Columns for June, 2003
(more
archives here)
| TORTURE ME
June 2, 2003 Today my brother turns 28. Congratulations, Adrian! And now, in his honour, since he got the athletism in the family, here are the Canada Fitness Test results! I called a friend of mine, Lu V (who, as far as I know, they do not call Dr. LuV, maybe they can be persuaded to start), a high school librarian. It appears that Canada Fitness Tests aren't done any more, BUT! oh, I'll let her tell it... "the six official events in the Canada Fitness Test (I found an old
manual in
1) flexed arm hang
for the endurance run, the distance varies with the age .... 200m is
marked
..... there's pictures and everything! Lu" There you have it, folks, the return of fond memories long believed
suppressed, only on The Teddybear Sawdust Show! But we've digressed far,
far away from writing.
And on a lighter note, clowns.
I have been asked for clarification per my Tortured Artist comments, so: What I do not understand is how an artist can require, or claim to require, personal agony (usually psychological) in order to create magic. <sorry if you're bothered by the clowns thing; sometimes I just get surreal, okay? or maybe I was in the mood to quote The Tick cartoon. this is called stream of consciousness and is very clever. Actually it's called Pure Writing, defined by Steve Martin as having no chance of being developed into a screenplay> Speaking of torture, you may be wondering how the story went this weekend. Well, it went the way of the Canada Fitness Test. The first thousand words were a snap. I liked them, and they would be entertaining to a genre fan, although certainly nothing ground-breaking. I can write that sort of thing in my sleep, often have, actually, and so it went well. And then I had to get down to the meat of the story. And pfft. Much (lots o') procrastination (and thinking, there was some thinking) later, I finally had an answer to the question How can this thing be cared about by anyone. Alas, the time remaining was not up to the task of permitting me to finish. So though the bad news is an incomplete story, the good news is an eventual story I'm going to be more proud of. Which you should have next week. QUESTION:
Okay another question: I needed names in a hurry for Baker's 12, and was not above a joke, so some of the names have a silly common origin. Is this also something best left unrevealed? <honestly, if there's one thing I am not interested in revealing, it's how much of Baker's 12 comes from my spontaneous bursts of surrealism>
This is my favourite part of the show, where I get to thank the fine folks who support The Teddybear Sawdust Show! - like PBS sponsors, really. Jeff L and Pasley P have kindly given their views on how horrible this site has not yet become (and while we're on the subject, archiving starts next week), and they will be keeping me honest. Jeff also wrote in about Canada Fitness (just when you thought that thread was over - hell, just when I thought it was over!), confirming my earlier guess about the other two events, although he thought it was the "100m dash." Incorrect measure, but I'm also pretty sure "dash" is the actual word used. Autumn H, Ceri Y, and Marc L, writers themselves, fellow NaNoWriMo participants and much more, think enough of this journal to link it to theirs. They can be reached at, respectively: Owls' Court - music, literature, pop culture, &c Ceridwen's Cauldron - quilting, the Ceeb, pop culture, &c Marc's Remarks - current events, gaming, pop culture, &c So those are the links you will find at the bottom of this page. Now I'm going to respond to some of my fanmail (instead of thinking up stuff all on my own): In response to my search for plot, Autumn wrote:
For me this really depends. I write Baker's 12 to have fun with it, for example, and because I care about it. I can only hope that my interest in it will be matched in others, but if not I won't change B12. To do this we have to believe that there are certain themes and issues that are common throughout humanity, beliefs and abstracts which unite us, despite what our personal opinion of them might be. Otherwise, what's the point? Right. Sometimes you want to touch someone, sometimes you have to trust that it will happen anyway. You don't necessarily have to have a plot; the internal Event can be a statement, a decision (although I suppose that counts as plot, just not an action-oriented Beginning-Middle-End plot we were taught qualifies as the only real definition) or something like that. Conflict and change are conflict and change, whether they happen on an interstellar scale or inside someone's head, right? Oh, absolutely. The problem with the first version of the story is that it was no story at all, merely history, current status, and the moment the character gets introduced to the premise of the RPG. The current version has the same personal history and internal conflict, but this time steps are taken toward resolution (the RPG angle has been dropped). Here's an example
of a gaming story that worked, I think. Same basic idea:
And now on to Ceri's feedback:
