Gerard Houarner

This is a “reprint” of a “lost” post (you’ll notice on the list of my posts that there’s about a year’s worth of stuff that never made the transition to the new blog).  Don’t know if the references are still available (for instance, Nick Kaufman’s post, but you should google him and check out his new site and friend him on facebook and read his stuff, anyway), but I think it’s still relevant.

Even if you read it before, you probably won’t remember it from years ago, so it’ll still be as new to you as to the rest of you just dropping by for the first time.   Here goes:

The idea of “dark matter” has been banging around loose in my head for quite some time.  For a quickie definition, Wiki says it is invisible energy whose presence “can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter.”  It’s there, we think, we just can’t sense it other than the effect it has on things we can sense.  Dark matter and dark energy apparently account for most of the mass in the universe.

I also like this Wiki tidbit, attributed to David B.Cline,  “The Search for Dark Matter“, Scientific American.: “It has been noted that the names “dark matter” and “dark energy” serve mainly as expressions of human ignorance, much as the marking of early maps with “terra incognita.””

I like the dark matter metaphor for the kind of force that makes a story, or any piece of art, great.  The “force” exerts an influence inside the work, and on the people experiencing the work.   We know it’s there, we analyze and argue and deconstruct, but still, the nature of that dark matter eludes us, or changes with the times and cultural context.  This dark matter engages the reader/viewer/etc in ways hard to define, but fun to talk and think about.  The easiest example is Shakespeare.

Of course, excellent Storytellerunplugged entries over the years have addressed the issue of giving a story dimension, depth, importance.   Like many others, I struggle to develop a story into something about more than what it appears to be, trying to find connections, meanings, layers (thanks, Dave), imagery, resonance, theme – the names for various tools go on and on.   The idea of “dark matter” connects many of these concepts for me, but I’ve never been able to come up with a “unified theory” to explain how and why.  (Don’t hold your breath.)

Recently, my fascination with dark matter was justified (at least in my own head) by an interview with a Fang Lijun, a Chinese artist who defined his work as dealing with the invisible.  (The art critics out there will rightfully cringe at my misappropriation of his concept, just as scientists will protest my profound ignorance of dark matter.  I plead guilty, but that’s what inspiration does – takes and mutates.  Sorry ‘bout that.)   Beyond the politics, I found the idea of the “invisible” a bit more inclusive and energizing.

“Horror” (whatever that is, and please let’s not get into that right now) uses terms like the sublime, the cosmic, and others to get at the kinds of things I mentioned above – imagery, resonance, the nature of the story’s layers, etc.  But my attraction to “horror” spills into fantasy, science fiction, literary (sorry, not so much mystery, because I like mysteries that remain so).  So invisible for me begins to take into account all the things we don’t see in our reality but which have an impact in our lives – big, “real” movements and policies and natural forces, yes.  But there’s also plenty of other influences, from psychological to subtle supernatural (yeah, I know, no difference, really).

I had a brief affair with “dark” as a catch-all word, but, like “horror” or any genre association, it’s too limiting.  But writing about the invisible – there’s something that for me captures the issues raised by writers who distance themselves from genres.

The tropes are fun, for whatever genre you’re using – from rockets to murders to the existential despair of college professors –  because they give something for the reader to hang on to, but really, for the stories that stand out, there’s something else going on.  The things going on in those stories, the background, the mood, all the storytelling tricks of the trade, have a relationship with something much larger, lurking inside and all around the story and the reader.

Let me try to be a little more concrete.  Nick Kaufman talks and makes others talk about Cormac McCarty’s The Road in his latest www.darkscribe.com column.  The discussion focuses on whether or not the book is horror, and the nature and blending of genres.  But what’s also interesting to me is how many things people think the book really is about, and the uses of the “real” and the “fantastic” in telling a story.

In a seemingly simple story about a man and a boy struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with very few joys and even less hope, there’s a hell of a lot of depth, resonance, meaning, layers, and all that other good stuff.  There’s past and future, the moment, primal survival and nurturing and protection, savage violence, and, well, yeah, even more stuff.

There’s a universe full of “dark matter” bearing down on the events of the story; the action has a relationship with the invisible, inside the story’s world, and outside, that draws us in and makes us wonder and question and think.  Like Lijun’s paintings of faces, screaming and otherwise, the story is more than about itself or its immediate source material.

Okay.  Let me take another tack.  I’m Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine, a small press publication older than some of you other there.  It’s so old it published my first story 35 years ago.  Along with a “merry band” of associate editors, I read a lot of stories by a wide range of writers, from stone cold pros to people sending out their first stories.  Can’t buy everybody’s story, and reasons for rejection vary.

The easiest rejections to make, the automatic ones (very rarely to the stone cold pros), are for stories that are only about the events in the story.  The characters have no past, no future, no relationships beyond the other characters (if any) in the story, no needs or wants besides the immediate conflicts (if any) driving the story.  There’s no hint of a larger world, no tension inside the story’s world with forces and characters just outside the plot line, and no tension in relationship with the reader’s world.

These kinds of stories are, indeed, “generic.”   They are often heartfelt, sincere, and there are often clues about what initially made the writer want to put words down on paper – an idea, an image, a piece of action, a particular piece of the puzzle that sparkles with a little life, that received more attention than the rest of the piece.

But the kind of story I’m talking about, as a whole, (and I quote from my personal library of rejections, which I stopped collecting after 1,000 – but hey, I’ve had over 250 stories published, and most of those early ones certainly did earn more than a bundle of rejects), doesn’t “hang together.”  It doesn’t “rise above the other stories under consideration,” doesn’t “engage” or “stick in the mind.”

The easily rejected story doesn’t have a bit of dark matter.  It has no relationship with the invisible.

I don’t think most writers can map out a story’s invisible aspect, any more than critics can definitively identify the story’s dark matter.  I do think you can listen for it, in the details you pull out of the air (things you just “happened” to notice and use), the odd things you drop in for no reason, the “dead ends” you run yourself into.  Lots of writers go on instinct, teasing out character developments and plot points out of things happening in previous sections of the story.  More follow plot outlines they either change on the fly, or are able to inhabit, fill out, and electrify with life because they don’t have to worry about where the story’s heading.  Different writers, different strokes.  The point is, for successful stories, there’s a sense of something more going on in a story than you can put your finger on.

More hooks to hang your hats on:

The invisible references the unconscious, the mythic, wonder and mystery, the subterranean, the ethereal.

