Joe Vasicek

Trope Tuesday: Bittersweet Ending

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AMERICAN GODS, LAGAAN, LORD OF THE RINGS, TREASURE ISLAND, AND CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON.

And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King.

I love bittersweet endings. I love stories that warm my heart even as they make me cry. There’s something about reading them that makes me feel alive, and something about writing them that makes me feel like I’ve truly told a story worth telling.

The tvtropes page claims that bittersweet endings fall more to the cynical side of the sliding scale of idealism vs cynicism, but I disagree. Without tasting the bitter, how can we know the sweet? Too many of our modern stories are like high fructose corn syrup, where everything gets tied up with a pretty bow and the characters remain essentially unchanged. I firmly believe that it’s only through sacrifice that we can know true joy, and stories that follow this often end up being bittersweet on some level, even if they are idealistic.

The tvtropes page lists six types of bittersweet endings, which are:

Did Not Get the Girl: When the hero either loses the girl or has to give her up to win the day. American Gods is a good example of this, I think: Shadow never actually gets back with Laura, even though he spends most of the book looking for a way to bring her back.
The Greatest Story Never Told: When the hero fades into obscurity after winning the day. Lagaan, one of my favorite Bollywood movies, is an excellent example of this. The last line of the movie is the narrator explaining how after the events of the story, the village faded into history until it was forgotten.
End of an Age: When the triumph over evil transforms the world so completely that there is no going back to the way things used to be. Lord of the Rings is the best example of this: after the one ring is destroyed, all the other rings lose their power, and the elves must pass into the west.
Heroic Sacrifice: When victory comes only after the death of many or all of the main characters. This is basically every David Gemmell book ever written, which is why I can’t get enough of him.
Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Where life is great for the main characters but everyone else ends up suffering. I can’t think of any examples where this is done well; it’s probably just bad storytelling.
Karma Houdini: When the bad guy doesn’t get what’s coming to him. The best example of this is probably Treasure Island, where Long John Silver gets away with the treasure in the end, leaving the good guys to say “I can almost find it in my heart to hope he makes it.”

It’s important to point out that this trope is not simply a tragic tale with a heart-wrenching twist. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, for example, is a straight up tragedy: even though Mu Bai confesses his love to Shu Lien, he promptly dies, and Jen commits suicide. It’s an awesome ending to an awesome story, but there is no sweet in it.

When done poorly, a bittersweet ending can feel confusing or anti-climactic. When done well, however, I think it adds a wealth of depth and feeling, as well as a degree of believability and realism. After all, how many of our victories are complete? How often do we have to give up something good for something greater?

So yeah, I love this trope.

Struggling not to settle

I’m in the middle of my first revision pass through Heart of the Nebula, direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and…I don’t know exactly how to put this, but the story seems to be simultaneously smoother and more shallow. Plot-wise, everything works great; character-wise, there just doesn’t seem to be as much depth as my other work.

I remember finishing the first draft in May, and being surprised at how well structured it was. Each of the three major plot points happened after exactly five chapters, and each of the chapters was almost perfectly balanced–a far cry from my previous work. I had a few stops and starts in the first part, but everything after the first hundred pages was smooth as gravy. What’s more, I’m finding in this revision that not a whole lot needs to change; it works pretty well as-is.

And yet…I can help but feel as if something is missing. The characters just aren’t coming alive the way they did in my previous works. The story isn’t quite as engaging, the climaxes quite as gut-wrenching as I would like. It feels like a good story, but not a great story.

Here’s the thing: my previous stories were all broken in this phase. Desert Stars was so broken I had to write another novel to figure out how to finish it–and even then, the second half of the book went entirely in the wrong direction and had to be thrown out. Bringing Stella Home had a solid storyline, but Stella’s character was completely broken and had to be rebuilt from the bottom up. And Genesis Earth had half a dozen false starts, and at least as many chapters that had to be thrown out because they did nothing to advance the plot.

