So I have these massive folders on my laptop. I really should back them up… Anyway, every once in a while I’ll try to clean them out, streamline, organize, etc.
Well, I came across these few paragraphs today, and I thought, at first, it wasn’t my writing. I thought perhaps someone had sent me a story excerpt to review (which happens all the time between us writerly types). Perhaps that illusion that it wasn’t my writing let me read through it with interest (I tend to be a bit self-critical… another common occurrence in us writerly types!).
After I read the few paragraphs and thought for it a bit, I realized it was in fact my writing. It was a quick exercise when I was thinking about writing a short story for a Halloween contest for Apex Books last year. I never got the story off the ground, so don’t read this excerpt if you feel you need closure. But the theme of the short story contest was something about Aliens and Urban Legends, and I remember thinking that I was going to write the story from the perspective of the alien who inadvertently and haphazardly caused the majority of urban legends in Philly while he was in the very volatile process of maturing to adulthood. Interesting concept, right?
Well, it may have worked out if September, October and November … and December, for that matter, aren’t crazy months for me. No writing gets done then (in fact, in 2010 I’m going to make a concerted effort to make sure I don’t shut down in the fall and fall prey to the constant activities scheduled for kids and family.)
Anyway, here’s the excerpt sans editing, for your enjoyment.
As far as plum assignments go, you’d think Philadelphia would be a cake walk. Just set up shop in the Eastern State Penitentiary or at Christ Church at Fifth and Arch. Passersby are used to “ghost” sitings
I got the notice on my birthday. Loosely translated, it said this:
Assignment: Advance Team
Location: Philadelphia
No need to list “North America.” Or even “Earth.” We have a long history with Philly. It’s been the main outpost in that sector for many time cycles. Philly’s notorious.
I had an idea what “advance” team meant, and you would probably use your word “ironic” to describe its use. We’ve been set-up in Philly for a long time, so it would seem a bit late for an “advance team.” I couldn’t be sure, but “Advance” in this case meant The Advance, the once-phantom policy the networks have been dreaming about for years. The time when we fully integrated Earth into the network. Someone would get a big, fat promotion for this. That person wouldn’t be me.
My parents were dispatched to Philly before I was born. So, in essence, I grew up almost like every other kid here. And just like every other outpost brat, I’ve caused my fair share of royal almost-expose-centuries-of-work mishaps. Thankfully, I was luckier than most, as one of my parents is from a clean-up crew clan and always knew what to do. Still, evidence of my maturization phase lies scattered around the city like a tossed deck of cards. You might make a bad joke here about the “deck being stacked against me” but my people don’t get that kind of humor.
I applied for Translator. After all, being here for so long, I can do both languages. But then again, any of us who are here more than 5 minutes can speak like a native. I felt I was a bit more insightful, though, than your typical alien; I was one of the few who lived like Earth progeny, going to school and socializing. I mean, I have Earth friends. They don’t know what I am, of course, but I can safely say that having friends is rare for us. I figured out a formula for long underwear that blocks the more harmful secretions and magnetic fields from my body, so only a few of my friends over the years have suffered from bad outcomes, and most of those outcomes were gradual and couldn’t be linked to me or my network. My parents are not convinced of my underwear’s efficacy, stating that it is more my superstition than reality. I wear the underwear anyway, just to be safe.
But here it was, my 2908th (in your years) birthday and I am being sent back to Philly. It’s all politics, I’m sure. As I said, this Advance thing is a pipe dream.
————————————–
Loosely translated:
Assignment/ Urging/ Suggestion: Advance Team
Location: Philadelphia
A more strict translation of this message or any event in this story would take too much time, and it would just look repetitive to you. The best way I can describe our communications is like a one-way network: you hear the voices of many, all shouting or whispering at you at once, but none of them hear each other. It isn’t like what you think when you hear the word, but “network” is probably the closest you can get to understanding this.
Here is a rough translation of the conversation with my parents that followed:
Me outward: Philadelphia.
Parent 1 outward: The Mutter Museum is full.
Parent 2 outward: Bring your underwear.
