Plot reversal changes tone of book

"Pickle dipping." Now there is a riveting image I never met with before. Is it a regional euphemism?


My reaction to question 1: I think it would be downright refreshing to have a major character who is indeed an admirable person. There are so few of them in literature today.

katdad said:

Questions:
1-- does this sound interesting, more engaging if the prof had been clean?
2-- have you also found yourself changing a critical plot thread after you were fairly deep into the writing, requiring revisions galore?

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I think it definitely sounds more interesting with this friend having some ugly truths he's been hiding. But I don't know if I'd go as far as having the wife be suspicious. I like the idea of a guy so squeaky clean that not even those closest to him would suspect (and even the reader can't be sure). That would seem to make the revelation that much more compelling.

The horrible event at the house also sounds good. Just when you think things can't get any worse, they do.

To answer question two: Yes, a couple times so far in the same WIP. My main character actually started out as just a minor charachter who was supposed to hang around for a few chapters and then drop out of the story completely. Now it's her story from start to finish, and the other leads are lucky to have POV chapters at all.

I think the second version is definitely more engaging. If you were to ask your agent I'm pretty sure they would think so also.

If I could, I would suggest though that you write it in a way that leaves some doubt as to whether the professor is actually guilty or not. It's always good to leave the reader guessing plus it will amplify the PI's guilt when he reacts to the crime and will increase his internal conflict if he has doubts about whether his friend was truly wrong or not.

Just some casual thoughts...

I don't see what the PI is punishing himself for. If he's idealized his friend and now glimpses feet of clay, I'd expect him to react by getting self-righteously angry at the friend.

Having the friend transgress could lead to a good bit of character development for the PI. Maybe they have an argument where friend defends himself and brings up moral ambiguities. Friend says he never meant to be a role model, PI has no right to use him as one, PI needs to grow up. PI lashes out, is sorry later, realizes life is complex. Maybe he still disapproves but doesn't take friend's behavior as an offense against himself.

One problem is, not all readers value fidelity equally strongly. Some may wonder what the big deal is about adultery.

I have mixed feelings about the pickle-dipping professor.

On the one hand, it's disappointing when someone worthy of admiration, even envy, turns out to have feet of clay. On the other hand, it's painfully true to life; and as writers, truth is our ultimate goal, even when it's unpalatable.

Given your PI milieu (which I think you usually describe as "hard-boiled"?) in which the seedier aspects of humanity are probably to the fore, there's perhaps something reassuring about having a good buddy on a (deserved) pedestal as a counterpoint. But true saints are thin on the ground, and therefore faintly unrealistic.

I think, faced with the dilemma your imagination has created for you, I would tend to portray the professor's straying from the straight-and-narrow of an apparently perfect domestic life as a one-off lapse. After all, who can honestly say they have not been at least tempted when pheromones, hormones and opportunity conspire against our frail humanity and better judgement? Survey statistics for admitted marital infidelity suggest that a surprisingly high proportion of us fall from grace by letting nature take its course. Alcohol has been known to play a part in these affairs, as has a yearning for lost youth. As long as the prof shows genuine remorse and his missus finds it in her heart to forgive him, the bastard, he could still come across as a sympathetic figure, with a fatal flaw like everyone else.

Thinking a little further, the campus affair could be the trigger for the "terrible thing" that happens at the professor's house - the bitter girl/jealous boyfriend/enraged father kind of scenario.

Good luck!

Hi, Katdad

I've been a university professor for longer than I care to admit, and I think your choice to portray the prof as less than sterling in his personal life is great. I've known many colleagues who were upstanding individuals, but I've known some who were slimeballs, too. Like all other occupations, there is a diverse cross section. BUT, tell me. Why is it that every time a professor appears in a story, a TV show, or a movie, he/she is either having an affair with a student or he/she is accused of having such an affair? I am sick to death of it. It's so frequent, it's cliche. This business doesn't come with groupies (darn it). It does happen, but not 100% of the time. In fact, it probably happens less often than in the business world (employee having an affair with an underling--pun intended). The reason--age differences. Most students don't want to get intimate with someone in their parents' age group. Truth be known, we are the enemy to most students because we assign grades. It doesn't matter that we assign those grades based solely on the students' own academic performances. We are still the enemy. Finally, the penalty for having an affair with a student is immediate firing, tenured or not. In fact, one of the few sure-fire ways to have tenure revoked is to diddle a coed. That's a lot to risk for a little fun.

