From: nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines)
Subject: Re: different kind of universe
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 17:20:15 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
	<ERICH.92Apr14165343@lighthouse.caltech.edu>
Distribution: rec
Originator: nickh@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <ERICH.92Apr14165343@lighthouse.caltech.edu> erich@lighthouse.caltech.edu (Erich Schneider) writes:

   In article <NICKH.92Apr14182131@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU> nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes:

      [a description of a place I've been writing about]

   Warning: mild criticism ahead

Thanks for responding.

   [...]

   She went on to make a statement that I agree with: that setting should
   flow from the story you're trying to tell, or more generally, what
   you're trying to talk about with the story.

I would most whole-heartedly agree with this.

   So why not go ahead and tell us what your stories are _about_?

Well, I was cross-posting (or trying to cross-post) with the intention
of posting further in this group about some of the actual stories I've
written in it. Here goes:

The first story I wrote in it was an ultra-short called `Falling'
which was `about' the narrator waking up from a falling dream. It
turns out he's a traveller in this universe. It's more of a scene than
a story, and came into my mind fully-formed one night when I couldn't
sleep. Filled a few lines in TTBA (the Cambridge SF society magazine),
but didn't deserve it. Got some interesting ideas from David Brin when
he read it. The rest of the ideas about the universe came out of my
working out `where' the story (and the others that followed) was
happening.

The next story I wrote in this place is `Learning to Fly,' and is
`about' someone training for (and taking part in) ornithopter races.
It's actually about the strange (almost Zen) state of total physical
concentration beyond exhaustion, and about the values and dangers of
mentor-apprentice relationships, and about the thrill of competition.
It reached 8000 words, but never got finished (although I know how it
must finish) because some of the characters had holes in them I could
fly an ornithopter through. One day I'll patch it.

The third story is `about' a pilgrim caught in a storm and deposited
on a heretical disk. I won't tell you how it ends. It's `actually'
about religious experience, devotion, risk-taking, and the nature of
heresy (I guess one thing I'm `saying' is that the heretics of modern
Western culture are the openly religious people). No title. About 5000
words. Needs a lot of polishing before anyone else sees it.

The fourth is `about' the transposition of Earth into this Universe.
Actually it's set some decades after this event, which is revealed as
the story progresses.  I'm still working on it. It demands
novel-length, unless I just write scenes as shorts, and I don't have
time to give to it. I guess I've got 10k words now, if I add all the
bits together, and outlines of the rest. My character work is a lot
better than it was, but still needs work---a lot of my dialogue is
still very flakey. I know perfectly well that this will never see the
light of day, but that's not why I'm writing it. Or why I write
anything else, for that matter.

I have a lot of other bits and pieces---short-shorts, character
sketches, descriptive pieces, plot outlines, dialogue ideas---but
these are the only `finished' (HAHAHAHAHA) things I've done there.

Nick Haines nickh@cs.cmu.edu