Biff Mitchell's Blog: Writing Hurts Like Hell, page 20
June 12, 2017
June 5, 2017
Know What You're Doing When You Write Foul Language
I’ve known people who would never dream of saying “damn” and then lose it completely and say “fuck” over and over. Sometimes, a deep breath just doesn’t do the trick. I’ve known people who just barely communicated because the amount of foul language coming out of their mouths almost obscured what they were saying.
But whether they never swear, or can’t stop swearing, you need to convey the sense of language your characters use and it has to be realistic.
Nothing describes your characters as accurately as the language they use. A large burly man dressed in rags is walking toward you on the sidewalk. Ten feet away, his eyes meet yours and hold there. You think, oh no, and get ready to say, “Sorry, I don't have any change.” When he's just a few feet away, he smiles and says, “Beautiful day.”
The words we use and how we use them say more about us than the clothes we wear and, often, how our faces and bodies look. Language is how we express our thoughts and feelings. It defines us more than anything else about us.
For example, a friend of mine ran an English immersion class for French high school students (many years ago). When he first ran it, there were situations where students had nervous breakdowns, made suicide attempts or dropped out of the program because they couldn’t handle the stress. The problem was that they were cut off from using their language. They defined themselves and their reality so deeply through their language that, when they weren’t allowed to speak it, their personalities began to dissolve.
If you put all the love, commitment and work into creating real characters in your stories―characters who are believable and surprising―then you have to go the whole distance and let them talk the way they will.
In children's books, family books, and religious books, the language is going to be toned down, not because teenagers, seven year olds and priests don't swear, but because your characters are created for a very specific audience and they represent the ideal type of person in your reading audience. This is the way you've created them. They'll take the road less foul-mouthed. On the other hand, you might want to change the rules and give the audience something new. Make sure you have a thick hide and a day job before attempting this outside the home.
I know very few people who don't swear at one time or another. We use strong language when we're mad, when we're disappointed, when we're reaching orgasm, when we're trying to insult someone, when we crush our thumbs with a hammer, when we're surprised, when we're frightened, when we're…
It goes on. And many of these times are appropriate for strong language. The same holds true in your stories. You use language that's appropriate for the situation and for your character in that situation. One woman might say, "Damn!" when she burns herself on the barbeque. Another might say, "Fuck!"
Don’t Under-do It
Don't have a big burly biker saying "Oh fudge!" when he comes back to his Harley and sees that somebody's taken a knife to his custom paint job.
Don't censor your characters’ language with F***! and c--- and &!!&%%$#!@**! You can use this kind notation to write non-fiction, but don't use it in your fiction. Real people don't speak in stars, dashes and ampersands. If you use this kind of technique, you take your readers out of the fictional world that you've made so real for them with your blood-and-soul characters and force them to focus on the fact that all they're doing is reading a make-believe story.
Let your characters talk the way they will talk without censoring them and your readers will stay in the world you’ve created.
Sometimes beginning writers are shy about using the word fuck. Don't be. It's old hat these days. Used appropriately, it neither startles nor offends. Used appropriately, it can deliberately startle or offend. It's that versatile. Use it for effect, and use it to define your characters. Does your character say “I fucked so and so …” or “I slept with so and so …” Both statements say the same thing, but they suggest different attitudes toward sex.
In Heavy Load (a laundromance), the lead female character, Hillary, is a young intelligent woman who has been betrayed by her boyfriend. Her language throughout the book is mild with the occasional “damn"…never anything stronger. But when her boyfriend uses inside information from her to steal her job and then calls her up to try and make her think everything’s alright between them she says, “Fuck off, Tim.” And hangs up on him. You don’t expect this kind of language from her, so when you hear it, it emphasizes that something is really out of whack.
The word cunt― considered almost mandatory in some British movies and books―is still pretty much verboten in most mainstream North American writing, which is exactly why it can be a powerful character definer when it’s used appropriately. Want to learn more about this word? Watch the Vagina Monologues with Eve Ensler.
But Don't Overdo It
I used to work as a bartender. One night a customer came to my bar and started talking to me about the rough time he and his brother had experienced earlier in the day moving a large couch down a narrow stairway. I’ll quote just a small part: “The fucking thing was fucking too fucking big for the fucking stairway and we fucking had to fucking take the fucking legs off …” This is exactly the way he talked for 10 minutes. Would I use this in story about him, exactly as is? Probably not, and not because I’d be concerned about my gentle readers’ ears, or consider it too gross. This is exactly how he talked. But I’d still delete a few of the “fuckings” and then read it out loud until I was satisfied I’d captured his tone. This kind of extreme overuse of a word is just as distracting as taking twenty pages to describe a setting for a scene that lasts for one page. The verbal expletive barrage focuses the readers attention on just one thing, the word, and looses a lot of the meaning of the conversation and the delineation of character in the process. This is where the writer as editor comes in and recreates reality in his or her likeness and strips away the extraneous detail that distracts from the story the same way F*** and Sh--! would.
Write Mindlessly and Go Right Over the Top in Your First Draft
When it comes to language, don’t let an image of your future readers, an image of your parents, children or a favorite teacher looking over your back, or your own sense of what’s right or wrong for yourself stop you from letting your characters use the kind of language that’s appropriate for them. A man saying to his wife, “You fucking bitch” draws a truer picture of a disturbed personality than the passive description: “And then, in front of everyone, Jack verbally abused Sally.”
Write without editing and write fast and furiously, putting in every foul expletive that you think might surge through the dialogue and the narration. Come back to it later and edit out the stuff that you feel is too far over the top, distracting, inappropriate for your reading audience, or just not right for that particular character.
If you’ve done your work in creating your characters, let them talk the way they will.
Try This
As a person, you may not like certain language and you may never use it. As a writer, you do what your characters demand. This exercise is designed to break the ice between you and how your characters need to express themselves.
Write the word (or phrase) that you think is the most repellent word you can think of twenty times. Then write just once, the word you think is the exact opposite. When you're finished, read the word aloud all twenty times. And read the final word.
But whether they never swear, or can’t stop swearing, you need to convey the sense of language your characters use and it has to be realistic.
Nothing describes your characters as accurately as the language they use. A large burly man dressed in rags is walking toward you on the sidewalk. Ten feet away, his eyes meet yours and hold there. You think, oh no, and get ready to say, “Sorry, I don't have any change.” When he's just a few feet away, he smiles and says, “Beautiful day.”
The words we use and how we use them say more about us than the clothes we wear and, often, how our faces and bodies look. Language is how we express our thoughts and feelings. It defines us more than anything else about us.
For example, a friend of mine ran an English immersion class for French high school students (many years ago). When he first ran it, there were situations where students had nervous breakdowns, made suicide attempts or dropped out of the program because they couldn’t handle the stress. The problem was that they were cut off from using their language. They defined themselves and their reality so deeply through their language that, when they weren’t allowed to speak it, their personalities began to dissolve.
If you put all the love, commitment and work into creating real characters in your stories―characters who are believable and surprising―then you have to go the whole distance and let them talk the way they will.
In children's books, family books, and religious books, the language is going to be toned down, not because teenagers, seven year olds and priests don't swear, but because your characters are created for a very specific audience and they represent the ideal type of person in your reading audience. This is the way you've created them. They'll take the road less foul-mouthed. On the other hand, you might want to change the rules and give the audience something new. Make sure you have a thick hide and a day job before attempting this outside the home.
I know very few people who don't swear at one time or another. We use strong language when we're mad, when we're disappointed, when we're reaching orgasm, when we're trying to insult someone, when we crush our thumbs with a hammer, when we're surprised, when we're frightened, when we're…
It goes on. And many of these times are appropriate for strong language. The same holds true in your stories. You use language that's appropriate for the situation and for your character in that situation. One woman might say, "Damn!" when she burns herself on the barbeque. Another might say, "Fuck!"
Don’t Under-do It
Don't have a big burly biker saying "Oh fudge!" when he comes back to his Harley and sees that somebody's taken a knife to his custom paint job.
Don't censor your characters’ language with F***! and c--- and &!!&%%$#!@**! You can use this kind notation to write non-fiction, but don't use it in your fiction. Real people don't speak in stars, dashes and ampersands. If you use this kind of technique, you take your readers out of the fictional world that you've made so real for them with your blood-and-soul characters and force them to focus on the fact that all they're doing is reading a make-believe story.
Let your characters talk the way they will talk without censoring them and your readers will stay in the world you’ve created.
Sometimes beginning writers are shy about using the word fuck. Don't be. It's old hat these days. Used appropriately, it neither startles nor offends. Used appropriately, it can deliberately startle or offend. It's that versatile. Use it for effect, and use it to define your characters. Does your character say “I fucked so and so …” or “I slept with so and so …” Both statements say the same thing, but they suggest different attitudes toward sex.
