Can’t even go for a walk
I’ve spoken of vignettes in Incursion being used to highlight how the protagonist of the story is seen by others, and I thought it might be fun to show he might respond to someone trying to mug him. Here’s a short story from that setting.
It was early spring in Dublin but, if there was any sign of the change in seasons, Sean hadn’t noticed. The cold night air bit into the skin of his face, and he felt like an idiot.
He padded his jacket to check for the steak knife. He supposed it was dangerous enough, but he didn’t want to test that assumption. There was a fundamental wrongness to all of this, and if it wasn’t for Frank threatening to break his legs he wouldn’t even be here. Maybe he could just wave the knife around and that would be it. He hoped so. He’d never seen himself as the kind of guy who’d do something like this but, then again, he never thought he’d be the kind of guy to borrow money from a loan shark.
He shivered in the shadows of the doorway, the shop it was connected to closed now for hours. He looked at his phone. Eleven twenty-three. The streets were quiet here, but someone good would have to appear soon, right? So many groups had gone by, which was too much for him to handle, and even in his current circumstances, he couldn’t bring himself to attack any of the women. One guy on his own who didn’t look too scary, was that too much to ask?
One such man crossed his field of view. Tall, sure, but he looked like he’d never been in a fight in his life. The man was looking at his phone as he walked, one of the newer ones, and he had ear pods in. Listening to music? Listening to a podcast? Either way, he was oblivious to Sean as he started to follow, at a distance at first but closing as the man’s route took him further and further away from where he’d started, that looked relatively bustling in comparison. When things looked entirely deserted, he turned a corner and the man was there waiting in the dead-end alley.
He was standing there, facing Sean, his hands in his jacket pockets, and a bemused expression on his face. ‘Can I help you?’
The confident tone threw Sean off, but he forced himself out of it. ‘Your phone and your wallet, now!’
‘O,’ the man replied, rocking back on his heels, ‘no thank you.’
Sean blinked. What? He reached into his jacket and pulled out the steak knife and held it before him, his arm rigid. ‘I wasn’t asking! Hand them over!’
‘Well, I was answering.’
This was going off the rails. Sean took a step forward. ‘I’ve stuck men bigger than you, ya American prick!’ He hadn’t—he hadn’t stabbed anyone—but he wasn’t going to tell him that.
And bigger? The man had appeared smaller before, hadn’t he? But now he loomed, well over six feet tall. It was as though an image had resolved into focus, and the unassuming man became a giant. No, not a giant. A tree, towering over him, whose branches seemed to stretch into the shadows of the alley and darken the sky. The man bared his teeth in disgust, and Sean felt a spark of terror in his heart.
‘Stuck? Where did you hear that one?’ Sean didn’t know. The man continued. ‘And why does everyone think I’m American? Jesus fucking Christ. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s not accurate. I don’t hear it in my voice, and I’ve obviously got a big Irish head on me.’ The man shook that head. ‘I don’t know where people are getting that one from, but I must be missing something, because I keep—’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ yelled Sean. ‘I don’t give a fuck! Give me your phone and your wallet, right fucking now!’
Another look of disgust blossomed on the man’s face. ‘No, Sean,’ he said, ‘not with that fucking attitude.’
Sean felt his stomach drop. ‘How do you know my name?’
The man shrugged. ‘Maybe you said it to yourself when you were psyching yourself up in that doorway.’
Had he? He couldn’t remember. But even if he did, how could this man have heard? Had he been watching? Then why try make himself a target? Sean could think of only one possibility. ‘Did Frank send you?’
The man visibly sagged, and then was stepping forward, glowering.
Sean didn’t realise he had extended his arm until he’d already done so. An instant later, he found himself disoriented and on his back and scrambling away.
The man was looking down at him, the knife held in a reverse grip in his right hand. ‘O!’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Sorry.’ He tucked the knife inside his jacket. ‘I’m going to hang on to that, I think.’ He waved his now empty fingers. ‘Fingerprints.’ He seemed at once concerned, and peered into where he’d stashed the knife. ‘I think I just tore a hole in that pocket. Guess I’ll be whipping out the needle and thread when I get home.’
Sean scurried further backwards, until he hit the wall. Trapped. ‘Who are you?’
There was a hint of sadness in the man’s eyes for the briefest of moments, and then it was gone. ‘Someone who knows you’re desperate. Someone who’s glad he’s the one you went after. Someone to whom you are not in any way a threat.’ The man neared Sean and Sean cowered, but the man did not strike him and instead reached out a hand. ‘Someone who wants to help. Come with me, and tell me what’s going on.’