Many people spend all day at the computer. Is it likely these people would then want to spend any further time in front of one once they're safely at home? I think not. For those who fit into this category, I recommend pasting to a wp document and formatting for the all-important legibility/paperminimising ratio, then reading a hard copy in a comfy chair in the den. That said, on Friday I finally sat down (spurred on, in part, by the frequent references to it in your blog) and read Baker's 12. It is very gratifying to know that my shameless self-promotion has resulted in audience. My Gods, man, if this is how you write for an exercise, what's it going to look like when you decide to do some serious writing? This is my problem: ALL of my writing is serious! It may not start that way, but it gets there. Happened to The Serial. Happened to SRS (boy, did it ever). Happened way before that, say early nineties, on a collaborative project, as well. And of course B12 started with some really strict writing guidelines. So I hereby absolve myself of all further exercises. Let's just turn history (and likely future) into policy, shall we? None of my writing is exercise. All of it counts! (Xerox is my personal favourite at the moment) Yeah. My favourite thing about writing a serial, and do not infer any sarcasm here, is how quickly the writer loses control of the story. Xerox is a prime example. He was going to be the stereotypical fat jerk at first, and bit by bit I was going to introduce his depth (such as his reference to the stereotype in an early installment), and so eventually the reader would come to realise what this underestimated guy is really all about. Of course, a few weeks later I wanted to write his scenes in Paris, and I had already worked out so many of his facets, and before I knew it I was presenting them. Eventually became immediately. Hopefully it does not require mentioning that you can not, and should not, as a reader, treat a serial the same way you treat a complete work. (A work that is fully completed before being presented in installments is not a serial.) Difference: NOVEL: "Wow. I was hoping to reveal that much later in the story than it feels like I did. I should move it to a bit later." SERIAL: "Geez. I remember I was going to save that for later. Oh, well, it's published; gotta find something else." It works like this: In a completed work, you can edit everything at once. In a serial, you edit only the one installment at a time (I do NOT go back and rewrite anything an audience has already seen). If you had flu one day while writing your novel, you can tighten that section up when you go back to it. If you were tired one week while writing a serial, in a couple of weeks you may have to contend with that talking gerbil turning out not to be so charming after all. Negative Creativity is a term I devised (let me know if there's already a perfectly good phrase/word for the phenomenon) some time ago, upon observing it in RPGs. When you get an idea that inspires you, and you run with it, but with time and reflection it turns out not to have been a good idea for your story, that's negative creativity. Negative here is in the mathematical sense; writer's block would be zero creativity, but negative creativity causes harm. Serials are a fertile ecosystem in which negative creativity can flourish. At the same time, deadlines and such create a sense of urgency that often leads to inspiration on a level not experienced if you can take your time. One of the writer's favourite experiences is when "the story just takes over, and goes where it wants to go." Serial writing is the closest this comes to literal truth. When's the next installment due? Sorry, no promises, ever. Since I have found that these deadlines create
in me a sense of frustration rather than inspiration, I have given them
up. I am trying to put out one week's worth of B12 every week, while
also trying to make up for the two months I fell behind. I am not willing
to commit to anything more specific than that.
Things take time. Today it was links and formatting a story
I never really thought I would put online. Lots of other things to do,
so I'll be back on Thursday.
We interrupt this projected silence to bring you an important lesson in the importance of precise writing and careful inflection, courtesy of the Ceeb, which today informed us that a Quebec provincial MP: "is going to introduce today legislation decriminalising the possession of small amounts of marijuana in the House Of Commons." Smoke 'em if you got 'em!
Ziggy played guitar... M sent me an email in which this journal was referred to as The Teddybear Stardust Show. Probably deliberate, as it was in reference to the SW story. Not deliberate, alas, was my bungled spellng of one of my links. Corrections made. Thanks to C for pointing it out, apologies to A. Here's the thing: I looked up the spelling of Ceridwen. Wouldn't you?
But who checks the spelling of Owl('s')? Nobody, because I know
how it's spelled! I've never really read Ceridwen (the word), because I've
just said Okay, I know what it looks like so I'll recognise it when
I see it, but I did not do this for a four-letter word. If memory serves,
the topic of fowl plurality was even discussed on that very site. Alas.
