Category: Life Hacks by Katrin Greene

Back to writing…  Laws, social and legal, are important to world building, when you’re coming up with an environment for your characters to live within.

Let’s talk about legal laws first.  While we, in most “developed” nations, enjoy a lot of protection from them, most laws are the exceptions that we “live by” to prevent “bad.”  I say those parts in quotes for a reason, but it’s a lengthy definition.  (While I don’t believe in anarchy, or necessarily libertarian-ism, there is a Facebook page called “Do no harm, but take no shit.”  I love this phrase.)

Our laws and commonly accepted ideals are difficult to maintain.  To allow freedom while at the same time providing safeguards.  We have legal notices everywhere.  It seems to me that you have to be both a lawyer and computer programmer to do just about anything these days.  And, what’s sort of weird, living in the US, is that we have a huge country, governed by many of the same laws.  Our states are larger sometimes larger than most countries.

This is something my sister and I talk about a lot.  Especially about cars.  We have awesome technology that’s been developed that help people to parallel park, where the car does the work.  I can appreciate the innovation of it while deploring it’s use.  The same with cameras all around the vehicle.  Sure, helpful.  I can see where it’s helpful and useful.

As I’ve been in car accidents, I can see and acknowledge that those new technologies can be wonderful additions.  Same with remote starters, computers that pump your brakes for you under certain conditions, the sensors, etc.

What bothers me is that those technologies become overwhelming.  It takes away the skill of the driver, application and development.

Here’s both a social and legal law.  Spousal abuse is one of those hot buttons.  I personally don’t believe this should, 99% of the time, be acceptable.  Legally, assault is wrong.  The common norms of our world, it is wrong.  Legally, it is actually NOT an exception to our common way of life, as you hear many, many stories about it.  I personally would never want to be in a relationship again where I was battered.

There is one situation I know of where my own personal preferences fall by the wayside.  When I was young, I learned that one of our neighbors was a battered wife.  I asked my mother why she never called the police.  Her answer was that, while assault of this nature is, for most of us, inherently wrong, what the wife had lived through before her marriage was so bad, that getting hit a couple of times a year was okay for “Linda.”  That putting Linda in a lifestyle where there wasn’t that male authoritarian lifestyle from her husband was worse than being hit.  I fought against this concept for a long, long time.

What I came to understand, as I grew up, was that Linda’s own childhood  was horrifying, with no one that loved her, cared for her, stood up for her, or helped her in anyway, and she had numerous visible scars to show for it.  While my own was pretty bad, in some ways, in others, it wasn’t.  I had a mom.  A real mom that went without food for me and in her home, I was loved with the best of intentions.  Linda never had that.  She loved her husband very much.  He took care of her, their two children.  Fed them, clothed them, and Linda didn’t work.  “Bob” loved his wife very much.  He didn’t drink, gamble, cheat, or anything else like it.  While I would never actually condone Bob’s actions, I can understand why Linda was happy.  In her world, she was relatively safe, never went hungry, always had clothing, two wonderful adorable children that Bob never laid a hand on, and a beautiful home that she cared for, daily.

Linda wasn’t capable of standing on her own or being without her husband, who had stopped most of the insanity of her previous life, quite literally.  It’s the one exception, even with other couples I have seen or heard about who live similarly, that I can understand.  She was happy.  And in her case, and hers alone, I wouldn’t remove her from her chosen lifestyle.

I mention this because of one my favorite TV shows is Criminal Minds.  (Yeah, that’s a real stretch there, right?)  One of the things I look at, inside the show’s mechanics, is that there are episodes where we completely understand WHY someone commits a heinous act.  That there are differences between a sociopath, a psychopath, a narcissist, and someone who’s just a plain old jackass.

There is a quote from an episode called “Natural Born Killers” that I absolutely love:

     Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner: You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent.

     Vincent Perotta: You said, “some people grow up to become killers.”

     Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner: And some people grow up to catch them.

