I’ve been busy with the final proofing and formatting of YSG #2 (Summer’s Cauldron) and the re-edit of The Celestial Blade, as well as working on Wizard of Time Book 2, so I haven’t had much time for blogging. I also haven’t felt inspired to blog about anything. However, I thought this might be interesting to share.

My wife and I watched Another Earth a few nights ago and while I really enjoyed the film it was an odd experience. Odd, because the house used in the film is the same house I shot my film Dark September Rain in back in the fall of 2003.

In Another Earth, a duplicate planet earth appears in orbit around the sun. The night of its appearance, Rhoda, a astronomy student is driving while looking up into the night sky. She run into a car and kill the wife and child of composer, John. Because he ends up in a coma and she’s underage, he never finds out who she is. Four years later, after she gets out of prison, she goes to apologize, loses her nerve and ends up cleaning his house. A subplot revolves around Rhoda entering a contest to be on a rocket to the second earth.

I found it to be a really interesting film.  It doesn’t explore enough the idea of this duplicate earth, where there are apparently duplicates of all of us, but it held my attention in a very unique way.  Brit Marling, who also wrote the screenplay, was wonderful and there was always a pleasant tension of what was going to happen next, even though the film has what an old friend used to call “a mannered pace.”

What made watching the film an even more interesting experience is that about a third of the way through the film, when Rhoda goes to John house to apologize, I realized it was that same house that I had shot Dark September Rain at. From then on the scenes with the house were like viewing a palimpsest film . The scenes of Another Earth were layered on top of the scenes from Dark September Rain and my memories of shooting the film there for ten days. Directing, shooting, and acting in the film was the most intensely creative experience of my life. We accomplished an enormous amount in those ten days.  A journal of the experience is on the films’s website. And a synopsis of the film is below.

Gabriel and five friends are stranded on his family farm on a day of national tragedy that forces them to confront their ideals and fears. Meanwhile the ghosts of Gabriel’s great grandparents recollect the horrors of the 20th Century, from World War One and the Great Depression to World War Two and the deaths of their children. Throughout all of this, two supernatural beings reflect on the events of the day while reading from a sacred black book. As night falls, it becomes clear that the tragedy affecting the nation has reached the farm, leaving Gabriel’s life hanging in the balance.

Reminiscent of films such as Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, and influenced by the writings of philosopher Ken Wilber, Eastern mysticism, and Western spirituality, Dark September Rain is a provocative and inspiring exploration of what it means to live in a post-September 11th world.

In the Another Earth trailer above you can see the house (the Lazy Days Farm) right at the beginning and again at 1:33 min. The trailer below for Dark September Rain features the house as the only location.

The house is now for sale. You can check it out here and here

Busy life right now and not as much time for blogging as I would like. So, until I have some time for original content, I thought I would post a portion on something I wrote a while ago.

I watched Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia a few nights ago, and by some odd chance, Roland Emmerish’s 2012 was on TV the next day. It’s hard to think of two movies about the end of the world that could more different. The first half of Melancholia seemed like a pale imitation of Celebration, by vov Trier’s fellow Dogma 95 alum, Thomas Vinterberg. I found the second hald much more engaging and it reminded me of Andei Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice. 2012 on the other hand mad me think of all the research I had done for an end of the world screen play I wrote in 1999-2000. Most of it seemed to be ripped from the pages of Grahamn Hancock’s The Fingerprints of the Gods.

So, since this is the year 2012, for which there are so many end of the world prophecies, and the end of the world genre is on my mind from the films I’ve recently seen, I thought I would post the first few scenes from my own end of the world story – The Day the Sky Fell (a reference to The Day the Earth Stood Still – which was part of the inspiration for the script). It’s a big budget action sci-fi script with a spiritual message. Not an easy sell. And it had a female lead. Also a hard sell with that genre. I tried switching the genders of the leads to see if it might be a little more marketable, but I like the original version best.

The story: The world is thrown into panic when, Europa, an ice encrusted moon of Jupiter, suddenly and inexplicably leaves the orbit of its parent planet and heads directly for Earth. By the time this Visitor arrives in Earth orbit three days later it has shed its icy shell to reveal a smoothly polished silver surface. As governments, scientists and religious leaders race to discover the meaning of the silent sphere’s presence, Dr. Valerie Whitehawk, a parapsychologist and philosopher with an extraordinary ability, is swept up on a quest into the bowls of the Visitor and eventually to the depths her own being.

If you like these scenes, you can read the whole script here in PDF.

The Day the Sky Fell

FADE IN:

EXT. SURFACE OF JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA- PLANET RISE

The icy, airless surface of Jupiter’s second largest moon becomes slowly brighter as the rotation of its axis brings the massive form of Jupiter up from the horizon to dominate the starscape above.

TITLES:   “Europa- Moon of Jupiter”

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. MOUNTAIN LAKE- SUNRISE

Crimson ripples in water. At the edge of the lake, beneath the branches of a large pine tree, sits a woman in her mid thirties.  She is dressed simply, in jeans and a denim jacket, her long, jet black hair flowing over her shoulders, the gentle morning breeze casting the ebony strands around the dark brown skin of her face.  She is seated with her legs crossed and her hands cupped upward in her lap, meditating.  Her name is VALERIE WHITEHAWK and her eyes are closed to the sunrise that lights the strong, but beautiful, Cherokee features of her face.

TITLES:    “The Appalachians 2012 A.D.”

A CELL PHONE RINGS.  She is still.  RING AGAIN.  She is silent. RINGS AGAIN.  She breathes deeper.  RINGS AGAIN.  Opens her eyes.  RING AGAIN.  She slips a small wireless earplug into her ear.

VALERIE
Yes, this is Valerie.

She listens to the voice in the earplug.

VALERIE (CONT’D)
No.  I haven’t been watching.

Valerie pulls the sleeve of her jacket back and taps a button on her Comwatch, activating a small video display.

VALERIE (CONT’D)
I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Valerie removes the earplug and looks at the screen.  The video image is of a city wrecked by a massive earthquake. A handsome Indian reporter in his mid-thirties is interviewing a survivor.  Valerie sighs and touches the face on the tiny screen with her finger and then looks up into the face of the fully risen sun.

INT. WEATHER DOME- MORNING

Early-orange morning light streams through the thin portal of the foam walled, all purpose weather-dome, and cascades across the desk that is in the center of its circular main room.  At the desk is a large meaty man in his late forties.  His name is LAWRENCE HOWARD and the normally jovial features of his face are pulled tight in concern as he watches reports of the earthquake on a small laptop screen.

He taps the screen and the image switches to another view of the aftermath.  At the bottom of the screen are the words “Miami Live”.  He taps the screen again and the handsome Indian reporter’s face fills the screen.  The reporter’s name is VAREEM THAPUR.

VAREEM (ON SCREEN)
The earthquake which struck Miami early
this morning, the twenty third major
quake so far this year, may be part of what
scientists are calling a “global geological
shift.”  A shift that may have occurred
many times in the planet’s past.  This
morning’s quake reached 8.2 on the Richter
scale and has left the city…

The door to the weather dome opens suddenly, a gust of wind rustling the papers on the desk and causing Lawrence to look up from his screen and into the face of his youthful French assistant, MARIE CHABRIE.

MARIE
Dr. Howard.  We’ve found something. I
think you should take a look.

LAWRENCE
Where?

MARIE
In the main temple.

Lawrence turns the laptop off and pulls on a thick parka as he walks toward Marie and the door.

EXT. ANTARCTICA ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG- SUNRISE

Lawrence and Marie step out of the small weather-dome and into the dim sunlight of morning.

TITLES:   “Antarctica”

They walk along a path lined with weather-domes of various sizes.  There is little snow on the ground, the weather being mild. The path turns as they are suddenly at the ocean.  Before them is a large crescent-shaped bay.

The ice that normally would accompany such a view has been melted away to reveal stone structures, streets, buildings, houses, pyramids; an entire city, ancient, and long buried.  Lawrence and Marie head toward the largest of the pyramids, in the heart of the small, dead coastal city.

