Blank Worlds

As an aspiring writer, I have naturally read a lot of stories. Many of these were published works, but I have also had the chance to read plenty of amateur stories, some from friends, some from the internet, and some that I wrote myself. Among these, I noticed that description was often forgone to get to the action quickly. As a teenager, I wrote my stories as I would watch a movie, focused on what the characters were doing, leaving everything else ignored in my peripheral vision. When I read similar works of others, though, I learned the truth: this style of writing presents an amorphous, blank world.

Consider the following opening to a story:

        I woke up in a strange, unfamiliar place. Looking around, I saw a man approaching me.
        “Are you all right?” He asked.
        I nodded.
        “I’m Graham Horner,” the man said, holding out his hand, “Nice to meet you.”
        “I . . .” my mind was blanking. “Christian Horst.”
        Graham smiled. “We don’t see many strangers around here. Come inside. There’s a phone, if you want to call someone.”
        “No cell?” I asked, following him.
        “We don’t get reception out here in the middle of nowhere,” he replied.
        He led me into a building, and gave me a drink.

This interaction is unpleasant to read, and provides no incentive to continue. It was merely light gray text on a dark background, so you may have imagined it taking place at night, or in an underground complex, or perhaps even in a sort of cloudy limbo dimension. No matter which, unless you have a particularly active imagination, it was a blank canvas waiting for a picture that was never painted.

Stories are almost always presented as black words on a white background,

 so worlds without sufficient description usually look like

 a white expanse with black outlines.

Now consider another version of the same introduction, but with description added.

        I awoke to feel the prickling of stiff grass beneath my back. Warm sunlight pressed against my face, and my vision was a gray-tinged red under my closed eyelids. The air smelled of mown grass on a summer afternoon. I opened my eyes and my hands instinctively snapped over them, triggered by the sudden intensity of the sun burning into my head. I sat up, making sure I was pointed toward the ground instead of the sky before trying again.
        This time, when I opened my eyes, I found myself on a wide lawn hemmed by tall trees in the distance. I thought there might be a gravel road near them, though it was hard to tell from this angle. All this I saw through the bluish filter your eyes get when you stare at the bright red insides of your eyelids for too long.
        A shadow appeared next to me and spoke in a man’s voice. “Are you all right?” I turned to see a slim man in a faded blue button-down shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. His leathery tan skin showed a few faint wrinkles around his eyes, and he sported a brown mustache with wisps of gray in it.
        I shook my head. “Where am I?” I said.
        “Oak Valley Community,” the man replied, holding out a hand to me. I took it, and he hauled me to my feet with a strong grip. He was almost as tall as I. “My name’s Horner. Graham Horner.”
        “Christian Horst,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Horner.”
        The man waved his hand, gesturing me to follow him. “Why don’t we go inside. There’s a phone, if you want to call someone.”
        “No cell?” The grass crunched softly under my shoes as we walked across the meadow.
        “We don’t get reception out here in the middle of nowhere, Iowa,” Mr. Horner said, “but we have phones in our homes and the Common Building.”
        Between us and the treeline stood a wood-sided single-story building with a steep roof. The Common Building, I assumed. It reminded me of a small school, or maybe a church. For all I knew, the community used it as both. In front of it ran a dirt road. I guess I was right about that after all. We climbed a set of concrete stairs to a screen door, on the other side of which was a wooden door for when it was cold out.
        I passed into the large room with small windows and a floor covered in beige tiling. The walls were lined with wooden benches and a few stacks of chairs. To my right, a counter was cut into the wall, behind which was a kitchen.
        As I looked around, clouds suddenly covered my eyes in a haze of lightheadedness. Mr. Horner must have noticed, because by the time my vision had cleared, he was holding a cup of water toward me, which I accepted with thanks. It felt refreshingly cool on my lips, and tasted slightly of minerals. It must have come from a well.

Though it took much longer to get to the action, this version was immeasurably better than the first. Right off the bat, it opened with a variety of sensations, taking the empty canvas and painting across it in multiple layers. Each step added new colors as the scene evolved. Even if it does not look like the kind of story you would be interested in, you might be motivated to keep reading for the immersion experience alone.

