Every topnotch website offers a FAQ page. I’d like to add one to this website, but, frankly, you fans haven’t held up your end of the deal. You haven’t asked me enough questions to count any as ‘frequent.’
However, I can ask myself questions, and even answer them. (Hmmm…Do you suppose that’s what’s really going on with most FAQ lists?)
Here’s my list:
Q: Who are you? A: I’m Steven R. Southard, stirrer of imaginations, weaver of yarns, and your tour guide for grand adventure.
Q: Why would I want to buy your books? A: To satisfy a yearning in your soul, to complete the missing puzzle piece of your life, and to immerse yourself in amazing new worlds.
Q: What do you write? A: Science fiction, often inspired by my time as a submariner and engineer.
Q: Whydo you write? A: To let the stories out and keep them from piling up inside. My skull can only stand so much pressure.
Q: What do you typically write about? A: I enjoy problem-solving and technology. Most often, my characters face complex challenges and must grapple with strange and unproven technologies.
Q: Why do you call yourself Poseidon’s Scribe? A: It fits me, and attracts a bit of attention. How do I know that? It made you curious enough to ask the question, didn’t it? For a more complete answer, see this blogpost.
Q: What authors inspired you? A: Readers of my blog know my top answer—Jules Verne. Following him, I’d add Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury.
Q: Do you write anything other than short stories? A: So far, you can only buy my short stories. In the near future, I hope to get some novels published. I dabble in poetry, but only for fun.
Q: Do you have any upcoming book signings, readings, or convention appearances? A: They’re less frequent than I’d like. I’ll create a Schedule page on this site for that, and make every effort to update it.
Q: What contemporary authors write stories like yours? A: In terms of story subjects, not literary skill, I’d say Eric Choi, Ray Nayler, and Allen Steele.
Q: What are you working on now? A: Two novels, a travel book, and two poems. In other words, too much.
Q: I’ve got a sure-fire idea for a story you should write. How do I contact you about putting it into words to finish it up? A: Tell you what (and I don’t offer this deal to everybody)—if you write the story, I’ll let you take full credit and you can pocket all the resulting royalties.
Few people have asked me any of those questions, so they qualify as ‘infrequently asked.’ I’m certain I failed to ask or answer your most pressing question, so feel free to leave a comment and fire away. Remember to address your inquiry to—
The writing human (Homo scriptor) is a subspecies of Homo sapiens, differing from H. sapiens only in its highly developed skill in writing. Though most humans write to some extent, Homo scriptor writes as an obsession, often to the exclusion of other activities.
Homo scriptor in its natural setting
Etymology
The genus Homo refers to human and the subspecies designation of scriptor (from Latin) refers to a person who writes.
Taxonomy and Phylogeny
Homo scriptor is a subspecies of Homo sapiens, member of the tribe Homanini, the family Hominidae, the order of primates, in the class Mammalia. H. scriptor has not yet split off from H. sapiens, and mating between the two can occur, but scientists believe sympatric speciation (the splitting apart into separate species) may be underway.
Description and Characteristics
In appearance, H. scriptor is indistinguishable from H. sapiens. Specimens of H. scriptor are present in the same genders and races as H. sapiens, in approximately the same proportions. Behavior is the only distinguishing indicator between the two.
Distribution and Habitat
Scientists estimate the world population of H. scriptor at around 400,000, perhaps 1 in every 20,000 humans. Homo scriptor has accompanied H. sapiens to every continent. They cluster in cities, as does H. sapiens. They occupy the same types of dwellings, though H. scriptor insists on one quiet space within the abode for solitude, writing, and the storage of books.
Behavior
Diet
H. scriptor eats the same foods as H. sapiens, but prefers to spend less time in obtaining, preparing, and consuming the food, to leave more time for writing.
Locomotion
H. scriptor walks in the same bipedal manner as H. sapiens, but less often, since writing is a sedentary activity.
Reproduction and Parenting
H. scriptor mates in the same manner as H. sapiens. However, for H. scriptor, the sexual act provides an additional benefit—research for a future book.
