Burning Update Experience: And We're Back!

Tonight I'm going to fire off a brief update - let you know where I am and what's going on with me and what the future of the Burning Zeppelin Experience is going to look like.

As to the first, I am a very happy, very tired man. I have successfuly completed the Oakland Teaching Fellowship. I've been hired to work at Frick Middle School way (way) out in East Oakland, where I'll (hopefully and probably) be teaching 7th Grade Life Sciences. This is a life direction that I am exceedingly happy with.

This doesn't mean that I'll be abandoning my writing or my blogging, though. In fact, both will likely get more important. Frick is a high-need school in a high-need part of a high-need city. Nearly 100% of my kids will be recieving free or reduced lunches - a common benchmark of a school district's poverty - and their neighborhood has a staggering murder rate. After a long day of working miracles, I'll need something I can do for me, and I can't always lean on the Abigail. She'll be starting work at the Homeless Children's Network at almost the same time.

That's the Abigail and me, living the Oberlin Dream: doing the most important work in the world for not enough pay, on not enough sleep, and loving it.

Furthermore, I'm convinced that my writing will get better because I have so much going on. There is nothing less inspiring than sitting in a coffee shop all day and looking for work. Conversely, if there's something more inspiring than working to expand the horizons of high-need kids and equip them to shake the world to its foundations, I don't know what it is. How will I find time for writing, you ask? Bah! Stuff and nonsense. You don't find time, you make it!

In any case, a counterpoint to my glass-half-full attitude is that I haven't done much writing or writerly-related things in the past six weeks. I've run and played very little in the way of roleplaying games, written very little in the way of stories, and gotten almost nothing done on my Rejection Letter Challenge. I did, however, finish one story, a neat little piece called The Weight of His Words. After I've had a chance to clean it up, it will join the others on the rejection letter front.

As to my various rooms - the Writing Desk, the Back Burner, and Threshing Floor - I don't even know where to begin. I'm going to do have to do some serious inner housekeeping. I can tell you that my first priority is creating short fiction so I can meet my goal of gathering fifty rejection letters. The Abigail and I have plans to do National Novel Writing Month again. Other than that... who knows?

Where is the Burning Zeppelin Experience going? I'd like to go back to posting every day, at least until August 31st, when school starts. After that... I just don't know yet. Continuing to post every day would be cool, but it might not be feasible.

We'll know when we know.

That's all folks. See you tomorrow.

Look, A Distraction! Part II: Black Hats

So, it looks like the Burning Zeppelin Experience's triumphant return will be delayed a day.

No, wait, tons of stuff has happened in the internet! I'm sure you can amuse yourselves while the Abigail and I take a practice honeymoon (because we've never been on vacation alone together ever! We're afraid we won't know what to do!).

In particular, Black Hat Matthew McFarland seems to have taken my advice (ok, the credit probably doesn't belong to me) and gotten a blog. The website I linked to in my previous post is defunct. You shouldn't go there anymore. God alone knows what will happen if you do.

That's it for today's relatively lame beginning to a glorious new empire of Zeppelin. I'll be back tomorrow with something more substantive.

The Burning Zeppelin Experience...

Will return...

Victoriously...

Tomorrow...

That's Two

Thank you for offering your story to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. We're sorry to tell you that we will not be using it; you are free to submit it elsewhere.

Sincerely,

The Doom of Thraknar

Assistant Editor

Also, I'm still alive, just too busy to breathe.

I'll take a stab at editing and re-editing that story (once I start breathing again) and send it out again.

Also, this blog is still alive. I promise! Watch this space in August.

Burning the Midnight Zeppelin: Villainous Villainy

I've talked about heroes and villains before (and somewhere else that I can't find right now), but I had a conversation today that had some interesting and surprising results, that I'd like to share. This is going to be quick because I'm sleepy, but I'm hoping it will give you all something to think about.

It probably comes as on surprise to anyone, but I really, really liked the recent Star Trek movie (though I saw it about a month ago, so I clearly wasn't in a huge hurry to tell you all about it). I thought it was an excellent revamp to an old setting. I thought what they did to the Vulcans desmarmed them and gave them some angst, making them infinitely more evocative. I think that they got better actors than the original series could ever hope to have, which helped. All this, and wrapped in a package that had the same retro-space feel as the original series, but with better special effects. Most of all, however, I loved the villain.

Wait. What? You liked the villain? Mr. Villains-Are-People-Too liked mad, bad, hates the world Captain Nero? What's up with that?

What came out of today's conversation is that there are two kinds of villains. You have your garden mill, run-of-the-variety people villains. People villains are - basically - people. They have hopes and fears, friends and affections, just like anyone else. Unfortunately, what they want is inimical to what the protagonists want, but that doesn't mean they're bad people. Even when they are bad people, it's usually in an undertandable, comprehensible way. You can see where this person went bad, and what he became is the kind of thing you could become, given the right stimulus. These are the enemy generals, overambitious wizards, and loyal priests of black gods of the world of fantastic fiction.

This kind of villain's strength is in its humanity. This kind of villain can form relationships. Protagonists can become close to him or even come to agree with him. If a hero really hates this kind of villain, it says something about her. What does it take for a hero to really hate - actualy truy despise and be prepared to kill - someone who is ultimately just a person who has made different choices and experience ddifferent consquences.

A second kind of villain is a force of nature. The villain's own inhrent nature matters less than its existence and its ill intent. This kind of villain exists to give the protagonists someone to bounce off of, rather than to have a point of view all its own. These are the evil prophesies, dark gods, exploding stars, and oncoming winters of fiction.

