Titular Plot Revelation

There's a (I won't call it a blunder) device that you see often enough that involves the title of a work. I'll name a few: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Artemis Fowl, Indiana Jones, Septimus Heap, Napoleon Dynamite... They all have one thing in common (besides all being male). The Character Title. You've written an entire 80,000+ word book but can't come up with one more thing. The title. Or maybe you chose the Character Title on purpose.

I'll tell why I as a reader don't care too much for the Character Title. It saps some of the tension out of the narrative, especially if there are multiple titles in your series. I know that no matter what the protagonist comes up against, he/she will definitely avoid dying until at soonest the last book. I imagine that George R. R. Martin saw this trope and decided to grossly exploit it. Nearly everybody dies in A Song of Ice and Fire—and that's a problem in and of itself. My question to writers of stories such as ASoIaF is, why should I put so much effort into becoming acquainted with your characters if I know you're just going to kill them off?

And there we've revealed two irksome behaviors. (1) I'm going to tell you upfront through the title that the character you'll grow to love is never really in danger, and (2) you'll soon find that every other character you grow to love will be slaughtered by my pen. Of course, there's another behavior that can be equally as tiresome, the resurrecting hero. If it happens once in your story and you pull it off, your book is going to be amazing. If it starts happening too many times...(Dragon Ball Z *cough*).

Now sometimes your story isn't concerned with life and death experiences (Napoleon Dynamite) and therefore has no quarrel with the Character Title. But let's take Harry Potter. He comes into a "life and death" situation at least once in every book, but (spoiler alert) doesn't die until the final one. That's exactly what the title told us would happen.

An example of some amazing titles are Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Although LotR doesn't focus around Sauron, it's interesting that the story follows the pattern of titular plot revelation by keeping him alive until the end of book 3. That being said, we know nothing about the fates of the characters we care about. Not all of the fellowship are present at the conclusion of the epic. The title of Star Wars likewise does nothing to reveal prematurely which characters will survive until the end.

Of course you don't always want the characters you're following to die, but it makes every encounter more real if we haven't been told beforehand that they won't. My advice is that if you get to the end of a story (unless it's a standalone or a short story), wring that last little bit of juice out of your imagination and come up with a good title. But who knows, maybe a good title for your book will be the Character Title. I think Leven Thumps worked it quite well as a series.

The Stoneslayer aka Moby Dick With Golems (Chapter 1)

So I've had a story idea bouncing around my head for a month or so. Today during a break between classes, I got on my computer and started writing. Several hours later I was finished with the first chapter of a project that's tentatively titled The Stoneslayer. It could be classified as an epic fantasy novella. I project that it will be around 30,000-50,000 words long. I may or may not post any more excerpts of this until it's finished. For now just think of it as Moby Dick with golems. Enjoy and tell me your thoughts.

Edit 7/26/2015: If you've noticed in the sidebar, I have almost 70,000 words. I got a lot more cool ideas as I wrote and expect it to come out to 115-120k.

Source: Kari Christensen

Evrom raced up a grassy hill, thick metal cudgel on one shoulder, boltslinger on the other. He paused to survey upon reaching the top and frowned. The evnarals, giant rock beasts, were cresting another mound two hills over.

The clatter of clothing beside him signified that Alyozam had made it to the top as well. Evrom pointed. “It’s going to take a mighty pair of legs to catch those beasts.”

Alyozam huffed, trying to regain his breath. “Legs which you surely have, Evrom.”

“I fear they are not as fine as yours, Alyozam,” replied the winner of the footrace.

They both turned as two more men reached the top, completing their party. The oldest of them—though only forty-three—Kerbin, spoke between heaving breaths. “Brothers, these evnarals may be too swift for us.”

“Surely they are not too swift for you, Kerbin,” said the fourth member, Losheimap. The general goal of addressing other people was to prove oneself humbler than they. People often found ways to work around this by saying obviously sarcastic comments in the levelest tone possible.

