The Marketplace of Technique: Open to All

Bringing up alliteration reminds me of a phenomenon for which I've never seen a name...so I'll give it one. I'll call it "end-to-end alliteration." I refer to phrases in which the last sound in one word is the same as the first sound in the next word.

Whenever I write, I try to choose my words in such a way that the sentences would flow smoothly if spoken aloud. End-to-end alliteration chokes off that smooth phonetic flow, or perhaps I should say blurs it. Try reading this sentence aloud, with every word pronounced distinctly:

"Sam Morrison knows several ladies: Cindy, Yolanda, Aretha and Doris."

If I had to convey the exact information in the above sentence, it would not be hard to reduce the end-to-end alliteration, just by changing the order in which those ladies are named.
 
I wasn't sure where to put this...

5 DEC 2007:

It was the reports on this forum of new Narnian books being planned that got me hopeful of doing something with my "Tigers" novel; so I wrote to Douglas Gresham about it. This morning I received his reply, as follows. (Where he says "such material," he means new Narnian stories.)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I have no idea where that assumption has come from (you are by no
means the first). The idea was mooted by HarperCollins a few years
back, but the decision was finally made firm that no more Narnia
books were ever to be published other than very simple books for
very young children, picture books and the like.

Regrettably for legal reasons I am not allowed to even read such
material. Sorry.

Blessings,

Doug
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This does NOT mean that I do not intend to finish my story here. At least this forum will have the answer to where the Calormenes came from!

Joseph Ravitts
 
Joseph,

The problem stems from charges and countercharges of plagiarism that have plagued the issuance of several important books.

There was a long running battle between Lord Baden-Powell who wrote "Scouting for Boys" and Ernest T. Seton who wrote "Woodcraft Indians" over who inspired whom. It turned rather bitter. The judgment of history is that over the years both benefitted from the other's work.

People will send in story ideas which get rejected and then shortly thereafter a movie or book comes out with similar ideas. The spurned artist charges that the idea was "stolen" and there you have it. The court gets involved and things get nasty.

A standard defence against that is the all out REJECTION of fan fiction. As long as they can prove they never read your work, you can't say they stole it. Sorry, we live in a litigacious world.

My own Byron on Wells stories could probably sell pretty good if I would revise it to remove a few references to Narnia here and there and set it in England. I refuse to do this on the grounds of conscience. I wrote those stories to honor CS Lewis, the Chronicles, and the fans. However there are a number of young authors with ideas that might sell someday who just as easily might remove a paragraph here and change a place name there and have a totally original work. If the situations and characters are not uniquely Narnian there is no reason not to do this. Unless, as I say, you wrote the work for the particular purpose of honoring Narnia or CS Lewis, in which case that would be crass and mercinary.

Ravitts' TIGERS story is so wrapped up in Narnia that it would be imposible for him to "cross over", but I want him...and YOU...to always remember that what you learn from writing ANYTHING benefits EVERYTHING.
 
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Sorry to double post but this letter offers stylistic, not legal, advice. The topic change demanded new ink.

The hard part in graduating from fanfic to original is that you have to build your world from scratch. When you say "White Witch" or "Jadis" everyone already knows why she's wicked, what she can do to you, and what to expect from her. If you invent the Lady of the Green Mantle or the Westwood Warlock, you have to build that yourself. It's harder to do, but definitely worth it. You will grow as an artist.

The trick is to pick some sort of boundary between our world and the fantasy world that is believable and hits people on some sort of emotional level.

Let me suggest one. You find a spooky looking swimming hole. You're alone. You jump in and try to reach the bottom. Instead of touching rock, you feel yourself being PULLED DOWN as if you were FLOATING UP. Then suddenly you break through the surface. You're UPRIGHT. You're looking around at the shore and it's a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PLACE.

You may even want to give it a bit of a twist to make it more mysterious. There is a blue light from the depths. When you get to the "surface" you realize it's THE SKY.

And where is it? Why not be a cave explorer who finds it in an underground room? Or for that matter why not have it in the woods ON A PARTICULAR NIGHT when all the planets are in alignment or some strange set of circumstances is met?

And if you find your way back, the entrance is only there when that set of circumstances is met again. So you wait a year...or YEARS...and maybe they want to build a housing tract there and you buy the land and you face legal challenges but hold on...and then they kick you off the land a day or two before....and you sneak in. Then police shine a spotlight. You run. There it is...you jump in...swim...the BLUE LIGHT...AH, HOME AGAIN IN FANTASY LAND! The police think you must have drowned...they never find the body. Of course not, you're alive.

All dynamited, gone...houses all around. They offer it as a bit of fine country living...all the time not realizing that what made the land truly attractive is diverted through drainage pipes and sealed under concrete, gravel, and "modern conveniences in a pastoral setting."
 
My sincere thanks, John, on behalf of all those who needed the advice. Your presence on this forum is a blessing to all. I don't think I ever told you, but in my case I turned TO fanfic FROM a long prior history of entirely original writing. I have had at least eight magazine articles and one short sci-fi story published (though the latter was not paid for, it was in a writers' society publication). I have completed two adult fantasy novels and one children's book, still unpublished, dagnabbit. I am also a recorded singer; the admittedly-not-very-famous album I did in Nashville thirty years ago with Kevin S. Johnson, called "Knights of the Lord's Table," has been seen as a collector's item on E-Bay. I've been writing online religious and political columns ever since Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. I used to do a comic strip called "Critters" for my college newspaper; and much later, while I was in the Navy, I drew and wrote a comic strip in Russian, "The New Adventures of Ilya Muromets," which was used as a training aid for Russian linguists in some units of the Army as well as the Navy. During my submarine sailing days, I created an onboard magazine for my shipmates' enjoyment, called "Squid Ink," featuring humorous articles and artwork.

The only reason I was so presumptious as to contact Mr. Gresham was that I have been in personal correspondence with him for about eleven years. Early in that period, he shipped to me from Ireland a volume of the complete Chronicles of Narnia as translated into Russian, asking me to verify that the translation was close enough to the original. Reading through all seven, I found some discrepancies--including, oddly, two changes of gender: both Strawberry/Fledge and Tash were made female--but none so great that Mr. Gresham considered them as ruining the books. And he later complimented me on my article defending his stepfather against Philip Pullman's attacks.
 
Moving along to something else

Early in the history of American science fiction, a phenomenon cropped up which may be worth a few lines, even if it is not one of the common experiences of writers in this forum. It is called "Gee whiz" writing, after a gentle phrase for moments of amazement which was in use back when the parents of us Flintstone types were young. (Sci-fi IS that old.)

Imagine that you are driving an automobile. Not that big a deal; autos are a normal part of our lives. But if a pre-Columbian Inca from the Peru of a thousand years ago were transported through time to meet you and you gave him a ride in your car, he would be astonished. Thus, for anyone writing a story about you and the Inca, it would make a great difference to the mood whether the ride in the car was described from the Inca's viewpoint or from yours. If you, the modern person, were described as being the one astonished at the very existence of automobiles, the author would be making a major mistake.

