This is a great interactive session from with Amber Case, cyborg anthropologist, TED speaker and SXSW keynote speaker. She discusses cyborgs, extension of the human self, and artificial intelligence. She also talks about Avogadro Corp (37 minute mark). This is from a Nov 29, 2012 hangout.
Support children’s charities and get a promotional activity
Mark Lawrence, author of Prince of Thorns, has created The Million Dollar Bookshop webpage, where he’s selling off pixels to raise money for children’s charities: http://www.themilliondollarbookshop.com/
Donors can have their books listed, which gives them valuable exposure while raising money. Each image links to a the retailer or author page of your choice. I’ve made a donation to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, and listed A.I. Apocalypse.
Check it out: http://www.themilliondollarbookshop.com/
Thoughts on AI Intelligence
In one of my writers groups, we’ve been talking extensively about AI emergence. I wanted to share one thought around AI intelligence:
Many of the threats of AI originate from a lack of intelligence, not a surplus of it.
An example from my Buddhist mathematician friend Chris Robson: If you’re walking down a street late at night and see a thuggish looking person walking toward you, you would never think to yourself “Oh, I hope he’s not intelligent.” On the contrary, the more intelligent, the less likely they are to be a threat.
Similarly, we have stock trading AI right now. They aren’t very intelligent. They could easily cause a global economic meltdown. They’d never understand the ramifications.
We’ll soon have autonomous military drones. They’ll kill people and obey orders without ever making a judgement call.
So it’s likely that the earliest AI problems are more likely to be from a lack of relevant intelligence than from a surplus of it.
On the flip side, Computer One by Warwick Collins is a good AI emergence novel that makes the reverse case: that preemptive aggression is a winning strategy, and any AI smart enough to see that it could be turned off will see people as a threat and preemptively eliminate us.
One blog or many blogs?
A fellow author recently asked if he should have one blog where he consolidates all of his interests, or different blogs for his different audiences, since they are pretty disparate topics with little overlap.
It’s a dilemma with no single right answer.
One point of view says that the most loyal fans come about on single author blogs. That is, Brad Feld has a rabid set of fans, while something like GeekDad, with a dozen different bloggers, won’t ever be able to inspire such a loyal group of fans.
The thing about single author blogs is that they almost always shift topics over time. A person’s interests change year by year, and five years later they may be onto an entirely different set of topics. Yet it still works. We like to follow people.
By comparison, a topic oriented blog is just that: a topic. The reader’s interest in that topic may wane, and they’ll stop following. I’m no longer reading TreeHugger or the other environmental blogs I used to read. Yet I’m still reading Rebecca Blood, a blogger I met once and emailed a dozen times, and who has some very different interests from me.
My thought is that over the short term, topic-specific blogs are better. But over the long term, just expressing all your interests in one place is better.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on having one blog or many.
Infinity Mirror
When I was about ten, I visited a nightclub for a party of some kind; an aunt or uncle’s birthday, I think. In the hallway into the main room was a large window into another universe. At least, that’s what it looked like to me at age ten. It was actually an infinity mirror: a regular mirror in the back, a string of lights around the edge, and then a two-way mirror in the front. The reflection of the lights bounces back and forth, and it feels like you’re peering into deep hole in the fabric of space.
It made such an impression on me that I’ve thought about it ever since, and finally decided to build one. It took about three hours construction time. I ordered LEDs ribbon lights and a two-way mirror film online, and picked up the rest locally. The two mirrors are held apart by a 1×4 wooden frame, and L shaped molding holds the mirrors onto the frame. The mirror and the glass are 24″ by 36″, and I went with that dimension because they were both available precut in that size.
