h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think you want to make your characters too consistent. Because people aren't.

I agree that it's a mistake to make your character hate broccoli on one page and love it three pages later. But your characters can develop. My heroine, in the story I'm trying to write at the moment, starts out quite submissive. But I intend her to rebel by the end.

As for creating villains, do we tend to turn people we don't understand that well into villains? (You think of the unfortunate depiction of Jews in some English literature).

In my creative writing class there are about 14 women and two men. The tutor (female) apologised to the men.
"Sorry, guys. You find in all these classes, the women write about terrible husbands."

I think your creative writing teacher is right. And that's part of what I meant. Note my remarks about creating straw men.

Note that I didn't say your character couldn't *develop*. I said the character needed to be consistent. Consistent with himself or herself - which might be to be inconsistent. One should be aware that a character who is 'inconsistent, because people are,' will be perceived as weak, though. There are some ways in which fictional people are held to higher standards than real people.

It's no good announcing that your character is a liberal, then giving her conservative opinions - unless you draw attention to this lapse in consistency. (The reader is going to notice.) Maybe she's consistently a person who only *thinks* she's liberal.

I'm glad you mentioned that aspect of characters. Elektra and I were just discussing the episode of 'Mad Men' we watched last night. I was saying that Don Draper was just enough better than the times he lives in to be interesting. (When he found out his coworker was a closeted gay man, his response was understanding, and typically subtle. That programme has great writers.)

Getting a lot of character development into about 2,000 words is pushing it. The most you could probably convincingly pull off is one bend in the road.

For instance, your character could have an epiphany moment about broccoli. Or her husband. To be truly unusual, that epiphany moment could make her like her husband *more*...

Hi there Dmitri! Thanky much for this series on writing. In my first attempt at a novel I tried to make the main characters villains ... villains I totally sympathised with because I know and (think) I understand everything that made them what they were. And they do develop as the story progresses ... and the real 'heroes' in the story actually occur as 'side characters' ...

That's an interesting idea, Willem. I suspect it depends on what you mean by 'villains'. I was really talking about using people you disagree with as straw men. If you're simply describing people whose outlook on life is different from your own, you might be doing what Krishnamurta advises: Studying the situation 'without praise or blame'.

Of course I'm not saying people shouldn't experiment. (We seem to do a lot of that around here, with cool results like angelic dinosaurs...)

But do keep in mind this series is designed for people who have not already written novels. And are probably approaching the 1500-word online short story with some initial trepidation......

What one does in one's experimental novel is between the novelist and his publisher...



s back: It's like what my piano teacher told me when I was 13. (She was afraid I'd be annoyed by a return to basics. She didn't know me yet.)

She said, 'Play the C scale. Even Vladimir Horowitz can learn from playing the C scale.'

She was right. (As always.)

I suppose it's a question of empathy, of learning to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.

There's that. Yes. Without that feature, I'd recommend an essay.

I usually decide that I'm a poet at heart.

But I'm not sure if anybody reads the poems on this site.

There is that possibility. An understandable reluctance, given that I haven't found two people on the site who agree on what they look for in a poem.

I can think of three possible reactions to this - assuming I can't really threaten to chuck people out of spaceships.

To take my less Vogonic poetry elsewhere;

To write a piece about poetry - what it is and why it's worth having;

Even offer to run a few poetry workshops - though I doubt if I have time at the moment.

I think the second two ideas are worth working on...

As to the first, the only one I can speak for is myself. And I enjoy your poetry.

But then, I *like* poetry...

I'd like you to write a piece about poetry, mvp. What it is, and why it is worth having.

I'd like to know about what was the role of the poet, in sort of like other times, like Ancient Greece, or even yesterday.

Have there always been poets? I think at one time they might have been seen as dreamers, performers, shamans, travellers, who journeyed through inner and outer worlds, and then brought back tales of their travels to the crowd, perhaps for healing purposes.

Probably not though .

Perhaps the first poets were seen as mad. Were there poets when humans were cave people?

Now, see why I need your piece?


And who was the first art critic? Perhaps it was someone who was disillusioned with the journey that the poet took them on, and wanted a ticket refund. . S'cuse me, my friend, you promised me uncrowded beaches, and cheap food. .

Probably not though.

There have probably always been poets.

Early poetry - as far as we can tell - was something called 'oral formulaic' poetry. At least, according to the professor I took the course with. (He was a guest professor, but I can't remember if he was from Oxford or Cambridge.)

All over the world, people in pre-literate cultures made poetry the same way. You had a set of memes. You had a certain rhythm. You didn't use rhyme, but you used certain devices (think of the alliteration pattern in Old English poetry).

And you had a story.

You told that story from memory, stringing the words together according to the pattern. Maybe you used a primitive musical instrument to accompany yourself, like a pentatonic lyre. Or you shook an assagai for emphasis, as in South Africa.

A good oral-formulaic poet (a Profssor Lord found some in Yugoslavia in the 1930s) knew tens of thousands of lines by heart.

The theory is that a pome like 'Beowulf' was performed like that. The copy we have is a transcript of one performance.

In other words, the origins of poetry are rooted in storytelling and mnemonics.

I didn't realise I'd let myself in for anything so major as a History of Poetry Since Cave Times.

I'll have to think about this and see if I can come up with something.

I would suggest you write us something that *you* find interesting, rather than feeling forced into the caveman option...

I know we will find it interesting, too.

Unlike my latest PR entry, which is working on a whole day without a reader...I *told* the Interim Editors we needed sexier titles...

(And ignore us, we are silly, and it's August.)

I'll go and read it when I get a chance.

I insist upon the caveman option. I must have the caveman-as-poet option. Nothing else will do. I want to know if the cave paintings had lyrics. This is essential research.

Y'all would like what Elektra and I just heard on the car radio.

It was an NPR programme called 'The Story'. People with unusual stories to tell relate them at length to the host.

This man, an investigative journalist, had spent his entire life listening to his dad insist that he had written the lyrics to a song called 'Lady Madonna', which was then 'stolen' by the Beatles.

Alas, the journalist's researches led to the conclusion that his father had told the story so often, he now believed it...but that Lennon and MacCartney were responsible for that (to me, boring) lyric.

Now, who's going to write the story about the caveman with the song lyric? (If there aren't any takers, I might have a try.)

love it. Hullo you mister DG. Let me greet you properly and personally. Its August. August! Ah yes, August. August makes me vague and drifty wafty. .

I love the origins of poetry being rooted in storytelling and mnemonics.

Mnemonics.

Everyone needs to think about the word mnemonics at least once in their life. Well, perhaps not everyone. I think I do though. Its like anemones.

Anemones.

Mnemonics.

Please send your caveman lyrics story immediately. I need it before August is out.

I was going on, over on the other thread, about The Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po> CD that Chris gave me. Music by Harry Partch.

Li Po. Harry Partch.

And then I was going on about Lorca's essay on the Theory and Play of the Duende. Remember that? I was going on about it to you some months ago.

I think the cavemen knew about The Duende, but I shall await further information. From you. Via mnenomics. And anemones.

And I need mvp's History of Cave Poetry (And Onwards) before August is out, also. You see, its all to do with August. After August comes September, and everyone is busy in September. Actually, people are busy in August also. I think I am busy, and its August.

Were cavemen busy in August?

I think they had lot of gigs in August In the Cavern Club. hahaha. That's clever. Not.

I think cavemen were busy gathering things for the winter...maybe...