Week 5 of Zette's Class as applied to Fortress Launne

So, it's actually nearing the end of Week 6, but I've been busy doing roleplay-related things for the past week and a half, and now I'm a bit behind in the class. Week 5 turns out to be a lot more time- and thought-intensive than the previous four weeks. Also, when I read the eight questions we're supposed to answer about our setting, I immediately start thinking about Fortress Launne instead of my 2YN story. This is good, because I desperately need to make sense of my Fortress Launne setting. It's a bit of a mess right now. I'm looking forward to the worldbuilding sections of the class for that reason.

On the other hand, it stalls me out for the 2YN story because I can't answer the questions until after I've already answered them for Fortress Launne. I therefore need to do this time- and thought-intensive assignment twice. Hence I haven't done anything yet.

In roleplaying news, my game is the only one that's moving. I got slammed with applicants last week, but things have quieted down this week. All the games I play are dead.

I've also started a game on RPoL for alcar's roundrobin story idea. The basic premise is:

Writer A writes Chapter 1, aiming for somewhere around 500-1000 words. Writer A passes their last 10 lines (up to 200 words) to Writer B.

Writer B writes Chapter 2 based on what Writer A passed along, and passes the last 10 lines of Chapter 2 to Writer C ...

This goes on until each participant has written three chapters. When the last writer has finished the last chapter, the entire story is assembled and read for the first time. Hilarity ensues. :)

Come one, come all. ;) I've got one story already started, plus a couple tandem stories to pass the time while people are taking turns writing. If more people sign up I can coordinate another one.

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Anyway, so here's my attempt to answer the Week 5 questions for Fortress Launne...

1. Culture as personality - What basic overall influence has gone into creating your setting? How is this influence reflected in the setting, in both physical appearance and general atmosphere?

For Amulet I, there are two distinct cultures. The native folk are hardened survivors living in swamplands after having been driven nearly to extinction. They're a very resourceful people and have a culture that was originally matriarchal but now reflects equality among everyone. There are no officially designated gender roles; each person has their own set of talents and skills that can help the community, and what gender they are is not as important. There are female warriors and male babysitters. All of the tribal leaders are still female, however.

The other culture is sort of a medieval European culture, male dominated with highly-defined ideas of gender roles, roles by birth (nobility vs. servants/peasants), etc. Everyone has a place, and stepping out of bounds of their places is severely disapproved. Needless to say, the native folk find this way of doing things a bit distressing.

2. Scars - Signs of previous troubles in the setting. What are the scars on your setting, and what caused them? How do your people react to them?

The native folk are highly suspicious of anyone outside of their lands. Non-natives are called "outlanders." It doesn't help that previous overtures of peace have turned into betrayal and bloodshed. They tend to overreact at any sign that they're about to be betrayed again.

The biggest physical scar would be the fort in the valley. This was where the first outlanders set up to extirpate the native folk. The fort has been flattened twice before in the past several decades, then rebuilt in the same place. By the end of Amulet I it'll probably be flattened again.

3. Status - Is your setting the location of rich and powerful people, a quiet village with everyone working together, or an impoverished town where everyone is scrambling to survive?

It's a frontierland to the European-style culture. The fort and surrounding farms is a small population that is always on guard for hostility from the native folk. The outlanders would really like to colonize the rest of the native folk lands.

The native folk live in primitive-looking villages of round wooden huts on stilts, adapted to constant flooding. They mostly get their food from fishing and hunting/gathering, and a tiny bit of gardening.

4. Population - What is the general population of the setting for your story? Consider this not just as a number function, but also a relative function as well. One hundred people on a small ship can be far more trouble to maintain than 1,000 people in a small village.

The fort population is small, somewhere in the low hundreds. However, they are not far from a larger population center to the south. The city of Myan is just across a wide river.

The native folk, meanwhile, are the last of their kind. There are less than a thousand of them in the Amulet I part of the timeline. There are more of them somewhere "off to the west" because most of them were captured and relocated to wastelands several decades ago, but they aren't in contact with each other.

Population is one of the things that keeps changing on me; I'd originally figured that there are only 300 or so native folk, but it keeps getting bumped upward because I'm not sure they can have as much power as I need them to have with only 300.

5. Weaknesses - What are the weaknesses within your setting and how did they come about? Are the people aware of the weaknesses, blind to them, or worried about them?

Based on the way Zette describes it, she's asking about signs of decay. I'm not sure there's been enough time for permanence to either setting at the time of Amulet I for anything to have decayed. There are certainly signs of past battles, especially at the fort, but those were total destruction events. Later on, when Fortress Launne is an actual city, there will be more of these. 80 years later, the native folk are dwindling by slow atrophy of their ways rather than outright battle.