When you are building a world, some of the hardest questions you have to answer are the same ones we have to answer for ourselves, on a daily basis.  What defines a child?  An adult?  What aspects of sex is acceptable?  Of violence?  At what age?  In what circumstances?

When you have two or more people interact, having them match 100%, 100% of the time is beyond belief.  Thus, you have conflict.  And how those people resolve that conflict is the story.

I talk about bubbles of varying degrees and types of intimacy a lot.  Especially with writing.

Anther CM episode deals with two men who find and share the same needs.  There is joy at finding another of their “kind” to interact with and enjoy the same experiences, sharing.  Two rapists that turn into murderers.

What I want to say here is that the same words used to describe a natural, accepting, healthy relationship can be used to describe a destructive one.  It is the intent of action and depth of it that changes the meaning.

Loyalty is defined as:  faithful to one’s oath, commitments, or obligations.  To not give up on another person or a cause.  Normally, in our culture, it is an aspect of personality that we cherish, hold as a measurement of character.

What would you say to a spouse, who took a vow to honor and protect their significant other until death, who remained in an abusive relationship?  They honor their vows.  They are loyal.  Even if the other is or does not.

What would you say to a spouse who, while they live with, take care of, love, support, and cherish their significant other who was permanently paralyzed, has a sexually intimate relationship with another, with their spouse’s blessing and permission?  With this person be disloyal?  Would the spouse who is disabled be within their “rights” to deny this relationship?  Should they separate, and if they do, is the spouse who is not disabled considered to be a selfish jackass?  Would remaining together in a marriage where the needs of both people are not being met be considered loyal or harmful?

It’s an incredibly complex situation and how people answer it is vastly different.  What is right.  What is wrong.  Some would say that, under those circumstances, an open marriage is acceptable.  Some would say that the physically whole spouse made a vow for accepting the other person, no matter what, and that stepping out of it, even to meet their own human needs, is wrong.

So when you are world building, writing becomes about culture.  The odd.  The bizarre.  What is acceptable.  What is not.  What dreams someone has.  What are legal laws and what are social laws.  These help define what happens between two or more characters.

Then we get into more personal issues.

Take Deanna.  Deanna is an alpha female.  She is hard working.  Not quite Type A.  She is devoted to her family, though they don’t realize it.  She gets up every day, sees to everyone’s needs, gets dressed with some personal hygiene in mind, and runs a business.  Comes home and does it again.  Deanna is currently unattached in a romantic sense.  While she is compassionate with people who don’t have the capacity to do, she respects strength.  She also does not appreciate someone taking over her life.  Enter in Ralph.  Ralph, seeing her daily preferences, stays quiet about what he enjoys about Deanna.  Never speaks about what he would wish.  Until one day, an opportunity comes.  A mistake is made.

Deanna is tired inside.  Tired of waiting around for other people.  Tired of doing for other people, even though that is who she is.  What happens between Ralph and Deanna goes very, very wrong.  Does it get fixed?  Does it become happiness, in the end, where they work out their differences?  Can they work out their differences?  Can Deanna accept that the quiet happened out of respect for her?  Does she get angry about, yet again, having to pry or have someone else make the decision for her, in another way, without talking to her first?  Is she tired of having to talk things out first?  To plan?  Can Ralph understand where she is coming from?  Is Ralph capable of speaking, in the first place? Would he want to?  Would he prefer to stay in the shadows of Deanna’s life?

What would happen if Deanna and Ralph were serial killers?  What would happen if they were black and white, in the Civil War Era?  What would happen if Deanna was married?  What would happen if Ralph was twenty years her junior?  Ten?  What would happen if Ralph had just buried his wife?  What would happen if Ralph had just lost his job?  What would happen if Ralph had an incredibly abusive father who told him repeatedly to never speak of emotions or put himself forward?  What would happen if Deanna couldn’t take one more time of not having her needs met, without having to sort things out for the people around her?  Maybe she’s tired of dealing with overly nervous, wishy-washy people and sees that silence as yet one more straw, one more hoop that she has to jump through and Ralph is sick of dealing with yet one more pushy person in his life, even though he respects and even loves Deanna?

