The Unification Chronicles

Another bang up week­end, a grand total of 196 words added to Cru­sade over two days. I did, how­ever, do a fan­tas­tic job of orga­niz­ing my Writ­ing Music playlist, all 108 hours of it. Nice that all the tunes are con­sis­tently named, for­mat­ted and all have album art, but it’s not writing.

Why am I blocked? The same gor­ram rea­son I’m always blocked. Because I’m ter­ri­fied. And why am I ter­ri­fied? Because I don’t know where I’m going.

I am a rare and very con­fused species, the Type A Bud­dhist. I want to go with the flow, let go of expec­ta­tions and all that, but I’d feel a lot bet­ter about it if I had an out­line and a set of require­ments to fol­low (yes, this is prob­a­bly a holdover from my days as a soft­ware devel­oper; I have a deep and pro­found fear of scope creep). I need to know not only where the story is going, but I need to have a rea­son­able idea of what I’m going to see on the way.

The prob­lem is that Rev­e­la­tion changed the story and the char­ac­ters so much from the orig­i­nal novella that very lit­tle of the orig­i­nal Cru­sade novella is still usable. Again, I know the basic beats of the story, where it has to end up and who has to die before we get there, but every­thing else is dif­fer­ent, and I find myself floun­der­ing try­ing to put one word after another in the dark.

My writer’s group says I’m just tired, hav­ing just fin­ished a novel in six weeks, and it’s okay for me to slow down for a while, gather my thoughts. They might have a point. In between writ­ing, I’m tran­si­tion­ing from one com­pany to another in my day job, said day job is migrat­ing users from one Exchange server to another, so I’m a lot busier at work than usual, my mom just had (suc­cess­ful) can­cer surgery and I’m des­per­ately try­ing to save up enough money to file bank­ruptcy (which seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but there it is). I’m under a lot of stress, and my body is start­ing to break down. I’m in near con­stant pain and have resorted to tak­ing mus­cle relax­ants just to get by. And I no longer have the NaNoW­riMo com­mu­nity to bol­ster my efforts and cheer me on.

All of that is a per­fectly accept­able excuse for why I’m not writ­ing Cru­sade at the same pace as Rev­e­la­tion. But it’s not a rea­son. It’s just an excuse.

Because the real rea­son I’m writ­ing so slowly is that I don’t know where I’m going. Again. My out­line for Act 1 of Cru­sade is a dis­or­ga­nized mess of vague story ideas. No won­der my nar­ra­tive prose sounds like aim­less wan­der­ing. That’s what it is.

So today, in between all the other stuff I have to do, I’m going to really tighten up the out­line for Cru­sade Act 1. I’m not going past the act break, because I want to remain flex­i­ble. But every­thing up to that act break needs to be thought out, delin­eated. Because only when I know where I’m going can I really open up the throt­tle to get there.

For the past cou­ple days I’ve been stalled in my story. Now a cou­ple days of not writ­ing — well, writ­ing very lit­tle, aver­ag­ing 1,156 a day over the past five days, only 207 words yes­ter­day — may not seem like the end of the world to most peo­ple, but when you’re try­ing to main­tain momen­tum in a 600,000 word project, it’s a con­cern. I’m still moti­vated about my story over­all, but the out­line beats for the last two chap­ters of Rev­e­la­tion fill me with the over­whelm­ing desire to pol­ish my andirons—and I don’t own a fire­place.

In the past, I would have thrown my hands up in despair, cursed my muse back a hun­dred gen­er­a­tions and set­tled in to watch some TV. And as it hap­pens, I did watch two episodes of NCIS and one of Crim­i­nal Minds last night, but this morn­ing, it’s time to get back to work. Because I know why writer’s block hits me.

In the immor­tal words of Richard Drey­fus, this means something.

For me, at least, writer’s block means there’s some­thing wrong with what I’m about to write, and my sub­con­scious is throw­ing on the brakes before I tum­ble off a lit­er­ary cliff. So let’s take a look at those story beats for the last two chapters.

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Susan and Daniel find out what hap­pened to Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Susan pub­lishes her proof
• The media runs with it, and pub­lic opin­ion wakes up to the immor­tal threat

30: The Hunt Begins

• Gov­ern­ment refuses to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of immortals
• Jack leaves the FBI to join a UN anti-​​demon task force
• Jack recruits Daniel

On the sur­face, they look per­fectly nor­mal, the dénoue­ment of the novel. But that’s the prob­lem. The big bat­tle in chap­ters 27 and 28 was unsat­is­fy­ing to me — a big focus point of things to fix in rewrites — and after that, these two chap­ters lookzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Huh? Exactly.

But why are these chap­ters bor­ing? Every­thing that hap­pens in them has to hap­pen, and noth­ing jumps out as hav­ing to hap­pen than isn’t there. So what’s the problem?

