The Mother of All Writing Processes, Part 3

Yes, I know it's been more than a week since I ended a blog post with "next week..." but with a holiday weekend the next week and then necessary travels, it has been difficult to make the time and also connect to a stable wi-fi. However, rather than abandon you in the middle of the Writing Process, I have actually been allowing you time to complete the previous step: writing a draft.

Done yet?

If not, please return to the previous blog post on drafting.

If you still need help getting an idea, check this blog post.

Let's assume you have finished the draft. I define a draft (or "rough draft" or "first draft" as my students often call it) as the initial work in its totality from opening sentence to concluding sentence. This presupposes that it is not in its final form. We understand that work is needed on it but at least we have put together something that includes the beginning, middle, and end. This is the same for an essay in a class or for a novel. 

Now that we have the draft, it is time to move on to the next step.


Revision

I advise my students to write the drafts of their papers far enough before the deadline that they have time to take a break from it and return with fresh eyes. In an ideal world, this would work wonderfully. The reality, I suspect, is that the first draft is the final draft for too many of my students. Papers are often full of careless errors that even a run through the spellchecker would have caught. I try to impress upon them that their writing is a reflection of who they are, so writing well is to their own self-interest. Alas, I understand that for some the goal is not to produce a great paper but to get a paper produced as quickly and with as little effort as possible because, well, life holds much more interesting options than writing a paper. Nevertheless, there is a need to go through the Writing Process diligently in order to learn how to revise a paper for one's academic success if not for one's own personal writing enjoyment.

Novel or short story writing is different in many aspects, the revision process especially.

When I have finished a novel, I follow this protocol:

1. Give it some time to settle, then read it fresh from the top and make some notes for revision. I'm checking the general flow, the dramatic arcs, and if I enjoy the story.

2. Do a thorough line edit, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. (Some people do this last but I do it rather early in revision because I must correct problems as I see them - which tends to be on that first thorough read-through; it's the grammar police in me.)

3. Read it all again, thinking of plot holes to be plugged, rifles on mantlepieces that have not been fired, and any ideas not clearly expressed in either exposition or dialog. 

4. I check the consistency of the dialog, character by character. For example, If Queen Sandra always says "perhaps" then I need to change "maybe" to "perhaps". Another quirk I check is whether a character uses "but" or "yet" and whether a character often starts a sentence with "And" or "But" rather than not using a conjunction. Dialog is based on personal speech mannerisms so it is important to get them right for the character and be consistent in their use - unless the character is trying to mock another character, but that situation would be set-up so that it would be understood.

5. Read it all again to check that my previous efforts have made it better. If there are still issues, I need to return to Step 2 or 3.

6. Repeat step 5 as needed.

7. Read again and edit more, tweaking as appropriate up to the gates of insanity . . . or the deadline to turn it in, which ever comes first.


For every part of a work of fiction we must check a lot of minute details which a student essay writer need not bother with. There is the story itself. And that is constructed of scenes (see my theory of Aria and Recitativo in the previous blog post on drafting). Each scene has its own dramatic arc, whether it is short or long. Every scene must have a purpose: advance the story, intensify the conflict, develop a character, etc., and if the scene does not do something necessary to the overall story it must be cut! A famous saying is to "kill your darlings"; I say, just move your darlings into a new story down by the river.

Every scene consists of setting (time, place, weather) and characters interacting with each other, with the gods, with nature, thinking thoughts ("What should I do next?") and acting physical (swordfights!), as well as dialog. Not many humans pass through a scene without speaking; it's what we do. I like to believe a little frivolity is allowed in a scene because people do not get to the point in real life; they obfuscate and beat around the bush, then get pulled off on tangents, then return to their main idea. It's fine in fiction; not so much in an essay.

Because I think a lot and mull the text over for sometimes quite a while before actually typing, and because I edit as I go (see Drafting from the previous blog), I am usually pleased with the initial "rough draft" result. THE DREAM LAND Book III was my "dream" project because it flowed so easily and smoothly that it came out nearly perfect (in my humble opinion). I blame years of training and lots of coffee and a summer free from distraction for that miracle. After writing the first two volumes of the trilogy, I knew my characters like they were my own dysfunctional family. Only in a few scenes did I struggle to get it right, changing the words and then later changing them back several times until I said to myself "Enough!"

