Gerard Houarner

Inspired in part by Brian Hodge’s post last month on predictability, and in part by a quick exchange of emails with a writing buddy about readers’ reactions to story endings, I had already been thinking about this month’s topic over the past few weeks.

Then current events added a new dimension to what passes for my thinking.  The question I’ve been struggling with is, what constitutes a story’s ending, exactly?

First impression:

It depends on reader expectations, based on taste, need, author reputation, cover, blurbs, description.

For context, it’s been less than 24 hours, as I write this, since America’s #1 target has been killed and buried at sea.  I’ve seen about 20 reaction interviews, from generals to soldiers, 9/11 survivors, first responders, family members of victims and soldiers who’ve died in the two wars, and just general citizens.  As a national story, 9/11 and its consequences certainly ranks high on the consciousness scale.  Of course, the story is “real” and we’re all characters in that story, not readers.  The story, being real, is not clean and packaged.  It’s not edited, other than through our own interior and highly subjective review panel.  Still, as a barometer, this particular villain’s story fate offers an interesting take on endings.

For some, the end of this particular story thread provided a degree of closure.  To paraphrase one guy’s reaction, “He won’t even be able to orchestrate another trip to the bathroom.”   For others, there’s the satisfaction of justice, of revenge, of a debt fulfilled.  Occasionally, there is the keen and biting awareness that payment is no substitute for what was taken.  In short, the story hasn’t really ended.  Like life, consequences continue to unfold.  Not everyone, particularly those who have actually suffered directly from 9/11 and its consequences, has gained that warm and fuzzy sensation of closure and completion.

For many, there’s no “happily,” and no “ever.”  There’s only “after.”

Of course, stories are not reality.  We are in the entertainment business, supposedly.  But at the same time, there is also the business of art, perhaps an ambition to have an effect on another person with nothing more than words on paper (or computer screen).   There may even be a responsibility to culture and society, perhaps something like “do no harm,” or even, “make a difference.”  Perhaps, there is only an artistic stance – to be true to one’s vision, or to reflect nature and reality, or to be provocative.  If nothing else, there a foundation to storytelling that supposes that, though stories may not be “real,” they’d sure better reflect what readers feel and know about reality.  Whether set in World War II or your mother’s backyard or a magical kingdom, there is a general sense of logic and order to be followed.

In the sense of connecting to an audience, stories are real. They’re real when they’re happening inside our heads.  We feel them.  We live in them, as readers.  They linger, like memories.  When they go over the edge, we go over with them.  That’s scary, yes.  But in going over the edge, they can also be truthful.  Often, at least for me, stories can leave threads that continue past the word “end” on the last page.  They can even be open-ended, a story road that goes beyond the book’s pages, in the reader’s imagination.

Sometimes this upsets people.

This is when the writer runs into trouble by creating an ending that’s too dark, or open-ended.  When the wrong characters get together, die, survive.  When things get too damned “existential” or, well, okay, too happy.  Predictable, or surprising in a way that doesn’t satisfy the reader.

No one ever said catharsis, for characters or audience, was supposed to be pretty.  But try explaining that to the paying public at the foot of the stage, down in the “pit,” rotten produce in hand.

An individual’s reaction depends on the contract with the signed.  Expectations.  There are bound to be problems, and lousy Amazon reviews, and possibly worse sales, if someone picks up a book anticipating fuzzy and getting razors.

And I can sympathize.  I don’t want “chef’s surprise, “unless I’m a fan of the chef.  And even then, that chef shouldn’t stray too far from the “Italian” I’m familiar with.  No liquid nitrogen cuisine, thanks.  But then again, maybe I’m due for a change.  Maybe I really need to experience flash frozen protein froth.  Who am I to sue over an imaginary contract?  Unfortunately, not many readers are that laid back.  Some get ornery when they think they wasted their beer money.

All artists struggle with the slippery slope of artistic integrity and commercial viability.  Endings are when writers say goodbye to their story, too, and that can be tough.  A world, a bunch of folks who’ve been living in the imagination for months, perhaps years, annihilated in the seconds it takes to type “the end.”  How to say goodbye, how to wrap it up, move on?  Oh, and bank that check, and maybe get back in with a sequel, maybe a series, a cable or movie option.

For readers, the struggle is simpler – the ending is where it all needs to come together.  And if frozen froth is the ending the storyteller finds necessary, how to convince a reader that the froth does indeed have a higher calorie count, and far more texture, flavor and complexity, than that meaty lasagna?

Is an ending okay if it ticks people off, not because it’s predictable, but because it’s unpredictable in the “wrong” way?

I’ve been told that people don’t always know what they want.  My buddy pointed out that, though the reader wanted a more definitive conclusion rather than an open ending, that reader still really wanted to read his work.

This made me think about one of Brian’s observations about characters and knowing them fully.  Oh, yeah, and novel use of language.  I can’t really speak to that one.  But I think characters, a cast of characters, and what happens to them, big and small, not only at the end but over the course of the story, can satisfy the reader enough so they don’t ask for their beer money back.  I think it can be important to reach, or at least offer, different conclusions at an ending, depending on each character’s point of view.

I know, in my reading for Space and Time, I like the main character achieving something, but a secondary character (or “entity” or other force because, let’s face it, it is Space and Time) accomplishing something else, and perhaps even the antagonist comes out with a piece of the pie.  Somehow, that sounds realistic.   Downright mimetic.

In Brian’s words, transformation, not death.  For all.

When I’ve been asked to go back and rethink an ending, it’s generally because the ending is too bleak, dark, hopeless and destitute.  Sort of The Road without the kid.  “What happened?” I’ve been asked, meaning why I did I destroy everything and everyone so completely?  Why did choices and circumstances have to be so dark?  There is, as far as I understand the reaction, a certain lack of meaning.  To me, the situation may reflect s view of reality but, I understand the feedback that, no, I don’t have to beat my readers over the head with that point of view.  And, really, the bleakness doesn’t reflect the totality of my viewpoint.

I do not wear black nail polish or velour on the inside and the out.

Incidents of random joy or humor aside, I still believe the dark path is a legitimate one to take.  I’m a fan of noir, after all.  Horror, dark fantasy, that kind of thing.  But, there is the market to consider.  The editor.  And the choices you leave yourself as a writer.   Meaning, and in the context of commercial fiction, hope, is a legitimate goal.  Those kinds of things do make a difference, they belong in a legitimate artistic vision of the world.  I think readers search for meaning.  I also think meaning can be found in wonder and terror, so you don’t have to be literal about providing “meaning.”

