Writing the Magic Moment

The first time the Magic Moment became clear to me wasn't a book: it was an opera. Les Miserables, in the original Sydney production, which was very closely based on the original London production. Since a Magic Moment is a lot easier to describe by example than definition (it tends to be one of those "you know it when you see it" things), allow me to describe it as it occurred.

This was quite early in the Sydney season, so most of the audience were seeing it for the first time. For those who aren't familiar with Les Miserables, one of the pivotal sequences is the barricades battle: Parisian students throw furniture and whatever else comes to hand into the street to create a defensive barricade of sorts. Their mini-revolution is a dismal failure: the students are killed almost to the last man (and woman). After his friend Marius is shot, the iconic leader Enjolras takes the red flag and climbs to the top of the barricade, where he waves the flag in defiance until he is shot multiple times and falls forward, over the barricade and out of sight of the audience. It's important to note that Enjolras is wearing a scarlet and gold waistcoat over a white shirt - he's one of the few splashes of color in the musical.

One of the key staging devices used in Les Miserables is a rotating section of stage. Soon after the Enjolras falls, the stage rotates, slowly and majestically. Here is the Magic Moment. The dead are scattered in front of the barricade and draped over it. Enjolras is in the center, head down, facing the audience, with his arms splayed out rather like an inverse crucifixion. The bright waistcoat and white shirt against the backdrop of his red flag pulls your eyes to him: he is absolutely the focus of attention. The audience gasped. In that one moment, the waste and pointlessness of the whole attempt at revolution came into brilliant clarity, with fiery, charismatic Enjolras as the symbol and centerpiece of the devastation.

That is my first memory of a Magic Moment, where something immensely moving and profound hits with the force of a sledgehammer and nothing is ever quite the same again.

There aren't many of them, and I've certainly never been able to write one deliberately. I think I may have managed one in Impaler, but I'm not sure. Even Pratchett only has one or two. The moment in Thud! when the terrible tragedy of Koom Valley becomes clear. The secret of the Grandfathers in Nation. They're that rare - and that precious. They also only ever have the full impact once: the first time you hit them.

Here's my attempt at a definition: a scene or image in a narrative work (i.e. opera, musical, book, play) where a number of plot and character threads connect to illustrate a deeper sense of meaning than expected.

Pretty lame, yes? But when one hits you, you know all about it. It's personal, too - because what goes into that illustration of deeper meaning is also all your experience up to that moment (which is why they only ever hit once - after that you know it's coming and the power of the moment is lost).

Here's some of the things I've identified in creating a Magic Moment:

- foreshadowing in buckets, but subtle. In Thud!, for instance, there are hints all along that Koom Valley is a lot more than we know, but Pratchett sets up an expectation that the truth will still be something more or less expected.
- strong interaction between character and plot. I've never seen a Magic Moment where the characters weren't central to the plot as it unfolded. The Koom Valley revelation in Thud! would not be the same without Vimes being present and being who and what he is.
- one or more characters is fundamentally transformed by the event. Again, in Thud!, Vimes is transformed into... well, himself. He sheds the various layers of social expectation, and in that moment is more quintessentially Vimes than we have ever seen him - and he understands and accepts that this is who he is.

I suspect there are more requirements - for a Magic Moment in a book to work, a single word that doesn't quite ring true will kill it. But when it does work... well. In all the examples I've given, I was left shaken, deeply moved, and with the books I couldn't hold them properly. My hands shook too much.

What are some of the Magic Moments you've found?

The Apocalypse Cometh, and Armageddon Sick of It

We are, as a rule, inordinately fond of catastrophe, so long as it happens to someone else. How many people slow down to gawk at a car smash? Don't all answer at once. Tragedy - preferably somewhere else - is ratings gold. And of course, destroying the world, and in ambitious cases the universe, multiverse, or the whole of reality, is something of a staple in fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy. Horror tends not to destroy it so much as populate it with all manner of unpleasantness and turn humanity into 'dinner'.

Naturally, any evil overlord worth his spiffy black cape (sorry, evil overlording tends to be mostly a male job. For whatever the reason evil overladies are usually just skanky bitches and not all that evil) has some kind of grand plan to destroy the world, often with a certain short-sightedness - after all, he's got to live there too, and if he destroys it, where's he going to live? Well, unless there's a convenient Death Star hanging around.

It used to be a pretty simple thing - the fifties are full of evil overlords of one sort or another rubbing their hands together with evil glee while preparing to kick of nuclear armageddon and forgetting that even their super secret base is going to get contaminated. Before that there was the notion that enough dynamite would do it. Then there's the potential for nuclear mutants - who usually end up getting some kind of bizarre super-powers instead of super-cancers, and never acquire extra limbs from damaged DNA. There's been the Dr Moreau style of animal-human cross-breeds on an isolated island.

In the sixties and seventies John Wyndham was remarkably imaginative in the ways he destroyed if not the world, then at least civilization as he knew it. There were the Triffids taking advantage of a mysterious meteor shower that blinded most of the Earth's population, massive ocean level rises (not caused by humans but by something that deliberately parked heaters at the ice caps), nuclear war (everyone's got to do it at least once), and perhaps most terrifying, spiders.

