Anyways, just a quick blurb from me for now, I shall return!

Today, you cannot get by without knowing how to read and write. It’s impossible to get along in life without knowledge of letters. People will say, “It’s as basic as reading, how can you not know that?” or “As long as you know how to read, you’ll do fine.” both of which are good examples of how important literacy is today. Today, more than an art-form, more than just something utilitarian, literacy has become a basic need of life.

By contrast, today, computer programming is something that fits more closely with the traditional role of writing centuries ago. No one really needs to know how computers work, leave that to the techs that operate behind the scenes. I believe however, that that will be something that will change in the future. No, I sincerely doubt that anyone of us here now will see it in our lifetime. In the future I foresee that being able to poke around the innards of a computer and its software will be just as important as the ABCs of today.

Perhaps I’m a bit too entrenched in cyberpunk and whatnot, and my programming background may have influenced this opinion somewhat, but considering the rapid pace of technology today, I believe such a future is not entirely far-fetched. True, the world won’t be composed of a bunch of super-hackers, and I doubt that everyone or even anyone will be able to work their way into the Pentagon. But by that same note, the world is not currently filled with Shakespeares though everyone can write.

I see the future then that everyone will know how to program a computer, sure, easy enough. I also see that perhaps learning how to program will be a necessity and not just an esoteric art. Perhaps the cult of the hacker will have disappeared by then, or have just become even more mysterious and complicated. Who knows? It’s sad that I won’t be around to see it, but it sure does make for interesting thinking.

I find that certain music does a lot to affect my writing. Compare writing with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 playing in the background to doing the same with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 or Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and you’ll most assuredly see a difference. Depending on my mood, I’ll listen to different things. Also depending on what I want my mood to be, I’ll also listen to different things.

Anywho, just a short little blurb from me. That’s all, cheers!

Part 2 – Of Maps and Mountains

Now, I find that when writing fiction, it’s not really neccesary to actually publish the map for your world. There are many authors who didn’t have extremely detailed maps for their worlds. Then again, there are some who did, and very elaborately at that.

Now, I’m not going to argue either way as to which is better. There are many reasons to not make maps, and then again, there are many reasons to make maps. Personally, I prefer to go with the making of maps as I tend to be a bit obsessive with keeping my worlds as realistic and believable as possible.

Distance in Fantasy Worlds

I find that one of the most important things that I need to know when building worlds is distance. For me, it’s important to know just how far away city A is from city B. This helps me to figure out just how long it takes characters to get from one point to another or how long it’ll take the army of the big bad to get to the good guys.

When writing, I tend to use the league. True, no one uses it now except perhaps fantasy writers and game developers. In the modern world, measurements such as miles or kilometers are much more prevalent. The problem is, if you tell me that something is X miles away, or Y kilometers away, chances are, unless I’m from the same part of the world as you, I won’t have a really good idea about how far that actually is.

In some places, just saying, “Oh, it’s just a mile or so that way” gives a very good idea about how far something is. Other parts of the world are more used to saying, “Oh, it’s just and hour or so that way” and everyone will be able to picture the distance. This is one of the reasons that I use leagues, as a more culture neutral sort of measurement. But, that’s not the main reason that I use leagues for measurement.

The main reason I use leagues, is that a league is roughly equivalent to how far an average, healthy, and physically fit adult human can walk in an hour at an average brisk pace. Although I’m hardly “physically fit”, it does give me a better idea in terms of distance. I can imagine myself walking for an hour, or I can go outside and actually walk if the mood so takes me, and I can get an idea of distance. This unit is based on Roman measurements used for their legions on the march. Now, measurements do vary, but a league is roughly equal to 3 miles, give or take. If you want to be more precise, one league is 3.4523 miles or 5.556 kilometers but for the sake of quick and dirty measurements, I’ll stick with 3 for now.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

This is useful for me, because if I know that City X is 172 leagues from City Y, then I can easily calculate how long it would take a character to get there. On average, a person can walk six to eight hours in a day on even terrain. Roman legions walked around four to six hours in a day, with the rest of the time being spent fortifying their position and resting. An individual however, should be able to do eight hours without too much trouble. I get a rough formula then of:

172 leagues / 8 leagues per day = 21.5 days

So I now know that, considering the terrain is roughly the same all throughout, my character could make it from City X to City Y in a little over three weeks, barring any interference. This prevents any problems with, “Hey, how did get here so quickly? It’s only been three days, and that city is 138 miles away!”

Issues like this however, can always be solved with magic. It’s a simple matter to say that a powerful wizard transported them through mystical passes that are known only to the wise. But this has always seemed to me to be a cheap way out, especially if no mention was made of it beforehand.

