The Problem of Evil

Normally I stay away from fundamentalism, whether it's the typical Evangelical Protestant brand or radical-traditionalist and ultra-traditionalist Catholicism. But recently I came across a gem of an article series that I couldn't pass by just because of the writer's other intellectual positions.

The blog's called The American Inquisiton, and in among the railing against the republic is a most interesting set of articles on the portrayal of evil in the media, and particularly in the cinema. It starts with Narnia, and continues through The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, then closes with a final analysis.

Whether or not we agree with the blogger's conclusion that the problems in portraying evil in current films are the result of a loss of a religious sense of sin, as writers we have to take note of the issues he raises that these filmmakers have not adequately established that the antagonists in these films are indeed evil, and the protagonists are indeed justified in the actions they are taking against the antagonists.

As beginning writers we are cautioned against the danger of creating cardboard villains who are purely Eee-vil, without any beleivable motivations. We carefully study methods for giving our villains believable "tragic virtues" that show they are developed characters rather than merely types. Yet do we, in doing so, end up undercutting the sense that they are indeed villains, and end up sending the message that there is no such thing as evil, merely misunderstanding?

Part of the problem is of course the need in visual media such as the cinema and television to shy away from graphic violence in order to gain a rating that will garner the widest range of audiences. In this the novelist has an advantage, for there are many ways to describe atrocities in written media without becoming needlessly graphic, for instance, focusing on the trauma of the survivor, with the actual act kept in the past.

But there still seems to be a noticable misuse of the "tragic virtue," such that "he's not all that bad" becomes a process of excusing the villain's crimes, as though being kind in one area makes it all right to be vicious in others. To take a historical example, the fact that Joseph Stalin did seem to actually love his daughter Svetlana, while it makes him a human being rather than a cardboard cutout, does not diminish the magnitude of his crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union, whom he murdered by the job-lot in his pursuit of total control.

On Seizing the Moment

So today I finally get some writing time, and decide to pull out the novel of King Rene XIV of the Swamp Kingdom and his wicked uncle Sebastien the Usurper. I'm figuring that the words are going to just come pouring out, since I know the story so well and it's a pretty straightforward action-adventure fantasy. Not a lot of intricate philosophy or social dance, just the slam-bam of a coup d'etat and a boy king fleeing for his life to another world and teenage allies.

But when I sit down to write, it's a real struggle to get the words flowing. I push out a few sentences, and then I'm wandering around the house before I can sit down and put out a little more. I did manage to turn out almost 1500 words, but I'd been hoping for so much more.

I think it's that old problem of holding in and letting out. After having to hold back so long because of the press of non-fiction deadlines, it's hard to let go and let myself write. There's the pull of multiple other novel and short story projects that all want my attention. But there's also the sense that I ought to be doing something else. I do have two other article projects, even if I don't have the right books for either of them right now. And this house is anything but spotless and ready for the realtor to show Right This Minute, so there's the guilty sense that I Really Ought to be busily cleaning and getting it Just Perfect.

All of which makes it difficult for me to make the best use of this wonderful chunk of time that suddenly presents itself for me to use. It's so frustrating to produce so little, when there's so much to be told and so dreadfully little time.

The Perfect Stranger Problem Again

As I'm forging ahead on The Crowns of the Martyrs, I'm realizing how completely ad intra a novel it is. That is, it's a novel set almost entirely within the halls of the Catholic Church, dealing with its people and politics. Unlike the other novels like Cloak and Shadow, there's not the strong element of interaction with members of other traditions, both Christian and non-Christian, and particularly the Independent Churches of Christ and Christian Churches of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, my own religious background.

Since I'm not Catholic, I suddenly have to confront the question of whether I should be writing this book, or if it's a form of trespass. In Cloak and Shadow, the strong role of Paige McFarland and her Restoration-Movement faith as seen through Jan-Pawel's Catholic perspective becomes a form of "how others see us," a chance for reflection. However, there just isn't going to be that element in The Crowns of the Martyrs, due to its focus on internal Catholic Church politics.