So the question remains- what circumstances would be the end result?  Do they remain friends?  Do they have an open relationship?  Do they live happily ever after?  Are they serial killers who meet each other and decide to hunt and kill together?  Are they “normal” people who decide that, once the bubble is popped, they can not be near each other?  Are they normal people who decide to have a monogamous affair and enjoy each other for the time they can, knowing that, at the end, they will both be better off without the other and it would be worse if they had never given themselves a chance?  Do their families keep them apart?  Does time?  What effort do they put into it.

Sound a little exhausting?  It can be.

But for me?  Writing is this and more.  I get a scene or a what if, in my head.  It’s my choice what happens with Deanna and Ralph.  There are no right answers.

So it comes down to what scene is going through my head.  Do I want Deanna and Ralph to be happy?  To suffer?  To be both?

Let’s take another scenario.  There is a traffic stop.  A four way.  There is a school crossing guard that stands there, three hours in the morning and again in the afternoon.  In the middle of the night, Detrick is high as a kite.  He wants money for his next score of drugs.  He currently has no clue where he is.  Elena, the crossing guard, sees footprints in her area every day.  She knows that this particular set of prints is normally there every Wednesday morning.  She’s reported it, careful that her children aren’t prey for a particular brand of nasty.  Nothing ever comes of the reporting, even though the police have done their drive by’s.

So, does Elena ever find out of Detrick is?  If yes, does she help him get sober?  Does she take the time to get to know him?  Does Detrick know that Elena, even if he doesn’t know her name, sees the pattern of his late night break-ins and robberies in the area of the school.  Can he keep it together long enough to protect himself from being caught?  Does he try to get Elena harmed, discredited?

What time frame is the book set in?  Is it modern day?  Is it in the future?  Is crime rate in the area bad anyway?  Are the cops on the take?

So while these ARE interactions, Linda and Bob, Deanna and Ralph, Detrick and Elena, it’s the setting and culture that changes the possible outcomes.

The funny thing, in Deanna and Ralph’s and Detrick and Elena’s situations, those are background characters I have in my Haven Point series.  Characters you would never read about, except maybe as a passing mention.  I know about their lives.  Their personal pain and what’s going on with them, so that when Drew or Jaimie or Aunt Jesse see them in passing, I have a running history to mention, if it’s needed.  And, I have my head in the head of the murderer in Lamp Light- the person’s thoughts that are written out.  Why they are in pain, why they think the way they do.  I know what’s going on with Zack’s history.  The girlfriend of Logan’s son.

As a writer picks and chooses these characters, the ones that make up the background, one might find that there is a second or tertiary story line going on that frequently pops into mind.  That is a story that needs to be told, even if briefly, along with the main theme or plot points.

So for my cops, Drew and Jaimie, their main story line is how do they deal with the laws of being a cop, what to let slide, what to be a hard ass about, how they deal with Deanna, how they deal with Detrick.  What would they do if they met a couple like Linda and Bob?  What would they do if they had to deal with a wife who was sleeping with a neighbor, with her husband’s permission, because he was stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, that was assaulted for being a harlot?  What are those other stories out there that would affect Jaime or Drew’s own daily lives and decisions?

As I write, I get cool scenarios in my head.  Sort of like cool CGI special effects in a movie.

Detrick, running and high- out of his mind, runs into Deanna, who looks a lot like Elena, though those two women have never met.  He is running over ice covered sidewalks, in the trees.  He can smell pine and he is taken back to his father’s house.  Pine floor cleaner.  What he used to get high on to deal with the complete lack of interest from his male parental unit.  Pine… A slightly chubby woman with sandy brown curly hair is out, walking.  Is it her?  Is it the woman who can identify his boot prints?  He’d been so careful.  So careful.  Around the houses.  Only going in those that left the door unlocked and used salt on their back walkways.  Nothing to tie him… Fred said he wanted more stereos to pay off his debt… She is there.  She is there…  One quick cut and he would be safe.