On to other things. Nobody has responded to June 2's questions, so I have to come up with stuff on my own, but I did say I would discuss what I'm currently writing. Which is basically Baker's 12 at the moment, due to time constraints. There are other things I want to write of course, like this quickie scene taken from one of today's news items, but for the most part my focus is trying to catch up on B12. There are many other projects, but since I don't know which will receive
the most attention next week, if any, don't expect these to be the next
things you see. (After all, how long was I promising Trapdoor Spider's
Parlour Game? Still in the works.) So, after Baker's 12, in rough order:
To say nothing of TMOTDF. In order to reflect this, and to get hits, I've updated (created) my list of what I write on the what the heck page. Which raises the question How do you classify Baker's 12? Eh. Remember what the word romance used to mean? I think it's one of those. And let me just take this moment to say how much I prefer issuing Baker's 12 in five-installment chunks. Instead of just presenting whatever I feel like writing that day, and dealing with the consequences later, now I can shape things, taking a scene and placing it right where it will do the most good. There is a much better flow, and I'm more capable of looking ahead, which means the plots are tighter and I can start playing around, like I'll be doing with Week 16. Tell me if you don't think it's gotten better since Week 09. I'm hoping it feels much more intense. Out of town for the weekend, catch you on Monday. (With archives!) But before I go, of course, don't forget your weekly dose of Vitamin B12. Here is Week 14. DO YOU NEED THE SERVICE?
I promised I'd be back on Monday, yet here it is already Tuesday, so of course I'm rethinkning the whole "daily updates" part of this journal. It's a time-consuming thing, this Teddybear Sawdust Show, and not only in the writing but also I'm not online very often to publish. However, the updates are still scheduled at more or less daily, for now. <note that this journal now does have, as promised, archives, so
please have a look and tell me how you like the format for its thematic
consistency and surfing simplicity>
Leaving town is wonderful. Wherever you live, I suggest, if you can, leaving the area for a weekend, soon. (And none of this wimpy "staying over at a friend's" business; I'm talking about getting out - minimum two hour's drive, and not at grandpa speeds, either.) It's about perspective. Not rushing, not caring, that sort of thing. What bugs you at home can't touch you when you're not there: Chores, phone calls, schedules. Waiting in a long line? So what? You're in no hurry. Too loud where you are? What's the big deal? Just go somewhere else. As a general rule, nothing that bothers you in ordinary circumstances bothers you when you're not at home to be bothered by it. That's how I define perspective. All of this by way of saying that naturally there was no writing done on the massive list above. Instead I was inspired to work on a different project, one of the dozens my brain has stored away for future reference, and that's what I wrote instead. It's a radio drama. We'll add it to the Awesome Project List as Radio Drama 2.1, along with Radio Drama 1 and Radio Drama 3.1. Decimals indicate that the RD will have sequels, so RD1 is a stand-alone (this often means almost everyone dies). There is also a RD0, a completed script (not mine), waiting giddily to be recorded. And speaking of the Awesome Project List, rather than editing TMOTDF on my own and getting aggravated with it, I have procured myself an editor. Thank you, Editor! This means Chapter One of TMOTDF will be available even sooner, so you should thank Editor, too, because TMOTDF is going to be a blast.
Here's today's all-important question: Is my writing pretentious? Let me back up a bit. I love good debate, good discussion, particularly on subjects which interest me, such as art. For me a great discussion is not one in which my point of view has won the day (often the opposite, actually), but one in which I arrived at a question or a conclusion that opened up a new avenue of thought. So, from a recent discussion: ME: I love Dali. You don't?
I don't have a precise "official" definition of pretentious with me (memo: bring dictionary to Batcave), but this is a word you hear all the time, if you get into artistic discussion, as I do. Often it is used to mean "Dali thinks highly of himself," or "Dali imagines he is a greater thinker than I am," or some variation involving inflated self-image. But doesn't it actually mean that he "pretends" to something? Dali loved to have his photo taken. Why? Because Dali believed in surrealism, believed in it so much that he lived surrealism. Of course he had pictures taken with his wife standing on a mantel while he aimed a pistol at her. Of course he had outlandish moustaches, sometimes with flowers curled into them. To look at Dali, to imagine this man's life, was to imagine a life-long surrealist work in progress. At the first ever surrealist exposition, a photo was taken of the artists (at that time, pretty much every self-identified surrealist out there), about fifteen if memory serves. Fourteen of them are well-dressed, in conservative suits, their hair combed neatly. The guy in the middle, in the 1930s diving costume with the big round metal helmet, that's Dali. Who in that group is the surrealist, and who is pretending? To be an artist it to dare, and to dare this way you must have a degree of self-confidence. Egomania is healthy; remember the lesson of Don Music. So I love Dali because everything he does says PAY ATTENTION! THIS IS BLOODY IMPORTANT! Why paint/write/sculpt something you would not otherwise appreciate? So back to my writing, specifically Baker's 12. It begins with the reader not knowing what is going on, nor even, for that matter, what the premise of the story is, and this was deliberate. I wanted to confuse the reader at first. And then there are many events that jump all over the place, without much indication to the reader of when they happened in relation to one another, or, I should say, when they are happening in relation to one another, because the meanwhile... insertion is a mini-comment on the fluidity of Time, how it may not be as linear as popular opinion would have us think. Some people would call this pretentious:
As far as pretending goes, there's none at all. I love Baker's 12. I love it because I think it's clever, because I think the reader that keeps up will find it more satisfying for all that, and because it lets me play around (eventually) with my pet ideas on Time and -travel. I love B12 because I would love to read B12. Those who don't love B12 may disagree, may find my love for the story out of place, and may therefore conclude that I "suffer" from egomania. They may call me pretentious. If "being pretentious" means I'm passionate about my writing, I can
accept that.
