Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2024

This quarter I continued writing a story each month on my website, publishing, “What is it?,” “A Possibility?,” and “A Noble Act.” I also reposted “In My Day,” “Moving On,” and “There’s a Cream for that” on my Ko-fi profile.  I also posted the story “Spooky Story” and reposted “Did You Think Otherwise?” on one of my blogs.

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I forgot to count how many microfiction stories and haikus I posted this quarter.  That’s something I’ll have to keep better track of.  But all of microfiction stories can be found on my Untitled Works Page, and all my haikus on my Haiku Page.

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A day or two after I post this, I’ll also post my writing plans for 2025, which will go over some changes I’m making.

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Image from Pixabay.

My thoughts on Doctor Who “Joy to the World”

These are just some random thoughts I had on “Joy to the World.” I don’t have a system to give it a grade, but I’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a … 5ish.  There is a near-certainty that I will never watch it again, and in a few months I’ll probably be hard pressed to remember the plot.

Spoilers.

What I liked.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I came up with a story idea of a Doctor-like character who travels through time losing a bet and having to live for a year like a normal person.  They get a job and possibly start dating a coworker.  I’m not saying “Joy to the World” stole my idea, because it is highly unlikely someone broke into my house, dug out an old writing notebook, found this specific page, and was able to decipher my horrible handwriting to get that basic description, because that’s basically all the work I put into the idea.  Also, just seeing The Doctor trying to live as a normal person is a pretty basic idea.  We’ve seen parts of this in previous episodes.  Sometimes these are either short time periods or are just mentioned in passing, like I believe in “Blink” The Doctor and Martha are stuck in 1969 and she’s a tad upset she had to get a job to support him, but that’s about all we get.  Other times there is some epic story thing going on, like I believe one of the Smith Christmas episodes has The Doctor in Christmas Town for a … century, or something.  (I have a vague memory of this, but don’t care enough to look it up.)

Anyway, I liked the idea of The Doctor living out a year in normal time.  In fact, I would have preferred an entire episode of The Doctor trying to figure out the solution to some problem while also dealing with some eccentric characters one can find in a neighborhood. 

I guess I also liked that they at least acknowledged that “Global Event That Must Not Be Named.” (I can’t remember if they actually named it in the episode.  If they did, I wasn’t really paying attention, but if they didn’t name it, we all knew what it was.) Although, I guess the world of Doctor Who isn’t our world, like, I don’t remember the time everyone was turned into The Master. 

What I didn’t like.

First off, why didn’t the first guy go in, say he needed to speak to the manager, and have the briefcase hook on to the manager, and then – knowing that they needed millions of years – go directly to the dinosaur room instead of futzing around in the human era stuff?

So Anita was like the tenth or so companion to basically fall madly in love with The Doctor?  Also, hasn’t The Doctor been told a dozen or so times by now that they shouldn’t be alone and they should find someone?  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those – like the later does show that even the smartest people might not readily take good advice because they think they know better – but it does seem like this template is being used too often. 

As soon as they mentioned something about creating a star, I knew where this was going.  I think they then did the Anita stuff, so I kind of forgot about it for twenty minutes or so, but when it came back I was going, “Please don’t be so obvious, please don’t be so obvious,” but in the end they were. 

Final thoughts

There were basically two parts to this episode.  The part with Joy and the star was … meh.  The part with Anita I liked the concept, but would have liked more, especially if they did something else with it.  Like, maybe Anita had a bit of a crush on the person who ran the whatever store next-door.  And over the year – while he’s working on solving some problem – The Doctor’s helping her build up her confidence to ask them out.  And you could have had a sappy, “Nobody deserves to be alone on Christmas,” and then someone could ask, “Who will you be with, Doctor?” And after a moment, he’ll laugh and say something silly, then step into the TARDIS with some sad music, and then … the TARDIS will be rammed by the Titanic again, or whatever will lead into the next episode and companion.