Plot-​​wise, these chap­ters are the equiv­a­lent of pas­sive voice. Our char­ac­ters don’t really do much. Stuff just hap­pens around them. They’re react­ing, not acting.

So how do I fix that? By mak­ing the char­ac­ters take a more direct hand in their fate. What really needs to hap­pen in these chapters?

• Daniel and Susan need to learn the increas­ing price — in addi­tion to los­ing Jeff — of bring­ing the truth to light
• Susan has to pub­lish her proof anyway
• While the pub­lic and the media go crazy with the news, the US gov­ern­ment has to dis­count it, set­ting the stage for Cru­sade
• Jack has to leave the FBI — quit or fired? — and join the UN, then recruit Daniel. They’ll get jus­tice for Jeff, Stan, Daniel’s fam­ily and every­one else by tak­ing down the demons. This is where a call­back to Jeff’s tale of post­war vengeance I’ve yet to trans­plant from the orig­i­nal into this ver­sion will add some resonance.

Okay, so how to we make all that hap­pen in two chap­ters and make it char­ac­ter dri­ven, rather than the char­ac­ters just pup­pets act­ing out the plot?

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Uriel meets the team at Frank­furt with Dante, breaks the news about Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Dante and Susan pub­lish Susan’s proof from Frank­furt, Ger­many (Dante has to help because the demons have take down New Amer­i­can Century)
• Daniel, Jack, Dante and Susan return to the US under Uriel’s protection

30: The Hunt Begins

• Jack calls Lou from a secure loca­tion, Lou reveals that the only rea­son they were allowed in the US at all was that bar­ring them would lend weight to Susan’s story and fires Jack
• Susan deals with the gov­ern­ment pub­li­cally refut­ing her story and the wild suc­cess of her new blog
• Jack recruits Daniel, promises jus­tice for the vic­tims of the demons

See how much bet­ter that is? Now every scene is focused through the eyes of our char­ac­ters, and they’re act­ing, not just hav­ing the story fall on them. It’s stronger, more directed, more inter­est­ing. I also like how Susan’s scene in chap­ter 30 rein­forces the theme in the chap­ter title, given how her hunt is going to shape up in Cru­sade. It’s a nice bit of sym­me­try I wasn’t expect­ing, the kind of thing your story will tell you again and again if you listen.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some writ­ing to do.

As folks have started dig­ging through the time­line and other stuff on the wiki, they’ve noticed par­al­lels to Joe Straczynski’s Baby­lon 5.

1. Two ancient races, one devoted to chaos, the other to order, have been at war for millennia.
2. The war went cold about a thou­sand years ago when the chaos ancients were dri­ven away.
3. One of the ancients is still buried on a for­got­ten world at the edge of the galaxy, wait­ing to be woken up.
4. The most pow­er­ful of the younger races fought in that war a thou­sand years ago, suf­fered hor­ri­ble losses, and reveres the order-​​based ancients as gods.
5. Humans were genet­i­cally manip­u­lated by the order-​​based ancients.
6. Our first con­tact with the most pow­er­ful of the younger races results in a war based on a misunderstanding.
7. The most pow­er­ful of the younger races calls off the war rather than defeat­ing us.
8. The cen­tral human hero is a mav­er­ick mil­i­tary man with a trou­bled past, with ini­tials nearly the same as the author’s.
9. The human hero leaves his peo­ple to go to that for­got­ten world on the rim, seek­ing answers.
10. The human hero, allied with the one of the order ancients, dies fight­ing the chaos ancients.
11. Once the ancient war is over, the younger races turn on each other.
12. The most pow­er­ful of the younger races is nearly torn apart by its own caste structure.
13. The story ends with the for­ma­tion of a new galac­tic gov­ern­ment that should ensure a last­ing peace.

Wow, a baker’s dozen of damn­ing ripoff points. Sure looks like I’m rip­ping off Baby­lon 5. JMS should sue!

Only, really, I’m not.

I’ll admit Baby­lon 5 is a huge influ­ence for me, and UC was, in part, inspired by what Joe was doing on the TV machine. But it was also inspired by Christo­pher Golden’s Shadow Saga, and Asimov’s Foun­da­tion series, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and well, just about every other epic I’ve ever read or watched.

Because if you dis­till the above points down even fur­ther, you’ll see that what I’m really rip­ping off is the Bible. And Gil­gamesh. And the Can­ter­bury Tales. And the Iliad. And the Odyssey. And Beowulf. Because really, when you get down to it, mythic struc­ture is mythic struc­ture. Seri­ously. Read The Hero With A Thou­sand Faces and The Power of Myth by Joseph Camp­bell. The points above seem so famil­iar because they’ve res­onated to us over and over and over again, down through the cen­turies. They’re cen­tral to human sto­ry­telling, so it’s no sur­prise, really, that Joe and I would end up drink­ing from the same well. Let’s look at a few in particular.

