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Post by scenario on Oct 4, 2023 3:03:29 GMT
I started writing a book a couple of years ago purely for the fun of it. I've always been a reader and thought about doing it for years. My book is my mental playground where I control the rules. Objectively, overall, it is not that good but has a few good parts here and there IMO. Two thirds of it should be edited out. I'd sort of like it to be a 400 page book with a 1000 page index explaining stuff.
The books name is The Triad. The three title characters were born in the mid 1930's. Johnny and Suzy met on their first day of kindergarten and they met Lisa on their first day of 3rd grade (4th grade for her). The book is a slice of life but the characters are classic "Competent Men" SF characters of my childhood in a way. They are a Triad because they are essentially 3 people in a marriage living in the 1950's. There are quite a few other LGBTQ characters in the story who I hope I've done justice to since I am not part of the LGBTQ community.
They are all really smart. They could read, write and do basic math at 4 years old. They can read and influence people well. (They form a business and almost always hire the right people.) They can read and absorb stuff at a ridiculously fast rate. But they aren't super humans, just people who are very very good in a few areas. (Lisa can talk to 20 men and 20 women for 10 minutes each and know which of them would be attracted to each other. Since its set in the 1940's and 50's she's careful about setting up same sex couples. They rarely work out long term but people never say "Why did you set me up with them?" The better she knows them, the more accurate she is. Where this is a "superpower" is that she and her business partner set up 400 people parties and can determine the type of party by who they invite.)
Anyhow, the story starts in AnyCity Rode Island where they grow up. They move to Really Big City (RBC) after high school. RBC is a thinly veiled New York City. The misspellings are on purpose. I intentionally change some things for story purpose but other times I'd like things to be fairly accurate. So RBC has a river going through thought the middle of it for a couple of minor plot reasons. My story, My geography.
Other times I want more accuracy. Sometimes google helps, sometimes its useless. For plot purposes, Lisa, then Johnny, then Suzy become private pilots. So I ended up spending hours and hours researching private piloting in the 1950s so its somewhat realistic to the time period. Now I'm having Lisa's younger brother Jeff going for his license. Of course something has to happen so I have his plane strike a bird on his solo flight. His front windshield is shattered but he successfully lands safely even though he's partially blinded by the wind and the blood running down his face.
Stupid question that I can't find the answer to. Does he pass or fail his solo if he doesn't quite do everything perfectly in this situation? If he fails, is it on his record? Or would they say it doesn't count. In story, his sister is a total Mary Sue when it comes to piloting and he really doesn't want to fail. I can use this either way. If he fails on what is essentially a technicality, I can have him getting upset that his sister beat him again. If he passes anyway, he can lord over her. "I'm as good as you sis." If they make him take it again and wipe it off his record its a tie.
Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun writing it and researching a lot of stuff.
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Post by Garak Nephew on Oct 4, 2023 13:59:55 GMT
I have zero knowledge of piloting planes, or of the regulations regarding license acquisition, so I have no advice... But I post to wish you good luck on enjoying and finishing the book!! I am very enthusiastic when it comes to people writing or creating. Just let your people be free to roam your world as they please.
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Post by scenario on Oct 15, 2023 4:02:06 GMT
Okay, just for the hell of it here are some details. The title is "The Triad."
The title characters are Johnny (Born March 1937), Suzy (born March 1937 2 weeks after Johnny) and Lisa (Born August 1936)
All three are very smart, have extraordinary memories and can read extraordinarily fast. They could all read, write and do basic math before going to school. Their abilities allow them to learn quickly. They could read write and speak multiple languages at a young age. They study people. They (especially Lisa and Suzy) can put on carefully crafted personas like most people change clothing. Their teachers love them even though they drive them crazy because they are highly self motivated. They can give them a pass to the library and tell them to write a paper on a topic and they'll do it, even in kindergarten.
Johnny is the middle child of five. He had an ordinary middle class family growing up except that both his father and his mother had college degrees and worked which was not common in the 1930's and 40s. His place in the story was to be the calm one everyone depends on. He is also the only one of the three to have friends before they met. But he had no close friends. His friends are boys who ask him to come out and play sports when they need more players. His mom is a role model for both Suzy and Lisa. When The Triad changes from 3 close friends to effectively a married triple, he is their cover. Younger people don't think twice about Johnny dating both Suzy and Lisa because the three of them have been inseparable as long as they remember. Older people get angry at Johnny stringing those two poor girls along. No one seems to realize that Lisa and Suzy are also lovers. By going out with Johnny, they are hiding in plain sight.
