The Confabulator Cafe

Author: jarnett

  • ‘Edit’ Is a Four-Letter Word (week of 2 April 2012)

    Have you ever encountered someone who said that writing a novel is easy?

    Settle down, we know it’s not. We’ve been through the process as recently as November, which is – as you know – National Novel Writing Month. We call it NaNoWriMo and those of us that have taken on the challenge are known as WriMos.

    Ask any of us here in the Cafe on any given day what’s harder than writing the novel or even coming up with an idea that should be fleshed out and researched and you’ll get one answer: editing.

    Hands down the most difficult, though for some enjoyable, process is going through your creation and hacking away at it. Cringing at the bits that seemed to make sense when you were writing really late that night and buzzing on coffee and energy drinks is the least of what happens. Hair is torn out, teeth are gnashed and foreheads slapped. Despair settles easily around a writer’s shoulders when it looks like the story isn’t salvageable.

    All is not lost, however. This week is where the Confabulators share how we edit; what our goals are, what our particular process is and just how do we decide to make the cuts. It’s a little peek into the restless minds of writers trying to make their stories better.

    So come back all week long to see if we do things the same ways or what the variations might be. At the very least it ought to be entertaining as we detail how to ‘murder our darlings’.

  • Lyla (Flash Fiction)

    Click here to see the photo that inspired this story. The owner disabled sharing. It’s worth going to look at, folks.

    Lyla was always the first one to get cold. She wouldn’t run the ceiling fan if the air conditioner was on. She would give in come July and August when temperatures outside peaked in the high 90s or 100s and just put on a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans so I could be comfortable. Lyla never broke a sweat.

    We never went to the lake with our friends, either, because she didn’t want to swim. She would tell me that without clothes, meaning wearing a swimsuit, she would be too cold and she wouldn’t enjoy herself.

    “What do you mean? How could you be cold with it almost a hundred degrees out there and the sun right on your skin?”

    “You don’t understand.”

    “You’re right,” I said, raising my voice. “I don’t. Help me understand. Are you ashamed of something?”

    That started an argument.

    Our fights were epic: near-hysterics, shouted words, slapped faces (mine, anyway; I never hit her), thrown glasses shattered on the kitchen tiles, slammed doors and tires squealed in anger down the driveway. Sooner or later Lyla would text me and tell me to come home. I refused only once in the seven years we’d been together. I was so angry that I stayed at a hotel overnight and the next morning there were forty texts and a dozen voicemails begging me to come home.

    The house was 85 degrees when I got there.

    Lyla was wrapped in a comforter, shivering. I thought it was because she was cold.

    “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she said. “I was afraid I’d lost you forever.”

    I put my arms around her, over the comforter and I made soothing noises. It took a while, but she finally let me under the comforter with her and I held her a long, long time while she cried. I sweated like a pig, but she didn’t mind.

    I didn’t understand anything about why she was cold.

    Neither did her doctors.

    It was explained that her core temperature was a hundred and two point nine, four plus degrees hotter than the rest of the human population. “But she’s not feverish,” the doctor would say. “I don’t know why. Her hypothalamus is functioning normally and her blood pressure is fine. Everything is fine.” He would scratch the back of his head or adjust his tie or lean back in his chair, then exhale a long time. “I can’t explain it. For all of me, it looks like you just run hotter than everyone else.”

    Which is why she had a passionate hatred of winter, especially ice and snow. “Why can’t we move to a nice tropical island?”

    I was pulling up the knot on my tie and checking it in the mirror.

    “Because my business doesn’t have an office in Barbados, dear.”

    “Couldn’t you telecommute? How hard is it to be a mid-level government functionary from an island?”

    I shook my head and closed my eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d diminished my work. “I’m not a government functionary,” I said. “I’m a recruiter. I develop talent. You know that.”

    “Well, they could fly the talent to you,” Lyla said. “I mean, couldn’t they?”

    She was serious. I went to her and rubbed my hands slowly up her arms. She was beautiful. The gown was perfect for her figure and she had a faux mink stole to wrap herself in. The white rose in her hair was a perfect accent to the silvery dress. She looked like a movie star on the red carpet. “My darling,” I said in my best Cary Grant voice, “I know you hate these things. I have to be there. My bosses and my team are expecting me and it’s important. It’s important you come, too.”

