The Weirding of the Writing Process: Examining the Narrative Function of the Protagonist (Post 1)

Looking back through my February posts I realize I've written very little on the writing of science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural horror. In large part, this is because the time I have to devote to creative has really went down. Why? I'm been working on my dissertation prospectus and so, I haven't had time for creative writing (I don't count the transcription of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants, as creative writing. I'm just mechanically transcribing it at this point. No editing. No revision.). Sure, I've been getting some flash fiction writing in. But the two flashes I wrote this month have been in "realistic" genres. I wrote a literary fiction titled, "Lift," and a hardboiled detective fiction, "I Met Her Seven Times."

Well, this morning I sent out the most recent draft of my dissertation prospectus. And so, I imagine I'm going to have more time to write creatively over the next couple of days as I wait for my adviser's input. 

***

This post I want to ask a question about protagonists. More specifically, I want to meditate on the relationship between readers and the protagonist of a narrative. What kind of a relationship should a reader have with a protagonist? Let's back up: what is a protagonist?

I can feel it. This is going to be a "two parter." This post will set up the problem. Tomorrow I'll try to respond to it.

Anyhow, once again, what is a protagonist? Lord Wikipedia defines "protagonist" this way:

A protagonist (from the Greek πρωταγωνιστής protagonistes, "one who plays the first part, chief actor") is the main character (the central or primary personal figure) of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, whom ends up in conflict because of the antagonist and with whom the audience is intended to most identify.

So, according to this definition, that protagonist manifests a few characteristics:

1) They are the main character.

2) They end up in conflict.

3) The audience identifies with them.

Hmm..

I find this intriguing. Let me say a little about each characteristic.

1) They are the main character. This implies that there is a "hierarchy of importance" in a cast of characters depicted by a narrative. In other words, this definition implies that there are characters in a narrative who are more important than other characters. Is this always the case? It's a hunch of mine that is has been the case for many narratives since the emergence of "novelistic" narratives or "realistic" narratives. But there are certain types of narratives that do not incorporate a "hierarchy of importance" among their cast of characters. I'm thinking of an epic like The Iliad. 

Yes, Achilles and Agamemnon are important characters in this narrative. And yet, are they the main characters? Are they more important than, say, Hector? Priam? Odysseus? etc. etc.. I'm not suggesting there is no "hierarchy of importance" in terms of the cast of characters that are depicted by the narrative of The Illiad. I do want to suggest, however, something about an intensity of this "hierarchy of importance." 

Let me put this hunch simply: in an epic like The Iliad, there are many, many characters, and they are all important. In more recent, novelistic narratives, there is a demand for a "main" character. Modern readers prefer to know who is important and who is not important. This might be changing.

2) They end up in conflict. This implies that the protagonist has to struggle with something, usually an antagonist. They have a desire or a problem that comes upon them. Can you have a protagonist who doesn't experience a crisis? Who just sits and enjoys themselves? Tea? Reading? Maybe. I don't think this would make a very interesting story. But, I can imagine a narrative where the protagonist experiences no conflict. Perhaps this would originate a conflict in itself. Perhaps for the narrative to begin the protagonist needs to seek out conflict. 

This reminds me of a stem in protagonist. Agon. Agon is Greek for "a comepetition" or "a contest." It's connected to our English work agony, which means, "extreme and generally prolonged pain; intense physical or mental suffering" (dictionary.com). Pro + agon means "towards the contest." With the meaning of our English word taken into consideration, we can understand "protagonist" to mean, that person who goes forward, faces, and courts, physical and mental suffering. Hmm...

3) The audience identifies with them. Identifies. What does this mean? One definition of to identify (the one I think this particular usage is referring to) is, "to consider (oneself) as similar to another" (dictionary.com). Hmm... So, the audience of a specific narrative should consider themselves similar to the protagonist? I'm not sure about this. I've read a lot of thrilling narratives where the "main character" or "protagonist," if you will, have been repellent to me. I'm thinking of something like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. In terms of fantasy, Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné is a borderline villain. I rarely identify with him. I'm definitely nothing like him. And yet, he's still a great protagonist.

There's much more to be said about protagonists. This post is a first step. And yet, this focused analysis of the concept of a protagonist has raised some interesting questions for me. 

