Foreshadowing Firearms

This post might have been written on time, but I went to a concert on Wednesday. Bad Wolves, Breaking Benjamin, and Five Finger Death Punch (click links for musics). Totally worth it to get tickets down on the floor, by the way.

But anyway, we're here to talk about writing. 

You may have heard of Chekhov's Gun. It's a… I don't know, a rule, that says, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

Basically, if you bother mentioning a thing, it should be important at some point.

Murder! In Space!

I don't know if this is going to come into play in my next project, but lately I've drawn to the trope They Fight Crime. As in, "She's a by-the-book detective. He's an amorphous blob of mac and cheese. Together, they fight crime!" Or something, you know, less nonsensical. He's an FBI agent, she's a forensic anthropologist. A cop and a novelist. An Ontarian and a Quebecois. You get the idea.

I was also thinking about space cops, but I don't know if I know enough about law enforcement and, you know, space, to pull it off. The initial idea I had for my "space story" was that the main character joined what I called "The Corps." I don't know what that is. I never figured that out. Maybe they're space cops. I don't really know what they would be policing, on a lonely ship, wandering through space all alone. I mean, I guess they could keep the citizenry in line. I don't know. I have no idea what I'm doing, as usual.

An Unexplained Journey

Journeys. Someone's going somewhere. But what really matters, the destination, or how they get there?

Back in high school, when I was in Drama, we had a group project to write a short script in which "Someone is going somewhere." That was the only guideline. Just think of all the possibilities! All the journeys that could be taken! Our "someone" was a malicious old lady named Edna. And well, she was going to Hell.

Not exactly high art, but journeys come in all shapes and sizes.

More familiar, and probably more impressive, is the Hero's Journey. Your hero starts in their normal world as a moisture farmboy, or Shire resident, or kid in a cupboard. Then they get drawn into some adventure, meet a mentor figure, go through some trials and tribulation, and then return a changed and possibly better person.

Worlds Collide

I randomly came up with the best analogy the other day. I was trying to explain what I was talking about last time, about needing the perfect words and the best sentences in a story that anyone's going to read.

It's like building a brick wall. You only want, good, high quality bricks. You don't want a brick made of Styrofoam, or Jell-O. That's going to make holes in your wall. You don't want a poorly constructed story with holes in it.

Granted, my original explanation had a lot more swearing in it. I try to behave myself on here, for some damn reason.

So I've had a poll running for the past couple of weeks, and I didn’t quite get the volume of responses I'd hoped. But that's okay. The votes are in, and it's a three way tie between Subterranean Fiction, Occult Detective, and Romance. Which means I have to combine all three.

Redeemable, Like a Coupon

There's still about a week left to vote on the genre of my next project. As it stands, it's tied, which means I'll have to combine the winning genres. And honestly, I'm kind of excited about the prospect.

As for the current project, well…

I haven't finished outlining it yet. What have I been doing all this time, you ask? I don't know. Not outlining, I guess. Motivation is still something I'm working on. The whole getting up and writing every day thing.

So the point in the character arc outline thing where I left off is the point of the story where the character goes on the offensive. He should try to defeat the antagonist (in this case a soul-gobbling entity), and he should fail. Then some other stuff should happen, some more information is learned, and then the final battle, so to speak. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen here. In this case, perhaps the entity remains undefeated, but the character succeeds in saving the Girl.  And then the aftermath of that.

Naming Names

When I start this post, it's 12:44am. So yes, NaNo has officially begun, but I haven't started on the ol' novel yet. I'll be doing that after work. If I start now, I may never go to bed.

I was going to do some outlining on Monday, but, well, the internet came calling and who was I to ignore it? I did finally name the girl. I said to myself, she's an ordinary down to earth girl, and she should have a name that reflects that. So somehow she became Claire. And then she needed a last name, and for some reason those can be tricky. I mean, you can name a child anything you want, but a last name tends to reflect a bit of heritage. You pick a name, and a whole bunch of history comes with it.

It Gets Funnier Every Time

I think things are stagnating a little with the constant "I don't know what this story is about." So we're going to talk about something different today. I actually wrote a whole post about lines and bits of dialogue I've collected, but I've had way too much coffee, and it really doesn't make any sense. So we're going to try this again.

Looking through all my collected stuff… how about running gags? Those are fun. If you're not aware, a running gag is some amusing thing that keeps popping up. It's Family Guy's giant chicken, Avatar: The Last Airbender's "My cabbages!", and basically all of Arrested Development.

