Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

Use these 11 “nations” of the US to create depth in the characters you build

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I read an article about the various distinct cultural nations within the United States and found it very useful for determining the underlying influences of characters in fiction. In this article which made use of the work of Colin Woodard, Matthew Speizer provides (This map shows the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures) descriptions of the type of people who live in specific areas in the US and what their political/cultural viewpoints are built on.


At first while reading it, I was focusing on identifying where I fit in the demographics described. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I’ll give you hints and let you pick my niche: born below the Mason Dickson line, but raised into my teens in northern New England, I then lived several years in Oregon after finishing high school in California. My adult life was largely in the Northwest, with southern influences. 

Now that I’ve written it down, all I can say is good luck with locating my cultural position within these described “nations.” I might be harder to label than I first thought.  Blame my dad who never seemed to be able to stay in one place very long.


But my point is how great is this for determining the underlining influences for character building and interaction. Imagine a “Yankeedom” having to rebuild a demolished world with a “Greater Appalacian.”  Utopian leanings vs very constrained. The conflicts are built into the individuals and the “cultures” they bring with them.


How about a (space)ship’s captain with “el Norte” sympathies with a first officer who’s a “Left Coaster.” Plenty of room for common ground and still areas where the two would argue specific issues of “expression,” “exploration” and regulation.


In my SF time travel novel (book 3 of Students of Jump), Next Time We Meet, Mick Jenkins is largely Greater Appalacian. But the society he is now trying to make a home in is New Netherland in many respects. He wants order where they encourage a general “go with the flow attitude.”


I can see these “culture” breakdowns of political viewpoints as one more useful tool for building individual character behavior and interactive conflict between characters. As you design characters, consider where they fall in these niches. Support the influences with attitudes, heritage, and biases that add depth to the individuality of your characters.  

Follow the link to the article and take a look at it yourself.  11 Nations of the United States.


Do you see any of your characters falling under these cultural labels? If so, which character, which story, and what qualities most standout?


#culture
#characterization
#writing

8 Ways to Strengthen Your Writer Posture

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Every writer needs a strong posture.

I recently watched a TED talks video, Amy Cuddy’s “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.” As a teacher, I understand the dynamics of body language. I read my students’ body language all the time and modify my approach to match or alter their attitudes so the class runs smoothly and achieves my intended goals for learning.

Watching this video brought to mind that this approach to body language relates to writers and how we do what we do.

The obvious connection is how our characters respond to given situations. The postures we describe our characters holding tells a lot to our readers about how the character is feeling about the situation. Do they expect to win or lose? Are they going to fight or run? Do they like the people they are with? Which ones more than others? How is the day going so far?

When that described posture is combined with narrative evaluation or internal dialogue, we end up with contrast, support, and definition.

Every writer makes use of body language.

But what about the writer as writer? How does a writer adjust his/her posture for power and confidence, raise testosterone and lower cortisol in the other aspects of being a writer?

I have read numerous descriptions of writers as shy, quiet, non-social, and insecure people. We present big, but in actuality lack confidence in being writers. I don’t know if that is true since fifty years back the typical writer was often viewed as a heavy drinking, loud, drug taking, know it all. Were they faking it?  Were they, to paraphrase Cuddy, faking it until they became it? Everybody is “coming out,” so perhaps authors are too, and maybe we really are totally insecure. I know I am a shy person who has a teaching persona my students often describe as demanding. Being a demanding person would not work for me as a writer. And I am not interested in following the drinking, loud, drug taking, know-it-all approach to ensure my “writing persona” is strong. So how can we use Cuddy’s ideas to present a strong writer posture in our writing endeavors?

Here are 8 ways to use Cuddy’s ideas to strengthen our writing posture.

  1. Before you start writing, take that power pose — hands on your hips, feet shoulder-width apart and chin just a bit above parallel with the ground (called the Wonder Woman for a reason.) You should hear the theme: “Wonder Writer, Wonder Writer” playing in the background. Do this before you sit down to write that post, chapter, poem, etc. 
  2. Unless, of course, you are trying to write a downcast character and you are one of those writers that act out your characters as you write — so a low confidence pose would be good to start with: shoulders curled in, arms down and held close to the body clutching the torso or neck protectively — gather a sense of what that feels like and then power up and sit down.
  3. Going for an interview: written, audio, video, in person — first stand up, raise your hands in the air and shout (or whisper very loud) “I’m being interviewed” like it is an Emmy award you’re receiving. Now go show them your stuff.
  4. How about that important phone call: Power pose it. By the way, according to Cuddy you have to hold this pose for two minutes. Now pick up the phone and make the call.
  5. About to upload your formatted eBook:  Walk around larger than life, take a stand in the middle of the room, power pose. Now go upload that baby. It’s ready to face the world.
  6. Putting together a proposal to an agent? Feeling daunted by the task? Time to power pose. You got this. Now write that proposal.
  7. About to edit your fully drafted novel? Definitely time for a power pose. This is the second most common time for low confidence in the writer. (For me, number 4 is the number one low confidence time.) You’ve put in all this work and now you’re saying it is done and ready for clean up. 
  8. Did somebody just say, “I hear that you write”? Get big, take up space — chest out, arms a little away from the body, chin up a bit or go for the power pose. Remember that’s hands on hips, feet apart, chin up. “Damn straight, I’m a writer.” Yeah, that’s asking a bit much for me, too. But it would give me a rush of confidence, enough to say. “Yes, yes, I am.”