On the other hand, The Crowns of the Martyrs is going to be near the end of the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence, so by the time it comes out (assuming any of this stuff ever gets published), my ecumenical credentials should be well established. However, each novel really needs to stand on its own merits, since there's no guarantee that any given reader will have read any of the previous books.

In the meantime, I keep writing, even as I consider the issues. I do my best to handle the material respectfully, with the same sort of consideration and reverence I'd want my own faith given by others.

Reconsideration

As I'm working on the novel of Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski and the massacre at the consistory (tentative working title either The Martyrs' Crowns or The Crowns of the Martyrs), I'm becoming steadily more convinced that my original plan for the first two chapters is faulty. Instead of having Jan-Pawel appear in the second scene of the first chapter, I'm thinking it's best to delay it until the beginning of the second chapter. This will permit the first chapter to deal entirely with the political maneuvering that makes possible the massacre, and will connect Jan-Pawel's entry with the next scene, in which he's introduced to Siloan. This way it will flow better, instead of moving in jerks.

However, I'm not entirely satisfied that delaying Jan-Pawel's appearance until the second chapter is really that good of an idea. Most of the important characters who are now appearing in Chapter 1 will be killed when the ninjas strike, and play no role in the subsequent conclave. On one hand, it's possible that the massacre is well enough into the novel that their deaths will mean all the more, but on the other, it's possible that readers will feel cheated to lose what seemed to be significant characters midway through the novel, and may not realize that Jan-Pawel, along with Eigun Eiderveyen, is the principal protagonist.

Of course this may be just another case in which I really need to write the whole novel and see where it's going before I can get a real feel for what needs to be done.

Entry Points and Introductions

As I'm working on Cloak and Shadow and on the as-of-yet-untitled novel of the massacre at the consistory, I'm struggling with whether the beginnings of them are any good, or if I need to start somewhere, or somehow, else.

Although these will probably be later novels in the series, I can't really assume that every reader who picks them will have read the previous novels. So I've got to make sure that new readers are brought up to speed quickly, without boring long-term readers to tears.

In Cloak and Shadow, I introduce Jan-Pawel and Paige both through meetings with their respective bosses, sending them on their diplomatic missions. The third is of the refugee priest being threatened both by one of the local auxiliary bishops and by agents from the dictatorship that took over his home country. Now that I'm looking back at it, the interviews both seem to be bland -- yet they convey necessary information, introducing the characters and establishing their diplomatic credentials.

In the novel of the massacre at the consistory, I'm starting with a top-level political strategy discussion, yet I'm still not sure if that's the best way to start this novel either. Yet I'm not sure what kind of "we've got a conspiracy here" scene would work best without producing a false start.

You know, the sort of novel that begins with a slam-bam action scene, and then it ends and the characters in it don't show up again for ages, as you drag through how things got into such a fix. It's pretty close to a bait and switch, to my mind.

Of course it may all be just more of the walking-through-fog phenomenon. Once I have the whole thing written, I'll be able to look back and see how everything fits together. Maybe I won't even be using the original opening scene as the beginning. Maybe it'll become a later chapter, or disappear altogether.

Ideas and Time

Why is it that, whenever your idea hamster is really getting going and you think you're finally going to have some time to actually write, it all goes away?

Things are really coming together on Cloak and Shadow right now, and I'm starting to see the interconnections I need in order to write it. And after I finished the last big load of articles and wasn't finding any new assignments on H-net, I thought I was going to have some actual writing time.

Fat chance. Today I get an e-mail from an editor I've worked for before, telling me she needs help with a bunch of articles that other people wussed out on. And we need the money, so I can't really tell her no. So I'm going to be frantically pounding out these articles for the next month, and there goes all my writing time.

We'll see if I ever get any writing time, or if it always ends up vanishing as the next non-fiction project makes its appearance.

