At Patheos: TF: As sands through the hourglass …

Fred Clark has posted a new Left Behind post, TF: As sands through the hourglass …, at Patheos

This week Fred writes about pp. 399-400 of Tribulation Force.

Excerpt:

And a story in which the characters do not change or grow or learn isn’t really a story at all — just a disconnected sequence of episodes. This procession of events — of tragedies, affairs, diseases, betrayals, reversals, abductions and evil twins — turns out to be meaningless. It isn’t allowed to mean anything to viewers because it doesn’t mean anything to the characters. If it meant anything to them, then they would have to learn and grow and change.

And so here we turn a single page in Tribulation Force and find, suddenly, that we have been away from our heroes for 18 months, missing out on the daily soap opera of their lives. Yet that turns out not to matter. Rayford Steele is still exactly the same person he was 18 months ago. Buck is still Buck. Chloe is still Chloe. Nicolae, Steve, Chaim and the rest are all unchanged and unaltered. The world around them is slightly different and the authors spend the rest of this chapter sketching out some of those changes, but the characters themselves may as well have spent the past 18 months cryogenically frozen.

[Fred Clark, TF: As sands through the hourglass …, July 6 2011, posted at Patheos.com]


Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

 

Comments

[Rodeobob]

I liked writing MetaChloe and MetaBuck courting in a relatively realistic manner, and I kept meaning to write more but I never got back to it. I still don't know how much could be re-written, but the 'flowers in the trash' bit might be salvigable, and given how incredibly dorky I write MetaBuck, the "mutual cookie snarfing" incident might even be workable, though it might require the presence of a cell phone. Of course, 18 months of celebacy is going to require a lot more heavy lifting, which is probably why I wandered away from the project in the first place.

[MercuryBlue]

Eighteen months later. So there's got to be some nine-month-olds about. Probably ten- and eleven-month-olds, too, since there'd be nothing to stop premature births.

And not a word about this is mentioned.

[hapax]

Of course, 18 months of celebacy is going to require a lot more heavy lifting,

...must...resist...obvious...rejoinder...

[Becca Stareyes]

Eighteen months later. So there's got to be some nine-month-olds about. Probably ten- and eleven-month-olds, too, since there'd be nothing to stop premature births.

Unless God decided to strike everyone infertile. But you think someone would notice. Then again, we already see what effect every child suddenly disappearing has... the person on the street in the LB world appears to have an awareness of the world slightly below bread mold. (Well, or authors don't give a damn about things like world-building.)

[Baf]

So, either there are more children now, who are presumably just as deserving of salvation as the children who were Raptured but who aren't going to have the opportunity, or we're looking at a Children of Men scenario, and the whole world now knows that they're living at the end of history (even if they don't yet know quite how soon it's going to be over). Either way, there's a serious issue here that I'd bet good money isn't going to be addressed or even acknolwedged in the book.

[Tonio]

Repost from Patheos...I had watched Smallville for years before finding out that fans had made up portmanteaus of various couples on the show - Clois, Clana, Chlark, Chlollie. LB needs some of these names to highlight the unreality of the romantic pairings. I vote for Chluck, although Bhloe also sounds funny. And for Rayford and Amanda, how about Raymanda?

In that spirit, I pose the following theory - Chluck and Raymanda as pairings make perfect sense if one assumes that courtships aren't about dating, the couples getting to know each other better. They make sense in the old courtship model where eligible women were essentially promised to bachelors, almost like arranged marriages. Almost like Ellanjay don't believe in the concepts of boyfriend and girlfriend. I seem to remember a biblical phrase about women moving from their parents' homes to their husbands' upon marriage.

[Coleslaw]

I seem to remember a Biblical phrase about women moving from their parents' homes to their husbands upon marriage

Really? Do you remember where it is? I ask because I was discussing this with someone on another board and all I could come up with were the three that say the exact reverse:
Genesis 2:24
Matthew 19:5
Ephesians 5:31

They all pretty much say a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh. They don't say anything about the woman leaving her parents' home.

