…and to all…
Happy New Year!
¡Próspero Año Nuevo!
Godt Nytt År!
Hauoli Makahiki hou!
Shana Tova!
Ath bhliain faoi mhaise!
Laimīgu Jauno gadu!
Felix sit annus novus!
The idea of ideas, part 2
So, I wrote about ideas in writing as building blocks of a story on a par with nails. Which was a slight oversimplification, for purposes of setting perspective. Some ideas are more important to a particular story than others, so some of them might be boards, others major support beams, and others cornerstones. The main point is that it is the entire assemble of the structure that constitutes a story.
I admit that questions about ideas are one of my pet peeves. For example, in the late 1980s I started writing a series of hard science fiction short stories about a group of scientists and grad students following up on a tremendous interstellar tragedy caused by a small-ish black hole moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. I got asked several times, “Where did you get the idea of a black hole moving so fast? That is so cool.”
Each person that asked seemed to be quite let down when I replied, quite truthfully, “There’s a small globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy that has jets of hydrogen shooting out of it at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The total mass of those jets is the equivalent of thousands of stars. If a small globular cluster apparently made of ordinary stars could have an event that did that, what might be happening in the hearts of large galaxies?”
Astronomers have since discovered much more dramatic things shooting out of the center of big galaxies than those hydrogen jets that originally gave me the idea. So now the idea seems even less unusual.
And they were even more disappointed if I explained that the first story was to answer a request from the editor of the shared universe fanzine where the story originally appeared. For reasons way more complicated to go into, she needed me to destroy an entire inhabited star system with certain preconditions.
To me, the story isn’t about the black hole, nor even is it about the death and destruction caused by it. The first story is about the scientific method, and the kind of people who can’t observe an unexplained thing (in this case, a gravity lensing effect where one isn’t expected) without trying to figure out what caused it.
The subsequent stories are about curiosity, and different ways people react to it. One of the recurring conflicts is between some people who are obsessed with finding answers at almost any cost, and others who don’t feel that way. If you want to engage me in a conversation about the stories, that’s what I want to discuss, not the black hole. Nor the method someone might use to attempt to protect records are artifacts from a nuclear (or worse) attack. Nor how someone would engineer a biological weapon to effect a species from an alien ecosystem which you have almost no knowledge of. All of those are just gimmicks—things I concocted to put the characters into a series of situations where I could explore questions about the pursuit of knowledge, the morality of such pursuits, and so forth.
Those concoctions are interesting, and yes, I spent a lot of time researching various odd corners of science to come up with those building blocks, but that was all in service of the story.
And in the end, it’s the story that matters. If I don’t tell the story the best I can, I have failed. Even if I come up with a lot of “cool” ideas along the way.
Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
-Ray Bradbury
The idea of ideas
Certain questions come up again and again at writing panels, on writing forums, and in writing discussion groups. A lot of those questions are about “ideas.” Where does a writer get ideas? How do you know an idea is worth writing? How do you translate your idea into a story? And so on.
I put the word “ideas” in quotes in that first mention because I believe the people who ask these questions have a profound misunderstanding of the meaning of the word. All words have different meanings depending on the context, of course, but I’m talking about something more than that. Because not only do the people who ask these questions misunderstand the word idea, they misunderstand the entire notion of story.
A story is not a collection of unique notions and eccentric characters presented in a series of shocking situations leading to a surprising ending. Some things we call stories contain all of those things, and in very rare occasions some good stories contain those elements, but that isn’t what a story is. If you want to turn to the dictionary, you might think of a story as a narrative designed to entertain the reader or listener—but that’s at best a mechanical definition of certain types of prose.
A story is a means to transfer a dream from the imagination of the storyteller to the imagination of the reader. Another way of putting it, a story is an incantation for evoking an experience in the mind of the listener.
Specific situations, characters, confrontations, and so forth are part of the arsenal of the storyteller, but they are building materials, not tools. And they are basic building materials, at that. Think of them as nails. Does a carpenter spend a lot of time agonizing over whether a specific nail is worthwhile for this project? No, unless a specific nail is obviously damaged in some manner. Does a carpenter spend a lot of time worrying about where he will find his next nail? No, nails are the kind of supplies a construction company buys in bulk. Does a carpenter spend a lot of time worrying about how to translate his bag of nails into a finished building? No, because nailing boards together is just one tiny part of the entire process of building something, and how to do that is a fundamental skill one should master long, long before attempting to build a house.
The sorts of things that people usually mean when they ask, “Where do you get your ideas” really are as fundamental and individually unimportant as a nail. Yes, if you’re building a house you will need good nails, and they’ll need to be used properly, but no single nail being slightly imperfect, or slightly out of place should ruin the entire structure.
The true skill of storytelling is the process of assembling all of those things together. And as you learn to do that, you start to realize that the parts you were focused on so intently when you were learning the craft are not the most important part of the story. It’s not where your nails came from, or how perfect each nail is.
It’s how you use them.
Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.
—Ray Bradbury
Boxing Day Links
It’s Friday! The final Friday in December. It is also, depending on whether you are reading this before or after sundown, the second or the third day of Christmas. Yes, it is still Christmas! (The first day of Christmas begins at sundown on Christmas Eve, which means that the second day begins at sundown on Christmas Day, and so on. The twelfth day of Christmas is not the invention of some song writer, but rather Three Kings Day or Epiphany, in which many churches celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men at the place where Mary and Joseph and the baby were by that time.)
Anyway, on this, the final Friday of 2015, here is a collection of news and other things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared:
My wish for the family with two dads who brought Christmas to a group of homeless LGBT youth. They had to remain anonymous, and not for good reasons…
U.S. Judge Robert Hinkle to Florida officials: Respond by Monday in gay-marriage case. And the judge appears to be losing patience with some state officials.
Florida woman in ‘Catholic Warrior’ t-shirt destroys Satanic Temple’s holiday display.
The Salt Lake Tribune Names Same-sex Marriage Plaintifs the Utahns of the Year.
This Response to Homophobic Bigots Is So On Point It Bleeds. Also, cheers for a comment: “…nobody worries more about the asses of gay men than homophobes do.”
Europa’s geysers play hard-to-see.
Fossil fish eye has 300 million-year-old rods and cones.
Gay Marriage Ban on Precarious Legal Ground.
Airline passenger freaks out over crew’s ‘Merry Christmas’ greeting.
How Many Stars Did It Take To Make Us?.
Jay Thomas’ Lone Ranger Story 2014 – David Letterman, Jay treats the audience to his final telling of the “greatest talk show story of all time”:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Have a very merry…
Happy Christmas! Blessed Yul! Happy Hogswatch! Joyous Kwanza! Festive Festivus! Feliz Navidad! God Jul! Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou! Beannachtaí na Nollag! Buon Natale! Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus un laimīgu Jauno gadu! Felix Dies Nativitatus! Keep Saturn in Saturnalia!
…and bless us, every one!
Muddle through somehow
Sometimes the universe decides to remind us that people have a tremendous capacity to love.
I mentioned, as part of yesterday’s post, some of the past and current difficulties I’ve had with some family members—specifically the ongoing sticking points of me being a gay man raised by a bunch of fundamentalist evangelicals. So, during my day trip to Mom’s and to visit at least some relatives near her, several people decided to tell me how much they love Michael.
Keep in mind that none of these relatives know this blog exists, and one of them can’t even “work the google” without the help of their 12-year-old… Read More…