Drake

First, Blue, this is not a flame war. I grant I got overheated while writing my response, and I am sorry if some people were offended by the content of what I posted. However, the road runs both ways. I was not offended in the classical sense by what Gabe originally posted. In fact, I made me think quite a bit, and I was sincere in the post-script to my post. Now, onto something else... Gabe, I do appreciate what you are saying. Yet I would be remiss if I failed to remind you that each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous one. If you got the impression I am simply standing by and watching the wheels turn around, then you are mistaken. I fight a different form of warfare. Because of the dangers I face in my locale, I am forced to use varying techniques. My goal is to slowly influence the thinking of those around me and, in turn, have them influence the thinking of others. It is a slow process -- infuriatingly slow -- and one that does work if patience is the watchword. This is not about pacifism. It is taking a look at the situation and understanding that a great many people are holding a hardnosed view. Laws can be changed overnight, as was witnessed during the Great Society period in the 1960s, but the culture and society lags far behind. People cannot be forced to accept changes. To try and force the changes when the mindset has not been altered leads to even greater resistance. Organizations like ActUp! and Queer Nation took an approach that did more harm than good. Their overly militant activism created divisive camps, and this has lead to the backlash effect we are now experiencing. Please, do not fight my war. I am fighting it. I am fighting it using methods that "the kids" often cannot comprehend. I did not comprehend them when I was younger. This is a battle of mental attrition. Activism of the sort you seem to imply gives others a reason to raise a battle standard and gather their forces around it. When it comes to numbers, we are out-gunned 10 to 1. Don't forget that. We truly are in the minority. Should the majority feel as though we are threat to their way of life, and a frighteningly large percentage do, then they will fight back. We will lose. I understand the war "they" are gearing up to fight. They have numbers we will never enjoy, and this is important. I spoke to a lot of people before the last election cycle, and I worked against the proposal banning same-sex marriage. It passed by a 3 to 1 margin. Conversely, if you do fight the war and it goes badly, do we then get to hold you up and flay the skin from your back for having made it worse for everyone? There are times when I think of General Custer as he watched the Oglala come streaming over the hill. All he could say was "Oh, shit! Didn't know there was that many!" I sometimes get the sense that "the kids" are setting themselves up for their own form of "Little Bighorn" (and I must state I was on the side of the Oglala). However, we are the Oglala. We may win a small victory here or there (look at the history of Red Cloud or Geronimo or Sitting Bull), but we will lose the war. That is what I am trying to avoid. The only way I can fight the KKK is to influence enough people to understand what a loathsome group it is in reality. I also never forget that there are those who will always support the KKK. We must be careful that we do not piss off the majority to such an extent that they fail to even recognize us as human beings, let alone as fellow citizens. The fight anyone picks is going to have consequences. One must take the time to sit back and think about what those results may be. I have thought about my fight. I have thought about the war in which I engage. I chose my tactics with care and caution. I don't want people to view me or my cause as a threat to their lifestyle. If they do, then they will actively seek to destroy mine... and they will probably win because of superior numbers. I do believe one person can make a difference. The diffence I seek to make is one where people can see the folly of divisive positions and the ill-treatment of fellow citizens. It requires tactful stategy. I want people to think I am one of them first. After that, the differences in person I reveal will force them to make a clear ethical and moral decision. Once faced with having to decide between being decent or despicable in action and thought, people will generally choose to be decent. Not everyone, but enough to make a difference. There is an old saying a friend of my father's used to toss around, and I never truly understood it until about ten years ago. I use it to end my comments at this point, and leave it as something for you to consider: "Age and experience always beats youth and strength." Drake