Most of the time, I write in layers: 

1. charge though with the basic plot, main dialog, etc.; 

2. fill out scenes, adding dialog, beefing up the action; 

3. checking the 5 senses in each scene and dialog tags and gestures (smiling, nodding, etc.). 

4. checking transitions between scenes and between chapters for dramatic effect.

I also revise fiction in layers.

A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, my so-called vampire novel, flowed well from the start but bogged down when I had to pause to do research. I was rolling but the research I needed to do stopped me. Rather than take time for that, I jumped ahead to the next scene. The writing was flowing again but once more had to pause to do research. I finally decided to just write it straight through to the end (the "first draft") and go back later to add in researched information, in this case, medical data. Rather than info-dump the medical stuff, I created dialogues between doctors and my protagonist, filled with asides, jokes, miscommunication, and so on wrapped around the medical information the reader needed to know. 

For my arctic drama, A GIRL CALLED WOLF, the revision process was different than anything I'd done before. Because the story was based on the childhood and youth of a living person, every chapter I sent to that person for comment. I blogged about this process previously. Instead of me deciding if I had gotten the scene right, at least in a dramatic sense, I also had the person who lived it judging whether I had depicted it in a suitable way. We agreed that to report every little episode might be tedious for the reader so we agreed to combine some and omit others. Keep the drama true to the reality of each event was a constant and delicate balance that went well beyond line editing.

Each project has its own writing process, obviously, and each kind of story may also have its own method of creation. I try not to judge, but go with the flow. Although I've settled on what works for me, each project is a new adventure. My muses seem to know what's best, although they often trick me and laugh at the results.

I know I have some quirks in writing, the set phrases I seem to use over and over. I know I tend to overuse certain words. "Almost" - to mean less of whatever the subject or descriptive term is (e.g., His smile was almost warm.), is my worst offender. I also like to type "form" when I mean "from"! Therefore, as a final step, I usually run a special check of those particular words and phrases and edit each one personally, individually, according to the situation in the scene. It is a laborious process, but I am old-school and do not trust technology to do everything for me exactly as I would wish it to be. I have been tricked before. So I take the time to look with my own eyes at every instance of imperfection and fix it myself. Yes, I do suffer for my art. It's also why I wear glasses.

For the evil essay, I have compiled over the many semesters of composition classes all of the most common errors I find on student papers. Some of them are easy to see because students write about similar things that are common experiences and of common interest. There is a common style among beginning writers. (I have a dream where I show them once how to write something correctly and they remember it forever.) I've previously blogged about the list. Not everything on this Little Notes on Little Errors will apply to fiction, but perhaps much of it will be of service.

So that is something about how my writing process works. In short, it's a rough process at best, and the devil is somewhere between the details, waiting for opportunities to thwart my good intentions. The other side of the writing process, as all writers know, is that without the writing we nearly cease to exist. I cannot go very long without having a project to work on, either writing something new or working on an existing or older project such as preparing it for publication, no matter how long that takes. Otherwise, I wither and die. Nothing keeps me alive like the desire to know what happens next. And I won't know until I write it.

P.S. - You would not believe how much revision I had to do on this bog post! My fingers do not obey! My eyes trick me! And the spellchecker does not work tonight. But I got it done.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Mother of All Writing Processes, Part 2

Remember that Writing Process thing from last week? 

First you get an idea, then you write it. Simple, isn't it? 

If you're writing an essay for a class, just follow the basic pattern that was outlined in ancient days by one cool Greek dude named Aristotle. That's right: he was so cool he only needed one name. His brilliant idea was that every speech (writing wasn't too cool back then but everyone liked speeches) had three parts: Beginning, Middle, and End. It's hard to believe now that nobody had thought of that until Aristotle did. Today we call those three parts: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Got it?


