Writing is Cake

I happened upon PROMPTuesday today. Since it is kind of similar to the bi-weekly word exercises we do, I decided to give it a go.

Word: Egg.
Genre: Romantic Comedy.
Limits: 10 minutes and under 250 words.

Title: the morning after

“I’m not sure I have ever tasted a pancake quite like this,” he mused, choosing his words carefully so as not to offend. It was the first time she had made him breakfast, which followed the first time he had stayed over and he did not want to hamper the chances for a second.

“Well, I only had one egg, so I had to substitute something else. So, I rummaged around for something approximating the consistency of an egg. I briefly considered sour cream and then I found the lime jello, you know, from last night…”

Tags:   PROMPTuesday4 Comments

Hell, I would have noticed her even if she hadn’t been pumping out enough chemical signals to attract every male within a hundred yards. She was a perfect specimen of the sub-species, with those delicate wings, tight little waist and a deadly sting on display for all to admire. Sure, she was a wasp, but who wasn’t in this part of town? And she looked like she was in trouble, vulnerable, though that was probably just the pheromones talking.

I sidled up to her and said, “Hey baby, what’s the buzz?” then immediately regretted leading off with such a lame come on line. The fact that she tittered demurely and didn’t shoot me down for fighting outside of my weight class should have been my first indication that all was not as it seemed. Too bad I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.

“I’ve got a big problem and need somebody to help me make it go away,” she purred, turning those big non-blinking eyes my way.

“What’s in it for me?” I asked, again regretting my words, since it sounded like a deal killer when it was out there hanging in the air between us. To my amazement and, in retrospect, against my better judgment, the conversation continued.

“Does that really matter?” she cooed, subtly changing the chemical cocktail, the equivalent of slipping me a Mickey Finn. I was completely under her spell, but, as I drifted down into a haze of mental fog, I didn’t care.

When I came to, she was nowhere to be found. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was. There was pounding in my head, which I quickly realized was being matched by pounding on a door too close for comfort. The dim light in the room offered no immediate clues to my location, but that quickly changed as the door crashed inward and light from a hallway illuminated the depths of my predicament.

There I was, surrounded by cops, you know, the Yellowjacket Squad. The room looked like it had been tossed by amateurs, looking for something they never could find. And there in the center of an ornate rug that looked like it could have been called a tapestry and hung up in a museum, was the body of Tommy “The Hornet” Shay.

It’s hard to say which stunned the cops more: the sight of him dead, or the thought of me, a low-level nobody, as the apparent assailant. I started to profess my innocence and then realized that even I wasn’t sure that was the truth. Just another dope played for a patsy by a beautiful dame.

Tags:   pheromones1 Comment

In “Self-Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson advised his readers not to get stuck in a rut. His advice? To force yourself out of your comfort zone because to his way of thinking one couldn’t possibly learn about himself unless faced with an uncomfortable situation.

I find that this applies to writing as well as life. Those familiar with my writing style know that I love to create dark characters in compromising positions. Most of them smoke. Some of them are serial killers. Nearly all fall into the “deeply disturbed” category. This is my comfort zone. Over the years I’ve written many a piece using just such characters. Hackneyed? Perhaps. Cliche? Most likely. Comfortable? Of course.

Recently I penned the beginning of a romance causing many in my writing group to wonder if I had come down with something. In a sense, I had. I finally figured out what my ailment was: Same Old, Same Old. It was time to write out of my comfort zone. It was time to introduce myself to some new characters and perhaps even lighter subject matter. And as hard as that piece was for me to write, I actually enjoyed it. It challenged me. I found I had an ability in a genre whose sunnier side I had never explored. And, best of all, I learned something about myself as a writer.

So in the spirit of Emerson and his Transcendentalist buddies, seek out those uncomfortable characters and and introduce yourself. Find those unexplored themes and start excavating. It is a great way to give your creative mind a kick-start.

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Artist Eric M. Bahle August 10, 2008

Takezo smiled up at the bird. The little thrush had not flown away as the warriors formed up at dawn. It watched from its branch, calm and unconcerned. When the grey dawn began to lighten, the thrush began to sing, unbothered by the armored men in the clearing. As the Lord Katsu addressed the assembly in his ringing voice, the thrush increased his own volume. The bird finally fell silent and Takezo realized that the assembly had also become quiet. There was a flash of barely seen motion as the bird flew away. Takezo looked toward the generals and they were all looking at him. All except Yamamoto.

