All posts by A. L. Phillips

Savvy Saturday – Ready or Not

Academics, New stories

It’s that time of year again. The birds are singing, the grass is green, the weather alternates between hot and cold and dry and wet, and the students don caps and gowns and march across a stage with much pomp and circumstance, to the cheers of their friends and teary eyes of their parents.

It’s time for graduation.

As exciting as it is, however, graduation isn’t a time of pure celebration and good cheer for all departing students. For some, it’s a time of mixed emotions: fear of the unknown, loss of leaving the friends one has lived and studied with for four years, trepidation about going to college, beginning a new job, or finding a job at all. College graduations are especially difficult, as the student leaves behind academia after sixteen (or more) years of schooling to begin an entirely new chapter of life. Some students feel ready. Others are more hesitant.

Even in a fantasy world.

The story that is today’s Savvy Saturday post is dedicated to this year’s college graduates – and to one college graduate in particular. You are ready to “be an adult” and live life on mission. To make the world a better place. To go where you’ve been called and do what college has prepared you to do. You’ve matured and grown and developed your talents since you started college as a bright-eyed freshman. As you move on to the next stage in your life, keep your thirst for wisdom and knowledge fresh in your mind and the friends and relationships you have built close in your heart.

And many, many congratulations. You’ve earned them.

 

Garnet_silver_ring

 

Ready or Not

by

A.L. Phillips

 

Xiristin held up the ring so it caught the light of the eight torches that blazed along the wall of Josin’s Jewelry, Amulets, and Artifacts.

“It’s exactly as you ordered it, my lady,” Josin assured her. “Are you ready to proceed?”

Ready? Heavens, no.

“A moment, if you please,” Xiristin said, continuing to scrutinize the piece she had commissioned. If there was any flaw in the ring, the magic she was about to perform could be fatal. All members of the Order of St. Pew were allowed one token to carry with them in their travels: one item of power, carrying the sacred signs of the Order itself, to help them on their way. Many chose to imbue their talisman with healing, with good luck, with protection. Simple spells, spells any fourth-year of the Order could accomplish.

But unfortunately, a simple spell wasn’t what Xiristin needed. And so she turned the ring slowly in her hand, looking for the slightest imperfection. At its top, a garnet red as heart-blood caught the light of the torches and reflected it around the room in a hundred shimmering sparks. A silver shield engraved with words of power shone proudly in the center of the top face of the stone. Around the garnet, a circular inscription proclaimed that ring’s bearer was a member of the Order of St. Pew, while the ring’s delicate silver band gleamed with etchings of figures, letters, and numbers.

Eventually, Xiristin let out a breath of relief. Josin was right: every letter on the ring was flawless, every figure exact. “It’s perfect,” she breathed. “Thank you, Josin. This is truly magnificent.”

Josin face lit up, and he gave her a bow. “My lady is too kind.”

Xiristin smiled back, but her stomach tightened as her hand closed over the ring. Now that the catalyst for the spell was in her possession, the danger she was putting herself in suddenly felt far more real. “Let us proceed,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Is all prepared for the casting?”

“As my lady directed.” Josin swept his hand toward the open doorway to his left.

Xiristin followed the jeweler, sweeping her long blue cape over her shoulder as she walked so it wouldn’t catch on the many display stands that flaunted gold, silver, and a rainbow of jewels for interested purchasers. As she entered the bare workroom at the back of the store, she shivered at the sudden drop in temperature. Here, there were no cheerful torches set in the walls. The room’s only light came from a bright blue flame that burned in midair a few inches above a round stone table at the room’s center.

“The wards are set?” Xiristin asked.

“Indeed, my lady,” Josin replied. “And the materials you requested are here.” He gestured to a small stool next to the table.

Xiristin glanced at the items on the stool: a dragon scale, a phoenix feather, a bowl of glowing water from the Sweet Sea, a perfect seven-sided crystal from the Mines of Memory. All expensive and rare, but all worth it.

Assuming the spell worked.

She forced a smile on her face and thanked the jeweler.

“It is my pleasure, my lady. May I be of any further assistance?”

Xiristin was about to say no, but then she remembered and bit her lip. “I hope not,” she said carefully, “but if…if anything happens…would you see that my horse is returned safely to the Order? Sprightly is her name; we’ve been through a lot together, and I would hate for anything to happen to her.”

Josin’s face had paled. Everyone knew that riders of the Order and their horses never separated from each other unless one or the other perished. Clearly, the jeweler hadn’t realized quite how dangerous the spell was that he’d agreed to let Xiristin perform in his workshop. “As you wish, my lady,” he finally said. “May you and the Order of St. Pew prosper.”

“And may you prosper in the Order’s care,” Xiristin replied. Once she heard the click of the door behind her, she focused her gaze on the fire and concentrated, trying to force away her nerves.

Ready or not, it was time to begin.

Xiristin took a deep breath in, then blew out, both with her breath and with her magic. As she blew, a breeze began to swirl about the workroom. It kissed Xiristin’s cheeks, pulled stray tendrils of hair from the intricate blond braids gathered at the back of her head, and whistled merrily as it gained strength.

Any other day, Xiristin would have laughed along with the breeze, and given it time to play before sending it to work. Today, however, she merely tucked her hair back behind her ears and pointed to the stool. Immediately, the wind whisked the phoenix feather and dragon scale into the air. They tumbled together on the breeze, whirling around the room in ever-tightening circles until they met the blue flame at the room’s center.

Whoosh!

Xiristin braced herself against the sudden vortex of power that surged into existence. She had never felt magic this powerful before, and this was only the beginning of the spell. “Primus,” she said, her voice shaking. She braced herself: at her word, her ears popped with a change in pressure, while the flame turned bright gold.

Xiristin suppressed a surge of elation. It had worked! Focus, she told herself. This was only the beginning.

The crystal was next. When the wind carried it to the flames, the fire roared up around it until the crystal itself burned gold.

“Secondus!”

As Xiristin spoke, the air turned frigid, while the flames around the crystal turned white as the snow around the building where she and her cohort had resided for the past four years.

She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat as memory intruded sharply into her casting. There would be no snow in the land to which she was being sent. She and her cohort were all receiving their arms tomorrow, the latest in the long history of the Order of St. Pew to be commissioned to fight for Freedom and for the Faith. But she was the only one being sent to the far western desert.

Her instructors had told her time and again that she was ready. She knew in her head that they were right: it was time to leave, time to begin her new apprenticeship with the masters of St. Davidus who would hone her skills until she was a master herself.