The visible events of the story – what the characters do and say to each other, the conflicts and their outcomes – are influenced by the dark matter of the writer’s life.  Let it flow.  Put it in there.  You don’t have to name names.  But make it personal.  Make the story mean something to you, beyond a nifty speculative idea or engineering concept or quirky character with snarky lines.  Let the story reflect some of the things that give you joy and pain.  You don’t have to understand the how and why of those sources.  Maybe it’s better if you don’t, because if you think you do, you might be lying to yourself.  Yes, there’s a surface layer of a character’s motives which should be clear to yourself and the reader, if those motives have an impact on the story’s plot.  But you don’t have to explicate every last little mechanical detail of what’s going on in those characters’ heads.

The mechanics of someone going from a to b to c, with a few clichés thrown in to dress the background, becomes almost immediately mind-numbing.

Tension is not only found between characters in conflict heading merrily for a showdown and plot resolution.  It’s in the setting’s background (I’m thinking Campbell) and in the sensory details.  It’s in the bits left hanging, unresolved, apparently quite ancillary to the plot, brief intersections with other aspects of the story’s world that helped the plot move along , deepened a character’s motivation, grounded the reader in the physical details of a scene.  There’s the tension of which character is going to “win,” and there’s the tension, often invisible, in what that victory or defeat really means, inside and outside the story.

Well, by now I’m sure many of you are thinking the point of all this is pretty damn invisible.  Sorry.  I guess I’m just trying to translate what I’ve heard so many writers talk about over so many years – theme, conflict, meaning, layers, what have you – into something personal that I can use in the fight to be a better writer.  For me, thinking in terms of “dark matter” and the “invisible” helps.  On the other hand, I haven’t earned fame or fortune thinking like that, so be warned.  Mileage may vary.

Still, stories I like, the ones I recommend that Space and Time’s publisher buy, the ones that have stayed up on my shelves for decades, as well as on the shelves of people much smarter than me, I think deal on some level with the invisible.  At least, that’s why I like them.  I hope mine manage to do the same, every now and then.

My good buddy Tom Piccirilli, whose “noirella” Clowns in the Moonlight ( http://www.amazon.com/Clown-in-the-Moonlight-ebook/dp/B0078B6VK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330741769&sr=8-1 ) was just released, recently posted on Facebook: “Worst thing about working through your novel for a second draft? Realizing that all those brilliant lines you wrote actually suck dead grizzly ass.”
Yes. Yes they so sadly do.
Of course, his suck is what some of the rest of us can only aspire to, but still, the point remains, running through your first draft with a cold eye can make you feel like you’ve slipped into a talent show judged by Ricky Gervais, Seth MacFarlane, and MST3k guys. You can’t help wincing.
But there’s no choice. Not if you want to sell. Or at least not be held up to ridicule like many self-published innocents whose work gets the occasional Ricky/Seth/MST3k treatment at writer gatherings. The cold eye is essential. It ain’t all poetic inspiration and glasses of wine.
Some writers embrace, even love the editing process. Blessed by stronger editing genes, or perhaps they’re strangers from another planet granted the super powers by the light of our sun, they’re not frustrated by debris from the crumbling façades of imagination. They’re not appalled by weak, even non-existent foundations of motivation. Nor are they attached to the clever bits that come in the fever dream of creation, the kind that wilt and die under the glaring reality of a really good second read. They love to prune, and are not afraid to chop off entire chapters.
The rest do it because it is part of the job. Face it, for any kind of work, there’s always some part that sucks worse than any other. I’ve heard writers say they hate writing, but love having written. Gardeners don’t all love messing around in the dirt, but they love the flowers or vegetables they grow.
There are ways to find support. Some folks give their work to hand-picked readers or writing partners who know their material, what they want to say, and can be trusted to give appropriate feedback. Others use a writing workshop for fast edits as deadlines loom. A few even have great editors with keen eyes who really work to make the piece even better than you ever imagined it might be.
The editing process differs with the writing process. Some folks like the fast first draft, others build the work carefully, scene by scene, laying down a strong foundation, putting down one chapter seamlessly on top of the another.

I usually spend a lot of time on beginnings, because I feel the end is in the beginning. As the story develops, I go back and plant a seed that needs planting, or I jump ahead and lay something down that will need to be done or said at the end.

I’m also a foundation type of writer. I need to feel what’s gone on before is solid before I move on. Of course, I know I’m deluding myself. But in the moment, I want to feel like something feels solid. I’ve dug into the characters, even the setting, maybe exposed something new or different, which then leads to a plot twist I hadn’t anticipated. Maybe I have to go back again, change a couple of things. In other words, I always seem to be going back and edit, smoothing out the rough spots so I have an idea what the thing I’m building actually looks like, and not just an outline of what I hope it’ll turn out to be.

This means I violate a rule many writers have of never researching while writing. Make it up, fix it later. My problem if something is worth mentioning, it’s worth getting it right. The detail may have an impact on plot, or maybe you put it in for the sake of authenticity. But if I’m going to bother with the details of, say, the ingredients of a meal and how it’s prepared, it means I want to use it as a way to show something about the characters. For me, it’s important to know those kinds of details as I come to them. It helps me get deeper into their POV, work with their reactions, make them more consistent, or surprising in believable ways.

But I understand the lay-it down first and smooth it out later types. For a lot of writing work, like media-based stories, you just have to pump it out. Deadlines rule. Business is business, and sometimes good enough writing and timely delivery will get you the next job, while great writing handed in late means zip. And, for folks not on deadlines, it seems like they need that feeling of being rushed to get through to the end and finish a story.

Whatever gets you through the long night.

Alas, whether you’ve written fast or slow, benefitted from friendly or rough feedback, worked on tight deadlines or loose ones, edited on the fly or not at all, you’re going to be faced with a final edit at some point, even if it’s at the last-chance galley stage. If you’re not, you didn’t get over, you got robbed.

Hopefully, you’ve gotten some distance from the material and forgotten those cherished little things you put in there that you thought were so cool. And for projects that may have taken a long time to complete, or suffered from a lot of interruptions, it’s the last chance to pick up problems like mixed up names/characters/descriptions, jumps in mood or tone, unfinished thoughts, questions that really should have an answer, repetitions and all the other errors and bad habits that pop up because, well, nobody’s perfect.

Speaking of lack of perfection, I’ve been working on revising a long piece and thought I’d share, for whatever it may be worth, a snapshot of an edit in progress.

In the following section, my goal was to show a part of the background setting, the Caravan of Death, actually working instead of trudging through desert. I also wanted to offer my main character, a young girl, Aini, an opportunity to return to a safer place.

In the earlier draft presented here, I already (thankfully) deleted a heaping glob of a useless paragraph that seemed to be a placeholder for something I wanted to say, making the initial word count around 500 words. In a cold second read, I had no idea what I’d been talking about, so out it went.

