one of the great limits of flight is how people will be watching you.)
Choosing Your Wings (a difference of a pinion)
So how do you fly? That is, what opportunities can you find where your world is ready to put someone in the air–or maybe, to show you a form of flight that’s just that precious bit better or more personal than most people already have? And how else are these going to change what you do?
Tech: Jetpacks, rocket sky-sleds, and the like might be the easiest flying to get hold of, if you can make or take a machine that’s even that crucial bit better at keeping flight under your control. (After all, the US military had and rejected a working jetpack in the late 1950s; the classic problem is cramming more than 30 seconds of lightweight fuel into them.) Or if that problem’s already been solved, you might join up with whatever group needs a pilot. This might be the most thorough approach to flight, since engineers are probably already working on whole sets of other gadgets that can go with it, from navigation to weaponry. Still, technological flight usually develops raw speed better than it does that physics-twisting maneuverability you might dream of, and you may regret every machine you didn’t think of in your planning.
Iron Man’s gear is heavy enough to explain all those hard “take a knee” landings for the cameras… but would you want to do them if you weren’t in armor?
Wings: Natural wings may be the most spectacular way to fly, but they also aren’t as simple as they sound; you’ll need more than “just” a strong pair of wings to hold you up. If that’s all you had, one rough formula says you’d need a wingspan of about three times your height just to get off the ground (as in, needing almost a helicopter-pad’s space to land or launch safely, never mind zipping through an open window). More workable wings seem most likely if they get some extra lift from another flight method, or at least an all-around superhuman metabolism to boost them. All in all, this sounds like you’d have to be of a whole species that was meant to fly.
Mount Up: Ride a dragon, a winged horse, or another oversized flying creature. You’ll need to be in a more or less magical environment to find these (unless the beast flies by being a natural balloon), and it may all depend on how well you can tame or befriend your mount–and of course, working with it afterward certainly will. But in many ways, this might be a counterpart to the technological route: the possibility’s likely to be already out there in your world, meaning you could be joining up with people who’ve already learned the art rather than being the first to discover (or rediscover) that it’s possible. The other parallel is that, of course, how much you can do besides fly is a bit different if you’ve got a giant eagle as your partner, rather than an immense, spell-savvy dragon.
Shapechanging: Or maybe instead of flying “like a bird” or on one, you could fly as a bird by changing your shape. This might be the most intensive flying power there is, since you have to master all the complications of rebuilding your whole body, and yet after all that work it becomes less about flight and more about its vast arsenal of other options. For flying itself, becoming a hawk simply won’t give you the really fast speeds, let alone let you carry a friend to safety… unless you then change to a horse. (Although if you can become a dragon in the first place, things do change.)
Raw Power: Master an energy like levitation, riding the wind, or all-around magic. This might be choosing one of a world-full of possibilities: you could track down the flying carpet that’s one of a legendary wizard’s more specialized creations, something that’s just what you need but not as well-guarded as his most powerful legacies. Or if the key to true telekinesis or your own sorcery is within your reach, you can throw yourself into just how much power you could master there, with flight only part of your arsenal.
A Higher Standard
Before you start chasing the wind, stop and think of one thing.
Much as we like to think of flying as almost another word for freedom, we have to think of this as the First Limit of Flying: everyone can see you up there. The two are almost inseparable: flight is the freedom to cross more distance and soar over barriers–otherwise known as passing by more blocks or miles that might be crowded with people, while keeping yourself up away from the walls and hills that normally hide you.
(In other Power Plays studies, more of this would be saved for the Hidden Power and Worldwide Power variations at the guide’s end. But for flight, they can’t be separated from the rest.)
So think of what this means, and how your flight is part of your world.
The longer that power has been out there, the simpler this is for you, or at least the more mapped out. If you’ve won a place in a longstanding Rocket Soldier Corps or Griffin Brigade, the crowds will know what to expect from you; more likely you’ll be dealing with your group’s regulations on how often you can leave your duties to drop in on your family.
But the more you have the sky to yourself, the more of a stir you’re going to make. Think of your own love of flying’s liberation and power, and remember how everyone below you has come out of the same “ten thousand years of being teased by the birds.” Can you keep “Wow, he can go anywhere!” from becoming “Don’t trust him, he could go anywhere!” or “I would have gotten to that burning building, if he’d shared his secret with the rest of us…” Yes you could fly over to impress the girl you just met, but how many people will see you, and will they think it’s a fitting use of your gift?
