All OWNED by somebody.

No more wild places.

I [...]]]>

As far back as the 1950s, my husband remembers seeing a quote from somebody saying that within 20 years all land on this planet will be *owned by somebody*. There is no reason to suppose the person who said was far wrong. I am sure it came to pass.

All OWNED by somebody.

No more wild places.

I would like to take a moment and think about what this means to us, the human race, as a species, as storytelling beings.

We began telling stories about the things that surrounded us and for which we had no explanation – and which thus had to occur through the agency of something beyond and outside of us, something divine, something wild. We created gods who lived in inaccessible places – sometimes odd and made up ones, fanciful and wonderful (but of necessity based on things that we knew – for instance, Valhalla) or real ones which were hard or impossible to get to by ordinary human agency and therefore gained an air of mystery and mysticism, like the top of Mount Olympus – and gave into their hands the power of the thunderbolt.

As human culture and civilization grew and our knowledge and insight increased, our stories grew and changed. The things that we knew in the present moment quickly slipped into yesterday, and yesterday slipped into history, and history slipped into legend, and legend turned into myth – and it was all born of that wilderness that existed outside of ourselves, the things that were NOT of Man but were greater or weirder or stranger or more worthy of awe or veneration.

The stories we told our children – all the fairytales ever told, all the fables, everything – were rooted in the wilderness. In the Wild Woods, where ancient and gnarled trees which were maybe a thousand years old grew in the gloom of spreading boughs, never before seen by human eyes. In the empty open places of the deserts. Atop great craggy mountains wreathed in cloud.

But that was BEFORE. Before that “every inch of this planet is owned by somebody” days. That was in the days where the gods and the creatures who inhabited our myths and our legends and our fairytales had room to live and thrive. Centaurs and dryads and rusalki and Koschei the deathless and the firebird and Quetzalcoatl and talking golden carp and the little mermaid and ifrit and djinni and flying horses and dragons and elves and witches and wizards and evil gnomes named Rumpelstiltskin who knew how to spin straw into gold. All of these, and more. They lived in those wild places where humans dared not go, and they loomed huge in the imaginations of generations of children.

No longer.

The wild places are going, or gone. There are no more tracts of forests into which no human has ever penetrated. There are no deserts where no human has ever been. There are no mountains which no human has ever climbed. We have gone to all of our wild places, and explored them, and mapped them, and conquered them, and… and tamed them. We own them now. If you don’t realize what that means think of the difference between a wild stallion and a working gelding pulling a cart on a farm. Think of the difference between the Minotaur and the domestic ox. Think, for that matter, of the startling differences between wild turkeys and the empty-headed domestic variety whose only redeeming feature is that they have lots of white meat to serve at the Christmas or Thanksgiving table. Think of Aslan (“he was not a TAME lion”) and that toothless mangy old beast in the back of the cage at the zoo.

We have gone to all the places where the wild things were. And they can hide in those places no longer.

Revealed, they are… diminished. There is less reason to fear something you can classify, and sort, and put into textbooks, together with means by which it can be combatted or defeated.  We own our planet, but we no longer have a place where our minds and imaginations have a chance to escape, to play, to invent, to learn.

Perhaps the explosion of fiction of the ilk that is now known as “urban fantasy” owes something to this phenomenon. The creatures who used to be the wild ones have been driven out of their refuges and hiding places – and they have evolved to suit their new niches, the dirty back alleys of cities, the glass and steel metropolises. Our werewolves are no longer the shaggy feral creatures who came howling out of the scary night to frighten our ancestors – they now prowl the underground of our cities. Our vampires no longer live in distant castles behind high walls with creaking wrought iron gates – they are among us, and some of them (God help us) even sparkle. Even the Fae have found their way into the city lights. Everything is changing.