I’m pretty sure I went on to fine tune it a bit more, but you get the idea. I’m not putting it out there as an example of how to do it, just an example of what I did.

419 words – earlier draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred, and you might not survive another such encounter.”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.” She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, the machinery of her youth in the other world, and uniformed men with guns. Another kind of bargain was being made. Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver, like a mirage.
She thought of al-Sirat, and the possibility of other roads in and out of the country of caravans. She tried to remember the old stories she used to tell of growing up in that far and other place, before her parents had brought her into their dream of a caravan life.
Every place, she supposed, needed storytellers.
Dejjal laughed. “Finding the way to and from the Caravan of the Dead is part of the price of trading with us,” he said. “For those in need, what we provide is worth the cost. But do not believe that any journey back with those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, blocking out Dejjal with the many voices, the pictures moving and talking, the endless stories happening and being told all at the same time in an enormous stewpot of fantasy and gossip seasoned by the occasional fact and rare dashes of truth.
“You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world,” Dejjal said. “You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”

****
480 – final draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “You might not survive another such encounter. My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred. ”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.”
She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, uniformed men with guns, the machinery of her childhood in the other world. Another kind of bargain was being made.
Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver like a mirage.
She thought of the world her parents had left behind and what might be waiting for her on the other side of a mirage. Every land held a promise, and a price. It was a world, she was certain, filled with stories and wonders. But no Caravan of Death, or Dreams.
Dejjal laughed as he followed her gaze and pointed at the rapidly diminishing trucks. “Finding the way to the Caravan of the Dead is half the cost of trading with us,” he said. “We claim the rest. And, of course, the way home requires its own payment. For those in need, what we offer is worth the sacrifice.
“But do not believe that any journey in the company of those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, listening to the crack and rumble of djinn until the many voices they’d awakened in her mind rose up in a tide of tales, real and imagined, seasoned by fantasy and gossip, the occasional fact and the rare dashes of truth, to drown Dejjal’s seductive murmuring. Tears came to her eyes, the kind she might have had if she’d ever seen her parents one more time.
Dejjal’s voice slipped through, a steel blade as hard and sharp as his smile. “You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world. You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”

Or…”interrupted by a person on business from Porlock” — sustaining the vision of the story you want to tell as life’s storms rage around you.

Trust me, it’ll make sense.

Quite some time ago in a LOCUS interview, Jay Lake talked about the challenges of containing the story he’s working on in his mind, or living in the “dream world” of his fictional creation.

I’ve always related to the problem, and kept the issue alive in my notes if not in my ever shrinking mind. I know I’ve mentioned the idea before, but perhaps never explored the concept. Also, over the years as life has closed in and its many challenges consumed innocence, insouciance, and energy, writing has become harder, not easier.

The topic haunts me.

One of the many romantic notions about writers is that they rattle off poems, stories and novels in a “white heat” of inspiration, working day and night, chain smoking, sitting in their dirty underwear in small rooms, their haggard faces lit only by the light of a computer screen (a single dusty bulb in the “old” days, and by candle flame in ancient times) surrounded by empty liquor bottles and piles of pristine finished manuscript, until the book is done and the royalty checks are already in the mail.

Everything real seems to stop in these writers’ lives. Children are magically fed, creditors compassionately defer their pursuit of unpaid bills. The sanctity of the torch of inspiration is respected, and the fire is allowed to burn until the fuel is spent and words are forged.

Now, it’s true there’s a least one famous thriller writer who books a hotel room for a few weeks and locks himself away to write a novel. And there are writers with significant others who “enable” their writing by taking care of the little details of life so they can concentrate on living in the imaginary world of their story until the tale is told.

The reality is that for most writers, that ain’t happening. More often, we’re like Coleridge with what we innocently and passionately believe is Kubla Khan in our heads, putting down lines from a (hopefully not opium inspired) dream vision until we’re interrupted by, as the story famously goes, a person on business from Porlock.

And if you’re a writer and never heard of anything from the above paragraph, stop reading and don’t write, but search out the poem and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Romanticism.

So the problem (one of many) for writers is keeping what you’re working on alive in your mind. For me, what Jay Lake is talking about is more than a memory problem of recalling plot direction and character tics. And it’s not “inspiration,” that magical booster shot people who want to be writers wait for so they can produce something when, and only when, they feel like it.

I believe containing the story in your mind is about getting a state of awareness about what you’ve done, where you’re heading, and what you’re supposed to be doing with your story when you’re at your keyboard. Something like an altered state, without the opium. An understanding that certain things have happened and that, because of those things, the blank page/screen is waiting for you to set down what you already know, deep down inside beyond your conscious mind, will happen next.

Maybe it’s a meditative state, for some. Or the “zone” athletes talk about, in which years of practicing certain skill sets, along with instinct, experience, and athletic talents, combine to elevate performance out of the mud of fear, nerves and thought. A higher state is achieved in which the baseball appears bigger, moving slower, toward your gigantic bat which swings so effortlessly.

A dream state. Being “in the moment.” Focused on the thing you are doing.

This precious state of knowing and being happens all the time in life, I think, though we may not be aware of it. I think it happens in the process of raising kids, working, driving, praying. Addicts miraculously rise from their stupor to orchestrate their next score.

For writers, I think it means avoiding the struggle of finding the “next thing” to write, rekindling the fire of “inspiration,” feeling again the urgency of having to say the thing you wanted to say in those first moments you scribbled down the story idea. It means recapturing the magnificent arc of story you saw at some point early in the process, re-entering the dream of your vision of Kubla Khan, with all its shimmering details, its clever references, plot points, characters, imagery and layers of meaning, and dragging it out into the waking world whole and complete.

We want it to happen whenever we write.

But it doesn’t happen all the time. We can’t live 24/7 in the dream state of our stories. Other lives, including our own “real world” lives, also need tending and care. Duty calls. Responsibilities knock on our doors.

Obviously, opium worked, at least once for Coleridge. The “romantic” image of writers that includes empty liquor bottles documents the supposed need for alcohol and other drugs to “lubricate” the imagination.

Certainly there are plenty of literary legends fueled by this kind of inspiration. There’s also a lot of bs, folks claiming one thing but doing quite another because, well, the bon vivant is a cool “platform” from which to sell stuff. Aside from the physically, emotionally and cognitively self-destructive aspects of these habits, there’s also regret.

If you wrote that well when you were high, think how much better it would have been if you were in your right mind.

And then there’s the sad reality that 99.9% of that stuff is buried, unseen, along with the creators. Mostly, at a very young age.

So what triggers these states? What else can we use to find the dream in which we can create?

I believe the discipline tricks writers use – writing in the same place, at the same time, every day – not only helps with production, but it also gets the writer back into the “space” or “head” of writing. It’s certainly helped me at times.