6. Relationships - What are the relationships within and outside the setting which help to define it?

Hmmm. These questions are starting to get a bit repetitive.

Between settings, I've already covered in Question 1-2.

Within each setting... the native folk are mainly cooperative with each other, as their survival is still threatened from outside forces. There are a series of small villages of 30-50 people each, set up that way to make it easier to find resources and stay hidden, and they communicate closely with one another. The setting as a whole hasn't been in place for more than a couple generations since the last major attempt at annihilation from the outlanders.

The fort population is fairly cooperative as well. Their survival is threatened by native hostilities, and they rely on a centralized government system to guard everyone. It has really only been an organized town for about a decade.

7. Weather - What is the general weather pattern for your setting? What extremes might affect your story?

Well, basically it's southern Florida except with mountains. A subtropical setting, lots of swamplands. There are occasional hurricanes. On a daily basis it's fairly sunny most of the time with scattered rainshowers that last less than an hour each.

8. Emotions - What is the emotional impact the background has on your setting and scene?

Mutual distrust between the two settings. A reasonable sense of trust and cooperation within each setting. Also, the native folk work in harmony with nature, while the outlanders would like to tame it.

Hmmm. In retrospect, this wasn't as hard as I was thinking. Apparently I do have the bare basics pinned down fairly well. It's the details that keep tripping me up.

Zette's class, Roundrobin Storytime

Well, the first month turns out to be pretty easy. We're apparently easing our way into things slowly, and a lot of people are impatient as they wait for the next assignment to go up. The first three weeks could probably have been combined into a single week, but at the same time I suspect the padded time gave people a chance to get comfy with the forum setup and get acquainted with each other. And also to drop out if it turns out that they weren't serious when they signed up. Seeing as how there's 160 people signed up at the moment, a high dropout rate would probably be good for the rest of us. A large number of people haven't even done the first assignment yet, so I guess we have plenty of no-shows right off the bat.

So far Zette herself hasn't gotten involved in discussing the assignments. She posts them and leaves us to fend for ourselves. I assume that at some point she'll actually look at what her students are doing... otherwise it might've been better to stick with a format where all the assignments are posted at once where everyone can see, that way it is with Uncle Jim's forum thread.

As for me, I've taken to rambling on at length in response to the assignments. I figure nobody is actually reading them anyway, so I might as well indulge. I do the actual assignments themselves, explain in excruciating detail how I arrived at the answers I did, and also argue with anything in Zette's posted material that I disagree with. It does help me think. Much like blathering over here does, from time to time. ;)

The story itself is starting to form up pretty well as I attempt to do the assignments. It's looking like it'll be fairly straightforward for a change. Thankfully. ;) I really do need to do something that's not as convoluted as my other stuff.

In other news, I'm involved with one other writing project that's been very addictive so far. Group Story Project is basically a roundrobin story where each participants writes a chapter, then passes the last ten lines to the next person in line. Eventually when the story is finished, it gets assembled and read by everyone for the first time. So far we're on Round 1 with four people - I wrote Chapter 2 and passed 200 words to alcar, and now I'm breathlessly waiting for my turn to write chapter 6. And sitting around insanely curious what alcar did with my 200 words - what kinds of conclusions he came to about the plot, given the hopelessly incomplete info. ;) I'll be trying to stick with the plot ideas I came up with when it's my turn again, though by that point they might make no sense. All depends on what analog feeds me.

Eventually I'm thinking to make an RPoL game based on the concept. But it would probably be better to wait for an entire story to get finished first, in case any glitches come up.

Sadly, that's all the writing I've been doing lately. Roleplay is still crawling along as well, though every game is still dead including mine. With occasional spurts of activity here and there.

And now to keep things from getting hopelessly long and sucking up all the space on Blogs, I'll post my assignments to Zette's class behind a separator... Basically I want to save them here too as backup in case something happens to Forward Motion.

[cut would be here if Blogger did cuts - 28 Sep 2009]

(...and also because I suspect Galen would enjoy all the extra reading. ;) )

Week 1: State an idea in 50-100 words.

Short Version:
Two diplomats from warring nations try to make peace by drawing on a childhood bond.

Long Version:
Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?

Week 2: What genre is it?

