M.D. Wiselka's Blog

My latest work in progress—Book Ten in my oeuvre—has been a bit of struggle to properly plot, and all this blood, sweat, and not a few tears has been over one character, 17-year-old Wade Bright, an oversized, big-hearted young man who dreams of possessing the love of a beautiful girl.

You would think, after nearly ten years of established authorhood, and untold HOURS of steady labor at my craft, I’d have this plotting bit down, but the truth is, getting this particular story right has been a REAL challenge, in part because I didn’t want to do what needed done, that is, give one of my main characters less than the HEA I felt he deserved.

A little background about my book. Strange Companions is a science-fiction adventure story in which a crew of aliens joins forces with a quintet of social misfits to reshape a fictional southern California city called Callisto Sands.

Essentially, this is a utopian story, in which the characters must overcome certain inborn limitations in themselves to assume the role of the leaders of their community. A story best summed up in its recurring mantra, TOGETHER WE CAN BUILD A BETTER WORLD.

The story is split into four narratives which weave into each other as the story progresses. We can ignore the story lines involving former actress Rae Burns and her companions, delivery drivers, Jayden and Aiden Mason, because their story didn’t require much work to craft. It has stayed largely the same through multiple amendments and restatements of the story’s outline.

Returning to Wade once more. His story was a version of Beauty and the Beast in which Beauty turns out to be, if not an outright villain, at least not the belle the beast assumed her to be at the outset.

For a heartbeat, I considered allowing Wade to win his girl, but it didn’t feel right. Possibly because it wasn’t realistic. Yes, sometimes homely rock stars can get the models of their dreams (no names, but you knew who). Such rare exceptions aside, in real life, how many times does the ugly dork win the heart of cheerleader every jock on the football team desires? It goes against tradition, possibly nature, for people not yet old enough to vote to have the spiritual and emotional wisdom to see that an unattractive person can be beautiful on the inside, if you’re only willing to look.

Wade’s dream girl is kind to him. She even gives him—however briefly—what he desires. Or so it would seem. But all the while she is desperately in love with another boy, a fickle-hearted fellow classmate of slight account who she once saved from drowning when they were both kids. She has a soft spot for the boy she saved, especially now he has grown into an attractive young man whose exotic Spanish looks and fine manners make him, at least on the outside, Wade’s superior.

Enter a rival for Wade’s love—a fellow classmate recently arrived from Knoxville, Tennessee, who’s been crushing hard on Wade since the moment he first saw Wade.

In earlier drafts of Strange Companions, Wade ends up with Bobby Rivers, who Wade realizes cares for him in a way Ursula (the beautiful girl) never will.

Great, but—

Bobby Rivers proved as much a problem for me as Wade himself. Initially, Bobby was Wade’s lifelong friend, who admitted on his eighteenth birthday that he was in love with Wade, while the pair were on a daytrip in Tijuana.

The problem with this version of Bobby was he was too much of a friend to Wade, who proves himself not only a callous asshole (for not cottoning on to Bobby’s feelings before this burning revelation) and also for failing to take Bobby into his confidence, when he realizes he has become the companion, possibly host, of a being from another world. If they’ve been friends for most of their lives, why would Wade suddenly shut him out?

In the next version of the story’s outline, Bobby underwent a transformation. He was no longer Wade’s bestie since grade school, but a new arrival to Callisto Sands. Son of a preacher, assigned to a new parish, Bobby Rivers had an entirely new past. He was no longer the eldest son of the man Wade got repair work from, but a former child actor who nearly died at the hands of pedophile who attempted to kidnap his girl co-star. By this act of selflessness, Bobby became the ersatz son of the girl’s millionaire/billionaire father, with resources and connections his real father deeply resented.

 This version of Bobby proved too powerful to suit me. Also, he was a bit distracting, since he was far more interesting than Wade himself. Never make more interesting SIDE characters. Your readers will wonder why they aren’t on center stage?

 Bobby underwent yet another transformation to make him more suitable. Now he was simply the son of an entrepreneur who’d spent two decades traveling around the United States attempting and failing to run an overpriced healthy foods grocery store.

Bobby, his mother and younger sister Blossom are repeatedly and relentlessly bullied by this overbearing man, who blames his repeated failures on anyone but himself. Having made a pact with God to live a “godly” life, he refuses to allow Bobby to be himself (i.e., date the person he chooses).

 So far, so predictable. There are untold numbers of novels that feature a main character in love with an unattainable or ultimately unkeepable person, who realizes, during the course of the story, that he or she is better off (and far happier) with the best friend who’s supported him or her through all that heartache. HFN or HEA. Your choice.

 In this instance, however, I was less than satisfied with the outcome. If Bobby is the far better choice, what took Wade so long to figure that out? Why did he continue to chase after a girl who is so obviously in love with someone else?

 That is bad enough. Add to that the loss of emotional impact when Wade loses the girl he loves. In a later chapter, when the boy Ursula loves asks Wade to give her up, he sullenly refuses, despite his growing feelings for Bobby, a situation that makes him appear not only petty but also brutally unkind to the girl he supposedly loves and the boy who loves him.