Parent 3 outward: Bring your underwear.
Me inward: *sigh*
Parent 3 is mimicking Parent 2, but really Parent 3 doesn’t realize Parent 2 is making the same joke, because they can’t hear each other. This isn’t one of your conference calls.
So this would be my new assignment. Now, as a full grown person, I would be on the Advance Team on Earth, back home in Philly. I applied for Translator. After all, being in Philly for so long, I can do both languages. But I’ve said that already, haven’t I? We repeat a lot, in our communications. Forgive me. It’s the only way we have to make sure our whole network gets the message.
The Mutter Museum comment I’ll explain in a bit.
_____________________
I wouldn’t be safe until Philadelphia; I knew this. Traveling around in our space is dangerous. There is something called The Trend (this is a sort of “baby talk” translation) wandering around out there and it is to be avoided at all costs. Best way for you to image it is to think of the The Trend as a traveling vacuum vortex that sucks the life out of creatures like me. And I could hear it as I was getting ready to head towards Earth. It was growing, like a sandstorm in one of your deserts, obscuring the pure messages and blocking the wayward thought. The transport was down below, in the garden. I practiced my technique. Slow breath, tunnel vision, simple mind. I tried to be Master Zen Li Zhou.
The Trend got stronger. Turtle, I thought. Turtle Turtle Turtle. The Trend was beating with massive signal noise right outside my door. I had gotten this far, but the turtle wasn’t enough. The Trend crushed the image of the slow-moving earth creature with the devastating wave of a tsunami. I have to think that even Li Zhou would have been no match. I had no choice; I was taken with it.
The signal noise was deafening and constant. My eyes burned and my mind was beginning to race. The speerings started to burn the edges of my brain. Images of Philadelphia were fading quickly into the far away space reserved for dreams.
I could feel my magnetic field expanding, furthering the power of The Trend. I closed my eyes and shut my ears. I struggled to contain it. I fought the nausea that gripped my body. Brutal pain pounded the feeling out of my arms and legs. Then I felt the snap. It was subtle and vaguely satisfying, so small a click I almost didn’t feel it. My friends on Earth described the moment when they realize they are drunk. It seems similar. I was beginning not to care.
My function began to deteriorate. My field was inextricably linked with The Trend. I’d never get back to Philadelphia. I’d be at The Trend’s mercy for the rest of my days.
_____________________
Back in Philly, it was Halloween. It’s a rare holiday celebrated by few inhabitants, but it was my favorite, for obvious reasons.
According to Symantec, “Porn” is a term most searched on the internet by children less than 7 years old. This means many things, but one thing I’ve been thinking about is that an astoundingly awesome “good-karma” opportunity for Google and Symantec is fading away as we speak.
Symantec collects data on millions’ of users search habits. Their service, OnlineFamily.Norton, is a web monitoring service where parents can create profiles for each child and monitor their online activities. The company has mined data on millions of searches performed by the children who have Norton profiles. Symantec has amassed the data into a report. Symantec doesn’t reveal the number of children who have profiles, but the mere number of searches mined (over 14 million) lends us the information that Symantec must have many thousands of children’s profiles in their system (I trust these data and the sample. As a researcher, I think these data represent the general population fairly accurately).
For kids reported to Symantec as being under 7 years of age, the term “Porn” is #4 most popular on the list. Does this mean that children are hyper-sexualized? No. It means that kids are using the internet to look up definitions of words they hear. They don’t want an example of pornography; they want to know what the word means. They are afraid to ask in fear of “getting in trouble,” so they do what they know how to do: they stick the term into a search bar. Much research shows that although small children can be curious about sex and pornography, healthy young children tend to avoid interacting with adult x-rated media. Wake up and smell the opportunity, Google and Symantec!
These are the results from today’s Google search on the term “porn.”