Keeping a Fortress of Solitude, a Batcave, a private space decorated so that it resembles the inside of your mind, is a tried and true. But I’ve found that isolating, at times. Cut off from life. Too unreal, perhaps too comfortable. And sometimes, when illness, death, disaster, financial woes or other big life tragedies and issues knock on the door, the Fortress walls come down, or they seem just silly and irrelevant, both in terms of life and to a story you may be trying to tell.

Music, especially when writers talk about specific genres for different types of writing, also serves as an emotional and imagination gate to get back into the story. I’ve seen candles and scents would do the trick.

There are stories about writers doing it naked, as if getting back into some kind of primal state to get the work done.

But not everybody works that way, and even if these techniques work for the structure and discipline of getting back to the work of writing, there may still be problems finding the dream of the story, particularly when time has gone by or a writer is jumping from one piece to another.

I guess what I’m looking for is something tied not to the act of writing, but to the story you’re trying to tell. An anchor, or a touchstone. A key that unlocks the cabinet through which you enter the adventure.

Well, yes, music works for a lot of people in this regard. Theme songs, like a Quincy Jones arrangement for a detective show, except the show is your story and the theme song is whatever rocks your boat. Alas, most of the time this is not for me. I find music too distracting, engaging me in ways that make me want to do other things besides writing, unless I’m writing a very musical story. And even then, at some point, I have to shut it down so I can concentrate on what the characters are saying and feeling.

I guess one factor in finding the right “key” is understanding which of the five senses dominates your awareness – are you visual, auditory, etc?

I do find getting in touch with the story’s setting a good way to start things up each time I write. Working on a longish piece set in a surreal desert, on and off over the past months (more on this another time), I found pictures, documentaries, even a screen saver all pretty good starting points. I write a lot in urban settings, and I live in a city, but I’ve also done nature settings, and I like parks and country, too. I know in those times when I write in a non-urban setting, I’m always thinking of and remembering the time I’ve spent upstate, out West, by the sea, etc.

Setting to me establishes the mood of a story. Again, I can see how music would be a great tool. But I’ve used, as above, documentaries, Sunrise Earth (HD films of sunrises in different parts of the world), and touchstone movies – Blade Runner, Casablanca, David Lynch stuff, surreal cartoons – running silently in the background to guide me into my zone.

Another way is to start every writing session by editing the previous session’s writing. This is a good habit, anyway, as what seemed like gold last night can turn out to be lead in the morning. But, depending on your need, re-reading the work and starting to tinker with it can get you back into the frame of mind you were in when you were last writing. Sparks fly, connections are re-opened. You’re reminded of things you wanted to say, or why you said such and such. You recall threats, you react to dangers. Hopefully, at some point, you’ll feel the need to stop editing and move into the action.

Yes, I know, there are some writers who cannot go on before finishing the perfect page. I studied under one of those. And for that person, the story was complete in his mind. It seemed like the dream of the story was readily accessible, though I was too young and stupid at the time ask. Most of us are not like that.

The point here is to get back into the overall story, the dream, and not to get caught up in close editing. Unless, of course, you find that to be your key. In any case, reviewing old work can wake up the other part of the brain where the dream is living. Listen to it when it calls.

By the way, I recently talked here on Storytellersunplugged about using “dead time” in your life as part of the writing process. Doing a little editing – re-reading what you’ve written, doing minor edits on the fly on your portable computer, smart phone, or manuscript pages — is not only a smart use of little snippets of time while waiting for something to happen, but it also helps to keep that dream alive in your head. Maybe it’ll make you more motivated to hurry home, or dip into the dream for as much time as you may have, and carry the story a little further along with new material.

The biggest key for me getting back into the dreamtime, I’ve found, are characters. I guess it’s something like an actor waiting in the wings, ready to throw up, having no memory of the lines, dreading the cue to step on stage. And when that moment comes and the floorboards creak underfoot, the actor doesn’t so much enter the play but the character in the play, and the lines flow and the fear flies off and the game is afoot.

It’s not the easy or magical, or nauseating, when I write. But I have found that once I’m “in” the character – I have a firm grip on needs, fears, strengths and weaknesses, as well as a sense of personality like sense of humor, patterns of connecting with others, how they relate to friends or family – I can see and understand the story through that character’s eyes. I’ve done long pieces through the eyes of several characters and never had a problem switching around and getting into the story from their point of view. Their individual worlds, and the world of the overall story, was usually within my reach.

Finding and feeling comfortable with the characters is another story, of course. Looking back, I can see the “failed” stories, particularly the ones that never sold or the ones I never bothered to finish, had problems centering on my lack of connection with the characters. The dream never came alive.

Sometimes (let’s not say often) dreams die when published. They never come alive for other people. So it goes. But at the very least, the dream should be alive for the writer.

Strong characters carry their own atmosphere, bring the mood to the story, invite certain kinds of characters to play with them. Good characters can make the work of telling a story so much easier.

Think of the Harry Potter series. Really, all that fantasy stuff is wonderful, but not particularly original. The magical schoolboy is practically an English genre all to itself. But it’s Potter and his Scooby gang that makes that dream come alive for readers. When I imagine myself writing something like that (and cashing all those checks!), I envy the way the characters come alive for readers, and how it must have been to work with them and letting the story flow from their traits, their histories, habits, needs and fears.

In my surreal desert fantasy (no, really, I’ll talk more about that next time, I really must), which was a pain to write and is still a pain in the editing/revision process, which this column is interrupting so I must hurry and finish so I can get back to that dream, I was only able to get back to it after through the many interruptions I had because the main character had a weight of her own. Sometimes she’d say or do things that completely surprised me. But I had a strong sense of her right from the beginning, and that anchor allowed me to slip back enough times (but not al the time, because no solution is perfect and writing is hard no matter how many tricks and shortcuts you use) to keep the dream of that story going.

Another thing that kept that piece, and most things I write, going and alive in my head is having an ending in mind.

For the desert piece, the reason I even started it was to write about the Caravan of Death. This was an idea and a collection of characters from one of my novels. I always loved the idea and wanted to return to it. I started the story knowing the little girl I invented would meet the Caravan of Death and somehow all hell would break loose. For that little girl to hold her own against something called the Caravan of Death, there’d have to be some special qualities to her, and finding those qualities became part of the process of telling the story, part of the dream.

But a general idea of the ending, in most cases, is part of the beginning of the story. As I’ve said before, the seeds of the end are always at the beginning. They may be invisible, implied, cast like shadows around the edges, part of the background, in the imagery and symbols, but usually it’s there, somewhere, lurking, waiting. You may not be aware of it. The secrets may only be revealed with time, the story’s development. You may re-read that beginning a hundred times before you see it. Or, you may have to go back and plant the damn seed as the ending becomes clear by telling the story. One way or another, the end usually gets there in the beginning.

