Setting

December 21st, 2012

Unless I am in deep Alternate History mode where I have researched a particular location in great detail, I am most likely to set anything I write either within somewhere that is British, or somewhere that in the story of the alternate world has become British – eg Timbuktu in ‘Never The Dawn’.

In ‘A Feast of Eagles’ I used some rather generic German locations, which since the focus was on the characters and their interplay hardly featured at all. I used Saint Petersburg which I had researched heavily. I used a very generic Tunis, that could be any Arab bazar town, and I had villages or towns in the Ukraine and Crimea that I had researched but which apart from the mention of a few landmarks could have been any market town, specifically any English market town.

But in most of my works, I use London in whatever form it has changed into due to the vagaries and butterflies of the ATL. Sometimes I use Southampton, or Brighton or Dover. Sometimes I use Peterborough or Ludlow, because I know them well. But mostly I use London, as in ‘His Peculiar Domain’.

Is it a failing? An author, I admire, Troy Blackford, uses Minneapolis/Saint Paul as the setting for many of his works, because he lives there, knows it, and can write convincingly about it. I could not – I did not even know what a ‘Skyway’ was until I read his works.

Research often does not provide enough FEEL for a place that you can write convincingly about it – in ‘Our Banner Streams Before Us’ I researched heavily pre-Barbarossa Kiev, but I did not find the writing either convincing or realistic. It might as well have been London with different buildings; none of the Soviet or Ukrainian feel came across.

Similarly, in ‘Eleventh Hour’ I used Ludlow because I know the town, I know the castle, I know the river and where the Teme goes to. I could not have written convincingly about Ross-on-Wye in its stead, despite it having equal potential for the role that I had Ludlow play.

‘Proper’ authors will go to the places they write about, but that’s not very likely on a very low income. I have been to Paris twice, admittedly not since I was 14, but I have a ‘sense’ of Paris in my head. I have a sense of Malaga, of Carcassonne, even of Lucerne, but many other places that I might set a story I have no real sense of it. I can either create a generic analogue, or I can spend hours on internet research (Youtube is your friend) so that I know what it looks like, or looked like at the time in question. But without the feel for a place, I do not think my writing is realistic or convincing.

Which is why a lot of my best work is set in London, and in fake British cities that are erected in place of those that exist in reality but belong to someone else in OTL. I can either use what I know, or create a convincing mirror of what I know on a relatively blank slate.

Do most authors do the same?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Writing something Unique or Different?

November 26th, 2012

Uniqueness – that is an idea that all writers aspire to. But it is a fallacy. Everything always builds upon something of the past, and what you build will be built upon by others to create something yet anew. That this cumulative process does in time create something that would have looked unique to the starting point cannot perhaps be denied, but at no time does it create something which is at that moment unique from any of its influences.

So, we can’t be unique, but we can be different…can’t we? Star Wars was different, that is why it was successful, yes? But everyone says Star Wars was derivative and a typical tale of its sort. What made it different was the setting, being in outer space, and with giant space stations and fast space ships. It brought new life to an old tale, it brought great model effects, and it brought great drama. As a story the plot was simple enough, and it worked.

Or what about Harry Potter? What suddenly made this sensation happen? At a simple level it was a coming together of several popular strands – English public boarding schools with their internal house system, high fantasy and wizards, and the typical coming of age story for teenagers. It was the mix of all these that made the Harry Potter franchise so popular, at first in book form, and then in the series of films. J K Rowling no doubt has passably good prose (I’ve never read any) and the films had great actors that made them entities in their own right. But the key to the success was the coming together of the popular themes which then made something very successful.

How is this of any use to writers of Alternate History? Well, writing in this genre has two different starting points – one is the Point of Divergence, and the other is the end point, the story, the timeline in the present, whenever that may be. These are both areas where it is difficult to find something that you can consider new, or unique.