INT. ANCIENT TEMPLE- MORNING

Lawrence pulls a large sheet of plastic back and steps into the inner chamber of the temple.  Work lights are hung irregularly, creating pockets of shadow through out the massive room.  Large square columns support the high curved ceiling.  Around the temple are statues and wall carvings in a form that suggests both ancient Egyptian and Olmec styles.

In the center of the temple is a raised stone platform with a series of steps leading up to it.  At the top of the steps is an altar of four enormous carved stone arms, reaching skyward.  Cradled in these four hands is a large stone sphere, nearly five meters in diameter, its surface etched with markings that appear to combine written language with complex pictograms.

A team of archeologists in hard-hats swarm around the stone sphere measuring the relic with various instruments.  Marie hands Lawrence a hard-hat.  He waves it off and walks up the steps of the platform to the stone sphere.

MARIE
The door to the temple was breached
only half an hour ago.  I would have
come for you earlier, but we wanted
to make sure it was going to be
structurally sound.  After what
happened last week…

Lawrence walks over to the stone sphere and places his hand on it.

LAWRENCE
Yes, yes, I understand.  This is the
first time we’ve seen pictographic
language with text.  This may prove to
be the key to translation.  See these
symbols?  They could easily be related
to Egyptian. And this. What is this?  It
looks like a depiction of sacrifice.
That makes no sense.  There’s no indication
of sacrifice anywhere else.  Interesting.

MARIE
That may not be the most interesting
thing about it.

Lawrence turns from the stone sphere and follows Marie’s gaze toward to small video screen nearby.  A technician is holding a large flat metal plate against the stone sphere and watching the video screen.  On the screen is an interior view of the stone sphere clearly showing that there is something of greater density beneath the rock.

MARIE (CONT’D)
It appears to be a casing.

Lawrence turns from the video monitor and stares up at the mysterious stone sphere.

EXT. OUTER SPACE- EUROPA

Europa.  Nearly as large as the Earth’s moon, it hangs, silent in space, above its giant Jovian mother planet.  The icy surface of Europa is covered with cracks and fissures, two of these being strangely long and straight.  Suddenly, a dim light seeps up from the depths of these straight valleys.  At first faintly orange and then bright green.  Then they are gone…

And Europa begins to move.  Imperceptibly at first, then faster and faster until it is rapidly leaving the orbit of Jupiter, heading toward a pale blue dot in the sea of stars near the sun.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. ARCHEOLOGICAL LAB- DAY

Lawrence and Marie are standing behind a wall of safety glass watching as the technicians on the other side examine the stone sphere with an array of instruments.  Lawrence turns from the glass wall and looks at a series of video monitors that are displaying the data from the various probes being used on the stone sphere.

MARIE
This makes no sense.  It couldn’t
possibly be so dense that we can’t
see through it, or we never would have
been able to lift it.

Lawrence leans over to a microphone.

LAWRENCE
Cut the shell away.

The plastic clad technicians turn toward the glass wall momentarily and then begin to pull the probes and scanners away from the stone sphere.

INT. OBSERVATION ROOM- DAY

As the technicians move back a large robotic arm with a shinny circular saw attached to its end is pulled forward.  The technicians lock the robotic arm in place and clear out of the room.

INT. ARCHEOLOGICAL LAB- DAY

Lawrence watches as a technician remotely guides the robotic arm toward the stone sphere.  As the arm nears the surface of the stone, the circular saw HUMS to life, a nozzle attachment spaying water over the blade as it bites into the stone shell.

EXT. OUTER SPACE- EUROPA

As the miniature planet hurtles through space the cracked ice of its surface begins to ripple and quake.  The mighty planet Jupiter is now a small multicolored globe far behind Europa.

INT. ARCHEOLOGICAL LAB- DAY

Lawrence watches as the robotic arm saws across the stone sphere in large swaths, the first chunk of stone breaking away and being grabbed by a second robotic arm.

EXT. OUTER SPACE- EUROPA

The thick crust of ice that covers Europa’s surface has begun to melt and liquefy, boil, and turn to steam, trailing off into space behind the swiftly moving moon.

INT. ARCHEOLOGICAL LAB- DAY

The robotic arm continues to saw away sections of the stone sphere.  Lawrence leans closer to the glass shield, trying to peer through the haze of dust and steam that surrounds the sphere.

EXT. OUTER SPACE- EUROPA

The vapor trail of steam and ice crystals behind Europa is a giant comet’s tail, glittering in the golden light of the nearing sun. The icy crust of what was once Jupiter’s moon has completely melted, steaming away to reveal a shadowy silver sphere beneath a boiling liquid surface.

INT. ARCHEOLOGICAL LAB- DAY

The mist of steaming water and dust clears as the robotic arms swing to the side.  Lawrence gasps and steps back from the glass shield in the same moment that rest of the researchers step forward.  In the observation room beyond the safety glass rests a large silver sphere nearly four meters in diameter.

]]> http://kosmosaicbooks.com/2012/04/25/the-day-the-sky-fell/feed/ 0 http://kosmosaicbooks.com/2012/04/11/the-separation-of-science-and-the-divine/ http://kosmosaicbooks.com/2012/04/11/the-separation-of-science-and-the-divine/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:48:21 +0000 G.L. Breedon http://kosmosaicbooks.com/?p=694

(Between my day job and trying to finish the final proof of Summer’s Cauldron to get it published by the end of the month, this has become a very busy week. Because I’m also in the early stages of editing The Chrysalis Age (now called The Alchemy of World and Soul) for publication at the end of the year, I thought I would post an excerpt from it. I had wanted to take the time to link all the references mentioned, but it was going to take too much time. Maybe I’ll update it later. Hopefully you’ll find the piece informative and thought provoking.)

The Separation of Humanity from Nature and the Divine through Religion and Science

The experience of awe one feels standing beneath the star-filled heavens is by no means unusual, though it is becoming more rare as the world’s population continues to move into urban areas where city lights blot out the glorious firmament above. A sense of wonder in the presence of an infinite number of stars is no doubt what inspired the ancient Neolithic sky watchers who built Stonehenge, and the court astronomers of the Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Mayan civilizations. Gazing at the stars, the ancients created numerous stories to explain the existence of the universe.

Egyptian myths tell of an original creator Ra-Atum, who manifested from primeval chaos and spawned the first essence of the male and female in Shu, the god of air and Tefenet, the goddess of moisture. Shu and Tefenet soon gave birth to Geb and Nut, who embraced so tightly that when Nut became pregnant there was no room for anything to be born. Shu separated his incestuous children so that there could be life, Geb becoming god of the Earth and Nut, goddess of the sky.

The theme of separation courses throughout human history. Just as myths of creation separate us from the Divine, the birth of civilization served to separate us, for the first time, from nature. As we gathered into larger and larger settlements we drew further away from the reality of the earth. From initial settlements like Catal Huyuk in what became modern day Turkey, to the rise of city-states such as Sumer and Babylon, humans drew further away from nature. These were the first cuts along the cord connecting us to our primal selves and this separation brought incredible changes.

Cities demanded bureaucracy, which in turn required a means of record keeping. In short order, spoken language was transformed into writing and for the first time our interior thoughts could be transmitted and preserved. The human love affair with the written word flowered, engendering what would eventually become a full-fledged retreat from the world of places and things into the ephemeral land of ideas and concepts that constitute our minds. And while civilizations continued to rise and fall for four thousand years, through the grace of, and often in spite of the written word, it was not until the Italian Renaissance of the 1500’s that the most significant separation from nature occurred.

Though mythology and civilization had divided humanity from the Divine and nature, science soon began to sever the ties between the universe and the Divine. The universe in all of its mysterious glory had always, in nearly every religion, been considered divine. All this began to change as the Renaissance of Western Europe flowered into the Enlightenment. Again, written language was a large part of the separation. Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of a movable type printing press in 1450 revolutionized the transmission of information throughout the continent. Books no longer needed to be copied by hand, but could be produced with minimal effort and expense.

