Thomas Wharton's Blog, page 13

Deep Dark Story

If you’re taking a trip into Story, make sure you let a responsible person know where you’re going and when you expect to be back.
Stories are like forests. Some are more dangerous than others, although it’s not always readily apparent which those are. There are stories that can draw you in like a trackless jungle and never let you go. Or stories that seem safe and fun on the surface but contain hidden dangers.
Maps can be very useful, though it’s worth remembering that they can be deceiving, and should not be relied upon if they go against the terrain in front of your eyes.
When traveling in Story, much as in wilderness, you need to be realistic about your abilities. You shouldn't attempt anything that you know to be beyond your strength and skills. However, this is usually the point at the story really gets interesting. So I know you won’t listen to this advice. I know I didn’t listen when I was your age. That’s why I read The Brothers Karamazov when I was thirteen. Maybe I shouldn’t have. But now that book, that story, is indelibly part of the person I am, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If things start to get scary in the story, it would make sense to turn back before they get any worse. And yet, when it comes to story, at the moment you realize you should turn back, it’s already too late. You're hooked.
I always tell people to bring a portable plot repair kit, and an emergency deus ex machina. But no one listens. They always think, if you've been in one story you've been in them all.
If you get lost … keep your cool and don’t panic. If the way out of the story is obvious, retrace your steps. If not, stay put. Someone is sure to notice you’re missing from the real world and come looking for you.
Illustration: detail from Antonine Hill by Philip Braham

 

Never Give Up

One of the students in my class at Youthwrite camp last week asked me: “If you could give only one piece of advice to young writers, what would it be?”
My answer: Never give up.
Keep writing, no matter what. Write every day. Make a habit of it so strong that if a day goes by when you don’t get to write, you suffer withdrawal symptoms.
If you’re like me you probably started writing in the first place because it was fun. Then, when you get more serious about it, writing gets harder. Keep at it even when it isn’t fun, when you’d rather be doing something else. It will get fun again.
Most beginning writers think they’re better at it than they really are. An important moment in one’s writing life comes when you admit you’ve got a long way to go. When you face that daunting gap between the writing you’re capable of and the amazing work you want to accomplish. Many would-be writers give up at this point.
Keep at it.
If you stick with it, there are plenty of other hurdles. The days when you don’t feel like writing, or when other responsibilities and commitments eat up your writing time. Those creative dry spells when you feel like the worst writer in the world and you have nothing to write about anyhow.
Keep at it.
Sometimes you finish a piece and send it out and it gets rejected. This happens to every writer. It hurts. Sometimes your writing gets rejected over and over again before it finds a home. Sometimes it never does.
And when you do get something published, or publish it yourself, you may have to face criticism, misunderstanding, mockery. Maybe even hatred.
That is, if you can get someone’s attention. There will be times when you know you’ve written something worthwhile, something beautiful and valuable and true, and the world doesn’t notice. There are a lot of books out there, not to mention all the movies, games, television shows, websites…
Indifference might be the most toughest hurdle of them all: to keep writing when it seems that what matters to you matters to no one else.
Keep at it.
Don’t give up. Never give up. If you’re stuck or blocked, remember that hitting a wall is actually a necessary part of the creative process. Go do something else for a while, and while you’re taking a break, the part of your mind that you can’t consciously access will still be busy working on the problem and coming up with a solution. Trust that your mind will find the way. The ideas will flow again. They always do.
If you’re discouraged by rejection letters, or bad reviews, or no reviews at all, keep working. Keep sending your work out. Keep learning and improving. We all have creativity within us, but most people never know it’s there or make use of it. You’ve found that spark in you, and that is the real reason for all the hard work, not money or fame or the approval of others. The reward of writing is to grow that spark into your own unique vision, whether it reaches five people or five million.
Never give up.
Oh, and one other bit of advice: Read. Read everything. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry. Read outside your favourite genre. Far outside. Devour a good book and then go back and read it again, slowly, with a pen, making note of all those passages where you were amazed, moved, transported, where the writer had you in thrall, body and soul. How did she work that magic? Reading like a writer is as much a craft as writing like one.  
Illustration: detail from Blizzard at Cape Denison, Antarctica, c. 1912.