In Heavy Load (a laundromance), the lead female character, Hillary, is a young intelligent woman who has been betrayed by her boyfriend. Her language throughout the book is mild with the occasional “damn"…never anything stronger. But when her boyfriend uses inside information from her to steal her job and then calls her up to try and make her think everything’s alright between them she says, “Fuck off, Tim.” And hangs up on him. You don’t expect this kind of language from her, so when you hear it, it emphasizes that something is really out of whack.
The word cunt― considered almost mandatory in some British movies and books―is still pretty much verboten in most mainstream North American writing, which is exactly why it can be a powerful character definer when it’s used appropriately. Want to learn more about this word? Watch the Vagina Monologues with Eve Ensler.
But Don't Overdo It
I used to work as a bartender. One night a customer came to my bar and started talking to me about the rough time he and his brother had experienced earlier in the day moving a large couch down a narrow stairway. I’ll quote just a small part: “The fucking thing was fucking too fucking big for the fucking stairway and we fucking had to fucking take the fucking legs off …” This is exactly the way he talked for 10 minutes. Would I use this in story about him, exactly as is? Probably not, and not because I’d be concerned about my gentle readers’ ears, or consider it too gross. This is exactly how he talked. But I’d still delete a few of the “fuckings” and then read it out loud until I was satisfied I’d captured his tone. This kind of extreme overuse of a word is just as distracting as taking twenty pages to describe a setting for a scene that lasts for one page. The verbal expletive barrage focuses the readers attention on just one thing, the word, and looses a lot of the meaning of the conversation and the delineation of character in the process. This is where the writer as editor comes in and recreates reality in his or her likeness and strips away the extraneous detail that distracts from the story the same way F*** and Sh--! would.
Write Mindlessly and Go Right Over the Top in Your First Draft
When it comes to language, don’t let an image of your future readers, an image of your parents, children or a favorite teacher looking over your back, or your own sense of what’s right or wrong for yourself stop you from letting your characters use the kind of language that’s appropriate for them. A man saying to his wife, “You fucking bitch” draws a truer picture of a disturbed personality than the passive description: “And then, in front of everyone, Jack verbally abused Sally.”
Write without editing and write fast and furiously, putting in every foul expletive that you think might surge through the dialogue and the narration. Come back to it later and edit out the stuff that you feel is too far over the top, distracting, inappropriate for your reading audience, or just not right for that particular character.
If you’ve done your work in creating your characters, let them talk the way they will.
Try This
As a person, you may not like certain language and you may never use it. As a writer, you do what your characters demand. This exercise is designed to break the ice between you and how your characters need to express themselves.
Write the word (or phrase) that you think is the most repellent word you can think of twenty times. Then write just once, the word you think is the exact opposite. When you're finished, read the word aloud all twenty times. And read the final word.
May 31, 2017
Free Story: A Touch of Time
(A romantic scifi story first published in Ginosko Literary Magazine, Spring 2013)
She was much prettier than he’d imagined. Dusty brown bangs floated around her forehead with long waves splashing against the air around her neck. Her lips were two waves of flesh on the crest of a kiss. Her figure fit everyman’s calendar dream—not overly undersized, not overly muscular or plump or buxom or plank-like. He could have sworn that her eyes glowed blue. She was just right. As he knew she would be.
So much for the warnings about Internet dating. He’d just hit the World Wide Jackpot and he wasn’t about to wonder how he’d become this lucky.
Her name was Persephone. He didn’t find it strange at all. His own name was Mordecai. Mordecai Morris. And he hadn’t spoken to his parents in a long time. He couldn’t remember Persephone mentioning her parents in any of their chats. He wondered if they were scholars or teachers or just well-read average Joes who thought they might wrest a name out of time and bounce it off the walls of the modern world. But he liked it. It suited her. She seemed to know a lot about history and the classics, and had described some of her favorite historical events in minute detail, as if she’d been on a movie set, designing the costumes and directing the course of action, much like a technical consultant drawing from personal memory.
He thought it was pretty damn cool that she looked as good as she did. This was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him, or likely ever would.
“You’re Persephone?” he asked, smiling a little mischievously, knowing the answer.
“I don’t think so,” she said with a devilish smile. “What makes you think so?”
God, she was just like in her chats.
“Oh, the fact you’re wearing a black turtleneck, red tartan skirt, black leggings, and you’re sitting at the table I reserved for us.”
“Nice guessing, Morry.” It was what she called him. He loved it. It sounded even better than it read. “Hope you can read Manchurian,” she said.
“This is a Manchurian restaurant?”
“You made the reservations.”
“Oh, yeah.” He pulled his chin lightly between two fingers. “I guess that would explain the name: The Frozen Horde. I thought it had something to do with iced desserts and lots and lots of blueberries or something.”
“Blueberries!” she squealed and grabbed his hand.
They were sitting in a café outdoors, in what looked to be a medieval French city overlooking a cobblestone street busy with men in tight knickers and long white wigs, and women with gowns flowing into the horizon. He thought he’d seen this place in very old prints and paintings. After a bowl of Bluet en Glace, they were sitting in The Frozen Horde relieved the menu had pictures of the meals.
Strange, though, he wasn’t hungry anymore.
***
She was drop dead gorgeous with the kind of lips a man could sink a kiss into and smother in lipstick with the tip of her tongue running along the edge of his soul. Big blue eyes peered through chocolate bangs, and her body could have been whittled from a stone of pure desire. She wore a skintight red gown plunging between spectacular mounds of white flesh. His eyes sizzled, his groin smoldered, his brain nearly snapped in half. She knew how to make an impression on a second date. Or was it their third? Who cared? She was drop dead gorgeous and he was the luckiest man on earth.
“Been waiting long?” he asked.
“And who might you be?” she replied.
He loved this game. “I’m the one who made the reservations for the table you’re sitting at.”
“Oh, him … the one who can’t read Manchurian.”
“We weren’t hungry anyway.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “Iced blueberries do not a meal make.” Blueberries. Ice. Something rattled at the back of his head, but evaporated into the Lost Regions of his gray matter at the sound of her voice. “So, do you speak Italian?” she asked.
“Everybody speaks Italian,” he said, picking up the menu. “Spaghetti. Lasagna. Linguini …”
She cut him off with the most amazing laugh ever to tickle his eardrums and her voice slid over the table like a spilled bowl of honey stew. “How did you know I love Italian food?”
“Everybody loves Italian food,” he said, and quickly regretted his words. “I mean, not that you have common tastes or anything . . . I mean . . .”
His ears buzzed with joy at the sound of her laugh. “It’s OK. You’re right. Everybody loves Italian, but I especially like it . . . I guess, for its historical content.”
“Historical content?” he asked. “That’s a strange reason to love food, but, if you say so . . .”
She reached across the table and took his hand and they were sitting across the table from Galileo Galilei as he tore off a chunk of Cabot while just around the corner in the kitchen Miro Sorvino sliced a wedge of Brushchetta and Luigi Pirandello twisted his fork into a mound of Spaghetti alla Bologna and Michelangelo Buonarroti gazed up from his wooden table as he chewed a mouthful of Tortellini di zucca and Frank Zamboni brushed ice from his jacket as his mouth watered thinking of Pizzette e Salatin and Federico Fellini scooped a steaming portion of Cannelloni al Ragu . . . and he still wasn’t getting it as he dipped a garlic stick into a pool of spaghetti sauce and wondered about the wooden bowl just as it turned to porcelain and Persephone smiled at him and asked if they should order another bottle of wine.
Another bottle? How many had they had? He tried to focus his thoughts but he was caught in the glow from her eyes and that was all that mattered and he said yes, another bottle of wine. Something red and Italian.
***
She was amazing. Life danced in her eyes. She was as fresh as the first time he’d met her and fallen in love on the spot, or had he already been in love after their weeks of sending and receiving over the Internet? He didn’t care. She was timeless and he told her so, “You’re timeless.”
She smiled bouquets and heartbreak and took his hand. “Something like that,” she said as they strolled past a heavily armored Samurai warrior outside a Japanese palace stretching into an ancient Far East sunset.
“But why me?” he asked.
“Why not?” she replied.
“There’s nothing special about me,” he said.
“Need there be?” she asked.
“But you’re so … perfect,” he said. “So out of my league. Why me?”
“I have a different perspective.”
He decided to leave it alone as their walk took them along a pedestrian bridge made of a single giant piece of plastic spanning two magnificent skyscrapers surrounded by flying cars and people streaking through the air in jetpacks.
Their walk finished in front of the coffee shop around the corner from where he lived. He asked if she’d like to go in for a coffee. They walked through the door and he noticed immediately that she was much prettier than he’d imagined with her dusty brown bangs floating around her face, her hair splashing against the air around her neck.
He suddenly had a craving for frozen blueberries.
***
His hand was wrinkled and liver-spotted, his nails cracked and dried. His eyes beamed youthfully, but the pinched gray skin around red-veined whites looked like something from the Bin of Ages. His legs wobbled whether he was standing still or walking. His head shook when he talked as though trying to shake the words out of his mouth.
She sat across from him, young and beautiful as her eyes enveloped him with their blue glow. His voice cracked as he spoke. “We’ve had a wonderful life together.”
