Betty Simulator to Inspiration

[Higgins]

How do old men do research when there is no real sea handy? Is that really a Question?
No the Question is...don't you always feel fortunate when you are not inspired by the first
load of junk that crosses your mind? Isn't it the more or less completely incomprehensible odds and ends that provide the most room for plots that need to go somewhere fast? Somewhere worthwhile...if possible?

For example

I wanted to get a little feel for the seas off Guadalcanal in August 1942 (for a non-demonic character who is learning to make Sushi in his early retirement in the 1970s) and I'm stuck in town for the next few weeks...so I went in search of a little inspiration.

It turns out you can use some flight simulation programs to fly the Japanese Betty (GM...something) bomber and by cunning use of pixel-counting, determine the range and drop torpedos and blow ships up....which was not all that inspiring, but then I recalled that I used to know the guy who trained all the US Merchant Marine 20mm AA crews. He was an Englishman and he must have done a very good job since (in reality) when the Bettys did come in on August 8 at Guadalcanal, the cargo ship AA crews pretty much shot them all down.

Still...even that was not very inspiring...and then I recalled (with a great tug at memory's heavy coils on its rusty capstans) that the Englishman had mentioned his probably unrequited love for Flaherty's (the film-maker of Nanook of the North and one about Irishmen hunting giant sharks from small boats) daughter. An ancient crush on Flaherty's daughter. That seemed weird enough to start the atmospheric wheels of an as-yet-unglimpsed half-chapter-sized plot element rolling, as if we had sunk our nets around some Leviathan and it was hauling us out into the wine-dark sea.

[Sassenach]

Who cares?

[Meerkat]

Who cares?

Dang! I'll admit, I wandered into this thread with the wrong idea entirely (think of the line from the Police song "Would You Be My Girl?": a breath of air was all she needed/to make her lose that frown...).

But once I read through, I would say that "Sokal, this one of your posts is the most applicable to someone starting a novel, trying to get a feel and a better grip on the MC's perspective."

I found it helpful!

Mitsubishi G4-M was the Betty, by the way....your twin engine bomber type, not the Archie and Jughead type I was hoping you meant in the title.

[Parkinsonsd]

Who cares?

er, I do.

[Higgins]

But once I read through, I would say that "Sokal, this one of your posts is the most applicable to someone starting a novel, trying to get a feel and a better grip on the MC's perspective."


Yeah, I was worrying about...well, I've written a lot of really bad novels...and as you can guess, one problem with things I write is that they start as private jokes and move on to more private jokes...anyway, I have an opportunity to re-write a bad novel (with some extreme beta-reading assistance even) in such a way as to eliminate some bad habits...and several things are worrying me: 1) my own motivation 2) an unlikely minor character in the novel who is learning to make Sushi and yet now seems to be a likely character to be dropped as a bad private jokester like me and...one reason he is in the novel is to tie an American town into America's experience in the world particularly with reference to China and Japan...so there is a double motivation problem: 1) do I always have to write myself into oblivion? 2) can this character be turned around to help me write myself out of oblivion?
Anyway...I thought the Bettys would help me re-imagine the world of a idle Sushi trainee...but instead I see the drive to oblivion as having a positive side (as usual), rather like the Profane Demons trapped on their way to the Sacred (while sitting in a Freudian way "beyond the pleasure principle")...but I guess I will see what my Beta reader says about it all. Or what the Beta says about Bettys.

[Meerkat]

I see some of your dilemma, which I also suffer (trying to make private jokes accessible without destroying them....trying to make private interests endearing rather than boring). Perhaps, if we step back and suggest that it is not the Bristol Beaufighter, the Convair Hustler or the Mitsubishi Betty details that matter....the experience to convey to the reader is flying, too low and too slow for such desparate hours.

I always look forward to your posts.

[Higgins]

I see some of your dilemma, which I also suffer (trying to make private jokes accessible without destroying them....trying to make private interests endearing rather than boring). Perhaps, if we step back and suggest that it is not the Bristol Beaufighter, the Convair Hustler or the Mitsubishi Betty details that matter....the experience to convey to the reader is flying, too low and too slow for such desparate hours.

I always look forward to your posts.

Thanks, I try to make them interesting at least.

As for my dilemma, it's not all that different from your average post-modern dilemma...which is basically that one has to monitor one's own motivation (and I can foresee a gazillion objections to this point: here are the first few:

1) but why? Why should I care what my own motives are? To think about one's own mental states as if they mattered is to beg for a very fast dismissal along the lines of "This is Academic Wankery; do you have a point?" or "Who cares?"
2) I know my motivation: its a big fat advance
3) my characters are celebrities, my motives are the same as everyone's ) and my answer is:

A) that despite, big fat advances and celebrities and academic wankery, a fictional story starts at one state and ends in another, ie something happens, and this something needs to be conveyed to the reader. So one has to picture at least 4 mental states: reader/writer at start and reader/writer at end. One might object that as the writer, one has no need to know what one's mental state is at any time, one only needs to know that 4 million dollars is more than 4 dollars and the rest is easy.
B) but B!!! I would say "No!" As a writer works at a story, from first hint of a tale to last revision, and even on into readings and whatnot, he is bound to run into his own motives in one form or another: why is he writing this particular story at this particular moment? Why does he want to keep the idle Sushi Trainee in the Tale?
C) and hence the dual motivation or the dilemma: the weird events that propell the writerly elaboration of a plot and the need to get these into a form that the reader can get into and enjoy. No differential monetary calculations, or images of celebrities or avoidance of academic wankery can force any particular resolution of the motivational dilemma a post -modern writer faces. In my view, the only thing that is likely to help (aside from an extreme beta reader or two) is an awareness of one's own motivation. And this can mean driving on passed the Bettys and the Sushi and the anti-aircraft guns to some fragmentary image that stands on the edge of some culturally-induced nothingness....the demon child playing in the water in a sarcophagus, obscuring the self-observation of Profane Love and turning the gaze outward into the void beyond the painting.

[Birol]

Ease up on Sokal, Sass, 'kay? He's actually talking to people instead of at them and it has the makings of an interesting thread.