If you want to make a professor despicable without going with the cliche, have him or her take a graduate student's dissertation research and publish it with only the prof's name (stealing intellectual property, in effect). The prof has the right to put his/her name of the papers, particularly if his/her grant funds supported the research, but student's name should come first on all dissertation-related pubs. Another huge no-no in the business--have the prof get caught dry-labbing data (making it up). There have been some serious cases of academic dishonesty in the news recently that have ruined the careers of productive professors (ambition is rampant in the research arena). If you want to have an academic get caught fooling around with a student, why not a Dean, or the Provost? Fists of professors would pump the air from coast to coast if their beloved Dean showed up, passed out, on a Girls Gone Wild video. I'll leave it to you all as to the reason for the celebration.

katdad, I have to agree with NeuroFizz that the prof-having-affair-with-student cliche is done to death (much like the repressed-librarian-secretly-a-nympho cliche). In addition to NF's suggestions, may I suggest, oh, making him a dean who slept with an up-for-tenure prof? Or, perhaps, having been falsely accused of having an affair with a student when he actually had an affair with someone else, like that prof?

Whether or not any of it is interesting is going to depend on how it's written, of course. Is the dean/prof ashamed, in denial, dismissive, proud of what he did? Does he try to be a good man, or just to project the image? Does the PI struggle with ethics and morality himself? Is he more motivated to do so when he can't rely on his buddy to carry the flag for him? Is it enough that people struggle to be good, or must they succeed for it to mean anything? Is it possible to live up to ideals, or do we have to accept that we will always fall short, and the striving is what matters?

Oh, yeah, Kat. On your horrible event in the prof's house--when I was an undergraduate, the daughter of one of the Biology profs came into her parents bedroom in the middle of the night and blew the prof's head away with a shotgun. True story. It would make good fiction, too. I heard some of the prof's students were relieved they didn't have to take the midterm.

If you want to keep sex in the story while keeping students out of it, have the prof diddling the Dean's wife. Better yet, the football coach's wife. She'd be worth a bundle in a divorce. Football coaches tend to have a legion of thug-like humans as assistant coaches (who, by the way, make more in salary than even the highest paid professors, never mind the perks the assistants get). There is natural tension between academics and athletics at most major universities (I was at a Pac-10 institution until hired away two years ago). If you want ammo, send a PM.

The academic sins that NeuroFizz first suggested – intellectual property theft, falsifying data – I think wouldn't have the desired impact on readers. They're violations of professional ethics that nonacademics don't have enough feeling for. An affair with the coach's wife: fine. Or something financial, like misappropriation of university funds to support a gambling habit.

Keep up the good work KD! I'll check out your latest in SYW. I already know it'll be a good read.

You already received some terrific suggestions. I have to disagree with the college prof however who stated your character's affair with a student should be substituted with a different scandal. I agree, it's cliche, but the public never seems to get tired of hearing about that particular cliche, and as we all know, sex sells (an even bigger cliche!). I agree with the prof that a typical female student wouldn't be interested in a guy way older than she; but who says the professor character has to be that old? Quite a few college-aged women are attracted to "older" men, by this I mean men in their 30s or early 40s even. Your professor character doesn't have to be a book worm, acne-covered, overweight guy of 60. I'm sure you're making him quite the catch so most women regardless of age would at least find him sexy.

I can see how it would be a tired anecdote to someone in that field... but for the rest of us? Bring it on.

What does your editor say? Do you ever ask him/her for advice, or are you just getting feelers from us?

NeuroFizz said:

Football coaches tend to have a legion of thug-like humans as assistant coaches (who, by the way, make more in salary than even the highest paid professors, never mind the perks the assistants get). There is natural tension between academics and athletics at most major universities (I was at a Pac-10 institution until hired away two years ago).