And it may be worse yet if you’re tapping into a wide but secret tradition of power; there’s a special frustration in being the hidden wizard whose one gift is levitation, and knowing your peers may never let you use it when it’s liable to expose them all. And consider: if your stabilizing a rocket pack or taming a dragon proves that it’s possible to a whole grounded world, are you responsible for every imitator or enemy who starts their own flight project?
(Or just try having wings and not being judged by the standards of an angel–and people may never really stop that judging unless you can grow a lot more feathers. And a beak.)
So before you ever take off, you want to be ready for how your life is going to change. You could try to inspire the world, if you think you can be ready for the public eye at every hour. You could try to keep your flights secret, probably working by night–though even that can start its own rumors about shadows in the sky, or your enemies being “mysteriously attacked out of nowhere.” The simplest answer might well be to split the difference by wearing a mask… as long as nobody ever tracks you back to your other identity.
Then again, flight isn’t a power that works best when you’re too afraid to use it. Many of its best uses come from sizing up an opportunity or danger in an instant (we’ll get to that), and another part of its appeal has always been to the showboat in all of us.
Or as Smallville told its still grounded and camera-shy hero, “People need to look, up in the sky.”
Now that you’ve been warned: let’s take a look at what you can do.
How Wide Is Your Sky?
To put it simply, flying gives you two gifts: speed and altitude.
When we think about flying, it’s never long before we all start saying “How fast?” And think of the difference in having a flight speed that could about keep pace with:
Running– say 13 miles an hour
Birds (average)– 25 mph (or 60 at short bursts)
Cars or simple planes– over 100 mph once you’re clear of traffic
747 jetliners– about 555 mph
the SR-71 spyplane– 2200 mph
Combine that with differences in endurance: the classic 30-second jetpack was mostly limited to hopping a river or reaching one rooftop. But going at 100 mph for hours would give you whole different options than a one-minute sprint of 555 (eight hundred feet a second).
Because… you’re going to be living with that whole new scale of life, and how it changes your world.
For most people, getting around takes some effort; someone might need five minutes to pull together his willingness and his coat to leave the house, knowing how much travel time he’s committing to. But those same five minutes might take you two miles at “bird” speed, well across town–or eight miles as a traffic-free “car,” or forty-five miles as the jetliner flies.
In five minutes.
How would you look at the world, your day, and your whole life the longer you had all that within reach? Without all the “buffer time” getting around, how much would you do each day? Eat breakfast in a new neighborhood or new landmark each day? Search out just the right scientists or artists to give you an edge at… whatever work seems worthy the scale you live in? Shake the hand of every relative you have?
Flying helps you go from anywhere (or above it) to anywhere else, to build on any connection you can between them; instead of distance, what can pull you down are the effects of being seen.
And yet… the longer you’ve held your flying power, the less you may want to avoid trouble. It’s harder to turn away from someone in need who’s across the street, than across town. But what if that crosstown hop was as narrow as a street to you?
Flying gives you the freedom to go anywhere, and all the consequences of how many people see you on the way. But more than that, you can start to feel the responsibility for wherever you don’t go.
So… how can you use flying against an enemy, or for rescues or other uses it opens up?
Air Supremacy
There’s a Second Limit of Flying: it’s the freedom to go somewhere but not to do anything more on arrival. Except… just getting there usually means flying is more than that.
If you fly using telekinesis or a dragon, of course reaching a place quickly is only the start of what you can do. But even if your only asset is the wings on your back, you can take full advantage of what that means.
Imagine:
If it takes only five minutes to rush out to the collapsed cave your friends are trapped in, is it worth making it ten minutes for you to detour and arrive with the one set of tools that could let you save them?
Then again, can they last that full ten minutes? Shouldn’t you be keeping the best gear with you at all times, in case some word of trouble comes in?
In fact, is five minutes enough? Why didn’t you make sure you knew they’d be risking that cave, and take those five minutes’ flight time to get you there before they went in?
–Now you’re thinking like a flyer. Having a world of preparations almost within reach is one of your advantages.
The other edge in that lesson is in how fast you can read a situation. Flying’s also about instinct; if you can spot the moment an opportunity appears, you can swoop in and act before that window closes. Whether it’s winning a battle or reaching a reclusive leader, the faster you can recognize the best moment–and how wide an area you can cross to exploit each one–the more leverage you have over the whole situation.
