Story Building - re-writing

Though I'm still a ways from having a solid outline for UFPE Volume I, I have resolved to begin the re-write soon for it. I have an extra binder lying in a locker; I think I'll start by printing off the first ten or so pages and completely rewriting them, then printing off more, re-writing, and so on.

No long post tonight - I know I've been shamefully bad at keeping up with this blog. But I have had a few ideas about what to change about the first few pages, and I'm very excited about it.

*Instead of beginning with MC doing some boring embroidery, it's going to begin as she's fleeing on the back of her beloved unicorn. She'll probably be sobbing.
*Instead of the squicky attempted rape that spurs her flight, her "uncle" will strike her, probably hard enough to leave her bleeding. I originally wrote that in keeping with the rich tradition of attempted rapes of beautiful female heroines, but I'll both feel less squicky writing and re-reading the beginning AND this will serve the plot in later ways.
*Specifically, MC needs a struggle during the first volume. I know the struggle in the second volume - preventing MMC from carrying out his Dastardly Scheme. In the first one, I've come to the conclusion that her struggle will be against her own fear. She'll keep thinking that maybe she should have stayed home after all when things get overwhelming. I have a slightly easier time imagining her thinking about going back after a physical assault than attempted rape.
*In a detail that will probably turn out to be as unimportant as it sounds, MC is going to have a floaty white wrap that she wears to keep the desert sun from roasting her to a crisp. I know, not very interesting.
*After some debate, I'll be keeping the Seaton episode. I plan for him to be important in Volume 3, when MC has to convince Seaton to take up arms against MMC.

We'll see if I remember to print these things off after class tomorrow. I am constantly amazed at how much I'm growing to like this story. After recent plot (and character) revelations, I'm even starting to warm up to the MC.

Prompt - sleep deprivation

Another day, another topic from another reader. That's a total of two readers, which is more than I had envisioned when starting this out.

The prompt is "sleep deprivation." My mind jumps immediately to Dastardly Human Experimentation because of my sci-fi bent. Does this return us to Illunova of post past? It feels like destiny to me.

So, Illunova continued. Was she subject to sleep deprivation as a malleable youth? How did they know, if they did at all, how much was safe in order to maintain her physical and mental integrity (as much as the latter IS maintained). Ah, this brings me back to her nemesis, who remains nameless for now. I imagine that a lot of academic papers and horrific human experimentation occurred before they (the notorious they) decided to test out their theories on their own subjects. They had it pretty good by then, considering that they had never tried to create a soldier like this before - and they fortunately (for them) avoided the Dark Angel trap of creating a whole generation of subjects who can band together and overthrow their masters.

This suggests that this is a very long-term project; a mature researcher can only expect to witness a couple of generations, and as noted, they did not have very many of these subjects. I imagine they told themselves they were being safe, but it was probably money more than anything that prevented them from beginning with a bigger test batch. Isn't it always the key? They belong to a department that's been relegated to the back burner for longer than any of the present personnel have been alive, but hope springs eternal when weapons are needed.

And this begs the question, why are weapons needed? Is the department out of favor because they're looking to create human weapons instead of the latest model bomb? Why should society at large favor bombs (or whatever it is) while this group of stalwarts prefer the human touch for destruction? What keeps them going in their long-term project? Do they have supporters, perhaps highers-up in Defense who secretly funnel funds to them? Do they even know of their supporters? Could there perhaps be a conspiracy? What speculative fiction novel is complete without a conspiracy?

I think Nova needs a plot walk. It's too late and too cold right now, but sometime during the next few days I should be able to spare an hour or two for just such a scheme. She's such an interesting character to me - extremely capable physically, a keen strategist if not quite a genius, and completely oblivious to the ebbs and flows of the social human animal. Having just read Watchmen in preparation for the movie, it occurs to me that she's quite a comic book sort of character. Interesting.

Story Building - character

Alas, I have absolutely no excuse for my dearth of posting lately. I have spent the free periods of my evening catching up with my reader and only remembering this blog, if at all, when I've been headed off to bed. And it's a shame, too, because I've known for several days what I want to post about next. Or I should say, whom - Illunova, whose surname I've forgotten, if I ever gave her one.

Illunova is a character without a setting. I did try to create a story around her once, one I had planned to write for NaNo, but the story never quite hung together and held my attention the way a NaNo story must. For one thing, it was sci-fi, and I always want to get too far into the scientific and technical details of a story, even when they're completely unnecessary. As a wise author once said, we don't need to know the functioning and history of the combustion engine when a character takes a ride in a car. And I was able to ignore the science for the recent short story I wrote enough to get the story itself out; that choice was not roundly approved, but it's all a lot of hand-waving anyway.

