The Confabulator Cafe

Author: mgreen

  • Brady Russell

    “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
    — George Bernard Shaw

    The writer who taught me the most is a friend of mine named Brady. We go way back. I first met him in the lobby of middle school when we were both waiting for rides home. We started talking about comic books. Ever since then we occasionally have conversations about our creative projects (and also about comic books.) I guess twenty years of semi-regular conversations about how we write have added up to some useful information.

    Brady has managed to work full time and be a relentlessly productive writer for years. He just self-published an ebook titled Dream Her Back.

    He creates a twice-weekly web comic, Eat the Babies, and he also somehow finds time to blog now and then for several different websites.

    He and I have had many conversations over the years about creativity, but one sticks out as particularly memorable for me. That is when Brady told me about the idea of trying to write for one specific person. It doesn’t matter who, he explained, and they don’t need to know. This was a suggestion he picked up from reading Kurt Vonnegut’s forward to Bagombo Snuffbox. He insisted this was an idea worth trying.

    To be honest, I did not understand how this practice could be helpful until I tried it. Turns out that this is a tremendous tool for forcing a piece to have an even tone to it. Don’t judge the effectiveness by this blog post, however because it is too meta.

    Of course I had heard about the concept of a “target audience” before. All through middle and high school that term was rammed at us in every Language Arts class. Truly, I felt like a target. But until Brady suggested it, it had never occurred to me to pick one single individual as my target audience. Maybe this is common sense to other people, but since neither one of us were creative writing majors it felt like hard won wisdom.

    I use it nearly every time I write anything now in order to keep focused on what to say and how to say it. Sometimes this is easy. When I have an editor to work with I know that my editor is my intended audience and I can keep my tone consistent by crafting each sentence for them personally. Other times it is not so easy.

    If I am working on a personal project with no guidelines, due date or editor, those are the times I have to use my creativity not only for writing, but also for putting constraints on myself in order to keep from going in too many directions at once. In these cases I have to really stretch my imagination and reach for someone to keep in mind as the intended reader.

    If you want to try it yourself, here are some suggestions on how to pick an intended reader. Remember, this person never needs to read your piece in real life. This is strictly a mental exercise in order to keep your writing focused. Who should you pick? Former teachers are handy, assuming they were any good when you were in class with them. Family members are useful to keep in mind, since one often has fondness for them and they are usually willing to read the finished piece anyway. You can also pick your favorite author, or a friend who is also a writer. But watch out it can easily get meta.

  • Free Legwarmers

    I have a writing routine which borders on compulsively ritualistic. I always write first drafts with pen and paper. Then I type that up. Then I read it through and decide whether to develop the idea further or scrap it. If it’s worth re-working, I make an outline and decide if the order in which things occur needs to be changed. Usually the events in my story need to be reordered somewhat so I read through a hard copy with a pen, making notes about things that will need to be changed so that the new order makes sense. Then I get to work re-writing. I give myself more latitude at this stage to flesh out things since the framework is set, but I usually don’t really add in many details until the next re-write.

    Yikes, reading that last paragraph made me feel really weird, like maybe everything I write is unread-ably overwritten. Okay, as an experiment then I will just type whatever pops into my head for the rest of this essay and not edit it at all.

    Cutting is not problem as long as I don’t care how long my finished piece is. My instinct is to tend toward brevity, so I often whittle down a written piece to around 65% of its original unedited length. As for setting goals for editing, I really don’t have to force myself much because it is an enjoyable process for me. The hardest part for me as a writer, is squeezing out that first draft. After I have something to work with on paper, the editing and re-writing stages are pretty fun. Polishing something and making it better seems possible whereas creating something out of nothing strikes me as more intimidating and unlikely to be successful.

