Author: admin

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.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

It’s a vital point; advice like Orly Konig-Lopez’s Unforgettable Writing: Use all 5 Senses to Add Emotion show how much it can add to a story. What I think it misses is—who’d have thought?—how that single line of advice describes it.

[bctt tweet=”The problem with ‘describe all five senses’ is how it describes the idea. #writing”]

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

[bctt tweet=”All five senses are not created equal. #description #writing”]

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 mixed 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.

[bctt tweet=”Sound #description goes with sight like thunder with lightning. #writing”]

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.

On Google+

 

Flying – Is The Sky The Only Limit?

Power Plays (can we be canny with the uncanny?) – Study 102

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.

[bctt tweet=”#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?

 

 

 

On Google+

 

 

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:

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

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.

Invisibility – the best guide you’ll never see

Power Plays (can we be canny with the uncanny?) – Study 101

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!)
  • darkness–just because they can’t see you doesn’t mean you don’t need some light to watch out for them, and people at night are already paying more attention to sounds as it is, though they may miss visual traces more
  • 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.

If the worst does happen and you have to fight your way out: the more you rush in at someone as if you were an ordinary brawler, the less invisibility is helping you. As long as you slow down and creep around to hit someone from a side he can’t expect, you keep a major advantage–but if you’re in such a tight space or a hurry that you let him guess where you are, it’s not hard for him to hit you just by swinging blindly. Many role-playing game rules get this backward, but in a close fight your biggest invisible advantage isn’t that something as big as your body can dodge, it’s that your fists are too small and fast for him to block what he can’t see. Especially, don’t ever let him grab you or get a gun out… unless you’re tricking him into wasting his bullets shooting in the wrong direction first. Most of all, keep in mind: do you actually need to go through with any fight, or just to shove him away from the exit and move on?

A more important question is, do people know about invisibility at all? If you’re a trained agent infiltrating high-powered threats, both you and they might 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 over to every doorway. But if 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. This might mean neutralizing cameras before they record a door moving, but it can easily escalate to killing any witnesses.

–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.

 

So just how do you get to be invisible, and how does that affect how you can use it? The source might be magic, science, or some variation of these, but the explanation usually comes down to one of three main types:

Total transparency: the classic, from H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man. There’s also H. F. Saint’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man, the book that can “make its readers forget we’re not invisible”–the masterpiece. (Also, ghosts are a form of this–or rather, it’s their lack of physical form that qualifies them.)

The “cloaking field” that warps light all around you is the second type. Examples include the “devices” the Romulan ships introduced to Star Trek, and the Predator movies and many other examples of light-bending stealth suits.

Last, maybe you want to “cloud the mind” like The Shadow, so people can’t quite notice that you’re there. Also a favorite of modern vampire stories and other recent tales.

(One baby-steps variation of these would be ultimate camouflage: a suit (or skin) that changed to exactly match what’s behind you. Or to be honest, match the wall you’ve flattened yourself against; if you move much, or let people look at you from different angles or see open space behind you, no “micro-camera/ chameleon” effect is liable to keep up with all those shifting perspectives. It probably has the same limits as Transparency too, but barely counts as more than regular stealth–except that it’s the one that today’s science IS ACTUALLY BUILDING. It’s in its earliest stages, but promising.)

So which of the main three could you get hold of fastest? If we compare the science, at least, telepathy is the most elegant; some case studies claim it’s already being done, and we all know people who are at least “easy to overlook.” After that, transparency seems more straightforward than bending light (but then again, photonic breakthroughs might be easier than making every kind of body tissue ultra-transparent but still alive). A better measure might be that Transparency is simpler to understand… or just not as convenient.

Think about it:

Transparency’s trademark is usually that only whatever was affected by the chemical, spell, or Quantum Event is invisible–meaning you can’t carry away anything, and invisible theft is suddenly a lot more of a logistics challenge than it looks. Plus, if the effect came from a single event you can’t repeat, you may want to stick to basic spying and escape rather than getting past advanced defenses, stealing complex secrets (anything too detailed to memorize), sabotaging, or assassinating, if you have to do it with mostly your bare hands.