Any combination of H. sapiens and H. scriptor parents may result in either H. sapiens or H. scriptor offspring. Scientists have not yet identified the genetic markers for H. scriptor.
Social Structures
The main and subspecies share a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. H. sapiens seeks and pays for the product (books) of H. scriptor’s work. H. scriptor writes books for H. sapiens’ enjoyment and receives payment in return. With both symbionts achieving benefits, this relationship seems likely to continue. The two freely associate in complex social structures, though H. scriptor may seem aloof and isolated.
Communication
Since the advent of written language in the late 4th millennium BCE, H. scriptor has exceeded H. sapiens in this activity, both in quality and quantity. On the other hand, H. sapiens surpasses H. scriptor in nearly all other human activities. The written language prowess of H. scriptor does not typically extend to other forms of communication. For example, H. scriptor may not speak any better than H. sapiens, and when the writer subspecies does speak, the topic is often about writing.
Cultural Significance
With the exception of non-written language arts, such as music, sculpture, and painting, Homo scriptor provides culture for Homo sapiens. All novels, short stories, plays, song lyrics, newspapers, motion picture scripts, television scripts, and Wikipedia entries were written by members of H. scriptor for the enjoyment of H. sapiens. Due to the symbiotic relationship, the writer subspecies rarely writes about itself, but more often about the main species.
See also
Human
Subspecies
Symbiosis
Writer
I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s an accurate and informative article. There’s no way Wikipedia would turn down this submission from—
In humorous form, it depicts six types of writers. The graphic describes each, including a ‘plus side’ and ‘ugly side’ and provides famous examples of all but one.
Russell depicts, using amusing exaggeration, six motivations for writing—creativity, money, solitude, anger, success, and bitterness.
If you’re a writer, you’ll see yourself in at least one of those caricatures, and probably several. You may even detect an evolution of your writing efforts from one motivation to another.
My Self-Assessment
Based on those six, I’ve self-assessed the percentages of each at the beginning of my writing career, now, and where I hope to be.
When I started writing, I fit into the Space Cadet category, with a bit of Weird Recluse and Ray of Sunshine in the mix. Now, I’m more Ray of Sunshine, and starting to adopt Greasy Palm tendencies, but losing my Space Cadet and Weird Recluse attributes. In the future, I hope to be mostly Ray of Sunshine, a higher proportion of Greasy Palm, with a little Space Cadet left over.
I’ve never identified with the Angry Man or Bitter Failure types, and hope I don’t become them.
Other Types?
Did Russell leave some other types off his list? Possibly. I thought of two more:
The Evangelist. Writes to inspire others, always envisioning a better world. Plus side: positive and uplifting. Ugly side: can be seen as pollyannish and preachy. Possible Famous Evangelists: Stephen R. Covey, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen
The Jester. Writes for laughs. Every line’s a joke. Plus side: there’s always a ready market for humor. Ugly side: eventually the jokes go stale and the well runs dry. Possible Famous Jesters: Mark Twain, Dave Barry, Bill Bryson
Your Self-Assessment
If we set aside the exaggerations of the infographic for a moment, you might find a benefit in identifying the motivations for your writing. As long as you avoid the Bitter Failure character, you can achieve a measure of success with any of the other categories.
Regarding the question in the title of this blogpost, what type of writer are you? Perhaps more important, what type do you aspire to be? Go ahead, you can tell—
Author Annie Dillard once wrote, “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients.” The quote intrigued me. What did she mean?
Source
It’s from a 1989 essay in The New York Times titled “Write Till You Drop.” The paragraph continues, “That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What would you say to a dying patient that would not enrage by its triviality?”
Picture the situation. You are near death and so are your readers. The pen and pad (or computer) sit before you. How would you write differently than you do now?
Answers?
As morbid as the thought experiment may seem, some answers to that question occur to me:
Don’t waste time. You haven’t much time for writing, nor do your readers for reading.
