I'm in typical "so much to do, running late" flail mode, so just for fun, here's something I've been playing with for a while, my laws of TV World. These mostly apply to American television, though I have noticed some of these popping up in British shows, as well. Enjoy!

1) Television homes and apartments don't lock from the inside, leaving television characters with no way to keep out annoying, wacky neighbors or nosy family members who barge in all the time. Even if a character lives in a crummy New York apartment (or a "TV crummy" apartment that's supposed to be bad but that's huge and fabulous even for non-New York standards) and has to go through an elaborate ritual of unlocking a dozen different locks to get through the front door, once she's inside the apartment, the door stays unlocked so that her wacky neighbor across the hall can wander in and out. I'm not sure how TV characters avoid being killed in their beds.

2) Television characters hang out around the house -- reading e-mail, watching TV, doing housework -- in their underwear, and they "forget" they're just in their underwear when someone knocks or rings the doorbell. However, this rule is fairly specific and applies primarily to two particular groups:
-- Attractive women who wear cute, matching lingerie sets involving pushup bras. They must be perfectly groomed, with a full Brazilian bikini wax, no leg or underarm stubble, and a full makeup job.
-- Unattractive men with hairy bodies and pot bellies or comically skinny men, wearing baggy boxer shorts and possibly a dirty wife-beater tank top.
In certain circumstances, attractive men might be seen in their underwear, but unattractive women in ugly (comfortable) underwear are not to be seen.

3) Unlike hotel and motel room room doors in the real world that in many places are required by law to automatically lock when they close, hotel and motel doors in the TV world can be easily opened from the outside with no key and with no juggling of the little plastic key card thingy. If two people traveling together have separate rooms, they can easily wander into each other's rooms just by turning the doorknob/handle.

4) Although television homes don't lock from the inside when a character is home (see rule 1), the doors will lock automatically from the inside if a character in her underwear (see rule 2) or less steps outside. Maybe she should wait for the wacky neighbor to come along and let her in, since the door is never locked to the wacky neighbor (see rule 1).

5) Even though, in the real world, most of the time it's the women who tend to be cold (menopause aside) and the men who tend to be hot (at least, according to all the office thermostat wars I've been through), in the TV world, the men usually wear leather jackets or long, flowing coats while the women with them wear skimpy, sleeveless tops.

6) Even though in the real world, most young people are nearsighted rather than farsighted, and therefore need glasses to see at a distance instead of for reading, most TV characters who wear glasses only put them on when they're reading.

7) Even if a TV character does actually need glasses all the time to get around and not just for reading, in a really intense action or romantic situation, he can get around just fine without glasses (and without bumping into things).

8) Women on television have sex while wearing a bra. The bra is usually black, but when the woman dresses to leave and puts on a white shirt, the black bra doesn't show through the white shirt, even when the woman is very fair-skinned. Almost all TV world sexy bras are black, no matter what color the outer garment is, or how sheer it is.

9) People in television small towns speak with southern accents, no matter where the small town is located. The accent gets heavier the more backwards the town is supposed to be. The town may be in far northern Minnesota, above the Arctic Circle in Alaska or the Vermont mountains, but if they're inbred yokels, they'll talk like Arkansas rednecks.

10) Television people develop southern accents when they grow old, even if they aren't actually from the south. This is especially true in science fiction series when the characters age prematurely and rapidly due to some freaky disease or space anomaly, even if the characters normally don't have a southern accent. The heavier the bad old-age makeup is, the heavier the accent.

11) There are three Christian denominations in television religion: Catholic, generic Protestant, and crackpot fundamentalist. The only way to tell them apart is that the crackpot fundamentalist minister or faithful member will have a southern accent. Otherwise, their churches, services and doctrines are more or less the same, and the ministers all wear clerical collars. "Ethnic" Catholics (Italian, Hispanic, Irish, Polish, etc.) are the main exception, with a touch of the culture added to the Catholicism for a sense of Old World mysticism, usually used to show how out of step they are with the modern world, either for sinister or humorous purposes. All clergy or deeply religious people are the most likely suspects of any murder, which is usually committed for judgmental reasons.

12) On television, "science" is an all-around skill. The person who's good with computers can also throw together chemistry formulas, improvise electrical circuits, analyze rocks, run genetic tests, identify dinosaurs from fossil fragments and spot the rare plant whose sap is the antidote to the poison he just identified through spectral analysis. The more specialized and advanced the "science" character's studies are in one area, the more other sciency things the character will be able to do. PhD in physics? Yeah, that DNA sequence will be a piece of cake, right after he's finished doing that autopsy and hacking into the Pentagon.

13) Television world medicine is a lot like TV science -- if you've trained in one area, you can do all of it. Say you specialized in cardiology. That means you can also do brain surgery, plastic surgery and gene therapy. (I'll give them a pass on all doctors being able to deliver babies because med students do all have to do an OB rotation that involves delivering babies.) TV world medicine also has a fast track that allows people to head hospital departments or be the chief medical officer on a military base (or space station) at an age at which they'd still be in medical school or at most still be a resident in the real world. TV doctors also don't necessarily have to have any related training or experience to hold these positions. If you're super-bright, you may get to be a chief medical officer at a military outpost, even if you have no experience in field surgery or working in combat conditions. You can be put in charge of an entire hospital within a couple of years of finishing your residency. Being really smart is all that matters in television medicine. Training and experience are irrelevant.