Travel time will never however (hey, a rhyme!), be without effect from the terrain. Walking through a forest will obviously slow someone down, and travel on plains will be a lot faster than through swamps. This is another reason why I make maps, as if I know where all the different geological features are, then I can plot my characters’ path and figure out how long it will take them.

Which brings me nicely to my next point, terrain.

What I am saying is that you should try writing your characters as real people. You should know their traits, quirks, and failings. When asked the question, “If you had one wish, what would it be?” Darth Vader would answer very differently as compared to the stereotypical dumb-blonde (or light–haired, intellectually sub–par individual if you prefer to be PC). Take the following as an example:

Interviewer: Well, many famous people have found various things and aspects of their fame to be the most rewarding in their lives. What would you guys say was the most fulfilling part of fame?

Interviewee One: Crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and hearing the lamentation of their women!

Interviewer: I see… And how about you, Sir… I’m sorry, how should I call you?

Interviewee Two: It stoles our precious!

Interviewer: Aha. Moving on… How about you miss?

Interviewee Three: Well, I’d just like to like, uhm, like say it’s totally cool to like be talking to you like this you know? And like, I think it’s like totally like oh yeah, nice to see everyone like here right now like this! And oh, I brought my puppy and he’s like totally cute and sweet isn’t he? And, oh, world peace!

Interviewee One cuts Interviewee Three’s head off

See how that works? There you have three different characters (kudos to you if you know who the first interviewee was) with three very different answers. It should be no different with your characters. If you ask one of your characters a question, then that character should respond differently from your other characters.

This is a problem that many people run into, creating a hero that is too heroic, or a villain that is too much the utmost epitome of evil. There exist no people that are either perfectly good or perfectly bad. There are always at least two sides to a person, if not more. Even Darth Vader, the great-granddaddy of evil archetypes had more than one side (the author only recognizes Episodes IV-VI) despite his overwhelming general bad***ness. He was torn; he didn’t do evil out of simply being evil. Although he would choke a man on a whim with a well-placed Force-choke, he did not run around pushing old ladies down stairs just for the fun of it. For everything he did, there was more behind it than simple, “I’m evil! I will do evil today!”.

Characters that do evil just for the sake of being evil are rarely, if ever, effective in writing. Those characters exist only in fairy tales and unless you do happen to be writing a fairy tale for the wee tykes, try to avoid the Snydley Whiplash image.

More often than not, the antagonist will not necessarily be evil, but will instead have methods and goals that are completely different if not outright contradictory to the goals of the protagonist. With the right writing (slight pun intended) even the most horrible of villains could be made into the hero of a book.

Let’s break it down. Take the example of Magneto against the X-Men. It’s a simple example, but in my book, the simpler the better. Start out simple, and then work up to complex. Now to Magneto and the X-Men, in a nutshell all Magneto wants is a world where mutants will not be oppressed or mistreated ever again. What he wants is noble, he doesn’t want any of his people to ever again be hurt by a species that doesn’t understand or approve of them. He sacrifices himself, pushing away his family and friends in order to further this goal. Unfortunately, this runs against what the X-Men believe. The X-Men believe that the Homo sapiens and Homo superior can live together in peace. For this goal, they are willing to fight against Magneto.

See how that works? Magneto doesn’t go around saying, “Well, I think I’ll rip Wolverine’s adamantium from his bones today. Yes, that sounds like an evil thing to do. (insert maniacal laughter here)” but rather he gets up in the morning wanting to further his goal, and if the X-Men stand in his way, so be it.

This problem is not restricted only to villains. Many authors are equally guilty of making too perfect heroes. Your protagonist is not a perfect person. In fact, the more flawed your lead, the more interesting it is to see how your lead progresses throughout your story.

Let’s take the example that wee so often in writing: the noble knight who happens to be the best swordsman in the land and stands up to evil in whatever form it may take. Once again, this character will only appear in fairy tales and will not make for interesting writing as your lead. While such a character may be interesting for a one shot or a minor character, too many of these guys will make your story dull and too much of a cliché. At the worst, you could fall into Mary Sue writing.

She is beauty, she is life. She is as a I remember her, so amazingly vibrant and beautiful, so full of the spark and flame of passion, so… alive. For moment, a heartbeat of eternity, our eyes meet. Soul to soul speaks that which is unheard, beyond scribe or poet, a sound unheard by symphonies beneath the clouds.

I long, I dream, I wait.

The moment is over, and she looks away into the far night, her eyes whispering an unasked question to the depths of the moonlit expanse. I follow her gaze towards the marble marker I know too well is there. We stand there, a sad silent figure beneath the gloom of moonlight, and I there watching her.

