All posts by Catherine Brennan.

Catherine published a novel and short story back in the 1990s. Life intervened, and she didn't write for a while. But then she started writing again in 2010 for National Novel Writing Month, and has continued to write in November and throughout the year. She has stories in two Journey anthologies, Drops of Midnight and Other Worlds. She is currently either revising her latest NaNoWriMo novel from 2012, working on short fiction, or posting on her blog, CB's Mojo.

Story Worlds

CharlevoixBeach

Pondering the possibilities

You get better at writing by taking a good, hard, look at what you don’t do well, right? I found something I want to get better at.

During the novel-revision process I’ve discovered that I can dive into a story and have people (interesting people, I hope) do thing (interesting things, I hope) and discover that everything is happening in a white room…or maybe out in some kind of unspecified outdoor spot. For me, the problem is the same whether I’m writing about real world settings or imaginary ones.

I may always have to go back and flesh out the setting; there are many writers that work that way. However, as long as I continue to do some pre-writing and outlining–which I prefer, especially for novels–I  might as well get a jump on setting. So I started to ask myself some questions. There’s a lot of help out there on the interwebs and elsewhere with research and world-building. Almost too much. To keep it manageable, I decided to start from scratch with my own way to approach world-building and research. Once I can handle these relatively simple questions, I might be able to move on and sample some of the wisdom that’s out there.

My questions began like this: What do I absolutely need to figure out before I start writing?

  1. Where do people live? How many of them live in one place, and what are their houses like, from richest to poorest (if they have such distinctions, or any notion of some folks being more elite or worthy than others)?
  2. What do people wear? How do climate, social mores, occupations, religious beliefs, and class distinctions lead to variations in dress?
  3. What do people eat? Is there a particular culinary tradition associated with their culture, and if they are aware of other cultures, how would they characterize the differences? What is their special (holiday, for example) food like, compared to everyday food?
  4. What local resources—animal, vegetable, and mineral, magical—help determine answers to questions about shelter, clothing, and food?
  5. How is society organized? Are people in tribes, city-states, nations? How are people’s settlements arranged? Who is in charge? How are disputes arbitrated, both within the community and with other communities?
  6. How do people acquire things? What kind of trade occurs, both within the community and with other communities?
  7. What common occupations exist? What kinds of things will my main characters do, and are their occupations typical, or unusual?

Okay, that just might be enough to start with. Going forward, these are questions I plan to address early on. It’s got to be better than plunging into my next story world only to discover someone forgot to fill the pool!

Do. Literally. Anything.

United_States_of_America_Flag_at_Half-mast_in_New_England_in_Summer_2015 (1)

By Adam S. Keck (Own work; click photo for Creative Commons license)

This blog was never meant to be a political pulpit.

I’m not eloquent when it comes to expressing my opinions, I’m not convinced you can really change anyone’s mind, and I’m uncomfortable with confrontation to the point of phobia. That said, I can’t stay quiet about the gun problem in America. But here’s my rationale for this post: most Americans are in favor of common sense gun control, especially when it comes to assault rifles and universal background checks.

I’m not expecting anyone to change their mind. I’m asking people to start speaking up for what they believe in. If you disagree with me on this, that’s your right. I’m hoping that the multitudes who want meaningful gun control policy will raise their voices to drown yours out.

You can post on social media platforms, but those who agree will already agree, and those who don’t will ignore you (at best) or attack you. You can try writing (or calling) the White House if you think that will work. To the best of my knowledge, the more effective tactic is to call your elected representatives. I use the site 5 Calls to help me keep track of the issues that matter to me, and I recommend it.

The following are some thoughts from a few people (more eloquent than I) regarding gun control.

Cookie:
If you feel the need to own a gun for self-defense or protecting your home, fine, get one; our current interpretation of the Second Amendment permits it. But you don’t need, and shouldn’t have the ability to obtain, a semi-automatic weapon. That is NOT your Second Amendment right. We have speed limits on our roads for public safety and need limits on guns as well. Our government put tight controls on buying decongestants when some clever person figured out how to make meth out of pseudoephedrine, but they can’t seem to manage to regulate guns that are used for mass murders on a frighteningly regular basis in this country. And it makes me sick.