Part of that is remembering that flight is not only speed, it’s altitude. You’ve got the whole third dimension to manuever in, compared to the people who work their way along the ground; a wall or fence without a roof isn’t even a speed bump to you. And, most of the walls and terrain that limit other people’s views of their environment aren’t even angled to stop you from searching them from above.
So you can arrive at just the right instant… and the reverse, you can wing away the moment things go wrong or you’ve finished what you need, and nobody but other flyers are likely to chase you. (Or if a ground-bound enemy tries to run away, he’s just giving you a chance to show off.)
And you have that same advantage when you’re not looking for trouble. As long as you don’t let your guard down too far, you might flit away from an enemy ambush on just an instant’s warning–then turn around and tail them or counterattack on your own terms. Except for–
The Third Limit of Flying: it’s only as good as the room you have. A rooftop or an open street might as well have an open door above it for you, but dodging through a forest will be more of a challenge… and anywhere indoors will be harder still. (Let alone heading into a basement or cave, where there won’t even be windows out.)
On the other hand, any open space is yours to watch and control; plains, flatlands, or oceans. You have an even greater advantage in rough but still open terrain, where anyone struggling through sand or over rocks might wish they could soar free. And mountains are better still, a three-dimensional playground of surfaces you can rest on or hide things within, that might take other people a lifetime to explore the way you can.
So open space is always what you want, right?
Except…
Here’s a doozie, a Fourth Limit of Flying: they can see you, so they can shoot you.
Flying may let you stay out of arm’s length, but looking down over all those walls and ridges also makes it all the easier for an enemy to send something up after you. Scratch that, it lets every enemy below start filling the sky with bullets or arrows on hopes of a lucky shot. Or worse, they might have an antiaircraft missile, or whatever precise, long-range attack they can build from the same background of power that put you up in the air. If your luck is truly bad they’ll send up their own flyers; if they’re faster and stronger than you, you can’t even cut and run unless you can shake them.
#Flying isn’t easy: Peter Pan dodged pirates; Wendy’s shot out of the sky after 5 minutes in Neverland.
Twice.
One way you might keep control in the air is the same way as to avoid public attention, and the main thing that helped (some) World War II bomber crews survive antiaircraft systems: move by night. Flying lets you pick your goal and take the initiative, so stealth helps you keep that advantage.
But flying at night weakens some of your own advantages too, and turns one completely against you. When you could have spotted your target and picked your moment with ease, now you have to make out what you can by moonlight or what lights people have lit below. (And that’s if you even have enough night-friendly landmarks to find your goal without losing half the night.) Worst of all, using anything like your full speed near ground level could slam you into any outstretched rope or branch that’s there, and the “clothesline” will be the last thing you (might) ever see.
Just how you fly might make all the difference here. If you’re riding something as loud as a rocket or as big as a griffin, you might as well give up on sneaking in close, and instead either stay up high or come in fast. Shapeshifters can sidestep the whole problem, day or night, by going in as an innocuous bird that will have better senses than human anyway. Or any technology or other sensory powers might help you find your way around at night, but if they exist that means the sentries could be using them too…
Still, a daylight raid may be even worse. If you’re careful your enemy might not look up at all… but the more aware they are that they’re fighting a flyer, the more people will be watching all three dimensions with weapons ready, or keeping themselves below trees or indoors (or worse, underground). In fact, beware of any accomplices your enemy has that might get word out ahead of you, unless you’re sure you can outrace that message.
(This might be the final answer to whether flying is better than invisibility: if you have both, you’re pretty well unstoppable! –Although neither power works as well in tight spaces.)
Still, if you choose your battlefield you can catch your enemies outdoors, say as they move from place to place. You can try to keep them on terrain that will slow them and let you rise up to grab a birds-eye view of his movements but swoop behind cover before he can shoot back. In fact, you may never find a better site than a city street: those even rectangular walls are just the thing to look easily down between and then duck below again whenever you want.
(But if they do catch you in open air: fly perpendicular to their line of sight to you, so they have to twist their aim more sharply to follow you–and of course twist some so they can’t simply “lead” you and shoot where you’re going to pass. Often the best move is to dive straight down, for the extra speed and to get you nearer to cover. Depending on how well you know your maneuvering limits, of course.)