So Illunova. She's a favorite character of mine, and once upon a time I wrote a character interview with her. But it wasn't in the format of the interviews I've been posting here; I just showed up as myself in a dream of hers and started asking questions. She is by far the most intimidating character I have; if it were in any possible, I'm sure she would leap off the page and demand to know what I was planning to do with her. If she didn't like the answer, she would take drastic measures.

Illunova is a very defective human being (if fully human she is), almost completely lacking in human empathy. Part of the reason I had such a difficult time with her was that I was not sure what story I wanted to tell around her; I don't want to write a story where she finally learns to open up and make friends and fall in love. It would not be true to her. Instead, I want to write something where the story is fundamentally about her relationship with her own self and her own damaged psyche.

Illunova was raised to be a soldier - not the stereotypical "perfect soldier" because she could not carry out the subtler functions of war and international strife, but a weapon on the battlefield. She is an exceedingly efficient person, and she has very little concept of the dignity or value of human life. She is wholly loyal to her country even as she's aware of all they have done to make her life what it is. She is not an extremely intelligent person, but she's adept at finding patterns in apparent chaos and thinking quickly. She has very little ability to read people, and she's aware of this lack. This obviously cuts against her ability to see patterns in social situations - ah, now here's an idea.

She was created as part of an experiment, the details of which remain unclear to me. But I'm realizing that the experiment is continuing, and this time the big bad masters are trying to create someone who is as clever and loyal and skilled a fighter as Illunova, while also being able to read people. Illunova could never be a spy or diplomat, and there's a good possibility that she stands to be phased out. And, ah! There's another soldier created in the same experiment as she, who's turned out even worse, and he is very angry at this development. The They in charger keep him around for now because he is a true genius, but in age of the kind of tech they have, genius is over-rated. They would rather have people they can send into the field.

And so it is not the people looking to replace Nova (as I affectionately call her) who become her enemy in this still-unclear story of hers; it's this fellow who wants to wreak deranged vengeance on the powers that be. Is this perhaps her last mission? Does she think it will be? How does she come to terms with her inevitable termination? I fear this is a story too big for me to write, but better to try than not.

Story Elements - desert mirage

First news first: the workshop group was extremely helpful with the Jemma story. I got some very useful feedback and I think overall a pretty positive reception. Two very interesting ideas I think I will use as I re-write and expand the story are: setting it the entire story during one (very long) day and interspersing it with news and ads all along, so the news story at the end is more fitting.

Tonight I was struggling to think of a topic and so requested outside assistance. What I received - from the blog's single blogspot subscribed follower - was "desert mirages" in the UFPE-world. I'm not entirely sure where to go with that, but the Elves of the Golden Downs certainly need more development, considering how important they are to the plot. In fact, something I never quite figured out is the fate of the Elves of the Golden Downs and how MC's mother met MC's father and (temporarily) escaped the doom of her people.

So I'm afraid I'll stray from the subject, but this is a key plot point I've never quite figured out. What I know is: the Elves of the Golden Down were decimated (perhaps in the older sense of th term) and a very few survivors are sequestered in a cave, sleeping an enchanted sort of sleep. They've become something of a legend among the other Elves, and MMC has made it his professed goal to wreak vengeance on those who did this to them. He's convinced his followers that humans are responsible, and so he wants to Destroy All Humans. He has something of a point; humans did push the Golden Elves out of their territory up into the mountains. But nothing to warrant genocide.

I also know that MC's mother escaped this enchantment or whatever it was to meet up with MC's father and have a romance. They also died, just after MC's birth. I'm thinking of drastically changing MMC2's character; he was written in the heat of NaNo, and even for an Ultimate Fantasy Parody, he's a bit much. I'm thinking of him because he relates to MC the fate of her parents, but that's probably unnecessary.

Anyway, Elves of the Golden Downs. Since beginning this blog and talking with certain people, I've made up the Secret Society, and they have to play a role in this enchantment. MMC probably isn't able to have a role in it, but I'm sure he knows more than he's letting on. I don't want to write it so that Secret Society created the enchantment for the sole reason of causing MC's birth. The mages also may have a role to play here; I haven't decide whose side they're on, if they're unilaterally on anyone's side. And what's the relationship between the mages and the Secret Society anyway?

