The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Influence

  • Covers

    Johnny Cash covers NIN. Hurt is the best cover of the last 20 years.
    Johnny Cash covers NIN. Hurt is the best cover of the last 20 years.

    There’s a tradition in rock music of learning your favorite songs note for note and then playing them for money in a bar band. Freebird. Smoke on the Water. Johnny B. Goode. I learned ‘em all. Smoke was the one I liked playing best and these were the tip of the iceberg for me as a bass player learning my instrument. I loved Sting, Geddy Lee, Chris Squire, Paul McCartney and I tried to learn from all of them and more.

    I learned a lot of songs. All the ‘standards’ of rock music. I got pretty good at playing the bass guitar in a number of different styles. I wasn’t on par with any of my heroes, but I was okay. Later, after years of playing I wrote songs and my bands played them. We even played them in popular venues alongside the covers. One band did a whole set of covers at an open mic night, closing with Werewolves of London much to the amusement and consternation of the hipsters in the audience. That was fun but it didn’t win us any fans. Didn’t matter.

    As a writer of prose, that kind of ‘covering’ of someone else’s material is called plagiarism. It’s frowned upon.

    So where do writers get the same kind of training and trials by fire as musicians?

    Fan fiction is a start. And that got me wondering if there were professional ‘covers’ like Rob Zombie doing We’re an American Band or Johnny Cash doing Hurt and making it his own?

    Stephen King covered himself by approaching the same story as himself and as his alter ego, Richard Bachman. (I preferred the Bachman story, by the way.) And retellings of origin stories are commonplace in comic books. Marvel Comics even relaunched their entire universe as Ultimates which spawned their current slate of very, very popular films. Essentially these are ‘covers’. So are remakes of films.

    But the writer of prose doesn’t get to do this. Why? Wouldn’t it be interesting, say, to have an entire collection of short stories where various writers retell selected short stories of Ray Bradbury?

    Probably not. See I think readers are more protective of their prose than any other artist or creator. Well maybe not as protective as the fine art world where those who ‘cover’ a painting are called forgers. Anyway, you see the point?

    It’s impossible for writers of prose to learn in the same way that rock musicians do, except for fan fiction. Maybe. Can you think of a popular example in fan fiction?

    How about Fifty Shades of Grey? Fan fiction cover. Completely.

    There’s no begrudging here, there’s no sour grapes over any of this. I’m asking questions, looking for answers. I’m talking about the differences between the arts. Comedians are allowed impressions, actors channel other actors who’ve played the role before but writers aren’t supposed to cover stories that have inspired them. At least not in public.

    Is that fair?

    No, it isn’t. But that’s part of what makes writing so much fun, the challenges that we have to overcome to tell the story we want to tell.

  • Can’t Let Go

    Not letting these stand in my way because I can't let go of my desire to tell stories.
    Not letting these stand in my way because I can’t let go of my desire to tell stories.

    Been awhile since I’ve been here in any regular capacity. It seems, as I expected, that the Cafe has survived quite nicely and even thrived in my absence. For those who don’t know, here’s the short version: I got sick, really sick, and had to take some time to get healthy before I could think straight about what I needed to do to be a writer. Let me tell you up front that coming close to dying can truly change one’s mindset. Anyway, I’m a lot better and the outlook is good.

    All right, enough about that. It’s old news at this point for anyone who knows me and tedious going for everyone else who doesn’t really care. I mentioned it to give some context to why I think about certain things and how they may’ve changed.

    Now [rubs hands together], let’s get back to it, shall we? (more…)

  • Dreams: The Free-loading Bitches Who Won’t Help Me Write

    For whatever reason, my dreams refuse to be helpful.

    I know there are some authors who claim they get brilliant ideas from dreams. I don’t necessarily hate those people, but I haven’t met them in person either, so I’m not prepared to say we’d be friends.

    I’ve also read at least one article that recommended sleeping as a way to work through your plotting problems. The idea was that you should think about your story, specifically focusing on those areas that were causing you trouble, as you were lying in bed at night. Presumably, you’d eventually fall asleep (after you finally got over the agony of being stuck on a scene that clearly just wanted to be an asshole), and your brain would continue to search for solutions while your body got the rest it needed.

