Art, Drugs, and Religion: Clark Ashton Smith's "The Disinterment of Venus"

So I've revving up my engines to prepare for writing my next dissertation chapter. This chapter will focus will on Clark Ashton Smith (13 January 1893 – 14 August 1961), a poet and writer of fantasy fiction who published in Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. I wanted to discuss one of this stories here, "The Disinterment of Venus." Published in Weird Tales in July of 1934, it appeared alongside the famous novelette, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," a collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price.

The story takes place in Smith's imaginary French province of Averoigne, at a 16th century Benedictine monastery. While the monks are digging in their garden, they come upon a giant statue, "the grimy head and torso of what was plainly a marble woman goddess from antique years." The statue is revealed to be somewhat supernatural. It evokes in people who look upon it deep desires. These desires are animal in nature: lust, hunger, the desire for alcohol. To a large extent, the statue emanates a kind of vice aura that contaminates those who look upon it. As the story progresses, the statue turns many of the otherwise god-fearing monks to sin. Eventually, one monk decides he has had enough. He approaches the statue with an intent on destroying it, with a heavy hammer. He is found the next day in the hole from which they exhumed the statue. The statue has crushed him to death, is on top of him, and it seems as though--even in death--he is embracing it.

Though this story didn't "scare" me, I found it extremely intriguing. I think allegorizes a certain kind of relationship to art, to drugs, to religion. In this story, an art object becomes monstrous. It becomes a kind of narcotic, something the monks become addicted to. And it leads to their ruin. I think this comparison between art and addictive drugs quite intriguing. Both drugs and art are reagents to ostensibly expand one's consciousness, yes? And furthermore, both drugs and art are sometimes offered as substitutes for religious experience. In this story, you have a drug-like art object set in a monastery, a place of worship. For me, this temple place with a goddess statue that attracts like a drug is a kind of "bridge point" between this world and other worlds. It is a kind of precipice that the monks throw themselves into in order to escape mundane existence in the seeking out of other worlds.

I think there is an ever prevalent attraction to the idea of "escaping" the world through art, through drugs, through religion Clark Ashton Smith's oeuvre as a whole.

*The Picture of Dorian Gray*: Literary Aesthetics, Fantasy, and the Undecided Text

A couple of days ago I tried out a book club on the West Side of Cleveland. Here's their webpage on meetup.com:  a ne{o}lit book club. The book club was great, and for my part (if you live in the Cleveland Area) I highly recommend coming to a meeting.

The book they were discussing was Oscar Wilde's famous, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). I've always loved this book! I find it really intriguing because, like Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (a ghost story), it is a text that is generally categorized as "literature" while at the same time it has many genre or weird elements.

Intuitively, I jump to describe The Picture of Dorian Gray as a fantasy. Not a "second world fantasy" like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's definitely a fantasy, though.

Consider the premise: there's a magical/supernatural painting the preserves and extends the youth of a young man. All of his horrible actions--all the stains on his soul--appear on the painting rather than on his body. The painting is a kind of "objectified soul" that Dorian can look on and meditate on. This is fantasy! Wilde has definitely deviated from the reality principle here.

It's so interesting, though, that folks rarely file this novel under the rubric of fantasy. This novel seems to announce itself as literature, as high literary art. In fact, the preface to the novel is often cited in anthologies of literary criticism and aesthetic philosophy as inaugurating or at least anticipating the highest of the high literary art: aestheticism or High Modernism. Very often, folks who believe in the importance of aesthetics and literature hearken back to this preface and cite it as a kind of articulation of first principles. Here's a link to the full manuscript of the preface: The Preface to Dorian Gray. See if you disagree with me.

I'd like to highlight a brief passage from this preface: "They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty." Why is this significant here? Well, genre literature--or "weird literature" (science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror)--has often been criticized and dismissed by literary scholars because of its apparent disregard of "literary beauty." Genre writers, the argument goes, write in a pulp style. Genre writers aren't concerned with form, only content. They don't experiment with literary aesthetics. Unlike High Modernists writers, genre writers aren't concerned with experimenting with the capacities of literary art (e.g. poetic language, narrative, genre, etc..).

I'll be honest. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. As much as I love weird literature, there's indeed something to this knee-jerk argument. There are lots of genre writers who just don't give a fig for literature as "art." Their project, their productions, the commitment is first and foremost to entertainment--to spinning a good yarn. To be more specific, genre writers seem more concerned with creating an emotion, what literary critics might call an affect (i.e. the fantasy stirs wonders, the horror stirs horror, the science fiction stirs feelings of the sublime or vastness).

The reason why I find The Picture of Dorian of Gray so interesting it that it seems to disrupt this clean framework: (1) genre writers are clumsy writers who aren't concerned with art; (2) high modernist writers are concerned with art and their concern with art can be glimpsed in their focus on language and form.

Dorian Gray is a fantasy, an example of what I like to call "weird literature." And yet--it tends to be framed in a way that runs contrary to how genre literature--fantasy, specifically--is often described, as aesthetically naieve, as pulp. Hmm...This is why I think it's "undecided."

Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith's, "The Stairs in the Crypt": Pastiche and the Haunting of Art

Last night I read another Clark Ashton Smith pastiche written by Lin Carter, a short story called "The Stairs in the Crypt." I loved it! It's about a necromancer whose apprentices fail to bury him properly, and, of course, like all necromancers who aren't properly stowed away after death, he rises, organizes an army of ghouls, and proceeds to go about the countryside feasting on the living. This is such an interesting juxtaposition of fantasy and horror. Also, the language is great. Carter does a good job approximating Smith's beautiful language and prose style. It's a wonderful pastiche!