    I just threw away my notebooks from National Novel Writing Month 2011. I had filled up five spirals. Perhaps the gratification, for me, is in the process of writing more so than the finished product. Don’t worry, I typed all my notebooks before tossing them so nothing was lost except for the paper original. With the amount of space that one project took up on my shelf in notebook form, I don’t believe I could ever have enough room to save all my writing. Besides writing, I spend much of my free time knitting. Knitting is nice because it keeps my hands busy while I think about ideas for writing. A big part of writing for me is stewing over things until I know the most appropriate way to express them. Perhaps appropriate is the wrong word, I mean the most honest way.

    In knitting there is this idea of “process knitting.” It means that a person doesn’t want to keep the finished object, they just wanted the challenge of completing it. These people usually give away what they knit. To some extent I am the same way with writing. I don’t have a strong desire to have other people read what I’ve written, but I do have a strong desire to write it in the first place.

    That reminds me, I have three pairs of legwarmers that I made that I want to get rid of because they were just first drafts. If anyone wants them, let me know.

  • Not Suitable (Flash Fiction)

    I stood on the strip with my feet tightly pressed together and my back as straight as I could make it. My scalp and underarms were moist. My teeth tense. I could see down the line with my peripheral vision. Although I gave the impression of looking straight ahead at the mountains beyond the runway, I was studying the other pilots, sizing them up.

    When we split into flight teams we all scuttled around, grabbing equipment and getting to work while Thomas barked orders at us. Formation had been easier since I could slyly look sideways at the men. But in the open while prepping for takeoff I could feel all eyes on me. I was different, not one of the guys. They knew it and I knew it. Takeoff could not come soon enough.

    In the air a limited number of things need attention. These are the things you pay attention to. Because these are the things that your life depends on. I ran through my checklists, routinized and a part of me, and forgot about the pettiness of the world on the ground.

    I watched the land beneath us turn into calm cerulean as we flew over the ocean. We would dash to the closest island which also happened to be the smallest, and then jump from one to another along the archipelago. We would hit each island in sequence like a frog jumping from one lily pad to another. Only a few places off the mainland were suitable for a new building and our job was to discover the best one. There were no airstrips where we were going, only the wild. We wouldn’t even stop unless we had to. Each touchdown would roll right into another takeoff. “How long?” I yelled over my shoulder. “75 minutes.” Someone replied. The weather was peaceful and clear. I deliberately forced my shoulders down, unaware until that moment how close to my ears they had become. I felt the muscles unclench a little. “Thanks.” I said under my breath.

    The time passed too quickly. My respite from the other men’s scrutiny while in the calm portion of the mission would soon turn back into a test, another gauntlet where they would be expecting me to prove myself. I saw the first island appear on the horizon. My Nav hadn’t even told me it was coming up. He was probably hoping I’d overshoot it. “That our spot?” I asked. “Affirmative. That’s the south side of the island.” The navigator’s voice held a slight humor. I couldn’t tell if he was tickled that I’d asked for confirmation on the target or if he was amused by his own juvenile plan to not offer any help until it was asked for.

    A quick trip around the island told me there was only one place to land. I descended and banked to the right. “Prepare for touch and go.” I told the crew. As I brought the plane down to the beach an uncomfortable confusion clouded my judgement for a moment. It was completely nonsensical, but for a split second I thought for sure I saw something. The trees that lined the beach about 20 yards from the water were walking. I took a deep breath and blinked hard once and quick. The trees were still. I hoped I had not let any of my disorientation show. I steeled my nerves against the nausea and that couple of lost seconds was enough to ruin my approach. “Prepare for landing. Repeat prepare for landing.” I barked at the crew. Out of the corner of my eye I could see their surprised body language as they followed my orders and adjusted their expectations.

    I touched down on the sand and felt a sickening slosh as the tires sank into the soft ground. I was thrust hard forward and I heard one of the men fall against his equipment. This was one of the risks we had foreseen, but I didn’t expect to encounter it so soon in the mission. The ground was completely unsuitable for building an airstrip, probably because the island was never more than an inch above at sea level and flooded with every rain shower. The plane skidded as it came to a stop near the trees. For a sacred moment no one said anything. They were happy to be alive and unharmed. But all too soon that gratitude melted into fury that we were stuck.