Don’t ‘enrage by triviality.’ Write about what’s important, vital to being human. Write the thing you’d regret not having written, the thing readers would regret not having read.
Don’t save your best for some later time. Don’t keep that masterpiece in reserve. There will be no later time.
Wonderful Concentration
English author Samuel Johnson said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Dillard admonishes us to write that way all the time, with a wonderfully concentrated mind.
Socrates
Consider the last words of Socrates. At his trial he received a sentence of death. Imagine the ‘wonderful concentration’ of his mind as he drank hemlock and felt his limbs going numb. Some have reported his final words as, “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Don’t forget to pay the debt.”
How can that be? On his deathbed, one of history’s greatest philosophers prattled about not having paid for a rooster? Is that not enraging by triviality?
Newer interpretations of those last words paint a different picture. Greeks considered Asclepius a god of medicine and the rooster a symbol of rebirth or eternal life, for it crows every morning. Some now think Socrates’ words a metaphor, a way of saying, “Athens may kill me, but philosophy lives on.” If so, that satisfies Ms. Dillard’s advice to write as if you were dying.
Triviality
Regarding the part of her advice referring to triviality, that confused me at first. What is trivial and what is not?
After all, author and politician Bruce Barton said, “Sometimes, when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think that there are no little things.”
No little things? Aren’t they the trivial things?
Perhaps not. Mother Theresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
Ah, that might provide a clue regarding what Ms. Dillard meant by triviality. You may write about anything, large or small, but do so with great love. Use up every drop of your literary skill. It’s not the triviality of the subject, but the treatment of it by the writer.
In sports, we say a player ‘left if all on the field,’ meaning he gave it his utmost. I may be wrong, or I may be over-analyzing it, but that’s what I believe Annie Dillard meant in advising us to write as if we were dying, and as if our reading audience were dying as well.
If your next written sentence were your last, would readers say you ‘left it all on the field?’ Aim to write with a mind as wonderfully concentrated as that of—
Ask a chatbot to write a story and it will do so. You’ll find the result contains the correct story elements. However, if you do that today, the story won’t move you. You’d rate it at junior high school level, certainly not a classic.
That describes the state of artificial intelligence story-writing in mid-2024. From this, you might well conclude that AI will never write stories as well as the best human authors do.
I intend no disrespect to Ms. Jones. Others share her opinion. I accept the possibility that her contention may prove correct.
Superiority Complex
However, it occurs to me that the history of our species includes several symptoms of a shared superiority complex. In each case, people erected a metaphorical pedestal for humanity, only to have science tear it down.
In cosmology, early depictions of the universe showed Earth at the center. Today, astronomers relegate our world to a backwater.
In zoology, humans have long regarded themselves as lords of the animal kingdom. We claimed to possess the largest brain, and to be the only creature that feels pain or happiness, that talks, that uses tools, that is self-aware. The march of science seems to be trampling this pedestal as well.
Story-writing Today
For now, humans stand, undisputed, atop the Best Story-writers pedestal, at least on this planet. We’ve stood there for thousands of years, so it seems natural to regard the honor as permanent.
At this moment, AI seems unlikely to unseat us from that perch. In that, I agree with Fiona M. Jones. We humans have written stories for thousands of years, and told them verbally far longer than that. AI chatbots have written stories for a much shorter time, a few years at best. Hardly a fair comparison.
AI chatbots learn fast. Very fast. They can memorize the entire internet. They do not die, and therefore don’t have to teach the next generation of chatbots to write. I expect them to write with more skill and originality soon. But could they surpass us?
Ms. Jones offers many good arguments, but they boil down to the fact that human authors write about the human condition, and chatbots can’t possibly understand the human condition as well as humans do.
Maybe. But consider that human fiction writers often convey the thoughts and emotions of non-human characters in their stories. These characters include gods, animals, plants, even inanimate objects. Given similar creativity and imagination, chatbots might become capable of conveying human thoughts and emotions in a convincing way, even though they’re not human.