Gabe: Ask anyone who really knows me, and you will hear the phrase "professional asshole" in regard to some of my personality. Your post has pissed me off for the last two weeks since I first read it. I have been trying to moderate my response to it during the intervening period, but there remains some persistent vitriol. Wake up! Take a look around! People live in the closet for some very good reasons. I live in a state that recently modified its consitution to allow for discrimination. I live in a state where "gay bashing", both verbal and physical, is more common than what is reported. I live in a state where a person can get fired from a job because of sexual orientation, and there is little recourse to the action. Gay people can be and are denied housing for the same reasons. Anti-discrimination laws regarding sexuality routinely fail at local levels. The backlash to popular culture of television and movies swept through my area like the plague. There are few safe havens in my state. "Gay Ghettos" can be found, and only one city has a truly tolerant attitude. The rest ignore the issues at best, and don't care when people are hurt by the puritanical measures. I dare you to come where I live and flaunt your sexuality. I live a scant 25 miles from the epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan in my state, and they are very real and very terrifying. There is a line blacks, Jews, and gays will not cross because it puts their very lives in peril. The worst part is the homophobia spreads like a head cold. Four years ago we had two men who were beaten outside of a gay bar. One died, and the other is permanently disabled. The news barely made the front page, and the trial regularly failed to gain attention. The Op/Ed pieces treated it as whimsy, and the Letters to the Editor frequently said the men had brought it upon themselves. Now, if you are a 17-year old kid in this state or an adult, that closet looks like a mighty safe place. I dare you to seek martyrdom to the cause. Come out here and get killed so that others may live free. You will not be around, however, to witness the apathy with which your case is treated. Furthermore, you will not hear the coffee house or restaraunt conversations that place the blame squarely on your shoulders for making such a big deal out of being a "fag." You will missed the agonozing slowness with which the system does little to amend the current poltical trend to treat your situation as deserving. You will not see how quickly only lip-service is paid to the tragedy of your death, and then the world will continue to spin without you and with no regard for the loss of your life. I have heard the conversations. I have seen what happens. I understand the fear within which people live. Yes, there are those brave souls who weather the storm from time to time in the exceptional places where such a stand will afford them some protection. What is interesting to note is how quickly they abandon this state and seek lives elsewhere. There is a huge difference between "self-pitying dribble" and honest fear. You do a tremendous disservice to those who live in locales where there is much to fear, and it is not based on self-hatred. That is a gross over-simplification of the situation. There is a reality you are flagrantly trying to brush aside, and I take umbrage to it. I live in the reality you think is so easily altered. As a comparison, take the African-America civil rights movement. It began long before the Civil War, and it is still being faught. The Stonewall Riots were a scant 35 years ago, and that served as the first battle cry. Society is reacting very poorly to the recent wave of "gay themed" entertainment. Have you forgotten that GW Bush won the election on the grounds of "God, Guns, and Gays?" There were other factors, but those three listed right up there. The election was labeled a "Morals War", and over half the people in this country sided with Bush. Wake the fuck up! Take a look around. 16 states now actively ban same sex marriage because it is viewed as a threat to our society. Guess what? You and I are viewed as a threat to society. People around me pound the Bible and scream "God Hates Fags!" They back up their words with guns, and there are more than a few who are willing to cross the line of civility into barbarism. Come spend a year where I live, and then see how far you will reteat into the closet. You won't even noticie you are doing it. The sad fact is that it would happen to you in more places than not. Your post pisses me off because you fail to recognize that some of us have to work very carefully in advancing the cause. I have to plot each step I take, carefully considering the consequences. I have one leg outside of the closet, and it's already been kicked a couple of times. When I want to go and experience who and what I am, I have to seek out the gay ghettos and move in cloistered circles. I participated, twice now, in the incautious act of attending the anual gay pride celebration in my state capital. It is video taped and broadcast in some parts of the state on the main news channels. Part of mind has senses I was "laid off" from my job because they suspected I am gay. Certain comments were made to me that announced what was being thought. "You just don't seem to be the right type of person to work in this office." What the hell? I did five jobs in the office that they still cannot fill. There were some economic reasons for my lay-off, but it was funny how they managed to hire another programmer a month after my departure. I know I also foolishly checked my web site from time to time, and I know the Internet logs were examined on a regular basis. Hmm? What is this DrakeTales, and why would this guy be visiting it? I am not a paranoid person by inclination, but I can see the writing on the wall. My lay-off was nice, neat, and polite, yet there are aspects to it that are beyond suspicious. Okay, Gabe, come and live in my neck of the woods for a year, and then let's see if you feel the same. I am reacting for every person who read what you posted and shook their heads in disbelief. Control is a touchy subject, especially when you can't control the actions of others. Drake PS: Please don't take this a moronic statement, but my rant was not entirely a personal attack on you. Far from it. I think it is important that this type of dialog takes place. I do thank you for your post. It made me think... again.

