Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

If you travel back in time, you better know the rules

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PhotoTime Travel has rules, but they vary by user, which is the
point of this post.  I have read a lot of
time travel novels over the years and gotten into a few strange conversations
with my husband. He views me as a sort of armchair specialist in this
area.  Well, I do talk a good talk, but
in reality, forward or backward, I find it just as confusing as the next
person.
  1. You can go back,
    but everything you do is already done according to the future you are a part
    of.
  2. You can go back,
    but everything you do will change what has already occurred in the future you
    are a part of, so be prepared for huge change.
  3. You can go back
    but only as an observer because time has a mechanism to keep you from changing
    anything.
  4. You can go back, but any changes you make will create an
    alternate universe running alongside the one that was and still is in existence,
    but you probably won’t know that and therefore won’t be concerned.  If you are aware of the new universe(s), it
    will either bother you because you really messed up or make you happy because
    what changed worked out well for you or those you love.
  5. You can go back,
    make change, return and live to enjoy it. 
    But be careful, some things are dependent on other events you altered
    along the way.
  6. You can go back; it’s the return that is tricky.   Good luck with that one. 
  7. You can go back, but avoid running into your self who you might not get along with, may cause serious problems for, might endanger by making people angry at the other you thinking you’re her/him, and it just gets crazy from there.
  8.  This is the one my
    time travel novels are based on:  You can
    go back, but we all make mistakes and those are the things that just keep
    tagging along, baggage we have to face because for the time traveler every move
    is still forward.

Add to my list:  what
other time travel rules have you noted while reading or writing the genre?

Book 2 of the Students of Jump just went live on Smashwords

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No-Time like the Present is published on Smashwords as of just a few minutes ago.  It has been a busy month pulling the last bits together, editing copy and preparing the cover.  I had the best help from fellow author Marcy Peska, who as my beta reader provided advice I could not have managed without.  Check out her books at Amazon.com.

My daughter helped me put the cover together.  It would not be the beauty it is without her eye for detail and design.

Look for the second book in the Student of Jump series at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and other booksellers in the next week or two.  For the remainder of July, the book will be available for 50% off at Smashwords.  Use coupon SSW50.  This coupon will work with all four of my books until the end of July.

Sometimes one needs a MacGuffin, at least to start with

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the sword in the graveyard
You know how there are words that we just love to say or write?  Some of my favorites are frikasee, mimsy, bailiwick, and conniption though they are rather hard to find a place for in my writing.  But one I have found usable is MacGuffin.  This word is a tool used in writing, and I  love the way it rolls off the tongue.   It’s fun and useful.  However,  the MacGuffin has earned some bad press.  Some writers for movies, novels, short stories use them simply to start the plot off and then completely leave them behind.  But when used properly, this tool can provide motivation for a character to get involved in some action and can still resurface where it can provide depth and deeper connections later. 
Mystery novels often use MacGuffins to embroil the characters in a
mystery.  Spy novels also can make use of the MacGuffin.  Basically the
character is chasing something that may not really exist:  the fountain
of youth, courage, grandpa’s missing will, microfilm with the schematics for a satellite laser beam.  Or they do find it, and it is not of value any more.  I was thinking about this word yesterday and realized I used a version of this tool in both the first and second books of my Students of Jump series. 
In the first book In Times Passed, Brent is searching for independence so he jumps into the past.  His desire to get away from
his mother’s manipulation instigate the decision.  But once he is there, this is no longer a
motivating feature of the actions that follow.  What started out important  becomes unimportant.  That is the nature of a MacGuffin.  (Of course, I plan to make use of this issue between Brent and his mother in a later work in the series.)
In the second book No-time Like the Present, Misty wants to face her father and demand he tell her why he
abandoned her.   When the opportunity arrives, she takes it.  But what motivates Misty initially is not a central feature
of her growth or the more important goals she really wants but didn’t think she could have: a relationship with her father and saving her
mother.  It is at best an excuse she gives
herself to see her father.  She claims to
have no interest in him, but is in fact obsessed with knowing him.  Escaping manipulation and high expectations or desiring one’s father explain why he made the choices he made are the MacGuffins which motivate them to take a step into a place they do not understand but need to go.
What MacGuffins have you identified in works you have read or works you have written

?