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I feel for you, Neuro, but I have mixed feelings about colleges these days. Though the professors may have the best of intentions, like expanding a student's world as well as educating them, it seems that too many colleges as a whole take the business aspect to heart way too much, while students take the party aspect to heart too much. With this business model, I can see why the football administrators get paid more in institutions traditionally strong in football--the football program probably brings in way more revenue via TV contracts (or brings the promise of big revenues) than an entire department in any particular discipline does in student tuition. It may not seem right, but it certainly fits the demand-supply argument in today's corporate- and celebrity-obsessed world--the price you pay to scream "hey, we're number 1!". U of Washington probably draws a lot of kids who simply relish the thought of having a winning football team to cheer every Saturday, never mind the number of these types of kids that Notre Dame does, sad as that may be.

gp101 said:

Though the professors may have the best of intentions, like expanding a student's world as well as educating them, it seems that too many colleges as a whole take the business aspect to heart way too much, while students take the party aspect to heart too much. With this business model, I can see why the football administrators get paid more in institutions traditionally strong in football--the football program probably brings in way more revenue via TV contracts (or brings the promise of big revenues) than an entire department in any particular discipline does in student tuition.

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This may be getting off the subject a little, but if anyone, like Katdad, is writing about universities, this may be useful. In most major public universities, the academic and athletic budgets are totally separate. The athletic department doesn't get a penny from tuition or from other academic revenues, but the opposite is true as well. No revenues from athletics come back to the main campus, unless they set up some academic scholarships or something like that. As for the business aspects, sure, athletic departments generate tremendous revenues, but their overhead is astronomical as well. Football and basketball revenues have to support all of the other sports, including the equality-mandated women's sports (Title IX, I believe, which I agree with). If you look around the country, you will be hard pressed to find many major programs whose finances consistently run in the black. Hint: that's why boosters have so much sway. Now to the academic departments...please be aware that when we professors write grant proposals to outside agencies (NSF, NIH, NOAA, etc), we calculate our budget, but then have to add a large percentage, usually 50% or more to the total budget, as "overhead." The overhead rate is negotiated between the universities and the agencies. This money goes into the university coffers. It's supposed to be for utilities, office help, etc. So, if I get a $500,000 grant for my research, the university gets a "free" $250,000+ for their operations budget. Some private universities even have (or had) overhead rates of 100%, so a half million $ grant brought a half million $ to the university. Person for person, reserarch active faculty bring in much more UNENCUMBERED money to the university than assistant football coaches, or even the head honcho hisself, whose contract, plus perks, will be in the multi-million dollar range. Finally, academic departments are mandated to operate in black ink, financially.

AND...athletic departments do get the groupies, while academicians, regardless of their ages and looks, usually don't.

Finally, if you insist on doing the professor/student affair thing, remember the potential consequence--losing a tenured position and probably ruining the professor's chance of staying in the occupation. A professor would have to be dumb as hell to do it. That's why I suggested a sexual relationship with someone other than a student. Oh, by the way, once a student is not longer a student (and the professor has no "power" over the student), a relationship is just between two private citizens, and the university has no say. Professors who are attracted to students can simply wait until they are "former" students. Again, with that known, why would a professor be so incredibly stupid to have an affair with a student when he/she can wait to see if the sparks are still there? I know, I know. It wouldn't make good fiction. A graduate student in another story. This is a totally different kind of academic relationship, and it goes beyond the time together. The professor maintains an active to semi-active role in helping the student gain employment well beyond the student's graduation date, so the hands-off period is indefinite.

For anyone writing, or thinking of writing a story that includes universities, professors, or anything related, please don't hesitate to contact me with a PM. I'll be happy to relate my experiences, give my opinions, and tell some stories about the good/bad of the occupation.

Athletic programs bring money to universities in the form of donations from alumni.

reph said:

Athletic programs bring money to universities in the form of donations from alumni.

