The Confabulator Cafe

Author: akordahl

  • Cardboard People (Flash Fiction)

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/paco_calvino/3105322521/

    Elise was a dancer, a twirler, a self-motivated mover.  Even as a baby she never sat still, and her mom fondly recalls how her feet fascinated her.  The possibilities of human movement excited her.  She hated all of science until Anatomy and Physiology, which taught her to think of every new way she could orchestrate her muscles and orient her bones.

    Fortunately, her fascination received benign neglect from the Masters, who decide which children are trouble makers and which must be left to blossom.  The troublemakers have their motions severely restricted, via a combination of surgical and chemical nerve overrides.  Elise thought that to be one of the Restricted would be horrible, that she would die if she couldn’t dance as she wanted.  Her friend  Hector said it’s not so  bad, he can still think whatever he wants and write whatever he wants so he has his free speech rights.  Just can’t punch things, can’t pull triggers, that sort of thing.  She felt bad for Hector but didn’t want him to feel her pity, so she didn’t talk about it with him

    But she was nearing the end of high school, and she needed to do a senior project.  What better to do than to override the possibilities of the Restricted?  Her brother James pointed out, rightly, that those she wanted to reach would never attend a recital in the fancy hall where she took lessons.  No, her project must be in the street.

    She elected to stage a morning happening, on the sidewalk where she turned to go to school.  She also elected a schoolgirl costume, a plaid skirt, a white collared shirt, to emphasize her audience.  James warned her that she might have no audience as a school girl where school girls usually walked.  She frowned, then agreed.   “Let’s make an audience, then, you and me.  We’ll print some people out on cardboard posters and stand them around.  Cardboard People!  That’s the name of the program.”

    It stuck.  They created seven or eight life-size cutouts of a fake audience, both to emphasize the theme of the show, and also to draw attention to the fact of the performance.

    She asked Hector to come to the show, and to bring his friends.  Her faculty sponsor and family invited, all that remained was to design her dance.

    The morning of her show dawned.  She and James carted the beginning audience to the chosen site quite early, before the main traffic began; still, they attracted a lot of attention, and with the help of the simulated audience she drew quite a large group.  A discreet music player hid between the cutouts, and suddenly blasted hip-hop into the morning air.

    The dance began with trigger pulls and punches, with violence, with Elise miming every way a human figure could enact violence. Her actions split the air but managed to communicate vivacity and passion.  People in the audience unconsciously began to move along with her, and James noticed many who tried but could not follow her.

    But the music changed, and so did her dance.  And the results of Elise’s careful preparation became clear:  she danced in ways that all could do, stopping meticulously to mime a nervous boundary, to skirt around the edges of the Restricted capabilities.  And all the people saw, and all the people could move along with her, Restricted and free alike, and there was a dancing mob that morning on the corner of 9th and Locust, before the Masters could shut it down.

    When the sirens began, Elise realized she had provoked more of a reaction than she expected, and she was about to join the ranks of Restriction.  But she realized as well that no matter what they did to her, no matter which pathways they blocked, she would find a way around it, she would scuttle over barricades and burrow under walls.  They could not stop her dance, and she did not fear the punishment that was to come.

  • Characters occupy plot

    Last fall, when thousands of protesters descended on town squares and public spaces, was it the zeitgeist? Were we all zombies, drawn into this massive, not-well-publicized-enough plot? Or did each character individually have her own motives for participating?  Did the arc towards justice  articulate each of us within the plot of the year, or did we each sit down and say, hey, today is the day that I’m going to participate in an international movement for economic equality?  What’s more interesting–the fact that a big movement happened and is happening, or each individual’s motivations for participating in it, each person’s story, each soul’s hope for results?

    A relative focus on character or plot leads not only to quite different fictional stories, but also vastly different reporting and non-fiction writing.  As I move my writing more in the direction of non-fiction, I realize that the concerns are not so very different.  Will a vicious new law outrage people in its very existence, or is it better to vocalize the law’s effects through a sympathetic person of interest in the case?  Which is more accurate, more moral?  When it comes to something like Occupy Wall Street, does a focus on the individual add to or detract from the overall plot?  What about something more sinister, like horrific shootings–better to parse the reasons for a violent society, or consider the motives and mental imbalances of the individual with the gun?

