Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 5)

Here is serial 5 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. And here is a link to the full transcription, thus far, if you want to catch up with things: Pulp Novel Project: The Rogue and the Merchants

Also, I sketched a banner for this project, considering I'm going to be at it for a while. Why not spice things up! And here it is:

Serial 5

It was difficult climbing down into the canyon. The horse stumbled over rocks, roots, and thick underbrush, and almost lost her footing a couple of times. But, she was a courageous horse, and eventually they made it to the base where there was a wide river, which had, over eons, carved out the canyon. The rogue knew that the settlement was upstream, and in order to be the most stealthy, he dismounted his horse and tied its reins to a small tree that was rooted strongly at the river's edge, thereby preventing it from wandering back to its master.

He was as quiet as could be as he set up the stream by the cover of night. He kept his hand on the handle of his hilt-less blade, just in case the villagers of this settlement were hostile. He had been sneaking upstream for about twenty minutes when he perceived the orange glow of torchlight reflecting off of the water of the river ahead. He then heard the faint murmuring of human speech., but it was too quiet for him to discern the words. And so he crept closer, clinging to the cover of the shadowy night.

As he got closer to the source of the noise he saw a long pole, stuck in the ground, and on top of it was a clay bowl that had been filled with some slow-burning oil. A thick, oil-soaked wick burned incessantly, giving off a plume of black smoke. In the globe of light that was emanating from the pole stood two figures. They were speaking in a fast, chittering language that the Rogue did not understand.

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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?

Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 4)

Below is Serial #4 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. Here is a link to the full transcription thus far: The Rogue and the Merchants

I've transcribed exactly one page of the typed manuscript and my word count is at 999; and so I have to modify my original estimate. The manuscript is probably more around 30,000 words.

Also, today, during a visit to a coffee shop, I engaged in some scribbling. I drew a picture of the city-state of Tabun-Stoh, the homeland of our merchants and the place where this demented journey begins. I'm no artist. And yet--and yet, I'm happy to share a brief study or two.

The City-State of Tabun-Stoh

And here is serial #3:

First, they went two days without finding any settlement at all. And then the roads they were following ended abruptly. Additionally, there was a horrible deluge, and half of their stores were soaked. On the third straight day of misfortunes--they had only been on the road for two weeks--they came across a settlement nestled at the bottom of a deep and expansive canyon. From their high vantage point they could see nothing peculiar about it, and their dire circumstances made them eager to approach it. They wanted to refill their stores and perhaps enjoy food that was boiled and soft as opposed to cold, dry, and hard (such was the preference of the folk of Tabun-Stoh).

But the rogue was against it. He told Brol, "Let me scout ahead, for our own good! We are outside the law of Tabun-Stoh. Some of the villages might not have even heard of your city and its lords. I wouldn't be surprised if we've reached lands where they longer speak an understandable tongue."

The merchants, acknowledging the wisdom of the Rogue's words, agreed heartily. And their leader, Brol, loaned the rogue his horse, which was the fastest and most courageous one. The Rogue helped the merchants set up their tents and start a fire, and at sunset he set out, down into canyon, to find the settlement.

He carried with him his hilt-less short sword that, although appearing to be a humble skinner's blade--dull and black-bladed--was actually a sharp and deadly weapon bespelled with secret sorceries. Additionally, he wore a thick, leather jacket, which he was sure would protect him from blows if he came to any battles.

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.

Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 3)

Below is Serial #3 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. Here is a link to the full transcription thus far: The Rogue and the Merchants

It was near a month's journey on horseback from the tyrannized city of Tabun-Stoh to Drossus, and the wilderness seperating the merchants from their city to that forest principality was not the safest. Their first difficulty was that there were only sparse roads. They were on the edge of the Empire of the Griess. The city of Tabun-Stoh was the last great population center for hundreds of miles. The lands were infested, too, with wild bandits who were related to the ancient Verdin civilization, which was lost to dust nearly a thousand years ago. On top of that, the scrub lands were not plentiful in terms of game. There were a few wild herds of bison, but they were a skittish animal. A stampede would truly mean their quick death, if they didn't watch out. They were well stocked with road rations, twice-baked biscuits, dried meat, and dried fruit, but the rains in the lands east of the city made it difficult to keep their stores dry and safe from molding. There only hope was to move along tentatively and be on the lookout for any settlement that seemed at least slightly civilized.

