All posts by Lars Walker

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Spoiling my Inner Child

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I’ve been making a serious attempt to listen to my Inner Child today.

And my Inner Child has a definite opinion. My mention of Davy Crockett in a recent post was a good start, he says, but it was not enough. He wants more. I suspect he’s gotten overexcited due to the fact that last night I won an eBay auction for a copy of that old Davy Crockett Golden Book I posted about, the one I remember from childhood. That’s what my Inner Child is like. Give him an inch… Bad Child! Down! Down!

Anyway, I checked out “Davy Crockett” on YouTube, and got some interesting videos.

One is the classic Bill Hayes recording of the theme song. I think (but am not sure) this was the version I heard most often on the radio. The lyrics were a little different from what they used on the show.

For you Motown fans, here’s something extremely weird: The Supremes doing “The Ballad.” Why, I have no idea.

And finally, some kids at a camp in Taiwan sing the song. My Inner Child insisted I include it.

And now I have to send him to bed. I’ve got chores for him to do tomorrow.

Have a good weekend.

Religion

Star Tracts?

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Here’s a post from Roy Jacobsen’s Writing, Clear and Simple blog, explaining an actual physiological reason why active verbs are better than passive verbs. So use active verbs, already!

Oh yes, he also has a blog called Dispatches from Outland.

I had an IM conversation last night with a friend who is an agnostic.

He talked about the idea of missionaries in space travel stories. He was assuming that if we found intelligent life on other planets, missionaries from various religions would go to them.

I suppose that’s probably true.

But I said that, for my own part, I’d never been certain whether the Atonement had anything to do with people on other planets (assuming there are any).

He had trouble understanding that.

I said that from a biblical perspective, sin is passed down from Adam, and the Redemption pays for that sin. But space aliens are not descended from Adam. So either a) they would not require redemption at all, or b) they might require an entirely different sort of remedy for whatever problem they might have gotten themselves into.

He said that that was a new thought to him.

It occurred to me that this might be a common problem of perception, and a sign that we Christians haven’t been making our case clearly.

He assumed (I take it. Could be wrong) that believers in proselytizing religions spread their messages out of a simple desire to make people agree with them. A conviction that “I’m right, and I won’t rest until I’ve convinced everybody else that I’m right.” A sort of intellectual bullying impulse.

While from my point of view, the central question is a purely practical one. I believe that there is something radically wrong with the human heart. It is literally “sick unto death.” And I have been entrusted with the medicine that cures that sickness. If I didn’t believe people were perishing, I wouldn’t be greatly troubled that people in Madagascar have a different world view than I do.

Context matters. A man running down a city street shouting, “Follow me to the exit!” is a nut. A man shouting “Follow me to the exit!” in a burning theater is very probably a hero.

Writing

Making stories better for readers by making them worse for your characters

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In case you’re waiting for an update, I got my material off to the agent without a problem (that I’m aware of) last night. She replied, apologetically, that it might take a couple days for her to get back to me. I have to assume that’s some kind of joke. To hear back from an agent within the same month qualifies as warp speed by industry standards. Stephen King gets that kind of service from his agent. Maybe.

Tonight’s subject will be another lesson in storytelling from The Superannuated Author (I just flashed on a memory of The Old Ranger, who used to introduce “Death Valley Days” on TV when I was a kid. If you only remember Ronald Reagan doing that job, it’s because you’re a young whippersnapper. I liked The Old Ranger. I think I had the idea he was The Lone Ranger’s father).

Here’s a plotting problem that trips up amateurs. You have a character whose personality you’ve established over the course of your story. Suddenly you come to a plot point where you need him to do X. And you realize that your character wouldn’t do X. He doesn’t “want” to do it. It’s not the sort of thing a guy like him would do in real life.

If you’re an amateur, you just make him do what you want. “Who’s in charge, anyway?” You say.

This is bad. Your intelligent reader will say, “Where did that come from?” and not in an admiring way. By forcing your character to do X without proper motivation, you’re reminding the reader that he’s not reading a true account, but a made-up story. You pull him out of the narrative experience. He may finish the book, but he probably won’t buy another.

So how do you deal with this problem?

Well, you can always go back and change your character’s personality to make him someone who’s more likely to do what you need him to do. That’s a possible solution, but not optimal. You probably made this character the way you did for some reason. The surgery you do on his character is likely to leave scars. And doing things that are easy for you isn’t very dramatic.

Another, better way to handle the problem is to make it work for you.

What drives plot? Conflict.

What makes people do things they don’t want to do in real life? Conflict. Stress. Fear. And these things are all useful to the writer.