Considering, the Point of Divergence (sometimes called Departure), Napoleon winning at Waterloo, the Nazis winning the Battle of Britain, the hijackers on September 11th 2001 failing to take over the aeroplanes, or further back Harold winning at Hastings, the Black Prince not dying of illness before his father, Richard III winning the Battle of Bosworth, George Washington’s army disintegrating in that coldest of Winters and so on – these have all been done, but the writer can do them again, and differently. That is not unique, but it could be different – but would the reader really notice how different you can make it, if the start point is one they are familiar with?

Contrary-wise, if the Alternate Historian picks a Point of Departure that is so obscure nobody knows what it is about, then the reader already faces a serious challenge of interest. Again if the P.O.D. is understood but so mundane, then the reader has a challenge to become interested. To most English-speakers, any Points of Divergence that focus on medieval Chinese history, or ancient Dravidians, or early modern Hungary would be obscure. Most readers would have to go and read some background to understand even what the POD actually is (as opposed to new real history that they are reading for the first time).

I write a lot of stories *(my critics would say I start a lot of stories) that start in a modern period based on a Point of Divergence way back in the past. In these type of stories, the way that the world changed becomes secondary to what the world has become. So, what we are looking at here is that the world you create based on a POD centuries ago can be pretty much any thing you want it to be

This is where you can try to be unique – or at the least achieve being different. I wrote Gates of Wrath with this idea in mind. The POD was vaguely defined as a world without the Mongol invasions. But with a vague Point of Departure centuries in the past, there does not need to be a detailed progression from A to B, only a plausible one in terms of geo-politics, and given such a long period and wide field to play with, most things can be made plausible.

Which of course sounds like a cop-out, without actually being one. The charge that one did not bother creating a detailed timeline to explain how the events of this alternate present came about is actually a meaningless charge. Yes, the writer could decide to spend a few months fleshing out the timeline, showing how it can have happened, creating centuries of history and in effect ‘proving’ his story possible. But this detailed under-pinning actually has nothing to do with the story that he is trying to write, and would serve as a long and tedious distraction to the author.

Timelines to get to a place, and stories set in a place are different animals. What I was concerned with in Gates of Wrath was describing an alternate Present, and creating one that was different and as close to unique as might be possible, given the impossibility of being unique at the point of creation (see above).

I think I achieved ‘different’ but I cannot claim to have achieved anything unique. Everything has its influences, and although used in a completely different way, or manifested in a different time period, influences as diverse as the Deathstalker novels, John le Carre, Agatha Christie and the television series ‘Moonbase 3′ all exist and came together in part to create the feel of the world in Gates of Wrath. They do not set the geo-politics, or solar politics as perhaps it might better be understood, but they are influences that can be seen in some of the writing style, and in some of the characterisation.

All authors draw upon their influences, whether they admit it or not, and for different works, even by the same author, different influences will be stronger than others, sometimes one, sometimes another paramount. But what makes all creative writing different from mere plagiarism is how these influences are mixed up and changed about and how different the outcome seems to be. With Gates of Wrath there is little to distinguish it from Science Fiction, except that it is science fiction set in a world where history diverged centuries ago, allowing for the geo-politics, the differences in moral outlook, and different technological growth.

Genres of course overlap – the Railway Detective novels have a romantic theme running through them as part of the story, Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct was simply an American police drama given a science fiction setting, and in Gates of Wrath it is Alternate History written in the present age with a science fiction theme.

But this overlapping of genres is what creates a difference, and is what creates something different and applying it to my examples at the start, it is plainly obvious to see it behind the success of both Star Wars and Harry Potter – ideas that are not something unique, and which have plain derivative influences, but which by being a successful blend of these influences given an unusual setting have indeed created something Different, and with being different also something hugely successful.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Resurrection or Data Mining?

November 20th, 2012

I’ve long had these three science fiction stories I wrote in the 1990s at the back of my mind. One was completed, one was well underway, and the other was just begun, but together they form a trilogy, and somewhere along the way they gained the names Beholder, Bellerophon, and Cerberus. For a long time Cerberus was almost a myth – I knew there were several parts, but I could only ever find one.