Two ancient races, one devoted to chaos, the other to order, have been at war for millennia.

There are only so many fun­da­men­tal dichotomies you can pull from. Order and chaos didn’t start with Baby­lon 5. And if I’d gone with good ver­sus evil — which I find far duller to think about — would I be rip­ping off Lord of the Rings? Harry Pot­ter? Or the Bible?

One of the ancients is still buried on a for­got­ten world at the edge of the galaxy, wait­ing to be woken up.

Golden’s Shadow Saga did the same shtick with Charle­magne. As have count­less oth­ers. And hey, at least in my ver­sion the ancient in ques­tion is actu­ally a dragon. Y’know. Tradition.

Our first con­tact with the most pow­er­ful of the younger races results in a war based on a misunderstanding.

Remem­ber in the King Arthur mythol­ogy how Arthur and Mordred’s armies were poised to fight, but tried one last time to nego­ti­ate, until a sol­dier raised his sword to kill a snake and the other side thought it was an attack? Again, this is a mythic motif that has repeated over and over again in mul­ti­ple cul­tures. Come to think of it, this aspect of UC is really rip­ping off every sin­gle episode of Three’s Company.

The cen­tral human hero is a mav­er­ick mil­i­tary man with a trou­bled past, with ini­tials nearly the same as the author’s.

Okay, the ini­tials thing I’m def­i­nitely rip­ping off from Baby­lon 5. But as for the char­ac­ters of Jack Kil­lian and John Sheri­dan, they remind me a lot of Pat­ton, MacArthur, and count­less other war heroes in human his­tory. This is a clas­sic arche­type, bor­der­ing on cliché, actu­ally. I should be ashamed of myself.

Actu­ally, let’s look some of Joe Straczynski’s answers when he was asked a sim­i­lar question.

Okay, I’ve just read a bunch more of these…okay, I admit it, you got me…I’m doing Philip K. Dick right down the line…and I’m also doing George Orwell right down the line…and I’m doing Lord of the Rings beat for beat…and Chalker…and…and Cherryh…and I’m doing a vari­a­tion on the Bible, and King Arthur, and the his­tory of Baby­lon, and the Idylls of the King.… What?  What’s that you say?  You can’t be doing all of these right down the line, all at the same time?  Sure I can.  Because there IS no B5.  There’s a blank sig­nal that reg­is­ters in your brain, trig­ger­ing the last thing you read, or the most impor­tant thing you read.  It’s a care­fully rigged US Gov­ern­ment psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare exper­i­ment. I give up. jms

And

RE: “B5 is really X in dis­guise” You’re all right, and you’re all wrong. Is it Lord of the Rings? Dune? The Kennedy story? The saga of Camelot? The Foun­da­tion? A brief his­tory of World War II? The Bible? All these and oth­ers have been broached to me by peo­ple absolutely sure that this was the model for the series. (And, as an aside, this kind of dis­cus­sion gen­er­ally hap­pens only to TV writ­ers; nobody here is doing a panel called “Is Star­tide Ris­ing Really X in dis­guise?” This hap­pens to TV writ­ers because some­how it gets assumed that we haven’t got an idea in our heads that we didn’t swipe from somebody’s book. But that’s another topic for another time.) Baby­lon 5…is a Rohr­sharch test. An ink blot cre­ated by smash­ing actors, arche­types, saga-​​structure, myth and lan­guage against a sheet of paper, fold­ing it, and bash­ing it a few times. When you open it up and look inside, what you see is the saga clos­est to your heart and your expe­ri­ence. Because like all the works men­tioned a moment ago, B5 draws upon the same well­spring of myth, arche­type, sym­bol­ogy, and dime store soci­ol­ogy that feeds all sagas, from the Iliad on through to the present. Writ­ers, sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers in par­tic­u­lar, are like the beg­gar in Aladdin, who offered new lamps for old…we seize myths that have fallen out of cur­rency and recast them in newer guise, dust them off and hope a genie emerges. Our myths, the myths of Tolkien and Homer, of Hein­lein and Mal­lory, are eter­nal; they exchange one name for another, cast off one mask and assume the next. If you per­ceive their pres­ence in Baby­lon 5, it is because we have courted the myth, not because we have echoed one of their names from another place. King Lear van­ishes into Londo, Cas­san­dra peers out from behind the eyes of G’Kar, Gala­had answers to the name Ivanova, the Ora­cle at Del­phi is now wear­ing an encounter suit, and Sir Bede­vere is…well, that would be telling. So you’re all right. And you’re all wrong. Because it’s all ACTUALLY based on the 1967 Young Juve­niles novel “The Mad Sci­en­tists’ Club.” And I’m actu­ally chan­nel­ing Eleanor Roo­sevelt. (For­tu­nately, I already have the wardrobe.) Oh, yes…and I am the wal­rus, coo-​​coo ka choo.… jms

And there endeth the lesson.