One of the first men to take advantage of this new technology was Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. In 1543, he published his infamous On the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies in which he proposed a heliocentric theory of the solar system. Ignoring the pre-scientific supposition of Ptolemy and Aristotle, Copernicus relied on empirical observation to determine that the planets of the solar system revolved around the sun, not the other way around, as many Greek philosophers had reasoned.

The dispute between science and religion took its most dramatic turn with Italian priest and philosopher Giordano Bruno. His publication of On the Infinite Universe and Worlds in 1585 made him few friends within the Catholic Church. The irony is that Bruno believed the universe is Divine. However, his insistence on its infinite nature, and his ideas about sensory evidence being given more credence than scriptural writing, put him at odds with the leaders of the Church. After seven years of inquisition, he was burned at the stake in 1600, becoming an instant martyr for the cause of rationality over superstition.

Well aware of Copernicus’ ideas when he built one of the first telescopes, Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei published confirmations of the heliocentric theory in 1610. By 1616 writings about the heliocentric theory were banned by Church edict, and Galileo faced the Inquisition. Not wanting to follow in Bruno’s fiery footsteps, Galileo wisely recanted his most controversial ideas and was allowed to remain under house arrest until his death.  Two years later, in 1618 Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, began publication of his mathematical confirmations of the Copernican theory. Basing his calculations on the studied observations of his mentor, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, Kepler succeeded in showing that the planets did not move in a circular orbits as Aristotle had deemed necessary, but instead revolved around the sun in an elliptical fashion.

Meanwhile, in England, the philosopher Francis Bacon was developing his ideas about the nature of science. In 1620 he published his Novum Organum in which he declared that science, and thus knowledge about the universe, should be based on strict observation and careful experimentation. Reacting to the tendency to displace scientific inquiry for religious dogma, Bacon wrote, “Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident…”[i]

In 1637, French philosopher Rene Descartes provided Bacon’s vision of science with the perfect metaphor. Speaking of the human body, Descartes said, “I assume that the body is nothing less than a statue or machine of clay…”[ii] In fact, Descartes envisioned the entire universe as a giant mechanism, and each of its living and non-living inhabitants as finely tuned mechanical devices that could be understood by understanding their parts.

Some fifty years passed before the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, discovered how certain parts of the universe interacted with each other. The co-creator of calculus, (along with the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz — the man who coined the phrase perennial philosophy,), Newton used Kelper’s mathematical and observational proofs of the elliptical orbits of the planets to formulate his laws of gravity and motion. Newton showed that not only could the universe be comprehended, but more importantly, that events within it could be predicted with accuracy.

Against this onslaught of rationality, the Western churches, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant alike, could no longer hold their privileged positions as interpreters of the cosmos. Copernicus, Galileo and Netwon led a revolution, fueled by Guttenberg’s printing press that would, within the relatively short span of four hundred years, completely divest the universe of divinity, creating a Cartesian cosmos envisioned as a splendorous machine, not quite infinite, but quite certainly knowable. Thenceforth religion would only be allowed to discuss what could not be seen, while the whole of the visible universe would become the empirical domain of science.

Science, of course, has little concern for that which cannot be seen, or at least theoretically supposed with enough mathematical imagination. Though all of the men of science mentioned believed in a divine God, with the exception of Bruno, they did not see the possibility of, nor the need for, a divine universe. Not surprisingly, in the course of the centuries that followed, scientists and philosophers managed to erase even the need for a God, a divine force, a cosmic creator. God, the cosmos, humanity, and the very idea of divinity had all been dismantled and compartmentalized.

This brief history is not intended to imply a denigration of science or a denial of its contribution to human civilization. It is not that the Cartesian/Newtonian worldview is incorrect, but that is incomplete. This is obvious — science has nothing to say about some the most important aspects of human existence.

Science can tell you about hormones and pheromones and explain the nuances of the maternal instinct, but it cannot quantify love. It can explain the birth of the cosmos, exploding forth from an unimaginably non-existent point known as a singularity, but it can’t give meaning to that birth. Nor can it give meaning to the evolution of the human species, from a single-celled organism in the primordial soup of Earth’s long distant past, to a race of beings that is haphazardly changing the very language in which that evolution is written.

From Copernicus’ notion that the planets revolve around the Sun, to Darwin’s insight into our intimate relation to all life, from the wonders of Quantum physics unfolding in the integrated circuit and the nightmare of nuclear release, to the Frankenstein-like exploitation of the planet’s genetic treasures, science and its doppelganger, technology, have changed not only the way we think about the universe around us, but the universe within us as well — separating one from the other.

Separation is a necessary aspect of growth in any living system. However, a healthy separation does not attempt to deny that the previous connections ever existed. This is why all of the world’s great religious traditions contain a path that acknowledges humanity’s union with the Divine. The mystic paths of Sufism, Kabbalah, Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism are an attempt to foster a reunion with the Divine. On the other hand, science, particularly in its current corporate directed incarnation, possesses no yoga of communion with the Divine, because science is seemingly founded on the denial of its existence. Seemingly because, science is not always as it seems.[iii] Science has shown us that the universe has no need of a divine creator to exist, but is has not and cannot have anything to say about the actual divinity of the universe itself.

In contrast, devoted practitioners of spiritual paths learn to apprehend directly the divinity of all things, and that the separation of them, which at first seemed so useful, is in fact, an illusion. A classic example of this is found in the Hindu Chandogya Upanishad which tells the story of a young man, Svetaketu, who returns home from years of schooling convinced that his knowledge of the world is superior to his father’s. His father soon shows him that while he sees the parts of the world, he does not see its indivisibility. Repeatedly making Svetaketu experience different parts of his world, he chides his son with the refrain,  “That is the True, that is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art That.”[iv]

An excellent examination of the separation between nature and humanity and the problems between the Traditional and Modern worldviews can be found in the animated film Princess Mononoke. In the film the forest spirit, a creature of divine power that gives life to the animals and plants of the forest, is threatened by the modern science and industrial designs of Iron Town. The leaders of Iron Town see the nature as an obstacle to progress and something that can be discarded. Only the young hero has the ability to see the necessity for both and the ability to unite them in an Integral vision. The film is a powerful commentary on the current trajectory of our worldwide clashes between nature and science, Traditional and Modern worldviews, spirituality and secularism, and the need for an Integral vision to see beyond the illusion of their separation and unite them all.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast about last weeks crop of sci-fi and fantasy by Darren Franich and Jeff Jensen and one of them mentioned in passing that George R.R. Martin hated the ending of Lost. I hadn’t heard that before, so I did a little poking around and found an old io9 article about it by Charlie Jane Anders – who disagrees with Martin, but who also didn’t like the ending of Lost.

Now, because I liked the ending of Lost, and Battlestar Galactica (which also receives mention in Ander’s article), it got me thinking about endings in general, and to these two series in particular.  I thought some thinking about endings might help me in the ending of my own stories, and maybe find a few principles those kinds of stories with.

So, this probably goes without saying, but since I’m going to writing about the endings Lost and Battlestar Galactica– what follows will contain spoilers.

The biggest problem I think fans of Lost and BSG had with the endings is that the shows both set up slightly conflicting narrative structures. Both shows were explicitly about the characters stories, but they were also both posing that the drama was not driven only by the characters, but also by a Grand Mystery, built up of multiple related mysteries.

The drama of Lost isn’t created only by the conflicts between the characters, or some by some outside event like the crash, it is created by a series of mysteries – what is the smoke monster? What is the hatch? What was the DHARMA Initiative? Who are the Others? Likewise, BSG poses questions – How does Gaius see Six? Who are the Final Five? How did Starbuck survive and what the hell is she now?