14) If you're a regular in a TV world coffee shop, bar, or restaurant, you never have to pay for your food or drinks. You just wander in, banter with the owner while eating or drinking, then wander out (or, often, rush out) without money ever changing hands.

15) In TV world, attractive single people are all over the place. A single person can't walk down the street without bumping into one. In fact, if an attractive single person does bump into someone, probably spilling something all over the other person, that person will quite likely be an attractive single person of the opposite sex. New bosses and new employees of any single main character are also likely to be attractive, single members of the opposite sex. Ditto neighbors. In fact, it's practically newsworthy if a single character runs into someone who's unattractive or unavailable. A television single woman never trips on the sidewalk and falls into the arms of someone who reminds her of her grandfather (and if she does, he has an attractive, single grandson he wants to introduce her to). It's always a hot, single guy. If a television single woman runs out into the street and is almost hit by a taxi, the taxi driver will be an attractive, single, available man, as will his passenger and several of the bystanders who rush to help. Exception: the attractive person of the opposite sex might be temporarily unavailable if the angst of the forbidden fruit is part of the plot, but the person will eventually become available.

How much do I love Pushing Daisies right now? Yesterday was one of those days that wasn't actively bad, but it was kind of the culmination of a lot of little annoying things from the whole week, where even the good news had a down side and the bad stuff was entirely justified. Then I got home from choir practice and it was cool enough for my first hot cocoa of the season, I curled up with my cocoa to watch Pushing Daisies, and there was this one part that was so funny I not only laughed out loud but practically had to pause the tape to get it out of my system before I could go on with the show. Because of that, the day ended on an up note.

I think part of the annoyance of the day was realizing that a lot of the problems were at least indirectly my own fault. Yes, there were situations caused by decisions other people made, but I know I haven't maximized my own efforts in the areas where I do have control. I had yet another one of those wake-up calls (yeah, I seem to get about one a month. I guess I keep hitting the snooze button on my life wake-up calls) from Seth Godin's blog about luck. Paraphrasing, he pretty much said that while there are some people who genuinely do luck out, like lottery winners, for the most part, what looks like luck is really effort. Then he gave his "diet plan" for making yourself lucky, which included taking 120 minutes a day away from unproductive things and using that time to exercise, stay in contact with people, volunteer, read and study in your field, etc. Meanwhile, devote one weekend day a week to spending time with people you love and don't spend money on unnecessary things, instead saving it. There's a very good chance that at the end of a year doing that, you'll look a lot "luckier." You'll be healthier, saner, better informed, better off financially and better connected, and that will probably put you in a position to take advantage of more opportunities.

That definitely applies in the writing world. Yes, there is a lot of luck involved. It's all about the right manuscript landing on the right editor's desk at the right time. A book may sell primarily because an editor picks it up right after her boss tells her they need to find just that kind of book, and the same manuscript (or even a better one) may not have sold a week earlier or a week later (after the editor bought something else to fill that niche). But still, in order to have that stroke of luck, the author had to actually write the book and write it well enough to make it worthy of being published. The author had to do enough market research to find either the editor who might possibly be into that sort of thing or the agent who would know that the editor would be into that sort of thing. And then the author will have to take advantage of that stroke of luck in selling the book to deal with the editor in such a way that she'll want to keep working with her and to promote the book in such a way that it sells well enough to justify the editor's decision in purchasing it. There's a lot of effort that goes into a "lucky" break.

I know I can find a spare 120 minutes in my day. The trick is that when I record how I spend my time, it changes the way I spend my time, so the wasted time disappears. Still, I have a good idea of how I'm spending that time when I'm not recording it. I know I need to spend the bulk of any additional time I carve out actually writing. I also know I need to be better about staying connected and not falling into the cave of book world while I neglect my friends, family and business connections. The cave time wouldn't be quite so bad if I really did spend all that time on the book, but I have a nasty habit of using the fact that I'm working on a book as an excuse not to do anything else when I'm not actually spending all that time writing. Staying on top of the industry is good for helping create luck because getting a sense for editor/agent likes and dislikes and potential or dying trends increases your chances of getting the right book on the right desk at the right time. Studying the craft of writing is important, as is reading widely, both in your own genre and in other genres.

But changing my life (again) will have to wait until next week because this weekend is the Browncoat Ball, and I have a lot of preparing to do.

Continuing with the discussion of archetypes from the Hero's Journey ...

This week, our archetype is the Shadow. This is typically, but not always, the villain (not all villains are really Shadows, while not all Shadows are villains). The shadow represents the darkness within the hero, personified into another character, and because the Shadow is largely made up of the "bad" parts of the hero, he's a worthy opponent for the hero and someone it's very difficult for the hero to beat, which means maximum conflict. Facing the worst aspects of himself can ultimately bring out the best in the hero.

I suppose you could think of this archetype as the inverse of the Mentor. If the Mentor is who the hero could become if he fulfills his potential, the Shadow is who he could become if he fails and gives into the worst parts of himself. Voldemort is set up as a Shadow of Harry Potter. Both have similar childhoods, with their families gone and them being unaware of their magical powers. But they react in very different ways. Voldemort sets out to destroy the people he sees as inferior, to make sure that he's never under anyone else's control, while Harry tries to create a community and forms a new kind of family to replace the birth family he lost. Part of the tragedy of the story is the fact that Voldemort could have taken Harry's approach and he'd have had a much happier life (as would everyone else, subsequently).