And yet…

Gritting her teeth, Xiristin pointed to the bowl of water on the stool. The wind lifted it into the air, whirling it around the room without spilling a drop until it hovered above the white flames that roared in midair. She motioned: the water slowly poured down onto the fire. Steam hissed, filling the air with the scent of roses. When it cleared, the fire now burned in the crystal alone, its white flames dancing and leaping inside the stone’s faces.

“Tertius!”

The crystal turned red: the color of the heart, the color of the garnet in Xiristin’s ring. Power hummed out from it, prickling the hair on her arms.

The priming was complete.

The woman’s breath was coming heavy now, and her head felt light, dizzy, like it did after studying all night for an exam. And that had been the easy part of the spell.

Xiristin let out a long breath, concentrating as hard as she could even as her heartbeat pounded against her skull. Now she would see if she was ready, if her training was sufficient for the spell she was attempting to cast.

If it wasn’t, of course, she wouldn’t know. She tried not to think of what it would be like to be sucked into the vortex she had created, for her life to be ended in a flash of fire and her memories dissolved into smoke.

It wouldn’t happen, she told herself. She was ready. She had to be.

Slowly, Xiristin stepped forward, holding her new ring out between her thumb and her first finger. With every step, the hum of power from the crystal in front of her grew stronger. Carefully, her hands shaking, the woman extended the ring, then let go. It hovered in the air just above the crystal. She held out her hands on either side of the ring, calling her power to her. And along with her power, her memories.

***

Encouragement, the White Council had whispered over her head when she had accepted the call of the Order four years ago. Joy. Hope. These you shall bring to a world lost in darkness. They shall shine in your soul, a light never to be quenched, and thus you shall push back the shadow wherever you ride.

***

The scene shifted. “You think you can do it alone? Ha!” Xiristin’s mentor folded his arms over his stout middle and fixed her with a skeptical eye. Stantus was more grizzled than some at the Order, and blunter than most, but still sharp as an arrow. And as hard as he tried to hide it behind a veneer of cynicism, Stantus cared about his initiates. It was why Xiristin liked him, why she kept coming to him when everyone else in her cohort stayed away.

Not that she liked him all the time.

“I won’t be alone,” she retorted. “I’ll have Sprightly.”

Stantus just snorted. “See above. If you’re stupid enough to try to fly solo, you’re going to crash and burn,” he told her. “Happens every time. The White Council fills your heads full of self-empowerment and actualization garbage, gives you a mission to change the world, and sends you off by yourself, all eager and bright-eyed. Then they wonder why you don’t last a month. Bloody knuckleheads, the lot of them. Not that anyone cares about my opinion.”

Xiristin raised her eyebrows and folded her arms to mimic his. “What would you recommend, then?” she said testily. “I have to go where I’m assigned, and I already know that there isn’t anyone else from the Order at St. Davidus. Unless you’re suggesting that I recant my vows and flee while I have the chance.” Her barbed sarcasm would have made her cohort-mates wince, and her other instructors assign her penalty duties for lack of respect.

Stantus, however, just laughed silently. “Can if you want to,” he said.

Xiristin gave him a pointed glare.

“All right, all right. You want to shine in the darkness and give sweetness and light wherever you go and all that mumbo-jumbo? Then make bloody sure you don’t burn out. And to do that, to continue the metaphor, you’ll need fuel. Lots of it.”

As he spoke, Stantus rummaged through the piles of manuscripts and scrolls on his desk, raising clouds of dust. “In fact, you’ll need…” he said, discarding one yellowed document after another, “this!” He held up a scroll tied with crimson and white ribbons.

“What is it?” Xiristin asked, reaching for the scroll. It was delicate in her hands, but power radiated through it into her fingers.

“A life-spell,” Stantus said.

Xiristin raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t those rather…dangerous?” she asked.

Stantus’ mouth quirked at the understatement in her tone. “Only if you can’t handle it,” he said. “You asked my advice, I’m giving it. Tie the Order to you through your memories, and your memories to you through your talisman. Don’t let this place and its people – knuckleheads and all – fade from your mind. Don’t let future shadows cloud the joy that you’ve been given and the lessons you’ve learned here.” A cynical smile came to his face. “Of course, even with a life-spell on your talisman, you won’t be able to complete your mission alone. No one can. But you might make it at St. Davidus long enough to find allies.”

***

Xiristin focused on the ring, memories flying through her head as fast and breathtaking as Sprightly’s gallop. Memories of the Order’s grand buildings of red brick and white stone, whose turrets soared toward cloudy skies. Memories of the laughter and late-night debates she had shared with the others of her cohort. Memories of her instructors, of her training, of the music and joy and hope and light of her four years in the Order’s care.

Memories of who she had been, and how she had changed, and who she knew she was.

Filling her mind with her memories and her vision with her ring, Xiristin spoke the words she had memorized from Stantus’ scroll.

As the incantation flowed off her tongue, the fire within the focal crystal concentrated beneath its top face. Brighter and brighter it grew, until it suddenly sprang upward, the fire of magic, of memory, of life, flowing from the crystal into the ring in a rush of energy. It was too bright to look at. She squeezed her eyes shut, blood rushing to her head as power burned in her veins, all crystalizing and focusing Xiristin’s memories in the silver band and its blood-red stone.

“Finite!” she gasped, and it was done.

It was done.

She was alive!

Xiristin’s breath came in laughing gasps. She sank to the floor on trembling legs, sweat dripping down her face, and rested her head on her knees. She couldn’t think; she hardly had the energy to breathe. But she was alive, and the crystal had stopped glowing, and the ring that hovered above it was now filled with a silver light.

With a small exhausted smile, she sat on the floor, content to just gaze at the ring. It was another fifteen minutes before her strength returned enough for her to push herself up from the floor. Her fingers still shaking, she reached out and touched her new talisman. The ring was cool and smooth, and as she ran her fingers over its band, joy flowed into her spirit: familiar joy, her own joy, but now crisp and fresh and clear as a mountain stream. She slipped the ring onto the fourth ringer of her right hand – the traditional place for a ring of the Order – and laughed aloud in delight.

The spell had worked.

Hope, joy, encouragement: there they were, secured in memory, protected against the darkness. There they were, a fount that could overflow through her to a world in need. Though she would soon leave behind the columns of pines and gentle streams of the Order of St. Pew, its teaching and music and light would live in her heart and her soul always. Her friends would be with her, as would Stantus and the White Council.

And when she rode into the west, it would be with hope and joy and light held firmly and forever in her right hand. Xiristin’s eyes brightened at the thought of her upcoming assignment. She would keep light and hope in her heart, even as she learned from the masters at St. Davidus. She would fulfill her mission.

She knew it in her heart.

She was ready.