A question of character
In a previous post, I shared a deleted scene from Incursion, and I thought it might be instructive to dig into why the scene doesn’t work.
To recap: it opens on a captain in some paramilitary unit being thrown across a room, kept clear of the haze my Darren as he enters the building and announces ‘I told you what would happen.’ He beats up some of the captain’s men in front of him, but the captain has reason to believe he is at least somewhat safe. Even in the scene as-is, Darren demonstrates this presumed safety is an illusion, but as we go further into the scene it is implied the captain has attacked innocent people after he has been warned not to, and we see Darren provide a second warning.
When I came back to this scene, Darren’s actions didn’t really seem to match his character. If you find this in your own pieces—characters acting not like themselves—it’s probably a good idea to think about why. Perhaps the scene can be brought closer to the idea you have for who that character is but, of course, ideas can often be nebulous and writing things down is a great way to bring things into focus.
So what does this scene, as written, tell us about Darren?
As a whole, he gives the captain not just a chance, but a second chance, to change.
He converses with the captain, in an effort to convince, but physically attacks subordinates, as part of his attack on leadership. He almost ignores the other men in the building we open on. Everything is in service of his efforts with the captain.
He tries to intimidate the captain, and although it’s a stretch to say he acts personally aggrieved, he does seem happy to toy with the man.
So why is this not Darren?
No second chances. I’m that sort of man.
There are circumstances in which Darren might feel it necessary to give men who do serious evil a chance to do better. He will take into account political realities, not because that is where his concern is, but in an effort to ensure his actions do not interact with the political environment to make things worse.
Let’s take an extreme example and look at the present war in Ukraine. Darren would, in isolation, be happy to capture Vladimir Putin and drop him at the Hague, but what then? Would the remaining Russian leadership feel so embarrassed by this they might launch a military operation to retrieve their president? Would the Dutch government intervene directly to return him?
If Darren were to deliver Putin to the Hague, he would also obviously be the one responsible for it, even if there were no witnesses, and Putin were to be unconscious. Darren is capable of killing someone in such a way that they would appear to die from natural causes, but his respect for human life is such that he would not do it.
There are too many risks of escalation, too many ways things can go wrong. Darren would likely concern himself with destroying Russian weaponry in or targeting Ukraine. He’s smarter than I am, though, so perhaps would come up with a better solution.
For this scene, I imagined that the captain had some protection by virtue of the political environment. Not as much as, say, Putin, but enough that a direct attack would risk an escalation at a national level. Threatening the captain, and giving him a chance to change, would not be entirely foolish.
But a second chance? If the captain has killed innocent people, Darren would feel it irresponsible to put others at further risk. One chance, and you’re done. And he’d blame himself for the harm done because he gave someone a chance.
Effectiveness first, and a rejection of hierarchy
Darren engages the captain in conversation, but attacks three other men (he does also throw the captain out of the building, dislocating his shoulder, but this feels an afterthought). Is this the most effective way to prevent harm?
An argument could be made that Darren is teaching the captain and his men in a manner he believes is most effective at preventing harm overall. Maybe attacking these three men physically will be the best way to stop them doing further harm.
This argument falls apart, however, when we look at who is targeted. The men in the building are beaten, but the ones outside are simply put to sleep. Why specifically go after the men inside, if not to impress something upon the captain? What makes them different from the men outside, aside from proximity to their leader? The idea that the men inside are tools with which Darren can demonstrate something to the captain feels very wrong to me.
And for the men who are simply shut off, what would they learn from the experience? Imagine you are going about your day, and then find yourself waking and skipping time, your workplace destroyed but you unharmed. Would your primary reaction not be confusion?
Darren rejects the idea that systems, in this case a rigid hierarchy, are a means by which one can be absolved of responsibility for one’s own actions. The captain may give the orders, but his men still carry them out.
No games. We’re done.
In the scene, Darren slowly steps the captain through a sequence, leading to the destruction of the Saint Christopher medal, as a means to show the captain he does have weaknesses Darren can target. Darren wants to make the captain fear the consequences of bad behaviour.
Book Darren is more than happy to use demonstrations of power to convince people to stop doing bad things. He is willing to stage his attacks for maximum effect. But he will not do things slowly unless required to and, if he makes himself known, he will not do so remotely.
There is nothing to stop Darren going directly to the captain, ripping the medal from him, and destroying it straight away. If Book Darren thought destroying the medal would work, he would just do it.
Not what he’s not, but what he’s not not
I’ve gone over some part of who Darren is not, but who is he? This is answered over the course of the book, but the traits most relevant to this scene are:
Darren is scary. Even those Darren helps are often terrified of him. He will not kill, but the nature of his attacks are often ruthless and unorthodox.
