Eccentric Flower:199902/the players in revolt

fourteen february

the players in revolt

Today (which means Saturday; it's only the fourteenth by an hour) I had the ultimate test: I brought my painted nails and my poofy hair into a Home Depot. Along with Nonelvis, who in her flannel shirt and jeans was there to buy an industrial respirator. Aren't we a study?

Very productive writing evening here at the home office. I did two revisions and also wrote a short-short - 500 words - which is hard to do. It probably needs cleaning, but I'm thrilled, more so in that it came to me just as I was falling asleep for a nap, and as soon as I woke up, I sat down and wrote it. I normally wouldn't remember it by the time I got up.

One of the revisions - finally - was "Rereading," which now has a new interim title, "Persistence of Vision." I got a couple of comments which made me aware of something lurking below the surface of that story, something which had always been there but was hidden even from me. I have twisted things a little to make that undercurrent more apparent. I hope.

The main character in "Persistence of Vision" is not a sympathetic character. I've written a number of stories in the last year or so where the protagonist is Not Very Lovable. I'm not sure why this is. The irony isn't lost on me: I'm writing characters which I myself would find thoroughly unpleasant to read. Great.

- - -

Speaking of characters not doing what I'd like: Tonight's other revision was "The Tale of the Defiled Convent," and in making the main character's motivations a little clearer, I realized what has been bothering me about the story all along, ever since I finished the first draft and went back to read what I wrote.

(Don't worry; you don't have to have read the story to understand what follows.)

I may have mentioned here before (I have certainly said it in correspondence) that twice in my life I have had the following experience: I reached the last few pages of novel I was enjoying, and then the main character did something so obviously pigheadedly wrong to me that I just couldn't stand it. I cannot bring myself to read either of those novels again. You might say they broke my heart.

(The books are Time Pressure by Spider Robinson and Dawn by Octavia Butler. If you don't want the endings of those books spoiled for you, skip to the three dashes now.)

In Time Pressure I felt, and continue to feel, that Robinson's mass-mind concept is really scary. (The reasons why could fill a separate postcard.) I felt that the correct thing to do, the sane thing to do, would have been for the main character to reject the whole thing and continue on the path he had originally chosen - which would have brought the whole mass-mind crashing down. Instead he swallows his pride and goes back. Robinson tries to sweeten this by explaining that the main character had been a misanthropic loner who was seeing the folly of his ways - except that, until the last few pages of the book, the character isn't portrayed as being especially hermit-like at all.

In Dawn I never saw what was so repulsive about the aliens. They offered something better, new hope for humanity, and all we have to do is breed with them? They aren't bad-tempered, they aren't especially scary-looking, they're not hostile, and they're not even bad in bed. Wherein lies the problem? Again, the main character does not turn especially xenophobic until the very end of the book, leaving me to feel betrayed. It also leaves me wondering what Butler's point is.

(I am less clear on the details about Dawn, because I really did only read it once, whereas I have read Time Pressure several times over the years ... getting pissed off each time.)

- - -

Although I don't think I am misleading the reader, suddenly jumping in a different direction at the end the way I feel Robinson and Butler have done, it dawned on me tonight that what bothers me about "The Defiled Convent" is that same sense of dismay at the character's boneheaded decision.

Had I been in my hero's position, I would not have done what he did; I feel it is a really stupid and tragic thing to have done. I know the other characters and their feelings toward him, things he did not know, opportunities he didn't realize he had. And yet I can't change it; the character is strong enough to me that I know I am writing the correct ending to the story.

It's like having a child who is smart and talented and the world is his oyster and then one day he goes and kills himself. You end up with this nasty mix of grief and rage: You idiot, don't you realize we loved you? Don't you know what you threw away?

Or - now that I consider it - like having a dad who is clearly brilliant but then spends the latter third of his life drinking himself into oblivion. Do you cry? Do you scream? Do you do both?

Did I mention that my sister, who never reads web pages, read the letter to my dad? I found this out on the phone with her yesterday. Fortunately she wasn't appalled. In fact she found nothing in it to disagree with. Which, I think, says something.

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