Or you could use your mobility to lure them away, then double back to whatever they’re guarding–at least if you can convince them to chase someone they can’t catch. This might mean hiding your wings at first, or convincing them they’ve shot you down; in nature this is actually called the “broken wing trick.” Or even if they can keep up with you, you’re still being the perfect decoy to let your friends slip in instead.
If you do have to penetrate any kind of closed building, you’ve lost most of your options. (Even sneaking in an upper window only gets you so far.) Still, ordinary stealth might be the last thing they’d expect from you, or you can pounce on sentries or find other ways to try to get in before they can react. Always try to stay near windows so you always have your escape route. But if you’re willing to simply destroy a place, it’s far easier to stay up high and drop firebombs, rocks, or anything else from a safe distance.
One last warning: the more you operate against an enemy, the better-protected your own home base has to be–or the more sure you are that nobody recognizes you or follows you home. Without that care, the easiest way for someone to eliminate a flying enemy is to catch him in his sleep. (The same as catching anyone else.)
“Hidden Power” variations
To sum up what’s been said before: flight is a challenge to use often, if you don’t want your world to know powers like it are possible. As usual there’s a real advantage in scouting, escaping, or attacking against someone who hasn’t heard about your tricks, since “nobody every looks up.” But that’s still a mighty cramped use of flight, compared to embracing the fun and freedom of going anywhere. It might be better to let the world know it does have a flyer–though that’s its own burden unless you can conceal that it’s you.
“Worldwide Power” variations
Handy though it would be to be the only one in the sky, flying is simply more practical when people have had more time and other flyers to help them accept the idea. It’s almost the only way to avoid society expecting too much of you, and it helps them work out just how many ways you can be useful.
Even airplanes don’t keep personal flight from having their value. These powers still streamline the process of getting into the air where planes don’t have runways; flyers like you might replace anything from the police who rappel down buildings to the elite bicycle couriers. (And yes, as you pass by you can help cats out of trees.) Some day you’ll be needed for an aerial rescue or as scout for an army; even before then you still have the joy that you’re flying.
Life Lessons
What does it mean to be someone who can fly? You’ll find pressures that could pull you one way, or another.
On one wing is the luxury and peace of knowing there’s no unenclosed place anywhere that you can’t reach… and no place you can’t leave if you need a break. You always know the world is bigger, and you’ll appreciate nature every time you watch the sun rise from above the clouds–or when the weather turns bad enough and grounds you faster than most human forces ever could.
You’ll face off against a touch of arrogance: you can see the world as a vast dome, with most people trapped on the bottom. You might resent the weight of all their eyes on you, and how they all seem to expect something from you, and yet they can’t understand what it’s really like in the air.
Or you might appreciate how every flight can let you meet someone completely new, that makes you throw out whatever you’d taken for granted about humanity… and also how much people are the same no matter where you find them. You could easily find yourself growing protective about all people, everywhere, but haunted by the fear that since you can go anywhere, you’re never doing enough.
Flying makes anything a little more possible, as long as you can reach it through the open air. Once you’ve felt that freedom, you’ll never stop asking yourself:
Where will you go?
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Flying — Is The Sky The Only Limit?
So you can fly…
Where? Where do you let it take you, just what might have drawn you to that one superpower or gadget or spell, and what’s out there that might bring you down again?
And–is it worth it? For everyone who’ll gush about the joy of flight, you’ll find someone else who warns you this power doesn’t live “up” to its reputation. So let’s take a closer look at how you might really use that ability, and how you might master it if it’s what you need.
First of all, let’s not lie to ourselves: as long as most of open space is the air over our heads, flight can’t stop being awesome. Cars never stopped athletes from pushing themselves to run faster, or hikers from exploring hidden corners of the countryside. Or anyone from tearing up the road with a Maserati, if we get the chance. And that’s only the start of what it can do.
As we think about it, we find the first and greatest limit that flying has is: how many people can see you up there. Whether it’s a world-full of grounded people who will never forget your face, or enemies that get a clear shot at you as you swoop in on their fortress, flight constantly has to deal with its own conspicuousness.
It makes all too much sense. Flying is almost another word for freedom, but freedom means choosing our actions and facing what that triggers in the people around us. Throw in how flight works by passing through wider stretches of space with everyone who might be below, and usually by soaring over the barriers that might hide us, and what happens is all the clearer. Before you ever take off, you want to be ready for how your life is going to change.