    As a writer I emphasize plot.  After all, each character is just one of many affected characters, and appropriating another’s life feels exploitative, taking someone else’ story and using it to communicate my ends.  It’s also an appeal to pathos instead of logos, which is not my nature.  Worse, I do see a focus on character as upholding a more individualistic view of society as opposed to the collective, solidarity-building approaches towards which I work.

    And yet…

    Nobody ever made me cry more than Tess Durbeyfield.  And not so much because of the plot surrounding her, but because of her bravery, her fidelity, her perseverance in hopeless circumstances, all without having a conniving bone in her body. I remember characters; she has become part of me, in a way that Neal Stephenson’s gloriously plot-driven fellows have not.  Plot convinces, plot recollects experience and provides a new experience to the reader, but finely etched characters stick in the mind and the bones.

  • Free expression, not oppression

    Freedom of the press is one of the seven wonders of America*.  As far as my understanding goes, our national belief in freedom of speech and of the press is one of the few beliefs that still unites our imagined national community, one of the few things that Americans of all political persuasions hold sacred.

    Now, often we go to the marginal cases to consider how far this freedom goes, and Amazon’s virtual publishing site has prompted many discussions of censorship and taboo literature since any idiot can now publish a book.   (more…)

  • Surprise!

    In character development, as in a lot of other aspects of writing, having a good reader is an essential part of the writing process.  A response helps clarify if you have communicated what you intended to, or if you have written down quite another world than the one inside your head.

    Classic writing class instruction includes the axioms “Show, don’t tell,” and “specific is terrific.”  These have good ideals at their heart, especially concerning character development. Only Republican presidential debate transcripts are more agonizing to read than paragraphs of development through description.  “Mary Sue was a brave girl, intelligent, but understated.  She enjoyed eccentric clothing and pop music of the indie persuasion, and her kindness was obvious.  But she had a dark side, too.  Mary Sue was a passionate mix of the good and evil that lies in all of us.”

    However, if an author eschews explicit narration altogether, s/he may find that the audience takes away some surprising notions about a character.  This is where a good reader comes into the mix.  My brother is probably my best reader (as my husband has to be more supportive than critical), and after he read one of my novels, he asked me, “Was the judge supposed to sympathize with the government or the protestors?”  I launched into a tirade of explanation–how could this have even been in question?  Alas, if I wanted the audience to understand the judge’s motivations, I would have had to tell them what they were.

    When I’m writing, I always know if my character is inscrutable or creepy.  Sometimes I don’t let my audience know, though.   I know who I meant to introduce; only my audience can tell me who they met.

  • Food, glorious food

    In looking over my Confabulator entries from the past few weeks, I realize that food and cooking are controlling metaphors for how I write and think about writing. Food is, naturally, delicious, and preparing delectable food is a natural metaphor for all types of production,including literary.  I find food to be at the center of human existence, and if there is anything more inspirational than good  coffee, with cheesecake, I have no idea what it might be!

    But this week we are focusing more on how other media influences our writing.  You know, I love movies, and we watch the Simpsons on an infinite loop in our house, but I don’t feel like moving pictures have a major effect on my writing.  The two genres that do influence me are advice columns and liturgy.

    A proliferation of advice columns (many published weekly, with years of archives available for mid-week fixes) is one of the many blessings of the Internet age. I do love the folks that people trust to make narrowly useful ethical decisions for them! Dan Savage and Dear Prudie are my favorites, to be sure, but many lesser luminaries light the way as well.  Once, I thought about writing a NaNo novel from the POV of an advice columnist, but thought better of it when trying to plot character development entirely through one-off letters. But often, I use the format to shape my stories.  Now, what would Prudie say about this situation? How about Dan? How about an advice columnist working in this particular culture…

    I am also influenced by the liturgical settings of my religious tradition.  Long have I planned to write a novel whose structure is based off a church service (start with a greeting, confession, etc, and have hymns sprinkled throughout). Although I have not done this directly yet, I do come up with something else to work on every time I start contemplating it. I like to invent liturgies for the various new religions in my stories, and someday my service-inspired novel will emerge full formed from the oven and be amazing.

    Geez.  Another food metaphor spiced it up this time.  At least I am consistent!

     

  • Warped Characters?

