Wet rain and blowing here in the Texas hill country.

For Readers and Writers Both

I have made a rough division between two types of fiction. You may like reading one or the other. You may like writing one or the other. Neither type is the ‘right’ one. Neither is better or more intellectually superior than the other, although the current fashion in ‘literary fiction’ is for the first described below. What is vital here, for the writer, is that you have two different toolboxes for the two different kinds of narrative. It is absolutely imperative that a beginning writer understand this.

I hope this helps. I’ll be here all day.

Relationship novels. These are narratives, or stories, about relationships between people. They generally have to be really bad relationships or there’s no story. Love/hate relationships, those of marriages, parents and children, children and their grandparents, people and their bosses, people and their crummy oppressive society (‘nobody understands me’). In general, the purpose of the narrative is to explore human personalities, which also have to be fairly chaotic in order to be interesting.

I am not a fan of these types of stories but many people are and I don’t intend to put them down.  They are often stories about how people are victimized by others. There has to be a fairly elaborate set-up for the main character to remain in a bad relationship. For instance someone taking care of an ageing parent and that ageing parent is a truly wicked and manipulating crone,  people stuck in a bad marriage, or locked into the family firm with a barbarian grandfather dominating his heirs at the Torvald Rubber Works, and so on.

If you are writing this type of novel, then you can’t have many important external events, believe me. Forget the devastating storm, alien invasions, wars, economic collapse, zombies, the living dead, The Rapture, banditry, etc. External events might be there but they take a back seat.

Once external events overtake your characters, you simply have a different sort of story.

Remember this is about fiction.

A good example of the contrast between an action novel and a relationship novel is one that everybody knows; Gone With The Wind. I take it as an example even though it is badly written, still it has the two sorts contained within one work. In the first half, external events (the Civil War) are paramount and account for truly gripping scenes. The love story between Scarlett and Rhett is relegated to the background and even though it is very important it hangs fire while the Confederacy is busy losing the war. The second half of the book, after Scarlett pays the taxes, the narrative calms down and explores the clash of personalities; the war is over and the background has become stable and so then we concentrate on a wretched mix-up in love affairs.

And even then, the novel suffers a let-down. Nothing can match that first half.

And happy riding to me this coming year. Big Bend in February! Many interesting thoughts on the movie Inside Out. Reading a history of the Byzantine empire.  Gray skies,much cold and storm coming, bringing up the horses tomorrow.

The year 2016 stretches out in front of us, may God hold you all in His hand month by month, moment by moment.

I think what a lot of people do on Christmas Day, say toward noon, is seek out some privacy. I suppose I am talking about people with a houseful. At any rate bad weather is coming, maybe actual snow!! and so I have to get in hay because I will bring the horses up to the corral, also unload a bag of oats in the garage so I can take it down to them, and reinforce the flimsy latticework surround on the loafing shed to something more substantial. Work!

To all! And  will get back to writing about writing in a week or sooner.

(photo: solar eclipse 1991 Antonio Turok)

The Accordion Effect

Immediate and as-it-occurs action should be written in short sentences. No subordinate clauses, very few adjectives or adverbs. Keep description of the scene strictly to what the reader needs to know. You should have setup the scene beforehand anyway. Your sentences should be brief. The verbs simple. The tense should be the simple past. I hate it when people try to write action in the present tense. It just doesn’t seem functional to me.

I will give some examples in a moment.

Use the old formula of the five senses; sight, sound, smell, touch and sometimes taste but that depends on what is going on. SHORT SENTENCES. Remember that when people are involved in some critical situation that one of the other of their senses often shut down. Very frightened people often stop hearing anything. They become deaf. I know this from personal observation.

If your hero is not frightened but indeed, on the attack, or a vigorous defense, or desperately trying to manage the tiller on a ship in a storm, their hearing won’t fault out on them but their other senses might. Remember that.  I have read a sea story where a helmsman clinging to the  tiller ‘tastes salt in his mouth’. That’s not likely. The tiller-clinger will likely have a very acute sense of hearing (listening to the tune of the riggings’ howling, listening for orders from the captain, a deep sense of the shift of the desk etc.)  but his mind will likely throw the senses of taste and touch overboard as ‘not needed right now’. So choose which of the five senses is the most important at the time. Which one will add to the plot.

Again, keep your sentences short.