Story shapes

For me, thinking about a story’s “shape” is a way of standing back from the story and seeing its broad outlines rather than the details. Is there a pattern here? Some sort of unexpected symmetry? Is anything missing?
You may have heard of Freytag’s pyramid: the classic story shape sketched out by the 19th-century novelist Gustav Freytag: a classic model of story structure that plots the way stories rise through moments of conflict to a peak at the point of crisis (the climax) and then descend into the “falling action” or denouement. Yes, it’s a structure that one can find in innumerable stories, and it’s a useful tool for thinking about how to put together your own plots, but it’s worth considering that this model was created in 1863. That’s right, 1863.
A plot might be something more -- or different -- than what the pyramid model allows us to see. What other shapes do stories reveal? What other shapes or patterns might your own story follow?
Exercise: sketch out a plot for a story based on one of the following shapes, or choose a shape of your own.

Top illustration: detail from Voyage d'Hermes by Moebius.
 

Paper people

Youthwrite camp, day four: creating characters:
We humans are incredibly social animals. We keep inventing new ways to communicate with one another. We are fascinated and obsessed with each other. We love to find out what others are doing. So much so that we invent imaginary people and become interested in their lives as if they were real. Maybe sometimes we come to think of these paper people as even more real than the people around us. (Think of all the Joyce fans who spend June 16thin Dublin retracing the steps of Leopold Bloom, who only ever existed in the pages of Ulysses.) Even those who are shy and don’t like to be around other people will often spend their alone time reading about the adventures of imaginary people or watching them on TV.
As a writer, how do you create paper people who are interesting, surprising, and have some depth and believability? One way is to get to know as much about them as you can. For example, you can borrow personality traits from real people you know. Another way is to expand your knowledge of your character beyond the “window” of time that the story takes place in.
Exercise: let’s say your story takes place during a week in the life of your character (the most important week in this person’s life, let's hope). But what about all the other moments of your character’s life? 
Write the scene of your character’s birth, or death. 
Where does it take place? Who else is there? Was there anything unusual about the event?

The power of words

Youthwrite camp, Day Two: The power (and magic) of words.







You can put all kinds of magical creatures or events into a story, but the most important kind of magic for a writer to keep in mind is the magic of language. 
As writers we need to think carefully and deeply about the words and sentences we use.That's where the power to enchant readers and hold their interest is going to come from.
Exercise: think of a word. Any word. 
Write it down. Don't tell anyone else in the class what your word is.
This is your “magic word” for the day. 
Now keep the word in your thoughts for a whole day. Ponder it. In conversation, use it in as many sentences as you can. 
At the end of the day, write a short piece (story, essay, descriptive passage, what have you) in which you don’t use the word. And yet your magic word should be at the heart of the piece, so that if anyone was to read it the word should come to mind for them.
Image: detail from "Method & Madness" by Gabe Wong at the Art Gallery of Alberta

Jumpstarting your creativity

This week I’m teaching a course on writing “fantastic fiction” at Youthwrite Edmonton. I thought I’d post some of the ideas and exercises that I’ll be sharing with the young writers at the camp.
Day One, today, is all about generating new ideas, or jumpstarting your creativity if you're stuck with your writing and don't know what to do next.
Here's an exercise the students will be doing today:
Come up with a fanciful origin for your first name. 
If you know your name’s real origin, don’t use it - invent one. Try to make it sound as plausible as possible. 
Or not -- make the explanation as ridiculous as you like.

Canada Day

I am an anthology

 When I glanced in the mirror this morning, expecting to see the same familiar, unremarkable face looking back at me, to my surprise I found I had become a book.

I was startled, too, at how large a book I was, too. Like, we’re talking tome here. Had I put on a lot of weight recently? I suppose I should have been dismayed about this, like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, but the truth is I felt more excited than anything. I’d been looking for something new to read!
Quickly I flipped through my table of contents and realized that I was an anthology. A collection of stories. All kinds of stories. Some new, some old, some that had been in the telling all my life. Quite a few that were apparently unfinished. Some I had never suspected I had in me.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was what I’d always been.
There are the stories our parents tell us about where we came from, about their lives before we were born, and then the stories about the day of our birth, and what we were like as babies. There are the stories we tell ourselves as we grow up, about who we are, or what we would like to become. There are the stories told to us by our community, our nation, our society. The stories we read and the stories we make up for ourselves. Our dreams, desires, fantasies, nightmares. The stories we don’t believe in, or find so frightening or depressing we wish we’d never heard them told. Stories about war and intolerance, predictions about the stock market or climate change….
There are the stories we’ve forgotten we knew, or just haven’t noticed because they’re so deep in the book.
The most wonderful thing about this anthology of stories each of us carries around is that it has never been bound and will never be completed. The latest edition is always just about to come out. And the more stories you read, and hear, and tell, the richer your anthology will be.
When we die our life will be a story in someone else’s anthology, or maybe more than one. If our life story has made an impression on a lot of people, it will probably get anthologized often.
If you find you’re telling yourself the same story over and over again, insisting it’s the only one, try turning the page.