The men on the hill were stoneslayers, the most impressive occupation one could hold. If it weren’t for their intrepid expeditions to hunt quarries of evnarals, their villages and cities would have no shelter. Their mission was to hunt the living rock so the masons could have dead rock to work with.

But the living rock, the evnarals, were vicious when provoked, tireless, and nigh impenetrable. Being a stoneslayer was no mean task, and the mandatory retirement age was forty-five. The others in the band of stoneslayers enjoyed reminding Kerbin of this in the humblest way possible.

Kerbin smiled. “You are a kind man, Losheimap. Though I could only hope for such success accompanied by you.”

Evrom was the youngest of the group at twenty-four, but he had been hunting the living rock since he was sixteen, the time when Hadaratzians were granted vocational freedom. Alyozam and Losheimap had both been on the hunt for nearly half their lives, being thirty-four and thirty-five respectively.

“Do you think we have strayed too far from home?” asked Evrom. He let the head of his mace fall to the ground.

“I’ve been farther,” Alyozam replied. He slung his boltslinger onto his shoulder and stroked his beard. “It was maybe eight years ago when Kreitah was still hunting the rock. We made it to the Pass of Jerr before we slew the quarry. It was a living terror carting the dead rock back to Desek.” He paused. “Recalling that return trip makes me question whether it would be worth it to pursue these evnarals any longer.”

They all looked toward Kerbin, who steeled his brow in thought. “We will follow for one day longer, then reroute toward Desek if unsuccessful to search for more quarries.”

The three younger stoneslayers nodded in agreement. “Excellent judgment,” they intoned.

The group descended the hill to their horses and carts. Evrom walked up to one of the stone and metal carts and tossed in his cudgel and boltslinger. He turned next to the attached horse and patted its side. Though he wasn’t a short man, he didn’t even come up to the creature’s shoulder. He reached up and unhitched the horse, letting it roam. Kerbin did the same for the other cart.

Losheimap and Alyozam set out in the waning light to gather some dustbush leaves for the fire. For reasons unknown yet not unwelcome, dustbush leaves burned for an inordinate amount of time compared to other plants. A fire could be kept alive for hours off a small bush.

They returned quickly and dinner was soon cooking. The conversation topic of choice was the upcoming coupling.

“It’s been far too long since I’ve coupled,” Losheimap declared, pointing at the others with his spoon.

Alyozam strained some misplaced stew out of his beard and chuckled. “And so it has. But of course you know that we all have been deprived of women for the same amount of time.”

“You are, of course, right, my friend. I was merely stating something we all could resonate with,” Losheimap replied.

“An apt judgment,” said Kerbin. “Six months is much too long between couplings. But of course it is as Gnolom wills it.”

“I firmly believe that you have control of your desires at this point, Kerbin. After over fifty couplings, have you not filled and drained your cup enough times to satisfy?” Losheimap asked with honest inquisition.

Kerbin smiled at the subtle jab at his age. “No matter how many tables you sit at, hunger will drive you to another,” he stated. “It is only a week away, my brothers. Praised be the name of Gnolom for allotting us a time to interact with his daughters!”

“Yes,” Alyozam concurred. “The older I become, the more I cherish their very presence. My desires now are different from my first hungry couplings. I despair that we are only given two days together.”

Evrom let his spoon sink in his stew and stared into the fire. “How many repeats do you usually couple with?” he asked his elders.

“Repeats?” Losheimap almost scoffed, though his humility gave no room to open mockery. “Life is too short and couplings too few to limit myself to one woman. There have been two or three couplings that I spent the entire duration with one woman though.”

Alyozam reclined and looked to the stars. “I’ve had two different repeats. I was foolish and thought I might love them, and I couldn’t stop myself. I have since tried to be more zealous for Gnolom.”

“I myself have had one repeat,” Kerbin admitted. “I was young and foolish, more so than Alyozam here. We spent three consecutive couplings together then got wiser the fourth time around.”

