Author: michaelkilman

Master Four Elements of a Scene to Enhance Your Fiction Writing

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Like music, good writing often has a rhythm and a flow. There are always exceptions of course, but if you want your readers to connect with your content, it can be helpful to consider the four elements below.

This essay will focus mainly on fiction. Non-fiction has a different set of elements, and maybe I will write about that soon (comment below if you’re interested in that).

Before I dive in, It’s important to note, that style is really important here too. Different writers use these elements in different ways, but, finding your way to balance them, can help your writing immensely. Often, thinking about how to balance these elements is better done in your second draft. Why? Well, often the first draft is more about discovery. What’s happening? Why is it happening? Once you have the core basics of what you want the scene to accomplish, then you can go back through and apply these elements. Of course, as you practice, you’ll get better at doing it the first time around too.

As I cover each element, I’m going to write a sample scene using the elements. Each element will build on the previous scene. The first iteration of the scene will only include dialogue. With each element, we will add another layer to the same scene.

Let’s dive in.

Element 1: Dialogue

What makes dialogue compelling? Have you ever stopped and read your favorite scenes of dialogue?

There are a few key ingredients to dialogue. But before we get into that, it’s good to note that dialogue in real life, is not the same as fiction. You can’t listen to real-world conversations to help with fictional dialogue.

When I was in graduate school a huge part of my job was transcribing interviews and roundtable discussions. I spent hundreds of hours typing up conversations. It wasn’t long before I discovered that most people don’t follow the same grammatical rules that we do when we are writing. Good dialogue has to simulate conversation but is cleaner and more to the point. No one wants to read all the ums and pauses and false starts. So a first tip is to consider studying how your favorite novels or films set up quality dialogue.

Beyond the flow of dialogue, it’s vital to consider your characters’ interests. What does your character want out of this conversation? What’s their agenda? Do they just want a cup of coffee or are they trying to persuade someone else to take action?

Every person in the dialogue should have some kind of agenda, even if the agenda is to try and remain neutral or understand what the other character is trying to say. How does that agenda tie into their larger goals? Or does it? Maybe their goal is to relax and their neighbor is pestering them. Maybe the conversation is with a powerful person whose goal is to take over the world.

Dialogues are often games of power, persuasion, and coercion. We use our words to enforce norms in society. We use them to get what we want or prevent something from happening. We use words to connect with people or share our feelings just as often as we use them to compete. Always consider how these conversations drive the plot and character development.

Each of your characters will use different kinds of words and phrases. A ten-year-old, unless they are a prodigy, is unlikely to use big words and scientific jargon. They are also less likely to be self-reflective. However, if the 10-year-old is trying to sound smart (because their agenda is to sound more grown up in a group of grown-ups) it can be fun to have the child use the words incorrectly.

You can also use a conversation between an adult and a child to reveal something about your world. The adult can explain elements of your world or story to your child that might be difficult to do in other ways. Children and newcomers to a world are often useful tool for helping your reader to understand your story more organically through dialogue than a long info dump.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of incorporating a lot of dialects into writing. In the Harry Potter series, for example, I loathe reading the Hagrid Dialogue out loud to my kids. That’s because sometimes it’s hard to understand what the character is saying. You have to read the sentence several times and that kind of dialogue can pull you out of the story and leave you feeling frustrated. Your use of accents or dialects should never pull the reader out of the story. You want to draw people in, not frustrate them and force them to read the same line several times to understand what’s happening. There are always exceptions of course, but generally, I suggest avoiding distracting dialects.

On the other hand, if there are certain words or phrases that a character always uses, it can be a good way to build personality or remind your reader of their quirks. Just don’t overuse this. We have all encountered the annoying person who uses the same phrases over and over. Though, this too can be a tool in writing. Perhaps your main character is exhausted by their neighbor who says the same phrase six times in a single conversation. But remember, a little bit goes a long way.

Avoid adverbs. I’m not one of those writers who says never use them, adverbs have their place. But if you always have to write something like, ‘She spoke softly’ or ‘He said with certainty’ then you aren’t really balancing out the other elements. There are lots of other tools in our writing kits that help us understand tone and emotion. Dialogue can be good for showing the reader things, but avoid telling your reader about the tone or feelings of the character. Let the character share their own thoughts and feelings as much as possible.

There are definitely more things to think about with dialogue but considering these key points can significantly improve your dialogue. If you want to dive deeper into dialogue specifically, I highly recommend the book ‘How to Write Dazzling Dialogue’. It’s a pretty quick read and covers some additional key points about how to improve that particular part of your writing.

Scene Example Part 1: Just Dialogue

Stephanie said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma said, “But we need you here on the farm.”

“Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

“One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

“So hire someone.”

“You don’t care about your family?”

“It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place. It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

“Stephanie, of course you fit in here. I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here!”

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.”  

Element 2: Action

Action isn’t necessarily violence. Action is also motion. It’s everyday tasks. It’s moving around in the space and inhabiting it. Action is important because you don’t want your character floating around in a void, you want them to be living breathing beings inhabiting an interesting space.

Is your character cooking dinner while talking to their grandmother?

Are they brewing a magical potion to curse their enemies while discussing their evil master plan with their assistant?

Action and Dialogue work together in beats. The dialogue in the example above is an okay start but when we only have the words, were missing so much more of the lived experience of these two characters. Dialogue and action have beats and melodies just like music.

