Dinner Conversation

I recently had dinner with my parents, during which my mother and I began discussing the screenplay that she's writing. I had the unpleasant task of explaining to her all the reasons why her story was being structured wrong.

My father, an accountant who reads Jonathan Kellerman novels, was sadly lost during most of this, though when I touched on points where the story would just be boring he was able to offer his support to my argument by saying "he's right, I'd be bored by that."

It was a strange experience. My mother was the one who first helped me develop my voice as a writer, learn to focus what skills I had, and is my biggest fan--just ask her. She's the reason I learned to indulge in my imaginings, no matter how dark they got. I would not have the ability to stop a "what if" in my brain and catch it before it flees, learning to turn it over in my hands and examine it for the nugget of story contained within the layers of "what if." Suddenly having to explain to her about story structure, point of view characters, narrative arcs, and all these things that I know she knows was more than a little surreal.

This is not to say that my mother is suddenly dumb, far from it. She just embodied that moment in all of our story development where we wrap our arms around our stories in a protective embrace and scream "NO! It's mine and it's perfect just the way it is!" It's a part of the process, and it's very helpful at this point in the process to have somebody whom you trust and who will know how to break your story apart without tearing you down in the process. Friends, editors, colleagues, whatever or whoever you have, use them and trust them when they tell you that you've got the world set properly but you haven't found the right story yet.

My father bore witness to this for at least an hour over dinner, my mother defending her choices and me explaining why they were the wrong ones.

At the end, I'd said all I could say and had begun to repeat myself, and my mother's arguments had grown shorter and shorter until she saw that, while I might not be right, I was at least on the right track. (Maybe that's another post I should put up, how to listen to your critics...) I got up and cleared the plates off of the table.

From the kitchen, I heard my parents speaking in low voices and then laugh. I called to them asking what was so funny.

"You're going to make a wonderful professor," my father replied.

This is not the first, second, or even tenth time somebody has told me something about me being a professor using "when," and not "if," in the statement.

Heroes and stereotypes, or Why I Refuse to Watch "Lost Girl"

Giving your hero everything he or she needs is boring. Stop that.

Stop giving your heroes weapons and gadgets. Or, if you give them every advantage they can possibly hope for, take it away.

I am sick of stories coming out featuring some kind of solo, me-versus-the-world hero who has access to weapons and tactics and all the toys a kid could need to take out the Bad Guys. It's cheap story crafting and eliminates the really interesting part of your character: getting to know them.

Between the super spies, super heroes, demigods, half-human creatures, and other stories that have super-saturated the market over the years, the stories that involve heroes that already have access to guns, explosives, military tactics, support staffs, and all the other goodies that you could hope for, I just can't find it in my heart to watch, read, or otherwise subject myself to yet another tale featuring the same old tropes.

I get it. I really do. You want your character to have that shoot-out at the O.K. Corral or on Main Street at high noon. You want to have some incredible fight scene with swords (incidentally, there are way cooler swords than a katana. STOP USING IT.) or some other key scene. But you know what? Those have already been done. And probably better than you'll do them.

Give me something new. Instead of giving me a character who knows how to fight, give me a protagonist with a limp or a bum knee from high school football who has to find a way to pursue the Bad Guy. Instead of a character who is a crack shot, give me a character who just had all his shit stolen while he was having laser eye surgery and has to rush into the daylight before his eyes are healed and OH SHIT I'VE DAMAGED MY CORNEAS! Instead of giving your character a sword, or a gun, or any kind of weapon or martial arts training, give me a character who breaks his hand throwing his first punch because he has no idea how to fight or survive on his own. Oh, and make him an alcoholic, or a recovering one if that's too dark for you. THEN make him--or her, I'd dig this in female characters too--struggle to find out how to survive in a world where everything is stacked against them. There's no ex-Army Ranger one cell phone call away who can roll up with automatic weapons, explosives, and a team of master badasses who will ride in and save the day. There's no Super Secret Big Sword That You Must Have, or The Sword That Killed My Father, or My Favorite Gun, or any of that nonsense. Having your character already equipped to face the climax of your episode, movie, or story makes their journey one-dimensional and I WILL NOT CARE.

Change it up.

Or, going back to my original point, give them everything, and then take it all away and make your protagonist claw his/her way back from the brink. Got a super powered character? Not anymore. Bam. Superman II that shit. Take it ALL away. That's when you give your character lots of moral and ethical shit to work through. Do they sacrifice all or part of themselves? How much do they hold on to? Why do they make that choice? What happens if it doesn't work out? How do they get or get back to what they need in order to succeed at the end? Do they, or do they die trying? Those are much more compelling questions than "How hard is the Bad Guy's face gonna hit the ground when the Good Guy is mopping the floor with him?"

Another tactic to use if you're going to ramp up a character trait to the point of super power is show me how awful that really is. That was one of the only good things about the movie "Troy," Brat Pitt's Achilles was shown as this mighty, powerful warrior who was so bored by his existence that he wanted to die. Literally. He wanted to die. Go back and watch it again if you need to, that character has a death wish for most of the movie.