But Heart of the Nebula isn’t exactly broken, it’s just…not at the level I would like. And I worry that because it isn’t broken, I won’t feel as compelled to make it better. I worked hard on the others, and learned a lot of lessons which helped me to write this book, but even if I’ve hit my stride and this is the result, it feels too much like settling. I can do better.

None of this probably makes any sense if you haven’t read the manuscript, but I hope it doesn’t sound too much like whining. Even if these are problems, these are good problems and I’m happy to have them. When I share this with my first readers, they will probably have all sorts of insights that will make me smack my forehead and make everything awesome again.

I guess my point is that I don’t want to settle, even though this draft will probably not be as good as I’d like it to be. I’ll fix all the known problems, then send it out to my first readers and trust them to help me find the unknown problems.

In the meantime, I should probably start something new. I have a ton of great ideas for the fantasy novel, and bouncing them off of friends has really helped me to figure out what else the story needs. After I finish reading American Gods, I’ll stock up on some fantasy to get into the right mindset, starting with David Gemmell (incidently, at dinner group tonight, I literally squeed while talking about David Gemmell. It was simultaneously embarrassing and really awesome).

Enough of this. Time for sleep.

Kickstarter update, new blurb, and cover art for Journey to Jordan

First things first: with sixteen days to go, Desert Stars is currently about 36% funded. If you haven’t picked up any of my books yet, this is a good place to start: I feel confident that it’s my best work yet. $10 will get you a copy with your name in the front under “special thanks”–$25 will get you that plus everything I’ve published so far. So check it out!

To keep the kickstarter campaign moving, I decided to update the blurb for Desert Stars. Here’s what I came up with:

He was the sole heir to the Najmi camp, a young man raised by tribesmen after falling to the desert from the stars. She was the sheikh’s most beautiful daughter, promised his hand in marriage–if she can convince him to stay.

Together, they must travel to a land where glass covers the sky and men traverse the stars as easily as tribesmen cross the desert. Here, at the ancient temple dedicated to the memory of Earth, they hope to find the answers that will show them the way home.

But when love and honor clash, how can they face their destiny when it threatens to tear them apart?

So what do you think? Does it grab you, or do I need to change anything?

Finally, I’m currently in the process of preparing my travel journals from the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad trip for publication. This is one that I’m doing 100% by myself–editing, cover art, etc. If anyone wants to volunteer to make a proofreading pass, I would greatly appreciate it. Currently, I’m about 1/3 of the way through; I hope to finish putting it together by December 1st.

In the meantime, here’s the cover art:

Pretty nifty, eh? What do you think?

Managing excitement and an idea for an epic fantasy novel

After getting about 40% through Star Wanderers 1.0, I hit a wall and decided to put the project on the back burner for now. The beginning part, which I’m hoping to shop around as a novelette, has some issues with it and those are keeping me from making any real progress in the rest of the story.

I wish I could just wave my hand and pretend as if I’ve already fixed those problems, but my creative process just doesn’t work like that. I guess I’m more of a discovery writer in that way, because I can only build on stuff that I’ve already written. I have to figure out my characters as I write, otherwise they just fall flat.

It’s discouraging, because I feel like I don’t have enough control or discipline over my creative process. Other writers seem to be able to pick up a project and finish it, even when that project is commissioned by someone else (editors, franchise owners, etc). But with me, if I can’t get excited about a project, I can’t finish it.

Fortunately, even if I can’t always control which project I’m excited about, I always seem to be excited about something. After finishing the last revision for Desert Stars, I felt this unusually strong urge to work on Into the Nebulous Deep (which, after the last post, I’ve tentatively decided to rename Heart of the Nebula). I totally didn’t see that coming, but I’m glad that it did, because that project is getting due for its first major revision. It’ll probably be a quick one, just to fix some major known issues before sending it off to first readers.

