June | 2008 | Bertram's Blog

On Writing: Questions to Ponder

June 4, 2008 — Pat Bertram

David Gerrold, a science fiction writer, is guest hosting my blog today. He doesn’t know that he is; I only know him through his book, Worlds of Wonder. Although it is a book on how to write science fiction and fantasy, it’s a good reference for all of us who want to take our writing to another level. He not only explains certain concepts better than anyone I’ve ever read (such as, “The name of the game is Hurt the Hero! Why? Because if he doesn’t hurt, why should we care?”); he also philosophizes about writing. (“What you write has an effect on the people who read it. Words have meaning, ideas have consequences.”)

And he poses questions worth pondering:

As a human being, you make a difference. Simply by existing, simply by being in the room you make a difference. What kind of difference do you want to make as a writer?

Your book, your story, your script — whatever you write — that’s your way of challenging the world. What do you want to say to the rest of your species?

How do you take readers someplace else and make them glad they went?

How do you create an experience of another life so vivid and compelling that for the moment it exists in the mind, it obscures and obliterates the reader’s own life?

How do you transport human consciousness into the realm of exhilaration and transformation?

How can you get so deeply into the story that you are telling it from the inside?

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: David Gerrold, making a difference as a writer, tell the story from the inside, what do you want to say as a writer, Worlds of Wonder. Leave a Comment »

On Writing: The Name of the Game is “Hurt the Hero.”

June 2, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I like my characters and don’t enjoy hurting them so my novels tend to focus on unraveling the mystery of the situation, because one thing I do understand is that at the heart of all books is a discovery. In a mystery, the discovery is the killer. In a romance, the discovery is love. In a character driven novel, the discovery is the nature of the character himself.

For the first time, though, I understand why the hero needs to be hurt. If the hero doesn’t hurt, why should we care? And if he doesn’t hurt, how would we ever discover his emotional core, what it is that he really cares about? When we discover what the character cares about, we care about him, and want to read to see how he reacts to the hurt and to find out what he is going to do to make it stop.

True character is revealed in the choices a person makes under pressure or when he is hurting or both. The greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation will be and the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature. Pressure is necessary. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little.

In Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, David Gerrold wrote: “You need to ask yourself these questions in every situation. Asking these questions brings each scene to life: Why is the moment important? Where is the pain? Why does it hurt? And most important — what will make it worse?”

In life, experiences often become meaningful with reflection and time. In retrospect, a horrendous experience takes on an aura of excitement or even happiness because we remember being fully alive. In art, experiences are meaningful now, at the moment they are happening on the screen or in the novel. We can see instantly that the character is hurting, but we can also feel the excitement of the moment, the adrenaline rush. It all happens at once, the reflection and the experience, which explains why movies and books sometimes seem more real than life itself. Without the character hurting, however, the experience becomes muted, less real.

So: hurt the hero. I guess I’ll just have to learn to like it. Or at least learn how to do it well.