WRITING ADVICE: “God Bless You Gravity Modification” I Gave Up On It, Am I READY To Do A Serious ReWrite?

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

Forever ago, ANALOG Science Fiction and Science Fact did something called a "Tag Line". It was an editorial summary of what the editor thought was the PIVOTAL question that the story attempted to answer. As it wasn't published, I had to think of my own tag line: "We always thinks about how paradigm changes will affect “society”, but what about how will it affect the 'little people.?"

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
For the first time ever, I drew on my missionary experiences from my eight months in Nigeria, Cameroun, and Liberia. I wanted to imagine what the introduction of gravity modification would do in a situation of rebuilding after war – war that the “big countries” had never paid much attention to. I was modeling the story on John Brunner’s ANALOG March 1973 short story, “Who Steals My Purse?” In THAT one, repurposed ICBMs are used to drop small TVs on Vietnam along with tools, seeds, and other developmental material that the people could use to raise their quality of living (and presumably grow to love Americans and overthrow the communist regime…)

Opening Line:
“Gordon Oyeyemi Daboh huffed, shaking his head.”

Onward:
“He said, ‘Building five new schools here in God Bless You isn’t impossible. We have clay, concrete, straw, lumber, paint, and bamboo.’ He flicked his hand at the meager supplies piled near the edge of the burned-out clearing. The faint concrete outline of the original elementary school was visible through a layer of fine ash. A pile of debris loomed on the edge of the gravel boulevard, waiting for removal or reuse. ‘But we don’t have time, and we have few volunteers. We have limited building supplies! Your, your,” he karate chopped the air in front of the young woman standing before him. Her eyes widened and she stepped back, ‘handwavium is as useless to us as our three buckets of glow-in-the-dark paint!’”

What Was I Trying To Say?
I wanted to communicate that technology, even when it’s incremental, can be used to dramatically change the lives of normal people for the better. (It contains the obligatory warning against the military machine…the fact is that my son, my father, two of my nephews, and some of my best friends have served and DO currently serve in all of the branches of the military. I STILL stand by my statement.)

The Rest of the Story:
Gordon and Comfort butt heads almost immediately. The shoestring operation of rebuilding the schools (the original title was “The Everyday Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”) is fraught and gets worse when a squad of wandering mercenaries get wind of Comfort’s gmod device. Expecting to easily find it, they have no idea it’s woven into strips of hook and loop (for a fascinating AND HUMOROUS (I REALLY appreciate the humor!) take on hook and loop and its registered trademark, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY) that are easily applied to pallets. There are accidents – and then a kidnapping of the village Elder and his daughters – and Gordon has to use the soldiering skills he swore off of to rescue them and get back on track…)

End Analysis:

OK, so writing the synopsis up above, I just realized what my problem is…Lisa Cron’s rules from her book WIRED FOR STORY clearly spell out the mistakes I made:

2) Grab the reader, something is at stake from the first page.
5) Plot (what happens): make characters confront internal and external issues to confront their "inner demons."
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action: to start with, anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic. In other words, "The Character HAS TO CHANGE!"

First line has no grab; Gordon’s inner demon is NOT clear (“I REFUSE to ever be a soldier again!”); external circumstances don’t slam into internal issues (He wants to be JUST a teacher! He didn’t even want to be a principal!); his worldview stays pretty much the same – it should start with him thinking he’s escaped notice and that quitting Lagos’ special operations unit of cloning soldiers after meeting former "enemies" has set him free; he can’t do everything right from the moment he leaves to rescue the Elder and his daughters, he has to screw up.

OK – I get it. I didn’t know about Cron’s advice when I wrote this one. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind.

Rewriting with a newer and wiser goal in mind! Which answers the question below:

Can This Story Be Saved?
Simple answer – “Yes.”

[BUT…if anyone would like a copy of the current work, and if you would read it AND maybe help me figure out a new name for it AND if you promise to be brutally honest with me…I would be in your debt.]

Later.

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 663

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: "It occurs to me that robot stories about naturally-occurring robots present an untapped sci-fi resource in terms of commenting on what constitutes life, or a meditation on the machine like nature of biological man, etc."
Current Event: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/scientists-create-life-like-cells-out-of-metal/

Ebony Jones pursed her lips, tweaking the landing jets of the surface ship. “I don’t like how it looks down there.”

Marquis Deonte ran another scan, tapping one of the readouts as he said, “It’s mechanical life, sure. Maybe the first time we’ve ever run across it naturally...”

“There’s nothing ‘natural’ about ‘mechanical life’. It’s an oxymoron,” she almost added “Like you...”, but decided against it. They’d butted heads enough times on the trip out from Earth – mostly because you could only live out virtual adventures so many times before you got bored. You could also only prep for landing on an alien world so many times before you were twitching in your sleep with the movements you’d repeated a million times.

You could only tell someone you just wanted to be friends so many times before you both started to... Marquis cut into her litany, saying, “Didn’t you come out here to find life as we DON’T know it?"

“Of course it’s what I want! Just because I question the possibility of some sort of metallic, mechanical...”

“Look! Down there!” he said, aiming the external sensors at the roiling surface.

Ebony said, “Besides, water mixed with just about any kind of salt would be corrosive to metal...”

“Our bones are metallic,” he said, his voice taking on the deadpan, lecture mode they’d fallen into after they’d first become fast friends. Since about ten months into the flight to HD 196944, a star rich in heavy metals when they’d stopped being best friends and become the banes of their separate existences.

“True, that. But...”

“There’s something moving under the surface,” said Marquis.

“I don’t see anything...”

“It’s not visible in our part of the spectrum. Change the frequency reception of your scanner. I’m getting lots of movement in the UV band. Also IR.”