Oh! The humans are pushing the Golden Elves out of their usual territory (that requires a post of its own, I fear), and the Elves are fleeing into the mountains, as noted. In a recent post, I realized that the Secret Society headquarters are in the mountains; maybe the Elves were getting too close to SS's mountain fastness. Maybe someone even found it - maybe MC's mother did! Oh wow, maybe she even nabbed something. Did MC inherit something from her mother? But how would she have gotten it? This is why MMC2's dubious power may actually come in handy, hmm.

This is very helpful. MC's mother was royalty among her people, but it's a well-worn fantasy trope to have princesses tramping around the wilderness. MC's mother would totally be that kind of princess, too. Anyway, she was tramping around and just happened to run into SS HQ (because security is shoddy) and ran off with an artifact. Why she did this... hmm. She was a trouble-making little princess, which I like; her memory gets hyped up among the Elves, but she was actually a little bit of a black sheep. Very nice.

So she causes trouble and then scoots back home. The SS storms in to the Elven refugee palace and demands to know what happens. Perhaps MC's mother's family suspects her, but of course they defend her. As things get very tense very quickly with SS, MC's mother... we'll say she's on her way to return it, hoping she can smoothe things over, when she spies a secret party of SS on a very bad mission. She runs away, and when she's missing, the Elves go nuts and suspect it was SS; there's a battle, and the poor refugee Elves are killed or sealed in a cave while the SS freaks out a little.

Hmm. This definitely will need some elaborating, but this was an incredibly useful post for me.

World Building - philosophy

I'm not yet feeling better, but as I wade through Hume for class, three things cross my mind. A) I wish I were doing something else right now. B) Though I can't spare much time, I wish I had a moment to spare to write a little something creative. C) I wonder which of the philosophers I've read the UFPE kingdom would like the best. These three thoughts led me, naturally enough, to take a break from Hume to write a bit here.

Once upon a time, I read a good couple dozen of these philosophers, but that was several years ago, and I only have the vaguest recollections of most of them. As this course progresses, I may change my mind about the Royal Family's philosophy of morality and government, but there's no guarantee I'll ever think to write about this particular angle of this universe again.

So far in this course we've read Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. It's a pretty scarce sample of all the philosophical variety of human history, but it provides a nice cornerstone for this post.

Hobbes: any Royal Family should like Hobbes for the easy justification he offers for any kind of government that is not actively murdering its citizens. Government, he says, is better than no government at all, so take what you can get and be happy you're not in a state of internecine war. All morality can be traced back to self-interest; people are better off if we've all agreed to honor our promises and if government is available to back up these promises with force.

So does the RF like this? The problem is that Hobbes provides a fairly bleak picture of human nature, and in a world where there are non-human sentient species, the leaders of the human race should want to glorify humanity more than Hobbes does. So Hobbes is out.

Locke: as one of the strongest influences on the American revolution, Locke's vision of government is a lot riskier for a government. If they're not doing what the people want them to do, the people have the right to opt out of the social contract and overthrow the bad leaders. On the other hand, Locke offers a useful take on property for any expansionist regime; once people mix their labor with inanimate objects, the objects become their property. And once labor is mixed with the objects, they gain a lot of value.

A Lockean philosophy would also place humans over the less industrial sentient species (namely Elves) and offer justification for the human expansion into Elven lands. This expansion is a key plot point for the backstory behind the UFPE. The problem with Locke comes in his political philosophy; he advocates for the separation of powers and claims that absolute monarchy cannot be legitimate.

Perhaps one could imagine a philosophy that combines Locke's view of property and Hobbes's view of government. That is, property is such a hugely important natural right that any government which protects it should be obeyed. This is simplifying both these men to a ridiculous degree, but I think it works for my purposes.

This leaves Hume, and I'm thinking of making Hume's view the heretic view. Maybe MC's One True Love is a closet Humean, eh? Hume is the ultimate skeptic: property is merely the result of the laws people create, and morality is nothing more than our feelings about certain kinds of motives people have. Or even if he does not embrace Hume's view on the specifics, I like the idea that skepticism is heretical in this society. And this intolerance of questioning could be a parallel to draw between the human Royal Family and the Bad Guy Nation.

This brings up more questions than I can address right now - what is the form of the human kingdom, anyway? Absolute monarchy? Constitutional monarchy with a council? Has this system been constant since its inception? Who developed the leading philosophy, anyway? Was it ever the heretical view?

As usual, the best answers produce more questions. Back to Hume.

Promises, promises

Lack of posting for the past couple days is due to social engagements and now illness casting its grey fog over my brain. See, look at the kind of metaphors it's producing. Creativity is a high priority for me, but indulging in laziness during times of illness is even higher.

When the noxious tide of disease recedes, I'll get back to posting. Until then, I'll be hacking and aching and generally praying for a swift, merciful end.