The origins of English do not lie in Latin. The Angelns and Juts (who came by way of Jutland in the form of Vikings) landed on the British Isles around 410 CE, and had become the completely dominant force by 830 CE. They brought with them the Frisian language that is the basis for all Germanic languages. The Romans had abandoned the islands by 400 CE, and the effects of Latin were felt more heavily, up to that point, in the Gaelic and Pictish languages. For over 600 years the Frisian tongue was the main language of the Brits. The wars between the Angelns/Juts, Gaels, and Picts witnessed the sidelining of the native Irish and Scottish tongues. When the Normans of France came to the Brtion throne in 1060 CE, with William the Conqueror at the lead, the process of amalgamating two languages, languages that were not complimentary to one another, started to unfold as the ruling class became French. English is a bastard language, but around if not over 60% is rooted in proto-German. English grammar still reflects these origins very strongly. The introduction of French, and the attempt to switch the language of Briton, failed miserably. Old French was overlaid onto the new variant Briton Frisian by the common people, and the native language became a mishmash. Old English looks and reads German by and large, and Middle English is not that far of a cast-off. The competing difference in the Latin-based French and the Frisian-based proto-German created the miasma that is English today. It is neither French nor German, but it's own language. Attempts were made through the centuries to apply the grammar rule of Latin to English, and the results was nothing more than confusion. Latinate languages and Germanic languages do not merge well at all. The rules of grammar are strikingly different despite some seeming similarities (thanks to proto-Sanskrit). The most famous faux pas (and the pun is intended) is the rule of Split Infinitives. German and Frisian (the language still exists in some parts of Denmark and the Netherlands) create infinitives by the addition of a suffix, but the infinitive can be modified by slapping another word onto or around it. Latin does not because the infinitive is a single word and the modifier cannot intrude into the word... a Frisian allows. When English was developing, the dichotomy between French and Frisian caused a new formation: the use of two words to create an infinitive. Some daft bishop tried to ramrod a Latin rule into English, thinking English needed to follow Latin more closely for religious reasons. Thus, it was deemed unseemly to place a word between "to" and "{verb}". It worked for almost three hundred years, but the OED finally declared the rule null and void about 5 years ago. The rule makes no sense in English. We have Gene Roddenbery and Star Trek to thank for the demolition of the Split Infinitive rule. Arguments about the use of Latinate rules of grammar in English are prone error. Even the argument about the use of Germanic rules of grammar in English are flawed. English is its own language now. The fight in English has been raging for nearly 1,000 years, since the Norman conquest. The ability of English to adapt to and to adopt other languages is found in the evolution. It seems to change regularly every 400 years, and there is a wide debate in the linguistic community about reclassifying the genre of English from Modern to Contemporary. It has been 400 years since William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon set down what we currently consider Modern English. The time has come to recognize a new stage of English. Moreover, we also need to understand the roots of the language to get any clear notion as to how and why it morphs as it does. One of the biggest driving forces in the change of English is something called The Big Pond, or the Atlantic Ocean. American English is, I believe, its own dialect. The same can almost be said for Australian and South African English. Only radio and television have kept the bonds between British English and the colonial cousins tied together. Well, speaking of esoteric digressions, I think this fit the bill. Drake

AJ: You are actually addressing two issues with this post. The first is definitely about dangling participles. The second is the proper sentence construciton using preopositions. The example you used shows the interconnected problem. Dangling Participles: There is hardly ever a good reason to finish a sentence with a present participle. The general syntax of English (Subject-Verb-Object) tends to negate this usage. As I sit here and try to think of a case where it could or would be used, my brain cannot cough up an example. It may be I am too inculcated with the rules of grammar to do so. All I can do is come up with alternate wording for your examples. "He was sitting on a rock." "The rock upon which he was sitting was wet." Nope, I just can't do it. Basically, there is rarely a good excuse for using a dangling participle. Prepositions: Rule - Do not end a sentence with a preposition. Reality - Contemporary American English plays fast and loose with this rule. Result - Not knowing how to use prepositions properly is simply lazy and sloppy. Once again, the basic syntax of English helps resolve the issue. However, the examples provided show a vast underlying set of concerns. Prepositions require a proper use of nouns (or pronouns) and ordering the flow of action in the sentect. The verb (or predicate) will point out the direct object and the indirect object, and the preposition reveals the direction of the interactio between the two. Then there is also the side issue of indeterminate articles and indefinite pronouns, and those affect the construction of the sentence. It is also best to look to the simple sentence and English syntax to divine the correct order of words, including the placement of prepositions. In the second example I created concerning dangling participles, you can see the order at work. The rock {subject} upon {preposition} which {indeterminate article} he {indirect object - using an indefinte pronoun} was sitting {verb complex} was wet {compliment to the object}. The entire sentence is aimed at describing the rock and includes two specific pieces of information regarding its condition and relationship with another noun. There are two simple sentences that can be pulled out of this: 1) The rock was wet. 2) He was sitting on the rock. However, the second sentence is a subordinate to the first sentence since the goal of the sentence is to describe the rock and the person. Always fall back on the direct object to decide how to construct the rest of the sentence. I hope this helped and did not confuse the issue(s). Drake