 Some serious structural changes needed to happen to make Ursula’s loss as impactful as I intended. That meant Bobby had to go. Sorry. Not out of the story. Just out of Wade’s potential list of lovers.

 Strange Companions has several pivotal story points. One of the major ones involves a school dance called the Yule Ball, which Wade attends or skips depending on which version of my outline you look at.

One constant is this—Ursula attends the dance with Diego, the boy she truly loves, not Wade, though she is technically “dating” Wade at the time of the dance. She has previously promised Diego to be his date.

The evening turns into a disaster for Ursula and Diego, not only because Ursula makes a bad first impression on Diego’s parents, but also because their fellow classmates shun them at the dance. The Yule Ball is a kind of musical chairs in which you change partners, filling your dance cards with the names of your partners (the more popular the better). By universally shunning Diego and Ursula, their fellow students are telling them just how unpopular they are.

In some versions, Wade swoops in to save Ursula from this ignominy. In other versions of this same scene, Bobby steps in to save her. Or fails to step in to save her, depriving him of Wade’s respect. Ultimately, I felt that it might be best, considering the story, if I let Ursula get a taste of her own unwelcome medicine. She learns by hard experience that Diego cares more about his own pride (he won’t let anyone drive him away from the dance, even if he is having a miserable time at it) than Ursula’s feelings (he should have taken her away, as she asked, sparing her embarrassment and unhappiness).

In the latest version of my story’s outline, Bobby has his own difficulties at the dance. A good-looking boy he’s long secretly admired asks him to dance. Because he’s afraid the news will get back to his father that he’s danced with a boy, he lies, telling the boy he already has a partner for the coming song, then slips into the toilet to hide. His friend, Chet finds him there and gives him a pep talk. Chet and Bobby dance the next song together. While dancing, Chet kisses Bobby, presumably to help him to overcome the fear of “coming out” to their classmates.

When Bobby returns home later, his father throws him out of the house, ostensibly for failing to show up for his shift at the grocery store, as ordered, but, in reality, because Bobby has kissed a boy.

Bobby moves in with Wade, but his feelings for Chet are no longer that of only a friend. He soon realizes that Wade was just a crush. Chet is the person he really wants to be with. A near-death experience on a lake cruise brings Bobby and Chet even closer together, leaving Wade without a significant other.

What to do? What to do?

In the next two versions of my outline, I played with some rather unconventional happy endings for poor NOT-so-little Wade.

To help you understand the first, I need to give you a little background on the Strange Companions story not yet covered. It is loosely part of The Dark Brethren series as The Other Tommy (2018) was before it.

Seker’s Brethren don’t make a tangible appearance, but their meddling is, nonetheless, in evidence. Also, we get our first glimpse of the mechanism that Seker (Death) possibly used to create his bearers, creatures of ash who can assume physical forms at will. An as yet nameless Protectorate engineer falls into a machine he is using to manipulate matter only to become a part of amalgam he’s creating.

One of the major themes explored in Strange Companions is where do we draw the line between a tool and a “person”. Protectorate orgtech is sentient. As such, capable of exercising its own will and making value judgments. And it makes those judgments on a regular basis throughout the story, banishing people it considers threats to the better good, among other acts that readers may or may consider unethical for a technical “machine” to make.

If we care to make the old chicken/egg argument once more with the same result, we could ask ourselves, does the man make the tool or does the tool make the man? I put this perhaps more eloquently in the below introduction I wrote for the story:

If there is one dream which we, the citizens of this planet, share, it is of empire. Our tools, given tongues, tell the tale far better than we. Long after we are gone, they will serve as witnesses to our struggle for mastery. They helped us build a better world.

In one version of the story, which I discarded even before I edited the outline, Wade becomes the partner of the disembodied engineer. This created a whole host of difficulties with the plot that don’t need to be reiterated in detail here, chief among them the sudden appearance of a “person” who could tell the hapless misfits the aliens they have formed symbiotic if not parasitic relationships aren’t going to enslave/kill them.

An undercurrent of body horror (I am being altered on the inside by an alien who claims it is acting in my best interest) that runs through the story is entirely spoiled when a representative of that civilization shows up to explain everything. A sort of deux ex machina that solves all difficulties.

One of the charms of my story, in my opinion, is the tentative bond of trust each character builds with his or her companion. In Wade’s case, his metallic counterpart, Au.

In my childhood, I watched Under the Mountain, a miniseries in an anthology program called The Third Eye, which aired on the Nickelodeon in 1983 and 1984. In Under the Mountain, twins Rachel and Theo Matheson formed a symbiotic relationship with “magical” stones they used to focus their physic powers. Theo’s emotional weakness prevents him from fully expressing his powers, leading to the death/end of physical existence of his mentor, Mr. Jones.

