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Clinton wants to stop N. Korea, Trump to encourage them!
First of all, let me send out my heartfelt thoughts for the families of those lost in the Orlando, Florida bombing, and the singer killed last week. That said, America faces deep questions about weapons control, and not just the small arms variety.
With the outcome of the Briexit ‘in or out’ Referendum looking so close, that the result will probably be stalemate, eyes (especially mine) are looking to the USA for lively and meaningful debate. With Hillary’s nomination in the bag at the end of last week, Donald Trump issued a warming that he would dish the dirt on the Clintons early this week. He should be careful. The Clintons probably are spectacularly rich, but Bill Clinton has earned more money for charity (The Clinton Foundation ) that any individual in history. Apart from calling the kettle black, can Trump say the same? Or anything like it? Any hint of corruption in his life (and I bet there is much of it) and he will be hoisted by his own petard, as we say in the UK.
But the issue of the week is weapons. America must get its own gun-control laws in order, and quickly. Hillary has vowed to do it, if she wins. Trump just seems to be interested in making political capital out of any and all situations. He will try to make capital out of the Florida bombing and shooting if he can, but it doesn’t stop there. He is also interested in making friends of violent regimes around the world.
In the past, he has been prominent among those accusing Hillary Clinton of failure to curb North Korea’s nuclear arms program, easy for him, because North Korea is willing to be isolated and doesn’t respond to economic sanctions as most countries would.
But back in March, he went further and declared that the USA, “cannot be the policeman of the world” and suggested that Tokyo and Seoul would move to develop their own weapons regardless, if the US continued along what he described as a path of “weakness”. Source: Independent newspaper.
He went on to say, “Would I rather have North Korea have [nuclear weapons] with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that’s the case,” Mr Trump said. “If Japan had that nuclear threat, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing for us.” Source: Independent newspaper.
Is Trump insane, or just very stupid?
My father served in the Korean War and it was a bitter and bloody conflict. So bitter in fact, once China showed its hand as the one holding the strings of the puppet state North Korea, that it didn’t so much conclude as end in a stand-off. Even today, US troops are based along the borders between the two enemies and only a truce and a ceasefire line exist to stop further deaths.
It’s a fragile situation and needs only a nudge to destabilise it. According to many political analysts wiser and knowledgeable about their craft than I, Trump is interested in making friends with North Korea, not only to save money (on US troops based there) but striking up a business partnership with the isolated state. This is a country that starves its own citizens to fund one of the biggest, if not the biggest, army in the world. This is a country whose citizens are desperate to escape, at almost any cost. This is a country that forces people to celebrate public events in return for a square meal that they wouldn’t otherwise get. This is a country whose only state-run news program, for those lucky enough to have a TV, spouts political propaganda on a truly monumental scale. In the past, it has openly lied about the strength of other countries (belittling America by the way) and regularly claims that North Korea is invincible and that its leader is virtually a god. This is a country itching for a chance to invade South Korea. This is a country calling Trump a ‘wise’ and ‘far-sighted Presidential candidate,’ (Source: Independent newspaper ) because he furthers their own political and military ambitions. If he can’t see that, then he is more stupid than I thought.
Now, I can’t pretend to understand fully what caused the Korean War. I certainly don’t accuse China of starting it. America is equally guilty because they were competing with France to develop their own interests in the country, which was economically devastated at the end of WWII. But I do know that North Korea’s is an inhuman and inhumane regime and cannot be allowed the opportunity to deploy nuclear weapons.
Fission v Fusion
Trump, if he wins the US Election, may also have to consider whether to allow countries like Iran and North Korea to develop fission processes. Even if these countries do not use enrichment to create bombs, fission is still a dirty business.
Trump, if he wins the US Election, may also have to consider whether to allow countries like Iran and North Korea to develop fission processes. Even if these countries do not use enrichment to create bombs, fission is still a dirty business.
I do not support fission as a means of generating energy; it is inefficient, dangerous and generates waste that is toxic for tens of thousands, if not millions of years. Burying it deep inside bedrock, far away from fault lines, might be the current way of dealing with it but have a thought for our children and our children’s children. Suppose a crack develops in the bedrock. Suppose something goes wrong during the transportation or burying of the waste. Suppose corruption allows unscrupulous dealers to get hold of some of it and create dirty bombs. Just one such bomb could make New York, Los Angeles or London inhabitable for years. Did you know that in the 1950s alone, 68 US nuclear warheads went missing? One was recently recovered but the rest are still missing. Disarm nuclear powers as much as possible and decommission the nuclear power stations; that is what I say. The future is fusion. If you want to know how we can generate cheap, clean fuel, take a look at progress on the global project to build a fusion power station on the ITER website.
