Tag Archives: On Writing

Editing and the Internet (Six Months Forward, Six Months Back pt 1)

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Hello, and welcome to Nate Chen Publications, home of the Project Sumter case files and, hopefully some day in the future, other stories. Six months ago I started this blog with the intent of serializing Heat Wave, the first novel dealing with Project Sumter and the talented individuals that work for (and against) that agency. This is the first in a pair of posts serving as a kind of review of how things are going, and what I’m thinking of doing for the next six months to a year.

When I originally started this blog it was with the intention to do exactly what I’m doing now: Write a story. Make it available to the world here. One day publish it in some format, probably as an eBook and probably independently. Huzzah business plan!

Now here I am, seven months into that plan and six months into the serialization, and I’ve run into an interesting quandary. I’ve managed to keep up with a fairly demanding schedule of three posts per week, amounting to 4,000+ words, and one of the ways I did that was by having a backlog of material to work with. Great so far, right? Except, while I had a backlog, I by no means had Heat Wave complete as I wanted it to appear. It’s been growing and evolving as time goes by, as stories have a tendency to do, and like all stories it’s probably going to need a little editing when its done. I’m not talking about simple GPS (grammar, punctuation and syntax) editing, I’m talking about some structural work and possibly the addition of a scene or two.

The problem: Heat Wave is already technically published here on this blog. How much tinkering is really kosher? While having new content would give people an incentive to pick up the published version of the story, do I really want to be that guy? On the other hand, marketing is a part of business, and I started this blog in the hope to use it to advance my writing career. I want to have Heat Wave finished in another two months or so, and I had originally hoped to have an eBook ready to publish on the one year anniversary.

To do that, I’ll need to figure things out soon. So I’m asking for the opinions of my readers. Would you rather see an eBook version of Heat Wave identical to what’s here, except for some basic GPS clean-up? Or would you rather see new scenes added and perhaps the order of some scenes adjusted to give the story better flow? Would you object to the eBook having a special goodie, like a short story that would only be published as part of the book? Or do you have no particular preference at all? I’d love to hear your comments.

Overdoing It

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One thing that authors rarely think about when writing a piece of fiction is how long they want their story to be. That’s a mistake.

Now on the face of it, that seems off. After all, a story should be allowed to grow to its full extent, shouldn’t it? Rather than worry about your short story’s word count or spending a lot of time stressing about how many pages your novel is, shouldn’t you be doing everything you can to make sure that your story is as strong and interesting as you can make it?

Of course you should! That’s why you need to do everything you can to keep your story from being too long.

You see, part of being an author is loving what you write. If you didn’t love it, there’s no way you’d spend hours and hours slaving over it, after all. And part of loving something is the ever-present temptation to indulge it. To talk about it constantly. To let it do whatever it wants, not whatever is best for it. In short, you can overdo it.

Have you ever met one of those people who only talks about one thing? Their job, their kids, their blog, their six-years-and-running D&D campaign? If you have, you know that even if that subject interests you at first, there’s only so long you can sit and listen to it before it becomes boring. Now, depending on how interested you are in that subject and how interesting the person telling you about it is, it might take you a while to reach the point where you’ve had enough, and it will definitely influence how likely you are to come back for more, but the key point here is you don’t ever want to let a story run so long that readers loose interest. Ask yourself how long you would let the premise of your story keep you attention, then, if your story looks like it’s going to run longer, find parts of it to cut.

You have to be ruthless about this, because even when you’re doing your best to write with the most elegance and the least waste possible, you’re likely to find yourself running much longer than you expected to. Both Heat Wave and my previous writing project (which I may talk about more in the future) have run away from me with surprising speed. Heat Wave is shaping up to be about 10,000 words longer than I originally expected it to be, and I’ve only included about 80-90% of the material I had originally hoped to use.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m scrapping all that. I talked about nonlinear writing a while back and one of the things I’ve discovered the more you do that kind of thing the more willing it makes you to take material originally intended for one story and transplant it into another. You may wind up writing whole scenes that contain great ideas or fantastic dialog but aren’t directly related to what goes on in your story.  Save them for another story with the same characters. Or even different characters.

