A Word's Worth
All Things Fiction — books and manuscripts, movies and screenplays, and moreAutumn
This photo was taken about a month ago, just as the leaves were at their best color. The tree is in a park near where I work, and I was chaperoning a bunch of teenage girls out for a day of fun and general silliness. I let them wander the park in a giggling herd while I took a few minutes to practice a little photography. (I put the amateur in ‘amateur photography’.)
The NaNoWriMo novel is progressing, but in weird tangential scenes, which I hope I can prod into a cohesive whole. My manuscript looks like creativity run amok.
M.I.A.
It’s National Novel Writing Month, and — as far as the rest of my life is concerned — I’m effectively missing in action. 
And, ironically enough, I’m writing much more than “a word’s worth”; my count is closing in on 22,000 words, about half of which are utter drivel, but that’s beside the point.
When December comes, I’ll put aside the manuscript — or the fire-starter, for which it may be better suited — and let my brain settle down for a while before attempting any edits.
A mere 28,500 words from now, I might actually have the bones of a decent story.
Gran Torino, Finally
I am typically behind the times, and only just this weekend watched Gran 
Torino. It is a deceptively simple story, its depths buried under a growling voice and layers of foul language. For all of those who’ve read all the reviews and watched the movie more than once, I’ll probably have nothing new to say — as soon as I’ve pondered the story enough to form some solid thoughts.
More later.
——————————
Okay, it’s later. Two weeks later, but what’s the rush? I still don’t have much to say.
I do like the fact that the main character spoke his mind, but maybe because — most of the time — I find curmudgeons amusing. They seem to have no problem blurting out exactly what they’re thinking about everything and everyone else, but they are often least comfortable with someone doing the same back to them. When someone does call them on their crap, they’ll either banish that person or respect him.
In Gran Torino, the crotchety old man eventually comes to respect, and grudgingly like, his neighbors — and they do the same toward him. Everyone still has their prejudices, to some extent, but they stop seeing each other as annoying Asians or grumpy white guy, and start acknowledging humanity and kindness.
As in the movie Crash, another one so full of vulgarities that they (for me) mar a great story, the prejudices do not all belong to the person with the palest skin. The grandmother sits on her porch and watches the white guy next door, and tells him in her own language that he just needs to leave. No one wants him here.
A solid human story.
For Want of a Vowel
Remember this?
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Well, for want of an “i” and the proper spacing between letters on a marquee sign, a heartfelt call for prayer in the face of illness has become an unexpected source of humor in my small town.
The sign should read thus: “Please pray for Michael ______. He has aplastic anemia.”
In reality?
“Please pray for Michael ______. He has a plastic anema.”
Anema, enema — and it doesn’t help that the sign is right in front of an auto parts store.
Poor Michael.
And that, my friends, is why one should always proofread one’s work.
—————
Reminds me of the scene in The Mask when the main character shows up at the garage where the mechanics cheated him. He stands in the doorway, an exhaust pipe in each hand: “Hold on to your lug nuts. It’s time for an overhaul!”
You can imagine the rest.
The “F” Word: Flashback
Flashback.
Say that word to some of the writing persuasion — or the editing persuasion — and they’ll form a cross with their fingers, toss salt over their shoulders, or perform some other ritual to ward off the evil eye.
Flashbacks, like prologues, have become anathema. I have yet to figure out why.
Yeah, there are times when neither device belongs in a story, but then there are times when adverbs don’t belong, or particular adjectives, or four characters whose names all begin with the letter K. To say that a particular element never belongs in a story is the literary equivalent of bigotry. There’s room for every device in the literary realm; just not room for every device in every story.
And some of the hardliners need to move over and make a little room for common sense, and a little room for artistry and talent.
Let me explain. Lazy or amateur writers lean too much on adverbs or adjectives when action and dialogue — or just plain writing — will be more powerful. However, in a manuscript where adverbs are as rare as roses in Montana in January, the use of an adverb may be just the trick. In a story full of short, punchy sentences, a long and fluid sentence may be exactly what’s required to move the reader from constant action into a character’s dreamlike state; too many flowery sentences, though, can produce a dreamlike state in the reader. Not necessarily a good thing.
