Cultural Scars

A few weeks ago I was listening to the audiobook version of Lee Child's Tripwire. A lot of the story takes place in and around the World Trade Center in New York. It surprised me how hard it was to listen to events staged in a building that no longer existed. As a result, I became acutely aware of the scars we bear as a culture.

When we write we are told to make sure our characters are well-rounded, that they have a past, and plans for their future. The same thing's true for the world in which our characters live.  Each society has its triumphs, dirty secrets, and tragedies. How they affect us, the characters in our own stories, depends on who we are and how remote those events are from us.

For Americans, our cultural scars include the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the race riots of the 1960s, the war in Vietnam, the Challenger explosion, and the September 11 attacks. Each one of these events fundamentally changed how we function as a culture and interact with the world around us. But, there's something else you need to notice about the list. Off the top of my head, I only included events that occurred in my lifetime, or slightly before it. I didn't include the Civil War even though it changed, well, everything, about a young country.

If my grandparents were still with us, I'm sure they'd have included the Great Depression on the list of cultural scars. How did living through the Depression alter how my grandparents interacted with the world around them? They didn't spend money on things they didn't need to. They didn't accumulate "stuff" just to do it. My mother's parents hid cash around the house - although not under the mattress -  because they didn't trust banks. They paid cash for everything and didn't trust or use credit cards either. But I didn't live through the Great Depression. I'm two generations removed from it. So, while I know the lessons from the Depression, I also lived through the "me" generation of the 1980's where the mantra of the day was "why delay gratification? The good times will never end?" Well, they did.

To me the 9/11 attacks were more about the end of American innocence rather than the Kennedy assassination. Yes, we could be touched here in America. Our streets can look like those over seas where unrest is common. The September 11 terrorist attacks created a culture of fear. Politicians now sell it. They get elected because of it. One where we willingly sacrifice our civil liberties and outage at governmental prying for the illusion of "safety." I often wonder if my grandchildren will think the benefit was worth what we gave up.

Okay, sorry I drifted off topic. Back to my point.

Cultures are people too. They have pasts and scars. Those scars in turn inflict invisible wounds on the members of that society. The best stories are recognize this. Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns has several rich cultures that hide scars. Jora'h, one of my favorite characters from the story, must confront  his culture's despicable acts, and decide whether to bear those scars at the cost of his values or expose those secrets and endanger his people. Each race has a secret that drives its society and present policy/ actions. A culture's present responsibility for its earlier choices is one of the themes in the series. Kevin's consideration and interweaving of these macro-issues makes him one of the best world builders out there.

Paradigm shifts happen when those wounds hit a critical mass and result in change. We change because of our cultural past as much as society changes because of what we do. Our writing should reflect the world around our character, and that world has scars that carve rivulets into its people's souls.

The Joy of Discovery

If you asked me which moment I liked the best, the one where I get to type "The End" and the one where I confront the blank screen for the first time, I wouldn't hesitate in answering. They're both amazing moments,  but the moment of creation,  when that first word hits the screen, is a just shy of ecstasy. 

There's very few things I enjoy more than opening a book for the first time. The world is full of possibility. Anticipation of a really good book has raised goose bumps - no joke. You remember that moment when the prequel to a popular movie franchise came out? The theme music started. I practically vibrated with excitement. The event was so visceral. While the movie ultimately disappointed, for that one moment, the moment of creation when the music started, anything could happen. Hope and possibility ruled. Starting a story is like that for me.

I'm in an interesting place right now in my writing. I have two completed novels (King's Falcon and New Bohemia: Just One Night) that are in various stages of editing, and as of Sunday, I just started writing my next novel - Schrodinger Effect. It's actually why this post is late. I've been visiting Vonna's world.

My resistance to outlining is that the one time I tried it, the whole process took the joy of discovery out of writing for me. But Vonna's world, and her stories are too complicated for me to completely discovery write. So, for this one I have an outline of sorts with some nice big wholes that I can discovery write in.

If you haven't read  Flashes of Life from my Paths Less Traveled  short story collection, shame on you. Seriously though, the new novel features Vonna, the psychic detective from that story. One of the things I find fascinating about Vonna is the quirks in her psychic abilities. While she's an empathy, she doesn't feel emotion, she sees is as color around the person.

The connection between colors and emotion goes back a long way. People are green with envy. We associate different meanings with the colors of roses- red for love, white for friendship, and so on.

Robert Pulchik , a psychologist, used a color wheel to help categorize intensities of what he considered to be the eight primary emotions - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, curiosity,  acceptance and joy. People have since built on that model to take into account additional emotions. The wheel to the right is an example of an emotion color wheel.

Vonna's a bit more complicated than that. Her ability to see emotion is, essentially, her 6th sense or, if I were writing a different kind of story, her superpower.  I have to thank my editor at Musa Publishing who pointed out that Vonna would notice the emotional colors as a non-gifted person would notice hair color. In other words . . . always. I realized that to sustain her gift/curse over the course of a novel, I'd have to account for gradients of emotion that none of the existing wheels did. As a result in preparing to write about Vonna's next murder investigation, I spent quite a bit of time coming up with the colors in her world. Her color wheel doesn't match up to Pulchik's or even the one above.

Similar emotions fall into the same primary color, except when the don't. For example for Vonna:

Love is spring green;
Adoration is Aqua;
Fondness  is Lavender; and
Like/ liking is Lavender Blush.

We're crossing primary colors (green,. blue and red) for emotions that are somewhat similar in nature. Also, because we don't have enough words to encompass all the gradients of emotion, Vonna had to make up her own descriptions of the colors she saw, and the more complicated the emotion, the more elaborate the color. As an example, "Trust" is sunset teal because I wanted to show that "trust" as an emotion was a combination of many lesser emotions and, thus many primary colors joining together.

So for the moment, I'm in the grip of a new love. So, please forgive me if I'm so wrapped up that I forget the outside world. I'll let you know how it goes.