Notice the lack of plain definitions anywhere. Google, Symantec and perhaps Merriam-Webster are missing a golden opportunity to better the world and to get some great press. They should gather forces to ensure that the top search result for “porn” links to an informative but simple definition of the term. (I’d suggest linking to Wikipedia, but the entry for “Pornography” isn’t appropriate for young children. If Wikipedia could get the image off the entry and lock down any editing, the site may have a fighting chance to get in on this American PR Dream.) If they can throw in a few quotes about kids’ behavior from a psychologist or a prominent internet researcher like danah boyd, I’m sure Main Stream Media would pick up the story. Mothers everywhere would feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Google would boost its reputation as THE 1-stop family shop for searching, and Symantec would sell a bunch more products.
You may counter my idea with Google’s claimed practice of not manipulating search results. This is easy to fix: Google could sell or donate the “sponsored link” at the top of the search results page. Google could commit to selling or donating that particular sponsored link to only educational sites like Merriam-Webster or Carnegie-Mellon University. Merriam-Webster or Carnegie-Mellon could use the space to not only define the term but link to their other educational resources.
Do how about it, guys? When opportunity this great knocks, I’m surprised it’s taking so long to answer the door!
***After a long hiatus, Wacko Wednesdays are back! Each Wednesday, I’ll outline a human quirk or phenomenon in the study of Personality Psychology. I’ll provide information, links, and my own experiences to help you along in your goals of writing memorable characters.***
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -United States Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4th 1776.
Happy Muffin!
Happiness research has taken the Psychology world by storm. If you search any book site for the word “Happiness,” you will see a plethora of books written on the subject. Lately I’ve been reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It’s academic research and theory about attaining happiness and how our judgment about what will make us happy in the future is ridiculously skewed by our present thinking.
This book and the advent of other titles in the positive psychology area have inspired me to think about how we, as writers, paint the picture of our characters’ states of happiness. By looking at your MC and her goals in terms of her motivations and methods of attaining happiness, you can paint a deeper picture of what drives us all.
I’m sure you are familiar with the basic story arc: Main character (MC) starts out with a status quo, then challenges galore are thrown at the MC, lots of roadblocks stand in the way of achieving the new happiness goal, MC overcomes, is a changed person. The end. Today for Wacko Wednesdays I’ll run down two phenomena that researchers, namely David Myers, have identified as influencing a person’s happiness, namely Relative Deprivation and Adaptation.
Phenomenon #1: Relative Deprivation
“when we compare ourselves with those less fortunate, we can, however, increase our satisfaction. As comparing ourselves with those better-off creates envy, so comparing ourselves with those less well-off boosts contentment.” -David Myers
Lately I’ve been reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a classic piece of American literature that portrays a devastatingly poor family and their survival struggles in 1900’s New York. It’s actually making me feel quite good.
Yes I know that sounds bad. But here it is: My husband, my two kids and I live in the smallest house in our neighborhood. We live on my husband’s salary as I’m a full-time mom, but we truly have more than enough. Still, this suburban life and the American consumerism gets to everybody. We are inundated with ads to buy more stuff, we read stories of neighbors’ huge home improvements, we hear kids describing their African safari vacations. It’s an affluent area and it seems, at times, that we aren’t keeping up with the Joneses.
The unfortunate Nolan family portrayed in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, truly has nothing. When they mention clothes, they mean one pair of pants and one shirt for a man and one dress for a woman. Can you imagine? I look at my closet full of plain, solid-colored Old Navy t-shirts and feel loaded (wealthy, not drunk). When the Nolan family mentions meals, they mean oatmeal with no milk or fruit. I open the freezer each morning and lazily wonder which hunk of meat I have to make that night. While they want for decent immune systems, we struggle to fight our ever-expanding waistlines. This book makes me feel so fortunate that I may start it all over again once I’m finished! This is Relative Deprivation at work. How rich you feel is totally dependent on who you are comparing yourself to. Compared to the Nolans (or many real people in this economy), my husband and I are doing great! Compared to our friends the doctors, with their big house and insanely lavish vacations, we’re struggling.
photo by Drawsome on Flickr
What do most good ol’ Amurrricanz do when they feel like they are poorer than everyone else? Apparently they buy lottery tickets. Recent research has shown the Relative Deprivation phenomenon in full-swing in lottery ticket buyers. If people are feeling deprived, they make the trip to the local bodega to pick up their Pick 6’s. If they feel better off than their neighbors, they don’t buy lottery tickets.