In shorter works, I try to introduce at least one character who is just “passing through” whenever I can.  Spear-carriers, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean they can’t serve the story.  Their tiny one scene arc not only puts the main character in context, in a living world that is going on around the protagonist as he, um, agonizes, but of course they also (Ihope) propel the plot, and, they offer a different point of view on what is going, a lingering presence that will probably survive the main character’s arc and perhaps make the story more real, more vivid, for the reader.   A mom or dad, a best friend, a husband or wife on the phone, a seer or a homeless person, a dog or a cat.  Whatever.  But their little walk through, in my mind, serves a host of purposes, including, I hope, a tiny beginning, middle and end in the scene in which they appear.

In a  longer story, I think there can be as many endings as there are character arcs.  Of course, there’s the main one.  But usually, you have a cast and, for the story to work, they should be of some variety (otherwise there’s no conflict).  A character’s story may be short – perhaps only a scene in a short story, perhaps a few scenes throughout a novel.  There’s usually a cluster of characters and their changes that need to be orchestrated at the end of a longer, more complex work.  An early novel of mine was episodic, so the arcs for the secondary characters were short, but the more recent stuff – with characters dying, or “moving on” (quite literally, in the supernatural sense) or just moving on – required a bit more coordination.

At each of those moments when a character is about to leave the story, either in the middle or the end of the work, here’s a chance to make that character really stand out for a reader.  Every character should be on their own journey, and those little endings and transformations can linger in a reader’s mind if it hits the particular mental or emotional target he or she carries inside them.

You hit them high, you hit them low.  You point in all kinds of directions, hopefully with some pattern or cohesion.

Darkness.  Light.  Humor.  Cruelty.  Love.  Despair.

Well, that’s being overdramatic, of course.  But I hope I’m making sense, if not an actual case, by treasuring the characters you’ve invented, and looking how their individual endings in the story can accent and spice up the overall narrative.  When everybody dies, or falls in love and lives happily ever after, it may taste like burnt chicken.

Another way to look at ends is the technique of revisiting fairy tales by looking at the story from different points of view –  Wolf instead of Red.  Same ending, different meaning.  Put the arcs together, and you have a third story.  Throw in the woodsman, grandma, and you have a richer ending.  Yes, a much longer story, I know, but richer.

Or, as always, you can look to Shakespeare and his major and minor character arcs for those juxtapositions of individual endings.  Well, maybe not Titus Andronicus, but you get the idea.  And, oh yeah, that elevated language thing Brian was talking about.

Going back to the beginning (which is one of my favorite ways to end a story – full circle, very different place), killing Osama puts a meaning to 9/11 – not necessarily the definitive one, just the one we have today, knowing what we know, still in the unfolding story.  Do this, and you die.  That’s a good enough meaning for many.

The more complex meanings are in the reaction interviews – he’s dead, and we are #1.  Or, he’s dead, but I’m still not happy.

In longer works, you can have multiple “endings” from a variety of character arcs, so that individual major, minor, diminished, augmented and what have you characters and secondary story lines can stick in a reader’s mind.  You have two good endings?  Use them both, hell, end on a power chord of endings.

Or, yes, trickle away at the very end, or fade away on the chorus.  Whatever.  I think if you’ve provided memorable characters – and by that, I mean not just colorful or interesting personalities, but vivid and contrasting journeys for those characters to fulfill in the story – you won’t make readers demand their beer money back.  I think that’s why my buddy’s fan wants to continue reading his books – she may not have liked the structural end, the long view of the road vanishing into the horizon with some characters on it, but I’m pretty sure she dug the characters and where most of them wound up.

I bet she liked the language, too.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

I haven’t the foggiest idea if Abraham Maslow had much experience with the arts, but certainly his observation works for more than therapists and their menu of interventions.  (Maslow being a psychologist of the “humanist” tradition famous for, among other things, a view of personality based on a hierarchy of needs, which some might find useful tool as a way to look at characters and  conflict – check out http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html as a start if you’re interested.)

The hammer and nail observation certainly relates to a lot of situations.  No matter what the profession, it’s never a good thing when a co-worker’s options for appropriate responses is severely limited.  As a matter of fact, the hammer and nail approach often serves as comic relief in storytelling.  And, as a predictor of a character’s early demise.

And, from the viewpoint of the “other side of the coin,” the hammer and nail can also flip from humor to horror, and become the sole motivating factor and/or technique for a predator.

But as a writer, it pays to have a bag of tricks, a few tools in the box to get your character from one place to another, another way to rescue characters besides blood and bullets.  Yes, writers and artists in general have their passions, obsessions, visions and all of that.  Lovecraft overcame his hammer and nail by making it a mighty special hammer, but too many would-be imitators/followers have tried using that same combination and found themselves on the unintentionally humorous side of the coin.  Writers have stock characters they lean on again and again, settings they wear thin, descriptive phrases that appear in story after story, set ups and pay offs that make their tales predictable, a reflection of the genre to which they belong.

It pays to experiment, to read and learn (never steal, writes never steal, they only learn from their betters, trust me), to try and fail (I know, the economic consequences can be dire, but calculated risks are part of every profession).

It pays to pay attention to how many times you describe a street, or a character, or a room, in exactly the same way.  It pays to pay attention to the plots you pick, the characters you rely on, the phrasings like, well, it pays to pay attention…

Zombies.  There’s a tempting target for hammer and nail.  And yet, as an example of how a writer might work different angles with the same very limited subject, you might try Scott Edelman’s collection, What Will Come After.

I think part of the struggle for artists in general is balancing passion and vision, which sometimes tends toward using the hammer of their particular talent and viewpoint to on every project, with the work of trying out new tools to shape different takes on the material.

By this, I mean doing obvious stuff like switching character viewpoints from male to female to “other,” experimenting with language and style and voice, stepping out of the comfort zone of habit, telling a “straight” story if you’re an experimental type and playing with structure if you’re already a straight-shooter.

Do something you don’t want to do.

Pick up a new tool, do something other than hit what you think is a nail.

I had a great conversation recently with a supervisor of a substance abuse clinic, talking about staff issues  and the learning process.  One of the things he talked about was dealing with counselors who used confrontation, a traditional substance abuse counseling tool, for every patient and situation.  And there he was, talking about hammer and nail.

To be applied to so many things in life, of course, from taking a different route to work to, well, you can figure it out…and to writing stories.