Should my readers identify with my characters? 

Should all of my stories have a main character? 

What is the relationship between main characters and conflict? 

In part 2 of this analysis of protagonists, which I aim to write on tomorrow, I will explore this more fully.

Review of Jeff VanderMeer's Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer

So, I need to write my prospectus for my dissertation. And so, apologies in advance if my posts are a little lean for the next couple of weeks.

I need to work on brevity anyways!

Today I want to briefly review a very good book: Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer, by Jeff VanderMeer.

Generally put, this book is a must-read for anyone who aspires to be a writer in our current, “post-print” context.

Let me be clear: this book isn’t about e-publishing specifically. It is, however, about surviving in an environment where the traditional road to publication is being metaphorically ripped up and re-paved.

Booklife was published in 2009 and so, in this fast-paced and changing environment, some folks might think any advice it offers—considering its ostensible purpose (to help you survive now)--is outdated.

I don’t think so. Not at all.

Reading this book I was struck how much of the advice he offers three years ago seems to prempt developments in publishing today.

One thing is certain: this book has definitely changed the way I plan to proceed with developing my life as a writer. Thanks to Mr. VanderMeer I have eagerly discarded my preconceived notions about the road to becoming a professional writer of fiction.

Let me try to distill in a few sentences the key lesson I took away from this book.

VanderMeer compares developments in professional writing and publishing today to previous developments in the music industry (post-Napster, ITunes music store, Myspace, etc..). He compares the profusion of independent musicians and labels to the emergence of independent publishers and “dyi” writers. Thus, just as independent bands needed learn to market and, more importantly, create their own niche markets/consumers, so writers of this moment and the future will have to learn to do this as well.

Gulp. That’s a tall order.

He’s has all sorts of ideas about how to create those audiences, and I won’t give them away.

To wrap up: this book is a must read if you want to be a writer today.

Arbitrary rating: 5/5

Opening the Skull's Trapdoor: Coming Up with Story Ideas by Association

Tonight I want to review another essay in the anthology, How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction, edited by J.N Williamson. I reviewed another essay in this anthology in a previous post. I had some reservations about this book, but, generally, find it quite useful. Here's a link to my original post: Short Fiction: Making the Premise Conform to the Treatment

The essay I’m reviewing is by Ray Bradbury and is titled, “Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds.” Talk about a mouth full of a title.

I trust Ray Bradbury. Even though his fiction isn’t my favorite, he’s a celebrated writer in the genres I care about. And so, any advice he gives on writing is worth our attention. 

His essay is somewhat general in approach and offers no pragmatic advice on the actual work of writing. It does, howoever, offer some very good advice on coming up with ideas.

It’s a kind of personal manifesto, an attempt to articulate where his ideas for his stories comes from. The most striking element of this essay is his description of his “list.” 

In this essay Bradbury describes a list of nouns he composed early in his writing career, and of this list he writes, “I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trap door on the top of my skull.” 

He talks about writing stories based solely on a single noun like “The Lake,” or “The Ravine,” or “The Basement.” In prose that is part revelry and part personal memoir, Bradbury makes a case for composing narratives through a kind of unconscious process of association. In other words, he suggests you think of a few nouns and just start telling stories about them. 

Let me give this a try. The Rock. Can I tell a story about “the Rock.” Hmm…

Let’s imagine a giant rock with a flat plane at the top. It’s kind of a stage, high up in the sky. Below it people gather, late at night. They stare up at the rock, where there is a fire burning. There is a priest up there. A table. A knife. Some burning incense. And, of course, a sacrificial victim.

Whew. That was strange. So it can be done! There be a story there!

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!

The Weirding of the Writing Process: Channeling Society's Metanarratives (Part 3: Conclusion)

The last couple of days I’ve been harping on this idea that creative writers don’t “come up” with their ideas. I want to calibrate that notion. Sure. In an intuitive sort of “pop-wisdom” way, creative writers are the source of their ideas. But we need to be very clear about how they are the source of their story ideas.

