October Spookfest #2

This month I’m trying to write one short horror story each day. I don’t really have a word limit so it can be anywhere from short fiction to (heaven forbid) a 30-pager. I’ll mark each post with the date and the prompt I used. For time, these are all first draft stories. I might revisit and edit them once October is over. Who knows! October 2nd: Dark Ride It’s surprising to find this end of the park so empty--normally it’s full of people, drawn to its flashing lights and exotic sounds. Normally the waits would be an hour deep, but right now it looks like you could walk right on. 

“Must’ve just been closed for maintenance,” you think, approaching the entrance. The cast member smiles at you as you approach. You smile back.

“Head on in,” he says. 

Off in another part of the park, there’s a roar--a cacophony of awe, as some distant crowd reacts to whatever’s on display. You and the cast member both glance over, though there’s nothing to see from where you’re standing.

There’ve been rumors that the park might be testing out new interactive performances with some of the mascots, and maybe that’s what’s provoked such a strong reaction from the crowd. But you know the ride ahead of you is only three minutes long. Plenty of time to get your thrill, then satisfy your curiosity. After all, the park is the place where dreams come true.

You smile at the cast member. He smiles back.

As you dip inside you hear another swell of noise from the distant crowd; their gasps turn to shrieks of delight. But the audio flourishes of the queue soon drown it out, as you’re whisked from one world into another. Down you go through the queue, past the animatronics, ignoring the flashing displays. The ride once had interactive parts but they’re the thing most likely to break--all the same, you slap a couple as you walk past, and are rewarded with the sounds of emergency klaxons as you do. You hit one and the whole building pretends to shake. 

Another cast member greets you as you approach the loading area. She smiles. She has a dimple. You smile back.

“Just you?”

“Yep,” you say. “Can I take the back?”

“Whatever you like,” she says, and gestures for you to step into row 6. The gates open and you drop yourself into the molded plastic seats, pulling the shoulder restraints down. Another cast member with thick black ringlets stands behind the control station, the skin of her forehead bunched in confusion as she presses her radio closer to her ear. She sees you watching and she smiles, so you smile back. Then she turns away from you as the building rumbles again, belly deep. 

A young cast member with too little facial hair on his round chin presses down on your restraints to make sure you’re good and secure. 

“What was that?” he asks the cast member in charge of loading. 

She doesn’t answer him. You twist around in your seat to glance back up at the queue just in time to see something black and spongy as it springs from the wall directly onto the cast member’s face.

“What the fuck,” the young cast member says, and suddenly your cart jerks forward. 

“What the fuck,” you say. Behind you the queue is congealed with a thick mass; the walls are coated with something that looks like black mold, tendrils creeping their way up over the ride’s facade, over the hidden design details, obscuring the lights. The first cast member pirouettes and falls as the black mold releases her, and you catch sight of her face, curdled and wet and red, and a lipless grin that spins out of sight as she crumples to the ground.

Next, the black mold lunges for the cast member with the radio. And the ride pulls you forward, into the dark. 

Your cart clicks into place and climbs the track with a clat-a-clat-a-clat and behind you, the cast members stop screaming, replaced by curdled noises like a clogged garburator. 

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” you say, wrestling with the restraints. “Let me out! HEY. HEY, I’M IN HERE! YOU GOTTA LET ME OUT!” you scream. The red launch lights around you flicker in and out as the ride goes on. The restraints remain locked in place. The launch sequence music plays in your ear, ramping you up for the ride ahead.

The cart continues to climb, clat-a-clat-a-clat. You twist your head but the angle blocks your view. The speakers flanking your headrest flood you with music that continues to build.

Once you reach the top of the ascent, there’s a brief moment when you’re held there. 

The music reaches its crescendo, and you’re launched, pitched forward into the turbulent darkness.

But the ride only lasts three minutes.

October Spoop Fest #1

This month I’m trying to write one short horror story each day. I don’t really have a word limit so it can be anywhere from short fiction to (heaven forbid) a 30-pager. I’ll mark each post with the date and the prompt I used. For time, these are all first draft stories. I might revisit and edit them once October is over. Who knows! 

October 1st: Nostalgia The plastic wheels slide easily over Eve’s thumb. She wonders, briefly, if it would be worth anything on ebay--there’s no scratches and the paint still shines. But she flips the train around to examine its smiling face, and there’s an irony there she didn’t recognize when she was younger, which tarnishes the whole enterprise.

She drops the train back in the box marked “Eve’s things: toys” and moves to the window. The work makes her hot, and to keep it propped open she’s shoved another box (“Taxes: 1985-1992”) into the gap. Outside, the night beyond the window is unreachable, a black distance that stretches on and on, until it hits the lit upstairs window of the house at the far end of the street. A matchbox worth of light strikes her with a hiss.

When Eve was eleven, her mother took that job down at the gas station, working nights out on the freeway. There’d been a phone number scotch-taped to the kitchen wall, for emergencies, but the summer heat quickly curled the edges so it could only be read with fingers splayed to hold it flat. Eve never called it but she often imagined the situation that would precede such a thing--played at the horror of it, imagined some terrible fate that might befall her, and pictured her mother’s reaction when she came home, too late. But that was only an early evening game, and the nights were long despite the season. 

Eve rescued cardboard before it could go limp and gouged out train tracks using a closed pair of scissors until they were deep enough to catch the wheels. She built tunnels and covered bridges out of empty toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes. Slowly her entire bedroom turned into a kind of town, not like one she’d ever seen in real life but a kind of cookie tin town, with little streets lined with foil windows, and popsicle stick people leading busy lives. The train wound all the way around the town, with two switches that only took it to a second, larger loop that ran around the first. Concentric circles.

The train had two stops: Central Station, and the Mountains, so all the little popsicle stick people ever had to worry about was picnics. Sometimes bad things would happen but only a little--just enough to keep them on their toes.