"I will have been answering this in a few moments." - Future Imperfect "I will have answered this in a few moments." - Future Perfect Brain bleed! Douglas Adams loved playing with future tense. I am still sad he passed away. Future Imperfect makes the assumption an action will take place, shows it using a present participle, but also includes a reference as to when the action will be completed. This is not a strict rule. It is imperfect because of the present participle. If the past participle had been used, then it would future perfect. The perfect variant makes the assumption the action will be completed successfully. Anyway, Graeme commented on the topic of the omniscient state of the narrator and the PoV employed. 1st and 3rd person can be used in any tense, so long as the tense is kept straight. The "understanding" of the narrative voice concerning all the events, especially feelings and throughts, determines the omniscient state, but the PoV is truly up to the author. Conistency is item of the day in this regard. A 3rd person narrator may be just as clueless as the characters being described. It may be an outsider who watched the events unfold (and this could be a place where present tense is used). The narrator can also be involved in the action, a character in the story, and it reporting the events. The omniscient state determines how much the narrator knows. Ask this question: Is the narrator floating above the action in a god-like, all knowing condition with access to every shred of information? I tend to to use a 3rd person, limited omniscient PoV where the narrative voice is an outside entity. Only the thoughts and feelings of the main character, possibly two, are known in full, and all of the events are filtered through her/his eyes and mind. I have used a 1st person PoV. non-omniscient and past tense, in the same way, except the narrator was a character who did not divulge what he knew of futuer events. The intermingling of PoV, tense, and omniscience are the three elements that determine the amount of information told in the story, and how it is relayed. If none of what I just wrote made sense, my apologies. Drake

Blue covered a lot of ground in his answer, so there is little I can lump onto it. However, you bring up an interesting point. Isaac Azimov and Robert Heinlein both tried a fatal experiment in short stories. I say 'fatal' because it caused brain bleed in the reading audience. Each attempted, in their own way, to write a future tense story told in 2nd person. Heilein at least had the grace to nod his head to James Joyce and the disturbingly complex "Ulysses". For one reason or another, your question, GW, brought this to mind. Now, for my take on the issue. I had an English professor who once told me: "The narrative perspective is the one best suited to telling the tale, but it must be intelligible." 3rd person, past tense tends to be the most intelligible for Western readers and writers, and perhaps I mean comfortable (as Blue stated). One of the issues that is not addressed in your question, but one that requires due consideration since it is related, is the omniscient state of the narrative voice: full, limited, or non-existent. This is important when deciding the tense you are going to use. A full-blown omniscient narrator will know everything that is going on. A limited omniscient narrator will only know what is going on in the head(s) of the main character(s), whereas a non-omniscient narrator is reporting only the actions and events that anyone would see if present... but not thoughts or feelings. Here is a general guideline I follow: Full Omniscient Narrator: Past Tense, 1st or 3rd Person Limited Omniscient Narrator: Past or Present Tense, 1st or 3rd Person Non-Omniscient Narrator: Present Tense (real time), 1st or 3rd Person Psychotic Writer: Future Imperfect, 1st or 2nd Person The main problem we writers face is that we are accustomed to thinking in past tense when telling a story. We are actually conveying history (as Blue noted). Thus, you often run the risk of mangling the tense as you write. I believe this what you are trying to avoid. If this is the case, then I would suggest you experiment with a short story, so you can practice writing in an unfamiliar tense variant and a different narrative perspective. Also, keep in mind the omniscient state of the narrator and see what that does to the story and how it effects the tense you want to use. There is an odd correlation between the two. Drake

Greetings All: Gabe really got me thinking about the character development process, but this is related to the actual exposition within the story structure. I will try to be succinct in the question: How much of the character description should be left up to the reading audience? In this respect I mean the physical description. I dumpster dive into characters' internal worlds pretty well, but I find one of my greatest weaknesses occurs when actually describing the characters physically. I do have an idea of what s/he looks like since I do a verbal character sketch. However, I tend to shy away from fleshing out the description in the story. I just sort of toss in a detail here and there along the way. This bothers me from time to time because I am not certain if I am doing a service to the story by allowing the reader to create an image in their heads to suit their needs, or if I am short-changing the audience. Any thoughts on this? Drake