She smiled and nodded and said, “Yes, we have.”
“I’ve loved you from the beginning,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “And right to the end.” She took his hand and they were standing in total darkness until, an instant later, the darkness exploded with color and fire rushing light years in every direction, populating the emptiness with stars.
And he was in the Frozen Horde, sitting across from the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He looked at his watch and smiled. He wasn’t surprised. Not a bit. Just happy for the fraction of a second she’d spent with him.
He looked one last time into the blue glow of her eyes and winked happily as he turned to dust.
She was much prettier than he’d imagined. Dusty brown bangs floated around her forehead with long waves splashing against the air around her neck. Her lips were two waves of flesh on the crest of a kiss. Her figure fit everyman’s calendar dream—not overly undersized, not overly muscular or plump or buxom or plank-like. He could have sworn that her eyes glowed blue. She was just right. As he knew she would be.
So much for the warnings about Internet dating. He’d just hit the World Wide Jackpot and he wasn’t about to wonder how he’d become this lucky.
Her name was Persephone. He didn’t find it strange at all. His own name was Mordecai. Mordecai Morris. And he hadn’t spoken to his parents in a long time. He couldn’t remember Persephone mentioning her parents in any of their chats. He wondered if they were scholars or teachers or just well-read average Joes who thought they might wrest a name out of time and bounce it off the walls of the modern world. But he liked it. It suited her. She seemed to know a lot about history and the classics, and had described some of her favorite historical events in minute detail, as if she’d been on a movie set, designing the costumes and directing the course of action, much like a technical consultant drawing from personal memory.
He thought it was pretty damn cool that she looked as good as she did. This was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him, or likely ever would.
“You’re Persephone?” he asked, smiling a little mischievously, knowing the answer.
“I don’t think so,” she said with a devilish smile. “What makes you think so?”
God, she was just like in her chats.
“Oh, the fact you’re wearing a black turtleneck, red tartan skirt, black leggings, and you’re sitting at the table I reserved for us.”
“Nice guessing, Morry.” It was what she called him. He loved it. It sounded even better than it read. “Hope you can read Manchurian,” she said.
“This is a Manchurian restaurant?”
“You made the reservations.”
“Oh, yeah.” He pulled his chin lightly between two fingers. “I guess that would explain the name: The Frozen Horde. I thought it had something to do with iced desserts and lots and lots of blueberries or something.”
“Blueberries!” she squealed and grabbed his hand.
They were sitting in a café outdoors, in what looked to be a medieval French city overlooking a cobblestone street busy with men in tight knickers and long white wigs, and women with gowns flowing into the horizon. He thought he’d seen this place in very old prints and paintings. After a bowl of Bluet en Glace, they were sitting in The Frozen Horde relieved the menu had pictures of the meals.
Strange, though, he wasn’t hungry anymore.
***
She was drop dead gorgeous with the kind of lips a man could sink a kiss into and smother in lipstick with the tip of her tongue running along the edge of his soul. Big blue eyes peered through chocolate bangs, and her body could have been whittled from a stone of pure desire. She wore a skintight red gown plunging between spectacular mounds of white flesh. His eyes sizzled, his groin smoldered, his brain nearly snapped in half. She knew how to make an impression on a second date. Or was it their third? Who cared? She was drop dead gorgeous and he was the luckiest man on earth.
“Been waiting long?” he asked.
“And who might you be?” she replied.
He loved this game. “I’m the one who made the reservations for the table you’re sitting at.”
“Oh, him … the one who can’t read Manchurian.”
“We weren’t hungry anyway.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “Iced blueberries do not a meal make.” Blueberries. Ice. Something rattled at the back of his head, but evaporated into the Lost Regions of his gray matter at the sound of her voice. “So, do you speak Italian?” she asked.
“Everybody speaks Italian,” he said, picking up the menu. “Spaghetti. Lasagna. Linguini …”
She cut him off with the most amazing laugh ever to tickle his eardrums and her voice slid over the table like a spilled bowl of honey stew. “How did you know I love Italian food?”
“Everybody loves Italian food,” he said, and quickly regretted his words. “I mean, not that you have common tastes or anything . . . I mean . . .”
His ears buzzed with joy at the sound of her laugh. “It’s OK. You’re right. Everybody loves Italian, but I especially like it . . . I guess, for its historical content.”
“Historical content?” he asked. “That’s a strange reason to love food, but, if you say so . . .”
She reached across the table and took his hand and they were sitting across the table from Galileo Galilei as he tore off a chunk of Cabot while just around the corner in the kitchen Miro Sorvino sliced a wedge of Brushchetta and Luigi Pirandello twisted his fork into a mound of Spaghetti alla Bologna and Michelangelo Buonarroti gazed up from his wooden table as he chewed a mouthful of Tortellini di zucca and Frank Zamboni brushed ice from his jacket as his mouth watered thinking of Pizzette e Salatin and Federico Fellini scooped a steaming portion of Cannelloni al Ragu . . . and he still wasn’t getting it as he dipped a garlic stick into a pool of spaghetti sauce and wondered about the wooden bowl just as it turned to porcelain and Persephone smiled at him and asked if they should order another bottle of wine.
Another bottle? How many had they had? He tried to focus his thoughts but he was caught in the glow from her eyes and that was all that mattered and he said yes, another bottle of wine. Something red and Italian.
***
She was amazing. Life danced in her eyes. She was as fresh as the first time he’d met her and fallen in love on the spot, or had he already been in love after their weeks of sending and receiving over the Internet? He didn’t care. She was timeless and he told her so, “You’re timeless.”
She smiled bouquets and heartbreak and took his hand. “Something like that,” she said as they strolled past a heavily armored Samurai warrior outside a Japanese palace stretching into an ancient Far East sunset.
“But why me?” he asked.
“Why not?” she replied.
“There’s nothing special about me,” he said.
“Need there be?” she asked.
“But you’re so … perfect,” he said. “So out of my league. Why me?”
“I have a different perspective.”
He decided to leave it alone as their walk took them along a pedestrian bridge made of a single giant piece of plastic spanning two magnificent skyscrapers surrounded by flying cars and people streaking through the air in jetpacks.
Their walk finished in front of the coffee shop around the corner from where he lived. He asked if she’d like to go in for a coffee. They walked through the door and he noticed immediately that she was much prettier than he’d imagined with her dusty brown bangs floating around her face, her hair splashing against the air around her neck.
He suddenly had a craving for frozen blueberries.
***
His hand was wrinkled and liver-spotted, his nails cracked and dried. His eyes beamed youthfully, but the pinched gray skin around red-veined whites looked like something from the Bin of Ages. His legs wobbled whether he was standing still or walking. His head shook when he talked as though trying to shake the words out of his mouth.
She sat across from him, young and beautiful as her eyes enveloped him with their blue glow. His voice cracked as he spoke. “We’ve had a wonderful life together.”
She smiled and nodded and said, “Yes, we have.”
“I’ve loved you from the beginning,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “And right to the end.” She took his hand and they were standing in total darkness until, an instant later, the darkness exploded with color and fire rushing light years in every direction, populating the emptiness with stars.
And he was in the Frozen Horde, sitting across from the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He looked at his watch and smiled. He wasn’t surprised. Not a bit. Just happy for the fraction of a second she’d spent with him.
He looked one last time into the blue glow of her eyes and winked happily as he turned to dust.
May 30, 2017
Know What You're Doing When You Write Sex
Sex can be the most magical thing in the world and it can be the ugliest, but it’s the most intimate form of communication between two people, whether the communication is about love or about terror.
It can say wonderful things about your characters and it can say terrible things about them.
Sex should never be gratuitous in your stories―it should be used to reveal character in the people who populate your literary landscape.
Sex Should Reveal Character
The way we have sex reveals how we feel about life, about other people and about ourselves, and the way your characters have sex will depend on how well you know them. If your characters are real, when you put them in the sack with another human being, they’ll have sex the way they would in real life.
Get into the minds of your characters while they’re having sex. Exploring the interplay of thought between two people in the throes of ecstasy (or boredom) can be a brilliant source of humor, drama, or irony.
For instance, the interplay between a woman and man on a one-night stand―and they both know it. He’s saying “I love you” to a woman he met an hour ago. During hurried and awkward sex, he’s thinking: “Let’s get this over with so I can put another notch on my conquest meter.” She’s thinking: “Let’s get this over because I haven’t been laid in a month and I need this, but I also have to get up for work tomorrow.”
If your character is violent and self-absorbed make sex with that person something painful and unfulfilling for the partner (unless, of course, the partner is someone who gets off on violent and self-absorbed lovers).
One of the best examples of this is the movie American Psycho. In one scene, the lead character (a self-centered sociopath) is having sex with two women. His room is lined with mirrors and he’s watching himself during the entire sex act. He’s basically using the women to masturbate on fantasies of himself. One of the women has to be hospitalized. It wasn’t a joyful thing for her. This scene says more about the lead character’s complete lack of feeling for other human beings than the scenes in which he brutally kills them.