There is one other way to give color to a world, and that is to provide a picture along with the text, perhaps cover art. But that does not solve the problem, only one of the symptoms. When writing books, the whole purpose is for the authors to share their imagined experiences richly and fully with their readers, and that can be done immeasurably better with a strong descriptive verbiage.

The Checklist Trap

Two parts of a story are more important than any other: the beginning and the ending. The beginning is what readers use to decide whether to commit to the whole thing, and the ending is what will stay in their minds most vividly after they finish. Both warrant a discussion of their own, but today I’ll be talking about one particular pitfall to watch out for when finishing a story up. I call it the Checklist Trap.

It shows its colors when the readers see a clear set of steps needed to resolve the plot, and each one happens at the proper moment, as if being checked off the list. If you’re into fiction, you have probably experienced a story that falls for this trap. You’re reading along, excited for the approaching climax, and then . . . everything just falls into place, and the main characters win the day. No twist, or if there was, you saw it coming a mile away. An ending like this feels stale, robotic, as if the writer grew impatient to be done and scrounged up the bare minimum so they could put it on the publishing rack.

Though the Checklist Trap is a mostly amateur problem, established writers are not immune. The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, the season 2 finale of Agents of Shield, and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith are three examples of professional stories that end in a checklist.

Left Behind, a modern fantasy series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins based on end-times prophecies from the Bible, is an archetypal example of a story fallen for the Checklist Trap. The main characters read the Bible, predict what is going to happen, and then it happens. This is repeated for every major event in the whole series. The authors missed so many opportunities for intrigue; no one ever misinterprets the scriptures or misses any prophecies, there is no clash of religious theologies except between Protestant dispensational premillennialism and the made-up Enigma Babylon One World Faith, and the main characters are never wrong about anything. Nothing keeps you engaged, apart from guessing who is going to die, which doesn’t even matter because it is established early on that all of the faithful (main characters) are going to rise from the dead at the end. Forget the ending; the entire 13-book series is one giant checklist.

The problem comes from focusing too much on the ending while planning, and not enough on how the story leads up to it. There are a few ways around the trap, but they are changes to the middle of the story, not the ending. Here are two.

Write a plot twist or two. This one is pretty obvious; if one or more of the items on the checklist suddenly becomes impossible, the protagonists need a new plan. This is extra effective if you make it look like it is going to end in a checklist, and then shatter the readers’ assumptions at a critical moment. I have read some fantastic novels that have pulled this off well, most notably the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

Make the plot more about the characters than the events. Sometimes a checklist is okay, provided what is happening is less important than who is in the scene. This is what Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Spoilers) did. Nobody cared about the First Order or Starkiller base. That was a background device to pit Rey and Finn against Kylo Ren on a planet about to explode. So when Poe Dameron went in with his X-wing and blew up the thermal oscillator just like the viewers expected, it served to keep the wallpaper from tearing rather than make the ending stale. (End spoilers)

It should be noted that the Checklist Trap is different from having a formula. If you’re writing a story, the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution model won’t do you wrong. But ask yourself if your readers are simply watching you set up the dominoes and then making them fall, because though it might be mildly entertaining, it makes for a dull story. Knock one of the dominoes out mid-collapse, or put the chain in the background, and your ending will be that much more satisfying.

The Dance of Reason and Rhyme

By Christian Horst

Under the light of the stars and the moon
A girl named Rhyme danced and sang to a tune
She sang of the way that the world came to be
When the wind kissed a sunbeam and bore him a tree
Whose boughs held up oceans, mountains, and seas

Watching nearby stood a scholar named Reason
Shaking his head at her naive depiction
From such a delusion, no sense could he make
Out onto the meadow, a step he would take
To cut off Rhyme’s song and correct her mistake

Raising a finger and eyebrow to match
Candidly Reason contested her facts
He droned on of vacuum fluctuations
And baryon acoustic oscillations
With nary a flare nor exaggerations