    Lyla acquiesced with a small nod, defeated.

    The party was a subdued affair with everyone in their best suits and spectacular gowns. The liquor flowed and the food was delicious. The government knows how to throw a Christmas party. Lyla met everyone she was supposed to, was gracious in the face of compliments and hung on my arm all evening. The hotel had rooms for those too drunk to drive. Lyla insisted we go home. I was tipsy but I could drive. “Take the long way,” she said. “Do you mind?”

    I didn’t. The bypass would drop us off on the far west side of town and we could take a country road or two and come back in on the south side. I’d be less likely to run into a saturation checkpoint that way, too.

    The sound of gravel bashing the pans and axles was kind of calming and the low hum of the tires on loose rock was something we both liked. Lyla took my hand and her smile was soothing, too. She had that look that said we were going to have sex when we got home and I squeezed her hand and brought it up to kiss it.

    All I remember is the whitest light I’ve ever seen. There was no sound, no flash. It was just white light and heat and then darkness.

    I came to in the ditch. The car was still on the road, its lights on and the radio playing but the engine was off. I called out for Lyla. No answer. An hour later, I finally gave up and called 911. All I ever found was the white rose that had been in her hair.

    It’s been a year. The police and the psych people agree that I had some kind of outre experience but they won’t say UFOs out loud or anything like that. I’ve finally been cleared to work and everyone’s offered their sympathies.

    I wish I knew what happened. I wish I knew where Lyla went or if she’s coming back.

    The rose sits in a vase on my desk at home, perfect as the night she wore it. It still smells like her.

  • Interwoven

    You can just look at the picture to see what I was trying to say. Click on the picture for another point of view.

    Whisky and water. Water into wine. Wine and song. Song and Dance. One thing follows another, all interconnected.

    Okay, that was a bit of a stretch but I think it works well enough. At least enough to illustrate a point. Character and plot are interconnected, one feeds the other and vice versa.

    I’m aware that one can tell a story without developing characters to the point where they are actual people. I’m also aware that writers can conceive ‘character studies’ that are not really stories, but more like scenes and vignettes. I don’t write that way. I’m not sure that I can write that way. Either way. I prefer stories about people doing things for a reason. I like motivations into actions and reactions that muddle things up a bit more when it’s necessary.

    I tend to focus more on character and hope that informs the plot than the other way ‘round. That’s not to say that I don’t come up with a plot before I develop characters, but once I’ve got the characters outlined, I start putting them through their paces.

    This goes back a little bit to how I develop my characters, I suppose, but I don’t want to get into all that again. (Click this link if you’re interested.) Rather, let’s take the opportunity to debate a little which is more important: plot or character?

    Pretty sure I’ve already told you what I think about that up above, but for clarity’s sake I’ll be blunt: a good story has both and that’s all there is to it. I don’t think a good writer will sacrifice one for the other because as a reader that’s boring. A ‘story’ that’s all character doesn’t move me. Oh, the characters themselves may be interesting but if there’s no story to go with them, what’s the point?

    Conversely, a story without any characters is unusual and painstaking to write and difficult to read.

    There’s a chemistry between the people – whether fictional or not – involved in how things happen one after another. One person is responsible for the bad things, one for the good things and several are somewhere in the middle. Where they are and what they’re doing there are the essential bits, the things that readers remember. Characters are made memorable by the things they do in reaction what other characters are doing.

    So it’s important to me that both work together and work together well. Characters who surprise me are engaged in the plot, advancing the story with their actions which are dictated by their makeup. Which is dictated by me, who supposedly knows the plot and that makes me the god of the story.

    That must be the whiskey taking over. Next thing you know I’ll be dancing and that’s something none of you want to see.

     

  • Out of the Box

    I’ve never been one to go with what’s necessarily popular or even mainstream. I like my entertainments to challenge me a little bit, to be outside my comfort zone.

    Monsters and mutants! How can you go wrong with that? Art by John Byrne. Copyright owned by Marvel.

    That’s weird, I think. At least it’s weird to the thinking of the rest of the world.

    Well, that and the fact that I want to be a full-time writer sooner or later.