Fog and Confidence

I often compare the process of writing a novel to walking through fog, with the confidence that, even if I can't see all the way to the horizon, I can always see far enough to keep writing. One of the things this means for me is that I can feel confident to plunge into writing when I know relatively little about the world in which the novel in question is set.

For instance, as I start writing Cloak and Shadow, I still know relatively little about a whole lot of key things. I haven't sat down and worked out the staff of each of the embassies that are important in the novel, or the chancery of the archdiocese of Raus-ceil-quein, or the court of Queen Catriel. I still don't know about the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement) congregation where Paige McFarland will be worshipping, other than they're refugees, rather than Salquari. Yet I feel confident that I will start seeing them as I get close enough to actually need to write about them.

Of course there are dangers in plunging ahead, but there are also dangers in meticulously planning every single thing. On one hand, one can go in the wrong direction without realizing it, and end up having to do major rewrites, simply because an element appears midway through that becomes so important that one must go back and lay in the necessary foreshadowing so that it doesn't pop up from nowhere. On the other hand, one can become so obsessed with working everything out in detail before hand that one never gets to writing the first page of actual story.

False Starts

Today while I was standing in line at the post office, I got out my trusty old Palm VIIx and started writing a scene in one of the novels I'm working on. I got about a paragraph done by the time I got up to the clerk. But almost as soon as I got out of the post office and headed back to the car, I had an intense feeling that I'd begun that scene the wrong way, and was going to have to toss it out and start over.

It's not an uncommon experience. If you start a scene even a little slightly off, it's possible to end up in a completely wrong direction.

At least in this case, I didn't do as badly as one scene I started in the first draft of The Steel Breeds True, when I picked the wrong POV. I got almost three pages in it before I realized that I needed a completely different point of view. The only way I was able to rewrite that one was to print out the first version, then open a completely new file and, using the old version as a guide to the events, write the scene from the proper POV.

This one's just a matter of a faulty assumption. Fix that one, and I should be back on track very quickly. Of course that assumes that I'll actually have the time to do the writing any time soon.

Missing Person Found

I'd been rather frustrated in the writing of Cloak and Shadow because I could tell I was missing someone, but had no real sense of who this person could be.

And then yesterday, while I was listening to an old Steely Dan song, it finally hit me. First I got the name (although I'm spelling her name Paige rather than Page), and then biographical details came pouring in. Now I think I can finally get this novel going again -- assuming I ever get some writing time between all these non-fiction articles I have to churn out to keep the income flowing.

Yet another perfect example of the walking-through-fog phenomenon.

Back to the Beginning

I should be working on a set of articles that are due January 16, but I haven't been able to get back into it and get going again on it. Frustrated with my inability to find a new entry point into the project, I got some of the Ixilon materials out again.

However, I do think I finally found the proper entry point to the whole sequence that deals with Eigun Eiderveyen and Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski. It's the story of the boy-king of the swamps, Rene XIV, and how his wicked uncle Sebastien thrust him into exile on the yonder side of a worldgate in order to usurp the Cypress Throne. However, the world into which he was thrown is our own, and there young Rene found allies of a most surprising sort.

I've written the prolog, in which Sebastien sets forth his plans, and a few sentences of the first chapter. I'd really like to push ahead on this novel, but at the same time I know that Ihave a moral obligation to get to work on the article project, since I've signed a contract promising that I'd get them written and turned in on time. And it doesn't help that the pay is really lousy on these articles, so there's not really that much to help motivate me in the face of a thorough lack of inspiration on how to turn these assignments into finished articles.

Walking Through Fog

I often compare writing the first draft of a novel to walking in heavy fog. When I begin, I can't see my way through to the end yet. But I can see just far enough to write the first chapter. As I write it, I begin to see where the second chapter will go, and the one after it. Sometimes the fog clears for a space so that I begin seeing how several chapters at once should fit together. However quickly or slowly it clears, it almost always pulls back fast enough to stay ahead of where I'm actually writing. If I suddenly run into it and lose my way, I've generally done the writing equivalent of overdriving one's headlights, and the best thing to do at that point is to slow down or to set the project aside altogether and work on something else for a while. When the project in question is ready to write again, it'll let me know.