And I say this not just because I have an Ouroborus tattoo on my arm.

It may not be the ending that actually happens, and in fact, it’s probably better if the ending changes as the story evolves. But having that ending, or just a general idea for how the character conflicts will resolve (where the characters are going in their individual arcs), serves not only as an anchor for the plot, but for all the different levels of the story being told. Having a direction, an ending, helps to give the dream And by general idea, I mean, do I want

Part of the reasoning behind beginnings/endings and characters as keys to keeping the story alive in your mind is another piece of advice that a lot of writers talk about: having a strong foundation.

By foundation, I don’t necessarily mean a strong beginning, though that helps. But, I’ve found to my chagrin, beginnings change. You think you’re starting in middle, like the sage writing advice tells you, but suddenly you discover you need to start the story earlier or, more often later.

And having a big finish in mind is no guarantee that it will happen, unless you’re the kind of writer who lives by the outline. No problem with that. If the outline works, and can contain the dream and make the story come alive in your mind, I envy you. Most writers I know throw out the outline at some point.

But a start and end does help to define the dream. It’s like recognizing a picture, knowing the outline on a map is not some vague blob, but Africa and all the history and pain and wonder that the name conjures.

And going back and making that beginning stronger, going back and revising and inserting and deleting material, even leaving notes here and there for yourself with what needs to be done right in the manuscript (and believe me, I’ve been startled by my own forgotten notes more than once, and slapped my head over a forgotten part of the dream that needed to poke its head out at the place I’d left a marker), is another reason to edit during “dead time” and start writing sessions by re-reading the story.

If you’ve been away from your story for a while, start at the beginning. See if the beginning awakens the dream, reminds you of the things you’ve already written about what’s going to happen, if the characters come alive and fill you with the need to go back into them, and if you sense what’s coming, good or bad, at the end, or perhaps more importantly, feel the drive to find out what happens, in the end.

If you do, then the story is still alive inside you, and the dream waits for you to join in the adventure.

In a recent BBC interview, Sir David Hare, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, playwright, and general curmudgeon, talked about writing –http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9568401.stm

Brief and bitter-sweet in the clip, he talks about having to write, and writing being one of the most important things in life even as he acknowledges that he makes films not very many people see.
Now, of course, you have to take some of the negative things he says, when his work has earned him a title as well as an enviable lifestyle, with a hefty grain of salt.

But for this little, irrelevant writer, what’s really interesting is his belief that writing, as a profession, is not about self-expression. The implication, at least what I gathered from the clip, is that writing is about, in part, surviving the need to write.

He talked about a writer being at the mercy of one’s gifts and imagination. Writing is about, for some, trying to write the Great Thing, and then, dealing with the reality that one is always at the mercy of one’s gift and imagination. Writing is also about the painful process of coming to terms with the limits of one’s “gifts” and imagination, and the reality that the Great Thing can’t be done.

He also talks about dealing with being judged, which I interpret as being critiqued, misinterpreted, misunderstood or, simply, not being liked. Well, okay, I suppose, though money, awards and a title might go a long way to smoothing out any feelings about a lack of validation. After all, very few people may see his movies, but people still give him money to make them. But for the vast majority of writers, yes, dealing with rejection – from editors, yes, but also audiences — is a professional challenge that must be faced.

Finally, and perhaps most relevant for everyone, is the need for regeneration. Whether you call it being blocked, or running out of ideas or inspiration, or coming to a commercial dead-end, writing is certainly about finding the energy and creativity to start over again once a story is finished, a project is published, and the moment of publishing success, or failure, has passed.

Writing as life is no different from life as life. Denial is a beautiful thing, and seems to carry some a very long way, but as in life, I’m too much a realist to try ducking the stone walls of talent, imagination, audiences or lack thereof. And I am a fan of regeneration, feeding that thing inside that wants to make something someone else might find interesting. Writing as life means having to find a way through the disappointments and failures and keep going. Where? Well, you know how that goes, it’s the journey not the destination…

On a perhaps more inspirational note, Ray Bradbury’s birthday was August 22nd, and recognized in the LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/08/happy-91st-birthday-ray-bradbury.html

Hard to come up with a better example of writing as life, integrating gifts and imagination, dealing with being judged, and finding strength through regeneration…

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….

A while ago, I received an email from a David Javet from Switzerland asking if I’d read his Master’s thesis on Lovecraft, The Pen That Never Stops Writing.  Being a “consumer” of so many things Lovecraft, I said sure.

Mr. Javet’s work is quite a labor of love (and, of course, a thesis on literature) and I bring it up here because so many are influenced by the ideas and vision, though hopefully not so much the style, of H.P. Lovecraft (even more so with the blessing of a Library of America edition of his works).

Like Aristotle, it’s always good to bring up Lovecraft every now and then because, like Aristotle, Lovecraft speaks to a core human sensibility and need for story.

I pause for the removal of bodies dropped by the use of those two names in the same sentence.

Moving on…

What struck me, at least in terms of a subject for SU folks, was David’s exploration of mythic story telling.  Going through the well-documented functions of myth, and the issues of myth as a representation of culture, we wind up with a point that’s important for new writers – that myth is essentially a tool, like language, with its associations and history, but also with an inherent capacity to be transformed.  In fact, for myth to survive, it must change to take in what is going on now or die, just as the faiths of conquerors and the conquered adapt to each other, absorb and transforms images, rituals, meanings.

In other words, it is important for writers who are fans of Lovecraft, or any other collection of mythic visions and stories, to process what has been done in terms of what is here now.  Science, from biology to cosmology, has come a long way since Lovecraft’s day.  So has storytelling, and the media through which stories can be told.

For a living example, check out Datlow’s Cthulu Unbound anthology.  Or even the Call of Cthulu role playing game.

Now, yes, I understand Hollywood tries and mostly fails at re-making the old myths it created or, more likely, stole.  But that’s because nothing new is added.  The old franchise is copied, not re-interpreted.  No risks are taken, no formulas are changed to reflect contemporary views of the world.  But for every dozen Jason remakes, there is occasionally something like Abrams’ new Star Trek, or on the literary side, a book like Let the Right One In.  Nothing earth-shattering, of course.  But you can feel and see the change of attitude, the issues being dealt with, that give the old myths a contemporary relevance.