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True, Reph, but most of the large donations come to the academic side of the campus from successful alumni who appreciate their academic background, not the university's athletic success. Otherwise, the Ivy League schools wouldn't be world leaders in endowment portfolios. Even in public universities, most of the huge, multi-million dollar donations come to main campuses, including those that give the benefactors' names to academic programs, e.g. H. Jones College of Basketweaving. These donations make athletic booster contributions look like chump change. On the other hand, boosters have those ever-valuable phantom summer jobs for student athletes. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the entertainment value, and sense of home pride, that come from athletic programs. I was a football and basketball season ticket holder for two decades at my former institution. I do think the general conception of the relative "business" aspects of athletics versus academics is misunderstood.

Katdad, sorry for hijacking the thread. I hope the information is useful, though. The booster/donor info could be used as an entanglement in your story, particularly if the prof is bedding the daughter (former student?) of a major benefactor. Or better yet, if he rejects the (bitter) daughter's advances (or the female prof rejects the son's advances, if the genders are reversed).

If I can throw this question in, real quick...

What is the difference between a Professor and a Doctor?

A professor is a member of the faculty who has the position of professor. A doctor is someone who has earned a doctorate.

gp101 said:

You already received some terrific suggestions. I have to disagree with the college prof however who stated your character's affair with a student should be substituted with a different scandal. I agree, it's cliche, but the public never seems to get tired of hearing about that particular cliche, and as we all know, sex sells (an even bigger cliche!). I agree with the prof that a typical female student wouldn't be interested in a guy way older than she; but who says the professor character has to be that old? Quite a few college-aged women are attracted to "older" men, by this I mean men in their 30s or early 40s even. Your professor character doesn't have to be a book worm, acne-covered, overweight guy of 60. I'm sure you're making him quite the catch so most women regardless of age would at least find him sexy.

I can see how it would be a tired anecdote to someone in that field... but for the rest of us? Bring it on.

What does your editor say? Do you ever ask him/her for advice, or are you just getting feelers from us?

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Just to add a little of my own thoughts to this (since I'm a teaching assistant in an English department). I too think the student-professor affair is cliche and although I understand where you're coming from, there are other things you can consider. It depends of course on what the prof would do as a character and more so on how the protag would react. I'd say looking at it from the protag's POV and his reaction (since the scene is a small one and ultimately has more to do with your protag than the prof) is the best bet. What would make him the most disillusioned and self-depricating in this situation?

Also, it doesn't have to be a question of legalities (like having an affair with a student). I'd think that the moral/ethical implications would be enough to make him fall in the eyes of the protag. Since it is a small character and a small scene, the issue of the public ramifications of the affair seem less to do with the protag - it's more the personal implications.

I recently ran across a story about another college where several women students had gone to the dean of the department about a prof's classroom commentaries that they felt were sexually demeening to women. That instigated an investigation and they found porn on his computer. I knew the guy and even though he's a very helpful prof overall (a little too helpful, some of us women thought...) and a little pitiful, finding that out definately put him down in my eyes.

I would think that since you're talking about the emotional connection between the PI and the friend (not to get too touchy-feely here...) then the power of suggestion rules - it doesn't have to be something that's all-out immoral (like an affair with a student) - it might be more powerful to have the issue be more personal, like the complaints from students that put in doubt the prof's personality.

Just some thoughts...

Tam

Perhaps the professor is innocent of having an affair with a student (though he's been accused either formally or informally), and guilty of something else?

James D. Macdonald said:

A professor is a member of the faculty who has the position of professor. A doctor is someone who has earned a doctorate.

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For the sake of accuracy in writing, I’d like to amplify Uncle Jim’s response to the Professor-Doctor question.

A doctorate is a terminal degree. It’s as high as one can go in traditional educational systems. There are many forms. In medicine and related fields: Doctor of Medicine (or Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine, etc), Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (I won’t include Chiropractors because their degree isn’t even close to equivalent—with apologies to back-benders). Law: Juris Doctor, I believe. Other areas including physical and life sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and most academic areas: Doctor of Philosophy. Business, not sure, but possibly Doctor of Philosophy as well. Fine Arts, not sure again. I know there is a Masters of Fine Arts degree, and in some institutions that’s the terminal degree in that area. Perhaps someone can add to this.