What does it mean to the Wild Things when the ownership of all the places which they once thought belonged to them is now claimed by us? If a human being signs the purchase papers for a stand of enchanted trees, does that human being now also own the dryads whose trees those are? Do they have to pay rent now? Does the human being who purchases a mountain and the mineral rights to everything within it also own the dragon’s hoard in the caves deep inside?

How are these bargains to be enforced on the creatures of our imagination, the creatures of the Wild? Are they really to be considered something that we can own? Has slavery returned to haunt humanity? Will the creatures we are buying and selling – in the end – rise up and fight for their rights? (Heh. Occupy The Wilderness…?) Do we have any right to fight back? What, after all, would WE do if the tables were truly turned and they came to us and told us that THEY owned the land, and therefore US?…

There are still stories here. But they are very different stories to the ones we have traditionally told. And they are getting harder and harder to hunt and find. It’s a little like those staged hunts now, where the so-called “hunters” are taken to a place from which they can safely and with 100% certainty shoot into an enclosure and bag their trophy of a lion or tiger or bear. Our wild stories have been increasingly corralled. There are still those which are loose, to be sure, but they’re more sophisticated than we knew them of yore, and harder to catch and kill and skin and display.

We’ve put the stamp of ownership on all of our wildernesses, and somehow we have thus closed the fences around ourselves. We are milling around inside those fences, thinking ourselves free, thinking ourselves mighty, while all the time the wonder and the glory of the wilderness is leaching away from us, leaving our memories, leaving us helpless and disarmed should something come up for which we no longer have the dark places of our world or our spirits to search for antidotes in.

Perhaps there is only one way left to go – up. Into the sky. Into the last wilderness of stars and space.

It is a tragedy that this last great journey of mankind will probably be undertaken with a single driving urge – to find out how we can stake our claim on these, too, and “own” them just like we now “own” every inch of planet Earth.

And maybe the last and best hope of humanity lies in the possibility that we will finally fail, and accept that we can only end with what we began – the wild places which we do not understand, and whose creatures we can invoke to frighten us into becoming bigger and better than we thought we could be.

Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of [...]]]>

This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.

Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He was abducted on January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. While a captive, Daniel’s picture showing a gun pointed at his head was sent with demands that the United States free all Pakistani terror prisoners, end the US presence in Pakistan and allow a detained shipment of F-16 jet fighters to be delivered to Pakistan. Daniel was ultimately killed on February 1 and beheaded. His body was cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. His remains were found on May 16 and were ultimately returned to the United States for burial.

A senior operative for Al Queda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, grew up in Kuwait, but obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university. Subsequently, he received military training in Pakistan and claimed to have briefly fought the Soviets. According to United States law enforcement, he had a small role in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City on February 26, 1993. The bombing was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, flattening them both and killing thousands of persons. That did not happen, but the blast did kill six persons and injure more than a thousand.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the principal architect of the coordinated September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks using four commandeered passenger jets. Two of the jets were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City A third jet was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, which was on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists. These attacks reportedly caused 2,996 deaths and injured more than 6,000 persons.

Among his terrorist plots, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly described a plan to take control of ten aircraft. Nine were to crash into targets including those of the 9/11 attack, CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in the states of Washington and California. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself was to land the tenth plane, kill all the adult male passengers and deliver a speech to the media denouncing the United States.

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the Pakistanis in Rawalpindi. He was reportedly held in Pakistan for three days and then moved elsewhere by US officials. During a closed military hearing, he confessed to being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions included the statement that “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” Since he confessed to so many terrorist acts, and since he had been the recipient of 183 water boardings, his confessions were considered by many as being inflated if not completely false.

A three-minute, thirty-six-second videotape showing Daniel’s decapitation was released on February 21. 2002. It was titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows the arms and hands of a masked person severing Daniel’s head. Stills showing his hands were made from the videotape and compared by the FBI and CIA to those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he had been captured on March 1, 2003. A bulging vein coursing across the back of a hand shown in the videotape was found to match a vein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.

Although vein matching is not presently considered to be absolute evidence, it is corroborative with other forensic evidence. Both the FBI and CIA reportedly sometimes use vein matching, formally referred to as vascular technology, to identify suspects. Vascular structures of individuals are believed to be unique. Vein patterns are obtained by recording (typically near infrared) light that penetrates skin and reacts with hemoglobin in blood to reveal a vein pattern. By identifying the vascular structure of a hand or finger of a suspect and recording it digitally, a template can be created that can be compared to a template of a known person.

In addition to being a step forward in forensics, vascular technology, has other useful applications. Critical hospital applications include error reduction and unconscious or uncommunicative patient identification. The chief of hospital operations at one medical center claims that vein patterns are 100 times more unique than fingerprints. Vein matching is also being used in the financial field and for such tasks as entry allowance and attendance recording. For hygienic purposes, a version of a vein matching device has been developed that requires no physical contact. An important advantage of vein matching is that it appears it would be extremely difficult to construct a fake representation of a vein pattern. Fingerprints do not have this advantage.

In response to increasing incidences of credit card fraud and of the illegal withdrawing of funds from their customer accounts, Japanese banks have begun to use biometric technology. A form of this is finger vein identification. A customer inserts a finger into a device that reveals the vein structure within the finger. The structure is compared with that of a customer of record to confirm the identity of the finger’s owner.

I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.

It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.
This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.

Most readers probably remember Daniel Pearl, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He was abducted on January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. While a captive, Daniel’s picture showing a gun pointed at his head was sent with demands that the United States free all Pakistani terror prisoners, end the US presence in Pakistan and allow a detained shipment of F-16 jet fighters to be delivered to Pakistan. Daniel was ultimately killed on February 1 and beheaded. His body was cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. His remains were found on May 16 and were ultimately returned to the United States for burial.

A senior operative for Al Queda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, grew up in Kuwait, but obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university. Subsequently, he received military training in Pakistan and claimed to have briefly fought the Soviets. According to United States law enforcement, he had a small role in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City on February 26, 1993. The bombing was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, flattening them both and killing thousands of persons. That did not happen, but the blast did kill six persons and injure more than a thousand.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the principal architect of the coordinated September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks using four commandeered passenger jets. Two of the jets were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City A third jet was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, which was on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to wrest control from the terrorists. These attacks reportedly caused 2,996 deaths and injured more than 6,000 persons.

Among his terrorist plots, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly described a plan to take control of ten aircraft. Nine were to crash into targets including those of the 9/11 attack, CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants and the tallest buildings in the states of Washington and California. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself was to land the tenth plane, kill all the adult male passengers and deliver a speech to the media denouncing the United States.

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested by the Pakistanis in Rawalpindi. He was reportedly held in Pakistan for three days and then moved elsewhere by US officials. During a closed military hearing, he confessed to being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confessions included the statement that “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” Since he confessed to so many terrorist acts, and since he had been the recipient of 183 water boardings, his confessions were considered by many as being inflated if not completely false.

A three-minute, thirty-six-second videotape showing Daniel’s decapitation was released on February 21. 2002. It was titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video shows the arms and hands of a masked person severing Daniel’s head. Stills showing his hands were made from the videotape and compared by the FBI and CIA to those of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he had been captured on March 1, 2003. A bulging vein coursing across the back of a hand shown in the videotape was found to match a vein in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.

Although vein matching is not presently considered to be absolute evidence, it is corroborative with other forensic evidence. Both the FBI and CIA reportedly sometimes use vein matching, formally referred to as vascular technology, to identify suspects. Vascular structures of individuals are believed to be unique. Vein patterns are obtained by recording (typically near infrared) light that penetrates skin and reacts with hemoglobin in blood to reveal a vein pattern. By identifying the vascular structure of a hand or finger of a suspect and recording it digitally, a template can be created that can be compared to a template of a known person.

In addition to being a step forward in forensics, vascular technology, has other useful applications. Critical hospital applications include error reduction and unconscious or uncommunicative patient identification. The chief of hospital operations at one medical center claims that vein patterns are 100 times more unique than fingerprints. Vein matching is also being used in the financial field and for such tasks as entry allowance and attendance recording. For hygienic purposes, a version of a vein matching device has been developed that requires no physical contact. An important advantage of vein matching is that it appears it would be extremely difficult to construct a fake representation of a vein pattern. Fingerprints do not have this advantage.

In response to increasing incidences of credit card fraud and of the illegal withdrawing of funds from their customer accounts, Japanese banks have begun to use biometric technology. A form of this is finger vein identification. A customer inserts a finger into a device that reveals the vein structure within the finger. The structure is compared with that of a customer of record to confirm the identity of the finger’s owner.

I can’t help wondering how long it will take for someone to develop a finger vein identification device that will trap the finger of an unauthorized person and summon security.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Finger vein patterns of each finger of each person are different.

It took until May 2002 to completely clear the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

To protect United States journalists around the world, President Obama enacted the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act on May 19, 2010.

When people who’ve known me [...]]]>

I’m on a deadline and couldn’t think of anything to write about this month, so I dredged up an oldie but a goody from 2005 that is still as pertinent to me today as it was back then. I updated a few of the details but the sentiment is the same.

When people who’ve known me for a while find out that I’ve published some books and am pursuing a career as a writer, one question usually comes up before long: When are you quitting your day job?

This question brings assumptions with it, whether or not the person asking it realizes as much. First, there’s an assumption that if I’ve published books that are in bookstores and in libraries, continue to have good Amazon rankings, were reviewed in Publishers Weekly, are available as limited editions, were translated into other languages, etc. that I must be rolling in dough, so I’ll soon be upscaling my life. I think the idea that there’s huge wealth in publishing comes from an unwarranted extrapolation from the music industry or Hollywood, where a single modest success can set a person up for life.

The second assumption is that my day job is merely a support system for my writing. If that were true, if I was just putting in eight hours a day at a job I barely tolerated so I could write, I would be miserable. As it happens, I currently have two jobs. One I do during the daytime. I’ve been with the same company for 22 years. I love my “day job.” I’m good at what I do there, and it is fulfilling and rewarding. It’s not just something that pays the bills, buys printer paper and covers my family with health insurance. My second job, which I’ve been doing since 2000, is equally fulfilling and more flexible. It has to be, because I fit it in where I can, between day job, family life, chores, and many other things.

My normal response, when I really don’t want to get into a lengthy discussion of the finances of a writer (i.e. always) is this: “I know a lot of writers. I know a lot of writers with day jobs.” If I’m feeling particularly expansive, I say, “The number of writers able to support themselves comfortably solely by writing is fairly small.”

Here’s the reality. Suppose, just suppose, I wrote a killer novel, a publisher loved it and saw a decent market for it, and offered me a big advance. A huge advance. Hey, we’re making things up – let’s say the advance is a cool quarter million. $250,000 smakeroos. That, by the way, is astronomically higher than the average advance for a first novel. What would that mean for me?

Well, after my agent gets his 15% and Uncle Sam gets his share, I’d be lucky to come away with $150,000. And, of course, not all in one lump sum. Best case scenario, half now and half on publication. “Now,” of course, means that six to eight weeks after the publisher approves payment, a check will be sent to my agent. Sounds like a decent amount of money, but in the general timeframe of publishing I’d be unlikely to see both installments in one calendar year, so that really amounts to two years’ worth of income. I’d have to be hopelessly optimistic or foolish to give up a job where I have a fifteen-year history for something like that. Suppose I’m a one-hit wonder (or, worse, a one-flubber when the book doesn’t sell).

Even if I hit the big times and got a million bucks in advance, that really only represents (after commissions and taxes) a decade of good income. I’m 50 – I have about fifteen years ahead of me before I could even start to think about retiring from my day job. What happens when I’m 55 or 58 and blocked and there’s not much money coming in from the royalties any more, and…

Maybe I’m a bit of a pessimist or alarmist. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. I love to write. I like the income I make for my writing. In the best case scenario, I hit my stride, find my voice, find an audience and start producing commercially viable novels every year or two, and I reach the point where I could conceivably retire from the day job. Would I? Well, I’m realist enough to acknowledge that if I attained that level of success, I might have to give up the day job in order to meet a regular publishing deadline. My 2-hour session between 5 and 7 a.m. before I get ready for the day job just might not cut it. It’s the kind of dilemma I wouldn’t mind facing some day.

In the interim, however, no, I have no plans to give up my day job. There are real people where I work. People I can interact with. A social group, a friendly bunch. And I enjoy what I do. It doesn’t get in the way of my writing – I’ve found a way to make these two avocations co-exist. I would miss it if I had to give it up.

It’s not my general aspiration to write myself out of a day job. It’s my aspiration to write, to continue to get published, improve my craft and have a blast with everything life tosses my way.

In other words, if this doesn’t exist, the idea is being offered for someone to develop.

I’m [...]]]>

Today, I want to offer forth a prediction for 2012.  It may already exist, and if so I am simply going to display my ignorance of the most recent marketplace changes, but I don’t know of anything available like it.

In other words, if this doesn’t exist, the idea is being offered for someone to develop.

I’m calling it the E-Reader Deluxe Edition.   It would be used for authors who have interlinked works.  This might be something as straightforward as the Matt Scudder stories by Lawrence Block or as complex as the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.  It would simply feature all of the associated stories bundled together into one discounted purchase, with each story parsed and coded so that when a reference is made to another work, the reader could open a link on that reference and bring up the associated story.  The result would be akin to a frame story, diverging to the new path if the reader so desired and returning to the original point afterward.

It would encourage readers to read more of an author’s work… for example, when references to Black Wind or the Freak Show frame story appear in Repairman Jack stories by F. Paul Wilson, directing readers to work they might not have realized was associative.  It would also allow for collections which, while prohibitively expensive or comprehensive in print format, would be acheivable in electronic format.  Lastly, it would bring forth some stories which have become effectively lost, stories published in magazines but never gathered into collected format.

Best of all, with the current scanning software available, it wouldn’t even be particularly hard, and would seem to be only a bit more time consuming than normal editorial and/or typesetting work.

Would fans pay for some material they already owned, if it meant getting access to rare works and suddenly being able to recognize each associative reference in a story?  I’d be willing to bet yes, if only because I know that personally I’d buy an e-reader just to have such an edition of, say, the Oxrun Station works of Charles L. Grant or the complete Cedar Hill stories of Gary Braunbeck.   I’ve met people who would sacrifice a digit to have an easily tracked set of Eternal Champion stories by Michael Moorcock… and the couple-hundred dollars or so an indexed version of those many stories and novels might cost is far easier to pay.

It’s just a thought.  I think it’ll happen, though.  And if it does, let me know where to purchase the downloads.

Like so [...]]]>

Looking through clip files for an SU piece this month, I came across a July 2010 article on disruptive thinking.  A quick web search led to a ton of more material on the topic, including a military field manual on Intelligence, so I thought it might make a cool kick-off for the coming year.

Like so many other innovations, “disruptive thinking” is just another way for someone with a hustle or a degree to make a living selling something old in a new package.  Being creative says it all, but sounds a bit elitist.  Thinking outside of the box also says it all, in a friendlier, homespun kind of way.

However you want to name the process, the idea is to look beyond the cliché, the familiar, accepted, routine way of doing things.  The motivation for engaging in this difficult work is to stand apart and offer something not done before in a particular context, leading to more of whatever it is you value – money, success, deer kills, whatever – than people doing things the regular old way.

For writers, this can mean looking at the story for opportunities for characters to engage in disruptive thinking – ways to get out of a problem that surprise the reader and demonstrate an interesting aspect to their personality.  You see and use this kind of thing all the time – an everyday person overcoming fears, doing things outside their comfort zone motivated by love, rage, money, madness, money problems, all the rest.

It’s the kind of stuff that keeps crime and thriller stories going, the thing that puts the edge to horror as the thinking, in and out of the box, never seems to stop what’s coming after you.

Keeping disruptive thinking handy is useful as well for business reasons.  Zombie Jane Austen, whatever its eventual worth, is an example of this.  Giving away books for free is another.

Like all ideas, this is a tool, not a lifestyle.  A hammer can’t replace a screwdriver (unless destroying the thing requiring the screwdriver is your “disruptive thinking” solution to the problem – not always a bad idea).

However, it can be useful in the process of writing.  Yes, at some point, critical thinking is required.  Commitment.  An acceptance of risk and failure.  Feel free to support all the really well executed materials on this kind of thing with a click of a search or shopping cart button.

In the meantime, just riff on the possibilities for writing.

For instance, there is simplicity to “he said” and “she said” in a narrative flow that makes heavy use of anything else a questionable decision, so disruptive thinking in this area is risky business.  On the other hand, relying on simple descriptions like “a blue car” or “a green dress” wears thin, at least at reading levels above telebubby, so the application of seat to chair and brain to tools might be recommended.

You’d think disruptive thinking comes easily to creative types – that’s why they/we are considered creative.  Except, we’re usually lucky to have some charmingly chaotic aspect to our work which gets us noticed, but have trouble working that charm through all the other levels of our writing, from dialog, characterization, structure, plotting, language, and the rest.

Also, markets are not always big fans of wild blue yonder ideas or characters.  Publishers want to be surprised, yes, but by the predictable, which is what they believe readers want.  And, judging by best seller lists, if not politics, you can’t argue too much against publishers if you want to make money.

But that’s no reason to throw away the old “DT.”

On a basic writing level, I work on being a “disruptive thinker” in terms of dialog and character perceptions.

Any exchange between characters can become monotonous, particularly if you’re trying to deliver plot and background information while trying to avoid an “info dump” or developing a relationship, good or bad, between characters.  Earnest gossiping about someone’s past or long-winded explanations of all the reasons why someone loves or hates someone else may be depressingly realistic, but will kill pacing.

These are excellent opportunities for character development – showing off personality, especially those character strengths and flaws that will show up later in the plot, while hopefully engaging the reader by having more than one thing happening at a time.  Fixing a flat, preparing a meal, cleaning a weapon, shopping (and all the side conversations and distractions that can occur while performing these tasks) can break things up while the smoke and mirrors aspect of the action should actually become relevant in the future, as well as demonstrate characters handling situations in their own style.

I find humor in these situations a good way to relieve boredom and predictability, as well cut down on a lot of unnecessary details, at least for myself, if not for anyone else.  In particular, the humor from misunderstanding and miscommunication can derail an earnest conversation which has already provided the reader with enough info to figure out that A is in love, or really hates, B.

Watching antic early Marx Brothers exchanges, or even Abbott and Costello, can be an excellent source of inspiration.  Being or know a smartass is also helpful.  Listening to children can be very rewarding in picking up ways to derail predictable conversations.  Picking up and inserting random snatches of conversation from radio, TV, or passersby in public places are also recommended.  Real life non-sequiturs from work or family life…priceless.

How a character perceives and reacts to what’s going on or what’s being said can also serve as an opportunity not only to demonstrate what that character is about, but startle and further engage the reader – the zombie lurching toward said character can suddenly be reminiscent of Uncle Harry and his war-wounded bad leg, or the pile-driver lurching suddenly outside my window at this moment as it shifts position may remind someone of an ancient siege tower, just as the relentless pounding of multiple pile-drivers throughout the work-day can become enemies pounding at the gates and walls of a fortress, thus serving as an apt metaphor for somebody’s work life.

As above, a certain amount of critical thinking and restraint is needed in the application of technique, otherwise you’re going to wear people out.  And, in keeping with the theme of disruptive thinking, I have to watch out for my own personal clichés.  Always reaching for the same technique to disrupt a reader’s expectations – like, again from my personal arsenal, having some kind of spirit/internal projection serve as a foil to help liven things up a bit – can also require a bit of disruptive thinking.

Descriptions.  When is a green dress just a green dress, and when is it hanging like a faded sheet of wallpaper freshly stripped from a pale and pot-marked wall, and when is it a cool invitation to lay down in a country field and watch the clouds drift by?

It all depends on just how bad a noir romance you’re writing, I suppose.

But, hopefully you get the idea that thinking outside the box and choosing the imagery, or the detail, that will quickly drive the item in question into the reader’s head is an exercise not only in imagery, but in tone and rhythm and language so that it can become almost haiku-like in its precision and ability to arrest attention.

Language.  Phrasing.  I’m not going to touch this because I’m not the one to talk about it, but how the  words are dropped on the page, how each flows to the next  – with invisibly serenity or with the heart-stopping ride of a bucket in a two-mile stretch of rough rapids – is another way to knock around reader expectations.  Some folks have the ear to mimic the music of different accents and ways to use words – the difference between an immigrant from Israel and one from the Caribbean – and other like Kelly Link just have a different voice running through their head and the sentences that come out on the page writhe like a nest of vipers and just seem impossible to imitate.

But whatever the talent level, making the effort to be a little out of the box when it comes to language, even if it’s as small as changing sentence cadence when in the head of the vampire or the corporate lawyer, and then shifting it again when in the perspective of the vampire hunter’s traitorous assistant or the thieving chief financial officer, will make a big difference in the final product.

In editing, watch for those personal clichés – words, phrases, fall-back characterizations, pet details that get thrown in time after time – and do the DT to come up with something fresher.

And we haven’t even gotten to the big ticket items, like…

Taking a character down two different choices, in very rough draft form, and see what comes up – the expected heroic action, and the terrible mistake that further complicates the plot and botches up your outline.

Writing in an office or other quiet space if you’re a “need noise” type of writer, or in a public or family space if you’re the “need peace” type, to see what comes out (but write fast and without stopping, using environmental stimuli or whatever’s rattling around in your head.

Write in the voice of a favored or newly discovered writer (yes, I know, it’s what beginning writers do, but sometimes it does a body good to go back and try that trick again, only this time don’t do Lovecraft or Spillane or Hemingway…)

Get lost.  No, really, I mean it.  Bring a map or GPS to get yourself out of the mess you’re going to put yourself in, and do check the news for the area you’ve targeted to make sure there are no mutant cannibals or rips in the space/time continuum that might mess you up.  But do break personal routines and habits every now and then, embrace wrong exits, restaurants out of your cultural range, foreign flicks that don’t have kung fu in them, if only for a little while.

I mentioned listening to children.  Listen to them again when they watch a movie or talk about a book they read in school.  Listen to people who are not diehard fans of whatever you really love to read or watch, to understand what doesn’t work, why they don’t buy into time lords or starships or monsters or even evangelicals.  You probably won’t be able to change their minds, but hearing their criticisms might make you work a little harder to be more believable to wider audience.

If you’re the hyper-critical type, of course, loosen up, and if you’re the fly-by-the seat-of-your-pants type, tighten up.  Throw out the outline for a minute, or use one and see what happens.  Change out of your usual type of narrator or character types.  I’m not saying base a whole novel on this, but in a more complex story, take a small step out of the gender/sexual orientation/religious belief/ethnic group box.

Anyway, check out disruptive thinking as a way to make yourself productively uncomfortable