Posts Tagged Unleaded
On Origins of Species
Posted by DLThurston in Plot Thoughts, Unleaded Crosspost on March 17, 2011
Aka: the morphology of Science Fiction.
Over in Unleaded this week I talked about science fiction that lacks variation in phenotypes among alien species. Here I’d like to talk about science fiction that has an abundance of variation in morphology. And, oddly, just as I used the Na’vi as an example of a lack of the one, I’m going to use Pandora as an example of the abundance of the other.
Look around you. Okay, perhaps not right now, because you’re at your computer and not in the middle of the zoo. But perhaps you can see non-human mammals from where you are. Pet dogs or cats, a gerbil or a hamster. While there are a lot of ways they differ from you, they’re smaller, they’re fuzzier, depending on their species they poop in a box. But they have faces. Two eyes, two nostrils on one nose, two ears, one mouth. They have four limbs. Go to the zoo. Look at the mammals. Look at the reptiles. Look at the birds. Look at anything with a backbone, and what will you see. Two eyes, one nose, two ears, one mouth, four limbs. Even going back to the dinosaurs, there’s the same quantities of the same five features.
This is common descent at work. Evolution found a formula that works, works well, and even while whole scale changes happen to species those few constants have remained.
Now look at Pandora. Lots of six-limbed creatures, lots of four-limbed creatures. Enough of a combination between the two that, during the movie, I had to work out just how such different morphology came to being on Pandora. Which species shared common ancestors. The fauna presented just didn’t offer enough similarities to the Na’vi for me to feel like there was a common ancestor.
Is this a big problem? Probably not. Are there people reading this who never gave a second thought to that? Absolutely. But it is one of those things to keep in mind when creating a new world, first to ask yourself whether it’s something you care about, whether you care if other people care about it, and then if you decide you do…what exactly you want to do about it. This may involve another phase of your world building, but the resulting world will potentially be deeper and feel more cohesive in the end.
Quick thought
Posted by DLThurston in Business of Writing, Unleaded Crosspost on December 16, 2010
While I’m sure I’ll never get to the point in my career that I’ll be famous enough for television commercials (and have always been somewhat dubious of novels being advertised on television), if it ever does happen I’m going to insist that my ads include no words that, while technically in the dictionary, really shouldn’t actually be words.
As long as I’m posting, I forgot to do this week’s cross post back to Unleaded. This week the story of a laptop theft inspired some thoughts on data backup. I plan to take my own advice this weekend.
Writers Write
Posted by DLThurston in Nanowrimo, Unleaded Crosspost on December 1, 2010
I think that’s going to be my new mantra, and something that I need to get tattooed backwards across my forehead so I can read it in a mirror. Anyway, another Wednesday, another post over in Unleaded, this time exploring the few things I’ll say against Nanowrimo, basically the line between having written and being a writer.
Cruise Characters
Posted by DLThurston in Character Thoughts, Plot Thoughts, Unleaded Crosspost on November 24, 2010
I’m still trying to come up with a good plot for a cruise ship. Something horror related without going with a haunted house or a sea monster pastiche. For the time being, though, there were more than a few characters I discovered while on board. What follows are first my observations then my own creative license taking over.
Washy Washy: Located outside the main buffet on the ship there were always two hyper cheerful people whose goals were twofold: get people to smile and spray their hands with bubble gum smelling sanitizer before they walked in and started touching everything. There was one in particular who took extra gusto in his job, smiling everywhere except his eyes. This was the same greeter they chose to see us off the boat because people absolutely loved him.
The Assistant Assistant Cruise Directors: There were at least two of these who I met. One was a gangly American, the other was a stocky Canadian. Both were in their early twenties and clearly on low rungs within the cruise staff organization. These two directed people to the gangways going ashore, and helped the Assistant Cruise Director run the bingo game, nightly at port and twice a day at sea. The ACD himself was only a few years older, and I just felt that for the first time in his professional career he has underlings after being the AACD himself for so long. I can smell the makings of a petty dictator a mile away, and when the actual Cruise Director wasn’t there, I’m sure the ACD had no problem reminding people who was in charge.
The Shopping Consultant: This was someone with a job to do. That job, however, involves helping the stores at each port of call to separate travelers from as much of their money as possible. For that reason, he’s hawking the Diamonds, talking up the rarity of Tanzanite, and generally is the closest thing to a used car salesman that existed on the ship. What I’d be curious to find out, though, is whether he was a nice guy who was just doing a job he happens to be good at, or whether he’s someone who actually enjoys his job perhaps a little too much.
The Youth Counselors: Being neither a child nor a parent, I had little interaction with the youth counselors. The only reason I ran into them at all is that they had the reservation right after mine at the Teppanyaki table. They were all uniformly early 20s, uniformly attractive, and uniformly American. The latter was an abnormality on the ship, this was the largest group of any kind I encountered who all had United States on their name badges. Also one of the only groups who only had first names on their badges (with the exception of the Latino member whose name tag read, and this is no joke, “Tex-Mex”). Four guys, four girls, all young and attractive, working and living together. Strikes me as the perfect combination for pairing off. They were all sun dresses and khakis for their reservation, but don’t let that fool you that there aren’t some shenanigans going on with this group. Side note: when I observed the youth counselors to my wife, she swore I said “grief counselors” and was shocked that, even with the older-skewing demographic on board, that eight grief counselors were necessary.
The youth counselors seem the easiest targets for a horror plot, but just because twenty-somethings-in-peril is such a well established sub-genre of horror. There was even the one requisite ethnic member of the group.
It’s Wednesday…
Posted by DLThurston in Nanowrimo, Unleaded Crosspost on November 3, 2010
That means it’s time for some writerly words over on Unleaded. This week: how best to use Nanowrimo. (Hint: the answer is “however you want to”.)
Unleaded quickie, Nanowrimo
Posted by DLThurston in Capsule, End of the Line, Nanowrimo, Unleaded Crosspost on October 27, 2010
New post up at Unleaded featuring SMBC and me…well, linking right back here again.
Next Monday marks the beginning of Nanowrimo. This year I’ll be missing a big chunk of the month as I’m heading to New Orleans for a cruise to celebrating the wedding of the proprietors of the Unleaded Blog (yay!). That means that the standard 50,000 word goal is out the window. But here’s the thing. I wouldn’t really want to anyway. I feel like I’m less than 50,000 words from the end of Capsule, and that trying to put that many more words into it would be contrived. And I sure as hell don’t want to start anything new, no matter how much I’ve been thinking about a plotline I’m currently calling “The Filibuster” (based on the old definition…shameless 200 Years cross-link). So here’s my Nanowrimo goal:
Maintain Nano pace on any day that I’m not on vacation until I get to the end of Capsule. Then work on editing, oh dare I even say it? End of the Line.
Also, came up with an odd idea for a flash fiction piece that I’m hoping to write and post here in the blog by the end of the month. Yay, flash fiction!