If you have only dialogue and no action, there’s no room for the reader to pause and consider. Action can give dialogue some breathing room. It can add quirks to each character and deepen the emotions of the dialogue.

Maybe it’s just me, but I struggle to stay interested when there is too much action. A big battle scene, a one-on-one fight, a massive explosion, or a scene where someone is fleeing a monster can be a lot of fun to read and write. But if your characters never stop to catch their breath, if every chapter has a scene where someone is fleeing a monster, if your entire book is a battle… you’re going to bore the hell out of most readers. There are certainly people who will read nonstop action. Hollywood counts on some of those people to consume their endless sequels of Fast and Furious, but even those movies, have downtime.

Action should serve a purpose in the story. Yes, you can absolutely write cool action scenes and they’re definitely fun to write, but why? What does this do to drive the story?

Frank Herbert was notorious for cutting out the vast majority of the big battles in his Dune books, and Dune is hands down the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time. There’s lots of action in the books, but you don’t hear very much about the big interstellar battles as Paul Atredies conquers the galaxy. And while not everyone loves Dune, it’s one of the most important science fiction novels in history. There are lots of ways to approach action.

Why does that bomb need to go off? Why do two rivals have to fight that battle? Or rather, why do you need to show the battle? Is your main character a warrior so the audience needs to see their skills or use of magic? Is important to show them fighting for their life against an evil shapeshifting clown? If your story contains a lot of battles, it’s not necessary to show every element of every battle. Choose important moments in longer moments to highlight important actions. Don’t make the mistake of the Transformers movies and have ninety minutes of a two-hour film dedicated to fight scenes. Those movies make my eyes glaze over because it’s just action, action, action.

Be strategic with your action. Too much and you might have readers putting down your book, too little and they won’t understand the scene the way you want them to.  

Scene Example Part 2: Dialogue and Action

Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed, “But we need you here on the farm.”  

Adding in some more garlic, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the floor. “You don’t care about your family?”

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here!”

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.”  She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops.

Element 3: Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the cultural and environmental setting your characters are in. It’s the kinds of cultural elements you’ll see in the seen giving your story more context.

– What time in history does your story take place?

-What is the level of technology?

-Are the characters indoors? Outdoors?

-What kinds of things decorate their walls?

-What kind of furniture or objects fill the room?

-What does the landscape look like? Can people walk in it or do they need a space suit?

We cultivate our spaces based on cultural knowledge and personal experiences. But personal experience is also bound by culture. If you live in a different culture you will naturally have different experiences. Think about the culture and the setting of your scene. In our example, we have a family farm and a young girl dreaming of traveling the world and painting. What kind of cultural details are important to make the world feel real?

Worldbuilding should be realistic. No, I don’t mean you can’t use magic, or spaceships, or supernatural forces, I mean your world must be internally consistent and holistic. What does that mean? It means that there are manyl ways that sentient creatures (like humans) interact and adapt to the world they live in both socially and physically.

-Every culture has limitations and gaps in knowledge. What are your characters?

-What are the power dynamics between the characters? Who tries to assert power? Who tries to resist it? The rebellious teenager who wants to travel the world and paint is trying to both resist the power of the older generation and assert her own.

-Do they fit within the status quo of the culture or is one character challenging the status quo?

-How does their identity fit, or not fit, into the culture?

A few sentences here or there can add a little more context to the world in which the characters inhabit. Everyone always says to avoid info dumping. But what if you have to introduce the reader to a giant walking city, telepathy, and what it’s like to be homeless in this environment in a single scene? How can you avoid info dumping? The balance between these elements (including the next and final one) can help you to draw your readers in and make a scene more compelling, while at the same time introducing interesting concepts or ideas to your story.

If you want a full book chapter that includes worldbuilding through, dialogue, action, and the environment, you might consider listening to audio narration of the first chapter of my novel “Mimi of the Nowhere” for free over on YouTube.

If you want more on worldbuilding specifically, I’ve written several other essays on the topic and of course, my co-written book, “Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers might give you some things to think about.

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Scene Example 3: Dialogue, Action, and Worldbuilding

Under the warm light of the kitchen, Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed. “But we need you here on the farm.”  

First, adding in some more garlic she had bought that morning from the farmers market, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

Cornelius the Rooster picked that moment to jump up and peck at the kitchen window.

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the peeling linoleum floor. “You don’t care about your family?” She grabbed the ancient rolling pin, that had probably been around as long as she was alive. Two white handprints lingered on her apron as she worked the dough.

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

Rain replaced the rooster, drumming on the window.

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here. Your family loves you. We’ll miss you.” She nodded toward the family portraits on the wall, taken semi-often over the last hundred years. The older photos were black and white and gradually changed to a printed copy Grandma had reluctantly taken with her cell phone.

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.”  She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops. Similar stains speckled the walls from past disagreements, a map of misunderstandings.

Element 4: Internal Life

Internal life is what’s happening in the character’s mind. Not every scene needs a great deal of internal life, and in some situations, it might make sense to cut it entirely. But I think that internal life can be a powerful ally in writing a scene that connects the reader to the character’s emotions. It can also show how a character has changed in a longer story.