The reason there are three parts is because each part has a particular function. The Introduction introduces the subject of the essay or speech and sets up your audience to want to read (or listen, if it's a speech). The Body is where you present examples or other information that develops, explains, or illustrates the subject you are writing about (or speaking about). The Conclusion is the last part; it's where you summarize your idea, maybe ask people to do something, and wrap it up so your audience feels good.


The same is not true of fiction writing, however. The rules are made to be broken - which is the reason we teach the rules first (see above). Either way, the writing of the first ever text that comes out of your head is called the Draft. Sometimes people number them: first draft, second draft, and so on, just to make it seem as though they are working very hard!



Drafting

Above, I briefly described the kind of writing process that I push on students. To some extent it holds true for any writing task. Even for fiction. However, fiction is more delicate, more fragile, and the idea of a story is subject to so many more mini-steps than an academic essay. I would need to address "my" personal writing process in light of each book I've written in order to cover all of the situations, but that would require about a year's worth of blogging. I've described the "getting ideas" step previously. The next step, drafting, usually requires me to craft scenes. Rather than think of the entire story, I focus on one section at a time. I began using this approach while writing A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and I have employed the strategy ever since.

The one great thing I learned in my MFA Creative Writing program came from the visiting writer-in-residence he had one semester. David Huddle, who I'd never heard of prior to his arrival, taught the formula which I've come to call the Aria - Recitativo structure. I forget what he called it, but we read many examples of this two-pronged attack strategy. Rather than get bogged down thinking of the whole story, which could be overwhelming, we just focus on one scene. Then the next scene.

A scene is a moment in time, written and read in real time, moment by moment. Action happens in about the same time it takes to read it. Characters act, speak, live - which moves the story along. Between the scenes is what is called exposition. It is a compression of time and events, because they are not so interesting in themselves and they are of little consequence. It's the information we need to get to the next scene. We tell something to bridge the gap. We could say that the scene is the "showing" while the exposition is the "telling" part of the story.

So we have two parts of a story: the scenes and the exposition. In operatic terms, these are the Aria and the Recitativo. The Aria is a set-piece where the actors/singers stop the story and sing a song about how they feel or what the problem is or anything else that reveals something of the central issues of the story - separate from the story line itself. Then we move into Recitativo ("recitation"), which is simply the information we need to move us on to the next Aria. People don't go to an opera for the recitativo, nor do readers buy a book for the exposition passages. But the exposition parts are necessary for tying aria to aria and scene to scene.

Granted, this is a simplification of both the structure of an opera and the structure of a novel, but if you examine contemporary novels, you are likely to see this structure. I've also heard it said that this writing style, this system in particular, has come about in parallel with the film industry. Younger writers write prose as though they are seeing the action in a movie, which tends to be composed in scenes or set-pieces, much like in an opera. By the same token, readers, experienced with the shorter, more succinct and set narrative patterns of television and film, seem to prefer this structure, as well.

So that is the basic process of drafting for me. I seldom create a full outline but, rather, rough it ahead a few chapters or scenes at a time. For example, I need a scene to show X happening or a scene where Protagonist realizes Y or decides Z. Often I begin in the middle of a scene (that's the cool term known as "medias res"). I fill in what-happened-before as I go on with the scene. I try to avoid starting a scene with a setting description, at least not a long one. Knowing I have a tendency to wax poetic with wonderfully adroit metaphors, I try to keep the writing as lean as I can. Once in a while, especially where a character's emotions are revealed, I allow myself a worthwhile indulgence of verbosity. Editors hate me for that, of course.

At each writing session (when I have no particular schedule that would limit my effort), I begin by reading what I previously wrote and editing as appropriate. (That is actually part of the next step: revision.) That reading/editing activity gets me up to speed in the story and when I have arrived at the point where I stopped previously, I am ready to charge ahead into new scenes. Occasionally, I may awaken with a new scene already in my head and I will write it out before determining where it should go in the story. Sometimes, I awake and write the scene that is in my head without editing the previous section first. Sometimes, I just stare at the computer screen waiting for the muse to whisper into my ear. While waiting, I drink a lot of coffee.

