We get inspiration from a variety of places. It might not even be intentional. We catch sight of something, hear a snippet of conversation or music, and suddenly our mind is off on an unexpected tangent. Inspiration runs away with our concentration, laughs at our attempts to focus and taunts us with ideas and dreams until we finally sit down and bang things into some form of coherent work.

Let me give you an example, and I’ll speak in general terms rather than specifics. Maybe you’ll figure out something in the process, or maybe you’ll just be amused or entertained. It’s the least I can hope for.

Inception is pretty inspirational just in terms of getting an audience thinking, and it’s been on my mind pretty much since I’ve seen it. In particular of late, however, has been this piece of music used in its last trailer: “Mind Heist” by Zack Hemsey.

So why is this music from Inception making me think of this particular character? In thinking about it, there’s one line in the trailer that stuck out. Cobb says to Ariadne, regarding extraction, “Well… it’s not, strictly speaking, legal.”

The things this character does are not, strictly speaking, good.

He has a good goal in mind, like Tyler Durden looking to free the world from the bondage of corporate greed. And he may help someone in need, but only if it suits him. The means at his disposal almost all fall into the realm of dark magics, he consorts with demons, he’s an intellectual snob and shows a lot of signs of being a sociopath. He’ll hear something he’s done or is doing called “evil,” agree, and laugh about it.

But why?

We have to go a layer deeper, like diving into another layer of dreams. We need to uncover what motivates or at least gave rise to this sociopathy, even if it’s of a heroic nature. What might people consider evil, among his actions? Well, evil people tend to destroy things. Going back to the Fight Club example, at times something must be destroyed in order for something better to be created.

In the world in which our subject lives, there are malevolent forces far worse than he. If he wants to continue to enjoy life in general, and his particular lifestyle in particular, the world must be prepared to face and fight back against those forces. I am suddenly reminded a line from The Boondock Saints:

“There are varying degrees of evil. We urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over, into true corruption; into our domain.”

I think that’s it. His goal, the underlying motivation for all he does, is to cultivate within himself the power to stand against evil forces on equal footing, unhindered by the constraints of societal morality and seeking a form of karmic, cosmic justice. He has seen evil, stared it in the face, and chosen to become, not the antithesis of it, but a rival of it, a rival firmly on the side of his allies but cut from the same diabolical cloth. To this end he must bend his will and all of his intent, playing things off with casual humor, devilish charm and ruthless cunning. Good cannot exist without evil, after all, and if one is necessitated to become evil, one might as well enjoy the experience.

Now that I’ve found the roots of this inspiration, all I need to do is put it in story form.

Have you ever explored inspiration like this? What have your experiences been? What were the results?

The Steam sale has pretty much reached its conclusion, and has saved many lives. After all, bees can kill with their stings, eating outside is a good way to attract ravenous bears, and have you ever taken a soccer ball to the face? Damn. That’ll mess you up. Never happens when playing Steam games.

My first order of business during the Steam sale was to round out my PC’s version of The Orange Box. I finally got my hands on the full version of Team Fortress 2. User-made maps, Valve’s great updates, the works. I fired it up on the X-Box once later, and really, it’s not the same. You never find anything cool as you play, you only have a few generic achievements to pursue and you’re limited to about five different maps. Boring. I’ve been playing on the PC exclusively ever since. Along with Half-Life 2 Episode 2, I also downloaded Garry’s Mod at the same time. I haven’t played with it much yet, but the idea of a sandbox with a physics engine and a fully-functional programming language for me to play with is very appealing. It’s a back-burner, percolating thought. I’ll get back to it later.

Left 4 Dead and its sequel is a great deal of fun. The idea of being one of the last few humans alive fighting against a slavering horde of one’s former fellow man is both harrowing and kind of exciting. Especially if there’s plenty of ammo & pain pills laying around. The best part of these games, though, is playing with friends. There’s nothing more satisfying than shooting zombies off of a friend, and nothing more terrifying than getting knocked down and wondering if the undead will tear off your head before your buddy can come to your aid. I’m looking forward to playing more of it.

My next likely fodder for a game review, however, is The Witcher. Being an old hand at role-playing games, and having played through the likes of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, this game seems right up my alley. I do still need to finish Dragon Age’s expansion, so it’s almost a race between it and The Witcher, and Awakenings has a head start. Of course I need to take time away from World of Warcraft to play either of these when I want an RPG fix.

There’s plenty of writing to do, as well. The holiday weekend is meant for recharging my batteries, as is the upcoming family reunion in Mystic. But for now, in terms of gaming, it’s full Steam ahead.

So with Citizen in the Wilds now in the revision process, I thought it might behoove me to take a look at some other fantasy literature, maybe examine what works and what doesn’t. Since most of what I’m doing involves the defiance of most fantasy conventions, I’m curious if anything I’m aiming at hasn’t already been hit on the mark by another, more prominent writer.

For example, floating cities aren’t anything new. Look no further than Dalaran in World of Warcraft. However, I don’t know how often the ‘ruling power’ in a given land has been one ruled by mages and defined by the use of magic – ‘magocracy’ is the term I’ve used previously. Everybody has elves in their stories, and most of the time they’re dying out, but I’m curious as to how often they’re shown as very upset at this state of affairs, rather than quietly accepting their fate and loading up on ships to sail into the West.

That said, I own most of Tolkein’s works, a full set of Narnia, and somewhere in this mess are my copies of A Wrinkle In Time, a collection of Conan stories and even Eragon. I’ve taken Tigana out of the library before and would do so again, mostly because I didn’t finish it before returning it. What else would you recommend me to read, oh wise Internets?