Suzy's family is a nightmare. Her father was 30 when he married her 15 year old mom because he wanted to have 10 or 15 sons. Instead he got one daughter. Suzy's grandfather died when her mom was a baby and Suzy's mom was raised by her religious zealot, over controlling mom until she was forced to marry her religious zealot, over controlling husband. When we first meet Suzy she is five on her first day of Kindergarten and her mom is twenty. Suzy's very polite and her mom's very timid but that changes over time. Suzy and Johnny meet the first day of Kindergarten and quickly becomes close. Her father works 2nd shift so she goes over Johnny's house and helps Johnny's mom before dad wakes up and goes home after he leaves for work every day. Suzy was pretty much locked in her room until then except on the rare occasion her father remembered to take her and her mom grocery shopping. She was always hungry until she hung out with Johnny's family. Suzy changes in her mid teens because of a series of horrible events. She gets depressed, has anger issues, has self esteem issues and becomes an alcoholic which takes several years to recover from.
Lisa is 6 month older than the other two and a grade ahead of them. She met them her first day of 4th grade. All of them were doing work well above grade level but Lisa was the most academically inclined possibly because she had no close friends until she met Suzy and Johnny. She had a typical family. Machinist father, housewife mother and a younger brother. While Johnny and Suzy decided to start a construction company very young, Lisa wanted to be a doctor. (Johnny loved woodworking and became a master craftsman by 12. By 15, museums and really rich people paid him top dollar.) Once The Triad started making money doing minor repairs at 8 or 9 Lisa used it to buy books and magazines. She subscribed to medical journal both American and European since she read German, Spanish, and French among other languages.
Now my question. The three of them enter into an adult relationship when Lisa is 16 and Johnny and Suzy were 15.
Johnny is straight. (Although I leave hints that he may be willing to experiment. The first is when they go to a gay bar in the Really Big City, Johnny is not upset when guys hit on him which was unusual in the 1950s. I may or may not develop the storyline. Mostly because The Triad don't tend to cheat.)
Lisa is bisexual so she likes having a man and a woman as lovers. And because she's read European medical journals since she was 9, she's read that many doctors in Europe don't consider same sex relationships to be a form of mental illness like they do in the states. She has zero guilt about what she's doing.
Suzy is basically a lesbian. Except for Johnny, she is not attracted to men. But she's loved Johnny since her first day of kindergarten. She is emotionally and intellectually attracted to him. Add in the social Mores of the 1950s which pressure men and women to date and punish same sex attraction push her towards him. Social pressures push her towards Johnny and she finds herself attracted to him.
So my question is, does this make sense? Suzy loves Johnny and is very attracted to him even though she is otherwise only attracted to women.
I introduce another character later, Robert. Robert is gay. He's lived with his defacto husband Gary for more than twenty years. He's twenty years older then The Triad. He is very rich and Lisa starts working for him. They become close friends. They start officially dating when Lisa's 19. They both know and approve of the other's relationships. Robert starts as very quiet, and stern. People say they've never seen him smile. Once everyone around him start believing that Robert and Lisa's relationship is real, he relaxes. People notice the change and tell him its because he has a woman in his life. It is but not the way they think. Now that they are a couple, Lisa can hug Suzy like a sister in public and Robert can afford to be seen in public with his lover Gary. He's not worried someone will notice a casual knowing look. He's changed because he's not living his life in fear anymore.
Is this relationship realistic considering the timeline and are there things I should avoid?
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Post by Garak Nephew on Oct 17, 2023 2:10:07 GMT
I think it is. And also it is as realistic as you want to make it. Who would have believed a gay cowboys romance set in Wyoming in the 60's? And then there's Brokeback Mountain. (I am not familiar with queer literature history, so maybe there's antecedent to that...) My point is that on a novel, I believe, social and historical fidelity should be follow but only up to a certain point. PRECISELY because there's a tension on the accuracy of the societal mores of the times is why the plot is engaging. Judging by the first post and this one I gather that this story is tackling the issues of polyamory and alternative forms marriages or romantic partnership. Most interesting and relevant topic. Since my frame of reference is mostly scifi, there is a rich bibliography 60's and 70's scifi that bothers itself with these subjects. Ursula Le Guin wrote some very interesting novellas collected, to my best recollection, in "The Birthday of the World"(BW) and "Four Ways to Forgiveness"; on BW the story "Unchosen Love" deals with a society were marriages are societies of four people. How Le Guin go about describing what is a "Morning person" and an "Evening person" is just beautiful.