Yes, spiders. Super-spiders, intelligent, capable of swimming, and working in packs - or swarms if you prefer. If you want alien intelligence, that certainly qualifies.

I don't think anyone's been quite that prolific about destroying civilization since.

Thing is, people read them and enjoyed them. We like to watch Armageddon happen - to someone else. But we also like there to be some hope at the other end of the apocalypse. From The War of the Worlds to Independence Day, between and beyond, the most popular destructions of the world either end with or show the plucky survivors working to build something from the ashes, or the threat is averted (often at the very last minute) and life goes on. We even jokingly refer to snowpocalypse (the Northeast USA and the succession of major storms that dumped snow in places that usually don't get much, if any), pollenpocalypse (every spring for me) and the like.

Some of my favorites are the Apocralypse of the Discworld, which may or may not be apocryphal, the Whitewashing end of the world in a wave of absolute Good in Eve Forward's Villains By Necessity (in which the world narrowly escapes destruction due to the efforts of - of course - a mismatched band of villains), and as I mentioned before, the implied death-by-intelligent-spider in John Wyndham's Web.

What are your favorite literary apocalypses, and what makes them interesting or different from the run of the mill?

Creativity and IQ

(My son, photographed by his sister in an homage to Tim Burton).

I keep coming back to Creativity because it is central to what we do as writers. It is also so hard to quantify. Like editors who, when asked what they are looking for, say 'I'll know when I see it,' Creativity is something we know when we see it.

When I read Terry Pratchett I get a buzz because his books are so wry and clever. They make me smile and they make me groan because the observations of human nature are so accurate. I could probably list a dozen reasons why his books do this, but I couldn't give you a recipe to reproduce a Terry Pratchett book. The final product is greater than the sum of its parts.

It's is like when you go to the movies to see a block buster and it leaves you unmoved. They might have ticked all the boxes, but there's no soul. You can't engage with the protagonist so the movie loses you.

Scientists have been studying creativity and intelligence, trying to understand the correlation. For instance, high IQ doesn't mean sensible. In fact it often means the opposite.

Bruce Charlton, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Medical Hypotheses says,

"...my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense."

For the full article go here.

According to Scientific American

"... most highly creative people are polymaths- they enjoy and excel at a range of challenging activities. For instance, in a survey of scientists at all levels of achievement, the [researchers] found that only about one sixth report engaging in a secondary activity of an artistic or creative nature, such as painting or writing non-scientific prose. In contrast, nearly all Nobel Prize winners in science have at least one other creative activity that they pursue seriously. Creative breadth, the [researchers] argue, is an important but understudied component of genius."

See here for the article.

Years ago, I read an article about a study done on school kids. They were measured for IQ and Creativity and then much later the researchers did a follow up. High IQ did not mean high job satisfaction or high earnings. But high Creativity led to a higher level of life satisfaction. Of course, being older and wise now, I have to wonder how they measured all these things.

And there is an article on biochemical support for a 'theshold' of creativity. All that primordial soup in our brains, firing off neurons and creating characterisation out of memories and instinct.

According to the scientists, Creative Types had more sex partners.

'Talk about creativity. Professional artists and poets hook up with two or three times as many sex partners as other people, new research indicates. A study of 425 British men and women found the creative types averaged between four and ten partners, while the less creative folks had typically had three.'

I'm not going to ask you guys to either confirm or deny this.

There is also a Fine Line between Creativity and Insanity (as if this is a surprise!).

'History suggests that the line between creativity and madness is a fine one, but a small group of people known as schizotypes are able to walk it with few problems and even benefit from it.'

But, for all the research I did, I couldn't really find a way to define and control creativity. You wish you could on those days when you wake up feeling 'Blah' and you need to write the first draft of your book and you have a deadline.

So how would you define creativity and how do you 'kick start' your own on 'Blah' days?

Terry Prartchett, so sad ...

We've all mentioned how we admire Terry Pratchett and how outraged we were when we heard he had been diagnosed with Alzheimers.

This is the latest.

'Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal

Should those with incurable illnesses be allowed to choose how and when they die? In his Richard Dimbleby lecture, author Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer's disease, makes a plea for a common-sense solution'

Terry puts a wonderful case and I recommend you read what he has to say. Measured, well thought out, and sensible with just a touch of that wonderful wry humour we have come to know and love.

As someone who shared a dinner table with Terry at World Con in 1999, it strikes me as intrinsically unfair that someone with a mind as sharp as his, should have to face what lies ahead for him.

Here's thinking of you, Terry!

Vorpal swords and derivation

'And his vorpal sword went snicker-snack...' - we all know where it comes from and the derivation automatically carries us to a certain mental setting for any story it is used in. Sort of instant setting-gel. Now this is a valuable tool (shared associations) for writers - but it is also a very dangerous beast because it is so infectious. Books - particularly when the author has a distinctive style and voice creep in to my own writing like memes-in-the-night. I try to work with this if possible - When I was writing the Karres books I read only Schmitz to try and be influenced by it (and in the last one I slipped and read an Andre Norton - I can SEE the influence). I use combinations of other writers to 'set' myself for other kinds of books. CS Lewis, Michael Scott Rohan, Peter Beagle, and McKillip, and a dash of Heyer for Dragon's Ring for eg. Or for Slow Train to Arcturus, Heinlein, Niven, Hal Clement. For Rats Bats and Vats - Tom Sharpe, Terry Pratchett, Niven.