Now this piece, to my mind, is what an RPG story looks like. To sum it up in one word: Defiant. As in, it defies the reader to understand and care about it; if you can't keep up, too bad. No character context. No relationship context. The concept of FREELancers seems important, key to the events even, but if you don't know what it refers to, you're out in the cold. Same with the plot; if you're not familiar with Torrance you might be surprised when you discover what the plot is. Yes, this is what The Special One looked like when I started it. But more on that story when it's done. Conginitive dissonance: As I wrote this I knew it was going online, as an example of something that looks like a story but kinda isn't, so while writing it I had to try to forget that, and also try not to explain things that I wouldn't need to explain to the intended audience. Hah! If you write a story for a group of five people, but you know you're going to be pointing it out to others as well, who's the intended audience? Is it really? Okay, this train of thought means I have to get The Special One up even faster now. But I don't want you to come away with the impression that I don't like the story. I do; I just wouldn't disagree with anyone who said it was pointless (outside the RPG). But this story is interesting for one other reason: It's the first one I've written with HTML-friendly formatting. Usually I write a story however I want, and then when I transfer from word processor to web page, I lose my indents and my italics (and possibly other things). So this time I decided to write without paragraph indents, skipping a line after each paragraph instead, and rather than click a button for italics I used the ctrl-I function, which I am told will hardcode italics directly into the document, thus preserving it in HTML. Also, I removed all auto-formatting, which is very exciting because I've been having grief with certain auto functions, and also it makes me feel like I'm typing without a net. So how did it work? Great for the paragraphs; couldn't be happier. Lost the italics, though. I must have misunderstood my advice. And the title centring also lost, but that's fine since it's fun to modify titles in HTML anyway. I like writing RPG stories because they help me get a feel for my character. Just deciding "Oh, he's like this and that," doesn't always work as well as I'd like, but when I write dialogue I come to it as an actor, performing everybody's dialogue in my head before the words go down on the page. (People like my dialogue; I expect this is why. It also explains why some of my dialogue contains redundancies: People talk in redundancies.) So in writing an RPG story, I am improvising my character for the first time, in an environment dedicated exclusively to him (instead of, say, a GM's story and several other main characters). So when I write an RPG story, my character solidifies in a way that some of my characters have never done, despite me playing them for a long time. Plus, y'know, I get a story out of it.
I'm very excited. Back when I started the Baker's 12 revival, you may remember, I started thinking of the publication in weekly as opposed to daily terms, to preserve my sanity and the story. The danger, when I begin thinking in new terms, is that I then begin thinking about what I can do to stretch those new bounds. "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible." - Alfred Hitchcock <This may be apocryphal, but it doesn't matter because he certainly thought it even if he never said it nor expressed it in those exact terms.> This is what I usually mean when I talk about stretching: "What can I do to make the story more frustrating to the reader?" In the good way. Each segment of B12 ends with a minor cliffhanger (often really minor; is there a better word for this?), but shouldn't I now be thinking about ending each week with something bigger and more dramatic? So I hit upon this idea. Call it a Three-Week Plan, or a One-Week Plan, neither is more accurate nor inaccurate than the other. It begins with Week 15. Which I publish today. So you see, I'm very excited. I finished writing Week 15 over a week ago, conceived of it almost a week before that. You, lucky reader, only have to wait one week to find out what happens next, but I have to wait two weeks between the time I finish a week and that week gets published. Oh, the suspense! Since B12 came back I've been working with a buffer, in case of emergency. I finished two weeks, then only published once I'd started the third. You get Week 15 today, Week 16 is ready to go, and I'm on Week 17. In the event that circumstances conspire to prevent the writing of B12 one week, I can still publish the buffer installment. Mathematically-inclined readers will be wondering how often I will be publishing 2 installments in a week, to make up for the lost time. The answer is As Often As I Can. But not until Week 17 is out! WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE?
