When no one trusts, does it matter that everyone lies?

I just saw this quote on a bumper sticker website and it really hit home in relation to my novel's premise.

Like many people in this universe, the two main characters live their lives in different states of reality. They have thier public persona's, which they have worked on to define for publicity and sale - sort of like an actor/actress creating a character that they continue to be so long as their contract and popularity live on. They have their semi-personal lives which is about as private as people living on a reality show, but still a bit affected by choice. They have their personal lives, how they behave with family and close friends, and they have their inner selves.

Then we have the internet, which is the media source for everything - and nobody really knows (or cares) whose persona is real, and when they are acting for a show, or when things are really happening to them. Some people stage accidents to get more hits on their websites, some people have unneeded surgery, others make up lies about their past or get themselves thrown in jail on purpose... Many people lie about others and that is why....

The court of law does not accept personal testimony anymore. Eye witness or character witnesses are a thing of the past. There is only camera visuals and sometimes DNA evidence, though most will not believe the doctors and scientists are paid off. People don't trust anyone, but they trust their own eyes. Everyone knows that camera CGI effects (aka digital stand ins) can fool their eyes, so the only kind of camera's that are accepted in court are those that are date stamp encoded with untamperable security codes. And everyone who has the money injects their children with life long identity markers that are used to tell not just who a person is, but where they are and what their vitals happen to be. If a video is messed with, or the perp or victim don't have an identity marker -it's thrown out - so there is a very high value placed on Shadow Video camera footage.

Anyway - the idea struck me, that the more in our society we lose trust in someone's testimony because so many people are disingenous liars, the less it really matters to us that someone is lying. It's easy to accept that someone isn't telling us the truth if we already don't trust anyone.

It's really sad how much lying can hurt us. All we have is our word, and once someone loses faith, it's very difficult to get it back. Imagine an entire society where faith is gone - no trust in anyone - the expectation of deception. How hard would it be to get people to trust in someone... who would they trust? What kind of person would it take to convince an entire society full of liars to believe in an unprovable truth?

Julia

The Doctor's at Delphi...

Part of my book deals with DNA enhancements and the mixing of Animal DNA with human DNA... but that's just a cool premise. What I'm really getting at, or trying to, is to explore the idea of arrogant doctors, blind faith in them, and unfounded paranoia about them. It's been done many times, (I can't tell anyone about my novel without them saying someone else has already done that - not that I would know, I don't read much sci-fi) I hope to give another interesting story that touches on many different aspects of this idea.

One of the things I do to keep myself motivated to write about the future is to read up on the latest research and news stories that illustrate what I'm getting at.

My Ares character is very religious and very anti-science... He's the one who has all these really outlandish conspiracy theories and thinks all scientists are out to do is mess with what he believes is God's perfect natural world order. At the same time he uses some science to make his game better...

Another main character is himself a trained doctor who is very humble, very good at what he does, but unfortunately a bit naive and mixed up with the wrong people and has to decide what he's going to do. He's what we hope to see in doctors (minus the naive part).

The primary antagonist believes whatever he can do through science, it is up to him to decide if he should do it or not. He is genuinely trying to do good for society, but he gets a bit mixed up along the way because of his blind faith in his own abilities.

The secondary antagonists are those that try to use science and manipulate it's findings for their own purposes, and those that refuse to believe the science that doesn't fit into their agenda.

*edit real life story I was talking about*

To anyone who read what I wrote, I decided to make this blog only about my novel and fiction... if I start getting into the real stuff going on, it's bound to get me distracted. Maybe once more of the novel is written...

Julia

Getting in the mood to write...

For me writing is an emotional experience, not something I can just do because I have to (or think I should) it's something I do when I'm driven to do it and need to do it and really FEEL like doing it.

When I started writing this novel I was driven by the idea of creating my own story out of the many ideas floating in my head, and that was good for while... But 5 months into it I've discovered other ways of getting myself to that place where the ideas just flow, and I've found ways to feed that flow.

First I should say that my writing is character driven, each chapter is from the perspective of a character and each character develops a bit more in each chapter as he/she interacts with the other characters in that novel.

Music is very important - I have a whole soundtrack to my novel, different songs for different scenes and a certain sound or group goes along with a specific character. So if I want to write for a character, I put on that CD and tap into the feeling of that character.

People watching - Many of my characters are inspired by a combination of people I know or actors/characters I have connected with/admired/ in movies and T.V. shows and many are also inspired by the feeling I get from animals. Sometimes the character is not really inspired by any individual per se, but that genre of character.

Fantasy - I fantasize with dialogue in my head, imagining scenes that my characters will have and how they might respond to each other. Sometimes I do this in bed, sometimes while driving, and lately I've begun writing it down free-style in a journal. Often I've kept an idea and written it out in more detail, but many times it's just me playing with where I might want to go and sometimes for the sake of the plot, I just can't make that dialogue happen at any point in the story. But I still think it's a good exercise because it makes me experiment with the character... and explore possibilities I might not have gone to had I not played around. Plus it's fun. :)

Blog Writing - Speaking on something from the perspective of a characters has helped me to jump from "I just dropped the kids off at school, worked out, put in laundry" to "In character writing non-stop". By writing free form in the blog, I am able to shift gears and get into character and remember what it is this character is all about.

Prayer and Meditation - This is something new I'm trying. When I get stuck, distracted, need to focus, I just lay quietly and ask the Spirit to touch me and flow through me. Many times I have had some quite inspirational ideas come to me and thinking about a plot point where I was stuck, I suddenly see something I never did.

Reading the newspaper, listening to sermons, catching up on the latest technology - all of these have given me ideas to add to my novel in many ways... I think even interacting with my kids has given me ideas. In short, I'm just always open to anything that might apply to someone in my book in some way...

Freestyle writing: Recently I've started a notebook where I write dialogue only, no names or what they're doing, just the talking. It helps me to get into the characters and keep a record of what I'm thinking rather than just losing it to free thought.

Doing any of these things has helped me to get in the emotional spot I need to be in to write creatively without being held back...

Julia

What this Blogg is for

I've already been posting in the bloggs of my fictional characters, and it's been a great way to get my mind into character before I write a chapter and also a way to flesh out some ideas about how the universe works.

This blogg I'm starting as a way to talk from my perspective about what's going on and to also give my friends visiting a chance to ask questions or make comments if they feel like it.

I have no plans to post regularly in this blog, but we'll see what happens.

For those who may stumble across this - and haven't been talking to me regularly, as of this date I have about 12 chapters (10 pages at 10 arial font each - I have yet to get a program that has a word count option) Some need considerable work, but the first chapter is nearly done and chapters 2-7 only need a breeze editing to make sure it's congruent after chapter one is completed.

What happened is I started the book in January, finished a couple chapters by February and quickly wrote up a few sketchy chapters after that to make sure I got my ideas down. Then realized I needed to ease into the technology and world more slowly. So I went back and added a chapter at the beginning, which turned into 3 chapters that took on a life of their own. And THEN 2 weeks ago I decided I wanted a 'prelude' which turned into a 15 page chapter. Soo... what was chapter 1 is now chapter 5.

I wrote WAAAY more than I thought I would for this first post. *heh*

Julia