Early science fiction writers wrote countless novels and short stories about future societies in which spaceships were almost as commonplace as automobiles are for us. But in the desire to make the _reader_ feel what a fantastic thing space travel would be, these authors got confused about who, IN the story, was and wasn't an Inca. That is, the writers would create characters who were part of the spaceship-using society...but then they would have those characters act as wonderstruck by spaceships as if they were NOT accustomed to them. "As Cliff Cosmos boarded his rocketship for the five hundredth time, he marvelled at the _stupefying_ thought that this rocketship was going to carry him into OUTER SPACE!!!" This is what sci-fi editors came to call "Gee whiz" writing.

If I were to write a Narnia fanfic set in the period when the Pevensie children lived as adults in the Narnian world...if my story took place, say, just one year before they returned to Earth and childhood, meaning that the four of them had all had quite a few years to become accustomed to all of Narnia's wonders...then it would be "Gee whiz" writing if I depicted the adult Susan meeting a Centaur, and said she was amazed at this creature WHO HAD A HUMAN TORSO ATOP A HORSE'S BODY!!!!!

You can write stories that amaze the READER; but if you are looking inside the mind of a character, and that character is one who should be familiar with whatever is going on, be careful not to confuse the character's state of mind with the state of mind you want to evoke in the reader.
 
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That is a good point. It is also interesting if you notice the things early sci-fi authors chose to emphasize about future life. For example, some of them seemed to assume that by now, people would all be flying everywhere. On the other hand, they often ignored the common, everyday changes that would have taken place. A story written in the '50's and set in 3007 might have the slang expressions of the 50's prevalent throughout it. Which tends to 'date' the story. So it can be difficult to allow for/predict all likely changes when writing a sci-fi story. On the other hand, those same 'dating' characteristics make the story more likeable to the audience of the day. What do you think is a good balance?


On another note, I missed the alliteration discussion...but I'd just like to throw in my quick two cents now. I think alliteration is a powerful technique as long as it isn't overused. Then it just becomes ludicrous. But a good example of alliteration can be found in Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (which is all the more impressive since he managed to use alliteration in a TRANSLATION from Old English, I think)
 
SO glad to have you back, L-of-L!

Let me answer your question (about having elements familiar to the reader) by example.

Have you ever seen the series "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe? it takes place much farther into the future than most sci-fi authors venture. It shows an era in which mankind has gone to many other solar systems and met other races--some members of which in turn have come to live on Earth, or Urth as it is spelled in the books. With such wide colonial distribution, there is little danger of the human race being destroyed altogether while the universe endures; but there is doubt about whether Urth will remain inhabitable, because our Sun is using up its hydrogen faster than science expected. Severian, the philosophical swordsman-hero of the series (yep, the author manages to make swordplay seem plausible in a high-tech universe), gradually obtains clues to a way in which our Sun could be regenerated--hence the series title.

I told you all that to tell you this. With a story taking place in A.D. 200,000 or whatever, it would be ridiculous (unless explained by divine intervention) to have any institutions of _our_ -present culture still surviving in a recognizable form. But on the other hand, if the future society had _nothing_ we could identify with, we'd get the feeling, "Why even bother to say that these are human beings?" Mr. Wolfe accordingly managed a compromise: no intact survivals of our institutions, but scattered hints of the past. For instance, Severian's sword has the name "Terminus Est," Latin for "This Is The End." Showing a Latin phrase at all is a link to the past, amid all the really, really strange things that happen in these novels.
 
Interesting. I never read that... One book (which I actually never finished) that appears to make a good bridge between 'now and then' is L. Ron Hubbard's 'Battlefield Earth.' I may be mis-remembering, but there are shards and hints of history of the present time - seen in the book AS historical - that link the book setting to now. Like I said, I never finished reading it, but all the same....

(Thank you, I'm glad to BE back! Had to get my schoolwork caught up.)
 
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Tackling the touchiness of parody

The following is my recent attempt to write a far-out-in-left-field parody and yet NOT insult Aslan. I wrote it as a column in my online series called "Empowered For Freedom." To understand it, you have to know that Keanu Reeves made a weird fantasy film called "Constantine," which was a mix of "The Matrix," "The Exorcist," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Dogma" and "Spawn." Tilda Swinton, incidentally, was in "Constantine." Here I was trying to symbolize the superiority of genuinely Christian fantasy to fantasy that merely borrows bits of Christian imagery as it pleases. Note that the only reason I depict the Keanu Reeves character as cursing (bleeped out) is because his character in the movie DID talk that way. This will be distaseful to some, but I give you my word that my intention was to convey a hint of what it's like when God redeems our minds and our imagination.

--------------------------------------------------------------

A SATIRE INVOLVING CHRIST, BUT NOT MOCKING CHRIST

(funny how some people can't see the difference)


It was a thrilling movie fight scene.

Wielding a nunchaku made out of two gold candlesticks from
a cathedral altar, kung-fu exorcist John Constanstink fiercely
battled the swarm of telemarketer demons which had sprung out
of a phonebooth and his own cellphone to attack him. "In the
name of the %\\+$=&#!! Father, the %\\+$=&#!! Son, and the
%\\+$=&#!! Holy Spirit, I'm gonna %\\+$=&#!! all of your
%\\+$=&#!!!!" he shouted, smashing them down left and right.

But no matter how many demons he killed, more and more
came at him. Their merciless chant of "Refinance! Refinance!"
was wearing away his will to fight.

Just when all seemed lost, Constanstink heard a burst of
orchestra music, far more uplifting, bright and hopeful than
anything that had been on the grim soundtrack up to this point.
Rising above the orchestra came a thunderous roar; and then,
out of a sudden blaze of multicolored light, a gigantic Lion came
leaping forth. In what seemed a single, impossibly agile motion,
the Lion slashed His claws through the whole army of demons,
exploding them into ashes like movie vampires getting staked.

Gasping with both relief and amazement, Constanstink
panted, "Who the %\\+$=&#!! are You?"

"Would you believe, Someone Who's come to clean up
your dialogue?" replied the Lion. "Actually, not to pussyfoot
around--" the Lion glanced at His paws, as if only just realizing
that He had tossed off a minor pun; "--I am the Lord Jesus,
the Second Person of the Trinity, here in My alternate form
AZZALION."

"Jesus Christ!" exclaimed Constanstink. "Excuse me, I
meant that as a term of address, not an expletive." Indeed,
now that he knew in Whose presence he was, the kung-fu
exorcist felt no more urge to curse. Ever. "But what's with the
mane and fangs? Isn't that some kind of sacrilege?"

"Not at all--especially here in the realm of imagination
where we are now. This outer shape does not contradict My
attributes of character. What would be really blasphemous
would be to depict Me in My exact human form from the
First Century, clothes and all, but then to show Me as weak,
foolish, and morally compromised."

Realizing he was still holding his nunchaku, Constanstink
set it down; it just seemed like the right thing to do in the
presence of the Lord. But he could not so easily lay aside his
bent for asking impudent questions. "But what are You doing
here at all? Intervening, I mean. Doesn't that violate the great
Cosmic Balance between good and evil?"

Azzalion growled. "It's a good thing I'm totally pure, or I'd
start cursing like you at all the times I've heard that nonsense.
Balance between good and evil? Just what kind of situation
were you in before I showed up? All monsters, all darkness,
all grimness, with no hopefulness or uplift at all. THAT'S the
kind of 'balance' evil demands--a nominal equality, with evil
being a lot MORE equal. But we'll talk further about that
later. Let's get down to the real business, the part where I
take you captive to obey Me."