Quite often, the hero and villain are after the same goal, or at least different sides of the same goal (the detective wants the truth, while the murderer wants to hide the truth). A Shadow villain will be using the traits the hero won't let himself tap into, which could give him an advantage. Indiana Jones and Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark were both after the Ark and for a lot of the same reasons. Both had a strong intellectual curiosity and reverence for artifacts from the past. But Belloq let the artifact itself become an obsession, he was willing to sell out to the Nazis to get the support to find it, and he wanted to use its power for himself. Indy had the potential to become obsessed, but he managed to focus on the idea of keeping the Ark safe, and he had more of a struggle because he was more or less on his own instead of supported by the entire Nazi military machine. Because he didn't want the power for himself, he was spared.

The Shadow can also be an institution instead of an individual. We didn't have a single, overall villain in the Firefly universe, just the faceless bureaucracy of the Alliance. But there were times when the way Mal tried to run his ship came dangerously close to being just like the Alliance he was trying to avoid. He thought he knew best and wanted everyone to just do as he said without asking questions. He did usually cave on issues where he was in the wrong because he was ultimately a good guy, but the Alliance represented a lot of Mal's negative qualities that often threatened to tear his crew apart.

This archetype is one that can fit with all the other archetypes at various points in the story, or in various kinds of stories. There can be a dark Mentor who is a Shadow figure -- often seen in tragedies where the Hero is led down the wrong path. The Shadow may sometimes play Threshold Guardian. Shadows are quite often Shapeshifters, as seen with the femme fatales who set up the hero to take the fall or in more literal shapeshifting, such as seen in vampire or werewolf stories. The Hero himself can even be a Shadow, in moments where he's acting on his worst impulses or in situations where he has a split personality. This becomes quite literal with stories like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or with Angel and Angelus in the Buffy universe.

While the Shadow is usually an enemy, this character can sometimes be more of an antagonist, someone who is on the hero's side and even with a common goal, but perhaps with a different plan for getting it, so that he ends up hindering the hero. We may see that in quest stories, where a large party starts out, then ends up splitting because they have different ideas of what to do. The fates of the various factions demonstrate the merits of the qualities they represent.

In my Star Wars examples, Darth Vader is very much a Shadow of Luke Skywalker, given that he's Luke's father. In the original movies, we actually don't see a lot of Luke's negative traits in Darth Vader. Luke is rash and impulsive, and he's more emotionally involved in the fight than might be considered good. He takes it personally instead of looking at the big picture. The Darth Vader we see in those movies is calm, cold and rational, though his pursuit of his son does get into the taking it personally while ignoring the big picture realm. But in the prequels we see that Anakin Skywalker's downfall comes mostly because of those same negative traits we see in Luke. Luke very much has the potential to become like Darth Vader if he gives in to his worst impulses. Meanwhile, we see in the prequels that Anakin is pulled between Mentor Obi-Wan and Shadow Palpatine. Palpatine shares and encourages Anakin's sense that he's somehow special and doesn't have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

Psychologically, the Shadow represents the psychoses, hidden fears and bad habits that can destroy us. While the Threshold Guardian represents that aspects of a person that hold him back and keep him from being successful, the Shadow goes a step further and represents the aspects that can bring about his destruction. By defeating the monsters within in the form of the external monster, the hero, in a sense, heals himself.

The thing to remember about these Shadow characters is that they are characters. They shouldn't just be a bunch of evil traits. The danger of the Shadow is that what he represents can be very appealing, charismatic and attractive. He may offer the easy way out or even sound like he's got a better, more rational plan. Another characterization danger is that the Shadow will be more compelling than the Hero. To avoid that, look at those dark traits in the Shadow and find ways to use them in the Hero to give him some depth and shading. A Hero can make bad decisions and act for the wrong reasons without being evil, and having to figure out where to draw the line makes for a more interesting character and story.

I'm coming to the end of this series, just one more archetype and then a post to tie it all together. So now's the time to raise any questions about other writing topics you'd like me to address.

I should know better than to even pretend to be ambitious about getting work done on the Monday after a convention. I spent most of the afternoon trying to stay awake while brainstorming a sequence I needed to write -- with the conclusion of the brainstorming being that I didn't need that sequence at all. I suppose it's better to spend time thinking about something than to spend time writing something you don't need. I guess realizing I didn't need to write it means I'm less behind than I thought I was, so I came out ahead on the day's "work." But that was all the work I got done yesterday. Today I need to do some writing, and I absolutely must deal with some real-world things, including my ongoing battle with AT&T, which somehow seems to have forgotten that I cancelled my long-distance "plan" with them because they're still billing me for it. There are times when having a killer robot sidekick (a la Cameron on The Sarah Connor Chronicles) would come in handy. I just imagined her on the phone with the AT&T Customer Disservice Department and went to my happy place.

