Starry, starry night

"But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you. " - Don McLean

The NaNoWriMo Monster

The real question is: who will ever read the 2.8 Billion words that were churned out of the month of November last year? Greasy little slippery words squeezed out under pressure and blessed with perfunctory thought. Sentences cobbled together hastily in a mad dash to spew as much verbosity as may be required to lunge the literary athlete across the 50,000 word finish line. Paragraphs and chapters pummeled together in the Large NaNoWriMo Collider. Fiction fusion. Fission of the imagination. Starfield of alphabet letters precipitously poised upon the chasm of meaningless chaos. Bland postulations despertely trying to reach the escape velocity required to leave mediocrity behind in it's gravity pool of banal everydayness. Cold little specs of dust ejected violently into the intergalactic wasteland of nobodies space. Spindly wisps of yesterdaylight fading in the tepid glow of dying stars. Stillborn suns.

We Oort to know better

Wikipedia is not the best place to find information on serious topics and especially not topics which court heated debates from people who have different points of view.

It is also a bit temperamental as a reference because things change each time someone makes an edit and what you are referencing may not be there next time someone goes looking for it.

So it is with reluctance that I link this topic on the Oort cloud to Wikipedia because I really ought to know better.

Surprisingly we Oort to know more about the Oort cloud but we don't. It's a hypothetical construct which has only been indirectly observed as an explanation of where long peroid comets and centaurs come from. It is thought to be spherical and isotropically distributed.

The mystery is understanding what mechanism dislodges comets from this theoretically isotropically distributed zone.

Editors on Wikipedia claim: "The outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to the Solar System, and thus is easily affected by the gravitational pull both of passing stars and of the Milky Way Galaxy itself. These forces occasionally dislodge comets from their orbits within the cloud and send them towards the inner Solar System". I'm not entirely convinced.

Two people independently thought of this cloud as an explanation: Öpik and Oort. This is also interesting because there are many other instances where more than one person has independently come up with an idea at the same time. Is this an example of thought entanglement?

Plot Development in 10 Easy Steps

Various sources seem to indicate that most stories follow a plot development path, which has essentially become a suggested formula. This summary comes form a chap called Harvey Chapman, the Chapman chap.

He describes the formula in 10 steps as follows:
1. Start with the status quo
2. Something changes the status quo
3. The Character makes a decision to act (or is forced to)
4. & 5. A series of mini plots then ensue following action and reaction phases
6. Anti-climax. The character's goal appears to become unobtainable
7. Metaphorical death - how the character reacts to the loss
8. Rebirth or revival
9. The goal is achieved (or not)
10. A new status quo emerges.

The following plot diagram is displayed on Chapman's website:


















The problem with a formula plot is that the story becomes predictable.

Chapman then goes on to discuss some advanced elements of plot that deal with time.

Five Elements of Story Writing

Basic stories are comprised of five essential elements.

Characters,
Setting,
Plot,
Conflict, and
Theme.

Characters can be people, animals, aliens, planets, deities, force fields, invisible intelligent forms of existence, an Ai or personality uploads. The character must be able to interact with other characters.

Setting is important because this is how we perceive the world. We can relate to a situation and a character if we can perceive or visualise their setting. It sets the environmental context within which the characters interact and gives the plot and anchor.

Plot is essential and is the way in which the train smash happens. Careful planning helps to make it plausible and detail makes it believable.

Think of these five elements as taking a journey:

The plot is the vehicle that enables the journey to be taken. The characters are those who take the journey and the reader needs to relate to one or more of the characters and want to travel with them. There is a driver and there are passengers. As complexity increases there is more than one vehicle, multiple drivers and potentially multiple passengers. The setting is the landscape through which the journey is taken. Conflict is not essential but makes the journey interesting and helps to keep the reader engaged. I think this can also be achieved through mystery and in my genre I think a combination of mystery and conflict is essential.

The reason for taking the journey is the motive that drives the plot but the sum total of the journey reveals the theme. The theme is the main message. It's the meta-reason, a second derivative version of the the reason for the journey. It's the reason for the reason of the journey. We are not always aware of what the reason behind the reason is but this is essentially the nature of life itself. How we reveal theme is where the art of writing lies. Anyone can bang a story together, but it is the deftness with which we can reveal the theme through the execution of the other elements that delineates our efforts into chasms of banality, layers of mediocrity and polished slithers of sheer genius.

Fortunately, just as Einstein wasn't brilliant at maths you also don't have to be a grammar specialist to be able to write good stuff. It helps, because it gets you through the shit-deflectors of those erudite groupie gate keepers who have slaved over books and know how to cross their t's and dot their i's. They expect others to meet the same standards before they will consider your five elements. If the gap is not too big you should be able to get a good editor to help you build a bridge.

No one is perfect. We all have strengths and weaknesses and it's important not to let our weaknesses overwhelm our strengths. Instead find someone to help you fix the gaps left by your weaknesses and focus on exploiting your strengths. Don't waste your time trying to improve weaknesses, rather accept that there are somethings that you cannot do alone and find the help you need to make the package deal work. It you're a good batsman and you spend all your time trying to become a better bowler then you will only become an average bowler and risk becoming an average batsman too. Learn to exploit your strengths and don't allow your weaknesses to hold you back or become an impediment to you realising your true potential.

Mars500 Reality Dysfunction

Finally the Mars500 project comes to an end today (4 June). After 520 days in simulated mission to mars reality six men will emerge from a large pipe to discover that they never left planet Earth at all. It was all a mind bending experiment.

During their first awakening they may have seen images of the planet, star fields, and instrument readings showing speed, altitude, and orbital parameters. They were immersed in deep troughs of unfathomable dark emptiness between massive gaps of nothingness separating the occasional dust particle or hydrogen atom and then finally presented with the incongruous gargantuan notion of a planet sized new world of rock and dust and thin feeble atmosphere.

During their second awakening they discovered a network of steel pipes, a few wooden surfaces, cables and displays all hooked up to a computer on the other side of the artificial boundary of illusion created by the design team. The tinkers of the trade. The illusion artists. The reality manipulators.

Deep seated in their psyche will forever lie the reality dysfunction of a discontinuity in logic, time, space and reason. They will carry this shrapnel shard of splintered black obsidian in their minds for as long as their memory can weather the passage of time.

The splinter. The itchy splinter, that just won't go away. What really happened back then? Which reality was true? The one they believed in, the one that created the illusion or maybe both. Yes, both were simultaneously true but paradoxically incompatible with each other. Oh the splinter, the itchy splinter. It taunts the mind and tortures the memory.