I also like to play music which helps to set the mood of the scene or for the story in general. For example, as I wrote my vampire book, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, I dared play music from the films of Twilight, although it did not cause me to borrow anything else. The music must be without English lyrics because the words in my ear distracts me from the words in my head. While I wrote Book III of THE DREAM LAND trilogy, I listened to a fine collection of "Epic" music, typical of video games and sci-fi films - selecting one or another which I believed fit the scene I was writing. (See a sample here.) 

For my latest book, A GIRL CALLED WOLF, which is set in the arctic, I searched for music which evoked the cold, windswept ice cap and rough mountain terrain. I found a selection on the album Miracles by popular music group Two Steps from Hell. This track ("Color the Sky") would open the movie of this story: soaring over the ice-filled sea, the bare crags of mountains, the thick ice cap, both beauty and starkness combined. Or, listen to this track  ("Northern Pastures") and imagine racing over through the snow on a dog sled, the green aurora waving over your head, icy wind blowing into your face, and you are a 12 year old orphan girl living alone, half fun and half fearful. A couple tracks actually changed the story a little because they conjured different scenes than what I originally had planned - just so I could play the song that went with the scene over and over. Not every track of the album fit the story, of course, but I drew from several sources to compile my own "soundtrack" playlist.

I tend to have two writing sessions: first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Mornings are good for editing or cobbling out a fresh scene straight from my dreams. It's also good for building on whatever I wrote previously. Night is best for fresh composition - providing I can get motivated. The irony is that I am usually exhausted physically and mentally before the words can come easily. Mornings, I tend to trudge zombie-like to the computer and start typing without too much "waking up" even as the coffee is being made. I'm really surprised how correct my typing is at that early hour; the more I awaken, the worse it gets. I think in both cases my filters are down and that allows unobstructed creation.  Darn Muses, always playing games with my head!

I write novels a lot more than anything else. I have written plenty of essays (or the upscale equivalent known as scholarly articles) and they tax my patience. The story, or the bundle of scenes in a novel, allow me much more free rein, which is what I enjoy. I pity my students writing essays about whatever interests them but the curriculum is set and I alone cannot change it much. If only they were writing stories of mystery and mayhem on misty moors....


NEXT WEEK: The Rules of Revision (or what to do after you are finished)


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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Mother of All Writing Processes

One thing I do most of the year is share my love of writing with young people who do not necessarily share my love of writing. If I can pull a few of them into the fold, however, all my efforts seem justified. As the many weeks of lessons have come to an end now, and the few I've managed to mentor into Write Club have celebrated their commencement into society-at-large, it seems a good time to summarize the 15 weeks of composition tug-o-war in a blog post or two.

It all begins with "The Writing Process"!

I've contemplated writing about my writing process for quite a while but such a blog post always faltered because my process varies from project to project and the seasons and the quality of coffee I consume and other factors. Hard to nail it down. Ironically, in my day job, I am tasked with teaching a rather "fixed" process to college students. It's like a song I play over and over every semester. And it goes a little bit like this:

1. You get an idea by reading, surfing the internet, talking with friends, brainstorming, drawing out a map/web/cluster to visualize ideas, thinking a lot, or just simply asking your teacher "What should I write about?"

2. Then you organize your idea, keeping in mind both the format of an essay (or what other genre you are writing) and attention to your audience, their expectations, and your purpose in writing about the subject of your choice. For an essay, we will need a beginning where you introduce your subject, a middle where to explain and give details and examples about your subject, and a conclusion that makes your readers feel all warm and fuzzy about your subject. For fiction, it's all screwed up so start anywhere, go anywhere, make it interesting.

3. Drafting comes next. That's where you hammer out your ideas, pulling them out of your head and plopping them down on some computer screen - or, more and more these days, on a phone screen. (I kid you not: I get papers sent to me from iPhones!) You don't have to start at the beginning and write through to the end. You don't need to thrash about in anguish if the words don't come out perfect or beautiful the first time. Just start. Open thy mind and summon thy muse!