Here are the questions you can ask yourself about your MC’s Relative Deprivation feelings: Is she better or worse off than her neighbors, peers, family members? When does she feel better off and when does she feel worse? What makes her feel superior? What kinds of behaviors result from those feelings? How does she make herself feel better in the short term? Does she eat? Does she steal their watches? Does she retreat into her packed charity-ball schedule? How does her current state of feeling deprived influence her dreams for the future? Does she coast when she feels affluent or better off in some other way? Coasting is what most of us do once we achieve a certain goal or milestone. That brings us to Adaptation.
Phenomenon #2. Adaptation
“I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.” ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly
Adaptation is what happens when a person has hit a windfall, achieved a goal, or just plain got lucky when that Good Samaritan pulled him out of the path of that oncoming bus. We adapt to having an inheritance, being a college graduate, or being alive to wander into the bus lane again. The “new” becomes the “same old.” Lottery winners, on average, aren’t significantly happier than the rest of us when they are surveyed 5 years later. We dream about California living but apparently Californians register on the same levels in happiness scales as the rest of us. (See Daniel Gilbert’s book). We adapt to the new status quo.
When my husband and I moved from Center City to the house in the suburbs, we didn’t see it as the smallest one in the neighborhood. We saw it as huge and wondered how we’d ever fill it with furniture. We had just moved from a trinity on Naudain street, banging our heads each time we came down the skinny and treacherous spiral staircase. The kitchen in that all-stacked-on-top-of-each-other house was tiny and there was no room for the baby I was carrying. But that house on Naudain was a palace compared to our 3rd-floor walk-up at 18th and Pine. Now we are here in the suburbs for almost 10 years, we’ve lost our coveted and elusive guest bedroom to a second child, and we’d like to upgrade to a food processor and a breadmaker if we had the space in our now-tiny kitchen. We’ve adapted. I can read a thousand tragic poverty books (Angela’s Ashes is next), but try as I might, I can’t roll back my “want” clock to the days when we were two grad students living in a 1st-floor alley apartment. Since that hole-in-the-wall had no light, I simply dreamed of having a view of the street.
Here are some questions about Adaptation that you can ask yourself about your MC: Has she had a windfall of luck lately (e.g., landed that dream job, attracted a super-hero boyfriend, or inherited large sums from an obscure aunt)? What happens to her after? Does she adapt and want more? Does desire for more turn into a disease that will be her undoing? When is the exact point where she takes her new life for granted? Does she ever grow enough to notice? Does she freak out, donate her lottery winnings to a bald-cat nursing home and flee to the Himalayas to live a life of solitude? Or, like most of us, does she just treat herself to a 1-million-calorie Frappuccino that week?
In their very basic structure, all of the archetypes and character journeys center around some kind of resolution, some little bit of happiness. Characters are going after a goal; the pursuit and the accomplishment will, they think, make them happy in some way. The goal could be revenge, it could be love, it could be fifty-two cents. They achieve the goal. Everything is coming up roses and they are turning up noses. But then they adapt. Showing your character’s general state of happiness before, during and after the accomplishment of her main goal will help to give life to her and her story. In daily life, we may overlook details, but in general we are conscious to our own state of happiness. The pursuit of happiness drives us. It will drive your character, too. Show us her struggles to reach her personal happiness. Be brave and show us what life looks like for her after she gets all she (thought she) wanted. Be honest with yourself and your characters. As writers, we are obligated to speak the unspoken truth, especially in our fiction. Mix in a little rough Relative Deprivation and astonishing Adaptation, and your writing will come alive.
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And of course stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Lots of people are ‘mommy bloggers’ (I’m not one of them). There are dozens of sites that rank mommy blogs. There are entire conferences, marketing plans and outreach initiatives all centered around the phenomenon. But that’s not in ‘reality,’ exactly. That’s in a place we social media folk like to call the bubble.