This combination of character drama and mystery drama (combined with dramatic events) are the elements that made these shows so addictive. But it also created an inherent problem for any resolution of the storylines. Part of that problem is the conflict between character-based story resolution and mystery-based story resolution. This problem is difficult enough to resolve – because for a successful ending the character and mystery storyline need to converge so that their resolutions dovetail with one another. The more difficult problem, to me at least, is that the way the mysteries were presented, in both shows, a dichotomy was created that was especially difficult to resolve – namely that the answers to the mysteries would have either scientific or mystical explanations.

I think that tension – between science (or even pseudo-science) based explanations and mystical explanations to resolve the mysteries accounts for most of the fan dissatisfaction with the endings to both series. What many fans did not grasp, and what the writers failed to make clear, was that in these two worlds, mysticism and science were equal forces. Lost tried to makes that clear with the long running feud between Jack and Locke – between science and faith (mirrored in BSG with the relationship between Gaius and Six). Seems it wasn’t clear enough.

I think the problem was that many fans thought science would win – that the mysteries would be explained with science – like some episode of Star Trek. They were expecting to find out literally what the island was, not metaphorically. They weren’t prepared (by their lives or the writers) to be presented with the notion that the full nature and complexity of the island was beyond the limited comprehension of humans. The writers tried to prepare us for that with the largely fruitless science based investigations of the DHARMA Initiative, but it clearly wasn’t explicit enough for most fans.

So, when the nature of the island is explained metaphorically, literal minded fans feel cheated. And when the smoke monster is not some nano-bot cloud but the result of Jacob’s brother being directly exposed to the light energy at the heart of the island – those fans hoping for a science based rather than mystical based explanation are disappointed. They thought they were watching science fiction not fantasy. But, Lost was always both.

And so was BSG. When Starbuck returns from certain death, science loving fans were looking for a science based explanation. When she simply disappears in front of Apollo at the end, it confounds any rational explanation. And it leaves all the questions about who/what she had unanswered. Or, if you are like me, it forces you to consider possible answers that you hadn’t before (like her presence being the result of some god or god-like alien’s involvement in the affairs of lesser beings).

So, because several of the stories I plan to write encounter these same structural problems – plots driven by mysteries that are rooted in both science and mysticism, I’m wondering what lessons I can learn from the endings of these two series.

First, it must be said, if one hadn’t guessed, that I was one of the people who were thoroughly satisfied with the ending of Lost. Immediately after watching the final episode I felt intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually satisfied.

My spiritual satisfaction came from watching the characters realize what I thought was the essence of the finale, and a potent spiritual teaching. As the characters become aware that they are dead, that they are in some middle place, a purgatory or bardo of some sort, a place of their own creating, they have a realization. That real realization is crystallized in the final scene between Ben Linus and John Lock. They realize they do not have to be the people they were. They understand that they were like actors in a play, pretending to be these characters with all these flaws and problems, filled with anger and hatred and fear, and finally, they can let go of all of that a just BE.

That is such a profound lesson to me. It is a lesson I keep trying to remind myself of. This life is like a play (or as Buddha said, like a dream). I don’t have to play the role of a person filled with anger or hatred or fear (delusions). I can drop that mask and all the other masks and just Be.

I also loved the ending of BSG. When Starbuck disappeared, I didn’t feel cheated, I felt liberated. As, I said, I suddenly considered possibilities that I hadn’t. The notion of some alien source for Starbuck’s temporary return. Or was it simply the god of the cylons? Or the gods of the humans? I suppose my reaction was tempered by personal experiences (which I may write about one day) that defy scientific explanation and the laws of the universe (at least as we currently understand them).

For me, the endings of both series made perfect sense, but early on in both, I had recognized and appreciated the blending of science and spirituality, the meshing of mysticism and empiricism, of faith and logic. I don’t see those things as separate and at odds with each other, so I my expectations were fulfilled rather than thwarted. I wouldn’t have changed anything about the endings, I would have changed small details along the way that would have made the endings more resonant.

So, again, because so much of what I plan to write will involve mysteries that revolve around mysticism and science, what lessons can I take from these series and their endings, and the ways many fans reacted to them?  Endings are about the structure of the story. About the elements being assembled in their final form.  So, choosing what those elements are, and how they are used, is essential.

First – if the plot and story will be driven by mysteries as much as characters and events, make it clear what those mysteries are rooted in. Are they rooted in science with scientific explanations, or are they more fantastical, with explanations verging on the mystic or the spiritual? If one is going to have more weight than the other in resolving the story and plot lines, make that clear from the beginning and reinforce it explicitly (as well as metaphorically).  If they are both going to have equal weight, that needs to be clear as well, and that balance should be expressed in the resolution.

Second – Prepare the audience/reader for the ending, even if it has a surprise twist. Make sure that your ending is hinted at structurally and metaphorically so that the audience/reader doesn’t feel like the a rug has been pulled from underneath them, but rather, that they suddenly realize what they have actually been standing on for so long.

Third – If one or more of the mysteries driving the plot isn’t going to be explained explicitly, or is going to be explained with an answer that raises more questions, lay some groundwork for that well ahead of time. Make that kind of ambiguity and complexity central to the story and the character’s lives. Set up the presentation of questions leading to more questions rather than final answers as a benefit and feature of the story as a whole.

I’m sure there are more lessons to be learned and I’m sure I will learn some of them by making a few mistakes, but for now I’ve found this little exploration into the endings of two of my favorite series very helpful in thinking about the endings to the series I hope to write.

A month ago or so, I had dinner with a friend who is a serious digital media geek so I could pick his brain about an idea I’ve been toying with for the past decade that I call metamedia. Metamedia is simply my name for fused media storytelling. Back when I was on a yearlong corporate tour (1999-2000), I became very interested in the idea of trying to tell stories in both linear and non-linear ways through different integrated types of media.

At the time there was really no one doing what I was envisioning, and that really hasn’t changed much, as my discussion with my friend revealed. Video games often make use of many of the principles I have in mind, but not in a fully integrated manner. Video games are, by and large, primarily intended to be games. Stories are the setting for the games, but the game action (fighting, puzzles, etc.) are usually the central part of the experience. The folks at Night Kitchen once designed an interactive ebook reading software that incorporated video and audio, but it’s no longer an active project. David Farland also has out an enhanced ebook called Nightingale with animation, and audio that seems to be movingin the direction of what metamedia could do.

I decided to dig out some notes that I wrote to define metamedia and edit them down for presentation here. Hopefully they will encourage me to think about the idea more and, eventually, to create a metamedia story.

What is Metamedia?

Metamedia literally means to go beyond or to transform media.  It refers to media technologies that offer the possibility of media-fusion, or the integration on various levels of many different media systems and techniques.  For example, a metamedia presentation might fuse the mediums of written text (prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction), digital video, photography, painting, 3D immersive/interactive environments, CGI animation, traditional animation, ambient sound, music, and even live theater to tell a story.  The technology allows the various media to be integrated and linked in a manner that would give the user access to it in both linear and non-linear ways.

The applications of metamedia are enormous.  It can be used to tell a single story or multiple, linked stories.  It can be utilized to tell an author-created story or to create interactive environments where users determine the story.  It can also be applied to many things beyond storytelling, like creating an immersive educational environment for a particular subject.

When I first started thinking about metamedia stories broadband wasn’t widely accessible in the US and reading or engaging in these kinds of stories was a less than appealing proposition on a computer. Today, however, with widely accessible broadband wireless and easily interactive tablet computers like the ipad, a metamedia story experience would be much more accessible and potentially successful.

While there are currently many video games and web sites that make use of mixed media to tell a story or provide information, all of them continue to think and operate within old paradigms.  When any new medium enters the mainstream, the first material to be presented with it is always a hybrid, or an adapted version of the material most prominent in the currently dominant medium.  For instance, when film appeared it turned to theater for content and when television arrived, it looked to radio for producible material.