The End

 

Copyright 2014, A.L. Phillips

 

 

Savvy Saturday – Stunt Fighting

Research, Writing Tips

Today I got to watch people pretend to punch and kick each other for three hours. It was delightful. I took lots of notes.

Jessie_graff_stuntsI hadn’t planned on doing research for my writing today when I went to campus; I had planned on cleaning my office, working on a paper, and categorizing citations on my computer. But when I saw that a Hollywood stuntwoman and alumna of the university (Jessie Graff, credits include Live Free or Die Hard and X-Men: First Class) was going to be giving a “master class” this afternoon in the theater department – “Free and open to the public!” – I figured that the citations could wait. Even though I’m not writing anything right now either involving martial arts or the stunt profession, learning about both of them in the context of a workshop class was a fantastic opportunity.

In my experience with martial arts and rapier, the instruction is aimed at giving individuals a deep knowledge of the sport. History, proper mindset, technique, solid footwork and grounding, all is important before you start getting to the parts that “look good” to an audience. A three-hour theater workshop in stunt fighting, however, is completely different. There, it’s all about what your actions look like. In other words, perfect for a novelist. The class also moved quickly: the instructor took the class through basic punches, rolls, and kicks, as well as how to “properly” respond to them.

“To learn how to properly react to being hit in the side of the face,” Graff said, “place your hand on your chin, push your head to one side, and let it go limp.” Note how your head swivels, but it doesn’t lean to one side. Further, it doesn’t just turn and stay there as if you’re purposefully looking over your shoulder. Instead, it “bounces” slightly, rebounding/jiggling in reaction to the sharp movement. (Try it and you’ll see what I mean.) Graff said that she likes to think of the reaction in a “1-2-3” pattern – side, forward, side, all happening very quickly. If you’ve been “hit” especially hard, blow air into your mouth, inflating your cheeks and exhaling quickly.

Camera angles are also a much larger part of stunt fighting than I had ever thought about before. Good stunt doubles and actors will see where the camera is pointed, draw a line from the camera to the actor’s face, and know from that both what height to hit at and when the actor should respond to the hit. For instance, the instructor said that she once had to throw her punches at triceps height for an actor she was supposed to be hitting in the face, because the camera was shooting up from the level of their feet. A bit strange, she said, to be aiming punches at his arm and having his head respond to her “blows.”

Being ten feet away from a skilled stuntwoman, watching her demonstrate attacks and blocks over and over again, was a fantastic experience for me as a writer. While I don’t need to be able to do the things that fighters can, I do need to be able to write them in a way that others can picture them. In a way, then, writing is like being a stunt person. You don’t need to be able to actually throw a punch, you just need to be able to fake it well enough that the people who are enjoying the entertainment you produce think it’s real.

With that in mind, here are some mechanics I learned today about how various types of attacks and blocks work. These aren’t going to give you enough detail to become the next superhero, but they should help you write about one.

 

How to stand like a fighter:

–          Always shift, and stay on the balls of your feet. Don’t let your heels touch the ground.

–          Your feet should be shoulder width apart, with your off-foot (left, if you’re right handed) forward and your primary foot at between a ninety degree and forty-five degree angle.

–          Keep your elbows in and your hands up in closed fists, with your thumbs on the outside of your fists.

–          Keep a straight line going from your arms up the back of your hands: if you want to practice, you can rubber-band a chopstick to the back of your hand and your wrist. If you let this get sloppy, you can break your hand if you hit wrong.

–          Stay low: imagine that you have a bar placed over the top of your head, and if you stand up, you’ll smack into it.

 

How to block a punch

–          The block comes from your hip, shoulder, and arm. If someone punches toward you, twist your hip and shoulder so that you’re almost showing your back to the attacker. This should result in your back heel lifting off the floor.

–          At the same time, lift your elbow up against your ear, so that your hand is behind your shoulder. This is almost a “combing your hair” type of motion.

–          Keep your arm tight against your head; this presents a flat surface (that isn’t your head) to the attacker.

–          During all of this, keep looking at the person you’re fighting so you don’t miss anything that happens.

 

How to throw a punch

–          The motion of your hip initiates the movement, whether you’re throwing a jab, cross, or hook.

–          Keep your muscles taut all the time.

–          If you’re jabbing, turn your body to the right as you punch with your left. It’s opposite for a cross.

–          Keep your arms straight, but slightly bent: don’t hyper-extend your arms or you’ll hurt yourself.

–          For a hook punch: turn your hips, extend your arm, then come in from the side. All of this should be on one horizontal plane: no punching upward or downward.

 

How to duck a hook punch:

–          Keep your eyes on your opponent

–          Bend your entire upper body forward in a u-shaped motion toward the direction of the punch, by twisting your hips. (So if the person is swinging with his right, you duck from your right to your left and come up again.)

–          This presents the small of your back as the target, rather than your head.

–          Keep your fists by your face to block.

 

How to roll into a fighting stance:

–          Imagine a line that goes from your right pinky down your arm, then across your back in a diagonal line to your left hip and down your left ankle. This is how you land in a roll to be able to come up fighting.

–          Once your back is on the ground, tuck your left foot behind your right knee, in the shape of a four. This allows you to push up on your right leg and be in fighting position.

–          Once you know what you’re doing, you can do things like grab a sword on the ground as you go into a roll, then come up out of it holding the sword and ready to fight.

 

Two other ways of using rolls:

  1. Dive roll. In this roll, Person 1 flips Person 2 over Person 1’s shoulder. Person 2 goes into a roll and comes up fighting. To do this: Person 1 is standing in front of Person 2, facing the same direction. Person 1 holds the wrist of Person 2 with his left hand across his body, and reaches behind him to grab Person 2’s shoulder with his right hand. Using his hips, Person 1 throws Person 2 forward and into a roll.
  2. Back roll. In this roll, Person 1 is facing Person 2. Person 1 grabs Person 2’s shirt and falls backward on purpose, with his left leg straight and his right leg bent to his chest. As Person 1 falls, he places his right foot on Person 2’s lower abdomen and pushes, sending Person 2 flying over Person 1’s head and onto the ground. Person 2 lands in a roll.

In addition to learning this information, I had a blast watching the theater students get into the acting portion of the workshop. From the right angle, you could almost believe that these students were actually knocking each other silly. And then one or the other of them would laugh and the spell would be broken. All in all, it was a remarkable afternoon: both enjoyable for its own sake, and hopefully profitable for later writing. A perfect way to celebrate being done with the semester.

Pow!

 

Savvy Saturday – A Night of Inspiration

The Quest of the Unaligned, Writing Tips

I saw her at our end-of-the-semester party last night: she didn’t fit in.