Darren’s focus is on harm reduction, not on retribution or even holding people accountable. He seeks to make a better future, however he can. He does not want to hurt anyone.
Darren never, ever lies… except to himself. He will bluff, he will mislead, but he believes every single word he says.
As Darren says in the second chapter, “a man can be quantified, analysed; assumed to be understood and so made safe. Better to be as unknowable as a force of nature, to hide behind a mask because I am a distraction, unimportant compared to the message that actions such as today’s will invite upon your head a reckoning.” If you are harming innocent people, treating him as a man is probably a mistake, because he will not present as one.
On that point, he sees purposefully harming innocent people not merely as bad, but as an act in contravention of our common humanity. He sees it as abhorrent and it inspires in him utter contempt.
Fixing the problems
As I said in the previous post, “[t]he vignettes give me the opportunity to show the reader how Darren is seen…” With that in mind, I’m going to write a new version of this scene, one that will try to show how many of the traits above are experienced by those he targets. It will be very different, but I’ll borrow as much as I can from the original.
Deleted scene
It’s common when writing to toss phrases and scenes into the wastepaper basket as you find they don’t serve the greater purpose of the piece. Below is one such scene from Incursion which, after a restructuring of the first quarter of the book, wasn’t doing the job it needed to.
Throughout Incursion are scattered vignettes. They represent terrible things that happen at least once every ten years somewhere in our world, and usually far more. The people and places and other specifics change, but our inhumanity to each other repeats.
The vignettes give me the opportunity to show the reader how Darren is seen as he injects himself into these situations. Even to victims he can be terrifying.
The scene that follows is one such vignette. It isn’t final draft quality, and also doesn’t hit as hard as the ones still in the book, but I hope you find it interesting.
The fundamental difference between the Darren portrayed here, and the Darren in the book, is that the Darren in the book would not give a second warning.
The north wall of the cabin exploded inward and, as the room filled with dust, the captain felt himself thrown back against the far end of the structure, his feet striking the table, scattering the beer bottles and cards and chips onto the floor. Though the three other men coughed and spluttered—they had not moved save to fall to the floor—he found himself in a pocket of clean air. He heard footsteps, slow and steady. From the thickening haze came a voice.
« I told you what would happen. »
He laughed. « You. You again. You don’t scare me. You’re just a nuisance. »
« Are you that unwise? » said the voice. The haze was almost entirely opaque now, but he saw a shadow move within it. His men started to shout, a pistol fired, then there was a series of thuds and cracks, ending when one man hit the wall behind him and collapsed into a bundle of limbs just to his right. Then silence.
« What are you going to do to me? » asked the captain, a smirk forming. « Kill me? You don’t kill. I know you don’t kill. You don’t scare me. »
« There are people in the world who care for nothing but violence. They will murder and rape and torture, just like you have, and are consumed by it. Fortunately, most people care about so much else. »
The captain felt himself snapped through the haze and out through the hole in the wall. His left shoulder crunched as it struck a rock. He tried to push himself over onto his right side but, as he pressed down with his left hand, he felt a sickening pop followed by shooting pain down the entire length of the limb. He tucked and rolled and used his good arm to push himself up. He looked back at the cabin.
The haze inside had almost cleared and within he saw only three men and miscellanea. There was no-one else inside. He started as he realised it was deathly quiet around him; this camp that housed two hundred was without any human noise. Even the generators were silent, the only sound an intermittent pinging he couldn’t place.
Surrounding him were the remainder of his men, slumped over. He saw one of his sergeants and ran to him, shook him with his good hand, but though he breathed he remained unconscious.
The voice came again, as if from everywhere at once. « There is no help for you now. » He looked around but could see no sign of the speaker.
More pings. He walked out into the clearing near the main gate. Twenty metres or so above the ground things were collecting, drawn up towards a point. Ammunition. Weapons. Radios. Vehicles. His own sidearm came out of its holster and joined the mass, and his knife followed. All the tools of war that the base held now hung as a loose sphere in the air above it.
There was a horrible scream of metal noise, then silence again as the sphere contracted to a fraction of its size and became a new sun in the sky made of molten metal. The light that near blinded him, and he shielded his eyes.
The captain laughed. « So you destroy our equipment, » he shouted, « but we can always get more. You won’t kill us, so you will never win. »
« Do you think that this is all I am here to do? »
He felt something slide up his chest. The medal, on a chain around his neck, lifted up and out of his shirt.
