Can You Make Your Readers Cry?

Sentimental -- what does the word mean?

I found this picture at  North American Victorian Studies Assoc.
http://navsa.org/2012/07/06/display-victorian-sentimentality-at-the-tate
No artist was given or further credit,
but it certainly sums up Victorian sentimentality

       According to Dictionary.com, sentimental means "expressive of or appealing to sentiment, especially the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia [as] a sentimental song."  But the entry goes on to give another meaning: "weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender [as] the sentimental Victorians." It's that latter meaning that critics commonly employ when they condemn a book as sentimental.  I was always taught as an English major to avoid sentimentality at all costs.

       Yet as a writer I agree with that only up to a point.  I certainly believe that excessive, unjustified emotion should be avoided.  The story that dwells on the "tragedy" of a dead kitten or emotes for pages about how much a mother loves her dying child is not my cup of tea.  And of course I think many stories don't require any sentiment -- for example, murder mysteries or crime stories, especially the kind where the fun part is solving the mystery; or straightforward adventure tales, like the Indiana Jones movies; or a lot of science fiction, particularly the space opera variety.

       But any story that focuses on character needs to bring the reader to tears at some point, because that demonstrates that the author succeeded in making the reader care about the character.  If you read straight through and close the book and say, "That's an OK story, but now I'm done at last and I can forget about it" -- or worse, if the reader abandons reading halfway through, saying, "Ho hum, I just can't get involved emotionally with these characters," then I fear the writer has failed.

     
       Can you believe that a number of people who have read my series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, and also its precursor, my novel The Termite Queen, have told me they have teared up or even wept at certain points of the stories?  I take that as a great compliment.  My characters are mostly giant extraterrestrial termites (called the Shshi) -- bristly, rather stinky bugs with no facial expressions beyond what their antennae can convey and strange habits like eating their primary dung in order to extract all the nutrients and also recycling their dead by eating them and thus conserving the protein.  How can you cry over such repulsive creatures?
       The fact that you can proves that I made them "human" -- I made them relatable to the human  psyche.  I read a SF book once (and frankly I can't remember the name of the book or its author now) that had an extraterrestrial race that was amphibious -- big frog-like creatures that spawned in water.  It was narrated from the point of view of the humans who had made first contact with that race, and I never could feel any relationship to them -- they remained remote and just too "alien."
       I think mine is successful partly because I tell the story from the point of view of the Shshi.  In The Termite Queen the point of view switches between the human anthropological team and the Shshi with whom first contact is being made, but the Ki'shto'ba series is narrated entirely from the Shshi perspective, allowing the reader to delve into their essence.  The reader can identify with creatures who have moral principles (or lack them, or are misguided), who care deeply about each other and the foundations of their way of life, who work together, rejoice when something good happens and grieve over loss.  They live full, realistic lives, which means not everything can always work out the way the reader might like.  That can make the reader say, "Not this character!  How could the author do that to this innocent character?" and that can bring on tears.
       I consider tears of that sort to be genuine emotion, and genuine emotion cannot be characterized as sentimentality.  Just killing off a character does not make me weep -- you've got to care about the character that was killed.  That's why we have "red shirts" -- because we need a surrogate for the main characters in whom we have a lot invested.  I can't give anybody instructions on how to make the reader care -- I'm not much of a teacher of writing skills -- but I seem to have succeeded with everybody who has read the entire Ki'shto'ba series.  Heck, I even succeeded with myself -- if I read some of the painful parts after being away from them for a while, I end up weeping over them every time!

       Why don't you give my books a try and see for yourselves if I succeeded?

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How Do My Books Fit an Agent's Criteria?

Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
Stands Guard
In the foreground (from left):
A'zhu'lo (Ki'shto'ba's twin),
Wei'tu and Twa'sei
(the smallest Worker),
Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer
(a Star-Winged Alate)
 

       On his excellent blog Nicholas Rossis recently published a post entitled The Worst Way to Begin a Novel. His criteria are excerpted from The Write Life and enumerate complaints of agents that can cause rejection.  I decided it would be interesting to consider some of my own books in relation to these criteria, so here goes!
 