At the other side of the spectrum, don’t have a prudish character suddenly having torrid sex unless you’re going for humor, or you’ve set the character up for this with the occasional erotic daydream or a quick flash in the character’s eye when a member of the opposite sex walks in, and the flash reveals something stirring inside, like a repressed sexual dynamo waiting to be loosened.
I remember watching pornographic movies with the guys in college. For the most part everyone laughed. Your sex scenes should make people think or understand, not laugh (unless you’re writing comedy). If the sex in your stories isn’t saying something about your characters, then it’s gratuitous, and possibly pornographic, or maybe it’s just boring.
The key to writing about sex is to not force it. Let it flow through you from the characters you’ve created. And don’t be afraid to experiment. If something seems a little over the top or perverse, but that’s the direction your writing is taking, go with it. You can always edit or toss it later. On the other hand, you may have found that you’ve written something beautiful, even if perversely beautiful.
Try This
Write a two-paragraph description of two people having sex. Use only their thoughts, no physical description (i.e. the bed, the room, etc.) unless it’s coming from the thoughts of the character. Write quickly and just let the words flow.
How Much Sex Should Your Character’s Have?
How much sex is right? That’s completely up to you and your characters. They might be able to get through a 400 page novel without once having sex, or as in Susan DiPlacido’s steamy chic lit novel, 24/7, they might not be able to get through four pages without sex.
If you find yourself putting a lot of sex into your first draft, keep it there for the time being. You can edit out the gratuitous stuff later, asking yourself, does this make sense? Is this real? Is this what these people would do?
Again, let the sex come from the characters you’ve created. If you’ve done your work on them before you started writing, then trust them to have the kind of sex they want to have. Don’t try to manipulate them. Write mindlessly, following the feelings your characters invoke in you. The sex they have may change them. Let them change.
In this light, if you’re writing erotic fiction, make sure your characters are erotic. Build them around their sexuality. Give background to their sexuality. Give the reader flashbacks to their first sexual acts. Give the reader their daydreams and fantasies and then make those daydreams and fantasies come true.
But also give them lives outside their sex lives. Make them real people in every facet of their lives and then put real people into the sack with them.
Do this, and two or three chapters into your book, your characters will let you know how much sex they should have.
How Do You Balance Sex Between Pornography and Eroticism?
Sex scenes don’t have to be graphic with descriptions of wildly flailing bodies and graphic close-ups of genitalia. If the sex is violent, you might describe bruises and grunts and facial expressions more than sexual contact. If the sex is humorous, you might focus most of your description on props like clothing, condoms and a leaky waterbed. You might even describe anything but the people. The entire scene can unfold as the description of a flower blooming, incorporating the sensual movement of petals as they tighten and then unwind and finally burst into color.
You might describe everything that’s going on in the character’s life, incorporated right into the sex act. The best example I’ve ever seen of this is Molly’s sex scene in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it hardly says anything about body-to-body contact.
However, if you’re writing erotica, you’ll want your sex scenes to be more explicit. But erotica is not pornography, and two bodies just pounding away at each other without any kind of build-up or reason isn’t going to create great eroticism. You need to arouse your reader. You need to give your reader a little literary foreplay, getting into the minds of your characters and exploring their wants and expectations.
Pornography turns people into sex machines, indulging in sex for no other reason than to go through the motions. In fact, pornography dehumanizes people to the point where they become little more than plastic sex dolls. It’s demeaning to both parties.
Erotica gets into the minds and bodies of your characters and makes your readers feel what they’re feeling. It’s a beautiful exploration, and if you can incorporate the rich experience of your character’s life into the act of sex like Joyce does, then you’ll be giving your readers a glimpse into your characters’ souls.
Romance, is generally much less explicit, with the focus on love or a relationship built on much more than sex.
Try This
Write one paragraph of pornography. Then turn it into one paragraph of erotica. Then turn your paragraph of erotica into an act of love. Let yourself go on this exercise. You can destroy it as soon as you've written it so that no one else will see what you've written, but you should go beyond yourself in this exercise so that you understand the differences between the various approaches to writing sex.
It can say wonderful things about your characters and it can say terrible things about them.
Sex should never be gratuitous in your stories―it should be used to reveal character in the people who populate your literary landscape.
Sex Should Reveal Character
The way we have sex reveals how we feel about life, about other people and about ourselves, and the way your characters have sex will depend on how well you know them. If your characters are real, when you put them in the sack with another human being, they’ll have sex the way they would in real life.
Get into the minds of your characters while they’re having sex. Exploring the interplay of thought between two people in the throes of ecstasy (or boredom) can be a brilliant source of humor, drama, or irony.
For instance, the interplay between a woman and man on a one-night stand―and they both know it. He’s saying “I love you” to a woman he met an hour ago. During hurried and awkward sex, he’s thinking: “Let’s get this over with so I can put another notch on my conquest meter.” She’s thinking: “Let’s get this over because I haven’t been laid in a month and I need this, but I also have to get up for work tomorrow.”
If your character is violent and self-absorbed make sex with that person something painful and unfulfilling for the partner (unless, of course, the partner is someone who gets off on violent and self-absorbed lovers).
One of the best examples of this is the movie American Psycho. In one scene, the lead character (a self-centered sociopath) is having sex with two women. His room is lined with mirrors and he’s watching himself during the entire sex act. He’s basically using the women to masturbate on fantasies of himself. One of the women has to be hospitalized. It wasn’t a joyful thing for her. This scene says more about the lead character’s complete lack of feeling for other human beings than the scenes in which he brutally kills them.
At the other side of the spectrum, don’t have a prudish character suddenly having torrid sex unless you’re going for humor, or you’ve set the character up for this with the occasional erotic daydream or a quick flash in the character’s eye when a member of the opposite sex walks in, and the flash reveals something stirring inside, like a repressed sexual dynamo waiting to be loosened.
I remember watching pornographic movies with the guys in college. For the most part everyone laughed. Your sex scenes should make people think or understand, not laugh (unless you’re writing comedy). If the sex in your stories isn’t saying something about your characters, then it’s gratuitous, and possibly pornographic, or maybe it’s just boring.
The key to writing about sex is to not force it. Let it flow through you from the characters you’ve created. And don’t be afraid to experiment. If something seems a little over the top or perverse, but that’s the direction your writing is taking, go with it. You can always edit or toss it later. On the other hand, you may have found that you’ve written something beautiful, even if perversely beautiful.
Try This
Write a two-paragraph description of two people having sex. Use only their thoughts, no physical description (i.e. the bed, the room, etc.) unless it’s coming from the thoughts of the character. Write quickly and just let the words flow.
How Much Sex Should Your Character’s Have?
How much sex is right? That’s completely up to you and your characters. They might be able to get through a 400 page novel without once having sex, or as in Susan DiPlacido’s steamy chic lit novel, 24/7, they might not be able to get through four pages without sex.
If you find yourself putting a lot of sex into your first draft, keep it there for the time being. You can edit out the gratuitous stuff later, asking yourself, does this make sense? Is this real? Is this what these people would do?
Again, let the sex come from the characters you’ve created. If you’ve done your work on them before you started writing, then trust them to have the kind of sex they want to have. Don’t try to manipulate them. Write mindlessly, following the feelings your characters invoke in you. The sex they have may change them. Let them change.
In this light, if you’re writing erotic fiction, make sure your characters are erotic. Build them around their sexuality. Give background to their sexuality. Give the reader flashbacks to their first sexual acts. Give the reader their daydreams and fantasies and then make those daydreams and fantasies come true.
But also give them lives outside their sex lives. Make them real people in every facet of their lives and then put real people into the sack with them.
Do this, and two or three chapters into your book, your characters will let you know how much sex they should have.
How Do You Balance Sex Between Pornography and Eroticism?
Sex scenes don’t have to be graphic with descriptions of wildly flailing bodies and graphic close-ups of genitalia. If the sex is violent, you might describe bruises and grunts and facial expressions more than sexual contact. If the sex is humorous, you might focus most of your description on props like clothing, condoms and a leaky waterbed. You might even describe anything but the people. The entire scene can unfold as the description of a flower blooming, incorporating the sensual movement of petals as they tighten and then unwind and finally burst into color.
You might describe everything that’s going on in the character’s life, incorporated right into the sex act. The best example I’ve ever seen of this is Molly’s sex scene in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and it hardly says anything about body-to-body contact.
However, if you’re writing erotica, you’ll want your sex scenes to be more explicit. But erotica is not pornography, and two bodies just pounding away at each other without any kind of build-up or reason isn’t going to create great eroticism. You need to arouse your reader. You need to give your reader a little literary foreplay, getting into the minds of your characters and exploring their wants and expectations.
Pornography turns people into sex machines, indulging in sex for no other reason than to go through the motions. In fact, pornography dehumanizes people to the point where they become little more than plastic sex dolls. It’s demeaning to both parties.