One of my favorite fantasy writers, Brent Weeks, does a fantastic job of using the internal life of his characters to show how they reflect on what’s happening to them and how they’ve changed over time. When you read either one of his famous book series, The Lightbringer, or the Night Angel series, that inner life helps you to feel that you’re growing with the character and you feel a deeper connection.

Things to consider about the element of inner life:

-What are the character’s thoughts and feelings?

-How do they think about what the other person just said?

-How do they feel about the place? The weather? The political situation?

-What do they think about themselves?

-What emotions are most potent in the scene?

-What things do they ruminate on? What can’t they stop thinking or worrying about?

-Do they have trauma? What things force them to relive that trauma?

-What motivates them?

-What are they afraid of?

-How does the internal life reflect the outer conditions?

Be careful, too much internal life can slow the scene down to the point where it’s hard for the reader to focus. If you’re always in the character’s head, the scene can feel bloated. Some books focus so much on inner life that nothing happens for most of a chapter. That may or may not be good for your story. Consider carefully.

Scene Example 4: All Four Elements

Under the warm light of the kitchen, Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed. “But we need you here on the farm.”  

What did they need her for? She barely tended the animals anymore. She couldn’t understand why her grandmother was pushing so hard to keep her around.

First adding in some more garlic she had bought that morning from the farmers market, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Her baby brother loved this place. He was up early every single day with the animals, spent hours on the tractor, and loved the work. But Bert was a loner. He only left the farm to go on supply runs.

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

Cornelius the Rooster picked that moment to jump up and peck at the kitchen window. She hated that damn bird. It woke her every morning and pecked at the window all the time. She definitely wouldn’t miss him.

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the peeling linoleum floor. “You don’t care about your family?” She grabbed the ancient rolling pin, that had probably been around as long as she was alive. Two white handprints lingered on her apron as she worked the dough.

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

The rain replaced the rooster, drumming on the window. She’d almost rather the rooster. Stephanie was so tired of the rain, of the endless months of overcast. She wanted to be somewhere warm and sunny.

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

And there it was. She wanted Stephanie to become the typical barefoot and pregnant farmer’s wife. And who the hell would she stick around for? There weren’t exactly a lot of good options around here. After high school, all the fun people had gone off to college. After her parents had died, she had stayed for three years until Bert graduated. But she dreamed of New York and Paris and London. And she wanted to see those places before she even considered kids.

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here. Your family loves you. We’ll miss you.” She nodded toward the family portraits on the wall, taken semi-often over the last hundred years. The older photos were black and white and gradually changed to a printed copy Grandma had reluctantly taken with her cell phone.

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.”  She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops. Similar stains speckled the walls from past disagreements, a map of misunderstandings.

Concluding Thoughts

Take a look at how much more we know about the character’s motivations and the world in which they inhabit in the last example compared to the first one where we only use dialogue. How I use these elements will certainly be different than how you use them, but I hope the scene examples will help illuminate how you might approach and improve your own scenes.

Even if you choose to skip one of these elements, or if you use one far less than the others, it’s important to consider how each of these approaches is used and integrated into the scene to breathe life into your characters. These aren’t rules, these are suggestions. At the end of the day, you decide how to approach your style of writing.

I write essays like this to help readers like you understand the core foundations so that they can truly understand the nature of the art and craft of writing. After all, the world is a better place with better stories. And I believe that stories can save the world.  

I hope this was helpful! Best of luck with all of your writing! Feel free to add questions or comments below.

The Great Magnetic Sock Migration of 2077 (Short Story)

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Hey readers,

As most of you know, I write a lot of serious things. So sometimes it feels good to write something absurd and fun. This story will ultimately be part of an anthology I’ve been working on for a while but don’t expect the full release anytime soon. The anthology will be called ‘A Comedy of Mechanical Errors’ and it currently has 10 complete similar stories written in it. It’s a sort of a side project for me but I love each and every one of these stories.

Below is a free preview of the story I published for paid subscribers on substack. If you want to read the rest you can visit the link here and subscribe.

The Great Magnetic Sock Migration of 2077

By Michael Kilman

“Socks… socks Luke. Who would have thunk it?”

As the pair drove west on the highway in the old green Land Rover, Luke rolled his eyes.

He sighed. “How many are on the move now, Roger?” 

“One second, let me look.”

Roger opened up his phone and scrolled as Luke drove on. They passed scores of abandoned vehicles on the shoulder. The highway, once 4 lanes, only had enough for two cars to pass abreast, and no one was headed east anymore.

“Wow! 2,938,532,971.”

“How the hell could that be an odd number? Wasn’t that the entire point of those damn socks?”

Luke dodged a few flipped-over cars in the road. One car had a few dozen socks inching over the derelict vehicle.

“I don’t know. It’s just what the tracker says. Maybe a bird ate one of them or something.”

“What the hell would a bird eat a sock for?”

“I don’t know. There’s gotta be a reason though, right? I mean, look at those things. Hey! Maybe one of them fell into a volcano!”

Luke rolled his eyes. “They aren’t the one ring, Roger, they’re socks.”

“They ain’t just any old socks. They’re Super Socks! You know what everyone is calling this whole thing on social media?”

“Do I really want to know?”

“The… ASOCKalypse.” He paused. “Get it? Get it?”

“Is anyone actually calling it that or are you just trying to promote hashtags again?”