Random Writing Tips – Using common words for weird things

Over a year ago, I wrote a post on why writers should Chill on the weird words.  The basic idea, is if you jump right into a story and have characters drinking regilum and eating roasted glarthen all in celebration of Clathenmas Eve, you’ll end up with a lot of readers who are more confused than engrossed in the story.  Using weird words isn’t bad, it’s pretty standard in fantasy and science fiction after all, but if you use too many of them too quickly, you run the risk of the readers not knowing what is going on in the story, which is generally a bad thing.  You can use glossaries so you don’t have characters explaining the meaning of words they should likely already know, but there is a difference between learning a few weird words and learning a weird language.  Like most things in writing and life, there are balances that need to be found.

Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day and realized you can have the opposite issue: using common words for weird things.  I was able to think of an example, but it wasn’t that great of an example.  So instead, I came up with this extreme, hypothetical example to show what I mean.

Imagine a book where in Chapter 1 we’re introduced to Queen Whoever.  You would naturally assume that Whoever was the ruler of some kingdom.  But in Chapter 2, the Queen receives an order from some Emperor.  Well, maybe this empire conquered the kingdom, and in return for bending the knee the royal family was allowed to remain in charge of this area of the empire.  Then in Chapter 3 we learn that Queen is just the title of the head of the Emperor’s Dragon Guard.  Okay, so maybe this conquered kingdom was known for their dragon riders, and the royal bloodline was allowed to remain as the head.  But in Chapter 4 we learn anyone can work their way up through the ranks of the Dragon Guard to become Queen.  At this point we wonder why didn’t the author come up with some other word, maybe Clethex or something, to be the title for the head of the Dragon Guard in honor of Clethex the Brave, the first Dragon Rider. 

Sometimes, misleading terms can be used to set up a joke, or as a red herring, or whatever.  Like, if you’re writing a post-apocalypse story, I’m sure there will be plenty of current terms and slang that will have their meanings warp in their world.  Like, maybe they use netflix to mean die, because they found something about “Netflix and chill,” and they know that after you die, your body grows cold.  That may seem convoluted, but explain how “Netflix and chill” came about.  In other types of stories, if you use a common word for something weird, the readers will either be confused wondering what they’re missing, or waiting for a punchline.  And if you don’t deliver on either, it can leave a bad taste. 

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing in these dark times

I recently had an idea for a story.  Some 10,000 years from now, humanity is on the verge of extinction – for reasons – and they use all of their knowledge and the last of their resources to build a time machine to send someone back to tell us we need to change the path we’re on.  Not a terribly original idea – I think I’ve already written four or five stories like that – but the way this person arrives in our time was kinda new. 

I started thinking about it, and quickly realized that there will be a lot of history between now and then.  They’re not going to come back and just say, “To change your path you need to support this politician’s bill,” or whatever.  They might show up and be confused that the Roman Empire isn’t still around, or be like, “Oh, I guess this is before Nigeria took over the world.”

So what future message would they give to help us?  I played around with this for a while, and that was when I ran into an issue.  Maybe ten or so years ago, just the message, “The path you are on leads to our extinction,” would probably bring enough of us around to try to make the world a better place.  But now, it seems the more likely result would be, “How dare you say we are on the wrong path!” Do you really think the people that willingly voted for a convicted felon would heed warnings? 

Working through how this person would arrive and what message they could give us was fun; it was the joy of creation we get when we write.  But that joy was tainted by the bitter reality we currently find ourselves in.  And I almost threw this idea on the “Interesting idea, but not worth spending time writing it” pile, but the idea didn’t want to give up that easily.  Originally, I figured the original story would have to be a novella, at least.  But if I can figure out how to get it down to a short story, I’ll put it on the list of stories I want to write over the next few years as part of my Sisyphean task of rolling our reality towards a better world.  It is, as they say, “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” and sometimes, those candles take the form of stories.