Erotica gets into the minds and bodies of your characters and makes your readers feel what they’re feeling. It’s a beautiful exploration, and if you can incorporate the rich experience of your character’s life into the act of sex like Joyce does, then you’ll be giving your readers a glimpse into your characters’ souls.
Romance, is generally much less explicit, with the focus on love or a relationship built on much more than sex.
Try This
Write one paragraph of pornography. Then turn it into one paragraph of erotica. Then turn your paragraph of erotica into an act of love. Let yourself go on this exercise. You can destroy it as soon as you've written it so that no one else will see what you've written, but you should go beyond yourself in this exercise so that you understand the differences between the various approaches to writing sex.
May 29, 2017
Know What You're Doing When You Write Humor
All humor arises out of the basic absurdity of life. Let’s look at life. We’re born. We flourish. Or … we don’t flourish. Then we die. It’s an absurd concept. We’re given this beautiful gift called life, and then it’s taken away from us. For no reason. Even if we’re really good and never kill a fly. Eventually, we die. It all ends.
It’s absurd.
How do we deal with it? Some people turn to religion and see it as just the first step toward a better life. Some people get drunk and speed up the process. Some people smoke and really speed up the process. Some people try not to think about it. Some people take a philosophical view and say, “It forces me to value every moment of my life … because the moments will end.”
Some people recognize the absurdity of the whole thing and laugh at it. That’s us. We’re the ones who laugh at it. And we’re the ones who want to make others laugh at it.
What Is Humor?
“Humor is the product of a surprise ending applied to a normal situation, and the more unusual the surprise ending, the more intense will be the humor.” Jim Foreman in “How to Write Humor”
“You take a woman walking down the sidewalk . Show the audience a banana peel in front of her. Everyone knows that she is going step on the banana peel and do a pratfall. At the last instant, she sees the banana peel, steps over it and falls into an open manhole that neither she nor the audience knew was there.” Charlie Chaplin
My Definition of Humor
Humor is that which lifts the spirit. If you can make someone let go of the basic absurdity of life, make him or her forget about bills, work, the dishes piling in the sink, a pulled muscle―all the basic heaviness of living life day-by-day― then you’ve created humor.
You don’t have to make them laugh until they puke. All you have to do is lift their spirits. Make them laugh to themselves, make them smile, make them forget about the mundane for an instant―give them a bit of breathing space.
In a nutshell: Humor is anything that lifts the spirit in such a way as to say, “Yeah, it’s all so very serious…but not right now.”
NOTE: Comedy is a whole different animal. In comedy, you need to make a live audience laugh and keep them laughing.
Seeing Humor All Around Us
The potential for humor is all around us. It lies just under the surface of everything we see in the way we see it. One of the best ways to explore this is to go through pictures and look for alternate realities to what you see.
The trick is to let your imagination run wild and not be constricted by what you see. Very little in life is what it appears to be. You can see a photo of two people embracing for a picture and they look like the happiest couple on earth. But she might be thinking, “Right after this, I’m going to tell him about John.” He might be thinking, “Right after this, I’m going to tell her about Marsha.” The situation under the surface of appearance is humorous and ironic.
Writing Captions
A great way to develop a sense of drawing the humor out of everyday things is to write humorous captions for pictures you find in magazines, newspapers, and advertisements. If you really want to get into it…go to the family photo albums.
You could even write an entire scenario based on a photograph, taking the people in the image an absurd world of your making.
Try This
Go through a magazine or newspaper and cut out pictures of people interacting with each other. Create thought or dialogue balloons with words that show the exact opposite of what's going one. For instance, a picture of four executives standing for a formal portraits and three of them are thinking, "Who farted?" And one of them is thinking, "Smile folks, smile for the camera."
Exaggeration and the Absurd
Exaggeration and the absurd are the most common forms of humor and are sometimes impossible to tell apart. You take something mundane like a sign on the road with a picture of a deer. The deer almost looks like it’s dancing. Up the road, you see an actual deer―and it’s dancing. Not only that, it’s wearing a ballet dress and tights. Further up the road, you see several deer dancing. Some are doing ballet, some are doing the tango. Still further along, you see dozens of deer dancing, then hundreds―ballet, rumba, flamenco, tango, twist, 2-stop. They’re in the woods, on the roadside and on the road. You have to stop your car and watch while they dance. After a while, they dance away into the woods and everything is quiet. As you start to drive forward, you see a sign that shows a moose. It looks like the moose has a grenade launcher.
The whole point with exaggeration and the absurd is to let yourself go―no restraints. Forget about what’s possible and what’s not possible. Make it possible, without any explanation. People will suspend their credibility gaps for a laugh. Don’t say, “This is stupid. I’m not doing it.” Instead, do it because it’s stupid. While you’re in the first draft writing phase of exaggeration, nobody will see how stupid you are. You can edit later to hide the true nature of your stupidity. Remember, nobody has ever gone to jail, lost their job, lost their marriage, or been laughed at for something they’ve written. Unless they were caught.
Try This
Write down a word or sentence and then start exaggerating it, going from mundane to increasingly absurd things. Keep in mind the deer sign on the road and the steady progression of impossible things, each more absurd than the previous.
It Builds Over Time
Do these exercises whenever you get a chance. The more you do them over time, the better you’ll get. And then, when you’re writing, you’ll be more likely to identify places in your stories where humor is appropriate and you’ll be ready to write that humor.
Try This
Do the same as in the exercise above. Start with the sentence: She had big blue eyes.
It’s absurd.
How do we deal with it? Some people turn to religion and see it as just the first step toward a better life. Some people get drunk and speed up the process. Some people smoke and really speed up the process. Some people try not to think about it. Some people take a philosophical view and say, “It forces me to value every moment of my life … because the moments will end.”
Some people recognize the absurdity of the whole thing and laugh at it. That’s us. We’re the ones who laugh at it. And we’re the ones who want to make others laugh at it.
What Is Humor?
“Humor is the product of a surprise ending applied to a normal situation, and the more unusual the surprise ending, the more intense will be the humor.” Jim Foreman in “How to Write Humor”
“You take a woman walking down the sidewalk . Show the audience a banana peel in front of her. Everyone knows that she is going step on the banana peel and do a pratfall. At the last instant, she sees the banana peel, steps over it and falls into an open manhole that neither she nor the audience knew was there.” Charlie Chaplin
My Definition of Humor
Humor is that which lifts the spirit. If you can make someone let go of the basic absurdity of life, make him or her forget about bills, work, the dishes piling in the sink, a pulled muscle―all the basic heaviness of living life day-by-day― then you’ve created humor.
You don’t have to make them laugh until they puke. All you have to do is lift their spirits. Make them laugh to themselves, make them smile, make them forget about the mundane for an instant―give them a bit of breathing space.
In a nutshell: Humor is anything that lifts the spirit in such a way as to say, “Yeah, it’s all so very serious…but not right now.”
NOTE: Comedy is a whole different animal. In comedy, you need to make a live audience laugh and keep them laughing.
Seeing Humor All Around Us
The potential for humor is all around us. It lies just under the surface of everything we see in the way we see it. One of the best ways to explore this is to go through pictures and look for alternate realities to what you see.
The trick is to let your imagination run wild and not be constricted by what you see. Very little in life is what it appears to be. You can see a photo of two people embracing for a picture and they look like the happiest couple on earth. But she might be thinking, “Right after this, I’m going to tell him about John.” He might be thinking, “Right after this, I’m going to tell her about Marsha.” The situation under the surface of appearance is humorous and ironic.
Writing Captions
A great way to develop a sense of drawing the humor out of everyday things is to write humorous captions for pictures you find in magazines, newspapers, and advertisements. If you really want to get into it…go to the family photo albums.
You could even write an entire scenario based on a photograph, taking the people in the image an absurd world of your making.
Try This
Go through a magazine or newspaper and cut out pictures of people interacting with each other. Create thought or dialogue balloons with words that show the exact opposite of what's going one. For instance, a picture of four executives standing for a formal portraits and three of them are thinking, "Who farted?" And one of them is thinking, "Smile folks, smile for the camera."
Exaggeration and the Absurd
Exaggeration and the absurd are the most common forms of humor and are sometimes impossible to tell apart. You take something mundane like a sign on the road with a picture of a deer. The deer almost looks like it’s dancing. Up the road, you see an actual deer―and it’s dancing. Not only that, it’s wearing a ballet dress and tights. Further up the road, you see several deer dancing. Some are doing ballet, some are doing the tango. Still further along, you see dozens of deer dancing, then hundreds―ballet, rumba, flamenco, tango, twist, 2-stop. They’re in the woods, on the roadside and on the road. You have to stop your car and watch while they dance. After a while, they dance away into the woods and everything is quiet. As you start to drive forward, you see a sign that shows a moose. It looks like the moose has a grenade launcher.