There is nothing wrong with classics.  They should be absorbed, understood, used, like any language, in the discussion of what is relevant today.  There is also nothing wrong with taking the concepts in those classics and perhaps seeing if enough time has passed for the original vision to grow, for the language of imagery and character and plot to be used to interpret terrorism and disease or one’s own personal vision of the world.

Because growing up in this world, the writer’s vision is guaranteed to be much different than someone who died 50 or 100 years ago.  Some things remain true and consistent – who and what we are as human beings, our needs and fears, our drives and the capabilities to fulfill them.

What has changed, through technology, cultural pollination, the availability of information, is the language we use to tell ourselves, and others, about what is going on inside and around us.

So I go back to what I’ve always said in these SU  posts – pay attention.  The world is in many ways a different place today than what it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.  Of course, in many ways, it isn’t.  What pieces of the world you pick up from the past and the present, because they are meaningful to you and you want to play with them, are the foundations of the particular vision you will bring to your writing.

Basically, like Lovecraft, you create your own mythos. It may not be as grandiose, or detailed, but it will contain the imagery and ideas and tropes that resonate with you.  It’s your job to explore, expand, improvise, adapt and transform that material into something that is particularly yours, and understandable by others.

That is, if you want to be any good.

As usual, I find myself out on the edge and I hope what I’ve said makes some kind of sense to somebody out there.

David’s thesis is, of course, about much more than what I’ve touched on here.  He may not even agree with what I’ve said.  But, as always, you should go to the source (always track back to the origins of what interests you, whatever the art, so you can see the influences and transformations along the way and understand, and perhaps even contribute your own relevant rendition).

Interested readers, and hopefully editors and publishers,  can reach him at david dot javet dot gmail dot com and tell him you heard about this piece and would like to know what he really said.

Hate is a relatively simple emotion. Stupid, but simple. Oh, people can cook up extensive mythologies to fuel the engine of hatred. And the mechanism itself can be elaborate – really, pick any brutal, self-destructive regime, past or present, and sift a while through the careful orchestration of grandiosity and paranoia. That’s not intelligence. No critical thinking involved, really. That’s just a flailing need from the ego to justify actions that appear, relentlessly, sometimes inescapably, to be inhuman.

But when it comes right down to it, hate doesn’t need justification. It is a primitive, primal monster and sustains itself, quite simply, on the worst in us.

That guy just doesn’t look right, or this one here talks funny, or this fella I knew once said he’d come from across the river and you know how we all feel about those folks and so that’s why we call this the Hanging Tree. It’s all the same. That other guy is different. That scares me (because I’m a punk) so let’s all kill that other guy before he does something bad (like show us up for the punks we are).

Hate does only one thing.

The heart of hate is very small.

The same – that it is a simple emotion – could be said about love. Not by me, at least most of the time, but certainly lots of folks believe you find yourself a beautiful woman or a handsome guy, find something/anything in common to take you through the next 50-60 years, and presto, you’ve got love.

Others believe you marry someone with good “potential” and love will grow like a fern, or perhaps a flowering bush.

Some folks focus on a thing or two, about a real person, or an imaginary one, and put all their energy and attention and “love” into the fetish, whether it winds up being large organs or bank accounts, out-sized personalities or talents, fishnet stockings or bouncing pecs.

Sometimes you fall in love with the feeling of love, and being loved. Not the other person.

Sometimes this stuff works. Other times, there is the sadness and the grief of losing someone, or sometimes a part of your self. Or just the feeling of loneliness that digs deeper into the soul, carving out deep pits no joy can ever fill, no sun can ever illuminate.

The bloom fades, the love becomes intangible, a memory, a ghost, until at last even the shadows and echoes are gone and there is nothing left but an empty, desolate house. The feeling of love and being loved blows away because there was nothing there for it to grow roots into, no real person to feed and sustain it.

It’s been said by at least one poet that you’ve got to get naked to love. Physically, well, people have worked all kinds of techniques for that. Emotionally, that’s true for certain kinds of people. Being open and honest, not holding back, exposing one’s self and vulnerabilities and emotions, is certainly a turn on for some. But not for everyone. In fact, that kind of openness is probably scary to a hell of a lot of people.

Sometimes you only show enough cards to get yourself loved, and you only pick up enough cards from the other person to get invested in your love of that person. For a while.

Then, of course, there are the kinds of love we have for family, friends, community, that can be as deep as the kind of love we speak of when we draw little Valentine hearts, and as intimate in their own ways.

There is love based on biological chemistry, the kind that draws bees to pollen, and love that has little to do with other people but is drawn to things. Or ideas. The abstract realms rather than the world of flesh and blood. Riddles. Words, or music, or forms and colors.

Occasionally, and I hope for all of us more often, love is simple. Without boundaries. Intimate. Innocent. Raw in its purity, and vice versa. Unencumbered by the expectations of self or others. Unconditional. Honest. Wise to the marrow about self and others.

Love, it would seem, does only one thing. As hate destroys, love creates.

But for me, love can create all kinds of things, not necessarily healthy or wise. That kind of love is dark.

There is the love that is possessive and destructive. There is the love that is delusional, or focused on the self rather than others. There is the love that picks and chooses what to love in a person, and hopes to ignore what may be terrible. Or inconvenient. Or too painful to accept.

There is love that destroys innocence, and love that annihilates self and/or the other.

Love in these cases builds dark palaces, torture chambers, mental emergency rooms for trauma victims.

The seven deadly sins – wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy and gluttony – can all be said to root in love gone bad, though you might have to work a bit for sloth.

So why am I nattering on about love?

Because someone once said every story is a love story, and it doesn’t hurt to think about the truth of that in the cold, dark, bitter heart of winter when we have a holiday celebrating love (or open heart surgery….sorry, I get so confused).

Or maybe it does hurt.

Whatever the case, love is the heart of every story.

And because, if every story is a love story, a writer can and should ask, what kind of love is at the heart of the story you want to write? In the heart of your characters?

And, for the sake of symmetry, balance and all-important structure, someone needs to ask, what hates that love, opposes it, perhaps even resides next to or in the very heart of that love?

Yes, sadly, the conversation turns not completely to love, because that is a topic more vast than all that the eye can behold and requires a very different venue. I ask only to glance at love.

Keep it at the periphery of vision, if it is too bright and painful to stare at until your eyes and heart burn out.

Romance is, of course, the obvious genre of the love story. The popularity goes back a ways. The Illiad and the Odyssey. Gilgamesh. Grendel. Oedipus Rex. Okay, okay, chivalric poetry. The Tales of Genji. The Ramayana.

I’d argue, if I was 36 years younger and still a freshman, that there is love in the existential heart of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In the heart of darkness. In the Nausea that inhabits the space once reserved for the soul…though I admit, I’m a writer, and thus frequently full of crap if not an outright liar.