As for new projects, I’m not quite sure what to pick up next. I’ve got a feeling I could give Edenfall another shot, though it’s dubious at this point, and I still have a bit of lingering excitement over the untitled Gaia Nova novel that involves Roman, Danica, Rina, and Stella’s son.

At the same time, though, I have a really cool idea for a fantasy novel involving magic swords. The idea is that the swords are actual characters, with the ability to think, feel, remember, and communicate with those who wield them. They can only be wielded by those whose minds have been melded to them, however, kind of like the Dragonriders of Pern.

As the swords get passed down from generation to generation, they pass on their skills and memories, so that those who wield them become legendary warriors. However, all but one of the swords goes insane, turning their wielders to evil. The one sword that remains has refused to take on a new master, even though war and destruction sweeps the land. A prophecy states that the one who wields this sword will eventually defeat the evil of the others, but when the good sword finally does take on a new owner, it ends up being a farmgirl / tavern wench (I haven’t really decided).

I don’t have a lot of experience writing fantasy, but this story is starting to really excite me. If I can combine it with a few other ideas and read some good fantasy novels to get into that mood, I think I can make some good progress on it.

So yeah–I have plenty of projects to work on, so things aren’t that bad. I just need to find one that I can really get into for the next couple of months; if I keep bouncing around from project to project without finishing any of them, that’ll be bad.

The ever elusive title

Man, titles are so freaking hard. I just spent the last two hours trying to think of a better title for Into the Nebulous Deep, my current work in progress. Here’s what my brainstorming looked like:

Deep Nebula

Heart of the Nebula

Serve and Protect

Love in the Deep

A Light in the Deep

Through to Freedom

We Won’t Surrender

Our Own

A Wolf in the Deep

To a New Place

In Search of a New Place

Flight to a New Place

Finding a New Place

Hope of a New Place

To Hope for a New Place

Hoping for a New Place

Reaching for a New Place

Striving for a New Place

Searching for a New Place

Heading for a New Place

Flying to a New Place

Voyage to a New Place

Journey to a New Place

Reaching for a New Place

Together in a New Place

Home to a New Place

Free in a New Place

Forward to a New Place

Forth to a New Place

Starry New Place

To a New Place

Some of those are pretty bad–but hey, it’s brainstorming right? There are no stupid questions, only stupid…

Anyway, I think I’m leaning more toward “To a New Place” or “Home to a New Place.” I’m curious, though, to hear what you guys think. If you have a better idea for a title, please let me know.

The story takes place five years after the events of Bringing Stella Home, when James has become something of a maverick pilot in the Colony’s militia. However, life under the Hameji occupation has become so difficult that their only real option is to evacuate the Colony and settle somewhere else. In the process, James gets tied up in a love triangle that ends in a way that’s only possible in science fiction.

So what do you think of “To a New Place?” It might not be the best when viewed side by side with “Bringing Stella Home,” but yeah. Actually, if I turn it into a trilogy within the series, it would be kind of cool to have all the titles form one giant sentence.

Or maybe it would be cool to get some sleep and think about it tomorrow.

Trope Tuesday: Childhood Friend Romance

C__H_and_S_Desktop_2_by_sora1589 — Oh come on--you just KNOW that they get together!

There’s something heartwarming about a romantic couple that knew each other as children. Maybe it’s that return to innocence, or a sense that destiny is on your side, but I find these kinds of stories hopeful and encouraging.

My favorite example of this is probably Deanna and Michael from For Better or for Worse. My sister was obsessed with that comic growing up, so my parents bought her just about every book and I got to read them all. I still remember when Deanna showed up again, after seven or eight books: at first, I was like “holy cow, is it the same girl from way back when Michael was a little boy?” And then he started dating her, and I was like “YES!!!”

Another good example is Phantom of the Opera, with Christine and Raoul. Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain also had a long-running friendship between Taran and Eilonwy, which eventually took a romantic turn. Apparently, Jane Austen was also fond of this trope, though I haven’t read enough of her to be able to say.