Coyote Among the Wolves, Part 2

Moon Runner, more than any of the pups, was fascinated by what she had learned about Crazy Dance. She talked to him often, asking questions and pleading for more stories.
“If you’re a coyote, how do you know all these stories about Great Wolf?” she asked him one day. Even as she asked the question her eyes went wide and Crazy Dance saw that she had figured it out for herself.
The next time they talked, Moon Runner said, “If there’s a Great Coyote, there must really be a Great Wolf, too, somewhere.” She had clearly been thinking about this a lot.
“There must be,” Crazy Dance agreed. “Maybe your parents know some stories about Great Wolf.”
“The only story they know is one about the Nameless Animal.”
The Nameless Animal, so it was said, was everywhere and in everything. She had given life to all animals, even the humans. She gave each animal its place in the order of things, and its own particular gifts. It was said the Nameless Animal was like what happens when the sun shines on water. The sun is broken up by the moving water into many suns, but it is really one. We just don’t see it because our eyes are tricked by the dazzle and confusion of the many little suns. The many are all the living things of the Earth; the one is the Nameless Animal.
Every animal knew this as truth. The wolves, the coyotes, the foxes, the crows, the jays …. Probably the hares and the buffalo and the deer, too, though the predators never talked with their prey. Everyone knows this except me,Crazy Dance thought after Moon Runner had gone to play with her siblings. As a pup Crazy Dance had lost his family. He’d had to fend for himself most of his life. He didn’t believe anymore that there was an order of things. If there was a Nameless Animal, she seemed to have forgotten him.
Sometimes the pups’ mother liked to go out hunting rather than stay at the den. When that happened, one or two members of the pack would stay behind and watch the pups. One day in late summer it was Twice Call’s turn to stay at the den, and Crazy Dance, to his own surprise, volunteered to stay as well. He couldn’t have said exactly why; there was just something cold and indifferent in the way Twice Call looked at the pups. The mother, who was well aware how much the pups loved Crazy Dance, agreed.
The pups were now old enough to leave the den on short exploratory forays of their own. When the rest of the pack had gone, Twice Call and Crazy Dance led the pups out onto the grassy plain and let them run around. They wanted to play stalk-and-kill, and as usual Crazy Dance took the role of the prey. They all had great fun, except Twice Call. Crazy Dance noticed that he sat and watched the game without expression.
“Look, it’s another Crazy Dance,” one of the pups shouted.
They all looked and saw a coyote watching them. The way he stood there, twitching as if flies were bothering him, sent a jolt of remembered danger through Crazy Dance. The strange coyote began to descend toward them with an odd jerky gait, its head lowered, its mouth hanging open. There was no telling its intentions, or whether it had any at all. It had traveled outside its own coyoteness.
“The mad sickness,” Crazy Dance hissed to Twice Call. “We have to drive it away from the pups.”
But Twice Call had seen the mad sickness before, and knew what one bite of the coyote’s fangs could do to him. He had already loped well away, leaving Crazy Dance alone with the pups.
“Stay behind me,” Crazy Dance barked at the pups, and then he stepped forward, snarling, his hackles up. The strange coyote stopped and gaped at the unexpected sight of one of his own kind advancing slowly on him. His dull, glassy eyes seemed to take a long time to register what they were seeing. He sniffed, snapped his jaws a few times, made an eerie sound halfway between a growl and a whimper, then turned and bolted out of sight. A few moments later Twice Call came slinking back, and without a word he and Crazy Dance herded the pups back to the den.
Crazy Dance said nothing about the incident when the other adults returned, but of course the pups told the whole story in excited voices. The alpha couple thanked Crazy Dance, and turned their backs on Twice Call. He was now in the place Crazy Dance had been a few months before: the lowest of the low. He spoke even less than ever after that, and avoided looking at Crazy Dance.
“Maybe you’re really Great Coyote,” Moon Runner said to Crazy Dance that evening. He laughed.
