Gerard Houarner

The following was first published in Aberrations 38, 1996, and reprinted in Nasty Snippets in 1999.  Maybe more of a meditation than a story, it serves today to maintain the old site tradition of putting up something appropriate for the upcoming holiday.  Hope you dig it…

In the first box, by the door, she keeps her public face.  Every day she scrubs it clean, smooths its wrinkles, adds a touch of color where the sun has bleached the skin.  Eyes and lips are in clear plastic tubes next to the face, a shade for every occasion.  They float in a special fluid which keeps the flesh moist and nourished.

The second box has her wigs, her shape, the clothes she wears, and pretty nails.   Clothes are lined along the side.

The third box holds her voice, the words she knows, the thoughts she has to give to the world around her.  There are some songs, a string of curses, screams of pain and of delight, and other sounds a woman is expected to make.

The fourth box is not kept by the door, as are the first three.  It is not made from cardboard and replaced every few months, nor is the top casually tossed back on after being opened and its contents used.  Built from strong oak, with runes from a secret tongue and animal faces carved into its side, the box is sealed with a heavy iron lock which has only one key.  Tears have corroded the lock with rust, and the key is lost.

In the box rests her name,her heart, and most of the feelings it contains.  Her soul is kept in there as well, nourished by the warmth of emotions smouldering in the darkness.  A long time has passed since the box was opened.

In the attic is a glass box, sealed on every edge and corner with gold and silver.  The glass is clean and clear, cared for at least once a week.  Lace covers the table on which the box rests.  The soft, warm light of a lamp glows beside the table day and night.  The windows are shuttered, latches nailed in place, and the walls and roof are lined with lead.  The door to the attic is hidden, and the stairwell is so small only she can fit through the passage.

The box holds her dreams.  They are bright and full of colors, and hard like jewels, with facets and faces hidden from view.  They do not breathe, and they never dance.  The have the stillness of death.

Below, in the basement, at the core of a maze cast in eternal night, a box has been carved from the stone on which the house rests.  The lid is a boulder moved only once, when glaciers last shaped the earth.  Vipers, spiders, beetles and rats, fangs dripping poison, slither and scuttle in the dark.  In this crypt rests her desires.  The flesh of her appetite is dry, and hangs loosely on the withered meat of her hunger.

Finally, in the garden, where vegetables grow and flowers bloom, and the scent from an herb patch hangs in the air during the evening, there are five stones marking the graves of her past.  The bodies in the five buried boxes have no names, but they bear traces of her kisses.  Hidden behind a bush in a far corner is a sixth box, already set into the ground and awaiting only the caretaker to fill the hole with the dirt piled beside it.  On moonless nights, when the stars are veiled by clouds and the world pauses in its journey towards death, she comes out and lowers herself into the hole.  She lies down in the open box and closes her eyes.  Sometimes she draws the lid shut and holds her breath.

That is when the few feelings left to run free in the house all come to her at once, like birds alighting on a favorite perch.  That is when rage makes her tremble, and sorrow burns the empty places inside of her.  And fear makes her feel the cold of the endless night beyond the walls of her box.

end

The world changes based on physical laws and dynamics; people change based on physiological and psychological processes.

How people perceive these changes and react to them is the stuff of, if not legend, certainly story.

A recent David Brooks Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08brooks.html) on “The New Humanism” (which doesn’t look like the old or even current New Humanism stuff I’ve encountered) sparked some thinking about people and stories I hope is interesting.

The notion I cling to from the article is that the disasters we visit on ourselves are caused, at least in part, by the “distorted” and simplistic view that reason and emotion are separate spheres.  We trust in and use the (so-called) rational self to suppress our untrustworthy emotional selves.

It’s the “Western way,” I suppose.  And there’s certainly good cause to fear the emotional aspects of ourselves and others.  Lynch mobs would be one.  However, there is also good cause to be afraid of ignoring emotional realities.  Loss of empathy might fall into that category, leading to the ever-popular genocidal binge.