Eve would stay up late, past her ten o’clock curfew, past midnight, until her eyes were blister-dry and it hurt to yawn, sometimes even until her mother’s car crackled over the gravel drive at five in the morning. The two of them would sleep until the afternoon and eat cereal at two, eggs at five, and bologna sandwiches right before her mother left for work again. Their tired faces were matching, their cutlery wasn’t.

One night Eve was lying on the floor next to her little town, her face pressed into the rough carpet, when she heard a sound. A glance at the clock told her it was only three and, besides, wasn’t the sound something different than her mother’s car? Yes, didn’t it sound like a song? 

The novelty was enough to pique her interest, even through the glaze of her insomnia, and she bit her lip and sat very still. Before long the sound came again: a mournful note, like an owl, coming through her bedroom window. The window was open but the curtains were pulled tight, so she crawled over to her nightstand to switch off the lamp, dousing the room in darkness. She fumbled her way to the window and drew back the curtains, just a little.

Outside the moon was yellow like a peach slice, and it dimly lit the edges of her yard, all the way to the bent oak tree with its broken swing. Beyond that the countryside was vague and shadowy, made up of ideas more than actuals. She listened again for the noise, and far away, in the house at the end of the street, a light in the upstairs window turned on. 

After she finishes sorting through the last of her mother’s paperwork, she piles the box on top of the others in the corner of her room. She likes grouping things like that, in little piles, where she can eyeball the entire domain of her accomplishment. There’s a final stack waiting in her mother’s closet, and the shed is sure to be another headache--but little by little, she finds herself making progress.

Eve’s mother could only take a few things with her to the residence, and since she wasn’t a sentimental person it was easy enough to pack. Eve thinks dryly that she never expected her mother to get out of this house before she did, but here we are, and anyway, she wouldn’t be far behind. 

She flicks off the old lamp on her nightstand and crawls into the twin-size bed. The mattress creaks under her weight. Maybe she’ll get a new one. She’s had a place picked out in town for a while now, with yellow-white cupboards just like the ones she has now, and a window that looks out onto an oak tree. Money is tight, but she has that job at the gas station, and she’s been working enough overtime to give her a little bit to spend on decor. Or maybe she’ll keep saving and even take a vacation. 

Lying down, a bubble of gas pops up her esophagus, bringing a bit of bile with it. She swallows it down and considers getting up to brush her teeth again--but she doesn’t struggle with sleep like she used to, and even as she’s thinking it, she’s already half asleep under the covers.

She wakes up what feels like moments later to a bright light shining through her bedroom window, and her heart pounding in her chest. Without moving her head she peeks, through her lashes, to the window at the foot of her bed, and that pinpoint of light widens into a funnel. It’s a burglar, she thinks, or a murderer. Someone checking to see if you’re awake. If you don’t move, if you stay still--But that’s silly, she thinks. I’m in my own house. 

With a dream-like confidence she slowly reaches beneath her bed for the baseball bat and, dragging it lightly across the carpet, she steps towards the window to look outside. It takes her a moment to realize that patch of bright light is the window in the house at the end of the street. Its glare is almost blinding, and she can feel the heat of it as if it were a spotlight. 

Annoyed, now, she pulls the curtains tight--but the light shines through, bright enough to light up her whole room, hot enough to bake her in it, too. A glance at the clock tells her it’s four, but she remembers that bout of insomnia that plagued her when she was young, and with a flash of anger she wonders if that distant window might have been to blame, then. 

She opens her window, as if to lean out and shout the light down--but when she does, all she hears is a low, mournful whistle.

The night is cool but not too cold, so she only slips on a cardigan and her loafers as she heads out the door. At the end of her gravel drive she could turn left to head to the road, which eventually would lead her to another road, and then that road into town--or she could turn right, towards the end of the street. She turns right. 

Even the crickets are asleep, so she walks up the lonely gravel with only the sounds of her own footsteps for company. Come to think of it, she’s never met the people in the house at the end of the street. Never seen them, except maybe--surely--as they drove by on their way to town. Eventually she gets to their house and sees a brown pick-up truck in the drive and, yes, that does look familiar. Yes, she must’ve seen them before. But neither Eve nor her mother were very good neighbors.This thought makes her climb the front steps with shaken confidence. Because it’s easy to be inconsiderate to neighbors you don’t know, and now that she’s on their porch it feels like they might know each other, after all, if only through distant lit windows.

The door cracks open before her. Her feet step off the shaggy welcome mat, and into the front dark hall. A stairwell immediately ahead of her is crowned at the top with a veil of light, so it seems that’s the obvious place to go. Besides, the whistling is coming from upstairs, as well--only now it’s loud, and instead of mournful it’s forceful. She has to hurry towards it or she’ll surely miss what she came for. She leaves the door open behind her because it will take care of itself, and sure enough, with a pneumatic hiss, it closes shut as she steps further inside. 

She feels the house begin to grind under her feet, and movement tugs her forward, up the stairs, curling around the banister until she reaches the top landing and there, before her, is that brightly lit room. The one that kept her up at night, the one that made her lose sleep, lose daylight, lose more than one summer, more than one year. She steps inside this room. There are four benches, each facing towards the door--it, too, swings shut behind her. The benches are wooden with ornate metal frames, painted red. The light is everywhere, but has no source. 

Outside, the house moves. Its wheels turn, slowly at first, with a little bit of a lurch at the end of each rotation. Eve realizes, too late, that in coming here she’s allowed herself to be taken away.But that door was shut behind her. It’s sealed with mechanical certainty--no latch or lever or handle can make it give way. Around her, the house issues a sharp, shrill whistle. It cuts through her head and cuts through the darkness of the countryside. 

