Lessons From My Early Writing

This week I reread some of my earliest writing attempts from 40 years ago. I hadn't thought about them until the last few months. Although they were failures for the most part, they taught me some lessons.

In Stephen King's book "On Writing", he says he began to write when he was very young. It took him many years to become successful. I came away with the feeling that since I had not started that early, that it would be harder for me to get into writing.

Recently I found some stories and notes for stories that I had worked on when I was in junior and senior high school. While I did not start as early as Stephen King, I have certainly tried to write for many years.

While most of my writing at school was various types of essays, a couple teachers did give me opportunities to write short fiction. More importantly, I wrote stories outside of my school assignments. I also began to make short movies when I was in high school.

One story that I did finish was "The Sleeper in the Dark", an attempt to emulate Lovecraft. I posted that on my website at: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-sleeper-in-the-dark/

In high school I wanted to write a novel. I remembered that I tried twice, but when I looked at my old papers I found notes for several other attempts. None of these produced more than outlines or a few pages of text.

The first attempt I remember was to do something like "Lord of the Rings". Needless to say, that was a poor choice for a first book. I began with a time line of events, from which I would later extract information for the story. I worked on the time line when I had free time at school.

The problem I ran into was that there was nothing that happened in the time line that lent itself to being  the core of a plot. I started without any idea where the story would go and just drifted. In essence the character just existed, didn't change or develop and nothing important happened to him. I abandoned that project.

The other attempt I remember was a Doc Savage book. Since I had read a number of Doc Savage books, I felt I knew the characters and how the stories went.  I gave the story a title: "The Smiling Corpse".

I found four typed pages, comprising Chapter 1 and part of Chapter 2. When I converted it to a text file, they ran about 2,200 words. I don't remember if I had any kind of out line or notes. I didn't find any kind of notes for the story. I found an outline I did for "The Lost Oasis", although I'm not sure that I did that before or after I wrote "The Smiling Corpse".

When I reread it, I couldn't see where I was going with the story. I say that Doc was off in Hong Kong, but the story was set in New York. One thing that struck me was that the victim/smiling corpse was a poet, who was a friend of Doc's. I wouldn't think many people would associate Doc Savage with poetry.

I dropped this project because I didn't think that the dialogue I wrote was very good. I felt I needed to have a much better understanding of the characters if I was to see any improvement.

I liked the title "The Smiling Corpse" and reused it for a short movie I made a few years later. It was silent, so didn't have any dialogue.

Out of curiosity, I did a search on the title "The Smiling Corpse" and turned up several different books and a short movie with that title. One book was a detective story published in 1935 by Philip Wylie. Wylie co-wrote "When Worlds Collide". The main characters in the book are well know writers, so I think it was something of a satire.

I gave up on writing a novel for a few years. Then in the early 1980s I tried a story I called "Conan the Accountant". In some ways it was a repeat of my experience with "The Smiling Corpse". I didn't develop an outline, or plan, for the story and it drifted away from the original idea. I found 11 typed pages, with close to 5,700 words in total. I can't remember why I dropped that one, but when I reread it, I cringed at some of what I wrote.

In the 1990s I dropped the idea of writing to focus on film making. For some reason I film easier to do. Partly that was because the films I did were shorter, but I think that I am just more comfortable with film as a way to express myself.

In the last few years I have started to make more use of outlines and story plans in my writing. I feel that has helped me move beyond some of the problems that stopped me years ago. I really feel it is important to have a very strong idea how the story ends before you start to write. Too many of my ideas have failed because I had no idea how to end them.

I haven't come up with an approach I can use to create better dialogue and characters, but I think that my skills have improved. It is easy to get over confident, and I know that when I do, my writing suffers.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

"Felix" and The Ancient Astronauts

The Red One

They say that reading is part of writing, so I think I can count some of my recent reading as work on "Felix". I've read a bunch of stuff about Lovecraft and ancient astronauts recently, which is something touched on in my story.

Pseudoscience

When I first learnt of Erich von Däniken’s "Chariots of the Gods", I was immediately convinced of it's veracity. However, as I read more, all of the claims disappeared in a puff of smoke. This lead to my interest in scepticism.

I have long since stopped reading the work of the people who perpetuate von Däniken’s ideas. These proponents haven't come up with any convincing evidence for their hypothesis. Nonetheless, I am still fascinated with the idea. In part, it is because the idea is, to me, plausible.

