Gunpowder Just Like Grandma Used to Make: Turning Your Friends and Relatives Into a Writing Resource

A normal person looking at my browser history or the titles on my library card would probably conclude that I am either a serial killer or a member of some paramilitary demon worship cult. All I can say is:  

 

Everyone knows the old adage about writing, most frequently quoted by non-writers: "Write what you know." This is both technically true and completely idiotic. Yeah, you need to know what you're talking about if you expect people to take you seriously. But why limit yourself to writing about what you already know? Get out there and learn whatever you need to know to tell the story you want to tell, and I don't just mean Google it. Google is a wonderful invention, but I've found that the best writing resource of all is real, live people. I know, I know. The mere mention of those creatures makes most writers go:

  

But I promise this isn't as scary as it sounds. I'm not telling you to go talk to strangers. Think about the people you already talk to on a regular basis. Your friends, your family, your colleagues. They've all had different life experiences than you. Ask them to tell you stories. 

My maternal grandmother's long and colorful life has inspired many of my best stories. She fought in the French underground during World War II and later immigrated to Palestine where she fought in the Israeli War of Independence. Some grandmothers pass on their recipes for chicken soup or chocolate chip cookies. She taught me how to make gunpowder.

People don't need much encouragement to talk about themselves. One simple question will probably get you more information than you could possibly use. And not just information. A person can give you something Google can't - emotional context. They can tell you what it feels like to live in a war zone, to have the threat of death hovering over you every day, to have to calculate your every move because you don't know who might be informing on you to the secret police. That's the stuff that makes your readers keep turning the pages. 

So screw up your courage, cast off the shackles of Google, and go talk to those scary hew-mon bee-ing things.

  

You might be surprised by what you find out about people you thought you knew. 

But before you go, here's a little gift, writer to writer. 

My Grandmother's Gunpowder Recipe

Disclaimer: This is intended for literary uses only. The author takes no responsibility for damage incurred through the real world use or abuse of this information. 

Ingredients: 

3/4 liter saltpeter (also known as sodium nitrate)

1/2 liter powdered wood charcoal

1/8 liter sulfur powder

2 ½ liters alcohol

3/4 liter water

Place the saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in a heat resistant container. Add 1/4 liter of water and mix until all the components are dissolved. Then add the remaining water. Place the pot on a heat source and stir continuously until small bubbles begin to form. DO NOT LET THE MIXTURE COME TO A BOIL, AND BE SURE IT DOES NOT DRY ON THE SIDES OF THE POT. THIS MAY CAUSE IT TO IGNITE. When it begins to bubble, remove it from the heat source and add the alcohol while stirring vigorously. Let the mixture stand for about 5 minutes. Then strain it through a finely woven cloth. Discard the liquid and squeeze the residue in the cloth until it stops exuding moisture. Cover a dry bucket with abrasive mesh. (A window screen works well, but make sure it isn't rusty as this can affect the purity of the powder.) Place a handful of the damp powder on top and rub until it falls through. When all the powder has been granulated, if any particles still stick together, put the entire batch through the mesh again. Spread the powder in a 1 ½ centimeter layer on a flat, dry surface. Use a radiator to dry it. It should take no more than an hour. The longer the drying period, the less effective the powder will be. As soon as it is dry, remove the radiator. Pack any powder you are not going to use immediately in a watertight container and store it in a cool, dry place. The sooner you use it, the more effective it will be. 

Happy writing!   

With a Slingshot and a Prayer: Writing Underdogs That Rock

Everybody loves an underdog. Whether it's David and Goliath or The Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, it's easy to empathize with a small force fighting on against impossible odds, and it's easy to hate someone who picks on the little guy. So making the hero of your story an underdog is a great start. But it's only a start. Here are some tips for making sure your David doesn't fall flat. 

1) Keep Your Chin Up - Video game designers know that the secret to keeping people interested in the game is balancing boredom and frustration. If the game is too easy, the player gets bored. If the game is too hard, the player gets frustrated and starts to wonder if it's really worth the effort. Writing a non-interactive story is also a balancing act, but between hope and fear. 
Usually it's obvious that the hero is going to win in the end because, well, they're a hero. But if the reader can see exactly how they're going to pull off that stunning victory, there won't be any tension. There has to be a lurking fear that they just might fail. 
But don't go overboard on that end either. Darkness and despair are very in style these days, and too many modern writers forget the hope side of the equation. It's not enough to have a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. There has to be some light along the way as well. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, there's a lot of darkness, but there are also happy scenes interspersed throughout the story.
The rule of thumb is that every time the hero comes successfully through an ordeal, you should give them one happy scene as a reward. After Frodo survives the Nazgul on Weathertop, he is reunited with Bilbo in Rivendell. After the Fellowship comes through Moria, they get a few days to rest and recuperate in Lothlorien. After Merry and Pippin survive the Battle of Isengarde, they find food and beer and tobacco in the wreckage. And of course, when the hero passes the final ordeal and achieves his stunning victory, he should get several mega-happy scenes.