Over the features of Rhyme spread a grin
Laughing, she offered a warm hand to him
Reason considered and slowly accepted
Following step, but the path, he directed
And soon felt at ease, his derision deflected

Twirling in tempo, hand in light hand
The two sang a true verse in poetry strand
Of galaxies swept out in web-like smattering
Seeded in splendor by symmetry shattering
Long ere the moment of last scattering

Born between stars in a cradle of fire
From water and dust rose complexity higher
A gravity seed drew a world from stone rain
And on it amines joined with acids in chain
Heralding eons of life-giving flame

Meanwhile a crowd had collected before them
Watching the two with intent and adored them
Their song in its glory rose up to the sky
And the mountains and stars joined the rhythm in time
To the glorious Dance of Reason and Rhyme

In Anticipation of Star Trek 2017

With the recent explosion of announcements of movies and TV shows, there are bound to be a few items that go largely unnoticed. One in particular has not made much of a commotion yet, but I look forward to it eagerly: the next Star Trek TV show, set to air next year.

Star Trek has always been different sort of speculative fiction, set apart from the mainstream sci-fi. Whereas most stories revolve around a few sets of characters battling and outwitting each other for victory, Star Trek is visionary, taking an optimistic view of the future of humanity, and considering the new problems and mysteries we will face after we have solved all of our own at home. It shows us a version of the future that is idealistic beyond what we think may be possible, to fill us with hope and a goal to strive for. With this in mind, here are some things I hope to see in the new Star Trek show.

Have a Middle Eastern crewmember.
It is tradition for Star Trek to promote cooperation by giving the Enterprise a diverse crew, paying particular attention to groups who are on uncomfortable footing with each other while the show is running. In past crews, we’ve seen members who are American, French, British, African, Russian, Chinese, and Native American, as well as artificial intelligence, alien, and half-alien. I am sure that the new crew will be just as diverse as those that came before it, and I cannot think of a more fitting place to represent now than the Middle East.

Continue to reference classic literature.
Though Star Trek is way out there in the far future, the depths of space, and a society that looks to us like paradise, it is strongly tied to the here and now by a common history. There is a blessed touch of familiarity when Data tries to solve mysteries with the methods of Sherlock Holmes, or Captain Picard wrestles with whether he is repeating the mistakes of Captain Ahab hunting Moby Dick. Their world is a vision of what our world could turn out to be, made all the more real when we see the classics will remain timeless even after we have left our planet behind.

Reference the modern scientific frontier.
Along with classic literature, why not go a step further? Star Trek is about the future, and one thing that is absolutely necessary to bridge the gap between our lonely rock in an infinite void and a galaxy teeming with life is scientific discovery. Let the characters reference the verification of the Higgs boson by the LHC and gravitational waves by LIGO. Mention Nobel laureates. Credit Miguel Alcubierre with the first theoretical model of a warp drive. Bringing these into the world would not only connect us to the show like classic literature does, but also encourage young people to go into science and help advance the real frontier of our time, moving us step by ever so small step towards the era of cooperation and exploration that Star Trek dangles in front of us.

Gravitational waves, simulated by Christopher E. Henze at NASA

Get the science right.
In the past, Star Trek has relegated science to a technobabble role, spouting meaningless jargon as "explanations" for technology and plot points. Admittedly, some made-up nonsense is necessary when speculating about the mysterious places where no one has gone before, but it would be nice if the writers made an effort to get the science that we already know correct. With science’s recent popularity spike, more and more of the audience is going to notice the absurdity of things like cleaning space lichen with concentrated neutrino beams or charging the deflector dish with antiprotons.

Show the Milky Way.
Outside of a planet’s atmosphere, space does not appear just a uniform smattering of stars across the sky, as each show so far has depicted it. For the most part, Star Trek takes place within the Milky Way galaxy. Because of the galaxy’s disk shape, we should see a band all around the sky, with a smoky wisp of space dust, and a bright bulge in the direction of the galactic core. Not only is this more accurate, it is also breathtaking.

Imagine seeing this in the background as stars zip by the Enterprise.