Random notes of things that came up in FenCon panels (I didn't take notes, so we're going by my fuzzy memory):

We really need an Internet-generation Emily Post to write a definitive etiquette guide for spoilers, including how long the "safe" period with books and movies should be. Not everyone sees movies or reads books at the same time, but how long must people avoid talking about things that interest them in order to avoid spilling spoilers? Twenty years is probably too long. Opening weekend is way too soon.

In the Whedonverse panel, we were asked who our favorite character out of all the series was, and I was surprised that someone else had mine and for the same reasons, because I've often felt alone about that. Both Rachel Caine and I love Wesley for the way they managed to grow the character from buffoon to badass and make it totally believable. I also came to the conclusion that I will have to give Dollhouse a shot, even though the concept doesn't really enthrall me, since I realized that I haven't really been enthralled about any of his concepts, but ended up loving the shows. I wasn't planning to watch Buffy because I don't care about vampires and wasn't into the idea of teen angst shows, but I didn't change the channel fast enough when the pilot came on and got hooked. I didn't think I'd like Angel, since it was a spinoff involving a character I had found boring and, again, vampires. But the pilot came on when I was in a hotel on a business trip, so I watched and I ended up liking that series better than Buffy. I wasn't turned off by the concept of Firefly, just more in a big "huh?" because I hadn't heard much about it, but watched out of a sense of duty and loved it best of all. So now my big "really?" reaction to the concept of Dollhouse probably means I'll fall in mad, passionate love with it.

On the House panel, I was the real oddball for picking "The Mistake" as my favorite episode. I thought it was an excellent example of the fact that House can show his human side while still being very much House and without going off the deep end into pointless meanness or woobification (I kind of liked the House who was a jerk just because that was his personality, so I'm a little bugged by the trend toward showing him as some kind of tortured soul who might be a jerk because of his painful childhood and because his mean old friends don't cater to his every whim). And it showed that a character can be mysterious by, you know, just not telling stuff instead of wafting around being "mysterious."

But there was something said with Doris Egan during the opening ceremonies (and that also came up on the panel) that brought up an interesting dilemma. Vagueing it up to avoid spoilers because I don't know where other countries are in getting the series, but it referred to the death of a character who'd become popular. Someone asked Doris why they had to kill that character (and why not kill the boring one instead), and she said they killed that character because people loved her. I get that a character death has no impact if people don't care about that character, and that killing an unpopular character or a character people don't care about means the death is meaningless (it sort of ruins the tragic moment if the audience is dancing for joy). But then that means if you kill off the character people care about the most, you run the risk of being left with the characters people don't care about. I guess the ideal is to have all your characters be cared about, but when you've got a supporting/recurring character who's really catching on with the audience and one the audience generally finds utterly boring, I'm not sure that killing the popular one and leaving the boring one is such a wise move. Yeah, the immediate death has a real impact, but it makes the series from that point on somewhat less entertaining.

But then no one's paying me to write for TV, so what do I know?

On the character creation panel, other panelists were talking about the challenges of making dark or despicable characters sympathetic. I said I had the opposite problem, making nice characters interesting. And I think that's actually more difficult, especially these days when there seems to be a common belief that dark automatically=good. I didn't have an answer at the time for how to make nice characters interesting, but I think a lot if it has to do with the fact that "nice" doesn't have to mean "perfect." Even nice, good, people who are not morally ambiguous can make mistakes, have bad days and struggle. Nice people can panic, lose their temper or snap at people. They can even make bad decisions. And all without dipping their toes into real darkness.

I don't really have anything from the CS Lewis panel other than that I reread The Silver Chair over the weekend, for the first time in ages, and I was reminded of the many reasons that's my favorite of the series, plus I think I really got the spiritual message of it for the first time, and now I like it even more.

Now time for lunch, the post office, then girding my loins and finding my inner Terminator to deal with AT&T.

I've survived another convention, and I think that's my last public "author" event of the year. Now I go back to being entirely a "writer." The convention was great, I had fun, got to see old friends and make new friends, I learned stuff and had enough of a steady flow of people at the autographing that I never got the chance to feel sad and pathetic. Now I'm utterly exhausted, to the point that the thought of going to the post office makes me whimper. I may hold off until tomorrow. It's a slightly rainy day, which is good for writing, so I may make a pot of tea and settle back to work this afternoon.

I didn't have a really good panel giggle fit at this convention. I had two close calls, but nothing quite in the tears running down my face, needing CPR range. One was in the Whedonverse panel, but I don't remember what it was about. The other was in the spoilers panel, courtesy of A. Lee Martinez (author of the absolutely brilliant The Automatic Detective). Alex is responsible for a lot of my con suite giggle attacks, but I think this may be the first time he's really set me off in a panel. We had a bit of a digression after he asked if it was a spoiler for the Star Wars prequels that Anakin becomes Darth Vader. I said no because those movies are built around the idea that you know his ultimate fate, and there are a lot of little hints that things aren't going to go well with him. You're more likely to notice all the foreshadowing if you have seen the original movies, but there's still plenty of "dum Dum DUM!" level "this is potentially ominous!" meta subtext going on. That then reminded me of an article I'd read that morning about how the Clone Wars movie had pretty much tanked, and about what they were trying to do with the TV series. One of the TV series executives was talking about how they wanted to show that before he became Darth Vader, Anakin was this heroic, fun guy. I said that the fact that we're spoiled about him becoming Darth Vader makes it really hard for us to ever see him as a heroic, fun guy. There's always going to be that sense of foreboding about him, so if they wanted a fun romp of an adventure in the Star Wars universe, he's probably the wrong person to build it around. Then Alex went off on a riff about a "Young Adolf" cartoon series about Hitler in his younger days, that sure he grew up to be a mass-murdering megalomaniac, but he was a fun, heroic guy in his teens, so kids will enjoy watching his adventures. And that set off the giggles, followed by a deeply uncomfortable feeling as I realized that it wasn't really hyperbole. Darth Vader did destroy entire planets and systematically wiped out specific groups of people based on their belief system and culture. So, yeah, they're trying to make the equivalent of "Young Adolf." Something tells me that someone at Skywalker Ranch didn't exactly think this through.