Theo was the weak link in a chain required to build a bridge to defeat the enemy. In Strange Companions, Wade Bright is the weak link in the chain. Unlike the other members of the “crew,” Wade has difficulty learning to trust his companion. The alterations Au makes to Wade’s physical form only make Wade that much more self-conscious. These include tattoos that cover Wade from neck to foot, leaving only his hands from the wrist bare.

Wade also has a weak heart, which makes him physically unfit for the role he’s been given in the city’s reconstruction. Au’s attempts to preserve Wade’s life through enforced periods of rest only further alien Wade, who resents the loss of physical control over his own body.

But I do digress.

In the version in which Wade becomes the domestic partner of the disembodied engineer, the story closes with him aboard the orbital satellite, working side by side with this faceless entity. Sweet, but not quite—well, right.

In the next iteration of the story, Wade acquires a baby. Yes, a baby. First courtesy of the nameless engineer, then of Au. This baby is generated from a sample of Wade’s sperm, using Protectorate technology, because Wade really didn’t need a significant other. He just needed a family. Content with little Copper, his baby, he accepts the loss of Ursula and Bobby with some regret, but no pain.

Great, but—

The problem with introducing a baby into a story is they don’t disappear when they are no longer convenient. What did I do with the baby, once I had her? Who took care of her while Wade was at school? At work? At play? Also, how did he explain the baby’s existence to anyone who saw her? A whole host of story problems came out of this solution.

Back the drawing board.

Followed a series of female love interests which included a pretty girl with a bum leg, an ex-friend of Ursula’s, and a mischievous vlogger who made life miserable for Wade before falling in love with him. It scarcely bears repeating that all of these girls failed to suit because they brought the same problems to the story that Bobby had, not to mention cluttering an already busy tale with yet another side character.

If we introduce Ms. Right Choice at the beginning of the story, what do we do with her until we need her? If we wait to introduce her to Wade until she’s needed, then we have to take the time to build her (adding several more chapters to an already pretty lengthy story), so that isn’t going to work either.

Back to the drawing board.

Again.

Maybe I’m failing to find my way out of this mess because I’m looking for the wrong signposts. What am I trying to achieve? A happy ending for Wade. Okay. And that seems to be giving him a love interest, because that’s what he wants, right? To know what it is to love and be loved?

Is it? Really?

When trying to find the perfect ending, we sometimes sacrifice a good one. What if the end Wade needs is not a TRUE lover, but the ability to live WITHOUT one?

In my latest, and let us hope final, ending Wade becomes ONE with the amalgam he’s discovered (and cultivated)—an amalgam superior to anything the Protectorate has yet created called draconium 12-5. The same amalgam that the deceased engineer was working to create at the time of his death on Polaris, untold generations ago, which Wade has perfected himself.  

Wade gives himself up to it, becoming so much more than he could ever be without it. The ultimate evolution—and a wholly satisfactory ending.

Even if it doesn’t end with a kiss.

What do you think?

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The post The Best Ending Vs. The Perfect Ending first appeared on MDWiselka.

How would you describe a character who APPEARS courageous, but only because he or she has never been tried under fire?

Here’s how Anthony Trollope does it in his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1843), when describing the villain of the piece, Captain Myles Ussher:

“He had natural abilities somewhat above par; was good-looking, strongly made, and possessed that kind of courage, which arises more from animal spirits, and from not having yet experienced the evil effects of danger, than from real capabilities of enduring its consequences.”

Good. But he goes one better by giving us specific examples of this “untried” courage:

“Myles Ussher had never yet been hit in a duel, and would have no hesitation in fighting one; he had never yet been seriously injured in riding, and would therefore ride any horse boldly; he had never had his head broken in a row, and therefore would readily go into one; he cared little for bodily pain if it did not incapacitate him, — little at least for any pain he had as yet endured, and his imagination was not strong enough to suggest any worse evil. And this kind of courage, which is the species by far most generally met wit, was sufficient for the life he had to lead.”

We have a “broken reed” that isn’t aware he is broken, because no one has yet put weight upon him.

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I wanted to share an interesting writing technique that might be employed to amuse readers. It’s easier shown than explained, but it’s basically saying something without actually saying it.

As an example, say I’m having a conversation with Judy about Sally, who I think was too cheap to give me a Christmas present. “Hey, Judy, did Sally give you anything for Christmas?” Judy responds, “no.” “Me neither. It must have been a really tough year for her. I mean, I can’t believe she’d be too cheap to buy a couple small presents for us, particularly, when we’ve always been so generous with her, if she wasn’t going through a hard time.”

Here, I’m saying what I really think without quite saying it.

Watch this technique in action in The Young Outlaw; Or, Adrift in the Streets by Horatio Alger, Jr. (1875):

“Deacon—Deacon Hopkins!” she exclaimed.

“What’s the matter?” asked the deacon, drowsily.

“Matter enough. There’s robbers downstairs.”

Now the deacon was broad awake.

“Robbers!” he exclaimed. “Pooh! Nonsense! You’re dreamin’, wife.”