Story-writing Tomorrow
You could measure a story’s quality by the intensity of emotion it produces in the reader. Once AI chatbots understand us better, what’s to prevent them from crafting stories evoking strong emotions?
I suggest we should not assume our present superiority will last. We may not remain forever at the center of the writing universe, at the pinnacle of writing prowess, standing atop the Best Story-writer pedestal.
It should not surprise us when the first AI-written novel tops the Best-Seller list. Even then, we should not dismiss that achievement as a novelty, a fluke, unlikely to repeat.
In the meantime, fellow human writers, I suggest we write and publish the best stories we can, while they still sell. That’s the course steered by—
No, you do not. You agree out of politeness, while praying they give you a two-sentence summary. After all, you can’t be expected to experience their vacation.
Why, then, do we read travel books? We don’t even know these authors, yet we read with eager interest about a trip they once took. They don’t show us their cellphones, encouraging us to scroll through pictures. They offer only words, yet through those words, we feel like we’ve traveled to the place along with them. How do they do that?
I’ve read several travel books in recent years (maybe I’ll write one of my own—who knows?) and, though not all rank among the classics, each transports the reader to another place in a readable and intriguing way.
Travel when you’re young, they say, and author Chris Dyer did so. Driving by car at age 25, he visited the forty-eight contiguous states while seeing friends and relatives (and bars, baseball diamonds, and basketball courts) along the way. His book includes helpful advice for those planning their own long trips.
A classic of travel literature, this book follows Steinbeck and his poodle in a camper across much of the country, searching for the essence of the nation. Steinbeck focused on the people he encountered, the general state of America, and the joy of being lost. He found America in the early 1960s differed from the America of his youth, but modern readers will find it’s changed even more since his travels.
Among the quirkiest books on my list, this chronicles the author’s grim fascination with presidential assassinations. She toured many of the sites involved with these tragic events, a series of trips nobody else is likely to take. Throughout the book, her snarky humor keeps readers intrigued.
Like Steinbeck, this author drove by camper over much of the United States, and wrote, for the most part, about the people he met and the history of the areas. He shunned the interstates in favor of narrower roads and smaller towns. A long book, it still succeeds in holding a reader’s interest.
Bill Bryson went to Europe and didn’t like it much, but at least he made some money from a book about his ordeal. He poked fun at the continent, and in a humorous way.
A nice collection of short essays by a variety of authors, this book will take you many places, some of them distant and exotic. The quality of the essays varies, but I enjoyed the book overall.
Many rate this a classic, but I almost dropped it from this list. It barely meets my definition of travel literature. Yes, Thoreau traveled to Walden Pond in Massachusetts and described the area well. But he concentrated on prescribing a different way to live. Not content to tell us about the wilderness, he urged us all to move there.
Unlike the other books on my list, this one chronicles a trip the author never made. Written in a rather bland style, the book keeps a reader’s interest due to the nature of this famous historical journey of exploration. With our modern world mapped and accessible by plane, it’s difficult for us to imagine trekking with horses and wagons.
More than most books on this list, Roughing It combines an arduous journey to then-unfamiliar places with sparkling wit. Nevada, California, and Hawaii are airline destinations for us, merely hours away. For Twain’s contemporary audience, those places seemed wild and remote. Still, the humor shines through even after a hundred and fifty years.
Summary
Most of us take a vacation, enjoy it, and that’s it. We fail in our attempts to share the experience with others through photos and verbal descriptions. A good author, though, can share a vacation with millions, using two techniques: (1) Paint a vivid word-picture of the locations, thus transporting the reader there, and (2) Write with a captivating style.
I’m sure you’ll want to read in detail about a vacation taken by—
As an author, you can expect to receive offers from people to interview you. Such interviews can be in person, or remote by phone or email. The offeror might broadcast the interview on TV, radio, podcast, or publish it in print or online in a blogpost. Today I’ll provide guidance about how to make the most of these interviews.