There is an old argument—I want to call it the biographical argument—that story scenarios (characters, settings, plots, etc..) derive from the biographical experiences of the storyteller. Thus, the argument goes, if I was born in an oil boom town filled with a bunch of rough folks who drank, got in fights, cussed, and spit, then my stories would be filled with characters who drank, got in fights, cussed and spit. I’m not sure I’m ready to disagree with this argument completely. I do, however, think it has some risks to it. Let me explain.

This “biographical argument” is one form of explanation for how writers are the source of their story ideas. What’s useful about the biographical argument is that it takes away agency from the writer. It alleviates the crisis that is making the demand on ourselves as artists that we create something out of nothing, out of thin air.

And yet, in spite of this boon, the “biographical argument” obfuscates the creative situation to a degree. It’s not as if the writer sets out to write his or her life (unless, course, they’re writing straight autobiography). No. The writer writes, spins yarns, and, lo!, elements from their life creep in. You write what you know.

Furthermore, the risk in this argument is that it doesn’t go “all the way” down. There are other sources of stories that aren’t just what we, as individuals, experience. And we “channel” those stories.

How do we “channel” those stories? I haven’t the slightest idea. But I’m sure we do.

I feel like a dose of the social-psychologist Carl Jung would give this revelry a little more credibility and structure (and yet—Carl Jung is a thinker and writer who has become, like Freud, a kind of jokester metaphyisician). Let me just say Carl Jung’s idea of the “collective unconscious mind,” the part of the mind that interfaces with the collective memories of the race, is an elegant metaphor for the process I’m conceptualizing here.

These stories that we channel, like spirits, are what I want to call “metanarratives”. Narrative theorists use this term in more precise way elsewhere. We’re creative writers who are interested in writing interesting stories. And so, I choose to use the term in an interesting way.

What are “metanarratives”? They are the stories that linger on, right outside of consciousness and memory, that are the source of our unstated beliefs about the most important things: honor, glory, evil, lust, justice, fear, ambition, and so forth.

Another way of putting it is this: “metanarratives” are the “deep code” of the stories we use to come to terms with being human.

I’d like to carry this “deep code” metaphor even further. In computer programming you always work with an analogue language and never binary. Why? You can’t understand binary. There is no way for a human being to understand strings of binary code. And so you manipulate that language with a more simplistic one.

Such is our situation as creative writers. In order to write the most intense stories, the stories that truly intensify, clarify, domesticate, and stir up the many emotions and crises of human existence, we need to access the “deep code” that is “metanarrativity.” But, if we follow my metaphor, “metanarratives” would be nonsensical to us. And so here is our crisis: we need an analogue language.

I conclude this three-part series with railroady syllogism and an unanswerable question. Be careful that you don't trip on the mixed metaphors:

IF we accept that creative writers don’t “come up” with their ideas like an inventor, i.e. out of thing air…
IF we accept that they channel “metanarratives”…
IF we accept that “metanarratives” are nonsensical to us in the manner of a “deep code” or a “collective unconscious” and that, thus, we need an analogue language to access them…

THEN, the question of the hour becomes,

What is the analogue language creative writers use to access and utilize the metanarratives upon which the most intense and stirring stories told are based?

How, oh how! do we glimpse beyond this passing moment to reveal those "god-stories" that weave together  paleolithic incantations by fire with the yarns printed on pulp paper?

The Weirding of the Writing Process: Channeling Society's Metanarratives (Part 2)

I ended my post yesterday by stating that, as creative writers, we don’t come up with our own ideas. I suggested that we channel them. Today I’d like to follow that train of thought to some practical conclusions.

I won’t go over the same territory I went over in my previous post. Those who are interested can refer to part 1, posted yesterday.

There have been a slew of narrative theorists and thinkers who have offered a version of this argument: there is no such thing as a new story. A good example of someone who made a version of this argument would be the Russian folklorist, Vladimir Propp (1895-1970).

Vladimir Propp (1895-1970)

I won’t go into his ideas in too much detail. The best way to give you an idea of what he believes is to briefly characterize his most influential work. Having read lots and lots of Russian folktales, organized them, cataloged them, he reduced them all—in a book titled Morphology of the Folktale (1928)—into 31 narrative functions. Here’s his argument in a nutshell: every folktale he studies, in spite of their apparent variety and color, are, on a primal level, re-tellings of the same story; for Propp, they are all variations of the same narrative structure.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

Another example: anyone who has read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) will recognize some similarity with Propp. Campbell, who studied world mythologies, suggested that all the world’s mythological stories can be reduced to one story, a story he calls “the hero cycle.” I won’t go into Campbell’s work here because his work are much more widely known.