Most of us were grad school students. There was a one-year-old baby, two twelve-year-old boys who poked and laughed and punched each other all night, and a spouse or two. And then there was her.

Short, quiet, dark of hair and skin, curled up on the bench with a library book, she looked like she knew that she was the odd one out. She was fourteen, and was the sister of one of the twelve-year-old boys. He had brought a friend. She had brought a book.

As she sat there turning pages, just beyond the fringe of the gathering, she reminded me of someone. Me. When I was younger, I always brought a book along to awkward social gatherings, or any event that could potentially be boring. I even brought books to “fun” things, just in case. (I can’t even count the number of homeschool “park days” where my exasperated-yet-amused mother had to tell me to put down my book and go play with my friends.) I’m experienced enough now that I can typically tell the difference between “DON’T DISTURB ME, I’M AT A GOOD PART” reading, and “I’m reading because otherwise I’ll be uncomfortable and awkward” reading.

I watched her for a few seconds – her reading was definitely in the latter category. She’d read a bit, then look up when she heard people laugh, or wander over to the drinking fountain, or sigh and shift positions. My heart went out to her.

I walked over.

“Is that an interesting book you’re reading?” I asked with my best attempt at a friendly smile. She nodded silently, looking slightly alarmed at being spoken to. I felt slightly alarmed at the alarm on her face – I’m not used to being the “scary adult” that I remember being intimidated by as a child. But I introduced myself nonetheless, and tried to look friendly as she stumbled over her words as she introduced herself in return. “I like to read too,” I said, giving her another smile. “And to write. Good stories are awesome, aren’t they? What’s that one about?”

She, however, had latched on to the first part of what I had said. “You write?” she asked. “Like, fiction?”

“Yeah. I’m a novelist.”

Her eyes grew huge in her dark face. “Really? Have you been published?”

I nodded. “One of my books has.”

Her look of wonder was like a child upon seeing Santa Claus leaving presents under the tree. It was a bit disconcerting. “Oh my gosh! What’s your book about?” she asked.

I gave her my spiel: The Quest of the Unaligned is a fantasy novel about a young man who grows up in a technologically advanced society, but is tricked into going on a quest through a magical kingdom. Of course, he doesn’t believe in magic, which makes things difficult, especially when he discovers that he’s the prince of the land.

As I talked, this girl literally began jumping up and down, her library book forgotten on the table beside her. “Really? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! That’s amazing!”

I thought the same thing. I’ve never had someone react that way to my telling them that I’m a published novelist. Ever. It was unreal.

“Do you like to write?” I asked her, though it was pretty clear what the answer was from her giddiness. Of course she did, she told me – and more than that, she liked to write fantasy and science fiction.

“Were you ever…” she asked, then looked up at me hesitantly, “a bookworm?” She said it like she was afraid it might be a derogatory phrase.

“Oh, my whole life!” I assured her. “I still am.”

It was amazing how her face lit up, and after that, the words came fast and enthusiastic. At my prompting, she told me a little about her work-in-progress, and then asked me to tell her about getting my book published, and then we were summoned to the dinner line for burgers and bratwursts. When it was our turn, the grad student in charge of Fire and Meat asked us what we wanted. I turned to my new friend, who just looked at me helplessly. I turned back. “I’d love a burger,” I told the grill-master.

The girl perked up. “That’s what I’m going to have too!” she said, as if she’d been planning on it all along.

I nearly died from the adorableness.

As we neared the end of the line, my new friend shyly asked if she could sit next to me. (Of course she could.) She tagged along behind me, and I introduced her to my other grad-school friends. We had quite a nice dinner, and she didn’t open her library book once.

“Thank you so much,” she told me later, clutching her book in one hand and jumping up and down again. “This was amazing! I’m going to get your book from the library and read it! I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d meet a real author tonight!”

I gave her my email address and told her to let me know if she has questions about writing or publishing, and that I’d be happy to help. She looked like I’d given her a new puppy. At least I think she did – I had tears in my eyes by that point. She waved at me as she left with her father and brother, still bouncing and wide-eyed.

It was weird. I’m a first-year PhD student, not a celebrity. People haven’t heard of my book, and most just give me strange/tolerant looks when I say I’m a novelist. But every so often, it seems, being a fantasy novelist gives you the power to encourage someone in a unique way. To tell a teenager that being a bookworm is cool, that reading fantasy is awesome, that writing fantasy is even more awesome, and that you don’t have to be an English major to do it. To show that it’s possible to be a normal person and get a book published.

Perhaps even to be an inspiration, the way that other writers and my professors have been inspirations to me.

Wow.

Savvy Saturday – Research Fun

Research

“Why are you researching how long it takes someone to die from gangrene?”

“Why are you at a cultural event for Native Americans?”

“What brings you to this recreation of a Civil War campsite? Are you interested in history?”

 

The correct answer to all of these questions, of course, is a bright-eyed smile and the reply, “I’m a novelist, and I’m doing research! Can you tell me more about [topic]?”

 

Today’s Savvy Saturday post is a compilation of some of the fun random things I’ve learned and seen recently as part of my research. Not all of these have to do with the same work-in-progress – and some don’t have anything at all to do with things I’m currently writing – but I am certain that any bit of trivia or interesting experience I can acquire now will add to the quality of my writing at some point in the future. So without further ado, here are some things I’ve researched recently:

 

1. How to rappel down a cliff face with nothing but a length of rope. Useful for escaping from towers and such.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBGOd8psA5I

2. Civil War campsites. Sharpshooters wore green uniforms, while others wore blue. However, sharpshooters didn’t necessarily have rifles that were any more accurate than their fellow soldiers; they might just have guns that could just shoot more times a minute. At top speeds, normal guns could be fired 3 to 5 times a minute. However, in the heat of battle, soldiers often forgot to fire their guns and just went through the loading and aiming routine over and over again, until four or five balls and powder for them would be rammed down the barrel of the gun. What happens then? Two words: not good.

 

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On the left, a sharpshooter in uniform
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A Union soldier (reenactor) demonstrating how to load a rifle.

3. Scottish accents are beautiful, but can be almost incomprensible at times. If you’re trying to write a character with this accent, you might use the words “nae” instead of “no” and “wee” instead of “little.” But to really get the sound and pattern in your head, you could try listening to someone from Scotland give a lecture:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cENbkHS3mnY

Or, listen to a voice coach explaining the distinctive features of a Scottish accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mALkCGVA2BU

 

4. How to knap arrowheads. It turns out that there are two methods that are used in shaping flint: percussion chipping, and pressure chipping (flaking). You can see a website with diagrams here: http://www.wildernesscollege.com/making-arrowheads.html, watch an example of percussion chipping here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KH_cToPdiA, then an example of pressure chipping here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnaAcP53iyk.