But now I'm running out of words and I need to get to work, so I'll resort to pictures.

One of my friends made an absolutely brilliant (and tasty) TARDIS cake for the con suite, complete with cute little Adipose guests:



And then there was this rather clever costume that totally cracked me up. I guess you could call him MacTrooper:

I'm in flailing about mode as I try to keep track of everything I need to do to get ready for this convention. I'm staying at home and commuting, so I don't really have to pack, but I'll be coming home late at night and leaving again in the morning (though not terribly early), so I'm trying to get things for each day set out and ready to go now.

Yesterday I figured out what to wear (I think. Until I change my mind). That made me painfully aware of how desperately I need to clean out my closet. I even started to falsely accuse Stan the 80s Bachelor Airline Pilot Ghost of being Stan the 80s Bachelor Airline Pilot Cross-Dressing Ghost because Stan trying on my clothes was the only way to explain why I couldn't find things. And then I discovered that the missing items had all fallen prey to the Chair Of Doom. That's the spot in my bedroom where clothes are held prisoner, waiting to either be re-folded, re-hung or taken to the dry cleaners. When I need to refresh my wardrobe, I don't need to go shopping. I can just clear out the Chair of Doom and I'll suddenly have several new items I haven't seen in ages. In fact, I sometimes think that clothes either mate or mutate while piled on the Chair of Doom, because I keep finding things I don't remember owning.

It will probably be good for me to be away from the computer for a few days because somehow I've been sitting in a bad position (yes, I even manage to fail at sitting) and have developed a muscle knot in one shoulder from having it hunched up or tensed too much. Even stretching it out at ballet last night didn't help, and the teacher kept pointing out that every time I raised that arm, I was also hunching up the shoulder. Maybe having to sit like a normal person and not at the computer all day will help.

I need to set the VCR for TV stuff I'll miss, but I think I may be a bad science fiction fan and skip Sanctuary. There's just something about the promos that's putting me off, and it will be opposite Life. I don't want to add to the list of shows I have to tape every week. I figure that it's on the Sci Fi Channel, so if I hear from reliable sources that it's brilliant, they'll either repeat it frequently and do marathons, or it will be readily available online.

Now to go finish attempting to get my life together.

I had a wee bit of excitement last night, though I guess it would only be considered exciting if your life is truly sad and pathetic. Which means for me it was at least mildly exciting. We had a big, neighborhood-wide blackout! I'd come home after choir practice and a post-practice birthday party and was curled up on the sofa, watching my tape of Pushing Daisies, when there was this loud click type noise, and everything went dark.

I hadn't realized just how dark it can get because my house is never truly dark. There's a lamppost on the sidewalk that runs by my house that shines into my bedroom and front living room windows, and my house backs up to an intersection with a major street, so there are the street lamps there. Once my eyes are used to the dark, I can easily walk through my house at night without turning on a light. But this was utterly, completely dark.

Fortunately, I still had my Ike preparations in place, so I had a flashlight on the coffee table that I got in one grope. Then I went outside to get a sense of the situation. The utter darkness was a good sign that it wasn't just me (and I did pay my electricity bill last month). It seemed to be pretty widespread. There were no lights at any of my neighbors' houses, and all the lights on the outside of the garages were out, as were the street lights and even the traffic signals. I went back inside and up to my balcony so I could see over the wall that separates our yard from the street, and the whole neighborhood, from what I could see, was totally dark. I went back outside, mostly because usually in situations like that, the neighbors all come pouring out to see what's going on, and then we all chat and it becomes a big community bonding experience. I may be a dork, but that's the big fun of blackouts. You're supposed to stand around with your neighbors, chatting about what you were doing when the lights went out and speculating on what happened. But the neighbors didn't come out, possibly because it was already pretty late and a lot of them may have been in bed and weren't even aware the power was out. Then I saw flashing blue and red lights coming from the intersection, so I went inside and back upstairs to watch a police officer putting out flares to create a four-way stop. I figured that if the police were taking measures like that, we might be in for a long haul, so I lit the candles in my living room to create a little ambient light and read by flashlight for a while. I think the lights may have been out for just under an hour, so it's not like it was that big a deal, but I think I revert to childhood in those situations, where it turned out to be fun when you had to light candles and resort to non-electronic means of amusement.

I also figured out why characters on TV shows do that thing where they carry their flashlights around shoulder level and hold them that funny way. You really do get a better placement of the light that way. I didn't even realize I was doing it at first, then when I did, I couldn't resist doing a sweep of my house that way (again, a reversion to childhood blackout fun). I am happy to report that I found no monsters or fugitives, and Stan the 80s Bachelor Airline Pilot Ghost made no appearance.