How Big Is the Sky?
When we think about flying, it’s never long before we all start saying “How fast?” Think of the difference in having a flight speed that could about keep pace with:
Running– say 13 miles an hour, based on records for running a mile
Birds (average)– 25 mph in general, or 60 at short bursts
Cars or simple planes– over 100 mph once you’re clear of traffic
Jetliners– a 747 goes about 555 mph
the SR71 spyplane– 2200 mph
Quite a difference in scale, isn’t there? Another difference is endurance: going at 100 mph for hours would give you whole different options than a one-minute sprint of 555 (eight hundred feet a second).
Still, most forms of flying we’re probably thinking of have a few things in common. They’ll let you breathe and generally handle the stress of the speed they’re known for, or maybe you can grab a good flight suit to cover that. They’ll have some maneuverability, at least being able to drop quickly to lower speeds where you can hover or maneuver like the slower examples above (dodging between buildings at 2200 would be a whole other level of super-reflexes). They’ve got some stealth, making a lot less noise than a jet engine. They let you carry at least one person for a few hundred feet.
–Then again, whatever’s letting you fly will probably alter a few of these. Flying as a hawk won’t help you haul someone down from a cliff; a dragon could carry more but can only maneuver so well, and most aren’t built for stealth; a rocket suit might reach the top speeds but be even clumsier.
Now… think about what that flying would mean. Why do you want it?
–This guide to flight is only starting. Keep watching the skies…
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January 31, 2014
Zero to Heroes
On February 16, I’ll be at Orccon in Los Angeles giving another of my talks on writing. Here’s what I’ll be leading people through:
We’ve all been there. When we just don’t know what a story should be, when there’s just this vague sense of what we’d “like to have written” and no more. The times we might as well have nothing.
–Except, it isn’t nothing, is it? Despite the title up there on the page, we do have the seed of an idea.
That’s all it takes.
Writing’s too full of myths about “inspiration” and “the concept,” that hint that if you don’t get half the story all at once you’ll never get it. Except, they’re all promulgated by–and for–people who’ve never sat down with someone who’s gotten through a story. Please.
Besides, it’s no secret what usually energizes a tale, and ties its pieces together: conflict.
In other words, who’s up against what. And odds are, whatever itch we have to get a story written is going to connect with one of those sides, either the hero or the forces he’s dealing with.
Starting with the Hero?
If you’ve got a sense of your protagonist… is it that you know what he wants? Is he struggling to become a famous wizard, or save his sister from an unnatural plague? There, you start to see what the story needs: a sister, a plague, a way to save her and all the things that can lead to it or go wrong.
Or you might have a more general sense of what he does, not really pinned down as far. A pirate raids ships; a father tries to raise children; a monster-hunter is no good without some-Thing to hunt.
From those, you can look back and see more about how many kinds of people might find themselves in your hero’s shoes. Maybe the protagonist you want is reluctant, dragged into the story by circumstances. Or he’s eager for it, or he’s the calm product of a lifetime of training. So how does that change how he faces a rival or looks for a clue? When does where he came from make him better than the people around him, and how does it trip him up–and, what could make him doubt he’s on the right path? All of those are plots.
…Or the World?
Or you might come into the story search from the outside, instead of the center: maybe you’ve got a sense of what flavor of fun is there but not who’s dealing with it yet. No picture of a Pirate Hero but just that the high seas would be a perfect place for an adventure.
So: what different forces might be in that mix? Raging storms, pirate ships one at a time, or whole navies at war? Is there a sea monster or three (and are they a normal ocean hazard, or did Something Open Up between worlds?), or are you more interested in human struggles? The humans might be marines, explorers, or a Fair Lady with Secrets.
From there you could ask: how many of each could the story have, and how are they different? Is one navy captain more of a backstabber than the one on the next ship, and how do either compare to that lady? Better yet, does one start out trustworthy and change to treacherous, and why?
And the best part? With each combination we look at, we can see different people who might be the hero in the center of it all, and how all that would give him new pressures and possibilities. Imagine focusing the story on a castaway tossed into the middle of that ship… or on the ship’s first mate that the captain hates, or on a captured pirate. Any of those angles would make a very different story from putting our Secretive Lady in the center.