It turns out that some arrowheads were made just through percussion chipping (you can see an example of a percussion chipped edge here):

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Percussion edges (on the right)

While others are made through pressure chipping (note the more jagged edges):

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Pressure edges (on top)

This is actually two edges of the same piece of flint – it was given to me by this knapper as an example of both types of techniques, once he found out that I was a novelist and doing research.

WP_20131012_042 (1)

What can I say? Being a novelist is a great job.

 

Have you ever researched anything strange for a book? Post your favorite trivia or experiences in the comments!

Savvy Saturday – Holy Week

New stories

This week, in the Christian tradition, is a remembrance of the last week that Jesus lived on Earth in around the year AD 33. Whether or not you believe that Jesus is actually who he claimed to be – God in the flesh, and the savior of the world – you have to admit that his story is the greatest ever told. Every theme that stirs the human heart is present in the story of the gospel, from love, beauty, and sacrifice, to jealousy, greed, and betrayal. Life and death, good and evil, light and darkness wage war in the pages of the Bible, until all loose ends are wrapped up and a perfect ending of justice and mercy is brought to pass.

The most important part of the entire gospel story centers around Easter weekend: what the church calls Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter/Resurrection Sunday. (Saturday doesn’t get a special name, as far as I’m aware.) On Thursday night, Jesus was betrayed by one of his close friends to the religious leaders who sought to put him to death. On Friday, these religious leaders succeeded in their goals by manipulating the Roman court system in a mockery of a trial. Jesus was condemned, crucified, and buried. On Sunday, he rose from the grave, conquering death and offering new life for any who will accept it.

But today’s post is titled Good Friday, and it’s my fictional musings on how two characters might have reacted to the events of that day. For more context (if needed), see Luke 22 and Matthew 27.

Good Friday

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts – let me know in the comments section below. And have a blessed Easter weekend.

 

 

Savvy Saturday – Hearing Voices Isn’t a Bad Thing

New stories, Writing Tips

In today’s Savvy Saturday, I want to give a shout-out to my many wonderful writing friends and their unique and fabulous writing voices. While having a good story to tell lays the foundation for a novel, having a good voice is what keeps people reading. Some authorial voices are fast-paced, excited, dashing from one adventure to another, while other authors meander through the landscapes of their stories, giving you time to smell the literary roses. Both are worth reading, but they tell different types of stories.

I’ll show you what I mean.

Last year, some of my English-major friends and I participated in a writing game. We each took the same opening to a fantasy story, written in the first person past tense, and rewrote it in our personal voice. Take a look at these opening segments, and you’ll see the differences in authorial voice between them. How would you rewrite this story opening? What kind of adventure would this opening lead to for you?

My version:

Final_ALPhillips_small2

I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of wind through the trees. Still half-asleep, I took a slow, deep breath. The heady scent of a pine forest filled my lungs.

Pine? That couldn’t be right. My head still foggy and confused, I fumbled around for my glasses and found them near at hand. I put them on and gasped.

I wasn’t in the hammock where I’d gone to sleep.

More than that, I wasn’t in Nalai anymore.

This pine forest, with its soft grass, its birdsong, and its lack of hills, wasn’t anything like the jungles and mountains of the island where I distinctly remembered falling asleep last night. My memories of the night before were crystal clear: I had bid my friends goodnight and we’d all drifted off to sleep in our hammocks, each suspended between two of Nalai’s abundant palm trees. The ocean had lapped softly on the Nalaiyan beach nearby, the warm night-breeze had carried with it the smell of tropical flowers, and the air itself had tasted rich and exotic.

Nothing like the crisp wind that was now blowing in my face. What was going on? I shivered and pulled my light blue coat around me, my thoughts flying fast as the pine needles swirling at the bases of the nearby trees. Then I frowned. Why was I wearing my coat? Or, for that matter, my travel clothes? I patted the pockets of my heavy-duty pants, and found my folding knife and the stronger-than-it-looks thin rope that I always carry with me when I go adventuring. My frown deepened. It certainly didn’t look as though I had been plucked from my hammock in Nalai.

I gritted my teeth, let out a deep breath, and clasped my knife firmly in hand. Whatever had happened, I was going to get to the bottom of it…

_____

ravens

My first friend has a down-to-earth authorial voice. She sounds friendly, uses a colloquial style, and her writing is quick-paced and active. Take a look:

Friend 1

I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of wind through the trees around me. I breathed in deeply, the fresh scent of a pine forest filling my lungs. My eyes snapped open. I bolted upright and scrambled to my feet.

Where am I?

This pine forest didn’t look anything like the jungles and mountains of Nalai. There was no sign or sound of any animal or human presence nearby. I was alone in the grass-carpeted glen.

What had gotten me here, leagues away from Nalai, and back in my travel clothes, without waking me up?

I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against them. I concentrated on the swirls of neon blue and yellow in an effort to keep my mind from going completely wonkers. Okay. Okayokayokay. Umm. Not good.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to know that I wasn’t going to get out of this mess by panicking. I exhaled and opened my eyes. My gaze fell on a path leading out of the clearing…

____

owl

My second friend’s style is a bit more relaxed, introspective, and flowing. Note, for instance, the use of semi-colons and two kinds of mental dialogue (normal authorial voice and direct speaking to oneself). This friend typically writes literary fiction, which spends a lot more of its time on description and characterization than on plot happenings. It’s beautiful work, but gives a very different flavor to the piece than the almost panicked section above.

Friend 2:

I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of the wind through the trees.

Where was I?

My head hurt a little. Had I gotten drunk again?

No. No, that made no sense. I’d never been drunk; I’d never made it past a warm buzz in the whole course of my life. Drunk people got stupid, and I didn’t like being stupid. Besides, I despised the feeling of nausea too much to risk it; by sheer force of will, I hadn’t vomited since about age twelve.

Alright. Congratulate yourself later. Focus.

I breathed in deeply. This place smelled like… pine.

My eyes snapped open, and I sat up. Where was I?

The last thing I could remember was bidding goodnight to each of the other members of our gathering, and drifting off to sleep in my hammock, suspended between two of Nalai’s strong-but-supple palm trees. The ocean had been lapping softly on the Nalaiyan beach nearby; the warm night-breeze had carried with it the smell of tropical flowers. The air itself had tasted rich and exotic…

But this? Pine. Soft grass, familiar birdsong, no hills… It didn’t look anything like the jungles and mountains of Nalai. I listened hard, but, besides the birdsong, there was no sound of any animal or human nearby…

_____

hatcat

Last, my third friend has a wonderfully droll (though somewhat dark) writing style. I often find myself chuckling at the wit and cleverness in her work, even as I’m carried along by its easy flow. See for yourself!