I have to admit something. I'm always slightly disturbed when I read genre fiction pastiches. Why? Well, before answering that let me be as clear as possible and give you an idea of what I think pastiche's are.

A pastiche is defined as "a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work" (http://www.merriam-webster.com). It's different from parody, which is "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule" (http://www.merriam-webster.com).

The key difference between parody and pastiche, one might argue, is the issue of "respect." Both "parodies" and "pastiches" are imitations; however, the significant question becomes, what is the intention of the author? To recreate the aesthetic effect of the work that is being imitated? Pastiche. Or, to make fun of it or to ridicule it? Parody.

No doubt in my mind: Carter is writing pastiches of Smith's work and not parodies. He clearly respects the author's work. And, lo, he has written a very entertaining/provocative story.

And this disturbs me. But why?

A good pastiche haunts my definition of art. A key element of artistic worth, for me, is originality. And, a first principal of a pastiche is its imitative quality. It's key characteristic is its unoriginality. Thus, to truly take aesthetic pleasure in a pastiche requires, I think, one conditionally set aside originality as a key feature of art.

I'm not ready to do that. And yet! A good pastiche written with genuine enthusiasm and, dare I say, love of the original work, has the capacity to trouble my aesthetic first principles.

The Two Experiences of the Lord of the Rings: the Novels, the Films

I've started rereading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I'll confess. I've read The Hobbit many more times than LOTR. Also, I've watched Peter Jackson's movie versions, the Ralph Bakshi animated versions, many, many times, to the extent that I sometimes conflate those narratives with the original narrative. And so,  rereading this novel (last time I read it was in undergraduate) some of its original strangeness shines through.

One thing that strikes me about reading the novel is how feasible the world of Middle Earth is in the novels and how epic and somewhat grandiose it is in the Peter Jackson films. There's a kind of concreteness and ontological weight, if you will, to the Middle Earth of the novels that just it not there in the films. For me, in the Jackson films, the world is so colorful, so vibrant, and so artistic--beautiful, sublime, horrifying--that it seems unreal. Middle Earth in the Jackson films is so intense makes me focus on the technology and production value. What I mean is, I can't forget the bluescreens, the CGI, the props.

With the novels, the strangeness of the world, its tangibility, its history subordinates the prose style. In other words, the story being related seems to have a life of its own that precedes any narrative or literary stylistic acrobatics Tolkien might be able to pull off.

I know you're waiting for it! I'm not going to recite that lame adage, "The books are so much better than the film!" Why? Because I don't think such a move is very useful or interesting, comparing the books to the film. The only thing they share are single narrative. Artworks are composed of many, many things aside from narrative. Narrative is just one element that creates emotion.

For me, the books and the films are two separate experiences, two different media that evoke in audiences qualitatively distinct aesthetic responses. You watch films with lots of people; you read books by yourself. The dialog in a novel can be charged with lyrical beauty, and yet--the action passages can only achieve a certain amount of excitement. In the films the battle scenes are astonishing and exciting while the dialog, though intriguing, loses is nuance through truncation and needs to be bouyed by a soundtrack of emotionally charged music.

Long story short: two seperate experiences.

But I will give you this: rereading LOTR makes me realize how much the various film versions of Tolkien's masterpieces have taken liberties with the narrative.

"Extremes more terrible than madness": Clark Ashton Smith's, "The Isle of the Torturers"

So, I've been doing reading for my dissertation prospectus. Some of what I've been reading is the work of Clark Ashton Smith, who I believe will have his own chapter. This morning I want to review a short story of his I just read, "The Isle of the Torturers."

Original illustration in Weird Tales, March 1933

Published in in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, I highly recommend it. I'd describe it as a kind of "sword and sorcery" "weird fantasy."

Let me briefly summarize it: it's about a king whose kingdom has been beset by a horrible disease that has come out of the cosmos, a disease called "the silver death." Everyone in his kingdom dies, and so he flees his kingdom over sea. While fleeing, his ship crashes on an island where there is a decadent civilization that loves nothing more than to torture people. After being subjected to a horrible variety of tortures, he infects everyone on this island of torturers with the silver death. They all die.

We have here the story of a "sleeper agent," a single individual who seems like they are powerless before a great power but who is actually quite powerful.

I don't have much to say about the plot other than it's very gripping. I'm not very familiar with Smith's work, but my impression is that the strangeness and latent violence of the plot is characteristic of his work.

What fascinates me intensely by Smith in his style. He was a critically acclaimed poet before he began writing weird fiction. And this artistic past can be glimpsed in his prose style. Consider this passage, which relates the arrival of "the silver death" to the kingdom--it is called "Yoros"--of the protagonist:

There was no time to flee from the strange, inevitable scourge. Dreadfully and quickly, beneath the clear stars, it breathed upon Yoros; and few were they who awakened from slumber at dawn. Fulbra, young king of Yoros, who had but newly succeeded the throne, was virtually a ruler without people. (187).

Consider the cadence of the end of each sentence. Each sentence builds towards a stirring image or imaginable action: "inevitable scourge," "breathed upon Yoros," "slumber at dawn," "ruler without people." We have here a staccato of imagery that evokes a kind of despair.

Smith's prose style in this story is particularly rich, and I think this richness is a function of the story's plot, its preoccupation with the senses. Torture is, at its most basic level, the agitation of the senses. Consider this passage, where the torturers are torturing the protagonist:

For the islanders of Uccastrog had designed innumerable torments, curious and subtle, wherewith to  harry and excruciate the five senses; and they could harry the brain itself, driving it to extremes more terrible than madness (194).