Recently I ran into just that sort of problem with Cloak and Shadow, the story of Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski's first assignment as an actual Head of Mission. I was running into a feeling that something, or perhaps someone, was missing. However, I didn't have any idea what should go into those holes, or even exactly how big those holes were.

I've learned through bitter experience that trying to force things is apt to wrench the story out of shape. However, by setting it aside for a while and concentrating instead on some other parts of the chronology, I was able to gain insights on that novel. Now I'm starting to get a clearer idea of just who all I'm missing, and even beginning to see some of them.

Now to try to pull these threads together into some kind of coherent whole, and make sure that they don't go unravelling all over the place the way I had happen with Wyrm Rampant back in 2001. (That's one I've still never been able to get back to and sort out, although one of these days I really want to. It just doens't help that it is going to be a huge novel, big enough that I really don't know if any publisher is going to want to take the risk involved in publishing it from an unknown author).

The Myth that Refuses to Die

Recently there has been considerable consternation about a television program on the old story of "Pope Joan," that is, a woman of the early Medieval period who supposedly masqueraded as a man in order to pursue her hunger for learning and ended up becoming so famous for her erudition that she was made a cardinal and ultimately elected pope, only to have her true gender revealed when she gave birth to a baby while on her way to her coronation. Supposedly she was then torn limb from limb by the outraged crowd and the embarassed Roman Curia covered the whole incident up, but her memory survived in the custom of all papal processions carefully avoiding the street upon which she met her doom.

There is not one shred of historical evidence for this story, yet it refuses to go away no matter how many times it's debunked. Part of it is pure ugly anti-Catholic glee at the Church heirarchy being made to look foolish, and in modern times feminist hopes that the exclusive masculine priesthood could eventually change, but because of the sheer persistance of the story in the face of fact there seems to be something more basic to human psychology at work here.

First, there is the element of the fear of infiltration, of the outsider sneaking into the inner circle. For those of us who remember the Cold War, the constant fear of Communist infiltration of American institutions was a constant feature of that era. Even today, one of the fears of the War on Terror is of American converts to radical Islamic fundamentalism becoming a sort of fifth column, indistinguishable from us save by their beliefs. But it's more basic than any particular conflict -- part of social cohesion is a clear understanding of who is a member of the group and who is an outsider, and thus the infiltrator threatens to destroy that distinction of us vs. them.

Second, there is the sense of delight at the underling outwitting authority, even if only for a time. Even as we fear the disruption of the social order, we don't want to let it become too rigid or too sure of itself, lest it become a tyranny. From this comes our love for figures such as Robin Hood who break the formal rules of society in order to serve a higher justice. It is also at the root of Trickster figures, who may outwit every power divine and mortal in one story, yet is outwitted and humiliated by a child in the next story. We want to be reassured that authority will be reined in if it should become overweeningly arrogant, yet we also want to be reassured that those who overturn authority will meet their own comeuppance in turn.

I'm not advocating the use or modern retelling of this particular story, since its historical use has generally been such as to be highly offensive to Catholics, and thus even a well-intentioned retelling will be colored by history. But understanding why the particular motif has proved so enduring can help us as writers tap into these sorts of basic narratives.

On Being a Perfect Stranger

A recent article by Jimmy Akin about serious theological errors in Bram Stoker's Dracula made me think about the responsibilities the writer of fiction has when dealing with faith communities not one's own. Obviously, we do not want to deliberately slander or malign someone else's faith by repeating things we know to be false.