Suppressing emotional aspects of culture and reinforcing the rational has certainly lead to great leaps in science, technology, philosophy.  But, of course, that suppression has certainly led to some interesting choices in the use of said tech.

As usual, my reaction is probably tangential.  Basically, we’re creatures of perception, and all conflict and miracles stem from this reality, the only reality any of us really care about.  If we perceive ourselves to be rational, the world and our own actions make a certain kind of sense.  If we perceive ourselves grounded in an emotional world, we understand ourselves and the mechanics of our surroundings in a different way.  In genre terms, it’s science vs magic.  One door opens, the other closes.

At least, that’s my theory, my understanding of things as I see them today, through the lens of the article, which, by the way, calls for a more balanced and integrated view, a “new humanism,” to save us from ourselves.

Anyway, I’m struck by the power of perception, and the importance of how the individual and group perceives themselves and the world.

Yes, it is true that when someone pushes a button and nukes everyone, or the asteroid we failed to track crashes into earth, or even when the aliens show up promising harmony and technological wonders and then exterminate us from the safety of somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars, a larger reality will engulf our many-splendored individual realities and make all those precious personal perceptions irrelevant.

And it is true we are often smart enough to evade that larger reality, because we built our earthquake-proof reactors close to the sea to make cooling more efficient, or we tested our brand new and exciting vehicles beyond industry standard to make sure they wouldn’t go off careening down highways on their own.

We built community developments on mountainsides knowing they would never slide off during a hard rain, while laughing at primitive people who built stone towns and cities in sub-tropical regions which have yet to show any inclination toward falling off.  Or, we built monumental apartment buildings to house the poor because that was efficient and cost-effective.

Or, we believed certain kinds of people, like, say, bankers, are fiscally responsible and motivated to preserve capital and wouldn’t dream of lowering themselves to speculation.

A priest, after all, is a priest.  A scientist, the same.  From an emotional or a rational point of view, neither should have any reason to act irresponsibly or stupidly in their role.

They’ve got those emotions locked down because they went to Harvard or MIT, and they’re adults, and they’re rich and responsible.  And stuff.

Indeed, until that larger reality actually manifests itself, we stumble along immersed in our stews of thought and emotion, cooking whatever the hell is going on around us into the gumbo of reality.

We reach conclusions, take actions, reap rewards and punishments based on the most tenuous beliefs: we are reasonable creatures, predictable, with motivations and intentions based on the certainties of evidence.  Or, if you prefer non-rational faith, a Higher Power is on our side.

We are certain of what we know, what we think.  And the best part of that is we have evidence to support our certainty.  There are studies.  Sometimes, experts gather and through consensus, select a “best practice” based solely on the scientific data and without any influence from manufacturers, insurance companies, or other entities with dubious motivations.  Sometimes, God just talks to us.

Often, it all works out.

A disappointing percentage of the time, however, the asteroid hits.

We’re driving along merrily drinking our home-brewed or pundit-bought brew, faithfully and quite rationally following our internal GPS right off the cliff.

Back to my clinging to the notion of a “distorted” and simplistic view of separate rational and emotional selves.

What I take from this idea is that, though the percentage of “right” from the rational approach to things may be impressive, may even be much better than some of the emotional viewpoints past and present, what we consider “rational” is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

The same, of course, can be said to those who navigate principally by an emotional compass.

After all, when the asteroid hits, it doesn’t matter if you made human sacrifices or launched nuclear bombs.  Despite your deepest convictions, what you tried failed.

Just because we elected our shamans, or made them go to college for degrees and licenses and other non-shamanistic accoutrements of non-shamanistic knowledge, insight and wisdom, doesn’t mean what they know or believe is right.