My buddy Tom Piccirilli edited a great little magazine a while ago by that name.  Alas, this post won’t match anything he ever published, but a few random sightings of these things on the internet a while back did stir the creative juices (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Famous_last_words ), so I thought I’d share the experience.  Basically a story and character generating idea – a lot of these attributions are pure fantasy or hearsay, but what if somebody actually did say one of these things as their last words?  Who would they be, what would have been the story behind those words?  Or, can you get into your character’s head deeply enough to imagine his or her last words?

Maybe if you dig hard enough, and maybe you’ll find your “rosebud.”

And if you don’t know the story of that most famous of all fictional last words, look it up and check it out.

Anyway, here’s a bunch culled from various sites, emails, posts, etc

Dammit…Don’t you dare ask God to help me.  (Joan Crawford to her housekeeper who began to pray aloud.)

I am perplexed. Satan Get Out  (Aleister Crowley – famous occultist)

Now why did I do that?  (General William Erskine, after he jumped from a window in Lisbon, Portugal in 1813.)

Pardon me, sir. I did not do it on purpose.  (Queen Marie Antoinette after she accidentally stepped on the foot of her executioner as she went to the guillotine.)

I can’t sleep  (J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan)

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.  (Humphrey Bogart)

I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct.  (Dominique Bouhours, famous French grammarian)

I live!  (Roman Emperor, as he was being murdered by his own soldiers.)

Bugger Bognor.  (King George V whose physician had suggested that he relax at his seaside palace in Bognor Regis.)

It’s stopped.  (Joseph Henry Green, upon checking his own pulse.)

LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.  (Aldous Huxley (Author) to his wife. She obliged and he was injected twice before his death.)

You have won, O Galilean  (Emperor Julian, having attempted to reverse the official endorsement of Christianity by the Roman Empire.)

No, you certainly can’t.  (John F. Kennedy in reply to Nellie Connally, wife of Governor John Connelly, commenting “You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome, Mr. President.)

I feel ill. Call the doctors.  (Mao Zedong (Chairman of China)

Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here  (Nostradamus)

Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you’re fooling around! (Carl Panzram, serial killer, shortly before he was executed by hanging.)

Put out the bloody cigarette!!  (Saki, to a fellow officer while in a trench during World War One, for fear the smoke would give away their positions. He was then shot by a German sniper who had heard the remark.)

Please don’t let me fall.   (Mary Surratt, before being hanged for her part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. She was the first woman executed by the United States federal government.)

Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.  (Voltaire when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.)

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”  (Oscar Wilde)

“I’ve had eighteen whiskeys. I think that’s the record.”  (Dylan Thomas)

“Wait a minute… ” (Pope Alexander VI)
“Don’t disturb my equation” (Archimedes)
“I’m bored with it all.”  (Winston Churchill)

“Thank God. I’m tired of being the funniest person in the room.” (Del Close)

“Lady, you shot me!” (Sam Cooke )

“This is funny.”  (Doc Holliday, said as he was looking down at his bootless feet while lying in bed. He always figured he would die with his boots on.)

“Such is life” (Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw “bush ranger”)

“Don’t let it end like this, tell them I said something!”  (Poncho Villa)

“Moose. Indian.”  (Henry David Thoreau)

“Don’t worry, it’s not loaded” (Terry Kath from the band Chicago, before he shot himself.)

“Pity, pity…..too late!”  (Beethoven)

“I am not in the least bit afraid to die”  (Charles Darwin)

“Who is it?” (Billy the Kid).

“Why, yes, a bulletproof vest”  (Dominic Willard, just before his death by firing squad, whenasked if he had any last requests).

“I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.” (Thomas J. Grasso, a confessed multiple murderer, concerning one item he had requested on a lengthy and detailed last meal list.)

All my possessions for a moment of time. (Elizabeth I, Queen of England, d. 1603 )

“I’ve seen many die. The Christians die differently. What is their secret?” (A Chinese Communist Executioner.)

“I shall be with Christ, and that is enough”. (Scientist Michael Faraday upon being asked: “Have you ever pondered what will be your occupation in the next world?”)

Writers are certainly familiar with the concept of failure.  Some of us have stacks of rejections to remind us, just in case we forget.  But this go-around, I’d like to approach this all-too-familiar concept from a different, larger point of view.

A couple of years (or more) ago, J.K. Rowling delivered a commencement speech to the Harvard Alumni Association called, amusingly enough considering the audience, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.

What strikes me, as someone who has walked away from certain kinds of “success” and who has been ambushed by unthinkable “failure,” in her approach is the valuable lesson regarding embracing failure.

I know, it’s practically un-American.  Un-anything, for that matter.

Anti-human.  Perhaps even monstrous.

Her angle on failure was freedom.  So maybe the hanging party can pause of while to reconsider, the torch-bearing mob stop at the gates before setting fire to the castle.  Because there’s nothing more American than freedom.

What I most identify with in her speech was the idea of “stripping away of the inessential.”  Now if there’s anything the last few years, hell, the last few decades has taught us is that some parts of the world’s various societies have created a whole hell of a lot of inessential stuff.  With it has come some pretty cool things, incredible feats of engineering and breakthrough science.  But still, a lot wound up being glamour.  Fairy dust in the eyes.  A mirage.  Ultimately, failure.

Individually, maybe we thought we belonged.  We wanted to, tried real hard, did everything we had to be one of the gang.  To beat the Joneses.  Whatever the gang was that we hoped would make us feel okay, protect us from the Big Bad, guarantee us success.  Whatever the Joneses meant to us that they had to be “beaten” in the race to accumulate the latest “things.”

We had to be just that little bit extra special.  So maybe people would notice us.  To feel good about ourselves.  To fill the emptiness inside with someone’s applause, or envy.

I’m sure many of us can look back on our lives and see periods where, well, things didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would.  Things were done as they were supposed to be done.  Certificates, degrees, social circle spokes were all accumulated and nurtured with due diligence and practiced charm.  Money and family and house and hobbies all neatly established to meet the standards of whatever club we wanted to belong to.

Then, if we’re lucky, we found out the club we wanted to be a part of didn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be.

Or, the club simply wouldn’t have us.

Failure.

Rowling  points out that if she had really ever succeeded at anything other than writing, she would never have “found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.”

Now here’s a key, I thought – the definition of failure, and the discovery of freedom, for her came as the realization of her greatest fear, which in this case was failure.

We protect ourselves from what we fear with the armor of what our culture values – the perfect spouse, the high-velocity career, car, degrees, property.  Perhaps we believe we have a pipeline to God, or the Spiritual Master of Your Choice.  Certainly, we also protect ourselves from what we fear with the trappings of failure – addiction, ignorance, obsession.