Still, Saint’s hero was a bit luckier: his lab explosion also affected whole rooms of materials, and he even carved out a set of invisible lockpicks, no fool he. Or, story idea: one thing you don’t need tools for is computer hacking, so you peer over someone’s shoulder at their password, then when they’re gone you send the files out and cover your cyber tracks.

So this power might seem better for avoiding trouble than for fighting back–but even there it may have some classic issues out of H.G. Wells. For one, you might only be invisible between meals, once everything you eat has taken the time to dissolve into your unseen stomach again. Besides the sheer uncoolness, daily vulnerable periods like this are the last thing you need if you’re on the run. Worse, if the effect comes from a Wells-like serum in your body, you may have to strip to hide from sight at all. You might want to stay clear of whole latitudes of colder temperature, not that snow underfoot is good for anyone invisible.

A good Cloaking Field will not only keep you fully invisible and wrap around your gear, it should affect some objects you pick up, maybe just a stealth suit having invisible pockets ready. The best Transparency effects might also let you extend the power when you need it, so either way you’re better set up (better equipped? better suited?) for more serious raids and robberies. Except for one thing:

That is, a cloaking or a flexible transparency power are so much more complex, they’re more likely to be unstable, or at least using up their power faster. This might be the nastiest kind of challenge: the rule of thumb to working invisibly is to pick your way carefully around obstacles, but now the longer you take the more you risk the spell wearing off or the suit shorting out in the midst of your enemies! So before you get too enamored of “full-feature stealth suits,” be sure you know how far they’ve developed in correcting this weakness, or whether you have the skill to get in and out before you start pushing your luck. Even the magical invisibility cloaks of Harry Potter’s world are expected to wear out quickly. (Of course, basic transparency treatments may wear off too, but all things being equal that simpler effect ought to last longer.)

In the other hand, those stable Transparent invisibilities are the only kind that run much risk of being permanent. If you have enemies you simply have to stop or no other way to escape them, this might be a necessary sacrifice–but it’s more likely it might happen to you by accident, say from the classic mad scientist mistake of rushing your invisibility experiments into testing before you understand them. Studying Wells and Saint are, again, your best guides to surviving the result: either disguising yourself with a headful of bandages or living in total secret, worrying about who might force you to spy for them, and dealing with the constant temptation to take over the world yourself.

(Both Transparency and the Field also have to deal with one other weakness: by making light go through or around you, they could leave you blind. (George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards anthologies had a villain, Fadeout, who usually left his eyes visible to see.) Most proper forms of invisibility will be working as hard to keep your sight functional as to hide you in the first place–for instance, by letting your eyes catch and read infrared light, provided it’s the IR that hits them so exactly that no made-visible light escapes to give you away.)

Psychic invisibility would be different from all these, completely hiding you at will, as well as being in its way the easiest to devise. Naturally if you’re born with the talent or the right vampire bites you, the biggest breakthrough is done; if not, solving its science or magic may still be simpler than for the other methods.

Another advantage is that by working directly on people’s minds, it may give more complete stealth than simply being unseen. The stronger the power is, the less you have to worry about your footsteps or other giveaways, and you might even keep people from noticing the doors you’re opening.

But mind-clouding can be more unstable than a Cloak, for several reasons. First, maintaining the effect may take concentration, so instead of breaking down for its own reasons it’s liable to give way because you’re at the moment you need it most–say when a guard suddenly comes around a corner, you’re focused on what you’ve just discovered, or having all your worst enemies in the room wears at your nerves.

Second, instead of affecting light itself, it has to deal with your observers’ willpower, and probably how unobtrusive you’re being. The more powerful an enemy is (or just if you have more of them to fool at once), the more you might want to keep back toward the corner of people’s eyes, especially whenever you’re doing something that could draw attention. You don’t want to make that one noise, let alone try to attack someone, and find that breaking the illusion means that you can’t fool them again.

Also, this is the method that has no effect on machinery; you might walk in and out of a bank unnoticed, but later they’ll see you on the cameras. You could still wear a mask, but what if that itself makes you too conspicuous to hide?