"Prologues: not so much! Agents find them boring and think that it’s much better to include the description of the prologue in the actual story plot."

       I have only one book with an addition called "Prologue" at the beginning.  It's my WIP entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  I extracted this and published it in the first Read for Animals book (proceeds going to support animal shelters) because it deals with a wounded eagle.    I'm thinking if I ever publish that humongous novel, I might retitle the Prologue as Chapter 1, because it relates directly to something that happens early on in the book and also to the book's broader theme of the eponymous Captain as a wounded man.  Furthermore, it's quite absorbing in itself.  I wouldn't want to omit it.

       However, all of my Ki'shto'ba books have introductory matter, specifically, a Translator's Foreword, because I've set up a scholarly framework.  These are tales written by an extraterrestrial and they require scholarly explanations. 

 

"No dreams in the first chapter: it makes readers identify with a story plot and/or a character/situation and then realize there was no point it, since it was not real. This can make them feel cheated."

       Not sure I agree with this premise, because dreams can be quite revelatory of a character's psychological state, so they can enrich the reader's understanding.  Why would that make you feel cheated?  That said, I've never written a dream in a first chapter.

"Too many descriptive adjectives: 'overwriting' is considered the mark of amateurish writing, as is language that’s too rich for its good.  As I always say, don’t let your writing get in the way of your story."

       I think Nicholas and I agree on this one.  I may occasionally violate it, although I'm not going to dig for an example.  You'll just have to read my books and decide for yourselves.

"No long descriptions: it’s all a question of balance between plot and description. You want to create a setting, but describing the colour of the flower in the vase for three paragraph could be dull."

       I think I deal with that pretty well, most of the time.  In Chapter 2 ("In the Nu'wiv'mi Marsh") of the second volume of the Ki'shto'ba series, there is quite a lot of description of the Companions' surroundings, including the plants and animals. I think any conworlder would appreciate that -- how can you construct a world and then not describe it?  And this watery environment is new to the characters in the story as well, so it fascinates them.

      

"Action: literary agents want action in the first chapter so that they -- and the readers -- get hooked."

       I sometimes violate this one.  I think I handled it OK in The Termite Queen, v.1, because the first short chapter is an internal monologue of the captive termite, and the second chapter introduces some characters in a way that doesn't explain everything (Who is this strange being on the other end of the com link?  Why does he talk in musical notes?  I want more!)  However, I confess that in the Ki'shto'ba series, I sometimes open with a chapter where Di'fa'kro'mi is simply talking with his scribe about his present life, his old age, how he happened to invent writing, etc.  The books often don't have much action until the second chapter or even later because that's where our narrator begins the actual story.  But when you get to that point, things pop. 
 

       Here are some sample openings of the main part of the text:

       Vol. 2: The Storm-Wing:

“We are lost.  I mean, we are quite lost!  Yes, I have to admit it.  I am not at all sure of the way!”

Ra’fa’kat’wei’s confession did nothing to improve my mood.  I was covered with mud, my wings were encrusted with drying shreds of water-weed, and I was sprawled on my belly huffing with fatigue.  So my rejoinder was tart.

“A fine guide you have turned out to be!  You said you knew all the paths!”

 

Vol. 3: The Valley of Thorns (this sets a tone of nostalgia, an anticipation of something that will be lost, including a bit of foreshadowing):

As travel-weary as they were, the Marcher Commander Gri’a’ein’zei’a disdained to rest its company long, saying that the situation demanded speed.  The following day we spoke our final farewells to our good friend Sa’ti’a’i’a, girded on our gear, and regretfully allowed No’sta’pan’cha to slip into our past.  When we came to the Ya’ur’akh’on, I looked down the valley toward the land where that river had another name.  My home fortress of Lo’ro’ra lay somewhere out there, past the distant haze that eternally hung upon the swamp Nu’wiv’mi, down the river called Rim’pol’bu, between the volcanoes, beyond Za’dut’s home fortress of Kwai’kwai’za.  I would not come even that close to the place of my hatching again in many season-cycles … so many …