4. When you have the draft finished, read through it and see if your ideas flow logically from one to the next one. Check the organization of your paragraphs. Look at the thesis statement (your whole essay stated in one or two sentences) and each of the topic sentences (what the paragraph is about). Make sure you have something which "hooks" your reader's attention at the beginning and something poignant or clever which closes your essay. Again, for fiction, it's all messed up. Even so, you still had something in mind while you were composing, so how close did you get?

5. Edit and proofread. Several times. Do not rely only on the spellchecker function of your word processor application. Read it at least once with your own eyes (fifteen times is better, twenty-two is getting closer to perfection, but even thirty wouldn't be too many, unless it's about fifty times). However, your eyes can be fooled. So try reading it aloud and you'll likely hear some of the problems your eyes did not catch. (If that seems boring, try reading in a vampire voice or with a British accent [American if you are a UK person].) Or have someone else read it to get another pair of eyes on the text. Look for problems with syntax (sentence errors like the dreaded comma-splice or the evil run-on), or fragments - which are not complete sentences. Note: fragments are common in fiction writing, but that's a whole 'nother ball game. (I have an exhaustive checklist of everything that can go wrong with an essay and I have a similar checklist for fiction and poetry.)

6. Finally, publish that thing. For school purposes, that means giving your paper to the instructor who will evaluate it and assign it a grade that will either ruin your life or send you off to Cloud 9. For the real world, that means sending it to someone somewhere in the hopes that your writing will be found so worthy they want to share it with the world - perhaps pay you for that privilege. Movie rights sold separately.

These are the steps in a quick-and-dirty synopsis. The reality is much more eclectic. More so if the writing is fiction rather than some kind of expository writing in an essay format.

Getting Ideas

For the academic essay, I like to stress that the student has something to say and needs to say it, and that is the reason for the essay. Got a Description essay of a person or place to write for class? My grandmother is the best grandmother anyone could ever have. That's a reason to write about it. Or, I remember how wonderful it was visiting grandma's house for Thanksgiving holiday. Another great reason to write. However, fiction is different, as everyone knows. People write fiction mostly to get lots of money from total strangers.

When I am writing a novel, the initial idea comes from any of a hundred possible sources. It comes as a bright splash of color erupting in my mind while reading, seeing a film, having a particular life experience, or couched in a dream. A moment caught in time. Yet before I can do anything more than have my next heartbeat, my mind runs off with the idea, unfolding an elaborate scenario right there in front of my mind's eye and creating a narrative several degrees beyond its spontaneous origin until I manage to pause, usually exhausted, and struggle to recall where I was and what I was doing when that emotive outburst stunned me. It's often a curse, often a blessing. (Caffeine helps.) Then, when I finally have the chance to write this new idea, I chisel out an interesting or significant scene: perhaps the one which started it all, something, anything, just to play with it, see where it goes, see if it has possibilities, see if it interests me enough to keep working on it. Then I build upon that start in successive waves of composition.

Idea method 1: Invent a situation based on some non-fiction studies.

For example, my romantic action-adventure novel AFTER ILIUM (2012) began in a Classical Rhetoric course where we read and discussed the Encomium of Helen. It was the Greek Sophist Gorgias's defense of Helen as the victim of an abduction and the cause of the Trojan War rather than willing accomplice of Paris (the result was that they welcomed her back to Greek society without harm to her reputation). Immediately, I contemplated a modern scenario which would parallel the ancient story. So here is this Alex Parris guy (get it?), fresh out of college, meeting a seductive older woman, Elena (Greek for 'Helen'), on an Aegean cruise and their subsequent visit to the ruins of Ilium/Troy. So I ran with it. 

Idea method 2: Tell someone else's story.