That’s all it takes, just looking for which other pieces of the puzzle could help and hurt which kind of hero. (Or heroine; now I’m starting to wonder what she’s up to…) Look at how they mesh with that center, and each other–fighting, tempting, teaching, befriending or betraying. All that’s left is to pick which combination builds up the best kind of pressure, and who knocks over whose domino first.
And look! now we’re plotting, and making more detailed choices, maybe looking up guides like my Bracketology plan for organizing a storyline. Because when we thought we barely had an idea–
Suddenly the ship has sailed.
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December 12, 2013
Invisibility – the best guide you’ll never see
So you’re invisible.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? You can go anywhere, do anything, and the whole world can’t stop you… or can they?
What would you really have to do to pull this off? How many of us could make it work, and how would it change our lives if we tried using it to its fullest? If you think you’re ready to disappear, let’s start again:
So you’re invisible. What’s the first thing you watch out for?
ROOM SIZE.
Your most basic problem is that any people near might walk right into you. So of course you’ve got to watch them all, spot anyone who might start heading toward you, and steer far enough around them all that never don’t touch you–and that means without you having to duck back so quickly they might hear your footsteps.
So, walls and furniture and such are the enemy, as much as people. Anything that hems you in or shrinks that buffer zone between you and the folks you’re sneaking past.
–That is, if you have to go into buildings. You might want invisibility more as a general way to see life differently, or avoid enemies that are more “trouble on the street” than determined to get into your home. But if you do have more proactive plans like spying on or sabotaging an enemy, that usually leads to someone’s door and on inside.
Those doors, literally, may be what takes up most of your time getting through. At every closed door you see, you’ve got choices to make–do you wait for the moment that nobody would see it “swing open by itself”? And what if nobody’s opened it so far, so you aren’t even sure if there’s someone watching on the other side? Or if you see somebody using that door, do you “tailgate” in at his heels and twist aside before he reaches back to shut it again? it’s one tricky move to pull off, that close behind someone without him hearing a sound.
That’s the kind of decision it means. How nimble are you, or how patient? Can you risk following the right person all the way through to lead you to the files or meeting you’re trying to find, or do you let one of those obstacles make you fall back and then you search out the rest of the way at your own pace?
And there are other hazards, indoors and out:
any kind of crowd, unless it’s thick enough that you can twist by people without them being sure who brushed against them
revolving doors–’nuff said
elevators–people may not notice them “moving on their own,” but you’re taking a real risk that nobody gets into that tiny space after you
security alarms, since they’re usually tied to a door opening or sensors for motion or body heat
streets with any vehicle traffic–you don’t have a prayer of reaching the other side alive until the cars stop for a pedestrian
in fact, it’s hard to invisibly follow anyone once they get to their car. Can’t hail a cab, can’t keep up on foot, but just maybe you’d have time to sneak into the back seat (if nobody gets in!) or trunk. (The car might have alarms, but even someone afraid of invisible enemies can’t take those seriously!)
dogs or other animals–the whole idea of invisibility is such a human-centered one, thinking what matters is to hide from sight, never smell
rain, puddles, dry leaves, anything “soft” you have to push through or walk over that shows your passage or makes noise. Watch the weather reports; any kind of precipitation is bad news.
and the absolute worst thing might be simply
mud. It shows your footprints, keeps showing them after you’ve moved on, and sticks to you to make the invisibility itself useless.
(Story idea: you’re watching one enemy “ranting” to his bosses about hearing invisible footsteps… and then he pulls out a paintball gun.)
Really, any time you enter any kind of enclosed space, you’re risking someone will lock it or start guarding the exits. Stepping through that first doorway is reason enough to be on high alert.
Maybe the biggest question is, do people know about invisibility at all? If you’re a trained agent infiltrating high-powered threats, both you and they are going to be watching every one of these tricks to the fullest. They may not have all these precautions in place yet, but if you make one slip they’ll rush a guard to every doorway. But you’re the first person to ever disappear, you have a whole world of blissful ignorance to play with… although that should make you all the more determined not give your secret away.
–If you aren’t aware of how much of this depends on learning to move softly, you aren’t ready to be invisible yet. Are you willing to take days, weeks, practicing even after you’ve gotten the ring or the suit to work? And even then, just running enough to break a sweat, or using a weak deodorant, could get you caught anyway.
