The Confabulator Cafe

Author: mcmyers

  • The Artist (Flash Fiction)

    So yeah, I’m working this fundraiser tonight at the museum. It’s in this room with ancient stone carvings from Egypt.  A bunch of rich people and artists from all over rubbing elbows. Used to come in here with my boys from time to time, that’s how I knew about it and now I work here, busing on nights like this, cleaning up during the day.

    It’s hard to get away from things, you know, like in Egypt, back when, where these old carvings were made: you were born to it, died in it. Pretty much like here, really. It’s all a bunch of shit. ‘Bootstraps’? Please. But I do some art, some things, you know. I get things out of the trash and try to make them into other things. There’s not a lot of room for anything at our place, so it’s all real real small. I look up at this stone wall, the hieroglyphics, I read they’re called, and the guys with the skirts and long hair. No faces though. That’s weird. Spooky. They say people that didn’t like this tribe back then hacked the faces off with something, ancient hammers I guess. Anyway, one of my pieces is small enough to fit inside one of those little carved spaces with the hieroglyphics. I’d like to try something big though, just don’t have any room for it. And anyways, who’s got time for all that, you know?

    I see the ice is about out, so I excuse myself to get behind the bar to refill the tub. I take away the bucket of empty bottles and ask do they need anything restocked. I’m thirsty myself, and that liquor looks good, but I try not to drink anymore. It just takes too much time away from other things. The real thing is though, the real reason is, I try not to because I have a problem with it. I like it too much and I’m trying really hard to stay clean. It’s hard though. Everyone I know pretty much has something they doing to take the edge off. Or make money. Or both. And it’s weird that I don’t, you know? When the story for most is that their brother on crack and/or dealing. They don’t trust me. They don’t want to act like that but I can see they don’t. So, I don’t fit in. It’s hard, like I said. I don’t really have any friends, and my family is pretty fucked up, whatever. So, when I’m not working I spend a lot of time walking, finding things to make art with. I keep out of the way of almost everyone. And pretty soon, you’re invisible, no face, like those boys up on the wall here.

    I bring the ice back and fill the tub. As I go, I pull one of my little art pieces out of my pocket and set it up on the bar, quick so no one will notice. I’m supposed to stay out of sight as much as possible. But I do that. I set my things up in little spots around the museum. I could get in big trouble for it, but I do it anyway. I see that one of the guests at the bar is looking at it, and my heart speeds up. I wonder if he saw me put it there and I’m going to get in trouble. Part of me doesn’t care, but the other side needs the money. And I like working here. I like being with the art. The guy is talking to the bartender and the bartender’s looking around to see who might have put it there, shrugging his shoulders. I look up at the wall, the stone carvings old as hell, and I think about the all the times I wanted to touch them, but I never did because the guards and people get upset when you do that. I close my eyes and feel my heart in my chest and my palms sweaty on the plastic edge of the bus tub. I open my eyes. The guy is still there holding my piece, smiling. I set down the tub. And I walk up and put out my hand.

    Later, I walk home, down the streets, the stores all shut, metal doors over the windows. People on the corners, waiting for something. I see one of my friends from when we were kids, but I don’t make eye contact, and he wouldn’t talk to me now anyway. I slip into our place, three stories up from the street. The TV is on, my mom asleep on the couch, no one else is here. I go into my room and sit on my bed, set my share of the tips on the window sill. The money won’t stay folded. It was a good night. I pull out the business card from my other pocket and turn it over and over in my hands, trace the raised phone number with my finger. I close my eyes. I think about taking that money, going back down stairs, hooking up with my old friends. I open my eyes and see the shelves I made, my art on it. I think about those boys with the hammers, right before they smashed those faces. How the grip felt in their hands before they raised them up, what they were thinking. I lay the card on top of the money, lie back and look at the ceiling. It takes a long time to fall asleep.

     

  • Plot vs. Character: Save the eggs; torch my metaphor

    “If your story was a house on fire, what would you run in and save?”