The DEZimator (not a name he would have chosen for himself, I think) recently treated us to an excerpt of his writing (June 4) in which the observation is made that every person is a character in a book, and discussion continues along this line. So which character are you? Because I think most people think of themselves as characters in a novel, or a movie, whether we really choose to recognise it or not. Why wouldn't we? We grew up on stories. What's the first story you ever heard? How old were you? Did you drift off to sleep wondering what it would take for Sam I Am to finally go away and take his combo platter with him? Were you rooting for Sam to prevail instead? How old were you when you saw your first movie? Your first sitcom? You may not remember; I don't. What I do remember is that books were always around and so was television (movies being a special treat), and soon after, comics. I spent lots of time in Grade Six eagerly waiting to be introduced to the marvelous world of Archie. This is what I expected high school to be like. Children grow up imagining things, and forming expectations based on... who knows what. I remember playing with my action figures one afternoon and taking two minutes to decide that yes, a fit human male could hold on to the wing of a fighter plane in full flight. Social interaction at high school, laws of physics, medicine (especially powers of recovery) - OH! Here's a good one: He wasn't dead! The bullet only grazed his skull! We thought he was dead. He was only unconscious. Of course, the bullet did hit his head, so he might wake up with anmesia... I don't know how many times I read/watched the bullet-grazes-head scenario, but it was often enough that I was convinced that these were medical absolutes. (Even happened to Richie Rich once.) So my point: Children are impressionable, and believe that the fiction they experience is fact. I remember feeling pretty foolish when I finally figured out (a few years later) that a man could not hold on to an airplane wing. Problem (One): What about the fictions we are not aware of, or the ones we cannot easily disprove? Example: What if you were exposed to the Victorian System of Rewards and Punishments to such an extent that you now, unconsciously, think that virtue is always rewarded and evil always gets punished? To the extent that even examples of the obvious opposite do not dissuade you from this belief? In extreme cases, this becomes dissociative disorder. In minor cases, this may lead one to exclaim that Life Is Unfair, because dammit, I'm a good person, so I deserve better! Problem (Two): Some artists are trying to remove previous stereotypical personality types, creating entirely new (albeit more realistic) stereotypes. Others are examining types of people previously ignored by popular entertainment, thus creating new generalised groups. Examples: In response to the unrealistic perfection of the sitcom nuclear family, Roseanne was created, along with twenty other IMperfect sitcom families. Ever called someone a Gen-Xer? You pigeonholed him. Humans need stereotypes. Our brains file like items to prevent overload. <just rememberd that earlier today I took an online quiz asking which vampire stereotype I am, kinda illustrating my point> SUMMARY: Stereotyping is inescapable. Our expectations of the world, conscious and unconscious, are formed in childhood. CONCLUSION: It is to be expected that humans who grew up on stories will think of themselves as characters in those stories. (Bringing us back to my third paragraph above.) Tomorrow we go back to my second paragraph.
<Before I continue with yesterday's topic I would like to mention
that today I wrote 3000+ words on a story that will be book-length when
completed, and was not on my list (June 5) of projects I'm working on.