My latest example, A GIRL CALLED WOLF (December 2015), began online. A reader commented about my vampire novel, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, and we became social media friends. Over the next year I got to know her and the amazing story of her life growing up in Greenland and moving to Canada. I told her she should write it and she tried to do so for the National Novel Writing Month event but didn't get very far. So I took over and interviewed her, wrote and shared drafts with her, and so on. Only the ending is fictional; the rest is based on the true events of her life. (I've blogged about this process.) 

Idea method 3: Fictionalize your own life.

And speaking of my vampire novel, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN was written almost exclusively to counter my teenage daughter's obsession with the Twilight series, books and movies. I kept telling her the way vampires were depicted in that series was nothing like the "real disease". So I set about conducting my own medical research, as well as research into the legends that originated the phenomena - records of strange events well before Bram Stoker was even a gleam in his father's eye. Then I set the story in the city where I lived and in the year I was writing it. I lived it week by week as I wrote it - but I lied about everything because, alas, I am not, nor have I ever become, a real vampire. 

As for THE DREAM LAND trilogy (Book I 2012; Book II and Book III 2013), I've written of its origins previously on this blog. To summarize: my childhood [i.e., pre-internet, pre-computer] fantasy games with imaginary playmates evolved into a compilation of quasi-militaristic scenarios on an alien world. I dabbled at a Young Adult version of the story. Then, years later, I had a dream one night which so provoked me that I had to start the novel. That dream became the opening scene of the novel but through many revisions it was pushed back to a later chapter. At the time, I thought it would be a single, stand-alone novel, but, thankfully, more ideas remained - questions remained that needed to be answered. In fact, I was deep in the middle of writing Book II when this new blogging thing took over my life. So I began blogging about Book II as I was finishing it. Indeed, the name of this blog comes from the setting of this novel: the empire of Sekuate. I had intended to use this blog to further explain things and provide extra materials to go with the trilogy. But I digressed.... Then Book III exploded through my psyche during the next year and voila! a Trilogy was born! 

For me, getting an idea is usually easy. I read a lot of science-fiction when I was young and the stories always put the what-if germ into my head. Even in standard "literary" or romance writing, the what-if basis works well. Therefore, I've always tried to write stories which intrigue me. If this happens, then what? Given two people like these two, say, a well-intended English professor and a Wiccan art student, what would happen? What would get them together and what would keep them together? Or what would inevitable keep them from staying together? That's the premise of my anti-romance A BEAUTIFUL CHILL. It's a kind of curiosity. What would it really be like if, say, two teenagers found, say, an invisible doorway to another world, and suppose they got stuck there and couldn't return home? Seriously, what would they do? Freak out? Learn to function? Try to find a way back? Those were THE DREAM LAND what-if questions, of course. I tried to depict how two such people would realistically react to that situation. 

In short, I write the kind of books I want to read. I hope other readers also want to read something a little off center, a bit to the edge of the genre or cross-genre, something not quite the usual or what fits cleanly inside a formula. I like twists and turns, and threads which do not always tie neatly by the final page. 

It's like being on a quest to kill dragons - you know, in order to, say, make the world a safer place...? That is the premise for my current Work-In-Progress, EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS. (You can read how I got suckered into this project here. You can read the start of it here.) I don't know where it will go, but I know I will get there - with my protagonist kicking and screaming at me.

NEXT WEEK: Let the Drafting Begin

--------------------------------------------------------------------- (C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Big F ...or, whatever it takes to get your attention

Dear Blog Readers and associates,

It's no secret that I like to write. People who know me think my name is Writer. The flies on the wall see me writing almost every minute of my waking hours. That is, when I am not engaged in my so-called day job. And what is that day job, you may well ask? I teach writing. Ironic? That brings us full circle, doesn't it?

However, lately I have begun to notice the curse of writing. I tend to write too much! Case in point: this past weekend I cranked out 15,000 words to finish the draft of the third book in my sci-fi trilogy, THE DREAM LAND. Yes, you've heard it all before "...greatest interdimensional epic ever!" That weekend word count might be an all-time record for me.