The next morning, Ralph, wanting to see Deanna, brings her coffee.  To find she is not at home.  But he hears the radios from a cop car several blocks away…

Here’s another potential scenario.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Elena says, as Ralph sits down in the booth at Bogie’s Diner.

“Sure.  Mind telling me what this is about?”

“Well, what I’m about to say is going to piss both you and Deanna off.”

Ralph, having already ordered a cup of coffee from the pregnant teenage waitress, nearly got up.  “Not sure I think you should be sticking your nose in there.”

“No.  I shouldn’t.  This isn’t my problem, even though Deanna is my cousin and I barely know you.”

Irritated, he sits.

“Look.  I’m here to tell you that you’re acting like a dolt.  Like a fourteen year old.  Just fucking tell her how you feel.  She isn’t going to wait around forever.  She can’t.  And you two are screwing each other up.  It may not be what you want.  May end in disaster.  You two don’t even have to wind up in bed together or in any sort of romantic relationship.  But if you don’t deal with it, some how, it’ll be a black hole inside you both and I don’t want to see that happen.  A good friendship that could be solid.  Instead?  This constant disappearing act that you do?  It’s ripping Deanna apart.  I know her better.  I know she’s got a lot on her plate.  She’s never going to ask for what she needs until she has a reason to.  You have no idea about her life, even if you know some of the details.”

Ralph looks into his coffee mug and remains silent.

“Well, that’s what I had to say.”

Elena gets up, pays for her meal and Ralph’s coffee.

Later that night… Elena’s body is found, throat slit, in an ally between the Laundromat and the consignment shop…

So you see?  Elena will die at some point.  Detrick’s drug infused paranoia is getting out of control.  Jaimie and Drew will be investigating, find a receipt for Bogie’s Diner in her pocket and go to ask the pregnant teenage waitress if she remembered if anyone was with Elena that day.  Ralph might just become suspect number one in Elena’s murder.

Now, Elena, in my Haven Point series, isn’t actually going to be murdered.  Something bad will happen to her and I already have that plotted out.  Part of my job is to figure out how to get the scene to actually occur, witnesses, other characters in my world of Haven Point, reasons, thought process, and actual depth of who those characters are.  Ralph, in that second scenario I wrote here, is already pissed off and irritated that someone stuck her nose into his personal business…

That is part of the laws, legal and social, and the what if scenarios.  Ralph’s gotten a message from outside of himself to shit or get off the pot.  Jaimie and Drew have come from a scenario dealing with the “cheating” spouse’s assault.  Jaimie will not speak to Drew, her partner, about situations going on in her head.  Do any of the day’s occurrences change her mind?  Would it, if she were watching an episode of Criminal Minds?

I get asked a lot of questions about what I do at night or how I survived what I did or why I write.  And I’ll probably write a lot of these posts as answers.

I can tell you one of the reasons I loved my ex so much was his capacity to tell stories, improv.  He was awesome at coming up with believable, interesting characters at the drop of a hat that you just wanted to interact with.

What?  You thought that, after all the horrible things I’ve said, there was nothing good to the man?

Here’s the deal on that, and yes, it is directly related to why I write.

I’m certain that our relationship wasn’t easy on him.  No relationship is.  Part of why I stayed with him is that my family convinced me that I was too hard to live with and at least this person loved me.  Well… love isn’t enough.  It can conquer all, as it’s said, but it takes a person who’s willing to live that way.

What I loved about this person was who he was inside the bubble of “us.”  That bubble popped.  Repeatedly.  When we first started talking, it was… I won’t say magical.  But we spent hours on the phone talking.  Sometimes 10 or more.  Living with someone who has PTSD isn’t easy, on top of living with another person.  His own fears, his own problems, his own disasters, his own pain.  That was a major part of our failure.  I know I stepped on his own preferences.  Some out of my problems.  Some out of my lifestyle preferences.  And we fought.  All the time.