In contrast, Metamedia material will tend to eschew specialization for diversity of content and media styles.   Metamedia artists will be concerned with ideas and difficulties beyond the scope of current media.  They will not simply worry about how lines of prose affect the reader, or how a scene in a film plays out with an audience.  They will need to contend with questions of how the audience reacts to switching from a scene of digital video to an illustrated text, to a moving photo-text collage, to a 3D interactive environment, to a live broadcast, to a forum discussing the material, to a collaborative software agent that allows them to contribute to the material being presented.   Nothing that is available today in any medium offers this kind of creative or entertainment potential.

A prospective metamedia site would likely use the following media hyper-linked through a main graphic interface.   This interface would allow the user to navigate the site in a self-directed and interactive manner.  The site would also allow the user to choose between a random presentation of the material and a pre-programmed presentation.  The key to the success of the site would be the method in which the material is cross-linked and the subtlety of the transitions between different media.

Potential Media Types for a Metamedia Site:

• Text – including prose, poetry, non-fiction, encyclopedia entries, news clipping, footnotes, fake advertisements, illustrated text, and any other text that seems appropriate.
• Photography, painting, and graphic art.
• Image and text collages.
• Ambient sound and music combined with other media.
• Video scenes with and without actors.
• Animated video scenes.
• 3D interactive virtual environments.
• Fake websites and blogs that are part of the story.
• Live and interactive broadcast of theatrical elements or live environments.
• Forums and chat rooms to discuss the story and content.
• The ability for the user to post material to the site through an editor
• The ability for the user to move through the site at their own pace and in their own way while providing enough structure to the story that the user does not get lost or bored.
• The site could integrate language learning techniques, and alternative translation to help the users learn a second language like Spanish or English.
• The site could provide educational content containing articles, a glossary and an encyclopedia.
• The site could provide links to the web that inform and support the educational aspects of the stories.
• Additional chapter installments could be made to each story line for additional user subscription fees if the site is successful.
• Revisions and additions could be made whenever necessary

Metamedia artists will also have to contend with the difficulty of creating large quantities of diverse media content. Few artists are able to create story content in all the potential media types that would be available for use in telling a story. This will likely result in metamedia projects created either small collectives of artists or by groups of artists working for an existing media corporation.

Of course, the question of how to monetize a metamedia project consumed a completely different set of notes. In short, make the first few “chapters” free and then charge a one-time fee for access to a the site, with additional fees for substantial updates/sequels.

An example of how an existing property could be turned into a metamedia site can be found in ABC’s Lost. Lost was not only a great TV show, with a six season run following multiple characters storylines, it also had a wide life outside the story broadcast on TV. There were fake websites, mysterious videos that popped up on youtube and elsewhere, a video game, novelizations, and informational books, and much more. All of this material could be integrated into a metamedia version of Lost giving users the ability to follow a specific character through the full story arc in video (from the TV show), while switching at will to different forms of media to follow clues about the nature of the island, the Others, the DHARMA Initiative, Charles Widmore, and the backgrounds of the primary characters. A user might skip from a video scene about Sawyer to text about the DHARMA Initiative, to a DHARMA training video, to a the contents of a notebook, to a 3D interactive animated version of the Swan Station, to examining Egyptian hieroglyphics, and back to a video scene. It would allow old fans and new user to experience the full story of Lost in a completely new manner that would be unique for each user.

I have to say, as a fan of Lost, I only hope someone at ABC eventually reads this blog and steals that idea. In the meantime I’ll keep day dreaming about how I could turn The Wizard of Time into a metamedia project.

 (Image from: EnlightenNext Magazine)

Back in 2003, after I had finished writing the script for Dark September Rain I wrote some short notes on how to take Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and apply it to theatre. The plan had been to stage Dark September Rain as a play for a few weeks before shooting it as a film. Eventually I dropped this idea, both because the actors seemed more enthusiastic about the film version, and because I really couldn’t afford to do both.

I came across the notes the other day while checking something on my Chrysalis Age website and thought that it might be interesting to apply the same integral ideas to writing novels.

A little background on Integral Theory is probably helpful. I’ve written about it briefly before.

At the center of Integral Theory is a chart Wilber calls the quadrants of knowledge that outlines the relationships between the different areas of understanding. Wilber builds on the idea of holons by Arthur Koestler. A holon is both a thing unto itself and part of a whole. Wilber then arranges the different holons of the cosmos into quadrants. The quadrants are created from the intersection of two dichotomies: the interior/exterior and individual/collective. This presents four areas: individual interior (psychological), collective interior (cultural), individual exterior (physical/behavioral), collective exterior (physical/social). He then further extends levels of development within each quadrant (atom, molecule, cell, organs, bodies, etc.). You can see the chart below for a better idea of what I’m describing (from Kheper.com ).

So, quadrants of being and levels of being. Wilber calls this an All Quadrant All Level approach.

The question then becomes, how can I use these different aspects of being to strengthen my storytelling. First it’s might be helpful to look at how this All Quadrant All Level approach might apply to the different aspects of creating as novel.  The primary aspects are Story, Character, Setting, and Plot.

Integral Novel Writing

So, based on that a few thoughts:

• Each aspect (story, character, plot, setting) is contextually interdependent with all other aspects.
• The point of an Integral writing approach would be to grab the reader’s attention at every level and quadrant of their being (physical, instinctual, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual).
• The means for accomplishing this will depend on the ideas, story, language, characters, setting, conflicts, action, plot, etc.
• An Integral novel needs to address content, structure, presentation, form, inter-personal dynamics, inter-group dynamics, experience, memory, imagination, etc.

Now, with all this in mind, what techniques can be used to create a novel in an Integral fashion? How do you simultaneously, or in sequence, approach the different levels (physical, instinctual, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) of story, character, setting, and plot?

Possible Writing Approaches to Levels of Being

These notes are intended to spark thinking. Mostly my own. They are not presented as some over-conceptualized system of writing novels. It’s more a sketch of a path rather than a map of a path. That said, I think it’s a useful sketch. At least for me. I can see that I will probably expand it as I think about it over time, especially as I begin to apply it to the writing of Wizard of Time #2.

Hopefully, others will find this helpful as well.

I’ve been thinking lately about heroes – what makes a hero we want to root for, what characteristics does a hero need to have so that we will want to empathize him or her, and better yet, how do you create a hero that people not only want to watch or read about, but that they want to spend time imagining themselves as?

First off, I’ll be using the word hero to refer to both male and female characters. I’ve never understood the need to cling to male and female words for the same occupation, especially now that we are a decade into the 21st century. Why is a man an actor, but a woman an actress?  Interestingly the words that are unisex for occupations tend to be ones that were restricted to men historically – like doctor and  lawyer and soldier. No one would call their female phsycian a doctoress would they? Well, they would have a hundred year ago, but now?

This mild digression into semi-feminist gender politics is relevant because what provoked this thinking about heroes was a blog I read that was a reaction to another blog reacting to an opinion piece in the New York Times – the subject of which was the notion of “strong female characters.”

The author of the NYT article, Carina Chocano sums up her argument in the final paragraph:

“Strength,” in the parlance, is the 21st-century equivalent of “virtue.” And what we think of as “virtuous,” or culturally sanctioned, socially acceptable behavior now, in women as in men, is the ability to play down qualities that have been traditionally considered feminine and play up the qualities that have traditionally been considered masculine. “Strong female characters,” in other words, are often just female characters with the gendered behavior taken out. This makes me think that the problem is not that there aren’t enough “strong” female characters in the movies — it’s that there aren’t enough realistically weak ones. You know what’s better than a prostitute with a machine gun for a leg or a propulsion engineer with a sideline in avionics whose maternal instincts and belief in herself allow her to take apart an airborne plane and discover a terrorist plot despite being gaslighted by the flight crew? A girl who reminds you of you.

The problem I have with this summation is that weak characters aren’t all that interesting. Complicated characters, yes. Flawed characters, yes. Characters with certain weaknesses that we can all relate to, like anger, fear, loss, and falling for the wrong person, yes. But genuinely  weak characters are genuinely annoying.