Smith's prose style is pervaded by such imagery and other attempts to evoke sensory experience: sights, smells, tastes; his rich vocabulary and strange new words are, on the level of text-as-image, visually stirring. In a strange way, Smith's style is a kind of torture, a "harrying" of the senses, if you will.

There's a whole tradition of art being agonizing, excruciating, but also satisfying. There's something of that going on in this story. And I wish I had more time to trace it out.

By the way, I read this story is a famous anthology of Weird Tales titled, Weird Tales: 32 Unwearthed Terrors, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowcisz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Bonanza Books, 1988). It's available used on Amazon and a beautiful book.

Also, I've been compiling some Weird Tales resources, if you're interested. Not much is here just yet. Here's the link: Weird Tales

Edgar Allen Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," and Perversity as an Aesthetic Experience

Today is Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday, and so I thought I’d write an homage to one of his best—my favorite—stories: “The Masque of the Red Death.”

This story always stirs me. It’s truly horrifying. And its not just the plot that disturbs—the story of the pestilence, the supernatural elements, the blood, the ghostly personification of the Red Death that drives alls the revelers into the black room. It’s also the tone of the narrator.

If I had to pick one adjective to describe the narrative tone, it would be, perverse.

Generally speaking, a “perverse” something is considered a deviation from the "normal" or what is expected. But I think there’s a little more to it when we describe something as perverse in an aesthetic context. Let me explain.

In art, not only is something or someone “perverse” if it deviates from the norm of things, that perverse thing is a source of pleasure. Pleasure, satisfaction, glee—these are just as important elements to the aesthetic of “perversity” as any deviation from the norm.

That pleasure married with strangeness is the tone of the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The Masque of the Red Death.” He’s relating the story of a group of selfish aristocrats who have cut themselves off from the world to escape a horrible pestilence; furthermore, he’s relating the story of how they are inevitably brought down by that pestilence.

And in relating this story he strikes an almost a giddy, pleasured, tone, as if their vain attempts to keep the dangers of the world at bay are laughable. As an artistic experience, I find this quite moving. It effects my body and just the mind: it gives me the shivers. 

In this story we have a 3rd person omniscient narrator who is not “dis-interested” in his characters; he’s quite “interested” in his characters. Furthermore, he seems amused by his characters, in the same way a little kid who is plucking the legs off a spider is amused by arachnids.

Let me be clear: I’m not elevating this sort of perversity for its own sake; Poe’s victory, I think, is to conjure an artistic experience out of this gruesome material.

There’s an image in this story, right after the duke falls dead, that always gets me. All night long the revelers have been avoiding the black room with the red light. The duke dies. And here is their reaction: “Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment […].” This "allegorically resonates" for me: these folks have been avoiding death and ignoring it for so long; and now that they have glimpsed true cosmic horror, they run to their deaths (the black room), embrace it.

When the narrator states at the end of the story, “And the flames of the tripod expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all,” I pecieve a quality of exulation here, a kind of grim rejoicing or celebration of death’s victory that is completely in earnest and completely perverse.

Happy birthday Mr. Poe.

A Secret and Complete Guide to Writing a Fantasy Adventure Short Story that Evokes Wonder

I have some extra time this morning. And so I thought I’d write something with a little heft to it. Having recently done some film reviews, I thought I would do something practical, a real “nuts and bolts” account of how to write a fantasy adventure story, a really fun genre.

 I can’t promise the process I outline here will result in good stories. I can promise, however, that, if followed, the process detailed in this guide will result in stories. And that’s a start. And I can also promise that, if you give it a good try, you’ll have fun.

For story writing, the more concrete the goal, the better. I've found it most useful to think of writing goals in terms of word count. And so, that's how I've structured the goal of this guide: to spin a yarn in no less than 2500 words and no more than 5000. Let's make it even more concrete. We’re going to set our goal someone in the middle: 3500 words. That’s a good, modest, short story size, and I think it conforms to a lot of emerging fantasy fiction markets.

So that’s our goal: tell a story in 3500 words. That’s a lot of room for telling a story.

The Ease of Storytelling

To prove the point, I’ll tell one right now. There was a warrior. He went to a strange land. There, he countered a slime monster with thirty heads. He chopped them all off. Returning home, he was made king. End of story.

Here. I’ll make it even simpler. There was a warrior who went and killed a monster and became king.

Even simpler. A warrior killed a monster and became king.

These aren’t necessarily enthralling stories. They evoke little emotional response. There’s no intense mystery, horror, romance, adventure. At the very least these stores are interesting. And yet, I can say this for them: they’re complete stories. The have a beginning. A middle. An end.

This is a guide for writing complete stories. Not half-finished, under-developed character sketches. Not fragments of a few scenes that don’t hang together.

Complete. Stories.

Composing complete stories is not difficult at all, as my previous examples illustrate.

Indeed, “spinning a yarn” is a natural skill all of us possess. We tell stories all the time.

You’re late to pick your wife up from the library; you explain with a story. Your students want to know why you don’t have their papers graded yet; you explain with a story. Your 3-year-old niece keeps jumping on her bed and you want to make a point about how it's dangerous to do so—you might be inclined to tell her a story about a time when you jumped on the bed, and fell, and cracked open your skull.

Remember: composing a complete story is easy. Anyone can do it.