It’s been nice having this little chat. Consider following me, tweeting this post, checking by again. I do occasionally …. can you give me a couple minutes….  Okay, I’m ready now. So you enjoyed this post. Follow me, Tweet my post, come by each week and you’ll find something valuable in my  writings to take away with you. I challenge you to check out my earlier posts. Yeah, power posture.

#powerposture
#writing
#confidence

Who decides what goes? New Horizons got me thinking.

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The New Horizon spacecraft is carrying Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes. He is the astronomer who discovered Pluto. Reading this fact in an article, made me stop and think a bit about who decides what is added as extra payload for such a scientific endeavor and how is the decision made? And what would Tombaugh have thought about it or his family?

Did a panel of people sit and discuss this, throwing out possibilities, conjecturing the symbolic meaning behind what was placed. Or did they only just enter the room when one person said, “Hey,  what do you say we get a tube of Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes. He did discover Pluto. Shouldn’t he get to take the ride?” And they all nodded. And did they agree because it meant one more thing could be ticked off the list, because it made sense, or because it felt so right there wasn’t any better choice?

Everybody has had those moments. Somebody says something and everybody’s internal processor says, “That’s the answer. There are no others.”

We’ve also have had those moments when we just say, “That will work. We’ll go with that, now on to the more difficult business of….”

And we also experience those times when a bunch of people are in a room and have to come up with one decision that all agree with, and we know that’s never going to happen, so we start throwing out ideas. Some stick, some are just plain stupid and some sit there slowing gaining traction or like a snowball, keep rolling and picking up momentum and size until there isn’t really any chance for any other option.

Or was there another option and the two sides dooked it out for days until someone gave in or most were convinced and that was enough?

And how much trouble was it to get those ashes?

If it was my family that was asked, there would be four avenues to getting those ashes as each one of us kids have a portion of our father’s remains. Still it would be tough to even get one flake from us as we are all pretty attached to him and this is all we have left of his physical being. However, of the four, the one most likely to give up a vile of our Dad is me. I would like the idea of him heading off into space. And I can hear him yet. “That’s just the shell.” Still it was a darn important shell to us. But our dad was full of surprises. Heading off into space certainly is no less amazing then some of the other things he was thought to have done.

He played a role in the Saturn rocket, but what exactly, I can’t say. He was as much mystery as surprise. In any case, he didn’t go, Tombaugh did. And if Tombaugh was asked about whether or not he wanted to take the ride, I rather believe anyone who went looking for planetary bodies and found Pluto probably would have said, “Hell, yes.” My Dad would have said, “Do what you like with my ashes; I won’t be needing them.”

#newhorizons
#tombaugh
#Pluto

Retirement: it will happen to you ready or not

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Ready for retirement?

I’d like to talk about retirement. I’d like to retire too, but since that’s not coming anytime soon (unless my books start really rolling off the digital shelves–feel welcome to participate in precipitating my early retirement), I’ll just talk about it.

First, you must consider as early as possible that you will retire one day and that you want a place to live, a partner to share it with, good health and money coming in. 
My mother was recently placed in elder care, and she had little liquid funds and only a house with investment value. We are scrambling to support her care. She is in excellent health though deteriorating mentally. But living with funds available is the issue. 
Second how can you prepare for retirement?  Investments are good. (Can’t help you with choices on that.) We have employee retirement that we are vested in, and a supplemental retirement plan we send to monthly. We purchased land at a nice but not popular lake, and we started building a house on it last summer. We are doing everything except pouring the concrete for the foundation, but we did handle troweling the concrete into place and smoothing it, relatively anyway. 
We just about have the house at the dry-in stage: windows in, roof on, last of the siding going up as I type. Time frame for completion?  Was two years, but my husband recently, nonchalantly, stated a day ago that five years wasn’t an unreasonable likelihood. 
Point here. Be ready to face the obvious thing you forgot to note. In our case, that was our daughter’s college tuition. It impacted our savings potential significantly. Both our retirement-related loans (land, building) are on less than ten year runs. Still, we do have that house we are currently living in that has value we can make use of for tying loose monetary ends later. 
How far away is our retirement? Ten years. So we’ll make our deadline fine. But we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t started early. 
As for the other requirements? I’ve been married nearly 35 years and my fellow continues to be good company. Health for both of us is good, and we make the effort to maintain it. Continued employment appears strong as well. 
I feel better now that we’ve had this chat. How are you pre-managing your retirement? Are you planning ahead or buying lottery tickets? Do you have a will or are you indestructible? Smoke and eat fast food or are you taking your vitamins, prescriptions, exercising regularly and vigorously and seeing you doctor once a year?
Retirement, it’s getting here whether you are watching for it or not. I’ll take tremendous sales figures on my books any day, but in the mean time, I’m going to do a few supporting actions for a modest retirement just in case the New York Times list does not come knocking. 