Heidi Stevens, Chicago Tribune:
You want better. You want change. You want it to stop. You wanted it to stop after Virginia Tech. After Sandy Hook Elementary. After Fort Hood. After Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal in Charleston, S.C. After Pulse.
You want your children to live in a world where it’s harder to slaughter people. You want them to live in a country that tries harder to stop the slaughter.
You want to believe one of these mass shootings will be the one. The one that makes us decide assault rifles don’t make us safer. (How can a good guy with a gun stop a bad guy shooting from 32 stories above the ground?)

James Corden, The Late Late Show:
I saw a quote from Robert Kennedy that stayed with me today. He said that “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.”
Now is the time for gaining that wisdom. Somewhere, it has to stop. Maybe the time for the thoughts and prayers of Congress members and the president have passed. We need to look to them to actually do something to prevent this from ever happening in the future.

Jimmy Kimmel Live:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a number of other lawmakers who won’t do anything about this because the NRA has their balls in a money clip, also sent their thoughts and their prayers today, which is good. They should be praying. They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country, because it’s so crazy.
Right now, there are loopholes in the law that let people avoid background checks if they buy a gun privately from another party, if they buy a gun online or at a gun show. So I want to show you something. These are the faces of the senators who, days after the shooting in Orlando, voted against a bill that would have closed those loopholes. These are the 56 senators who didn’t want to do anything about that.

Stephen Colbert, The Late Show:
(Addressing Donald Trump) Want to make America great again? Do something the last two presidents haven’t been able to do. Pass any kind of common-sense gun control legislation that the vast majority of Americans want. Because if we are facing pure evil, then by all means, offer thoughts and prayers. But think about what you need to do and pray for the courage to do it.

Again, 5 Calls. Maybe you’re already subscribed but if not, it’s incredibly easy.

If you have another (constructive) idea, I’ll share it in the comments.

 

Dunsinane

DeadMacbethDunsinane
Siobhan Redmond and Darrell D’Silva
Photo courtesy of the National Theatre of Scotland
and Royal Shakespeare Company

Imagine the war-torn Scotland that Malcolm and his English allies found themselves in, once the tyrant Macbeth was defeated.

If that isn’t intriguing enough, imagine that rumors of Lady Macbeth’s demise were mistaken. Imagine if her madness, too, was a rumor, probably put about to discredit her, and that Macbeth’s power had come to him because of his marriage to her—that she was the true heir to Scotland’s sovereignty. Then imagine that an Englishman who means well is in charge of restoring peace to a country where all this is true—a country he cannot begin to understand. You’ll have the setup for Dunsinane by David Greig. Artists from the National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company are visiting Chicago Shakespeare at Navy Pier from February 26-March 22, 2015 to share this riveting production.

Have I mentioned that Sis gets me a subscription to Chicago Shakespeare every year? It’s a combination birthday and Christmas present. Sometimes we choose the three-play series, sometimes the four-play, and sometimes—though not often—we go for all five. This was one of those years, but oddly, we were iffy about Dunsinane. During our post-performance discussion, we remembered how we almost didn’t go. I channeled Julia Roberts (in Pretty Woman) to assert, “That would have been a big mistake. Huge.”

Dunsinane was about peace and war and politics, including sexual politics. There were a surprising number of laughs in it. In part, it was a cautionary tale about a nation that sees itself as a stronger, more culturally advanced power than its neighbors deciding to go in and meddle in the “lesser” culture’s government to keep themselves safe and bring enlightenment and better government. The nations in this story were England and Scotland, but they could just as well have been the United States and “pick-any-nation-we-believe-is-unstable-and-poses-a-threat-to-our-security.”

There was so much food for thought in this play, so many questions raised. Is peace a natural state, or even possible? What makes a person bad or good? In the end, will one of them do more (or less) harm than the other?

The writing was so excellent I haven’t even touched on the production, so here is what I haven’t said: while some roles were more demanding than others (Siobhan Redmond as Gruach, Darrell D’Silva as Siward) the ensemble’s acting was stellar, the direction and design (Roxana Silbert, Robert Innes Hopkins, Chahine Yavroyan) were so good as to seem inevitable, and the live music by Nick Powell grabbed me by the heart from the first drumbeats.

I feel lucky just to have seen it. You can still get tickets for some performances, though many are sold out as of this posting. Until March 22, 2015, check with Chicago Shakespeare.