After my topic was selected to be included, I had about a week and a half to put together the slides. I approached it like a screen writing project at that point, breaking down each section into “scenes”, each of which was to move the “story” along. I also tried to keep one of Jeff’s favorite mantras in mind at all times: “Enter late and leave early”. So, for instance, I did not open with “Hi, I’m here to talk to you about zombies”; instead, I chose to lead off with “Why have we had no global zombie uprising to date?” I felt that this imparted a hit-the-ground-running feeling right from the start.

After roughing out the first draft, I made two editing passes through the material and added in some “breather” slides, where I could pause. These were done as large graphics with a catchy title which I hoped would elicit a laugh from the audience allowing me to regroup my thoughts for the next sequence. Although I talked it out several times to myself, something I also do when working through dialogue in a screenplay, there was no substitute for the live experience. Reviewing the video, I definitely see several “scenes” that could have been tightened up.

Since it is a bit hard to see in the video at times, I have included the slide deck.

View the video on Blip TV.

The air was quiet and thick in the afternoon heat. The only sound was the crunch of his footsteps on the tilled earth. Few people ventured into the woods this time of year, but the boy was curious, and since his grandparents had decided to drive into town, he had time to explore. The stand of maples at the edge of the woods formed a canopy which shaded the boy as he stood looking into the tangle of bushes and timber. He touched the shotgun shells in his pocket and stepped into the forest.

The shadowy air felt moist against his skin, and it took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the new light. Although he’d been in these woods plenty of times with his grandpa, he realized that he had never been here alone, and this made him uneasy. Granted, he knew his way around, so it was not as though he feared getting lost. But the boy sensed a gulf between his life in town and the natural world he encountered on the farm and in the forest. It was this gap which seemed especially acute to him right now.

He began to wander toward the center of the woods, and as he did, swarms of insects followed, buzzing at his ears and his eyes. With each step, the underbrush grew thicker, the ground muddier. He could hear squirrels and birds chattering overhead. Soon he found himself approaching the ruins of an old cattle shed that had been abandoned decades earlier. Beside it stood a bramble of raspberry bushes which grew tall and bristly along the base of the building. As he approached, he heard a faint rustling. He stopped and bent down to get a look under the thicket, and it was there he saw it–the flick of an ear and a flash of white fur. The boy crept forward, slowly lifting each foot and stepping gently on the ground, being careful not to jostle any loose twigs and at the same time keeping an eye on his prey. The boy knew the rabbit was watching him, but somewhere in his mind he thought that by sneaking up on the creature, perhaps he could get close enough to take a shot. The boy pulled back the hammer and raised the stock to his shoulder. Then in a flash, the rabbit leaped from the bushes and darted past him into a clearing. The boy took aim and squeezed the trigger. He felt the punch of the recoil, and his ears rang at the explosion.

Through a thin cloud of smoke he saw that his shot had found its mark, although not enough to stop the rabbit entirely. It hobbled forward on three legs, with its hind foot flopping and dragging behind. The boy broke open the shotgun to eject the spent shell. The paper cartridge had expanded, and he had to pull it out hot with his fingers. The smell of the burnt powder flooded his nose as he reached into his shirt pocket to retrieve another cartridge. Fumbling, he shoved the fresh load into the chamber and closed the action.

The rabbit was now at least thirty yards ahead of the boy. Despite a shattered hind leg, the creature could still outrun him–at least for awhile. Soon, however, the rabbit slowed, and when the boy finally got closer, he noticed a thickening trail of blood on the forest floor. After a dozen more steps, the boy stopped. There on the ground lay the rabbit, weak and panting. A black pool of blood lay under its rump, and the creature’s eyes betrayed its pain and fear. The boy realized that had never been this close to a wild rabbit before–nor had he been this close to death.

Although he’d brought along a small knife, the boy couldn’t bring himself to touch the mutilated animal. He considered using a rock to finish it off, but instead, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger once more. Again, the boy’s ears rang and the air was filled with the acrid scent of gunpowder. Even with a blast at this range, it took several more seconds for the rabbit to finally stop breathing. He cocked open the gun’s breech and tossed the empty cartridge on the ground next to the riddled carcass. Gnats and mosquitoes buzzed around the boy’s head, disturbing the dark silence. Then after a few moments, he made his way back through the forest and out into the bright afternoon sun.

