This is a pairing that I could not pass up. For those who have such pets, enjoy the day with them. For those of us who don’t, we get the memes. Oh well.
Well, I’m writing this on Thursday night even though Friday is a big field trip. The week has been chaotic enough, so I don’t think I can add anything else. Let me put it this way: As of the writing of this post, I have yet to finish editing chapter 7 of Darwin & the Beast Collector and I started that last Saturday. I should give up getting any editing done during the week.
So, what went wrong?
My health hasn’t been the best this week. Part of it comes down to the weather jumping from cold to warm and back again. Then, you have rain and wind, which mess with the temperature even more. All of this batters my sinuses to the point where I have trouble focusing. Doesn’t help that I got my new glasses on Saturday, which made it hard to look at anything bright white like paper. I worked really slow, which is why I didn’t finish the chapter by Monday.
Well, there was the other health disaster on Sunday. I tried one of these Celsius drinks before I did 4 hours of Pokemon Go. Fully intended to finish the chapter that night, but I didn’t realize that this drink had the equivalent of two cups of coffee. Now, I didn’t feel anything strange until evening when I sat down to dinner. My appetite vanished, my head swam, and I checked my vitals to find my pulse was staying in the 120’s. My blood pressure was the worst it had ever been then back to normal 40 minutes later, but it spiked again as my anxiety joined the party. I probably got 2 hours of broken sleep before heading into a crazy day of work on Monday. I was forced to use Zzzquil for two nights to make sure I passed out and got some sleep, which worked for a bit. Still, I began the week utterly wrecked, so I only managed to edit one more page Thursday morning since I showed up really early to work.
Just to sum up the chaos: My schedule had to get changed a few times at work to accommodate absences. There were a few rough patches that pushed my mental, emotional, and physical limits. My son had a school trip to see ‘Wicked’ and was nervous about that. He was also highly agitated about other things that I can’t get into, so we had some heavy discussions. My ex-wife and I weren’t getting along as well as we are supposed to, which is all I’m going to say about that. The Internet kept giving me trouble and . . . I know something broke and I had to fix it. Can’t remember if it was a physical thing or my sanity.
Then there was . . . Fallout? Last weekend, I did a big ranting post after having several heated interactions both in person and virtually. I kind of knew something could backfire, but it isn’t like any of my books are selling. A bunch of reviews disappeared from my books within 24 hours of the post. I noticed interactions here have been visibly reduced, including likes and views. This in turn got me thinking about something else . . .
What the heck am I doing?
Nearly 30 years ago, I was a 15-year-old who said he was going to become a successful fantasy author. Now, I’m almost 45 and I can barely edit a chapter per week much less write anything new. Much of it is a combination of my brain definitely being damaged from Covid, my work schedule going later to eliminate weekday writing, and the custody schedule created last January causing a ton of stress. I can really only write during the long breaks, which is December, February, April, and maybe summer. So, I can’t produce much of anything these days, which means writing isn’t even a viable hobby. I used to get agitated if I didn’t write within 3 days and now I’m going on nearly 2 years, which might be a big source of my sadness.
Another factor is that I don’t have the money to pay for covers and I haven’t talked to the person who did the Nytefall covers in about 1.5 years. That’s because I simply didn’t have the money to pay her and that situation has gotten worse recently. I don’t have the money for advertising too. No time to do it as well and I can barely keep this blog going, which I’m starting to wonder about. I’m not writing or doing anything interesting here, so what am I maintaining the blog for? I know if I let it die then I won’t be able to come back and try again, which might be the reason. Honestly, I really don’t know if I can ever try to be an author again due to how this ended. Remembering how many people didn’t really have faith in me and that a few backstabbed me still hurts. With other life arenas battering my sense of self-worth, I don’t know if I can put myself through it again.