Possible genre definitions for my idea:

a) going by Agent Query - commercial fiction, military or political thriller (depending on which way I go with it)

b) going by http://www.cheapest-book.co.uk/book-retailers/about-genres.shtml - realistic fiction

c) going by http://dannyreviews.com/subjects.html - war fiction

I've noticed that not everywhere agrees on the definitions. What Zette says about "mainstream" and what Agent Query says about it are somewhat contradictory, for example.

My particular story could also easily fall under "science fiction" or "fantasy" depending on what kind of setting I decide to use. (Somehow, setting is always the last thing that gets pinned down when I'm writing a story. I always start with a plot, derive characters from it, and then figure out setting last.)

At the moment, I'm thinking to use something similar to Earth. But not necessarily with the same nations and cities that actually exist. Nor necessarily with the landmasses in all of the same places. But it would have the same kind of sky, seas, rocks and trees, plant and animal life, and humans as the people. It would have cities, contemporary technology levels, and no magic. Perhaps "alternate Earth" would be a good way to describe it.

Zette says that genre decision would likely depend on how the Earthlike place is related to 'real' Earth. I say that it doesn't matter. It matters to the story about as much as the name of the world mattered to the Black Company (Glen Cook) - that is, we never even get a name at all. Of course, The Black Company series is clearly fantasy because it has a lot of swords & sorcery elements in it, so it was never hard to classify for publishers.

Week 3: What's the theme?

It took me a while to figure this one out. Again, like with the first assignment, I found it easier to first start with the long-form version, and then derive a single-word version out of it.

Theme: Communication

Communication is the key to everything.

***

Okay, so what I have is a war between two nations. I also have two MCs who knew each other in childhood and haven't seen each other since their families went their separate ways. They recognize each other as adults due to things like personality quirks, characteristic gestures or identifying spoken phrases.

Why did the war start? Well, why do any wars start? The most obvious (and possibly easiest to resolve) would be: a misunderstanding of some sort. Could be a cultural difference. Could be the way one group views the other is detrimental to the second group, even though the first group thinks that they're doing "good" by subjugating/converting/annihilating them. Could be that the first group is actually trying to achieve something else entirely, and the second group started out as either a convenient means to that end or "collateral damage." Could be whatever the heck the U.S. is presently doing, mucking about in the Middle East - I'm still not entirely sure why we're there (though I've read some interesting rumors about a deadly combination of power-mongering and incompetence), only that as far as I can tell the U.S. is definitely the Bad Guy in that particular war.

Anyway. A misunderstanding of some collossal sort, that the two MCs have to sort out by building from their long-ago common ground.

I've long thought that human social interactions are fundamentally the same at every level. It all scales up and down the same, from two people to two nations.

Things that cause people to want to hurt each other:

1. A hurts B. Could be because B was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could be that A is a natural phenomenon (earthquake, hurricane, flood, etc.). Could be a misunderstanding about something. A might've hurt B on purpose or entirely by accident.

2. Three possible reactions:
a) B retaliates by hurting A.
b) B hurts C, because C reminds B of A in some way.
c) B hurts C, because C is the nearest convenient target.

3. 2.a) would be the most straightforward thing. A lengthy conflict begins between A and B. This is probably the form of plot my story will take.

The other two, B turns around and hurts C, causes C to react in some way in turn, which can cause a chain of hurting to begin.

To summarize the above a bit:
Pain springs from Nature, from ignorance and naivete', misunderstandings and retaliations. Pain begets pain down unending chains, until someone is strong enough to break free, sometimes (rarely) even turn it to joy.

Also, the possible reactions aren't mutually exclusive. It could be more than one, or a combination of things.

So I'm focusing on a misunderstanding as the main cause of this war. Misunderstandings are overcome by communication - telling each other truths until both sides understand why the war is happening. Realizing that there doesn't need to be a war at all.

Other possible themes:
1. pain and joy
2. experience and innocence
3. An end to world suffering, a moment of peace.

As for symbolism. For me, a lot of the symbolism will naturally emerge as I'm writing; I don't need to figure it out consciously beforehand. So this is the sort of thing I'll worry about when I'm doing final-polish on a story - making sure that symbols are referred to consistently and in appropriate places.

Week 4: What are the goals of the main characters? What are the conflicts they must resolve/overcome?

To recap, my story is about two childhood friends on opposite sides of a war, who are meeting again for the first time after 50 years.

So, goals. There are two sets of goals here. First, the nations who are at war with each other. Second, the actual MCs themselves.

So why is there a war?

A long time ago - maybe 50 years, maybe longer ago than that - there was another war. Several different nations sought to destroy each other, but none could prevail. Instead, over a decade, they wore each other down until finally the victor was the last one still standing in an utterly defeated land.