    In the very first draft of my very first novel, I struggled with character a lot–I didn’t have any bad ones.  Nope, all my characters were well-meaning, with great heart and minor, excusable flaws.  Even the person who burned down the church had a perfectly good reason for doing it–not a justification, exactly, but certainly enough rationale to make him a sympathetic character.

    Readers commented that my characters were all just too unbelievably well-behaved and pleasant.  So, in my next novel attempt, I did try to make some more believable bad guys. Really. There were some guys in a lab, there were some military guys, there were some guys who just wanted to protect their own ill-gotten power. But then it turned out they all had interests in the situations, and that in some circumstances they were wonderful supporters of all that was good and right, and only in certain other circumstances did they release their inner villain.  Of course, this time, the person who burned down the church had absolutely iron-clad reasons for why he had to do it, and he was a hero, not a villain.

    In my third novel, I think I finally managed to make some bad guys–actually some people with anti-social interests sitting in a room plotting to wreak havoc on the lives of those around them by taking away their health insurance and jobs, or something like that.  Truly bad guys, the sort that wanted to return rampant inequality and hierarchical authority to the world.  And then, people got to yell at them for a long time about how much they wanted to hurt them.  At least I got through that book without any new arsonists!

    Writing heroes and heroines is relatively easy for me.  I can invent past lives, ambitions, dreams, quirks, and speech patterns.  I can describe days in the lives of, their homes, their companions.  But writing characters who intentionally do evil things is a struggle.  At those times, I tend to go to stock characters and stereotypes.  I need to work on building characters who are human, who do bad things, who might feel bad about doing those bad things but still are not totally redeemed at the end of the day.  Like Alec in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, who is totally a villain and totally understandable and mostly redeemed and still experiences poetic justice.  Writing a villain like Alec would be the  crowning achievement of my writing career!

  • The satisfaction of the self

    Sometimes I call myself an unpublished writer, but that is not technically accurate. I had experienced the thrill of the acceptance letter, the brief realization that my writing was worth something to someone out there. Oh, yes. I was fourteen, and I had considered myself a writer for at least seven years. I kept long, glorious, passionate journals, wrote letters to Jesus, and Anne of Green Gables fan fiction. So the world was obviously ready for my peculiar genius to come into the spotlight. And those good people at poetry.com could see that, too, and they took a chance on me, and published one of my semi-rhymed verses in their venerable anthologies: Gondolas in the Moonlight, I think, or maybe Saltwater and Seaweed.

    Now, fourteen year old me was vain, and overwrought, and preachy. But even fourteen year old me was not stupid enough to believe my work was worth my $50, the price of the anthology. So, sadly, none of my family ever saw my immortal words preserved in leather-bound pages alongside two hundred and fifty other promising young poets.

    Poetry.com was my first (and, to date, only) experience with self-publishing, although I didn’t see it as such at the time. Later, I was able to laugh about it, only to find that several of my college friends published with that company as well, and some still labored under the hope that they were fine publishers.  That experience did make me wary of other self-publishing schemes, however. If I were to venture into more self-publishing, I would want it to be a decidedly anti-capitalist operation, and most of the current platforms appear to be steeped in capitalism.  Specifically, they appear to be operations designed to extract labor from writers while providing very few services to them or to the literary community, profiting only the company involved.

    That said, I have read some delightful self-published books, some that don’t have a large enough audience to fit into a traditional publishing house focus group.  The world of ‘zines is one of empowered self-publishing, intended to affirm one’s worth and communicate ideas directly without an intermediary.  These seem to be worthwhile enterprises, new possibilities that the digital age makes possible and cheap.  While I don’t anticipate self-publishing my novels in the near future, I think some of the current technologies may make the process less exploitative.  I have enjoyed some other authors’ efforts in this vein, and I support those who wish to blaze new pathways of possibility for both authors and readers.

  • Laying out the Table

    When I stop to consider my favorite scenes and descriptive passages, I just stop.  Seriously.  “Setting the scene” has always been a difficulty in my writing, because I quite hate reading descriptions.  I like plot and character and telling detail as much as the next reader/writer, but description-skipping is one of my best strategies for consuming my preferred book a day diet. Alas, I now achieve that diet only in the summer and on vacation.  Ah well.