For all of the doctorates, the individual earns the right to be addressed as Doctor XXXXX. Some people in the medical professions feel this isn’t justified for non-medical doctorates, but the amount of education needed to earn a Doctor of Philosophy is the same as in the Doctor of Medicine (four year minimum. It took me five years, which is average in the sciences). Also, for a Doctor of Philosophy, a dissertation is required for most, involving an original and publishable (for those areas in which their activity is published) creative activity that contributes to a significant advancement of the discipline. For Medical Doctors and Juris Doctors, the degrees are more experiential in nature, where the candidate perfects a craft and learns about the intellectual challenges in the field without necessarily making an original research contribution.


Beyond the doctorate, Medical Doctors (to include Dentists and Vets) complete an internship and a residency, in which they develop a specialization. This also is not unique. In the sciences, and to a lesser extent in other fields, Doctors of Philosophy have to take a Post-Doctoral position before taking a position in academia. This is equivalent to a medical residency since the Post-doc develops a specialty in his/her field of creative activity and prepares for an independent research/teaching career. In the sciences, a minimum of two years of post-doctoral research is necessary to take faculty positions in a major university (private or public). I did a two-year post-doc.


If an individual takes an entry-level, tenure-track position in a college or university, it will be at the rank of Assistant Professor. This is a time-locked degree. After five or six years (depending on the university), the candidate will either be promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure, or given a one-year terminal contract so he/she can find employment elsewhere. There is no in-between. No second chance. To earn tenure and the promotion at research-emphasizing universities, the candidate must have achieved a national reputation in his/her creative activity, and demonstrated that he/she is on track to remain active after tenure is awarded. In the sciences, it requires a steady production of published research papers in peer-reviewed journals (a good example of the publish-or-perish cliché), a good track record of obtaining outside grant support for their research, and some degree of national-level service to the field (service in discipline-specific societies, service on granting agency panels, service as journal peer reviewers, etc.). Oh, yeah. And a record of training graduate students. The final promotion is from Associate Professor to Full Professor (written as Professor with no modifier). This promotion isn’t time-locked, and it doesn’t even have to happen. A person can be an Associate Professor, with tenure, until he/she retires, so this promotion is a distinct honor. To achieve the rank of Professor, one must establish an international reputation in his/her area of creative activity, have a consistently funded research program (in the sciences, anyway), and have an excellent record of national/international service (serve on journal editorial boards, hold offices in national/international societies, etc.). Also, the individual must have an excellent record of training graduate students who have gone on to achieve reputable positions in the area of creative activity. Individuals at all three academic ranks are addressed as Professor XXXXX. There are some specialized non-tenure track professorial positions, such as Research Professor, but if someone is hired only to teach, that position is typically called Lecturer in the U.S. Also, the professorial ranks have different names in different countries, so this is very U.S. specific. I think in the U.K, the three professorial positions are Lecturer, Reader and Professor. UK people, chime in if I have this wrong.


Tenure isn’t called tenure everywhere. In some states it is called “stability of employment” or something similar. It was instituted to ensure and protect academic freedom, and to allow individuals to take risks in their creative activity: prior to tenure, the best path is to pursue conservative, safe activities. After tenure, the individual can go for the high risk, potentially high pay-off activities that sometimes result in major breakthroughs, but more often turn out to be average contributions. Tenure can be abused, but it doesn’t happen as often as one may think. Want to ramp up the tension in a story with an academic character? Throw in the pressure of tenure—the decision of being retained or turned loose. Tenure denial is a kiss of death in the sense that one probably will not obtain a position in an equivalent institution. That person may still gain a professorial position, but in a lesser institution (lesser only in terms of prestige, research activity, etc.). Obviously, he/she can still have a satisfying, productive career. Some individuals who are denied tenure bail out of academia, for various reasons.

I hope this helps. I anxiously await good stories with academic settings and characters. I have one brewing, based on an incredible true story. But that’s for another time and another place.

Neurofizz, pretty much everything you posted is US-specific, or at least cannot be applied globally (i.e., some countries have a specialised Doctor of Science degree that comes after the PhD; a medical/vet degree can be a BS; post-docs are not mandatory, etc.).

For optometry (O.D.) and chiropractic (D.C.), in the U.S.: three-year postgraduate programs.