“You,” Lord Katsu pointed with his fan. He was pointing at Takezo. Nonplussed, Takezo took a step forward and bowed a little. Katsu waved his fan indicating Takezo should approach. Takezo ran to the front of the assembly and dropped to one knee in a battlefield salute.

“You are to act as kaishaku for General Yamamoto,” Katsu said.

Takezo was shocked but tried not to show it. He wanted look at Yamamoto but stopped himself from turning more than an inch or so. Instead he bowed lower. “Yes, lord.”

Katsu noticed the shock. “You hesitate?”

“Not to obey, lord,” Takezo said. “Just to step before others closer to Lord Yamamoto’s rank.”

“General Yamamoto chose you himself,” Katsu put the barest emphasis on the word general. Takezo turned and bowed to Yamamoto, who knelt in the grass.

“Lord, you honor me.”

Yamamoto bowed his head and smiled. “Two years ago in Gozen you beheaded three samurai. I was there.” Yamamoto was trying to answer the question Takezo could not ask.

“Yes, lord, but those were just executions.” Yamamoto smiled again and moved his head indicating the back of the assembly.

“Back there when everyone was watching me, you were looking up. At what?”

“A bird, lord,” said Takezo. “A thrush.”

“Ha,” Yamamoto chuckled, low and warm, “While the shrike gets his wings clipped you were watching a thrush?” The shrike appeared on Yamamoto’s personal banner.

“He was singing, lord. It was beautiful.”

“You composed a poem?”

Takezo nodded and Yamamoto indicated he should hear it.

“Thrush sings, sun glints on

Bright wings and the once still branch

Now quivers, empty.”

Yamamoto nodded and smiled and Takezo smiled back, nodding as well. He stood and drew his sword. Yamamoto took a few moments to compose his own poem and wrote it with sure strokes. Takezo longed to read it but it would have been impolite. Yamamoto laid the brush next to the gleaming blade of the aikuchi and paused to regard them both.

It’s a shame we lost such a man, thought Takezo. The assembly was utterly silent as Yamamoto grasped the hilt of his dirk. In the forest Takezo heard a thrush singing.

Tags:   artist · writing exerciseNo Comments.

(writing exercise for our writing group using the word “artist” as a seed)

The Detective slid the manila folder across the worn steel table to Cassidy.  Cassidy shifted in his chair and looked down at the folder.

“Don’t you want to see the results of your handiwork,” asked the Detective.

Cassidy looked up from the folder and met the Detective’s gaze.  “Not particularly,” he said.

The Detective leaned back in his hard, uncomfortable chair.  He looked at the huge two-way mirror covering one wall of the interrogation room, and bit his lower lip thoughtfully.  No one was behind the mirror, but it usually helped if the prisoner thought there was.  The idea of a faceless, scrutinizing judge was much more imposing than a small, Canon digital video camera.  The whole sterile, hard, cold room was designed to put people off balance, to make them feel alone and controlled.  It worked much better on some than others.

The Detective pressed on.  “You seemed to take a lot of pride in what you did, why wouldn’t you want to see it?” he asked.

Cassidy cocked his head, puzzled for a moment.  “It wasn’t pride, Detective,” he said.

“Then what was it?  Revenge?”

Cassidy leaned forward slowly, pushing the manila folder to the side.  He clasped his fingers and leaned on his elbows on the table.  The Detective tensed, not that anyone else could see it.  He didn’t think this scrawny stick was any danger, but you can never tell.  If this fool got the advantage on him, he would be a laughing stock.

“Do you have any children, Detective?  A daughter, maybe?”

Now the Detective sat upright.  “None of your business,” he replied.

Cassidy shook his head. “I’m not asking for details or anything, but you asked why I did this.”

“My children have nothing to do with it one way or another.”

“I’m an artist, Detective. Art is about helping people to connect on an idea, an understanding, or an experience. It’s a common medium for us to share our private views of the world.  I’m trying to find that common medium with you so I can explain.”

The Detective drummed his fingers on the table.

Cassidy continued, “I know you’re probably supposed to be the Bad Cop, but I’m not trying anything funny.  Really.”

No Good Cop could be spared to tag team on this loser, so the Detective finally responded “Yes, I have a daughter.”

“A baby?  Graduated?  Teens?” asked Cassidy.

“In her teens,” said the Detective slowly.

“Ah, so you’ve had some time to watch her grow up.  To go from the beautiful ideal you had for her when she was an infant, to making her own choices.  To getting tarnished a bit.”

“Careful,” cautioned the Detective.