Evrom took their words in with a clenched jaw. The next week would mark his fourteenth coupling and, if plans held, his thirteenth repeat.

The others noticed his tension. “To be caught between two brawling evnarals is better than to be caught with a woman,” Losheimap cited from the Third Message.

“If you carry perplexities, Evrom, do not fear sharing them with us. We are your brothers, not your accusers,” Kerbin said, finishing his stew.

Evrom hesitated. “It’s just...why can we not read the Messages?”

Kerbin grabbed his waterskin and poured some into the clay dish. “The Messages are meant to only be read by the most humble. Tell me, have you ever felt a swell of pride as you ride into the city with a cart full of dead stone?”

Evrom bit his lip. “Yeah. But do you really think that the king has never had any prideswells?”

“It’s not that the king and his court have never had any prideswells, Evrom. It’s that their amount and intensity are so much lower than we could even imagine.” Kerbin waved the bowl around to remove large drops of moisture.

Evrom sighed. The king, Farauv, according to theology was the humblest person on the planet. If it weren’t so, he could not also be the only Deathslayer alive. As the ultimate test of humility and precedent to his coronation, the king underwent a special sacrificial ritual. He lay on an altar and had his throat slit. Five days later, he would rise again completely whole. In the interceding days he would be taught by Gnolom, then return to Hadaratz with a new Message for the people.

Or that was how things once were. There hadn’t been a new Message for over four hundred years. It was declared in the final Message, the twenty-fifth, that there would be no further Messages; the instructions of Gnolom were complete. It also declared that the title of Deathslayer was to become hereditary, though anyone could petition to gain the title at any time. They would simply have to pass through the sacrificial ritual themselves.

“Excuse me if I overstep my bounds, but your demeanor suggests that you might be in the power of pride even now,” Kerbin observed.

Evrom inhaled sharply and tried to purge the feeling from his insides. “Yours by twice,” he said in thanks.

To express gratitude and humility simultaneously, a certain phraseology had worked its way into the Hadaratzian vocabulary. It began as, ‘your life is greater than mine by twice,’ and eventually morphed into just ‘yours by twice’. Of course, a significant level of gratitude was expressed by ‘yours by five’, and the utmost display of humble appreciation was found in the words ‘yours by ten’.

The others had finished and were cleaning out their dishes. “Tell me, Kerbin, in your superior years of experience, have you ever arranged a tryst with one of your couplings?” Losheimap asked.

Kerbin stared into the fire without speaking for a moment. “Such a thing is difficult to manage as a stoneslayer. But as I have just declared that we are brothers and not accusers, I will share something with you. As I said, I was much more foolish than Alyozam. The same woman that I coupled with thrice, I met with her outside of any city on nine separate occasions.”

“Nine!” exclaimed Alyozam. “Gnolom knows if the Paramours have coupled so many times!”

Kerbin smiled ruefully. “Yes, we had actually discussed going to join them. To live with one another out of the king’s reach and be able to love, no holds barred. It was a tantalizing offer.”

“Well what made you change your course? I can’t think that you were caught, for you’re here with us today,” said Alyozam.

Ezrom’s heart paced more quickly as the conversation progressed. If Kerbin and his lover could pull it off, what could Ezrom and Matak accomplish?

“It was what happens to any addicted fool. I kept telling myself that I didn’t love her. I could stop meeting with her at any time. And then I heard a sermon by one of the king’s advisors. He read the part from Message Six where it says, ‘And he loved her, and was filled with pride.’ It was enough to smack me out of my stupidity and recognize that I loved her. Only then was I truly able to humble myself and break it off. I went to the next tryst we had planned and told her we couldn’t meet any more. I told her I didn’t love her. She wept, and so did I as I ran home.” Kerbin’s eyes were dotted with tears even as he told the tale.

“For Eternity’s sake, brother. Have you ever told anyone?” asked Losheimap.

Kerbin shook his head. “You three are the first. I’ve always known that it should be told to some of my stoneslayer brothers, but I never felt right about it until now.”