The 5 Sub-Processes of the Writing Process

This post presents that writing process as composed of five important sub-processes, each of which I'll discuss in some detail below.

• Invention: coming up with ideas.
• Outlining: organizing your ideas. Preparing to tell your story.
• Drafting: the actual writing process of your story.
• Revising: large-scale changes you put your story through
• Editing and Manuscript Prep: “fixing” small-scale issues like grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc..

A point about the writing process: do not mix these sub-processes up. Engage in them separately. Why? Let me tell you why.

Composition theorists have studied the writing process for years and years, and, if there's any recurrent theme in the copious amounts of writing advice that has been accumulated over the many years, it’s this: don’t mix up the distinct sub-processes.

Why?

Well, the idea is that when you’re “coming up with ideas” you’re using a completely different part of your mind than the part you use when you’re organizing things, e.g. thinking about specific scenes, dialogs, conflicts.

When you’re actually composing language—typing on your computer—this is a completely separate part of your mind than that part used when you’re revising for clarity. So don’t worry about clarity as you compose. And—gods!—don’t worry about grammar at all.

Of course, with word-processing programs, it’s very easy to come up with ideas, organize them, write them out, use spell-checker, backspace and fix grammar, and format your text all at the same time. Technology allows us to do this. It also trips us up.

Mixing up the distinct sub-processes results in a mind that is overtaxed. And overtaxed minds can’t spin yarns, let alone good ones.

This is a useful metaphor: writing narrative fiction is like baking a cake. You should do each step separately. You don’t mix batter, cook, frost, and decorate at the same time. This would result in an abomination of a cake (or no cake at all). The key is to do each process deliberately. With care.

Invention

The first subprocess—the first step, if you will—is what I call "invention.”

Invention is all the work you do to “come up” with ideas. What are the goals of this process? To have an adequately fleshed out story that you can tell in 3500 words.

You can’t relate “a novel length story” in a short story form. It will seem vapid and empty. Nor can you relate a flash fiction scenario in 3500 words. It will probably come out at “puffed up.”

The trick is to come up with a story that requires 3500 words to be told. Bad news is, this is really difficult. The good news is, you have this secret guide.

I call this quality—the skillful conformity of a story idea to the medium that relates it (in our case, the 3500 word story)—tightness. A “tight” story is a story that wastes no words and lacks no words. The alternative to “tightness” is “shagginess”—using too many words—and “dessicated”—using too little.

Creating “tight” and not shaggy monsters or dessicated husks is something I’m still struggling with. For me, it’s the most important quality for fiction (which is why a lot of contemporary fantasy frustrates me—a lot of its shaggy, not tight at all).

For our purposes, the best way to come up with ideas that result in tight stories is to read short fiction.

That's obvious advice: you should read the kind of work you’re interested in modeling your work on; however, for those of you who are just eager to write and are frustrated with the recurring advice—read, read, read before you write!—there’s another way to conceive of how much of a story can fit, in, say, 3500 words.

A 3500 word narrative related in the medium of prose text can approximate the same amount of narrative complexity as, say, a single Twilight Zone episode. Or, say, a single issue of a comic book. Or, hmm…a single episode of a half hour sitcom.

Keep in mind, though, comic books and sitcoms are serialized, meaning, the writers don’t have to waste time characterizing their protagonists and telling you their entire life stories every episode. They usually rely upon a prior knowledge the viewer brings to their text.

This is why The Twilight Zone is the best of these three examples. It’s not serialized; meaning, it’s not an overarching story. Each episode has different characters encountering strange things in a different way.

If you want to read an example of a short fiction before trying to come up with an idea for one, I recommend Robert E. Howard’s, “The Valley of the Worm.” It’s a great example of a fully, self-contained story full of adventure and wonder.

Coming Up with Ideas

So, we talked about how easy storytelling is and we talked about how you should keep in mind, when coming up with your idea, your medium: a 3500 word short story. Now. How do you come up with ideas?

You’ll be happy to hear this: you don’t really have to. At this point you can let your creative muscles relax. Go get a cup of coffee. Stretch. You’re writing fantasy adventure. The vast majority of this step is already done for you.

What I mean is that the great storehouse of adventure scenarios has already been stocked for you. You can go and pluck any one of those scenarios from the shelf. Some examples:

• Gilgamesh: the story of a adventurer on a quest, through a labyrinth, to find a magical artifact.
• Moses and the Exodus: the story of a prophet and his conflict with a tyrant.
• Odysseus: the story of a man trying to get home.
• Beowulf: the story of a warrior who saves a group of folks beset by a monster.
• Dante: the story of a man who travels to a distant world, a strange place.
• Hamlet: the story of a man who plots revenge.
• Robinson Crusoe: the story of a man who has to conquer nature.
• Bilbo Baggins: the story of a man who is comfortable, lives a cozy life, and, against his desires, is swept up in an amazing adventure.

A side-note: I realize that all of the protagonists I list here are men. There’s something inherently male about the “adventure” narrative structure. I’m not sure what this means, culturally, historically, biologically, etc.. I’m sure it means something. Just thought I’d point that out.