What you should avoid? Nothing, just bad prose.
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Post by scenario on Oct 18, 2023 1:16:00 GMT
One of the fun and annoying things about this is research. At one point in the book I had The Triad travel to Texas for business. By this point Lisa is dating Robert. A really rich and influential man. Think Rockefeller. No one quite knows what to do with a 19 year old girl (in Texas at that time in my world the age of majority is 21) dating a 43 year old rich guy. Most people think she's eye candy but people who know them say its serious.
So I decided to have her get invited to a rich persons party. I googled rich people in Texas 1955 and got H.L. Hunt, the richest guy in the world at that time. I decided to have her meet his daughter Helen who died in a plane crash a few years later in real life. (In the real world she was born and raised in Atlanta Ga. Her mom was H.L. Hunts second wife he had while still married to his first wife. I ignored that minor complication. My book, My world.)
Now Lisa's traveled to Texas again and I'm going to reintroduce Helen. I knew Helen was married in real life so I wanted her date of marriage to work it into the story. Google has 4 facts about her, 1) She was H.L Hunts daughter, 2) Her birth date. 3) She died in a famous plan crash with her husband 5) Her mother built a music hall in her honor in Atlanta. That's it. I don't really want much because that allows me to make stuff up like she liked to ride horses like the rest of the family but I want something.
I've wasted hours trying to find something.
At least my search about planes led me to some very enjoyable videos to watch.
I don't expect an answer. I just wanted to rant. Rant over.
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Post by BeastBoy on Oct 18, 2023 12:38:17 GMT
Are you a professional writer?
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Post by scenario on Oct 18, 2023 14:49:26 GMT
No. I've been a voracious reader my whole life and thought about doing it. I got an idea stuck in my head a few years ago and it grew.
One time early in the process I got on a roll and typed and typed. When I checked the time it was 2:30 in the morning but I didn't want to stop reading. I've never felt that sensation again but it was fun. It felt like I was typing a book that was already there.
The book started at Suzy and Johnny's first day of Kindergarten. I just past Lisa's 21st birthday. I'm just starting the third story arc.
The first arc was childhood.
The second started at 15 and its The Triad establishing their adult relationship, Suzy's mental health issues and Lisa's establishing her official relationship and first few careers.
I've just started the third arc. Suzy has mostly overcome her mental health issues and settled into her new work responsibilities but must confront her childhood trauma's which leads her to better understand her troubled father and get close to his second family. Lisa will finally realize her childhood ambition of becoming a doctor but at a steep cost. She has always had way to much to do and life starts overwhelming her. She's going to effectively have 3 spouses who help her the best they can but she just cannot handle the overload. In the middle of all the work she's doing she decides to have children. They have a nanny and loving family but Lisa can't connect with them. Suzy on the other hand is a wonderful mother who also worked. Role reversal. Suzy looked up to Lisa the whole book and now Lisa looks up to Suzy.
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Post by scenario on Oct 20, 2023 3:10:05 GMT
I set my book in the era I did for a reason. WWII and the time just after it changed America.
WWII: Millions of American men went more then 100 miles from home for the first time in their lives. They met people who didn't think exactly like they did. City folks were used to it. Small town people were shocked. Some small town folks moved out of their small towns. Some doubled down and believed small towns were perfect.
Women were encouraged to work out of the home for the first time ever. Rosie the Riveter. My main characters were 4 1/2 and 5 when the war started. Women working seemed normal to them in their childhood. They worked as teenagers. Women working was uncommon in the 50s but not unheard of.
Many women who worked in the 1940s were not all that happy being housewives in the 1950s. Their daughters born right after the war were in their teens and twenties in the 1960s and ready for a change.
Many white men who fought for freedom during the war sided with Black Men and Women fighting for their rights 10 or 15 years later. They'd seen people die for freedom. They weren't going to support oppression.
1950's: The 1950s looked peaceful on the surface. Jobs were plentiful because the U.S. was the only major economy left standing after the war. Employers couldn't get enough workers so they paid a living wage, If you were a white man. Being gay was okay if you stayed deep in the closet, especially in big cities. It was tougher in small towns where everyone was in everyone else business.
Many women didn't like being housewives but conformity was king and a man could support a wife and 3 kids and own their own home in the suburbs with a factory job.
The civil rights struggle started at this time. Women's rights were just starting.