    The best metaphor I can think of for scene setting is Setting the table for dinner guests.  Some people like linen napkins, red silk tablecloths, magisterial dowager chairs on the table ends, baroque flatwafloe bowers of centerpieces. I am not into that. I prefer simple cotton napkins, maybe some placemats, whatever unmatched silverware is in the drawer. But my focus is on the food, the herbed turkey and cinnamon crusted sweet potatoes, creamed corn, apple spice cake goodness.  I don’t want dirty place settings, or inadequate serving dishes. I want my guests to forget all about the place settings in their rapture of tasteful delights. So my goal is that description and scene setting not interfere with the content of the story.

    Readers have offered me very inconsistent accounts of my success in this aim. Often, my creative writing teachers mentioned my descriptive passages as the strongest part of my story.  But another reader commented that my novel felt like I was watching the movie in my head and only sharing glimpses with my audience, enough to assure them that I could see the whole scene, but not enough to take them along with me.  Looks like I need to retrieve some new serving spoons–the ones I have been using can’t quite handle the gravy!

  • Imitation WOULD be sincere.

    In my reading habits, I imagine I am eclectic.  My favorite fiction writers range from Richard Powers to Thomas Hardy to Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood.  But really, those aren’t all that different.  All use a lot of big words, have complex and twisting plots (usually two or three entwined together like a big cinnamon twist of melodrama), and write a lot about religion and science and myths.

    Believe me, I would love to say that my work is a mere imitation of those storied artists’ creations.  That the influence of Hardy’s sweeping landscapes is obvious. That, clearly, my ability to merge worlds of academia and science with deep emotional observations comes from a careful replication of Powers’ work. That my feminist aesthetic is on loan from Atwood. That my ability to write tenderly and brilliantly for the masses and specialists alike is merely derivative of Gaiman.

    If those statements were true, I might be derivative, but at least I’d be brilliant! Alas, none of those things are true.  Most of the things that I admire in my favorite writers are not qualities I can replicate. The people whom I aspire to write like have little in common with those whose books I enjoy.  My favorite writers influence my philosophies, my taste, ideas, fact bases, yes; but most of my writing style is a lot closer to that of people I merely enjoy, not idolize.  Perhaps there is an intimidation factor here.  I don’t try to write a la Thomas Hardy because I know the result will be subpar. But I can try to write like Robert Krouse (a self-published author who became a surprise Amazon hit with pleasant, satirical novels) or like Katherine Norris because my work will not disappoint quite as dramatically in that case.

    One way, though, in which my most admired writers do influence my work is in sentence structure. I try to analyze the structures of wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and build my work around those most admirable. But the day that anyone can genuinely trace the influence of any of my favorite writers in my work is the day I am happy to share it with the world!

  • But does it lead down the primrose path?

    Every writer has the moments of doubt and indecision, asking herself, “Is there a story there?  Would anyone ever want to read this, anyway?” Usually the answer to both those questions is no, if you consider it too rationally, and she must learn to ignore the nagging voice that insists all ideas are bad, and no one would ever want to read anything she wrote, and instead persevere with the hope that all the ideas are good at heart, that the muse will triumph if you just start writing.  It’s not about the story, it’s about how you tell the story.  Any story can be made interesting, right?  Remember The Social Network?  The concept behind the movie sounded so dull, but the movie was so entertaining, even suspenseful!

    Alas, this is not always the case.  After watching the Social Network, I had to conclude not that it was a good movie about something boring, but that I was wrong about the original concept, which the movie revealed as an important and interesting topic.

    I believe that most ideas will eventually produce some good writing, if one explores the topic enough and allows it to branch and lead to new topics, twining itself into a world of interest.  But every once in a while, a true stinker of an idea does come up.

    Generally, if I have to work too hard to develop an idea, if it doesn’t help me at all by suggesting its own new directions, I eventually abandon it and return to a better-traveled path.  Good concepts do branch and twine and scaffold, and help bulk themselves up into a novel.  Bad concepts can be just carbohydrates–that quick burst of energy that fails right around 10:30, too early for lunch but too late for second breakfast.

    If I can’t stop thinking about an idea, I figure there is something to it; if I follow, it will lead me to some good thinking and writing.  But sometimes, if I forget a project, my potential audience probably would too.  The worst ideas will be naturally abandoned, and that is as it should be.