Just then there was another racket. Sam, in trying to effect his escape, tumbled over a chair, and there was a yell of pain.

“Am I dreaming now, deacon?” demanded his wife, triumphantly.

“You’re right, wife,” said the deacon, turning pale, and trembling. “It’s an awful situation. What shall we do?”

“Do? Go downstairs, and confront the villains!” returned his wife, energetically.

“They might shoot me,” said her husband, panic-stricken. “They’re—they’re said to be very desperate fellows.”

“Are you a man, and won’t defend your property?” exclaimed his wife, taunting him, “Do you want me to go down?”

“Perhaps you’d better,” said the deacon, accepting the suggestion with alacrity.

“What!” shrieked Mrs. Hopkins. “You are willing they should shoot me?”

“They wouldn’t shoot a woman,” said the deacon.

But his wife was not appeased.

Just then the unlucky Sam trod on the tail of the cat, who was quietly asleep on the hearth. With the instinct of self-defence, she scratched his leg, which was undefended by the customary clothing, and our hero, who did not feel at all heroic in the dark, not knowing what had got hold of him, roared with pain and fright.

“This is terrible!” gasped the deacon. “Martha, is the door locked?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll get up and lock it. O Lord, what will become of us?”

Sam was now ascending the stairs, and, though he tried to walk softly, the stairs creaked beneath his weight.

“They’re comin’ upstairs,” exclaimed Mrs. Hopkins. “Lock the door quick, deacon, or we shall be murdered in our bed.”

The deacon reached the door in less time than he would have accomplished the same feat in the daytime, and hurriedly locked it.

“It’s locked, Martha,” he said, “but they may break it down.”

“Or fire through the door—”

“Let’s hide under the bed,” suggested the heroic deacon.

“Don’t speak so loud. They’ll hear. I wish it was mornin’.”

The deacon stood at the door listening, and made a discovery.

“They’re goin up into the garret,” he announced. “That’s strange—”

“What do they want up there, I wonder?”

“They can’t think we’ve got anything valuable up there.”

“Deacon,” burst out Mrs. Hopkins, with a sudden idea, “I believe we’ve been fooled.”

“Fooled! What do you mean?”

“I believe it isn’t robbers.”

“Not robbers? Why, you told me it was,” said her husband, bewildered.

“I believe it’s that boy.“

“What,—Sam?”

“Yes.”

“What would he want downstairs?”

“I don’t know, but it’s him, I’ll be bound. Light the lamp, deacon, and go up and see.”

“But it might be robbers,” objected the deacon, in alarm. “They might get hold of me, and kill me.”

“I didn’t think you were such a coward, Mr. Hopkins,” said his wife, contemptuously. When she indulged in severe sarcasm, she was accustomed to omit her husband’s title.

“I aint a coward, but I don’t want to risk my life. It’s a clear flyin’ in the face of Providence. You’d ought to see that it is, Martha,” said the deacon, reproachfully.

“I don’t see it. I see that you are frightened, that’s what I see. Light the lamp, and I’ll go up myself.”

“Well, Martha, it’s better for you to go. They won’t touch a woman.”

He lighted the lamp, and his wife departed on her errand. It might have been an unconscious action on the part of the deacon, but he locked the door after his wife.

DID YOU SEE IT? THE AUTHOR IS IMPLYING THAT IT MIGHT BE AN UNCONSCIOUS ACT, LOCKING HIS WIFE OUT OF THE BEDROOM, BUT WE, THE READERS, KNOW THAT IT WAS QUITE CONSCIOUS, BASED ON THE CONVERSATION HELD BEFOREHAND.

Mrs. Hopkins proceeded to the door of Sam’s bed-chamber, and, as the door was unfastened, she entered. Of course he was still awake, but he pretended to be asleep.

“Sam,” said Mrs. Hopkins.

There was a counterfeited snore.

“Sam—say!”

Sam took no notice.

The lady took him by the shoulder, and shook him with no gentle hand, so that our hero was compelled to rouse himself.

“What’s up?” he asked, rubbing his eyes in apparent surprise.

“I am,” said Mrs. Hopkins, shortly, “and you have been.”

“I!” protested Sam, innocently. “Why, I was sound asleep when you came in. I don’t know what’s been goin on. Is it time to get up?”

“What have you been doing downstairs?” demanded Mrs. Hopkins, sternly.

“Who says I’ve been downstairs?” asked Sam.

“I’m sure you have. I heard you.”

“It must have been somebody else.”

“There is no one else to go down. Neither the deacon nor myself has been down.”

“Likely it’s thieves.”

But Mrs. Hopkins felt convinced, from Sam’s manner, that he was the offender, and she determined to make him confess it.

“Get up,” she said, “and go down with me.”

“I’m sleepy,” objected Sam.

“So am I, but I mean to find out all about this matter.”

Sam jumped out of bed, and unwillingly accompanied Mrs. Hopkins downstairs. The latter stopped at her own chamber-door, and tried to open it.

“Who’s there?” asked the deacon, tremulously.