Moreover, I’m not interested in watching or reading about characters who remind me of myself, I’m interested in characters that I would like to be – who possess traits that I would like to have, who respond to difficult situations the way I would hope to, who make me want to be a better version of myself.

I happened to be traveling for work last week and watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon in my hotel room. Travel for work is when I watch all those films I can never convince my wife to watch. My wife is wise about her film choices.

I wanted to enjoy the film, as I had found the first installment of the series to be perfectly mindless fun. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really get into it. The biggest problem I had with the film was how weak the lead character Sam Witwicky is. He’s not a character with weaknesses that make him more human and relatable (like Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes or his impish over confidence), no I found Sam annoying because he was a weak as a whole. You would think that after saving the world twice (by his own admission) that he’d be a bit of a bad ass, rather than a whiner. He’s unemployed? Okay, I can buy that. He doesn’t fit in to the normal world anymore. But when the feces hits the fan, as it does once the plot gets moving, I assumed that Sam would come alive, realize that he is at his best when the world is going to hell and someone has to save it. But he doesn’t. He stays weak. He keeps whining. He tries to be proactive, but whenever he is faced with a confrontation, he survives more by luck and rather than skill or daring. You know something is wrong with the CGI robots display more nobility and emotional depth than the lead human character.

Which brings me to Mur Lafferty’s response on I Should Be Writing, to Chocano’s article. She defines a strong female character this sway:

To me, a strong female character is a woman who can take action, who isn’t passive. Taking action may be corralling a group of children during an airstrike. Taking action may be breaking up with someone when they treat her like crap. Taking action, yes, may be kicking some vampire butt.

That strikes me not as a definition of a strong female character, but a definition of a strong character, period. And one that writers should take to heart, especially, if like me, they write genre fiction. I think in literary fiction, you can get away with a character being more “realistic” in the sense that Chocano seems to mean – ie. passive and weak. Maybe folks who read a lot of literary fiction have a higher tolerance for weak characters. Or maybe some of them prefer to see characters that reflect themselves as they are rather than as they wish to be. Who knows?

As Charlie Jane Anders of io9 puts it in her response to Lafferty and Chocona: “Passive people are hard to watch.”

Passive people are hard to read about as well. Which doesn’t mean that they need to wielding swords or firing guns to hold our attention and gain our empathy. A few months ago my wife and I watched the BBC series Larkrise to Candleford and one of the main characters, Dorcas Lane, is the epitome of a strong character, who happens to be a women, and who never picks up an implement more dangerous than a butter knife. But she is passionate, she is determined, and regardless of her disappointments, she struggles to overcome them. She reminded me of another character I love, Dorothea Brooke, from Middlemarch, a woman who whose desire to be more than society will allow conflict with the actions she takes to define herself.

So, strong characters don’t have to take violent action to be heroes, but they do need to take action against the problems set against them. They need to be people who do things. Or at least they need to make you think that they might do something any moment, even if they never quite do (I’m talking to you Hamlet).

What are the qualities we are looking for in heroes? The qualities that we desire in ourselves. Strength of character, conviction, moral integrity, passion, resilience, and intelligence are a few. They do not need to have physical strength or martial prowess, although those things don’t hurt, but they do need inner strength and a prowess of personality.

But they also need to have weaknesses that we can relate to. An inner emotional life that reflects the complications of human life and relationships that the average reader or viewer can relate to. This makes me think of Aeryn Sun of Farscape. At first she seems to be exactly the kind of ‘strong female’ character that Chocona bemoans – emotionally unexpressive, militaristic, and prone to violence. But as the show develops, Aeryn’s emotional reticence becomes understandable (a consequence of her Peacekeeper upbringing) and she evolves into a more rounded person. That change, that character arc, is fascinating to watch. Sciencefiction.com has a list of 10 great female science fiction characters. For a more exhaustive list see Pink Ray Gun’s top 100 woman in film and TV.

So, what makes heroes interesting? The balance between strengths and weaknesses, their emotional inner life, and the way they change over time.

Speaking of how heroes change over time, and women heroes in particular, there is a very interesting documentary premiering this week at the South by Southwest Film Festival that looks into the history of Wonder Woman. It’s called  “Wonder Woman: Untold Story of American Heroines”

The trailer above got me really excited when I saw a previous version about a year ago. I started reading up a bit on Wonder Woman. I’ve never read the comics, but as a kid I had watched the 70s TV series with Linda Carter. I’ve always found it odd that all the other major comic book heroes have had major films, but no one (ie. the men who run Hollywood) couldn’t figure out how to tell the story for modern audiences. The more I read about the attempts to bring Wonder Woman to the screen and watched clips from the failed David E. Kelley TV reboot. The more I read (one of the scripts can be found here) and the more I watched, it seemed that modern men just didn’t know what to do with the idea of a super powerful woman, much less the iconic character of Wonder Woman. The result of all that reading and thinking about Wonder Woman was the creatiion of a modern fantasy story I’m temporarily calling Redstone about a woman with godlike powers and how she changes over hundreds of years as she deals with romance, marriage, motherhood, and enemies that want dominate the world.

And all of the think thinking about woman heroes is relevant because I have recently decided that I need to start writing more adult centered novels even before I finish the YA series I’ve been writing. So, after I finish Wizard of Time #2, I’ll be writing Redtsone. Hopefully all this thinking will result in better writing when the time comes.

Update (3/17/2012): I came across this article today comparing the hero qualities of Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games) to Hermione (Harry Potter) and Bella (Twilight) and  to Ripley (Alien). Interesting complimentary reading.

Update (4/10/2012): There is a fun conversation between film critics about the nature of Katniss Everdeen  (Hunger Games) as a hero.

The day job has been keeping me far too busy lately. I have a bit of breather today, but no time to write a substantial post, so I thought I’d dip into the archives and post an excerpt from a sci-fi screen play I wrote years ago called Unexplained Phenomenon.

I wrote the first draft back in 1996 and a agent shopped it unsuccessfully for a year before letting it drop. I’ve revised it a few times over the years, the last time in 2008.

Below is a quick description of the story and the first few teaser scenes. If it seems like something you might want to read, you can download a PDF of the full Unexplained Phenomenon screenplay.

Unexplained Phenomenon Synopsis:

Science reporter Ian Banks is assigned to investigate the strange formations that have been appearing around the world: Complex geometric patterns that appear everywhere from freshly fallen snow and living forests to polished rock on the face of mountains to a strange monument that people have spontaneously begun to build in the fields of Iowa.

A mysterious admirer sends him information proving that the U.S. government is not only communicating with whoever is responsible for the formations, but that a secret agency has initiated a series of events it cannot control and which will climax with a world altering impact within days.

Soon, Ian and a professor of modern mythology he inadvertently involves, Elizabeth Carson, set out to find the meaning of the formations while eluding the government agents who desperately want to silence him before he can reveal what is really happening.

Unexplained Phenomenon Excerpt:

EXT.  FIELD IN KANSAS- DAY

TITLES: “KANSAS, THE UNITED STATES”

The noonday sun beats down as a large John Deere tractor pulls a plow through the field, turning over rows of earth.

A small, wiry FARMER in his fifties sits in the cab of the tractor singing along with a Johnny Cash song on the radio. The tractor suddenly stops and the Farmer lurches forward, his foot sliding off the accelerator.

The tires of the tractor spin in place for a moment and then come to a halt as the Farmer pulls the hand break and steps down from the cab.  Cursing under his breath, the Farmer walks back to examine the plow, finding it bent and twisted where it has made contact with a large piece of rock.

FARMER
Well, shoot…

The Farmer looks closer and sees that the large slab of rock that has damaged his plow has been pulled away from a wide opening in the earth.  He bends down and peers into the hole.