[Skyknight]

Hapax: I can't say the rejoinder is obvious to me...(I'm going to regret saying that, I just know it)

Reposting from Patheos:

Of course, we still have to wonder WHY Nicky Melungtse is trying to remake Babylon. It'd be easier to retrofit an existing city--Rome, Istanbul, London, New York, Beijing, Johannesburg, Sydney, Lisbon, etc. So, what's in Babylon that he needs so much?

One of my ideas has to do with an oddity with the list of conjurors' demons that began with Johann Weir's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and is best known through the Ars Goetia portion of the Lesser Key of Solomon. In Weir's original list, there was a demon named Pruflas, manifesting as a great fire with the head of a nighthawk, who never appeared in any other lists (given his capabilities and his bird's head, I think he got conflated with Andras). An interesting detail that Weir mentions is that Pruflas's habitation, at least when no conjuror is calling on his services, is the ruins of Babylon. For the record, Pruflas's "office" was to incite discord, so we're not exactly looking at someone Nicky Ramelau is calling on right away, unless he's trying to keep Christians out of the Global Community already. But later on...?

Another possibility, once again from the conjurors' grimoires, has to do with what Solomon did with those bound demons after he got all the work he needed from them. He apparently sealed all 69-72 of them in the brass vessel one last time, and cast the thing into a lake, expecting them to stay sealed to the end of time. Unfortunately, some Babylonians mistook it for a treasure cache and unsealed it. Most of the demons just went back to being mostly free (the rites developed by Ham and Solomon were still binding on them, after all). Exception: Belial (yes, THAT Belial). Belial took the opportunity to impersonate one of the Babylonian gods, and so enjoy a nice span of free worship and glory. What if he's still connected to the associated idol?

Not, of course, that Jenkins and LaHaye would dare sully themselves by even glancing at a page of occult-related writings (probably doesn't help that Weir appended the Pseudomonarchia to a very thorough refutation of the Malleus Malificarum. While he did believe in the existence of demonic magic, he didn't think anything akin to witchery was responsible, and instead thought the inquisitors should have been looking for wannabe Scholomances.), even to help inveigh against the demonic even more thoroughly...

[dismayor]

Skyknight --

That's a really interesting idea. I have a question though -- if all he wants is one demon, wouldn't it be easier to summon it (or however you gain a demon's services) to Chicago or Cluj or somewhere a little more comfortable? Even if he has to go to Babylon to cast the spell, that shouldn't require him to live there for the rest of his life, right?

[Tonio]

Coleslaw, truthfully I have no idea where that nugget of alleged wisdom came from, except that it seemed to have a religious source.

[dismayor]

Speaking of demons, I was always disappointed that Carpathia didn't use Satanic magic more often in these books. You're the Anti-Christ -- why aren't you getting a horde of stygian trolls to do your construction for you? Instead of mucking about with Hattie, Steve, and Chaim, why not get a goblin to take dictation, a succubus to handle press conferences, and a couple of imps to follow you around and carry your luggage? There's really no reason not to -- it's not like anyone's going to complain about extradimensional immigrants stealing jobs from struggling middle-class mortals, at least not after the demon locusts you recruited to staff your phone bank gets through with them.

[Firedrake]

"Has he even held your hand yet?"

"We tried, but every time he comes within two feet of me I throw up. Still, I'm sure it'll all be fine once we're married"

[Kit Whitfield]

Cross-posted:

The frantic rush of such a [soap opera] schedule means it’s impossible for the writers and actors to do the best work they might be capable of doing. A first take of a first draft doesn’t allow for much exploration or for care and craft.

I do not believe this is true or fair. A friend of mine writes for a soap opera; what happens is that different writers develop different storylines and get given particular episodes, but the storylines are planned months in advance. There are deadlines, but it isn't a frantic rush.

Likewise, they take an interest in developing the characters. They can't change beyond recognition, but then real people don't do that either.

Based on talking to my friend, I think soap opera writing involves a great deal more care and craft than you give it credit for.

I don't know any soap opera actors, but I think it's perfectly possible there's care and craft in their performances. If you play the same character for months or years, after all, you can make a case that every performance is also a rehearsal: by playing the character in one scene, you get familiar with their persona, their attitudes, their physicality, their essence, and you take that essence forward into the next scene.