A lot of times, this trope is coupled with a childhood marriage promise. It doesn’t have to be, though; I just love the thought that Calvin and Susie eventually end up together, even though they hate each other as kids. As a storytelling device, this trope can also work well in conjunction with first girl wins.

Sometimes, though, the love is unrequited. In many stories, this happens when one of the friends thinks their relationship is more like a brother and sister thing. The scientific rationale for this is called the Westermarck effect, where people become sexually desensitized to those with whom they grow up together. A good example of this would probably be Cyrano de Bergerac; the whole nose thing was more a self-esteem issue for Cyrano than a turnoff for Roxane.

In the Middle East, where it’s still common for first cousins to marry, this trope tends to be a lot more prevalent. In Arabic 202, we read several magazine stories about couples who fell in love after growing up together. There might be a bit of a squick factor there for Western readers, though–and that’s something you have to look out for with this trope. If the characters really are like brother and sister, and they get together anyway…ew.

So there you have it. For an innocent, hopeful, satisfying romance or romantic subplot–or a crushingly depressing tale of unrequited love–the childhood friend romance trope can be used to great effect.

Image courtesy sora1589. Line art by nami86.

Slogging along

So I’m working part time now, making ends meet as I get ready to finish up the year and go abroad for a while. This time, I’m only doing about 20-30 hours per week, so it’s much easier to balance writing with everything. Minecraft is still a distraction, but I think I’m finding a good balance.

Star Wanderers is coming along, but I made the mistake last week of reading some of the critical feedback on the first part while working on the second. Not that the feedback is bad–it’s quite good, actually, and very helpful–but taking criticism on a work in progress put me into a temporary slump. I think I’m most of the way out of it now, but progress is more sporadic than I’d want it to be.

However, I just started revising Into the Nebulous Deep today, and I’m very excited about that. Into the Nebulous Deep is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, featuring James, Lars, and the Colony five years after the events of the first novel. I haven’t looked at it since May, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about it, so I think it’s time to dust it off and work on it again.

It definitely needs a new title, though; “Into the Nebulous Deep” is much too convoluted. Anyone have any ideas? I’m thinking something like “Heart of the Nebula” or “Into the Deep,” but neither of those have quite the right zing.

Even though I finished the first draft almost six months ago, no one has read this one yet. It had some pretty big issues that I felt I needed to fix before sending it out to first readers, but I wanted to give it some time to settle before reworking it.

As if that’s not enough, I’m also working on getting Journey to Jordan up and published. This book is more of a travel journal, so I’m self-editing it, but it’ll probably take a couple weeks before it’s up and ready. I was going to publish it under a pseudonym, but now I think I’ll just keep it under my own name. I’m not sure whether I should change the names of people mentioned in the book; I never say anything libelous about anyone, but if that’s the standard MO for works of non-fiction, then maybe I ought to do it. In any case, my goal is to have it out over Thanksgiving break.

Other than that, not too much to report on. I’m bringing back my travel blog in anticipation of going abroad, but I haven’t said anything particularly interesting other than “I’m back!”

Oh, and I’m reading Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet and thoroughly enjoying it. I don’t generally like poetry, but Poe and Gibran–I could read them all day.

Desert Stars sample chapters now available!

I just formatted the prologue and first three chapters of Desert Stars in epub, mobi, pdf, etc. You can download them for free with the following links:

The samples are taken from the current manuscript, so the editing might be a little rough in spots. The novel is finished, however, and has been through several rounds of revisions; all I need is to run it by my editor and commission cover art.

The basic premise is a little bit like The Jungle Book meets Dune. The main character, Jalil Najmi, crash landed on Gaia Nova as a boy and was raised by desert tribesmen. All he wants is to find out who he is and where he’s from, but the sheikh, his adopted father, wants to keep Jalil from leaving because he has no other sons to inherit the camp.

