Tag Archives: immortality

February 19, 2014 · 1:04 PM

How Aging Works

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging and immortality.  Mainly because Twilight has remained a part of my life in the best way possible – through the people who have been making fun of it.  For instance, there is a channel on YouTube that I highly recommend you check out.  It’s called CinemaSins, and they do a segment entitled Everything Wrong With_______.  In the EWW videos, they point out everything wrong with a movie (as if you couldn’t figure that out).  From consistency errors to poor writing to other stuff, all with a humorous overtone, so you know…you don’t get too offended if they say a movie you like has 73 sins.  And they just came out with a new video, which I watched yesterday.  I’ll embed it here for you:

So the first thing I noticed was that the narrator didn’t understand that Edward’s appearing to Bella in times of danger was not one of Edward’s many superpowers, but rather a new power of Bella’s – hallucinating her ex in times of danger.  This was hilarious to me.  Don’t know why.  Guess it’s just because nobody could really fathom the levels of crazy that book went to.  But what I really wanted to talk about was a thought inspired by 00:44 in the video.  “Wow.  Maybe I shouldn’t be dating such an old man,” says Bella.  To which the EWW narrator replies, “Ya think?!”

Now, I am guilty of this in my writing.  I even blogged about immortality before without bringing up this particular point, so I wanted to clear something up:  No matter how you spin it, an 109-year-old is an 109-year-old.  If your body stops aging at seventeen, your brain may stop developing in the traditional ways, but it will just find some non-traditional ways.  Eventually you’re going to stop acting like a teenager.  It’s just going to happen.  And I say I’m guilty of this because I am.  My character, Aiden, is three-hundred and um…seventy…sixty…….He’s um…

Hold on…

*looks back through own book*

Three-hundred and seventy-six!  There we go.  I forgot.

Anyway, the point is that he still acts like an eighteen-year-old and I want to be the first to say that that is bullshit, pardon my language.  It’s in my book because I wrote it at a time before I’d given this immortality stuff any proper thought, and after I’d given it proper thought it was too late to change the entire book.  Plus, I don’t know if I would have.  I think there’s a certain level of suspension of disbelief that contributes to the enjoyment of paranormal romance type novels, and I think that it is that suspended disbelief that allows us to buy that a 376-year-old could ever act like a teenager.  It’s something I rely on, in fact.  But at the same time I’m telling you it’s BS.  Because it is.  And I felt like being honest.  Speaking of honest, I’m sure I wanted to make a point somewhere in here, but I’ve honestly forgotten what it is.

Ummm…hey look at this stuff I made for my Etsy shop! [EDIT 1/12/15: My Etsy shop has been closed but I’m leaving these pictures up because I’m a showoff.]

Abstract 5

Fish4

Conch 1

Round Shell 2

Thanks for reading!

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February 3, 2013 · 5:35 PM

Immortality

I’ve been thinking a lot about immortality lately.  Not that I’d like to be immortal; that would be terrible.  But a lot of characters in books are immortal, and that poses more problems than you’d think.

For one thing, you have to define the limits of their immortality.  I know that sounds oxymoronic – limited immortality – but think about it: A character who is untouchable, like Superman without a weakness to green rocks, has little motivation to be careful and think things through.  He or she does not care at all about going blindly into any situation.  And why should they?  They can’t be harmed.  But that makes it a little difficult to create any amount of suspense around that character.  You know he or she is going to be fine no matter what.

Another thing is that an untouchable protagonist makes for a character that your readers can’t really relate to.  When was the last time you looked at Superman and thought, “I know exactly how he feels.  I hate it when entire buildings fall on me.  It really messes up my hair”?

Messed Up Hair

No worries, though, because your character can still have very human flaws that make him or her more empathetic.  That’s not what I want to talk about though.  What I want to talk about, as I said, is the possible limits of immortality.

For example: Have you thought about what would happen to an immortal if their head was cut off?  If they were chopped up into teeny tiny pieces?  Incinerated?  Dissolved in acid?  Do those things just not touch them?  Do they bleed when they’re cut?  Or can they simply not be cut?

Severed-Head

These are all things that must be established.  The reason I’m talking about this is I have several characters in Hellbound who are some form of “immortal.”  My protagonist is, for one.  As are the protagonist’s father and uncle.  But all the immortal characters do have weaknesses.  They can be killed in certain situations.  It’s just tricky, because most things can’t kill them.  So how do you create a sense of urgency?  Suspense?  When the reader knows that a character is untouchable, it is hard to do these things.

Fortunately, as the author, you control the world you create.  You can make exceptions to the rule, create an opponent who has the ability to harm immortals, define the parameters of your character’s immortality.  It is all your doing.  But you do have to think about those things.  It is not enough to say “He is immortal.”  You must say, “He is immortal, in that he will live forever, provided that no one ever attacks him with a man-made weapon and cuts his head off which will cause him to die.  Other weapons, like guns, have no effect on him because they are made by machines.”  And the explanations could go on and on.

That’s all I have to say really.  Just wanted to point out to you that immortality is complicated.

Have a comic:

Writer's Block Strip 16

Word of the Day: Parameter (n) – a limit or boundary; guideline.

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