Two Useless Things

Posted on 26 July 2010

This blog post is being posted several hours late because I haven’t written it ahead of time on Sunday like I usually do.  I’ve also been dealing with some Active Worlds stuff.  Some of it is very good news.  And the rest of it is… well it’s still in the oven is probably the best way to describe it.  I’m not sure how it will turn out yet.

I’m pleased to announce I did reach my goal of getting 3 chapters edited in my second-pass revision.  And that last chapter was a double-sized one as well.  So I am happy with my performance thus far.  I hope to do four chapters this week.

The only problem (although I guess it is a good thing to have this problem) is that I discovered a character who is for all intents and purposes completely useless.  Ethander Ryn is a character who is the “father” of another character that works quite well.  Ironically she wasn’t planned at all while Ethander was.  He exists merely as a plot device to get the characters where they need to go, but he is presented as a valued member of the party.  The other characters would not miss him if he were gone, and I think this means the character is a waste of my reader’s time unless I do something to make him valuable to the team.

And believe me, I want to.  At this point I have no intention of writing him out of the story.  He just needs to be given his own character arc.  This I’m still letting my muse toy with.  It may be awhile before I think of an adequate solution because along with this, he ties into the plot in a way that will be difficult to extricate him out of if I change even one thing about his character.

This means I will have to make even more significant rewrites and plot restructuring than I’ve already known was coming.  I’ve been holding out hope that my novel wasn’t broken, but I think it is with the discovery of this broken character along with what I’ve already known about needing to add another one that had his own subplot.  I’m fearing that rewriting this is going to be major suckage.  I’m also thinking that I probably should have thrown my original plot out back when I was doing the How To Think Sideways course on plotting and done it like Holly said I should do it instead of trying to make my plot fit into her method.  ;)

Either way, one other thing I discovered about my writing style is that I tend to summarize what the main characters have just done or said right after they’ve done or said it.  This will change in future projects.  Definitely.

As to that other useless thing, I thought this quote worthy of sharing with you all.  It comes from the book Intellectuals by Paul Johnson.  At the end of the book, he writes:

We are now at an end of our inquiry.  It is just about two hundred years since the secular intellectuals began to replace the old clericy as the guides and mentors of mankind.  We have looked at a number of individual cases of those who sought to counsel humanity. We have examined the moral and judgmental qualifications for this task.  In particular we have examined their attitude to truth, the way in which they seek for and evaluate evidence, their response not just to humanity in general, but to human beings in particular, the way they treat their friends, colleagues, servants, and above all, their own families.  We have touched on the social and political consequences of following their advice.

Now, what conclusions should be drawn?  Readers will judge for themselves.  But I will go on to say this: One of the principle lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity is this; beware intellectuals.  Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.

Beware committees, conferences, and leagues of intellectuals.  Distrust their public statements, issued from their surried ranks.  Discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events.  For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and nonconformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behavior.  Taken as a group, they’re often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.  That is what makes them en masse so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action.

Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget; that people matter more than concepts and must come first.  The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.