 

Vol. 4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear (where  the Companions first encounter Bu'gan'zei, the Orpheus character):
       A wind had sprung up – the tree limbs seemed to be dancing and from a nearby overhang some stones broke loose and skittered down …
       Is’a’pai’a was the first to receive the sending and it stopped so abruptly that Wei’tu and Za’dut bumped into its posterior.  Then we all took the sensation – an antenna-buzz at once penetrating and delicate, so unusual that we were all entranced.  Simultaneously there was the smell of a male At’ein’zei Alate, along with the rank odor of reptiles and the feather-stench of birds!
       “Holy Nameless!  What can that be?” Ra’fa’kat’wei exclaimed.
       And then we detected words in the sending …

 

Finally, my latest publication, v.5: The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine (also an example of my description):

       After safely negotiating the daunting bridge that crossed the Sho’gwai’grin at the Great Waterfall, we found ourselves descending an ancient zigzag path that had been hollowed out by the scraping of countless claws.  Off to our right, the escarpment, an impassable precipice layered with gray and white and brown stone, stretched westward until it vanished into the distance.  To the southeast, beyond the end of the spur, we could see the glinting line of the river, with cliffs continuing to abut it on the east.  If we were to follow the west bank of that river, it would bring us into Gwai’sho’zei country and lead us quickly to the sea.
       Our immediate destination lay southwest, however.  In that direction we could see stubby hills thickly covered with dark trees and hung about with mist.  I always associate mist with these lands in which we would spend the final days of Ki’shto’ba’s quest. 
 

Personally, I think those are pretty good opening paragraphs, but I could be prejudiced!

"Make the reader want to learn more: the literary agent wants to see something captivating about the character, something that will make her read more in order to discover the plot and how the character unwinds."  And I'm combining with this: "Characters that are too perfect."

       Character is all, in my opinion!  Well, not all, of course -- a good tale needs many layers and aspects -- but still, if the characters are crudely drawn, cliched and commonplace, the whole story falls flat.  The good guys and the heroines need to have flaws and quirks that make them human (even if they are alien termites! -- "human" is in the eye of the beholder!)  And the villains ...  well, it's nice to have a villain that has redeeming qualities -- whose motivations are comprehensible -- although I confess to finding few redeeming qualities in Mo'gri'ta'tu (the villain who wreaks such havoc in The Termite Queen).  But then I based Mo'gri'ta'tu on Iago in Othello, who is frequently criticized for having unclear motivations.  The villain in The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine is possibly a little easier to understand, although he is even more devious and evil than Mo'gri'ta'tu, if that's possible.

"Don’t describe your characters fully in the first chapter: a), it’s boring, b) you really need to leave mystery for the rest of the book."

       My characters never emerge all at once; after all I've written some 600,000 words in the Ki'shto'ba series (averaging about 100,000 words per volume).  If they all emerged in the first chapter, nothing would be left to write!  They change and grow as the series progresses -- every single one of them.

"Unrealistic situations: literary agents feel that however inventive and imaginative a book can be, some things have to remain genuine and authentic, especially when it comes to human reactions."
       So how do you remain "genuine and authentic" when you're writing about giant alien termites?  You do it just as I said above -- you make them as close to human as you can.  You show that extraterrestrials -- aliens, if we must call them that -- may very well share the human qualities of compassion, caring, loyalty, self-sacrifice, adventurousness, joy, grief, and humor.  They also share characteristics  like intelligence, stupidity, anger, betrayal, sibling rivalry, a desire for revenge, and the ability to forgive.  It doesn't matter if they have three Castes and all of them are deaf and two Castes are blind.  It doesn't matter if they can only speak through their antennae, if they breathe through the sides of their bellies, if the Warriors can't feed themselves, if some of the species eat their own dung, or if all of them are necrophages.  What really matters is what is in their guts, or as humans might prefer to say, in their hearts -- their several hearts.  That is what makes them "genuine and authentic" and I'm egocentric enough to think I achieve that.  Whether a literary agent would ever think so is irrelevant.