However, it is not enough to merely avoid deliberate slander. As Jimmy Akin demonstrates so ably, it is possible for a well-meaning writer who knows a little about another religion's practices and beliefs, but doesn't really understand them or the theology that underlies them, to produce scenes that are profoundly offensive to members of that faith. It is a perfect example of the old adage "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing."

How then can we as writers avoid such gaffes? Obviously extensive, careful research is essential -- but because we are not members of the faith community in question, we may well lack the knowledge necessary to distinguish authoritative sources from those that are perpetuating misconceptions or outright falsehoods. Even when working with authoritative sources, we may miss nuances, or get the sense of a term wrong when trying to understand it from context -- and it can easily come back to bite us in a story.

Often it comes down to being able to ask someone who has first-hand knowledge about the faith in question. Even then, one often may not know what questions to ask, since certain kinds of misunderstandings are often invisible because they deal with things assumed to be universal, when they are in fact peculiar to one's own religious background. If one's expert is willing, having them actually vet the entire manuscript with an eye to such blunders might be the best solution, although this is often more easily obtained with a short story than a novel.

Congratulations, Your Excellency, You've Been Redshirted

For those who aren't familiar with the science fiction community, "redshirting" is the practice of giving the names of friends or associates to minor characters who are subsequently killed, often in absurd or memorable ways. Sometimes big-name writers will actually auction off the opportunity to have one's name mentioned in this fashion, and donate the proceeds to charity. The term comes from the original Star Trek series, in which the security personnel wore distinctive red shirts, and one could often recognize at first appearance the character who is going to be killed off solely to demonstrate to the viewer that This Is A Very Deadly Place.

I'm doing some planning for another of the stories of Eigun Eiderveyen, which is taking place at a meeting of Catholic bishops. There's an assassin among them, and after a series of murders of people of lesser rank, at least one bishop will be picked off before the assassin is identified and caught. Suddenly I realized that I had a perfect opportunity to redshirt the notorious Marcel Lefebvre, Rad-Trad extraordinaire. And since he can easily be considered a schismatic, the method of murder quickly became gruesomely obvious.

Now I just need time to actually write it.

Who Can It Be Now?

I'd gone back to Cloak and Shadow, hoping to get some work done on it, and I'm becoming steadily aware that there's someone missing in it. I roughly know the sort of person I'm missing, but I still don't really have a sense of who this is yet.

And for me, it's very tricky to consciously think in terms of "OK, I need a character with these traits for this slot," because there's a constant danger that in doing so, I can end up killing the story. If the story becomes a made thing, instead of living in my mind, it just shrivels up and dies. It no longer matters, because it's not about people I care about any more, but just little wooden puppets to be moved from plot point to plot point. So what.

This issue has been a major sore point with several workshops I've been in. They couldn't understand why I couldn't look at a story in terms of structural elements like a machine that could be taken apart and reassembled at will, and would actually get angry with me and accuse me of willful unprofessionalism when I tried to explain that trying to do so kills stories for me, and that I had to protect my stories from being destroyed by this whole slot-based, mechanical plotting system they were trying to impose upon me.

For me, there has to be a world and people that exist for themselves, and only then can I tell stories about them. If I try to reduce them to just a collection of sets and hired actors playing roles, the story dies. I might be able to trudge through cranking out a story as an assignment, but it would be a hateful chore, and would probably end up looking like I did it as an assignment rather than something from the heart.

I'm Still Here

No, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth,
nor have I given up on writing. It's just that I have
so many things to deal with that I simply haven't had
any spare time to speak of.

We've had another spate of thieves over Thanksgiving
weekend. This time they broke into our house, which
inflicted further mental strain.

And of course there's the constant drain of article
assignments, book shipping and being expected to be an
unpaid maid around this house, but keep it clean to
professional maid standards, for no pay.

Like I have time just lying around in piles waiting
for me to pick it up.

So writing is bits and slivers, a sentence here and a
sentence there while standing in various lines waiting
to do things. Maybe even a whole page into the Palm
Pilot while I'm at the laundromat or some other place
that keeps me for any length of time.