If a story starts too early, readers can slog through so much back story that they stop reading. On the other hand, if the story starts too late, readers can be lost — or the writer may resort to constant flashbacks, yanking the readers back to where the story’s really happening. Again, not a good thing.
According to an article by Joseph Hansen in the November 2009 issue of The Writer, “The 10 most common story problems” (originally published in October 1976),
Flashbacks can be useful. But they do jerk the reader’s attention from one time and place to another. If this happens too often it is tiring.
Agreed. So far, so good.
Stay with the present…(D)etail can tell as much about (your character) as half a dozen flashbacks.
Still agreed.
And details are of the here and now, whereas flashbacks are of the past and never have the impact of things present.
Uh. Nope. Not necessarily so.
Do our characters not have pasts? Exes? Old jobs? Regrets? Memories? Photograph albums that commemorate family outings or significant events?
A brief remembrance, a prolonged wander down Memory Lane, or a flashback — wherein the reader is transported to another time and/or place, and told a portion of the story that occurred before the story’s “present” — may absolutely have power, so much so that knowing that piece of “history” will affect the reader’s emotional investment in the story’s outcome.
A few literary examples include Wuthering Heights, The Bridge of San Luis Ray, some of the tales from Arabian Nights, and myriad more novels and short stories that employ flashbacks with great effect.
So, to continue with Mr. Hansen’s commentary:
If your story has more than one or two flashbacks, you may be telling the wrong story. What is in those flashbacks may be what is really on your mind. If so, write that story instead, and if not, cut the flashbacks.
Well, I guess I oughta cut him some slack. This article was written over twenty years ago, long before such movies as Memento or The Machinist were made — both of which rely solidly on what happened in the past — or the twisty and addictive strangeness of Lost, FlashForward, or Stargate Universe arrived on our television screens. None of these rely on linear storytelling. And, frankly, I’d be bored if they did.
In your high school or college literature class, you may have been taught to ease your audience into the flashback — don’t make any rapid cuts, or you might lose them. Well, I gotta tell ya, be too easy, and you still might lose them. I prefer a nice clean jump cut between present and past, and have found that readers can follow that just as well as they can obey a more gentle nudge.
Some folks prefer their stories to move from Point A to Point B, with no zipping off to Point C or elsewhere. That’s fine. Some stories are best told in a straight line. Secrets and surprises can still be woven into them by a skilled writer; those twists will have power, too, being unexpected in otherwise straightforward narratives (no pun intended).
But, properly wielded, flashbacks have their place — and, rather than interrupting a story, they can enhance it, and provide a rich experience for the audience.
Craft and the Editor
I’m a little obsessive sometimes. When I really like a film, I’ll watch it. And watch it. And watch it. That was bad enough back when movies were only available on tape. DVDs with all their extra features just feed the obsession: deleted scenes, making-of featurettes, behind-the-scenes videos, staff interviews, director commentaries, gag reels, and more. It’s no surprise that some of my favorite extras are interviews with editors.
I like to see how a story is put together; why certain scenes were transposed, shortened, deleted, reshot; why dialogue was rewritten; why one angle was exchanged for another. A great editor can take good material and elevate it into something excellent; the director’s vision is refined and reshaped in the editing process.
The same can be said of writing: Once a writer lays down the story in a complete draft, the real craft begins.
Some folks say a writer can’t edit his own work, to which I say, “Balderdash,” as well as a few other pithy words — “lazy”, for instance.
Yes, it can be difficult for a writer to see his own mistakes. His mind fills in the missing words or corrects the transposed letters, or makes a sentence appear to say what it doesn’t really mean. (This, by the way, can lead to unintended humor. “Jeremiah went to the door wearing his pajamas.” Really? What was the door doing in Jeremiah’s pajamas? Perhaps it’s best not to ask.)