Donald Trump wants to remove sanctions and US Army personnel from North Korea, Hillary Clinton wants to increase sanctions.
Trump must think hard before he removes sanctions. A petard is a ‘small bomb’ and he may well be hoisted by one, if he is not careful. But it might not be so small. In a few years’ time it might be a thermo-nuclear warhead.
Who is right; Clinton or Trump? If you have an opinion on the subject, drop me a line below.
I will be writing more about the Korean War in a forthcoming novel.
If you liked this article, please share my video for December Radio, my new novel based on the possibility of America being attacked by Nazis with a nuclear bomb. Here is a video trailer:
Less Blogging – More Writing!
I will not be posting very often for a while, because I will be focusing on writing RIP and completing the spy novel, set at the beginning of the Cold War, which is set to be published sometime late in 2016 or early 2017.
However, I will still be sending out my quarterly newsletter, so if you want regular updates, subscribe to the Lazlo Newsletter now.
Movie Review: Oblivion, 2013
Oblivion movie still of the Sky Tower
What more can be said of Tom Cruise in sci-fi roles? He always seems to deliver, so I was expecting something a bit special when I sat down to watch Oblivion last week.
Things were looking good after half an hour; great sets, great scenery and great special effects. Cruise was, as usual, dry in his delivery of Jack’s lines and held my attention.
But then I noticed something odd; Andrea Risborough, as Jack’s girlfriend and teammate Victoria, was acting badly. I thought, ‘Oh yeah, she must be an android and this will all be explained properly later,’ but no, the further into the movie I got, the more it became apparent that Victoria was human, and therefore badly portrayed. I am not saying Risborough can’t act, but she must have been at least badly cast here. It makes all the scenes with Cruise wooden and the love-making scene was just embarrassing.
But then along comes Olga Kurylenko. I won’t spoil the plot by telling you what relationship she has with Jack, but her acting is convincing and the story began to take off.
Morgan Freeman then put in an appearance. His flying googles, stubbly beard and short, white hair worked very well, allowing him to bring a new level to the film in a very convincing way.
Little touches, like the Led Zeppelin song Ramble On, were nice. In general the soundtrack worked very well and the tempo of the film increased nicely.
The sets of sunken landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge were a bit cliched. Such things have become overused in sci-fi movies since the original Planet of the Apes, but I didn’t mind too much.
The main twist of the movie only began to dawn on me in the second half of the movie, which may not be a bad thing, and then I was further confused by the appearance of Cruise’s double. Being confused is something I expect to feel during a good sci-fi movie so all was good.
The climax of the movie is a sacrificial scene and it worked very well; the music suited and the action was muted, but poignant. I was convinced and felt my time had been well-spent.
Plot Spoiler
Do not read on if you want to watch the movie and don’t want to know the ending.
Ready to turn the TV off, I saw what I hoped was the postscript scene with Olga Kurylenko. I thought, ‘Ah! Now we will see that there is a child and she is happy and they both lived happily ever after.’ Jack’s rebel mates then appeared and – horror of horrors – Jack himself! My mind was double-taking and reeling with the stupidity of a director who had just delivered a decent sci-fi movie.
We then find out that Jack has survived, sort of. I turned the TV off in disgust.
Why, oh why, do Hollywood producers insist on happy endings? And why, oh why, do directors go along with it? This was a very decent movie without the final scene. I can just see the producers saying, “No, we can’t have the take-home message that Jack has killed himself to save Earth. It must be that Cruise heroes always survive, no matter what!”
God help us if there is a post-generation-X bunch of kids who believe any of this tripe!
Four stars for everything except the last 5 minutes. A molten asteroid for that bit!
How to Write a Good Book – Post 6. Editing
At last your manuscript about Rudolph and Santa is complete and has gone to your beta readers for one round of testing. What next?This is where the hard work begins. Most writers don’t enjoy it, but editing is the stage that will lift your work from just a rough story to a world-class bestseller. Well, okay, we hope it will. Seriously though, without good editing, you book will not stand a chance in an increasingly competitive market.
If you can possibly afford the cost, I recommend you get another writer or professional editor to do the final edit on your work. You can always swap books for editing with other readers, if you are short of money. Why do I tell you this? A writer reads what he thought he wrote, not what he actually wrote, when he reads it back. He or she will read the same paragraph 20 times and not see the typo. It has has happened to me in a very embarrassing situation; a submission to a pubisher had an error in the first line of the query letter. Two other people close to me checked it and didn’t spot it. I read it at least 20 times and missed it. Once the tension of submission was over and I received their rejection, I saw the error and it was blindingly obvious!