Just as this last nation (A) was about to declare victory, however, another nation swooped in, easily crushed A which had no reserves left to defend against it, and claimed victory for itself. That nation (C) had been standing on the sidelines the whole time, neutral, hiding from everyone and doing its best to pretend it didn't matter.

Nation A was much angered by this. A small, cowardly nation who hid during battle, only to steal the victory at the end. Secretly, as C built up its misbegotten empire now that no one could stop them, A plotted its revenge. Fiftyish years later they were ready. C had grown complacent during the time of peace. A caught C entirely unprepared in a surprise assault that wiped out the nation almost instantly. But then they kept going. They saw that Nation B had been actively trading with C and mistook B for just another colony - part of C that also deserved to be wiped out. They attacked.

B defended. B had no idea who A was or why they were attacking, having of course always been told the winner's story of the last great war. Some people of B wanted to take the offensive and go wipe out A, while others wanted to find out why A was attacking at all.

Goals

1. Nation A wants to annihilate Nation B because it thinks B is a part of C, and they hate C.

2. Nation B doesn't want to be wiped out, and some of them want to find out what A wants with them while others want to go wipe out A.

3. Character X is from nation A. He's a standard, straightforward military officer of some sort, leader of one army among many. He is a strong believer in the goals of his own nation, and wants to do his best to destroy nation B.

4. Character Y is from nation B. He's also military, but more of a spy/special ops sort of skillset than straightforward battle. He has been tasked with finding out why A is attacking them to help his nation decide what to do next.


Let me pause here to mention a few other working details. First, the above scenario is based on the outcome of a Starcraft game I watched a few years back, on Battlenet USEast. Nation A was named Tesseract, C was named omray. Omray stole Tess's win in a FFA game, at the last minute, and was quite pleased with himself and how clever he was. I must say I'm going to get a lot of cheap thrills whenever an opportunity comes up to describe nation C being soundly thwacked.

Second, I'm still thinking about the nations in terms of the actual real nations they're based on. Nation A is Nordic, Nation B is Japanese. So what we have here are Vikings vs. Samurai. :) I might push back the technology level a bit to accommodate this version of setting.


Moving on to the MCs then. I have an opening scenario in mind to get them together. First, X's army is ambushed and defeated in battle by one of B's armies. As the fighting comes to an end, Y's special task force sneaks around back and captures X. The idea is to acquire a high-ranking officer in A's military so they can interrogate.

However, before Y's task force can secure X and bring him back to B's strongholds, something bad happens and the task force is also wiped out. Maybe it was an unexpected, unfortunate spot of bad weather. This leaves X and Y with just each other, X nominally Y's prisoner (but not really; X's bluff is probably going to get called early on), and having to team up if they want to survive whatever Nature is now throwing at them.

Opening Conflicts

a) X and Y have to work out their differences enough to cooperate with each other. On their side of things, they recognize each other, which helps give them a common frame of reference to work from.

b) X and Y have to survive and overcome Mother Nature's obstacles and make it back to somewhere civilized.

c) Once they make it back to civilization, they have to convince their governments to end the fighting and begin working out their differences on an international scale. They have to find common frames of references to work from for their nations, not just themselves.

About Taking Control

I don't take control. My characters and I cooperate and compromise. That's the best way to really describe it.

Basically, I start each scene with a list of plot points I want to cover in it. Could be key bits of info that need to get passed from one character to another. Could be specific small events that need to happen. Could be particular characterization I want to see revealed.

I start the scene and give this list to the characters that are going to be in it. I then let them loose. They may do my list of points in any order they choose. They may do whatever else they'd like with the scene, so long as my list is covered by the end.

Occasionally I discover that I've cast the scene wrong. Then I have to pause it, take out the character that isn't cooperating, and replace with a different one. Then unpause and let things continue.

Reading over Zette's comments about "control," followed by her first example where she says "MC will attempt to kill his wife and her lover," I can't help thinking that it would never work that way for me. If my characters don't want to do what I want them to, they won't. I actually had a story stall out because I had a plotline like that - "MC will kill Bad Guy and then find that this has doomed him, and now he feels bad." Well, it turns out that that particular character would never do such a thing, and when it finally occurred to me to ask what would cause him to do such a thing, he told me that it would never occur to him to want to kill the Bad Guy under any circumstances; it just wasn't in him. That's why the story wouldn't go.

So I guess it was a matter of wrong casting. If I want to tell that particular story, I need to start over with a new set of characters that are more appropriate. Meanwhile, the first set of characters continue to thrive in an entirely different story that will hopefully have the same broad end goals, but will probably get there in a completely different way than I had in mind.