So: am I alone in this, or do others find themselves writing derivative style and voice? And if so, how do you control it and who do you use?
I have fairly limited access BTW, so commenting is difficult for me right now.

I am the ball

Instead of the thoughtful, considered, and probably somewhat scatological piece I was going to write today, I'm writing shameless fangirly squeeing. This is because Unseen Academicals, PTerry's latest novel, was in my mailbox today. Dragon's Ring was there too, but... Sorry Dave. One book a night is the limit if I want to be able to function the next day, and PTerry won. I'll have to do the fangirl squee over Dragon's Ring later.

As usual, I emerge from a Pratchett book caught between awe and despair. Awe should be self-evident. Despair because I will never, ever be able to write a measurable fraction of that well. In what appears on the surface to be a book about the wizards of the Unseen University having to play a game of football (soccer to those of us who think of football as involving an elliptical ball and a lot of legitimate physical contact) there's a tour through a human nature and how effectively and securely we make our own hells - as well as how every single one of us can escape them.

There's a lot more than that, of course. This is PTerry.

The title? That's a direct quote from the book - and it sums up something we tend to forget. In a game of football (any sort of football) the ball is the most important part, and it becomes in a sense the spirit of the game. That spirit becomes part of our culture and our souls, whether the ball is a ball or something else, and whether the game is football, soccer, cricket, baseball, basketball... Keep your eye on the ball. Out of left field. Outfielders. Goals. Sports are, as Pratchett says, about everything except the sport.

I'm going to leave off with two things, a quote from the book, and a question.

"Forgiveness is the name of Pastor Oats's double-headed battle-axe."

What else - books, movies, whatever - absolutely nails some part of human nature without preaching a sermon? My first (non-PTerry) vote goes to Dave's Rats Bats & Vats and the sequels for reasons that ought to be obvious.

The Other Half

Sorry to be late this morning, but I came back yesterday night, late, from the first North American Discworld Convention. Well, technically, I came away from the convention on Monday, but we had business in Denver yesterday, so we delayed on the way.
Though I’ve been going to conventions since 98, I only started going after I sold my first novel. So I’ve never been to a con as a fan. Not, mind you, that I have anything against fandom. The whole idea of organized fandom was just so alien to me, though – because it didn’t exist in Portugal – that it never occurred to me to look for fan groups/conventions until I was told I should go to World Fantasy to meet agents.
So this is the first time I’ve gone to a convention as a fan. It was lots of fun. Far more relaxing than going as a pro. Oh, I was still on some panels and I signed some autographs, but overall I was there to hear Pterry speak and to hang out with people who understood when I said "That’s so Sam Vimes" or "Please don’t let me detain you" and that was enough.
But of course I’m a writer, and being a writer is not something I can turn off so... Things I learned at the Discworld con about how to treat your fans – not that I ever expect to have as many as Pterry, but who knows? One of you might! --
1 - They’re there to see you, make yourself available. Pterry talked a lot and also mingled and talked to people. Mind you, he didn’t need to do anything else to make us love him, but if he’d been the "I’m too important to talk to fans" type of author, I doubt he’d have got where he is.
2- Let them in just enough into your private life. No one likes their privacy more than I do. I’ve been known to say if I could have fortune without fame, I’d take it. But the truth is fans feel they own a little part of you and they want to know some stuff. Stuff such as... how your health is doing. And perhaps some fun project you’re involved in just now. Pterry, for ex, is doing better than expected, and he’s building a bridge, back home.
3 - If possible, genuinely enjoy your fans and your worlds, so you can play in your worlds with your fans, without its being a put on.
Presumably the rest of you have gone to cons at fans. At least some of you. What lessons do you take from it for when you’re on the other side of the table?

The Empty Room Versus The Filigreed Flourishes

Sarah talked yesterday about a tendency to genericise, to reduce the details of our imagined worlds to the bare bones and let readers put their own filigree and flourishes into the story.

There is a certain amount of validity to this, since the world inside our heads is always much richer than anything on paper. But at the same time, if we strip down too far, we run the risk of talking heads in empty rooms (guilty, yeronner).

Heinlein was a master of putting in just enough to make the scene spring to life - and choosing the perfect detail to do it, usually something that implied a whole bunch more and built the world in our heads for us. Pratchett does the same in his fantasies, building on the more or less common heritage of fairytales to layer the details in a way that the more you know about history in general, mythology and the just plain weird, the richer his books become. As a quickie example, in Making Money, the parrot's squawk of "Twelve and a half percent!" has at least four layers of meaning that I've identified. There are probably more.

Who do you think gets it just right? If you feel like some examples where the author's gone too spare and left you with the talking heads, or too lush and given you way too much description instead of plot, feel free to mention those as well.