 

2) Nobody Bets On a Horse With a Broken Leg - Underdogs, by definition, stand alone. Only a loyal few believe that they can win. Everybody else thinks they're brave, noble idiots who are going to get crushed. David's own brothers laughed at him when he said he was going to bring down Goliath. Nobody thought he could do it...until he did.

Kelsier, one of the heroes of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, is one of the Skaa, a downtrodden race who have been slaves for as long as anyone can remember.  Kelsier dreams of freedom, but the attitude of the other Skaa is made clear in the first few pages of the story. 

'You're satisfied with this then?' Kelsier asked... 'You're content with this life full of beatings and endless drudgery?'

'At least it's a life...I know what malcontent and rebellion bring. The eye of the Lord Ruler and the ire of the Steel Ministry...Men like you preach change, but I wonder, is this a battle we can really fight?'

 'You're fighting it already, Goodman Mennis. You're just losing horribly.'"

Mennis is not one of the bad guys. He's not on the Lord Ruler's side either. He's just a tired old man who's had a hard life. It takes extraordinary courage to support an underdog. Remember, the characters are in the same boat as the reader. They have no idea how or even if they're going to win. Not everyone has the strength to live with that uncertainty.

3) Some Things Are Worth Fighting For -  So what makes someone fight for a lost cause? Well, the reasons are as diverse as humanity. David wanted to defend the honor of his people and his God. Frodo wanted to protect the Shire. Kelsier wanted to avenge his wife. But at their essence, they're all the same reason. There are some things you just don't give up on, no matter how hopeless it seems. 

The most important thing the reader wants to know about the hero is, what does he care about? What does he love? What is he willing to die for? If the answer is 'nothing', they're probably going to put the book back on the shelf and move on to something more interesting. But if you give them a cause they can root for, they will follow you into the fires of Mordor. 

So to sum up: 

Hope + Fear + Doubt + Love

 =

 

So who's your favorite underdog, real or fictional?

 

 

 

    

How Tolkien Saved the Dragons

What adjectives come to mind when you think of dragons? Noble? Majestic? Terrifying? 

If any or all of those are correct, you're either a student of classic mythology or a child of the post-Tolkien fantasy renaissance. 

The earliest known dragon legend comes from ancient Babylon where they believed that the world was created from the bones of a dragon which the gods slayed. For millennia dragons were a kind of litmus test for heroism, at least in stories. Anyone who wanted to call themselves a hero had to face off against a dragon at some point. Beowulf killed one, or rather slayed it. So did Sigurd of Norse legend. The city of Krakow in Poland is supposedly named for the knight who slayed a dragon on that spot. The city has capitalized on the legend, building a statue of the dragon which breathes fire at regular intervals. I've seen it, and it's not nearly as cool as it sounds. 

    

But in the nineteenth century, dragons went out of style. In fact, fantasy went out of style. Magic and magical creatures were considered juvenile, the stuff of children's stories which no self respecting adult paid attention to. Consequently, the dragons and other monsters underwent a neutering process so that they wouldn't scare the kiddies. They became quirky. Cuddly. Trying to slay them would have been like disemboweling a teddy bear.

 

Tolkien was the first writer to take dragons seriously again. He was fascinated by dragons from a very early age, but he was always drawn more to the ancient legends than to the modern tales. And many years later when he wrote The Hobbit for his own children, it was to those ancient stories that he looked for inspiration. 

In fact, The Hobbit has a strong resemblance to the Norse legend of Fafnir and Sigurd. Fafnir didn't start out as a dragon. He was a dwarf prince who became so obsessed with protecting his treasure that he killed his brothers and shut himself in a cave with all his gold. His greed became so strong that it warped his body as well as his mind until he became a dragon.

Although The Hobbit is still pretty juvenile by our standards, it was the beginning of the renaissance. It got its metaphorical foot (probably a large, hairy one with an exceptionally leathery sole) in the door, and primed the world for The Lord of the Rings. But there are no dragons in the seemingly infinite pages of that book, or as Ted Sandyman says, "There's only one Dragon...and that's Green." Without The Hobbit, dragons would have remained banished to the brightly colored pages of fairy tales, drinking tea with dimwitted children. There would be no Eragon, no Song of Ice and Fire.  

The cuddly dragons persisted for a while. 

  

But really, how is a flying lizard-puppy mutant who talks like a stoner, and a bungling wanna-be Jiminy Cricket supposed to compete with this? 

 

So who's your favorite dragon?