She pries open the window, even with the heat of the light searing her back, and leans out--the landscape around her is contorted by the house’s speed, but that’s not what makes it unfamiliar. Finally she recoils from the window, the heat of the light is too much, and she stumbles back against the far corner of the room. 

She knows that most trains don’t only travel in a loop. She knows that most trains have a destination that’s different from its departure. She crouches in the corner, her eyes wide, as the engine churns beneath her. 

Zootopia

In order to preserve any illusion of professionalism I might have, I have started a trash blog for all Zootopia posts. Maybe I should write a proper review of it? Turn an analytical eye on Zootopia, film of my heart--movie that holds dominion over my soul?

Probably not. Trash can be found at fyeahwildehopps.tumblr.com but it is the trashiest trash. 

Guardians of the Galaxy and Protagonitis

To Start: A Brief(ish) Discussion of Protagonists in Marvel Movies

I haven’t written a blog post in a while and it’s generally because it can be hard to make time for theory, I understand.  So today I want to talk about protagonists, but to make it more interesting for everyone (including myself), I’m going to couch this discussion in a review of Guardians of the Galaxy. SPOILERS ABOUND, so if you haven’t yet seen it you may wish to save this post for later.

In most cases it’s always easy to tell who our protagonist is: it’s the person on whom the camera sticks.  But this isn’t always true, and if you’re aware of this disparity you can manipulate it for some interesting story-telling.  As a quick example, consider Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. The narrative is about Kahu, the eponymous Whale Rider—but the novel is first-person narrated by her uncle, Rawiri, and the story even follows him for several years while he travels. So who is the main character?  The subject of the story, or the subject of most of the sentences?

Trick question!  I actually think it’s Kahu’s grandfather Koro Apirana (who is also the antagonist, and thus his own enemy).  Note that the movie version of Whale Rider adapts the script so that Kahu (renamed Paikea) really is her own protagonist, and I can’t say I disapprove of the choice, but that only serves to drive home my point: protagonists can be tricky to pin down. When done poorly, they can detract from your story and bore your audience.  When done properly, they can take a repetitive story and turn it into something fabulously human.

So what is a protagonist? How is it possible to be confused? 

Many might think that the main character is simply the person with the most screen time, and in some of Hollywood’s lazier stories you can understand why they might make that mistake.  But narratively speaking, your protagonist should be at least one of the following:

1)      The character who changes the most from beginning to end as a result of their actions in the story.

2)      The character whose change is most intimately initiated or developed by the events of the main story. (The A Plot)

Because of this, there are many stories out there that—whoops!—forget to really include a main character.  The Winter Soldier is actually one such story; if you watch the film you notice that nobody actually changes in any way from beginning to end. Cap doesn’t really trust SHIELD at the beginning, and he still doesn’t really trust them at the end.  He’s sad and uncertain at the beginning, and still sad and uncertain at the end.  Torn between two worlds in the beginning, torn between two worlds in the … you get the idea.

In fact, if we had to make an argument for who the protagonist of The Winter Soldier was then I guess we could say it was Nick Fury, because his naïve notions about SHIELD and his own potency are challenged and shattered, and he has to resolve to be independent at the end, but I think we can all say that, if so, it was unintentional, because clearly if Nick Fury was going to be the protagonist of a Marvel movie it would be called “Nick Fury Motherf*cker” and would have a lot more scenes that like SUV scene, because that scene was THE BEST.

Character arcs (the path of a character’s personal development) are separate from plot arcs, though they’re usually intimately entwined (see #2 above).  What’s silly about The Winter Soldier is that it would have been very simple to insert a character arc: just rework the story a bit so that Cap and everyone else suspects the Winter Soldier could possibly be Bucky from the very beginning, and then Cap must choose between his past and his future: does he potentially endanger Falcon and Widow in order to reconnect with Bucky, or does he let go and move on?  He begins by forlornly clinging to things that were, and in the end lets go and embraces his modern existence.

It’s so easy to insert a character arc that it’s really befuddling whenever someone forgets to do it.  That’s like sending your story off on its first day of school without remembering to feed it, clothe it, or *sniffle* even tell it you love it.  You’re a terrible mother.

I have never read Brubaker’s The Winter Soldier, but I have been told that this character arc is present in the comic. So it was right there and the scriptwriters just chose to cut it.  Even more bewildering.

(And on one last note about protagonists before we move on to Guardians of the Galaxy, this actually means that the protagonist of The Avengers was Widow, followed closely by Tony.  It was an ensemble cast so they had watered-down character arcs, but nevertheless Widow had the most of one.  In this instance, given Joss Whedon’s presence on the project and his penchant for bad-ass women, I actually assume that was intentional, rather than accidental.)

I’m sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy, but you’ve got … Protagonitis.

Now on to the meat.  It’s important to note, from all that lead-in to this actual review, that Guardians DOES have a character arc for its protagonist.  Peter Quill goes from being a ne’er-do-well ruffian to a do-the-right-thing hero.  (By the way, you can plot and communicate these changes simply by developing the character’s goals, but we’ll save that for another blog post). 

Rocket also has a character arc, as does Drax. Arguably Drax’s is more interesting than Peter’s, but … that’s not exactly hard. Because Peter’s character arc is lame.

I know Chris Pratt is everyone’s favourite it-boy at the moment and this is going to get me some angry comments from everyone and their grandmother, but forget Chris Pratt.  This isn’t about Chris Pratt. Forget his A-wing shaped jaw (Star Wars reference, deal with it) and his ability to make funny facial expressions for a second and imagine that it was Shia LeBeouf in the role. Okay?  Picture the Beef.  With or without the paper bag on his head—both images will serve.  Starlord is no longer Chris Pratt, but rather another (and until recently equally bankable) it-boy.  How do you feel about Starlord now? Keep imagining this until the end of the review.