Recently I started to follow Jason Colavito blog about ancient astronauts and pseudo archaeology. See: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog. He takes a sceptical stance and investigates claims in some detail. One his major claims is that people who make claims about ancient astronauts were inspired by the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. He published the book "The Cult of Alien Gods" about his ideas. See: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/cult-of-alien-gods.html.

Jason Colavito links to Michael S. Heiser blogs. See: http://drmsh.com/ and http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/. Heiser has debunked some ancient astronaut claims.

One of the disturbing aspects of many the ancient astronaut claims is their inherent racism. Although it doesn't often appear overtly, many of the arguments used boil down to "those people" were not capable of building something so impressive. Lovecraft often expressed racist views, which many of his modern day fans are uncomfortable with.

Science Fiction

Over the years I've come across many stories and movies that invoke the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth in the distant past. As noted above, H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories involve extraterrestrial visitors who have influenced history. He wrote most of these stories between 1926 and 1936.

Recently I came across an earlier story, Jack London's "The Red One", which was published in 1918. It concerns a man who finds an alien artefact deep in the interior of Guadalcanal. The descriptions of the natives in the story are quite racist, although it isn't clear to me if this reflects London's views or those of the character in the story. The story is available from Project Gutenberg. See: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/788.

Several of Arthur C. Clarke stories have ancient alien visitations as a back ground. Most famous are the 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and the 1968 novel and movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(short_story).

I hope to soon add my story "Felix" to this list.

Scientific Study

In the past, some scientists have taken the idea seriously. Most notable was Carl Sagan, who published papers on the subject in the early 1960s and later was involved with the SETI project. Since pseudoscience has taken over the ancient astronaut hypothesis, few scientists will take a serious look at the possibility. If you know of a serious scientific study of this, please let me know.

I remain intrigued by the idea of alien visitations in the past. For now it seems that it can only be explored in fiction. Some day some thing may show up to validate the hypothesis, but it does seem that not even the advocates have made any serious attempts to find that evidence.

I would like to explore this idea more in my stories and movies.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Writer's Block and "Felix"

As I continue to struggle with writer's block, I ask myself, why do I want to write "Felix"? Maybe that will get me restarted.

On one level  a story can be just a story; an exercise in entertainment. But to write a story a writer needs motivation. What is my motivation? In general I see any creative activity as a way for the creator to express their personal philosophy. When I look at the stories and movies I've done, they all reflect ideas or emotions that were important to me. That is even true of projects where I didn't consciously set out to make a point.

What about "Felix"?

My initial inspiration for "Felix" was a desire to rewrite one of H. P. Lovecraft's short stories. At the time I started, I didn't give any thought to what I wanted to say in the story. I believe that if I want to finish this story and make it worth reading, then I need to clarify in my mind what I want the story about.

In many of Lovecraft's stories he tries to evoke a sense that people are just a small and insignificant part of the Universe. His protagonists are horrified by that revelation. It is not that the other beings are evil, but that they simply don't care about humanity.

At the end of "Felix" I have a similar revelation. As I said in an earlier blog post, it is very difficult to hide the climax to a story like this. Since there can be no surprise ending to the story, my focus needs to be on how my protagonists react to the revelation. In the current version of the story I have the two protagonists react in different ways.

The story up until the climax needs to build up the reader's empathy for the protagonists. I need to develop the characters to the point where, while their reactions may be unexpected, the reader can understand why the characters react the way they do.

What I want the reader to think about while they read is how the characters might react to the revelation. Then, after they have read the story, I want them to go on to speculate how they would react in their place. I do want to provoke an emotional response, but I don't believe I would call it fear.

I would like reader to find what I seek; an acceptance of the Universe as it is. So often we get caught up in the travails and frustrations of our day to day existence. I believe that it is easier to find happiness and enjoy life if we see our troubles as not that important in the whole scheme of things.

This seems like a mighty ambitious goal for a little story like mine. I find it rather intimidating to think of it in those terms, which doesn't help much with my writer's block. On the other hand, just because I might not succeed is no reason not to try. A failed attempt may still be worth the effort.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

STATE as a Writing Tool for "Felix"

I continued to use the STATE animation program to help me rewrite "Felix" this week. I finished a couple of scenes.

I made a few changes to the scene I started on last week. In it the two astronauts explore "the target area". Then I extracted the dialogue from the STATE file. STATE stores the dialogue and other information in an XML file. All I needed to do was open it up and do a little reformatting.