Friend 3:

I awakened in gradual stages to the clamor of birdsong and the rustling of wind through the trees. The air was fresh and tangy and smelled of pine. I nestled deeper into my bed of moss and twigs, hoping it wasn’t terribly early in the morning.

Wait.

Birds? Pine? Moss and twigs? Where on earth was I?

My eyes snapped open and I sat up, disoriented. This… couldn’t be real. I last remembered bidding my friends a good night and drifting to sleep in my hammock, alarmingly suspended between two of Nalai’s abundant palm trees. The ocean had been lapping softly on the beach nearby, the warm night-breeze had carried the smell of tropical flowers, and the air itself had tasted rich and exotic.

I found my glasses lying beside me, put them on, and stared. This pine forest, with its soft grass, familiar birdsong, and utter lack of hills, didn’t look like anything I’d seen in Nalai. To make matters more bizarre, I’d gone to sleep in my pajamas, and now I was dressed in my travel clothes. They weren’t anything fancy: just a shirt and trousers and a light summer coat with—yes, of course—empty pockets.

I had no idea what I was doing here. I couldn’t remember anything beyond falling asleep in a hammock. Had I been drugged? Poisoned? Cast into one of those particularly nasty spells, where you think you’re living through all sorts of unpleasantness while your enemies point and laugh? If yes, someone was going to spend his retirement reminiscing about how he’d once had a liver and spleen.

Until he’d eaten them.

_____

I love reading my friends’ writing – both these friends, and others who have beautiful voices of their own. I must admit, I nag them probably more than they would like to share their unfinished work with me. But I’m sure you can see why. Each of us has our own unique style, our own way of telling a story, that lets us start with the same material and take it in completely different directions. And that’s why there’s always room for another author to tell “the same” story – because no one has a voice like yours.

 

If you come up with an opening based on this writing exercise that you’d like to share, paste it in the comments below! Or feel free to use it and start your own adventure, with your unique authorial voice to lead readers on a journey they’ll never forget…

 

 

 

Savvy Saturday – A Tale of Two Sellings

Uncategorized

As a marketing student, I am fascinated by the idea of what influences people to buy things. As a novelist, I am selfishly interested by what influences people to buy the things I write. Fortunately, these two areas of interest go together very well for me – and hopefully will lead to research findings that will be helpful to others as well.

 

I’m actually at a conference this weekend, so this blog post will be shorter than usual. However, I wanted to share an example of how thinking about marketing one’s book ahead of time, and identifying the benefits that your book brings to readers, can result in success (i.e. sales to interested people).

 

This past week, I personally sold copies of The Quest of the Unaligned to two people who are pretty much as different as possible – and who seem equally excited about the prospect of reading it. The first of these was a conservative, homeschool mother (purchased for her daughter who’s interested in reading and writing), and the second was a liberal PhD student with a background in sociology. In marketing speak, these people are in two of the target markets that I identified for my book, and I developed differentiated marketing strategies for reaching out to them.

 

One target market that I’ve had some success with is the “homeschool crowd.” Since I was homeschooled, I was able to write The Quest of the Unaligned to have elements that homeschooling parents would look for: a tie to curriculum (social science), discussion and essay questions, and a high school reading level and age-appropriate content. When I spoke with the homeschooled girl and her mother, we talked about writing stories and publishing, and ended up planning to have me hold a small writing seminar for homeschool students in the early summer. The student is excited to read my book because she likes stories and wants to be a writer, and the mother is excited to have her read my book because it has educational content (and will inspire her daughter to keep writing!).

 

Another (smaller) target market for me is the academic sociology crowd. This is a bit trickier to sell to, since most professors and students of sociology aren’t used to reading novels that incorporate their area of study, and they certainly aren’t used to using novels in their classes as teaching tools. It’s even rarer to find a sociologist who’s interested in reading a fantasy novel for its own sake. This weekend, however – at the conference I’m at, actually – I was conversing with a PhD student from another program, and it turned out that his master’s degree was in sociology. We started talking about doing research from a sociological bent, and he made the observation that what we do really comes down to storytelling. I agreed. A while later, I asked if he liked reading fiction. It turned out he did, and that further, he liked fantasy books. Needless to say, I brought up my novel.

 

I have to admit, it was fun explaining The Quest of the Unaligned as a sociology-fantasy, using sociological jargon, to someone who was interested and knowledgeable about both topic areas. He, for his part, is excited about reading a book that is written for people exactly like him.

 

And that’s the trick. People want to buy products that are made for people exactly like them. When someone’s reaction to hearing about a product is to say, “You know exactly what I’m looking for! Please, take my money!” marketers know they’ve done their work well. In my case, there is one large main group of people that The Quest of the Unaligned is designed for (people who like well-written fantasy adventures), but there are a number of books that fall into this category that would compete with mine. By targeting two smaller groups of people – niche markets – who are looking for something far more specific, I can do a better job of finding, talking to, and selling my book to people who will actually like it.

 

The goal is that even though I sold them the book for completely different reasons, both the homeschooled student and the sociologist will like the novel equally well and recommend it to others. They will likely never know that I position the book differently based on who I’m talking to, but they don’t need to. All they need to know is that the book is designed for people exactly like them. And it is. That’s the power of marketing.

An Interview with Anna del C. Dye

Interviews, The Quest of the Unaligned

It’s April Fool’s Day, but all jokes aside, I had a fun interview with the fantasy author Anna del C. Dye last week. Her questions covered things such as my first novel, what got me interested in writing in the first place, and how my family background affected my writing, as well as more specific questions about The Quest of the Unaligned.

You can check out the interview here!

Savvy Saturday – A Sociologist’s Analysis of “Divergent”

Academics, Reviews and Exemplars, Writing Tips

BlogpostThe top movie in theaters this week was the film Divergent, based on the book of the same name by Veronica Roth. I can understand why this movie (and book trilogy) has made the headlines. Well-written, with deep, realistic characters, a thoughtful portrayal of loss, grief, sacrifice, and courage, and gripping action (told in the first person present tense to keep readers on the edge of their seats and inside the main characters’ heads), the Divergent series is an impressive series for anyone to have written, much less a college-aged novelist.

However.

Like many fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian worlds created by people who haven’t studied sociology, the world of Divergent has a few severe flaws. To define terms, a severe flaw (in my dictionary) is one that portrays an importantly different and inconsistent reality than that which the author is purposefully trying to establish. Minor flaws are things like timeline believability problems – books where, for instance, a protagonist is supposed to go from being a clueless farm-boy to a daring knight in just a month. Those are the kinds of problems where readers can shrug their shoulders and say, “Yeah, whatever. It’s unbelievable, but not problematically so.” In contrast, severe flaws are unavoidable. They are problems so ingrained in the world that the author has built that they confront the reader throughout the book and undermine the author’s message. Unfortunately, this is a problem that the world of Divergent faces.