Beholder was in some ways worse – I had tried a couple of times to collate it, but it consisted of chapterettes catalogued by a numbering system that often jumped to the next decade number to mark the end of a cycle, and seemed to jump to the next century numbers to mark the next major ‘book’ inside the novel. Over time, the originals on floppy discs had been taken off, catalogued, analysed and so on but I was never sure how much was missing – for missing an amount certainly is. I remember my first attempt at doing this and the creation of the ‘Lost Lambs’ folder, those missing chapters found on their own on a floppy disc otherwise dedicated to another subject. Eventually, it might be said that there are at a minimum two chapters missing (there is a mid-teens gap that makes no sense in terms of jumping to the next numerical milestone) and at most maybe a dozen or so missing. But the bulk of the story is there, and has finally now been collated into one document. Even that was not without its trials, for I did this on holiday and only had my laptop to work from, but the originals were written using Microsoft Works, yet Vista on my laptop refuses to install Works, so I had to work through Notepad, opening each document, stripping it of code and copying it into Word. Fine, but it had the very peculiar effect of always including a stray snippet of text at the bottom, often somehow pulled from a different Works document. I decided to keep these in on the basis that if I could match each snippet to a piece of text elsewhere, good, but if I couldn’t I might have the only remaining fragment of one of the lost chapters – truly story-writing archaeology!

Bellerophon was intact, of reasonable length and would probably have formed a third of the total novel length, whereas the 3 chapters I eventually found for Cerberus are clearly only a beginning, and may yet be missing a part I vaguely recall writing, or perhaps I only recall planning, but never wrote?

The continuous thread through the three stories was the Artificial Intelligence known as Ariadne, and the possible naming of the books relates to her role in the stories – in Beholder she is watching for the mostpart, in Bellerophon she is fighting, and in Cerberus she is protecting. At least that is a rationalisation!

In the past I had tried to make something of the existing stories, either to rewrite them in a more coherent manner, or expand upon what existed, but neither approach had really worked. They are in a sense too much of their time, even though written in a somewhat distant future, and they were written with influences long since eclipsed by more recent influences – eg there are clear streaks of Deep Space Nine in some of the terminology and imaginings, whereas since that time I have taken in all of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

Instead, I decided this time to write a sequel to the trilogy, taking it as a whole, and setting it ten years after the events in the original work. On one level this was an easy enough decision, but on another it raised some rather large questions. Due to the disjointed nature of the trilogy, that Beholder’s characters other than the AI are not in Bellerophon, and that Bellerophon’s characters, other than the AI, are not in Cerberus, but Cerberus revolves around one group only of Beholder’s characters, what has happened to all the rest of the characters? This is not simply a question of what has happened to them over ten years, since that is my decision as the writer of the new work, but it is very much the question of what happened to them during the time-frame of the original trilogy. As an example, General Kalister escapes from Station One when it is destroyed by the aliens and is last seen hurtling towards Earth in a convoy of evacuation ships. What happens to him during the timeframe of Bellerophon, and if he survives that what has happened to him by the timeframe of Cerberus?

We cannot think of him as still on that ship when up to a year must have passed within the internal reckoning of the triology.

In a sense, the opening scene of the new work suggested itself to me as a scene seeking a story. I needed not only a background, but a character and this took some working through. What became easiest was to extrapolate certain trends from the existing stories – the Human Imperium is on the backfoot, the enemy is not only choosing the battlefields within human space, but has some kind of secret weapon, but one group of characters has information taken from an alien battlecruiser and intends to use this to bargain for a pardon from the Emperor. Taking these as long term trends I could say that the aliens continue to win, but that the humans are able to fight back and delay them – delay them but not stop them.