From Victim to Hero: Joss Whedon’s Characters
From Victim to Hero:
Joss Whedon’s characters
Scott Allie (editor in chief, Dark Horse Comics), Rhiannon Louve, Kara Helgren, Anna Snyder, Todd McCaffrey
· Q: How do you feel about Joss’s portrayal of River, in terms of her presentation as a victim?
o AS: These are things that are done to her, from an outside presence. She doesn’t have a choice. She had no participation in her victimization. By the end of the series, her programming is something that is not externally triggered, but she embraces and uses.
o RL: There is being the victim of a crime vs. a victim mentality. Joss’s characters are victims of crime who do not embrace a victim mentality, but instead rise up and fight.
o K: Ophelia (Hamlet) was used as a pawn by everybody, and essentially had no control over that. Shakespeare implied that she saw drowning as a way out. By comparison, River saw another way out.
· Q: Joss took a lot of heat for Dollhouse. Characters were so victimized: treated as pawns and prostitutes and were traumatized.
o AS: Echo had some free agency. She signed on the dotted line so they could do those things to her. It complicates the notion of victimized. Women who are in abusive relationships, there is a transitional periods, on their way out, they sometimes go back. They are choosing to go back into a victim. They need to own their situation.
· Q: Was Joss glorifying victimization by making a whole cast of victims?
o RL: I didn’t feel that way. I felt empowered by the show. He explored philosophical sexual ideas that were ahead of their time.
§ AS: Joss has been exploring prostitution throughout his shows.
§ K: Showing people freely talking about sexual themes: people are not always comfortable with this. Sex is a part of life, a basic need of human beings. Some people just felt this was an exploitation. It was calling attention to the victimization that does happen. We don’t see these things, we try not to think about them, but they are happening all the time. And that’s hard for people to swallow.
· Q: Inarra
o AS: They are in control of their client base, their money, they have political power. It’s clearly not victimization.
o TM:
o RL: It’s hard to have a character that is traditionally feminine and still powerful. And that’s what Inarra is.
o K: She is in control. She’s a sex worker, but she’s not a victim. River is the victim – because she has things done to her that she doesn’t want. The companion guilt is very wealthy and powerful. She knows how to fight. She’s able and capable. Whereas River is victimized to such an extent that she doesn’t even know how to control herself.
· Q: Regarding Dollhouse: even if it could be done, could it be done ethically? Is there anything that can be done without victimization if people are desperate to sign that control?
o RL: This is what makes Adele such an interesting character. First you think she’s the villain, and then you don’t. Adele is at the center of how the LA dollhouse was run.
o K: Adele will get shit done, if it needs to be done, but she has a caring nature to the dolls.
o Audience: The dolls in the LA dollhouse were still treated as human beings, while the Washington dollhouse treated them only as tools.
· Q: Where does Echo become a hero?
o RL: She starts out as either a hero or a terrorist. She’s back into a corner, and she’s coerced. Her personality starts to carry over from personality to personality.
§ SA: Is this what makes her a hero?
o K: When she’s in her terrorist days, she’s Caroline, not Echo. As Echo, she starts picking up pieces of other personalities she’s had programmed into her.
· SA: Dollhouse explores identity, without answering anything. We can all make different conclusions.
· SA: We see female characters put in a victim role. They are put through some kind of horrible sexual ringer, to rise up from the ashes. Is it exploitive? Is it emotionally honest? (talking about Tomb Raider game)
o TM: It’s a default state for a male writer to say that if I am going to put a female character through the ringer, it’s going to be through rape. But there are other tools. There are things that can make you lose your will to live faster.
o K: Originally the backstory was that she lost her father. Now this is being retconed. It’s a shorthand for something more complicated. And it trivialized the event.
o RL: Bringing it back to River, there’s nothing about sexual victimization. It’s not about sex. It’s a female character, and she’s rising up from her oppressors, and it’s nothing about sex.
§ Even if you don’t go to a story about rape, it’s about being married against their will.
§ Even things that are written now, for children, have that trope.
o K: Using either rape or forcing to marry: you’re taking free agency away from a woman.
o RL: forcing to marry is something that is still happening in the world today.