Why do I cite these authors in talking about that first stage of writing, invention? “Coming up” with ideas?

If you accept the more general idea that these thinkers point to, that stories are there and not created, I think it really alters the way you proceed as a creative writer.

Invention becomes less the acrobatic and awkward task of surveying the field of stories, the canon—if you will--and innovating with novelty in mind. Innovation, in the conceptual framework I’m outlining here, becomes a problem, a crisis we are unfit to master.

The task is to not innovate. The task is to look beyond the ephemeral stories of our modern moment to see the eternal ones that linger in the shadows, beneath the surface, out there.

Couldn't get it all in today. Stay tuned for part three tomorrow.

Exercise: (Step 1) Think of a story that you love. That moved you. That captures your imagination (for me this would be, say, Star Wars). Summarize it in 50 words. No more. No less. Next, look at your 50 word summary and reduce that to one sentence. Make this sentence no more than 20 words. The trick to this is dropping incidental details like characters and circumstances and foregrounding important narrative functions.

The Weirding of the Writing Process: Channeling Society's Metanarratives (Part 1)

Beautiful weather in South Euclid. Enjoying some delicious "Blue Moon" coffee, roasted by Phoenix Coffee down the street from my place. If you ever find yourself in Cleveland, I recommend giving this place a try.

My wife is currently holed up in the Kelvin Smith Library at Case because her qualifying examinations are in less than three days. Thus, I find myself in my house with my cat, the Lump, for company.

The Lump on a kind of throne. I hope I don't lose readers for this.

My post today is one of two, which will be focused on the first step of the writing process.

One of the most difficult tasks that writers struggle with is coming up with ideas.

Writing theorists call this part of the writing process invention, a term they take from various Greek and Latin treatises on rhetoric. Other folks talk about this phase in the writing process as prewriting, which refers to all the thinking, note taking, or outlining you do before you begin drafting. Other folks include both invention and prewriting in their vision of the writing process; they understand invention as the cognitive processes one executes to “come up” with ideas and the prewriting phase as that time when one organizes those ideas before drafting.

There’s a problem, I think, that all of these schematics try to cover over, which anyone who has sat in front of a blank computer screen can identify. This problem is better stated as a question: where do my ideas come from? 

This is where the stakes lie, where how we describe the first phase of the writing process-- invention or prewriting—starts to matter.

To use the term invention is to imply that our ideas just spring fully formed, from our unconscious, as if we’re Zeus-like gods and our story ideas are so many Athenas springing from our mind. To use the term prewriting is to dodge the question, to make the “coming up” with ideas to be less a matter of creation and more a matter of “organization.”

I’d like to propose an alternative vision of this primal and no doubt most important part in the writing process. Where do our ideas come from? In a word: society.

Let me be clear: this isn’t a very new idea, I’m just coming to it from a novel perspective, the perspective of a creative writer.

Narrative theorists have long mulled over this idea: we understand, connect to, become thrilled by stories because they conform to a specific social code, to socially entrenched metanarratives that we use to understand our place in the world, the nature of the world, morality, justice, good, evil—all of those things.

According to narrative theorists, the stories that cohere and that are effective—that are “the best,” if you will--are ones that we can follow. Big disclaimer: this is different than saying, say, that the best stories are the stories that we can anticipate. Being able to follow a story and being able to anticipate it because of unoriginality are two separate things.

But let me get back to “coming up” with story ideas. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t. Or, if we did, no one would be able to follow them.

A better verb than “to come up with” or “to invent” or “to create” to describe that weird alchemical process that produces new characters, new scenarios, new conflicts is to channel.

"Channel" comes from the old French word for a bed of water, a groove in the ground, a gutter, a pipe, etc.. We use it in fantasy writing in other contexts: to channel a spirit is to conjure it up, to create a bridge between this world and that.

Why do I think it best to describe the first phase of the writing processes metaphorically? In terms of channeling spirits?

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post, which will come tomorrow. I plan on including a writing exercise with it.