The Laws of Science Fiction

[Steven Lake]

Exactly! One other thing that's sorta funny about getting people to love characters that I find hilarious is when you try your best to get them to love one character, and instead they all gravitate to another, lesser character that you never intended them to like so much. Case in point. In my Earthfleet Saga, Finch was intended to be a minor supporting character for Phyland and was thus written that way. In the end he's turned out to be one of the top three favorite characters in the entire series and the one guy I wanted at the top ended up sorta middle echelon! hehe.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Exactly! One other thing that's sorta funny about getting people to love characters that I find hilarious is when you try your best to get them to love one character, and instead they all gravitate to another, lesser character that you never intended them to like so much. Case in point. In my Earthfleet Saga, Finch was intended to be a minor supporting character for Phyland and was thus written that way. In the end he's turned out to be one of the top three favorite characters in the entire series and the one guy I wanted at the top ended up sorta middle echelon! hehe.

And you expect characters to behave as you planned? A lot of folks I know talk about having their characters grab them by the collar when they are writing a scene, shake them and say "No no NO! You idiot! That's not what happened! I was there! This is what happened!"

Diane Duane told a story about working on a Star Trek novel, when two male characters from another series she was writing walked in, hand in hand, said "By the way, we're gay!" and walked out. As it happened, the next line in the ST book was Captain Kirk saying "Who were those guys?"
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Dennis

[Fat Abe]

Originally Posted by rleguillow

IMHO, doesn't matter what genre you are writing in, if I don't care about the characters and what is happening to them, I don't care about the book.

Robin

It is the art and craft of the author that makes one care. When Gardner Dozois was compiling a collection of short stories, Modern Classics of Science Fiction, there were many choices he could have made. But, in his words,

"Most people would probably have chosen Baby is Three for this book, and it is indeed a seminal work ... but somehow it was the sly little story that follows, a vivid glimpse of the strangeness that underlies the everyday world, that was the Sturgeon story I've never been able to get out of my mind, and which was the one that insisted that I pick it for this anthology. And, indeed, I think that it is Sturgeon at the very top of his form ... which places it among the best work ever done in the genre."

That work would be, The Other Celia. Although I recollect her saying not a single word (quoted line), she was a character I'll always remember and identify with.

http://books.google.com/books?id=usY...0celia&f=false

[Joebill]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And you expect characters to behave as you planned? A lot of folks I know talk about having their characters grab them by the collar when they are writing a scene, shake them and say "No no NO! You idiot! That's not what happened! I was there! This is what happened!"

Diane Duane told a story about working on a Star Trek novel, when two male characters from another series she was writing walked in, hand in hand, said "By the way, we're gay!" and walked out. As it happened, the next line in the ST book was Captain Kirk saying "Who were those guys?"
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Dennis

They better, I have an eraser...

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And you expect characters to behave as you planned? A lot of folks I know talk about having their characters grab them by the collar when they are writing a scene, shake them and say "No no NO! You idiot! That's not what happened! I was there! This is what happened!"

lol! Yeah, I've seen characters and scenes totally take on a life of their own, and before you know it, you've gone off in a direction you never originally intended. It's like being in a car that pulls hard to the right, and you're struggling with all your might just to keep it on the road.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

lol! Yeah, I've seen characters and scenes totally take on a life of their own, and before you know it, you've gone off in a direction you never originally intended. It's like being in a car that pulls hard to the right, and you're struggling with all your might just to keep it on the road.

if the car does pull hard to the right, that means it does stay on the road ....

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Maybe it's just me, but in the shows I see him in, Dr. Kaku usually comes off as a sci-fi/science shill. I think he's trying too hard to "bring science to the masses."

My personal opinion is that he is doing it about right. You forget that the majority of the masses have the attention span of a three-year old and think that WWF Wrestling is quality entertainment.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

lol! Yeah, I've seen characters and scenes totally take on a life of their own, and before you know it, you've gone off in a direction you never originally intended. It's like being in a car that pulls hard to the right, and you're struggling with all your might just to keep it on the road.

But in the best cases, the new direction your characters take you in is a better one than the one you planned. The trick is to be able to recognize that and go with the flow.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Joebill

They better, I have an eraser...