His mother had given it to him when he was fourteen, when he took a job one town over. A Saint Christopher medal. « Something to keep you safe on your travels, » she’d said. A sign of her superstition, but dear to him. One of a handful of things he still had to remind him of her, after she took her own journey into the earth.
He gripped the medal in front of his throat. « You animal! »
The ground shook. « Animal? I am much worse than that. »
He felt the tug on the medal build until the chain began to cut into his neck, until the clasp gave. Inside his fist, the medal started to move. As it slid out, he grabbed for the chain with his left hand, tried not to vomit from the agony in his shoulder. The chain ran across his right palm, and he held it tighter as he yelled, as he screamed.
The chain snapped, and the medal disappeared into the molten ball above.
He fell to his knees weeping. Drops of blood on the ground before him and beyond those came another man’s black boots.
« You soldiers can play your games all you like, but if you so much as breathe on another innocent person, I will destroy everything you have that connects you back to her. »
He looked up at the man, silhouetted against the red and yellow glow that had been his arsenal.
« It’s only your body I won’t kill, captain. »
Destruction versus unmaking
In Incursion, Darren has to fight a threat of enormous scale, one which threatens to unmake the universe, so it has never been. My development editor A.P. Canavan looked at this and asked me what the functional difference was between something being destroyed versus never existing.
I gave him one answer then, but I think I have a better explanation now.
Perhaps like me you have children. If not, imagine you have a child. It’s a sad fact that no matter what you do, even if your child survives you, they will eventually die, their bodies going the way all of our bodies do and, at maximum entropy, not even their atoms will remain. Time will destroy them as surely as it destroys everything else.
As a parent, I don’t like to think about this. The idea that my children will be hurt at all saddens me greatly. When such thoughts occur I try to let them pass from my mind. I work to give my children the tools they need to have fulfilling lives, no matter how brief a human life is in the face of eternity, because human life matters, and those of my children are particularly special to me. Their lives are marks in time, adding to the story of the human race at least in some small way, as we all do.
Destruction is death, but at least there was life to begin with. Unmaking is total erasure.
You never had a child. Every trace of them has been deleted, along with the rest of the past. There is no mark of them in time because the medium itself is gone. They don’t matter, for nothing matters. They don’t mean anything, for it is meaning itself that has been destroyed. It is nihilism realised in its ultimate form.
As you get older, more and more people you love will die; they are effectively destroyed. Now imagine meeting a time traveller, one who threatens to go back in time and make it so these loved ones were never even conceived.
Your loved one will not exist in the future, in one direction in time, but this time traveller threatens to remove them from the other direction too.
That is the difference.
The politics of the protagonist
I am currently querying a novel, Incursion, and you can read more about the novel here. However I also want to highlight some things about the protagonist (and perhaps later, other characters), and I’m starting with his politics.
Darren’s political sensibilities are inspired from a few places, most notably Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, in his description of white moderates…
I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate […] who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom
…along with the poem Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes:
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
Although Darren agrees with many of the ideals espoused by the two men mentioned above, I’m not sure they would agree with his methods—namely, a sometimes violent interventionism. He could fairly be described as “social justice nightmare fuel,” for he wants to deliver the message that “actions such as [attempting genocide] will invite upon your head a reckoning,” and he will deliver that, too.
In fact, he feels he has no choice but to do so. As Darren says in the second chapter:
Deep is the well from where my anger flows, but to be angry and do nothing would be to indulge in the same vanity as the world, which looks on, idle, as its leaders deliver their platitudes, decrying events while leaving the people of this impoverished nation to their fate. As if their own agency had abandoned them and they could not be here to stand with their fellow human beings against inhumanity. Against genocide.
They are bound by a delusion, common in the minds of humanity, and one that binds us more than most. We seldom notice the chains for we, in our misconceptions, often do nothing that would chafe against them. We limit ourselves to being lesser lights, not growing in the way that matters most.
We believe that we are good.
The politicians and professional opinion-havers, and those caught in the narratives they have spun, have their reasons. There are always “reasons.” But what are our minds if not engines of self-justification? Our default is to excuse rather than examine ourselves, for we think ourselves good, and how could a good person do ill? With that goodness assumed, what reason would we have to pursue it? We stay in the comfortable prison of our existing beliefs, confusing stability for righteousness and, so poisoned, let hells remain upon the Earth.
No more. If I can stop such things as this, and do not, what value would there be in continuing to live?
Imagine if someone like Darren showed up today, and promised to kick down your door if you commit crimes against humanity. What would happen even if he limited this to obviously evil things like genocide and ethnic cleansing?
We’d try to kill him.