(To save Gamora's life he nobly takes off his paperbag and gives it to her, while the plot slowly thickens around him.)

In order to present us with a protagonist, we’re left with one of the most stagnant, boring people in the history of swashbucklers. At no point does Peter’s backstory actually connect to or inform who he is in the present.  We’re told that he’s hung up on his dead mom in the present because dying moms are sad, but as Rocket says to Drax: cry us a river. You’re a protagonist. Of COURSE you’ve lost someone you love.  What matters to a protagonist is not that you have feelings but that you do something with those feelings.  What does Peter do with that grief? (Spoilers: nothing)

At no point does the story explore the things he should be really hung up on: that he failed his mother when she needed him emotionally; that he doesn't know who his father is but, after being abducted and applying some retroactive reasoning to everything his mother said, could quickly figure out that his dad's from space and now he's in a prime position to look for him; or even that he’s been kidnapped from his home and seems to have no intention of ever going back and reconnecting with that large family present at his mother’s side.  No, instead he seems entirely sad that his mom died. This is sad—it’s also the least interesting character detail delivered in that original scene. But fine, all right--his mom died and that is sad. But then his mother’s death needs to motivate almost everything (or at least some of the things) he does, and instead he doesn’t really seem to give much of a crap.

For example, we find out, at the very end, that he was christened “Starlord” by his mother, so retroactively that ascribes a kind of purpose even to his misdeeds. But how does the loving nickname from his mother transform into the bad-ass title he wants to enforce upon his enemies and admirers while he’s ransacking gravesites and boldly going where no panties-spelunker has gone before?  If he’s so desperate to continue to ignore his mother’s death (as evidenced that he hasn’t opened her present, which she implored him to do after she’d “gone”), why is he taking her nickname for him and turning it into his Jolly Roger?  Would that not upset her? Does that not upset him? 

Note that I’m not saying he has to want to carry on his mother’s memory, but by calling himself “Starlord” that’s exactly what he’s doing. So why is he doing it in a weird, messed up way that would make his mother disapprove?

Remember that his mother was proud of him for defending people and being good—and at no point is he punished for wanting to do so (in contrast to, say, the terrible Green Hornet movie, where the protagonist is at least “turned off” being a do-gooder by his father’s cruel admonitions).  So does he really have a character arc at all?  “At first I liked to help people.  Then I liked to rob people. Now I like to help people again.”  Hrrm.  In the end we get a protagonist who isn't informed or motivated by his backstory at all, but rather the backstory is slapped on at the last minute, as if someone suddenly remembered he ought to have one. 

It doesn’t help that, even character arc aside, Peter Quill is just boring. Stop!  Put that down. Remember the Beef! Starlord is the Beef! Imagine the Beef. Breathe the Beef. Now let's continue. 

He serves no purpose in the actual story: the wisecracking Han Solo type could be well satisfied by Rocket; the entry-point character is unnecessary, and he can't be one anyway because the story starts decades after he’s been abducted and he’s well-versed in the ways of space; the heroic Luke Skywalker-type could be doable … except that we already have that, as well. In Gamora. And with her, it would have been way more interesting.

In contrast to Peter, Rocket, and Drax, Gamora doesn’t have a character arc.  She’s the exact same person at the beginning as she is at the end—unless, of course, her character arc is to learn to be charmed by Peter Quill’s bland brand of dashing renegadery.  But this is a total waste of time and story, as Gamora is intimately tied to every single step of the plot. 

She is a character who, after decades of oppression, has finally decided to betray her overlord/father.  She is a character who is being hunted by the main villain specifically for a personal vendetta, and her own sister is along for the ride.  Gamora is the character who wants to sell the orb so she can start over and escape the life she once knew.  Every single facet of who she is and what she wants is propelled forward by the main events of the story.  She could also be an entry-point character, if we needed one (even though we don’t), because she’d be joining the messy, sloppy, civilian galaxy and a rag-tag group of criminals, when all she’d known before was the deathmatch-driven, oppressive, screwed-up Thanos family.

“What made Gamora escape now?” I wonder. “What makes her and Nebula care for each other—in their interesting way—when their relationship is clearly adversarial?” “Why is Gamora ultimately a good person when Nebula is not?”  These are the questions I was interested in, the questions I wanted answered. Not “BUT WHAT’S INSIDE PETER’S PRESENT” because if you didn’t know it was a mixtape from the very first scene of the movie then you need to go back to story school.

Guardians of the Galaxy suffers from Protagonitis not because it doesn’t understand that protagonists need character arcs, but because it picked the wrong protagonist.  I get that Peter is the main character of the comics, but as Whale Rider demonstrated (and The Winter Soldier abused), you don’t have to stick to the original source material.  The power of collaboration, of adaptation, is to make things better. 

Okay, so let’s say we rewrite the script: Gamora is the main character, with her own character arc and cool high-collared jacket and everything.  Starlord--still played by The Beef—is left naked and shivering in the pilot's seat, equipped only with clever one-liners and a mixtape you can use for interesting music-scene pairings. Where does that leave Peter?

Well, to be honest, nowhere.  We have no need of Peter.  He serves no purpose, unless you want to make the argument that we’re incapable of relating to any of the alien characters unless there’s a human present—and you really don’t want to try and make that argument to me. But I guess, if we wanted to throw Peter a bone, he could be the beefcake love interest awarded to Gamora as a prize for her hard work and nobility.  (I think Peter would like that)

You can stop picturing The Beef now; I release you from that curse. 

But remember that I was using Guardians to make a post about protagonists, so I’m being especially cruel to it.  In reality: Guardians was actually quite good.  The world was interesting, the characters (other than Peter) were interesting, and there were actively parts where I laughed out loud. 