I transferred the dialogue to Word, and then I used that as a basis to write the version for the story. I did make some minor changes to the dialogue, but most of the work was to add in descriptions of the location and the action.

I felt that it went quite smoothly. I feel that the text flows quite well.

I went on to do another scene. In it the astronauts explore a cave next to "the target area". For some reason this didn't seem to work as well. I'm not sure why. Maybe I tried to go too fast. I went through the same process to convert the dialogue into text for the story. Nevertheless, I felt that the process did help and the result was better than if I had just worked with the text and not the animation.

Next week looks like I'll be busy with other things, so I won't likely get much done on "Felix".

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

"Felix" Inches Forward a Little

Astronauts on Mars look for "Felix"

I actually got back to work on "Felix" this week. I think my idea to use the animation program STATE to help me write will work.

A couple of weeks ago I installed the animation program STATE on my computer. It is a hacked version of the Xtranormal program. I was reluctant to use it at first because of the uncertain legal status. Since Xtranormal shut down the program's legal status is in limbo. That might be clarified soon, if the planned resurrection of Xtranormal happens. I decided that it would be OK for me to use STATE as a writing tool until the legal issue is resolved.

I also used STATE plus, which is an add-on that allows you to modify characters, sets and actions. I found that useful on this project.

I wanted to rewrite several scenes from "Felix" that I wasn't happy with. In the first scene I tried the two astronauts explore a site on Mars and argue about what they find. STATE didn't have a Mars set, so I modified the Moon set to look like Mars.

I shifted the colours from black/white/grey to pink/pink/red. I removed the lunar lander and the flag. I also duplicated the astronaut character, so I would have two characters. I gave them different helmet colours to tell them apart.

I tried twice to write a new scene. Both times went quite smoothly, but I wasn't happy with the way I did it the first time, so I started over. I'm much happier with the second try and plan to build on that. I do find that it is easier for me to write with this approach, and I find that it does spark my creativity.

Unfortunately, I got distracted by experiments with the program. I didn't really need to modify the set and characters like I did for what I planned to do. Even after I had something that looked like Mars, I continued to tweak it. It does look better, but it is hard to justify the extra effort.

On the other hand, maybe the extra work does help. The more appropriate it looks, the more it can "put me in the right mood" for the story. We'll see how it goes this week.

I had thought my idea for this story was original, but then on one of the Lovecraft Geek podcasts (http://lovecraftzine.com/the-lovecraft-geek-robert-m-price-podcast/), Robert Price mentioned that someone had suggested that a new version of "At The Mountains of Madness" would have to be set on the Moon. I think Mars is a better choice.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

"Felix" and "The Barrier"

I started to get back to my story "Felix" this week, although I am still involved with "The Barrier". Just before Christmas may not be that good a time to start a new project.

"Felix"

I wrote a first version of "Felix" a year ago. It is a science fiction tale that I based on a H. P. Lovecraft story. I changed the setting to Mars. I left it since then because I find it easier to rewrite if I can distance myself from the story.

I reread the story this week. It was different than I remember. For one thing, I had planned to have parts of the story told in flashback. In the version I did, I had done it in chronological order. I forgot I had done that. Lovecraft himself recommended that if you want to tell a story in non chronological order, that you start with it in chronological order, then rearrange it later.

I've come up with some ideas to revise the story. I know I need to develop the characters more, but I haven't given that much thought yet.

"The Barrier"

I had some more good feed back this week. No bad feed back. My plan was to leave the project for at least several months before I do anything more on it. I didn't think that there was much I could do unless I redid the movie from scratch. However, as I contemplate the comments I've had, I can see how I can do some improvements with out a complete redo.

Someone suggested that I add music. That could help, but I find it hard to imagine what kind of music would be appropriate. The suggestion was that I could use it to set the mood of each scene. I may set aside some time to review the options.

Another person suggested that I redo the voices with real actors in place of the computer generated voices. I think that can be done. I may try doing one character in one scene to see how it goes.

Initially I had some comments that questioned the validity of some of transportation planning details. That doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

My Science Fiction Stories

I have four science fiction stories on the go now. Over the last few weeks I made progress on a couple of them, but I need to focus on one at a time if I want to get any of them finished. I’d like to find some people to critique my stories.

The Science Fiction Market

I thought I might try to sell my story Heat Wave to a science fiction magazine, so I did a little research on-line. One magazine, Strange Horizons, has a list of the type of stories they don’t want to see: http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml. I’ll need to look at it a bit closer, but Heat Wave just might be one of them. That prompted me to think of other possible stories.