For this 2YN story, I haven't cast anyone yet. I've sketched out the roles that need to be filled, but not yet started coming up with characters to fill them. Maybe I won't. For something like this, where plot comes first and characters are derived from plot, perhaps it should be the roles that define the characters. Who they are beyond their roles is secondary.

Hmmm. Interesting lesson.

Beginning of the New Year: State of the Union (or at least my Writing Life)

Well, Zette's class is off to a rousing good start. So far, for the first week's assignment, we just needed to post up 50-100 words describing an idea. Here's mine:

Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?

Obviously I decided against the plot I mentioned in my last entry (though I might use it for something else later on). The above idea came to me last summer, while we had two visiting scientists on campus, one from Japan and one from Norway. They were both here for several months and they'd brought their families. They each had sons that spent a lot of time playing together.

I came up with the idea, didn't really know where to go with it from there, and filed it away. It occurred to me that Zette's class would be a perfect place to try to develop it, since I'm not doing anything much with it anyhow, and it's very different from everything else I'm doing.

Meanwhile, I wrote 992 words last night toward Amulet I. Since Nanowrimo ended I've managed to come up with around 4500 new words, mostly in fits and starts as the mood moves me. The good news is that the mood moves me rather more often than for either of my previous Nanowrimo novels. I've barely looked at Amulet II since Nanowrimo 2005 ended, and I'm holding off on any more fiddling with Temple (as well as Janis) until after Amulet I is done, and the setting ... umm, settles. Right now it's about as solid and stable as quicksand. Every time a character sneezes, it turns out I need to do more worldbuilding and change things around. (Note: no characters have ever actually sneezed in any of my efforts thus far. Hmm. Maybe someone should.)

As for Stranger on a Bus, it's still languishing on the backburner. I've decided that the next scene will involve a blizzard, however. So far I've managed to go ten chapters without any whiteout driving conditions; I need to "fix" that.

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Then there's Dragonfly. I needed to get far enough away from it before I could figure out what it meant. Eight months later, here I am.

The main problem I struggled with is that, looking just at the framework of the actual story, what I have is a choice between death and death. So the question was: what's the difference?

That's not what the story is about though. What we have is a man that is bored (and boring), because from his view, he's sitting there waiting while nothing much happens. Ultimately his existence is meaningless. As far as he can tell, nothing much will ever happen, there will never be anything but the waiting, and eventually at some point it will end.

Then a dragonfly comes and shows him that there is a different way. That there is a place with meaning, and it's over a line that he didn't know about before.

Once he knew it was there, he had to make the decision to cross it. He knows that there's a lot to explore on the other side, and elephants to find, but he can't see them without crossing the line - he has to trust that they are there. It's a leap of faith that he has to take.

So it's not a choice between death and death. It's about either staying still and dying where he is, or crossing over and transcending into new life.

This is a metaphor that I've been discussing with my brother for a long time now. Life is like a holodeck. Everything is illusory on the inside, which means that everything is ultimately meaningless. But there's an outside to the holodeck. It's a scary place, and you can't know what's out there unless you actually leave. There's only so much information you can gather about the outside from the inside, and at some point there's nothing left to do but to actually go there and see.

My brother is still stuck in that holodeck. I took a leap of faith and crossed over. My dragonfly was a young girl named Dana who came along in 2002 and dragged me out of an abyss. The line appeared while we roleplayed. And now I know what's on the outside, but I can't show him. He demands proof that there's meaning and wondrous elephants. But he has to come over on his own.

How to convey all that in Dragonfly though. I could take the easy way out and make that playground more significant instead. Give the man a choice - get well and be able to go out to the playground with the laughing children, or die and be able to explore the other side of the line and find the elephants.

Hmm. I guess I'm still not really sure what the elephants mean. Memory would be the obvious thing. But memory of what?

Also, why a dragonfly? I think I know the answer to that one, though whether it's relevant to the story remains to be seen. My grandfather was born in a dragon year (Chinese zodiac). In early 2004 we all had to fly out to see him because he'd collapsed and everyone figured he was about to die. He was on a respirator when I got there; he'd survived tuberculosis several decades earlier, but it permanently damaged his lungs. When I went to hold his hand, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. After that he made a miraculous recovery, and not long after I left, he was able to go home. There's a bit more to that than I'm saying, but I think that's where the dragonfly came from.

I guess my grandfather, being a grandfather, would have a lot of memories. Hmmm.

So that's where I am with that.