The whole point with exaggeration and the absurd is to let yourself go―no restraints. Forget about what’s possible and what’s not possible. Make it possible, without any explanation. People will suspend their credibility gaps for a laugh. Don’t say, “This is stupid. I’m not doing it.” Instead, do it because it’s stupid. While you’re in the first draft writing phase of exaggeration, nobody will see how stupid you are. You can edit later to hide the true nature of your stupidity. Remember, nobody has ever gone to jail, lost their job, lost their marriage, or been laughed at for something they’ve written. Unless they were caught.
Try This
Write down a word or sentence and then start exaggerating it, going from mundane to increasingly absurd things. Keep in mind the deer sign on the road and the steady progression of impossible things, each more absurd than the previous.
It Builds Over Time
Do these exercises whenever you get a chance. The more you do them over time, the better you’ll get. And then, when you’re writing, you’ll be more likely to identify places in your stories where humor is appropriate and you’ll be ready to write that humor.
Try This
Do the same as in the exercise above. Start with the sentence: She had big blue eyes.
May 26, 2017
Know What You're Doing When You Write Violence
We live in a violent world. It’s a part of life. Animals die violently in nature to feed other animals. We walk across a beautiful bed of grass―and squash the life out of ants and other insects that were busily going about their lives thinking, “I’m so happy to be doing this.” And then … crush. They’re gone. We may not have intended violence, but tell that to the bugs.
Violence, like the characters in your stories, is more complex than it may appear on the surface.
You have to ask yourself: Why did that person commit that act of violence?
No human is a single person. We’re all each of the people we’ve always been, when we were children, when we were teenagers, when we young adults, when we were middle aged, and when we’re old. We carry around with us all those people we’ve ever been―all the fears, all the joy, the anger and the love. Most of us deal with these things over time and manage to bring all those people into a balance that allows us to function. Some of us never quite find that balance and this can cause us to act in ways that surprise us. We might suddenly snap at someone for no reason, or we might overreact to some little thing that goes wrong. We have no idea where this comes from. It could be from problems in our everyday lives, or it could be from some long unresolved hurt in our childhood, still festering and calling out for help in our adult lives.
It’s this richness of experience and the emotional impact it has on us for our entire lives that makes every person complex and multi-dimensional. No one person is completely bad and no one person is completely good. If you have a character in your story who is completely evil with no redeeming characteristics, then you have a piece of cardboard. Even a psychotic personality may have a deep fondness for chocolate ice cream. Adolf Hitler played a game with his general staff. When one of them saw a man with a beard, they yelled, “Beard!” The one who saw the most number of beards won. This man who caused the death of millions of men, women and children had a sense of play.
An experiment performed in a US school in which students were to re-enact the rise of Nazism as part of a history project got so far out of hand in just a few weeks that most of the students had to undergo extensive counseling. In a matter of days, normal children were converted to fascism.
We’re all a mixture of many personalities, but we all have two sides―a dark side and a light side. Most of us manage to stay within the bounds of the light side, but the dark is always there. As writers, we have to accept both sides. We may not agree with some of the things that our characters do, and we might not like them if we were to meet them on the street or at a party, but we have to accept them for both their good and their bad.
It starts by loving our characters, unequivocally. If we love them enough to create them in the first place, then we have the responsibility of loving them enough to go the whole course and give them life. We show the good in bad people and the bad in good people. We keep it balanced.
If you have a violent character, don’t let the violence just hang there. Show where it comes from. You have the breadth of story-telling in a novel to do that. Sometimes, just the mention of a scar that the character rubs after committing an act of violence may suggest something deeper and give some understanding or meaning to the violence or the character. Sometimes, you can do this through back-stories that track back to an incident in the character’s life that feeds violent behavior throughout their lives.
Violence: Physical and Emotional
Violence is not always physical. Emotional violence can be just as destructive and sometimes even more so than physical violence.
I was in the checkout at the Superstore one day when I heard a man call his wife a fucking bitch a few aisles down. They had three children with them. He told her how useless she was and called her a fucking bitch several times. Everyone could see that she was humiliated and close to tears. It wasn’t a big jump to assume that this is what she lived with every day.
The man in the supermarket might just as well have punched his wife in the face. Our bodies heal quickly from physical violence but emotional violence lingers inside us and punches us in the face moment-by-moment, day after day. It eats at our souls and strips us of our pride and self-worth.
Whenever you can, try to show both sides of the act of violence, including the victim―if only through the expression in the victim’s eyes. As for the man in the store, I’m guessing that someone in his past probably called him every name in the book.
Ask Yourself: Which is worse, physical or emotional violence?
Violence Pointers
Never throw gratuitous violence into your stories. Violence is a part of life and therefore has meaning in life. It comes from your characters; treat it with all the respect you give to the people you’re creating. Make your violence appropriate.
Don’t overdo it. You don’t have to describe every physical blow or every hurtful word. Focus more on the effect it has on your characters.
Make your violence reveal character, not obscure it.
Try This
You’re a child in a playground. The school bully comes after you, insults you and slaps you in the face. If you do anything to defend or protect yourself, the bully will beat the living daylights out of you. Write about your thoughts as this is happening, right from the moment you see the bully heading toward you, through the taunting (“Hey, ya four-eyed runt,” etc.), and finally to being slapped in the face.
OR
Write about a man or a woman punching another man or a woman in the face, over and over. Get inside the person doing the punching. Write only about what's going on inside the head of the person doing the punching. You can state it explicitly or you can hint at it … but try to show where the anger and violence are coming from.
OR
Try both.
Violence, like the characters in your stories, is more complex than it may appear on the surface.
You have to ask yourself: Why did that person commit that act of violence?
No human is a single person. We’re all each of the people we’ve always been, when we were children, when we were teenagers, when we young adults, when we were middle aged, and when we’re old. We carry around with us all those people we’ve ever been―all the fears, all the joy, the anger and the love. Most of us deal with these things over time and manage to bring all those people into a balance that allows us to function. Some of us never quite find that balance and this can cause us to act in ways that surprise us. We might suddenly snap at someone for no reason, or we might overreact to some little thing that goes wrong. We have no idea where this comes from. It could be from problems in our everyday lives, or it could be from some long unresolved hurt in our childhood, still festering and calling out for help in our adult lives.
It’s this richness of experience and the emotional impact it has on us for our entire lives that makes every person complex and multi-dimensional. No one person is completely bad and no one person is completely good. If you have a character in your story who is completely evil with no redeeming characteristics, then you have a piece of cardboard. Even a psychotic personality may have a deep fondness for chocolate ice cream. Adolf Hitler played a game with his general staff. When one of them saw a man with a beard, they yelled, “Beard!” The one who saw the most number of beards won. This man who caused the death of millions of men, women and children had a sense of play.
An experiment performed in a US school in which students were to re-enact the rise of Nazism as part of a history project got so far out of hand in just a few weeks that most of the students had to undergo extensive counseling. In a matter of days, normal children were converted to fascism.
We’re all a mixture of many personalities, but we all have two sides―a dark side and a light side. Most of us manage to stay within the bounds of the light side, but the dark is always there. As writers, we have to accept both sides. We may not agree with some of the things that our characters do, and we might not like them if we were to meet them on the street or at a party, but we have to accept them for both their good and their bad.
It starts by loving our characters, unequivocally. If we love them enough to create them in the first place, then we have the responsibility of loving them enough to go the whole course and give them life. We show the good in bad people and the bad in good people. We keep it balanced.
If you have a violent character, don’t let the violence just hang there. Show where it comes from. You have the breadth of story-telling in a novel to do that. Sometimes, just the mention of a scar that the character rubs after committing an act of violence may suggest something deeper and give some understanding or meaning to the violence or the character. Sometimes, you can do this through back-stories that track back to an incident in the character’s life that feeds violent behavior throughout their lives.
Violence: Physical and Emotional
Violence is not always physical. Emotional violence can be just as destructive and sometimes even more so than physical violence.
I was in the checkout at the Superstore one day when I heard a man call his wife a fucking bitch a few aisles down. They had three children with them. He told her how useless she was and called her a fucking bitch several times. Everyone could see that she was humiliated and close to tears. It wasn’t a big jump to assume that this is what she lived with every day.
The man in the supermarket might just as well have punched his wife in the face. Our bodies heal quickly from physical violence but emotional violence lingers inside us and punches us in the face moment-by-moment, day after day. It eats at our souls and strips us of our pride and self-worth.
Whenever you can, try to show both sides of the act of violence, including the victim―if only through the expression in the victim’s eyes. As for the man in the store, I’m guessing that someone in his past probably called him every name in the book.
Ask Yourself: Which is worse, physical or emotional violence?
Violence Pointers
Never throw gratuitous violence into your stories. Violence is a part of life and therefore has meaning in life. It comes from your characters; treat it with all the respect you give to the people you’re creating. Make your violence appropriate.
Don’t overdo it. You don’t have to describe every physical blow or every hurtful word. Focus more on the effect it has on your characters.
Make your violence reveal character, not obscure it.
Try This
You’re a child in a playground. The school bully comes after you, insults you and slaps you in the face. If you do anything to defend or protect yourself, the bully will beat the living daylights out of you. Write about your thoughts as this is happening, right from the moment you see the bully heading toward you, through the taunting (“Hey, ya four-eyed runt,” etc.), and finally to being slapped in the face.