Keep the invention of the warp drive canonically in 2063.
In Star Trek lore, scientist and engineer Zefram Cochrane built and tested Earth’s first warp drive in the year 2063. As that year approaches, it might be tempting for the writers to change it and say it was actually 2163 or something like that. The reason I suggest not doing this—I mean, besides the angry mob of fans such a retcon would bring to their doors with pitchforks and torches—is if the date is pushed back, it creates the impression that the era of Star Trek is an unobtainable fantasy, always a hundred years away from us. Keeping the date as it is, false though it may inevitably turn out to be, will create a sense of growing excitement and imminent change as the year Earth makes contact with the Galactic Federation approaches.

So far, I have seen only The Original Series and half of The Next Generation, but that has been enough to see how the franchise had earned timelessness. With its passionately optimistic vision of the future, its brilliant social commentary, and its common history tying it back to home, I would not be surprised if Star Trek continues for centuries, even after the invention of the real warp drive, if such a thing is possible.

Is the End of Time inside a Black Hole? Chrono Trigger Video Game Theory

In Chrono Trigger, widely acclaimed as having one of the best stories in a video game, the characters travel between time periods, influencing the course of their fictional history on a quest to uncover a plot that has been in the making for mega-anna. Each time period has a label—600 A.D., 1000 A.D., 12,000 B.C., and so on. But when they crank the dial past the furthest date and off the scale, they find themselves at a place called the End of Time, where only a few pieces of land float in a dark void. The time stamp for this dreary, mysterious place is “infinity.”

At first glance, it doesn’t make sense for there to be an actual time called infinity. After all, infinity is always as far away as ever. Time can keep passing, on and on and on. The stars will burn out, the galaxies fizzle away, but infinity will never get any closer. Therefore, the End of Time must be simply a poetic device the game makers put in to make the game feel more mysterious.

Or must it? The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea showed a curious puzzle about infinites, which is known as Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox. Zeno noticed that if someone were to run a race, he would first have to run half the race, then half the remaining distance, and then half the distance that still remained, and so on and so forth an infinite number of times. Though it is against our intuition that an infinite sequence of events can happen in a finite amount of time, runners do indeed finish races, so we must accept that it is possible.

From Wikipedia. The runner must travel half the distance,

then 1/4, then 1/8, etc.

If it is possible for an infinite number of events to happen in a finite amount of time, could it be possible for an infinite amount of time to pass between two events? The answer, believe it or not, is yes, according to the relativistic nature of time as discovered by Albert Einstein. A boundary that takes an infinite amount of time to cross is called an event horizon. There are several kinds of event horizons, but the most well-known type is what we think of as the surface of a black hole.

From the movie Interstellar

According to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, time passes more slowly in a gravitational field. The stronger the field, the slower the passage of time. In fact, where there is strong enough gravity, time will completely stop. For a black hole, this happens at its event horizon.

If this is confusing, don’t sweat the details; we’ve just gotten to the important part. Remember, time passes differently in different reference frames. In the reference frame of someone falling into the black hole, they would pass right through the event horizon no problem, just as they would expect to from gravity. They don’t notice their own time slowing; to them it seems like the rest of the universe is speeding up. This person ends up inside the black hole, so we know that events inside black holes do happen. In the frame of an observer who stays far away from the black hole, however, the time around the event horizon slows to a crawl, and so the falling person takes an infinite amount of time to pass the event horizon. This is why it is called an event horizon; events on the other side are removed from the rest of space and time.

In summary, things inside of black holes happen after an infinite amount of time has passed. If any place could be called the End of Time, where the date is infinity, it would be the inside of a black hole. A time traveling space ship would have no trouble getting in or out though, so it would be an opportune place for Crono and his magical companions from throughout history to set up a base, out of reach of their eldritch abomination archenemy.

Choosing a Canvas: Video Games

The mark of a true artist is to be able to make people feel exactly how the artist wants them to feel. As civilizations advances and technology progresses, more and more tools appear for artists to use, expanding and pushing the limits of true art. For the storyteller, the most recent major leap forward has been the invention of the computer, which has led to an entirely new medium for storytelling: the video game.