Not after they hold you down and take it away from you...

I attended a reading some time back by Gahan Wilson. He's a good writer as well as a brilliant cartoonist. He read a piece in which the author of a "Fu Manchu" like series decides to kill off his long-time protagonist and replace him with a new here, maybe Hungarian like he is. He confidently expects his new hero to handily defeat the villain and end the series. It doesn't work out that way. What he does do is remove the only obstacle that was presenting his villain from escaping from the series and affecting the real world.

(IIRC, in the Last Fu Manchu novel, Nayland Smith decides he's just delaying the inevitable. Fu Manchu is too smart, too powerful, and too rich. Sooner or later, he will succeed in taking over the world. But once he has, he'll probably do a decent job of running it, and certainly a better job that those he displaced.)
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Dennis

[Joebill]

Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams. Ah, my fave cartoonists.

[BVLarson]

I dislike aliens that are anything near the category of "a guy with a rubber mask on". In other works, I'm sick of fuzzy/leathery-looking humans with cloaks being called aliens. I can understand it in movies, where you have a hard time convincing all the actors to be essentially voices for puppets and CG, but not in fiction where imagination is the limit.
-BVL

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Not after they hold you down and take it away from you...

I attended a reading some time back by Gahan Wilson. He's a good writer as well as a brilliant cartoonist. He read a piece in which the author of a "Fu Manchu" like series decides to kill off his long-time protagonist and replace him with a new here, maybe Hungarian like he is. He confidently expects his new hero to handily defeat the villain and end the series. It doesn't work out that way. What he does do is remove the only obstacle that was presenting his villain from escaping from the series and affecting the real world.

(IIRC, in the Last Fu Manchu novel, Nayland Smith decides he's just delaying the inevitable. Fu Manchu is too smart, too powerful, and too rich. Sooner or later, he will succeed in taking over the world. But once he has, he'll probably do a decent job of running it, and certainly a better job that those he displaced.)
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Dennis

This reminds me of the comic book series "Empire," where the main character is a villain who defeats all of his enemies, wipes out any opposition in the world to his rule, and now controls the entire world. With his technology he is able to immediately wipe any opposition as soon as it becomes known.

The problem is, he hates the job, he's ill suited to it, and he can't quit. There's no one he can trust, he's continually having to watch his back, and he has to ruthlessly deal with any one who might be a threat. Ironically, when he became the ruler of the world he also became the least free person in the world.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

This reminds me of the comic book series "Empire," where the main character is a villain who defeats all of his enemies, wipes out any opposition in the world to his rule, and now controls the entire world. With his technology he is able to immediately wipe any opposition as soon as it becomes known.

The problem is, he hates the job, he's ill suited to it, and he can't quit. There's no one he can trust, he's continually having to watch his back, and he has to ruthlessly deal with any one who might be a threat. Ironically, when he became the ruler of the world he also became the least free person in the world.

The late James Blish did a turn on that in his horror novels _Black Easter_ and _The Day After Judgement_. In _Black Easter_, we learn that God has apparently died. (Or at least, gone somewhere were even His angels can't find Him.) In _The Day After Judgement_, we see the effects, as things happen like the infernal city of Dis arising in the Nevada desert.

At the end of the book, the four main protagonists come face to face with Satan. The great Cherub is in the Pit, head surmounted by a golden halo, and crying. He begs Mankind to grow up quickly and become ready to accept the Keys of Heaven. With God gone, he's bumped up to the top spot in Creation, and he doesn't like it at all.
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Dennis

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

But in the best cases, the new direction your characters take you in is a better one than the one you planned. The trick is to be able to recognize that and go with the flow.
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Dennis

lol. Yes, in some cases the new direction *is* better, but just as often it's not. At other times the new direction they take totally flies in the opposite direction of what the story is going, and goes down a rabbit trail that ultimately leads to nowhere. So some direction in the story telling process is required.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

But in the best cases, the new direction your characters take you in is a better one than the one you planned.

And sometimes not. At times, when a character's expected reaction takes a story down a wrong turn, the author must go back and revisit the elements of that story, to figure out what they should have added or revised to make that character want to go down the right road.