For those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area or interested in coming to the area this weekend, I'll be at FenCon. Here's an overview of my schedule:

Friday 4:00 PM
Caution: Contents may spoil (I'm moderating)
Description: "OMG, did you see 'Fringe' last night!?!?!?!" How long do we have to wait before we can speak openly about a TV show or book details? Don't make any more enemies than you have to - come to this panel to learn proper spoiler etiquette! (rosebud was the sleigh).

Friday 5:00 PM
C. S. Lewis (I'm moderating)
Description: From "Narnia" to "The Silent Planet", panelists will discuss C. S. Lewis and his ideas and impact.

Friday 6:00 PM
Is There A Dr. in the "House"?
Description: Gregory House is in as pros and fans discuss the hit medical drama. Who knew that complex medical cases could be this much fun? (This panel includes House writer/producer Doris Egan. I will try not to get nasty about how badly the show had gone downhill lately, and I will resist the urge to take her hostage and demand the removal of the new fellows, or even just that Thirteen chick.)

Saturday 11:00 AM
Character Creation
Description: "So there's this Troll, and he meets this guy, see?..." Creating believeable characters is tough. Writers have to do this well, and this group will discuss how they approach this challenge and create characters their readers will believe.

Saturday 1:00 PM
Living on TARDIS Time (I'm moderating)
Description: The Doctor is in! No, not House, the other one. With "Dr. Who" being more popular than ever, we wanted to have a big, all out Who panel where everybody could join in! (There is a significant chance of one of my patented panel giggle fits during this panel, fair warning!)

Saturday at 2 I'm doing a reading. I'm not sure yet what I'll read. I guess it depends on the audience and how much they've heard me do in the past.

Then Saturday at 3 I'm doing an autographing, otherwise known as sitting behind a table and looking pathetic for an hour.

Sunday at 11 a.m. I'm doing my Mythology and Psychology of Characterization workshop. This is a real workshop with handouts and everything, and incorporates a lot of the archetype stuff I've discussed here. There is limited space in this room.

Sunday noon
Whedonverse
Description: All things Joss! Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible, you name it, we got it!

So, that's what I'll be doing this weekend! There's lots of other stuff that doesn't include me, like demos, other panels, some stellar guests of honor, space science stuff, music, costumes, etc., etc. And, for once, I may not have a conflict with the big radio play auditions, rehearsal or performance, so I may do that. And I'll spend a lot of time hanging out in the con suite. For more info on the con, visit http://www.fencon.org.

Now I just have to get ready and figure out what to wear.

Thanks for all the feedback on spoilers. Now I have some good topics for discussion for my panel this weekend.

As in much of the rest of my life, when it comes to spoilers, I guess you could say I'm a moderate. I don't frantically avoid all information, but I also don't seek it out. I'll look at officially released stuff like the TV Guide listings, interviews with people involved with the show and the "coming next week" promos, but I usually don't go to spoiler sites. Generally, I guess you could say that I like knowing what could happen as opposed to what will happen. I like just enough little bits of info to give my imagination something to play with but not enough to actually know for sure what will happen. Unfortunately, the people doing promo don't always grasp the concept, as often the major twist or surprise in an episode is in the TV Guide listing. Or there's the Sci Fi Channel (whose marketing division is a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes) that puts the major spoiler in the promo. "You won't believe what happens in the last five minutes! And we're so sure you won't believe that we're showing it to you RIGHT NOW!" The first couple of times, I assumed that the big surprise they showed us in the promos was a red herring and that there would be another, bigger twist. But no. They really did put the big, shocking moment for the episode, the part that was supposed to be a major surprise, in the promos.

I think my major reason for avoiding spoilers is that I like surprises. As a kid, I never searched the house for hidden Christmas presents or shook packages to figure out what they were. I didn't want to know. I'm the same way with entertainment. I love that big moment of surprise with new revelations or plot twists. One of the occupational hazards of writing is that you can start to see patterns in the way others write, and it gets harder and harder to be surprised. The more spoiler information I have up front, the more likely I am to be able to piece together precisely what will happen. And then I start running into "favorite book made into a movie" syndrome, where I have such a clear mental movie that I'm bound to be disappointed in the reality, even if it turns out to be well done, just because it's different than I imagined, and I have to get used to the difference.

I do re-watch and re-read things (I even re-read mystery novels), so I'm capable of enjoying the journey as well as the destination. But there's just one first time to experience something, one time for it to be fresh and surprising, and I don't want to waste that experience by cheating ahead of time. I think the less spoiled I am in the first go-round, the more likely I am to be able to enjoy something repeatedly. Then the first time is for surprises, and I can dig into the layers and details on subsequent times.

I'm more of a stickler on movies and TV than on books because books are more "journey" and visual media are more "destination" for me. There's also the visualization aspect -- in books, even if I've already imagined it before reading it, when I get to actually reading it, I'm still imagining it, so there's less of a disconnect. There's also more immediacy in a TV show or movie. For big, ongoing series with lots of plot twists, I will avoid book spoilers, but then, it's generally a lot easier to avoid book spoilers unless it's something huge like Harry Potter, simply because book talk isn't so pervasive.