“Nope, not me this time. There are like a million memes about it and some of them have us and the other teams in it. Do you want to see it?”

“I’m driving. So… no thanks.”

“Asockalypse ha! I wish I’d thought of it first.”

“Millions of people are already following us and the other teams. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know… money? Fame? Memes?”

“T.S. Elliot was right.”

“What? Who?”

“The Poet. T.S. Elliot.”

Roger just blinked and stared at Luke.

Luke sighed again. “He said that the world won’t end with a bang, but a whimper. And our world is ending with socks and memes. That feels like a whimper.”

“Well there’s gonna be a pretty big bang isn’t there? I mean if we don’t stop this.”

“Okay, so a bang after the whimper.”

“The world’s gotta end somehow right?”

“With socks?”

“No, the Asockalypse!” Roger had a massive grin on his face. 

Want to read the rest? Become a paid subscriber of my substack and get a free short story or exclusive content every month.

Launching the ‘Re-Weaving’ Podcast

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For a while now I’ve been really focusing on thinking about alternatives to our current, political, economic, and social systems. In that vein, I’ve been reading a lot of books and articles that challenge the apparent inevitability of our current global system. The more I’ve read, the more I realized there are a lot of people in the past and present who are spending time looking at other ways of approaching social organization in this world. There is also a ton of archeological evidence out there now that increasingly demonstrates that the classic story of how humans organized in the early days of our species is nothing more than modern mythology, and that things were, and are, a lot more complicated than historians, economists, political scientists, and others would have us believe.

Some of these ideas are radical and game-changing, some of these ideas are experiments of the imagination. But, I wanted to create a space for people to engage with them, that’s accessible and public. Because everything humans do is complex, and what we imagine matters. So, I’ve decided to launch a new podcast. The podcast is called Re-Weaving. I wanted people to think about how this world is woven together, and how, if we choose, we can unravel some of the toxic systems and approaches and, as communities, weave things back together.

For now, it will be a once-a-month thing that starts as a live stream on YouTube and then will be uploaded to other podcast services after we have recorded. This allows for public engagement and questions during the live stream for anyone who is participating.

My first episode will go live this coming Monday, June 26th at 7 pm. I will be speaking with the Author and Game Designer Joshua L. Stelling for his unique book called The Organomic Manifesto and discuss his ideas for a radically different approach to economics. You can join us live, or watch the replay on YouTube or other podcast sites (I am working on getting other sites set up at the moment).

Here is the link to the very first episode

The Truth About Strength and Courage

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Our goal in this world should not be to dominate and control, but rather, to empower and encourage the unique qualities of every living being. We should seek to allow the best versions of ourselves to develop and thrive and encourage those around us to do the same.  I’ve said it before, our diversity in thinking, experience, ways of knowing, and qualities are the greatest tools human beings have. After all, if we try to tackle the same problem with the same approach time and again, all we do is make ourselves miserable and the problem still won’t be solved. Throughout history, the greatest achievements have always come from collaboration across diverse viewpoints. The greatest works of art, the greatest developments in science and technology, and the answers to our most difficult problems were all solved by applying diverse thinking and skills and collaborating with others.

So why do we fight so hard against diversity and difference? Why do we so often seek uniformity?

The answer is simple, fear and cowardice. 

The concepts of strength and courage have, for too long, been equated with the ability to dominate, to control, to create order and hierarchy. But neither strength nor courage is really about these things. These notions are falsehoods perpetuated by longstanding narratives and myths that reinforce existing structures of domination and control. Essentially, the reason we’ve come to feel that strength and courage are about these things is that those in power have used that narrative to legitimize their abusive system.

What do I mean by an abusive system? 

Regardless of which political or economic system you employ, it becomes abusive the moment that it creates a situation that takes away people’s agency. This isn’t an argument for libertarianism though. This isn’t an attempt to say we should undo government regulation. There are many ways you can take away people’s access to society, and deregulation of the private sector and creating a situation where those with money and power have no accountability to the people they impact with their choices can be just as destructive as systems with governments that have too much power and too much invasion of your privacy.

An abusive system is one where a large portion of the population struggles to meet their basic needs and are chasing after safety, security, health, and must suppress their skills and talents to survive.

Any system that causes suppression of our creativity, our dignity, and eats up most of our free time, is an abusive system.

An authoritarian government is an abusive system.

A system where a small minority of people control the majority of resources is an abusive system.

A system where you are discriminated against because of either outward features or inward abilities, is an abusive system.

A system where there is only one right way of thinking and there is no opportunity to play with ideas is an abusive system.

Anything that stifles agency and creativity is abusive. Nor can we forget that freedom must be partnered with accountability. For if your freedom erodes the freedoms of others, and there are no consequences, this too creates abusive systems. Freedom without accountability is nothing more than a weapon wielded by those who are already powerful. Freedom without accountability has the possibility of becoming tyranny.

The American ethos is one that is supposed to value ingenuity, persistence, creativity, innovation, and the opportunity for individuals to improve themselves. We often point to the narrative of bootstraps, one that suggests that with hard work, anyone can make something of their life. But the sad truth is, we don’t have a system that values that at all. We have a system that uses the idea of the self-made person to suppress the best qualities of the American Ethos (See my posts How to Understand Poverty and Success is Luck for exactly why this is true) and further empowers those who already have wealth and power in our society. The current incarnation of this has been heightened since the end of the 1970s, but certainly is not unique in the history of this country or indeed across quite a few cultures. Though, as David Graber and David Wengrow very successfully demonstrate in their book The Dawn of Everything, nothing about this system is natural or inevitable.

