A Question for Writers

Hey folks.

I was reading an article by Jo Walton on Tor.com the other day, and it really interested me, and I wanted to get all of your opinions on this. the article was about Religious science fiction, and here's the line that got me thinking:

"There’s the kind of SF where the writer is themselves a member of some religion and this imbues their writing—I think Connie Willis would be a good example of this. Look at the stories in Miracle, or her novel Passage. I don’t have a problem with this unless it spoils the story, but I don’t find it all that interesting either."

Now, my question is this: to what extent should an author's personal life (personal history, religion, culture, personal beliefs, etc.) be evident in his/her writing?


For example, lots of people have a problem with Orson Scott Card's work because they feel his Mormon heritage is too evident in the plot and characters.


Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about this question. I don't have a problem with Card's work, but that's probably cause I'm a Mormon too so the Mormon-esque parts of his stories don't jump out at me unless I'm looking for them. C.S. Lewis was an Anglican and the Chronicles of Narnia are overtly Christian, but that never really bugged me . . . of course, I'm Christian, so maybe thats why. Is Lord of the Rings too preachy for anybody? What about Wheel of Time, or Brandon Sanderson's stuff?

I do think that in our society we try very hard not to be religously pushy . . . but if the author tries to drain his/her writing of everything that is him/her . . . well, we might as well pull a 1984 and just have machines mix and match formulaic plot devices into something new every few weeks. What's the difference?


Please, give me your opinions and what-not.


Later . . .

Danel's Theme

So, continuing with out little inspiration thread, here's a link to a song that--to me, at least-- really seemed to capture Danel's character (if you don't remember who he is, check out my last post labeled under Spear of the Ancients.

After you've listened to it, tell me if this seems like a good fit or not . . . I'd be interested to know. Of course, I know the entire story and you don't, so its a bit unfair.

Later . . .

Along the lines of inspiration...

Hey kids! I don't have a story to post yet, but I thought I'd try something new. In the same spirit of Landon's "inspiration" thread, I thought it might be good just to swap ideas about the writing process as well.

Where do you get ideas for characters?

As for me, music helps get me in the zone sometimes, and if a song has thoughtful lyrics, I often find myself expanding the songwriter's thought and developing it into a character or a plot point. Generally speaking, the mood means more than the literal words, but I find lyrics stimulate my thoughts better than just music. For example, when I was thinking about a story in which someone decides to leave his society, which doesn't want to leave its generation ship, a couple of songs by Arcade Fire got me into the "disaffected rebel" mood (No Cars Go and Windowsill in particular) to which I still go back when I'm trying to evoke that character.

I also get a lot from philosophical or ethical questions, often from the news. "If I were those guys, what would I think?" The story I'm working on right now, about changing pathological behaviors in violent convicts, was inspired by a neuroscientist who, while being interviewed, stated that his goal was essentially to prove that there is no such thing as a soul by manipulating the brain's moral functioning. "That's an interesting fellow," I thought, and I developed a whole story around a scientist being able to do just that.

What do you do to think of character ideas? What other media influences your writing process?

The Planet Ryzel

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B24LU75HbwPPODZkMWVjZmEtZDlkOS00MjE0LWI5MGUtYzg0NTRhMGU4MmE0&hl=en&authkey=CMOnjvAE

This is a planet that the next novel happens on. The background is that mankind had established itself on several planets before being consumed by a massive civil war. The war ruptured all the planets and stranded them apart from each other with the collapse of the space ship industry. For almost half a millennia they were stranded from each other, and some of them reverted to less civilized states. This one became reminiscent of 19th century western America. Then the Earth humans who still retained some semblance of technology showed back up, starting to reunite all the planets. This is the second planet to have been reclaimed maybe seven decades previous to when the story starts.

The people specifically here on this planet are a hearty breed. The planet is covered mostly with temperate fores as well as boreal and alpine areas around the mountains,some tropical deciduous forests (think Washington state) along the southern edge of the larger continent, and one major inland lake. The people have a habit of using the "y" in replacement of "i" partially as habit in recognition of one religious leader that led the people during the civil war several centuries earlier. This man, Kyle Barlowe was a religious leader, as well as social leader, one part Joseph Smith, one part Mahatma Ghandi, and was martyred in the city of Robyn, that was since destroyed and subsequently abandoned since then. Many religious followers of his now travel on journeys following his life along the major continent and following a road now known as the Pylgrym Road, ending at the monument in Robyn.

Biological life isn't incredibly diverse, as this planet is about 300-400 million years younger than earth, probably around Early Permian. No sophant extraterrestrial life has been found, and humanity managed to settle at least two dozen planets.
Sorry, I can't get the link to work right so you have to copy and paste.

Grand Crossing

Here is a simple map of Grand Crossing township, which was mentioned briefly in my last post, and is the site of the all the action in the first few chapters in my Spear of the Ancients story (I really, really like maps, so hopefully ya'll enjoy it).

Later.

Inspiration

Ok, here comes another addition to the blog: if you guys are at all like me, you find a lot of inspiration for your writing in a lot of different places. So, as of now, if you find pictures or maps or even links to music—basically whatever you want—you can now post them up on the blog . . . we'll make kind of a growing repository of writing inspiration.

To post an image, just start a normal post like you always do, and click on the image icon up above the Posting text box (the picture icon is third from the right). From there, you can browse through your computer, find the file you want, and upload it to your post. Browser then has quite a few options for sizing and placing the image.

As far as labels go for this images and what not, just label them 'Inspiration', and then if you also want to link them to a particular story, give them a second label that is the working title of your story.

We'll try this out and see how it works.

Later.