This is what people do, have always done, will always do.

Let’s be blunt.  Failure is hardwired into living.

Systems break down.  Errors occur.  Death looms.

Everybody loves a winner, but to be a winner, everybody else must lose.  That’s the price of competition.  And even today’s winner is tomorrow’s loser.

I’ll stop short of saying there’s “no winning.”  I won’t even go into the aspect of game theory that says the point is not to win or lose, but to keep playing.

I don’t want to bring anyone down, here.  But there is, actually, a point or two to be made…

Half of what I’m saying here relates, of course, to writing.  Creating and building characters.

Nobody wants to read a story in which the character succeeds at every turn.  The point of a plot is to pile one failure on top of another, to “up the ante” and repay the first Act’s successful handling of an initial crisis with a double dose of plot twists – more failures.

Overcoming failures by adapting and changing priorities, changing directions, stripping away the inessential, is bascially what story, and life, is about.

Experimenting, trying things out, accepting and even embracing failure for the lessons it can teach us is actually the way everything from evolution (um, if you happen to believe in that) to growing up to science actually works.

So in thinking of characters, it is sometimes more rewarding to think less in terms of the “heroic” aspects of a personality, and focus more on weaknesses, faults, blind spots.  Or perhaps, to consider “heroic” not in terms of power and bluster, but as flawed and fragile, with the true heroism expressing itself as self-sacrifice for others when clearly there are few resources for self.

It is more revealing and certainly entertaining to consider how people and organizations cope with failure – out of this good and well fertilized earth grows horror and comedy.

We identify, to a certain extent, with those who fail, mostly because we want to see them win, at least once in a while.

And think about those Secret Masters of the Universe graduating from Harvard, listening to one of the most financially successful authors in modern times, who made her fortune writing, of all things, fantasy, talk to them about failure and how it might not be such a bad thing.

Think about what failure might look like for them, and what failure looks like to someone whose life was blown away by 9/11 or Katrina, or who landed here from someplace else (like, maybe, your ancestors) with nothing, hoping to find a way to survive.

That’s the stuff of story…

The other point I want to make is about the business in general.

It’s not a good beginning if, by Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of everything is crap.  One could be generous and say the stuff you write and get published doesn’t contribute too much to that percentage.  But the odds, you have to admit, are not golden, or even sterling.

Failure is built into the system.

So in terms of business, and of creativity and art, don’t be afraid.

I know, easier said than done.  But, really, the only way to succeed in any business, including a creative one, is to take risks.  If you are constantly copying the cutting edge of your field, instead of contributing to that edge, how soon are you going to be replaced by someone faster, cheaper, better at doing the same thing?  Successful artists and businesses – those who stay in business and make money – find a way to innovate, to create niches for themselves and their customers.

So.  Risk leads to growth and success.

Sometimes.

It also leads to failure, very often.  Our personal visions are not shared by others.  Our art wanders from the public’s center of interest.

Risk leads to failure.  But so does standing pat, refusing to change and grow and adapt to the transforming world around us.

Failure.  You really can’t escape it.

So.  For those contemplating the writing life, I am certainly not arguing for a deliberate leap into the unknown without a parachute to discover one’s writing groove.  Besides, the issue of struggling with failure as opposed to hiding behind success is a completely different one, often times requiring professional help of one kind or another.

I am really talking to those who are on some level comfortable in their life.  Perhaps even complacent.  Ill at ease, at times.  Maybe a touch miserable, deep inside.  Remember, this was a commencement address for the future masters of the universe.

Pursue what you must.  There are developmental needs, stages of life we must all go through.  The path to success is as relative and twisty as its meaning.  Take risks.  Or don’t.  Play it safe.

When the “Katrina” of your life hits – and it will – when what you’ve feared comes to pass and you’ve failed, when you’ve lost the thing or things that protected you, made you feel lost your job, your house, someone you love, or whatever else that has psychologically and emotionally protected you from the terrible certainties you most fear from reality, take stock.

What was essential.

Let us not forget, as well, the importance of finding a place to belong.  Belonging to what is essential is not a bad place to be in…

A while ago (maybe a long while, depending on when I put this one up), NPR’s What’s the Word broadcast a piece called Literature on Foot.  Basically, it was about a few poets and their habit of walking as part of their creative process.

“Perhaps truth depends on a walk around the lake.”

That kind of thing.

One of the ideas that struck home was about needing to walk to gain mental freedom and access one’s true self.

It made me think of other ways writers use to gain that mental freedom, to access true self, the creative core.

Sitting in store front windows while pounding out a piece, yes.  Writing under pressure of a deadline, or with the “right” kind of music blasting, or television babbling on in the background.  In the subway, on crowded trains.  In noisy coffee houses.

After exercising.  Before doing something else they really want to do, holding that thing off as a reward.

Butt naked (I’m betting no one else uses your chair…).

In a tent.  In the kitchen, with the family flowing by.

In stone silence.

By the clacking of a mechanical typewriter’s keys.

The point is, finding those moments to write also means discovering how you write, what you need environmentally to free your mind from the everyday concerns of the world (unless that’s what you need, of course – a stack of bills and the baby crying, and you’re ready to knock out a thousands words Shakespeare would be proud of).

What do you need to free your mind to be able to work at a story?

Yeah, writing is a tricky art.  You just sit there, staring at the screen, or the paper, straining as you reach for the next word, the next line.

You’re stretching for that clarity of mind that allows you to fill the story with ideas, bon mots, sharp lines, fascinating characters, and other unexpected things.

Do you need to take a break every fifteen minutes and move around, paint another couple of feet of wall, check on dinner, whatever?  Or do you need a solid 2-3 hours of time to concentrate and cycle through all the little details humming round in your head?

I wouldn’t recommend drugs or alcohol – yes, they free your mind.  They strip it naked, in fact, and trip your thoughts, trick perception into a wobbly altered-state of consciousness logic that could never be replicated in the mind of a sober or even high reader.

It’s not a pretty look.

So free your mind means, yes, letting go of many rules and inhibitions.

But by freeing your mind, don’t get yourself arrested.  Unless, of course, you’re very certain you need to be in a jail cell to write.

And even then, I can get a whole lot of people to testify that that particular idea is a very, very bad one.  And they will speak from experience.  They will also charge a speaker’s fee.

I’d pay it if I were you.

Some mornings, when I can escape from the world’s demands long enough to achieve a moment of clarity, or when I’m not too lazy, I seek wisdom in short, pithy bursts, like an expresso for the mind.