I don’t know if this is the stress from everything building up and giving me a case of depression, but I really do feel lost. Survival mode for years isn’t healthy. My solo trip in mid-April to do editing and get away might help, but I don’t know how long the healing will last. My life isn’t going well. I think the reason I play Pokemon Go so often is because catching shinies and leveling up gives me some sense of victory. Considering how many times I’ve lost, I guess I psychologically need something to give me a boost. It doesn’t answer the question on what I should do with any books I write and finish though. I will still write when or if I can, but my heart is having trouble trusting my abilities since I can’t be sure I still have any talent. That’s probably caused more by the brain fog that still shows up at times ever since my first bout of Covid years ago.
So, goals of the week?
Finish chapter 7 of Darwin & the Beast Collector.
Get a haircut
Help son with homework.
Go to son’s NYSSMA performance next weekend.
Curse the wind gods who won’t leave Long Island the fuck alone.
Finish May blog posts . . . Maybe I should repost old ones during July and August? Would that make sense?
Say you really want to use a character who alters reality. Yet, you don’t want to lose all tension of the story. Hard to do when this character can change everything around them if they wish. What can you do besides jettisoning the character?
Keep it a passive power that the character is not fully aware of. This means they won’t always get an easy out of a situation. Come up with a specific trigger like them being stressed to a certain point or nearly dying. The point of this method is to have a way to prevent them from altering reality all the time and eliminating all tension.
Create a cost for using their power. It could be that they lose sanity or begin fading from the world they are changing. Maybe a sacrifice is needed for each use. The size of the sacrifice depends on what they wish to change. For example, giving up a favorite pen would allow them to win a raffle for a new washer/dryer, but they would have to give up the memories of their parents to rebuild the entire world.
Limited the scope of what they can change. Lesser forms of reality alteration exists such as luck manipulation. Even magic that allows one to transform one object into another can be used here. The full, unchecked power to change reality should be prevented as much as possible to protect the story.
If you really want to go full God power, you can temper this by giving the character a mild personality. A hero or villain that doesn’t really want to use the power because they’re okay with most things will restrain the usage. You can’t have them do whatever they want because they’re simply not that type of person. This runs the risk of them getting stale and people seeing no point in them, but it could work for a time.
Put the power on a supporting character who isn’t around all the time. This means the main character can’t depend on the power and will have to bargain for its use. The one who has it can simply say no if the requested change would cause too much trouble for the story. It can also be on a neutral character, so even the villains may have the opportunity to utilize it.
Prepare yourself for juggling a multiverse, which is a concept you’ll be accused of stealing from Marvel, but DC really did it first in comics and a pro-Socratic philosopher named Anaximander made the first multiverse theory without using the actual term.
Give everyone the power to alter reality, so it means absolutely nothing. If everyone can do it then there will always be someone to counter the changes. It would mean that the power is pointless, but it’ll be there.
There are many schools of thought when it comes to killing in fiction. I’m only going to go over four of the most common to give you an idea of the basic arguments you can run into out there:
All Necks on the Line– Readers and authors who believe this is the best way to write a story feel that every character is fair game. If the main hero dies then that’s where the story was meant to go and someone will take the mantle. These books tend to create a rather large body count in order to drive the point home, which could lead to plenty of fodder figures. People who argue for this method don’t have a big problem with this because it’s what they want. The only criticism would be to make sure the deaths mean something, but that’s not a deal breaker. There can be a maintained distance from every character since it’s expected that any of them can die at any moment.
Selective Deaths– This is probably where I fall most of the time because I feel that a character death needs to have a big impact. The argument here is that one shouldn’t kill heroes and villains with such ease. Each one is important to the adventure, which will be altered once they are gone. Eliminating someone early means the plot can’t reach where the author wants it to go. Stories like this can have a high risk of ‘plot armor’, but this can be minimized by having some deaths. Once the audience realizes that the author is being selective instead of avoiding killing entirely, they will be less likely to get annoyed at heroes surviving multiple encounters. Of course, this still requires that you kill characters or, if you can’t do that, make them fall back in their evolution at times.
