Year: 2014

How Not to Write Dialogue

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I didn’t know this morning whether to write about Ebola, illegal aliens, or the vice president saying China is part of North America. I mean, the whole confounded thing is going belly-up…

Ah, skip it. How about a little coaching for those of you out there who would like to write some fiction, one of these days, and hopefully see it published? I was going to say, “Well, if you want to do that, learn how to write good dialogue.” But in a number of books I’ve had to read lately, good dialogue seemed to be the last thing on the writer’s mind.

A good rule of thumb for creating good dialogue is to avoid anything that sounds like it might have come out of the screenplay for The Poseidon Adventure. It is amazing that Gene Hackman’s acting career survived the lines written for his character to speak.

My own rule is always to try to “hear” my dialogue as if it were lines spoken in a movie. If it sounds right, it’ll read right. But what do I know?

In a series of novels about Merlin published by Zondervan, the author butchers his own work by injecting an endless series of Americanisms into his dialogue. He wants you to imagine you’re in Britain circa 470 A.D.–and then he hits you with lines like this (and I’m not kidding!): “Yeah, that guy sure is a crook. It sure looks like it to me. Ya got a problem with that?”

In a Brother Cadfael knockoff featuring a perky nun in ancient Ireland, circa 500 A.D.–she would be that stock cliche character, The Street-Smart Nun, if they had any streets–we have her beating up (!) the wicked abbot and warning him, “if you ever mess with the sisters of Brigid again, I will come back and finish this.” She also describes her own convent’s evening snack-time as “a great way to unwind.”

This literary crime was perpetrated by Pegusus Books.

Do the editors today think readers are so ignorant, so benighted, so intellectually crushed by text-messaging and video games, that they won’t be able to make any sense of plain English dialogue? Fictional characters living fifteen hundred years ago have to talk like middle school kids today?

Maybe the way to get published, these days, is to write truly horrible dialogue. Maybe that’s what editors are looking for.

So don’t “sound out” your dialogue to make sure it’ll read smoothly. Don’t stick to plain English. Don’t make sure your character’s words clearly convey the information you want the reader to receive.

Instead, make sure your historical novel is jam-packed with contemporary American slang, never write “you” for “ya,” and take pains to see that your cliche characters speak in wall-to-wall cliches. If any originality should creep into your manuscript, get rid of it.

A Lesson from ‘The X Files’

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Back in the day, Chris Carter’s The X Files was one of the most successful series on TV, and certainly one of the most honored. It won all kinds of awards. And now that you can watch old TV shows on your computer, Patty and I have been watching X Files episodes.

If you want to know why Christianity is in trouble in America, check out our pop culture.

Last night we watched a 1999 episode called Millenium, a crossover with another series produced by Carter and canceled for the 1999 TV season. Anyhow, in this entry, the bad guys are resurrecting dead FBI agents who committed suicide because they wanted to be resurrected. Yeah, it’s complicated.

In a brainstorming session, Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) figures there must be a lot of necromancy going on. Necromancy is the art of raising the dead and getting them to do your  bidding. Mulder describes it as an ancient feature “of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” Uh, not exactly… Necromancy is mentioned in the Bible. There shall not be found among you anyone… that useth divination… or a witch… or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord…  (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) It is not part of any Judeo-Christian tradition.

Besides which, all this Scripture-spouting necromancer can really do is make the corpses into zombies.

But my point is, here is a popular TV show, an icon of our popular culture at the time, making use of Christianity, or rather abusing it, for the producer’s own ends. It went on then and it still goes on today. Our “entertainment” industry hardly ever touches on Christian faith except to mock it, distort it, or condemn it.

The X Files frequently touched on Christian themes, Chris Carter sucking it into a mish-mosh of New Age twaddle, UFOlogy, and pagan superstition. It lent “gravitas” to the show’s mythology. I should add that The X Files would have been totally ridiculous if not for the consistently superb quality of the filming, the acting, the background music, and the locations.

For whatever the reason, we Americans have for a long time been using our popular culture to undermine our faith.

If you answer by saying, “Oh, it’s just entertainment! It doesn’t really mean anything,” I think I would have to answer, “But everything means something.”

Study our “entertainment” closely and see if you don’t agree with me.

It Won’t Work, But It’ll Make Us Feel Good

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The one lifelong politician who never held a job in his life says the economy is in great shape and the people don’t appreciate it because they’re going broke.

Now we hear from another lifelong drone, the Democrat president who couldn’t keep his zipper shut, who sold pardons, and who is now America’s Revered Elder Statesman–we hear from him that, yeah, the economy is in terrible shape. But the good news, he says, is that the government can fix it easily.

Just increase the cost of labor!

Yup, the ex-prez sez, just jack up the minimum wage and everything’ll be hunky-dory.

