'Love is just a four letter word'

It's that rather over-commercialized St. Valentine's day here. Now I'll be first to admit I am the guy who still tries to give his wife a flower and romantic dinner and card, not so much because I am victim of advertising, but because I like an opportunity to spoil her, and she still has to cope with me in the other 364 non-Valentine days. And trust me, that's no holiday... anyway, I'm neck deep in this book, which, duh, has a romance in a Fantasy. So I thought... love seems to be the used as a metaphor (surely it's mostly a met-a-two?) and we could have a metaphor challenge here. Someone sent me 99 of these...

"No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can
do with only a single thread."
(Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621)

Your turn :-)

Is it all about sex?

Hmm. Now that's got your attention let me talk about line editing, which is less interesting than sex even though it also has two participants (mostly, anyway) and the insertion and removal of things, with conclusions that are not always mutually pleasing. Your words, dear writer, are NOT actually holy writ sent by divine providence and unalterable and inflexible. In fact, no matter how beautifully they read, it IS possible that, if they were lost, you could write them again, and possibly better (I did not believe this. I found it out, however by losing a file. Being forced to rewrite what I considered some of the most brilliant prose I'd ever put together. Not selling it... and some years later, clearing out the manuscript cupboard and finding the original _and_ the second version on paper. Firstly, I failed to work out which was which, and eventually decided that better one must be the original... (and both of them stank mildly) and then realising that um, (as was almost inevitable) I'd got it wrong and it was the second that I preferred. Trust me on this, every writer that ever breathed has written a difficult piece that he or she marvelled at, and thought a direct and personal intervention of the muse speaking through their fingers. I went and had a chat with the Muse of Prose, where she was having a smoko behind the Parthenon. She's a little past her sell-by date now and becoming rather confused. She's spent the last 20 centuries inspiring ladies of the night in an entirely different direction, and letting writers muddle through on their own. Sorry and all that, but you really all do all right without her.

So: it's not Holy Writ (which judging by the versions of the Bible may be more flexible than you think too) and yes, Editors (particularly callow young ones wishing to stamp their authority on you - I had one of those a few years back) can be ignorant and mess up. But trust me on this too, they're not even in my league when it comes to failing to spot typos and grammos in my own work. My own attitude is ‘line edits do not need my approval before you do them. - send me the final product. I'll line-edit your edited version. (And there is a 99% I won't even notice the corrections).

Now onto the subject of sex. Ah yes, it does have a fascination for most humans, even for those of us for whom it is a spectator sport (which is why I used it in my intro-hook. Show-don't-tell, in action). Apparently, heterosexual males (which I believe is my subclass in categorisation of human or similar simian) think about this subject more than most other sub-classes, so that in a way says if anyone is going to be obsessed with it, I should have an idea what I am talking about. And this is my opinion, and you're entirely free to disagree with it. (In fact I'd love to hear your opinion on it).

It's LESS important than it appears. Sex, sex, sex, sex. It's great for getting our attention, can be good in a book, and sometimes the point of the book... but far from always. We're writing about relationships (and sexual relationships are merely a small subset of that). Interactions between people - which fascinates us because we're a social species, and being ostracised was as much of a death sentence as not breeding. And though I don't know how to break this to some authors... relationships, love even, are not primarily because of sexual attraction. Well, not all the time. It is a part of it, sometimes, but if that's all that it is, have you considered the blow-up version? Much less likely to give you a STD or argue with you.

What brings this to mind was checking on Heinlein's DOOR INTO SUMMER in Wikipedia last night for the Flinders Family Freer blog - I wanted to know how many doors (I remember 12?) Now this a great favorite of mine, a feelgood book I have re-read repeatedly. But the Alexei Panashin quote:
"The romantic situation in this story is a very interesting, very odd one: it is nothing less than a mutual sexual interest between an engineer of thirty and a girl of twelve ('adorable' is Heinlein's word for her), that culminates in marriage after some hop-scotching around in time to adjust their ages a bit."

Gah. And again, with feeling GAH! "Mutual sexual interest" my blue butt. There is about as much "Mutual sexual interest" between Goth and Captain Pausert in Schmitz Witches of Karres. Both sets of characters have planned to marry. This is not Nabokov. This was a perfectly respectable ambition, rather like wanting to be nurse or an entomologist, or a fireman for that matter, when these books were written. Perhaps wanting to have a lifetime relationship with someone who you like, admire or even love is not fashionable any more. But there is more to love than sex. I love my sons. I loved my mum. I cannot think of anything sexually appealing about them however - and that I believe is the norm, not the other way around.