Having thus decided the overall strategic situation, it becomes clearer both what to do with many of the characters, and what their likely fate would have been. A lot of the military characters are going to be dead. Given that a continuing alien advance is going to mean that human habitation after human habitation falls to the aliens, then a lot of the political characters are also going to be dead. The war is clearly going to have given pirates, freebooters, outlaws and bandits a certain free rein, but since the aliens are going to make little distinction, this kind of war also gives all of these types the chance to shine as unofficial adjuncts to the human military – or guerillas, if you will. Whilst this gives them a continuing valuable role in the story to come, it also means that, as with the other characters, a lot of them are going to be dead.

All of these dead characters seems a bit daunting on the one hand, but what a trilogy of novels does, even one with incomplete volumes, is to generate a mass of characters. Quite literally some of the ships are overloaded with characters when we last see them, so culling them down to a few key characters makes perfect sense for the story to come. The choice of characters to definitely kill, of characters to promote as it were, and of others to have surviving and able to play a useful role in the story to come was an interesting one. Resolving it, brought clarity to who it was I could see in my mind’s eye in the first scene of the new work. It also led me to kill off some of the leading characters who had survived the previous works, and to promote others into their places.

One thing a ten year gap does is to age people. An important segment of the characters from Beholder were teenagers chosen by the leaders of the criminal cartels for their youth as much as for their skills. They are now in their mid to late twenties, and the youngest of them, chosen for her ability to escape notice and to get around tight corners, whilst at the same time having a high intellect, is now a young woman of twenty-one. But she is not the character who emerged from Beholder intact and in high esteem, for Cerberus (what there is of it) is built around her ordeal at the hands of her captors. She is a more withdrawn figure after this experience, and ten years of fighting the alien menace has not mellowed this in her.

Ten years also does things for the youngest characters in the previous work – the youngest named character was a four year old refugee from Station Two in Bellerophon. Escaping on the yacht that contained the AI, she is clearly missing by the time that Cerberus comes around, and the only in-story explanation was an alien attack badly damaged the ship and the crew took to the life pods. Extrapolating on this, it seemed reasonable to posit that she fell into alien hands and forms one of probably hundreds of thousands of human prisoners on alien slave worlds. This puts a character of an interesting age in an important place, in terms of viewpoint.

The other youngest character was not born, but the mother came on board the pirate ship already heavily pregnant. As this was at the end of Beholder, it is obvious that a child must have been born during the time period represented by Bellerophon, and be present but not mentioned during Cerberus. That child is now ten, and has grown up on a pirate ship, all his life dedicated to the pursuit of such goals, and of hitting the aliens in the guise of being a privateer. This is going to make for some very interesting child development!

At the opposite extreme almost the oldest character is still around. I decided that in terms of what we know about the Spacefleet of the Human Imperium, the old admiral who refused retirement and who was sent in with his reserves when the aliens attacked, would be one of those characters most likely to have been able to use all of his experience to survive in a war where humanity is increasingly out-numbered and defeated. I decided that despite his now truly ancient years, keeping him in command makes perfect sense for the story. After all, this is science fiction, it is the future, and it is quite possible in terms of life-span for the better-off that when they retire they can look forward to some thirty or more years of leisure.

The sequel is now about ready to begin. Characters have been chosen, settings set, backgrounds assigned and the grand strategic overview is in place. A few names have had to be changed, not least that of the aliens for when the story was written Dell was something you associated with Dingley and not with a multinational computer company! Others have been standardised, their spelling having slipped across the chapters, whilst as far as it has been possible full names, including last names, have been data mined from obscure brief mentions in the chapters they occurred. Some characters don’t have any – perhaps they never did, perhaps they do not remember it, perhaps they choose not to use it and nobody really cares anymore, considering the circumstances. Some characters have been assigned roles in keeping with their stature but very different, at least in geography, to where we saw them before.