Thanks again to Nicholas Rossis for giving me the idea for this blog post.

A Re-post of "What Are the Termite People Really Like?"

Welcome to the Old-Post Resurrection Hop!  I first posted this piece back on October 26, 2011.  Now that more people are familiar with what I do, perhaps they would like to learn about my termite people.

The Shshi evolved from insects just as we evolved from hominids. They still live in termitaria (called fortresses), which are built of stone instead of earth, extend both above and below ground, and have built-in ventilation systems. They have a low-tech culture; they have never tamed fire and they use wood and stone tools to supplement their own mandibles. They haft the mandibles of dead Warriors and use them as cutting tools. They have evolved double-clawed front legs; the claws are jointed and can grip like fingers, but they have no opposable digits. They have the wheel, but they have never taken its use farther than making little wheelbarrows; they have no draft animals. Their mathematics is almost nonexistent; they count on their antennae, each of which has 18 knobs and they have no numbers beyond 36. Anything larger than that becomes "more than the two-antennae count" or "many-many." This lack of math, however, doesn't prevent them from being supreme engineers; the blind Builder Subcaste simply understands instinctively how to construct edifices -- the genetic heritage of their ancestors.

The principal species that I'm writing about in "The Termite Queen" do not eat wood; they lack the proper intestinal flora to digest it. Instead, they are fungivores, cultivating underground fungus gardens, but they also eat soft cellulose products, such as the flowers and leaves of a certain tree that they grow in orchards. And they also garner protein from practicing necrophagy. They are in fact the universe's best recyclers, just like terrestrial termites.

All Shshi lack auditory organs and the Warriors and the Workers have no eyes. Of course, they have other senses -- chemical and electromagnetic -- that compensate. The Warriors and the Workers don't differ so much from terrestrial termites, but the Alates have changed more significantly. Their compound eyes have evolved far beyond the norm for terrestrial insects and they are much more than short-lived reproductives; they live as long as their fellows (20-25 years). Their wings have evolved bioluminescence in order to provide light within the fortress. (I had to find some way to light up that pitchblack interior of the fortress. Another writer I once read used phosphorescence in the walls, and Bernard Werber in "Empire of the Ants" gives some of his ants infrared vision.)

The cultural level of the Shshi could be designated "Heroic Age," a bit like Mycenaean Greece without the metalworking. Each fortress resembles a self-sufficient city-state, with very little contact with other fortresses except for the occasional territorial war or the necessity to exchange reproductives. They have developed human qualities like compassion, loyalty, a sense of self, an eagerness to learn and to attempt to account for their world through myth. Their only art form is literary; they are passionate tale-tellers. It makes sense that a deaf race would have no concept of music and that a mostly blind race that lives in perpetual darkness would have little use for visual art.

Their mythology provides them with an explanation for the existence of Castes: to ensure that the members of the community are interdependent. Because of their physical and sensory limitations, no one Caste can exist without the existence of the others. The Warriors' huge heads and mandibles makes it impossible for them to feed themselves. The Alates are weak in body and need protection from the Warriors and physical labor from the Workers, but their acute vision gives them an edge. They are the most subtle in intellect and so are likely to gain an advantage in the governance of the fortress.

Each community has only one breeding pair, just like terrestrial social insects. The Workers and Warriors may have vestigial sex organs, but they produce no sex pheromones, so they are truly neuter and are referred to by a special pronoun that can only be translated "it." The Alates, from whom the breeders are drawn, retain some sexual characteristics, enough for them to be identified as male of female. fa is the nominative, singular, third-person personal pronoun (used for Warriors and Workers) and fai is the nominative, singular neuter pronoun (used for things, qualities, etc.). Alates are either ta (she) or ma (he).