At this past weekend’s Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, I described myself as primarily a writer of ‘speculative fiction’. A few people asked me what I meant. There are some stereotypes that I think are assigned to areas of speculative fiction I’d like to dispel, and more depth in those stories when they’re done well than some might give them credit for. So let’s explore this a bit, shall we?

What Spec Fic Isn’t

Speculative fiction is not its setting. Science fiction, for example, is not just about spaceships and ray guns. It’s more about themes and methods of exploration regarding those themes than window dressing. The bits of speculative fiction that put it in those genres are the frosting on the cake, the chocolate around a Twix. There needs to be something under that frosting, inside that Twix, or it’ll be insubstantial. It might be sweet and you might find some people who are willing to eat that frosting neat from the container, but most people will want something with a bit more to it.

Joe McGee’s Six Guns and Shadows is a good example of this. It’s what I’d call a “paranormal Western.” It’s neither all about witches & warlocks, nor all about saloons and cowboys. It mixes those two and lays them on top of character exploration and theme. Now, it might be able to get by in some circles on the unique aesthetic alone, but without Lily having some depth and themes of self-acceptance and the preservation of tradition – which I assume is what he’s working on with the Moonstone – it might as well be a Jonah Hex knock-off or something. But Joe’s a smart guy and a cool cat. Witchslinger‘s going to kick ass.

What Spec Fic Is

In addition to being about something, having an emotional core as Chuck would say, speculative fiction lets a writer tackle issues, debates and controversies in a ‘safe’ environment. Heinlein wanted to discuss the romanticism of death and the dangerous allure of militarism, so he wrote Starship Troopers. H.G. Wells was concerned by an ever-widening gap between the elite and the working class, and penned The Time Machine. Jules Verne had ideas about exploration and politics that might have been a touch controversial for his time, and poured those notions into Captain Nemo when he created 20000 Leagues Under The Sea. J.R.R. Tolkien was worried that the lessons of the hard-fought wars that encompassed the world might be forgotten, and ensured they’d be preserved by writing The Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis re-imagined things he’d come to appreciate within The Chronicles of Narnia.

I think I’m belaboring my point a bit, but the “speculative” part of speculative fiction doesn’t just mean speculation on how things might be in the future or on another world or against a certain antagonist. They’re also places allowing for speculation on human nature, politics, religion, sustainability, you name it. So, want to discuss the neo-conservative movement but afraid of Glenn Beck calling you a Nazi or Rush accusing you of hating freedom? Set the discussion in space.

Now, settings do vary but fall into common groups – science fiction, fantasy, horror, paranormal, etc. I’m willing to elaborate on those more, but the point I’m getting at is that they all share the desire of an author to try something new and interesting while exploring relevant themes in a ‘safe’ way. I’ll discuss these things more at length in the future.

Courtesy Terribleminds, make with the clicky-clickly

I think I was consciously putting this off.

Not because the idea of establishing a theme for the novel is disinteresting to me, no. I just didn’t want to define a theme and then get preachy about it. I don’t want this to be the kind of story where I decide my theme is “man’s inability to coexist with nature in his quest for lucrative resources” and have the bad guys blast giant trees to bits while sipping coffee and contemplating “shock and awe.”

Okay, all right, enough ragging on Avatar, it was a good movie that is undercut by some crappy story choices and it really isn’t relevant to what I now find myself needing to do.

You see, if someone were to ask me what ‘Citizen in the Wilds’ is about, I’d be at a loss. My impulse would be to launch into a plot synopsis, and that’d bore a potential reader or, worse, potential agent to tears. I certainly don’t want to do that at the upcoming Writer’s Conference in Philly when I’m asked what I’m furiously trying to finish. So let’s see if we can’t nail down a theme, an answer to the question.

The question, as referenced, is “What’s this about?” The question is not, “Who is this about?” I have a protagonist and he’s following an arc that, one or two elements aside, is a pretty archetypal one. I don’t own a copy of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” even though I probably should, but I’ve read and seen enough of these journeys to know what makes a good one and a bad one. Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Alex Rogan, John McClaine and Marty McFly instantly come to mind.

So, just like a plot synopsis, describing how my protagonist starts out, how his circumstances change, when he hits his lowest point and how he manages to overcome the odds is kind of dull in the overarching sense. Besides, as much as I’m trying craft strong, deep characters, the story can’t just be about them. If it were, I’d be guilty of the problem that affects some of BioWare’s games – great characters existing in a lackluster story.

Peter Parker goes through a bit of a hero’s journey in his origin story, and learns the lesson “With great power comes great responsibility.” I like that lesson, and it certainly applies as a theme to the project at hand. However, is the story really about that? Sure, a lot of the conflict comes from the grand high poobahs of one of the races not using their power & influence responsibly, but that feels more like an impetus for the story to move forward and have tension, rather than what the story is ultimately about. However, I might be on to something with the web-head, here.

Peter has to grow up.

Part of that whole using superpowers responsibly thing involves moving upward from the childlike awe of getting those powers in the first place to realizing how those powers should be used. It’s a lesson that my protagonist learns in a very jarring way, as the use of his magic in the beginning of the story would be a quick way to get himself killed, but as the story goes on and more facts come to light about where he came from, he realizes that his people need to learn a bit about responsibility themselves. The wide-eyed and naive apprentice becomes a dedicated and seasoned teacher. But are people going to be willing to listen to him? How badly have their previous lessons changed their perspective so that any facts he brings to light seem like lies?

Allegories, metaphors and soapbox moments aside, I think I’ve found my theme.

What’s it about?

This is about people learning to use their abilities responsibly, and what happens when they refuse to learn that lesson.

Right. Back to writing about dwarven caverns, forbidden knowledge and turning giant cave-spiders into shishkabobs with stalagmites or melting them with the sudden appearance of magma.

Alchemy’s really fun, when you think about it.