What I would say to this person now is that my face was not supposed to be his mirror.  My life was supposed to part of his own, an important part, but not an extension of who he was or his identity.  That bubble was never supposed to be my cage, nor his, if he felt that way.

I say these things gently now instead of in rage, lashing out in the pain of having that bubble pop so many times.

I can say these things now, this way, because I have reconnected with enough of my outside life, inside my head.  I can say these now because I have spent the time exploring.

For some people, their “art” is quilting.  Or drawing.  Or how they make a pie.  It’s the expression of passion that I am attracted to, in many ways.

I remember sitting with my Grump, listening to him tell stories about his own childhood, in his dry, factual way, with barely a hint of humor underneath, as he explained how they put someone’s outhouse on a roof.  Me?  I’d be giggling in laughter.

My mother was the same.  We had this hideous, green, scratchy, three seat couch when I was little.  We lived in the country at that point.  I sat with her, learning to count with coins on the living room table.  With her, on the couch, learning to read, well before school started, and I had this book about, yes, a chicken, (never realized how much chicken influenced my life, but hey, it’s a trend now), named Lucille, and I absolutely insisted that the name be pronounced “Luckily.”

I’d listen to stories about Grump’s childhood home.  About how they had a massive chicken farm and how “The Egg and I” was so similar to our family’s history.  Parts of it anyway.  About how my mother hated gathering eggs, but it was one of her chores when she went to visit her own grandmother.

I’d listen to stories about how the feuds between family members got started and the psychology behind it.  (Okay, this one isn’t pleasant.  I’ll admit that.)

After we moved from this country apartment, my mother, sister, and I lived in suburbia.

I can’t remember how old I was, but, again, somewhere between the age of 6 and 10.  I had a box someone gave me.  Like one a dryer or washer of some sort would come in.  This… this was my space.  My “fort,” if you will.  Especially since I was so tiny.  I had painted it, inside and out.  Cut windows.  Cut a door.  Outside looked like a house.  But the inside, if memory serves, I had painted to look like the night sky.  I kept my Bobbsey Twin books in there.  A pillow and my softest blanket.  Stuffed animals.  And in this fort of mine, I read.  For hours.

I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” and, to be honest, I’ve re-read that book more than two hundred times.  Before some of the head injuries, I could recite most portions of it by heart.

While I know most people feel that the book is about racism, and it is, I also know it’s about hatred on so many levels.  It’s also a book about acceptance and how one person can change the lives of so many others.  It’s also about the frailty of human nature.  It changed my life, so many times, each time I read it, and that capacity was born in this cardboard house, along with the philosophy and children’s books I had also read at the time.

As I grew into a teenager, I had the capacity for a nearly photographic memory.  And for speed reading.  This was before the head injuries made that nearly impossible.  I read 20-40 books a week, most weeks.

Stories rarely get old to me.  Aspects of them, maybe.  Writing styles, definitely.  I have my preferences and they have changed a couple of times.

But characters… they are like old friends to me.  Even with the memory and reading speed I had, I would go back (still do) and re-read.  Visiting.  Seeing Boo Radley in my mind and knowing, somewhere, in Scout’s mind, neither she nor Boo would be alone, though they never saw each other again after the end of the book.

My opinion of the Bobbsey twins, of course, changed as I grew.  What was originally fun, I made sarcastic comments in my head about how… stick stuck up the ass they were.  But that is the way of things.

I love movies and TV for the same reason.  If there is one I like, I will re-watch it.

I have my stories.  My personal stories.  Experiences that are innocent, humiliating, humorous, or extreme.  It’s why I don’t fear getting hurt.  “Life is pain,” as it’s said in The Princess Bride.  Why I don’t have many regrets.  I’ve fallen on my ass lots of times.  Tried to make relationships, (family, friends, lovers, pets), work and failed at it miserably.  I’ve tried too hard at time and waited too long on hope at others.  Wisdom doesn’t come from waiting until things are perfect.  It comes from experience, good or bad.  It isn’t that I seek to be hurt or fail.  It’s that I accept that pain is part of life.  Somewhat because if you read a book that has no adversity in it, it’s rather boring.