    Then, at some point, either by dream or some early morning/late night revelation, you’d experience a breakthrough. You would have the answers you so desperately needed, and you and your story would live happily ever after, or at least experience some mild feelings of contentment until the next time it decided to dig in its heels and act like a fuckhead.

    That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To be able to lay your head down on the pillow and then wake up in the morning with fresh ideas and a clear outline of your plot. It would be like some awesome version of the tooth fairy. One whose visit didn’t require a painful, bloody sacrifice followed by the inevitable letdown when you realize her cheap ass is on a one-quarter-per-tooth kind of budget.

    I’d love to be wired that way. But I’m not. My dreams are lazy, free-loading bitches who contribute almost nothing to my fiction.

    (more…)

  • Awakening Without a Dream

    Dreams slip from my mind upon waking like dry sand through my fingers, leaving only the memory that they had been there. I wake with the memory that my sleep was filled with fascinating dreams but I have never been able to recall the details. Any attempts I make only succeed to chase them further from my mind. To this date, I can only vividly recall two dreams and both of them nightmares from my childhood. Dreams that left me screaming as I woke, too terrified to sleep.

    I have woken knowing I have dreamed that dream before. Yet still I have no recollection of what the dream itself was. My mind lives a dual life in my sleep, one that I will never recall.

    I’m slowly learning to accept this, though I find that I frequently will attempt to force myself back into sleep in hopes of continuing the dream I was having. Because even though I do not know what it was that I dreamed, I remember that I enjoyed it. That I wanted to experience it again. Perhaps I live in hopes that if I manage to complete the dream, that will be the one that I remember upon waking. (more…)

  • Close Your Eyes and Tell a Story

    You get into a car with a stranger. Maybe she’s offered you a ride on a rainy day. Maybe you just make stupid life choices, who knows. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that during the ride you realize that you have no idea where the driver is taking you — and the doors have been sealed. You cannot get off this ride. You have no control.

    We are all in the car with a serial killer, and she’s going to kill each and every one of us. Welcome to life.

    So, that sucks. The good news is, we have these crazy brains that allow us to do creative and beautiful things. We create art. We invent new sexual positions. We make up a sort of magic known as language. We tell stories about the dark, about the journey, because the story is a linear. The story makes sense. It’s a pretty reprieve from a life that doesn’t.

    I don’t think the escapism and hope and control we, as humans, derive from storytelling is a bad thing. In fact, I think its remarkable. Its soothing to slip into a book and become the princess or the warrior for a while. Or maybe to become the monster; we are all dark and vicious animals on the inside, after all, with enough socialization to hide it.

    There are more benefits to the story, of course. We tell tales of “what if,” both good and bad. A great story can change thousands of minds. We influence strangers; we exert power over them with nothing but words. Have you ever written something that made a person cry? Let’s face it — you loved it. I sure as hell did.

    We explore our dreams and fears. We discover little bits of ourselves in both the reading and the writing. We empathize with the characters as people, so deeply and intensely that sometimes we create whole fandoms to cling to them, to keep them when the story is over and we’re left alone again.

    We close our eyes so we don’t see the countryside slip by. We whisper stories as our prayers, and we hope that maybe its a long way to the killer’s destination.

  • Getting Away

    tumblr_m6o8rdALXy1qhwhflI like to be entertained by stories. I want to be taken away to a place I’ve never been or to see place I’m familiar with in a new way.

    That’s not asking too much, is it?

    Now, don’t get me wrong – we need all kinds of stories. We learn from them, we are informed by them, hopefully we take them to heart and not too seriously. Except when we should. It’s complicated.

    But it shouldn’t be. We should be able to discern which stories are entertainment and which are informative. The blurred lines of our society right now make that sometimes very, very difficult.  (more…)

  • It’s All About Storytelling (Again)

    Humans are a storytelling species. Stories are how we make sense of the world. Stories turn raw data into intelligence. We cannot make decisions without telling ourselves what stories we would like to make true.