As he walked along the fencerows toward his grandparents’ farm, the boy imagined some fox or raccoon making quick work of the rabbit’s remains, and it took all the strength he could muster to fight back his tears.

Personally, I don’t believe I’m as vehement a SNOOT as other English teachers I’ve known-although my students would probably disagree.  Grammarians typically fall into two camps:  prescriptive and descriptive.  Prescriptivists are rule-adherents, and they believe that by following the approved, accepted, and time-tested maxims of Standard Written English, people will communicate more clearly with one another.  Descriptivists, on the other hand, contend that language is inherently fluid, and so long as a person’s words are understood, what’s there to complain about?  Descriptivists accept variances in dialect (think Ebonics), pronunciation, usage, and are generally the mortal enemies of most prescriptivists.  Some prescriptivists go so far as to contend that sloppy grammar leads to moral laxity and a general disintegration of civilized society.  On the grammarian continuum, I would not categorize myself as a Fascist SNOOT, although I do believe that poor writing is a great impediment to job performance, career opportunities, and one’s desire to be taken seriously.  I also recognize that people’s regional and social dialects are an integral part of their personalities, and sometimes it takes a profound effort on the part of a writer or speaker to overcome one’s natural linguistic proclivities and develop skills that our dominate culture deems as “preferred” or “acceptable.”      

It may sound silly, but I enjoy reading through grammar books and style manuals.  I think Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is a work of sublime genius.  (Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but it is very good as style guides go.  However, the college students I taught a few years ago thought I was daft for assigning them chapters from this book to read for class each week.)  Do you remember how Scotty from Star Trek used to spend his shore leave time reading ships’ schematics and engineering manuals?  That’s me with style manuals.  Sometimes, I’ll peruse several of these books to see what each of them has to say on a given topic.  Take colons, for instance.  The colon is not as common as a comma or a period, but unlike apostrophes, it is one of the few punctuation marks Cormac McCarthy deems worthy of use.  Strunk and White is predictably brief on the topic:  “Use a colon after an independent clause to introduce a list of particulars, an appositive, an amplification, or an illustrative quotation.”  They go on to add, “The colon has more effect than the comma, less power to separate than the semicolon, and more formality than the dash.”  Well said, gentlemen.  Other style guides try to use humor to teach a point.  The book Woe Is I states, “Think of the colon as a traffic cop, or punctuation’s master of ceremonies.”  Likewise, the best-selling guide to grammar and punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, notes, “A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to come.”  (Please understand, this is grand comedy in the world of grammar books.) 

Occasionally, the style guides contradict one another.  Do you capitalize the first word of a complete sentence which follows a colon if that sentence is not a quotation?  Elements of Style says no;  Woe Is I says sometimes;  Pinckert’s Practical Grammar calls this approach “newfangled” but is otherwise accepting of the practice.  The editors of Modern American Usage make this case:  “In the modern view, a capital letter would trip up the eye just where the colon means to make a seamless connection.”  So, is it a question of rules over aesthetics?  Should we take a law-abiding prescriptivist stance and shout “Never!” from the writing rooftops, and thus ensure the moral integrity of the human species?  Or should we be wimpy and warm-fuzzied descriptivists and acknowledge that grammar rules change as languages change?  Oh, the complexity.  And to think how our teachers in grade school made grammar seem so simple.

I freaked.

I’m not afraid of spiders as a rule, and having lived in the desert southwest for 25+ years I have encountered about every nasty creature out here, including scorpions, widows, brown recluses, and rattlesnakes. What got me was how close I had been to just blindly grabbing what was, and I am not exaggerating, the largest black widow I have ever seen. It was the knowledge that my blind groping into unseen corners almost made my day a tad bit worse than just having a dusty grill.

I think it is that fear of the unknown that often cripples writers. The most common question writers get is “Where do your ideas come from?”.  They don’t know.  None of us do. They come from the dark parts of our brain when we start reaching there blindly. We feel around for something we can’t name, and pull pieces together into a coherent whole (we hope).  But what if you reach in there and nothing comes out? Or what if it is trash? Or what if you get bitten?

It leads to a whole list of secondary excuses for not writing, of not challenging yourself, of not trying something risky.  Really it’s about fear. If you never go under the grill, you’ll never get bitten.

In this case, after I came down off the roof and took the picture with my iPhone, I squished the spider and the egg sac into gooey bits. I hosed the hell out of the grill, then got back to cooking the steaks. They came out great.  I may be stretching the metaphor a bit here, but you can’t get the juicy steak if you don’t reach under that grill.