There is a small group of trusted readers who help me catch such errors, but that is not their main task. What I most want from them is an opinion on the nature of story itself, and whether or not the characters are real, the dialogue makes sense, the actions are plausible, et cetera. In the interest of making the reading experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible, I provide them with a manuscript that is as error-free as I can make it. Of course, there might be a missing “the” or a “siad” that should be “said”, which the readers are sharp-sighted enough to spot and correct. They know that I have done my best in their behalf: provided them with an interesting tale presented in such a way that they don’t stumble over jumbled verbiage, wonky grammar, or strange punctuation.
Any writer can do the same by educating himself in the basics of his craft — vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, tense, point of view — and by befriending his thesaurus and dictionary. If he is of the notion “Oh, the editor will catch my mistakes,” he’s 1) lazy, 2) arrogant, and 3) probably unpublished. My advice to him would be this: Don’t just be good enough. Be excellent. Take full responsibility for the end result.
One thing I’m hearing more and more from writers is how little they read, but they’re leaving out one of the greatest tools of their trade. Reading a variety of genres and authors is an easy and entertaining way to expand and enhance a writer’s abilities. Often, while studying a thorny issue within a story, I will read a well-written book (a new one, or an old friend), and some piece of dialogue, description, or action will trigger a solution to the problem — even if what I read bears no resemblance to what I write.
By reading excellent works, we can improve our own. Good writing shows us how to structure a sentence, build a paragraph, organize a conversation; thus we can return to our manuscripts and see those places that plod, jerk, or just fall flat. We can see which scenes need to be moved to a different place, or which need to be enhanced, deleted, or rearranged. We can feel the places where the tension deflates, where the conflicts fizzle, where the suspense nosedives. Then, like film editors, we can direct our stories toward excellence.
A writer who sees his own work clearly, without infatuation or arrogance, without believing that his words are sacred, can craft intriguing art.
The Moral of the Story
When I was a youngster in school, the earliest form of story analysis came in a question: “What’s the moral of the story?”
And some of the earliest stories I can recall parsing are Aesop’s Fables, those brief tales with their poignant lessons at the end. Even as a child, I was annoyed by them.
My mom, brother, sister-in-law and best friend each recall hating those parts of literature class when students were called upon to divine what the author was thinking — “What’s he really saying?” — or to somehow twist the text so that it appeared to support a message not actually written in the prose. As much as I enjoyed literature classes, I’ll admit to hating that part, too.
Sometimes, though, certain messages just reach out and slap the audience across the face. I’ll talk more about that later in this post.
It took me a long while to understand the concept of themes, which are sometimes mistaken for morals. A theme is not a lesson, however, but a characteristic, a quality. For example, themes in Romeo and Juliet include not only love but revenge, jealousy, light, and more.
Is there a moral to the story? All sorts of arguments could be made by a variety of critics and analysts, but if Shakespeare intended a moral to this melodrama, it might be found in the Prince’s words near the end of the play:
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish’d.
Personally, the lesson I find in the story is this: Think before you act. A whole lotta heartache and senseless death could have been avoided by a little levelheadedness.
But that’s just me.
In “About choices, a Hart Crane poem, and a dragon”, a post at Jade Smith’s blog, she discusses the idea that any good horror story has a lesson to teach. Such a practice has been in use for millennia: In every religion, and as long as mankind has lived, he has told stories to “scare people straight”, to keep them from straying from the path.
Tales of terror — just as all other types of stories — are also used to put forth political agendas, to play on public hysteria, to present philosophies, to parade propaganda, and whatever else writers might do to get a message out to an audience.
I don’t intend this post to be an in-depth dissertation; but, before I end this monologue, I’d like to discuss some overt “morals” gleaned from recent television viewing.
A new Fox comedy-drama, Glee presented a message on hypocrisy in a recent episode in which the “abstinence club” participated in overtly sexual activity that promoted anything but abstinence, even if the activity itself wasn’t intercourse. I agree, the behavior was at odds with the supposed message, thereby making the participants hypocrites.
But what else was being said?
1) Forget abstinence; it just increases the desire for sex. (Just because I’m prohibited to murder my fellow human beings has not increased my desire to go out and do some killing.)