I’m a fan of James Gunn’s because how can you not be but I do wish the cinematography had been a bit more Guy Ritchie-esque—too many wide angle, by-the-book establishing shots detracted from what would have been more interesting, revealing quick cuts about the flavour of this interstellar society.  But from an art direction perspective the movie looked fantastic. Rocket looked great. Groot looked great.

Lee Pace was a lame villain, but comic book movie villains almost always are, and until Marvel learns to bottle Loki (by making a villain who pairs superhuman omnipotency with all-too-human flaws and motivations), most comic book movie villains will continue to be just so. But one step at a time, right?  Because if we can’t even figure out the main freaking character then our antagonists are probably going to have to wait. 

RIP Thomas Pierson

Thomas Pierson, CEO and founder of the SETI Institute, passed away two days ago. 

SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) is really important to me; the perspective that we gain while looking for signs of life elsewhere in the universe affects the way we treat one another and the planet we live on; the philosophy it inspires will shape the way we develop as a species and carry ourselves forward. 

As much as I dream about alien life it is, in fact, the search itself that is important. If we do find signs of life tomorrow, then imagine the worldviews that will have to be reconstructed, the egos that will be thoroughly shaken. If we never do--if we just keep looking, fingers crossed--then consider what that says about the fundamental loneliness we have as a people, and the yearning we feel to connect with someone else in the cosmos ... and how we should take that loneliness and try to connect with our peers here on Earth.

The Institute is responsible for a lot of thrilling and essential research, in addition to wonderful educational outreach programs. Check out the full list of all their projects and please consider donating, as they can't exist without the support of the ravenously curious public (that means you!).

At Oxford we were essentially required to do a mini-dissertation in first year. I chose to do my Year 1 Specialization on the concept of space opera as a new form of mythology; I explored the oral tradition and how we could use that to make legends for the future. I won't bother sharing the critical aspect (academia has never been my strong suit) but the creative aspect, which is much more interesting is available to read if you're interested. The creative part was an hour-long pilot for a radio drama series, starring the oh-so-subtly named September "Seti" Drake.

All photos courtesy the great and glorious Hubble Archives. 

Aristotle's Poetics: The Three Unities

We’ll start this foray into story by discussing Aristotle’s Poetics, a text written approximately a billion years ago (or 335 BCE, depending on whom you ask).  

These writings focussed on contemporary dramatic tragedies and are of more or less use to you as a modern writer depending on your personal technique.  Nevertheless, the foundations are there for a reason--and it’s always a good idea to know the rules, even if you continue to go ahead and ignore them.  Especially as the rudimentary lessons of storytelling are essentially just exercises in pattern recognition.

The purpose of the Poetics was to explore some of the storytelling elements that made the tragedies so gut-wrenchingly tremendous and successful.  It looks at a lot of things to do with theme, tone, and emotionally-satisfying character arcs (which we will inevitably look at in a later blog post). Possibly one of the most important topics is the concept of catharsis, which is an emotional purging: that moment when you release a breath you’ve been holding all through a terrible scene that was sure to end in someone’s death or disaster. Cathartic moments are extremely important, and learning to create them is a valuable tool. Again, we’ll look at that in a later blog post.

Aristotle also wrote on comedy, but sadly this text was lost in some great flood or fire or other calamity that was always insensitively destroying creative accomplishments, so we’ll have to move ahead with the tragedy stuff alone.  

Of the rich bounty Poetics provides, today we’re going to look at a concept known as the “Three Unities” or “Dramatic Unities”.  The Three Unities are:

1. Unity of Time: the action of the play should take place in a short internal chronology, ideally, no more than 24 hours.

2. Unity of Place: the action should take place in a minimal number of locations--ideally, just one.  A public square or palace courtyard would usually serve this purpose well.

3. Unity of Action: The action of the play should be as succinct as possible.  Accomplish the emotional beats and relevant plot points in few, efficient steps.  Avoid subplots. Quality trumps quantity. (If Aristotle had known what non-linear storytelling was, he probably would’ve advised against that, as well.)

You may have instinctively agreed or disagreed with one or all of these points, so let’s take a moment to look at their merits and faults.  

1. Unity of Time:  This one seems immediately useless from a modern perspective. In today’s media, stories can expand across any amount of time, from a measly half hour to spanning entire generations.  But in Aristotle’s day this served more of a purpose; stages were set in large amphitheatres, with actors often playing multiple roles.  Communicating the passage of time could be tricky and confusing, as masks and body language were used to communicate different characters across the large space.  Trying to capture various ages between those characters might just muddy the waters.  Nowadays, famous faces and descriptive prose make ages-long storytelling a walk in the park, and non-linear storytelling is not only possible but often desired.

Nevertheless it serves a purpose for us, as well.  It behooves us to remember the tool of urgency--something which can play a pivotal role in any story, not just the thrillers or adventures. Dragging out the chronology of your story removes that urgency. This isn’t necessarily bad, just something to be aware of.  If you want a reader’s undying attention, try to capture it in the now.  

2. Unity of Place: again, this was more useful in Aristotle’s day when stories faced logistical challenges. Changing location meant using set pieces or hauling out the chorus to tell us about the shift. This could be awkward and clumsy, and it would pull the audience out of the immediacy of the scene. But today we can capture a sweeping landscape in a few well-crafted lines, and visual media makes movement from place to place even easier.  

All the same, a unity of place is something many writers show a lack of appreciation for and their work often suffers as a result.  Characters need goals and direction, a steady balance between progress and obstacles.  Using “video game style” narrative to suggest a character has to collect the 7 Dragonballs or the 150 Pokemon or what-have-you is fine for an episodic adventure series but it dilutes the potency of your narrative when you stick it in your novels or films: it essentially becomes a montage of many places and experiences.