OR
Write about a man or a woman punching another man or a woman in the face, over and over. Get inside the person doing the punching. Write only about what's going on inside the head of the person doing the punching. You can state it explicitly or you can hint at it … but try to show where the anger and violence are coming from.
OR
Try both.
May 25, 2017
Building a Path for Your Voice
I’ve heard a lot about this thing called the writer’s voice…as though it’s some magical sound thingy that slides through the night and whispers breezes of joy into the ears of the reader...or rips through the fabric of the reader’s comfort zone and leaves a path of raised eyebrows and bumpy skin.
I’ve heard about this thing called the writer’s voice that readers and editors and critics wrap tightly around a pedestal and raise it into the sky with each successive publication of “THIS NEW VOICE!”
And therein lies the secret of becoming a successful writer: finding that distinctive voice that will distinguish you from the rest of the pack and vault you into riches and fame or critically correct obscurity. And your writing doesn’t even have to be good. It can be crap. But if it’s distinctive crap, it’ll sell…once the voice is out there, recognized, familiar and well-marketed.
But voice isn't a style. Styles can be copied. It’s more like a personal resonance, a sense of the rhythm and flow of the way words would be used if they were read out load on a street corner, rise above the traffic and human bustle and still be heard. It’s the rhythm and flow of a human presence as distinctive as fingerprints and DNA…a rich flow of visual diction as well-composed as a great painting or photograph. It’s the rendering of thought through words so that it can’t be mistaken for any other voice.
The man who punctuates every sentence and thought with “fuck” is just as distinctive and memorable as a great orator. Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it no matter how much you’d like to…and you’ll always recognize it.
“So, Biff,” said the fox, “where do you find this thing called voice?”
“You don’t find it,” I said. “It finds you.”
“And just how might it find you?” said the fox, a little too arrogantly for my liking.
“Well,” I said, “one way is through mindless writing.”
“You’re joking, right?” said the fox.
“Let me explain…”
I teach a writing workshop call Writing Hurts Like Hell (and it does). In the first class I introduce my students to a this thing called mindless writing that I borrowed from Dorothea Brandt, who introduced it in her 1934 book On Becoming a Writer. It’s a little book, but it’s big on wisdom and great advice for anyone with aspirations of becoming a writer.
Here’s the gist of it: pick a word, a topic, a thought, a dream, a memory, a sentence, an object within view, a feeling, a concern, a theme, a conversation you overheard, a scent, a worry…anything that pops into your head.
Pick a length of time you intend to write. Start with five minutes. Being the cruel malicious bastard I am, I make my students start with fifteen minutes. Some of them run screaming from the class and drink too much for the rest of their lives. Now, start writing (preferably by hand with a pencil, pen or stick and sand…this has actually been proven to engage the mind more than a keyboard) about your chosen whatever.
Here’s the catch…you can’t stop writing until you’ve reached the time you set for yourself. If you stop to correct something, rewrite it or change it in any that will make it different from what you wrote…God will kill you. You have to keep writing even if you run out of things to say about your chosen whatever. You might have to change to another whatever or just repeat the last sentence you wrote until something new comes along. When this happens to my students, they write something like, “I hate this bastard, Biff. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!” Surprisingly, this can occasionally lead to some genuinely insightful mindless writing.
But it’s worth the pain.
Mindless writing helps bring out the individual voice without judgement, editing or criticism. That voice that’s always inside you trying to get out, but pushed back inside with left brain thoughts like, “This is too flowery.” “This is too plain.” “This sucks.” We tend to write the way others expect us to write so we write for them, not for ourselves. We write in such a way as to gain the approval of those for whom we write, even if they’re imaginary spectres looking over our shoulders, and if we imagine they don’t approve of what we’re written, we scratch it out, delete it…deny it.
The last place you’ll find your own personal voice is in the approval of others. It just won’t happen.
Do this every morning. That’s the best time. It’ll give the right side of your head a boost that’ll charge your mundane day with creativity. But more importantly, the more you do it, the easier it will become. It will gain coherency, structure and uniqueness. Your voice will find you. It’s in there…you just have to give it a pathway out.
“So,” said the fox, “any other ways to find your voice?”
“Yep,” I said. “Get into arguments with yourself.”
“But…”
It’s a little like mindless writing except it has a definite structure: a dialogue. You write something down, complete with quotation marks and then disagree with what you said, complete with quotation marks. Then defend your statement. And go back and forth like this for a page or two or more if you're really into it. You’d be surprised at how many times you’ll lose an argument with yourself.
The key to letting your voice find you with this way is to believe everything you say, on both sides of the argument. You'll develop an objectivity that rises above criticism because your the one criticizing on both sides of the fence. You'll rise above the na sayers because you will be them...along with the yea sayers. Think of it as a battle between your right brain and your left brain taking place in the stadium of your left brain.
Always good to hedge your bets.
Argue hard and furiously. And, unlike total all-out extreme mindless writing, you can stop and think about your arguments and counter arguments.
So how does your voice find you in this medley of dissention? Well, nothing brings out the inner self as convincingly as a good heated argument. Argue with yourself when you're feeling kind of groovy. Argue with yourself when you're angry at something. Argue with yourself when you have nothing else to do. Have a drunken argument with yourself. Yell at yourself. Yell back. Sometimes, do some name-calling. You'd be surprised at what you may call yourself that might give pause for thought.
One little hint...keep it in writing. Don't get into a shoving match or a fist fight. That's called "hearing voices in the head." That's not what you want.
Keep this up and after a while, you'll find one side winning more and more frequently. That's your voice. You'll know when you hear it because it will have found you.
This is one I don't teach in my workshop because if I give away all my secrets, they won't need me anymore and they'll kill me. This is how Kung Fu masters die.
One last way to let your voice find you...blog. But write in a word processing program first...or pen, pencil, stick in sand. That way you'll be writing for yourself. Then decide what you want to share and what you want to keep for yourself...and revise accordingly. Not giving a flying bat's ass what anyone thinks about me...I never delete anything. I wrote it for myself...it's my fucking voice and I argued and wrote mindlessly for millennia to get it, so put up or shut up.
Don't mean to insult either of you, but that's how I feel. You should feel the same way too.
I’ve heard about this thing called the writer’s voice that readers and editors and critics wrap tightly around a pedestal and raise it into the sky with each successive publication of “THIS NEW VOICE!”
And therein lies the secret of becoming a successful writer: finding that distinctive voice that will distinguish you from the rest of the pack and vault you into riches and fame or critically correct obscurity. And your writing doesn’t even have to be good. It can be crap. But if it’s distinctive crap, it’ll sell…once the voice is out there, recognized, familiar and well-marketed.
But voice isn't a style. Styles can be copied. It’s more like a personal resonance, a sense of the rhythm and flow of the way words would be used if they were read out load on a street corner, rise above the traffic and human bustle and still be heard. It’s the rhythm and flow of a human presence as distinctive as fingerprints and DNA…a rich flow of visual diction as well-composed as a great painting or photograph. It’s the rendering of thought through words so that it can’t be mistaken for any other voice.
The man who punctuates every sentence and thought with “fuck” is just as distinctive and memorable as a great orator. Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it no matter how much you’d like to…and you’ll always recognize it.
“So, Biff,” said the fox, “where do you find this thing called voice?”
“You don’t find it,” I said. “It finds you.”
“And just how might it find you?” said the fox, a little too arrogantly for my liking.
“Well,” I said, “one way is through mindless writing.”
“You’re joking, right?” said the fox.
“Let me explain…”
I teach a writing workshop call Writing Hurts Like Hell (and it does). In the first class I introduce my students to a this thing called mindless writing that I borrowed from Dorothea Brandt, who introduced it in her 1934 book On Becoming a Writer. It’s a little book, but it’s big on wisdom and great advice for anyone with aspirations of becoming a writer.
Here’s the gist of it: pick a word, a topic, a thought, a dream, a memory, a sentence, an object within view, a feeling, a concern, a theme, a conversation you overheard, a scent, a worry…anything that pops into your head.
Pick a length of time you intend to write. Start with five minutes. Being the cruel malicious bastard I am, I make my students start with fifteen minutes. Some of them run screaming from the class and drink too much for the rest of their lives. Now, start writing (preferably by hand with a pencil, pen or stick and sand…this has actually been proven to engage the mind more than a keyboard) about your chosen whatever.
Here’s the catch…you can’t stop writing until you’ve reached the time you set for yourself. If you stop to correct something, rewrite it or change it in any that will make it different from what you wrote…God will kill you. You have to keep writing even if you run out of things to say about your chosen whatever. You might have to change to another whatever or just repeat the last sentence you wrote until something new comes along. When this happens to my students, they write something like, “I hate this bastard, Biff. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!” Surprisingly, this can occasionally lead to some genuinely insightful mindless writing.
But it’s worth the pain.