Writing metaphor: two dogs, shedding a little of the dark and the light

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Two sides to writing

It is Wednesday evening and for two days running I have not been writing on my #wip. Arggg! I even am a bit late on my blog. Not good.

So what is the status on Book 4 of Students of Jump you ask. Well, so far it is the longest book I’ve written, coming in at just a bit under 100,000 words.  Besides watching out for typos and diction errors, I’ve been adding a scene here and a scene there. My fabulous beta readers, friends and fellow writers Marcy Peska and L. A. Hilden have pointed out some issues and areas for expansion and those have been keeping me quite busy this month. (By the way, all my books are available at Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo and other fine ebook retailers.)

I have been busily writing and content editing. Until yesterday. Family stuff, a bit of Trivia Crack and dog maintenance. Let’s deviate off the path of wherever I was going and focus on dog maintenance a moment. I have two Labradors, lovely ladies. We call them the bookends because they tend to take positions right next to each other and either mirror each other or lay identically. Of course, one is a chocolate and the other a yellow so they are always opposites in one way. The yellow sheds year round, while the chocolate sheds twice a year.

Consider this: they are both Labrador retrievers, not quite a year apart in age and they live in the same air conditioned residence. Yet, when I brush Cagney, the yellow, I am left with enough hair to cover a whole other dog. Lacey, however, produces about half a tennis ball size of hair fluff, unless it is the start of spring or early fall when she drops considerably more. After an hour of brushing Cagney, I simply give out. If I keep brushing, she just keeps letting go of hair. I look her over, and other than looking sleeker, she’s still well favored in soft yellow hair.  Do you remember those dolls that had hair that you could pull out of the top of their heads or roll it back in by pressing a button at the center of her back? I had one of those, still do in a cedar trunk. Cagney is like that. No, no buttons, but it sure seems like there is an unlimited supply sprouting from her skin, perhaps brush activated.

Where am I going with this? Well, I will admit, I had no idea at first. But something came to mind, just now as a matter of fact. Here it is. Sometimes writing is like this. There are days when I am a Cagney and the keys just keep activating my word production and other days I wonder if I am trying to write in the wrong season. See Cagney is the lots of words day and Lacey is the drought day. And if you think about it, they are the same but opposite too. At the end of the day, something was written. Good/bad, a lot/a little, brutal/effortless, willingly/forced, ears back/ears forward, mouth open and panting/mouth clamped shut.  Writing is like having two dogs, same breed, but different.

It was a struggle, I know, but I found a connection. I challenge you to write about something that enters your mind and show how it is an metaphor for an activity you love. It need not be writing. But if you got to the bottom of this twisted doggy run, you are probably a writer, or at least a reader. Thank heaven you exist.

#writing
#creativity
#dogs

We gather the music of words to create a story

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A few days ago I went to a band camp concert. My daughter was one of the players. As I sat there listening to the rising and falling notes, flutes coming in as clarinets drop away, background drums rolling in crescendo and tubas filling the brief spaces in between, my heart racing and relaxing with each movement, I realized that a good book is much the same.

The opening lines just like the first notes played introduce the vision: science fiction with electronic tones, romance flutes of the first attracting glance, Bronte storms in the kettle drums, piano-keyed mysteries or an oboe lilt of a cobra rising from the basket of an Agatha Christi novel. Each rise in the action another movement to thrill the reader.

The middle movements fill us with ideas, emotions, connecting us as a group to a single vision.  And the final notes, whether sudden and thrashing or softly fading away, give us a sense of closure and completeness.

Writers, like conductors, construct a story with the instruments at hand. We have our characters, imagery, setting, rising action, inciting event, climax, pacing and conclusion just as they have their woodwinds, keys, capriccio, adagio, brass, cymbals and the like. We create an experience, one the reader/listener wishes to experience again and again.

Sitting there caught up in the music of the moment, a part of me felt the desire to race from the auditorium and compose my own worded score, to put into words the images that floated before my eyes in response to the pull the music gave to my imagination. But the other part of me wished to remain to listen as my daughter and her fellow musicians crafted musical stories in my head.

Learning to play an instrument is as essential as learning to write. Not all of us will be great musicians any more than all of us can be best selling writers. But all of us need to experience the attempt to make music, write poetry, paint a picture, sculpt a figure, or crochet an afghan. From each experience we gain much and, on occasion, find beauty to inspire others and be inspired.

What inspires you? 

#music
#writing
#inspiration