And of course, this new story also needs a name. Sometimes the name is the easiest part, sometimes it is the hardest. I have the vaguest inkling at the moment, but hopefully when the opening scenes have been written it will coalesce into something I can use. Wish me luck on this great voyage of exploration!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Plump Incestuous Princesses

November 9th, 2012

I was thinking about clichés in one’s fiction writing. From two of my stories that I wrote in succession, ‘A Feast of Eagles’ and ‘Dancing The Shadows’ I was jokingly (perhaps!) referred to as having incestuous plump princesses as one of my writing clichés. Maybe this was briefly fair, though in AFOE it was more gently hinted at, and never confirmed, that King Albert III and his sister Louise had a more than friendly relationship. In Dancing The Shadows it was a definite fact that the Tsar of all the Russians had a child with his sister (a Russian Grand Duchess is the equivalent to a princess in the rest of Eurropean royalty) – this royal bastard was named as his heir, in a very controversial move that provided a lot of the dynamism for the plot of that story.

Now, I have written literally dozens of stories, but for these two coming close in succession it was enough for people to say that having incestuous princesses was a cliché of my writing.

Again, it is similar to people saying that I have a strong Russia in my stories – I certainly do in some, but in just as many Russia does not even exist, in just as many again Russia is weak, or in just as many again Russia is not even mentioned. But the effect of a strong Russia in the stories where it does feature has been to place in the general mind of my readership the idea that having a strong Russia is a cliché of my writing.

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Ancient Aliens or Alien Space Bats

October 26th, 2012

A common theme in Alternate History is that anything that requires some sort of outre event is regarded as needing Alien Space Bats, the equivalent in literature of a miracle. The term is applied equally to meteor impacts and things that the “historical consensus” views as impossible (despite contemporary viewpoints) such as Nazi Germany getting nuclear missiles or achieving a successful Operation Sealion.

In its most literal form, ASB means the direct intervention of hithertofore unspected aliens, or megatronic forces equivalent to this, such as whatever causes an ISOT (Island in the Sea of Time) phenomenon or time-travel of one or more protagonists.

In its more general applications, closed minds shrilly cry “ASB! ASB!” whenever they do not agree with the direction that a timeline or story has taken. They view that in their potentially completely uninformed opinions, something is not possible and so they call in the ASBs, the derided Deus-ex-Machina of modern stories and tell you that what you have done is stupid and impossible without such magical, fantastical intervention.

The literal meaning is a true sub-genre in Alternate History, though the boundaries with science fiction, and geological alternate history are blurred, whereas the latter meaning is simply a way for people who think they are more intelligent to attack your ideas without having to bother to argue against the internal logic of your timeline or story – if ti is ASB to their shallow minds, then it does not matter if it flows naturally from the events you are describing, they decree it to be impossible, and the followers and herd-like masses choose to agree with them, regardless of any truly academic standards.

But there is one area where viewpoints would converge and this is on the subject of an alien visitation. By its nature, for an alien species to arrive here, and announce itself, is a manifestation of the ASB rule. Especially so, many would so if these aliens were, or were to be understood to be, descendants of or representatives of aliens who had come before. Conventional history does not allow for the potentiality that aliens have been here before, so any story that includes this element is defined by its nature as ASB.

But conventional history is far from being a be-all and end-all of history. Take two simple questions – the age, purpose and origins of Gobekli Tepe, and the method of manufacture of the Great Pyramids of Giza. For the first, all that conventional history has is complete shock and utter surprise, followed by quickly-warped theories made to fit the undeniable facts. For the pyramids, conventional history likes to pretend it has the answers but giant earthen ramps are a manufacturing nghtmare without retaining walls, and Wally Wallington probably has it closer to the truth with his understanding of pivots than scores of ancient historians do with their inept understanding of engineering.

Conventional history is as cohesive as current Physics; in other words it is full of holes, hopes and thinly-formed bandages, a body of so-called facts, apparent factoids and a spiders web of an overview, each and all of which fall down on many points, except that there is no agreed or accepted alternative to cover the entirety, and that supposed solutions to partial elements are swept aside by the general consensus that the whole must surely be right, rather than be wrong in small measures.