So, think closely about your invisibility’s details, before you start putting it to use. It’s too easy to think “I’m invisible or I’m not, it’s not a question of how fast I could fly,” but some powers will still be stronger than others. A weak power might leave a “shimmer effect” if someone looks closely (even in The Hobbit  Bilbo could be seen by his shadow in daylight, since invisibility was just a minor side effect of what the One Ring was really doing). But a more powerful cloaking field could cover up mudstains or radar blips or even mask the space where rain is splashing off you; thorough transparency might stop mud from sticking to you at all (Saint noticed that it’d have to at least reduce dust clinging to you) or hide you from scent. And a strong telepathic grip would slip less, and you just might make a witness forget he saw you at all–or explore all the other tricks telepathy can do, but that’s a Power Play for another day.

All in all, mental invisibility seems the easiest to achieve, especially if you’re trying to master it out of subtler forces such as psionics or low-magic traditions, but it may be the trickiest to use as much more than ordinary stealth. Light-cloaking is flexible and convenient if you can get it, but most useful for helping you take more on more complex missions, at least if you have the skill to beat any time limit it may have. And classic transparency is still best for the “hardcore” invisible man (or woman) who may need to learn the skill from Square One, but prefers the simple split between what’s invisible and how much isn’t.

Now that you see your choices in how invisibility works… what are your options in using it? (And, readers’ answers to my Invisibility Challenge to find actual non-deceptive uses for it.)

 

 

What would you do with invisibility?

–Yes, many people’s first words would be “Girls’ Locker Room.”

But let’s back up and think just what the power means, and just how many things it can do. What it can’t do is let you move faster, see further, or endure any more trouble, you can only do the same things a human being can do before you disappeared–except it lets you do them unseen.

In other words, what invisibility means is bypassing other people’s influence, defenses, and revenge–instead of giving you power, it makes you immune to their power. In theory.

(In fact, I held a special Invisibility Challenge for readers to think of non-deceptive uses for invisibility. And getting from the usual tricks to those options is such a stretch, I had to put them at the end of this guide, sorry.)

Naturally, the more of that power the world has over you, the better defeating it starts to look. Invisibility can be the tool of choice if you’re a fugitive, though it can’t solve the whole problem over the long term. (For one thing, remember how most Transparent powers might leave out the food you eat or even your clothes, or how Cloak and psychic effects might be unreliable. And you still have to sleep somewhere… the list goes on.)

Even if your old life isn’t over, it may come down to how tired you are of it. You might be living under too many expectations, or being barely noticed already; black author Ralph Ellison found his own meaning for Invisible Man. Or it could be a handy tool to dabble in, to widen your life with an occasional hour’s cutting loose or to learn how the world is different when it can’t see you… and of course it’s a favorite choice for children of all ages.

But are pranks and peeping really all you want?

It isn’t hard to find little injustices or unfairness you could correct. Could you really turn away if you saw a bullied boy needed an unseen “guardian angel”, or a SWAT team struggling to rescue hostages? Think of all the corporate whistles you could blow–or help a recovering alcoholic keep her past buried (like you already covered up how you got hold of invisibility).

You’d look hardest at anything that could be solved by hiding something, or by spying it out. (Stealth often seems like the same advantage as enhanced senses but at a different range; the one needs you to get in closer, while the other’s based on keeping a safe distance.) A full set of your options might be, from arranged simplest to riskiest,

  • spying, just enough to know who to warn about what
  • stealing–maybe like The Hobbit, to take back what had already been stolen
  • whistleblowing
  • blackmail, or using secrets to frame or manipulate enemies
  • sabotage
  • assault, even assassination

–and there’s the classic question: when you’re invisible, what won’t you do?

When the world’s trying to hurt you, or someone else, it’s easy to stick out an invisible foot and trip whoever deserves to be stopped. But where do you stop–maybe at protecting people, or at reversing an injustice, or do you start seeing terrorists that need chasing or politicians that need a reminder of who they serve? Invisibility’s a perfect tool for either visionaries or radicals, who want to change the world… but could you make that succeed?