She tapped the screen, slid a spectrum bar and watched as the imaged jumped into view. There were larger shapes deeper down. Smaller ones close to the surface. They were angular rather than rounded; mechanical rather than biological. “What kind of ecology would they have?” she muttered. After a moment, she said more loudly, “There’s something – cloudy – under the surface. Seems to be...” she paused, defaulted to a space-view of the lander, zoomed in then added, “The cloud is matching the shape of our shadow.”

“Huh?” Marquis said.

“Our shadow! A cloud is forming underneath us in the water.” Below them, something burbled, as if the water were boiling. A larger bubble burst beneath the surface, splashing the lander. Ebony swung the imager to the belly of the lander and cried, “The ship’s skin is boiling! I’m taking us up!” Without waiting for his confirmation, Ebony pushed the throttle to full...

Names: ♀, ♂ Top 20 Whitest and Blackest Names (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2470131) Resource: http://io9.com/5628989/ten-tropes-youll-find-in-science-fiction---over-and-over-again, http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0129b/
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Indifferent Incomprehensibility Between Alien Intelligences = Conflict?

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

Inspiration: February 28, 2025
Interesting Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NlqhEeK1iw

I read and write science fiction. I couldn’t tell you how many stories I read include some kind of peaceful confederation of intelligent aliens.

The stories don’t always depict those beings getting along! Even in the most hopeful one, one many of us grew up with, STAR TREK’s United Federation of Planets, there’s all kind of conflict. There’s hatred. Humans hate Klingons; Klingons hate Humans; Vulcans don’t hate Humans, but feel they are infinitely superior to Humans; the Borg are the ultimate form of organic life – to be controlled by technology (kind of like us…) and aren’t technically part of the Federation. There’s bias based on color (Andorians, Orions); gender, (Orion females were the foundation (while appearing male) ; Skreeaa males were too emotional; and (obviously) mental capacity – Vulcans being telepathic, Humans only mildly so); Betazoids; the Cairn; Species 8472; El-Aurian…there are others as well.

Among Humanity, our largest conflicts haven’t been based on any biological difference (though the Nazi believed that anyone who wasn’t blonde with blue eyes was an inferior Human; possibly not even Human at all. Probably I could safely say that the largest conflicts resulted from different philosophies, points of view, or perception of what the Universe should be like or was like.

I’m secretly convinced that I would love aliens to be “just like me”! I’m secretly convinced that aliens will prove that what and who I am indicates some kind of innate superiority. It’s not even a secret that I’m convinced that other people are absolutely certain that the universe, aliens, and other intelligences will turn out to be clones of themselves, and identically mirror their points of view, and philosophy or not even their philosophy, but the TRUTH of the universe…

Most of us UNDERSTAND how unlikely that is; in our brain. It’s just hard to get our emotions to agree with our brains. Without any conscious effort, we find it necessary to firmly believe that we’ve got it all figured our and KNOW what the universe beyond Earth is going to be like. Back to STAR TREK, Gene Roddenberry was convinced that by the time Humanity reached the stars – ostensibly sometime in the 23rd Century – religion would have vanished, mostly because it had vanished from his own life and it would obviously collapse the instant Humanity met non-Humans. To his worldview, this was the only INTELLIGENT, STAR-FARING conclusion.

And yet…religion crept back into STAR TREK, mostly after he passed away.

So, giving the whole idea of a United Federation of Planets a serious thought, a REALLY serious thought…let’s look at one of the more fascinating aliens STAR TREK presented. They were simple, really: the Horta. Creatures who lived in solid rock, passing through it like we pass through air. They were silicon life forms. Since then, we’ve even discovered life on Earth that, while it’s not BASED on silicon, it’s dependent on silicon – the diatoms. “Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year, take in over 6.7 billion tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and make up nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans. The shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half-mile deep on the ocean floor, and the entire Amazon basin is fertilized annually by 27 million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara, much of it from the Bodélé Depression, which was once made up of a system of fresh-water lakes.” (From the WIKIPEDIA entry) Discovered in the early 18th Century and finally identified for what they were in the latter part of the same century, they opened a gate for the identification of life forms first discovered in the mid-to-late 17th Century…and published with illustrations in the book Micrographia.

Currently, Humanity is convinced that ALL life in the universe will OBVIOUSLY be multicellular and recognizable to us and that with just a bit of effort, we’ll be able to communicate with them. The we will be able to understand their hopes and dreams and intentions and senses of humor or even what they find offensive – because it will be what WE find offensive…though we’ve somehow managed to understand that we won’t have the same artistic senses. Art and beauty and non-quantifiable aspects of Humanity will be acceptably mysterious. But government? Right and wrong? The importance of certain kinds of math or physics or sciences – well, we are CERTAIN that all of those will not only understandable, but OBVIOUSLY ones we share and a firm foundation on which we can build a comprehensible, mutually beneficial, and enjoyable Federation (as we will all have identical DEMOCRATIC ( = Democratic PARTY) beliefs and sensibilities…because we are expecting that alien civilizations will want to SHARE…

STRANGE assumptions to make as we have absolutely no evidence to back up such a belief…only a “feeling of certainty that we have it figured out”. One might even say it’s become a practically RELIGIOUS doctrine.

And like (some people I’ve heard of and read) religion – supported by absolutely NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER.

Having a conflict implies that we will share enough biology and psychology to have to both WANT…or NOT WANT. Do we dare make such an assumption? Last thought: I’ve long thought that the absolutely worst result of First Contact would be that Interstellar Civilizations WOULD IGNORE US because no one will have absolutely nothing AT ALL in common…

Image: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/RJPJ88/spotted-hyaenas-crocuta-crocuta-and-vultures-on-a-zebra-kill-in-the-masai-mara-kenya-RJPJ88.jpg