Ezrom fought a tempest inside. Kerbin’s story—if one tweaked the ending—sounded exactly like what he desired.

“Well I’m glad you trust us enough. Such an admission is a mark of true humility, brother,” said Alyozam.

“Yours by five for your compassion toward my iniquities.” Kerbin smiled at his friend.

“Yours by five for telling us, brother,” said Ezrom. And he meant it, if for different reasons than the other two might.

“But while I’m at it, I have one more confession.” Kerbin gazed over the dark plains toward home. “It was a lie I told her then, and it is a lie even now. I still love her.”

Now Available on Amazon

Good news, folks, The Oneironauts is now available on Amazon. It's currently listed at 10% off http://www.amazon.com/Oneironauts-Schools-Thought-1/dp/1501050974. Pick up a copy and tell me what you think. I'm working on getting the eBook up, but I have a math test this week and then there's General Conference during the weekend plus other homework. Oh, and here's the updated cover art that I designed.

Lucid dreams!

Oneironauts Book Proof

Today something beautiful happened. Almost a week delayed (which may have been due to me inputting the wrong ZIP code), the proof of my book The Oneironauts: Schools of Thought peeked its head through the mail slot. Bless that UPS guy. Here's what the copy looks like.

It just amazes me how you can just open it up and read what you've written. The book is a remarkable invention! Although I did decide that I want the pages to be cream instead of white.

There were a few hiccups with the lineup. The 'R' got cut off, and the spine image is bleeding over onto the cover. I redid some stuff then uploaded a new cover.

Luckily there's a lion consellated on the back. That came free with the package.

The line spacers that I put in were somewhat pixelated, so I went back and replaced them with 2-line drop down starting letters. If you know what I mean. I realized that I don't have the know-how to make this particular aspect work. I also added an author bio right at the end in case anyone that buys it doesn't know me personally ;)

You may have noticed that the cover is different than the one previously posted. Well, I realized that I had made a pitifully small cover (at 72 dpi). They recommend/require that your cover be at least 300 dpi, so I started from ground zero and built up an entirely new cover. I also designed a full wrap instead of just a front. It was tricksy getting the spine lined up, I'll tell ya.

I don't know, what do you think? Disregarding the minor blemishes, does it look like something that would catch your eye in a bookstore (including online)? I hope so. I'll also have you know that I am working on the second book (progress over in the side bar), but it's hard while pursuing a physics degree.

The price will be $13.99 on Amazon once I approve the final copy. I wanted to make it lower, but the minimum price Amazon would allow is $13.10, so I rounded it up to a consumer-friendly value. Link will follow in a week or two.

Money Is Not Power

This is a short post describing an epiphany I had the other day. It all started off when I woke up from a dream. The only thing I could remember was that the currency was measured in severed foreheads per second. It gave me a good chuckle but led to another thought: what if we actually measured money as a time-dependent value? I realized that occasionally we do, e.g. I make $10/hour.

In correlation to this, I realized that the old saying money is power was not true. Power is a time-dependent value while money is not. To make a correct analogy, money would have to be matched with energy.

But I thought to myself, why can't we make a unit of money over time? So I propose the salarant. It is the equivalent of one dollar per hour. I don't know if it would exactly fall under the SI units (they'd probably use Euros), but I think we can make it work. Money per hour is power.

The Economics of Judging a Book by Its Cover

You've heard this metaphor recapitulated time after time your entire life. Don't judge a book by its cover. But I'm here to argue that that's exactly what you should do.

You see, publishing houses are involved in a thing called business. One of the principles the majority of businesses try to adhere to is maximize profit. So obviously all book companies are idealists who believe that a book shouldn't be judged by its cover. They spend as little as possible on the book's appearance, trusting that readers will be enchanted by the content.

Publishers spend an average of $3,000-5,000 on a book cover. In the video below (start at around 0:50 for the quote), Brandon Sanderson states that the highest paid cover he's heard of was $15,000. Fifteen grand. That sends a very clear message that publishers are worried about how their books look.