Have background on your characters that the reader doesn’t need to know just yet? Hold on to it for a later story where it will immediately important. That will give it more impact, because your reader sees both actions in the past and their consequences in the present in the same story. That improves both your writing now, as it removes extraneous detail for you readers to keep track of, and gives you a leg up on future projects.

Finally, trimming all that extra stuff keeps you within the bounds of the Law of Conservation of Detail. We’re busy people, who only have so much time to keep track of things. Do your readers a favor and keep how much stuff they need to track to a minimum and they’ll love your writing for it. Your stories will be slimmer, trimmer and more memorable than if you just let them run all over the place, and the ideas you’ve had to cut will be glad to have more time and space to develop themselves more fully, too.

I know that this is a hard area for me to practice what I preach. I love the extra details, the hints at the bigger picture, the long running threads that only bear fruit with time. But sometimes serving your story’s best interests isn’t a whole lot of fun for you as an author.The results are well worth it, though.

P.S. – This is a link to a review of Under the Dome by Steven King, which illustrates what I’m talking about from the reader’s perspective. That review was posted after I wrote this post, and I didn’t want to try and kludge it in in some awkward way, so I’ve just appended it here.

*add title here*

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What’s in a name? that which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet 

-Juliet, Romeo and Juliet 

I cannot give my character the moniker “Tim the Barbarian”. Especially since he’s the bard. 

-#378 of the Things Mr. Welch Can No Longer Do During an RPG

Ever had the feeling that the perfect title is eluding you? While Shakespeare assures us names are not the defining aspect of a thing, Mr. Welch’s counterargument also carries a lot of weight. Nine times out of ten, the name of your story will be the first thing about it that your reader encounters. That makes the name of your story a vital part of making a good impression and attracting the attention of potential readers.

Unfortunately, unlike a lot of aspects of writing, there’s not a lot of good, solid, repeatable methods you can use for story titles. You want something high imact, that will stick with your audience. But you can’t contradict the basic spirit of your story either – you can’t use Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death for a romance and Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom only works if you’re trying to be ironic. You can’t use any titles you’ve used before, and you can’t use any titles that other people have used for very popular stories (unless you’re doing a mashup, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

One of the most common strategies to coming up with titles is to develop a theme. The novels in the InCryptid series are all jokes based on the fact that the main characters’ last name is “Price”. Thus, Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special and next year’s Half-Off Ragnarok. You never have any doubts that your dealing with an InCryptid novel when you look at the title, but they don’t actually tell you much about what happens in them. On the other hand, the Cal Leandros series relies on single, high impact compound word to catch your attention and tell you a bit about what happens in the course of the story. Nightlife is your introduction to the world. Moonshine has werewolves in it. Roadkill is about a road trip (but not a fun one, exactly.)

Other themes include Sue Grafton’s alphabet soup series, which I’m sure has a proper name, but I’ve never read one of them, and the “Character name and X” convention (Mr. Monk goes to the Hospital and Immediately Leaves That Den of Filth and Iniquity) or simply naming the story after what takes place in it, such as the Peculiar Occurrences novels The Order of the Phoenix and the Janus Affair. The problem with embracing a theme is that once your dedicated to it, you have to stick with it or your audience will object to your breaking away from it.

And your theme may not be as deep or meaningful a well of inspiration as you had hoped. Chapters in Heat Wave get their titles based on which character is narrating. Chapters where Helix narrates get titles with a theme of heat or fire, while chapters that feature Circuit have titles with an electronic theme. Except when both characters narrate a significant part of the chapter, in which case I have to try and find some overlap between their themes. So far that’s worked but I’m not sure how many more chapters I’ll be able to find good titles for. Originally I had thought the title might reflect the events of the chapter to some extent, but that’s mostly fallen by the wayside at this point.

So naming your story. It’s a struggle, for most of us I think. But if you know a surefire way to come up with a great title every time, don’t hold out on us. Share it in the comments and let us in on the secret.

Author’s Obligations: The Story

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So every author needs to pay attention to their audience. What comes after that?

Well, for the fiction author, it’s the story. Most fiction authors start writing so they can share stories with their friends, or because they have a story they love so much they just have to tell it, or perhaps even just because they love stories so much they want to be part of making them. So with all this love and dedication to stories flying around, it might be useful to pause and say exactly what a story is. After all, if people start writing them for different reasons, they probably have different ideas of what the end product will look like.

