Talking About Sam
Sam Carter is another of my major viewpoint characters in Legacy, and she's on my mind right now since I'm working on one of her scenes in The Avengers.
Sam presents some different challenges from Teyla. Teyla comes from an invented culture, and the challenge in writing Teyla is worldbuilding -- creating a coherent background from tantalizing bits and pieces. Sam comes from a real, living culture -- the US Air Force.
As a woman Sam's age who intended an Air Force career myself, I'm very aware of her context. Sam is a lifer, a service brat who has chosen a professional career in the Air Force. She's "married to the blue suit," one of those women who is over forty and unmarried, putting her vocation before other relationships. In that way, she's a lot like some of the characters I've written in my other books, Gull, who as a priestess puts her calling first and though she has relationships does not marry, and Charmian, who puts her service to her queen and country before all else. And so writing Sam has some of the same challenges as Gull and Charmian -- that one of the primary critiques is that her life is emotionally sterile, and that vocation is a terribly difficult thing to portray in fiction.
So one of the first things is to look at Sam in terms of her connections, to show her in terms of the strong emotional bonds that ground her and that make her happy. And she is at a very happy place in her life in the Legacy books. No, her life isn't perfect, but the tumults and miseries of earlier years are over, and she's in a very good place. Jack and Cassie and Daniel and Teal'c are her family. She's stable and satisfied in her relationships, standing at the center of a supportive circle of people who love her. And whose love she returns. One of my favorite sections so far is an email of hers to Cassie, encouraging and warm and just a little bit preachy. She wonders if she's sounding just like Jacob did when he wrote to her, and thinks that maybe she is. No, she's not married and she has no biological children, but she has love and friendship and family, as unorthodox as it may be. And so in some ways Sam can serve as a model for others who are still flailing, still trying to find some way to have connection and warmth in their lives without becoming something they're not.
Addressing vocation is a bit harder, but fortunately it's something I've had lots of experience with in my other books! With Gull, the challenge was to explain why someone would choose a life as a dedicated priestess, to be forever apart from the mainstream of her society. With Charmian, it was to explain why someone living in the heart of her society would choose a life of service that set her apart. Both are choices that few women make, and that many women don't identify with. Why would someone choose to be set apart, to be dedicated? To live according to oaths and rules that others don't have to follow, to measure life by rituals that few understand?
So my approach is this -- show it. Show what it is that the person believes, show what they are passionate about, show what they love, what it means to them. This is something that SG-1 did very well in some ways. The promotion scene at the end of New Order part 2 is simply gorgeous. And yes, it does look like a wedding scene in some ways -- it's also an oath taking, a sworn commitment. In our society, we are most familiar with weddings as formal oathtaking, but that's not the only kind of commitment service. One can say "I do" to more than one thing!
How do I go about showing that, absent large ceremonies? One thing is by making the consequences of apart-ness clear. For example, Sam's cabin on the Hammond is described in considerable detail, more than many other settings, because this room and its circumscribed space, its circumscribed decor and personal items, is very much a metaphor for Sam's life. The first mention is about its limitations -- in The Lost Sam explains that she doesn't have service dress with her because her closet is ten inches wide. By the end of The Avengers, I think her cabin has begun to seem a warm and welcoming place, a very personal and safe place, rather than an uncomfortable and limiting thing. Yes, it's still a tiny room with gray walls. But that's truly ok.
And Sam is ok too. Like Gull and Charmian, she's happy in her dedication and has an incredibly rich life bounded by the demands of vocation.
Another thing is to actually explain what she's chosen. In order to understand dedication, we have to talk about it. We have to articulate what we mean, explain for the uninitiated what the rules are of this secret society. What are the rules and why are they there? What does it mean to break them? What are the fine mathematics in plotting a course between the spirit and the letter of the rules? What are the compromises one makes? And what are the rewards? Some of these questions are very illuminating, not only to Sam's characterization but to John's plot arc, which is one of the major ones carrying the series. This feeds into Sam doing what a major supporting character should -- providing a dialogue with a main character about their choices, a contrast and another example both. Some of my favorite scenes are Sam and John's scenes. There's also a gorgeous one in Homecoming with Sam and Ronon that sets up one of his major avenues for growth.