And for that very reason you can, should, and do judge books based on their outward appearance. Another poignant observation that Sanderson makes in the video is that publishers don't worry about whether or not the cover represents what's inside. To them, it's basically a movie poster for the book. In that sense, if you've written a fantasy novel, your cover has to appeal to fantasy readers! If it doesn't, your sales will suffer.

I'll make a comparison to the literary world. Most publishers won't take a look at your manuscript unless you have an agent representing you. To them, if you can't even manage to convince one person who's educated in how the literary world moves to stand by your project, they don't want to waste their time on it. For the same reason, someone who's on the lookout for a new title won't consider making the time investment on your novel if you can't even make it look exciting.

Next time you're at the bookstore (or at your bookshelf) examine which covers entice you and which ones turn you off. A nice fantasy or sci-fi cover always intrigues me, but the romance covers turn me off. That's okay, I'm not the target audience. It doesn't mean that I won't enjoy every single book whose cover isn't particularly exciting. It just means that I'll have to be introduced to those volumes through another source.

I'll end with a series that I was attracted to by the cover, the Bartimæus Trilogy. It had excellent payoff as well!

The Flaws of Harry Potter

This is a subject that many of my generation find blasphemous, but I assure you that this post is purely academic. It's a worthy pursuit to identify things that successful authors did poorly in order to avoid them. Let us begin.

The Goblet of Fire Plot Hole
One of the most blaring mistakes of the Harry Potter series is book 4. The entire plot of the book rides on the idea that the Death Eaters have to get Harry to touch any object. That is to say, a portkey can be any object, and Harry just has to touch it outside the walls of Hogwarts. So instead of having a Death Eater come up to Harry at the Three Broomsticks and give him some present, they decide, "Let's make it one of the single most difficult objects to touch in the wizarding world."

Voldemort wants to kill Harry. But first he needs Harry's blood to be able to kill Harry. We need to keep him alive so we (or more specifically I) can kill him. I feel like a whole lot of trouble could be bypassed by just killing him, then resurrecting Voldemort. Maybe that was the Death Eaters' plan. Put Harry in the Triwizard Tournament and let him die accidentally. Or not, they seem pretty fawning. The point is, don't make an entire book based off a plot hole. Examine your characters' motives before making a plot (and after).

Hm, this picture appears unwilling to show up. It's rejecting my accio picture command. Another flaw of Harry Potter: I've never gotten any of the spells to work.

Time Travel
A classic way to fill your plot with holes is to introduce time travel. Now, Rowling tried to patch this up in book 5 by sending the time-turners into an infinite loop of getting knocked over, thereby rendering this useless. But that doesn't cover up the fact that they existed for a long time before then.

That means that for every crime committed, the Ministry could just take time turners, go back, and prevent it. Pretty useful, eh? Every single event that they weren't pleased with, they could revert time and change the course of events. For example, the murder of Lilly and James Potter. Why don't we go back and stop Voldemort, or at least warn the Potter's so they can flee? No, no, let's save Buckbeak. (I'm talking more about Dumbledore at this point.) The point is, don't introduce time travel unless you put limitation on it.

Voldemort: The Most Powerful Wizard in the UK
For how infamous and powerful the Dark Lord is, his reach doesn't seem to extend very far past the UK. I don't know that this is a huge flaw, but you'd think that a sociopathic megalomaniac would want to rule more than just one country. One might counter argue that he was still in the process of conquering the UK when he got zapped by Lily's love power. Not a flaw per se, but it just seemed like the villain had a relatively small vision to me.

Another issue with the geography of things is why did the Potter's feel the need to hide in the UK? I'm sure there are hundreds of other wizarding communities (where Voldemort has seemingly no reach) that would willingly hide them. But no, they decide to hide with the bomb instead of away from it.

The Magic System
So then there's the magic system. Rowling just kind of improvises new bells and whistles as she goes along. Then in later books she might completely ignore an element of magic that was so interesting in previous books.

