Workshop – Page 3 – Seeds of Fear

Beneath: Sublime 3

There’s a lot to talk about with this one. First of all, no, I did not accidentally skip a chapter. Sublime is a story about confusion and disorientation, finding yourself somewhere that does not necessarily fit with what came before.

Secondly; it’s been less than a week since the last chapter. In light of how short the previous section was, and because Incarnate will be uploaded on Mondays, I elected to have Sublime moved to Thursdays.

Now that the immediate house keeping is out of the way, details. The surgeon! This scene is part of the very heart of Sublime. It’s painful, it’s visceral, it’s violent, and it forces the reader to think and imagine explanations. It’s also one of the most savage scenes in the story. Perhaps my exposure to Greek theater has tainted the way I deal with things, but I have a love of offscreen violence as a device to invoke the reader’s imagination. I’m not against making a visual massacre, of course, but subtlety abhors a battlefield.

Next, if you’ve been keeping up with these workshop posts, you’ll know I tend to agonize over names, and you’ll have thoughts as to the ones that appear towards the end of the chapter. All I can really say, is that I have my reasons for not changing these.

First Incarnation

This is it. The story I made this site to publish. I have more reasons than that, of course, but while working on this story, I arrived at the realization that the way I wrote could function as a serial. The seed was planted here.

Speaking of incarnations and iteration, this story originally had a very different name. I was coming off working on Sublime, and the prefix was still rattling in my head. Subjugation was the original name, for reasons that may already be apparent. Survival, resistance, and control are important themes in the story, and it seemed fitting to have the title reflect that. But then, I decided to serialize, and decided I wanted a title with a little more je ne sais quoi.

I actually worked on another project after Sublime, a piece meant to follow a cast of characters in the same setting as the aforementioned story. I wanted to create something poignant and compelling, and perhaps tragic. I found, however, that I had pushed a little too hard. The setting had become too familiar, and therefore unfulfilling to dwell in.

Incarnate has roots in my desire to create characters who change. It also has roots in my desire to reexamine an archetype I had only explored briefly.

I once read a lecture on the subject of what constitutes a mind: “Minds, Brains, and Science” by John Searle. In it, he made a pretty convincing argument about the misconception of what a computer can do. The central concept is that a computer cannot think in the same way as a person, because it cannot understand what it does. It knows how to do the things it is programmed to do, and it can be taught to do them more effectively, but it does not grasp the importance of the concepts it manipulates.

This argument had a profound effect on me. I began to view the discussion around the dangers of AI as a bit of a farce, because a program gaining sentience seemed like a joke. But that lecture also pointed out that the human brain is still pretty mysterious, so who’s to say we won’t accidentally create a circuit that thinks for itself due to a factory defect?

This story is about artificial intelligence, but not the kind that writes your homework for you, or the kind that turns homicidal because of a paradox. It’s about an intelligence created artificially, dealing with the kinds of things any intelligence would if placed in its circumstances. I wanted to create a character with a little more nuance than the Hollywood star who only knew how to be evil because of some faulty logic. I have to admit, I was heavily inspired by AM.

Names and Doubts

Something I’ve mentioned already, is that much of my work existed under a different name than the final product. To make a document, you have to give it a name it will be saved under, but when writing, giving something a fitting title before you even start is a big ask. So, after getting more familiar, I often find I want something different to be the icon of the work.

But names are not limited to titles. Character names are tough. One can always slap a random name on, but then you have to live with that choice for every appearance that character makes. Names matter.

Another example: when it comes time to name a new, fictional discovery. The fictional alien species I had to name gave me quite the headache. At first, my instinct said to follow how scientists name space phenomena: black holes, dark matter, pulsars. It felt reasonable to say that humans, having given out names like hagfish and sombrero galaxy, might give monikers as uninspired as “Carnivores” and “Bugs” to species fitting those descriptions. I certainly wouldn’t be the first fiction writer to take such a course.

But while being uninventive is a classic human act, I wanted a little more out of the names. After some consideration, I settled on names that sounded like they came from the species themselves. Khanvröst is a double-edged sword, it both sounds like a word in their language, and carries the seeds of words associated with their nature: Carnivorous, frost, tyrannical (Khan). Pliktik is simply an onomatopoeia for the sound of mandibles gnashing. Xalanthii, however, is a little more subtle. The species, to human kind, is largely mute, and communicates via a color-changing patch in the forehead. The name can’t originated from their gills, certainly. For this, I used a method called “It sounds and looks cool” but also wanted association the exotic from the moment the name appears: a rare consonant, a doubled vowel.