The whole invisible mindset keeps coming back to caution, planning, and self-control. For instance, the classic “Would you want invisibility or flight?” game is sometimes called a choice between being careful and being bold. All in all, burglars, spies, or other people with practice in stealth and patience would get a head start as an invisible man.
(Invisible “man”? It’s the common phrase, but I think women might be better at thinking invisibly, and that lighter body type has to help in moving quietly. On the other hand: story idea, a true trickster of a wizard dares someone to tiptoe around using an invisibility spell he’s tied to a pair of high-heeled shoes.)
Speaking of clothing: tomorrow we can look at the types of invisibility, some famous examples, and how they change your equipment and your options.
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December 9, 2013
Book Blitz: Shadowed Is Everywhere!
In just one more day:
Yes, my “man who does not exist” has been coaxed out of hiding for a day–I don’t have Paul’s paranormal senses, so this is my own chance to hear the whole world talking about our secrets.
And what a chance! If you’ve ever wanted to trade theories about how to use birdseed in a break-in, or what would keep you up late to finish a tale, I hope you’ll weigh in with a comment. For me there’s not much more thrilling than hearing what a reader likes… or better yet, what they would like and aren’t sure anyone’s writing it yet. I’m hoping for a serious earful.
and since one secret always leads to others, this is also your chance to enter to win for one of three $10 Kindle certificates.
See you Wednesday!
(Don’t forget, if you’d like to try your hand at disappearing as well as enhanced senses, there’s another Kindle $10 for the best “non-deceptive use” for invisibility, on my Invisibility Challenge, that will be presented as part of… well, the biggest guide to invisibility you never thought you’d see. Watch for it.)
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November 29, 2013
The Invisibility Challenge
I’m working on a blog post about invisibility powers, and what it might be like to maneuver when the world can’t see you. This is going to be the first of my “Power Plays” series, that’s meant to be the definitive writer’s and reader’s guide to how abilities like this might work.
And as part of that, I’m looking for input on one thing: invisibility has a bad reputation, with everything from Plato’s Ring of Gyges to locker-room jokes… or at best it appeals to tricksters and outsiders. But for the next few weeks I’m offering a $10 Kindle gift certificate to the first person to suggest a use for invisibility that isn’t a form of outwitting people (or animals or the like, sorry).
I’ll include the answers I get in the blog, and if nobody’s able to send a really good suggestion (it’s harder than it looks) I’ll choose the least silly answer.
But I do know one use myself. So, who else who can see it?
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October 19, 2013
No Creatures Needed
(or, anything They can do in, We can do in better)
The darkened sky shifts as the breeze kicks up, switching dry leaves about the roots of the sprawling tree. But–there! Lurking back behind its trunk, where the shadows thicken, crouches…
a zombie?
a vampire?
or is “simply” a man with a knife more thrilling?
Some of my best friends are vampire books, yes, and don’t get me started on the odyssey that is Buffy. A monster can be such a personal way to frame the dangers in a story, whether it’s something we’re supposed to run from, fight, or learn to trust and fight beside. And they each come with their own language of tips and symbolism: you know what the full moon means, or that spotting one modern zombie could mean half the world’s already infected.
Except, a part of me just sees the missed opportunity.
It’s not putting the paranormal in the story that bothers me; I love a good spell. But to put in a completely supernatural creature usually turns into a kind of back-and-fill process. The writer gets the quick thrills of using a known icon, then they usually shift around to show us where this monster’s different from what’s gone before, and how that variation makes the story stronger. But… why start so far back from where the story wants to be?
Doesn’t the word “monster” mean something different, not-human at all?
And, don’t most monster stories really come around to showing us the human side of the creature?
It goes back to the classic Bela Lugosi days, and before. The monsters that stay with us are always the ones that made us feel a little sorry for them, for how they might be horrifying but they’re almost sure to be alone… or else we fear them even more because their evil’s something we see in all of us.
Let’s take an example here. Classic scene: after a night of murders by some unknown threat, a suffering man looks into the mirror and sees…
remnants of werewolf fur fading from his face?
or, his hands covered with innocent blood?
Our first man’s shocked because so much of his life’s been taken out of his control by one bite. Our second scene, it works best if we can follow a whole chain of pressures and mistakes that brought him there and tangle what he can do next–
And that’s what I want to fill up the story with.