But whether you are editing somebody else’s work, or your own, the editing process is the same. Do it in this order:
- Development editing
- Copy-editing
- Proof reading
Development editing
Development editing is looking for ways to organise and rearrange the text to tell the story better. A good example is for Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate, as mentioned in lesson 4. Structure. I took the few pages just before the climax and inserted one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter of the book in italics. I could do this because the Main Character (MC) used a tape recorder, so we don’t lose tension by revealing whether the MC lives or dies.Copy-editing
Copy-editing is basically getting the gammar right. It is done to improve the flow of ideas for the reader, clarify what you are saying and sometimes to reduce the length of text. You will probaby find that you also correct some typos, thus saving yourself work during the last stage; proof reading.
Development editing is looking for ways to organise and rearrange the text to tell the story better. A good example is for Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate, as mentioned in lesson 4. Structure. I took the few pages just before the climax and inserted one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter of the book in italics. I could do this because the Main Character (MC) used a tape recorder, so we don’t lose tension by revealing whether the MC lives or dies.Copy-editing
Copy-editing is basically getting the gammar right. It is done to improve the flow of ideas for the reader, clarify what you are saying and sometimes to reduce the length of text. You will probaby find that you also correct some typos, thus saving yourself work during the last stage; proof reading.
Read this sentence:
After that, the conversation went on but I left to find the dormitory
There is a lot of ambiguity here and at least 2 typos; there should be a comma before the conjunction ‘but’ and there is no full-stop (or period, if you are American). Some writers will not use a comma after a preposition of less than five or six words. This practise is becoming more common. So the comma before ‘the conversation’ could probably be removed.
But the sentence is very ambiguous. Did the person leave before the conversation, during the conversation or after. As it stands, it suggests that the person probably left before the conversation. But think hard. Is that what you intended to say? If you wanted to say that they left after the conversation, you would want to use this form:
The conversation went on, but I left to find the dormitory after that.
And if you want to say that they left during the conversation, you would write:
The conversation went on, but I left to find the dormitory.
Notice how this is also much shorter. If you want to reduce the length of text and it really doesn’t matter whether the person left before, during or after the conversation, then use this form.
Hemmingway is a great writer for economy of prose. He never uses a word when none is required. This is the typical approach of journalists, because each word would cost money to print.
Proof reading
Now you are simply looking for typos. These are not always picked up by your wordprocessing software’s spell-checker. For instance, look at this sentence:
The convection went on, but I left to find the dormitory.
If you have your auto-correct feature turned on, you are more likely to have the wrong word in a sentence. Here, ‘convection’s is not the word we want, but it is spelled correctly, so spell-checker will probably not highlight it. Beware of misplaced words!
I would recommend turning on the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. This will put a blue underline under a word, phrase or sentence that seems incorrrect, according to common grammar rules. If you see a blue underline, take a close look at the phrase. Here is a good example:
In fact I didn’t know what was wrong.
Word will underline ‘In fact,’ because that particular type of preposition is always followed by a comma. You will learn a lot about grammar by checking phrases that are underlined in blue. But don’t feel you MUST make the change. Sometimes word simply doesn’t understand the specific situation.
Here are my top tips for proof-reading:
- Do it twice. Once reading forward, to improve the flow, and once as in 2.
- Start at the end of your story and work back, reading once sentence at a time. This way, you are less likely to expect what you read and miss the typos
- Use a macro to check for unmatched speech marks. I doubt there is a writer on the planet who can write a book without leaving out some or putting them in the wrong place.
- If something feels awkward, it is. Try rewriting it in as many different ways as you can think of. Eventually you will get it right. You might even improve the story.
Lastly, if you think editing is a waste of time, take a look at these pictures of December Radio. The copy on the left is before editing, the one on the right after. See how much the text was reduced. In my opinion, the story improved greatly as a result. The cover on the left was my visual. And as a bonus editing tip, pick your best scene and send that to your cover designer.
That is the end of my series of tutorials on How to Write a Good Book. I hope you have enjoyed and learned something from it. You can find all my books online. December Radio is in bookshops in the UK and USA. And there is a special deal:Get 4 eBooks and the December Radio Paperback for $16! lazloferran.com
If you find any errors in my books, email me!
How to Write a Good Book – Post 5. Varying the Pace
So you have your plot of Rudolph’s adventures all worked out and you know where the climax and twist will be. Now you are considering writing the climax and want to know how to show tension when Rudolph can’t get the tractor down a narrow alleyway, or gets stuck in a snowdrift. So how do you show the tension?
It’s not as easy as you might think!
Action Words and Expletives
The first rule is to use more action words when you are writing action sequences. These are words like ‘ripped,’ ‘spun,’ ‘yelled,’ ‘wrenched,’ and ‘panted.’
Here is an example. See how this sentence sounds quite calm.
– He knew he needed to get through the door. He put down the axe and walked up to the door. He pulled on the handle and it opened. He went thought the opening and all was well.