Setting a Foundation for Urban Fantasy

I’ll be honest, most of my time lately is spent on trying to become a real adult, and desperately trying not to be a real adult. So I've been slacking in the writing department. I was trying to do some plotting while I was at work, but people kept coming in and wanting things. Very distracting.

It falls into the realm of urban fantasy, in a contemporary world with supernatural elements. This involves something called the Masquerade, which is the outward appearance that the world is normal. The public at large is unaware that creatures of the night roam the streets or what have you. So I can have an ice cream parlor, but no one knows it's run by vampires. Because that would make people uneasy, to say the least.

This saves me, like, half of world building, since half the world is already, well, built. It's just the supernatural underworld that I need to work on. And of course raises the question of whether there are creatures besides vampires in this world. But that's a slippery slope. First you add werewolves, then ghosts, then rakshasas and shtrigas. Then angels and demons. You get my point. Once you add one thing, it's hard to know where to stop. So I think we'll stick with strictly vampires for now. We can always add later if we have a good reason to.

The Noodle Incident

I was going to move forward from Camp NaNo, but what's the hurry? Let's stay here a little longer. There's no need to rush off to some new project. I wanted to share some snippets with you. At least one I've already put on facebook, so it might seem familiar to some.

But first, let's talk about the Noodle Incident. The name comes from a Calvin & Hobbes comic, and typically refers to some event that is mentioned but never explained.

I'm rather fond of noodle incidents, because they hint at a backstory that I don't have to actually create. You reference some random event (the randomer, the better), and it might tell you a little something about the characters. Was it some kind of trouble they got into? Was it an adventure they had?

Now, my Camp NaNo story from July, Once Upon a Writing Desk, has something of a noodle incident. A literal noodle incident with literal noodles. It's brought up more than once, and elaborated on a bit, but I think each new piece of information only raises more questions.

It begins just after the mac and cheese scene I mentioned last week.

“Where did you learn to make this?”

“A man has to have a few secrets. Maybe I studied for six months with Tibetan monks.”

This then leads into a discussion about Buddhism, and seems to be something that Martin made up. After all, who would learn to make mac and cheese from Tibetan monks? This occurs on page 10, and is not mentioned again until the very end of the story, on page 23. Here, we find Martin making mac and cheese again, and see the return of the noodle incident.

“I’m shit at following orders. Just ask the Tibetan monks. ‘Use yak cheese,’ they said, and I was like, ‘No, man, that’s weird. Where am I going to find yak cheese in Lancashire?’ And they kicked me out. Of the monastery. And Tibet. Just, like, out of the whole country. So then I thought I’d climb Everest, since I was, you know, in the area. But then I stood at the bottom and was like, ‘Fuck that.’ So I went home, and it turns out you can buy yak cheese there, so what the fuck do I know.”

Personally, I think that paragraph is a better story than the 24-page tale that surrounds it. I kind of want to just write a story that is this guy's adventures in Tibet, learning to make mac and cheese from some monks. But that would take the mystery out of it, and it would cease to be a noodle incident.

I have zero idea what my next project is going to be. I have a lot of rough drafts that need to be revised, but I don't know. I still have figured out how to pave over some of those plot holes yet. I'll see you all Tuesday, in any case.

A Tale of Infinite Weirdness

On Tuesday, I proposed a story involving one or more mysterious items. The more I think about it, the more into the idea I get. It's this bizarre little pocket of sci-fi and fantasy, and it's something I need to explore.

Ten years ago, there was a miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel (so much of my life revolves around these, apparently) called The Lost Room. In it, well, there's all the Objects from the titular room, and they do stuff. Like boil eggs, or rotate things, or send whoever touches it to a stretch of highway outside Gallup, New Mexico. Some of them do different things when combined with other objects. That's the kind of weird-ass story I want to write.

This is probably a good example of how the writing process can be for me. It's not always that I have a vague plot that needs to be filled out. Sometimes it can be as vague as "there's some things that do stuff." From here, I have to figure out what it going to happen with these things, and who they are going to happen to.

Do people want these items? Does someone not want them? What will people do obtain or get rid the things? What's the best and worst thing that could happen because of these things?

What sort of characters could be involved? Taking aside our protagonist for a moment, do they have a thing? Do they want a thing? Why? What about our antagonist?

These are the sort of questions I have to answer. Also, what sort of a world is this? I'm leaning towards an urban fantasy sort of deal, where fantastical elements are thrown into our modern world. Basically, our world, with some weird shit thrown in. A lot of the time, the weirdness exists under the surface, known only to a few.