“I am,” said his wife, emphatically.

“So you locked the door on your wife, did you, because you thought there was danger. It does you great credit, upon my word.”

“What have you found out?” asked her husband, evading the reproach. “Was it Sam that made all the noise?”

“How could I,” said Sam, “when I was fast asleep?”

“I’m goin to take him down with me to see what mischief’s done,” said Mrs. Hopkins. “Do you want to go too?”

The deacon, after a little hesitation, followed his more courageous spouse, at a safe distance, however,—and the three entered the kitchen, which had been the scene of Sam’s noisy exploits. It showed traces of his presence in an overturned chair. Moreover, the closet-door was wide open, and broken pieces of crockery were scattered over the floor.”Samuel,” said the deacon, “did you do this wicked thing?”

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In The Young Outlaw: Or, Adrift in the Streets by Horatio Alger, Jr., a novel written in 1875, the hero is briefly employed as a chiropodist’s assistant, one of the few high points of a relatively uninspiring novel. Possibly in an effort to write a “flawed” protagonist, Alger makes Sam Barker a less than sterling example of boyhood, depriving this story of many of the feel-good beats that are typical of Alger’s books. A little comedy in an otherwise dreary story:

A young dandy advanced, dressed in the height of fashion, swinging a light cane in his lavender-gloved hand. A rose was in his button-hole, and he was just in the act of saluting a young lady, when Sam thrust a circular into his hand.

“Go right upstairs,” he said, “and get your corns cured. Only a dollar.”

The young lady burst into a ringing laugh, and the mortified dandy reddened with mortification.

“Keep your dirty paper to yourself, boy,” he said. “I am not troubled with those—ah, excrescences.”

“I never heard of them things,” said Sam. “I said corns.”

“Stand out of my way, boy, or I’ll cane you,” exclaimed the incensed fop.

“Your cane wouldn’t hurt,” said Sam, regarding the slight stick with disdain. “Never mind; you needn’t go up. I don’t believe you’ve got a dollar.”

This was rather impudent in Sam, I acknowledge; and the dandy would have been glad to chastise him.

“Miss Winslow,” he said, “I hope you won’t mind the rudeness of this—ah, ragamuffin.”

“Oh, I don’t,” said the young lady, merrily; “he amuses me.”

“So he does me; ha, ha! very good joke,” said the dandy, laughing too, but not very merrily. “I hope you are quite well to-day.”

“Thank you, quite so. But don’t let me detain you, if you have an engagement upstairs.”

“I assure you,” protested the young man, hurriedly, “that I have no intention of going up at all.”

“Then I must say good-morning, at any rate, as I am out shopping;” and the young lady passed on.

“I’ve a great mind to flog you,” said the dandy, frowning at Sam. “I would if you wasn’t so dirty. I wouldn’t like to soil my hands by taking hold of you.”

“That’s lucky for you,” said Sam, coolly.

The answer was a withering frown, but Sam was tough, and not easily withered.

“Aint he stuck up, though?” thought he, as the young man left him. “He don’t seem to like me much.”

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The argument that 1970s-1980s children’s programming wasn’t “educational” might have some validity.

In example, I offer an episode of Spider-Woman entitled “Shuttle to Disaster.” A somewhat prophetic title, in light of later developments.

Spider-Woman makes a marionette out of a dinosaur skeleton, which she uses to scare off the minions of the bad guy, a man with a steel jaw called imaginatively enough “Steel Jaw.”Steel Jaw immobilizes the three pilots of the space shuttle by encasing them in SOMETHING (ice, plastic, who knows?). We assume they aren’t dead, but the only persons who are shown safely landing on earth at the end of the episode are Spider-Woman and her two companions.Steel Jaw hijacks the shuttle, taking it to the moon;Steel Jaw and his minions have no difficulty flying the shuttle, despite presumably not being astronauts;Spider-woman is ejected through an airlock (I say airlock; it might just have been a door) with only a space helmet over her spider suit and is unharmed;Spider-woman uses her “venom blast” (Swiss-army-knife magic weapon that can be used to fight anything, even spaceships in one episode) for thrust to reach the shuttle, which she enters by opening an unlocked side door;Shuttle is set down on the moon without damage;All the passengers (civilians) on the shuttle are forced into spacesuits so they can mine the moon;Within literal hours, the passengers have bored a massive tunnel that gives up literal heaps of gems, which they cart in giant skips to the shuttle;Characters run at normal speed on the moon (implying gravity is the same as on earth);Steel Jaw welds the mineshaft shut with a laser (melting the stone, which instantly solidifies), sealing Spider-Woman inside;Spider-Woman creates a diamond-web drill by tying one of her webs to a diamond, cutting through the stone wall;Spider-Woman launches herself into orbit with a giant spiderweb slingshot, which enables her to catch the shuttle, which has apparently taken off from the moon (somehow); andSteel Jaw attempts to shake Spider-Woman off the shuttle by firing retro rockets. Unshaken, she lets herself in another conveniently unlocked hatch/door.