    “Why did you not bump!? Now we are sunk in. Thomas put me on your team because he’s still holding a grudge about that shower curtain. Now I’m going to rot on this island with…” one of the men was ranting when the Nav interrupted with even louder shouting. “Shut up! Just get out and dig and we’ll be on our way.” Seat belts clicked and the door clanged open. Everyone knew the drill. I was the last one out of the plane. When my feet hit the ground the horizon dipped and spun. I felt bile rise in my throat and my knees wobbled. I went down softly onto the waterlogged earth. When I woke the trees were upon them. The men were hunched over digging out the wheels and didn’t even see what was coming. They had ignored my fall and left me in a pool of my own vomit. I opened my mouth to warn them but the only sound I could make was a raspy grunt. One tree for each man, their branches reached out and curled around the crewmen like cocoons. The men kicked uselessly until their bones broke in the embrace of leaves and twigs. Then the trees stilled. I found my strength and raised up on one arm, twisting my head to look behind me and fulling expecting to see my own death. But there was nothing. The trees spared me. They knew I was different.

  • How documentary films show the need to show.

    One of the things I write is scripts for documentaries. If you’ve ever seen a documentary you may have asked yourself “I wonder how much this has been manipulated to bolster a certain point of view?” The answer is, that varies a lot! It ultimately depends on how much the filmmaker tries to “tell” the audience what conclusions to come to. I think at the heart of this question is the matter of showing versus telling and here’s how it applies to writing as well as filmmaking.

    I often hear the writing advice “Show don’t tell.” I agree with this most of the time, in writing and in filmmaking. For example in a documentary it might be easier to interview a subject about an exciting event, but it would be more satisfying to show the audience that event by filming it directly! The pitfalls of telling not showing are clear. But what happens when a movie is all show and no tell?


    When a piece of art is experimental there is more heavy lifting required of the audience and therefore more possible interpretations of the work. This doesn’t only go for films. I can think of examples of writing that are experimental and require some work from the reader. These include the stream of consciousness writing by William S. Burroughs, the postmodernism of Kathy Acker and the babbling prose of Steve Katz.

    In film school I had to watch a lot of experimental films. Some of them were more enjoyable than others, but overall the experience of watching experimental films taught me how to meet my audience halfway. What I mean by this is that I learned to strike a balance between showing and telling, between spoon-feeding the audience a message or leaving everything ambiguous and making the audience do all the work of interpretation. I don’t want to manipulate my audience into seeing only a certain point of view on a subject, but I think relying on audience interpretation too much is an unfair onus to place on people who come to my work with some expectation of being entertained.

    So, mostly show.

  • The Creativity Hopper

    The first time I was ever moved to tell a story was after watching the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was five years old and visiting my

    grandmother in Alexandria, Virginia. Immediately after seeing the film I had an idea for a sequel. I tried writing down my story as it formed in my imagination… but I found the words coming faster than I could write. I gave a pencil and paper to my father and asked him to take dictation. The thing I was writing, I explained to him, was a sequel to the Indiana Jones movie. It would star a girl, of course. I don’t remember exactly how my story went but it was definitely not anything like Temple of Doom.

    From that first creative impulse as a child until now, movies have been a huge source of inspiration for me. My creativity hopper (in my mind, I picture this as one of those kid’s popcorn popper toys) is full of kernels of ideas.


    Some of these come from memories or dreams, some from current events that I read about in the news, and many come from movies I’ve watched. These kernels of ideas are images and emotions that get jostled around in the hopper, bumping into each other and bringing about a feeling of mystery and excitement that ultimately fuels my own projects. Allowing these unrelated ideas to bump into each other leads to questions like ‘What if?’ and ‘Wouldn’t it be weird…?’ which are the type of questions that spur on my creative process. As an artist I have to be receptive all the time as well as productive. This is why it’s important to me to be sympathetic and open minded. Hopefully by keeping an open and non-judgmental mind I can be open to receiving the ideas that power my creative output.