“And maybe you’re Great Wolf,” he said to her. She rolled over in delight at such a ridiculous idea, then scampered off to rejoin her siblings. Crazy Dance watched her playing with them, playing the games he’d taught them. Maybe I’m not a pretend wolf, he thought. Maybe, if there is an order of things, I’m something new in it.
During those times when the wolves weren’t hunting and stayed around the den, one or two members of the pack would go out on patrol, to watch for any threats or possible prey. One day it was the turn of Twice Call to go on patrol, and the alpha insisted that Crazy Dance accompany him.
As they padded along over the rocky hills and through the tall grass, Crazy Dance noticed that Twice Call was not going in a wide circle around the territory as they usually did, but instead was heading more of less in a straight line away from the den. Finally, as they were crossing a dry streambed, Twice Call stopped. Crazy Dance stopped, too. He waited for Twice Call to explain what he was doing.
“It’s time you had some lessons in proper fighting,” Twice Call said. “Since you’re a wolf now. Attack me, and I’ll show you how to fight back, the wolf way.”
“I’m not a wolf,” Crazy Dance said, with a cold feeling in his gut. “You said so yourself.” He realized now that Twice Call had been paying careful attention to his coyote tricks and games. Twice Call had learned about pretending, about concealing your real intentions. He’d learned very well.
“Attack me your way, then,” said Twice Call, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “Let’s see how you coyotes fight. Who knows, maybe you can teach me a thing or two.”
“I don’t want to attack you,” Crazy Dance said quietly and firmly. “I’m not threatening you. We’re packmates. We should finish the patrol, don’t you think?”
For the first time since Crazy Dance had known him, Twice Call laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
“Packmates,” he said. “Well, if you won’t take lessons from a packmate, then do your clown act. Go on. Amuse me. Amuse me like you amuse Alpha and the others.”
It was a hot day. Crazy Dance foresaw what would happen if he danced and cavorted in the sun on a day like this. He’d be exhausted before long. He wouldn’t be in any shape for fighting, or running. It was just what Twice Call wanted.
Crazy Dance thought then about Moon Runner. You are a wolf, she had said, and then she’d called him Great Coyote. Maybe he was both, and neither. There was no story he knew about what was happening here. But it was going to happen anyway. Crazy Dance laughed to himself and thought, Maybe I’m a nameless animal, too.
“No,” he said aloud to Twice Call. “No, I’m not going to do that. It’s too hot out here, and anyhow we should be getting back to the den.”
“I’m telling you to amuse me,” Twice Call said. “That’s why you’re in the pack, isn’t it? If you’re not going to do what you’re supposed to, then I guess you are just another coyote after all. And you know what the pack does to coyotes.”
“I know,” Crazy Dance said, bracing himself for what was about to come. “It’s the order of things.”
Later that afternoon a mountain of cloud climbs out of the west, its heights dazzling white, its underside a blue-black cave. The cloud drives a cold wind before it that kicks up the dust and leaf litter. The air chills as if an invisible river has flooded across the land, and then the cloud is overhead and the rain comes slashing down. In moments puddles have formed in the dry hollow places and raindrops leap and dance in them. Then the rain draws off and the cloud-mountain splits open, and the last of the sunlight turns the tops of the high ridges to gold. 
At dusk a coyote family -- a male, female and three pups -- come slinking quietly and cautiously along the streambed. They were driven from their old den by men with traps and they need a new home. They sheltered from the rain under an overhang of the sandy bank and now they’re searching for someplace a little safer and more secure for the night.
The coyotes stop when they come across the body of one of their own kind. Its throat has been torn out and the terrifying reek of wolf is all over it. The coyotes pause briefly to inspect the body and read the signs of the enemy. When they’re certain which way the wolf or wolves has gone, the coyote family gives up the search for a den in this dangerous territory and scampers away in the opposite direction.
The ants have already discovered the bounty in their midst, and soon the flies and the crows will, too. All of them will come to the body and take away some of its coyoteness, which will become antness and flyness and crowness. A story no one knew was being told goes on telling itself.