The human choices, not the monster’s destiny. If a villain has hypnotic influence, let it have an extra grip on the heroine because he’s offering her revenge on her enemies, not because he’s tasted her blood. Let people struggle and sweat to gain their abilities or dig themselves into their hole, and know they’re still human enough to turn their lives around afterward–if they’re lucky.
Most writers who do this take a step further and don’t use the paranormal at all, of course. Hannibal Lecter didn’t need anything but his wits to get into Clarice’s head, and you can always find fans who say that a “pure” thriller or action story is more intense than one that wants us to accept anything Extra. I can’t argue with the theory.
But, I’ll still be back watching that tree, working out how someone makes those shadows wrap tighter as the people hunt each other, and just who’s on whose side… but for reasons we could all have lived through.
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August 24, 2013
Testing for my Flying Belt
I see superpowered people.
Really. When I look at a skyline, I see the angles Spider-Man would need to swing in through an upper window, if this were a week the artists wanted to do it justice. I know Spidey’s not up there, but to this day I think if I could just get the physics right…
I guess my mother knew she couldn’t change me. Sure, a lot of moms talk about throwing out their kids’ comics; mine certainly did. But she never really followed through with it, just laid down the law that I couldn’t start talking about Spider-Man at the dinner table. And then it was “no D&D,” but by the time I discovered the X-Men, I realized if she hadn’t held the line back then I might never have stopped talking. This is what we call maturity.
(Of course, Jane Hughes had read a few Superman issues herself back in the day.)
These days we talk about how comics, dragons, and all the rest are powering most of Hollywood’s biggest investments–but we still call them “escapism.” There’s no hiding just how obvious the wish-fulfillment is, and how moronic it would be to either leap off a tall building or think real problems could be punched away. Not something you waste a real thought on, right?
So that makes what I do my own kind of secret identity.
It was the X-Men’s smart planning that did it for me, along with Barbara Hambly’s flawless novels of other worlds. More than anything, I look around and I start seeing which way something would have to be.
When Cap gave each of the Avengers a different role in containing the Chitauri in New York, I saw the military sense each move made. (Hey, I’d played out scenes like that in my head–of course if one teammate is big enough and raw enough you let him charge after the biggest threat and just “Smash!”)
I can tell you that every fictional throwing knife is obviously a misspelling of “axe,” the thing you actually can throw. But Jim Butcher did it better, with one line about how clumsy and weak knives are, plus another for how it changes things when you put a vampire’s experience and muscle behind the throw.
I know the real reason Clark spent all the seasons of Smallville not flying was that he wasn’t ready for people to “Look, up in the sky!” Being seen is the usual reason people pass on getting flying when compared to invisibility, but I did work out the best ways to use even that power in secret.
And I keep thinking where different forces might come from, and how each kind of past would change people’s lives. Which psychic powers win which games at Vegas, but then what a person like that might want to do with the money. How many clues Saya went through to learn why her “Blood-Plus” really poisons the monsters. How Frodo and Sam found the courage to just keep plodding on and on through a whole hellish landscape for a home they were sure they’d never see again.
–That’s when I usually crash to earth, and for the same reason as the younger Clark:
No matter how many plot points I can work out, I know they all lead to the same thing, whether the heroism’s fantasy or real. Consequences. Serious change in your life. Sacrifice. And then I’m just another of the readers and writers who didn’t join the army or the Peace Corps, instead I’m driving past each stalled-out car beside the freeway rather than take a moment to pitch in. Every time I hear a man shouting at a woman I know I could walk over, just to remind her there are people who could help… but is it worth it, if the man’s a neighbor who knows where I live? There’s a reason some of my own characters live in hiding.
Buffy Summers, as always, said it best about what it would take to live like that: “It’s hard, it’s painful, and it’s every day.”
It’s the dance most of us do. Half the fun in reading about heroes is trying to work out what could happen next, but another half can be putting the book down and knowing there’s no telepath out there scrubbing blanks in our own memories. Except… except… sometimes, following how to outwit a problem or what to stand for or how it feels to change someone else’s life can come back to you, when you need it most. That’s no secret.
–Oh, those ways to fly without being seen? First, do it at night, and second, curl up in a ball so if anyone sees your silhouette they’ll take it for a bunch of balloons.
Anyway, I’ve got a writers’ meeting tomorrow. And this time if I see a car stalled out by the freeway, I’m going to make sure that while the guy waits for the tow truck I can offer him a snack.
But he’s not getting my comics.
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