I had one particular experience that made me spoiler-averse. I was living in Germany when The Empire Strikes Back came out, and that meant that the already long three-year wait for the Star Wars sequel was even longer for me because we didn't get the movie until November. It was nearly impossible to avoid spoilers, since the soundtrack album and novelization were in wide release, and plenty of kids had moved from the States during the summer, so a lot of my classmates had already seen it by the time we got it. They'd run a condensed version of the novelization in one of my mom's magazines (yeah, a magazine in the Ladies Home Journal genre ran the novelization from a Star Wars movie), so I knew the plot. I had the soundtrack album, so I'd pretty much memorized the music and had seen all the pictures in the album fold-out. Then one of my friends had an extra copy of the novelization that she sold me, and I'd practically memorized the book.

Then I finally saw the movie on its first showing in our area. And I was terribly disappointed. It felt flat to me. I knew all the lines, so I was conscious of the fact that it was actors speaking lines. My brain has an unlimited special effects budget, so the effects on the screen were cheesy compared to the way I'd pictured things, and there were no surprises. It wasn't until they did the special edition re-release and I went with some friends from work that I realized that this was actually a truly awesome movie and probably the best movie of the entire series. It took a nearly twenty-year gap to be able to appreciate what was on the screen for what it was.

And, thus, I learned to avoid spoilers.

My spoiler policy here is that I try to avoid giving away major plot twists for books and movies, since there's no set time to read/see them. If something is so pervasive that anyone who cared much would have already read/seen it, then I feel safer using that. That's why Star Wars makes such a good example. If I am going to spoil, I will warn. For TV series, I'm aware that I have a global readership and not everyone sees things at the same time. I try to avoid talking in specifics about the current season. I generally try to stick to shows that have been out on DVD for a while as examples, and I try to remember to warn even then about which season I'm referring to.

I kind of figure that if you didn't watch something when it was on the air, if you're watching on DVD after the series ends, you're on your own when it comes to the Internet, and it's up to you when you're in conversations to make it clear you haven't seen the whole series. I remember talking to someone once at a convention who said he was a huge fan of Buffy and Angel, and since both series had been off the air for years, I assumed that meant he'd actually seen all of both series, so I proceeded to discuss the whole thing, only to have him then complain that I'd spoiled the last couple of seasons of both series, as he was watching them on DVD and hadn't finished. So, if you're catching up on something older, it's a good idea to make that clear from the start. Declare yourself a huge fan of something that's finished, and people will assume you know how it ends. On the flip side, if you're talking to someone who says they don't get cable, so they can only follow something like Battlestar Galactica as it's released on DVD, that means you shouldn't immediately start talking about all the major plot twists in the currently airing season, as I saw happen at a recent convention.

I do have a few exceptions to my spoiler aversion. There are some series where I'm not that emotionally invested, and it's more fun to watch the fans have total meltdowns over every little tidbit of spoiler info than to have any freshness or surprise when watching the show myself.

I'm making real progress on the rewrites now and actually enjoying myself. Most of what I've done so far is compress events, change viewpoint characters (which has been really fun, seeing things from a different perspective) and move events to different places in the book. Today I get to the part where I move some of the plot in an entirely different direction.

I've experienced another weird case of blogosphere brain unity. I'd planned my post today around a topic for a panel I'll be moderating this weekend at Fencon on spoilers. And then on my morning blog surfing, it turned out that The Park Bench had a post on spoilers and whether or not to seek them out. So I guess today is spoiler day!

For those who don't do a lot of online discussion (Mom), a spoiler is information that gives away what happens in a book, movie or TV show. What actually constitutes a spoiler depends on who you're talking to. On one extreme are those who don't even want to know the episode titles, who don't watch the promos, who don't want to know who the guest stars or characters are and who don't even read the TV Guide episode descriptions and who consider any of that information a spoiler. On the other extreme are those who only consider it a spoiler if it gives away a major plot twist or the ending of the story. Then there's all kinds of disagreement on when something should be considered spoiler information -- how long after the book or movie is released, when the episode is shown in its country of origin, a delay after the first airing, when the episode has been shown in the United States, when the episode makes it around the world, when the series is out on DVD, etc. And does it only count if it's words that specifically tell you what happens, so pictures (as in LiveJournal icons) are okay, even if they give away a major plot twist? (The moment the season finale of Doctor Who aired in the UK, LiveJournal was swamped with icons depicting a major plot twist from that episode, and they appeared in personal journals that had nothing to do with Doctor Who, not just Doctor Who forums. And, ironically, there were even people who normally screech about people spoiling them using these extremely spoilery icons with entirely unrelated posts. So I suppose the definition of spoiler is often "something that spoils me.")

The global entertainment market and the global nature of online communication make it all more complicated. Release dates for movies and books vary around the world. The same TV series may be shown in multiple countries, but at different times, and when they are shown at different times, the really devoted can usually find them soon after the time of origin online, so not everyone in the same country even sees the same episode at the same time. Then with Tivo and other means of delayed viewing, as well as legal online availability, people may shift their viewing times to watch not when the episode originally airs, but when it's convenient. Quick release of full-series DVD sets means that some people don't even bother watching series on television and instead wait to just watch the DVDs. And then there are people who discover series years later via DVD. How far do you have to go to preserve the fresh viewing experience for people in all this?