Take a broad, over-obvious example. Let’s say you’ve created a character called, say, Bruce (following up on my staunch defense of that proud old name yesterday at the American Spectator Online). Bruce, needless to say, is strong, handsome and dauntless. But he has a weakness (if your hero has no weaknesses, give him some. How’s he going to learn anything if he has nothing to learn? And having him learn something is what the story’s all about). He is afraid of… oh, water. Can’t swim. Terrified of drowning. Nearly drowned when he was a kid; ended up with a phobia.

Then your plot calls for him to go to England. And the story’s set in the 19th Century, when the only way to get to England is by ship.

You can’t have Bruce just get on the ship and go. Even if you say something like, “Although he didn’t like to, he bravely boarded the ship.” That’s weak. There’s no drama, and your reader is suspicious of his sudden attack of self-mastery.

No, this is your opportunity to ramp up the tension. Have Bruce think about sailing, try to buy a ticket once or twice, and then lose his nerve. He’s terrified. He can’t handle it. He’s ready to give up.

Now your reader is interested. He knows Bruce needs to go to England; he knows Bruce won’t board a ship. How will this problem be solved?

You solve it by doing what God does in real life. You increase the pressure. Have your lovely, spunky heroine be kidnapped by the villain, who smuggles her on board a ship bound for England.

If you’ve established Bruce’s passion for his lover sufficiently, you can now show him buying his ticket and climbing the gangplank, shivering, sweating, weak at the knees, feeling like he’s going to die. But he overcomes his fear because of his great love.

This is believable, because most of us know the power of love to force people out of their comfort zones. And it’s good for the story, because the reader has experienced Bruce’s fear. The reader pities him, and at the same time admires him for doing what he’s scared to do.

This works with external fears and internal fears. It works for main characters and secondary characters.

But you should listen to your characters too. Sometimes they have suggestions of their own, which turn out to be better than your original plan.

There are two characters called Eystein and Deirdre in The Year of the Warrior. He’s a Viking warrior, she’s a widowed Irish slave. My original plan for them was to have them fall in love, but then to have her father, a rich Irishman, come to find her in Norway and take her home. This is the sort of ending I generally give the romantic elements in my books. Can’t imagine why…

But as I thought the story out, I realized that, given their situations, it just made more sense for Deirdre to send her father home alone and stay with Eystein. So I wrote it that way. I think the story is better for it, if only through avoiding predictability. I don’t want the reader to think he can figure out how I’ll resolve every issue.

There wouldn’t be any drama in that.

Writing

Didn’t see that coming

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Instead of my usual single long post today, you’ll have to make do with 3 small posts, for reasons I shall explain.

I recall that when I was a kid on the farm, when my dad wanted a cow to move and it wouldn’t move, he’d take hold of its tail and twist hard.

No doubt this will shock some animal lovers, but it accomplished its purpose, and I never saw a cow actually injured.

I thought about that kind of tail-twisting as I twisted my own tail last night, forcing myself to actually get out of passive mode, select one (just one) of the agents whose information I’d downloaded the other night, and send an e-mail query to her.

(This is how it’s done most of the time, for you aspiring authors out there. You find a list of agents, you select a few you think might be interested in you [someone suggested sending out 12 at a time, so I selected 12), and then you follow their individual directions for queries. This is not one-size-fits-all. Each agent has a way he/she likes to be approached. Approach them that way. No sense teaching them to hate you even before they know you.)

So I sent a single query last night, and to my amazement I had a reply this morning. (I’m accustomed to being ignored by agents, even my own.) She wants to see a sample chapter and a synopsis. So that’s how I’ll spend my evening. Fortunately I have the basic material backed up, so it didn’t die with my laptop hard drive a couple months back. Let that be a lesson to you. And to me, for that matter.

I’ll keep you posted.

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The limits of environmental concern

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Dale forwards this link to an article in the National Catholic Register, about one possibly dangerous chemical that’s affecting fish, about which environmentalists seem to have little concern.

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Oh, you beautiful Dahl

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It was a quiet weekend in Lake Woebegone (to paraphrase a program I stopped listening to years back). The weather was mild for July hereabouts. On Saturday I made a full frontal assault on my renter’s door latch and finally got it working properly. On my uncle Orvis’ advice, I took my Dremel tool to the hole in the striker plate. After some work I discovered that the hole needed to be extended, not sideways, but up. I wore down a grinder head (they made those old striker plates strong back in 1929. Nowadays they’re thin brass. I think this one must have been cast iron), but I prevailed in the end.

Another crisis met and mastered.

On Sunday I actually went to a museum to look at paintings, something I never do.

It came about in this fashion: My friend Chip called me some time back and said he had tickets to this exhibit of Scandinavian landscape paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (the link includes a slide show featuring some of the artworks, in case you’re interested).