According to Merriam-Webster’s, a story is an account of incidents or events, a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question or an anecdote, especially an amusing one. When talking about writing his famous poem “The Raven”, Edgar Allen Poe adds that it’s wise to consider what kind of emotional impact you want your readers to walk away with, as well. Many other authors have also said that they try to consider the ending of their stories before they begin. So, let’s say for the moment that a story is an account of a series of events intended to leave a specific impression on the reader when he is finished.

Now, you may quibble with that. There is lots of talk in writing circles about plot driven narratives versus character driven narratives. Maybe you think to yourself, “But I just want to have a good time and share it with others.” However, even in character driven stories things still need to happen in a certain order for your characters to make sense. Having fun is still an emotional response, even if “fun” isn’t something we normally consider an emotion.

So, what exactly is it that we owe to the story? What do we need to keep in mind as we write?

First, all stories have a natural arc to them. Beginning, middle, end. Whether you’re looking at the life of a single character or the events of a single day, all stories follow this basic pattern. There’s a lot of good stuff out there written on this topic, and I’m not going to rehash it all here. Suffice it to say, if your narrative doesn’t have a specific plot point where things start and another where they end, you’re probably in trouble.

Stories also want to be unique. They cannot have too much in common with other stories. Try not to be obviously recycling plot elements from other stories you have written, or successful stories written by other authors in the same genre. Also, and this is a much more common mistake, try to avoid using the same character over and over. Audiences (and publishers!) love continuity and returning faces. It gives them a sense of familiarity and stability as they wade into a new, unknown story. But, as the Wolverine Publicity phenomenon suggests, using a character too much can result in burnout or cynicism. Some of the best uses of recurring characters that I’ve seen come from the Kingdom of Jackels novels of Stephen Hunt and the Clockwork Century novels of Cherie Priest. In these series, the setting carries most of the work of continuity, while the characters show up to remind us that yes, they’re still alive and still being awesome.

Finally, it’s important to make sure that your story’s length and pay off are balanced. No one wants to read a seven hundred page book to find that the entire story built up to a single one line gag, but an hour long TV show can handle that kind of thing occasionally. (See, “The Trouble With Tribbles“.) Another example is Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy. While well written and fast moving, and featuring believable, almost-lovable characters, after over fifteen hundred pages the trilogy ends with many of the major plot points unresolved and the fates of several characters left to the reader’s imaginations. Not exactly a satisfying end to a story. While life isn’t always satisfying, part of the point of fiction is to get around that. Since Abercrombie has written other books set in the same world, it’s possible that we’ll see some of these characters again. But I’m not sure he needed three books just to introduce us to his setting.

In the end, your obligation to the story is more about not getting caught up in your pet characters, scenarios or causes and making sure that the story speaks to the audience as clearly and effectively as possible. If you’re not doing that first, then you’re failing your story and your audience and you need to take a hard look at what you’re writing.

The Work

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You can read all the books on writing you want, you can study the greats, you can join a writing group and talk the finer points of writing over and over again, but if you don’t keep your nose to the grindstone and actually write something, then you are not a writer. Let me stress this again. You must write something on a regular basis or you are not a writer.

A writer, after all, is a person who writes.

As I said in my first post on the author’s obligations, a writer writes for the purpose of sharing with others. This doesn’t mean that you have to share everything you write. Some drafts may need considerable work before they’re ready for the harsh light of criticism. Some may never be worth sharing at all. Writing for exercise and for fun is all part of being an author. But try to develop a tendency to write with an audience in mind.

Write when you’re in the mood to write. This is something you love, and whenever you can indulge your passion your skills will grow and so will your love of the art, so this is a win-win situation. It’s likely to result in your best work.

Write when you’re not in the mood. It’s very easy to make excuses for yourself and not write. There’s no solution to this other than to ignore those excuses and write anyway. Sure, you’ll probably use the delete key (or your eraser, if you’re of the analog persuasion) a lot at first, but with a running start you’ll be surprised what you can do if you just reach for it a little.

Write when you’re absolutely, positively in no shape to write. It will probably result in one of those passages that you never share with anyone, but sometimes buckling down and writing when you’re not emotionally or mentally prepared to write can result in something that surprises you and eventually finds a place somewhere.