History and Science are in equal parts observed practice, pious hopes and a patchwork to cover anomalies and holes that there is the wish most people will not notice. Nothing is truly known, it is simply understood as best that the current generation can manage, but in the mainstream this is far less of an understanding than those who study these things have. In print, in popular media etc, these holes are skimmed over, are made as if they did not exist, and a more coherent whole than ever did exist is presented. People are sold a lie for the sake of simplicity, and many of these people subsequently declare themselves experts and come back to attack anyone who would question the shaky consensus that gets built up around many of these things.

But more than anything, declaring Ancient Aliens to be ASB misses the point entirely IF Ancient Aliens is in ANY way factual. If they did come before, then they will come again. But even more than that, if they did come and help Civilisation A then the potential for them to in the future help Civilisation C or to have aided Civilisation E instead of A in the first place, all these things come back into the realm of simple alternate history and not the fantastical realm of the ASBs.

If Ancient Aliens are in any form accepted as real history, then the whole concept of yelling ASB at their very mention must collapse. ASB by its definition is something generally impossible made real by a Deus-ex-Machina device of the writer, but if Ancient Aliens is ever proven, even in the most remote and small way, then the whole of ancient history is opened up to alien intervention as a true possibility and natural occurrence, not needing the derisory ASB tag applied to it.

The very possibility of Ancient Aliens undermines the whole sneering sub-culture of the ASB shrieker. If it is possible that aliens that did indeed come to this planet and have some input into the development of man, then the admittedly small possibility that Nazi Germany could have successfully carried out the invasion of Great Britain pales into insignificance.

The ASB shriekers have both done great harm to Alternate History as a genre (either literary or historical) and laid the foundations for their utter annihilation if ancient aliens should ever become proven fact.

They are the most closed-minded of commentators, the most arrogant of critics, and the most insensible of observers. If it should be proven that Ancient Aliens did indeed visit this planet, then the final irrevocable laugh shall be upon them, and their pitiful whimpering shall herald the death of the ASB and the rebirth of true allohistorical discussion.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Disgusting Aliens

October 26th, 2012

What if aliens arrive, and things that we find abhorrent are all in the natural form of things for them? Aliens capable of planetary destruction demand things that ordinarily would be beyond the pale?

What if as part of the normal passage of diplomacy, the aliens demanded human sacrifice, or child brides, orgies with the US president or with the British Queen? What if they were cannibals, or viewed human meat as a delicacy to be consumed during diplomatic negotiations? What if they had sentient meat animals they ate alive?

These things can’t be discussed on the alternate history boards, where they are anathema, but sex has long been a major element of dynastic politics, and by extension imperial policy, and it would be stupid to assume that aliens would not indulge in it.

What we consider decent is simply a matter of the development of mores over generations. Even as late as 1945-1946, it was the norm for Bavarian peasant women to work the fields bare-chested (much to the delight of passing GI’s). Naturism was a respectable idea in the 1970s, and the idea of a family practicing it would be a life choice, whereas now it would be viewed as close to child abuse by “exposing” the young to the nudity of their elders.

Until the end of the 1990s it was not unusual for girls in the American South to marry in their early teens, and those marrying them were not seen as predators or evil men, but simply those living within that society, who operated by the mores of that society.

Morality is not an absolute, and the discussion of moral issues should not be constrained by the hysteria of the press, often publishing completely hypocritically for maximum effect, or by the panicked actions of politicians who seek to define a new moral code in their own square image.

If an alien race arrived and demanded one thousand virgins as wives for their battle commanders, then it is not anything much different from how ancient peoples behaved towards those they subjugated. In effect, they would be demanding girls of an age that official society has now decided are still children, whereas previous societies did not and biological logic does not bear this out.

But even if the aliens agreed to abide by our moral code on such things, they may well be far more open about sex, far more “in your face” about it, and simply far more demanding, because they have the position of ultimate power.