· Talk of playing to strength. There’s victimization, but then how do you deal with that.
· Women are victimized by taking away their free agency (e.g. control over their body, their mind, their relationships), and that almost never happens to men.
o It’s the shorthand for a female character.
o A male protagonist is usually more complex.
· SA: Choice being taken away from the protagonist is a common trope. But that’s not always true: Ripley in Alien. Linda Hamilton in Terminator. On the other hand, you have Catniss in Hunger Games, where everyone is essentially a slave.
o Gender is not an issue in the story of Catniss. It’s not about a young women rising above, it’s about a person rising above.
o SA: All genre fiction is about taking support structure away from the protagonist.
o AS: But female and male characters are treated different. You don’t see nearly as many kidnapped male characters (unless they are children). You don’t see men sexually victimized. The method of removing choice and agency is different. A wider range for male characters vs. female characters.
o
Kung Fu vs Wire Fu: Realistic, working fight scenes
Kung Fu vs. Wire Fu
Are your fight scenes realistic? Do they work on the page?
Steve Perry, Kamila Miller, Dave Smeds, Blake Hutchins, Steven Barnes
Orycon 34 — 2012
· DS: The first thing, when doing an action scene, is to get intensely into the viewpoint of my character. How is the fight seeming to them. What are the threats to them. See it from the viewpoint of the expert. In doing this, it makes it accessible, regardless of whether the reader is familiar with the combat or not.
o I know unarmed combat, but mostly I write about armed combat. There’s some cross over in terms of what people are aware about in fighting, but the techniques are different.
· SP: I go for wire fu. Real fighting is boring. Someone gets hit, and you don’t know what happened. You want to write for it to be entertaining.
· KM: I try to pull in the point of view really tight. In the beginning, I tried to do it like a movie: choreographed. But for writing, what’s important is the impact on the character.
· SB: every fight has its own story arc. Look at Sylvester Stallone: every fight is a 3-act story.
· BH: When I write a fight scene, I start with grounding in the sense. That makes it exciting. What is the scene meant to show? It is real jeopardy, or show competence?
o What does it feel like to feel outclassed?
o What does it feel like to be hit?
o What does it feel like to be tricked.
· SB:
o Fight scenes are like sex scenes. There’s a lot going on, but what’s important is what it reveals about a character. A character should not come out as the same person.
o I start by asking myself who is this person at the start, and who they are at the end. Either they change, or they learn something about themselves, or they reveal something about themselves.
· Pet peeves?
o KM: The dude who wades through the battlefield hacking and slaying.
o DS: Karate kid: where you take someone with almost no training, and they can beat people who have been training for years.
o SP: Tom Cruise. A 5’8” guy can’t play Jack Reacher, who is 6’5”.
o SB: In PG and PG-13 movies, when people are fighting other people far more capable. There should be ripping eyes and going for the groin.
· What do you love?
o SB: The fight scene in From Russia with Love in the train cabin.
o SB: Peter O’Donnell wrote the best fight scenes ever.
§ He’s put people in a situation they could not possible win.
§ Then convince you they have to win.
§ Modesty Blaze books
o You find the people who do know this stuff. You have the scenes express something: somebody’s loyalty, their tolerance for pain, the lengths they will go to.
· Get the original episodes of the Green Hornet with Bruce Lee. He’s genuinely good. The last few seasons are the best because they bought up people he could really fight against.
· Guilty Pleasures:
o SP: Green Arrow on CW: the kids aren’t watching this, so they just go wild. “kill them all”
o SB: Wild, wild west
o
So You Want to Be a Writer
So You Want to Be a Writer
Richard A Lovett, Amber D. Sistla, Karen Azinger, Ken Scholes
Orycon 34 — 2012
· AS:
o My writing time is so precious that when I drop my kid off at daycare, I don’t even leave the building: I sit down outside the door, and start writing.