All this can be a bit hard to swallow, even for someone who isn’t a rocket scientist. The villains on Spider-Woman are all lunatics with elemental motives (Steel Jaw included). You have to ask yourself why this Steel Jaw didn’t just rob a jewelry store some place on earth.

And here’s the funniest bit. There AREN’T any gemstones on the moon because the moon doesn’t have the right geology to create them.

This episode was obviously designed to take advantage of the shuttle craze that was happening at that time. If it hadn’t come out four years before Starflight One, I would say that the writers of this episode had plagiarized this piece of crap. They probably borrowed at least some of the plot from Bond’s Moonraker, which came out the same year. Spider-Woman even calls the villains moonrakers at one point.

They show the U.S. government taking charge of the gemstones at the end of the episode. Maybe they used them to pay for shuttle repairs?

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Spiderwoman 1979.

Credit for giving a woman the lead in a show, but that’s about all you can say in praise of this poorly written, poorly drawn cartoon.

Like most cartoons of its time and later, Spiderwoman 1979 relies heavily on limited animation to keep costs low. But it is so obvious in this production it’s distracting. Characters travel through crudely painted matte backgrounds where nothing moves but them.

While most cartoons / animated series keep their story regulars in a kind of costume (think Scooby Doo gang in their 1970s getups), the choices made in costume on Spiderwoman 1979 are atrocious–and consequently annoying. Jessica Drew/Spiderwoman wears a purple dress with a sloppy tie that somehow transforms into her Spiderwoman suit with a simple twirl of her body. In one episode, she does this while clutched in the puny arms of a T-Rex. Her co-worker/potential love interest Jeff wears a forgettable costume that almost works, but her nephew Billy goes around in a jersey with a giant zero on it.

I’m guessing the writers assumed you were only ever going to watch ONE Spiderwoman episode (they may have been right), so why go out of their way to give you anything like variety or–more importantly–a story arc?

While a new threat to Spiderwoman is introduced in every episode (she fights Kingpin, an evil scientist, a giant spider, Amazonians, etc.), each story is a carbon copy of the previous one. Nothing changes character-wise, because these shows are designed to be watched singly or out of order. Story arcs would create confusion.

Typical episode of Spiderwoman: Opens with a flashback of Jessica Drew stupidly opening a cage containing a poisonous spider. She is bitten and her scientist father (who apparently left her unsupervised in a lab with poisonous spiders) gives her an untested spider antivenom which gives her spider senses along with the ability to shoot webs, “blast” baddies with spider venom, and change her shabby garments into a tit- and ass-hugging costume that makes her into Spiderwoman.

Once we’ve established her character in this flashback, we are immediately thrown into a shitty situation of some kind that she must face. For example, a giant spider is trying to maul a village and, good thing, her spider senses have drawn her there in the nick of time.

She saves the day–sort of–then returns to her normal life, where she purportedly works as a magazine editor. She and her two sidekicks, potential boyfriend and young nephew are roving reporters with a helicopter. They fly around the world looking for news, conveniently bringing Jessica Drew into contact will all sorts of strange baddies.

Her two sidekicks have no clue she is Spiderwoman, which she conceals by conveniently absenting herself from any scene in which Spiderwoman is needed. Her excuses are always lame, but her sidekicks never notice.

Example: in one episode in which they are being attacked by a giant metallic spider (nevermind why), she pretends to be afraid, so Jeff tells her to hide behind the seat. She drops through a trapdoor in the back of the helicopter without drawing attention to herself, returning later without anyone noticing she’s left the helicopter. This despite the fact that at one point the helicopter is captured in the claws of said giant metallic spider, which surely would have prompted either of Jessica Drew’s dimwitted sidekicks to look behind the seat to see how she was holding up.

Keeping Jeff and Billy in the dark is a burning passion with her for some reason. We must assume it’s to protect them, but allowing them to remain ignorant actually puts them in more danger. Fortunately, Jeff and Billy never go out of their ways to rescue Jessica whenever she inexplicably disappears, which happens every episode.

Billy is basically a bundle of enthusiasm in a small package. He doesn’t have much of a personality, so we won’t waste much time on him. Jeff is bit more complex. He is a typical chauvinist, who tells Jessica that certain things are too dangerous for her (because she’s a woman). He is also something a know-it-all, who inevitably is proven wrong (usually within five seconds of making a pronouncement). Though Jeff pretends to be the big hero, he does absolutely nothing in any episode that in any way helps Spiderwoman. Usually, he just makes things worse for her. Yet, he never sees Jessica as anything but a helpless woman. Jessica periodically reinforces her helpless alter ego by pretending to be afraid of worms, spiders, and scary things in general.

Jeff also makes periodic attempts to get Jessica alone, only to have Billy cockblock him. This includes simple dinner dates. Obviously, the writers were told to keep it kid friendly, though you can’t help wondering how that was defined in the late 1970s. It’s pretty obvious from the tone that Jeff would be up to something bad if Billy wasn’t constantly pissing on his picnic.