Some seek this kind of rush in various scriptures, others in the morning foreign stock reports.  I look for it in the funny pages.

It’s a habit developed as a child, when Hagar the Horrible was the new kid on the block, when Dondi and Little Orphan Annie and Dick Tracey and Steve Canyon were on their last gasps  (yeah, I read the sci-fi DT with magnetic cars and Moon Maiden, which was kinda cool in a pre-Blade Runner kind of way, with Dick running around in his fedora and sharp chin/nose while cylindrical spaceship/cars zoomed off to the moon fetching alien women who seduced wayward young police rookies….).

These days, I set my mental alarm clock to Get Bucky and Dilbert.

It’s weird, not getting your comics from a newspaper.  But newspapers are dying, they’re a failing habit.  Already, they slip from my grasp – I rarely pick one up, anymore, and when I do it frequently remains unread in the rush of chasing the list of daily things to do.  Now, I sit in waiting rooms and power up my “smart phone” and click on the comic application.  There they all are.  So I can catch up on a week, a month, maybe more, of wisdom for the ages.

Well, at least wisdom for now.

Often, the funny pages inspire my psychological theory for the day.  So here’s a link for a Dilbert cartoon that set things straight for me:  http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-03-31/

If that doesn’t work, look up Dilbert for March 31^st, 2010.

Basically, it says that leadership is the art of trading imaginary things in the future for real things today…and the punchline is the evil director of human resources telling Dilbert that  he might get promoted if he works all weekend….someday, if there’s an opening, and there’s nobody else more qualified…

Now this management tool is a stone cold reality in most places I’ve worked in, including places where management doesn’t actually have the instant power to promote because people must pass tests and score high enough on them to get even get a shot, or there are strict guidelines in terms of qualifications, degrees, etc..  And yet, people who routinely fail tests or don’t have qualifications place themselves in awkward positions of responsibility in the hope that somehow, someway, their desire for power and money and recognition will be fulfilled.

It’s a little like American Idol (or whatever amateur hour television show is relevant for your media generation) – follow the dream and you will be rewarded.  Or humiliated in front of millions.  Or, more likely, face the realization that the dream needs to be revised just a tad.

Now the relevance for all of this is, of course, in character building.

Characters are the engines that make stories work (if you ignore Aristotle), and characters need fuel.  That fuel is motivation.  And motivation comes from needs.

In the animal world, needs are clear and fundamental: sex and food.  Comfy nesting spots (if you’re that sort of critter), personal safety, personal comfort in the form of getting rid of parasites or staying dry, grooming (for sex) are the secondary needs that contribute to the ability to satisfy those primary, hardwired needs.

It comes down to passing on the species genome.

Humans, of course, are different.

That, of course, is a punchline.

But seriously, humans complicate those basic needs, that fundamental drive.  We dream.  Perhaps in small, cruel and petty ways – we dream of stealing our co-worker’s lunch from the community refrigerator, or doing the “hit it and split” on a Friday night pick-up.  Sometimes in large ways – we want to create a significant piece of art that speaks to our generation, perhaps to generations in the future, or we want to be President to shape the world according to the values we grew up with.

We dream of things that will make us feel good about ourselves and for things that will make us feel like we are better than others, that we are special and different – could be money, could be recognition, could be a role in work or society.

Some just dream of not being hungry, or lonely.

Today’s psychological theory of personality (and remember, this is only today’s theory, because as I’ve said in the past, these things change, just like people…and, deep down inside, they’re all the same and they really don’t change, just like people) talks about motivation as the need to do things today in exchange for imaginary things in the future.

Character motivation.

Working for a paycheck is, largely, not so imaginary.  But that is not always the case, not even in the “glorious and stable” Western world.  You work, and you hope the boss doesn’t disappear before paying you.

Just ask writers who deliver work to publishers who never pay.

(There’s a reality tidbit for those of you wondering if there’s any relevance to writing in this column.)

Working for a dream, for something in the future that may or may not actually happen – that is a fundamental development in motivation that I think separates humans from large parts of the animal world (doesn’t make us “not animals,” just makes us more complicated ones).

Yes, a tiger goes out to hunt because of hunger and may, or may not, satisfy that hunger.

But a human goes to hunt because of hunger, which is a reality, and also because of glory and status and the power he or she believes a successful hunt will grant over others, which is a dream.  And, as a bonus, because humans really like to kill things and exert their power over their environment and may not be hungry or even eat the meat they’ve slain, which is another level of reality.  Or nightmare.

An animal may protect its young (not all species do) because the instinct is in them, it’s part of the drive to pass on the genome.

Humans may protect their young, but sometimes they don’t.  Often, because we are so complicated, they screw it up, in some major or minor fashion.  Sometimes, they mess it up deliberately.  Almost all the time, whether they try or they don’t try to protect their young, stuff happens anyway and messes up the kid in some small or major way.

I’m not sure animals get to be neurotic, or psychotic.  Not for long, anyway.  Unless they’re around humans a lot.

The need to eat and the need to pass on the genome get complicated almost instantly as soon as humans can act on those apparently simple and basic drives.

Amazing, really.

Because we are human, we add layers and mountains and oceans of stuff on top of those fundamental drives.

You can call the dream of an imaginary future faith, or ambition, or desire…whatever.

You can call how humans work to make that imaginary future come true politics, religion, art, war, commerce…whatever.

You can call the results society, culture, government, pleasure, pain, apocalypse, creation, heaven, hell…whatever.

Sometimes you do real things today for imaginary things in the future, and you get the promotion.

Sometimes you do real things today and there’s never an opening for you in the future, or someone else is more qualified.  Or the job gets outsourced.  Or the company goes out of business.

Sometimes, the dream comes true and you wonder (like Peggy Lee…go ahead, google it), is that all there is?

Sometimes, you look at the pile of ashes that is all that remain of your dream and sing the same song.

In the dreams of your characters is the future they want to make happen.  That is their motivation.  The story is in how they try to make that dream come true, and what happens – what changes in and around them – when they succeed, or fail, in making that dream come true.

Apologies, from one who struggles with the balance of dreams and reality, to those who believe dreams and reality are the same…

Taking the 59th street exit on the FDR in Manhattan, you usually get caught in red-light eddy between two tall buildings for what may seem like minutes, but is probably just 20-30 seconds (this is Manhattan, after all).

One access point to and from the apartment building on the left is across a footbridge over the eddy (lovely at dawn, looking out at the rosey-peaked dawn while inhaling exhaust fumes) that seems to lead to a long, glass-enclosed corridor decorated, at intervals, by art prints.  Occasionally, very occasionally, you see someone in the hall.  Once, I saw two or three, very widely spaced, walking all in one direction.