· KS:
o The most important thing I can do is write.
o At a book signing, I can sell maybe 3 or 4 books
o At a con, I can sell maybe 4 books
o So the most important thing I can do is write.
o When a book comes out, people will read it, and they’ll publicize it.
· RL:
o If it’s sunny, I’m looking for things to do during the day. And then I’ll write at night.
o C.S. Lewis always wrote in the morning, and then went for a walk in the afternoon.
o 6 hours of writing in a day is a hard drive.
§ KS: I consider 3 to be good.
· Q: Do you have agents? How important are they?
o KS:
§ For my NY stuff, I have an agent. They have boilerplate contracts with all the publishing houses. I reap the benefits of what Jim Butcher has been able to get, because we have the same agent.
§ For my short stories and small press stuff, I do it myself.
§ Don’t get tangled up in writers. You have to practice your craft until you have a publisher ready material.
o RL:
§ For my non-fiction work, I don’t have agents. Usually publishers approach me. Would they get me a better deal? Maybe. Would it be 15% better? Maybe not.
· Q: How much time do you spend writing vs. rewriting
o KS: Much more writing, but I’m notorious for really good first drafts, perhaps from so much time spent on short stories.
o KA: I tend to take about nine months to write the manuscript. Then I give it to my alpha readers (about nine people). I wait to hear from them. Then I take their comments into consideration, and doing a global edit. I tighten it up, increase the tension, kick everything up a notch. “they passed the building”, goes to “they passed the thatched-roof cottage”. Then it goes to my editor, and identifies copyediting, but also, for example, asked me to focus on three chapters that needed rework.
o AS: With novels, because they are so long, if I am a third of the way through, and I see a problem, e.g. that something needs foreshadowing, I don’t make the change then. I just make a note. Then later, I can go through and do all the notes in one pass.
· Q: What do you like most?
o KA:
§ Holding the book in my hand
§ Having people read it
o KS:
§ I won an award in France last year, and this year they’re asking to fly me out there. That’s exciting.
§ Whether I get a letter from a fan or win an award, it’s feels good.
o RL:
§ Being able to do what I like to do. I can pick the assignments I want to do. If its fun, it’s worth writing about.
· Q: What’s your least favorite thing?
o KS:
§ I don’t like flying.
§ I get tired of seeing the same thing over and over ahead. Like having to read galley proofs.
§ Colleagues can get snarky.
o KA:
§ When I am doing the global edit, I get tired of working on it.
§ When I get feedback, and someone says “this doesn’t work”. Sometimes I know how to fix, and that feels good. Other times, I don’t know, and I hate that.
o AS:
§ Rejections.
o RL:
§ Lede panic.
· Q: What if it’s not the right length?
o RL: I write it to the length it needs to be, and then I edit it to the length required.
o KA: Even more than word length, it’s got to be really good. If it is really good, they’ll help you get it to the right length.
o RL: Don’t pad. It really sucks.
o KS: My first novel was 130,000 words, and they bought it and wanted four more novels too.
o KS: I start with the end in mind. I imagine a 130,000 word book, in a 3 act structure, and allocate out the word count. And I know early on whether I’m running hot or cold. It’s less wasteful than writing 200,000 words and then editing down to 130,000.
· Q: Is there anything you wish you had known before choosing writing
o AS: I just wish I had more time to do it. I wish I had started before I had kids.
§ Just do it now with whatever time you have.
o RL:
§ In non-fiction, I would have learned what PAC journalism is like. It’s not fun, and I didn’t know. Publishers are sheep, and it’s really frustrating. They are trying to follow the trend. If you buck the trend, they don’t want it. If you follow the trend, it’s not the trend by the time you’re done.
o KA:
§ Pitching. In the beginning you send your query letter out, and get a ton of rejections. Instead, go to a writing conference, and sign up for face to face pitches.