Though resistance was obviously futile, Constanstink
couldn't help objecting to the implication of Azzalion's words.
"Wait a minute! Are You saying You only saved me so You
could enslave me?"

"More like redeeming you. Didn't you hear Me say that
we're in the realm of imagination? You're a _thought_--and I
take thoughts captive to obey Me."

Constanstink's movie-star eyes widened. "Are You saying
I don't really exist??"

"Don't be afraid," said Azzalion more soothingly. "As a
_redeemed_ thought, you will live on in redeemed minds. In
fact, you'll still be part of the fight against evil, by serving as
an illustration. Hold still, now; this won't hurt"--and suddenly,
before Constanstink could react, those massive jaws opened,
and Azzalion had swallowed him whole.

Being swallowed by Azzalion was not a fall into darkness,
but rather into light. Without any digestive functions that might
have made this parable simply too gross, Constanstink found
himself once more standing facing his Redeemer--only, now
the fictional man was wearing robes of pure white.

"Now I get it!" he rejoiced. "Every wrong idea derives
from an older, truer idea. Evil can't be equal to good, because
it's only a mutation from and a parasite upon good. I myself
was dreamed up by a writer who still retained something of
the proper human desire to see good prevail, but who was and
is terribly confused about how it all works. You've changed me
from a personification of pessimism into a representation of
hope--changed me from the distortion back into the original
idea--so I can help flesh-and-blood people break loose from
the same confusion. Way cool!"

Azzalion gently patted him on the shoulder with one mighty
paw. "Well said, My now-good-and-faithful servant. You'll
have work to do, all right, because this false 'balance' idea
has intruded itself everywhere. No man who had a hundred
dollars taken from him by a robber would agree that 'balance'
required the robber to give back only fifty; and yet, equally
idiotic interpretations of 'balance' are accepted as wisdom by
far too many mortals. They think it normal for half of all new
marriages to end in divorce, or for half of all unborn babies to
be aborted. Such 'balance' is itself the disruption of creation."

Constanstink nodded. "Yes, Lord, I see it now. It's always
_evil_ that wants _good_ to agree to this 'balance' garbage, so
that good will yield ground and let evil invade where it has no
right to be. But evil doesn't play fair; it wants _only_ the good
side to be inhibited and restrained, so evil can take advantage."

"Well said again. My Father and I, with Our shared Spirit,
are all light, with no darkness in Us at all. And now that you
have become an idea that upholds this truth, I'm going to have
plenty of interesting work for you to do."

"Sounds good, Lord. Only...do you suppose I could start
being called something better-sounding than Constanstink?"

Azzalion looked amused. "Well, I don't want to lose the
pun altogether. How about calling you John Constantruth?"

"That's cool, Dude, I mean Lord. Let's get started!"

Azzalion laughed. "So many falsehoods to destroy, so
little time!" Then He turned serious. "Little time, indeed. Come
ride on My back, and I'll take you to your first assignment."

Away they flew--though in a sense John Constantruth was
the only one actually going somewhere, since God is present in
all places, not at all restrained by any phony division of turf
with evil. Constantruth was on his way to his next appearance
in an "Empowered For Freedom" column, where he would try
his best to make solemn truth more digestible.
 
Thanks, L-of-L

NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING TOUCHES ON MATURE THEMES.

Here comes the second installment of "Azzalion and Constantruth." For this one, there is again something you need to understand from pop culture.

Imagine if, in the Civil War, it had been the NORTH which wanted slavery and the SOUTH which wanted to free all slaves--thus eliminating all justice from the Northern side. In such a case, the South losing would be a disastrous total failure of justice, with Southern survivors having some cause to question God's goodness. Now, suppose that this altered Civil War happened in the far future, in a solar system with numerous planets colonized by mankind. Imagine that a rebel veteran who survived the defeat is making a living as a spaceship captain; among those who find their way onto his ship are a futuristic prostitute, a thuggish male mercenary burdened with a female first name, and a girl who was scientifically tampered with by evil experimenters with the result that she acquired superhuman powers.

What I have just described is the intelligent but short-lived TV show "FIREFLY," which also bred the movie "SERENITY." I have caught you up on it because it is necessary if this parody episode is to make any sense...

======================================

GETTING DOWN TO EARTH IN OUTER SPACE


John Constantruth found he had adjusted surprisingly well to
the realization that he was a visualized metaphysical concept
rather than a mortal man. After all, this was hardly any more
weird than the adventures he had been having while he still
believed his kung-fu exorcist role to be reality.

Jesus Christ, in His alternate form Azzalion, had promised
John an interesting assignment in the war of ideas. But when
they emerged from something like faster-than-light flight, it
was not to behold any kind of battle, but rather a gorgeous
expanse of stars in all directions, including straight down.

"Is this Heaven, Lord? I see stars, but no clouds..."

"Actually, it's outer space, or outer space as envisioned by a
mortal screenwriter." Seeing a reflexive look of alarm on
His protege's face, Azzalion added, "Remember, you're an
embodied abstract concept, not a flesh-and-blood man, so you
can't be killed by exposure to vacuum. You wouldn't even be
able to hear Me talk here if it were dependent on air. But do
think of all the characters you'll be meeting as real people.
Here, I'll place you on board their spaceship."

"What spaceship, Lord?"

"Over there." Azzalion gestured with a paw toward a
not overly graceful-looking spacecraft, on whose hull was
painted the name SINCERITY. "I know it doesn't look
familiar to you; the TV series from which it is a satirical
derivative didn't stay on the air long, though the theatrical-
release movie did better. I'll transmit knowledge to you
about it as you need it. Once on board, ask to speak to a
girl named Riverdancer." Then, much more smoothly than
anything in Star Trek programs, He beamed Constantruth
into the spaceship's cargo hold. Unkillable abstraction or
not, Constantruth felt relieved to discover that the ship had
artificial gravity; he didn't care to be floating around loose
in any environment that wasn't either Heaven or a warm
swimming pool.

Looking around, he saw a tough-looking man who did
not yet see him. This man, facing toward a ladder, called
out, "Hey, Jenny, come down here!" In response to the
call, no woman came down the ladder, but rather a man
who looked even tougher and grubbier than the first.

" 'Jenny'? " thought Constantruth. "If that's the
leading lady, no wonder the show didn't last long." But in
a voice audible only to him, he heard Azzalion explaining,
"No, that's not any major gender-bending, more of a 'Boy
Named Sue' type of thing. Don't let it distract you. This
plot format was actually created to address some valid
moral issues. Now, proceed; and remember, since they
can't hurt you, it's no fair being rough to them. IDEAS
are your battleground. Introduce yourself and ask for the
girl; also, ask them what happened to the Earth in this
hypothetical reality."

Our hero stepped forward, clearing his abstract
metaphorical throat. "Um, hi, guys. Pardon the hitch-hiking;
don't panic--excuse me, you probably don't know that story."
Then he was glad to know he couldn't be killed by bullets,
in view of how swiftly both scruffy astronauts whipped out
guns which were clearly of less-than-Star-Trek technological
level, but looked businesslike. "No phasers?" he muttered.

"Who the [Mandarin Chinese expletives] are YOU?"
snapped the man John had seen first, the smarter-looking
of the two. The second said, "Ask him after I empty a few
magazines into him;" but a gesture from his apparent
captain suppressed his intent.