One of the first lessons about invisibility came from Plato himself, when he wrote that anyone who began using the Ring of Gyges–for any reason–would end up being corrupted by what he did. Wells tells a similar story, although his Invisible Man had the extra isolation of being permanently invisible. And they make a strong case: of all the forms power might take, something this focused on defeating other people’s wishes (and hiding yourself from the consequences) has to be one of the most tempting. The longer you had your invisibility, the more slippery the ways you might see “to do good.” (How tempting is that? It was the first fear Gandalf voiced about himself taking the One Ring, even more than how evil the thing itself was. –In fact, it’s in writing this that I see why the Ring would “choose” invisibility as the first power to offer to its victims…)

In fact, many Wells-inspired stories today tend to make invisibility drive its users insane, which has the added chill of an enemy people can’t see but also can’t try to predict.

And there’s another side to how it can start trouble, that’s the first of several questions I’ll be ending all my Power Plays guides with:

“Hidden Power” variations

We’ve gone through how invisibility, maybe more than any other power, changes based on whether you live in a world that knows it’s out there. When you already can’t be seen, the absolute best thing on top of that would be for nobody to even know to listen for footsteps or set up antimagic and other precautions. But the more your secret gets out…

Disappearing’s attractive to misfits and visionaries, but that’s also close cousin to how it would attract the most ruthless people there are. Could any spy organization or underworld stand knowing you were out there, and not on their side? And the fact that you’re hard to find only turns your loved ones into their leverage against you. (Superheroes may have the right idea with their secret identities, but of course that’s never as easy as in the comics–especially if your invisibility’s permanent and you can’t lie to the investigators face to face.)

Then again, you might have been taught your invisibility because you’re one of their agents yourself. Or you could offer your services to the most trustworthy group you could find, both to open up whole new levels of resources and to have their protection. But people are still people… how long would it take before at least one of your bosses wants to send you on a more “gray” mission, and what will that lead to? And, how fast will they start mistrusting you if you protest, when they know how dangerous you are if you turn against them?

–There’s a reason the “invisibility or flight” question is often answered by whether it’s an ability you can keep secret or not!

Tip: if you do get noticed, one way to stop someone from suspecting what he’s seen (or at least stop others from believing him) could be to pretend to be a ghost.

Worldwide Scale variations

What if every king or president has time to get the secrets of invisibility, at least for one or two of his best spies? The absolute best case might be a “whistleblower’s world,” where all authorities thought twice about any dealings they didn’t want to explain. More likely invisibility might be a very personal ultimate weapon, a Mutually Assured Destruction where no leader dared to be the first to send his shadow assassin after another leader… except, how can they know any death or accident wasn’t an invisible ninja at work, and how long would the truce hold? No, as an invisible agent you’d be in great demand.

Most likely every important building would have security against it, from dogs to invisibility-jamming fields. But how effective they are would depend on how clever you are, how much of the power’s potential you’d developed–and just how rare invisible agents were, if it meant not so many buildings were protected.

Story idea: your one cause as an invisible hero is to prevent the world’s greatest peril–other people mastering invisibility.

Story idea: a VIP is killed and you get the blame, because until now you’ve been the only one with the power.

Or, all it takes is one invisible killer to panic a city, if what he wants is public terror.

Life Lessons

Like any power, invisibility can change your life. Even after you’ve put the cloak away for the day, how would walking unseen change how you look at the world?

Of course the first thing you’d have learned from surviving your invisible outings would be self-control. After a few times waiting out and dodging around people to make it to the exit again, you’d be on your way to having a calmness in crisis that the toughest soldier would envy. You would know in your bones what’s worth struggling for, how much is just a distraction–and you’d face more and more problems knowing only the one matters.

More than that, you’d develop your creativity. You’d be learning to see how average people live and think–usually so you could outwit them, but every time you had to predict a guard’s rounds or how to convince him the safe he’s guarding hasn’t been opened, you’d see more about the “boxes” people think in. While your friends are still guided by “we just don’t do that,” you’d know how different a plan could get by demanding help or showing up early, or at least that stepping over those lines isn’t as dangerous a gamble as the crowd assumes.