So. Love, and hate, like tattooed knuckles that can either caress or batter, stand somewhere in every house built of story. Could be front and center, or perhaps deep in the background like faded wallpaper. But if you’re writing to be read by human beings, and you’re dealing with characters related to humanity, then somewhere in there you’re dealing with some form of love. And, I’d submit, if your work hard to eliminate it (like some classic puzzle-oriented science fiction), love’s absence is itself a thematic statement about the story.

Love and hate are other lenses through which to view the idea of telling a story. Clues to open up characters and plot. Maybe a key to unlocking what kind of story you want to tell. Or maybe just more crap to confuse you….

by Gerard Houarner

Another in an occasional series of over-intellectualized approaches to writing which, at worst, will send you screaming into the internet abyss after the first paragraph or, if you get through a few lines, may remind you or jog into place a more coherent version of the notion you’ve had all along.

I’m not promising anything, I’m just throwing a bunch of suff out there….

Filters.

This is what you could call what folks, and characters, use to include and exclude information about themselves and the world.  Taking a look at characters in terms of the filters they use can be a means of generating and resolving conflict and developing emotionally satisfying characters.

I’m just saying….

We have a collection of these filters: ways of looking at the world driven by biological and psychological engines. They are ways we pick and choose (consciously and unconsciously) what we see, allow ourselves understand or influence us, or ignore. They range between logic based on “facts” (the belief in one’s logic and facts is, obviously, also a filter) and the purely emotional.

I know, they’re also called beliefs – religious, political – as well as values, interests, passions, biases, prejudices, perspectives, agendas, sensitivities, tragic flaws, faith, fetishes, appetites. They’re the (complicated) rules of the game we play, or don’t play, with ourselves and everyone around us.

But I’m looking for a term more specific than the usual “needs and wants” that sometimes serves as a basic sketch we might draw for characters as they come to life in our stories, and something not as limiting as those terms. I’m reaching for a framework that considers anything that could influence in an individual’s choices and still allow the imagination some room to play.

I’m choosing “filters” as the operative word because it describes the function of all those other aspects of ourselves and our characters. Like lens and noise and air conditioning filters, they alter our perception of the nature our environment, and our interactions with it as well as with ourselves. Their interplay determines what’s available to our particular decision making.

I’m also choosing filters because it implies active, constant choices being made, often unconscious.

We operate in spheres of perception – personality/background/training/culture/environment contribute to the filters we use to shape the reality that we perceive. And we swim through a world filled with resources, information, dangers and distractions, using filters to screen for what we want (again, consciously and unconsciously) to reach us and block out what we consider irrelevant.

As I writer, I’m on the look out for story and character ideas, and for material scratching my particular itches in urban environments, deserts, mythology and folklore, the bizarre and the fantastic. Those are some of my particular filters.

Apparently, I have filters designed to ignore all kinds of real money-making opportunities.

For others, significant filters may be based on a love for the Boston Red Sox or the latest fashions. Or a fear of water bugs or closed spaces.

For all of this filters stuff, volcanoes erupting, bombs dropping and asteroids crashing are pretty concrete aspects of reality that cut through all psychological games. Big stuff crashes through filters, re-shapes perceptions, which is also important to telling a story – as in The Stand and apocalypse stories in general.

But I’m thinking of the kinds of conflict that generate interesting stories that happen when spheres of perception intersect and culture/psychology filters clash, from two people sitting at a bar to two empires straddling a world.

On a personal level, filters you discovered or were taught to use, that helped someone get through a mad household or a tough neighborhood or an exclusive and socially pressured private school, are obviously conflict points once settings change. What worked in one place won’t in another. And other characters’ filters serve as barriers, or as resources and even solutions to problems.

(I don’t think I’m talking about Big Evil and Grand Good characters, here – Sauron is a force of nature, and frankly the elves and dwarves and Ents are pretty much one with what they are. But by the time you get down to the gaggle of hobbits, I think you can see the kind of external and even internal conflict I’m talking about that’s generated by different sets of filters.)

For example, if I screen out information that reinforces the fact that I am a 52 year old male with “limited” looks and athletic abilities (for whatever deep-seated psychological reasons, or simply because I’m an idiot), and instead allow information like “Telly Savalas was bald and he was still considered cute and studly” and “that waitress was nice to me so she must think I’m hot” through my reality filters, I allow for a lot of both tragic and comedic possibilities in my own private world as well as public and family life.

No, there are no examples on YouTube .

Besides glaring (and hopefully more subtle) “blind spots,” finely tuned filters also set up powerful character strengths – detectives, crusaders, mass murderers, that sort of thing.  They allow a character to be focused.  And as we all know, there is a cost for excluding information from our world even as there is a reward for specializing in a absorbing a particular set of facts and skills.

Being thrust into new situations leads to the discovery or the development of a brand new set of filters (and talents, of course).

Filters bring people together, and most interestingly, a single common way of looking at the world can form an allegiance among wildly different people (like, oh I don’t know, strangers trying to survive a haunted house or rampaging monster).

Obviously I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t already know about people and stories.

But sometimes, switching perspective on a writing problem can reveal interesting solutions. Since characters drive plot/story (sorry, one of my filters doesn’t let me see a plot driving a character – cars don’t drive people), it can be vital to dig a little deeper into the heads of even minor characters and see the world through their eyes, their filters, and find new ways they might behave and so contribute to the story.

So all I’m saying is, along with writing “bios” on your characters, or researching your historical figures until you know where they went to school and with who, or pulling stuff out of the “air” as you zip through your story, it can be valuable to make connections between whatever “facts” you’ve established about your character and the way they’re looking at the events unfolding in the story. That is, really explore what they are excluding, and what they might be picking up on, and how those filters might bring characters together or drive them apart.

One last filter note – editors have them, too. They’re called guidelines.

Gerard Houarner

Who Are You?

Yeah, yeah, classic rock. I really want to know.

Do you, really?

It’s a theme I keep coming back to, re-approaching hopefully from different directions, because I find in it an interesting key to a number of different locks – people, characters, relationships, situations, culture and society. And writing.

Maybe “what are you” would be a more appropriate question. But I don’t want to get personal, and I’m not even sure I want to know that about myself.

The point is, who we are may or may not change, over time and in different situations. Consistency is sometimes offered by fine, upstanding citizen folks as a positive value, but a consistent “who” or “what” needs to be added for me to get enthusiastic about the concept.
This train of thought was inspired in part by an interview with Peter S. Beagle in Brutarian 48/49, in which he’s asked by the interviewer, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, what can he do now he couldn’t at 19 when writing his first novel.