I took it for granted he’d gotten the tickets from somebody, didn’t want them, and was trying to give them away. Most anything Scandinavian is fascinating to me (except for their furniture and their politics), but I wasn’t keen to drive around looking for parking in that particular “vibrant, diverse” neighborhood. And anyway, I had no one to use the second ticket. So I told him no.

Then he explained, and I comprehended at length, that he actually wanted to go himself, and was planning to go, and just wanted company. So I agreed.

I enjoyed it more than I expected. The sorrow and pity of the thing was that as the exhibition went on (it was more or less chronologically arranged), the paintings got less interesting to me. I loved the earlier, realistic, Romantic pictures with ships at sail and big storms and bent trees. As the fashion grew more impressionistic and abstract, it all became more and more about the artists and their own states of mind (usually depression). Yes, I’m a Philistine, and I’m proud of it.

Still, it was all interesting. I can look at art with a small trace of comprehension, because I used to draw myself. A lot.

When I was a kid, my life plan was to be some kind of artist. Not a fine artist, but either a commercial artist or a cartoonist. I drew obsessively. Whenever I run into an old classmate, I can count on them asking me, “Are you still drawing?”

My subject matter was a “dead” giveaway. I liked guns. I liked swords. I liked fighting and battles. If were a school kid today, they’d ship me off to a psychologist for counseling (which wouldn’t be a bad thing, come to think of it). My chief subject was the Civil War, until I discovered Vikings. Then I drew Viking battles. Two recurring characters in those old Viking pictures eventually became Erling Skjalgsson (as I think of him) and Lemming, both familiar if you’ve read The Year of the Warrior.

And then, toward the end of high school, I started writing. I think the catalyst for the change may have been my learning to type. I’d always been frustrated with my drawing. What ended up on paper was never exactly what I’d been shooting for, and I always felt I was hammering at the brick wall of my talent limitations. When I started making stories, that frustration vanished, or at least was greatly reduced. I felt I had (or would be able to attain) real mastery of this medium.

So I stopped drawing, pretty much unconsciously. It was some time before I even noticed I’d given it up.

But it’s still enjoyable to look at well-done painting.

There were a couple Edvard Munch’s (the Scream guy’s) works in the collection, but give me J. C. Dahl, for my money.

Reading

How I was corrupted early by degenerate literature

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It occurs to me that this is a book blog, and I ought to post about books occasionally.

I’ve already told you pretty much everything I know about writing. I’ll probably be recycling that stuff again after a while, but not quite yet.

So I’ll write about books.

You want to know about books that were important to me growing up, don’t you? Sure you do.

The first book I recall vividly is one of those Golden Books that were so popular back then (do they still have those? Not that I actually care.) It was about Davy Crockett, with pictures based on scenes from the Disney series. I think the Davy Crockett craze happened simultaneously with the arrival of sentience in my life, so I imprinted on Davy Crockett with great intensity. I don’t actually recall seeing the programs on their first showing, but I remember very vividly the Crockett stuff I had. Aside from the book, my brother Moloch and I both had Crockett caps and tee-shirts. I also remember some kind of jigsaw puzzle or board game.

There’s a family legend that I was able to read the Davy Crockett book at a very young age. This was an illusion. The truth was that I had memorized the entire text, and I could recite it by page.

I still have a soft spot for Congressman Crockett, whatever kind of hat he actually wore.

Strangely, I don’t have much clear memory of my other kids’ books, although I’m confident we had a fair number. The next book that really caught my interest (helped by the fact that I could actually read by the time it showed up) was a book called What Cheer?, an anthology of light verse edited by David McCord and published by The New American Library.

The book was actually a Christmas gift to my mother, as I recall, but I was the one in the family who seized on it and spent hours and hours in its pages. Bear in mind that this was grown-up, pretty sophisticated poetry, originally published in journals like The New Yorker or Punch, a lot of which was definitely unsuited to my age. But I escaped corruption through my inability to understand more than maybe an eighth of what I was reading. It didn’t matter to me. I loved the play of words. I loved the jokes, when I got them, or thought I did. I loved the rhythm of the stuff, and the challenge of big words I didn’t know yet. We didn’t have a lot of books in our house, but I think that one was what made me a writer. I still have a copy (though not that particular one, as it happens).

The other published work I’d have to count was The Universal Standard Encyclopedia, published by Funk & Wagnall. My folks bought it one volume at a time, at Nelson’s Super Valu grocery store in Faribault, Minnesota. It was not a premier reference work, but it was what we had, and I took advantage of it. I did not read the books through. I took down volumes at random, and high-graded them for stuff that interested me. I picked up a lot of odd facts that came in handy from time to time throughout the years of my education.