Any of these stories will do as a foundation upon which to base your story. I’m not advocating plagiarism at all. Plagiarism is stealing. I am, however, advocating that you dialog artistically with the stories that have come before. How do you “dialog artistically”? Let me just try to relate how it happens in my mind. Excuse the non-normative grammar as I try to open my skull and let you look inside:

“I’m going to write a Gilgamesh-type story about a king… no. Wait! A goblin king! Who—who goes on a quest! Through a labyrinth! Like that Jim Henson movie. Damn. Well. It’s an abandoned city that’s “labryinth-like.”What abandoned cities show up in literature? H.P. Lovecraft tells stories about abandoned cities. R'lyeh. Cthulhu’s city! Yeah! An abandoned city that—has a Cthulhu like monster in it. No. Too obvious. What’s the opposite of Cthulhu? Something beautiful. An angel. A beautiful arch-angel. O.k.. Goblin king. Goes to a weird, destroyed city haunted by a beautiful, evil angel. He goes in search of a… hmm… a magical flute? No. A horn. A brilliant silver horn.”

And so on.

Notice I’ve cited all sorts of texts and authors here: Gilgamesh, Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth, H.P. Lovecraft, religious iconography, etc..

The fact of the matter is my story about a goblin king who goes to an abandoned city to fight a beautiful angel to get a silver horn isn’t that original at all. Even with my mish-mash of various elements, it’s not very new. I’ve just weirded things up.

Here’s something important: the point is not to have a new plot. That’s not where your originality shines through. Furthermore, the goal is not to be “original” on the level of plot in fantasy adventure. The locus of originality, the source of fantasy adventure's artistic power, is not the originality of its plots. It’s in the emotional effects it evokes in its audience: the feelings of mystery, horror, sublimity, wonder, etc.. I have some thoughts on how to make your writing have the most potential to evoke intense experiences.

For now, at this stage—invention—remember this: in spite of all the dragons, goblins, wizards, undead monsters, fairies, cyclops, unicorns—in a word, novums—the originality of fantasy literature does not come from its plot. It comes from its capacity to stir feelings of wonder.

So save your creative energies for later, when we move onto outlining.

I’ve showed you how easy composing stories is. I’ve given you an idea of what can be related in a short story. And I’ve tried to convey an intuitive strategy for coming up with a story idea. Now. Before we move onto outlining and some more thoughts on composing “tight” stories, do this: come up with an idea. You’ll need it. Write it down. It should be no more than 50 words or, say three sentences. Do it. And then go on to read about outlining.

Outlining

The first thing I want to say about outlining is a scandal: they are an illusion. You can create an extensively detailed outline organizing every scene, every expository passage, every dialog exchange-- you even get all mathematical and assign word limits to each of these elements. The fact of the matter is, you will not follow it. When you move onto drafting, you will deviate from it.

Does this mean you should just strike out and start drafting without an outline? Let me take a deep breath: NO! Bad writer!

In spite of our faithlessness to outlines, they are absolutely essential for the composition of any sort of narrative fiction. Why? Remember my reference to “tight,” “shaggy,” and “dessicated” stories? Put simply and in metaphorical form: if “Shaggy” and “Dessicated” were vampires, their garlic would be outlines. Another metaphor: outlines are your anti-biotic against writing “shaggy” and “dessicated” stories.

Put simply: outlines not only keep your writing focused, its turns your writing into a story, a coherent story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Some folks don’t like using outlines because—to use an RPG term—they feel “railroaded” by them (i.e. they feel like outlines force them into following rigid paths). They desire the free reign of the sandbox. The wide open of the flowing meadow. The vast emptiness of a cosmic vacuum.

The last example was meant to make a point. Unless you’re one of those very gifted and lucky people who can come up with, compose, organize, and beautifully relate a story—four processes—all at the same time (side-note: I don’t these mythical super-writers  exist), your stories will feel like a “vast emptiness” to readers, a “cosmic vacuum”.

In terms of fantasy adventure, writing without an outline produces strange (not in a good way) stories that are meandering and aimless. The genre we’re working in offers far too many opportunities for pitfalls. Why not throw in another fight with vampire-demons-slime-monsters? Why not add an extra riddling serpent? :Sigh: Because—

Hold on.

This will be become clear if I try to make a case for why we should outline.

In fantasy adventure, you should outline because it allows you to identify the moments in your narrative that are important; the key moments that have the potential for evoking for most sought after effect: wonder.

The Aesthetic of Wonder

Here’s a hunch: the primary aesthetic effect of fantasy adventure is what I call wonder. What is wonder? Well, philosophers since Plato have been arguing about that for thousands of years. Let me give you the fast sketch of it.

Wonder is the emotion one experiences when the world seems to conform to your vision of it. Wonder is the emotion one experiences when it seems as if our expectations are about to be realized.

If you want more on wonder consider reading Philip Fisher’s great book, *Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences* (Harvard UP, 1998).

But, to unpack this description of wonder, let me just give some examples of it:

Example 1: An other-worldly adventurer has been traveling through multiple planes of existence to find a shining city of light. Using a map, he has come to the final obstacle: a hill. A horizon. He walks up the hill. He approaches the horizon. Red light is pouring over the horizon. He looks over! His eyes grow wide! Wonder.

Example 2: An old witch has been making a potion. It requires a rare ingredient. The beak of a squid-god and a vial of its ink. After many adventures, she gets all the ingredients together. She brews up the potion. It’s green and bubbling. It releases noxious fumes, red smoke, that swirls into various shapes: horses, demons, piping satyrs. She holds it up. She drinks it down! She gasps. She grabs her throat. What’s happening to her? Wonder.

And there’s more.

Wonder isn’t just this experience of expectation. It is also followed by a realization of that expectation. And, usually, that realized expectation is another emotion, an intensified one. Let me demonstrate with my examples:

Example 1: He looks over! His eyes grow wide! There is the city! It’s so beautiful! A million spiraling turrets of ivory! Flowing banners of silver! Ecstasy.

