Latest Wright’s Writing Post
My beautiful and talented wife has another entry in her bounteous supply of advice and tips to writers and would-be writers.
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/94453.html
One advantage of being married to a authoress / editrix is that when I am out of ideas for my novel (which is frequently) she is fruitful with ideas to make up the defect.
She speaks here of what she called the "two strings technique" which is, in every character have a personality trait that goes against the grain of all his other traits, in every scene have each event trail side-effects that increase the tension, have every solution foreshadow a next and deeper problem.
Even in role playing games (for those of you who serve as dungeon-masters but not out of modules) drama can be increased merely by making sure each character has two things in his life that contradict. This is particularly easy to do in something like WORLD OF DARKNESS or DICELESS AMBER, where plot-conflict is built into the structure of the game. It is simple. Have the player character be assigned by King Oberon to guard the Grand Pattern of Amber or something. Merely having the player-character be told by his mother, Princess Fiona, that she will blow his brains out through the back of his skull by sheer psionic willpower if he does not cooperate in smuggling his half-brother Judas past the dungeon guards and onto the pattern: and then be told by his father Prince Benedict to expect sudden death via swordblow at his hands (one metal, one flesh) if anyone — but especially that bastard Judas son of Caine whom Benedict has particular cause to hate — sneaks past the guardpost and onto the pattern. Then have both parents warn him not to tell anyone that they are secretly married, such incest being strictly against Oberon’s law. Then have Caine visit the character on a moonless night and start asking prying questions about his parentage. You see how it works.
Of book, characters in books can be put under a lot more pressure than role-playing players, and their two (or more) plot threads can pull them more vehemently in opposite directions, because book characters cannot up and quit the game when it gets discouraging. "OK, you are playing Frodo! You have a magical treasure of epic power! Your mission is to destroy it! And the only place to destroy it is the Dark Land, a landscape which looks like its partway terraformed to match the surface conditions of planet Venus! And the Dark Land is guarded by hordes of Turks and goblins, giant spiders, and deathless wraith-kings, and their Sultan is an archangel of Hell, who is disembodied, invisible, malign, and is also a necromancer — and he can attack your mind from here. Boromir betrays you! He is twice as tall as you and nine times as strong. Roll your saving throw!"
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