And come to that, frantic rush is not necessarily a bad condition to work under. I finished one book in exactly that, a frantic rush. The result was that I stayed in a state of permanent, high-wire imaginative tension that pushed me to make leaps and take decisions and jump from peak to peak; it was one of the most extraordinary months of my life. And it produced work I was very happy with.

Art always involves a degree of improvisation, and improvisation can happen fast. The idea that having or taking longer to create something means it'll be better just isn't true.

[Mmy]

Cross-posted:

@Kit Whitfield: A friend of mine writes for a soap opera; what happens is that different writers develop different storylines and get given particular episodes, but the storylines are planned months in advance. There are deadlines, but it isn't a frantic rush.

I don't know anyone who writes for a soap opera but what I know about the industry reflects what you wrote. If one watches for a long period of time one can detect the different "voices" of different writers. I do know that storylines are worked out far in advance if, for no other reason, exigencies of scheduling. Stories have to progress around the holidays and life circumstances of the actors. People who go to conventions and frequent fan boards are often aware of stories far in advance of their appearance on the shows. Indeed there have been a number of times when story directions are floated and then nixed when fan response is not favourable.

I very much second Kit's statement And come to that, frantic rush is not necessarily a bad condition to work under. Some of the most inspired, brilliant and loved books, movies and radio shows were produced in this fashion. Indeed some people find that they do their best work only under conditions of urgency.

[Rowen]

To piggy back on Kit's statement, I'd also like to point out that the actors in a soap opera don't work on the set 365 days a year. Like any other show, they spend a few months filming, and then go off to do other things. The one thing that a soap opera actor has that many others don't is *some* minor form of job stability, but that's mainly for the main cast, and is pretty flimsy at best, with all the "Mary Sue ran off with Steve! We'll never see her again! Until her long lost twin sister comes to town, looking for her estranged parents, who were actually their adopted parents! But then the sister gets killed while investigating her real parents! But it was a faked death! Except then it wasn't! But then Mary Sue comes back after studying with the Mystic Shamans of Nabooboo after the yacht she and Steve eloped on crashed. . . "

This is why, if you pay attention to these things, you'll see a lot of Broadway shows have soap opera stars join the cast for 6 months or so. Filming's done, and instead of sitting around being bored, watching their money drain away, they'll go do that, or commercials or co-host with Regis, or whatever.

[Kish]

Likewise, they take an interest in developing the characters. They can't change beyond recognition, but then real people don't do that either.

Actually, my biggest problem with soap operas is that the characters often do change into completely different characters in a thoroughly unrealistic way.

Yeah. Sorry, Fred*, but I don't think you know enough about soap operas to know what you're talking about here.

*Yes, I know he's not going to read this.

[Kish]

I should add that I only know American soap operas. If soap operas elsewhere are better at maintaining character continuity, good for them.

[Jason]

I have very little exposure to soap operas but have had enough relatives that watch them to know that they also will have one character have a child who will go from infant to 5 years old in several months of real time, then become a teenager in several more months to the point where I was in a waiting room one time where a soap opera was a playing in which a woman's adult son didn't seem to be much younger than she was. They were around the same age.

[Jon Maki]

@Jason: I kind of grew up watching soap operas. For the first five years of my life, it was just me and my mom at home during the day when school was in session, so the soaps were always on. After that, it was a matter of only getting one channel on TV (no cable), so if I was home and bored...
In any case, the scenario you describe is pretty common, but there have been instances in which something that's not exactly the opposite, but near enough, has happened. Essentially, they've kind of held a character's age in stasis until the moment is right. That is, there's a teen/pre-teen character, who isn't often seen on-camera, and when the summer rolls around (which is when they typically, for obvious reasons, start focusing on teen characters), they'll have him/her be the same age as the other teen characters they've introduced.
The main example that springs to mind is Freddy Bauer on The Guiding Light. He was permanently 11 or 12 for several years, and mostly only appeared around Christmas time, being away at boarding school or somesuch the rest of the time. Then one year they introduced a bunch of teen characters, let Freddy reach what the age he should have been at by then, and integrated him into the teen storyline. They also sort of reinvented him as "Rick" (from "Fredrick.") and made him, well, a bit less dorky. (Though he remained kind of dorky). At the same time they accelerated the aging of another character and made him and Rick the same age (and best friends).