I'll be revising that list in a more interesting fashion; I'll tell you
about it in Part Three.>
So let's say you've given some thought to what kind of character you are. Maybe you're the Idealistic Artist: "I'll never sell out, man!" or the Pillar Of Spousal Support: "Tell me what's bothering you, Honey," or the Solid Worker: "This job is going to get done right, on time and under budget - you have my word!" All of these are great things to be, but doesn't every story also have some kind of less-than-great person to be? Take reporters for instance. Everybody loves the Reporter Who Uncovers The Truth At All Costs, but this same person in a different story is the Comedic Hindrance To The Hero, or if you're not careful the Nosy Character Who Gets Murdered To Ensure His Silence or Has To Be Rescued, or perhaps worse The Story Hunter Who Doesn't Care How Many Lives He Ruins. You may (must!) believe you're doing the right thing, but others may disagree. Nobody, I hope, thinks of himself in unflattering character stereotypes (although recently I've begun wondering if I'm the Mentor By Bad Example: "Don't do what I did, Kid. I wasted twenty years of my life... " My consolation is that I haven't really lived long enough to waste twenty years of my life. But some people do.), but you seldom know when you're making a bad decision until it's too late. If you knew it was a bad decision beforehand and you still did it, I don't know what to say, except I've done that too. So let's change the perspective on my three examples above: > Idealistic Artist becomes Pretentious Wastrel
and I'm sure you can come up with other stereotypes on your own. By definition, you fit into some kind of stereotype somewhere, probably several. Storytellers since the dawn of Time have been creating these stereotypes in order to appeal to some part of yourself, and they've done the job well. Your consolation is that stereotypes are two-dimensional, and since you have three dimensions no stereotype can ever perfectly reflect the real you. And you can't choose whether you're considered Assertive or Bossy, but you can decide to take a stand. (Or preserve the peace. Up to you.) Tomorrow: Part Three, in which I reveal that I am, in fact, a Homicide Detective.
Readers of New Rose will have noted that I keep an eye on stage personas. Last night on The Osbournes the best moment involved Ozzy kissing Marilyn Manson, who called out to Sharon for help. I know it was Reverend Manson because I recognised his contact lenses. Does he always wear them in public? Did he wear them because he knew there would be cameras? Did he wear them because it's Ozzy's party, and that's what you do? Ozzy Osbourne: Real name John. His wife, who possibly knows this, always calls him Ozzy, even during the renewal of their wedding vows. Alice Cooper's mother named him Vincent Furnier, but: "I even got used to calling him Alice." I watched Marilyn's friends telling VH1 that once he adopted that persona, he would become very upset if they called him by the name he used when they were growing up together. Forget checking up on whether these name changes have been made legal, registered with a government. Depends who you ask. But does it really matter? In order to change your name here in Quebec, you have to show that you have been living that name, in other words prove that this is, de facto, your name. If I decide my name is Crash (you know, for example), and I tell everyone that is my name, and I don't respond when called anything else, and when someone says, "I saw Crash yesterday" and my friends know who this is, then my name is Crash. Back to the "which character am I" topic. Based on the examples above, it would seem that you are whichever character you choose, because you get to write the book in which you appear. <Ever chosen to remove your bad mood by deciding you were in a good mood, only to be surprised when you realised later that it worked?> One of my childhood fantasies was "I wanna be a Homicide Detective." So, if I decide I am one, does that not make it so? Leaving aside governmental authority and Impersonation legislation,
I can so be a detective if I want to, because this is what they do:
and this is how they do it:
Case closed! I won't belabour the "calling" and "mystery" metaphors; if you've ever read this column before you've figured out that I'm comparing police work to writing. Sometimes, after all, a case goes unsolved. Sometimes new evidence turns up on an old case that changes the perspective. Sometimes everything proceeds from a flash of intuition, from the experienced officer's "gut hunch." Detectives need to be diligent, patient, clever, perceptive. Personally I need to work on two of those, so here is my focus: There are too many open cases on my files; I need to put a few down, close them, solve them. To that end, seeya Friday.