Gabriel: Truly an interesting post that is worth thinking about at length. Thus, I may revisit this post several times as different thoughts pop into my head. I think character development in a story stems from a place deep inside of the author. Even the most abusive of writers, and here I am thinking of Charles Burkowski, tend to hold to this rule: Writers inherently like people. Why take the time to write a story about a person you care nothing about? It would be a waste of everyone's time. The author must like the characters in the story, protagonist and antagonist alike. I have created characters who were thoroughly rotten people, but I never left them without a sense of humanity. This is a factor that goes into the development process. If you like the character, regardless of the role played in the tale, then you will invest the effort and time to add nuances that bring them to life. Flannary O'Connor once said that she always wrote her work from the perspective of the character people would like least. Moreover, she was unrivaled in creating macbre characters that were engaging despite their horrendous flaws. She could make a cold-blooded murderer lovable or an old grandmother despicable. Despite the fact I am often disturbed by her stories, I find I am drawn to them. O'Connor cared about her characters, and it shows in the words. Hence, I tend to believe the first act in character creation is finding something you like about the person, regardless of the role s/he will play, and then adding to it. You also hit upon a very salient point when you stated: I find I never sit to write a story unless I know the history of each character, even the tertiary ones, from birth to death. Since I know I am writing about a single slice of life, I find I have to know exactly where they began this journey and what it did to them when they reached the end. How did any one of them develop as a person? That is what I am trying to show in my work. Not to toot my own horn, but I really hit the mark in "Through Different Eyes" when I managed to show the change in the two lead characters, and they were living very different lives. I was also able to show the changes in the secondary and tertiary characters. For all my verbosity in commenting, you sum it up beautifully, Gabriel: Drake

What he said. Almost. (Sorry, couldn't resist). If you are a fan of EL Doctrow, then you'd best be prepare for a series of narrative jumps that will leave your head spinning. He does it all the time. His classic work, Ragtime, opens with six chapters that have six separate stories... with not transition from one to the next. Moreover, as the tale draws together, Doctrow leaps from one story to the next without any explanation or warning. The strange part is the fact Ragtime is an absolutely engrossing read. I could not stop reading it, despite the headache it gave my by chapter 3. Doctrow is not alone in this. Zora Neal Hurston was found of the narrative interchange. Gunter Grass does it as well, on top of the fact he writes the weirdest stories. F. Scott Fitzgerald did it, albeit infrequently. Toni Morrison. Eugene O'Neill (in his plays no less). Kurt Vonnegut. Tom Robbins. All of these writers would make ludicrous leaps in the narrative PoV in their tales, and they never apologized for it. I suppose what I am saying is that it is not only permissible to do this, but it can be done in the harshest of manners without alienating the audience. It comes down to the craft the writer employs. Audiences can be forgiving of the worst crimes in a story so long as what was attempted serves the tale in the end. There is a rule I follow that I find makes the readers generous in their estimation of a work: "Never let the reader feel as though his/her time was wasted. Every sentence should matter and add something to the story." You can lose a reader as much as you want in the telling of a tale, just as long as the reader walks away from the experience feeling as though something was gained from the effort. If they think the writer is doing nothing more than jerking their chain, then they will turn around and rip the writer's head off... with reason. Okay. Simple thoughts from a simple man. Drake

I know I am a little late to this thread, but... If you have ever read Frankenstein, then you know what can be done with the narrative perspective. The story is told by the captain of a ship. However, he relates in first person, from a second person PoV, the tale of Victor and the Creature. I thought extensively about the narrative structure of Frankenstein when I was writing Through Different Eyes. One of the things that can be done is to segue into a story arch of a different character by stating something like: "And this is the story he told me..." Cheap and cheesy, I know, but it doesn't have to be. You are allowed to shift the PoV when a different character takes over the narrative position, and it can be assumed it is still be told through the pen of the original narrator. It can be convoluted, yet it can be done with tremendous effect (see Frankenstein). One of the biggest pitfalls in writing when changing narrative perspective is shifting tense. That is when it becomes glaringly obvious that something is amiss in the structure of the story. Keep the tense straight, and the rest of the story will follow without a hitch. Inasmuch as Frankenstein is concerned, you might also want to watch the movie Rashamon, by Akira Kurasawa. An absolute classic film wherein the same story is told from 4 different points of view and, as most people forget, it is told by a fifth character who is relating it to a sixth. Very intense, and very good. I mention Rashamon because it deals with the situation that started this thread. My $0.02 worth. Drake