The thing is, we could absolutely cultivate those values. We could create situations where anyone who wants to pursue their dream and work hard, has the support to be successful. But as long as we measure success by the ability to dominate and exploit (basically wealth as a measure of success) we can’t have those things at all. As long as we hold up excess, self-interest, and competition as the cornerstones of our system, the majority of the population will never have the ability to meet their potential. Competition isn’t inherently bad, but when the result of competition is the destitution of some of the population, then we have missed the point. We have simply replicated the pattern of domination and control.

What does this have to do with strength and courage?

In order to justify an abusive system, you have to create propaganda. As Michael Foucault once stated, (paraphrased from his book Discipline and Punish) every system of power has the same problem. It must seek to enact that power at the lower possible cost to those who wield it. In other words, the best way to keep control is to convince people to police themselves, to enforce the morals and ideas that allow you to maintain an abusive system.

The concept of masculinity has been deeply tied to notions of strength and courage. We see action heroes in media dominating people around them. We have competitive sports that, even when they are about teamwork, often highlight who can do the most damage. We see propaganda on news outlets and in commercials about what it means to be a “real man.” The work of sociologist Jackson Katz looks at how we use these ideas to reinforce an abusive uncaring system that hurts men and honestly, everyone else. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend his documentary “Tough Guise 2” which further elaborates these points and offers significant evidence. He also has a body of written work and research worth considering.

Strength has nothing to do with whose ass you can kick. Strength and courage are about adapting to whatever circumstances you find yourself in and finding a way to press forward. Strength and courage are not about the individual, but about creating connections with others to navigate through difficulty. There is very little in this world you can do entirely on your own. You need other people to help you to achieve your goals and dreams. It takes courage to take a risk and go after your dream, but it also takes support from others. Often, people can’t take risks unless they have the right kind of support or circumstances.

To open, to be vulnerable, to admit when you are wrong, and to journey into the unknown, this is the nature of true courage. And when you encounter things that make you uncomfortable, strength is the ability to persist and the attempt to understand. Strength is not lashing out in fear. Strength is not painting a picture in your mind of why someone is your enemy, why someone is wrong, and/or how you must dominate them to prove yourself right. Strength and courage are doing your work honestly, sharing your knowledge, and then stepping back and allowing your contribution to speak for yourself. Strength is embracing the truth, that all beings are our relatives, and have been our mothers in the past. For there is no place where we begin and end, we are an ever-linked and interconnected part of the whole being that we call life.

Launching My Substack

/ michaelkilman / Leave a comment


Hello everyone,
I decided to launch a Substack to connect with my fans of my work. I will still continue posting here on this website as always, but additional content will available on substack. The content on there will include my artwork, poetry, blogs about writing and worldbuilding, personal growth, anthropology, philsophy, YouTube Videos, Podcasts, and Recorded discussions and more.

The vast majority of my posts on substack will be free to anyone, you need only sign up for a free account. But, I will also have paid subscriber content as well include free access to every short story I publish and sometimes advanced review copies or audiobooks versions of my work. So, if you enjoy my work, consider heading over to my substack and signing up and supporting me and the things I create.


https://loridianslaboratory.substack.com/

Success is Luck (With a big L)

/ michaelkilman / 1 Comment

It’s a great taboo to assert that success (defined here as recognition and financial success because there are many kinds of success) comes largely from luck. Of course, hard work plays a role in success, but luck, timing, and connections are so often an even more powerful force.

But wait, you say, I worked hard to achieve all the things I have!

Did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found? 

What’s more, the difficulty of work is quite relative. Who works harder each day? The construction worker who uses their body to build things? The janitor who cleans toilets and prevents the spread of disease? The coder who, versed in a computer language, reshapes technology? The doctor who saves lives? The teacher who must train the young minds of the future? The manager, who must organize the rest of the labor at a restaurant? We compare the kinds of labor and justify how much people make based on entirely relative notions, that are steeped in luck. Not everyone is born in the right circumstances to take advantage of education and technology.

So, we tell ourselves so desperately that hard work = success because the reality is, we are too embarrassed to admit when we are successful that luck played an enormous role. A person can work twelve-hour days for the entirety of their life, rarely miss a sick day, and always be on time, and can still die destitute no matter how well they manage their money.

But wait you say again, I did work hard to get where I am at!

You did. No one is seriously denying that unless perhaps you won the lottery or something, which is just another kind of luck.

Again, did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found? Did they want their success less than you? Perhaps they didn’t visualize the goal as hard as you?

To assert so, would be the worst kind of arrogance. We have created a system with far more losers than winners.

So what then are we rewarding with financial success and recognition? It is not hard work. It’s luck. And mythmaking about how Europe came to power, plays a role in the modern idea of hard work equates to success.

Perhaps an element of the modern Western notion of hard work equates to success is an example of how the myth of exceptionalism, born in a narrative of superiority during the rise and justifications of the horrors of colonialism, is nothing more than a defense of the fact that ultimately success is overwhelmingly about luck. The West isn’t exactly unique in this belief, but it’s certainly a core justification of the structure of our world at this stage of history.