And the bad puns. Don’t even get me started. Jumping spiders.

While this show might have appeared a step forward in gender equality for superheroes, it was in reality a consistent representation of why changes needed made. Jessica was constantly belittled by her clueless love interest, who she didn’t trust to share her most intimate secret.

In a perfect cartoon world, Jessica Drew would have taken both her would-be lover and her nephew into her confidence. She would have done this because she could trust them and they–let’s hope–would have been better able to help her do her job–fight crime. Instead, we have endless episodes which can best be summed up this way–they blunder into trouble, Spiderwoman gets them out of it, they marvel at how amazing she is, then have the bad taste to throw her in poor Jessica’s teeth, when she at last appears again (with a lame excuse for her long absence, which they take without a murmur).

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I just finished reading The Runaway Bride by Lucy Gillen, a Harlequin Romance written in 1972, so you wouldn’t have to. The heroine and her love interest are pretty standard 70s fare–a childish woman who doesn’t know what she wants, who suddenly gets cold feet, just weeks before her wedding. She escapes on a train, only to be followed by her fiance, who treats her reckless behavior as a joke.

In the story, she goes on to meet three potential suitors, each in his own way a disappointment–one too worried about appearances, another interested only in enjoying himself in the moment (to hell with the consequences), and a third who is more afraid of angering her fiance than in winning her love. Ultimately, she realizes that her fiance was the one for her after all–much to everyone’s relief, including her family who are purportedly marrying her to this son of a partner for “business” purposes, whatever that equates to. This story, while promising in plotting, failed in execution, because neither of the leads deserved a happy ending.

So what can we do to make this better?

Scenario One: Heroine is tired of fighting with her live-in girlfriend, so she joins a dating club that promises to find her the ONE. After three successive PERFECT dates, she realizes she’s better off with the one she’s with. You can make this story even more interesting by having the girlfriend sabotage these dates in a variety of interesting ways. Give each potential PERFECT an interesting flaw that reminds the heroine why the girlfriend is the better option. For example, a PERFECT who loses her shit every time someone fails to do something punctually. Heroine cringes in her seat when her date gives hell to the overworked waitress for failing to bring the appetizer to the table within a quarter of an hour.

Scenario Two: Hero, who’s tired of the endless struggle of meeting the rent with his equally struggling boyfriend, takes off one night, determined to win himself a sugar daddy, thinking this will solve all his problems. Only to learn that all that glitters isn’t gold. You could show him going from one rich man to the next, discovering along the way the downside of the upside. You could have his boyfriend chase after him, or you could just have him come back home, after he’s lost everything, like a prodigal son, to discover whether the love he threw away can yet be saved.

Scenario Three: Small-town teenage girl is adopted by her wealthy uncle, after the death of her parents. Uncle pressures her to give up her small-town boyfriend, introducing her to three potential suitors in the hope that he can happily settle her with one of them. Each is in his own way PERFECT. Why then does she keep thinking of the boy she left behind? To make the story more entertaining, you could have the teenage boy show up at uncle’s house, in the form of a servant, etc., possibly even dressed as a girl, so the two can have some romantic moments–on the sly.

I’m sure you can think of several more story plots using this same structure.

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Let’s break down the structure of The Green Rain to see how it works as a piece of science fiction and a piece of social commentary:

Inciting incident: a rocket containing a chemical called chlorophylogen, intended to terraform the moon, crashes back to earth, burning up in the earth’s atmosphere.

Results: a third of the world’s population is transformed into “green” men, REGARDLESS of their original color. Any women so transformed will give birth to infants similarly colored. In time, the whole world will become green.

Social efforts to deal with this transformation: attempts to identify “inferior” races to keep them from taking advantage of their newfound ability to conceal their former social caste, including birth-certificate registration, physical markings, etc. Some countries suggest destroying “greens” as Nazis liquidated unwanted races during WWII (viz., through death camps).

Attempts to bring “harmony” back to the world: scientific experiments to trigger color changes (going from white to green, from green to white, etc.), which ultimately lead to a second rocket being launched into the atmosphere, bringing a second green rain to earth.

Tipping-point saturation: 1930s science suggested that poisons could accumulate in a living organism, seemingly harmlessly for years, only to reach a critical point, or an event horizon, where they ceased to harmless. A man who has worked with lead paint for years suddenly develops wrist drop, etc. In this case, the earth reaches its own saturation point, where the cholorphylogen ceases to be an inert chemical and does what it was designed to do from the start–terraform.

Initial outcome: those who come out for the second green rain (practically the whole world, minus communist countries who contain their citizens in their homes by gunpoint). The color change goes off without a hitch.

Story twist: The genetic plan of earth plants is altered to encourage out-of-control growth. Nothing can contain the plants, short of complete darkness. Containment attempts include firing the plants (fails), capping the plants (eventually fails), and hiding in absolute darkness (ultimately fails). The plants begin to consume oxygen at an alarming rate, while leaving carbon dioxide in the air, making the atmosphere ultimately unbreathable for humans.