This worked in the first weeks outside of Tabun Stoh. The villages they came upon outside of the city at first were not much different than the city itself. The people spoke the language of the merchants. They built their houses using techniques similar to that of their homeland. And their music, drink, and food had a familiar, though slightly different, feelt to it. It was the beginning of their third week that they began to struggle.

Swords and Dark Magic: C.J. Cherryh's "A Wizard of Wiscezan" and the Narrative Capacities of Short Fiction

Today I'm continuing my extended review of the anthology, Swords and Dark Magic, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders. I realize my posts on the individual stories have been less reviews and more "seed reflections" on each story from which spring this or that writing related train of thought. And so, as my final post in this series, I plan on doing a general review of the entire anthology. Here is a link to all the posts I've written on this anthology thus far: An Extended Review of Swords and Dark Magic

If you're coming to this series just now, you might want to check out this overall review: Review of Swords and Dark Magic on SFFWorld. Here's another on on SF Site: Review of Swords and Dark Magic on SF Site

The story I'm discussing today is C.J. Cherryh's, "A Wizard of Wiscezan." 

Some summary: In the city of Wiscezan-on-Eld the Duchess has died. Her rule has been replaced by a Duke who happens to be influenced by an evil wizard. The story is the "coming into maturity tale" of an apprentice wizard who helps a stranger confront the Duke and the evil wizard.

This story seemed slightly "bloated," if you will. It felt as if the core narrative was weighed down by non-essentials. There were characters who, though interesting, didn't to serve any specific narrative function. I know what you're going to say: do characters need to serve a narrative function? Are all characters mere tools? Can't characters just be dropped into a narrative for the hell of it? 

In a novel, I think, minor and incidental characters are just fine, but not in short stories. Let me explain through a brief jaunt into the history of the novel. 

The first narratives that began resembling our modern novels were long affairs, episodic in nature, more akin to what we would consider a short story collection than a novel. They were the Latin novels of writers like Petronius and Apuleius. These were long narratives that were structured like this. This happened. And then, this happened. And next, this happened. And after that, this happened, and so on. In these "Latin novels," events just poured forth. Thus, the main characters had strange encounters that sometimes cohered together and other times did not.

Most of genre fiction, in terms of style, follows the lead of the 19th century novel, what we would call "realism." Unlike in Latin novels, in "realistic" novels events don't just happen or pile up. Misfortunes and fortunes don't just continually happen to characters. 

In the 19th century novel and the "realistic" style derived from it, the prime aesthetic aspiration is to represent the world as it is experienced in lived life, shaded by such things as agency, lack of agency, causality, and time; accordingly, it includes characters ranging from every social level. 

Characters make decisions and have decisions made for them; they are in control and sometimes unforeseen circumstances take control away from them.  And due to its aspirations to represent the world accurately, "realistic" novels tends to include main characters, minor characters, and incidental characters in our lives and societies.

O.k.. Enough history of the novel. What does this have to do with C.J. Cherryh's short story, "A Wizard in Wiscezan"? Why is the short story bloated? 

Well, I think this short story is trying to be a novel. How so? In order to explain, let me consider all of the characters this short story tries to include: a dead Duchess, a distant King, a usurping Duke, an adviser to the usurping duke who has possessed him with a demon spirit, a demon spirit, a good wizard, a bunch of street urchins who serve the good wizard, a boy the good wizard is training, the nephew of the dead Duchess, and so forth. 

Anything notable about this list of characters? You have here, pretty much, every level of society: the King down to the street urchins.

It's not a hard and fast rule, but short stories cannot effectively dramatize all these characters; short fictions struggle to represent full societies. Sure, elements from every facet of a society are bound to infiltrate the narrative space of a short story; however, the writer has to be selective, to cordon off a "slice" of society capable of being fully explored within the narrative limits of the short fiction genre.

I'm not going to take the space here to outline what I think a short story can do better than a novel. Another post, another time. 

But here is where I think "A Wizard of Wiscezan" goes wrong: it tries to immerse us in an entire world, a fully formed world. Fantasists love to do this. The novel is the perfect technology for doing this. And yet--and yet the short story isn't. With a short story, the aesthetic effect is less the "full picture" of a world, or a society, and more a fleeting glimpse--a glimpse through a keyhole rather a panoramic vista our eyes drink up. 

In this story Cherryh tries to get us to see the whole world through "the keyhole of the short story genre." The result is a lot of squinting.