As is often my habit, I look at places like this and imagine them as a particular corner of hell.

So hell is an endless corridor.

Carpeted?  What’s the lighting like?  Is there music?  Or musak?

Is one wall windowed, overlooking an industrial wasteland (a go-to favorite of mine, alas) or a Bosch landscape of tortures to come should you ever reach the end of the corridor?  Or is it rock?  Lava?  A spongy mass that will consume you if you lean against it?   A blank wall.  Or another wall decorated by prints.  Or art.

Do the people in the corridor do the art?  Or someone – or something – else?

Who are these people in the corridor, by the way?  Are they all walking in the same direction, up and down?  If the same, are they spaced apart as they were in my vision?  How far – meters, miles?  Can they hear each other scream?  Or do they just run into each other’s trash?

Let’s get to the mechanics.  Do the people in this particular corner of hell need to go to the bathroom?  Do they get hungry?  Sleepy?  Do they want sex?  Drugs and alcohol?  In other words, is part of their torture the needs and appetites of their former lives?

It’s good to have needs.  Needs propel stories.  (Waiting for Godot has no plot, but the characters do have needs, of a kind, which holds the reader’s/viewer’s interest.)  So if not this, then some other need…something chasing from behind, or a carrot dancing just around the next bend of the corridor.  An urgent mission they were assigned to fulfill by reaching the end of an endless corridor when they arrived at hell’s gate.  A compulsion to reach the end of the hall.

How those needs are met, and frustrated, are sure to torture in hell, as they sometimes are in life.

Is there a culture in this corridor world of hell?  What protocols structure encounters, whether regular (as in the world of cross current walkers) or irregular (spaced walkers, perhaps lingering by a bathroom or food store they exhausted waiting for to share the company of the one who follows them – and what happens then, is hell really other people?).

Culture also propels needs, as well as structures them.  Culture complicates the fulfillment of needs with rules.  Culture is good for story.

Does all this hell stuff mean something – is it a metaphor, or a satire, or a surreal excursion, a virtual simulation or game or test, or the dreams of a catatonic character?

And we haven’t even gotten to the characters, yet.

The point of this exercise, of course, is to approach storytelling from yet another angle – developing an idea, a premise – hell is an endless corridor – and making it real by asking questions and finding answers for them.  Could be science fiction, where the rules are the ones that rule the external world, or fantasy, in which the action serves as a metaphor for the rules governing the inner landscapes of people.

In other words, some kind of logic needs to be applied to stories at some point in their making.  Usually.  By most folks.  (Have I hit all the qualifiers, yet?  Because everybody’s different, yes, I know.)

Because logic will be applied by editors, publishers and readers.  So you’d best to get know the concept.

Internal logic, logic consistent with the rules set up by the world in which the characters live – that’s all that’s asked for, most times, by readers from casual and professional.

When that logic gets worked out is up to you, of course.  Some let the undertow of emotional and intellectual currents carry them off through some stuff that happens to these folks they throw in, and when an ending is reached, logic is applied and the stuff that happens is tightened up a bit or a lot, and the folks, well, they get that stuff happened to them.

Others work all that logic out in their heads, know the arcs and the twists of their tale ahead of time, and set about the clean and crisp construction of a story with a certain amount of precision and confidence.

Wherever you fit in the spectrum, from master architect to pulling it out of the hole with your eyes shut, it’s good to remember what can propel a character and a story is usually something that can follow a form of logic others can understand.  Vampires, living dead, werewolves – all logical in their context.

Now, if I were John Skipp, I’d tell you all to work out a little 100 word ditty based on “the corridor is hell” premise and see how many different views of hell you can get (and how brief they can be), and then send it to me, and I’d post the best ones next time.

But, of course, I’m not John Skipp and I don’t have a legion of fans and I’m not even sure who’s reading this (I do have a fan, Mr. Legion, from Des Moines, who mostly buys my stuff used but is very sincere, but his old 486 desktop has been acting out lately and I’m not even sure his screen is working anymore and last I heard the mice had eaten through a power cord and the roaches were dancing on his hard drive disk).

So if you feel spunky, see what you can do and send it to me and I’ll be back next month with something from you guys.

But, most likely, I’ll be back with something else acting like this never happened.

Just like if I was in hell….

In the SU tradition for Halloween’s month, here’s a story I wrote a while ago, originally published in the Barnes and Nobles anthology, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories in October, 1998

****

They ate quickly, swallowing chunks of meat and vegetables, draining glass after glass of wine.  They finished his bottle and two she kept in a rack on the kitchen counter.  The stew pot was empty when they finally stopped eating, sat back, looked at each other.  Richard burped loudly.  Carmen put her napkin to her mouth and turned her head to the side.

“In high school,” he said at last, toying with the bread knife, “I killed a girl’s dog when she wouldn’t go out on a date with me, and I planted the knife I used in her ex-boyfriend’s locker.”

Carmen stood and went to the window.  She hugged herself, as if chilled. “In high school, I worked for a man who arranged for older men to see me after school.  He arranged for the abortions, as well.  That’s why I told you I couldn’t have children, anymore.”

Richard went to the stereo and put on a CD of salsa music.  Horns blared, voices cried out, intricate percussive rhythms laced the air. “About the scar on my chest you asked about last night,” he said, hips swaying as he danced his way to her.  “That was from the first one I killed.  She carried a razor in her purse and slashed my through my jacket.  I’ve been much more careful since then.”

Carmen turned.  Her gaze travelled smoothly from following the steps of his dance to the swaying hand holding the bread knife to the subtle, steady smile on his lips.  “You never told me you could dance,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders, drawing nearer.  “I always wanted a dancer.  My first said he could dance, but when we went to the club he made us both look ridiculous.  What I took from the hospital where I worked as a nursing intern gave him a fatal heart attack, and could not be detected without specialized tests.  Since his family had a history of heart problems, no one bothered to look for anything else.”

Richard pressed his body against hers, pushing Carmen back against the wall.

“I’m so glad you wanted us to get to know each other,” he whispered in her ear.  He put the serrated edge of the bread knife to her throat.  “Sharing our pasts as well as our bodies makes our time together so much more satisfying.”

“It’s not every man who opens himself up to a woman,” she replied, staring  into his eyes, hands splayed against the wall.

Richard stabbed her once, expertly, and threw her to the ground.  “I’ll stay a little while longer,” he said, crouching beside her as she lay pumping blood on the floor.  “So you’re not alone as you die.”

