And then they start flying…

One of the signs that a story has jumped the shark is when characters who previously couldn’t do so suddenly gain the ability to fly. A story has really jumped the shark when a character suddenly acquires a flying motorbike. (I have no idea why this idea is so popular.) A story has really really jumped the shark when it’s an invisible flying motorbike.

I’m not talking about characters like Superman or Iron Man, they could always fly. I’m not talking about characters like Hagrid who has a flying motorbike at the beginning of the Harry Potter series.

I’m talking about characters who suddenly acquire abilities in order to invigorate a tired plot. This is never a good idea, if nothing else it frequently invalidates previous events.

The point is illustrated in Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier, a book that partly describes the troubled development of the computer game Star Wars 1313. One of the biggest stumbling blocks was the introduction of the character Bobba Fett half way through development. Bobba Fett had a jetpack, which meant that the levels had to be completely redesigned. Objects that were previously out of reach could now be flown up to, for instance.

SF is all about establishing a set of parameters and then exploring them. You can push your world to its limits (in fact, that’s the point of SF) but you can’t change the rules.

Once you’ve built your world you have to stick with it. If you’ve exhausted it, move on.

Getting Around in Doom Emacs

The following post is part of my new Emacs Writing Setup. You can find the complete setup here on GitHub: https://github.com/ballantony/emacs-writing

A big part of writing is putting the notes I’ve made into some sort of order. I spend a lot of time joining notes together to make scenes and then rearranging those scenes. Scrivener is good at the rearranging part (I’ve written about this here.) Where Scrivener falls down is the flexibility of search. Emacs allows me to home in on a scene, an idea or a sentence almost instantly.

I copied some of my writing process from Scrivener’s model, even going as far as writing a simple Emacs Scrivener mode. Doom Emacs has rendered that unnecessary. Tools like ripgrep and consult make it far quicker to find what I’m looking for. If you’re unfamliar with the following commands, try them out. You’ll be pleased that you did.

One last thing. Doom Emacs calls different commands depending on which completion engine you’re using. This means the search syntax may vary. I use the default (vertico at the time of writing) which means that searching for apples oranges will return lines containing apples and oranges. In other words: when searching, type one word for an initial selection, then a second to narrow it down.

10.0.1 Searching in Projects

SPC SPC find file in project
SPC s p search project for text
SPC s P search another project for text
SPC s d search files in directory for text

10.0.2 Searching in Buffers

SPC s s helper function search for text in current buffer. Matches are displayed in another window.
SPC s j helper function that goes to entry in evil’s jump list
SPC m . Jump to org heading (uses consult-org-heading)

And don’t forget

C-c C-j org-goto

10.0.3 Useful Tips

SPC s o Search online. t will search online dictionary, T thesaurus
Find an unmatched quote using this regex ^[^"]*"[^"]*$

10.0.4 M-x consult-ripgrep

For a more flexible search try consult-ripgrep. It’s worth reading the documentation, but here’s a taste:

#alpha beta Search for alpha and beta in any order.
#alpha.*beta Search for alpha before beta.
#$alpha\|beta$ Search for alpha or beta (Note Emacs syntax!)
#word -- -C3 Search for word, include 3 lines as context
#first#second Search for first, quick filter for second.

The Time Traveller’s Wife

I visited my wife’s childhood home last week, clearing out the last few things following the death of her father.

The house lies in a village just off the A55, the main road into north Wales. My family took me on holiday to Wales when I was about 13 years old, and we would have travelled along that road. I sometimes wonder if I saw my wife back then. Perhaps she was walking to the village shop as we drove by. Did we notice each other?

There’s a small possibility. It’s less likely than bumping into people you know whilst on holiday, but there’s a chance. It’s a fascinating thought: think of all the people you might have met in the past and not known it at the time. Future friends, or people who would become famous.

Which brings me to the Time Traveller’s Wife. I read this book years ago (I’ve written about this elsewhere), but recently I’ve been watching the TV series. I was struck by the scene where Henry, the male protagonist, travels back in time as an adult to meet Clare, his future wife, when she was aged 13.

And it struck me that there was no parallel to this situation in real life. It’s possible that I met my wife by chance when she was 13, but I would have been 13 too. There is no situation where I would have the experience of meeting a younger version of her.

In the Time Machine, HG Wells was writing a critique of utopian ideas. In the Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price, 21st century morals are contrasted with those of a 16th Century Scottish-English Border clan.

I must have enjoyed the Time Traveller’s Wife. After all, I’m watching the series having read the book. I’m just not sure what the point of it is…

Your Day on a Page

For many people, going to College means freedom. Freedom to try new things, to do what you like, when you like.