"It's a little complicated," said John; "but I come in peace."
To the taller, trigger-happy man, he said, "Please, no
jokes about my coming to pieces." To the captain again:
"I'm called John Constantruth. I'd like to know what
happened to the Earth, and I'd like to meet Riverdancer."

The big man called Jenny brightened up. "Sure, you can
have her. Take her away, with our blessings!"

Uttering more Mandarin Chinese at his henchman,
the ship's captain said to John, "I'm called Mallet Rebel.
This is my ship, the Sincerity; and since teleportation only
exists in sci-fi, I want to know how you got here."

"Well, let's say teleportation also exists in the arena
of metaphysical inquiry." Feeling a telepathic prompting
coming in from Azzalion, John added, "Since you seem to
have lost some of your cast and almost all the recurring
guest characters, I'm here to liven up your dialogue."

A silky female voice sounded from immediately behind
John. "If I weren't in an ambiguous transition toward a
vague experiment with monogamy, I'd offer to liven up
more than dialogue for you." The speaker proved to be
a shapely young woman; John sensed somehow that until
recently she had been in the habit of wearing heavy makeup,
but her natural good looks were better seen without it. "You
wouldn't be Riverdancer, would you?" he asked.

"No, I'm Ignorinya."

"How can you be ignoring me while you're talking to me?"

"You don't understand, my NAME is Ignorinya."

John glanced back at Mallet and Jenny. "Those two guys
wouldn't really be Abbott and Costello, would they?" Then
he saw that the retro reference went over all their heads.

Mallet moved his gun closer to Constantruth's face. "The
last time someone slipped on board my ship so mysteriously,
I ended up sending him free-falling in space forever. What
ARE you doing here? Are you from the Alliance?"

"That's Azzalion, Captain. Azzalion sent me here--but
not to do any harm, far from it." Azzalion's prompting chose
John's next words for him: "Your friend Riverdancer has
been the subject of experimentation--but you don't realize
the REAL purpose of the experiment, or who's doing it."

Just as Mallet was looking slightly less belligerent,
someone else took over the belligerence for him, and not
the gunman called Jenny. Out from behind some crates
rushed a slender, not bad-looking girl, screaming frantically
in Chinese. Leaping across the remaining fifteen feet to
where John stood, she delivered a flying kick to his throat
--only to fall backwards on her hindquarters as the kick
failed to have any effect at all on its target. Suddenly she
went from warrior-like aggression to weeping like a little
child. "It's not fair," she sobbed. "You're supposed to fall
down. It always works for Miss Piggy!"

John's imperviousness to kung-fu attack seemed
alarming to Jenny; but his unretaliating calm seemed
reassuring to Mallet and Ignorinya. The sexy woman
reached a hand to the strange girl, helping her up while
simultaneously telling John, "This is Riverdancer."

Mallet's eyes were wide. "How is it you're still on
your feet, stranger?"

"I don't suppose you folks remember the Blues Brothers
--on a mission from God? Maybe you should think
of me as part student, part teacher. First, you teach
me something. What happened to the Earth?"

Mallet seemed to take this as a cue, as if he had said
many times what he was about to say to Constantruth.
"Okay, here's how it is. We used up the Earth--pollution,
overpopulation, that kind of stuff; so the whole human
race moved to a larger solar system, with a larger parent
star capable of providing heat and light over a wider
orbital plane than our old Sun. The system correspondingly
had far more planets than our native system, and most of
the planets had moons big enough to be colonized; so we
terraformed them all, meaning we adjusted air pressure,
chemistry, temperature and other factors enough so that
Earth-type life could survive there. Now there are more
than a hundred inhabited worlds, but the strongest ones
forcibly imposed their will on the rest--which is why my
crew and me live more or less like fugitives."

"Terraforming...I guess I should have read more sci-fi
novels, but I was busy being a supernatural fantasy anti-hero
...excuse me, don't mind my rambling. Do you realize there's
a logic problem in the scenario you just recited? If the human
race in this timeline has got SUCH tremendous technology
as to be able to do everything you said, isn't it obvious
that they could ALSO have restored and cleansed Earth?
I mean, space pioneering is cool, nothing wrong with it; but
on your terms, there was no need for Earth to be completely
lost to humanity."
 
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Directly continuing the above

Jenny tapped Mallet on the shoulder. "Hey, Captain, maybe
he's on to something. Maybe the Alliance has been
holding on to Earth all along. If we could just swipe a faster-
than-light engine, we could get back to Old Earth and find
some _really_ big banks to rob!" Mallet was spared from
rebuking Jenny when Riverdancer suddenly reverted to
aggressiveness for a moment and knocked the gunman
out cold. Then the mysterious girl mellowed once again,
and addressed John: "You're right, something is wrong
about the reasoning. It's like in Kevin Costner's movie
'Waterworld,' in which, for the sake of a heavy-handed
sermon about global warming, they depicted the Earth as
flooded to a greater extent than the total amount of ice in
the icecaps could ever account for. Is this connected to what
you said about the real meaning of the experiments on me?"

"There's a good little autistic savant...Yeah, it's
connected. Your whole plotline is a sociopolitical treatise,
having to do with the balance between freedom and law.
There are such things as deceptive definitions of balance,
but the freedom-and-law tension is a perfectly legitimate
subject for deep discussion. You yourself, Riverdancer,
are the way you are partly for the sake of illustrating the
difference between power and freedom. You have enormous
power, but your freedom is actually _hampered_ by it,
because you can't always control it. Interestingly, your
best success in controlling your own power has been when
you were motivated by LOVE, using your power to save
your brother's life. By the way, where is your brother?"

Riverdancer smiled. "Slyman? He and Krayzee are
busy playing doctor, now that the deadlocked romantic
tension between them no longer needs to be maintained."

"Which leaves ME," put in a new female voice; it
belonged to a dark-skinned woman almost as sexy as
Ignorinya. "I'm Zoomie, and I'd sure like to know why
the scriptwriter had to kill off my husband!"

John looked her in the eye. "I wish I could give you
a comforting answer, but he did it just to make the story
more serious and impactful for the audience. You got off
easy; I understand he killed off almost the entire cast of
another show." Turning to Mallet: "And I sense _you_
getting ready to say that this proves you were always right
about divine justice being only wishful thinking on the
preacher's part. But in story composition as in real life, it's
not that simple."

"Could we get back to the freedom and law?" said
Ignorinya. "That was beginning to sound interesting."

Constantruth nodded. "As well it should--though you,
being perhaps the only really cliche'd character in this
series, may not like where it leads."

Ignorinya bristled a bit. "Me, cliche'd?"--and she
went into some venting in Chinese.

"I'm sorry, lady, but the prostitute or otherwise
promiscuous woman who's better and smarter and wiser
and everything-er than other women HAS been done to
the saturation point. Now, Dostoyevskiy did some good
with his prostitute character in "Crime and Punishment;"
she didn't _want_ to sell her body, but she was desperate
to make a living for her poverty-stricken family. That
plot thread was designed to make men ashamed of using
women in such a way. As for you, do you realize what sort
of societal trends you're contributing to by projecting the
happy-hooker image?"

"Take it easy!" interjected Mallet. "Ignorinya _isn't_
a hooker anymore...um, you're not, are you, Ignorinya?"

