And then the theme struck a painful blow!
May. 10th, 2007 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI cannot finish a story without a theme. I can easily start any story with a theme, but until I identify the theme of my story there is no way I'm going to ever finish it to my satisfaction.
For Honest Impulses, I've been wrestling with this very question. I mean, the story has some wonderful preliminary meat on its bones for my space opera universe: Professor Misuko Ffanci & Linia Hunda are madly in love, Linia's a robot; Professor Raij & Saia Omertum are another human/robot couple but one in a highly abusive relationship. Misuko and Raij are teachers at Hiroshi University. Shandy Oxenhollar is a student in Raij Omertum's "commercial large drone drivers" program. She's taking a night class taught by Linia for no credit, and she has a terrible crush on Linia. Like Misuko, she's from Abi, "the world that hates robots"; unlike Misuko, she still has terrible guilt and neurosis about her infatuation with them. She doesn't know Linia is a robot when she develops her crush. Misuko soon comes into Shandy's life looking for drone operators for her next mission to Indigo 161-4 even as Linia starts to ponder that reciprocating Shandy's crush might be a positive experience. She is, after all, a primitive robot two millenia out of date and has odd, primitive thoughts like that. Misuko proposes marriage to Linia. And Shandy finds Saia Omertum dead, apparently of suicide.
I haven't thought about this story in a couple of weeks; I've been promising myself that I'd concentrate more on the soap opera that is Sterlings. I wasn't thinking about it at all when, all in a flash, the theme of this story hit me all at once: how do we decide how to value someone? What does it mean to say you've given someone else everything you are and everything you have? If you're really given all you have to another and have nothing left to give, do you have anything left for them to value?
My robot stories focus on the oddities of the Journal Entries universe: as Benja said in the last Misuko & Linia story, most companion robots seem to be pale shadows of the person who ordered their manufacture. Honest Impulses explores what life is like for those people, and it points out that even in the Journal Entries universe, no social structure exists that cannot fail someone.
This makes for a huge and quite wonderful tangle of stories: how can a robot who sole purpose in life is to be dedicated to one and only one person decide to be polyamorous? How bad does life have to get for a robot that it would commit suicide? And is it healthy for someone to simultaneously be thought of as a person and yet to regard as natural and normal the idea that his beloved thinks of him with the kind of regard one normally reserves for his laptop?
What does it mean to value someone else? Who is worthy of value?
Now, the only question remains: what plot will serve this theme? My original, melodramatic ending involving a duel between Omertum and Shandy was just kinda silly (it would have been fun to write, however!). One of the plot points is (was?) that Shandy uses a homunculus interface for driving drones instead of the modern neural interface; this is a major point of conflict between herself and her professor, but with her custom plug suit Shandy might (might, of course) just be the best articulated drone driver on the planet. But that ending doesn't drive the theme, and theme is one of those things that's really important to me.
Guess this ain't gonna be Baen material, after all.
For Honest Impulses, I've been wrestling with this very question. I mean, the story has some wonderful preliminary meat on its bones for my space opera universe: Professor Misuko Ffanci & Linia Hunda are madly in love, Linia's a robot; Professor Raij & Saia Omertum are another human/robot couple but one in a highly abusive relationship. Misuko and Raij are teachers at Hiroshi University. Shandy Oxenhollar is a student in Raij Omertum's "commercial large drone drivers" program. She's taking a night class taught by Linia for no credit, and she has a terrible crush on Linia. Like Misuko, she's from Abi, "the world that hates robots"; unlike Misuko, she still has terrible guilt and neurosis about her infatuation with them. She doesn't know Linia is a robot when she develops her crush. Misuko soon comes into Shandy's life looking for drone operators for her next mission to Indigo 161-4 even as Linia starts to ponder that reciprocating Shandy's crush might be a positive experience. She is, after all, a primitive robot two millenia out of date and has odd, primitive thoughts like that. Misuko proposes marriage to Linia. And Shandy finds Saia Omertum dead, apparently of suicide.
I haven't thought about this story in a couple of weeks; I've been promising myself that I'd concentrate more on the soap opera that is Sterlings. I wasn't thinking about it at all when, all in a flash, the theme of this story hit me all at once: how do we decide how to value someone? What does it mean to say you've given someone else everything you are and everything you have? If you're really given all you have to another and have nothing left to give, do you have anything left for them to value?
My robot stories focus on the oddities of the Journal Entries universe: as Benja said in the last Misuko & Linia story, most companion robots seem to be pale shadows of the person who ordered their manufacture. Honest Impulses explores what life is like for those people, and it points out that even in the Journal Entries universe, no social structure exists that cannot fail someone.
This makes for a huge and quite wonderful tangle of stories: how can a robot who sole purpose in life is to be dedicated to one and only one person decide to be polyamorous? How bad does life have to get for a robot that it would commit suicide? And is it healthy for someone to simultaneously be thought of as a person and yet to regard as natural and normal the idea that his beloved thinks of him with the kind of regard one normally reserves for his laptop?
What does it mean to value someone else? Who is worthy of value?
Now, the only question remains: what plot will serve this theme? My original, melodramatic ending involving a duel between Omertum and Shandy was just kinda silly (it would have been fun to write, however!). One of the plot points is (was?) that Shandy uses a homunculus interface for driving drones instead of the modern neural interface; this is a major point of conflict between herself and her professor, but with her custom plug suit Shandy might (might, of course) just be the best articulated drone driver on the planet. But that ending doesn't drive the theme, and theme is one of those things that's really important to me.
Guess this ain't gonna be Baen material, after all.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 05:14 am (UTC)A book finally helped me understand what a writer's Voice is.
I still don't understand Theme.
Is a Theme the same as the Message? If not, how are they different?
I'm not sure I write with a theme in mind. Perhaps that's the reason I can't complete stories.
As to value, I've heard that people tend to value people they can see themselves in, or people whom they want to become, or sometimes even people who have something they need. It doesn't have to be a physical component, but it can be. It's not very elegant, but it's a concise answer.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-12 12:19 am (UTC)Granted, I've just finished watching Brick, not to mention Heroes. I guess it would be bad form and a tad complex to select perhaps three characters and write about all of them at once? Sort of weave their lives through a series of plots answering the questions you present?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 07:52 pm (UTC)I suspect you already knew that... :)