Example 2. She drinks it down! She gasps. She grabs her throat. What’s happening to her? She begins retching! Bloody, vein-covered sacks! They’re moving! Out of the sacks rip little demon-creatures that resemble the witch! They smile and scream, “Sister! Life! We live again!” and they cackle horrendously. The witch, meanwhile—with a long, red tongue—begins licking them clean of their birthing juices. Horror.

So, wonder is an emotion of anticipation that is usually realized. And it’s the key aesthetic effect of fantasy adventure.

Outlining (Cont.)

But back to outlining.

Aside from the obvious benefits of outlining—it keeps your story focused, it stops you from adding scenes and episodes that are irrelevant—it offers an essential boon specifically for writers of fantasy adventure, writers who are committed to having their stories evoke wonder.

What does outlining have to do with composing a narrative that evokes wonder? Outlining allows you to adopt that “macro-narrative” perspective you require in order to identify the moments of wonder in your story; having identified them, you can then structure your narrative to foreground those moments.

Let me offer an idea of a story idea and a brief outline. It’ll be better to have an example to work with. I like that witch story. I’ll stick with it.

Story idea: There is an evil witch whose two witch sisters were burned by priests of a city god. The witch has found a way to resurrect her sisters. She has to make a potion from rare ingredients. When she drinks it she literally vomits her sisters up.

Beginning of Example

Thoughts about the outline: How should this story start? I got it! The witch is talking with someone who is going to give her information regarding the ingredients.


Characters:


• The witch.
• Her sisters.
• The priests who killed her sisters.
• Squid-god.
• People who worship the squid-god.
• Person she’s talking to—A hermit sorcerer possessed by a demon who owes her a boon for her help in the past. 


Scene Outline


Scene 1: The witch talks with the demon-possessed sorcerer. She will not tell the sorcerer what potion she wants to make. The sorcerer tells her where to find the ingredient she needs. The ink of a squid god.
Scene 2: Expository passage detailing her travels to the island where the squid god is worshiped by a strange people.
Scene 3: Minor encounters with the people as she makes her way to the temple.
Scene 4: Her encounter with the squid-god. A fight.
Scene 5: The brewing of her potion and the vomiting up of her sisters.

End of Example.

This outline entails a list of characters and a scene-by-scene outline. One could also include descriptions for each of the characters. Some folks might like including a list of the settings (e.g. Sorcerer’s tower, witches hut, temple of the squid-god, etc.)

Briefly, let me point out some potential moments of wonder, where the reader’s expectations can be intensified: the witch’s travels leading up the island of the squid god, her fight through the city to the squid-god’s temple (the temple turns out to be a monstrous, huge conch-shell!), her encounter with the squid-god (it results in a fight), and, of course, her brewing of the potion.

Brief interlude: I need to say something about fights. Fantasy adventure is filled with fight scenes. But you need to understand how reader’s relate to fight scenes emotionally in order to craft effective ones. First, the lead up to the fight can be just as interesting as the fight. Questions, such as, “Will they fight? Is he really going to go for his dagger?” stir a sense of wonder in the reader; this sense of wonder, leading up to a fight scene, primes the reader to experience another emotion: excitement. When the protagonist finally goes for his dagger and slashes at the demon-priest’s face, you’ve left wonder behind and moved on to excitement. Here’s the thing about excitement: it fizzles out quickly. In narrative prose—written stories—I found that when writers try to sustain excitement in this way, it inevitably fails. And, even more simply, it’s something this medium—the written word—is just not good at. Want a good, exciting sword-fighting scene? Watch *The Princess Bride.* I’m sure there will be detractors here. What about Robert E. Howard? What about Harold Lamb? Indeed. What about them? Looking at their fight scenes I am always surprised by how brief they actually are. There’s a lot of lead up in Howard’s stories to actual fights, but the fights tend to end very quickly with a beautiful image of gore: “The Cimmerian split the skull of the Pict in twain. A burst of hot, red blood shot out.” Fight over. I could go on about how to construct good fight scenes. It’s really important for this genre. But now, alas, is not the time. Perhaps a post on this topic is in the future. Back to outlining.

Another way people refer to outlining is they use the term “pre-writing”. I tend to use them inner-changeably. Outlining, pre-writing, whatever you call it, it’s is great for coming up with details.

And yet—and yet! it carries with it two risks:

(1) If you spend too much time pre-writing, then you’ll never get to drafting.

(2) There is a tendency for the length of a story to grow the more pre-writing / outlining you do. If you’re aiming for a 3500 word story, you want to keep your pre-writing / outlining of a quantiy appropriate for that length. How much pre-writing should you do? Once again, this is somewhat difficult to gauge. I tend to allow myself approximately 25% of the word-count of my story for my prewriting. Thus, prewriting for a 3500 word story should not exceed 875 words or thereabouts. Anything more, and your story might baloon into a novella or a shaggy short-story. Anything less and your story might become a dessicated husk. But, as you write stories, mess around with it. I’ve known writers who attest to writing 40 pages for every 1 page of completed prose. I, personally, think that’s ridiculous (and probably a whopper).

One other thing before I wrap up this outlining section. Keep in mind the difference between these three writing modes: exposition, description, and dialog.

Exposition is when you summarize something. Time can be collapsed in exposition. For example, “A thousand years past and the Empire of Nes flourished, grew decadent, crumbled, and was lost to dust.”

Exposition is also when you’re just relating information. For example, “The Slime-monsters of Kadee procreate through using long tentacle-like spikes that spray spores.”