INT. CAVERN BENEATH THE FIELDS- DAY

Light streams into the large cavern from a hole above a sloping set of crude stairs.  The beam of a flashlight sweeps through the darkness as the Farmer descends into the cavern, slowly navigating his way down the dust-laden stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs the Farmer pauses, aiming his flashlight around the interior of the cavern.  There are several solid stone support beams at regular intervals throughout the space, each covered with a series of strange symbols and pictograms. He walks forward carefully, the beam of the flashlight moving back and forth.  The beam of light stops as the Farmer freezes and gasps.

FARMER
What the hell…?

There in the glow of the Farmer’s flashlight stands a large metal disk some ten feet wide and two feet thick, its smooth polished surface reflecting shards of light throughout the cavern. The surface of the disk is covered in strange symbols that spiral around its edges and in toward the center where there is single pictogram-like image engraved.

FARMER (CONT’D)
Well, I’ll be damned.

The Farmer steps forward and examines the disk more closely.  Licking his lips he reaches out a hand and places it on the surface of the metal disk.  He jumps and suddenly snaps his hand back, as though receiving an electric shock.

FARMER (CONT’D)
What the… Jesus!

As the farmer watches the symbols on the metal disk begin to move, and to change, and to glow from within.  The glow from the shifting symbols on the disk grows in intensity blasting a blazing light over the Farmer and the cavern, suffusing everything in a brilliant white radiance.

FADE TO WHITE:

FADE IN FROM WHITE:

EXT.  WHEAT FIELD IN KANSAS- SUNRISE

The rising sun lends a deep golden glow to the large wheat field.

TITLES: “Two Years Later”

A farmer comes striding through the wheat toward a barn that sits in the middle of the field.  He is an older, heavyset man who is beginning to bald and his walk from the farmhouse in the distance has caused a sheen of sweat to bead on his forehead.  His name is ROBERT BLOCK.  He pulls out a red bandanna and wipes his brow as he reaches the barn.

INT. BARN- MORNING

Robert opens the door to the barn and steps inside. The barn looks like most barns; dusty, dirty and filled with farming equipment.  A ten feet into the barn there is a wall with another door. Robert walks to the second door leaning to peer into a knothole in the wallboard. A thin line of blue light scans his retina and the second door swings open slightly.

INT. RESEARCH BARN- MORNING

Robert steps into a brightly lit barn filled with computers, desks, tables, scientific equipment, and a staff of researchers.  The barn had been built over the underground cavern.  The stone roof of the cavern has been removed and covered with glass.  Beneath the glass the large metal disk can be seen, the symbols on it glowing faintly, shifting and changing slowly in a constant inward spiral.

In front of the disk a dark haired young woman named GINA sits cross-legged on the ground in a meditative pose, her eyes open as she stares at the shifting symbols; especially the one in the center.  Though it is different than the symbol that was in the center when the Farmer found it, it is the only one that does not change.

The symbols are pictographic-geometric forms of an exceedingly complex yet fluid and beautiful nature.  They seem to emerge from some ancient and long forgotten region of the collective unconscious; immediately alien, but somehow intimately familiar.

Robert walks through the room to a bank of computers where a woman and man sit.  They are RESEARCHER ONE and RESEARCHER TWO respectively.  The screens in front of them are filled with different views and readings of the disk and Gina.

ROBERT
What do you have for me?

RESEARCHER ONE
I’m down loading the satellite pics of this morning’s symbols right now.

RESEARCHER TWO
I have several satellite pics of occurrences from today in England, China, and the West Coast.

ROBERT
Let’s see them.

Researcher Two taps his keypad and several screens are filled with identical symbol formations all seen from satellite photos taken 150 miles above the Earth. The first symbol formation is outlined with ripe golden stalks in a field of young, green wheat.  The second is created from a large swath of green algae on the China Sea.  And the final symbol formation is composed of some sixty humpbacked whales lazily floating in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

RESEARCHER ONE
Gina’s been fixed on this one for the last eight hours.

Researcher One gestures to her screen indicating that all three symbol formations from around the world are identical to the symbol in the center of the metal disk.

ROBERT
How is she doing?

RESEARCHER TWO
She’s been up all night, but her numbers are all in the green.

ROBERT
Tell her to take a break. Give her a day or two off.  Tell Richard he’s up next.

RESEARCHER ONE
His symbols are always so much less interesting.  More masculine. Hard.

RESEARCHER TWO
I don’t care what they look like, I just want to know what the hell we’re saying to each other.

ROBERT
I think who we’re speaking with may be more important that what we say. This hasn’t turned out to be the cosmic Rosetta Stone we had hoped it would be.

RESEARCHER THREE, seated nearby and staring at a screen suddenly speaks up.

RESEARCHER THREE
Oh my God!  Come look at this.

Robert walks over to Researcher Three and so do several other people.

RESEARCHER THREE(CONT’D)
It just came up on recon satellite two.

ROBERT
Where is that?

RESEARCHER THREE
Peru.

More people have gathered around the screen.  The image is of hundreds of native Peruvians creating the same symbol formation as in the center of the metal disk by clearing away the thin layer of rocks that cover the desert ground to create long lines in the mountain plains.

RESEARCHER TWO
Now how the hell do you explain that?

ROBERT
I need a report on the Nazca lines ASAP. Everything you can find.

Researcher Two runs off to do as Robert asks.

RESEARCHER ONE
That would take weeks to create, maybe months.

RESEARCHER THREE
How could they have known? Robert turns to one of the researchers.

ROBERT
Get the general on the phone.  He needs to see this.

Robert turns back to the screen and stares in amazement.

A few weeks ago I came across Brandon Sanderson’s First and Second Laws (of magic) at his blog and they sparked a great deal of thinking.

The two laws are:

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

Sanderson’s Second Law of Magics: Limitations > Powers

Sanderson goes into detail explaining each law and how it affects his writing. His first law is pretty simple. If the reader doesn’t understand how magic works in your world it will be harder for them to believe you when you use it to save the hero/heroine. He likes magic systems with clear rules and boundaries. So do I. But if you don’t, and your magic system has no rules (which makes it hard to call a system) then you need to make sure the reader understands this as well – again, so they will buy into your use of magic to save the day. (The same can easily be said for technology in sci-fi).

His second law is a little more intriguing. He’s essentially saying that what makes a character interesting (and the magic system interesting) is not what they can do with magic, but what they cannot accomplish. The power of their magic will help save them, but the limitations of their magic will put them in peril – and it is the peril what will help readers identify with the character and keep turning pages.

I thought those were both great observations. Reading them made me wonder not just how they can positively affect my own writing, but what other rules about magic I might find helpful.

I did a lot of research on creating magic systems before constructing the ones in The Wizard of Time and The Young Sorcerers Guild series. Both have similarities, but they are very different, each with clear rules about what the magic can do and what is required to accomplish it. For me the interesting thing about magic is not how it can help the characters, but how its use can cause problems. Magic is basically breaking the laws of physics in different ways, so I think when you break the law, there should be some consequences. Maybe not all the time, but certainly when a character uses magic in a big way there should be some big repercussions that play out in the plot and directly affect the character in question, as well as other characters that might get caught up in the ripple effects of the magic.

This is all useful thinking right now because I am in the process of figuring out how Gabriel’s use of magic can cause problems in The Wizard of Time Book 2. But it is also thinking that brings other laws and rules to mind.

The first is obvious – Arthur Clarke’s 3^rd Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Which leads to Larry Niven’s corollary law: “Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.”

The third popped into my head because I was thinking of it in relation to plot the other day – the Pareto Principle, usually called the 80/20 rule. A few business examples (from Wikipedia) illustrate the point:

• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend
• 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products
• 80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff

This gets translated to all kinds of things, like 80% of your enjoyment comes from 20% of what you do. So that got me thinking about how the 80/20 rule might relate to novels. I’m not sure that it does really, but I suspect it might. I can certainly see how it relates to most non-fiction. In nearly every case of a non-fiction book I’ve read, 20% of the text provides 80% of the meaning and importance. Most writers don’t have that much to say, but they still need to fill 300 pages to get published.