What's fascinating is when one kind of villain is actually the other. More specifically, when a force of nature has a name, a face, and a backstory - when a primal villain is also personified.

Don't let the trappings fool you - a force of nature villain is a force of nature villain, no matter how much she seems like a person. She doesn't exist to have a point of view, she exists to stress the protagonists' relationships and invite them to do terrible things to defeat her. She is a force of nature, she just walks like a person.

Neither villain is superior in my mind. To call either "better" is invalidated by a great wealth of literature in which the main character struggles against the environment (or some dark nature of her own) rather than another human being. Rather, I'd say what's important is knowing what you're about and sticking to it ruthlessly. When you're writing a force of nature, keep him a force of nature. Give him a personality and a backstory, make his past as tragic as it needs to be to make him make sense, but keep the story focused on the protagonists. What's exciting when this kind of villain takes the floor is not what he does, but what the heroes do in reaction to him. When you're writing a person, keep him a person. Make sure her choices are rational, her feelings are logical, and her emotions are human.

The problems come when you try to write one kind of villain as the other. When an author is writing a force of nature and tries to "soften" his image with completely extraneous, well, crap, or writing a real person and crosses that invisible line that separates "sympathetic antagonist" from "total douchebag."

Which brings us back to Nero.

Nero is an excellent example of a force of nature villain in human form. He has just enough backstory and personality to make him believable, but when push comes to shove, Nero's emotional experience isn't important to the story. What makes Star Trek tick is how everyone else reacts to Nero, how they suffer, sacrifice, bond, grow, and change in the face of his ruthlessness.

So don't be afraid to write your bad villains bad. Just be sure you know what you're doing.

• • •

EDIT: I almost got this post out yesterday night, but then I passed at the keyboard. Repeatedly, in fact, until the Abigail came and took me to bed. So the post is late by reason of exhaustion. Enjoy.

• • •

• What's your favorite example of a force of nature antagonist, personified or otherwise?
• Who's your favorite example of a human antagonist?
• When have you seen a villain cross this line well?
• When have you seen a villain cross this line poorly?
  
• This entry brings up the possibility of villains who are personified forces of nature, but is the inverse - a force of naturified person - possible, or just silly?
  

The Not So End

One of the best things about any extended practice - in my case, writing - is the things you learn about yourself. In this particular case, I've noticed a fascinating pattern in my short stories. I don't like to write short stories that really, really end. In some cases, they don't really begin, either. I seem addicted to those stories that are slices of greater stories, the past elegantly implied through masterful explication, the ending elegant and satisfying, but with a hint of further narrative.

There are three reasons I'm not surprised. The first is that I suck at endings. I always have, and they will probably always be the part of a story that I find most difficult. Beginnings are easy for me, I just pick out a suitably dramatic moment and go. Endings... endings always awkward, though. Does the narrative just stop? Do I end with a line of dialogue, a description of the sunset, a narrative musing? How do things end, anyway? So, it's not shocking that when it comes to short stories, I find a way to end the piece without really ending the story.

Secondly, I know myself to be primarily a novelist. All my best ideas first occur to me as extended epics, both personal and fantastic. Some of them I file down to short stories - especially in the context of my Burning Rejection Challenge - but they always remain contextualized by the conditions that gave them birth. Specifically, a longer story.

Finally, I'm not surprised because my one-shots are the same way. Roleplaying style isn't always an indicator of writing style, but in this case, it's dead on. I never run totally self-contained one-shots. They always feel like a first episode or a juicy cut from the center, satisfying, self contained, but implying more.

Sometimes I take the philosophical view: nothing really ends and nothing really ends. Every beginning is just a matter of point of view, not "when does it start" but rather "when did I start paying attention." I kind of like that rather than pretending that reality is neater and cleaner than it really is, my stories embody that reality.

That said, I don't know if stories that work this way are satisfying. If they are, I'm quite content to keep on writing the way I have been... except, of course, that stories still need to have endings, and I'd like mine to be more elegant. I also don't know if stories that work this way really are as satisfying as I hope they are (and find them myself). I'd hate to be doing something people think is annoying and dressing up a bad habit as a virtue (which is something I find annoying).

Fortunately, though, essays do have endings, and that brings us to it. I'd love to hear your answers to my prompts - or just your thoughts on the topic in general- below. Until then, farewell.

• • •

• Do you think this is a serious flaw, or are stories that don't really end as satisfying (or more so?) than stories that end definitively.
• What kind of short stories do you prefer?
  
• What advice do you have for getting more comfortable with endings?

Illicit Burning Experience

This is insane.

I'm sorry about the nopost yesterday. I was home at 9:20, needed to be asleep by 10:45, and actually wasn't in bed until 12:45, all because I was handling logistics, sending and answering important emails, and ironing my pants. Man, this program is rough. I hate ironing pants.

I actually shouldn't be writing this post. I'm currently at the actual program, at my lunch break, and I really need to be studying for the constitution exam.

Um... let's see. I still need to give you something Burning. Something good.

How about this? Check out the RPG Dumping Ground, a daily fantasy idea blog. Every idea is outlined in evocative detail and vague stats, suitable for interpretation into any game system. The first post outlines the system light pseudo-statting the author uses to describe his inventions' traits.

Now, at first glance this blog is merely a good reasource for gamers. However, it's also a good resource for writers. Remember: good artists borrow, great artists steal.