Dialog is self-evident. Example: “Watch out for them spores!”

Description is when you relate physical space and time as it happens. Time can be condensed in description. For example, “He walked into the room. He threw down his sword. It clattered on the ground. It seemed as though the entire mead-hall grew still as the dust cloud erupted. And hung in the rafters. A thousand tiny particles. Like the numbered stars.”

Some people like separating physical description from the narrating of action. Consider, “He walked into the tomb,” versus, “the tomb was filled with long-bearded zombies with yellow eyes.”

It’s good to note in your outlines of which mode you’re using and when. This allows you to calibrate your pace.

An important note about narrative technique, description, and expostion: the technique of a lot of novice writers (like myself and friends of mine) derives from the narrative technique characteristic of the commercial genre writers publishing today. Novel writers like George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Steven Erikson take their time and more often than not almost narrate in the “descriptive” mode, scene-by-scene. They rarely use “exposition” (Patrick Rothfuss does someties). I love their work and don’t begrudge them their 800 page novels. But, in short fiction, this “non-expository” narrative technique is a quick way to boring your reader. If you don’t use exposition in short narrative fiction, your pace will feel tortuously slow to a reader.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Enough of outlining! Of mere prewriting! Onward! Excelsior! On to drafting!

Drafting

You’ll be surprised to find out I have little to say about drafting, the actual click-clickety-clicking of keys. Just draft. Sit down, in front of the computer, and start writing out your scenes and expository passages and dialog. That’s what you should do. I have more to say about what you shouldn’t do.

1) Worry about grammar, punctuation, word choice, spelling, awkward dialog, manuscript details. Make sure your writing is coherent enough to read after drafting; but aside from just drafting, do little else. Don’t use spell-check; that’s editing. Don’t worry about double-spacing; that manuscript preperation. Don’t stress over dialog— “Should I use contractions? Is that word too modern? Would he say it like that? ::nail biting:: —just write it out; anything else is revision.

2) Don’t draft too long. Set yourself a limit of, say, 15 minutes per session. Aim for, say, two sessions a day. Or one. You’re not on a schedule. Make sure you’re making progress. But don’t rush it. If you sit down and tell yourself “I have to write for 1 hour. I have to write 2000 words,” you might do it. But it will be terrible. Let me say it again: don’t draft too long.

But…

3) Don’t stop if you’re on a roll. If you sit down, start drafting, reach the 15 minute point, and, lo! you’re creative furnace is still red hot! If you’re still cooking with gas, go for it. The moment you feel fatigue, however, quit.

4) Don’t refrain from drafting if you don’t want to. Always do at least 15 minutes a day. Why? Because missing one day becomes missing three days becomes missing a month, a year, you’re dead. Life is short. You only have so much time to give form to your fever dreams.

This is a big one!

5) Don’t—I repeat—DON’T start over. "Starting over" is just another another phrase for "giving up" on your story. If you start writing it, finish it. It might come out a horror of a story (not in a good way) that no one would ever elect to read (I bet you could still get your wife to read it), and yet—and yet! you still would have finished a story. It’s been my experience that writing bad stories is just as useful as writing good stories. If you have a bad story, you can analyze it, understand where is went wrong.

And that’s it for drafting. Draft. And avoid the pitfalls I just enumerated. Do those things and reap the payoff: from your mind will issue a new world.

And now for revision.

Revision

I’m not one of those folks who think revision is 90% of writing. I think that’s nonsense. If you’ve outlined and if you’ve stayed committed to that outline while you draft, then by the time you reach this phase, you should have a good story to work with.
Don't get me wrong: revision is very important. I've just become desensitized to the spetacularizing that claims revision is as important as drafting.

Let me engage in some guesswork: if, say 20% of your labor is spent on outlining, 40% on drafting, I’d say 30% would be spent on revision. In other words, I spend more time revising than I do outlining (actually coming up with the story), but I’d say I spend less time on revision than I spent on drafting.

I should be clear: lots of folks mix up revision with editing. For me, revision and editing are two separate subprocesses of the creative writing process. Let me explain.

When you revise you focus on large-scale, issues like narrative pacing, characterization, lyrical expression, making dialog more natural.

When you edit you focus on small-scale issues like spelling, grammar, punctuation, format.

Don’t get these two subprocesses mixed up. Why? Bald statement of fact: revision is important and editing is not important. This is not to diminish the work the “editors” do for writers, which is usually to help them with what I’m calling “revision.” In the professional writing world, what I’m calling “editing,” they call “copy-editing,” and they usually pay other people to do it.

Gods, I hate copy-editing. The various typos and errors that pervade my blog (and probably this post) attest to the esteem I hold copy-editing / line-editing / editing (whatever you call it).

But don’t get me wrong: you have to do it. It's a matter of self-respect. You should do it. I should be embarrassed to have typos on my blog. I am embarrassed!

And yet, in spite of that disclaimer, compared to what I’m calling revision, copy-editing is negligible in terms of importance.

Now that we’ve gotten what revision *isn’t* cleared up, let me say a few things about what I think it is. I’ll do that by talking about the goals of the revision.

Your goal as you revise should be to locate those moments of wonder and make sure they are functioning as intensely as possible. You increase their intensity by shaving off excess language here, a scene there; some revisions might include adding a whole new character or taking one out.

Another goal of revision is to truly assess your goals with the story and ask yourself, is this story as “tight” as it can be? Does every word serve a purpose? Is there anything in this story that is not essential? If so, cut it out.