Images of microphone and pen from Pixabay
The Hermit Option
You may refuse interviews, of course. Some authors remain elusive, hidden from the world. They have their reasons, and that’s fine. I’m not aiming this post at them.
My Experience
I’ve been interviewed six times, which isn’t bad. But I’ve conducted almost seventy interviews of authors, editors, and poets. I’ve done all of these through email and posted them on this website. Just search for ‘author interview’ to find them.
Purpose
You’re trying to entice people to buy your books. Simple as that. All other reasons for the interview remain subordinate to that prime purpose. Make every sentence of every answer support that goal. What follows are my tips for giving author interviews with the aim of selling books.
Author Photo
Unless the interview gets broadcast on TV or radio, the interviewer may ask you for an author photo. Use a photo taken recently enough that your appearance hasn’t changed much. Choose a photo that portrays you in a good light.
Taglines
When answering a general question about one of your books, like “what is it about?” use a pre-prepared tagline. I alluded to this in a previous blogpost. You should craft brief taglines about each of your books, and practice saying them until you can do so in a natural way without stumbling.
The Comedian Mindset
This tip applies more to written interviews where you have time to polish your answers. Though you should strive for honesty, you’re not undergoing a police interrogation. You’re trying to sell books, so reject the first answer you think of and go for the unexpected.
When I advise you to think like a comedian, I don’t necessarily mean to go for laughs. Comedians become skilled at considering several responses to a question and selecting the one they judge funniest. You should select the response you judge will attract people to your book. Consider the odd, the quirky, the answer with a punch or a twist.
Well-Edited Answers
Again, this applies to written interviews where you’ve got time to hone your answers. Don’t just jot down answers and click ‘Send.’ If you’ve used misspellings, poor grammar, incorrect references, or awkward sentences in your answers to an interview, why would readers want to read your books?
Brevity
I’ve saved the most important tip for last. In any interview, short answers beat long ones. Think like a poet—not to rhyme, but to pack a lot of thought into few words. Write your autobiography some another time.
With those tips in mind, you’ll do well on your future interviews, especially if you’re fortunate enough to be interviewed by—
Imagine the joy of blazing a trail in your stories, writing about something nobody has attempted before. Consider the electric thrill when you’re creating, in fiction, a new type of vehicle for your characters (and, by extension, for your readers).
Vehicles hold a special place for all of us, don’t they? The machines that transport us also shield us from the harsh outer world while cocooning us in comparative comfort. They move along at our command, heedless of distance or obstacles, and some of them convey us through places in which our frail bodies wouldn’t survive.
Today I highlight the pioneering fiction vehicles, the ones first taking readers through a particular environment. Look elsewhere for a list of the most popular, or the coolest-looking, etc. Here I’m focusing on the first, the pioneers, and we’ll proceed in chronological order.
First Flying Vehicle
The Hindu text R?m?ya?a, dating from between 600 BCE to 200 CE, mentions gods and demigods flying around in Vim?na. These vehicles take various forms, including flying palaces and chariots. I found no evidence online that these vim?na carried mortal people, or that they traveled in outer space. Still, a flying palace seven stories high sounds great to me. Not all gods owned them, apparently, and some of these vehicles lacked anti-theft devices. Ravana stole one from Kubera, but Rama recovered and returned it.
First Underwater Vehicle
The same character—Alexander the Great—piloted the next two vehicles on my list. Though a real historical figure, Alexander also got fictionalized in a series of tales now called the Alexander Romances. Widely read and translated, they originated in Ancient Greece before 338 AD, but spread across Europe and Asia, changing with every retelling over hundreds of years. One of these tales took him underwater in a glass diving bell lowered from a ship. I’ve written my own fictional account of this trip in my story, Alexander’s Odyssey.