First thing: ANYBODY GETTING BOUNCES FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS? One of my beloved fans has reported such an incident; please let me know if there are any more bounces out there. (Hmm, now that's a good question: How will you let me know this?) I have since sent myself email and had it not bounce, so hopefully the problem is past tense. And now for the latest Baker's 12, which is really the most of what you'll have to read from me this weekend, because I am buried in work on a short story for a contest, deadline tomorrow. The contest is looking for short fiction with a Pagan theme. I entered last year, tied for third place. Two days before the deadline, I had no idea what I was going to write. Then I remembered an old (1995, I think) idea I had lying around in my head, so I decided to expand that slightly and go with it. It was the closest thing I had to a "Pagan" concept, and the only one I was going to come up with in the time remaining. I was understandably pleased with the outcome. This year, more of same. I checked my word processor documents, the ones located in various files and titled Mozart, and found nothing. I was expecting nothing; I remember no other Pagan concepts. (Wondering just what is a Pagan concept, anyway? Hold on; we'll come back to that.) (And while I'm digressing, it's an old thing that I've been doing since I saw Amadeus. Remember the scene in which the Emperor says that Mozart's work contains too many notes? Well, ever since I saw that scene this has been what I title documents, on paper and computer, where I keep track of story ideas, lines, etc. - you know, notes. I have too many of these.) Then I checked my notebooks, again nothing. So I'm left trying to adapt, once again, the only remotely Pagan concept I have. It's about a guy who becomes a bit too involved in his Tarot deck. My big question tonight as I write the story is: Is this story Pagan enough? I don't mind a poor showing in the contest, but I would be less than Zen if I discovered my entry were rejected on the basis of not fitting the criteria. I asked my sweetie what she thought; she said that of course the Tarot can be considered a Pagan topic. The thing is, my story is not unlike something you could read in an EC comic book. (And every time I start thinking that way, I remember that last year's entry was mostly inspired by what I had been reading in Neil Gaiman's comics.) What is a Pagan concept, therefore? Is it merely a story that features Pagan themes? Is Live And Let Die a Pagan movie because it has a Tarot reader in it? If this reader's interpretation of the Death card is ill-researched, does it still count? There has been a recent trend in movies and television to get some of the research right, but then present magical systems that owe more to Hollywood dramatic convention than common Pagan spiritual belief. As a widely misrepresented group, Pagans are fussy about these things. I understand the Tarot. I want the judges to know I understand the Tarot - do I refer to specific cards in order to demonstrate this? Should I feel that I have to? If I don't, is it a Pagan story or is it just any story by a guy who's heard of the Tarot but knows nothing else about it? <I failed my dirver's test twice. I passed the third time because I made a conscious decision to ignore what I thought the examiner wanted me to do, and just do what I knew to be right. So.> My solution to all of this is going to be the same one it always is: Trust the story. It will show me where it wants to go, and the rest is up to the audience.
I have added Carnaval Grotesque to my links list; the latest entry is a first-person story excerpt in the present tense. Generally I don't go for present tense, since often I've seen it used to force (unsuccessfully) a sense of importance upon the reader, but in this example it gives one the feeling that the narrator's emptiness is a continual thing, so I think it works. (He and I are also currently having email debate as to Dali's pretentiousness; some of that might make it back into here.) I have also archived for the third time in as many weeks. I have to re-think some of the way I archive, alas. Next up, you're probably wondering how my story went this weekend. You'd better be, because that's what today's column is about. I had an idea, two years ago when I first became interested in Tarot, about a guy who uses his deck to cheat at Clue. <Well yes, of course it's cheating to ask your deck who did it, with what, and where. If a guy has a rabbit's foot, but doesn't really believe in it, that's superstition, not cheating. The guy who believes in his Tarot cards is cheating because he gets the answers when he asks. When you believe, the Universe follows your lead. If the guy believed in his rabbit's foot, it would work, and then he would be cheating: "Why does he always roll a six just when he needs to?"> Eventually, once he's alone because nobody wants to play Clue with him anymore, he wonders what else he can predict. Baseball scores: Failure. Stock market: Failure. A high-profile crime makes the papers, his cards tell him it was the next-door neighbour, several days later that is the conclusion reached by the police. A-ha! So next our hero brings his skills to the Boys In Blue. (There is, I believe, FBI precedent for using psychics and mediums (do you use media if it's people?) in crime detection.) He becomes sort of an unofficial Tarot detective. And that was it. I had no ending. For a year or so. Then I hit upon an ending, an unexpected ending, and, as hinted at last Friday, an unpleasant ending. Then, also as mentioned Friday <See what happens when you miss a column? You may also be wondering what the relevance is of Dali's pretentiousness. It's like Twin Peaks; you can't afford to miss an episode.> I was describing my story to Sweetie, and I almost stopped halfway through because the story made no sense to me. How do we get from a thriller with a psychic hero to an EC comic? We don't. That is, I don't. The ending had nothing to do with the rest. But on Friday I tried to write it anyway: "Oh, it'll come out in the wash." Because I know some companies are funny about copyright and things and I didn't want this to be a factor in the rejection of my story (remember, I was inventing reasons they would reject it), I changed the game to poker. I also created a beginning that fit the ending, cuz, y'know, when the ending came I wanted there to be some coherence with the beginning. And by then it was a different story. So I threw out the cops with the board game. No Clue, no cops. A portentious beginning, a bad situation, worsening via Tarot deck, the passage of time, unpleasant ending. <Is this getting all Lemony Snicket? The Terrifying Tarot: "Yes, you may think that winning at poker made him a happier person, and rich, and respected, but you would be wrong, not only because everybody hates rich people but also because he never became rich, although he was still hated."> Back on June 5 I mentioned I was looking for a Pagan serial topic. It so happens I have one, now: A guy discovers he can win at Clue with his Tarot deck, in later installments he discovers that he can also help the Police in this fashion, but then complications arise... It is, as I said, a totally different story, despite having its origins in the same place. I am such a proud parent. My stories committed mitosis.