    (more…)

  • Bronzing the Imagination

    THE iconic image of Doc painted by James Bama

    Okay, I’m going to say what all the other Confabulators have either hinted at in emails to me or allowed to go unsaid on their blogs: this week’s topic was frustratingly hard to write. That is, until I understood the question (link to This Week’s topic blog post).

    It doesn’t take much to put a vision of a character in a person’s head: The boy with the lightning-shaped scar. The bronze man with the gold-flecked eyes. The masked man on the white horse.

    That’s Doc over there on the right in the picture but maybe you missed the Lone Ranger reference. With a certain group of fans you don’t have to say much more than that about some of the more iconic characters. The same would be true with the Harry Potter fans, I’m sure.

    For instance with Doc Savage, his physical features are so amazing that they only bear mentioning once each time in the original supersagas. He’s very tall, very handsome and he has some interesting habits. One of the more famous ones is how he unconsciously makes a trilling sound when he’s working on a problem. He has a vest with a lot of pockets that he almost always wears and it’s when he’s dressed as a ‘normal’ person that his clothing is gone into with any detail. However, it’s when he’s in a room with others that his physical features are shown rather than described. People ‘look up’ to him, they ‘move around’ him, they are in awe of the force of his personality.

    (more…)

  • All That Surrounds Me

    All sorts of things have triggered something in my head and gotten the idea rolling, then the idea takes hold and I go along and start working it out as I mentioned here. But what kinds of things trigger that moment of inspiration? I’m glad you asked because I was going to if you didn’t. Wait a second…

    Tune in next week for more X! Minus! One!

    Anyway, I’m a huge fan of Old Time Radio. Especially the fantasy/horror shows like The Shadow, Lights Out, Suspense, Inner Sanctum and the list goes on and on. Science fiction shows like X-Minus One are in regular rotation on the iPod. You can find tons of these shows on the Internet Archive site. But the reason these things affect me so much is that they’re so earnest, so in the moment and flying by the seat of their pants and on a tight schedule. In the case of X-Minus One the stories were direct adaptations of now-classic SF from the pulps that were on the newsstand that month.

    While I’m on the subject, I’m also a big fan of The Bob Edwards Show on satellite radio. I’ve got more ideas written down from listening to that show on a daily basis than almost any other interview-type program I’ve heard or watched. I keep a spiral bound notebook with me during the day and that’s what snatches of ideas and phrases go into. There are probably six or seven novels worth of ideas in there.

    Depeche Mode made an exceptional music video for the single Wrong. It’s a couple of years old now, but it’s a beautiful short story told inside a three and a half-minute song. Go watch it, I’ll wait.

    Now tell me you don’t wonder how that guy ended up in the car. Who did he piss off that badly that he ended up like that? I like to think that the video was a nod to the 2008 film The Dark Knight because this seems like the kind of thing the Joker might do. The other music video that really affected me was Mike + the Mechanics’ Silent Running. Remember it was the 80s and videos were being used rather heavily to promote films. Among my friends we kept wondering what the movie was that the song had come from. It wasn’t any kind of promo, though, it was just taking the art form of the storytelling video in a new direction that would culminate in the DM video 20+ years later.

    Gatewood's Olan Sun

    Visual art has a real effect on me, too. I’m a huge fan of anything that combines words and pictures like comics, even Facebook memes and some abstract paintings from artists like William Gatewood. But then the fantasy paintings of Roger Dean and Frank Frazetta have inspired me to write stories to include the settings or scenes these fine commercial artists had in their heads and translated to canvas in vivid color. Even Russian propaganda posters (here’s a great gallery you can buy from if you like) can bring to mind a story possibility.

    I’ve been to local productions of stage plays that have caused me to start thinking. One in particular, Picasso at the Lapin Agile featuring Einstein (him again!) and Picasso on the very edge of possibly their greatest achievements. How could one not come out of that play inspired to explore the thoughts and ideas that are planted there? Same with Angels in America and so many other plays that are packed with capital ‘I’ Ideas.

    A writer is open to all forms of input, to everything that can spark an idea that will rub up against a thought and become Something Else. The only thing that holds one back from being a capital ‘W’ Writer is not being open to the things that will take him to the stories inside.