Then again, sometimes it is. Operating invisibly would teach you to look for small risks but avoid most large ones, because this supposed “perfect consequence-dodging power” is instead making you more aware of how one footstep can change the night, or a rumor can change the world.

(Or, consider one last example: ghosts. A ghost might be the ultimate example of an invisible person who’s been a victim, and in fact they’re only holding onto this world because they’re driven to undo something in it. But look at the irony: they’re usually shown as struggling to be more visible and asking other people to right their wrongs, not to hold back and secretly fix it all themselves; see movies The Sixth Sense and Ghost.)

Most of all, invisibility shows you how much power anyone can have over other people, but all of that often makes them turn their own power against you. And so using it might make you more and more reluctant to trust yourself to others, when you know how much you can do without or in spite of them–or maybe one mistake will complete that isolation in a minute. Or perhaps, invisibility could teach you to value the friends you have, because you know how quickly you could lose them, and also how many small, inventive, or determined acts from you can change their own lives.

If you learn to see them.

 

Invisibility Challenge ideas:

When I asked readers to think of a use for invisibility that wasn’t a form of deception, I never thought of some of the answers I’d get. Such as this one:

help move set pieces in play w/o people seeing you for the performance

Clever. And it reminds me of the story that the black “ninja suit” evolved from Asian theater where stage hands wore total black as a signal that they weren’t there as characters. They had such a tradition of walking amid the action that the first time one pulled out a sword and “killed” a character, it must have looked like death really had struck from thin air.

Or this one:

Was thinking, what say you could control which parts of your body you could make invisible. So go stand in front of a mirror and make the front part of your face invisible and you could see through to the skull and brain. You could diagnose your own skull fractures and brain bleeds. It’d be better than an X-ray!

The most inventive I got, though, is

Invisibility can be a cooling system since the sunlight can’t be absorbed by the body. It could be useful in a desert, for example. It is also a nice protection against laser weapons (or sun based magic). Casting invisibility on your opponent will turn him blind since the vision is based on absorption of radiation by the receptors of the retina. Actually it can be quite applicable as X-ray vision – turning invisible any obstacles in front of you.

Now those are some brilliant (or is it brilliance-bypassing?) thoughts. Turn the power’s classic beginning weakness into a direct, blinding attack? Use it to X-ray anything you can affect? Or, keeping an invisibility cloak to laugh at the worst of the desert sun? Maybe some peaceful tribe never even thought of it as a weapon…

Excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do. So,

Move along. Nothing to see here.

 

 

 

On Google+

 

 

Book Blitz: Shadowed Is Everywhere!

It’s here!

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.

Shadowed Blitz Banner
I’m listening right now. What will you say?

(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.)

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?

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.

 

 

On Google+

 

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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Quiet Scene or Boring Scene? What can make the difference

We call them “character moments” or “pacing breaks” when we write them, or “boring scenes” when somebody else tries and fails. We know the story isn’t complete if it’s all twists and suspense, but making the slower “day in the life” moments work is harder than it looks. Still, I’ve found there’s one tool that does a lot to make those slower scenes more appealing.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

The first step is to be sure why the scene needs to be there. It’s easy to say “there have to be slow moments,” but a writer–and then a reader–ought to be able to put a finger right on which fact, characterization, or lull or shift of mood a scene is contributing to the story’s sequence. That is, why this moment with the character’s family is a different and better one to show than the home scene he probably had yesterday, and how much room the overall pacing has for them.

The basics matter too. The more you know the character and the issues, and the more you’ve established about them so you can show what small ways this scene changes them–and the reader’s primed to care about those–the easier it is to pull off a quiet scene. Then again, you’ve still got full control over how much has gone by “off camera” before the moment you start the scene, how soon you can end it, and how much you can summarize or “blur forward” to cover a time faster; you’re looking for the right moments and the ideal pace(s) to cover them without wasting space. Or maybe the quiet scene does double service because it’s also the one that’s interrupted by something important, or has it developing in the background.

But most of all, I like to write quiet scenes with the same thing that makes active scenes work: focus. That is, even when the hero isn’t fighting for his life, I still focus on what he wants, right now.