    My federal counterparts hire contractors to do the information collection and repackaging work that I do for the state. On occasion we share information on points of mutual interest, and I’ve seen some of these contractor-generated reports. And I gotta say, I’m much better at it than the feds are.

    Why? Because I never forget that I’m telling a story [0].

    I have a template that I follow which uses your basic inverted pyramid structure. We begin with generalities: what is the issue and why do we care about it? I’ll introduce the stakeholders and run through the issue history from a couple of different angles, and the deeper I get into the document, my descriptions get more specific. I wrap up with conclusions and recommendations. Pretty basic, right? By the end you know the story– what is the problem, how did it get there, who is to blame, and where do we go from here. You probably learned this in English class.

    On the federal level, though, it’s all about getting paid, and they’re not ashamed of it. The first page of the document usually describes the contract, and every section thereafter is in contract order [1]. The document is specifically designed so that you can lay it on the table side-by-side with the contract and check off that every contractual obligation has been satisfied, in order. Good job, well done, you’ll have a check in 30 days.

    The contractors work hard. They use the same resources I do, mostly, and collect the same data. They are without a doubt dedicated and passionate about their work. But the structure of the contract precludes their ability to tell the story, and they write a report as a series of unconnected collections of data. They never even see the story, which means they can’t identify and fill plot holes, they never ask, “What if?” and they end up missing out on critical insights and promising lines of inquiry.

    I feel sorry for the federal project managers who have to read the reports and try to make decisions based on them. All the information is there, but the serious skull work of making sense of it all is yet to be done. One of the reasons I am careful to tell stories is because I know my bosses are busy people. They don’t have the time or the attention span to do a lot of synthesis. I have to lay it out in plain language, and the best way I know to do that is to tell a story.

    [0] It’s a factual story, and every point in it has to be backed up in reality somewhere, which often means a six-page memo has 200 pages of attachments.
    [1] Which would be fine if whoever wrote the contract knew how to structure a story. But they don’t.

  • We Will Always Need Cautionary Tales

    Lighthouse
    Like a lighthouse, stories can guide us through some dark places and help us avoid dangers we would not see.

    After Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 — his dystopian novel of a world where books are burned — he reportedly told interviewers “I wasn’t trying to tell the future, I was trying to prevent it.”

    Fahrenheit 451 is a cautionary tale, like so many of my favorite stories. If you think about it, some of the best stories are those that warn us of some great danger — real or imagined.

    • Ancient literature — From dealing with the devil to receiving wishes from a djinn, we are advised to be careful when dealing with supernatural creatures. The outcome is often not what we want, and it may cost us our souls.
    • History — We know to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, because — as the people of Troy found out only too well — a gift from an enemy can be a trap.
    • Fairy tales — The stories of “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Hansel and Gretel,” tell children to stay out of the woods because they are filled with dangerous animals and dark-hearted crones.
    • Science fiction — Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein warns of the hubris of human scientific advancement. As does the more recent Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  Just because we can do something, does that mean we should?

    (more…)

  • There Are No Stories Here

    The world doesn’t need stories. Stories are purely entertainment, a way to fritter away time better No_booksspent being constructive.

    Think of the money we would all save without stories.

    Books, of course—that’s the obvious one. We could get rid of all the bookcases around our house, as well as the expensive e-readers.

    I know a lot of people have cancelled cable, but they still watch television shows through other avenues. Without stories, not only would we save on Netflix/Hulu/other sources of streaming content, we’d also save on the television itself. (more…)

  • Escaping Reality

    Every person has their own reason for picking up a book. Sometimes it is because a teacher has given them an assignment, other times it is because they need to escape to a fantasy world, and sometimes it is simply for the sheer delight of reading. The world needs stories. It needs people to come up with these tales and twist the words into phrases that will tease the imaginations of their audiences.

    For me, reading has always been an escape. It is a chance to immerse myself into the life of another person. I cry with them. I laugh with them. For the duration of the book, and usually hours after as well, my life revolves around theirs. I can set aside everything that troubles me in my life and live the life of another person and, when the book ends, I walk away with a new friend. A friend I know is always waiting for me whenever I need to escape from the stress of the real world. (more…)