    The less mystical explanation for why watching movies helps me write is simply that it helps me gain familiarity with storytelling techniques. If I find a movie that resonates with me I watch it several times in order to appreciate every detail and study how the narrative was structured. When watching a movie for storytelling insight, I ask myself a few questions such as: ‘In what order are the facts revealed? What does each character know and when? What does each character want?’ and ‘How does the action of each scene cause the next scene to take place?’ These types of questions help me understand why a story works. I
    believe that those storytelling truths are equally applicable to movies or the written word.

  • Influences

    I would like to say that I am a complete original. My ego would prefer that I depict myself in this essay as a creative genius who oozes unique ideas all the time.

    Honestly? Well if I’m being honest, then I have to admit that whatever I am currently reading heavily influences my writing style. My NaNoWriMo novel for 2011, which I am still working on, is more than a little colored by the fact that when I started it I was reading REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. A suspicion haunts me that if I were to suddenly ditch the Stephenson book and pick up Emily Brontë, the tone of my own novel would change in turn. In order to keep the tone the same throughout the novel, I’ve made a pact with myself to only read that one novel while writing this book.

    I’m not proud that my creative work is so easily influenced by what enters my mind from the outside. It seems like a distinct weakness in my writing abilities. I may be embracing this weakness for NaNoWriMo, but on other projects I have deliberately sequestered myself from media in order to keep other people’s ideas out of my work. I was writing a voice over script for a World War II documentary a few years back. Everyone I told about my project recommended watching a television series called Band of Brothers. I was curious but I waited until my project was finished to prevent any subconscious lifting of ideas.

    I read somewhere that one must must write one million words before finding their true voice as a writer. That is what I’m shooting for, 1 million words. If I participate in National Novel Writing Month every year it will take me 20 years to achieve that goal. I really can’t wait that long. If I take the magic number from NaNoWriMo 1,667 and write that many words every day it will only take 20 months to reach 1 million words. This seems like a much more exciting proposition. If I keep writing as much as I did during November, I should be on schedule discover my true voice in around two years. I’m not sure if my editor will allow me to make up tags here on Confabulator Cafe, but if I can I will create the tag “1 million words” or something like that and keep everyone updated on the progress towards my 1 million words goal.

    Optimistically, perhaps after crossing the 1 million word mark I will not need to isolate myself from media in order to keep my writing voice strong and original. Neither will I be a slave to imitation. Eventually I will be able to write authentically and from my heart all the time. In the meantime I am moving purposefully toward that destination of 1 million words and hoping that I can finish my 2011 NaNoWriMo Novel before I finish reading this Stephenson book.

  • Ask a doctor…

    Several years ago I was talking to a friend. He had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and I was curious if this qualified him to endorse any particular worldview as the most credible.

    “So what’s your favorite philosophy?” I asked him. He laughed.

    “That’s like asking a doctor what their favorite medicine is.”

    For the rest of this essay I will be discussing my favorite book.

    There have been different books in my life that were extremely meaningful to me at specific times: Immediatism by Hakim Bey, The Hip Mama Survival Guide by Ariel Gore, George by E.L. Konigsburg, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. I’ve loved reading books since I was small and since it’s been almost thirty years since I was small I’ve had plenty of time to read quite a few.

    If I had been asked this question at the age of five I likely would have said Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola. It is the tale of a man who messes with magic forces and is forced to pay the price. This book taught me that there are serious consequences for breaking a promise and that one should not fool around with other peoples’ stuff. At fifteen I might have told someone that Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer was my favorite book. This is the perfect book for a precocious high schooler since it is full of jobless ex-patriots lounging around and drinking and reading it really made me believe that living an interesting life was a possible vocation. My outlook changed when I became a parent and at the age of twenty five I almost certainly would have answered The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. This book is about grand adventure but it drew out of me a sadness that I couldn’t step in the same water twice. Once I chose my grand adventure, I could not go a different way or start over.

    (more…)