First Flying Vehiclefor Mortals
Alexander the Great also flew in the air, according to another tale from the Alexander Romances. He harnessed two griffins to a chair in which he sat. He steered the craft by tempting the griffins with meat on skewers so they’d fly in his intended direction. You can never find griffins when you need them these days, forcing us to fly by airplane.
First Space Vehicle
The first purposeful aerial vehicle in fiction belongs, I believe, to Francis Godwin, who wrote The Man in the Moone, published in 1638. (I’m discounting True History by Lucian of Samosata, since his ship flew by accident.) In Godwin’s tale, his hero, Domingo Gonsales, trained a flock of swans and hitched them to a framework, allowing him to fly. Unaware that these swans periodically migrated to the moon, he ended up there. Little wonder his contraption didn’t catch on—he’s sitting on a slender pole.
First Time-Traveling Vehicle
If you’d care to travel through time, step aboard the conveyance from the 1846 novel Le Monde Tel Qu’il Sera [The World As It Will Be] by Emile Souvestre. This steam-powered locomotive flew through space and time. (And you thought the flying, time-traveling locomotive in the movie Back to the Future III was innovative!) The seat looks comfortable, but it’s atop the locomotive’s boiler, just forward of the smoke-stack—a rather warm ride.
First Multiple-Environment Vehicle
So far I’ve mentioned travel in no more than two modes–air and space, space and time. But the Terror from Jules Verne’s 1904 novel Master of the World combined boat, submarine, automobile, and aircraft. The police might catch you speeding and give chase, but they’d never be able to pull you over. Not available yet for purchase, but my name’s on the waiting list.
First Underground Vehicle
If you’d like to travel underground in style, you’ll need the Iron Mole from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1914 novel, At the Earth’s Core. Perhaps you’d better wait until someone develops a steering mechanism for the machine, though. The novel’s heroes couldn’t steer it and they dug down 500 miles and found Pellucidar.
First Intense-Gravity Exploration Vehicle
When someone asks if you’d like to travel to a neutron star (if I had a nickel for every time…) just say no. The intense gravity creates massive tidal forces within any approaching ship. The character in Larry Nivens’ short story “Neutron Star,” published in 1966 (before evidence of neutron stars existed) said yes to the question. He traveled in a spaceship called the Skydiver, a transparent, spindle-shaped vessel.
First Solar Exploration Vehicle
Most of us enjoy vacations where we can get a little sun. But we draw the line at traveling to the sun. I’ve heard of hot travel destinations, but that one melts the cake. The characters in David Brin’s 1980 novel Sundiver make the trip aboard a spherical vehicle called the Sundiver, which enables them to get close enough to the extreme heat. Seems to me they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by going at night.
First Cyberspace Vehicle
Traveling to the Matrix might seem difficult, but not if you step aboard Nebuchadnezzar, the hovercraft ship from the 1999 movie, The Matrix. In case you’ve forgotten, the matrix is the “simulated reality world” fed into human minds, a sort of dream world far different from the dystopian present. (Yes, I know the 1982 movie Tron included cyberspace vehicles, but they couldn’t travel between cyberspace and real space, as Nebuchadnezzar could.)
Conclusion
If I’ve left out a pioneering vehicle, or if a vehicle predates one or more on my list, let me know. To qualify, a vehicle must travel within an environment or element no other fictional vehicle has traversed before.
If you enjoy writing about fictional vehicles, don’t despair that it’s too late to write a story about a pioneering vehicle. See my blogpost about pioneers and giants. If you can’t be a pioneer, you can still be a giant. For a discussion about how to deal with fictional vehicles in your stories, stay tuned for a future blogpost by—
If you’re a fiction writer wishing to create vivid characters, you’ll like Shadow Theory. But beware of its major pitfall.
In your first attempts to write stories, you’re likely to invent characters without much nuance. Perhaps they’ll resemble common tropes or stereotypes. Even if you avoid that, your characters may lack the sort of quirks readers enjoy. The characters may seem flat, two-dimensional. Shadow theory can help with that.