To take the classic example, say the scene’s a typical morning at work. But making it interesting means putting yourself a little more into that character’s shoes.

If you enjoy your work, the scene could just be about being in your element. You’re tending your bar, flying your jet–or writing your blog–and each thing that comes up is just something you can handle, simple and satisfying. Or a variation could be, the work is ordinary or petty, but it barely matters because the people around make the day fun.

Or maybe it isn’t going so well: sometimes work’s just a grind or a case of working through sizzling heat, surly crowds, or even Murphy’s Law kicking each time you’re about to fix the last thing. This time you just want to get through the day, coping with each moment but the real fight is to keep your temper down and a few of your hopes up, and any bright spot there or moment of weakness probably means more than the facts themselves.

Or, the challenges may not be quite so minor or so implacable. If you’ve got one customer that’s hard to please or a chance to impress your boss, coping with that makes the scene develop twists and a scramble of trying one thing and then the next, the same as the major scenes the story’s really about.

Then there’s the other side to scenes like this: besides what’s going on now, what happened last night or before then that’s on your mind, or what are you worrying or planning or hoping is coming soon? A date, an injury, a visit with your family, or Something Odd that you’re so sure won’t mean anything more…

Those are some of the points a quiet scene might make. The first approach shows a happy character with something to lose, while the second’s displeasure might make him someone who needs a change or is likely to see it get even worse. The third intensifies how it could go either way, and it puts more emphasis on a win or a loss and on how the character tries to solve problems, plus anything in the mix that may be part of the larger story. The fourth pairs the one scene with other happenings (and if anything important’s been going on, it should be on his mind) and opens up all kinds of contrasts between them.

But it’s all easier to write when you take a closer look at what the character wants just then–token or specific challenges, or managing his reaction to them, and/or other thoughts. Because whatever those are, right now it’s what changes and arcs those go through that are filling the character’s world. Even if there isn’t much at stake now, doing justice to the struggle for it–by the same rules as the larger plots–is what makes the scene both fun on its own and adding that moment of comfort or stress or whatever it is to the story.

I’ll come back to something I said earlier, and put it a bit differently now: be sure the scene has something new to say. However much you like the character’s moments at work or how he is with his girl, only add scenes where you can put some twist on what you’ve already shown, and keep to that part of it. Does this date have an incident that’s really cute enough to make this the scene to show? Is his time with his father lingering on the things they haven’t quite said before, and letting the scene end at that? Use the “Tarzan Test,” that there’s something more in the mix and that the scope of that mix defines what the tale has become–it’s either large changes or seeing why the small ones are at least a little important for the moment.

Small or not, it’s those steps that make a story more interesting than just looking at random strangers. What someone’s life is, a story lays it down one piece at a time, and it’s the changes and contrasts between them that we want to see. If our hero isn’t charging across the globe saving the world right now… we just need a stronger magnifying glass to see what he is doing.

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Dialog, Plot, and a bit of Spock — Layers brought to life

Dialogue might be the most powerful tool a writer has. It’s absolutely the easiest one to lead in any direction you want, and yet… Just by keeping track of what pieces the story’s built from and what the character’s own viewpoint is, a writer just might find a line that plays several points off each other all at once, in such a bold combination the reader’s completely hooked. Just look at these lines, from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, between Saavik and Mr. Spock after meeting Captain Kirk (okay, it was Admiral Kirk at the time):

“He’s never what I expected… He seems so human.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Saavik.”

How much work do these lines do?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Well, let’s say you’re a viewer who knows nothing about Star Trek (a real stretch, I know) except that the two seem to be aliens because you notice their pointed ears (hmm, maybe a bigger stretch). That and you’ve just seen Kirk sweep in as the officer who’s inspecting Spock and Saavik’s ship. Even if you somehow don’t know the rest of the Trek story, it still captures a whole range of points:

  1. Kirk is Important, or famous, enough that Saavik has expectations about him. Enough expectations that she bothers to talk about them in the middle of an inspection, when she could have stuck to business.
  2.  Kirk isn’t what Saavik expected (laying the foundation for him surprising any number of other people too–not a bad thing to keep in mind for Kirk).
  3. Saavik’s concerned about “humanness,” out of all the things she might predict or notice about a person–
  4. and from Spock’s reply we see she wasn’t mentioning humanness to compliment it.
  5. Spock isn’t so impressed with humanity either, the two aliens agree on that in theory–
  6. but at the same time Spock is more tolerant of it, or at least of Kirk.