Only Villains Die– This school of thought can be seen as naïve and uninteresting, but it’s common and fairly simplistic. Readers who gravitate towards these stories don’t want to see good people die while evil ones continue to thrive. Older stories work this way too because there was a period when it was believed heroes shouldn’t even bleed. There are legitimate reasons for doing this. Authors with very few or a single protagonist facing many villains don’t have the option of killing their hero, unless the adventure is set to end that way. The target audience could be children, which is a demographic typically given stories where good triumphs over evil without question. So, don’t think that this simplest of styles should be tossed out immediately.
Nobody Dies– There isn’t a single death in these stories, which one would assume is for very little children. Adults may be exposed to these types of adventures as well if the author refuses to kill a character. Even the villains survive after their plans are foiled. This does work in some stories where the heroes can’t take the life of a villain without being arrested for murder. Establishing that it’s illegal to kill someone in a fictional society does limit the amount of death you can include in an adventure. Those who do kill are clearly villains, but if the bad guys are not the murdering types then that leaves you with accidents to take anyone out. It’s when nobody dies in a story where there are constant death-dodging situations that it comes off as everyone having ‘plot armor’. At this point, it’s not even plot relevant, but simply that the author is refusing to take a fictional life.
As you can tell, each school works in specific situations, so there’s no right or wrong way to handle character deaths. It comes down to how well you set it up and the reason for why it happens in the story.
Wasn’t sure if I ever wrote about characters who alter reality, but something triggered the idea again. Wish I remembered what I was watching at the time since this came to me as I was falling asleep. The combination made me think of characters like Haruhi Suzumiya up there. Basically, those who alter reality without realizing it.
To explain this, I will simply describe Suzumiya. She is a teenage girl with the power of a god to alter reality. She can even erase reality and rebuild it if she wishes. The thing is that she doesn’t realize she has this power. Instead, she is interested in living an exciting life with aliens, time travelers, and espers being real. She has inadvertently conjured/attracted these things with her power, but they all agree that she can’t know about her own abilities. So, the story involves her having adventures while her friends make sure she never learns the truth about herself.
This differs from what people are into now where a character knows what they can do and directly use their power. For example, Scarlet Witch and her magic or whatever it is they’re calling it these days. This type of character can create a problem in that they are too powerful. Threats can be erased with a thought, so they are never seen to be in any danger. Many stories result in them being removed either by their own power or an actual God showing up to do the job. All other characters are unable to do anything about them, especially if they turn evil. I’ll get more into that on Wednesday though.
With a dreamer altering reality, you can be more subtle. They don’t really want to change the world, so not all of their desires will be met. It’s more of a ‘it would be nice if’ situation that they don’t think can really come to pass. This only happens when they develop a strong hope that such dreams can become reality. It still isn’t a conscious change, but comes off as a happy coincidence if they even notice what’s going on. Think of it like when you hope you hit green lights on the way to work or your favorite food is on sale at the supermarket. You’ll notice, be happy, and not think it had anything to do with you beyond some luck.
I think a key to a character with this power is subtlety. Being fully aware and in control is a mess for the story, but a dreamer with no conscious control can be useful. It still runs afoul of plot armor, deus ex machina, or whatever you want to call it. The reality altering can always be done at a crucial moment to help the heroes, which is what our instincts would tell us to do. For the power to make a mess, it would have to either go out of control or the author would need to give an explanation as to why it did something to harm the heroes. For example, a dreamer accidentally conjures a ramp during a car chase because they think it would be cool and they get launched into a river. Oops, but at least you can establish this through previous actions and thoughts.
Personally, I’m always nervous about writing a character with these powers. They carry far too much temptation to mess around and fix my mistakes without giving a good reason beyond ‘they changed it’. I also have trouble thinking up ways other characters can challenge those who can alter reality. Limitations can work, but then I start wondering why I gave them this power in the first place. So, I’d have to be really careful when using one of these outside of them being a God or go with this dreamer concept. Definitely having it be a power that is used occasionally and by accident feels like a safer way to go in terms of story and power scaling.
So, what do you think of reality altering characters?
Legends of Windemere 