"No, I'm not," the exotic woman affirmed. "But what
harm was I doing to anyone but myself when I was? It
seems to me that prostitutes do a public service, by
diverting men's lust into a controlled outlet, so they're
less likely, well, to commit rape."

Constantruth sighed. "I've heard that one before. But
why DO men commit rape? Simply because they have a
sexual urge? In many cases, it's because they imagine
they have a grievance, for which they try to take revenge
on women. Where does a fake sense of grievance come
from? It comes from a fake sense of entitlement that
runs into real-world frustration. And where do men get a
fake sense of entitlement? From being taught that sexual
pleasure is a guaranteed right, as if the men were some
sort of government and sex were the tax they collected.
Can't you see what you're doing, or were doing, by giving
out the message that sexual intimacy without commitment
or even affection is acceptable?"

Ignorinya stiffened. "I suppose your solution is to wrap
women up in head-to-foot robes and lock them indoors?"

"No, lady; Azzalion didn't send me here to be distracted
by minor externals. I know perfectly well that rape is NOT
caused by women being dressed revealingly. Both rape
_and_ prostitution have been known to flourish in societies
where women _were_ modestly clothed; it was just a
matter of the clothes coming off, by choice or force. But
however you dress when you're not, uh, performing that
service, it's the message of instant gratification that does
the damage. If a basically selfish man is programmed to
believe that it's normal for everyone to have immediate
sex available all the time, then if he _isn't_ getting that,
he'll feel as if he's been specially cheated out of what
'everyone else' is supposedly enjoying. _That_ leads to
the false feeling of grievance."

"You talk about selfish men," Zoomie put in. "I'm sure
not making any excuses for rapists--but how much use is
it for anybody NOT to be selfish? My husband was a good
man, and he's dead now; same's true of our preacher friend
--who used to talk a bit like you, by the way. Mallet and
Slyman are good men, and they're fugitives--while the
tyrants who made fugitives of us enjoy power and luxury!"

John felt a fresh prompting, and recited: " 'The dull
man cannot know; the stupid man cannot understand this:
that although the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers
flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever; but Thou,
O Lord, art on high forever.' That's from the Psalms."

The spaceship captain's face took on a more pensive
look. "You know, I used to try to make our preacher friend
keep quiet, but you remind me how much I miss him now."

Riverdancer spoke up: "Once he said to me, 'You
don't fix faith; it fixes you.' I miss him, too."

Constantruth nodded. "Your scriptwriter had enough
grasp of the truth to write at least some lines to good purpose
--but he, and you, could stand to dig deeper. He was sort of
off at an angle from a true understanding of the law-versus-
freedom issue. The cure for excessive regulation isn't an
opposite extreme of permissiveness; it's freedom WITHIN
bounds of responsibility. That shouldn't be hard for you to
see, Captain Rebel, since you carry responsibility for the
lives of others."

"You make some points worth chewing on," said Mallet;
"but you still haven't really answered MY question about
how you got on board in the first place."

Constantruth looked him in the eye. "You ever play
baseball, Captain? I'm here as a sort of relief pitcher. Since
the creator--small 'c'--of your series is only partly right
about the basic moral issues he set out to address, _the_
Creator--capital 'C'--sent me, well, sort of to recruit you into
His effort to get more people to see more of the truth more
clearly. So do you mind if I stay on awhile? I don't need
food, and I won't try to steal your leading lady from you.
I'll probably spend more time talking with Riverdancer;
she doesn't know it, but she represents one small element
in a huge fabric of confusion about gender relationships.
That is, there are bitter feminists who want to believe two
mutually exclusive ideas at the same time: that all women
are superior to all men in everything, AND that women
somehow are still passive, helpless victims of men. Of
course, Riverdancer, you would be taken chiefly as adding
to the 'superior to men' side of that self-contradiction. Your
scriptwriter may not have intended this, but the contradiction
is there in popular entertainment."

"You won't be boring," said Riverdancer. "And we probably
won't meet anyone else this interesting unless the
studio does a sequel to our movie."

"You might say you're in a sequel now," John told her,
"though for a smaller audience."

Azzalion, watching and hearing all from outside the
ship, rumbled a growl of approval which only He, the Father,
and the Holy Spirit could hear. This would lead to at least a
fairly colorful set of instructive illustrations for mortals not
yet sure about what the sides were in the spiritual war.

So the spaceship Sincerity sailed on through the black of
computer-generated interplanetary space, on its way to
become part of the next John Constantruth vignette.
 
Having set up the parody characters, I began to make applications

* Restoring The REAL Balance *

John Constantruth, metaphorical metaphysical hero, had
persuaded the crew of the TV-parody spaceship
"SINCERITY" to try flying back to Earth despite all
the talk in their scenario about Earth having become
uninhabitable. He had pointed out that his Lord, as the
ultimate Scriptwriter, could enable their slower-than-
light ship to cover the distance easily; and Mallet, the
captain, had begun paying heed to John's suggestions
that their storyline might be withholding from their
audience a crucial secret about what really had happened
to humanity's native planet.

"We're hitting turbulence!" exclaimed Riverdancer, the
scientifically-altered girl who was in the plot to
provide a mixture of comedy, menace, and deus-ex-
machina. "How's that possible in a vacuum?"

"We're in an atmosphere of ideas," John told her.
"Switch on your space radio; I think we're hitting a
layer of mutually-contradictory statements."

Riverdancer glanced at Mallet, who nodded. She
touched a button, and the cockpit speakers gave out
voices, which were indeed contradicting themselves:

"The Earth is cooling, and therefore the Western
nations must be deprived of their industries. But the
Earth is also warming, and _therefore_ the Western
nations must be deprived of their industries!"

"The fetus is only a part of the woman's body, with
no separate identity at all, and therefore she has
every right to terminate it. But the fetus is also a totally
distinct being, foreign and alien to the woman's body,
and _therefore_ she has every right to terminate it!"

"Self-esteem, self-esteem, self-esteem is everything.
Children must be deluged in self-esteem. Therefore,
we must isolate them from the parents who love them
as unique individuals, deprive them of a home life in
which they can feel they specially belong there, and
immerse them instead in a vast collective which treats
them as interchangeable and superfluous!"

Mallet and Riverdancer fought to control the ship
until they penetrated through the contradiction layer.
Their female ship's engineer was no help, as she was
still occupied making love to Riverdancer's brother;
but "SINCERITY" made it safely into the clear...

...to find Earth coming into sight, looking not at all
so devastated as its crew had been taught to expect.

"I'll think you'll find there _has_ been devastation,"
John Constantruth warned them, "but of a different
sort--still a matter of ideas."

The spaceship descended toward the surface, coming
to a hover above water, with a coastline visible not far
off. Almost directly below them was a surface ship,
headed out for the open sea. Audio sensors picked up
voices of the sailors, shouting things like "That's right,
head for land!" and "We're almost in harbor!"--all the
while that they were moving _farther_ from shore.

An additional paradox became evident. The sea
craft was badly listing to port, its deck on that side only
inches above water. Cargo of some sort was piled on
deck--all on the port side; and, with cries of "Shift the
ballast!" and "Correct that balance!", the sailors were
busily shoving _more_ objects TO THE PORT SIDE.

"Those stupid %$=/:\*!! are going to swamp their
ship!" shouted Mallet. "Constantruth! Can we get down
there to help them?"