So, if the 80/20 rule does relate to novels, does that mean that 80% of a reader’s enjoyment comes from only 20% of the novel?  Since I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about plot these days, as I revise the plot outline for WOT #2, I’m wondering if 80% of the story and action is found in 20% of the plot?

Again, I’m not sure if that holds true for most novels, and this is mostly a thought experiment, but I can see how keeping that rule in mind when plotting and writing might help to bend those numbers in your favor. When you think about a story and the plot that tells it, how much of it is essential? Sure there is a beginning, a middle, and an end (supposedly you’re not supposed to allow new beginnings, multiple middles, and double endings), but how much plot can you cut out of a story and still have the essence of the story present? In many cases – a lot.

How many times have you read a novel and thought that things were happening to the characters just to have things happening to the characters?  How many times have you thought to yourself the so-so novel your were reading might have made a great short story? Or that the film you were watching should have been a TV episode?

I think both films and novels can get trapped by a self impose structure that actually works against the story that is being told. Romantic comedies are a perfect example of this. Valentines was a few days ago and there was an article about why so many romantic comedy films fail to satisfy audiences.

The article was amusing, but I think the real problem with romantic comedies (and many films and novels) is a slavish adherence to a formulaic conception of three act structure. It usually goes like this:

Act 1 – Girl (because nearly all romantic comedies these days are from the perspective of a woman) meets Boy; Girl (who is somewhat neurotic because apparently slight neurotic women are supposed to be funny) and Boy (who is generally a bit of a jerk – I call this the Mr. Darcy syndrome) are initially repelled by each other, but secretly somewhat attracted (I suspect because she has daddy issues and he spends too much time watching porn to understand women as people); we spend some time learning inconsequential things about individual backgrounds of Girl and Boy, at the climax of Act 1, Girl and Boy are thrust together in some, hopefully, interesting way.

Act 2 – Girl and Boy spend the next hour getting to know each other. Girl realizes Boy is not as big a jerk as she thought he was. Boy sees that Girl’s neurosis is actually quite charming, Girl and Boy realize they like one another (but usually not enough to actually kiss – unless they have sex – it’s usually one or the other), and at the climactic moment of Act 2 – forced by the Iron Law of Three Act Structure – one of them (usually the Boy being a jerk again – unless it’s the Girl playing out her daddy issues in reverse) does something completely out of character and against all common sense, to sabotage the relationship and break the couple apart so that…

Act 3 – Girl and Boy spend the next 20 minutes realizing what an awful mistake he/she/they have made and finally reunite for that climactic movie-ending, all-questions-answering, no-more-problem-creating kiss. Roll credits.

For me, at least, I think the application of the Iron Law of Three Act Structure is the main reason why my general reaction to romantic comedies (and action films, and now that I think of it, almost all films) is blah! Treating three act structure like an iron law and forcing formulaic formatting on to the plot of stories makes them blandly predictable. Everything is telegraphed. The reader or viewer knows what is going to happen because they have seen the same thing happen at the same moment in countless other novels and films. For instance, why are so few romantic comedies about married couples (and I don’t mean the ones where the characters spend the whole story either cheating on each other or thinking about cheating on each other)? Why is it that no one seems to believe that people in a loving and committed relationship can be funny? The only exception to this seems to be when children are added to the married couple comedy. Apparently, kids are always funny.

So, wait, where was I before I started this diatribe against the misuse of three act structure? Right. The 80/20 rule.

If we can accept the proposition that in general 80% of the enjoyment of a story comes from 20% of the plot, how can we change that? With good, multi-layered structure. The sort of thing that most books on writing (whether for film or stage or novels) tell you. Each section, chapter, or scene of the story should either expand our understandinf of the characters, advance the plot, or resonate thematically in some significant way – preferably the chapter or scene should do all three.

For myself, I need to examine why each part of a story is there and how it can advance those three things (character, plot, and theme). If a scene or chapter doesn’t do those things, I need to figure out how to change it, or I should probably get rid of it. Sometimes a scene can only be about plot or character. If plot and character are the things we tend to enjoy most about a story (and I’m assuming we tend to enjoy them more than descriptions of settings), then by careful plotting and writing we can hopefully get to a point where the reader is getting 80% of their enjoyment from 80% of the story.

I think I’ll call this the 80/80 Goal. It’s clearly not a rule or a law – just an aspiration. And I think you can’t really ask the reader to enjoy 100% of your story. Everyone has different tastes and the average reader is bound to find 20% of the story they don’t really connect with.

Now let me propose something else, based on this discussion of the 80/20 rule, but thinking of Sanderson’s two laws of magic: A character’s use of magic should only solve 20% of the problems in the story but this same use of magic should create 80% of the new problems the character will face. I think I’ll call that the 80/20 Law of Magic.

Not only does this restrict how I can use magic to get out of situations that put the characters in danger, it also means that each significant use of magic has consequences that will reverberate throughout the plot, creating new difficulties and conflicts to be overcome. It will also mean that characters will (hopefully) restrain themselves in the use of magic – because, like violence, it leads to more of the same.

Maybe this will be a corollary to the 80/20 Law of Magic – Magic only leads to more magic.

I’m not sure about that, but it’s a fun idea to play with. In fact, I can’t say that I’m sure about any of what I wrote above. Maybe I’m 80% sure about 20% of what I wrote. Or am I 20% sure about 80% of what I wrote? Regardless, I now that 100% of the time I spend blogging is time I’m not working on the next novel. So…Time to break some rules.

I came across this film in progress called Man Conquers Space on the Sci-Fi Movie Facebook page. It’s an amazing retro-future history documentary of a space program that never existed, but that every space geek dreamed of in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Since I grew up reading Popular Science magazines from the 1950s and a great set of 50s encyclopedias my grandparents had, I too envisioned the future of space travel and exploration though that brightly, rose-tinted lens of 1950s space optimism. It was a sad day when I was old enough to realize that the future that I was dreaming about – a future of space stations, moon bases, missions to mars, and regular space travel – was unlikely to be realized in my lifetime.

Sure, we have the International Space Station, but the US no longer has a Space Shuttle to build and service it. We now rely on the Russian’s unreliable Soyuz space craft to service and staff the ISS. The next US space fleet is still years away and will not be composed of reusable craft. Private companies are, thankfully, trying to step into fill the gap and expand access to low earth orbit, but even with government assistance, there are some big hurdles to overcome before private space travel is regular, reliable, and safe.

The website for the Man Conquers Space film project has a great background story page with a detailed future history providing the dramatic rational for the film. I love future histories.  The idea is simple – a sci-fi fictional history of the future, generally used as a backdrop for several stories or novels. Neil R. Jones seems to have created the first fictional future history with his Professor James stories (published between 1931 and 1951). I grew up reading the stories in Robert Heinlein’s The Past Through Tomorrow future history, Larry Niven’s Known Space future history, and Jerry Pournell’s Codominium future history, among others. I was always fascinated by a detailed vision of the future. It’s the sort of world building that lends a bit of realism to stories. Recently, I’ve found the future history of Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth and Night Dawn series captivating. A solidly created future history in sci-fi is akin to a vividly imagined world in fantasy. Both are backdrops for the story to take place in, but the level of detail, and the consistency of that detail, lends the story a deep patina of realism that makes it easier for the reader to suspend his or her disbelief.

Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote a script called Future History. It was a story about a man and his robot meeting a woman and her rocket ship in the year 2000 AD – as envisioned by the sci-fi pulp magazines and novels of the 1940s and 50s. I haven’t looked the script in years, so I have no idea how good or bad it might be, but I while hunting for something else in my digital files, I came across a Guidebook to the Future – a future history I had written up for the script and formatted as a guidebook for the screenplay agents I was hoping to entice to represent me.

I got go so exited watching the teaser film for Man Conquers Space that I decided to post the guidebook for my Future History script. I may post the script itself sometime soon, but I think I’d want to read again before taking that leap.

Follow this link for Future History: A Guidebook to Tomorrow.