In short, treat writing like your job. Hopefully a job you love, one that fills you with excitement and joy whenever you think of it, that allows you great freedom to creatively express yourself and one that shares those feelings with others, but still a job that brings with it the obligation to keep going, even when you don’t always want to.

Only when you begin to cultivate that mindset do you start to move away from the realm of dabbler and begin to be a writer.

Rereading

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Let’s talk about rereading!

Wait a minute, you say. We just went over reading, didn’t we?

Of course in practice it’s probably a bad idea to reread something immediately after reading it. Also, it’s probably not worth your time to reread everything you read once. But really good writing, the kind of stuff that grabs you and runs, the kind that moves your heart and keeps your brain churning, that kind of stuff is worth reading more than once, particularly if you aspire to be a writer.

Rereading, particularly if you took notes or just wrote a rough sketch of your impressions after you read something the first time, is a great way for you to glean out the most important lessons from a book or story. I’m not talking about life lessons, although many stories have an Aesop or two built into them. I’m talking about the lessons that help you be more the writer you want to be.

Did you just read something that left you slack jawed and drooling, it was so amazing? Reread it. Now don’t shove your mouth closed, wipe your chin and go back to the top of the page, it’s best to finish the entire story or book before you reread something, but do make a little note for yourself and, a week or two later, come back and read that part again, maybe the whole chapter, or if it’s a short story just reread the whole thing.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “But reading it again that quickly robs it of so much impact.”

Exactly. The problem with great writing is, the first time you read it, it sweeps you along so easily it looks effortless, when in fact the writing was probably very difficult. You need to slow down and really examine what made that passage speak to you. Was it word choice? What about those words struck you? Pacing and cadence? What rhythms and turns of phrase make it work? Is the scene the culmination of several preceding moments in the story? How does the author tie it all together for the audience?

Read for the story and the inspiration. Reread to appreciate the craftsmanship.

Another reason to reread is to see how a story speaks to you in a different stage of life. Truly great works appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds. In order to understand how they can do that it’s important to see them from as many perspectives as possible. While having a group of people that love stories and talking about them is a valuable resource in meeting that goal, so is carefully rereading stories that you loved when your life was different.

Has your impression of the book changed because you are older/married/(un)employed? Does the story still speak to you in the same way? In new ways? If the old spark is gone, can you think of ways the author might have kept it? You have changed, but if you’re a writer then writing is likely to be a lifetime obsession. Let your changing perspective teach you more about great writing.

If you’re anything like me you have shelves full of great books. Maybe there’s one or two you haven’t thought of in a while. Take them down and get reacquainted. Your old friends still have a lot to tell you, after all.

Reading

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It may seem intuitive to some people, but reading is as much a part of the art of writing as the actual writing is.

Now, I’m not just talking about the need to read over what you’ve written, edit it and generally strive to turn it into stronger writing. That’s important, don’t get me wrong, and any author who’s not doing that needs to rethink their approach. And I’m not talking about reading how to books or other kinds of study. Again, very important but not where I’m going.

What I’m talking about is reading things that will inspire and shape your writing. This doesn’t mean plagiarism, which doesn’t reflect an improvement to your writing at all, but rather finding writers who tell the stories you’d want to tell, and then studying what they do. C.S. Lewis said in his preface to George MacDonald: An Anthology that he probably never wrote a book in which he did not quote from George MacDonald, but their works are markedly different on the whole. While you may never find an author that inspires you to the same extent as MacDonald did for Lewis, it’s certainly worth taking the time to try.

Reading other works can inspire you with themes and story ideas. While I’ve said before that a writer probably never runs out of story ideas, seeing how others have implemented similar ideas can shape your own in a number of ways. It might suggest things you could do to avoid overlap, point out weaknesses in the story idea you should avoid or just help you fine tune your idea by showing you what works.

Reading the works of others also helps you work out a solid idea of what good writing looks like. This applies just as much to nonfiction as to fiction. Tightly written news articles or engaging nonfiction books are just as valuable to fiction writers in helping you understand good prose as scintillating dialog and well drawn fiction characters are. Of course, the nonfiction writer benefits just as much from reading good fiction. The applications may not be as immediately obvious to you, but they’re real and noticeable.