All of this has to do with the act of second-guessing when writing and editing. Any time I reread my work, I question certain choices I make, and wonder if I can’t revise them to better serve my intended purposes. Typically, if a character says or does something, I like for them to have multiple reasons to explain why they did. I hold myself to a similar standard. I can’t do something just because it moves the plot forward, it has to have an identifiable cause. If true deus ex machina is to occur, then I’d better know which deus chose to be ex machina and why.

Beginning: Sublime 1

Sublime. Where to start? At the beginning, right? After lifeless, I spent time revisiting old works and wondering at the things I left out due to timidity. This so possessed me that I took the time to put into writing a biography of sorts for what I considered my most thoroughly depraved villain. I rather enjoyed the process, as it justified going as far down the course as possible, and seeing where I ended up.

What I wasn’t ready for, was my sudden desire for just a little more complexity. It’s all well and good to experience the horrors and terrors of a grisly concept, but without levity to contrast, you end up muddling your way through the dark, not sure if you’re getting anywhere. So, the biography went from a place of depravity, to one of moral hand-wringing.

But I digress, heavily. With Sublime, I had a few requirements for myself. First, first person perspective. I wanted to increase the immersion a little, and even made an effort to keep the narrator very ambiguous. Every time the reader passes over “I”, hopefully they impose a little more of themself onto the story.

Second, I wanted to be both shocking and meaningful. A splash of blood loses its meaning when it’s already raining type AB+ from the heavens. To this end, I took pains to create contrast, to have serenity and violence as bedfellows.

Finally, I wanted to have mystery. It’s common to hear that “good storytelling doesn’t tell, it shows.” I like this idea a lot. I like movies where you have to think for yourself just a bit, to put things together and feel engaged. I am still guilty of running to the internet and searching “movie ending meaning” from time to time. That’s probably what drives me to write these. Understanding and certainty are comforting feelings.

I made choices in writing this story that reflect my feelings and interests at the time. I wrote from the belief that characters do just as much guessing as I do, and get the wrong idea a lot. I had also begun to embrace the idea of an open ended question, a rhetorical scenario. I, of course, had my exact understanding of the back story I imagined for what I wrote, but I also made space for the possibility of other interpretations. A sudden twist at the end of a movie could just as easily be a fan theory to explain a bit of withheld plot.

I could go on for a while, but I’d be contradicting my point about not giving everything away. Instead, I’ll let you imagine how to end it succinctly, like so:

Behind “Lifeless”

“Lifeless” marked a turning point in my writing style. Prior to writing this, my work almost entirely revolved around dark fantasy and the occasional sci-fi adventure. I always had a proclivity for the grim, but with this story, I decided I wanted to push the envelope, and tackle more than just cheap violence and gore. It started as a vent piece, taking an unsettling nightmare I had experienced, and transforming it into a creative work. Spoilers ahead, by the way.

The prototype name for this piece was “Unliving”. It revolved around a world in which some faceless “them” had taken control of society in ways it hadn’t before, in response to an event that altered life itself. Things are upside down in more way than one: The dead are more able than the living, and instead of being respected, they are loathed; Prostitution and human trafficking are regulated, successful businesses, while housing and medical care have fallen to the side. It felt compelling to paint this picture of a world with strange and maligned morals.

The key moment of the story takes place when a dead brother and his living sister see eye to eye, and both experience a shock that reminds them that their lives, (or afterlife), is not as it should be. Bleak as it is, I could not bring myself (yet) to write a story with a truly sad ending, and so left it bittersweet.

After recieving positive feedback from friends, I felt empowered to ruminate on the compulsion to explore risky territory. It seems fitting to start this archive with the story that initiated my journey into less forgiving topics.

While I hesitate to pull punches, I will put here the idea that, for a long time, prevented me from pushing myself to broaden my horizons: I don’t wish to be interpreted as a shallow sadist or some such. My work explores difficult topics, and frequently features characters acting in ways that are uninformed, biggoted, or unhealthy. This doesn’t mean I think people should act that way. Its because I believe in confronting that behavior, dragging it into the light, and examining it. The life unexamined is not worth living, supposedly. Pain, confusion, and loss are part of life. QED, I think.