The smell of cigarette smoke clung to the nurse’s clothes. It was under the smell of antiseptic soap, over the smell of Chantilly lace. Brandi probably would have missed it if the nurse hadn’t leaned so close to give her the baby. The baby fumbled at Brandi’s nipple and fussed and Brandi thought he might refuse again. The worried look on the nurse’s face said she thought the same thing. But after a few slobbery false starts the baby began to suck.
“There he goes,” said the nurse, excited but quiet. “That’s a good sign, darlin. That’s a real good sign.” The nurse smiled wide and Brandi tried to smile back.
“Y’all settle on a name for him?” the nurse said.
“Yes’m,” Brandi said. Brandi’s breast hurt. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant but there was definitely pain as the baby nursed. She bent her head to look close into the baby’s face. He had almost no scent, just a faint smell, like skin that’s hot from being in the sun. She murmured, “John.”
“Oh, darlin. After your, pa?” the nurse put a hand over her heart. “That’s nice. That’s real nice.” She patted Brandi on the thigh and started back to her station. Before closing the door she turned with a warm and glowing look. Brandi knew the nurse had completely mistaken her mood and her intent with the baby’s name.
She lay her head back and tried to ignore the pain from her overworked nipple. It was late and the hospital was quiet and Brandi closed her eyes. With eyes hooded the smell of the place pressed on her. The sour smell of sick people seemed to hang like a mist, still in the current less hallways. Of course over all was the stench of every hospital. The smell of clean that comes, not from the absence of filth, but from the abundance of chemicals.
It reminded her of John, her father not her son. Not because that man was clean but because he had died so recently in this very hospital. Just her and her ma, the hospital wouldn’t let Randy in, he wasn’t family, sitting beside the bed waiting for him to go. John was a logger and strong but even a strong man should have died more quickly after an accident like that. The doctors marveled but Brandi was more familiar with the man’s spiteful vigor. She didn’t sleep a wink for the entire four days and when he finally went she recoiled at the stench of his final breath. It smelled like roaches crawling out of a sewer.
Another stench reached her now, out of place in the sterile hospital room. The stench of eager decay from black marsh mud. The seminal stink of primordial slime that hangs over certain hollows that never see real sun. Brandi had gone down to just such a hollow not long ago and she kept her eyes closed against what shouldn’t be there.
“I knows yer awake girl. An’ I knows ye knows I’m here.” Brandi grimaced at that thin croak of a voice. She opened her eyes and even though the nurse had left the lights on the room was now dim.
“Ole Ezra’s here to collec wha’s owed ‘er.”
“How–” did you get in was what Brandi was going to say but stopped. It didn’t matter how, she was here. There was a movement in the shadows as the old lady laughed and Brandi thought of a misshapen bullfrog dripping foul mucus.
“A bit wiser than las time we jawed, eh?” Wet gleam of bald and black gums as Ezra grinned from the dim corner of the room. “An’ not jus in the ways o’ pink young flesh.” Those black gums smacked together obscenely and Ezra’s yellow eyes gleamed as she looked at the suckling infant.
“Please,” Brandi held the baby close and averted her eyes from the foul crone. “Please don’t take my baby.”
“Ain’t yourn,” she snapped. “It’s mine! Made a bargain ye did. Sealed wit a kiss.” The obscene smacking came again and Brandi shuddered.
“I didn’t know what I was askin,” her voice was on the verge of trembling. “I didn’t know what I was promising.”
“Ye knowed well enough to come to my cabin. Ye knowed enough to come down into the holler. Ye knowed plenty, ye pert hussy. Ezra held up her end. Ain’t yer daddy gone?”
“That was an accident.”
“Ye knows that weren’t no accident,” she hissed and the swamp miasma threatened to choke Brandi as Ezra moved closer. “It weren’t no accident that yer pa picked that tree that day. No accident that he was crushed like a worm far from help.”
“Please,” Brandi’s voice was shaking now and tears didn’t look far off. “You can’t take my baby.”
“I held up my end,” unrelenting, implacable. “Yer daddy ain’t here ta hit ye an’ yer ma. Is he? An’ ain’t yer young hound come to rut wit ya, bitch? Wha’s his name agin?”
“Randy,” she whispered, tears started falling.
“Randy he is too, I reckon,” The filthy rags Ezra wore flapped as she bucked her bony hips and Brandi felt like she might vomit. “Randy as a two peckered billy goat. He didn’t waste no time stickin’ his young pink cock in ya did he? Gimme wha’s owed.” Ghastly hands like a crow’s claws were thrust out but still Brandi tried.
“There must be some way,” she said. “Can’t you leave him?”
“There ain’t no other way. He’s mine an’ if ye don’t give ‘im up I’ll take ye instead. But before I finish ye I’ll make yer Randy young buck have a ‘accident’. One that’ll make yer pa’s look like a lover’s caress.”
The horrid kissing sound was almost in Brandi’s ear now and the swamp fetor was unbearable. Grasping hands were thrust out.
“I’m owed.”
Ancient tendons creaked as the hands opened and closed, opened and closed.
“I’m owed.”
Brandi thrust the baby away from her and into the greedy claws. The bright pink babe was swallowed in shadow as Ezra clasped him to her leathery chest. Brandi looked away as the shrunken fiend wrapped him in the folds of her rotting garment. Her eyes gleamed, yellow and malevolent.
“Wha’s his name?”
Milk dribbled down Brandi’s chest but she ignored it and covered her face. “John,” she said through her hands, voice flat and empty now of emotion.
Hours that seemed like days passed before she could be alone with Randy. Brandi was exhausted from the stream of doctors and nurses. From talking to the whole police force, all nine officers and the chief. To the sheriff and to a State Trooper who kept his hat on the whole time. All she could do now was lay in her hospital bed and hold Randy’s hand.
“You okay?” he said. “Everything went all right?”
“It went fine sweetie. She didn’t suspect a thing. After all the excitement dies down we can have a baby of our own.”