Look, whether it's Superman somehow finding ways to put himself in situations where he knows he's gonna get his ass handed to him, Batman finding ways to keep fucking things up or having things keep getting fucked up around him, or Achilles being so bored he wants to die, these are all viable ways of subverting the archetypal heroic mold that everybody seems to be drawing from.

Next time you're facing a moment where you need your character to have a weapon, a skill, a side-kick (read: support character), or anything of that sort, ask yourself "how would my character react if that didn't work?" The answer you get is probably going to be much more interesting than what you had come up with originally. And the "why" of it is very simple. Triumph. If you have a character who is so perfectly suited to the dangers he or she is facing that triumph is the only likely outcome, then the triumph isn't all that spectacular when it happens. If we know going in that the Good Guy is going to win, it's not engaging. If there's doubt that the Good Guy will even make it back alive, then we're engaged because we want to see the triumph.

Basically, if you have a character with some kind of bad-assery, make it irrelevant, obsolete, or otherwise negate it. What does that character do then? In the face of insurmountable obstacles and infinitesimal odds, how does a character with nothing going for him or her work up to the climactic battle against the Bad Guy? THAT's interesting. THAT's something that I'd watch or read.

And this isn't even touching on the believability aspect of things.

On Monsters

I was asked recently what I think makes a good monster, a scary monster. This is my answer:

One of the first things I employ in creating a monster is giving the reader just enough detail that they can use their imagination, but not so much detail that they don't have to. Stephen King's book "Danse Macabre" relates an analogy of a closed door with a strange sound coming from behind it. If you open the door and have a ten-foot bug, part of your reader's mind will say "Oh thank god, I was afraid it was a HUNDRED-FOOT bug!" If you give your reader a hundred-foot bug, part of your reader's mind will say "Oh than god, I was afraid it was a SWARM of bugs!" Point is, your reader's imagination will always create a monster that is contoured specifically to them, and is infinitely more terrifying than anything we could craft. Our job is to give them the (heh) bare bones.

Next, the monster has to serve as a vehicle for the main character's dual confrontations. One is Man vs. The Unknown, and the other is Man vs. Himself, if you're familiar with the types of conflict. The Monster represents the unknown on a literal level, but on a symbolic level represents the main character's journey that has been taken to bring about that climactic moment of confrontation. I subdivide horror thusly: Fright. Terror. Horror. If a monster eats some poor shlub at the end of a dark alleyway, that's fright. When the monster eats the guy standing right next to you, that's terror. The moment in which you realize that you're next, that's horror. Good use of a good monster is employed when the character (note that I am not using the word "hero" anywhere here) is taken through a journey of discovery, choice, perhaps revulsion, and finally confrontation not just with the monster, but with who that character is and/or has become/has to be. Taking away that journey will simply leave a hero (Ta-da!) rushing to do battle with a dragon, and the reader is spending the whole time in the story rooting for the final battle rather than going along for that journey with the character. The monster should help take the reader along for that same journey and force that same confrontation in the reader as it does in the character.

Thirdly, a monster should be created first, then that information used to inform the specifics of the main character. Whether it's a hero, an anti-hero, a tragic character, or anything else, the situations and circumstances surrounding that character's rise to significance (after all, they are your main character) are all informed by the hell which you as the author choose to unleash upon them. Clarice Starling's character wouldn't have had that story about running away if it wasn't for Dr. Lecter's ability to see so deep into her psyche. The crew of the Orca would never have gone shark hunting if it wasn't for Quint's story about being predated upon by sharks off Japan's coast, but he wouldn't have told that story if the monster wasn't a killer shark.

Stephen T. Asma's book "On Monsters" talks about the purpose that monsters serve as moral compasses, as well as with issues of angst and catharsis. He relates a story of Eli Roth's "Hostel" being shown to troops in Iraq which is a fascinating perspective on catharsis. Jason Zinoman's "Shock Value" deals with some of the same issues, but also a lot of social and political influences on the use, style, and deployment of monsters. But nothing has yet touched the import or significance of Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" for me.

Acid Etched.

A horror writer's mind is a very bizarre place.

I had to buy a new battery (again!) for my scooter today. To prep the battery, one needs to fill it with the enclosed solution of sulfuric acid.

I, doing this, realized that one could conceivably purchase enough untraceable sulfuric acid to dispose of an organic mass--say, a body--through the mass purchase, in cash, of small liquid-cell batteries. This was my first thought, and one that predominated any thoughts that came after, remaining in the priority position as my mind wandered through a thousand brief scenarios in which this knowledge may one day be useful to me.

So I file it away, with the reckoning number adjacent to the other one which deals with manufacturers, costs, and delivery fees for the 55-gallon drums of sulfuric acid in case I write a character that has access to such things without it being trite or cliche.