Six points, all leading up to how Spock’s respect for Kirk trumps all the rest. (In fact there’s a seventh point, since most viewers actually would know Spock and Kirk are longtime friends: the fact that Saavik dares to say this about her superior’s friend reminds us that even Vulcans military officers don’t let human respect keep them quiet, at least among themselves.) If this were a new universe it would be a magnificent bit of multipurpose exposition; in a franchise like Star Trek it puts the audience on notice that this writer gets the characters and the story’s only going to make better use of them from here on. Not too shabby.

In fact, this isn’t just a dialog point. It applies to any kind of characterization, and that means it can inform the whole plot of a story: how does a character really see a situation, and what’s he going to do there besides the obvious? Turn and salute the enemy he’s just viciously wiped out? Be the only person in the room who doesn’t believe the evidence, and so change the whole course of what happens next while the reader stops to think “Wait, I guess she would be the one who can’t accept it yet…”

One key to finding those openings might be to look at the story in terms of differences within its elements. What or who doesn’t fit with who, what’s grown stronger than what, who wants one thing and who wants something else, what options or tools have just stopped working–and where does a character stand on these? (“Differences,” of course, are another way to say “conflict” or at least the fun stuff that gets a reader’s attention.)

With the Saavik/Spock exchange, the gaps it points out are between Kirk’s achievements and his very human nature, comparing that with how she (as a Vulcan) sees that as odd and unsettling, all against how Spock–although he partly agrees–still has that tolerance for it. That’s a lot of bases to touch, about history and one man’s individuality, two different cultures, and Spock in turn bridging between them.

So, how many pieces is your story built from? And how many different things can you compare to each other, by finding the right character and the right moment to show a few of those differences all at once–or just the one that the reader will never forget?

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Writing Travel Scenes: What to Keep Moving

Do you ever notice how often “the hero’s journey” isn’t just a metaphor? Travel’s a huge part of many stories, sometimes long days or weeks on the road, sometimes brief hops that still get wedged so close into the characters’ real moments they seem like they deserve a place in the story. But there’s always that question: how much do you write up, or do you show it at all?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

More than anything I’d call this a pacing question, and check that against a writer’s overall style. Some periods just need to take more time–it could almost be a paradox of:

  • if none of the real plot has started yet, skip forward to when it has
  • but when the plot’s just underway, then show more of the journey
  • once things are moving toward high gear, skip to the good stuff
  • and then when the important scene’s near, once again show the approach to it

–Not very helpful, is it? But the pacing theory is that there’s an ideal plot distance away from the more important scenes, not so far that it’s no longer worth showing and not so close the reader’s gotten too eager to rush on, and that’s the sweet spot to take some time in. That is, once you decide which are the more important scenes and what makes other moments just how far away from them. One writer’s cut-to-the-chase’s-warmup is another’s favorite time to pause and say goodbye to how things were.

Part of that’s each writer’s own style. The more you use description and mood overall, the odder it’s going to look if you skip ahead… unless part of your pattern is skipping ahead, because you writer fewer but richer scenes. It all gets mixed together to decide which side of pacing a moment is.

(Another point: one way to give a sense of time passing without showing any of it is to show something else, or rather someone else. So if the story has multiple viewpoints, momentarily shifting to a different one for gives some weight to that passing time, even without the specifics of a villain’s schemes or a mentor’s trust or whatever contrast works with what’s going on now.)

Still, there’s no lack of options for what might fill up the travel time you want to show, to just the degree you want to show it:

Description of course. A lot of travel is having so much time to take in the scenery… and also get acquainted with how hard the seat is, how welcome the meals are, and other points that might not seem as exciting but do plenty to put the reader right in the characters’ place there.