2) A person of faith is a hypocrite. (The leader of the abstinence group is supposed to be a Christian. In the pilot episode, she’s shown on the couch with her boyfriend. When matters get — ahem — hot, she coyly pulls back and says, “Let’s pray.” There’s nothing spiritual about it.)
Whether or not the viewers agree with the message, it’s present in the story. If it continues to show up in the series, it becomes not only a “moral” (if one may call it that), but a theme.
Masterpiece Mystery on PBS is currently running a series featuring the character of Inspector Lewis. In the episode entitled Life Born of Fire, the viewer is presented with a sermon of sorts: All love is good.
Sounds fine, unless one happens to disagree with the homosexual agenda that is presented. There is a distinct odor of indoctrination in the storyline, and the “moral” is hammered home by repetitions of the theme/sermon, and by the biased presentation of people of faith who disagree with the homosexual lifestyle. They are portrayed as villains, hypocrites, evil, homophobic — which, by the way, is an overused and misused word concerning an irrational fear of homosexuals or homosexuality. I have yet to meet anyone who suffers from this condition.
And the final example, the one that actually spurred this post, is the last episode of an early 1990s television series that still has a cult following: “Twin Peaks”. I never watched the show when it was on the air, but have since caught up with it online (all but episode 18, which is not available for viewing, as of this date). It’s a funny and intelligent series — and it has its share of strange — and an overarching theme is the struggle between good and evil. Human frailty is also a strong thread throughout the story.
In the series finale, straight-arrow FBI agent, Dale Cooper, goes through a surreal experience culminating with a horrific scenario: The woman he loves will be allowed to live if he will surrender his soul to the evil entity behind the murders in Twin Peaks. He agrees. When the episode ends, the viewer knows that Cooper is gone, his body inhabited by ultimate evil.
Some viewers have said it’s the best episode, some have called it bizarre (it is) or the perfect ending for the show, and others consider it a romantic episode, because it presents the greatest sacrifice anyone could do for love.
I’m not sure what the “moral” might be — Evil wins? — but I have to disagree with the romance angle. Yeah, the Bible says that there’s no greater love than that of a man who lays down his life for his friends, but this isn’t that.
In order to ensure the woman he loves may live, Cooper agrees to become possessed by an evil that just may end up killing her anyway. He puts his trust in an untrustworthy being. He gives up control, allowing himself to become a puppet to an evil no human can conquer. It is an arrogant and foolish trade, and is no proof of love.
But, once again, that’s just me.
Ghosts?
My oldest friend writes dark fantasy (otherwise known as horror or ghost stories), I read slush for a horror magazine and am attempting a ghost story of my own, and my boss’s wife is a fan of the SyFy series “Ghost Hunters“.
I’m a skeptic. As research for my own story, and to gain a little understanding for the rabid fandom of my boss’s wife, I watched a few episodes of GH and GHI. I remain a skeptic.
For the most part, there appear to be manufactured chills, sounds and sights I couldn’t discern, much less interpret as anything beyond the ordinary. On the other hand, among the episodes I viewed, there are, at most, two incidents that didn’t seem to have any other explanation but the actions of outside entities: an obvious human form walking in front of a camera where no living human presence could be seen, and a flashlight being turned on three times without apparent human intervention, with an accompanying chuckle.
Every other time there was supposed to be a clearly human voice, I only heard garbled sounds; any translation of words felt a lot like reaching. If 1) ghosts exist, and 2) they want to communicate, why go through all this trouble? Why not just say what needs saying, outright and clear?
There are parallels between these feeble communications and the way fortunetellers (ahem, psychics) are vague, oblique, and unnecessarily riddling in their profession. The true believer takes the merest outline of communication and fills in the blanks with his own memories, desires, beliefs.
Perhaps my own beliefs make me a skeptic. Though the notion of ghosts is intriguing — even a few ardent atheists I’ve known have been open to their existence — I cannot reconcile the proffered “proof” with what Scripture says about the soul, God, the afterlife, and evil.
Off topic: What’s with SyFy? It’s silly. I much prefer the original name, SciFi.