Cassidy spread his hands, “I’m not judging her at all, Detective.  But no daughter, no son, no child has ever grown up without changing in their parent’s eyes.  Becoming something they didn’t expect, wandering off the path a little bit, or maybe a lot.”

“As a parent you love your children anyway. I’ve had mothers in this very room sob over their gangbanger son as we put him away for years over some driveby shooting.”

“Exactly,” said Cassidy. “You love them anyway, and you forgive their faults, but what if you found your daughter fell in with the wrong crowd?  That she was being abused, used in some horrible way, would you let it happen?”

“My daughter wouldn’t end up with punks like that. I’ve raised her better.”

“What if it wasn’t her own choice?  Someone forced it on her?  Wouldn’t you rescue her?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what I did here. My art… this was not what it was for, what I intended, what it wanted.”

“That isn’t the same at all. Your art wasn’t a living, breathing person.”

“It was my child.  Parent to child, artist to art. My art could not speak for itself and it was being abused.”

“So you destroyed it?”

Cassidy sat back.  “I saved it.”

The Detective slid the manila folder back in front of Cassidy.  “And the rest of what went along with it didn’t matter?”

Cassidy shrugged.  “You and I are both artists, just working in different mediums, Detective.  Where would you stop? What would be too much for you?”

The Detective shook his head.  “That’s not the same thing at all.  You don’t really expect me to buy that, do you?”

“I suppose not,” said Cassidy.  He put his fingers on the folder and flicked it across the table to the Detective.  “After all, I guess being misunderstood is part of the profession.”

Tags:   artist · crimeNo Comments.

Often for me it isn’t the time it takes to write that’s the problem, it’s how I can somehow waste that time once I sit down.  I think there may be some concentration vampire that lives under my desk, but I have yet to find him so must ponder an alternate root cause.

M. Jaynes blogged about one key issue here recently, Creating a Writing Space.  That’s an elemental item for me, because while I sometimes enjoy banging out ideas in a coffee shop or other public area, the distraction factor is through the roof.

Lifehack also has an article with some great additional tips to help remove all the other excuses and help you get down to writing when you sit down.  My favorite items are:

Make your software leave you alone - Use tools to hide all the other pop ups and software running on your system.  The browser is a tricky one for me because I use it for valid research, but then suddenly find myself surfing Wikipedia for an hour on random, tangential (but interesting) garbage.

Use pen and paper - It’s so retro it’s cool.  On top of that, it really forces me to connect with my ideas and work slower. I struggle writing full paragraphs, but I can work out plot points, ideas, and phrases.  I also like to people-watch when I do this, and make notes for characters.  There is a Starbuck’s in San Francisco that I particularly love as I think only the most bizarre and fascinating people seem to stream in there (well, except for me of course)

Music - Maybe a given, but I think the choice is key.  I like Classical, or Techno music.  No words, just energy. It’s a mental white-noise for me, and helps me tune out all the other things to help me focus.  If I give in and switch Pandora to my workout station to try and get “pumped” I invariably want to go hit the gym or something.  Background noise only.

If I missed any favorite tricks you like to use, let me know.  I can always use more… those vampires are relentless.

Tags:   distractions · music · tips4 Comments

“[Bill] entered the room, which could only be described as nondescript.”

I’m going to leave off the citation of where I stumbled across that particular sentence to protect the guilty.  The next few lines, not surprisingly, proceeded to describe the room.  It was an office waiting room, with tan carpeting, brown chairs, neatly stacked magazines, and forgettable pictures upon the wall.  So clearly the author was going for the “characterless” definition of nondescript and not the “defies description”, but it is still a bizarre way to establish a setting.

Take them there
Don’t start by telling the reader how they will view the scene, show them.  I’ve been in enough office waiting rooms to have picked up the vibe of the room without having to be told it was characterless before we even got started.  If you make the description come alive, you won’t need to tell them how to interpret it.

Close your eyes
Put yourself in the scene and discover what captures your attention first.  Close your eyes and imagine the room all around you.  Fill it in. What’s in the corner, what are the colors, how high is the ceiling, is anyone else there?  What is the first thing that captures your attention?  What dominates the room?  Start there and work outwards.  It helps you create an experience and not just check off a list of objects.

Bring in the other four (or five) senses
People are usually visual creatures, but think how powerful a certain song or smell can be to call up a feeling or memory.  Don’t limit descriptions to the colors and position of things in the scene, but also how they smell, sound, feel, and maybe even taste if it works.  In the room in my example, was a droning Muzak cover of Barry Manilow playing through a feeble speaker?  Did the fake plants and cheap furniture fill the room with a faint plastic smell?  Could you feel your shoes stick to the stains hidden in the complex pattern of the cheap carpeting? And if you want to go for broke and bring in a sixth sense, like a feeling of deja vu or a cold shiver, go for it.