[Phoenix, who is squicked]

Having just read a really creepy book about courtship, that part of this post really resonated with me. I'm all for being careful with physical intimacy, but there are ways of pushing it too far.

In LaJenkin's quasi-defense, I believe Chloe admits to her father somewhere in this passage that she and Buck have kissed. It's still a little creepy that they're discussing this at all, though. I can't say it ever occurred to me to tell my dad when I first kissed any boyfriend of mine.

[dismayor]

I don't think that merely making someone older really counts as significant character development, especially if you can't see any continuity between Child and Teenager, or Teenager and Adult. It's closer to say that they've simply introduced a new character.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

The only soap I know is The Archers, which my mother follows. Now I'm out of their house, I've lost track, but I'd say that character development and continuity is pretty good. Of course, the acting is probably easier on a radio soap, but apparently the actors do have to sit up on a special bench when their characters are horseriding, because it affects the voice quality.

TRiG.

[Philboyd]

@Kit Whitfield:
In my experience, time spent writing the first draft may not equal quality, but time spent editing and revising said draft does generally correlate with quality. The longest thing I've ever completed was a short story, though, so my experience is probably limited. Is the situation different with novels?

[hapax]

@Jon Maki: Omigosh! I remember Freddy / Rick Bauer -- he suddenly grew up to become best friends with, umm, Philip (?) Spaulding, who played alongside one of Kevin Bacon's first big roles. A lot of the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" connections come from his GL days.

Gads. I can't believe I recall all this Guiding Light trivia. I grew up on the show -- my grandmother had listened to it since it started on the radio, my mother watched it since it showed up on television, I used to schedule college classes around it.

[P J Evans]

My grandmother watched a couple of soap operas, What I learned was that Monday episodes recapped the previous week, and the first ten or so minutes of each succeeding day of the week recapped the previous day. At that time (60s and 70s) they were half-hour shows, mostly, so that didn't leave a lot of time for advancing the plot. It meant you could keep up by watching one day a week...
(She watched 'Edge of Night' and 'As the World Turns', mostly.)

[AnnMarie]

Hello,

I'm a librarian, and I've been following this community for a while. I am currently trying to put together a good booklist of Christian fiction for teens. I'm looking for *good* books, or at least half-decent books, with quality stories and realistic teen characters. They don't have to be realistic fiction but they definitely have to have strong Christian values/themes and nothing too objectionable. If you have any suggestions would you please email me? Annmarieh@ylpl.lib.ca.us. Thank you guys so much,

AnnMarie

[hapax]

AnnMarie, I haven't read a lot of Christian fiction for teens I think well of (aside from classics like CHRISTY and some of Oke's books) but there some pretty good Christian YA fantasy out there. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest anything by Bryan Davis, Stephen Lawhead, and G.P Taylor.

Depending on your definition of "strong Christian values / themes" I'd put in a plug for the Young Wizard series by Diane Duane SECRET SACRAMENT by Sherryl Jordan, and MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francisco Stork. These would not be acceptable to those who demand an ECPA imprimatur, however.

[Jana]

*delurking, sheep are holstered*

@MMY: "Indeed some people find that they do their best work only under conditions of urgency."

True, but a lot of other people use that as an excuse to put off writing until the last minute and then hand in subpar work. One of the main things I try to drill into my students' heads is "edit, edit edit, proofread, proofread, proofread". Writing in a rush doesn't give you time to do that.

(Why, yes, I have been marking grade 9 English assignments recently. Why do you ask?)

*relurking*

[Kit Whitfield]

In my experience, time spent writing the first draft may not equal quality, but time spent editing and revising said draft does generally correlate with quality. The longest thing I've ever completed was a short story, though, so my experience is probably limited. Is the situation different with novels?