The thing that I know for sure is that these weird items that may or may not do stuff are not common, and not known to the general public. The protagonist probably just stumbled upon one, maybe in their attic, maybe at a flea market, wherever. There may be some person or organization who wants the items. But what will they do to get them?

In times like this, when I need both a plot and characters, there's no clear answer for which to create first. It's possible that one will lead to the other. Maybe a plot will imply a certain sort of character. Maybe a character has a particular story that they want to play out. Right now it feels like the whole thing is right on the tip of my tongue, like it already exists in my head, I just have to pull it out.

Join me Tuesday, when I may have a clue as to what this story is about.

Look At This Stuff, Isn't It Neat?

After careful consideration, I have determined that I will not be rewriting The Midnight Circus for July's Camp NaNo, or possibly ever. The general consensus on that was "write an entirely different story." So I will. I'm not going to waste my time trying to fix a story that no one would ever want to read. So now I have to figure out what to write in its place.

I have a partial story about a guy who can see the future that I could finish. I could try to rewrite any number of my old novels. There's one currently on draft three that I could try to figure out.

On my quest through all my story ideas today, I came upon my list of McGuffins. A McGuffin is a thing, that you probably want. Maybe it’s a thing that does something. That's real clear, right? It's the One Ring. It’s Dorothy's ruby slippers. It's the Holy Grail, and that suitcase from Pulp Fiction. It's either the cause of, or the solution to, all your problems. Maybe both.

Anyway, I have some great McGuffins on the list I have assembled from the NaNo forums. I'd like to share some with you. Maybe one of them will play a vital role in my next story.

• A desk that seems to swallow anything (or anyone) who spends too much time around it.
• A map that shows the location of something that you want the least.
• A tiny, metal puzzle box that is impossible to solve.
• A large, old book that doesn't open, and occasionally drips salt water from between its pages.
• A weather vane in the shape of a rooster that comes to life on the 14th of every month.
• A broken music box, which plays distorted and ethereal notes to a nursery rhyme tune.

Can you imagine a story around one of these things? Or a story involving all of them? Maybe it's time for me to write a delightfully weird fantasy/supernatural type story. Maybe that's what I should do for July.

What do you think? Any of my McGuffins stand out to you? Or might you suggest some of your own? Let's get collaborative in here.

I think we might be on the right track with this. These particular items and their odd style evoke a feeling I'm not sure I can explain. It's like… sliding sideways into a sunny room. It’s summer, twenty years ago, maybe. There's no way in hell anyone's going to understand that. I've got a good feeling about it, is what I'm trying to say.

So please, comment and tell me what you think. I don’t care if it's on here, or on Facebook. I'd just really like to hear your thoughts. All of you.

See you Friday.

Narrative Inevitability

There are certain, I don't know, rules of narrative. By which I mean, certain things have to happen because of, or leading to, other things. Well, they’re not really rules, more like, things that tend to happen. This is the worst explanation ever. I spend way too much time on TV Tropes, so I have to try to put these things in layman's terms. How about some examples?

Chekhov's Gun: If a gun is introduced in Chapter One, it should go off by Chapter Three. Otherwise, why is it there? Basically, if you're going to introduce some element, it should be relevant in the future. Each scene, each piece of dialogue, should be either furthering the plot or revealing something about the characters, setting, etc.

Redemption Equals Death: If a bad character turns good, they are probably going to die. And it will probably be in some valiant act of heroic sacrifice. If ever you find yourself rooting for a bad guy, you'd better pray that he doesn’t see the error of his ways.

Rule of Drama: The potential for conflict will never be passed over. Basically, if something could happen to cause drama, it will. If something can be misunderstood, it will. If someone could cheat on their significant other, they probably will.

The reason I brought all this up to begin with is that after a while, you start noticing these things. There you are, innocently watching a movie and suddenly you realize that guy's going to die, those two are going to sleep together, and that cool thing is going to be destroyed. Things become predictable.

This is true for things even as I write them. I've barely pondered the rewrites for The Midnight Circus and it occurred to me that one character is going to die. And it's not because I'm needlessly cruel. They're probably my favorite character in the story, and I'm pissed they're going to die. But they have to. That's just where the story goes, and who am I to argue?

I guess that raises the issue of fate versus free will in writing. Do we ever actually have control over the story, or are we just following a tale that already exists somewhere? Was it ever really our story?

Stay tuned for Tuesday when… something happens. I'm sure it will be great, whatever it is.