But most of all, reading the words of others helps you understand your own writing preferences better. Keep a record of what you read, what you like about it and what you don’t like about it. Find sections you really like and break down what appeals to you about them. Find sections you feel could be better and then make them better. Don’t read passively, read actively. While stories are meant to move you and engage you, they’re at their best when you reciprocate and engage with them.

What you read is one of the biggest influences on how and what your write. If your desire is to be a skilled and able writer, you can’t help but need to take charge of what you read, study it, master it and turn it around into something that bolsters your writing. So what are you waiting for? Hit up your local library* and start reading.

 

*Full Disclosure: The author works for his local library, and may be biased in recommending libraries over other book suppliers.

Author’s Obligations: The Audience

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You do not become an author simply because you want to have a good time. Being an author is a job, and it comes with certain responsibilities. They vary in importance and some of them are more important for fiction or non-fiction authors. But they are there, and if you’re not living up to them then the ugly truth is you are failing as an author. Obviously, it’s important for the aspiring author to know what they are.

If you’ve done any writing at all, you probably have some idea of what these responsibilities are already. Watch your grammar, mind your punctuation and know your story. But the more ways you see them, the more ways you can think of them, the more they will shape your writing and the better your writing will be. So what’s the first, most important duty of the author? Is it to clean, flowing prose? Good grammar and punctuation? No, the first duty of the author is to your audience.

Writing is a part of the art of communication. When you are writing you must be aware of the person or people who are reading, if they cannot understand you then you have failed to communicate. Therefore you must be mindful of your audience if you hope to succeed. Don’t get so caught up in your story that it runs away from you, it’s very unlikely your audience will be able to follow all the places it takes you unless you take the time to carefully mark the path. In short, know your audience.

So, who is your audience?

Well, as contradictory as it may seem, the author’s first audience is themselves. Yes, I’ve just said that it’s important not to get too wrapped up in your own story but, at the same time, the person who has to be most invested in understanding and enjoying your writing must be you. If you don’t buy into what you’re writing 100%, no one else will buy in at all. What’s important is to look at your story through the eyes of the reader. You need to set aside everything you already know about the story you are writing and look at it as if you’d never heard of anything in it before. Learn to put aside your author’s perspective and see if you can enjoy what you’ve written on it’s own merits.

The second audience is the people who share an interest in what you’re writing about. They are your most importance, core audience, they are the ones who will read your story and then want to share it with others. While self editing is the first hurdle for your story, you will need feedback from this part of your audience before you can call your story complete. Can they follow your ideas? Do they enjoy your story? Is there some barrier to understanding that needs to be removed? You can’t evaluate these things yourself, you’re not objective enough nor do you really count as a large enough sampling to be useful. You need feedback from your core audience if you hope to communicate with them.

The third audience is the people who are in the “mainstream”, a mythological group of people who include pretty much everyone who’s not a part of your core audience. While “mainstream” supposedly refers to popular culture, the fact is it’s really too varied to count for much. It’s just changing too fast and doing different things for different people, trying to target it would be like trying to hit all the heads on a hydra with a single toothpick. Some people from the general public will love your work, some will hate it and the vast majority will most likely view it with a certain amount of apathy (if the majority loves it, you’ve crossed over into the rarefied atmosphere of the smash hit, and I’d love to hear how it’s done). Regardless, while it’s important to try and make sure the “mainstream” can understand what you’ve written, you cannot chase after their approval of stories or themes. If you do, your writing will have no identity and will never find a following.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to knowing your audience than what I’ve written. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to codify in one or two short articles. You have to read a lot of what your audience loves, you have to know some members of your audience personally and spend a lot of time with them. An author can’t just sit in a chair 24/7 and write then expect to be successful. He has to be out with his audience, as well. Fortunately, you’re probably going to like the people you meet, since your first audience is yourself and thus your second audience is likely to share interests with you.

So get up and go out for a bit, get to know your audience. Then, the next time you sit down, ask how your stories and theirs can link up. You may find your writing improves for it.

Viral

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If you are an unheard of person trying to make your mark on the Internet, then going viral is a dream come true. It means instant exposure to a huge audience, some part of which is probably going to find you and your content wildly appealing. That, in turn, means that you will get even more exposure, popularity, fame, wealth and general dating ability.