Here in New Jersey, the pols are fixing to do just that, despite warnings that it will cripple the state’s restaurant industry ( http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/01/new-jersey-minimum-wage-proposals/ ). That means that the people the pols say they want to help will actually get hurt, as their employers cut back on hours and lay off staff.

This is not working out well for us, people: being governed by persons who are ignorant of everything but the pursuit of power for its own sake. They’ve never done anything but politics–never worked, never started a business, never tried to keep a business going successfully. They have no idea how wealth is created.

Worse, they have no idea how poverty is created–even though they themselves do so much to create it.

At what point do you question the intentions of people who know their policies won’t work and will only do harm, and yet they keep on doing them?

Those Who Can’t Do, and Don’t Know How, Govern

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The other day, the jidrool in the White House said America is way better off since he took office–only the poor stupid people “don’t feel it” because, you see, wages and incomes haven’t gone up, but prices have.

Duh… let’s see. Your income stays the same, or even decreases, while your food and fuel and rent keep on going up and up and up–and you’re better off?

How big a nincompoop is this guy?

The point is: so, here we have this dangle, this stunata, coming up with public policy vis-a-vis the economy, and he knows absolutely not a bloody thing about it. The man has never worked at a job, let alone tried to start and operate a business. You would be better off having me come over to repair your computer, than to have this ignoramus tinkering with the national economy. And believe me, you do not want me tinkering with your computer.

But it’s not just President *Batteries Not Included. We have a whole political class that knows nothing but politics, and a whole Academia that knows nothing but the classroom. Because they’re rich, tenured, or both, they don’t have to experience the consequences of their ignorance; but we do. We do! What they don’t know about economics would fill an ocean basin.

Is there anybody else out there who thinks that government by the totally ignorant is not a good thing? I mean, really–what do you suppose would happen to a business created, owned, and operated by the likes of Barack Obama, John McCain, Sheila Jackson Lee, or some daft professor of Queer Studies at Dunderhead U.? How long do you think it would take them to lose their shirts?

And don’t forget–they want to run our health care, too.

Devil Wannabe Convicted of Triple Murder; or, Why I Read Tolkien

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Do you ever get the idea that reality ain’t what it’s cracked up to be?

Like, for instance, this news story ( http://news.yahoo.com/massachusetts-man-horn-implants-convicted-2011-triple-murder-220826030.html ): Convicted of murdering three men in 2011, a jerk with “devil horns” implanted in his forehead vows revenge against the jury… No, it’s not a Kolchak episode.

Just as an afterthought, somewhere out there is a plastic surgeon who needs his ethics looked into.

Imagine if the news was all we had to read. True, we get the good news from the Bible–and boy, are we in need of it! All the same, mired down here in this fallen world, sometimes faith comes hard to us.

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in high school, and it blew me away. I’m reading it again now, and I like it even more.

Now that I know the Bible better, I can more clearly see what Tolkien was doing in that book. I can recognize the sections of the Bible by which various aspects of the story must have been inspired. (Like me, Tolkien seems to have drawn much inspiration from I Corinthians, Chapter 1.)

Tolkien sets up a world whose inhabitants face destruction and doom. Their enemy is not only evil, but vastly more powerful than they are. But the resolution of the story becomes clear–and spiritually elevating!–in light of this:

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. (I Cor. 1:27-28)

I have read a lot of fantasy since I first read Tolkien. His work has something which most of the rest of fantasy doesn’t have. It has vision, deep vision. It has conviction, and solidity. It has an element of stateliness.

And although it is not Scripture, I believe it was–as, alas, so much of art is not–God-breathed.

By the unseen but irresistible hand of God, the world of The Lord of the Rings is redeemed in the end.

As shall be our own–perverts with horn implants notwithstanding.

The Hardest Thing About Writing a Book

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For me, the hardest thing about writing a book is that, sooner or later, you’re finished and you don’t have it to write anymore. You want to keep on, but the story’s over. (Hint: if you can’t wait to be done with the freakin’ thing, and are overjoyed not to be writing it anymore, you have probably done something wrong and the reader will probably feel the same way about it.)

OK, I do have my share of the editing to do on The Glass Bridge, plus many other things to keep me busy. But I’m done writing The Temple and already I miss it. And I know it’ll be months and months before the beginning of a next book takes shape in my mind.

A reader from Australia has been helping me with casting suggestions for when my books are made into colossal hit movies. He came up with Richard Attenborough for Ashrof–not bad!–and F. Murray Abraham for Lord Reesh. I have added Robert Shaw for Roshay Bault and Wes Studi for Ysbott the Snake. There’s got to be a part for Martin Shaw, but I haven’t found it yet.

No, I do not want to make Bell Mountain into a Lego movie, or even a movie starring marshmallow peeps. As long as I’m gonna daydream, I may as well dream big–and totally ignore reality.

If they ever did to Bell Mountain what they did a couple years ago to C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I’d be after them with a baseball bat.