Fetching the remaining astronauts--the widow, the
ex-prostitute and the big oaf--to take over the controls,
Constantruth used a little metaphorical power to
teleport himself, Mallet and Riverdancer down to the
tilting deck of the ocean vessel. There was no time to
argue with anyone if the ship was to be saved. Mallet
headed for the bridge to take over the helm, with
Riverdancer accompanying him to bat aside any of the
insane sailors who tried to stop him. John, muttering
"There actually is a spoon after all," began heaving
boxes and crates to starboard--gently heaving sailors in
the same direction as necessary. The deck slowly began
to grow more level.

One crate John grasped was labelled, "TO BE
DISPLAYED IN ALL FEDERAL BUILDINGS." Even as
he noticed this, the top tore loose, and scores of
slick-paper posters came flying out. Some of these
posters depicted [things which the moderators don't
want mentioned, but which federal employees are
commanded to consider wonderful]; others bore the
bold-lettered slogan "INCLUSION IS OUR GREATEST
STRENGTH." The first, John suddenly realized, shed
light on the intent of the second.

Pitching the crate across the deck, John soon saw
another interesting box of documents, labelled "School
Policies." A flier from this box read, "Carrying of
Bibles, wearing of crosses, and mentioning of Jesus
Christ, are all strictly prohibited as hate speech. Copies
of this instruction will be posted in the school libraries,
next to the witchcraft sections."

Every sort of printed matter or media material he
encountered had similar themes. These included an
endless assortment of movies depicting Christian
clergymen as frauds, thieves, adulterers and psychotic
murderers. John was tempted to throw the items
overboard instead of starboard; but he remembered
that the Christian faith, when actually practiced as
it was designed, stands on its merits rather than try to
gain favored treatment through censorship. He went
on shifting the cargo, and periodically knocking
down sailors who tried to interfere with his rescuing
them, until the danger of capsizing seemed past.
Mallet, meanwhile, had gotten the ship turned
around toward land.

"I'm the captain of this ship! What do you mean by
interfering?" bellowed a fat man in a gray business suit
which did not look at all nautical. "Can't you see how
far you're making us lean to starboard?" (The deck
was, in fact, almost perfectly level.)

"I can see that your kinesthetic centers are about
fifty degrees off true," John replied. "If a level deck
looks tilted to you, what do you consider level?"

"Bigot! Religious fanatic!" the fat man shouted,
waving something like a magazine or a newspaper
insert in John's face. "You're shoving your geometry
down my throat!"

"I'm trying to keep you out of the ocean's throat!"
retorted John, grabbing the flimsy publication. "Just
what is this?"

"It's a warning to us against intolerant right-wing
fundamentalists like you, who preach violence!" the
man cried, swinging a fire axe at John's head. The axe
broke apart without mussing John's hair, which amazed
the fat man enough so that John had a moment of
peace to see what the magazine was.

It proved to be a digest of book reviews, labelled
with the name of a major bookstore chain. John's eyes
were drawn to one review which he suddenly felt that
the Lord particularly wanted him to notice...

"FICTION: In an altered America, Jose saves. By Sarah E. White.

"...In 'The Messiah of Morris Avenue,' [Tony] Hendra draws a
funny, frightening portrait of a militantly Christian America, where
Hollywood is rechristened 'Holywood,' and two enormous churches
vie for control of the hearts and minds of American citizens.
Meanwhile, Jose Kennedy, a Hispanic man living in the Bronx,
begins performing miracles and preaching about the true trinity:
the father, the mother and the son...

"This story is full of satire and sarcasm, sometimes
a little too close to reality to actually be funny. What
this book has to say about media, religion and culture
is as valid in our society as in Hendra's imagined one."

John turned his gaze on the bewildered fat man. "Let me be sure I
understand you about this. In a world where the Boy Scouts come
under furious reproach for wanting their members to believe in God,
we are supposed to take seriously a suggestion that the imminent
peril to freedom is a _Christian_ dictatorship??"

"Of course!" exclaimed the fat man. "Just like the Christian terrorists
who flew the airliners into the World Trade Center, and the Christian
pastors who ran Hitler's concentration camps! Everyone knows
about them! Now, if you're not going to let me shift the weight
properly to port, all I can do is go get a fire extinguisher to combat
the flooding!" And the fat man ran off.

John shook his head, then called out, "Mallet!
Riverdancer! Don't stop till you run this ship clear
up onto the beach! I think it's the only way we can
stop these idiots from drowning themselves!"

John realized that it was this relevant metaphor
for the actual Earth, not Tony Hendra's Christian-
bashing novel or the zillions of others like it, that
was too close to reality to be actually funny. At
least he could avoid splitting infinitives as the
reviewer had done.

John plainly had a lot of work ahead of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yours for Jesus and Reality,
Joseph Richard Ravitts
 
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Sailing on another new tack

Many of us have unfinished projects. I'm about to give a little exposure to one of mine. My excuse is that I'll be demonstrating how you can borrow scene ideas from great authors and make them your own.

Fyodor Dostoyevskiy, the wise 19th-century Russian writer who could have prevented the Communist takeover if only the Russian people had listened to him, described an incident which he suggested was appallingly commonplace in Russia: sadistic abuse of a work horse, just for fun. In the incident as described by Dostoyevskiy, there was no one to intervene on the unfortunate animal's behalf; but who's to stop me, when writing a derivative scene, from changing that?

Back before my Mary was stricken with cancer, I was working on a graphic novel of the historical-character-brought-into-modern-times genre. My chosen historical, or anyway legendary character was the most beloved hero from the medieval sagas of early Russia: Ilya Muromets, a peasant who had been a cripple until he was miraculously healed and given superhuman strength. If I'd been through what Ilya went through, and then was compensated with super power, I truly believe that I would always have a heart to help and protect the defenseless--having BEEN defenseless for so long myself.

Of my story project, suffice it here to say that I had Ilya supernaturally restored to flesh-and-blood life in Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era. He won the love of a Russian woman named Anastasiya (with a nickname of Anochka), who was as beautiful and sexy as I could manage to draw her. The portion of the novel I was actually able to draw and write before MY OWN true love was taken ill did not extend as far as Ilya and Anastasiya getting married; but that was where it was headed. Here, then, in prose without pictures, is a scene I intended to portray after the two settled down in Siberia, on the grounds of a former collective farm from Soviet times. Among the new-breed private farmers near them is an obnoxious clod tentatively named Seryozha, who uses horses to conserve motor fuel. That's all you need to know, hopefully, to appreciate this scene...

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Having finished cutting firewood, Ilya loaded it into the four carts he had chained together in a line, then began strolling back toward the cottage, casually towing the carts behind him. He was less than halfway home when he heard coarse male voices raising drunken shouts that wavered between phony-sounding laughter and sincere-sounding curses. One of the voices, not surprisingly, was that of Seryozha. And punctuating the vocal brawl, the cracking of a whip was ominously audible.