“Thank you,” she croaked, a halo of blood surrounding her head, “but you don’t have to.”

Richard winced, dropped the bread knife, passed a hand over his stomach.

Carmen caressed his pale face with bloody fingertips.  “I drank all the antidote before dinner.”

end

A couple of months ago,  I riffed on a Locus interviewee’s  comments about writing, and this month, well, I’m going back to the well but this time it’s john Crowley and, well, it’s john Crowley…

In the January 2010 issue of Locus, John Crowley talked about writing and how he teaches, and said the following:

“When I teach science fiction classes, one of the stories I always give my students to read is “The Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw.  It’s a story about memory: things that have been captured and lost, and the power of things that have been caught but shouldn’t  have been.  What I try to describe to students is the way a science fiction story ought to work.  To be a real science fiction story but a moving one, whatever technological gimmick you come up with has to be the bearer of the meaning of the story.  It has to carry the weight of the emotions.  It’s not a science fiction story if the scientific wonder or futuristic thing is just there but the emotions are about me and my wife, or my feelings about my son, and by the way, we’re in the future.  The SF thing has to carry the meaning, and you get the meaning of the story by thinking about the gimmick.”

Of course I’m old enough to remember that story from when it first came out, back in the day when short stories carried a bit more impact than they do now and when it was possible to read just about everything that was important in various genres without secluding one’s self in a priory.

The quote is an obvious, and valuable, lesson for science fiction writers, of course.

But, of course, it relates to any literary work powered by a central image, idea, crime, passion, adventure, monster, what have you – the gimmick, whether it is technological, fantastic, emotional, or simply the machinations of a thriller plot, serves as a metaphor for the meaning of the story.  The tools of the genre serve as a vessel for the  emotions of the characters in that story, the ones the reader is being asked to identify with, invest in, relate to and follow along on a journey.

Yes, I understand, Crowley is talking about a very specific thing relating to science fiction, and I’m adding fuzz to the matter at hand, generalizing and obfuscating a very important truth.

Yes, I understand that the technological innovation is not at all the same thing as a paranoid thriller plot, or a noirish scenario of doom, or a dragon, or a stranger in town, or a couple trapped in a domestic hell.

But Crowley’s observation sent my mind down a rabbit hole and into a world I haven’t inhabited in many, many years: college.  Sophomore.  Greek classical literature, the roots of Western literature.

And the old Red Queen said hi:  Aristotle’s Poetics.

You just can’t get away from the damn thing.  There’s a version for film writing, Rick Hautula (aka  A.J. Matthews,  or the “next Stephen King” as he’s “lovingly” referred to at Necon writers’ conference) is always referencing it whenever he talks about writing,   My college professor in Greek lit obsessed about the Poetics, before he was summarily dethroned as temporary department head and saner (in only the most liberal, academic sense of the word) heads prevailed.  It’s online (google it and you’ll find various “”Butcher” versions or splurge and for a couple of dollars you can pick up a better used translation), and there is a lot of study and summary material dedicated to it which presents in capsule form those hours of debating and interpretation you might spend, along with a ton of money, experiencing first hand in college classes.  If you need the live performance, knock yourself out.

It’s all about dramatic unity.  The Poetics offers the first cohesive theory about the structure and aesthetics of storytelling, at least as it relates to Western aesthetics.  You could do worse than read, or more accurately, spend a little time studying and researching, old Aristotle.  Much of what you’ll learn in modern writing courses comes from the groove he laid down 2300 years ago.

What was said then is, of course, still relevant now.  Certainly in the commercial markets available to us.  Certainly in relating to what our audience has been trained to expect, through school and lifetimes worth of mass consumption of stories – from structured and packaged biographies (for those non-fiction types who don’t read “fiction”) to folks schooled in everything from the classics to pulp, comics and summer blockbuster movies.

Dramatic unity calls for a story structure in which all the parts are tightly interconnected.  The usual line-up includes time, place, rhythm, emotion, theme, action.

Ooooo, action.  Don’t get my old professor started on that.

Anyway, Aristotle served as midwife to the notion of show, don’t tell.  He viewed storytelling (specifically, tragedy) as a mimetic art, that is, a reflection of the way the world actually works. No deus ex machina.  Fear and pity, at least in tragedy, are the emotional goals for the audience, followed by catharsis.  Characters, sadly, are rather strictly defined in moral/societal terms, hardly the intense, psychological creatures of today.

There are interesting things out there on the Poetics – you could much worse than spend a couple of hours going through some of the online free college study material (google something like aristotle’s poetics analysis).

Yes, there are issues.  This is all fine and well for Western style storytelling, and we all know that Western style storytelling is the very best of its kind, certainly, and everybody else wants our Westerns style storytelling and there really is only one kind of story and one kind structure that really, really, really reaches down into the core of who and what we are because we’re all the same, when you come right down to it, and those Greeks got it right for everybody when they did their thing and everybody else got it wrong and they just better hurry up and get with the program…

Well, there are some cultural differences, things found acceptable and rules broken, as story fulfills different needs at other times and/or parts of the world.  Hell, there’s plenty of variation within our own “sacred” Western rational point of view.  You can start with Euripedes.

Of course, the way story, or the art of poetry, can reflect individuality in the context of a society rather than merely represent culture, fate, what have you, is a twist on Aristotle’s take on the matter.

What makes the Poetics valuable, no matter how you shake your rhubarb (as another generation’s Joker might say), is the logic of making the story coherent in terms of an internal set of rules.  If in your world folks express themselves periodically through outbreaks of song and dance, or extended hand-to-hand combat, then so be it.  Just make sure the logic holds true as certainly as apples fall from trees in our world.

The Poetics might not work for you.  The work might bore the bejesus out of your imagination.  I’m just saying, Aristotle’s Poetics is a place a lot of writers you read and love have passed through.  For some, it’s a bible.  For others, a tool to help get a handle on story structure.

There’s a reason the thing’s been around for thousands of years….

Another Space and Time reading period has passed and it’s time to throw out a few notes for anyone who might care at least as much about the writing as about getting published.  And, if you really only do care about being published, there’s some advice for you here, too.

Mentioning credits in a cover letter sets up expectations.  If you list high-profile markets, awards, etc,  the reader is prepared for a certain level of premise, character development, plot, etc.  There is an understanding that, if you are submitting to a market that is not #1 in terms of payment, the story might not be award-winning.  If the elements don’t quite all come together, or perhaps originality or some other component is not quite up to the level of a first-line, top-paying, invitation-only anthology, there is the expectation that the story will hold up to general standards.