Well, not quite.

You’re still going to have lectures and tutorials to attend (that’s why you’re going, remember?) You want to make sure that you know what you’re doing every day, so that you can really enjoy your free time without worrying that you’re behind on an assignment.

That’s where Evernote can help you.

Evernote Home gives you your day on a page. Front and center should be your calendar. Your calendar will tell you where you need to be and when. Lectures, tutorials, practicals…

Setting up a calendar with all those details can be tedious. The good news is that 99% of the time your college will have your timetable already prepared and will share it with you via Google Calendar or Outlook.

You can view that calendar on your home page on Evernote. Here’s how you can add a Google Calendar. Evernote doesn’t support Outlook Calendar integration yet, but you can subscribe to your Outlook Calendar from your Gmail account. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see how.

Add your college calendar and when you open up Evernote in the morning you’ll have your day on a page before you.

But there’s more.

Searching is easy on Evernote, but why search when you can have the right notes appear at the right time?

Here’s a tip: link your study notes to your individual events.

Just suppose you’ve created a note with the materials you need for tomorrow’s 9am tutorial. Link that note to the tutorial on the calendar on your Home Page. Here’s how to add link notes to calendar events. Now the note will be there, just when you need it.

You can even get Evernote to remind you to open the notes as the lecture begins. Just go to Calendar settings (click the dots on the top right of the calendar widget).

If I only had two pieces of advice for people heading of to college, the above would be one of them. Follow this link to see the other…

Using Outlook

Using Outlook? You can subscribe to your Outlook Calendar from your Gmail account, if your college allows you to share calendars.

Go to Outlook and click on Settings (the cogwheel in the top right hand corner)
Click on View all Outlook settings at the bottom
Choose Calendar
Choose Shared Calendars, just below Events from email. If Shared Calendars doesn’t appear then bad news, you’re college won’t allow this.
Go to Publish a calendar and choose the calendar you want to share. Hit publish and copy the ICS link. You
Now open your Google Calendar
Click on Cogwheel and Settings in the top right
Choose Add Calendar and then From URL
Enter the ICS link you copied earlier

The Right Stuff

Someone said that a Science Fiction story was one that wouldn’t work if you removed the science element

I was struck by this watching an episode of the Right Stuff on Disney+. The opening scene deals with the would be astronauts discussing a friend who has just “flamed out”: been killed in a test flight. The characters drink whisky around a fire, they speak in low voices, they shake their heads and look serious as they reflect on the noble mission they are undertaking.

It’s am interchangeable scene that could have appeared in many stories.

Compare that with opening of Tom Wolfe’s original novel. A test pilot has been killed but which one? The tension is raised as the wives phone each other, trying to determine who it could be. The identity of the pilot is revealed.

And then, something different. Rather than nobly reflecting on the tragedy, the other pilots try to determine the cause of the accident. As always, they decide it was pilot error. It wasn’t down to chance, it was something that could have been avoided if the pilot did their job properly. It seems heartless, but that’s how the other pilots maintain their sanity, that’s how they handle the uncertainty of the job.

The Right Stuff novel was Science Fact, not Science Fiction, but like good SF it respected its subject matter, it didn’t just throw standard story elements at a setting and waited to see what would stick.

Incidentally, I seem to remember the opening quotation was by Fred Pohl. I had a look online to check but I couldn’t find it. I did find this rather nice line though:

“Someone once said that a good science-fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. We agree”.
Frederik Pohl, 1968.

Live Notes and Archives

Suppose every year I plan a birthday party for my good friend, Jean Petite.

I have separate notes containing lists of presents, guests, food and drink, entertainment and so on. I also have one master note named Project: Jean Petite Birthday 2022. All the notes are tagged jpbirthday so I can find them quickly.

The party is a success. Even so, I create a new note outlining what went wells and even better ifs that I can refer to when planning next year’s party.

What happens when next year comes around? Do I create new notes or use old ones?

Some notes such as guests will just need to be modified, but others like food and drink may have to be done from scratch. I’ll probably want to create a new note for presents, but retain the old note so I don’t buy the same gift twice.

How do I stop the current notes getting mixed up with the old ones?

One way is to tag the notes by year: 2020, 2021, 2022 and then just filter to this year’s party.

Here’s a better way.

Create the following notebooks (the numbers are there so they appear in the correct order in the sidebar)

Put this year’s party notes in the In Progress Notebook. Put previous years’ notes in the Done Notebook. Put reference notes, notes that don’t really change from year to year, in the cabinet.

