Sean O'Brien
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Beltrunner: Aftermath Publishing Journey Part XI

7/30/2023

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     I’m finalizing edits with the editor at EDGE Publishing (I won’t identify her in full here to preserve her privacy, but we’ll call her K for convenience) and the process has been whittled down to little changes or suggestions (in some cases, we’re literally talking about comma/conjunction or semicolon). K has been diligent and professional in her edits, and I hope I have responded in kind.
     Many of the edits seem to be stylistic or syntactic: rearranging a sentence here, moving a prepositional phrase, etc.  But I just ran into one that was more substantive and hadn’t been included in her earlier edits.
     It would be nigh impossible to explain fully the nature of the suggestion K gave me without several pages of explanation (and, for that matter, some spoilers), so I will speak more generally about the editing process.
     I found myself reacting very forcefully to her edit, because I thought it undermined one of the main character’s growth and strength. The change, as I say, was quite small–imagine a story about a person being blackmailed who initially agrees to the blackmailer’s demands but then reverses course and successfully double-crosses the blackmailers. In my original draft, our blackmailing victim only PRETENDED to go along with the blackmailers but ALWAYS had a plan to turn the tables on them. This isn’t what happens, but it is loosely analogous to my story. It may seem small and inconsequential–after all, the result was the same and was arrived at in a virtually identical manner–but in the original draft the so-called “victim” was unwavering in their position. There was never a doubt as to their state of mind, their strength, their resolve. Yes, the readers themselves were tricked, but the reveal that the victim always held the upper hand as opposed to found a way to get the upper hand is an important difference.
     At least, it is to me. 
    The character has been developing more and more into a fully independent person who shows loyalty because they want to as opposed to being obligated to. In his relationship with the other main character, there is nothing transactional: they both love one another without regard to what they are owed in return. It seems to me that relationships built on mutual love and respect are the strongest–and when that love and respect comes from a sincere place, a very real desire to see one’s partner thrive…well. At the risk of being judgmental, I’d call that real love.
     That’s why I find the scene from Citizen Kane to be so powerful. In case you don’t know to what I am referring, here you go:
LELAND: You talk about the people as though you own them. As though they belong to you…You just want to persuade people you love ‘em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way according to your rules.
KANE: A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.
     And that’s the real tragedy of Charles Foster Kane’s life, it seems to me. He cannot live–cannot even conceive–of a pure relationship that isn’t transactional, that isn’t a quid pro quo. In my story, I’m trying to set up that my two main characters love one another not because they are obligated to, or because they feel they “owe” the other. They love one another because they genuinely care. And, small as it may seem, the little edit K suggested chips away ever so slightly at that, and I can’t have it.
     I hope this made sense–it sure seems like counting angels on the head of the pin (look it up), but it matters to me.

Be seeing you!

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Characters and Ideas

7/23/2023

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When you think of some of the best books (or TV shows or movies, if you prefer) you realize that in many of them nothing actually happens. 
Well, that’s not quite true, but you get my drift. The idea of plot, or incident, takes a back seat to characterization and character development. 
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called “The Little Tin God of Characterization,” in which he posited that, in a science fiction story, ideas are of prime importance. Orson Scott Card formed the MICE quotient in science fiction stories (milieu, idea, character, event) where “idea” and “character” stories were different things. 
So what’s going on here? Do I watch Star Wars for all the deep characterization? The complex interplay of shifting motives? Is Star Wars so popular because it is the Faulknerian ideal of the human heart in conflict with itself?
Or, on the other hand, is it so popular because of the cool s.f. (and in this case, read “science fantasy”) ideas? Hyperspace, intelligent and sentient robots? The Force? 
I’m being unfair, of course–I’m presenting this as a binary choice, when the question is nothing of the sort. A blending, an interface of character and idea is obviously at play in the best of works. The incidents that happen, or the ideas behind those incidents, take on a special meaning when the happen to this character or that one. What happens in Casablanca means very little if it’s not Rick Blaine to whom they’re happening. 
Still, I think Asimov had something. The idea is what sets science fiction apart from other genres. “What if you could go back in time?” “What if aliens contacted us?” “What if a robot could be built who could feel?” All of those are IDEAS that are the special province of science fiction. If you take those away, you may indeed have an excellent story–but you wouldn’t have a science fiction one.
The problem with the Good Doctor’s approach (which his successors pointed out) is that it relies on labels, as if our job was to stock the shelves of some imaginary library and place each story squarely in its appointed genre. Increasingly (and, to my way of thinking, this is a good thing) stories are including science fiction elements while not really being science fiction–stories where the science fiction “idea” is merely a gimmick or a plot device to heighten tension or bring a conflict into sharp relief. The story may not delve into the ramifications of a scientific development but simply present the idea in a sort of “plot vacuum.” The aforementioned Star Wars is frequently guilty of this. So are countless love stories involving time travel, or many of the post-apocalyptic stories where the science of how we got here is secondary or even insignificant to the story.
A purist might claim “these are not science fiction!” and I might even agree. 
But so what? I mean, ultimately, who cares? Was Christopher Reeve’s Superman science fiction? We can debate this back and forth, but at the end of the day, does it matter?
One of the best things to come out of the so-called New Wave of science fiction was the inclusion of what had been (and still are) marginalized voices in literature. It seems like this necessitated a widening of what science fiction was: no longer was it shackled to white cisgendered heterosexual able-bodied Protestant men speaking in clipped military accents as they bravely conquered space: everyone’s got a story to tell, not just those sitting atop the social pyramid. Inclusion, welcoming, and the Big Tent gave us some of the best science fiction we’ve ever seen, and if that meant widening the definition and placing characters–especially ones we’ve not heard from before–at the forefront, then I sing their bodies electric.

Be seeing you!



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    Hello to you. Glad to have you here. I'm going to write what I feel in this blog, and while I'm not going to go out of my way to offend you, neither am I going to hold back.

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