1960s: The good times didn't last. 15 years after the war, the U.S. wasn't the only functional economy anymore. We had competition. But corporations were fat and happy. Companies in other countries were using newer machines and newer production processes. Many companies were using 20,30 even 40 year old machines. We weren't as efficient as our competitors were. But the company owners didn't want to change. They blamed lazy workers, and women's lib and uppity black people. Anything but themselves.
Conservatives now are still in that mindset. We can return to that glorious time when real men who worked hard could get ahead if it wasn't for THEM. THEM changed over time. First it was Black People and communists and woman's libbers. And of course The Jews. Always The Jews. Then it was the liberals and unions. Now its moved on to Trans People and socialists and liberals and of course Black People and The Jews.
Conservatives are trying to return to a brief point in time which only existed because of unusual circumstances. The good times ended because of greed and a refusal to change but Conservatives always look for scapegoats and the easy way out.
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Post by scenario on Nov 9, 2023 3:09:38 GMT
I'm introducing a new minor character. The kind of character that's mentioned once in a while but has one line of dialog every 3 chapters. I'm calling him Bert. I'm thinking about adding a line of dialog in a couple of months story time.
Lisa (Main character), "Why's Bert so upset?"
Judy (Lisa's med school roommate and Bert's girlfriend), "He's mad at himself for forgetting to send his brother Ernie a birthday card. Now it won't get there on time."
Then go on to something else.
edit
I decided Bert's nickname in school is Punch once he started dating Judy.
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Post by scenario on Nov 10, 2023 3:48:41 GMT
I'd like to see if this makes any sense.
Background: Suzy's (main character) father was 29 and her mother was 15 when they married and had Suzy. Suzy's father was very religious and very controlling. Suzy and her mother were afraid of him. Her mother and father got a divorce when Suzy was 15 when her father went to prison. Her mother remarried and Suzy now has a 6 month old half sister through her mom and step-dad. She recently found out that her father is out of prison and founded his own church. He married a 14 year old girl when he was pushing 50 and Suzy has a baby step-brother and another child on the way through him and his 2nd wife. She hasn't confronted her father yet but she's in contact with her step mom. (Suzy's 20, Step mom 15.)
Suzy's step mom introduces Suzy to a new character, Grace, who (Unknown to Suzy) is the girlfriend of one of the early villain's of the story. They are having their first conversation.
(First draft of a small part of the story)
"Grace did get to ask, “What was Pastor Elijah like when you were young?”
“He wasn’t a pastor then. He worked in a factory. He was very religious but he hadn’t found his calling. Religion was the only thing the two of us ever talked about growing up.”
Suzy vividly remember the Sunday Evening church service discussions that started when Suzy was five years old. She described the service she’d attended with Johnny’s family in great detail including her reciting the sermon she had memorized and her dad ripping it apart and explaining where the pastor went wrong point by point. She learned to take at least 3 copies of the churches order of services home so her mom and dad could follow along as she reenacted the services for them. By the time she was ten Suzy, her mom and dad reenacting the entire service twice including the bible readings and hymn singing. The first time as Suzy remembered it and the second time as her father thought it should have been done. Funny thing is she remembers those times with fondness because they were the only times she and mom weren’t afraid of dad and they felt like a family."
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Nov 10, 2023 15:27:06 GMT
As someone who writes occasionally myself, I don't think you need 100% accuracy for every circumstance. Sometimes, especially on details like the flight exam, it just has to make sense and then the reader can go with it.
Regarding the flight test, it seems to me that your pilot passes because all of his responses are correct so that he lands the plane and lives ,and what caused the situation that he had to react to wasn't caused by his own action or inaction.
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Post by scenario on Nov 10, 2023 18:11:39 GMT
The Triad grew up in AnyCity in the state of Rode Island in the New Holland region of the country. Once they graduated high school they moved to Really Big City (RBC) New Holland. Which is a thinly veiled NYC NY.
In a way this is a science fiction alternate history story. I'll eventually write a history where Holland settles the North East part of the U.S. and lots of British people settle there. It starts under Dutch law and as it gains partial independence from Holland, the local legislature changes the legal system to English. At some point there is a revolution and they join Briton until the American Revolution happens. There are some flukes in the law like women are adults at 18 but men at 21. (Which was the case in parts of the U.S. in 1900 but not when my stories set.)
The three lead characters have essentially low level super powers. Mainly, their memories and intelligence. So they not only speak 7 languages but they can speak different dialects.