Final twist: astronauts on the moon watch as the entire earth turns into one green ball.

“The tape ran on silently until it came to the end of the spool. Pelargus (scientist) was leaning back, his eyes closed, his large, bony hands on his knees. And, with soft tapping, gentle scraping, with undulations and sinuous obeisances, the green tomb-builders and enshriners came to erect his mausoleum and make him part of their greenness.”

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“Whatever man has built throughout the centuries has been destroyed by man himself–because he could not leave Nature alone.”

This underappreciated science-fiction novel, which was written just five years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, still has a timely message about race and an important warning about trying to alter a man’s mind from the outside in.

A blunder with a rocket causes one-third of the world’s population to change green. Suddenly, all the “race” rules that have governed life are turned upside down. Racists attempt to keep “inferior” races in their supposed place by making databases of birth certificates and stenciling race markers on people’s arms. Then someone gets the bright idea to make everyone green so the world can be ONE race.

A second rocket is sent into the atmosphere–bringing about the destruction of mankind.

Paul Tabori lost his father in Auschwitz. His family was persecuted because of their race. If the book’s science is bad (some complain that it is wonky) and the characters one and all reprehensible (there are no good guys in this st0ry), Tabori is spot on in presenting a broad picture of the downfall of the human race because they can’t accept their differences.

“And I, who dreamt this dream, woke up in terror and tears. For I had dreamt of a world that was green and dead and I awoke in a world that was red and white, black and yellow; a world that was alive and not at peace. And my terror and my tears were because I did not know if the dream or the waking was reality; and of the two, which was evil and which was good.”

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While working the second draft of my latest novel, a romance with a time-travel twist, called Passing Strange, I revised a key piece of dialogue between my two main characters, David and Cole.

Here is the original:

“Lady, this place—it isn’t safe at night. A man was stabbed a couple of days ago, a block from here. If the police don’t come, someone worse might.”

He did have a point.

“Got a place I can go for the night?”

The question caught the man off guard. He hesitated, then said, “I live near here. You can stay with me—for the night—if you’ve got no place else to go.”

“You don’t want to take me home with you. Well, I can’t say I blame you. You don’t know me from—Adam.” Do people still say that? “Look. I’ll be straight with you. I recently split with my man.” Cole showed him the winnowed spot on her left ring finger where an overpriced pair of rings had been, only twenty-four hours before. “I used the last of my cold hard cash in gas coming here. I used to have a credit card in my own name, but my bitch mother-in-law cancelled that when I married my asshole husband.” A Valentine never bought anything on credit. “Even if I wanted to stay at a hotel, I’ve got no way to pay for it.”

“Why did you come here?”

Good question. Mosley Bend wasn’t exactly a refuge for the struggling.

“My brother lives near here. Only it’s way too late to go to his house now.”

The man nodded.

“If you don’t want to let me into your house, you don’t have to. I’ll just park my car in your driveway—and be gone before you get up tomorrow morning.” She smiled with artificial brightness. “So you’ll get your boy scout badge without having to stick your neck out for me any further than you already have. How’s that?”

The man looked closely at her. “I think I can trust you.”

Here’s my problem with that version. I get from A to B, as planned, but it seems a little too quick and somewhat hard to believe. Is she really going to suggest staying with this guy, who she doesn’t know, and is he really going to agree to it that easily?

Here’s my revision.

“Lady, this place—it isn’t safe at night. A man was stabbed a couple of days ago, a block from here. If the police don’t come, someone worse might.”

He did have a point. “Look. I’ll be straight with you. I recently split with my man.” Cole showed him the winnowed spot on her left ring finger where an pair of overpriced rings had been, only twenty-four hours before. “I used the last of my cold hard cash in gas coming here. I had a credit card in my own name, but my bitch mother-in-law cancelled that when I married my asshole husband.” A Valentine never bought anything on credit. “Even if I wanted to stay at a hotel, I’ve got no way to pay for it.”

“Why did you come here?”

Good question. Mosley Bend wasn’t exactly a refuge for the struggling.

“My brother lives near here. Only it’s way too late to go to his house now.”

The man nodded.

“Got a place I can go for the night?”

The question caught the man off guard. He hesitated, then said, “I live near here. You can stay with me—for the night—if you’ve got no place else to go.”

“You don’t want to take me home with you. Well, I can’t say I blame you. You don’t know me from—Adam.” Do people still say that? “If you don’t want to let me INSIDE your house, no problem. I’ll just park my car in your driveway—and be gone before you get up tomorrow morning.” She smiled with artificial brightness. “So you’ll get your boy-scout badge without having to stick your neck out for me any further than you already have. How’s that?”

In this version, the girl explains why she hasn’t anywhere else to go, gaining the guy’s sympathy AND providing him with a little backstory. Now she isn’t a COMPLETE stranger. She’s just some girl down on her luck who needs a friend. When she asks for the favor, a place to stay temporarily, he’s more receptive to saying yes.

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