Collisions & Calamities

"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I know."--Abraham Lincoln

Caveat Lector: You may find this more goofy than useful, but this model of writing has the questionable virtue of amusing me.

Thanks to my husband, whether he wants to admit it or not. *grin*

Particle Physics What?

I'm serious. It came to me: writing as particle physics.

I could blame my husband the physics graduate student, though he protests he's at LIGO and studying astrophysics. On the other hand, I remember (back when we were dating) that he used to come see me with radiation badges from working at Cornell's synchrotron. And on the other other hand, I tried to recreate Young's double-slit experiment with a desk lamp, scissors, and piece of paper when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Given that I couldn't read the difference between an eighth note and a sixteenth note in playing piano at the time, you may conclude that my sense of scale was highly underdeveloped...I digress.

One of the reason I like having different models of writing handy is that when one stalls out on a particular project, I can apply a new one and see if it helps. It doesn't always, but the mental exercise is good for me. This one occurred to me as I was working on a couple nasty chapters (in the sense of protagonist obstacles, not horror!) of Paper Knives.

Collisions, Catastrophes, & Fallout

The way I figure it is this: a story, if you recast it in particle physics terms, is about collisions, catastrophes, and fallout.

Collisions: you take plot element A and plot element B and throw them at each other. Even more elements, if you're feeling ambitious. The trajectories should make sense; two things moving away from each other won't normally collide.

Catastrophes: When particles hit each other at high velocity, the results aren't pretty. These are your conflicts, your plot, the things that happen to keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat.

Fallout: Any time particles collide hard enough, you end up with consequences. Bursts of energy, new particles, and so on. (Don't look at me like that. I'm not a physicist.) Consequences. Some of which become collisions and catastrophes in themselves. You can figure out the recursive aspects.

That's Too Simplistic!

Well, yes, but that's beside the point. I'm not so certain about the simplistic aspect. It sounds simple explained this way, but then, so might a synchrotron. I visited Cornell's synchrotron one Saturday; Joe was working there and he offered to show me around parts of it. Believe me, that building didn't look like it was simple. And neither does the relevant physics, from what I've seen of it. (They call it the "particle zoo" for a reason.)

Part of the point, aside from the amusement value, is that any model will compress, streamline, or omit certain aspects of a process in order to clarify the rest of it. The particle physics model obscures a lot, but it was helpful to me at a time when thinking of plotting in terms of collisions between characters and societies was apt. If there's any lesson in this whimsy, there it is.

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