 

I’ll give the “first book only” version first, for those of you who want to remain relatively spoiler-free. (The end of the second book and the third book are supposed to “fix” the problems of book one, but in my opinion, raise more questions than they answer.) In Roth’s first book, Divergent, she reveals a society that has been built around five “factions.” These factions are created to be tightly knit social groups, almost castes, in which the members of the faction all revere a single moral virtue or ideal that shapes their actions and their beliefs. Different factions have different jobs in society, different lifestyles, and different value systems.  All well and good thus far. One can look at the ancient Hindu caste system and see that separating otherwise-identical people into utterly separate groups can work.

But then one key component is added that makes the whole system break down. Every person is allowed to choose his or her own faction when he or she comes of age, and this choosing is aided by a test that determines where an individual would best fit. Once an individual has chosen a faction, that faction becomes his or her new family – “faction before blood” is a key line from the book – and individuals must leave their old faction’s worldview and ties behind.

We then find out that this system has supposedly been working for over a hundred years. This is the severe flaw. The system cannot work the way it is supposed to, if Roth is trying to describe human beings as they truly are. (And if she is trying to describe humans who live in this city as being in some way very different from humans in our world, then it undermines the entire message of her third book, Allegiant.)

There are three major reasons that the faction system is severely flawed: 1) the virtue-driven nature of the factions conflicts with the nature of man, 2) the allowance of choice of factions undermines the integrity of the faction system, and 3) the creation of factions should lead to violence rather than lead away from violence.

First, basing factions on non-conflicting virtues presents a problem for any individual who is given a basic moral education. As the character Four expresses, why should you be forced to choose between being strong, selfless, intelligent, honest, and kind? Why can’t you pursue all of them? Given that the characters of Divergent do seem to have a typical human moral compass, the faction system cannot work as written. ALLEGIANT SPOILER (mouse-over): Given that Four actually isn’t Divergent, and is in fact “genetically flawed” as are most other people in the world of Divergent, this makes this argument even stronger. 

The nature of in-groups is to emphasize what makes people in your group good and special, while downplaying, minimizing, or shrugging off the strengths of other groups. This is relatively easy to do when the strengths of other groups cannot mutually coexist with your own. (For instance, a plumber can be glad that he isn’t an electrician or a university professor, because you can’t be all of them, and it isn’t expected that you be all of them.) It is practically impossible to do if the strengths of other groups can mutually coexist with yours, and – in fact – if universal morals in your world say that other groups’ strengths are, in fact, things to be emulated. No one in the world of Divergent says that honesty or bravery or kindness or even intelligence are inherently bad. In fact, the characters display a moral code that acknowledges the goodness and the strengths of the different factions. This is a sociological problem. If an individual is ever praised for being honest when he or she is in Abnegation, or ever praised for being brave when he or she is in Erudite, it will undermine the system that is so highly revered.

In short, a virtue-based faction system is not conducive to a stable society, and asking readers to believe that it has worked for hundreds of years is a severe flaw.

The only way it could work, in fact, is if there is no movement between factions. This brings us to our second point. Allowing individuals to choose their own faction is to say that every individual can choose one of five equally good worldviews to follow. However, this conflicts horribly with the entire idea of being raised in a faction that truly believes that its way is right.

Sociologically, individuals are raised by their parents to believe that a certain view of the world is correct and good. We are moral animals, as sociologist Christian Smith states. Every culture has a set of beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong, which form the rules that children internalize. In the world of Divergent, parents have one of two choices: tell their children that they must follow the rules of their faction and obey their faction’s worldview only as one choice among many that is no more good than any of the others until they come of age, or tell their children that their faction is right, that the others are wrong, and then have this view of the world challenged every year in the choosing ceremony. (This ceremony tells children that a test shows them what faction they truly belong in, and that faction may not be the one that their parents are from.)

If a child doesn’t want to obey his or her parents, then, a natural retort would be, “Well, maybe I don’t belong in this faction! Why should I follow your rules if I’m really ____ faction?” Parents in Divergent have no real grounding to answer this question – because their children would be right. If their child is actually meant to be in another faction, why should they be forced to follow the worldview and practices of their parents’ faction until they reach a certain age?

Now, if factions only governed one’s job, and if the society held a common moral grounding or set of common practices, the differences between factions wouldn’t be as large an issue. (This is where one might compare Divergent to Harry Potter and the houses of Hogwarts: all children at Hogwarts know that they’re all students at the same school, that they all take the same classes, follow the same rules, and answer to the same headmaster. They all know that they take the same tests and after they graduate, they will all be members of one wizarding society. This prevents the differences in beliefs and strengths of the houses from getting out of hand – though Rowling does show rivalries and conflicts between the houses that occur, as is believable.) In Divergent, however, there is no going beyond the factions. There is no deeper moral code or religious grounding that applies to everyone. No one is above or beyond the factions; there is no emperor with divine power who everyone obeys, or even a set of common rituals and beliefs that bind people in the society together. Instead, Divergent shows five different cultures, each of which believes that its way is the right way, and yet which allows its members to freely choose a different path if they are so led. It is internally inconsistent, and should not work.

Finally, and culminating from the above points, the existence of a faction system should increase, not decrease, violence in a society. Emphasizing differences between people, rather than similarities, always creates tension and keeps things from running smoothly. Every country, business, organization, and family knows that you have to emphasize what holds you together if you want to maintain peace among people who are different. Creating factions based on personality types and differing virtues is the ideal way to cause a war, not to prevent one. “Separate but equal” has always been a bad idea that leads to prejudice and violence. Integration and appreciation of differences through appreciation of deeper similarities, not segregation based on differences, is the way to keep the peace.

One would think that in the aftermath of war, the leaders of a city would recognize this.

On the other hand, it isn’t surprising that a college aged novelist wouldn’t. Again, Divergent is well-written, emotionally powerful, and speaks truths about psychology, morality, and the nature of man. But if Roth continues to write in new fantasy worlds, I hope she will take some time to learn more about the nature of societies as well as the nature of individuals. It will improve the quality of her work, and add to, rather than distract from, the points she wants to make in the stories she tells.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!