It varies from writer to writer and novel to novel, so I can only speak from my own experience. What I'd say is that most of my best work has been written fast because I've been, I don't know, in the zone. There's a mental state that produces good art that's qualitatively different from the ordinary mental state; when I'm in it, things can flow fast and sure, and generally the writing is much better than it'd be on a day when I was going slowly, because going slowly means I'm not in the zone.

As to editing and revising - well, how much editing and revising a book needs depends a lot on what proportion of it was written in the zone and what proportion was written out of it. Theoretically, the best book I could write would be a book entirely written in the zone; such a book would be written fast and wouldn't need much revision. The reason this doesn't happen is simply that the zone can be difficult to reach.

Some writers need a lot of editing and revising, some don't. For some, revision means improvement; for others, the first draft is the inspired one and too much fiddling just breaks the flow. It all depends - which is why generalisations are a risky business.

[Kit Whitfield]

The reason this doesn't happen is simply that the zone can be difficult to reach.

Addition: also because writing in the zone is tiring, and after a few hours of it my brain's exhausted and needs some time to rest before it can carry on.

[Donalbain]

Kit: I think you are talking about British Soap operas, which are very different in style and production to US soaps.

[Kit Whitfield]

I am talking about British soaps, but they have to deal with the same conditions as US ones: the one my friend writes for films four episodes a week.

[Mmy]

@Jana: True, but a lot of other people use that as an excuse to put off writing until the last minute and then hand in subpar work. One of the main things I try to drill into my students' heads is "edit, edit edit, proofread, proofread, proofread". Writing in a rush doesn't give you time to do that.

Agree wholeheartedly. In fact one of the things I would try to get my students (undergraduates) to understand is the difference between working under stress because of a tight schedule and working under self-created stress because one had procrastinated. My own experiences (and I have worked in both circumstances) is that if one is in a job/industry in which time is tight and speed/efficiency is of the essence then one does in advance everything that can be done in advance.

Work done in haste due to procrastination is has different flavor to me.

There are, of course, writers who can write with speed, stress and excellence but they are the exception not the norm.

(Why, yes, I have been marking grade 9 English assignments recently. Why do you ask?)

My heartfelt sympathies. When I was grading large piles of undergraduate work the thing I felt most difficult after the first 50 was providing creative/useful criticism. Scrawling "this sucks and it offended my eyes that I must read it" in large red letters on the front page of an essay was not considered acceptable.

*relurking*

Hi (mmy waves vigorously)

[Amaryllis]

Theoretically, the best book I could write would be a book entirely written in the zone; such a book would be written fast and wouldn't need much revision.

"edit, edit edit, proofread, proofread, proofread". Writing in a rush doesn't give you time to do that.

Hmmm. Are we talking here about the difference between "creative writing" (whatever that is), and academic/non-fiction/"purpose-driven" writing?

Either way, I still second the "proofread, proofread" part.

Shall we have another fight about "what is art"? (Because some of the non-fiction that I've read has been quite "artfu" as far as I could see.)

[Lampdevil]

@Mmy - Scrawling "this sucks and it offended my eyes that I must read it" in large red letters on the front page of an essay was not considered acceptable.

Hee!

This is a feeling that I'm familiar with. I have started to read the administrative documents of the LARP club that I'm a part of. Having done that, I also decided that I should take the administrative tests. Having actually looked at the major main administrative test, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not cut out for administration. In the case of every question that asks "a member has behaved badly, what do you do?", my immediate reaction is "smack the offender upside the head and tell them to eff off."

How does one push past that first uncharitable urge, and on to something more fair and balanced and useful? I'm still trying to figure this one out...

[Lila]

There are soap operas and soap operas.

I spent way too many years of my youth watching "Dark Shadows". No, you young whippersnappers, not the Ben Cross remake; the original, with Jonathan Frid. Now available on Netflix. Take a look sometimes. You can see actors flubbing their lines (and cracking up about it), wobbly styrofoam tombstones, boom mikes dipping into the picture, and so on. Moreover, not only was there a voice-over recapping the past few days' happenings, the episode itself was often so repetitive it felt like "Groundhog Day" ("You must marry me or I will kill you!" "No, never!" "What's wrong?" "He says I have to marry him or he'll kill me!" "How awful! If you don't marry him he'll kill you!" "I'm back! Are you going to marry me or am I going to kill you?" etc.)