This was what I was aiming to discuss in my hated and reviled “Aliens of Porn” short story. What if they did practice sex whilst in open communication, what if they demanded participation in sexual ceremonies as proof of the compliance of the other diplomatic party? Stating that any narrative that explores these themes is evil and should get the poster banned, is a monumental stupidity, because these things are neither impossible nor unprecedented.

However much the “consensus of history” likes to sweep under the carpet everything that does not meet the currently-promoted puritanical model of the government and press, history is full of things that would make even the more open-minded and liberal of modern commentators blush.

The assertion that adults cannot discuss whether aliens might have a system of thought akin to those once seen on Earth is censorship in its most extreme form. It is a disgusting inditement of where over a decade of state censorship and attacks on freedom of expression have led us, and in this climate, it can only get worse.

There can be no validity given to dissenting opinions, indeed dissenting opinions are branded as deranged at best, deliberately contrary to “accepted thought” at worse. There is now no longer any space to hold these opinions honestly and to promote them as legitimate points of discussion.

Beset Rearguards
Grey Wolf

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Push….er yeah

December 12th, 2011

PUSH… Honestly I can only say one thing that was good with it – Dakota Fanning. Despite the tripe she was given as plot, and the wooden mannequins who made up the rest of the cast, Dakota says her lines with conviction, acts as if its important how and where she moves, and is convincing. Its a pity NOBODY else is. The male lead is more wooden than Seagal or Schwarzenegger at their worst; in fact if either of those had been in it they would probably have rescued this…thing. Psychic kung fu may SOUND cool, but it looks pretty stupid after the first couple of seconds.

Somehow Empire magazine apparently rated this as “Thrilling – X Men meets Trainspotting”. X Men was a whole order of magnitude better than this. Maybe this THING would have been rescuable if it had had a better director, a better male lead, some convincing villains and a more coherent plot. Quite possibly a combination of Ridley Scott, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger/Stephen Seagal/John Cusack as the male lead, and some adversaries who could act, would have resulted in a fun romp.

Dakota would have remained excellent throughout things, but one always remembers excellence within excellence, whereas she has to write this one off on her CV as being excellence within a pile of shite.

RATING : 3 out of 10

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Pause for Thought

December 6th, 2011

Who is the most Christian? The one who earns millions by being a hard-hearted banker and then gives it all away, or the one who shuns worldly things to work with the poor? The latter, without doubt, for the banker in earning his fortune destroys as many lives as he later saves by giving it all away. It is a zero sum – and worse, for those whose lives he wrecks are not the ones whose lives he saves; their lives remain ruined. The poor man giving his life to serve others only ever does good and tho his account may read many fewer in the positive balance than the banker, it is triumphant because he has no one in his debit balance – unlike the banker whose destruction equals his reparation to humanity. We cannot condemn a man who gives away his fortune but we cannot in any way hold him above the man who earns none and yet devotes his life to others.

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Exercise in Characterisation

November 29th, 2011

In the Thanksgiving edition of the Writers Digest email newsletter, there are Characterization Exercises:-

Every person has many facets to his or her character. A good fictional character also is multi-faceted. In order for you to consider all the facets of your characters, write a description of a character as if you were a character witness testifying in defense of this person. Then write a description of the same character as if you were a character witness called by the prosecution. Remember, both parties are discussing the same character, so the characteristics discussed have to be consistent.

So I thought I would do this with one of my more…problematic characters, Marshal Wolf from a British-centric empire which is waging constant war, over-running Africa and sending slaves back o the homeland.

Character Witness

Marshal Wolf is dedicated to success. He is a true stalwart of the Empire and while he has sworn loyalty to the Emperor, and while he stands in the chain of command beneath the political elite, he will let nothing stand in his way – if glory for the Empire can be obtained by subverting these things, then he will do so. The Empire above everything. But never treason

He is liberal in a fascist sense – he cares not what sexual orientation the men and women of his command are, he will happily elevate women, gays and the maimed to superior command if they prove capable of it, and he does not infringe upon their rights even in the middle of a campaign. To him this is the doctrine of Empire – everything to itself, but glory in the Empire.