I just wish I could start having real, unbroken
writing time again. I've got more ideas than I ever
had, but less time to write.

At this rate I'm never going to be able to get
anything published, and I'll be writing work-for-hire
nonfiction for the rest of my life.

So Many Ideas, So Little Time

Yes, I've got still more ideas. Things are
interconnecting and interesting backstory from one
character's earlier life is starting to look like
parts of another character's novel. It would be
interesting to see the first character from the
perspective of the second, and especially when he was
so much younger.

But I quite honestly don't know when I'm ever going to
get them written. I've got article assignments
stacking up one after another, and I somehow need to
do still more cleaning if I'm going to have any hope
of getting this house to sell. You simply can't write
a novel on the basis of a sentence here and a sentence
there, scribbled during the bits and slivers of time
found standing in line waiting for things to happen.
And as long as I'm having to write fiction on-spec, I
pretty much have to let everything else cut in front
of fiction writing time, no matter how many ideas are
burning in my head.

And with my luck, once time does finally loosen up,
the stories have gone cold in my mind and are no
longer so eager to be written, so I'm stuck sitting at
the keyboard remembering the white fire that's now
gone.

Of Holding Back and Letting Out

One of the great frustrations of writing is that, once you finally get time to write, you may discover that the words simply won't come. All those wonderful stories that had to be held back while other
obligations were discharged now seem jammed up there, unwilling or unable to come forth. So you sit and struggle while precious minutes and hours go by, all too aware that the writing time will end all too soon and that you'll have yet another Obligation come plopping down to take away all the time that might otherwise go to writing.

Or worse, you have so many stories and novels lined up that you literally can't settle on any one of them. Your mind is pulled a dozen ways at once by all the different stories crying out, "Write me!" "No, write me!" "Don't forget about MEEEE!" And nothing gets accomplished, and before you know
what's happened, the precious respite is over and it's time to buckle down to Duty once again. But the mind that was so briefly released doesn't want to go back to drudgerous work, and refuses to concentrate. So of course work becomes an even more painful and soul-draining process, and you know that next time around it will be even more difficult to let go and start writing.

On Beginnings

As I'm working on the various novels of Jan-Pawel
Trzetrzelewski and Eigun Eiderveyen, I'm wondering if
some of them are starting in the right place. For
some, it's obvious where to begin. For instance, the
story of the rescue of the prelate whose name I still
haven't settled on should begin with the torturer
telling him that either he will break and deny his
faith, or they will grind his bones into powder. With
that threat established, I can move to his superiors
setting up the necessary circumstances for Eigun to
effect his rescue. And the first Jan-Pawel story,
working title In the Presence of Mine Enemies, starts
with a priest being set upon and beaten by thugs.
Jan-Pawel is then called upon to fill in for the
priest, which puts him in contact with other key
players and gets the storyline moving.

But with others, I'm not so confident. For instance, I
started Plausible Deniability with a scene of
Jan-Pawel reporting to receive his new assignment. I
also have a similar scene at the beginning of Cloak
and Shadow. Now, looking back at them, I find that
both of them seem rather weak, not to mention
repetitive. On the other hand, I can't yet think of
any good action bit to put at the front, that doesn't
give a false impression of just what the story is
about.

On the other hand, sometimes it's best to just forge
ahead and write the whole novel, and hope that
completing it will give the necessary perspective on
the overall shape of the novel to perform the
necessary front-end alignment. That was certainly the
case with The Steel Breeds True. The scene with
General Semyonov in the Lubyanka was one of the last
that I wrote, as I finally saw how to present the
story so that it would be immediately clear what was
at stake.

The Name Game

I've got a character giving me fits. His name is
either Silan or Silor, and I can't figure out which
sounds right.

And he's a major figure in that new novel that just
cropped up, so I have to figure out what his name is.
I really don't want to get a huge way into it and then
have to laboriously go back through and change every
single instance of his name.