Quickening his pace to round the bend in the road, the ancient warrior saw the scene. An aging black mare whom he had seen before, one of Seryozha's animals, was hitched to a wagon--but a wagon loaded more heavily than ANY single horse should be expected to pull, let alone a horse far past her prime. The wagon, Seryozha's largest, was piled high with various pieces of machinery, their total weight surely not less than seven hundred kilograms; and on top of those, numerous large rocks were piled--for no other possible reason than simply to make the burden greater. On top of THOSE, not only Seryozha but five of his hooligan friends were sitting, drinking, and howling in celebration of their own cleverness...as Seryozha cracked his whip at the hapless mare. He was not just making the noise, he was hitting the mare's back and drawing blood. "Move, you worthless, lazy trollop!" he yelled at his four-legged victim. "Do you think you're some princess? Work, blast you, WORK!!" Ilya could see that the point at which the animal must have been hitched to this impossible burden was no more than six meters away. In however much time Seryozha had been tormenting the mare, her most desperate efforts to do his bidding had only managed to move the load this far. As Ilya came within speaking range of the tableau, two more of the bully's drinking buddies ran up from the wagon's rear and jumped on board, adding their guffaws and curses to the uproar.

Ilya reminded himself that he was no longer living in the eleventh century, and he was no longer a knight of King Vladimir of Kiev, empowered to judge life and death. In his own time, anyone Ilya had caught doing this to an innocent beast would have found _himself_ under the whip AND hitched to the same wagon in very short order; but this was the modern world, with its own ideas of justice; and he had Anochka to think about. So--

"Neighbor! Good afternoon!" Ilya exclaimed with a cheerfulness not more fake than Seryozha's indignation at the mare's "laziness." "Where do you need that load taken to?"

The civil question, from a man who Seryozha knew held him in much-deserved contempt, took the stupid brute off guard; so he simply answered forthrightly: "This junk has to go to one of the lumberyard storage buildings, Number 17." His dull puzzlement at least made him forget to continue whipping his horse to death.

Ilya nodded, stroking his beard. "Ah, yes, I've seen that shed; it's a bit far at the pace you're going."

One of the other drunkards, too far drunk to remember to be afraid of insulting a man who could break his spine with one finger, leaned out and shouted with stinking breath into Ilya's face, "We'd get there soon enough if this cursed sluggish mare would start earning her feed!"

"Well, maybe I can help," said Ilya calmly. Hands working almost too fast to be seen, he unfastened the mare from the wagon, picked her up off her feet as easily as a common man might lift a cat, and set her down to one side--where she sank to the ground, unable to stand. Before Seryozha or his drinking buddies could react, Ilya told them, "Hold on tight!" Then, ducking below the wagon, he lifted it, with everything and everyone on it, and carried it at a strolling pace toward Storage Building Number 17. Setting the wagon down before the double doors of the large shed, he then said, "While you fellows unload the machinery, I'll go check on your horse. She was looking a little unwell for some reason."

When Ilya walked briskly, few men could keep up with him unless they ran headlong. As Ilya expected, the eight vodka-hounds, after getting over their amazement, began following him, their muddy brains beginning dimly to sense that they had just been rebuked. But they could not overtake him until he had reached the mare and had a moment alone with her.

"Trust me, dear creature," he said, stroking the suffering animal's mane. Then he closed his huge hand around the mare's nostrils and mouth, cutting off her breath. Barely able to struggle at all, the mare lost consciousness in seconds. Some of the other local residents, having heard the noise, were drifting to the scene, but not soon enough to see what Ilya had done to the horse.

When Seryozha and his gang came up, Ilya turned to face them with a solemn expression. "Your draft horse appears to have had a weak heart. Perhaps whatever accident caused her back to be bleeding so, contributed to draining away the last of her strength."

Another of the hooligans slapped Seryozha's back. "That's okay, brother, we had enough sport killing her."

Ilya ignored that interjection, keeping his gaze on the owner. "Since this animal will never work for you again, would you mind selling her body to me? I'll pay you twenty-five rubles for her."

Seryozha grunted. "Might as well, I guess." Ilya fished the twenty-five rubles out of his pocket and handed them over. Glancing at the newly-arrived onlookers, he said, "All of you are witnesses: he has sold me this horse of his own free will." There were nods and mumbles of agreement.

Ilya then planted his hands against the mare's chest and applied carefully-controlled pressure...until that chest expanded, and the mare was breathing again. She looked at Ilya as if it were somehow given to her to understand what he had done for her.

Seryozha went livid. "You SCUM!! You LIED to me!! Give me my horse back, NOW!!"

Ilya stood up. "I never said that she was dead. You _thought_ I was saying so, since you yourself had intended her to die from your cruelty. Be satisfied with your extra vodka money; this horse belongs to ME now." Scooping the mare up in his arms as before, he then hoisted her over his shoulders, so that he could resume hauling his firewood at the same time.

He did not get far before something whistled toward his right ear. The warrior's right hand, again moving like lightning, caught the whip aimed at his face, then yanked it out of Seryozha's hand, sending Seryozha skidding forward off balance to fall in a heap.

Three of Seryozha's friends drew knives; and Seryozha himself, recovering his feet, did the same. Ilya merely smiled...set the mare down again out of the way...picked up from the lead cart a log almost too big for his fingers to reach around...and with a squeeze of his hand, crushed it into splinters. His eyes bored into Seryozha's. "Oh, yes," he said softly. "Yes, try that. I _beg_ you to try it. All of your friends, too. I _beg_ you to try to use those knives on me."

After just enough delay for drunken brains to process the warrior's meaning as he took one step toward them, the eight rowdies ran for their lives, some stumbling, some of them wetting their trousers in fear. More than one of the other people present cheered for Ilya. And Ilya, picking up the mare again, resumed hauling his firewood carts, enroute now to inform Anochka that she had just acquired a new pet horse.
 
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Interesting... I have never read any Dostoyevskiy, obviously... Even after you mentioned something about superpowers, it struck me unexpectedly in the story, too!
 
Fyodor Dostoyevskiy, at one time, was himself lured by the revolutionary movement which was to give birth to the world's all-time-champion genocidal system; but in the end he turned to follow Christ instead. His most famous novel, "Crime and Punishment," is not just the tale of individual crime and guilt that people today think it is; it is also a profound warning against the mental attitudes which _enabled_ the main character to be a murderer.

Dostoyevskiy's anti-hero, Rodion Raskol'nikov, is a man capable of good deeds--but, fatally, a man arrogant enough to set himself up as the sole judge of what IS a good deed. It is his delusion of being superior to "ordinary" people and to traditional morality that enables him to give himself permission to commit murder...just as both Nazis and Soviet Communists, in disregarding God's moral law, conferred permission on themselves to disregard the most basic humanity as well.
 
LESSON SERIES WITH BUCK AND BRAMBLE

In this series of lessons I will be dipping into a particular favorite of mine, "Byron on Wells", for examples. I will be showing you what makes things work and why. The reasons may surprise you. Questions are welcome, so are examples of your own work trimmed to show a specific point.

LESSON: PROSE

I've seen on more than one sitcom a lady trying to be more attractive who got advice from a friend. "Let me see you walk," is the inevitable first question. After a few moments, "Hey, that's not walking, it's moving from place to place!"

A lot of people's writing does not walk, it just moves from place to place. To move along with style, you should consider writing prose.

Prose is writing that incorporates some aspects of poetry. It's a strange sort of hybrid that, when done right, raises your writing above everyday language and gives it power.

At the end of Byron on Wells is a bit of a farewell to the reader that sums up the feel of the whole book. Part of it reads like this:

"Sometimes in the newborn night, in that narrow alley between waking and dreams, I feel myself swept along the currents of desire to my far off home."