Day One

As an aspect of my goal to finish the rough draft of the remaining three stories in my cycle, I have forsaken most of my social life for the month of September. Unless it's something I've already committed to, work related, a date, or one of those things that is so immeasurably Awesome that I really have no choice but to do it, I'm not going out. This essentially eliminates chill gatherings at friends' houses (which is the bulk of my outings), birthday parties (which is most of the rest of my outings), concerts, movies, events, lunches, dinners, and the like.

Last night I came home right after work, had dinner, and by 11:30 p.m. was writing. Considering I leave work at 9:30 p.m. that's actually a fairly good turnaround on time.

I set a glass of wine and some chocolate next to me on one side, had some incense burning on the other, and my chill ambient music playing in the background from my computer. I opened up the Word document and started to write. After some pacing, jumping, cursing, and flailing I finally figured out the beginning of the story and began ACTUALLY writing. Four pages later, I'd completed the first scene and decided to hit the hay.

The hardest thing to recognize with writing creative works is that, compared to academic papers--or, indeed, one's own expectations--four pages is quite a lot to write in one night. There's a feeling of "only four pages? Really?" that must be reconciled with the flip side, that coming up with four pages of fiction can--and often does--take the better part of an evening. And that has to be okay. I can't allow myself to feel punished or inadequate for not completing more than that. Sure, sometimes I hit The Zone and can write 20 pages without being aware of my time, but when I'm not there, when it's skill as much as talent in play, four pages has to be sufficient. And it has to be okay. Especially considering how much time and energy I put into the structure, the format, and the conventions that are all factors in the subtleties of my writing.

Next round, we'll see how much I write. But I've begun it, and that is the important part right now. This story will live outside of my brain.

New Tactic

I have given myself the month of September to finish the rough draft of my whole collection of short stories. This will, in theory, leave me with a novel-length collection that will serve as the foundation series for my own universe/mythos. The particulars will be for a later entry, that's not what this is about.

My tactic has, thus far, been to finish the rough draft of an individual story and then send it out for comments, critique, feedback, notes, what have you. This has proven to be rather a poor idea, as nobody save for one former classmate of mine has ever actually gotten back to me with any sort of feedback. What it has served to do is enable my procrastination and slovenly behavior by allowing me to put off writing anything new until I "finished" my current story. I haven't written anything since completing my last short story several months ago because I have been waiting on feedback from people.

This, it occurred to me recently, is not only an untenable situation, but a completely unnecessary one. I know the direction I intend to go, as well as many of the particulars of how I intend to get there. I do not need each individual story to be completed in order to progress to the next one. All that waiting around has done is a fat load of nothing. And while it did allow me time to steep my brainmeats in their juices, unless I act on them while the flavor is full and the aroma is fragrant, that marinating time will quickly turn to fermentation. Stagnant creativity often leads to unhappiness with the very ideas come upon in the creative process. So rather than wait around for the never-to-arrive feedback or story notes, I am going to simply move forward with rough drafts of all my remaining stories and then edit them all later.

What remains is only two short stories and one novella. I am going to be diminishing my social activities so that I may devote extra time to completing these tasks--which is a task well within my capabilities, I wrote this much when I was in school. Once these are completed, I will begin revisions and edits to all the stories, as well as ordering them and making the superstructure more cohesive for the reader.

TL;DR: Do not feel obligated through some sense of thoroughness to stop all progress in a creative work simply because you've asked for feedback. Feel confident enough in yourself to move forward. You can always go back and edit later, but you should never forgo an opportunity to create something new.

Writing theories

When I was an undergraduate student, I took a class called "Major Critical Theories." This course was, in essence, an applied philosophy survey. We studied Plato and Aristotle, all the way up through contemporary theorists like Derrida (and even newer).

The theory that I enjoyed most at the time was deconstruction. Basically a "fuck the rules" kind of theory, where words can be redefined, concepts can be taken down, inverted, subverted, or just plain ignored. I liked that concept.

The counterweight to this is structuralism. Deconstruction exists within the framework of structuralism, since the latter applies the structure that the former seeks to subvert. Structuralism posits that the form the story is told determines the type of story it is. I thought that was so confining and so...well...rule-oriented, that the iconoclast within me railed against it.

Since then, I have come increasingly to the inevitable conclusion that structuralism is much more than something to be railed against, and I am using it with increasing frequency in my writing as well as my critiques of other stories (books, movies, anything).

The younger version of me detests that I have become a structuralist, citing the "damn the man" attitude that I held in such high regard in my youth. As a theorist, I still enjoy the idea that all our constructs, all our conventions, all of our rules, can be undone simply by deciding not to engage in them anymore--or to deliberately seek to subvert them. However, as a writer, I was finding that deconstruction simply does not make me a better artist. The idea of writing with no rules or conventions wasn't helping me hone my craft.

Aaaand then it hit me. I use the structure, the convention, as a structuralist in order to understand which rules to skirt, which paradigms to invert or subvert, how to make my story unique. When applied to my writing, I have become a structuralist who uses deconstruction. As a theorist, in my critiques of other stories, I have become a deconstructionist who determines success based on structuralism.

It took about three years, but I finally synthesized the information from that class.