In his enthusiastic response, he points out technical skills he’s developed, as well a willingness to handle scenes he couldn’t when he was younger. In short, his approach to writing has evolved, to the point where he says he finds himself less clever now than when he was 19.

He also talks about a writing internship he had at age 22 with Larry McMurty and Ken Kesey, in which he felt out of his depth. What particularly struck me there was his reaction to writers who were “very much from somewhere and could tap that, where I have the perspective of an immigrant’s child. I could never be from the Bronx…”

He goes on to say that he didn’t think he’d been delivered to the wrong parents, but dropped on the wrong planet. I particularly appreciated his saying that he almost had to invent a world to be from, leading to his involvement with fantasy.

I’m an immigrant’s child, and I feel exactly the same way. I’m so alienated I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.

Ba dump dump.

Anyway. The kind of fiction I write, the actual need to create fiction, certainly stems from the same kind of issues. The worlds I invent are the worlds I come from. They’re who I am. My personal “Dreaming.” They are at least in part my reaction to the “other” world I interact with, the waking world.

Never mind my issues with the species.

Which are, of course, very different from other writers – some of which are explored by other contributors in their storyteller postings as we all talk about our influences and what drives us to write.

But the point is, there is a part of the creative self that identifies so closely to a past, place, style, subject, feeling, and which really doesn’t change. That’s part of what I’m talking about – knowing your strengths, passions, foundation. Pay attention to what you react to, what you notice, what you find easiest to do and most satisfying. Because once you get a feel for what’s important to you, what’s meaningful, not only can your tale begin to “pop” but I’m betting you’ll want to get back to the keyboard to write. ‘Cause you’re gettin’ to the good “stuff.”

And who you are – long-term and through all those pesky developmental stages of life – shapes what you do. Including writing. Tastes can change. Style. Subject matter. If you leave yourself open, new voices, technology, media can also shape your creative choices. Life’s ass-kicking will also most certainly give you the opportunity to write from different points of view. So will life’s joys and victories, which are often just as difficult to see coming, or even if you see them coming, to understand emotionally what they mean.

I’m just saying there’s a core “who” or “what” you are, and tapping into that person rather than chasing the image of what you should be, the ideal of a favorite writer, the goal of best-sellerdom, whatever other external goal you might hold as important, just trips you up.
Unless, of course, you’re one of those genius types who gets to magically match talent and ambition. Maybe you get lucky and you don’t have to struggle or think too hard to become a hit. One thing’s for certain, if you’re not that lucky, and you don’t find a way to dig your way to who you are as a creative entity, you’re not going to go very far.

But I’d argue that, except for some of the formula best-seller writers who write the same thing over and over because their audiences won’t buy their off-brand product, all writers will change. Even, perhaps especially the geniuses. They have to.

First off, for the non-geniuses, what initially brings us to writing is usually just not good enough. Whether we’re doing Lovecraft pastiches or break-neck wanna-be big-budget potboilers, there’s something missing in our game. Like, maybe, characters. Or a point. A plot. Whatever it is, there are changes that need to be made to our “game.”

In this same issue of Brutarian, Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin interview Ramsey Campbell and, in talking about his phenomenal success at a young age, he talks about learning his craft by imitating others while “homing in on what I had to say for myself.” He talks about “denying” his Lovecraftian influences in order to discover his own themes and then eventually rediscovering Lovecraft. In rereading Lovecraft, he still finds different qualities to appreciate.
The point here for me is that Ramsey Campbell took the time to discover who he was as a writer, his relationship with his environment, what he enjoyed reading and experiencing of the world, in order to focus on a unique voice and approach to the work. He became not just another writer, but one of THE writers.

And in Peter Beagle’s comments about his early years, I caught that there was an essential quality to the writers he studied with that he couldn’t use because it was alien to him, and perhaps the need to learn from these masters blinded him initially to the truth that there was essential quality, a perspective, in him that was also valuable. It just took him a while to get in touch with that part of himself.

So mastery of the craft, adjustments to editorial guidance and markets, and most importantly, a better understanding of who/what we are, brings on a change in what we write.

Secondly, and this goes for everybody, I think, life won’t let us stay the same even if we’re determined to be consistent. The simple fact is that things change – from our bodies to the world around us. We raise families, we watch and feel friends and family pass away, we succeed and we fail. These events transform our perspective, our priorities.

Okay, maybe not always for the better. Maybe not successfully (I am haunted by the writer at a SFWA gathering who told me that, as his sentences got longer, his sales went down until he couldn’t sell anymore, and he wasn’t interested in writing short sentences, anymore – I’ve never seen him again). Call it a maturation process.

So who you are will shift, if not by situation or circumstances, certainly by time and experience.
Paying attention to those shifts adds to the material you have available to write about. Ignoring those shifts gets you drifting further away from who you are, and maybe gets you in trouble. You get to a point where you’re not doing what you really want to do, anymore. There’s no joy in the work. You get blocked.

You get lost.

For the new writers who presumably come to this blog, my message is to embrace what you are at the moment, don’t fight to hang on to the past or imagine something other than what you are. Don’t try to be who you aren’t, just because you think what you want to be is cool. The process of being creative includes fighting to become who you are.

Doesn’t mean you won’t have to make compromises. If you want to make a living at the game, who you are may not be enough. Or it may be too much fo
r readers to handle. But when I talk to my buds, or listen to writers talking about their craft, I can’t tell you how many times I hear them say they stuck in this bit or that because that’s what made the story worthwhile for them. They may be writing a media tie-in, or a piece for a theme-anthology they can’t quite connect with, but what makes them successful and what lets them get some satisfaction out of the writing is drawing on who they are and getting some piece of that self into the story.

I don’t think you get anywhere without a firm grasp of who you are, what tools you possess, what point of view you present. It doesn’t mean you have to get all analytical about it. Lots of writers don’t ever think about this stuff, they just do it. They may not think about it, but as Harlan Ellison always says, they pay attention. They know what’s going on around them, and inside, and when something doesn’t feel right, they bail.

Now, of course, what goes for the writer also goes for the character, so if you’re new and haven’t pulled anything out of this babbling yet (if you’re an oldtimer, you’re probably not here, anymore), pay attention to your characters. Who are they? You better know on some level, or you’re not going to have much of a story. Even if you’re not the type to write biographies and take extensive notes and research and such, even if you’re a by-the-gut type writer, pay attention to that gut. Even if you don’t know who the character is as the story evolves (or even if you think you do), your gut knows better.

Who are you? If you haven’t pulled a thing out of all of this even down to this last line, then put that question up around where you write, and I’ll bet asking it of yourself or your characters (perhaps even your editor, agent, publisher, spouse or child) will lead to some useful answers sooner rather than later.