· Write a pitch that focused on the main character, a different one that pitches the main problem, etc… Come up with five different pitches. Try them all. Watch their faces… you can tell when they are turned off. Switch to the second pitch. If necessary, the third pitch. What I found was that my fourth pitch was the most effective. I started with the fourth pitch for all of the successive pitch sessions, and I used it with my query letters.
o KS:
§ If I did anything differently, I wouldn’t be who I am now and where I am now.
§ In the last five years, I got a five book contract, and gone full time as a writer, and lost eight members of my family, and gained two members.
§ What’s important in writing? There’s no secret handshakes, no magic bullets. You can go to cons, and you can meet people, but unless you have a novel, and a good novel, nothing else matters. Producing work doesn’t just yield you a finished work, it makes you a better writer.
· Q: Choosing indie publishing?
o AS: You’ve got all the jobs. Even if you farm it out to other people, you are in charge of it. There’s no money coming in during the very beginning. (as opposed to getting an advance.)
o Annie Bellet: Don’t choose. Do both.
o KS: I haven’t done indie publishing yet, but I will. And I’ll use my contacts from traditional publishing (editors, cover designers) to get it done.
o RL: I did my first work, and it was a collection of pieces previously vetted through Analog. Collections don’t usually make a lot of money, so there wasn’t much risk,
o KA: I had a five book deal with a publisher. And they were awful. But I finally escaped. I would recommend doing it yourself.
That’s gotta hurt: wounding and maiming your characters
That’s gotta hurt
Why wounding, maiming, and torturing your characters is good
Mike Shepherd Moscoe, Rory Miller, Burt Kemper, Adrian Phoenix
Orycon 34 – 2012
· It’s about realism in your characters. If they don’t get injured or heal too quickly, it’s not realistic.
· MM:
o Jack Devitt kills between 10 and 50 characters per book
o Mike kills anywhere between 100 and 1000
o John Henry kills a 1000 and up
o It’s important that it makes sense, that it contributes to the storyline
· AP:
o Author of two urban fantasy series
o Even though they are powerful characters, they are still emotionally and physically tortured and suffer.
· RM:
o Non-fiction writer
o (works for police department?)
· BK:
o Engineer. Professionally, done force protection work, ballistics, etc. Works in the military.
o Long term emotional, physical and spiritual damage is done to people, and that stays with them.
· RM:
o I tend to throw most books against the wall.
o There’s almost no way to engage in violence that is consequence free.
o Legs, eyes, ears, fingers, hands: they eventually no longer work the same.
o In fiction, there is a trope that characters emerge unscathed and unscarred.
o The patterns for warriors: they tend to keep doing what they do until they die or drink themselves to death.
· MM:
o Psychologically, we’re not permitted to kill humans.
o Until your not psychologically normal.
o There’s a small fraction that are intelligently capable of distinguish between the times when it is permitted to kill and not kill.
o The vast majority of us don’t have the programming to do that.
· RM:
o Some people who go out and kill professionally, they still have strong family relationships.
· BK:
o Women have different adrenaline cycles than men.
· RM: Male and females have different stress response:
o Men get angry quicker and let go of it quicker
o Woman get angry slower (still thinking logically longer), but stay angry or upset later. Crying is a way to release stress.
o Because of this, women can be trained to fight cold. They can think, plan, aim better, because they are not yet in a stress response.
· BK:
o If you’re ambushed and you spend time thinking, you’re going to be dead.
o If you respond automatically, because your training is instinctive, your chances are improved. (And specifically, it’s better to turn into an ambush.)
· MM:
o The characters that’s just been introduced – if they die, it’s somewhat meaningless.
o The character that’s lived through three books, that they care about, and who has to make a choice between his life and his wifes, and then dies… that’s gut wrenching.
o As a writer, you have to make characters that you care about die: it’s got to be serious.
· BK:
o Sometimes you have to roll the die and decide what characters to kill. Otherwise, as a writer, you’ll keep protecting them. Roll a die to choose who to kill. Let it reflect the randomness of life. Let the other characters grow as a result.