That’s enough for tonight. Have a good weekend.

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A kiss is still a kiss… I think

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Listening to talk show host Laura Ingraham in the mornings doesn’t usually lower my spirits, but today was just depressing.

She made a comment about guys who don’t know how to kiss. “They’re the worst,” she said, if I remember correctly.

Cut me to the quick, that one did.

Now I know how liberals feel, getting personally attacked on talk radio.

The issue never actually came up in my life, social phobic that I am, until the time I played Tony in “You Can’t Take It With You,” (Jimmie Stewart played him in the movie version, because I was unavailable [that is, not yet born] at the time). I’d always assumed that the thing must be fairly easy, but the mechanics gave me unexpected trouble. I’d never realized that you had to do something about The Nose In the Way Problem.

I’m sure the woman who played Alice thought I was a complete dork.

I’m also sure she was right.

But as far as Laura Ingraham is concerned, I now begin to see the logic behind the Fairness Doctrine. If that rule were in place, maybe I could go on the air and offer a spirited defense of socially handicapped dorks everywhere. Call for a federal program or something.

In closing, I offer this link to a brilliant recent post on the Iowahawk blog. I’ve been meaning to share it for several days, and it’s as good a way as any to close out this embarrassing post.

Reviews

Point of Impact, by Stephen Hunter

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I said a little about Stephen Hunter’s Point of Impact a few posts back, and I told you I was enjoying it quite a lot.

That was an understatement.

Now, I suppose that’s old news to many of you. I expect I’m far behind the curve (as is so often the case), since this book and its sequels and collaterals have been out for a while. So this review would probably better be called an appreciation. I just want to babble a little about how much I enjoyed Point of Impact, and to share my priceless insights on why I think it’s so great.

The chief beauty here is that the book is centered on a strong, well-rounded, sympathetic hero. If you’ve been reading this blog for any time at all you know I think character is king, and Bob Lee Swagger, the hero of this book, is a hero and a half. I don’t think there’s been a straight-ahead, singleminded, admirable main guy like this since Louis L’Amour died, and L’Amour wasn’t as good a writer as Hunter (I speak as an admirer of L’Amour).

Bob Lee Swagger of Blue Eye, Arkansas is everything books and movies and television have been teaching us to despise for most of my lifetime. He’s a white southerner. His formal education is limited. He’s ex-military, and he loves his guns. He also loves his country, to the point where he destroys evidence that might clear him of a capital accusation, because its release might make America look bad.

Swagger is approached by a mysterious pair of strangers, obviously former soldiers, who offer him a short-term job. They want him to test some new ammunition, they say. His testimonial would be valuable to them, as he was a legendary Marine sniper in Vietnam.

He does the job, and the ammunition is good. But something isn’t right. Bob Lee is not only a shooter, he’s a hunter of men. His hunter’s sense tells him they’re not telling him the full truth, but they entice him with a lure he can’t resist—there’s a plot to kill the president, they say, and the shooter coming in to do the job is a Russian, a famous sniper whom the Vietnamese brought in to take out Bob Lee himself during the war. That sniper crippled Bob Lee and killed his spotter. Bob Lee’s job will be to figure out where the attack will come, and to help them prevent it.

Of course it all goes south from there. Before long Bob Lee is on the run, wounded and the target of a nationwide manhunt.

Another great character is Nick Memphis, an FBI agent who first hunts Bob Lee, and then forms an alliance with him. Nick was a sniper too, years back. He tried to take out a criminal who was holding several women hostage. But he missed the shot and paralyzed a hostage. He married the woman and nursed her for the rest of her life. It doesn’t seem to have ever occurred to him to do anything else.

Even the villains are entirely believable and realistically motivated.

And the women—the women in this book are solid gold, Tammy Wynette, “Stand By Your Man,” grand ladies. They may have moments of envy for the easier lives enjoyed by women who chose lesser men, but they know that they could have had that kind of man if they’d wanted one. (I suppose these women are as much fantasy characters as Bond Girls in the movies. But it’s a whole ‘nother kind of fantasy.)

The plotting is flawless. Tension grows and grows as Bob Lee’s enemies’ plans unfold, and he finds the whole world more and more against him. Yet he never loses his nerve. He never gives up—even with a bullet hole in his chest.

I couldn’t help thinking of James Bond as I read Point of Impact. Like a Bond movie (the books not so much), this novel presents a vision of manhood that most of us can only dream of.

The difference is that, after reading Point of Impact, I wanted to be a better man than I am.

As you’d expect, there’s mature subject matter and harsh language. But I recommend Point of Impact for every grownup man. I have no idea what women think of it.