Softly, her steps scarce but a sibilant sigh on the satin blades of grass grass, she seems to glide past me. She stands there, her eyes silent and questioning. She looks up and her eyes move to the skies, her vision traced by moonlight. She closes her eyes as the rays of heaven caress her face in ghostly luminescence. A single tear spills forth and I reach out towards her to brush it from her face.

Almost, faintly, I can just believe that I can catch that single tear, to be able to hold her, be a part of her again. But her skin shies from my touch and my fingers slide past as if through little more than mist. The tiny droplet of silent sorrow continues its trail down her face, catches for a moment, then falls, tumbling trembling down to disappear as if it had never been.

She turns, and my breath catches as she looks towards me, but her eyes don’t see mine, and her gaze continues on through towards the depths of night. She looks up at the sky again and I follow her gaze. The rain has begun to fall.

We stand there, almost together, but eternities apart, the rain falling a cleansing shower that would wipe all away save for the sorrow still in my soul. I remember a single night such as this and feel the rains pouring my sorrow through my soul.

I look to her again, and she is still standing facing the moonlight, her tears flowing freely through lids softly shut. I long to hold her once again, for one last minute together to tell her everything, but the cold stone we stand by tells of chances once given and now lost. She lowers her face and wipes at her eyes, brushing away tears I once soothed.

She takes in her gloved hand, a single rose, and sets it down. She lingers for a few more seconds, then slowly, turns to leave and I can do little but look and listen to the fading of her steps in the rain.

It’s silent now. The rain is but a fading memory and the mists rise. Once again, I am alone in the night, and the soft satin sheen of the sky spills over me in a sombre, still, and stony silence.

It’s Valentine’s, so I thought I’d do a romantic one. Sort of.
I’ve been working on a few of these, all a bunch of stories revolving around questions of life and of death. I already have a title for them, “Tales of the Sad Man” named after one of my other stories.

Photo courtesy of the excellent PDPhoto.org

But then I start walking, and the spell is broken. It’s just the corner of Fifth and Main again, and there are no more mysteries. I’m just another commuter on the way to a dull 8 to 5, and all thoughts of clairvoyance are pushed from my mind.

I’m passing by the drugstore now, but I don’t go in. There it is again: prophecy. What if I had just missed the moment of my life? What if she was there, the one I’ve loved all my life but have never met? I could turn back wandering in nonchalantly. But I don’t.

Did I just miss her? Did I just lose my chance of ever meeting the one person I could ever truly love? I don’t know, and I never will, because I’m walking down Fifth Avenue again, and the crossroad has passed.

But what if I had gone in there? Perhaps the one I was to meet is actually along this road? Or maybe I made the wrong choice at the library. She could have been waiting in an alley for me, beset by a gang of rapists, lustful and wild. I could have been there behind the library to fight them off with my umbrella and briefcase.

I could have.

But I didn’t.

And I may have just lost the one chance in my life to be happy.

The sun shines off of my balding head, sweat glistening off of my skin. I’m forty-five years old, fat, single, and balding. My life is going nowhere. Yet here I am again at a crossroads. I could enter the building and go up to my office, or I could turn around throw my papers to the winds and be free.

The Jones and Dewey case would fly in the breeze like doves playfully swimming through the air. Alan Kovordjek Jr., Gertrude Humberg, and Kyle Smith vs. Alan Kovordjek Sr. and Jennifer Kovordjek would be nothing more than random pieces of paper to be lost to the jungle of the city. A child would pick one up, and it would become an airplane, a boat, maybe even the latest fashion from Paris in the form of a paper hat.

I walk through the door and the moment is lost again. The place is very familiar to me. The fake Persian rug, the polished bronze plaques that shine like gold, the tacky smell of crushed dreams and crisp money. I work here, and I have worked here for the past twenty years. So many crossroads then, so many chances at becoming someone, at being free and happy.

I’m fat and thirty pounds overweight. The next crossroad is easy; I take the elevator. But what if I had taken the stairs? My boss might have been there, with a broken leg after slipping and falling. He always takes the stairs even though we all say that he shouldn’t because of his age. I could save him, and I would get a higher position in the company. But it’s not going to happen is it?

I really can’t figure it out. I could be a Nostradamus with these. Each crossroad is something new, something grand. I can look down one path and see all the things that could possibly happen. We all do. But once we start walking down a path, it is blind to us, but paths we haven’t walked are clear.

I’m in my office now. I sit at the desk, reach into the drawer and pull out the .357 I’ve been keeping there. I put it to my temple and blow my brains out all over the room.

There’s something magical about crossroads. I think I’ve just figured it out.

A bit melodramatic, true. I rather like it though. This is one of those pieces that I’d like to do a short video of. I can already imagine it, a voice reciting, soft music in the background, hand drawn very simplistic animations of the guy walking around. Then at the end, the gunshot, then silence. Fade to black.