I try for realistic coincidences. Suzy's father and his fanatic follower were the big bads in the early book. I brought them back recently. They had gone to prison when Suzy was 15. They got out and moved to Bronx RBC, cross city from The Triad. Her dad and her lived in the same city for three years and neither knew. Suzy's business expands to cross city. One of her employees asks her, "Miss Taylor, Are you related to Elijah Taylor? He looks just like you." She runs a company with hundreds of employees and customers so lots of people know her. He runs a church with 100 regular attendees. They are father and daughter and she looks and sounds much like him. They share the last name. After 3 years someone makes the connection. I don't think this is too far fetched.
Suzy's dad's church is in a Puerto Rican neighborhood. She dresses and speaks like a poor Cuban girl so she can attend his church incognito.
If Suzy wants to learn a new language she buys and memorizes multiple dictionaries and grammar books. Then she goes to a place where people are speaking the language, goes into a study trance and listens. Within days she speaks the language fluently with the accent of the people she was with. That's almost super hero level but not quite.
I want to keep things somewhat realistic beyond the super powers. So when I decided to make Lisa a pilot she bought a real plane of the era and had to get her license. I just wanted it to be somewhat realistic but if you can get a license in NY at 16 or 17 so what. In New Holland its 18.
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Post by scenario on Nov 18, 2023 19:55:46 GMT
I'm writing my book for fun and for practice. I've got an idea in mind that I'm not sure I have the ability to pull off.
All of my main characters have intentionally developed multiple personas which they put on and off like masks. In the real world, everyone acts differently in different groups, parents vs partner vs friends vs work, etc. But Johnny, Suzy and Lisa do it intentionally. It's not acting, really, its showing different sides of themselves.
Lisa is now engaged to a very rich, very old money guy. He's got ancestors on both sides of his family who came over on the Mayflower. His family was rich during the American revolution. Lisa is trying trying to fit in to Robert's friend group as a middle class women whose parents grew up in the Kentucky backwoods. She's also trying to fit in at med school. Most people at her school don't want her there. They only want white men but recently the school started allowing 2 women per class of 100 students (i.e. 2 freshmen women, 2 sophomore women etc.)
She developed a blue blood persona when she first started working for Robert at 17 years old. It's rapidly becoming her dominate persona.
I'd like to show this through a minor character. Mary is 4 years younger than Lisa and her friend. She looks up to Lisa. I'd like to have a chapter looking at the new Lisa from Mary's viewpoint. Blue blood Lisa is very serious and rarely smiles. She's one of those people that people listen to and respect without quite knowing why. I'm not sure how to show that.
Second related point.
In the Dune book series the Bene Gesserit had an ability they called the voice. It wasn't a magic power. They studied people and could get them to obey without thinking. If they used just the right tone, pitch and inflection at just the right time, people would obey without question. So they could tell a guard, "unlock the door" and they would just do it without thinking about it. The book stresses it is psychology, not magic. The first Dune movie (the one with Patrick Stewart)turned it into a magic power.
Lisa and Suzy have this ability up to point. When a very rich and drunk guy starts getting out of control at a party, Lisa knows just what to say and do to bring him back to reality. Everyone around them thinks she's got a magic power. She doesn't. She's just figured out his triggers.
I think I did a decent job of explaining it but it might be tough in a movie.
SF has snuck into my book.
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Post by Prometheus59650 on Nov 18, 2023 22:28:00 GMT
This sounds pretty interesting.  |
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Post by scenario on Dec 3, 2023 18:55:00 GMT
One thing I'm enjoying is finding things I didn't know I put there. Like the Triad and Lisa's fiancé's Robert have incredible memories. The can go into a deep memory trance and effectively memorize a textbook in a few hours. Or they can go into a light memory trance at a party and memorize everyone whose there and all the conversations going on around them. This made school easy.
But I just realized the downside. The deeper the trance the longer it takes to clear their mind. And the less actual thinking. When they go into a deep trance for a few hours memorizing, it takes a few hours in a lighter trance to actually understand what they've read.
Lisa's in medical school. Med school is said to be like drinking from a firehose. She takes 30 pages of notes per class. So six hours of study trance in class every day m-f. Then another few hours in a lighter trance re-writing her notes and actually trying to understand them. Plus she has to study for work. Plus she's pregnant. She's in a constant fog and is very irritable. She's been concentrating so much on remembering everything she has to learn, its affecting her thought process.
The downsides of using deep study too much were always there but I just really saw it.
She's always been a Mary Sue but now Lisa's going to hit the wall. She's taken on so much somethings going to give.
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I am so sorry...