  • People Watching

    Found on the web at: http://www.worldsstrangest.com/neatorama/stained-glass-d20/

    We were sitting on the steps leading down to Centennial Park from the parking lot of the old burger joint one night, drinking cheap beer advertised on TV and talking about girls. My friend was older than me, maybe five or six years older, maybe a little more, but he was wise and full of insight to my eighteen year-old self. If I think back, a lot of things my friend told me have stuck. I’ve lost touch with him in the intervening years, but I can hear his voice if I think hard enough.

    I tell you that story to tell you this: there’s no secret to developing characters. Anyone can do it. Some writers run their people through a kind of boot camp by interviewing them and knowing all sorts of details that may or may not be revealed in the course of a story. Others take a more organic approach and allow plot to reveal character through action. In the business we call this ‘pantsing’ for ‘flying by the seat of my pants’.

    I fall somewhere in the middle. I need to know more than just a little bit about my characters in order to write about them and often their actions determine the path of the plot. This happens when I ask the question: “What would (character name) do in this situation?” If the answer isn’t dramatic enough, I change the situation to suit the character. The one thing I need to know is whether the character will zig or zag in a given situation.

    Dictionary.com defines Character as “the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing”. The same site goes on later to define a character as “(of a part or role) representing a personality type, especially by emphasizing distinctive traits, as language, mannerisms, physical makeup, etc.” Some writers – as I said above – need more than others. When we’re talking about aggregate features and traits that represent a personality type, we’re talking about people. That’s not a secret, either, but I think it’s something that’s often forgotten by writers of all stripes.

    There are two sides to “Write What You Know”. First, yes – write what you know about, share your expertise and be passionate about the stories you want to tell. Second, don’t limit yourself – find out what you don’t know and expand your base of knowledge. Then you can more authoritatively “Write What You Know” because you just learned it. When I don’t know characters that I think will be essential to the telling of a story, I have to find out more about personality types. I consult books, watch films, read interviews with real people who I think are like the character I want to create. Sometimes I go places to people watch. Sometimes riding public transportation will inform a character.

    I’ve used all kinds of character sheets as I’ve been learning about writing. Everything from a basic D&D character sheet to Nancy Kress’ character interviews have been helpful in determining all sorts of things I need to know or don’t. I don’t necessarily need to know everything about the characters’ childhoods, but I do need to know things like one important event that occurred in their past. The one thing that they hold on to, that shapes them and drives them to be the person they are. Where and when it happened, how old the person was when it happened, who was involved, how it affected him. Everyone’s got a story that’s painful. If I know that one story about any of my characters, they’re easier to write.

    My day job allows me to interact and observe hundreds of people each day. I roll the dice every time I’m out among them as to which things I will absorb, which traits and features will be filed for later use. A lot of times it’s as simple as getting someone to tell me a story about their day or something that they’re passionate about. A lot of people like to talk. It’s listening that’s the secret.

  • Close Enough for Rock & Roll

    Eastman & Laird
    One little self-published comic book was the beginning of a startling cultural phenomenon.

    I have self-published music, comics and my writing. I am not wealthy as a result of it, but I am better for having made the attempts. These attempts were made with the best of intentions but with little heed for what was actually wrong with each of them. We had no producer for the music and I had no editor for the comics or writing. I thought I knew what was wrong at the time with all of it, and I was right.  But there was more.

    Everyone’s heard the stories of the writer who pens a wildly successful book, the band who’s basement-recorded album hits the top of the charts, the writer and artist whose parody concept spawned a revolution in comics. Amanda Hocking. Collective Soul. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

    These are the exceptions to the rule. These are the inspirations for people like me. (Well not Amanda Hocking in my case, sorry.) These are the cases that cause us to keep at it. If they can do it, so can I.

    I’ve been in a professional recording studio and in ones in the homes of other musicians, always looking to make the best product I could. One band was really successful at it though we didn’t do an actual release of the record. We got two songs played on local radio (one seemed to have a regular rotation for a month or so) and had some very, very good shows. Didn’t make a dime off the record, but hey we had the shows and the beer and nice following locally. I’ve documented my comics ‘career’ elsewhere and don’t need to rehash it other than to say that I got some positive reviews and made some great friends. My writing has also been self-published on my blog and via the wonderful folks over at The Penny Dreadful website.

    Each of these situations, projects – whatever you want to call them – creative efforts, would have greatly benefitted from a producer or editor to tell us what we weren’t able to discern for ourselves: they weren’t good enough.