A person in a fight, that is to say, someone trained and willing to fight back, has an intense sense of vision.  Quite often, if they are mad enough, they don’t feel blows or even pain very much until they are incapacitated.  Then they feel it. On the contrary, frightened people shrinking back from an external threat will feel pain intensely and immediately.

Keep your sentences brief and forceful. I can’t say that enough.

Okay, back to the scene and its set-up and unrolling.

Your sentences can be longer and easier and more descriptive previous to the action. Then as danger approaches and becomes manifest, the sentences become shorter and shorter. Then as the danger passes or whatever happens happens, they become longer again. It’s the accordion effect.

Examples; Your hero is on a ship and a storm is approaching. Your sentences here can be long, with subordinate clauses, the description can be careful and even lush (the unrolling edge of the storm, the wind suddenly picking up anything on deck that is loose and skimming it about, concerned looks on the faces of the crew) and your hero more or less inactive, as he is observing it all.

But then it strikes and here your sentences should become short and shorter. I hope your hero does something. Rather than sweat and cry out O No we’re all going to die! A sheet snaps. The ship heels over. Our Hero throws himself up the rigging to grasp at the sails to bend them. He can’t get his hand around a line. A mate comes to help. He can’t see. The wind is driving packets of salt water into his eyes. Things he can’t identify strike him in the chest. (This was set up beforehand with the unnamed objects being blown about the deck). They struggle with the taut line etc. etc.

Never never never include memories or flashbacks in the middle of action. I have read some really stupid groaners. For instance a protagonist is faced with Grungar the Wild Man slavering for his blood and carrying a spiked club. And it was just that kind of spiked club with which the Dominion of Evil soldiers had broken into his house with when he was six years old!  The memory comes back to him full force and he is nearly frozen!

So forget that.

One thing I want to re-state here is that beginning writers often actually think they have a proactive hero or central character when actually they have a passive character shrinking back in fear from external events. Lush descriptions of the characters state of terror does not count as action.  ‘Her heart pounded, her mouth was dry, she could feel her palms drenched in sweat, her hair stood on end’ etc. I have read this so often I have wondered, ‘who is teaching this?’

Writing action. Or, an active and living narrative.

It has been an interesting study for me. The toolbox, or the techniques, involved in writing action, are quite interesting. They are fascinating. They lead to very involved effects. They are not easily handled.

It’s possible that beginners may think that if they have their hero take the bit in his teeth right away, then he’d run through the plot like a thief with your ATM card running through your checking account. There has to be hesitancy, refusal of the Quest, dithering, wondering, internal monologues, flashbacks to childhood, emotional scenes, etc. or everything would come to an end very soon.

Meaning, the writer has not thought out his/her plot.

Plus, if he is not a victim, then is he Evil? For half a century there have been those who questioned, ‘Why do the villains and the evil characters have all the energy?’ The question is posited as if it were an absolute. ‘Why are villains so much more interesting than the main characters?’

They are not, not inevitably.

If you give the Bad Guys all the agency and initiative, then yes, otherwise no.

This is the first post on this matter but if you are a writer and are interested, I would refer you to two of Dickens’ novels. Compare and contrast. Great Expectations and Nicholas Nickleby. (Check out the Wikipedia plot summary if you haven’t time to read them) In GE, the main character Pip is very passive. Pip is dazzled by social prestige, he allows himself to be insulted and trashed by upper-class characters and so on. Maybe I am simply not knowledgeable about the British class system, but why does Pip have to go to Miss Haversham’s and continue to be insulted, month after month? I don’t get it. In NN, the protagonist is active, clever, takes on conflict when it is shoved in his face, never bows out of a fight, and gets the girl, of course.

However Dickens could not avoid action even if he wanted to. Read this; Dickens is describing a lazy day in a quiet square in London. Note the verbs. It is alive, living, charged with animate power. From Barnaby Rudge, Penguin Classics, page 128

    There are, still worse places than The Temple on a sultry day, for basking in the sun, or resting idly in the shade. There is yet a drowsiness in its courts and a dreamy dullness in its trees and gardens; those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing from the tumult of Strand or Fleet Street ‘Who enters here leaves noise behind’. There is the plash of falling water in fair Fountain Curt, and there are yet nooks and corners when dun-haunted students may look down from their dusty garrets on a vagrant ray of sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses and seldom troubled to reflect a passing stranger’s form. …In summer time its pumps suggest to thirsty travelers springs cooler and more sparkling and deeper than other wells and as they trace the spillings of full pitchers on the heated ground they snuff the freshness and, sighing, cast sad looks toward the Thames and think of baths and boats and saunter on, despondent.  