Blackberries
This isn’t fiction, but an essay I wrote a few years ago for a contest. It wasn’t quite what the judges wanted, but I knew that going in, and I sent it anyway; can’t quite say why, because I don’t know the answer. However, I’ve considered using the essay as source material for a short story:
I remember the plump sound of blackberries hitting the bottom of a metal pail, and the purple-black stains they bled onto my fingers. I ate as many as I put in the bucket, and likely more. Although I feared the bees that nested amid so much sweetness, I bore more scars from thorns than from stings, for nothing kept me from hunting the treasures on those broad-leafed vines.
Yet, as I grew from adventurous child to uncertain adult, life yielded less fruit until its vines were bare even of leaves. I continued to search, but the day came when — like the caged bird whose bloody wings can bear the pain of hope no longer — I turned from the briars, hung my empty pail upon a peg, and commanded myself to grow up; to accept there are no magic kingdoms in this world; to realize control is an illusion; to see that love is a deed, not a word; to know happiness is a snowflake, not a diamond. I must weep no more.
Where once I wore thin sundresses in which to gather berries, I now wore armor that grew thicker with each stinging encounter. Even my soul was encased in iron.
The brambles behind me withered, yet their brown thorns seemed honed in death, clawing at Memory, for it could wear no skin tough enough to fend off the sudden ambushes of the past.
Then, longing for days of excitement and wonder, I wept. Armor rusted and fell away. Tributaries of hurt, anger, fear and loss fed the torrent, becoming a river of release flowing out to flood fallow ground and dormant dreams. Green appeared, and hope returned. New vines grew from tangled thorns, for now sun reached golden fingers toward the seeds, revealing an ancient truth that is new only to youth and folly: “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Taking the old metal pail from its peg, I went down to the blackberry patch, and there I met life and reached deep into its heart to pluck from it the fruit that grows there, sweet despite the thorns.
c. 2006, EE
photo courtesy of EduPic Graphical Resource
A Look at Point of View
As I am still trying to come up with sage and timely words, I’ve borrowed a few (with permission, of course) from Keanan Brand’s blog, Adventures in Fiction:
The following paragraphs are notes taken from my presentation for a writing seminar. It’s an alternate take on my previous attempts to explain the nature of third-person limited POV.
Have you ever played a video game? Often, except for an initial menu inside the game, the artwork on the box, or an avatar in the corner of the screen, a player doesn’t know what his character looks like. He is looking out on the created world through his character’s eyes, and sees and experiences the game from inside that “body”.
He doesn’t know what the other characters in the game are thinking, or how they will react. He turns a corner, and doesn’t know what he’ll find or what he’ll do. He has to wait until he gets there.
That’s part of the fun for the player. That’s the challenge. He unravels the mystery right along with his character.
He doesn’t know what isn’t necessary for him to know. The game isn’t bogged down with a bunch of other characters’ points of view, and the main character learns what those others think or know only if they tell him somehow (maps, books, letters, conversations, clues, et cetera).
However, as we’ve discussed in the past, there’s merit to stepping into a supporting character’s POV. If that’s what you do, indicate a scene change on the page, and then follow only that character through the scene.
I’ve recently been re-reading a trilogy of YA fantasy novels known collectively as The Hollow Kingdom, written by Clare B. Dunkle. She employs mostly a third-person limited POV, but slips into omniscient on occasion, something I would usually find annoying enough to cause me to close the book and look for other reading material — and yet the POV switches work. Sometimes, if one breaks the rules well, the end result can be a satisfying reading experience.
I still prefer a stricter form — limited third-person, or first-person POV — but that preference doesn’t negate the fact that, as a child, I read and re-read classics in which point of view was all over the place. Earlier this year, I dove back into The Count of Monte Cristo, and was surprised at how many heads Dumas jumped inside in the space of any given scene.
It’s still a favorite book.
I wouldn’t be inclined to read a modern work that did the same with such abandon; perhaps because writers should “know better” in this era, or because I have simply lost my patience for it.
However, being both a stickler for the rules and a blithe breaker of them, I can appreciate rule breakage done well, and recommend Dunkle’s books to teens and adults who enjoy a fresh take on goblins, elves, dwarves, and other creatures.