Characterization, using dialog and other tools (and thoughts) to advance our knowledge of the characters, and the characters’ connection to each other– the classic Road Movie claims to be more about bonding with the other folks in the car than anything on the way.

News and clues, any updates on anything that matters, from broadcasts about the killer on the loose to moments the gas tank seems to be a lot emptier than it was before. Even a small hint or reminder can keep a bit of suspense building.

Progressions, whatever people are doing as they go. Remember Luke getting that lightsaber lesson on the way to Alderaan, and achieving his “first step into a larger universe?” Look for anything interesting that’s underway meanwhile.

(Of course, one common progression is the growing sense that they’re on the wrong road, or need to rest or otherwise change their plans…)

and then, Events. There are always small (or not so small) complications or shifts where what the people try to go past–or who’s going past them–step in and break up the pattern. They might be using a scene to make a point that could have been through general description or other methods, or it could the start of a genuine subplot or a taste of what’s up ahead.

A travel sequence could be a few words of “By the time they cleared the forest, he never wanted to smell sap again.” Or it could be pages or chapters, about either the journey itself or the writer’s wish list of how many things could be established or worked out on the way. But those are a few of the choices.

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If your scenes look too similar… try the Tarzan Test

It’s one of the nastiest problems in writing, because it can pop up either because we’re struggling or because we’re getting in the groove: we keep using another of the same kind of similar scenes. Hero and heroine argue, or maybe hero uses his professional skill to work through the problem, or bullets fly… again. I’ve slipped into a few of them more often than I’ll admit, maybe because I’m trying to play to my strengths as a writer or because a given story does call for a lot of a thing. (For some reason gangsters in trouble like shooting people.) So I try to look at my plot through what I call the Tarzan Test, both to keep my scenes distinct and to see if those patterns can be a good thing for what the story is.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

The test goes like this:

  • If Tarzan fights a lion, and then he ever fights another lion, that’s redundant
  • –or not

Check every scene against every other scene. Any two that start looking similar risk boring the reader… unless the writer’s good at making a distinction between them. But at the same time, if you’ve worked out a lot about what makes one lion stronger than another, or why one comedy act works and another fails, using both scenes puts real focus on what makes them each tick. The book I’m working on now, The High Road, has more a number of scenes of the heroes using their discovery to fly over the city, but in some scenes it’s to look for clues about their enemies and in others it’s to cope with the power’s side effects.

Of course, favoring action or conversation or whichever is part of what makes any story what it is, for genre and style and just because of what that tale’s key elements are. (Besides, we writers do have our preferences, and readers do open our books expecting certain things, so we ignore them at our peril.)

But it goes beyond that:

  • If Tarzan fights a lion, then fights a crocodile, the story’s about the jungle
  • If he fights a lion and then a poacher, it’s about the jungle plus who comes there
  • If he fights a lion and then a World War I battle, it’s Tarzan in the larger world

The variety in scenes might do more than anything else to define what the story is. Making only animals the enemy makes a different statement than giving a human a turn as villain, and so does every other choice. There are writers and readers that would love to see Tarzan in something as realistic as the WWI trenches (the period’s about right), and others who think that breaks the fantasy of what the stories should be.

  • If he fights a lion and then talks with Jane…
  • If he fights a lion and then speaks in London about ecology…

Naturally a story is more than one type of scene. But one tale could use only a few types, others could have many… and then, what’s the balance between them? One writer could use a visit to the city as a token excuse for a range of rooftop battles, while another works through dozens of different reactions to bringing him to “civilization.”

I sometimes think of scenes’ variety as dots within a circle. The shape they make might be wide and diverse or tightly clumped, but its overall breadth tells us how many things the story’s about; meanwhile within that given space, having at least some of those points evenly spread out tells a lot about how well it’s being explored.

  • If he fights a lion and dies saving Jane…

What each scene does for the story still means more than how it compares to the other scenes. And those effects are the biggest key for which parts are more different, and more important.

After all, even if you could kill off Tarzan, you could never do it through him saving anyone else. That’s just who he is.

(Update: for more musings on scene variety and ways to check for it, look at Been There Done That?)

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