An Enigma from the Book of Judges

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Among the portions of the Bible which challenge my understanding, there is the next-to-last story in the Book of Judges (Chapters 17-18).

For those who don’t know, a quick summary: A man named Micah steals a lot of silver from his mother. When he repents, and gives it back to her, she’s so pleased, she takes a bunch of it and has an idol made, which they install in their house. Soon Micah persuades a Levite to stay with him and be the priest to this idol.

Along comes a force of Danites looking for a new place to live, and they persuade the Levite to come with them and be their priest. This fickle Levite not only agrees; but he also steals Micah’s silver idol so it can be worshiped by the Danites.

The story is introduced and concluded by the same formula: “In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Except we know from the rest of the Bible that this kind of behavior didn’t stop, once Israel had kings. Indeed, it got so bad, God had to punish Israel severely.

This subtly grim story of Micah and his idol is in the Bible for a reason. We are meant to learn a lesson from it. But what lesson?

I have held back from seeking out commentaries: because I find the story so elusive, so tantalizing yet forbidding, that I want to see what the Holy Spirit will teach me if I devote a lot of thought to it.

It should be noted that, when the Tribes of Israel are listed in the Book of Revelation, Dan is not among them.

God did make Himself quite clear, didn’t He, when he declared the Ten Commandments? Idolatry is one of those things that the Bible condemns without a trace of ambiguity.

Then again, so is homosexual behavior: and there are plenty of renegade churchmen today who teach otherwise.

Kind of like that Levite in the story.

A Really Lousy Vision for America

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I just can’t get over how smart I feel, now that I know the purpose of government is “to help people change their behavior” ( http://leeduigon.com/2014/09/25/seattle-will-inspect-your-garbage/ ).

The Bible (Romans Chapter 13, and elsewhere) says we have governments to restrain and punish evildoers, and to protect our lives and property. Our Declaration of Independence ascribes to government a lofty purpose: to safeguard inalienable rights given us by God Himself. And in the Constitution, government’s function is to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Obviously government isn’t doing any of those things anymore. Restraining evildoers? The evildoers up on Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue don’t seem the least bit restrained. They chop away at our liberties and, by their fiscal incontinence, beggar our posterity.

But when it comes to helping us to change our behavior–hey, they’re all on board for that.

Laws used to tell us what we couldn’t do. Now, more and more, laws tell us what we must do.

We must buy health insurance. We must embrace same-sex pseudomarriage. If we’re kids in public school, we must eat “healthy” foods as defined by the government, even if it’s tasteless pap. And there are laws just waiting to be passed that will tell us what kind of dwellings we must build, and where to build them, how much electricity we can use, what kind of cars we must drive, what kind of vaccines our children must receive, and even when we’ve lived long enough and must now sign up for “end of life counseling.” And so on–no end to it in sight.

Could anything be farther from securing the blessings of liberty?

Look, you can’t fundamentally transform the country if you can’t order the citizens’ behavior. For that, you’ve got to have “human rights” commissions, speech codes, Climate Change legislation, and amnesty for a flood of illegal aliens to keep Democrats in power until they can finish their transformation project.

Why aren’t people angrier about all this?

 

School Punishes Boy for Sharing Lunch

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

So you’re absolutely, positive sure you want these idiot public schools “educating” your children? You’re really confident you can’t do just as good a job yourself?

Out in California, the Weaverville Elementary School punished an eight-grader with detention for sharing his lunch with another kid ( http://www.krcrtv.com/new/local/student-put-in-detention-for-sharing-school-lunch/28115110 ). The 13-year-old shared his chicken burrito with a friend who didn’t like the cheese sandwich slapped on his plate by the school cafeteria staff.

As usual, the brain-deads running the show took refuge in the “we have a policy” mantra, yatta-yatta. You never have to think about anything, if you have a policy.

But, see, they have thought about it! You’re not gonna believe me, so read up on what the founders of “public education” have to say for themselves. Check out R.J. Rushdoony’s The Messianic Character of American Education, which is mostly quotes from leading “education” theorists going back 150 years ( available from The Chalcedon Foundation, http://www.chalcedon.edu ). Their goal has always been the same: to turn schools and teachers into “change agents” to re-engineer human society along the socialist lines always proposed by left-wing moral imbeciles.

“Oh! But that happened out in California! They’d never do that in one of our town’s schools!”

Wise up, people. The same teachers’ unions run public education in all 50 states. Being in Texas won’t help you; your kids will get the same rubbish that they’d get in Massachusetts.

School officials in Weaverville say they forbid food-sharing because it might lead to kids dropping dead from allergies, or what have you.

Nah. They want to train the kids to accept without question whatever they are given, whether it’s a cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, or Global Warming and “Barack Hussein Obama, Mm-mm-hmm!” in the classroom.

Please, get your children out of there.