That definitely lacks tension. Let’s try it again:
– He had to get through the door. He only had seconds left! He threw his axe down, spun round and leaped toward the door. Grabbing the handle, he pulled and pulled but the door wouldn’t budge. Using all his strength, he gave it one last almighty heave and wrenched the door open. The wood cracked and splintered as the lock broke, and he was through!
“What’s the problem Rudolph?” Santa yelled.
“The door! It’s bloody stuck!”
Okay, so I went a bit over the top there; it’s twice as long. But it’s much more exciting.
Notice the use of words like ‘grabbing,’ ‘cracked.’
Also notice saying ‘had to’ instead of ‘knew he needed to.’ Forget about considered thought in tight situations. People just act and think later when they are desperate. This is one place where we definitely don’t need to know what the hero is thinking.
Also note the use of an expletive (swear word) by Rudolph. You might not want to use expletives in your writing but it’s a fact that people swear a lot when under pressure. Leave swear words out and you risk losing realism.
Short Sentences
For the last reason above, short sentences are good in action sequences. We want simple action, and short sentences tend to increase the pace.
Time
Another trick is to use time. If the hero is not only fighting against an evil adversary or obstinate door, but also against the clock, this will dramatically increase tension.
I used this a great deal in Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate.
Adversity or Obstacles
Elements of adversity of obstacle can also add tension. In the example above the door wouldn’t open easily and he had to wrench it open. Small accidents can also increase tension. He needs a key to unlock the door but he drops it, as people do when tense or in a hurry. Both accidents and obstacles also prolong the tension, which also helps create tension.
Use of Commas
The use of less commas during action sequences can increase tension, but this is a technique not all authors employ. If you try it, you still need to observe good grammar rules.
A Word of Warning about Length of Description
As you probably noticed in my example above, quite often action sequences can make the prose longer. For this reason, you will need to allow a bit more space for describing action, perhaps as much as 50% more space. But on the other hand, if you use short sentences carefully and avoid any description of inner feeling, you can sometimes keep the prose in action scenes as short as elsewhere.
Slowing the Pace
It may sound crazy, but sometimes you will want to slow the pace!
You can’t have climactic scenes throughout the whole book. This would be exhausting to read, and would ignore the whole point of climaxes. But you may want more than one climax. In The Devil’s Own Dice I knew there would be a big battle in the middle of the story. Inevitably this has to be very tense and a climax of some sort. But I didn’t want it to be the final climax. This made things tricky. I got round it by making the lead up to the battle quite leisurely and keeping the tension high afterwards. I also had a strong ‘insight’ scene after the battle, so that we see a previous love affair in detail and how it affected the main character. This kept the pace up, because of the tension of an affair, but also allowed the reader a bit of a contrast to battle. I had to make sure the final climax was even more exciting, but on the whole I think the reader feels they got a bonus, rather than a let down
Using Chapter Breaks and Scene Switching
I put these 2 factors together because they sometimes amount to the same thing.
Because you will want the climax somewhere near the end of the book, each chapter should, on the whole, be more gripping than the last. This drags the reader along and won’t let them put the book down. For this reason, you should normally end each chapter on a cliff-hanger. That is, they should either be just about to learn something, or have just seen some action but not know the outcome. This will make the reader want to turn the next page.
If the book has a large cast and a complex arena of action such as the invasion of Earth in my science fiction book Worlds Like Dust, you might try switching between different areas of action, either at section breaks or chapter breaks, rather than trying to describe it all simultaneously. Allowing yourself to describe one piece of action completely before switching to another increases tension, because the reader is wondering in the back of their mind what has happened to so-and-so in the other scene. Tolkien does this brilliantly in Lord of the Rings. You must handle continuity very carefully when you do this.
So, in conclusion, to vary pace, use:
- Action Words and Expletives
- Short Sentences
- Time
- Adversity or Obstacles
- Reduced Number of Commas
- Chapter Breaks and Scene Switching
Join me for the final part of this series 6. Editing in two weeks’ time.
Let me know what you think of my tutorials by commenting below:
Coming Soon! RIP – the greatest story adventure!
Subscriptions will soon start for RIP – a scifi, paranormal and alternative history adventure in the online magazine format.
There is a RIP in the fabric of time space which allows two spirits, joined by the dream of a world that might break out of a cycle of progress and destruction, to seek each other out, again and again. Omah is a man with a key, but he knows not what it will open. Bri is an empath of outstanding ability. Together they will find a way to open up the RIP and find man’s destiny.
Subscriptions will be for $0.99 for 2 chapters per month (RIP Prime), or $0.49 for one chapter per month (RIP Stream 1 or 2), of a story that will build into seven novels of up to a million words and take years to complete.
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