In speaking about blog entries, however, I do tend to write too much. It is said that most readers of web pages typically scan the page in the shape of the letter F. (I do not expect my readers to believe me because I know they are appropriately skeptical of anything an obsessed fictioneer says, so here's one of many links: F-Shaped Pattern.) Readers read more closely the first paragraph, to see if they want or need to read more. (I wonder how this correlates to how college students read the required texts.) Then readers tend to scan down the left edge, picking up bullet lists, etc. If there is something else of interest, a bullet list representing quick and easy information, then they will slow down to read more, hence the second horizontal line of the F.

Have I gotten you to the second horizontal line of your F yet?

Probably not. I don't write that way. I write as I was taught years ago, pre-computer, pre-web page. I save the most impactful information for the end, when I summarize my argument and present a conclusion. The essay format. That's what I teach--because that's what Academia wants students to learn: well-thought out, well-organized, argumentative writing--taught in the English course but for use mostly in every other course of the curriculum. Not personal web pages or Facebook, or Tumblr, or the 140 character Tweet.

Are we there yet? To that second horizontal line? (Did the red catch your eye?)

In my last blog post I waxed poetic on the exigencies of exoskeletons in everyday life, and especially so in science-fiction literature, to which I am adding my epic trilogy. (Let me put that in red to draw your attention to it.) Because of my tendency to write too much, I easily outpaced many dear readers. I thus ran out of space for including an excerpt on exoskeleton use from THE DREAM LAND Book III "Diaspora". Fortunately, on my blog, I can do pretty much whatever the heck I want to do--even as I consider the limits of my readers' patience.

If you are ready for the second horizontal line of the F, here is that DREAM LAND III excerpt:

Chucker took the remote control and studied the buttons layout. He pressed the yellow circle at the top and the fuel cell taped in the small of the man’s back showed a yellow light and hummed. He pressed the other, smaller yellow buttons across the top and other parts of the exoskeleton came to life.

“It is aliiiiive,” said Chucker with a snort. “Let’s see if we can get you up on your feet.”

The joints moved smoothly with the power on and Chucker eased the man into a sitting position, the frame cradling his hips and supporting the back, firming automatically to hold him in that upright position. Chucker helped him turn his legs off the table, lowering them until one foot platform touched the concrete floor. The rest was done my remote control.

“Relax,” said Chucker, giddy with his success. “Let the machinery do the work. Trust it. It won’t drop you and you won’t stumble. I’ve seen it work. See, there’s a gyroscope in the unit that’s fixed to your back. But don’t resist the system or you could break some bones. Think of it as a robot that is walking you around and just enjoy the ride.”

A shadow fell on the floor.

“Excuse me,” said a voice not from the man in the exoskeleton.

Chucker froze. He was certain he had locked the door. He had. But a man had entered from the restroom side. He looked up.

“Sorry to bother you, but my boy....” The man was dressed as a tourist, and paused to wonder what was going on in the Education Center on a blustery October Saturday afternoon. “He really got to go and the restroom over at the African Market is out of order.”

Chucker saw a boy of six or seven hiding behind the man’s legs.

“Sure...aaa...go right ahead.”

Remain calm. They probably don’t have any concern for what you’re doing. They probably don’t know a serial killer has escaped his handlers and is hiding out with a madman from another world.

He heard the dad giving instructions to the boy, the words echoing back to him, and he thought of his own children, waiting so long for him to return, insistent as he was about completing this final mission.

“What’s that thing, mister?” asked the boy, proudly exiting the toilet, slow to hitch up his pants.

Chucker did not miss a beat as he stared at the man in the metal transport frame.

“It’s a robot. We’re getting ready for a carnival. Somebody is having a birthday party later and we are the entertainment.”

“That’s cool!” said the boy. “Does he do tricks?”

“Sure, he does.” Chucker pushed the right blue T-shaped button and the right arm swung from beside the body to a Heil Hitler salute and back down again. He pressed the left T-button and the left arm repeated the movement.

Too irreverent to the science? To a paralyzed man in a wheelchair being rescued/kidnapped via an exoskeleton? 

I'm sorry. No, I'm not.

I suppose I must simply accept my fate: Readers will rate this post an...





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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.