I think, if you find someone that you can create that bubble with, even if it does pop, you should.  Why I can love people that I don’t particularly care for.  I know my preferences, even if I know that person is going to cause me pain or drive me nuts.  I’ve learned to steer clear of specific personality traits.  Wisdom again.  Knowing that the end result would be disastrous or what’s going to completely piss me off or force a fit that would cause damage to both people.  But mainly?  People are people and they are going to do what they do.

If it works, it has to be a combination of being open to the unexpected and odd, as well as directly speaking and making decisions to choose those opportunities that spring up in a way that fits both people.  Just walking around bumping into those special moments isn’t enough.  Why people lose out on their opportunities.  Ways to make their life better.

The person who misses out on having loving people in their life who would enrich it because they are waiting for perfect or ideal or that they are too afraid to reach out.  The person who gives up on themselves because they accept too little of their needs being met.  The person who doesn’t take the job.  The person who waits for a resolution to present itself for only one opportunity before moving on to the next.  The person who holds on to a grudge for nearly forever and fixes it at the end, instead of living the life that could have been better, sharing experiences with the person they are irritated with.  The person who pushes away everyone else in their life solely for the approval and acceptance of a parent that will never see them as a whole human being.  The person who thinks that commonly defined sense of intelligence is the only way to solve a problem.

While these are all stories, common ones, I have trouble living this way.  I see all those wasted opportunities, know I have lived them.  Writing gives me an outlet.  To say “so what?” and “what if?” in the ways that would find an opening, instead of a reason to not do.

I do a lot of research.  Indulge my curiosity.  I leave myself open to learning and living, even if I don’t always leave myself to be open to people all that often anymore.  Books create that bubble.  Characters.   Circumstances.

And while I do get paranoid a bit of having some official come into my house and see things that could be very bad for me- the books on poisons, the internet history of the graphic details of brutality, the target board of pressure points someone could stick a knife into another person, in addition to opening up in this blog about my personal history, it’s part of learning and or my own personal healing.  Not to literally cause harm to another.  People rarely chose to do something because they think it’s a mistake.  They may know it’s wrong and enjoy the twist of it.

With the violence I have personally experienced, putting my head into the mind of a killer or someone who wishes to cause harm isn’t difficult.  Actually doing those things would be.  I have to think like that person.  Sometimes, I have to find a way to physically perform those tasks.   What it would look like if someone was thrown down the stairs?  What would crash?  How does the arm that gets caught in a newel post twist?  How does someone swing if they’ve been hung and left for days?  I have a three foot tall Sylvester stuffed toy that I use for these things.  Dollhouses that I can set up for crime and look through the tiny furniture or windows, to see what a potential witness would or what the person who would be breaking in be able to view.  Because, let’s be honest, a cop that has no crime to investigate is pointless.

The cool aspect of my research is all over my house.  A DIY desk that has homemade generator parts on it.  Containers I have chosen for my kitchen, to keep out mice and insects.  This was a massive research project for A World of Novo.  And it changed how I live.  I walk into my kitchen now and see jars that Elizabet would see or Bryn would use.  I know how to make beer or vodka, even though I’ve never actually fully done either.  I know how to make a clock and my hand tools are all over the house.  It’s the other reason, other than my pets, that I don’t have normal, traditional rooms.  I have workstations.  Where I quilt or see how to use a fish tank to hydroponically grow food.  How I’ve been able to deal with the erosion and soil problems around my house with composting.

My sister sometimes “walks” into these simulations.   It can be quite humorous.  When I was shooting bow, retraining myself on how to use substandard equipment in a crouched position, the top tip would bang into the wall.  While she was safely in her own half of our duplex, the noise echoed throughout the entire building.  I still giggle at the conversation we had afterwards.

So, while I write, and experiment, and set up scenarios, it’s also what I remain open to.  The stories.  Experiences.  Life.