Jalil’s only connection with his birth family is a datachip from his mother, and he believes the only way to unlock it is to go to the Temple of a Thousand Suns, the ancient shrine on the other side of the planet dedicated to the memory of Earth. When he sets out for the pilgrimage, however, his father conspires to send one of his daughters with Jalil with orders to seduce him. Since Jalil has a deep sense of honor, his father knows that he’ll return and marry her out of shame.

The only trouble is that Mira, the sheikh’s daughter, actually has feelings for Jalil and doesn’t want to hurt him. At the same time, she can’t bear the thought of leaving home, and her parents have threatened to disown her if she doesn’t convince Jalil to return. Thus the pilgrimage becomes a race against time, even as they travel through the strange cultures and ancient domed arcologies of humanity’s oldest world.

That’s the basic storyline. The short pitch, so far as I’ve worked it out, is this:

A tale of adventure and romance on the fringes of an interstellar empire that has forgotten its holiest legend: the story of Earth.

I sincerely believe that this novel represents my best work yet. I started it in 2008 and have been working on it off and on ever since. It was heavily inspired by the time I spent in the Middle East as part of the 2008 BYU-Jordan study abroad, and represents a fusion of Middle Eastern culture and science fiction, a little like Dune.

My goal is to publish it before Christmas, and to do that I’ll need to raise the money by the end of November. So if any of this sounds at all interesting, please download the sample chapters, visit the project’s kickstarter page, and tell a friend about it.

Thanks so much!

Tradition!

We have some pretty weird traditions in my family. One of them is that we watch The Ten Commandments every Thanksgiving. Another is that my mother tells everyone “rabbit rabbit!” on the first of every month. Yet another: whenever anyone opens a bucket of fresh butter, everyone nearby screams bloody murder and scrambles to be the first one to break it.

The biggest tradition of them all, however, is that whenever it’s someone’s birthday, everyone else rushes to be the first to wish them a happy birthday–or at least to get one of the first slots. For mine, my youngest sister called me at midnight to get the coveted number one spot.

So anyways, today is my sister Kate‘s birthday. I called her at 11:35 pm MST (GMT-6), which is half an hour past midnight where she lives. Of course, she didn’t answer her phone (she never does!) so I called her husband and asked him to wake her up so I could talk with her. “It’ll only take a second,” I said.

Well, he did…AND SHE SAID I WAS NUMBER TWO!!!

All I can say is she married smart.

#$@! !#$@# $%@^ !@#!

That is all.

Announcing the Desert Stars Kickstarter campaign!

In order to help pay for some of the production costs of my next ebook, Desert Stars, I’m running a kickstarter campaign. The goal is to raise $600 by December 1st, and to publish the novel by Christmas.

For those who contribute to the campaign, here’s what I’m offering:

$10 or more: A copy of the finished ebook in all formats, with your name listed under “special thanks” at the front.
$15 or more: The above, plus a high resolution image of the cover art as a desktop background.
$25 or more: The above, plus your choice of every ebook I’ve published in 2011 (including the forthcoming Journey to Jordan) OR every ebook I will publish in 2012.
$50 or more: The above, plus a character named after you in a future work and a complimentary copy of that work.
$100 or more: The above, plus a short story up to 1,500 words that is exclusively yours to share as you see fit.

This is my first time running anything like this, so I’m a little bit nervous, but I’m also excited at the same time! At the very least, it’ll be an interesting experiment. The goal is fairly modest, but it’ll cover the editing costs, with a little bit left over to go towards cover art. I’ll pay for the rest.

This weekend, I’ll put out the first few chapters on Smashwords so that you can read a sample. If you want to read the prologue, you can find it here.

In the meantime, please help spread the word! Tweet it, like it, share it, tell a friend about it, blog about it–every little bit helps! And if you can contribute a little towards the project, that would be awesome as well.

Thanks so much! I’m really looking forward to publishing this book!