    Brad Bird ~ Writer/Director

    (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible – Ghost Patrol)

    Plot vs. Character? No doubt in my mind, I’d save the characters.  Here’s why:  character drives plot.  The “stuff” of story, the desire that drives choices and actions made under the pressure of dilemma, are all expressed through character.  If you don’t have them, you don’t have plot, and ultimately, no story.  Characters are the eggs, if you will; plots are the chickens they hatch. (Which came first is another post, but it’s the egg per my high school zoology teacher, Mr. Highfill, an amazing character in his own right, so I’m going with egg.)

    But I digress.  Yes, I’m giving the edge to the egg, but what about that chicken? Is it just crowing in the morning, pecking at the ground, taking a nap, running around the barnyard, going to sleep, and doing it all over again the next day?   This is not plot, this is not story.  This is activity not action.  The chicken that comes out of that egg has got to be top notch, too, or no one is going to hang out in the barnyard to see what happens.

    To put it all together, your eggs need to have Grade A burning desires, inner and outer conflicts that create dilemmas, through which they make choices to try to reach their goal, and thus, advance the story.  These choices and their results create the chicken, which in turn acts on the characters (eggs) and so on to the last action in the series, the end of the road.  Perhaps just before Sunday dinner when the horse, who, against all odds, has fallen in love with the chicken, kicks the axe out of the farmer’s hands, and, together, horse and chicken ride off into the sunset.

    So, to take this horrible pun to the end: go lay some fresh eggs; the chickens will be tasty.

     

  • Who are you and what do you want?: Developing characters and finishing what I start

    Back when I never finished anything, I used to just give my characters a name and a situation and watch the ‘fun’.

    But it wasn’t enough, I cannot be pantsless (See Confabulator Ted Boone’s Pants are optional. Plans are not. | Confabulator Cafe.) and I never finished anything! And it wasn’t all that fun, either.  Not that it was their fault. Among other things, I found through this process that I needed to know these people extremely well to have a grasp on how they might act, or react, to other characters and the situations I put them in, and, come to think of it, what the situations might be that they’d be in in the first place.  Is this making sense?  Hello?

    Writers need limits, or this one does anyway, to circumscribe the possibilities, to give boundaries to work in, to pressure the work to make it go.  Willy nilly is too chaotic for me, too many choices (like those giant @&#% menus at chain restaurants) made me a worse writer, and I NEVER FINISHED ANYTHING. Did I mention that?

    Now I use character worksheets to help me think about what these people look like, their backgrounds, relationships, desires; I use screenwriting techniques; I brainstorm with people about what might work; I practice with my characters in situations other than the story I think they want to tell.  I think hard about them:  What do they want to say? What do they want more than anything in the world? What’s to stop them? Then what? Go from the inside out. I’ve ‘finished’ some things, but it doesn’t end there–I’m still trying to make them better in revision, and I find getting down to the base motivations of my characters is a big part of that making that process better, too.

    As for the reader, oh yeah, I do not want to insult the reader with boring, cliché, two dimensional characters, the actions need to flow coherently from who these people are and if they don’t, well, I hope you do shut your laptop or throw down the pages in disgust. I’m lucky to have your attention in the first place.  And that’s a pretty good motivator…

  • Panning for Gold in the Dark

    A couple of weeks back the fabulous Confabulators weighed in on where their writing ideas come from.  I may backtrack a bit over some of that territory, because where they come from seems to be connected to the ideas I end up pursuing past the ‘idea’ stage.

    Looking back on the thousands of words I’ve written, I sort of see this pattern: for a novel or short story, what usually what gets me going, and keeps me engaged, is something I’m struggling to understand in my own life.

    For example:

    ~The aftermath of the unexplained death of my father became a short story about the changing relationship of two brothers, as one pulls away from what’s left of his family.

    ~Trying to understand marriage became a novel exploring the lives of a girl traded into white slavery and a man raised in the 1960’s “who did everything right and failed.”

    ~The idea of refuge and the families we make became a novel about the friendships between gay theater kids in college and their circle of friends (‘Fame meets Boogie Nights’.)

    ~Addiction, the allure of escapism, and personal betrayals (both perpetrated and experienced) became a book about a young girl’s search for her birth parents in an alternate reality. (more…)