First off, look at the repeating sounds highlighted in color:

"Sometimes in the newborn night, in that narrow alley between waking and dreams, I feel myself swept along the currents of desire to my far off home."

That is alliteration, somewhat like Shakespeare's "Who's tongue so sweet saluteth me?" Be careful not to overuse it.

Now look at the imagery evoked by particular comparisons:

"Sometimes in the newborn night, in that narrow alley between waking and dreams, I feel myself swept along the currents of desire to my far off home."

Not 9 pm but the "newborn night". Not a space but a "narrow alley". Not wishful thinking but the "currents of desire" along which one is "swept".

Note well that I don't write every paragraph in the book like this. It would become maddening by some point if there were never skies but overarching firmaments, never rivers but great silver highways. The places where I put these are in introductions and summations -- the beginnings and ends of chapters. In a way it's like a trip on the Space Shuttle...the two big dramatic moments are liftoff and re-entry.

Let me give you an example of a beginning that evokes a mood. Pay attention to the language. It is a story about Mountebank learning how to write:

From the pages in the Royal Library great voices of the past speak again, enriching the spirit and equipping the nation. The gift of writing is one we never take for granted, yet most of the folk in my hometown saw little more in it than dark lines on the page. Literacy was a luxury that few could afford, so for most of them only the memory of dear voices kept the treasured words alive.

Not the books but the pages. Not writings but great voices of the past. Notice the parallelism of "enriching the spirit" and "equipping the nation." This is similar to a poem with a metrical structure. Alliteration in "Literacy was a luxury" and the F sounds in "few could afford". Finally the appeal to the emotion that "for most of them only the memory of dear voices kept the treasured words alive."

What you see in this short paragraph is the emotional fallout of illiteracy. Good folks living good lives, yet when someone dies the only memory of all they said and did is what got passed on in local folklore. If the words "What a waste!" come to mind, BINGO...I won.

I referenced this again for an emotional one-two punch in the end of that chapter. Mountie did learn to read. His father, who was illiterate, studied as well so his son would understand how important it was not to do without an education. Look for the similarities that were laid out like a trap in the first paragraph...the trap is sprung...

He never learned how to read well, but my first years as a mage were cheered by Mum’s letters that always had a sentence or two added at the bottom in Dad’s painfully crafted pen. I saved every one of them and for me those dark marks bring back his beloved voice from the past. “Son, I am so proud of you. I miss you very much. --- Love, Dad.”

The obvious point is that this obscure little character of Horace Beaverlee was a great voice from the past, just like the other authors in the Royal Library, not because he was famous but because he was great.

A story that begins and ends harping on the same note with similar language is called a Pantoum. Only on the way out the audience hears it in light of what they have just experienced. It is that difference that makes it work.
 
LESSON: EMOTIONAL TIMING AND MODULATION

In this bit of text, Oakley Badger and his wife Jasmine hear their son crying from outside the locked door of his room.

Oakley was about to knock but Jasmine waved him off. Instead, he put a paw to his ear and listened at the door. He heard Buck sobbing softly on the bed.
He straightened, wrung his paws, then motioned for Jasmine to follow him downstairs. He went to the closet and got a large walking staff.
“Where are you going with that jackie?”
“I’m going to fetch their money back.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Neither is letting down my son.”


Notice how I never said Oakley was angry? Notice how I never needed to?

Here at the end of the same chapter, not only had Oakley gotten his son's money back but he also bought him the new fishing rod he was going for before things got out of hand. See how I show love....

Oakley gestured toward his wife and Jasmine brought over a nice new pole. It was splendid with metal fittings and a shiny metal reel.
Buck reached out for it with trembling paws, took it lovingly and turned it about to admire it.
"Is that one all right?"
Buck dropped it and mobbed his mum and dad for a hug. As I watched them come together in an embrace, transfixed, I felt my mother's paws resting on my shoulders. I also saw Bramble smile. It was a perfect moment, a thing of rare beauty. Some memories dim with age, but I'll always remember Oakley murmuring, “I love you, you rascal!”


By the time Oakley says "I love you" it's almost not news anymore.

Here is an example of timing. Emotions build over a few moments. Hit someone with too much at once and they won't absorb it properly. Look at how timing in this was designed to let the emotional response build in you as it built in the characters. Bramble, the fox pup, finds out that his otter friend, "Uncle" Nickaby, is dead.

When we got there, Thorny was sitting on the front porch with his arms around Starlight who was crying as if it were the end of the world. The truth was painfully obvious to Buck and I, but Bramble, in a last moment of denial, had to ask, "Is Uncle Nickaby going to be all right?"
Thorny looked up. "Bramble, my boy, you have to be brave."
"No!! He can't die! He just can't!!" The fox pup made a mad dash for the door, but his father grasped him by the arm.
"You can't go in there. He’s gone."
Bramble began to sob convulsively, clinging to Thorny. Buck and I did not know Nickaby well, but our friend Bramble was in pain. Somewhere along the way our Club Without a Name had become a family.


Look at how imagery of a key...as a symbol of the end of an old life...is used. In this cameo Dawn Willowtree, who feels her love for Bramblwood Foxworth is not returned, decides to leave.

It was close to midnight. By the drunken light of a few flickering candles Dawn went about the painful task of emptying out her dresser and wardrobe, removing her few mean belongings from the room in the Moon and Hare she had called home. She could not stand to face Bramble again, knowing he'd never love her and she would never stop loving him.
She took out a hairbrush, a brass mirror, a good luck coin that Bramble had given her. The act of removing them from the drawer and putting them in her knapsack was painful enough. Yet the deepest pain of all came from a simple brass key on a cotton string. It reflected the candlelight in brief flashes as it turned and swung at the end of its simple tether. Never again would the back door ever yield to her. With one last turn in the lock and a shove beneath the door, that key would forever close out her light and life.


In this last example I build up tension. That absolutely demands that you show it rather than tell it. Notice how everything contributes to the overall mood...

Mum managed to get a small flame going on the stove and went to fetch the tea canister. As she was taking its lid off, another loud blast of lightning shook the lodge. She dropped the canister which struck and knocked off one of her good porcelain cups and broke it. It was Dad’s cup.
Horrified at the bad omen, she burst into tears. She ran out the door, not even bothering to close it on the way out so that it swung and battered in the wind, and hurried across the dam. There was almost no visibility out there, and anyone but a beaver…or maybe an otter…would have stumbled and fallen.
“Horace! Horace!!”
She drew near to the bank and saw a dark spot bobbing in the water where the spillway would be. She rushed along the shore and came closer to it. It was the boat bobbing in the waves, but she did not see Daddy.
She gasped in a deep breath and let it out in a scream. Hysterically, she plunged into the water and made her way to the small skin boat. She pulled up on the side and looked in. She saw Dad balled up in the floor, clutching his chest.
"Horace!! No, please!! You can't leave me!! You just can't!!"


Expressing emotions is one thing. CONVEYING them is another. When your story conveys emotions by the way it is written, you will engage your reader on a wholly new level.

John
 
We interrup this program for a moment of self-indulgence

Lost Dreamer has been trying to help me understand the signature-prepping procedure. If I've followed her instructions correctly, this post should be accompanied by the "Tigers" graphic LD so kindly made for me. If not--well, in cyberspace no one can hear you scream.
 
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