The rise of Europe, like so much of history is about luck and timing. Europe was in the right place at the right time after the collapse of the Mongol empire. Then, hit by the black death, the traditional power structures crumbled at just the right moment for change to surge forth and give rise to a new merchant class. This increased trade and brought wealth to Europe, which alongside many other cultural and social processes, brought increased power to several kingdoms. Competing for dominance, these kingdoms began their colonial project.

I am oversimplifying these incredibly complex processes of course (a few sources for further reading are listed below if you are interested), but luck and timing also lead to the rise of every empire in history. Most of the tools and technology and knowledge that Europe used to launch the colonial project came from other places around the world. Very little of the technology required for the colonial project originated in Europe itself.

True, Europe improved upon many of these ideas, but that’s not unique. This is true of every empire. One of the things that make empires powerful is their ability to take a wide variety of ideas from diverse populations and cultures and turn them to their advantage. Empires are great at synthesis. If they aren’t they either never rise, or don’t last very long. But during the late 15th century, Europe had the right conditions and was in the right place at the right time. Europeans had the opportunity to synthesize much of the available knowledge and technology of the known world at a moment and, with several other factors at play, succeeded. The greater their reach grew, the greater access they had to technology, knowledge, and resources, thus deepening their power.

The powerful always imagine the past in a way that justifies how they seized said power. We always need a justification for our less-than-favorable qualities or actions, especially when we know we are doing things that are deeply problematic.

Shifting back to the individual level. The talent of exceptional individuals largely went unnoticed throughout history because people were marginalized through an accident of birth or circumstance. What if Mozart had been born a slave? Or Rumi a serf under a feudal lord. Both were extraordinary, and both were incredibly lucky to be born in the time and circumstances in which they lived. There is no doubt the world would be poorer had these individuals never had the opportunity to explore their unique genius. And yet, we have squandered so much human potential throughout history. How much genius has been lost to terrible systems of oppression?

At the very core of our experience is luck. Ideologies around the world, both secular and religious, have tried for centuries to justify why some are born lucky, and some are not. The Hindu caste system, the divine right of kings, the concept of manifest destiny, or even hate groups that believe they are born superior to others, tout their superiority and supremacy to justify the suffering they inflict on others. The bootstraps myth of American life (the concept of which was originally a satire of what the elites said about the poor since you cannot physically lift yourself by your bootstraps), is yet another justification of oppression. The powerful justify their power through a narrative that makes them feel special, while othering the very people that they build their power from through exploitation.

Why do we fight so hard to discount luck? What is it that so many people around the world who are successful in one way or another, feel it’s almost taboo to say they were born lucky? Certainly, some of us who are unlucky, do not have such reservations. I don’t. Part of it may be our need to create meaning in a world that feels meaningless. Part of it may be the storytelling and mythmaking that are so deeply embedded in the human brain or the pattern-seeking systems in our neurology. Regardless of the why, creating political and economic systems that reward luck and discount the important contributions of everyone in a community, has disastrous consequences for a large majority of the human species both historically and presently.


Many of us are obsessed with the narrative of the great individual, the idea that some people just come along and reshape the world. This is only a partial truth. The remarkable individuals are often just great synergists. They, for all their luck, come along and take many ideas and concepts and frame them in a new way others had not considered before, adding only a little to the existent and much larger body of knowledge. The light bulb, for example, is often credited to Edison, but, not only did it take a huge existing body of research and knowledge for Edison to synthesize the idea, but he also wasn’t the only one at the time to have come up with it. There are several individuals credited (Nicola Tesla, Hiram Maxum, and Joseph Swan to name just a few) with its invention at the same time. But, because of luck, politics (in this case patent laws), and power, Edison is credited as the brilliant mind who brought the invention to light (pun intended).

Did Edison work hard to synthesize his idea? Sure. How many of us have grown up hearing about his incredible number of failures in his process, which from a scientific standpoint isn’t all that remarkable anyway. Plenty of researchers plug away at their subject for thousands and thousands of hours and run thousands of experiments before they find any kind of success. Some ultimately fail, which also advances science. No, there is nothing particularly special about Edison. So again, I ask, did Edison work harder than any of the others who succeeded as he did or the others who tried just as many times and failed? Consider the conditions of Edison’s life that he was able to simply sit around and fail hundreds or thousands of times. Edison was born to a middle-class family. What if he had been born into a family with few resources?

We are not rewarding hard work, we are rewarding luck.

As long as we hold this notion of hard work = success we will always be captives to abusive systems. Some people are just luckier than others. It’s that simple. We all know that some are born luckier. It’s not hard to see.  If you were to survey a huge number of people on the streets of any major city and asked, do you think some people are born luckier than others, the majority would certainly say yes.

And luck certainly is not a reflection of character. Some of the most vile people in the history of the planet have been incredibly lucky. Conversely, some of the greatest examples of compassion, have been incredibly unlikely. Do only the good die young? I’m not so sure that’s exactly true but, life is the roll of the dice.

This is why we must end these absurd systems that reward luck. Because many amazing people starve to death every single day. Recently, a dear friend of mine, who was one of the most loving and courageous people I know, died far too young after striving endlessly to just meet her basic needs in life. Life was always hard for her, and she worked hard every single day. Yet, she never saw the rewards of this hard work. And doubtless, if you look around honestly, you will see endless examples of this. No, not everything works out for everyone. That’s simply another platitude to ignore the bad luck of others and justify burying our heads in the sand.