Definition
In this post, author K.M. Weiland provides an outstanding, in-depth description of shadow theory. Please read her post, since I’m providing only a brief overview here.
Imagine your character as an impressionable child. She tries to be outgoing in an effort to make friends, but gets snubbed. Reacting to this, she adopts a more standoffish approach and remains aloof from others. This practice protects her from rejection. She has relegated her friendliness to the shadows. Though still a part of her, that trait is something she tries to keep hidden from the world.
The theory says this happens to real people, like you and me. We seek workable coping strategies and push their opposites to the shadows. However, the shadow remains attached, still available. If stress or other harsh circumstances require a change, we can switch to the shadow’s method, though we will find it difficult to break a long-held pattern and leave our comfort zone.
Use in Fiction
You see the powerful potential of this theory in creating fascinating, relatable fictional characters. A strong defining trait coupled with the opposite trait lying in the background—often the subconscious background, even as a suppressed memory—gives a character more dimension.
As your plot inflicts increasing pressure on your character and she finds her accustomed responses failing again and again, you can bring the opposite trait out from the shadows to win the day. This shift to shadow behavior won’t be easy for the character, and that difficulty adds to the drama.
Misuse
As I read Weiland’s post, I loved learning about this literary tool, but saw a danger. A hammer is a fine tool as well, but it hurts when you smash your thumb with it by accident.
If you’re clumsy in the use of shadow theory, you could confuse readers. You shouldn’t show a character acting one way throughout the book, then have her suddenly change behavior without explanation.
If a character acts out-of-character, readers notice and can’t help questioning the author’s competence.
Solutions
You can overcome this problem in a variety of ways, including the following. You could:
provide a flashback to show the shadow trait forming in the character’s past,
show the character’s thoughts as she realizes the shadow trait exists (She may wonder where it came from, and may even recall its source in her past, but it should still require effort to use the shadow trait),
show a second character (B)—perhaps an ally or love interest of A—who senses the shadow trait in A and helps A to see and use that trait, or
give hints of the shadow throughout, so the reader sees it but the character doesn’t until the dramatic ending (this may be the most difficult of the four).
If you’re like me, you write descriptions of your major characters before creating the first draft. Consider answering the questions asked by Weiland in her post as you develop these descriptions. You might devise your plot such that circumstances test your character’s accustomed behaviors but those behaviors produce bad, then worse, setbacks. Only when the character, through internal struggle, calls upon the shadow trait, can that character prevail.
As the old radio drama tagline put it—Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…and so does—
Unlike writers of the past, we own computers to make our lives easier. But the machines arrived with plenty of baggage. Have they been worth it?
For most of human history, authors wrote by hand with a scribbling implement making marks with ink on some form of paper. (We’ll ignore the ages of chiseling into stone or making impressions on clay.) By the late 1800s, typewriters became commercially available. Only in the last forty years have writers turned to computers.
The Case for the Pen
Consider the ease and simplicity of pens or typewriters vs. computers. No passwords, no two-factor authentication, no need for backups, no pull-down menus, no need to pay for software updates, and no viruses. No chance of some hacker stealing your manuscript. No need to recharge or (except for electric typewriters), plug in to an outlet. Most of all, with pens or typewriters, there’s little to learn first—you just start writing.
The Case for the Computer
To be fair to computers, we’ve gained much in return, compared to previous methods. We see our text instantly, as it will appear in final form. That’s something. We’ve also swept away the piles of paper and books, the fire hazard that used to clutter a writer’s office. Also, we use the same computer for research, mostly eliminating the need to pore through dusty tomes for obscure facts. We can search through previously written text more easily than flipping through pages.
Computers render certain writing tasks easier—storing, retrieving, searching, and researching. Pens and typewriters ease other writing aspects—ready access, cost, learning, and security.
Decision
Like so many other facets of writing, different writers find their own methods easier. You must make this decision yourself. Sorry if this seems like a copout, but what’s true for you may not be true for—