Personal experience (loss of a loved one) provided direction and depth

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Love is a foundation: loss a process

One of the main issues in the first two books of the series Students of Jump is loss of a loved one.  This is an area I have some experience in.  Though my original plot did not include a death, the events grew naturally out of the interaction of characters and circumstance.  My own mother died when I was a baby, and I was at first unaware of the effect it had on my father or myself. As I grew older, I realized he never allowed himself the time to adjust to losing his wife.  He buried himself in his work and in raising his children.  It was a new experience for him to be the sole parent of two small children. 

He shared a story with me about the first months he found himself caring for us.  He knew that my mother had always kept us fed and clean.  He had been guided on feeding us properly by the ladies in the neighborhood, and my father was always a good cook, but the requirements of keeping children clean was never addressed.

He bathed us night and day.  We were not particularly dirty children, both of us under two years old.  When he took us to our yearly check up, he asked the doctor if he was caring for us well, as he feared being gone during the working hours meant he could only bath us twice a day.  Our skin was a bit flakie, but the doctor set him straight relieving quite a bit of tension and reducing the bathing to a more manageable level, and our skin and hair returned to that shiny, moist quality inherent in healthy children.  When I had my own daughter and spoke to my father about her potty training not going well, he gave me just the information I needed to have a smooth process for my daughter.

Talking to and observing how my father dealt with his loss and my own later frustrations at not having my mother around during my teenage years helped when I worked through the changes my characters dealt with and their challenges dealing with loss.

What parts in the writing you have done is a reflection of your own experiences?

I have just spent the last three hours working on novel blurbs

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I’ve written two versions for the first book of my series.  That took the first hour and doesn’t include all the previous ones I have written, none particularly good.

I wrote four more for the second book in the series which I hope to publish in just a couple of weeks.  I don’t think I like writing blurbs.  And now there are five.

I know what I want them to do. But they are not doing it.   Excuse me while I go scream.

Well, that didn’t help.  Perhaps some sleep and another stab at it tomorrow.

Please respond with all tricks, advice and personal experience that you think can help me with this endeavor.  The dogs don’t like it when I scream.

Update:  final version complete, and I still have my hair and my dogs have their hearing.  Thank you, Marcy.

Since I cannot have a wall of sticky notes for a visual timeline

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Keeping time under control

Keeping track of a timeline in my novels has been a constant frustration for me.  I have tried numerous approaches which were only partially satisfactory.  I am trying a new one out for my second novel in my Students of Jump series.  Time is important because I have my characters moving through large chunks of time on occasion, and it gets tiresome rolling back pages to see what the date was the last time my character was in that place or determining progression of several events that are occurring at the same time. This can’t be a problem I alone am having.

My dream timeline app will give me a horizontal line on which I can assign dates (and create dates that don’t yet exist) and attach key points to them.  I want to be able to add little bubbles or boxes that connect to those points for summary or notes and be able to close them up as I move along the timeline or open them all up and see how it lays out.  I want to be able to click on them and move them if I wish.  But enough about what I want because that is not what I found.  If you find my holy grail, please let me know.

I need to keep track of time as it relates to growing a clone.  This simply cannot be found in mainstream iPhone apps.  I have this new laptop, and it has software new to me.  Some of their names are familiar, but I have not had any experience with them. 

I looked up the description of OneNote and checked out the video on it.  Okay, worth a try, I thought.  I was willing to accept a vertical row of boxes.  It did not quite supply the series of little boxes I was hoping for. (Though it may yet. I’ll keep looking. BINGO – I can make little text boxes that can be moved about.)   After some playing around, I worked out a system of using the time markers from my book plus a short synopsis of the related event.  It seems to be working.  And I won’t have to search though my desk for that paper I last scribbled a timeline on for book 1.  I was also able to set tabs in the same notebook for character lists, publication info and notes.  So it might prove useful for other reasons.  Not my dream timeline, but it’s workable.

What do you do to keep track of your novel timeline? By the way, my husband will not let me take over a large wall and put sticky notes on it.  That is my other dream timeline, but alas, it cannot exist.