So, just out of curiosity and to help me develop some good talking points and questions for the panel discussion, I have a few questions for all of you out there in blog land:
What's your stance on spoilers? Do you avoid all information, look at officially released information, or seek out every scrap of information you can get?

What do you consider to be a spoiler?

What issues do you run into in trying to avoid (or find) spoilers?

Any other thoughts you'd like to share on what you think proper spoiler etiquette should be?

(And feel free to direct people to this if you know they have strong feelings on the topic that they might want to share.)

Tomorrow I think I'll talk some about my own spoiler journey and personal spoiler policies.

I think the worst of the ragweed might almost be sort of over. I was able to get outside this weekend for the Greek Food Festival at the big Greek Orthodox Church. The church members make the food, so it's basically Greek home cooking on a massive scale, and I must say that whoever invented baklava was divinely inspired.

I also managed to get about 20 pages rewritten, and so far I think applying the notecard and scene-by-scene outline methodology to revisions has been a huge success. The main benefit is that it separates the scenes themselves from the words that make up those scenes. That helps in several ways. For one, it's a lot easier to tell if there are too many scenes that hit the same story notes or that serve the same story purpose when you look at sentences on index cards than when you read the actual scenes. I realized in this book that half my scenes in the middle of the book were really about the same thing. They just all took different forms. The scenes themselves seemed very different, but once I wrote down the gist of what the scene was about, I realized I'd been repeating myself. Then it's a lot easier to throw out a notecard with a sentence on it when you realize that the scene doesn't need to be there than to throw out the scene itself. The scene itself may be a good scene -- it could have all kinds of action, tension, conflict and emotion -- but it might not need to be there, and it's very difficult to look at a good scene and then throw it out. But if you look at that sentence on the notecard and realize that the scene doesn't need to be in the book, it's easier to toss it aside.

But where I think it's really helping is in getting away from the scenes on the page for rewriting. When I'm revising by looking at the manuscript, the tendency is to just make what's there better. For a hypothetical example, say I've got a scene in which the hero is being pursued by the bad guys, and he makes a narrow escape. If I'm doing revisions by going through the manuscript and I don't think that scene works, I'm probably going to make it a better scene about running away and making a narrow escape. There may be more obstacles to his escape and he may come closer to being caught. He may even learn something about the villain that moves the plot forward or creates an additional complication. But running away and narrow escape may not be what the book needs at this point, and it's easier to see that when I just look at the main point of the scene instead of at the words. Looking at that main point, I may realize that what the book needs is for the hero to stand and fight instead of running, or maybe even that he should be caught. Or, to get really radical, it might not even be time for him to go anywhere near the bad guys and he should be doing something proactive on his own instead of running away from bad guys.

Here's how I'm working the process right now: First, I went through the whole book and made a card for each scene, writing a sentence or two to describe the gist of the scene. I could already tell that I had a lot of redundant scenes just from doing that, so I started throwing out cards, replotted the middle, and then made new cards for new scenes. Then I went through those cards and analyzed each scene, figuring out what the main story question for the scene was (what I hope will keep readers turning the pages), my purpose for having the scene in the book, what the primary scene character's objective is and what the stakes are. If I can't answer those questions, I have to reconsider the scene. Then on the back of each card, I wrote in a different ink color what the main emotional component for the scene should be -- for both what the characters are going through and for what I want the audience to feel. I had to take a lot of breaks during that phase because when you've been doing that kind of deep analysis for a while, the temptation is to get lazy about it or not care.

Next, I made a detailed scene-by-scene outline, with a short paragraph for each scene on the major events, followed by a short paragraph on the emotional through-line. During this, I reorganized some scenes to get a better through-line, deleted scenes and added scenes that occurred to me based on the outline flow. I also tried to group the scenes into arcs to get a sense of rising and falling action. I even did a little chart to show the high and low points of the book to make sure there was a lot of mood variety. Once I was happy with how the big picture of the book worked, I went to the manuscript, chopping out the deleted scenes (whimper) and writing new scenes. After I'm through with that major surgery, I'll do a pass through the whole book to make sure the new parts mesh with the old parts.

I've seen a lot of writers advocate doing a really fast draft, just blowing through the initial draft to capture all that energy, but I've found that my biggest weakness as a writer is impatience, so the more processes I put in place to slow me down and make me think, the better I seem to do. I'm hoping that doing it from square one will mean fewer rewrites and revisions later, so that the overall process of writing the book from start to finish will be faster, even if the first draft takes me a little longer.

Now, a big TV update (being the TV Guide service): The season premiere for Chuck is tonight. That is such a fun show that manages to spoof spy shows even while being a pretty good spy show. Too bad it's opposite the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I'm not sure which one I will watch and which I'll tape to watch later. And then the season premiere of Life is on after Heroes, with another episode on Friday night. Pushing Daisies starts up again on Wednesday, and then I think my fall season will be complete. I may have to get more videotape because it seems like most of my TV viewing is either opposite something else I watch or on a night when I'm out. Someday I may splurge on getting the converter box with DVR (and maybe even the High-Def service to go with my HD TV) from my cable company, but I'd have to sell a book or two first. Which means I'd better quit playing online and do some work.