Worse, when we drag them from place to place it shifts the focus from the characters to the landscape; we see how the scenery changes at the expense of spending time with the people who occupy it.  Again, this works fine sometimes (especially in video games, where story and character come second and third to gameplay), and occasionally in TV shows--but less so for other media.

Instead, try to keep the spirit of Aristotle’s Unity of Place alive.  Choose a few key locations that we can switch between (using cutting-edge storytelling technology) but make those locations firmly grounded in your character’s minds. If they occupy the space then both they and the environment will seem much more alive.

3. Unity of Action: Despite the thousands of years between us and Aristotle this is the one step that I feel is still right--well, at least 85% right.  Unity of Action is essential to any story.  The precise thing that makes Hollywood action movies shallow and derivative is an over-abundance of action (which is fine--you’re allowed to enjoy that!  I do!  Let’s just call it what it is: spectacle, not story.)

But “Action” doesn’t simply refer to gunfights and explosions, it describes the steps through which your story reaches its conclusion (AKA plot points).  The art of good writing--both in terms of language and story--is succinctness.  Say what you want to say in as few words as possible.  The better those words, the more elegant your writing becomes.  If your story is burdened with too many ups and downs, lefts and rights, it will feel that way, and suffer for it.

Remember that this has not been a complete look at the Poetics. If you have a literary streak and would love to learn about the steps for establishing  tragedy then I highly recommend reading more about it (or just reading it directly!)  This has merely been a paltry look at some of the structural elements, and I encourage you to pick up a copy (quite cheaply!) and make it part of your reference library.

Synopsis Exercise

Synopsisesesees

Okay, so your piggy bank is full and you’re now bursting with ideas.  Time to start developing one!

You’ll probably have a favourite so deciding which one to work with is simple enough--but if, for some reason, you really have no clue, pulling at random will probably be revealing (either you’re happy with your choice or you’re not, in which case, pull another). However you decide, you have your story in mind and it’s time to nurture it.  What do you do?  How does one even begin?

A lot of people come to the table assuming their current skill set is all they need, but part of a story’s success actually depends on the way it’s delivered.  So regardless of whether you’re a novelist, a playwright, or whatever, a story has to be assessed for its appropriate medium.  You might set out to write a novel and find what you actually have is a film; a comic book might become a radio drama.

There generally is no rule to determine this, but at least a moment’s reflection is required--and certainly, at any rate, can’t do any harm. Ask yourself what your chosen medium allows, and what does it limit?  Would your horror story work as a novel or, perhaps, would a radio drama, where description is limited to nonexistent and the audience must play a more active role, be the best fit? 

(Heh. Prose pros.)

The only way to get the hang of this is to absorb, of course--watch movies, read books, listen to podcasts, and analyze the stories.  What benefits are enjoyed as a result of the format?  What consequences are suffered?  Thinking about other works critically is the most important step towards developing a knack for self-analysis in your work--an absolutely *crucial* skill for any creative person.  If you can’t find and diagnosis problems (and strengths!) in other people’s stories then you sure as hell can’t do it in your own. 

Also ask “why?”  Why a novel and not a short story?  Why a stageplay as opposed to a screenplay?  Sometimes your answer may simply be “because I want to” and that’s completely valid, but it’s still important to pose the question anyway.  The moment, or day, or week of self-reflection could make all the difference.  You may surprise yourself with the answer, or brainstorm a range of brilliant, medium-specific ideas.

The medium, after all, is a huge part of your story.  You ought to select it wisely, and not simply at random--or worse, out of habit.

(Writing is, of course, a process of trial-and-error.  If you aren't already comfortable with the idea of working for three weeks straight and then simply throwing it all away because you realize it’s not working, then you best get comfortable with it.  “I worked so hard on it!” is not an excuse to keep ineffective writing around--it just takes up space and doesn't pay rent.  Plus, knowing that each word you write is not set in stone can be a liberating process.)

(Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!)

So now you have your idea and you’re fairly sure you know what format to go for (keeping in mind that you may, of course, change your mind half-way through a draft and have to start all over.  Getting messy!) it’s time to start writing. 

OR IS IT????? (duh duh duh)

I know many writers who are content to dive right in and see what comes out.  I am, in fact, one of them! This often works for short pieces, but for longer ones I inevitably stop, maybe 10 or even 20 pages in, and realize there needs to be some organization--or else I’ll never keep track of what’s what.  This is especially true of novels, but my comic and stage writing is in no way exempt.

So in my personal process I typically write a chapter or two and then put things aside to work out the finer details.  What this means is that I resort to working out a synopsis, which may also require some fine-tuning of the world mechanics, depending on what I’m working on.  Assuming it doesn't,  however, then I just work on a simple-and-clean summary of what goes down.  The advantages of this are pretty apparent: it’s better to know where you’re going so you can figure out how to get there efficiently. Some people make this discovery by just going ahead and writing the full story--and then, of course, writing it again, and again …

Rewriting is a huge part of the creative process and figuring out a synopsis in advance will not spare you this at all; you’re doomed (or blessed) to rewrite your work.  But I sometimes find it a tremendous struggle just to get to the end of a story.  I get distracted, I focus too much on the ‘fun’ scenes (neglecting the necessary scenes), and I lack the discipline to thread them all together and see them through to the end.  The synopsis gives you a map to follow, helps you keep an eye on the next landmark, and drives you forward towards the finish line.  For this reason, I present …

  The Synopsis Exercise

The synopsis exercise is quite simple: simply write the summary for your story, put it aside, and then write another one the next day.  Go to bed, and repeat.  Write a new, from-scratch summary of your story every day for a week, and a natural refinement will occur.

It’s important to include major plot points but not to get too hung up in minor details (or sometimes even subplots)--the exercise works best if you try to do it in under fifteen minutes a day.  If you’re encumbered by unnecessary steps or pointless details then in your boredom you’ll inevitably omit it in the next version, streamlining yourself down to the bare essentials.