A brief interlude, in which I will explain what “going viral” means to my readers who are not “down” with “internet jive” (hi mom!) Going viral refers to when something on the Internet experiences a sudden boost in popularity entirely by word of mouth. News of the viral event travels from person to person and usually happens with little or no need for a middleman, much like an epidemic, from which the term “viral” comes. Social media has made it easier and easier for things to go viral over the Internet, just as modern transportation has made epidemics more and more of a worry. Any piece of media can go viral, but it typically refers to a YouTube video or, in rare cases a comic (as in a stand-alone illustration, although it sometimes refers to serialized webcomics).

A very recent example of a viral event is PSY’s Gangnam Style. If you are one of the five people in America who aren’t familiar with this little bit of Korean absurdity, let me spread the infection a little bit more.

Wasn’t that fun? Whether you like it or hate it, Gangnam Style is now a part of the American consciousness. A year ago, how many people you know could answer the following question:

“Who or what is Gangnam?

A) A district in Seoul, South Korea.

B) A battle mecha franchise from Japan.

C) A new kind of inner city gang.”

If you’re like mot people, the answer is none. But now they’ll all say, “Oh, that’s the song with the Asian guy who rides the ponies, right?” And they’d be right, because going viral has the power to define things in the cultural consciousness. And that’s on top of the fame, money and hordes of attractive single people.

Many people come to the Internet, and indeed to blogs such as this one, with a fairly simple plan in mind:

Step 1. Go viral.

Step 2. ???

Step 3. Profit!

What they quickly learn is that it doesn’t actually work that way. In fact, the order should probably be:

Step 1. ???

Step 2. Go viral.

Step 3. Profit!

You see, all the real work goes in before you make the big break. Even in the age of the Internet, there’s no easy win. You have to put in the time and dedication to make even a little bit of a mark. Viral videos generally have three things in common.

First, there’s the dedication to craft. PSY was a successful Korean pop artist long before he went viral. One of the earliest viral events was “All Your Base“, a video put together by video editing students as part of a major project. In fact, look at pretty much any major viral event that has resulted in lasting success and you’ll find that it had a higher than normal level of finish work, proof of a dedication to making good content. The creator probably had a string of much less successful work before they made their big break.

Second, there’s a love of what’s being done. Look at AutoTune the News, makers of more than one viral video. Sure, their videos are silly and the music isn’t really that memorable. But the real magic is that they bring out the music the creators hear in every day speech. That love goes into the songs they right and attracts people to them. By the same token, PSY has said that Gangnam Style was not created to be an international sensation. It was a love song to the Gangnam district, a celebration of all the things that make it unique and lovable.

Third, there’s a willingness to have fun. I’m not aware of any viral events on the Internet that are people playing things completely straight. If you want to go viral, you can’t take yourself very seriously. Again, look at Gangnam Style. PSY blows himself up, engages in a dancing duel with a man in a plastic suit and rides invisible horses everywhere. And he obviously has a great time doing it. We want to share that fun with him, and we’re sucked in with him.

Ultimately, I don’t think anyone can intentionally go viral. But your can create in such a way as to make it much more viable. On the other hand, when you go viral there are far fewer people who have been with you since the beginning and come to have a true appreciation of your work and goals. You may not have the support and emotional maturity to deal with the sudden exposure. And you may not want the huge, impersonal masses staring over your shoulder, wanting you to repeat the old successes when you’re seeking to press on to newer and better things.

Should you go viral? Well, that’s really up to you. It will probably be a fun and wild ride if you do. But whatever your goal, it’s best to work relentlessly at something you love. Keep presenting your work in the right forums, taking feedback and never give up and you’ll be surprised where you wind up.

Nonlinear Writing

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Part One

Often one of the biggest excuses to not write you’ll hear from an aspiring writer is that they’re not “in the mood” (or perhaps that they are “waiting for inspiration”). On the one hand, it’s important to realize that writing, just like all other forms of art, is work. You have to sit down and do it on a regular basis, no matter what, regardless of how you feel about it. If you don’t, you never get better. On the other hand, there’s nothing to say that you have to slog through the writing in the most disagreeable way possible. It’s a difficult task, you might as well try to find ways to do it that don’t fight with human nature.

Part Four