Savvy Saturday – How to be biased

Academics, Writing Tips

Part of being a writer is exploring the human experience as it is truly lived. Even in a fantasy or science fiction setting, one’s characters need to feel real. We all know this. It’s a truism, a proverb, easier to say glibly than to actually carry out in one’s writing. Why? For one thing, human beings are complex. Part of this complexity is the fact that we aren’t always rational. We make biased choices based on feelings and heuristics – rules of thumb – that can lead us to make different decisions when presented with exactly the same data. Moreover, our brains work very differently than we often think they do. We plan one thing and do another. We’re swayed by emotion and situational characteristics and the way questions are worded. Even our memories are malleable.

Today’s post features just a few findings about the irrationality of the human brain that I’ve recently studied for my PhD classes. Whether you’re a writer or simply an interested reader, I hope you find them useful. Personally, I know I’m going to keep these facts in mind and use them to make my characters more complex and realistic.

Finding 1: People hate losing. (Prospect theory, endowment effect)

loss

Which would you rather have? A one percent chance of winning a thousand dollars, or a $5 dollar bill handed to you right now? Most people would take the $5, even though statistically, the one percent chance of $1000 is “worth more.” The opposite, however, holds for losses. Human beings don’t like to lose. Most people would rather have an 80% chance of losing $4000 than a certainty of losing $3000, even though again, statistically, the first option is worse for your pocketbook (Kahneman and Tversky 1979).

This phenomenon is known as “loss aversion.” People really, really don’t like to give up what they have, far more than they want to gain something that they don’t have. This then translates into the “status quo bias,” where what you have right now is valued more than any change, even a change for the better. Similarly, once you own something, that thing suddenly “gains value” in your opinion beyond what it was worth moments before. People who are given a pen or a coffee mug in psychology experiments consistently refuse to sell it at the “market price” just a few minutes later, and instead set a much higher price on it than it is worth. Once an item is owned by you, you don’t want to give it up even for a “fair” amount of money that you could spend on something that you’d probably like more than the item you were given.

How does this transfer to the world of fiction writing? Easily. Threaten your character with the loss of something he/she values, and watch him move heaven and earth to keep that threat from being realized. Is your story set in a dystopian world? Instead of promising a character riches and luxury for doing some nefarious deed, simply have the rulers give the character a better life – new clothes, good food, etc. – then threaten to send him back to his former servitude unless he cooperates. Far more nefarious. Far more effective.

Finding 2: The way a choice is framed will influence what decision is made (Framing)

framingA company is giving bonuses to teams based on the number of working ideas they contributed to the company over the past year. One manager reads about a fantastic team that proposed 10 ideas, and 7 of them worked wonderfully, making significant profit for the company. Unsurprisingly, she approves a bonus for this team. A different manager reads about a team that also proposed 10 ideas, but 3 of them were abject failures, and resulted in significant loses for the company. Unsurprisingly, this team does not get a bonus.

Except…these teams are identical (Dunegan 1993).

Framing an issue in a positive or a negative light makes a huge difference in how people respond to it. Giving a city a vaccine that will save 60% of its population from a devastating plague (but not save the other 40% from certain death) is a much better option in people’s minds than giving a city an experimental drug that will kill 40% of its members but keep 60% safe from an impending doom. Having a dealer apologetically not give you a $10 discount on a $100 item because you aren’t a club member is much better than having a dealer apologetically charge you an additional $10 fee on a $90 item because you aren’t a club member.

If your character wants to manipulate someone, then, the easiest way to do it is to focus attention on the (true) negative or positive aspects of a choice. For instance, knowing that a magic sword can kill ogres, giants, and trolls is very different from knowing that it can’t kill dragons. This is also a way to have characters argue with each other very effectively. If one person sees only the benefits of making a certain choice, and the other sees only the negatives, they will be very unlikely to come to an agreement even if they have all the same facts.

Finding 3: Learning, memory, and experience aren’t all they’re cracked up to be (Experiential learning)

elephant“This ain’t my first rodeo,” an old Western hero says, giving the newcomer a withering glare. “I’ve done seen a fair share in my time, and I can tell you like it is.”

That’s all very well, but that old hero’s memories might be playing more tricks on him than he’d like to believe. We like to trust memories and our own experience more than what other people tell us – memory is vivid, supposedly objective, and engages all our senses, whereas learning from others is more distant and is possibly biased. Unfortunately, our own memories are just as fallible, and sometimes even more misleading, than what we learn from others.

Of course, we all know that we find what we expect to find. Humans are incredibly good at confirming things that may or may not be true. This is called the confirmation bias, and happens all the time. We come up with a hypothesis that something is true, then we look to see if the data support our hypothesis, rather than seeking to disconfirm it. In writing language, we see if the world makes sense given the story we’ve told ourselves, rather than looking to see if there are plot holes.

“I’m thinking of a rule for picking numbers,” we tell someone. “With this rule, I’ve picked the numbers 2, 4, 12, and 16, as well as others. You may ask me whether any particular number fits my rule, and when you’re certain about what the rule is, make your guess.” Our poor confirmation-bias target guesses 14, and is told yes. He guesses 20, and is told yes again. He guesses 110, and is told yes a third time. He confidently states that our rule is any number that can be divided by two. But he’s wrong. Our rule was any positive or negative whole number. Whoops.

With enough effort, people can be trained to avoid confirmation bias. It’s much harder to avoid the effects of faulty memory. Many of us have heard about the experiment where two sets of people see the same video of a car crash. One group then is asked to judge how fast the cars were going when they “bumped” one another, while another is asked how fast they were going when they “smashed into” one another. A while later, both groups are asked whether or not they saw broken glass in the video. (There was no broken glass shown.) The group that had been given the “smashed” language were far more likely to report having seen broken glass, and remember it just as certainly as the other group remembered not seeing broken glass.

Similarly, in the world of advertising, people who were given test orange juice – actually vinegar, water, and orange flavoring – obviously rated it as tasting horrible. Half of them, though, were then shown an advertisement that talked about how good, fresh, and wonderful (like drinking an orange through a straw!) that brand of juice tasted. A while later, the two groups were asked to again rate their juice experience. The ones who had seen the ad after drinking the vinegar-water rated it as tasting better, and in fact, tasting like drinking an orange through a straw (Braun 1999).

Thinking about your writing, what do your characters remember – for sure! – that just isn’t so? What decisions do your characters make where the facts seem to fit what they believe, but only because they didn’t look too hard to prove themselves wrong? When do your characters rely on their memories and their expertise because it’s just easier, even when they really shouldn’t?

(For that matter, when do you?)

Thinking through these questions and writing characters with realistic cognitive biases will not only make your story more gripping, it will make your characters, even the non-human ones, more realistic. For instance, an elephant’s memory – though vivid – could be completely inaccurate. And dragons, as we all know, have an extreme aversion to loss. So put your biases to work, and make your characters human.