You may say that it's not fair to characterize a genre by one of its worst (but still pretty successful) examples. I reply that the worst is no less characteristic of a genre than the best.

[Jana]

Typepad does not like me. I'm hoping this doesn't post 3 times.

@MMY: "When I was grading large piles of undergraduate work the thing I felt most difficult after the first 50 was providing creative/useful criticism. Scrawling "this sucks and it offended my eyes that I must read it" in large red letters on the front page of an essay was not considered acceptable."

This. So very much. When I was marking undergrad papers as a TA I had many such comments spring to mind. The best one I ever heard of was from another TA. He was marking a history paper with no citations; no endnotes, no bibliography, nothing. His comment: "What, were you there?"

One advantage of marking middle school papers: they're shorter. Also, you don't have to shake your head and wonder how someone actually made it through secondary school without learning how to write a coherent sentence.

[Ruby]

Tonio: In that spirit, I pose the following theory - Chluck and Raymanda as pairings make perfect sense if one assumes that courtships aren't about dating, the couples getting to know each other better. They make sense in the old courtship model where eligible women were essentially promised to bachelors, almost like arranged marriages. Almost like Ellanjay don't believe in the concepts of boyfriend and girlfriend. I seem to remember a biblical phrase about women moving from their parents' homes to their husbands' upon marriage.

Late to the party on this, but I don't think they do believe those concepts. I'm reminded to the rest of the books in the Babylon Rising series--media mogul Shane and ace reporter Stephanie are in a relationship. But instead of being a couple, or being "boyfriend and girlfriend," Stephanie is referred to (repeatedly and even by herself) as Shane's "mistress."

This is strange, as a) they are both single and b) the relationship is consensual (at least until it's not, but she's the "mistress" long, long before that).

The only explanations I can think of for the "mistress" references:

1. They're both nonbelievers
2. They're having lots and lots of sex
3. And most importantly...neither ever expresses a desire to be married.

[Ruby]

Wow..."believe IN" and "reminded OF." Drink some tea, Ruby. Wake up.

[Tonio]

Ruby, the explanation for "mistress" is far simpler. The term doesn't have a male equivalent, unlike the egalitarian terms "girlfriend" and "boyfriend." It connotes a type of ownership. Or at least, it defines a woman through her relationship with a man, without an equivalent word defining the man in the opposite direction. In other cultures I've hear the word used to refer to an unmarried woman sleeping with a married man.

[Ruby]

Tonio: In other cultures I've hear the word used to refer to an unmarried woman sleeping with a married man.

Yeah, that's the primary way I know it to be used in the States, which is why it made me laugh when LaHaye used it. I kept thinking, "Um, Tim? Did you forget what you've written about your own characters? They're single."

[Tonio]

Ruby, while I would have that same reaction, I seem to remember reading that a century or so ago, the word was also used when the man wasn't married. Of course, that was an era when a woman sleeping with a man when both weren't married was openly labeled as a "whore."

[Ruby]

@Tonio--so basically, Tim is a throwback from 1892.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

[Jon Maki]

@hapax: Omigosh! I remember Freddy / Rick Bauer -- he suddenly grew up to become best friends with, umm, Philip (?) Spaulding, who played alongside one of Kevin Bacon's first big roles.

Yep. Kevin Bacon played Tim (or TJ, I think) IIRC. Philip was one of the worst instances of rapid aging I'd ever encountered at that point. I remember when he was born, yet at some point he went from being a toddler to being 18. I was probably 8 or so when he was born, and yet when I was 12 suddenly he was older than I was.
Of course, comic books are just as guilty* of a lot of those things, which is why, despite the fact that I no longer watch soaps (and haven't for decades), I can't really bring myself to rag on them.

*When Kitty Pryde debuted in X-Men, she was six and a half years older than I was at the time. Now I'm eighteen years older than she is at present. And how many decades has Franklin Richards been 4 1/2 in order to allow for the gag variation on the FF costumes?