I picked up a collection of the best science fiction of 2010 at the library. Well, actually my wife picked it up. I wanted to get a feel for the kind of stories and style of writing they feature. It didn’t look to me as if there is a big change from the last time I read a lot of science fiction, back in the 1980s. I think the stories I’ve developed wouldn’t be out of place. That is assuming they turn out OK.

Heat Wave

Heat Wave is the story of a climate researcher who doesn’t get along with his new boss. I wrote more after my last post about it http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/science-fiction-story-update-2012-august-5/, but not in the last week. The first draft runs about 5,700 words now and I think I am about half done. The final story would end up at about 11,000 words. That said, I think I can develop the story more, which could make it a novelette or even a novella rather than a short story. I’ll leave that decision until I do another draft.

I based the story partly on some of my own experiences and partly on what one climate researcher told me about the threats she’d received.

Pete’s Plan

It is the story of a man who lives in a future time where unemployment is so high, that people who have jobs are unlikely to ever meet someone else who has a job. The story is set at a time after the singularity, when some people have become immortal and the rest haven’t.

I got started on it when I woke up from a scary dream early one morning and found it hard to get back to sleep. The dream inspired a story idea for me. I got up and wrote a short first draft in my notebook. I completed a second draft of it this week. It runs about 900 words. My brother has agreed to read it and give me a critique.

The Helix

One story, The Helix, I based on a Lovecraft story, but I moved the setting to Mars. It features a Mars rover I call Felix. So far, all I have is a few notes and a first attempt at an outline. I might change the name to The Spiral Tunnel, because I called the rover Felix. I don’t intend the story to be part of the Cthulhu Mythos, although the story I based it on was.

The Two Davids

The Two Davids, is about a man who wishes he could be two people so he wouldn’t have to choose between two life paths. It doesn’t turn out well for him.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Science Fiction Story Update 2012 August 5

I hadn’t planned to work on my science fiction story until later, but the ideas just poured out of my head this week. The story has a (tentative) title now: Heat Wave. I’m taking a slightly different approach to how I write this time. We’ll see how that goes.

Through out the week, I wrote my ideas, along with some dialog and description to use in the story in to my notebook. Later in the week, I started to work on the story itself. I decided that I should write the story in first person.

Most of my stories have been in third person because movie scripts are in third person. It wasn’t until this week that I realized that all scripts are in third person. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard anyone point that out. Even when you use a voice over to have a character describe how they feel and what they think, the script itself is still in third person.

About a month ago, I did an outline, but my concept of the story changed since then. I did a new outline. I gave the characters names and then I started to write parts of the story.

Normally I work from a general outline and write each scene in proper order. This time I decided I wouldn’t write them in any particular order. The main reason is that I have some very clear ideas about some scenes, including the final scene. For the other scenes I had only a vague idea what I wanted to do. As I finish scenes I expect to think about the other scenes, and that way build up into a complete story. So far, that approach seems to work.

I transferred what I’d written in my notebook with a voice recognition program. I think that sped up the process. I think the words flow easier when I speak them aloud. The voice recognition isn’t 100 per cent accurate, but I think I caught most of the problems. I got about 1,400 words of the first draft done so far.

I used Celtx for my story. It has some useful features. The “index cards” make it easier to move blocks of text around. Celtx was originally for movie scripts, but it does have a novel option. I used it on Bright Freedom and it was a big help there.

As I’ve thought about the story, I’ve started to realize that there are some parallels between the story and some of my personal experiences. I’ve altered the story a bit to take advantage of that. Recently I’ve read several books about H.P. Lovecraft. Despite his stories being weird fantasies, they point out where he has incorporated his personal experiences into his stories. Most authors do that to some extent, but it helped me see that I could use my experiences in this story.

The books I read were.

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World Against Life by Michel Houellebecq,

Lovecraft: A Biography by Lyon Sprague De Campe, and

Lovecraft: A look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos by Lin Carter

I don’t plan to push ahead on this story. When I get ideas, I will follow them up. I had some more over the last few days, so I’ll likely do some more work on it this week.

Pierre Berton suggests that you read a good story before you write. I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate for my story. Yesterday I decided that I would read Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke. I read the book back in high school, so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy, but I think it would be a good influence on my writing. In particular, the narrator is similar to how I see mine.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog