C.A. Jacobs

I hate camel spiders. Really, honestly, truly hate them. They are unbelievably fast, they like to jump, are hugely creepy, and very aggressive. We caught a couple during one of my extended research trips and the whole under belly portion was like a bunch of little gnawing teeth. I keep thinking that the long, spindly legs were at least a partial inspiration for alien face-huggers. If you imagine a camel spider getting to be the size of a medium dog, then they would easily look almost exactly like an alien face-hugger.

You might be wondering what my absolute hatred of camel spiders has to do with writing, or with today’s post. I’m getting there, I promise.

Today at work, we went to unload several containers filled with cargo from our research trip. One of the containers that was not supposed to be opened was unloaded by mistake and the contents left in the open for a bit longer than anticipated. Lunch came around, and most left to go and get some food, leaving only a small handful of us who didn’t really feel like having to come back and deal with more cargo. So we decided to start reloading the cargo back into the container. Imagine my surprise when several of my fellow workers started freaking out about a spider. As I am directing cargo and its placement, I am not particularly caring about a spider, thinking it is one of the many normal, tiny varieties we have here on the island.

Only it’s not.

It’s a camel spider that seems to have hitched a ride with our cargo. And it’s less than a foot from my face. And it’s NOT of the tiny variety.

I hate camel spiders, I really do. But by that time in the day, I was more annoyed, tired, frustrated, and hot than anything. So I took a cautious step backwards, while the rest of my fellow workers continued to freak out and back about 15 feet away from it. Since the wonderful creature was on the door between me and the container with me trapped inside, I started thinking of all the ways this could and had been used in stories. Thankfully, one of my fellow workers decided to attempted to find large metal weapons with which to destroy the spider, but he missed completely, so the spider jumped towards me, then fell down and went under the container. I was so annoyed I didn’t even flinch. That says quite a bit, given how much I genuinely hate those things.

As a writer (or potential writer), one of the most common questions I receive from non-writers is where I get ideas from. My response to the people who ask these questions is always, “Hi? Do you live in the real world?” The real world comes up with more terrifying creatures than I could possibly imagine. Camel spiders are the top of my creepy list. All my brain has to do is increase the size and *poof* instant horror story. Or I could probably leave them as they are, add some poison, and do something along the lines of Arachnophobia. The real world produces more ideas for all sorts of genres and crazy ideas if you just pay attention to it. Need a romance novel? Go hang out in a public place like a train station or shopping center, and do some people watching. People watching is a great way to see heartache, joy, anger, friendship, sorrow, and any other human interaction you can think of, and maybe a few you don’t have names for. Human interaction is a very complicated thing, and you can create stories just based on watching other people’s emotions and how they react to their world.

I freely admit that the story I’m working on right now was an idea based on seeing hundreds of children running towards me and thinking that the zombie-pocaplyse would look exactly like that. And then I started wondering what it would be like if you had to shoot at hundreds of zombie kids and how that would mess just about anybody up. The real world is filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of story ideas. Everything you see, everything you feel, everything you think has the potential to be a story idea. Sometimes I get confused that non-writers don’t see the world as potential story ideas.

But I still hate camel spiders. As much as they inspire ideas and stories, I still and will always hate them.

During a recent discussion with a fellow writer concerning character traits, we talked a bit about heroes and villains and how most villains don’t go around calling themselves the villain in their head. Some villains do, like in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, but I think that’s a rather unique example. This really got me thinking about different perspectives on heroes and villains.

For me, the biggest defining feature of a hero versus a villain is sacrifice. And by hero, I don’t just mean some poor schmuck who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and doing everything possible just to keep themselves alive during the zombie-pocalypse. I guess I am talking about heroes as defined by their villains. Kind of like Superman and Lex Luthor. Without a super villain to define his own heroics, would Superman have really been considered that much of a hero? But that might either be a topic for later or another post entirely.

A hero is always willing to sacrifice everything, including their own life, to save the lives of innocent people. A hero generally fights because they feel as though they have a responsibility to do so, as though they were granted either certain powers or a certain skill set that ought to be used to help people who lack the ability to protect themselves from aliens, monsters (both of the human and inhuman variety), thieves, criminals, murderers, etc. The villain is always intent on personal gain, usually in the form of profit, power, world domination, special influence, or other nefarious gains, but they tend to do so with the intention of making the world a more structured or better organized place.

So where is the boundary between the self-sacrifice the hero willing assumes responsibility for and the sacrifices the villain forces upon the hero? The villain almost always finds a way to manipulate the hero by using those the hero loves against them. Family, friends, loved ones. They all wind up as pawns for the villains and their schemes. Most of the heroes find ways to foil the villainous plot by saving the world and the person they love, but every now and then, the hero is forced to choose the fate of the world or the fate of the one person they love, be it a family member or a romantic interest. The hero is screwed no matter what decision they make because there are always going to be people on either side, outsiders looking in, who will chastise them for making the choice they did, for choosing to save one side instead of the other.

From the view of the public, every action a hero takes will be criticized and demonized. There will always be people who will watch every step a hero takes and castigate them for everything. Take the example of Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson, where Spider-Man saves the city all the time, but J. Jonah Jameson always puts a negative spin on Spider-Man’s actions. Most of the time, those who criticize the most would make the worst heroes and make more mistakes than the heroes they criticize.

But then the interesting point comes up about property and what happens to the cities that are destroyed during the conflicts between the heroes and the villains? Do the heroes have a responsibility to stay and use their superpowers to clean up the mess? Can you imagine how much faster the debris would be cleaned up and the city rebuilt if people with superhuman speed and strength stuck around to repair the damages? Or would allowing them to use their unique skills in that manner then take work and jobs away from the average working citizen and cause harm to the local economy? That’s just more proof that heroes really won’t be able to get anything right, no matter how many people they save. It’s all just a matter of perspective. One person’s hero is another person’s villain.

So how do we, as writers, convince the readers to view our characters as the heroes, or get the audience to cheer for our villains? I would say the key is sacrifice. Your characters have to give something up. Personal freedom, money, glory, something that would matter greatly to them if it was lost. In most cases, the hero gives up their very identity – their sense of self. Peter Parker has to watch his actions be ridiculed every day by the man he works for and say nothing. If the audience builds strong emotional attachments to the characters, even when they do something that could be morally wrong, the audience forgives them or makes excuses for them almost immediately. I can think of a recent example from the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, but I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to include anything for people who may not have finished reading the books. There is definitely a time in those books where Katniss takes some actions that could be seen as morally wrong, but by that time and everything Katniss has been through, I know I was willing to pretty much overlook some of the less moral actions she took.

Hero or villain, as the writer, build emotional attachments between your audience and your character so the audience forgives your characters for their trespasses.

A couple months ago, I returned from an extended research trip. I thought I was going to have a lot more time to write on that trip than I did, but I came back with some great story ideas. A lot of stuff happened in my life in the last year and it’s taken quite a bit for me to feel like I was getting my feet back under me enough for me to put my research and story ideas to good use. So now it’s oh-dark-early and I can’t sleep so I decided to finally start typing out some of my notes for my next book.

One of the hard parts for me as a writer is actually getting started. I have a couple key scenes that are usually burned into my mind that pretty much write themselves once I get there, but I somehow have to get there first. Getting started is always the hardest part of actually writing for me because I spend so much time thinking and over thinking the opening lines. I think about how editors and publishers will view the first opening scene and whether or not what I’m writing is marketable, how potential readers in a bookstore will see what I’m writing and react to it, and a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn’t really affect the story at all. But these are the things I get stuck and focused on. Instead of focusing on the story, the characters, the world, and the conflict, I get caught up in the details. Details that don’t particularly matter at this time because I’m putting the cart before the horse. In fact, I’d say I put the cart so far in front of the horse that they aren’t even in the same town anymore.

The book that I’ve been meaning to start for the past nine months or more is now around 1,000 words strong and this story looks like one that I might be able to tell fairly well. I’m hoping to be able to write between 5,000 and 7,000 words a week which is a lot more realistic now that I’ve actually started the writing process again. It feels good to be writing again and I hope that this book will move a lot faster and clearer than my first book did.

I think some of my most amusing interactions with people come from those who are wannabes. As I will eventually be a fully published author, writers are those I tend to pick on the most. I was thinking about some of my experiences in deserts lately and how much I dislike those environments, but how rich miserable places are for creative stories. Probably one of my favorite personal experiences involved a cameraman in one of the beat up cities out in the middle of nowhere. So here goes the story.

The city sits in the middle of a sea of sand and fine dirt, and all the power comes from a variety of generators strategically located throughout the area. Some sections have power, some don’t. Some only have power at certain times of the day and the only means of transportation are trucks designed to take a beating. Most are either really expensive or really beat up. Mine was somewhat of a mixture between the two, stripped down with no doors or windows and only a tarp strung across what passed for a windshield as a relief from the sun. The bed of my truck was completely empty, with the exception of a few tough boxes strapped down with bungy cords, a set of pretty crappy speakers mounted to hook and loop fasteners across the dashboard, and a word processor known as an Alphasmart so that I could do some writing in my free time in a case attached to a mounting bracket between the driver and passenger seat.

I had a couple hours before I needed to check on my guys in the city again, so I was typing out the next scene for my work in progress, pretty thoroughly engrossed in the task at hand when a shadow fell across my keyboard. I looked up and saw a man with a scraggly beard and a video camera with one of those tripods that are taller than I am braced along his shoulder. As is typical, he asked me what I was doing and what that thing was that I was typing on. Being a proponent of writing on the go, I explained the Alphasmart to him, showed it off a little, then launched into some of the cool parts about Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction Program and how much fun I was having learning how to write horror. He starts talking about how he has these great ideas for this entire series of books plans and the conversation begins.

The conversation goes really well for a while. We talk about plot and world building and are having a really great time. Until we start getting around to characters. That’s where I start seeing some rather entertaining holes in his entire concept. His story seemed to revolve around a very studly action hero. Very old-school James Bond-ish Alpha male who would be able to kick butt and solve all sorts of problems, kill bad guys, and have sex with different hot chicks every single night. I brought up to him that action, adventure, and spy books were doing very well these days and then I asked him something of a key question which involved studies about book sales. I asked him about who his intended target audience was going to be for this series and who he expected to be purchasing his books. He was overly excited about how his books would appeal to a wide audience, male and female, because his main character is someone guys would want to be and chicks would want to sleep with.

Wow.

Really?

I read books because the guy is hot and I want to sleep with him? I had no idea that’s why I’ve been reading all these books! Of course that’s exactly it! I absolutely want to be with a guy who has sex with a different chick every night! Or even multiple chicks in the same day! That’s exactly my dream guy! How did this cameraman capture my dream man so precisely? How did he know? What kind of research must he have done to come to this startling and unbelievable understanding of relationship insight?

I tried to nicely explain to this gentleman that, according to the last research I had read, approximately 80% of all books are purchased by women. I also tried to explain that women might be a little bit more complicated than just wanting some random guy to have sex with every now and again. I’m not really sure he understood. Turns out the guy was single, never married, and didn’t have a steady girlfriend. I wonder if society is giving men the same unrealistic expectations to live up to that it seems to continue to push on women. It still made me amused and I couldn’t believe that he actually thought his series would appeal to women at all. Men, sure. Well, maybe. His plot seemed to have a bunch of holes in it and seemed way too simple for the modern world and modern technology, but if writing is something he truly believes in, I’m sure he’ll find a way to make it work.

The problem is, I don’t think writing is something he really believes in. I think a lot of people have dreams they don’t really believe in, or they’re just jumping in on other people’s dreams to start a conversation. If you see someone working on something or doing something, you hop in on whatever it is you see them doing and hope that if you seem interested, maybe you can get lucky and learn more about them instead of being honest about yourself. The trouble with doing it that way, though, is that I did learn more about him. I learned that he’s not someone I would ever want to date if the character he created is really the kind of guy he would want to be or look up to. It was still a very amusing encounter and I continue to be impressed by the way other people’s brains work. Or maybe I should be amused by the way my own brain works.

Hm. Maybe I should be worried about the way my own brain works. My brain is a very strange place.