· RM:
o There’s no such thing as the one punch knockout and simple recovery. Anything that will do enough damage to knock someone out will be a concussion or worse: dizzy and puking for days, or repeatedly passing out.
o If people do pass out, they are people who weren’t ready to fight, and they just fainted from fear.
· MM:
o Post-traumatic stress can trigger at any point
· BK:
o Societal norms vary within a culture. And characters live in a culture. They don’t commit violence in a vacuum. They do it with support or without, etc. In our society, we’re traumatized by death. In other cultures, they are not.
· Pet peeves: poorly executed or unrealistic
o BK: explosions: there’s not normally flames. There’s just a shock wave.
o RM: use common sense: if you get shot in the shoulder, it’s going to hit something. It’s nearly impossible for a bullet to go through without hitting something.
o AP: Fight scenes that are fairly brutal and no one seems to get hurt. They should just be laying there and bleeding. Not getting back up.
o MM: I loved the battle of los angelos. They got the marines right: they didn’t bunch up. They used cover, etc.
§ You get slugged in the nose, and drove the nose bone into the brain. There is no nose bone.
o BK: Don’t single source. Use medical source, trauma sources, military sources. Double check. Read Rory Miller’s books.
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Writing with All Your Senses
Writing with all your senses
Orycon 34
Annie Bellet, K.C. Ball, Adrian Phoenix
· How to do it?
o KB:
§ Pick one of the five senses that isn’t ordinarily used in writing, like taste or touch, and focus just on that sense. Do a 4-5 page writing experience.
§ Try to imagine having another sense. And write about it. Do it without referring to existing senses.
§ Flash fiction is a beautiful way to experiment with writing technique. Do a piece under 1,000 words in which I experiment with someone who only has one single, e.g. smell.
o AB:
§ Use all five senses every two pages. Do it consciously. It takes what you as the writer see in your head, and communicates to the reader.
§ All sense is a character opinion: a chair feels differently depending on the character, e.g. too small, makes their back hurt, etc. Instead of saying the “air smells like coffee”, it could be “the irritating odor of coffee wouldn’t go away”.
· KB: What’s wonderful about that is that it doesn’t just establish the scene, but it tells you something about the character too.
§ Making the bridge between character and sense is probably the biggest difference between being rejected and making sales.
o AP:
§ Unique way to use sense: the taste of bile in his throat. The tang of fear.
· Question: generic vs. specific
o AB: You need to be specific: exactly what is the color of the sky. Has the coffee been sitting on the burner too long?
· You have to dare, you have to go big. Don’t be timid.
· We want to draw people in, make them feel that it is real, but at the same time, we don’t want to pull people out of the story by being too clever with words. When they are done, the reader should be saying what a great story, not what a great writer.
· We have senses beyond the basic five:
o E.g. we can sense gravity, which way is up.
o We can sense where our limbs are, even when our eyes are closed.
o We can sense infrared, e.g. you can tell where the sun is with your eyes closed.
o You can tell compass direction by where the sun is.
· Q: Particular writers that demonstrate this well.
o AP: Stephen King
o AB: Stephen King short story: old man reminiscing about being a young boy and talking about the sense of time, how a summer would stretch on forever. He didn’t use a paragraph break for three pages: he mirrored in writing what was going on.
o KB: Stephen King is a master: he can take a very ordinary situation and turn it into a story. Tommy Knocker: he starts the chapter saying a character is going to die, then makes you fall in love, and praying he isn’t going to kill them, and then he does.
o James Lee Burke
o GRRM Game of Thrones
o Sand Kings
o With Morning Comes Mist Fall
o Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, is amazing when it comes to playing on senses.
· Read writers who are widely read. Read out of your genre. Understand why people read them. Especially people with multiple books. Word of mouth and marketing may sell a first book, but it will never sell a second book unless the first is good.
·