He cares little for diktats from the central government, not in themselves. Where he sees their worth he will enforce them, albeit in his own way, but where he disagrees with them, or finds them pointless, he will ignore them and de facto challenge them to take him on, trusting to his own success and the glory of the Empire that he bolsters by his actions to defend him successfully.

Some lives are cheaper than others – the men and women of his command he will not waste in pointless assaults, but he does not hold human life in itself to be sacrosanct. Command he sees as a contract – he will preserve their lives from unnecessary wastage if they will give their all to advance his goals. Where other populations are concerned he is a man of honour and of his word – if he spares someone’s life then anyone who takes it is doomed, if he makes a deal with a native elite, then that deal will hold as long as they keep to their side of the bargain, if he frees prisoners, or spares an enemy, then he expects at least obedience if not loyalty from them, and if he gets it, their lives are under his protection.

The economics of Empire are very important to him. Plunder, exploitation and slavery are all the powerhouses of conquest, and he sees nothing wrong in maximising them to the glory of the Empire. Where slaves are concerned he sees it in terms of value – do these men, women and children have a value if they live? If they do, then they live, and are protected – a dead slave is a waste of time, effort and money, a living slave is an investment and a future return. Slaves should have food, warmth and shelter.

The slave markets are a personal delight of his, seeing the culmination of his policies, healthy, fit slaves being sold to owners for the glory of the Empire, and the increased wealth of the traders, an economic boost that generates more wealth in its wake. To him, there is a definite delight, a solid satisfaction, in seeing slaves whom he created when a city fell, finally sell for good money, and head off into fruitful and profitable lives for the Empire, being able down the line, should they prove worthy of it, to once more buy their freedom and become members of the body politic of the Empire

In his own establishments, his palaces and mansions, he practises what he preaches. Women, the maimed, and those with unusual tastes are as likely to be found in senior positions as anyone else, and he cares not what they do in their own time. Slaves abound, but freedmen also, and he is a strong believer in using superior slaves in positions where they will best aid his enterprises, even if he has qualified freedmen or servants who are not quite as good.

PROSECUTION!!!

Marshal Wolf is guilty of unnumbered heinous war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He is a supporter of slavery and has benefitted economically by persecuting the defeated populations of cities his army destroys. He is a supporter of every sexual perversion, and frequently commits treason by acts of omission. He has no loyalty even to the emperor, suborning all things to his own warped view of what is best. He will exploit children in his own households, and commits massacres on a frequent and ghastly scale. He is evil incarnate and the best most of his men can say is that they fear him.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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NARRATED FILMS

November 29th, 2011

I don’t like narrated films – this is a general rule and, of course, not an absolute.

I DO like “The Usual Suspects” but there the narration is a part of the plot, a twisting of events and perspectives that is done perfectly, playing with the audience, shifting their understanding, breaking down the barriers.

Most narrated films use narration as a vehicle for joining together disparate time periods, or sewing together a clunky plot. As much as I was a fan of Peter Falke, I found “Goodfellas” weakened by the narration, and as much as I love Nicholas Cage as an actor, the narration severely undermined “Lord of War”. Both would have been far better films if they had ditched the narration and paid more attention to how to tell the story through the plot, the characters and the way that the screenplay unfolds.

I decided to try to watch “The Last Airbender” the other night, but despite my open mind on the idea of a live replaying of what had been an excellent cartoon, I could not get past the idea that it was being narrated. To me that implied defeat, that the producers did not believe they could get across the point in a logical fashion, that they thought the story too confusing to be able to tell it chronologicaly, and that they did not have faith in the material they had been given.

Very very few films need narration, and those which can use it properly should do so as part of the plot – an intrinsic part of the plot, like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd where the first person voice hides the fact that the narrator is actually the murderer – a similar situation as with The Usual Suspects.

The rest of the time, narration is not only unnecessary, but jars massively on the story-telling and destroys the power of the story itself

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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