Final Fantasy VII, widely acclaimed for its innovation and fantastic story.

The story of a video game is not entirely written by the developer. Instead, the developer lays a framework, and the player writes the details. Video games have the potential for much stronger immersion than any other medium of story, since the player usually controls—gets to be—one or more of the characters. In role-playing games (RPGs) like Final Fantasy, the player must invest time and energy in making the characters grow, drastically increasing the sense of accomplishment the player feels with the characters, and creating a sense of magnitude about the feats they perform.

This writing dynamic between developer and player opens doors to new kinds of stories, which would either not work well or be dull in book or movie form. In The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the character is forced Groundhog Day-style to relive the three days leading up to the moon crashing into the world. The different choices the player makes each time around lead to stories playing out in different ways. In the Metroid Prime series, the player explores the ruins of ancient alien civilizations, discovering their cultures, values, and causes of destruction.

There's history and culture to be found in this floating city in Metroid Prime 3.

Perhaps the most defining feature of video games is that the players are required to overcome a challenge in order for the story to progress. The classic science fiction shooter Halo is an archetype of balancing challenge with story, continually challenging the player to the maximum of their abilities, and then making the next challenge just a little more difficult. The challenge can be made even more exciting by adding music; when Halo’s Rock Anthem starts playing as the player enters a battle, it feels that much more like they are fighting to save the galaxy.

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that, of all the storytelling media, video games bring the most variety to the table. From the mysterious ambiance of Myst to the Lovecraftian horror of The Last Door, from the courtroom drama of Phoenix Wright to the heroic adventures in The Legend of Zelda, from the tactics and adrenaline of Halo to the epic sagas of Final Fantasy, video games embody many artistic modes that can be mixed and mashed to create an untold variety of experiences and stories. Though they may one day be usurped by holodecks, I am glad to have been born in a time when video games are on the scene.

Choosing a Canvas:
Books
Video Games

A Fateful Quandary

The symbol for the Wheel of Time in the series of the same name by Robert Jordan.

One of the most important qualities of a good fiction writer is to be able to present a story that appears self-sustaining, as if it could happen without an author to speak it into being. In almost all cases, a story is so much better if it presents the illusion of being a transcription of events in an alternative world, not just a product of someone’s imagination. Stories that fail to do this feel shallow and lacking in dimensions, as the readers keep getting pulled out of their immersion by forced happenings or breaking of the fourth wall.

Fictional stories are usually created by a process of creating characters, places, and objects, deciding a set of key events and experiences to put the characters through, and then linking these events with details to make them coherent. In other words, a fiction writer creates everything in a story for a purpose. In this way, the story has an inextricable element of fate, its world being shaped to the will of the writer. Any aspiring fiction author must be wary of this, and take steps to hide it.

Though there may be no way to eliminate the connection between author and story, there are ways to create the illusion that it isn’t there. One of these is to write a mechanism for fate into the story. This could come in many forms, such as the Force, the Wheel of Time, the lion deity Aslan of Narnia, or even the ambiguous “greater forces at work” found in The Lord of the Rings. These powers serve as a buffer between the writer and story, allowing happenings which would otherwise come across as too convenient.

Another possibility is to forgo fate altogether and create the illusion of uncertainty, making the reader feel like anything could happen. This type of story feels more natural, as its events are seen to more realistically fall into place by chance and the will of the characters. Such a story style ups the stakes; if the characters don’t have some supernatural protection against the odds, and if there isn’t a higher power working behind the scenes to make events play out a certain way, then there is more tension and excitement to keep the readers engaged.

Pulling off such a trick is a skillful art. We think of the things that need to happen—This person needs to join the main characters, that person needs to be diverted, these characters need to go on a mission even though someone else is much more qualified—and it is tempting to simply give the characters a little help, to use our pens to nudge events in the right direction. We must keep in mind, however, that smart readers are going to notice, and it will cheapen their immersion in our world. We don’t have to give up on our unlikely heroes though—anything can happen in fiction, and with enough imagination, it can be made to look natural.