The Adventures of Rubi Pi and the Aviation Girls: History of Flight in Stories
YA Adventure
Date Published: 12-05-2024
Publisher: Empire Studies Press
Fly along with Ruby, Sarra, Isoke and other young heroines as they take to the skies to save their families.
Nine scenarios, nine heroines, nine lessons in flight.
Gia travels from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Aleutian Islands to capture one of the most mysterious warplanes of all time – the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
Young Yi-Tai Jo falls in love with the homely, misunderstood X-1 rocket jet. Heartbroken at X’s failure to break the speed of sound, she may have a solution.
One morning, bratty Anke has a bitter spat with her sister, Romy. Yet when Romy is kidnapped, Anke is the one who can save her – using an old war-kite to glide to the villain’s tower. Can she navigate gliding through the Black Forest and save Romy?
Ship-salvager’s daughter Sarra defies a garrison to save Father from Rome’s wrath. Can her home-made balloon win the day?
“Tom’s delightful stories in The Aviation Girls span ancient ideas about flight through the Golden Age of aviation to the Age of Rocketry.”
— Anne Millbrooke, author of the award-winning “Aviation History
Writing with Negative Space
Tom Durwood
One of my favorite college professors loved to point out the value of negative space. His name was Rudolf Arnheim and his course had to do with psychology and the visual arts. Prof. Arnheim returned again and again to this concept of negative space – important vacancies which offset the positive.
I remind myself often to leave room for negative space in my stories.
In graphic art, negative space can be seen in the white space on a printed page. For a painter it is the field, or background, behind the main figure. For an architect, it might be an empty window bay which allows a structure’s complexities of design to breathe.
For a writer, negative space can balance the narrative. The reader can get a rest from clever plot advancement and full-of-meaning dialogue.
Positive spaces dominate our heroic stories – noisy fights, the call to adventure, skirmishes with henchmen, secrets revealed, close calls, big kisses, dramas from the past, on and on. The negative spaces are those windless moments, the silences, the losses, the lulls in the action, and the deep inner doubts which punctuate every protagonist’s quest.
As a writer, if I can remind myself periodically to downshift the plot’s forward motion and gather, for a long description, or a quiet moment between characters, then my story gains richness for it.
Some of our most popular tales are built on negative space. The Toy Story films, for example, are incredibly sad. The high-energy openings are offset by the toys’ laments, their great sorrow at the human kids’ growing up. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the small victory of Boo Radley’s stepping into the sunshine is so moving because of the very dark spaces (Atticus loses the trial, Tom is ambushed in jail) which lead up to it.
HAL FOSTER, MASTER OF NEGATIVE SPACE
The Marvel movies are drenched in negative space. This represents a tradition in comics that started with Hal Foster.
The interlude showing Thanos tending his garden in Avengers Infinity War, the post-credits diner scene at the end of The Avengers – these wordless, soundtrack-less scenes are well-considered. They not only offer us a pleasant change of pace in themselves, but they lend purpose and depth to the films. More than just a tonic to the attack of loud crashing sounds and zoom-y special effects and ingenious, these oases of silence and stillness can change the entire narrative.
We have Hal Foster to thank for this.
Hal Foster’s Tarzan Sunday comic strips from the 1930’s and Prince Valiant illustrated epic from the 1940’s both championed the slow build. These stories took their sweet time to appreciate texture and quiet — the light falling on Tarzan’s face, the beading on the baby Arn’s snow-coat, the accretion of small acts and details along the heroes’ journey.
Because Hal Foster cared exactly how a ship’s sails bulge when the winds pick up, so do we also care. And when the inevitable and spectacular naval clash with the King Tourien of Cornwell arrives, the battle has far more impact from these weeks of build-up. We see how thoughtfully Alita tends her horses in the Forests of Merlin, so we are that much more upset to see her rage at the rush of the Skjalddis.
I love Jack Kirby, but episodes of quiet can be a very good thing in a superhero tale.
Credit to the Marvel film-makers – these Hal Foster moments, this kind of restraint shows their confidence in the characters.
Negative space.
Rudolf Arnheim.
About the Author
Tom Durwood is a teacher, writer and editor with an interest in history.
Tom most recently taught English Composition and Empire and Literature at Valley Forge Military College, where he won the Teacher of the Year Award five times.
Tom’s historical fiction adventures has been promising. The stories have won nine literary awards to date. “A true pleasure … the richness of the layers of Tom’s novel is compelling,” writes Fatima Sharrafedine in her foreword to “The Illustrated Boatman’s Daughter.” The Midwest Book Review calls that same adventure “uniformly gripping and educational … pairing action and adventure with social issues.” Adds Prairie Review, “A deeply intriguing, ambitious historical fiction series.”
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