Chicken Kiev for me molasses biscuits and apples and carrots for the equines and Grady may have a bit of the chicken Kiev. Went down and started the long, long process of cutting cedar saplings and other trash growth out of the meadow and lower pasture.

Learning ‘A Christmas Waltz’ on pennywhistle and finally got the bridge on ‘Fool’s Jig’ down pat and learned.

Invaders now at the Croatian border (all young men) are doing stunts to appeal to the liberal media of Europe. Sewing their mouths shut (? why?) and putting duct tape over their mouths — I suppose they’ve seen some kind of protest where protestors taped their own mouths shut —- painting their bodies with HELP US SAVE US. The western nations send millions upon millions in aid to the countries they come from. So it doesn’t make sense.

I am thankful to be a citizen of this country and living in safety so far.

A drizzle today and more coming. The Sabinal is still over the dam at the park, but Little Creek is still not running. We could use this for months!

Susan’s black-and-white paint named Doc, Susan and Megan (the wildlife biologist for the Forest Service) starting in on supper. We ate very well on that trip! So good to have Megan there, she could identify every birdsong, every plant.

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This is my dad, Seaman First Class Robert Leonard Jiles, of the Pacific Fleet, 1944-45. He was at the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and did escort duty on his ship, a DE named the USS Finnegan. He was one of the famous ‘tin can sailors’. He told us his DE (destroyer escort) was called a ‘tin can’ long before I knew the history of these little ships. He said, ‘our purpose was to draw fire, so the big ones could go on’. I thought he was joking.

The Finnegan also did escort duty for the fleet to Saipan and through the Marianas.

About Iwo Jima, he said the ships were lined up all around the island and pounded it without cease for a week to soften it up for the Marines. It didn’t do much good. He said he saw a ship to port get hit in the bow and catch fire and go down. He said you could see sailors streaming over the sides and into the water like ants. The Finnegan ordered nets thrown over the side and my dad went down the nets to help haul sailors out of the sea.

I can’t identify any ships in this old photo of the invasion of Iwo, but that is Mount Suribachi on the left, and enormous amounts of explosion debris.

They also had a kamikaze come at them but it was shot to pieces before it could hit them. My dad was at his post loading a gun and he said flaming pieces of debris were falling all around them. He just kept on loading ammunition.

To tell you the truth I think it was the best time of his life. The Navy doesn’t allow seamen to become alcoholics.

In one of his letters he wrote that when the news of the surrender of Japan came through you could hear men yelling and screaming with joy all around the fleet. He didn’t say where he was (Navy censors).  He said all the sailors threw their hats in the air “and it was like a skillet of popcorn going off”. He also wrote that where he was in port there were impromptu bands of ‘the Brits’ and others on shore walking up and down playing everything they could remember as loud as they could.

The flag above is, I think, the flag that was rescued during the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was from the USS Shaw; she went down with all hands. The story is that a sailor in a whaleboat looking for survivors (there were none) saw it floating and reached out and drew it in with a boat hook.

There were a lot more stories from my dad, but maybe I will write them down some other time.

Happy Veterans Day to all my loved ones who have served! Jim, Nadine, Daniel, Gary Edwards, my brother, Jim Sr., many cousins.

I must order the above book to see if Giles Becker has been writing his interminable dystopia/post-apocalyptic tomes in vain for the past fourteen years. I suspect not.

Note that The Martian, an absolutely terrific book, received no prizes or awards in the recent conventions of sci-fi/fantasy writers. That would be the Hugo award and the Nebula award.

Blogs where this is al being discussed, argued over and fought about are: (the best) John Wright’s blog at scifiwright.com and Voxpopuli and Madgenius.com. among others.

Giles Becker has strongly urged me to read them nd join in. I read them but have not yet joined in.

We have had splendid rains. Ponds are full, April’s lakes at the camp are full, creeks are running, the Sabinal River is over the dam down at the park, and so I hope and pray this seven-year drought is perhaps over…