It should be a good story.

The simple fact is that someone who has sold to a number of solid professional markets and has been around for a few years has grasped skills a beginner is still struggling to get a get a hold on.

Sometimes, the story is just too odd for some markets.  Or, an experiment.  The key thing is that, whatever problems may arise, there is an expectation that a pro believes there is something worthwhile in the story.

But if you’re a pro, pushing trunk stories you don’t believe in, or have proven to have major flaws, can be embarrassing.  First off, the thing make actually get published, and then you’ll look like Murray F. Abraham, Academy Award winning actor, on SyFy channel.  Well, not even that, because at least he’s cashing a nice little check and making a living.  He’s not working below scale.

Things like that aren’t going to destroy reputations, of course.  Not over the short term, anyway.  And everybody needs to make a living, and a check is a check, no matter how small.  Just, well, be careful out there.

For the rest of us, whose names may not be instantly recognizable but can be attached to some nice credits, the rules still apply.  Credits set up expectations.  So, at least in one’s own mind, it would be nice if the work doesn’t make those credits look like a complete aberration.

And if you put down a list of markets no one has ever heard of, at least no one trying to sell stories, because the markets don’t pay and don’t have literary cachet, you are making yourself look like an amateur.  And that makes errors and story problems stand out that much more.

It’s like sending out a story that isn’t in standard format.  Or going to an interview in a sweat suit.  Yes, the world is unfair and frowns upon people who stand apart and don’t join the herd.  The world doesn’t bother frowning upon bad stories, it just ignores them.

If you say you teach English, you should check your manuscript for errors in, like, English.

If you’ve seen it in or are inspired by movies or television, your story and characters are pulp.  Not the mashed innards of fruit squeezed of all vitality, juice and nutrients, but the mashed ideas about story and character that were perhaps new or at least exciting when you were twelve, or when mass media was born in cheap magazines and radio many generations ago, but have since faded to crinkly, yellowed garbage not fit for packing material.

Seriously.

Oh, by the way, I’ve discovered a new way for writers submitting work to wind up in a spam folder: accidentally paste the editorial address of a market into an email list for, oh, I don’t know, a campaign for some school board post or a family reunion or something else that is similar but has nothing to do with submitting an attached story.  You might get a response from an editor that says something like “why am I on this list?”  But when the messages start piling up, one click, and you are consigned to the spam folder, perhaps never to be read again, at least from that email address.

I’m just saying…

Here’s something for very new writers:

Start the story on page 1.  Don’t wait until page 5.  We’re all gone by then, having beers (referencing the old quote about writers and their stories trying to separate readers from their beer money).

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever received when I was very young was that by the first page and a half (taking into account the standard ms. format with contact info, title and byline taking half the first page) the reader should be engaged with the character and their problem.

Now, if you want to split hairs, yes, the initial problem may unfold in due course to a deeper, more complicated conflict, but the point is that the initial problem should lead, very quickly, to the larger and more relevant issue in the story by the mechanics of those plot formulae that focus on resolution of one plot leading to the creation of a bigger, more complicated problem – Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx, but that leads to a bigger problem involving heritage and doom.  (For the media hounds, reference Invader Zim’s Doom song.  If you’ve never heard of Zim, I’m sure there’s a sample cartoon out there on the net.)

What this means is that within a page and a half of a short story, a reader should understand who the main character is (though not necessarily who the enemy is, if there is one), and what they want or need to do.

In journalistic terms:  who and what. The where and when are also good things to have.  The how is what the story is about.

By page 2 or 3, or 5, or the end, that want or need may have changed through the logical progression of the story – dealing with a flat tire on an abandoned stretch of road leads to an encounter with a serial killer or alien or wood spirit which transforms the symbolic “breakdown” of the car into a breakdown and fix-up or destruction of a life.

But the point is,  you probably shouldn’t describe the scenery, or describe the past 1,000 years of galactic history, or engage in light banter to “get to know” the characters.  Unless, of course, you are very, very good and can make all of that mean something in terms of story that a reader will “get.”  In point of fact, if you are good, you can do just about anything for a page and a half and have it engage the reader because you can convey a sense that there is “story” going on.

By “story” going on, I mean communicating a sense of urgency to the reader that something important is going in a character’s life, and that anything could happen in the next few moments it will take to read the next page.

I am sure writers on this blog could start out quoting the telephone directory in such a way as to make you flip pages like an addict hopping to the next fix.

If you are new to the writing game, however, or perhaps not as well-read as you might be if your primary source of entertainment wasn’t video games or movies and television, then you should stick to the tried and true methods.  Go classic, not experimental, casual, boring.

Sidebar on experimental – this should be tried after mastering the classic, unless, again, you are very good.  As in a “natural” writer whose talent and innate skills allow for leapfrogging the rest of us and making sales fairly quickly.  A few years of rejections should tell you that you are either a genius of such magnitude that it is taking the rest of us a very long time to catch up to what you are doing, or you need help.  Chances are, if you are a genius or if you really believe you are a genius, you are not reading this.

So.

Start the story, already.  Call it a hook, or a “splash,” or whatever else the professional teachers of fiction writing are calling it these days, but, please, I beg of you, start the story.  Be subtle, be grand, be over the top, but make something happen.  A story is about something happening, inside and outside somebody.  The lines you put down are there to show us what is happening, not to introduce characters and relax the reader and show off how much you might know about the setting or even how clever you are with language.

On another note, I was reminded of another old piece of advice during this reading period – don’t summarize or try to “sell” your story in the cover letter.  I can’t tell you I’ve never bought a story from someone who did this – I don’t bother reading summaries all the way through, and often I miss them in my haste to get to the tale, so I probably have managed to overcome any reaction to this approach through the “ignorance is bliss” method.  But I can tell you from the ones I start reading that they sure doesn’t help set a good mood for the story.   After reading a few lines, I am never “sold” and often  feel like a customer on the sales floor being hounded by a rep eager to make a commission.

Yes, for novels and book projects, you need to do a brief outline, push your saleability, present your “platform” and even come up with a log line or pitch (Blue Lagoon meets Alien, anyone?) and some blurbs from famous authors.  But for shorts, keep it simple, list credits (see above), and let the words you’ve set down and the story you’ve weaved snare the editor.

All the talk before reading tends to set up expectations, and those expectations might not be the ones you intended.  Sometimes a little mystery and a good first impression in those opening moments get you a lot farther.

Just ask romance writers…