Illustration by T Wharton

Coyote Among the Wolves

[As promised, another story from the Republic of Animals.]

A coyote once crossed paths with a pack of wolves. They surrounded him and were about to kill him, as they did all coyotes who ventured into their territory.  The coyote began to yip and dance and roll in the dust with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He cavorted so outrageously that the wolves stopped in their tracks and stared. They didn’t know what to make of this.
The coyote didn’t know either. He thought later that in the last few moments of life left to him he must have been trying to use up all of his coyoteness.
The wolves watched this inexplicable performance, and then they laughed. It had been a good day’s hunting, one of the few they’d had in a long while. They were feeling good about life. And so, rather than tearing the coyote to pieces, they let him live and brought him back with them to the den. They decided to keep him around, for entertainment.
The coyote, who had been a loner all his life, constantly living on the edge of starvation, thought that this might be a better life than anything he’d known before. Still, it had its dangers. All that was expected of him was that he would put on his clown act whenever the wolves needed a good laugh. But what would happen on the day his new friends got tired of his antics?
He knew he had to find a way to make himself indispensable. The coyote was not allowed to join in the hunt, but he had an idea that he shared with the wolves, and they agreed to try it. He would do his “crazy dance,” as the wolves called it, to distract and confuse the prey while the wolves moved in for the kill. They tried it on a small herd of buffalo cows and calves, and to the coyote’s relief it actually worked. After that this ruse became part of the wolves’ regular hunting practice. Once they had brought down their prey the wolves would feast until they were stuffed, leaving any scraps that remained for the coyote. He took them quietly and meekly, grateful to still be alive in the midst of his enemies. For they were still his enemies, weren’t they?
When a litter of pups was born to the alpha female that spring, she wanted the coyote killed. She wasn’t going to trust a coyote around her helpless offspring. The other wolves had grown fond of the coyote by now, though, and besides, he had proved to be useful in the getting of food. For the new mother’s sake they made a show of chasing the coyote away, but they all knew it was only a show, even the coyote. He hung around at a safe distance from the pack for a while, and eventually, once the pups were big enough to leave the den and romp around, the alpha female relented and let the coyote back into the pack.
The pups took an immediate liking to the coyote. He was smaller than the other adults, and more playful, so in their eyes he became a kind of honorary pup or perhaps an older brother. They climbed all over him, mauled him, followed him around and pestered him incessantly. He taught them all sorts of fun games to play, and sent them into fits of laughter with his crazy dance. And that was the name the pups gave him: Crazy Dance.
He told them stories, too. He told them all the stories he knew about Great Coyote, stories his mother had told him when he was a pup, before the mad sickness took everyone in his pack. Except that he didn’t call the hero of the stories Great Coyote, he called him Great Wolf. He did this so he wouldn’t have to explain what a coyote was, and that he was one. But then he thought: am I a coyote anymore? Maybe when I thought my life about to end I really did use up all my coyoteness and now I’m only a clown, and a pretend wolf.  Great Coyote would never have done what I did. Or would he? Didn’t I do what Great Coyote was always doing: finding a way to live one more day?
“Why are you smaller than the other grown-ups?” one of the pups asked Crazy Dance one evening after he’d told them the story of how Great Wolf tricked the Hunger Beast. She was the smartest of the pups and her name was Moon Runner.
“Am I smaller?” the coyote replied. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“You are. You smell different, too, and the grown-ups don’t let you hunt. Why?”
“It’s because I’m not a wolf.”
“Not a wolf?” The other pups crowded around when they heard that. “Then what are you?”
“I’m a coyote.”
“A coyote? What’s that?”
“Well, wolves and coyotes are cousins, I suppose you could say. We live and we hunt much the same way. We both bark and howl. We eat the same things.”
One of the adult wolves overheard this conversation and came over. His name was Twice Call. He was the only wolf in the pack not blood-related to the alpha couple (in fact, the pack was more a family than a pack, Crazy Dance had noticed by now. Father, mother, the father’s brother and sister, the pups … and Twice Call). Not long before Crazy Dance jointed them, Twice Call had challenged the alpha male’s leadership and had lost. Twice Call, the coyote noticed, was the only one who never laughed at his silly antics. Twice Call never laughed at anything.
Now Twice Call came over and said, “Yes, coyotes and wolves eat the same things, but we compete with them for the same food, so coyotes are our enemies. If they enter our territory, we kill them. If you pups ever see another coyote, you let the grown-ups know right away. Understand?”
“What about Crazy Dance?” Moon Runner asked. “We don’t kill him.”
“Crazy Dance is different. Alpha says he’s in the pack, so he’s in the pack. But he’s not a wolf, and never will be.”
The pups began to pester Twice Call with more questions, but he gave a growl that said the discussion was at an end.
“You are a wolf, Crazy Dance,” Moon Runner said defiantly when the grown-up had gone. “We won’t ever kill you.” The other pups agreed. They were troubled by this new knowledge and stayed close to Crazy Dance the rest of that evening. But in the following days he noticed they sometimes gave him glances of fear and suspicion. They didn’t play with him as much as they used to, either.

[end of part one]