This is an important exercise because good writing is efficient writing.  The best writers communicate as engagingly as possible in as few words as possible.  Some authors, of course, have a style that means they may be more verbose or drawn-out, and some authors have a terse, spare style.  There is wiggle room.  But if you’re actively trying to take longer routes to express the same sentiment, then I promise you are simply shooting yourself in the foot.  Longer is never equal to better--and it may betray a lack of polish on your part.

As for the synopsis exercise, I've heard of people writing their entire novel with the same policy.  They complete a draft, set it aside, and then begin the whole process anew.  They’ll do this again and again until some point when they've found the most bountiful seam of ore their brains can provide, and then refine it to the point of perfection.

I personally think that’s insane.  If you’re writing a 120,000-word novel you’re undoubtedly going to forget some of the good parts and lose them along with the bad!  But everyone has a process.

Doing this with a synopsis is much simpler.  It’ll probably cap out between 500-1000 words, making it easier to keep the good stuff in mind, and only take up at most 30 minutes of your time each day.  And, in the end, you should have something streamlined; no clutter of filler, just raw, awesome story.

But even at the end of the week you may encounter a wrench in the works, some unsavoury lump that disrupts the flow.  And it never seems to go away, no matter how much you try to smooth it out--at best, it just pops up somewhere else and annoys you all over again.  Then where do you turn?

(If you're wondering how it’s even possible to screw up a synopsis, I urge you to take that as a warning sign. The critical skills required to acknowledge when something is flawed are the exact same cognitive abilities required to be good in that field.  If you've never noticed a flaw in your own writing or story structure then it’s more likely to suggest that you’re just not at the necessary skill level to recognize it, not that every word escapes your beautiful brain as a perfect dew-drop of literary merit.  Fortunately all is not lost!  ABSORB.  Watch all the TV and movies; read all the books; play all the video games. And then write essays analyzing the merits and weaknesses of each and every thing.  Go to school for it if you require the structure and discipline to make it happen. Inevitably your own writing will begin to seem hopeless and, possibly, downright disastrous. Good.  That means it’s working and there is hope for you yet. 

If, however, you are constantly tossing your stories because you think they are crap, congratulations!  You’re on the right track.)

If your synopsis isn't working it means that something is missing, or that you have an extra ingredient that needs to be cut--rarely does it mean you just need to restructure, and you can vouch for that as presumably in your efforts to make it work you tried compiling all the pieces in every conceivable configuration.  (If you didn't, I’m afraid you missed the point of a synopsis. Try again!) Restructuring is what the synopsis exercise is for; if it doesn't work, you may have to consider … cutting.

That much is probably obvious, so it’s just a simple matter of figuring out what the offending element is and either adding or excising it, depending.  Fortunately, human beings have been thinking about story for a really long time, and they've come up with a few ideas--well, a heck of a lot of ideas, actually--in fact, so many ideas it would be unwieldy for me to discuss them all in one blog post, so I’m afraid I’ll have to do it as a series. 

Over the next few weeks we’ll look at structure and the mechanisms of story, the bits and bobs that come together to make something narrative and personal.  We’re gonna smash stories together to see what particles spill out, and thus construct the Standard Model of Fable. 

  Seatbelts, everyone! 

Argh.

I keep forgetting I actually need to update this for it to be relevant.  Apologies!  Believe it or not I actually have three blog posts about traditional story structure written--they just need to be typed up first. (I write everything by hand--I'll write a post about why ... later)

In the meantime, two of my stories have recently been released in the comics anthology Waterlogged: Tales From the Seventh Sea.  You can read them here, buy the book here, or check out a review here (that has special mention of yours truly!  Gawrsh.)  There's also a book launch that you should be sure to check out! 

Also, just in case you haven't read it, I wrote a several-part review of BioShock Infinite over on my "literary" review blog, so you can check that out, too:

Part 1: On Violence

Part 2: On Expectations of Story

Part 3: On Game Mechanics

Part 4: On the Ending

This probably goes without saying but those are spoiler-rific.   Anyway, I will be typing up those three posts on story structure to be updated across the next three fridays so hell yeah for content!

The Piggy Bank (Or, How to Generate Ideas and Stick 'Em Somewhere)

Anyone intimately familiar with me may know that I already occasionally update a blog over at Booklubbers with my good friend and colleague Al Friebertshauser.  Feel free to head in that direction if you’d like to read literary reviews, collaborative comics, and a series I’ll be doing this summer called “book porn” (wherein antiquarian books are photographed and you get excited about it).

I’ll link to relevant Booklubbers updates in this blog, as well, but I also want to start detailing my own writing process, just in case anyone should actually find that interesting. You may not! In which case, why are you here, go away.  But if you’re into that kind of noise, then by all means, read on.

If you somehow found this blog without first checking my website, be sure to go over there (http://www.wordweasel.ca) as that will have relevant information regarding my bio and portfolio.  Otherwise LET US BEGIN.

At present I’m working on a novel that I started, conceptually, back when I was still in high school.  It lay dormant on the back-burner for several years until last year, when I started to work on it in earnest as part of my thesis for my master’s degree.  But to start, I’d like to talk about the idea generation process.

Step 1. Getting Ideas

I hear this question all the time and it always kind of floors me.  I’m not sure any person ever has an answer better than “Just … somewhere. My head. Somewhere!” and yet it’s still a question that gets asked constantly.  Where do ideas come from, and how can we turn them to our advantage?

Obviously there is no specific place.  It’s not like ideas exist within some netherplane of Ideahood which an attuned and sensitive mystic could access and harvest.  Ideas come from a lot of places, but with myself, I generally find my ideas emerge from a story I really like.