The Shshi religious beliefs are centered on the female principle -- what else could an ILF worship in a situation where only one individual among a thousand can produce offspring? In effect, they worship the Great Goddess -- the Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name -- who lives in the sky and lays stars and who generally allows her creation to make its own way. But occasionally she interferes, particularly at times when the Shshi Way of Life is threatened or something really significant is about to happen in the world of her offspring (like being invaded by extraplanetary beings). And the Seers can communicate with the Highest Mother through the intermediation of a special hallucinatory fungus (and sometimes through their own inate abilities).

One further remark: In the chapters of "The Termite Queen" that concern the Shshi, I tried to come up with a style that would provide contrast with the human story. I settled on writing it as a dramatic script -- writing a play, as it were. It didn't seem right to put in lots of wordy description when you're dealing with blind creatures whose dwelling consists of mostly unlighted underground chambers and corridors. So we have dialogue supplemented by minimal stage directions. We also have soliloquies. It was very easy to fall into a kind of Shakespearean formality and rhythm. I used a lot of Shakespeare quotations as epigraphs for the termite chapters. The villain Mo'gri'ta'tu is fully comparable to Cassius or Iago -- quite Machiavellian. In fact, as I was writing these parts, I humorously referred to my characters as "my Shakespearean termites"!

 

Chapters 1, 2 , and 3 Have Now Been Posted!

Chapters 1 and 2 -- and now 3 -- are available on the separate pages listed on the tab above!  Comments are welcome!

Drawings of Four Shshi

 

Clockwise from upper left:

Holy Kwi'ga'ga'tei Priest and Seer
Mo'gri'ga'tu Keeper of the Holy Chamber
A Worker
Hi'ta'fu the Unconquered, Commander of Lo'ro'ra

More on the Language of the Shshi

       I've mentioned that the Shshi speak by  transmitting electromagnetic signals between their antennae, which contain nodes that act as receivers and transmitters and are connected to  special centers in their brains that decode the signals.  Therefore, no sound structure is involved in their language.  Kaitrin merely assigns random syllables to certain waveforms on the spectrograph and the pronunciation is no different from her native English.  This enables her to pronounce the language aloud so her transmission device can project the appropriate EM signals.  As Kwi'ga'ga'tei the Seer, who serves as her principal informant, realizes with much wonder, "The Star-Beings keep their antennae in a magic box!"

       If writing were invented by a native speaker of such a non-vocalized language, it couldn't have an alphabet, which by definition images sounds.  It would have to employ pictographs or ideograms or syllabograms or logograms.  Now, I'll tell you a secret -- in a later trilogy which I have not yet mentioned on this blog (entitled "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head"), Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer (the fortress's Bard) invents writing.  At the very beginning of the first volume, he is in his old age and he is dictating the memoirs of his adventures with Ki'shto'ba to a scribe.  He rambles on a bit about how he invented writing.  I'm inserting a section of this as a separate page entitled "Shshi Writing."  It will also give the reader an amusing glimpse of what the Shshi are really like.

What Are the Termite People Really Like?

       The Shshi evolved from insects just as we evolved from hominids.  They still live in termitaria (called fortresses), which are built of stone instead of earth, extend both above and below ground, and have built-in ventilation systems.  They have a low-tech culture; they have never tamed fire and they use wood and stone tools to supplement their own mandibles.  They haft the mandibles of dead Warriors and use them as cutting tools.  They have evolved double-clawed front legs; the claws are jointed and can grip like fingers, but they have no opposable digits.  They have the wheel, but they have never taken its use farther than making little wheelbarrows; they have no draft animals.  Their mathematics is almost nonexistent; they count on their antennae, each of which has 18 knobs and they have no numbers beyond 36.  Anything larger than that becomes "more than the two-antennae count" or "many-many."  This lack of math, however, doesn't prevent them from being supreme engineers; the blind Builder Subcaste simply understands instinctively how to construct edifices -- the genetic heritage of their ancestors.