    Everything that’s independently produced (art, music, writing, whatever) needs to have a professionally-trained, uninvolved set of eyes to give it a lookover. The Beatles had George Martin, early science fiction writers had John W. Campbell, comics have Karen Berger and Axel Alonso. Editors are important, make no mistake. (more…)

  • Architecture Without Thought

    Mountains and blue sky are enough description to tell you where you are, don't you think?

    So it turns out that I’ve never really thought about how I construct a scene. That’s made blogging about what I do to set scenes in my stories very difficult. That doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts that echo what my fellow Confabulators have written about here, it just means that I don’t know exactly how I’ve done it in the past. So let’s examine what I think I do and we’ll see if it’s rubbish or not:

    THE PLAYERS

    Can a scene be written where there are no characters? Sure. I have. Boring. Awful. Pages of description of trees, pictures, buildings and nothing’s happening! Garbage. There needs to be action. Something has to happen. People, animals, machines, robots, anything that can move or can move things must be inserted into the description. So, I have to determine who is in the scene. Do I need to tell you what that person looks like, what race or ethnicity? Or do you only need to know their names and where they came from? Will that tell you enough to get into the story? I try to give you only enough to enjoy the story. If I were drawing, I would be using only enough lines to show the general shape of the characters, allowing the reader to fill in the rest. 

    THE GOAL

    Each scene has to accomplish something, some small change in the lives of the characters that moves them toward the end of the book. Remembering that, like the story, there’s a beginning, middle and end to every scene has been something that I often don’t do. There’s a natural arc to every scene, just like the story the scene is in, has a beginning, middle and end. By the end of the scene, things have to change. I need to know what the goal of the scene is as I begin to write it. This determines the action.

    THE PHYSICAL PLACE

    Something that I learned from making comic books (don’t worry, you can’t find them, they were self-published and really only circulated around town) is that you don’t have to draw the background in each panel. One does, however, have to describe the setting enough for the reader to be able to envision the physical place the players are inhabiting. The room they’re in, the vehicle, the house, the glade in the forest, wherever the characters are has to be described. Details are up to the individual writer to provide and I will give my reader fewer than others, but more than some. 

    THE TIME

    Day or night? Morning, afternoon or evening? April? September? January? 20th century or 14th? Perhaps the 33rd? It’s usual for a story to have a ‘ticking time bomb’ or at least a time element that’s working against the characters. If a main character is a nightowl then dropping her into a scene during full daylight certainly creates tension. These are things I consider.

    THE REASON

    Everything has to move forward. If it’s not moving, there’s not really a story being told. If the writer hasn’t developed a compelling reason for telling the story over the course of the scenes he’s written, he’s not written a good story. So, everything must advance and each scene must move things forward. Even scenes of people talking about what they’re going to do – though sometimes boring – can be essential. As long as the characters are somehow changed at the end of the scene, the story advances.

    So, to sum up here, my thoughts on the subject are indeed rubbish. Perhaps you can mine some nugget from this ramble, perhaps not. It has, however, given me an insight to what my process is and how I can improve it. Once I get there, I’ll let you in on how I did.

  • Setting the Scene (Week of 6 February 2012)

    The Cafe isn’t always well-lit and open. Sometimes it’s dark and foreboding when you’re in here, especially at closing or before we unlock the doors and get everyone in here writing. While the furniture is mostly new, some of it was scavenged or given to us, which allows the Cafe itself to have a patina of age when you walk in. The place is clean (we do a pretty good job sweeping up at the end of the day) and the coffee’s always fresh, but when the place is hopping there’s nothing quite like being in here. The pictures on the walls by our favorite artists, the music in our earbuds to inspire us and the general tenor of the place all contribute to how we do our jobs as writers.

    Setting a scene, using descriptions and telling the readers what we see in our heads is perhaps a greater challenge than just writing a story itself. This is the personal part of storytelling, it seems. Each of us approaches descriptions differently and with good reason: we don’t necessarily share one brain. We’ve all read the theories of ‘get in as late as possible and get out as fast as you can’ and ‘start on the action’ that are common bits of advice for writing scenes and stories. This week the Cafe bloggers share how they do it.

    Pull up a chair. The dark roast is especially good this week: smokey and light-bodied but intense. There’s some half and half if you need it.