She's definitely a fascinating character to write, and I'd love to write her again sometime as the central character.
Sam presents some different challenges from Teyla. Teyla comes from an invented culture, and the challenge in writing Teyla is worldbuilding -- creating a coherent background from tantalizing bits and pieces. Sam comes from a real, living culture -- the US Air Force.
As a woman Sam's age who intended an Air Force career myself, I'm very aware of her context. Sam is a lifer, a service brat who has chosen a professional career in the Air Force. She's "married to the blue suit," one of those women who is over forty and unmarried, putting her vocation before other relationships. In that way, she's a lot like some of the characters I've written in my other books, Gull, who as a priestess puts her calling first and though she has relationships does not marry, and Charmian, who puts her service to her queen and country before all else. And so writing Sam has some of the same challenges as Gull and Charmian -- that one of the primary critiques is that her life is emotionally sterile, and that vocation is a terribly difficult thing to portray in fiction.
So one of the first things is to look at Sam in terms of her connections, to show her in terms of the strong emotional bonds that ground her and that make her happy. And she is at a very happy place in her life in the Legacy books. No, her life isn't perfect, but the tumults and miseries of earlier years are over, and she's in a very good place. Jack and Cassie and Daniel and Teal'c are her family. She's stable and satisfied in her relationships, standing at the center of a supportive circle of people who love her. And whose love she returns. One of my favorite sections so far is an email of hers to Cassie, encouraging and warm and just a little bit preachy. She wonders if she's sounding just like Jacob did when he wrote to her, and thinks that maybe she is. No, she's not married and she has no biological children, but she has love and friendship and family, as unorthodox as it may be. And so in some ways Sam can serve as a model for others who are still flailing, still trying to find some way to have connection and warmth in their lives without becoming something they're not.
Addressing vocation is a bit harder, but fortunately it's something I've had lots of experience with in my other books! With Gull, the challenge was to explain why someone would choose a life as a dedicated priestess, to be forever apart from the mainstream of her society. With Charmian, it was to explain why someone living in the heart of her society would choose a life of service that set her apart. Both are choices that few women make, and that many women don't identify with. Why would someone choose to be set apart, to be dedicated? To live according to oaths and rules that others don't have to follow, to measure life by rituals that few understand?
So my approach is this -- show it. Show what it is that the person believes, show what they are passionate about, show what they love, what it means to them. This is something that SG-1 did very well in some ways. The promotion scene at the end of New Order part 2 is simply gorgeous. And yes, it does look like a wedding scene in some ways -- it's also an oath taking, a sworn commitment. In our society, we are most familiar with weddings as formal oathtaking, but that's not the only kind of commitment service. One can say "I do" to more than one thing!
How do I go about showing that, absent large ceremonies? One thing is by making the consequences of apart-ness clear. For example, Sam's cabin on the Hammond is described in considerable detail, more than many other settings, because this room and its circumscribed space, its circumscribed decor and personal items, is very much a metaphor for Sam's life. The first mention is about its limitations -- in The Lost Sam explains that she doesn't have service dress with her because her closet is ten inches wide. By the end of The Avengers, I think her cabin has begun to seem a warm and welcoming place, a very personal and safe place, rather than an uncomfortable and limiting thing. Yes, it's still a tiny room with gray walls. But that's truly ok.
And Sam is ok too. Like Gull and Charmian, she's happy in her dedication and has an incredibly rich life bounded by the demands of vocation.
Another thing is to actually explain what she's chosen. In order to understand dedication, we have to talk about it. We have to articulate what we mean, explain for the uninitiated what the rules are of this secret society. What are the rules and why are they there? What does it mean to break them? What are the fine mathematics in plotting a course between the spirit and the letter of the rules? What are the compromises one makes? And what are the rewards? Some of these questions are very illuminating, not only to Sam's characterization but to John's plot arc, which is one of the major ones carrying the series. This feeds into Sam doing what a major supporting character should -- providing a dialogue with a main character about their choices, a contrast and another example both. Some of my favorite scenes are Sam and John's scenes. There's also a gorgeous one in Homecoming with Sam and Ronon that sets up one of his major avenues for growth.
She's definitely a fascinating character to write, and I'd love to write her again sometime as the central character.