       The principal species that I'm writing about in "The Termite Queen" do not eat wood; they lack the proper intestinal flora to digest it.  Instead, they are fungivores, cultivating underground fungus gardens, but they also eat soft cellulose products, such as the flowers and leaves of a certain tree that they grow in orchards.  And they also garner protein from practicing necrophagy.  They are in fact the universe's best recyclers, just like terrestrial termites. 

      All Shshi lack auditory organs and the Warriors and the Workers have no eyes. Of course, they have other senses -- chemical and electromagnetic -- that compensate. The Warriors and the Workers don't differ so much from terrestrial termites, but the Alates  have changed more significantly.  Their compound eyes have evolved far beyond the norm for terrestrial insects and they are much more than short-lived reproductives; they live as long as their fellows (20-25 years).  Their wings have evolved bioluminescence in order to provide light within the fortress. (I had to find some way to light up that pitchblack interior of the fortress. Another writer I once read used phosphorescence in the walls, and Bernard Werber in "Empire of the Ants" gives some of his ants infrared vision.)

       The cultural level of the Shshi could be designated "Heroic Age," a bit like Mycenaean Greece without the metalworking.  Each fortress resembles a self-sufficient city-state, with very little contact with other fortresses except for the occasional territorial war or the necessity to exchange reproductives.  They have developed human qualities like compassion, loyalty, a sense of self, an eagerness to learn and to attempt to account for their world through myth.  Their only art form is literary; they are passionate tale-tellers.  It makes sense that a deaf race would have no concept of music and that a mostly blind race that lives in perpetual darkness would have little use for visual art.

       Their mythology provides them with an explanation for the existence of Castes: to ensure that the members of the community are interdependent.  Because of their physical and sensory limitations, no one Caste can exist without the existence of the others.  The Warriors' huge heads and mandibles makes it impossible for them to feed themselves.  The Alates are weak in body and need protection from the Warriors and physical labor from the Workers, but their acute vision gives them an edge.  They are the most subtle in intellect and so are likely to gain an advantage in the governance of the fortress. 

       Each community has only one breeding pair, just like terrestrial social insects.  The Workers and Warriors may have vestigial sex organs, but they produce no sex pheromones, so they are truly neuter and are referred to by a special pronoun that can only be translated "it."  The Alates, from whom the breeders are drawn, retain some sexual characteristics, enough for them to be identified as male of female.  fa is the nominative, singular, third-person personal pronoun (used for Warriors and Workers) and fai is the nominative, singular neuter pronoun (used for  things, qualities, etc.).  Alates are either ta (she) or ma (he).

       The Shshi religious beliefs are centered on the female principle -- what else could an ILF worship in a situation where only one individual among a thousand can produce offspring?  In effect, they worship the Great Goddess -- the Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name -- who lives in the sky and lays stars and who generally allows her creation to make its own way.  But occasionally she interferes, particularly at times when the Shshi Way of Life is threatened or something really significant is about to happen in the world of her offspring (like being invaded by extraplanetary beings).  And the Seers can communicate with the Highest Mother through the intermediation of a special hallucinatory fungus (and sometimes through their own inate abilities).

       One further remark:  In the chapters of "The Termite Queen" that concern the Shshi, I tried to come up with a style that would provide contrast with the human story. I settled on writing it as a dramatic script -- writing a play, as it were. It didn't seem right to put in lots of wordy description when you're dealing with blind creatures whose dwelling consists of mostly unlighted underground chambers and corridors. So we have dialogue supplemented by minimal stage directions. We also have soliloquies. It was very easy to fall into a kind of Shakespearean formality and rhythm. I used a lot of Shakespeare quotations as epigraphs for the termite chapters. The villain Mo'gri'ta'tu is fully comparable to Cassius or Iago -- quite Machiavellian. In fact, as I was writing these parts, I humorously referred to my characters as "my Shakespearean termites"!

       Remember to watch for updates on "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder"!  I'm beginning to format it in CreateSpace!