Describing a scene effectively is key to understanding how your characters react within it.  Don’t skimp on the details, and don’t tell the reader how to react.  If it turns out your scene really is beyond description, well, then you have a whole different set of problems on your hands.

Tags:   descriptions · scenes2 Comments

Lazy writing.  We’ve all done it.  I’m doing it right now.  You’ll be lucky to get one coherent thought out of this entry.  There’s some obvious signs of lazy writing.  ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ let’s you know right up front.  Recently, my wife handed me a novel and asked me if it was as bad as she thought it was.  She wanted me to read the first chapter but it only took one page.  The book was about vampires.  The story opens with a young archaeology student looking over an old battlefield early in the morning.  I guess the student’s musings are vivid because the author told me they were vivid.  The actual images of cannon smoke and screaming men were pretty standard and not very vivid but we did find out the battlefield was Gettysburgh.  He told us.  I got as far as the young man rubbing his sleep heavy eyes, only to discover that he forgot he was wearing kohl from ‘last night’s clubbing’.  I didn’t read further but I’m pretty sure the young archaeologist is going to dig up some vampires in that old battlefield.  I’m also guessing that these bloodsucking fiends had soft southern accents and fought for the Confederacy.  I don’t know how the Union managed to beat the North hating Nosferatu but I know they did.  After all, the North won.

I can actually enjoy lazy writing when the writer cops to it….”The toilet flushed with that sound that toilets make when they flush.”  That’s kinda funny.  It might fit a character:  From an old sitcom (The Single Guy), a show about a writer and his friend who says of playing cards, “Poker’ll burn ya, Sammy.  If your’re not careful she’ll burn ya like…some…great burning thing.”  I had one when I was making fun of a preacher, “You will burn in a fiery lake of fire.”  Homer Simpson has tons of those but I suspect they aren’t the result of lazy writing.  It probably takes alot of work.

You’re probably smarter to pursue lazy writing actually.  People snap up paperbacks that seem pretty much phoned in to me.  I like a light read as much as the next guy but c’mon, switch it up a little.  I’m talking to you Dean Koontz.  TV is worse of course.  I’m willing to cut the writer’s a little slack on this one.  There’s only so many ways you can write about a boy/girl who’s in love with someone but can’t seem to find the right time to tell them(for as many seasons as possible).  Of course you don’t have to settle for lazy writing on TV.  I’m looking forward to the next season of Firefly….oh, wait. 

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One of the tasks I face as a high school English teacher is helping my students learn to read a text both critically and analytically.  There are numerous ways to do this, of course, but a method that I have found to be particularly effective is approaching stories from an archetypal perspective.  An archetype is image, symbol, character type, plot pattern, or descriptive detail that occurs frequently in various myths, religions, literature, or folklore.  Some common archetypal motifs include:

The journey

Death-rebirth

The exiled child

The battle for good over evil

Heaven-hell

God and the devil

The seasons

The tree of life

The fall from grace

The snake

For example, the characters of Jesus and the Phoenix show the pattern of death and rebirth.  Moses and Odysseus depict the pattern of the journey.  Perseus and Beowulf demonstrate the pattern of good versus evil.  The list could go on and on.  (My purpose here is not simply to repeat ideas that other writers have expressed far more insightfully than I could.  For a thorough treatment on the topic of archetypes, I recommend reading Christopher Vogler’s excellent book, The Writer’s Journey.  Or if you prefer a more scholarly approach, pick up Joseph Campbell’s classic text, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.)  As I teach, I make a point of drawing attention to some of the archetypal conventions as they emerge in the stories we are studying.  What is even more fun, however, is pointing out examples of how modern writers and film makers take these stock themes and twist them in ways that breathe fresh life into old storytelling devices.     