Scenes and Timeline

I went to Lowe’s and bought a section of white board paneling, that is basically a section from a dry ease board.  I mounted it on my wall and divided it up by Acts.  In the picture, you can see Act I on the top. Act II covers the end of the top section, the middle, and part of the bottom.  Act III picks up the end of the third row.  The space on the bottom I left for notes and scratch work.

I then picked up a bunch of colored post-its and began noting down my major scenes.  The blue are the Past timeline, and the Pink are the current timeline. Orange indicates a major plot point that has to be revealed at some point along the way. The lone white post-it in the upper left is a plot issue I have to come back and work out.  I’m now able to see my pacing, juggle scenes easily, and use the colors to really highlight any problems. (Yes, that’s still a work in progress)

In a more traditional narrative, I use one color for Theme scenes, another for Character scenes, and a third for Plot scenes.  Under the idea that every scene should advance at least one of those three aspects of the story, I can see if I am spending too much time “talking”, or maybe not enough time since something really dynamic was happening on screen.

It’s a variation on using index cards to juggle scenes, but I prefer this for the color and the ability to see the whole picture at once.  This is in my writing area, so I can look up at any time from my writing and see what’s next, or get up and move things around.  I’m still refining the technique, but so far it is working out really well.

If you have any ideas what I could use to improve it, or if you use a technique similar to this for your own plot planning, I’d love to hear it!

But that very appearance of normalcy from afar can prominently figure into the story. Zombies are usually up close and in your face dangerous. From ten yards away, they just look like a person in distress. No cunning involved, no premeditated plan, no trap of their own making. Stimulus and response. Enter their space of awareness, you are now prey. When they’re not actively chasing a tasty brain snack, they usually fall into patterns of aimless wandering.

As a writer, there are a couple of interesting plays on human/zombie encounters to consider. One is the character who goes missing for some time and is then rediscovered. Were they “turned” in their absence? Do they think the other characters have “turned” in their absence? Plenty of room for the writer to craft an encounter to keep the reader engaged. Another staple is the “safe haven” that is found to be compromised. Likely, the characters have had to endure hardships to reach this place of presumed refuge. Now what are they going to do? Plenty of room for the writer to explore the emotional dynamic of the living characters.

It has been some time since my first post in this series. Although I am a fan of the genre and have embarked on the writing of a trilogy of screenplays in this space (one down, two to go), I realized that there are great gobs of zombie-centric movies and books of which I was unaware. I am but a necrophyte! (a term coined by a member of my writing group, today). I started getting caught in a research loop. So, this post is an effort to break me out of that cycle as well.

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…”

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.