Today's topic: The secondary character: Is there such a thing? In many circumstances, of course, the story is about one character, we'll call him Joe, and a conflict he must resolve. Joe's conflict may be internal, resolved through one or several incidents, or it may be external. In these cases, of course, the audience recognises that Joe is the main character, and everybody else is secondary. Unless Joe's plot is to find his birth mother. Wouldn't that make Mum a main character? Or Joe has to defeat Mugs in single combat. Without Mugs, there is no plot, so Mugs has got to be a main character, perhaps the main character. And here we see the way Hollywood has coloured our character perceptions, in two ways: Academy Awards and credits. The first way is obvious, through the Supporting Actor categories. Remember the Pulp Fiction nominees, and the debate this caused? > "Of course Samuel L Jackson gets the Supporting Actor and Travolta
the Best Actor. They're equal in the movie, but Travolta's white, after
all."
Judi Dench seems in interviews to find it odd she won an Oscar for "Eight minutes of work." Nicholson has three(ish) scenes in A Few Good Men, but those scenes are about his character, as is the entire movie, really. Is he the Main or Supporting character? Credits, now: STARRING: Hero, Hero's Love Interest
You're going to the movies; you see the poster. You know what the movie's about, roughly, so you start to play Which actor plays which part. I always do this: "Hold on! James Earl Jones was the AND. He must be the guy Kurt Russell is looking for!" <On the other hand, I'm sure all of you can thnk of at least one credit list where an actor was placed higher than logic would dictate, assuming the criteria were other than marketing or contractual negotiation.> So through the credits and the Academy criteria, we've come to think of characters as either principal/starring or supporting/secondary. Which can lead to weird thinking on the part of an audience. Boy leaves The Invisibles, yet her fans still want to know what happened to her afterward. But she's left; the story is no longer about her. She'll be back if and when it is. The problem here is that readers came to regard all five (which is itself a misnomer) Invisibles as the main characters. But the story was never, I think, really about anyone; I think it was about ideas, making all the characters secondary. Going back to Joe, we could describe his relation to everyone else in the story like this: Joe is the plot, everyone else is a character. There are no main characters, no secondary characters. Buffy The Vampire Slayer (tv): Angel was a Guest Star, then a Regular Cast Member, finally the Star Of His Own Spinoff. In the story of Buffy, he goes from Briefly Significant to Generally Important to Irrelevant Except As A Memory. Television is a good example to study if you want to examine ways in which character importance evaluations can become meaningless. Any ongoing story works like that, characters weaving in and out at creator whim, but of course tv characters also come and go due to actor availability, so this makes the whole mess even more exciting. Do you write a character less carefully if the part is smaller? Of course not. I, for one, try to write him better, because he has less of a chance to make an impact. It's the same reason I prefer playing Laertes or someone over Hamlet: Hamlet has to respond to the needs of the play (he's Joe the plot); everyone else has room to try something unexpected.
If next week is anything like this one, look for updates no more frequently than every second day. And I will be taking the weekend off, which you may henceforth consider official policy. I am pleased to announce that in addition to posting Baker's 12 today, I have also finished the first installment of my new serial. (Have you noticed I love serials?) This is the one where the hero solves crime using Tarot cards; I call it Elemental Deduction. I decided to choose a number of installments before I began, so this story will be told in 16 parts. The reason for this is pretty simple: The newsletter in which it is being published, WynterGreene, comes out 8 times a year. Also there are 16 court cards in a standard Tarot deck, so one installment per court card, two years to tell the story. From there it was a short leap to another experiment: I removed the court cards from one of my decks, shuffled, and drew the top card. Then I wrote with that card on the desk in front of me. Descriptions and other story elements, if I was stuck, came to me through the card. I will be doing this with all the court cards, and I think the first time out went rather well. You'll just have to read WynterGreene and decide for yourself. |
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