Try as we might there really is no such thing as ‘fresh ideas’ anymore—there’s simply new and unique appropriations of ideas that are already out there.  Jane Yolen is a fierce believer in this. 

Let’s get something straight.  Plagiarism is bad. If you plagiarize, you are a shmuck, and also a douchecanoe, and possibly even a flazbobber.  But how can we be writers—people who presumably delight in the written word and feverishly devour it at every turn—and not be directly influenced by the things we love (and hate)? Where do we draw the line?

That line is different for everyone, but for those in doubt may I present the following rule of thumb for your consideration.  It is by no means a guide or definitive answer, it’s just the rule by which I try to make my own stories:

It’s not the story that’s unique—it’s the teller.  Are you telling the way in which only you could possibly tell it? Is your personality weeping from every comma and whispering from each new word? If so, then you’re probably on the right track. The story isn’t new. You are.

I follow this rule so closely that I usually judge the acceptability of someone’s “rip-off” based solely on how well it’s executed.  If you’ve “borrowed” the plot of Lord of the Rings I will allow for all but actual legit copyright infringement as long as you have made it better.  I don’t care what you’ve done, as long as I enjoy it more. (The estate totally has the right to sue your butt into the ground for copyright infringement if you can’t be bothered to make changes, but hey, you knew what you were getting into.)

To give an example: I do not forgive Eragon.  The Pit Dragon Trilogy by Jane Yolen is so much better. (But Paolini was 15; he can hardly be held accountable for mimicry)

I do forgive The Hunger Games.  I have loads of problems with those books (as can be read in my review here) but ultimately they ARE better than the original Battle Royale, so by all means, go for it. 

Okay, so, then, what exactly do I mean? 

The first novel I ever wrote was in high school (I actually wrote two and a half novels in high school, but they were all repeated iterations of the same book).  My favourite book at the time (and to this day) was The Neverending Store by Michael Ende, so I wanted to tell a story about a kid who has to face their problems when a story comes to life.  Initially the main character and her friends were even sucked into a book that they found in a spooky part of the library, and their adventures unfolded from there.

But I was 14 when I started this and about 16 by the time I finished, so I naturally thought it was crap.  So I started over.

The second iteration removed some of the cast (most of whom had been shoddily ripped off from some of the anime I was watching at the time of writing. I didn’t even change their names) and reshaped the rest.  I stopped focussing on stuff like the colour of their eyes and started thinking about the shape and impact of their personalities.  I took out the book—now there were statues that sucked them into this magical world of danger and mayhem and whimsy.

I finished that about 8 months later. I still hated it. I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So I started over.

The third draft began when I was about 17 (I’d taken a heavy break to pursue my extensive fanfiction career), got sat on, and then workshopped in my first year of the creative writing program at UBC.  It reinstated the magical story element, but this time Ann and her friends were sucked into a story she had written, rather than a story that had come from nowhere.

I never finished that draft of the novel because it quickly became apparent that that idea was also crap. It put too much emphasis on Ann as a power character and no matter what I did she just ended up coming out as a bit of a Mary Sue—always right, always on the ball. Even when I tried to take her out of the story it made her seem like some magical little princess.

The current draft of this story is on the backburner, but I have written the first few chapters. This time, the cast is halved again; Ann is a raconteur who tells stories that seem to come to life; they don’t get sucked into a world, but rather the folklore and legends of Vancouver rise up to add a new layer of reality to the city they already live in.   At the moment I’m pretty happy with that premise and when I’m done working on my current novel I’ll get some serious work done on it (for now I’ll upload the first draft of some early chapters to my website, so feel free to check them out, if you’re curious).

The point of this was just to take you on the path of development, showing you how a story went from being my blatant rip-off of The Neverending Story with added anime characters to a fleshed-out “original” story.  When people ask me about the plot I still sheepishly feel as if I am stealing from Michael Ende, but nobody else can tell, and that’s what matters. 

So go ahead and take an idea from a story you really like. Try to distill what it is you love about that story and go from there.  I find it impossible to think that the years it takes to develop a novel won’t shape that story into something so inherently personal that it doesn’t have a full life of its own.

If even that makes you sheepish, then try taking ideas from dreams. Your dreams are basically just a watered-down version of your daily pop culture absorption anyway, so you may as well.  “But Shannon, I don’t remember my dreams!” Then start keeping a dream journal. Here’s some advice on how to do it.

Option the third: steal from Neil Gaiman. He did this story in Sandman (“Calliope”—it’s in the third trade) where a guy is cursed with endless ideas. There’s a couple pages where this guy just rattles off nothing but one-sentence pitches.  Go use ‘em. Gaiman isn’t; I’m sure he won’t mind.

If

Alternatively, use writing prompts.  If you’re a short fiction writer or poet you probably have a very different relationship with “ideas” than I do. There are lots of good writing prompt exercises available on the internet, like http://creativewritingprompts.com/, http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts, and http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.ca/.  Sit down and start—you never know what will come out, and it may be something you end up wanting to keep.

I try to only work on one or two ideas at a time.  I’m not much for short fiction so it’s easier to commit my time to the novels I’m working on, or whatever longer project has caught my fancy.  School has always really distracted me, though, so I’ve had plenty of other bits of writing come up during the long years of my education. 

As a result I generate ideas really quickly.  When I think of something that’d be good I jot it down on a piece of paper, fold it up, and pop it in The Piggy Bank. 

In theory when I’m done working on the next two novels (Dirty then Soggy—listen, I’m terrible at titles) I’ll presumably be able to pull a new idea from The Piggy Bank and work on that. 

So there you have it. Some thoughts on getting ideas.  In the next blog post I’ll talk about what you do with those ideas once you have them, in terms of organization and planning. Because, sadly, there’s a lot of that required.

Cheers!