The UN estimates that 25,000 people, including 10,000 children die every day from starvation. Most of these people were born into bad luck or something unlucky happened to them to make them far more vulnerable to an exploitive system that rewards luck and forgets the basic decency and dignity of taking care of other people. These exploitive systems make us less human and more selfish and apathetic. We need to learn to imagine another way of moving through the world, both economically and politically. Everyone deserves dignity. We can do something about this. A failure of imagination is not evidence that the present system we have is inevitable.

So say it with me. Because if we don’t, we will continue down the dark path of indifference. We must start creating systems that maximize human potential instead of squandering it.

Success is luck. 

Success is luck. 

Success

is

luck.

References and Related Further Reading:
Europe and the People Without History

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

The Meritocracy Trap

Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Rereading to Improve Your Writing Craft

/ michaelkilman / Leave a comment

There are so many books to read and so little time. It’s a mantra every bookworm knows well. I currently have almost 300 books on my Goodreads, want-to-read list, and that’s just what’s on Goodreads. I probably own at least 200 more ebooks, audiobooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers. I often feel frustrated that I can only get through so many books in a year, despite constant reading. I want to explore new ideas and new worlds and new characters and grow my knowledge of fictional universes to improve my craft and gain exposure to new styles. Yet, the more I read and the more I write, the more I have come to believe that rereading some of those books I live is vital to improving my craft.  

Over the last five years or so, I’ve begun to put books on a reread list. The books that make this list are ones that I couldn’t put down, books that I often sacrifice sleep to read chapters or finish. I want to reread them because I enjoyed them, but there’s another reason. I want to understand the why of what caught my interest. Was it something in their style? The descriptions? The characters? What made it so I couldn’t put that book down and how can I build on those skills in my own writing?

Recently I reread Kim Stanley Robinson’s book Red Mars. Robinson is one of my favorite sci-fi authors because he’s an extraordinary worldbuilder and his characters are so wonderfully complex. Of course, he’s not everyone’s cup of tea as some of his passages and descriptions are quite lengthy, but I love his work. In reading Red Mars for a second time I was able to see exactly how he used his themes through his characters’ lives and how some characters were even a kind of avatar of a theme or philosophy that could be pitted against each other. So much of Robinson’s arguments surround the arguments, to terraform or not to terraform (each represented by a major character and their followers) and to continue with the Terran status quo or to create something politically and economically new (again represented by particular characters). In this you have a kind of four-pointed nexus that makes for very interesting and contrasting characters, all of whom want to call Mars home, but in their own way.

Rereading the book reminded me a bit of some of the suggestions from John Truby’s wonderful book The Anatomy of Story. The most interesting stories often have characters with similar goals, but different approaches.  This makes for lots of really interesting conflict and opportunities for characters who do change as a result of their experiences in a way that feels organic and natural. Of course, if you’ve read the whole Mars trilogy, you know that the conversation continues for many of the characters and the depth grows. But while I wasn’t ignorant of these themes the first time I read the book,  I didn’t notice the same level of depth the first time around. It’s not that I don’t think you can do this the first time around, it’s that I think you can do it better the second time around because you’re less distracted by the story itself and thus can tinker with the materials that went into the story’s construction. Once you observe the whole picture, you’re ready to understand the fine details of its construction.  

Consider, after you’ve finished the first draft of your own story, you can do the same thing. I know it takes me about seven to ten drafts before I feel a chapter or a short story is ready to go to an editor. So why not use the first few drafts to get the story out of the way, and then in the later drafts apply that critical eye you get from rereading books you love?

Here are a few questions I ask myself during a reread:

  1. How does the dialogue in this passage contribute to the character’s place in the story and the general themes that they embody?
  2. What kind of description speaks to you? When are your eyes glazing over from too much description?
  3. How does the author use the show vs tell dichotomy and how well does it work? What did you want to see more of? Less of?
  4. How does the pacing between action, dialogue, worldbuilding, and the inner life of the character work? When does it shine? When is it weak?
  5. What kinds of things make you turn the next page? What piques your curiosity?
  6. If the book is bad, why did you put it down or struggle to finish it?
  7. How does the author use themes or their central thesis to move the characters or build connections?

Ultimately a lot of this is your own opinion, and it’s important to keep that in mind. But even if you don’t like a book but it has fantastic reviews and critical acclaim, it’s worth doing this process to expand your craft. The goal here is to get you thinking critically about your own writing and thus improve your work. For me, I’ve found that rereading has been useful in that endeavor. What do you think?  

Not Anywhere At All… (Poetry)

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You always hear… wherever you go there you are. But who are you?

Not anywhere at all…


They say, Wherever you go, there you are

But I am no where to be found

I circle round all day looking

And find nothing even remotely profound

The when of me isn’t looking much better

For I will die again soon

But if I am willing to die every single moment

I can dance with the spirit of the moon

The urge to transform I cannot suppress

Nor is it a journey light of heart

To delve deep into myself in all it’s intimacy

Is to tear my ego apart

Wherever I go is not where I will be

But a moment just past recognition

I slip away so suddenly

Beyond the unknown and into a permanent state of transition

I cannot grasp the formless  

And certainly not my mind

For I am not an individual  

At least, nothing so easily defined  

 It turns out I am made from simple things

Contexts and conditions of endless configurations

To know them well is to know the source of all things

And get closer to some kind of liberation

It requires a little madness to begin

To start the process going

So I will let go of the ways I think and feel

And consider another way of knowing  

What Do You Know?