That way if you want to see this years notes, just filter to In Progress and jpbirthday. To see only reference notes, filter to Cabinet and jpbirthday. To see everything, just filter to jpbirthday

The system makes use of the fact that a note can only be in one notebook at a time. Notes can be Todo or In Progress, but never both at the same time.

A lot of people recommend using tags to represent these states, I think they’re wrong. I’ve written about that here: You’re Using Folders and Tags the Wrong Way Round

Two more things about this system.

The filtered notes widget works really well with this system. You can use them to see this year’s party notes at a glance.

And lastly, I used to have a separate Archive Notebook for old notes. This is no longer needed, they all just go in the Cabinet

Stop tagging your notes with todo and done. Use notebooks.

The Path of a Story

There’s a story that turns up every so often where one of the characters wonders what things would have been like if x hadn’t happened. If they’d never been born; if they’d never met their partner; if they’d never found the item that turned them into a superhero. Some films that spring to mind are It’s a Wonderful Life, Shrek 4 and Sliding Doors.

It’s something I occasionally think about when writing a story, or more usually, rewriting a story. Sometimes when I’m rewrite I think of a good idea and start to include it, only to find I’ve already done it a few pages later.

I feel as if I’m creating when I write, but how much creation is there? How much of the path of a book is fixed by my experience and personality? As my friend Eric Brown often says, writing is about letting your subconscious take over. Part of becoming a writer is learning how to do that…

I’ve written more about this here: I Used to Worry about Finishing Stories

Todos and Agenda Views

The following post is part of my new Emacs Writing Setup. You can find the complete setup here on GitHub: https://github.com/ballantony/emacs-writing

On my original Emacs Writing Set Up I had this many states:

(setq org-todo-keywords
      (quote ((sequence "TODO(t!)"  "NEXT(n!)" "|" "DONE(d!)")
              (sequence "REPEAT(r)"  "WAIT(w!)"  "|"  "PAUSED(p@/!)" "CANCELLED(c@/!)" )
	      (sequence "IDEA(i!)" "MAYBE(y!)" "STAGED(s!)" "WORKING(k!)" "|" "USED(u!/@)"))))

Now I only have three: TODO, IN PROGRESS and DONE

This is in line with my philosophy that productivity systems are great procrastinators. Thinking of new tagging systems and states for tasks is very absorbing. You can spend hours moving notes around and not doing any work.

Now I capture all my notes as TODOs, I change their state to IN PROGRESS and DONE as projects advance.

Calling org-agenda gives me a bird’s eye view of everything I’m working on. I can then filter down as appropriate.

For convenience, I wrote the following function to restrict the agenda to the current project. ou can see an example in my config.el file

(defun tb/agenda-restrict-this-project ()
    "Restrict agenda to current project"
    (interactive)
    (let ((org-agenda-files (list (projectile-project-root))))
      (org-agenda)))

I rely a lot on this function. When writing I hit SPC j p p (my keybinding: see my config.el file) to see the TODOs and IN PROGRESSes for the current project only.

You can read more in My Doom Emacs Writing Set Up

Cargo Cult Science Fiction

There’s too much Cargo Cult Science Fiction.

The term “Cargo Cult Science” was first used by physicist Richard Feynman in 1974. It focuses on the superficial rather than the underlying causes.

Cargo Cult Science Fiction is SF built on Cargo Cult Science.

Now don’t get me wrong. Cargo Cult SF isn’t SF based on imaginary ideas. Some of the great SF novels contain no real science (a classic example is The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester).

Cargo Cult SF is SF that doesn’t take the science seriously. In Cargo Cult SF it’s good enough to say something scientific sounding (quantum carburetor anyone?) without exploring the imaginary science further.

In Cargo Cult SF the hero gains superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive vampire bat and no one else in the story thinks to experiment with radioactive tigers, jellyfish or wombats.

In Cargo Cult SF people use time travel to change past events and no one ever thinks to use time travel to change them back again.

In Cargo Cult SF Gaia steps in to save the USA and no one asks what exactly had she been doing when people died in floods and famines in other parts of the world.

If you don’t follow the science, no matter how wild your idea is, you’re not writing SF.

The Machine Stops

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.
The Machine Stops – E. M. Forster

I was reminded of the above story while looking at Wikiquotes. I was struck by just how much the quotation described me using my iPad at the time.

I don’t think it’s the purpose of SF to predict the future. I think that the majority of SF writers would agree with me on this. I think what we’re seeing here is a reflection of our world in Forster’s reflection of his world…