It also seems as if you could just learn Latin and become a master wizard. Why don't they teach Latin at Hogwarts (I mean, they do, but it's broken up). And who decides when you can make new spells? Snape just kind of comes up with a sinister, powerful one as a student. Why hasn't Hermione made a list of her own inventions?

Why do spells have to be generated from the wand? Powerful wizards don't have to use a wand to channel their magic. Why, then, couldn't they originate a spell right in front of someone's face?

Another qualm I had was how Harry only learned like 3 spells his entire 6 years at Hogwarts. I expected him to become a great wizard. In the end, he won off a fluke of wand ownership. Rowling defined dueling magic as the quickest and wittiest wizard will win. But instead of using that definition, she had Harry win because one time he disarmed Malfoy. It was clever, but I didn't feel it was terribly satisfying.

Love Magic (Sacrificial Protection)
Ah, perhaps one of my biggest issues. The love magic. Rowling uses an a priori assumption that love trumps all, but never goes into too much detail. The basic rules of love magic, or sacrificial protection, are die for somebody and they get arcane protection against your killer. So my question is this: why is Harry so revered? Has no one ever sacrificed themselves before? This sounds like a documented phenomenon, yet the entire wizarding world seems oblivious to the fact, naming him The Boy Who Lived. I find it hard to believe that so few wizards have ever sacrificed themselves that the entire community views this as incredible.

And the second part comes when Harry invokes the powers of Sacrificial Protection. He goes to Voldemort who kills him. Then all the good guys back in Hogwarts are protected from his (and somewhat from his cronies') magic. But here's the thing: Harry didn't die. Dumbledore explicitly states this. If he did die then it would be breaking the Rule Against Resurrection when he came back.

But that means that you don't actually have to die in order to access the Love Magic. So another question that gets brought up is are there other acts of love that would activate the Love Magic? I suppose we'll never know.

Other Random Flaws
The Potter universe also seems to completely disregard the existence of modern weaponry. That was likely on purpose, but Harry and Hermione lived with muggles for years before learning about magic. Of course they know about guns, planes, bombs, tanks, etc. Why doesn't Harry keep a glock on him for the next time he meets Voldemort? Imagine the battle in the fourth book: their wands connect. Voldemort is distracted. Harry pulls out a 9mm and pops a cap. It's suddenly a 4-book series.

In the telling of the Deathly Hallows, we learn that one can hide from Death with the invisibility cloak made by Death himself. But somehow a group of teenagers made a map that can see through it. Perhaps Death should have hired the marauders.

Liquid luck, or felix felicis, will purportedly give the user a perfect day. Why didn't Harry and the gang brew some of that up and down it once they came up against Voldemort?

Another thing that was always an issue for me was that when Harry said a phrase that closely resembled Diagon Alley (maybe even how some dialects would pronounce it), he was transported to a place called Knockturn Alley. Diagon, Knockturn. Di, Knock. Is magic so stupid that it can mistake the two?

This isn't exactly a flaw and was touched upon above, but what's the deal with wizards outside of the UK? We see a bit of that in the 4th book with the two visiting schools and the World Cup, but what about continents beside Europe? I understand this topic is briefly discussed in non-series books that I haven't read, but you think there'd be more of a mention. What did wizards of the Plains Indians do in the early second millennium? What about Mayan wizards? Aborigine wizards? African? It's not vital to know, but it would have been nice if the topic were addressed. It could come in a passing comment by Hermione. "We can't reveal ourselves, Ron. The ancient wizards of Mesoamerica did just that and they ended up controlling the people."

In Conclusion
All in all, the books are fantastic. This was merely an exercise to show how even great authors can forget elements they introduce and leave loose ends. They can get caught up in a story and not realize that the plot they're writing is unnecessary. They forget motives. They make a priori assumptions. They ignore facts. They capriciously make and break rules. And we loved it. This is not a ticket to go and do all those things