One final thing about revision: I find it’s a pleasure to revise in collaboration with others. Writing is using a solitary activity. It can get lonely. Revision is a great stage in this process to share your work-in-progress with others craftsman to get their input. There are some ground-rules though:

• Pick a collaborator who you trust and respect, who is a close reader and a good writer. If you know someone like this, grab them. They are valuable. Consider marrying them.
• Don’t share your works-in-progress with folks who aren’t writers. Non-writers only get to read your work after it’s been revised and polished and ready for presentation.
• Don’t let your collaborator turn your story into their story. If a collaboration isn’t working, end it.
• Don’t start a collaboration just to get someone to read your work. If you start a collaboration, be ready and willing to take advice. If all you want is a reader, read it yourself.
• And--sorry for the constant reiteration--don’t revise until you’ve finished your first draft.

Conclusion and Theoretical Time-Table

And that’s about it. I covered a lot in this post. I left a lot out. To wrap a bow on things let me engage in some guesswork again. Here’s a theoretical time table. I’m sure if you put it into action the pace will be different for each person, depending on their personal circumstances, working style, etc..

• Day 1: Come up with your idea. You might not even write anything down at this point. Just grab a cup of coffee, sit at a cafe, and ponder for about twenty minutes.
• Day 2: Pre-writing / Outlining. Do this by hand on a piece of paper; or type it up. I’m usually able to get my pre-writing done in one day. Some folks might drag it out to 2. That’s fine. 800 words in one sitting is difficult if you’re drafting. If you’re just scribbling notes, you should be fine to produce that in a single session.
• Days 3-4-5-6: Drafting. Draft for 15 minutes a day. In theory, this is only an hour of writing. You’ll probably end up writing upwards of 2 hours. If you prewrite and outline well, you’ll be hard-pressed not to go over your 15 minute designation.
• Day 7-8-9: Revise. Possibly revise with another person. Make it fun. Meet at a coffee shop and have a scone.
• Day 10: Edit. Proof. Copy-edit. Whatever you want to call it. Clean it up.

The last piece of advice is a reiteration: don’t mix up the sub-processes. Don’t mix them up. Don’t do it. No.

Thanks for reading! And please, if you have any questions, concerns, advice, let me know! And good writing!

By the way, I asked my wife copy-edit this for me. She said no.

Now I'm going to go write that story about the witch who vomits up her sisters.

***


Update (2/25): I wrote that story about the witch. I thought I'd share it with you, as an example of the kind of story this process can produce. It's titled, "The Ink of the Slime Lord." I even made a cover for it!

Video Games as Art: The Aesthetic Value of Skyrim

I noticed that a lot of folks have been reviewing the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and so I thought I'd throw my two cents in. I don't plan on doing a straightforward review of the game because nothing I could say along those lines could be very original. Trust lots and lots of other folks and not me when I say, baldly, it's a piece of art.

Having been released December 8th of this year, the game's not even a month old and many have expressed that Skyrim is their favorite of 2011. I completely understand.

I'm not just much of a "contemporary" video gamer and so I don't have many other titles to compare it to (take my review with a grain of salt). Let me be clear, though: I play a lot of video games, but the video games I play are retrogames: old school games on the Atari, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES), Sega Genesis, and more.

I plan on spending some time discussing these old school games on this blog. But to inaugurate my commentary on video-gaming, I thought I would start with the most popular game out right now: Skyrim.

Why is Skyrim so great? Let me answer that in an indirect way: it makes me cold. What do I mean by this? Well, the setting of the game is the northern province of a great empire, a kind of Norway, that is a beautiful frozen land; and the richness of the scenery is such that (no exaggeration) as I play the game, I sometime feel a chill as the wind blows and the snow is swept up in clouds. For example, my character--a giant, Conan-like barbarian who wields a two-handed sword and wears platemail--fell into an iceberg filled ocean, and I thought to myself, "Wow. That would be cold as hell."

A reflex thought like this reveals, I think, the degree to which the virtual environment of this game is substantial. Indeed, walking through the wilderness, through towns, over mountains, into swamps, through ancient tombs--one can almost imagine oneself being there. In spite of previous developments in 3D rendering technology in video games, I've rarely, if ever, felt that.

At one point I found myself in a swamp at nighttime. Aurora borealis swirled overhead. Moonlight illuminated the vegetation. Glowing flies buzzed around. And a dragon flew in the distance, howling. It's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but, at that moment, I was gripped by a sense of wonder.

I realize this may sound hyperbolic; it definitely sounds silly to speak of a video game in terms of wonder. And yet--and yet! I can't deny that Skyrim effects me in a way parallel to, say, a beautiful poem or a touching song.

Here's a hunch: Skyrim is a symptom that we may have crossed a boundary. It reveals to us more than most previous video games the capacity of that medium to be art. Video games have a lot to go before their aesthetic worth is comparable to poetry, painting, fiction, drama, music. Nevertheless, playing Skyrim allows me to imagine a day when video games demand a sort of cultural gravitas, when their capacity to stir the soul is on par with a ballet or even *gulp* a production of Hamlet.

This is not to say that previous video games were not art. Paleolithic cave drawings and tribal music have their own unique beauty, but they are of a different nature than the paintings of Leonardo DaVinci and the compositions of Mozart. Nor is this train of thought meant to make aesthetic demands on our current video-gaming culture (any video game that aspired to be Hamlet, I think, would fail miserably. Now, alas, is not the time--a integral element of the medium is its fun, non-serious quality).

But, as far as the history of video-gaming is concerned, Skyrim feels like a moment of critical mass.