In 2005, whilst perusing the shelves at the
Hennepin County Public Library, I stumbled across CHANGING VISION by Julie
Czerneda (say it: chur-nay-dah), an author I'd never heard of, and was
intrigued by the aliens on the cover by artist Luis Royo. It didn’t matter that
the book was the second in a series, the cover entranced me and so I read. The
book was spectacular, I read others, and fell entirely in love with another
series of hers called SPECIES IMPERATIVE for its fascinating aliens and
superior characterization. A teacher deeply at heart, Julie Czerneda shares
ideas and methodology wherever she goes. On her website, http://www.czerneda.com/classroom/classroom.html
she shares ideas for writers. I want to share what kind of impact her ideas
have had on my own writing. They are
used with the author’s permission.
“The expert witness is
someone who understands and expresses the science ideas. It
could be the
narrator, the protagonist, or anyone. But the reader should find the
information source
credible.”
This is a concept I’d
never heard of before reading Julie Czerneda’s advice – and yet it’s someone I’d
included in every story I’ve ever written. Unlike character building, finding
an expert witness has worked out well for me.
In my only real
ANALOG story, “A Pig Tale” (you can read it here: http://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-pig-tale-june-2000-analog-science.html),
my main character serves as both the protagonist and the expert witness. She’s
the one taking action to meet her needs in the story, but she’s also the expert
on the Alzheimer’s drug she uses to change her father’s memories, deflecting
them away from his attempted suicide.
In another story of
mine, the job of expert witness is split between two characters. If you would
like to read the story before I comment, you can see “Invoking Fire” here: http://www.perihelionsf.com/1306/fiction_6.htm
before continuing on. By the way, that’s what they call a “spoiler alert”!
At any rate, the
main character is Na’Rodney, a young adult growing up in a post-petroleum, NON-apocalyptic,
NON-teenager-hating future. His great-uncle has just passed away, and
authorities have come to claim his cousin, Payne. Payne is a victim of
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder and is kidnapped. Na’Rodney reluctantly
enlists the help of the “housemaid”, Angelique – who forms the second half of
the expert witness.
To Na’Rodney’s
dismay, it turns out that his great-uncle, former president of InterPol (which
is a very different organization in this future than it is in our present), has
been involved with the lives of several young adults. Think of him as a “non-psychic
Professor Xavier”. He and Angelique – and eventually reunited with Payne – are on
a sort of quest…only in reverse.
They will never
again see Na’Rodney’s great-uncle as his body was immolated in the burning of
their home and immense paper book library, but between the two of them, they
form “the expert witness” in this story.
In another published
example, my most recent “kid’s SF” story, “The Penguin Whisperer” (CRICKET
Magazine, January 2013), I again employ the technique of creating a two-part
expert witness. A snarky girl and a shy
boy join their two areas of expertise to survive an accident aboard a space
station (An aside regarding character. I seem to have a fondness for snarky
characters. I know I’m not snarky – I wonder where I get that fondness comes from?
It’s certainly the type of character in the stories I’ve had published…)
Julie Czerneda
utilizes the “doubled characters equals expert witness” technique in at least
two of her series. In SPECIES IMPERATIVE, Mackenzie Connor is the heart of the
story as well as an expert in salmon migration. But it’s the acerbic and mysterious
Emily who completes Mac’s expertise.
She does something
similar in THE TRADE PACT set. Sira is the heart of the story and has a very
specific skill set. Morgan has another, wider set. Together, they form a
powerful expert witness.
Fascinating – my best
work appears to be set up this way. A quick dash through my file of dead
stories reveals that the ones that didn’t work had a single expert witness. Of
course, the single expert witness as the main character translates into exactly
one thing and that is a violation of one of the rules of character I’ve been
learning: “The character has to be normal in the sense that they make mistakes,
they make smart decisions, and they wonder if what they did was a mistake or a
smart decision.”
Putting all the
expertise into one character makes them a smarty-pants, and I can’t begin to
tell you how much a loathe smarty-pants people in real life.
OK – lesson learned.
No more combining viewpoint character with the expert witness. When I do that I
make someone I’d hate as well as making someone that editors apparently hate, too!
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