So is Dave being un-PC yet again and is all explained about the non-best-seller status now? ;-)

When I Fall In Love, It Will Be Completely

I decided to jump into this discussion on character and though there are many reasons why I love or hate a character, I must start at the beginning. And at the beginning I fell in love with someone out of the pages of a book.

I was eleven or thereabouts. I might have been eight. After a while all those ages run together. At any rate, real love and any interest in men was a long time in the future. But I got my hands on Dumas The Three Musketeers. For those who haven’t read let me explain that after some preamble with the youthful D’Artagnan and some barbed tongue-in-cheek comments, we move on to a scene in the Captain’s office, where he’s upbraiding two of the Musketeers – Porthos and Aramis – because he’s heard that the third of the inseparables, Athos, was wounded. Of course his wound was an humiliation for the musketeers, so he’s telling the two musketeers he called in that perhaps he should go and command a nunnery instead. Only at that moment Athos comes in. It is clear he is wounded and only staying on his feet by a powerful effort of will. He came to save his comrades from being yelled at and he refuses to show his weakness, but he is in fact so wounded that he collapses when the captain squeezes his hands.

At that moment I fell in love. Head over heels. As an adult and a writer, I think I can tell you why – it was his sacrifice for his fellows, his iron will in dragging himself in, his refusal to give and inch and – ultimately – the undeniable physical wound that causes him to lose consciounsness. This created a brew of courage, honor and the inevitable compassion for someone who is hurt that couldn’t help but capture me.

Athos is not a very admirable character. He drinks. He’s a mysogenist, and he killed his wife – perhaps with the best of reasons, at least for his time. But the introduction captured me so much that I stayed with him until the end of the series and then as some of you know went on to write mysteries with the musketeers – really for the sake of spending time with Athos! And might now be doing another (fantasy) project with them soon.

Such the power of making a character larger than life at the outset.

There are many characters in novels that I hate. Usually if I hate the character I hate the novel and vice-versa. And I’m not going to waste my time describing them. Instead I’m going to jump to an iconic novel of a legend of the field, a novel that by rights I should hate with a passion, because all its techniques and its “point” are the sort of thing that rubs me wrong. (This is not to say it’s bad. Just that it’s almost custom made to push my buttons the wrong way.) However, that novel remains on my shelves because of its main character. I’m talking about The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula LeGuinn. Therem Hart Rem Ir Estraven (not sure I got the first name properly spelled, and I’m too lazy to go to the shelf tonight) comes on stage through the eyes of the Earth character who despises him and views him as a conniving, venal sort of person. (The characters, for those who haven’t read the novel, are hermaphrodites, so the proper wording is hard.) Then we jump to Therem’s mind and we find he is actually an admirable person in an impossible situation, trying to live up to his commitments and hanging off the end of his rope. The author then proceeds to both put him through hell and make him come through it with honor and dignity. And then she kills him.

I’m not sure the last one is needed, but its emotional punch is very powerful and keeps you going back to see how she did it.

The only thing I have against what she did with that character is that it ruined two of my early – unpublished – novels in which I tried very hard to replicate that effect but just managed to make people take such a dislike to my character that they never got over it.

And those are characters that make me fall in love with them. There are others – Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Demerel in Venetia (which, in answer to the obligatory Heyer question is, in fact, my favorite Heyer.) And it occurs to me both these characters are in reality very flawed and come across even more flawed than they are, but have an inner sense of honor that might not fit that of society but which is, in fact, noble and larger than life.

In the comments (to Dave?) Doc John mentioned that he was told one of his characters was too powerful. That is a big issue. I had to figure out how to handle this with Athena in DarkShip Thieves. For good and sufficient reasons, integral to the plot, Athena IS better than most people. I balanced this out by giving her good instincts but – due to her upbringing – the moral sense and self-image of a catatonic gerbil. What this means is that even though she’s smart, she can be completely blinded by her own perceptions and apply her mind/strength in EXACTLY the wrong way. In effect, in many ways, she’s her own worst enemy.

I think the point is that if your character IS larger than life in good, you must balance it with larger than life in ill also.

I’ve – as usual – written five times as much as anyone else. So let me bow out for now. I shall return eventually with my amazing, piercing, and possibly excess-coffee induced insights in how to create truly loathsome wretches. Maybe...