One motif that students readily identify is the teacher/student archetype.  You don’t have to look far to find examples of this.  For instance, in ancient Hebrew literature, there is the character Joshua who serves under Moses before becoming the leader of the Israelites.  In the stories from ancient Greece and Rome we find Chiron, a wise old centaur who trains the great heroes of Classical mythology, such as Hercules, Achilles, Aeneas, and Jason, among others.  King Arthur is trained by Merlin the wizard.  Virgil teaches Dante.  Gandalf guides Frodo.  Mr. Miyagi and Rocky’s crusty old coach, Mickey, train their weak apprentices to be powerful fighters.  Morpheus and the Oracle help Neo realize that, inside the Matrix, “There is no spoon.”  Professor Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle to be a lady.  Likewise, Clarisse Renaldi trains Mia Thermopolis to be proper princess in The Princess Dairies.  In the Star Wars saga, Yoda trains Qui-Gon Jinn, who later instructs Obi-Wan Kenobi, who then, in turn, trains Anakin and Luke Skywalker before Luke returns to Yoda for further training…etc, etc.

So far, the examples have been primarily positive, but what about the recent trend of depicting mentors whose motives are not always in their students’ best interest?  For example, in the film Training Day, Jake (Ethan Hawke’s character) is led along a dangerous odyssey through L.A.’s gang-ridden streets by Alonzo (portrayed by Danzel Washington) so that Alonzo can set him as a fall-guy for his own drug-dealing and extortion.  In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is trained in the martial arts by Henri Ducard, who then betrays his student.  In the film Wanted, Wesley Gibson (portrayed by James McAvoy) is at first rescued from a life of oppressive boredom by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) and Fox (Angelina Jolie), only to be double-crossed by his so-called teachers.  The story Fight Club portrays a particularly twisted rendition of the mentor/mentee relationship in which the teacher and the student are one and the same.  To me these are fascinating examples of how writers take an often-used archetype and bend it in surprising and innovative ways.  And when students begin to think about stories in this way, it gives them a framework on which they can develop their own analytical skills more effectively.  Of course, one question worth asking is this:  What do all these negative portrayals of mentors say about our own society?

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I was pretty sure The Dark Knight was going to be the best Batman movie yet and it was.  I wasn’t fully prepared to be quite so blown away though.  For me, Batman Begins raised the bar and The Dark Knight jumped over that bar on a souped up rocket-bike.  Pretty much left the bar in favor of a low orbit cheerfully yelling ‘look ma no hands’.  I was going to write a full review but what I really want to talk about is The Joker.

There were whispers and mutterings before the movie wrapped about what they were going to do with The Joker.  When Heath Ledger died those whisperings grew into full blown hype.  For once the hype was not only deserved, but understated the case.  This is The Joker’s movie and The Joker belongs to Heath Ledger, possibly forever.

Like a legion of Batman fans, I like my Batman dark.  Grim, bleak, possibly psychotic.  I can go the rest of my life and never see the Batusi again, thanks.  My favorite Joker story is The Killing Joke by (shock) Alan Moore.  That book takes alot of time to ask why The Batman and The Joker are tied together.  It’s a ghoulish Joker and a dark brutal Batman but it’s a thoughtful story, even melancholy, but it takes place at a time when the two have had a long, painful relationship.

The Dark Knight covers the same questions.  What makes The Joker do the things he does?  Why are he and Batman so drawn to each other?  If Bats hates Joker so much why doesn’t he just kill him, moral code or no?  But here this all takes place when The Batman is just getting started.  He has barely begun to understand what it means to be this knight for Gotham and he’s confronted with an adversary apparently his equal.  

So it’s The Joker’s origin story.  But the writers go ahead and put a bit of a wrinkle there.  Even though it’s an origin story there’s really no origin.  We don’t know his real name.  We don’t see how he got this way.  His face is disfigured but his ‘joker face’ is makeup.  We get the idea he probably wasn’t some loser that fell into a vat of chemicals with a red helmet on his head (the oldest Joker origin).  The Joker himself plays tricks on us when he gives differing accounts of how he got his scars.  He just appears, like a force of nature.  Intentionally or not he has been summoned or drawn.  He is (fanfare) an archetype.

We’ve seen the Trickster plenty of times in movies.  Jack Sparrow is a Trickster.  Bugs Bunny is too.  So is Fletch.  But those guys are pretty likable.  Mischievous scamps.  What we don’t see much is the dark side of the Trickster.  Chaos gods like Loki, someone who tricked a blind man into killing his own brother.  This Joker is chaos unleashed and Ledger goes at it without campiness, reservation, or fear.  The dude is scary.  There were several ’gags’ like the disappearing pencil trick that would be funny in a regular action flick.  But this Joker is not a schizo, or a sociopath, or a criminal genius.  He’s outside all of that.  By making himself an archetype of justice and order The Batman summons an opposing archetype of chaos and misrule.  And, oh yeah, he’s a scary mofo.

So here’s the review: go see this movie.  Now.  

Tags:   archetypes · movies · myth1 Comment