As a fiction writer (a.k.a. story-teller), I want to take a moment to remind us all of that (hopefully) familiar feeling of immersion when reading a great book. I’m not being a luddite. Just take a second and think back to that experience. The writing was so good you lost track of time. The fictional characters were real people, perhaps just like you or your neighbor down the street. You could hardly wait to turn the page. Your foot was tapping. Your heart rate went up. You let yourself be whisked away, and that was the point. Remember? Good.
Now ask yourself, what could make that better? Perhaps being a part of the story yourself?
“Immersive Entertainment” is a term being thrown around by everyone from plasma screen TV manufacturers to mom-and-pop podcasters. Like the term “new media,” there is no solid, agreed-upon definition of the term, but the buzzword still peaks interest in the media-worn consumer.
Any sci-fi fan worth their salt can name a dozen hedonistic planets, solid holograms, or pleasure robots that portray our human fantasies of virtual reality. I call these ‘entertainment realities,’ and they seem to be our goal. We take small steps toward these entertainment edens. Today’s developers are concentrating on previously ignored senses in order to make the story experience seem “more real.”
Storytelling, the mother of all entertainment, first relied on sound. Printed media came, relying on sight. The vistas and the music became enveloping, whisking us away further into the story. Now there are high-definition flat screens that add special backlighting to supposedly increase depth perception, which the manufacturers boast will make you feel “like you’re there” more than ever before. Movement and touch are being added; Your chair or at the very least your game controller can vibrate when your avatar takes a hit or there is an explosion in a TV show. Smell-o-vision will probably soon emerge, and every show will have code that activates certain chemicals in the connected surround-smell modules in the room. Turn it up to superblast and you’ll be able to taste it too. Most of the top Googles on “Immersive Entertainment” are about these mock virtual reality video gaming or extra bells and whistles (lights, sounds, chair buzzing) added to your living room.
Entertainment has moved far beyond the lonely one-hour-a-week episode on TV or console game. Now, you can read blogs “written by” the fictional characters in that TV show, you can watch extra footage on websites, you can join in discussions and post video tributes on YouTube or Viddler, you can game on-line with strangers. Just recently I noticed that members of Twitter, a free on-line instant-message type of service, can now follow Chuck Bartowski, the main character of this season’s break-out hit “Chuck.” Chuck is a mild-mannered tech support guy who is forced into international spying.
I follow Chuck on Twitter.
I don’t know what I’m expecting out of it. Chuck doesn’t reply to any messages, he just puts them out, and infrequently at that. He doesn’t read anyone else’s messages. Basically, the writers of the show are using social networking media to promote the show. I know this. But I have to admit, when I was browsing the Twitter site and I found “Chuck Bartowski” listed as if he were a living, breathing person and not just a character with an actor’s face, I was excited. I love that show. Plus, Chuck is exactly my type of guy: geeky, yet handsome; masculine, but empathetic (he’s a bit of an underachiever, but I could work on that!) It excited me that I could be exposed to this quirkily dreamy anti-hero in an extra, seemingly more personal way than just watching him on my DVR or reading a fake blog post. I can pretend that Chuck is in my small social network, that Chuck is messaging me personally, that we used to work together but now live in separate states but we keep in touch. I know the instant messages, called “Tweets” on Twitter, are just as fake as a fictional character blog post, but somehow Twitter and tweets as social media are still so new and fresh that Chuck’s messages just seem more real. This makes my heart speed up.
I’m sure it will get old. My heart will slow down. Reading a thriller is a lot different the second time around. Chuck is the lucky character to be the first to send me all a-Twitter. My first fictional love was Phineas of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace; he stole my teenage soul. Phineas still holds a special place in my heart. But A Separate Peace was one of “those” books for me, an entertainment reality that I will never forget. Will instant messages and a silly TV show compare to that experience? Only time will tell. But I intend to keep my mind and eyes open to Chuck, to keep my preferences for the printed novel in check, and give the new social media world a chance to whisk me away.
Tags: aliens, fiction, Right-in, sci-fi, science fiction, story 
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