/ michaelkilman / 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about self-honesty lately. I’ve had more than a few hiccups in my life recently and somehow, I seem to be okay with it all. That doesn’t mean there aren’t heavy moments or difficulty or struggle… but it’s alright.

I’ve found so much peace and just letting my creativity flow. Here is one such flow.

What Do You Know?

You don’t really know yourself.                                                              None of us do….

How could we?

We are not individuals.

We are not a simple narrative of birth to death.

There is no line that we walk,

even if we consider the m~e~a~n~d~e~r~I~n~g~ paths that hold our

[Traces…]

We Walk…………… Forward

                                                                                                                    drawkcaB ……………klaw eW

We die many times in a single life.

Have you ever tried to count your deaths in this cycle?

Bardo is forever.

Because

We are a profound amalgamation

of the connections,

the environments,

the knowledge,

the experiences,

we have encountered.

It is not possible to untangle yourself so completely that you can measure the shape and structure of

who

you

are.

Yet, we must try.

There is no more noble a pursuit then to

Examine yourself with honesty and intimacy.

Love

The

Fact

Finding

Mission Within

And you will find the whole universe mirrored.

Do not try to grasp at concepts

You are water,

Ever flowing,

Ever Changing

A closed fist can never hold water for long

Know thyself?

No!

There is no end to self-knowledge

So BE in a relationship with yourself

Dance with the Depths,                  The Shadows,

The Desires,                                              The Light,

And move to the rhythm of laughter.

Tenderness dear one…

Always Tenderness

Because self-honesty…

Though necessary…

Tangles with turmoil

And Temper Tantrums

But Persist in your pursuit

For we need a true communion of the heart

To Stand On the Rubble

/ michaelkilman / 2 Comments
A child sits with their back turned on top of rubble

This precious human life we have is ever-changing.

We wish things will stay the same forever when they are wonderful, and wish they would change quickly when they aren’t. We are always wishing, always trying to keep the bad at bay or hold the good up forever. But this is an unreasonable ask. All things fall apart eventually. So we become dissatisfied because we hold ourselves to an impossible standard of perfection. All structures are inherently unstable.

We are just a boat, on the ocean, riding the waves and tides. We have so little control over the forces that surround us. Up and down we go in the waves and troughs… waves and troughs. We do not know when a storm might hit, or when the wind might die, or when the sailing is smooth, and the food is plentiful, but we do know we must press on. The journey must continue.

It’s easy to allow yourself to be possessed by your fears, your anxieties, and your frustrations. It is easy to give in to self-pity and hopelessness. It is easy to feel that no matter what you do, nothing goes right. But to quote the band, Bad Religion, “Self-pity is always a case of mistaken identity.”

No matter your outer conditions, you have a deep natural curiosity and joy that lives inside you. You have an inner child who wants to play and explore and thrive, no matter the conditions of your life. For what child, seeing a pile of rubble, doesn’t want to climb up on top and declare themselves ruler of the world?

We rule our worlds. Not in any external way. You cannot control when things collapse or when the winds of changes blow gales through your life. But you can climb on the rubble and declare victory. You can turn toward yourself with compassion. You can live in a state of self-honesty and acknowledge those heavy emotions, but without letting them possess you.

Self-honestly can feel like a dark forest, with unknown shadows lurking behind the trees, at least at first. But when we connect with that forest, when we learn to love the land, we find wonders, medicines, and peace. Be like our ancestors and listen deeply to that land. Be in communion with it. Learn the lay of your own internal landscape. Learn its wonders and beauty.

Be present with yourself, with what is, but be present with all things in all moments. In every moment, there is beauty and joy, even in the darkest times. Life does not stop being beautiful, because we have forgotten. Choose to remember.

Let that child out. Let your life be full of wonder and interest. And when times are hard, be curious instead of furious. Look at the possibilities in collapse. For in the wake of destruction, it is in our very nature, and the nature of all living things, to change and discard qualities and aspects that are not useful anymore. Even our biological evolution is a process of adaptation and removal.

When things go wrong ask yourself, what isn’t useful anymore? Look at both inner and outer elements. Do not just remove everything you don’t like, understand it first. See its wisdom. It may not need to be removed but instead, reorganized. Look inward honestly and see what habits and ideas no longer work. Admit when you were wrong.

Be wary of the advice of others. Test their ideas out for yourself carefully, else you may venture a long way down a dishonest path. We are diverse in experience and motivation. There is no one right way to love life.

When you are honest, space opens inside you. Take that new space you’ve created, and fill it with love. If you love to be in nature, do it. If you love to create, do it. If you love to connect with people, or reconnect, do it. Find ways to bring smiles to your face and the faces of others. Help people to feel authentic, while you develop your own authenticity.

Be creative in whatever form that takes. Build things, explore things, and open yourself up to the wonder of all that is. Remember how many things had to come together, for you to be here, now, at this moment. You are precious. This life is precious. Love it the best you can.