Sometimes, I think we’re all just ants blundering around, putting our heads down and doing our individual thing to the best of whatever our brain circuitry and personal chemistry can do, following one another, picking up scents left by trailblazers who survived and came back with the sugar.  Somehow, our combined chaotic efforts result through trial and error in what we call civilization.  Culture.  Flat screen TV’s filled with sports and digital effects.

I think that’s the latest in ant theory, anyway – there’s no Borg-esque Queen directing the hive, just a bunch of organic machines doing their jobs, stupidly making mistakes, and making up for those mistakes by trying again and again until, eventually, an efficient and practical solution for whatever is challenging the little buggers is found.  Or they die trying.

I also like the word “distorted.”   To me, I means there may well be something there in our funhouse image of what is true and real, but what we have not considered, what may be beyond our grasp or ability to perceive, is what distorts the image.  We believe the image to be true.  But it’s not.  And we are led astray, even to our doom, thinking we are doing the right thing.

I do sympathize with the article’s point that the rational and irrational are enmeshed, inseparable, and to think otherwise may not only be foolish, but dangerous.  Reminds me of the “old” humanism, like a ying yang tattoo staring you in the face.

I also appreciated the research on other measure of intelligence – lord knows we need other forms of intelligence.  The research may be a bit dense, but things like the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence might lead to some creative perspectives on how your particular demon, fairy, Elder God or alien might perceive and understand the human world.  But go to a library for the thing – even the Kindle price is a heart attack.

There are other ways thinking about the rational and emotional aspects of humanity in terms of story and character.

Yes, there are the obvious and massive dramatic and comedic situations to be mined by playing the rational against the emotional, from I Love Lucy to The Big Bang Theory. Possibly, there’s art in their fusion.

And, an awareness of the varying definitions of humanity, intelligence and talents can help in establishing concrete needs and behaviors of the “new” or alternative human and the alien, and the conflicts and possible resolutions that come out of that.  Could be the new X-Men, could be the transformation of Remembrances of Things Past to the Perceptions of Things Now.

How much trust, and distrust, characters have in their rational/emotional selves is a fundamental anchor for their perception of the world.  And from that anchor, as I’ve been saying, all hell can break loose.  From the best of intentions, horrors can come, and from the worst, miracles.  Or maybe something a little less melodramatic.

Certainly at the root of genres like thriller, mystery, crime, suspense, there is tension between the rational and emotional in individuals and opposing groups.  Character perceptions are skewed, “distorted,” by their perspectives, by the information they allow themselves to process and what they do not take into account.

Decisions are made based on incomplete information.  The rational, or perhaps the emotional mind, blocked relevant information and observations.  Perhaps something was missed in the conflict between the two.  Actions are taken, horribly flawed, and if perceptions don’t change and characters don’t adapt, tragedy results.

I can’t even imagine how many papers have been written on the rational versus the emotional in Shakespeare.  The heart of horror is emotion, but getting to that heart may take raging tooth and claw, or the clean, precise rationality of a surgical blade.  What’s a love story without the heart and mind at war?

In fact, if you look at literature – from love stories to war stories, perhaps even post modern lit – you’d be hard-pressed not to find the conflict between the rational and the emotional at the heart of most stories.

Yes, sides may be taken, which may run counter to this “New Humanism” or its plain old Taoist philosophical roots.  True love wins out, or emotional horror, or the logic of the master detective or the science of the future.

The audience, immersed in their cultural perspectives, craves the comfort of the reality it perceives.

Sometimes, however, a certain balance can be achieved.  The audience may get what it needs rather than what it wants and be satisfied – a richer, more complex resolution than the triumph of the rational, the demise of the emotional, or vice versa.

I know, looking at the news, its hard to believe.  Unrealistic.  Certainly not mimetic.

A hard sell.

Whatever story you choose to tell, a long, hard look at the conflict between the emotional and the rational in characters, in the forces aligned against each other in the grand plot, might not be a total waste of time.  At least, that’s today’s theory.

It seemed to work for Shakespeare.

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.

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….

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….