Mindless writing helps bring out the individual voice without judgement, editing or criticism. That voice that’s always inside you trying to get out, but pushed back inside with left brain thoughts like, “This is too flowery.” “This is too plain.” “This sucks.” We tend to write the way others expect us to write so we write for them, not for ourselves. We write in such a way as to gain the approval of those for whom we write, even if they’re imaginary spectres looking over our shoulders, and if we imagine they don’t approve of what we’re written, we scratch it out, delete it…deny it.
The last place you’ll find your own personal voice is in the approval of others. It just won’t happen.
Do this every morning. That’s the best time. It’ll give the right side of your head a boost that’ll charge your mundane day with creativity. But more importantly, the more you do it, the easier it will become. It will gain coherency, structure and uniqueness. Your voice will find you. It’s in there…you just have to give it a pathway out.
“So,” said the fox, “any other ways to find your voice?”
“Yep,” I said. “Get into arguments with yourself.”
“But…”
It’s a little like mindless writing except it has a definite structure: a dialogue. You write something down, complete with quotation marks and then disagree with what you said, complete with quotation marks. Then defend your statement. And go back and forth like this for a page or two or more if you're really into it. You’d be surprised at how many times you’ll lose an argument with yourself.
The key to letting your voice find you with this way is to believe everything you say, on both sides of the argument. You'll develop an objectivity that rises above criticism because your the one criticizing on both sides of the fence. You'll rise above the na sayers because you will be them...along with the yea sayers. Think of it as a battle between your right brain and your left brain taking place in the stadium of your left brain.
Always good to hedge your bets.
Argue hard and furiously. And, unlike total all-out extreme mindless writing, you can stop and think about your arguments and counter arguments.
So how does your voice find you in this medley of dissention? Well, nothing brings out the inner self as convincingly as a good heated argument. Argue with yourself when you're feeling kind of groovy. Argue with yourself when you're angry at something. Argue with yourself when you have nothing else to do. Have a drunken argument with yourself. Yell at yourself. Yell back. Sometimes, do some name-calling. You'd be surprised at what you may call yourself that might give pause for thought.
One little hint...keep it in writing. Don't get into a shoving match or a fist fight. That's called "hearing voices in the head." That's not what you want.
Keep this up and after a while, you'll find one side winning more and more frequently. That's your voice. You'll know when you hear it because it will have found you.
This is one I don't teach in my workshop because if I give away all my secrets, they won't need me anymore and they'll kill me. This is how Kung Fu masters die.
One last way to let your voice find you...blog. But write in a word processing program first...or pen, pencil, stick in sand. That way you'll be writing for yourself. Then decide what you want to share and what you want to keep for yourself...and revise accordingly. Not giving a flying bat's ass what anyone thinks about me...I never delete anything. I wrote it for myself...it's my fucking voice and I argued and wrote mindlessly for millennia to get it, so put up or shut up.
Don't mean to insult either of you, but that's how I feel. You should feel the same way too.
May 24, 2017
Free Story: Food for Words
I once applied for a hamburger. I didn’t expect to get it, especially after getting the go-ahead on a feed of tacos and Mexican beer earlier that year. But the week after I wrote for it, I checked my email and there it was: a coupon for a fully dressed king-size hamburger with fries and soft drink of my choice, although the fries were synthetic, as were the hamburger patty, the bun, the pickle, lettuce and ketchup. But the mustard and pop were real.
This was back before the fourth blight, when people were only mildly starving, when there were two billion fewer people scratching the planet’s surface for crumbs of anything that would keep them alive for another day. Another hour. But it was after we stopped burying our dead and started recycling them like in the movie Soylent Green, which was made so long ago I don’t think most people had ever seen it. But we heard about it when they first started talking about recycling the dead. Lots of people were against the idea, but everybody was starving and it was getting hard to find places to bury the bodies. Plus, there was already mandatory organ donations (wherever those went), so we were already sort of into the recycling thing.
But let me tell you, that hamburger was delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything as good as that burger, real or unreal. And the fries! I don’t know what real fries taste like―I don’t think they grow potatoes anymore since the farmers committed their mass suicide to protest what was happening to them and their way of life―but those fries had a taste that filled my mouth and nostrils at the same time. It was a solid taste, like you would associate with real food. The root beer wasn’t so bad either, being real and all.
And then it was back to starving. Things have gotten worse since then and I’ve given up on ever getting another hamburger or anything like that. I’ve scaled my expectations down to more realistic things like powdered milk, pollock, noodles…stuff like that. Most of it’s probably recycled people, but you never know because they don’t put that kind of information on the food labels. May contain human parts. Ignorance makes for blissful eating. I tried telling my friends and family to keep it simple and humble, but they kept writing essays about the big stuff: steaks, turkey, spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread. They’re all dead now―starved to death.
Into the mixer.
I keep my essays limited to the possible things. Last night I wrote an essay about how eating a bowl of beef-flavored texturized vegetable protein soup would improve my attitude toward work. I work for a small company that advises people. We cover just about everything. When somebody wants good advice, they come to us and if we don’t have the advice on hand, we find it for them, or we just use our imaginations. We’ve never once failed to advise a client. Sometimes they take our advice, sometimes they don’t. But they pay for it and there’s no refunds because once advice is out there, hell, there’s no getting it back.
Tonight I’m writing about macaroni and cheese. The cheese may be a little extravagant but sometimes you have to push things a little into the “I’m way out of control” zone. But not too often and not too much. You could starve to death. My theme is Macaroni and Cheese: A Meal for the Masses. Which it was in the long ago when there were farmers and cows around to make milk and use it to make real cheese. Damn farmers took the cows and pigs and chickens with them and started the first wave of blights that threw the world’s biggest cities into war zones with everybody killing off everybody―trying to steal their food―and breaking into stores and food banks and the government food distribution centers, even after the centers ran out of food to distribute and the stores were full of empty shelves and the food banks were bankrupt.
But that’s ancient history. We have better ways of feeding the populace now. And better ways to determine who should survive. These days, we weed out the stupid and the arrogant. Literacy rates are higher than they’ve been in all of human history―mostly because the illiterate were the first to starve off under the new system, but also because a lot of people became literate really fast. Of course the really stupid ones wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer and send an email. I mean, how were they supposed to submit their essays? As for the arrogant, well, did I mention what happened to my family and friends who wouldn’t take my advice and tone it down?
Now, something like macaroni and cheese creates a nice balance with your basic pasta on one hand and synthesized cheese (probably cheese-flavoured human extract) on the other. One for nutrition and one for taste. Plus, it’s easy to prepare: boil pasta, add cheese, stir, eat. If ever a food was made for the masses! And there’s something humble and unassuming about macaroni and cheese, something to tame the tethered masses, remind them of how lucky they are to not be arrogant or stupid.
These are things I’m putting in my essay. I can almost taste that macaroni and cheese now. I don’t want to get too cocky, but I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in an essay. Certain things seem to be “right.” For instance, mentioning things like humble and unassuming seem to work. Mentioning things like bold and strong can get you starved. Mentioning balance is another good thing. Talking about how much you need what you’re writing for is almost certain to fail. What you need is good writing skills and a realistic approach to composition. It also helps to know your place.
I have a nice writing desk and a nice room. I have a view of the river. Last week, I saw a man fall into the river―though it almost looked like he jumped―he disappeared under the gray water and didn’t come back up. I didn’t report this. You have to be careful about whose attention you draw. And besides, I doubt if that man would have been recyclable after being in that water.
If water doesn’t come in a bottle, you don’t drink it. You don’t use it to cook food and you don’t use it to wash either yourself or your clothes. Tap water is still good for washing floors and other stuff, and if you have real grass in your lawn, it might be safe for watering. That river water though…just as bad as lake water. Good thing there’s lots of bottled water. Farmers didn’t have any say in that.
I share a bathroom with about twenty other people who have exactly the same kind of room as me. And like me, they all live alone because, like me, they don’t have Relationship Permits and they haven’t had their parts re-connected so that they can have babies. I think everyone’s in agreement that we don’t need a lot of new babies. But that doesn’t stop people from writing essays about why they’d like to have a baby. Not me, though. I stick to food. I’ve heard about people being allowed to have a baby but they spent so much time taking care of the baby that it cut into their food essay writing time and they and the babies starved to death. You have to be careful about what you commit to.
But I like it here. It’s quiet. Nobody intrudes on my personal space. Hell, I don’t even know the names of anybody in this building and they don’t know my name. It’s safe that way. And you don’t have so-called friendly neighbors yakking in the hallways at all hours of the day and night and distracting you from writing essays. Loud neighbors can get you starved. But we’re always sure to smile and nod to each other in the halls and coming in and out of the washroom. When you don’t smile and nod, you’re thought to be out of balance and being out of balance can draw attention
I’d like some macaroni and cheese, please.
I think I’ll end my essay with that. I don’t think it’s too presumptuous, and it might even give the editor a smile. I’ve heard that people with really good writing style and things like a subtle sense of humor and wit get offers for work that pays in money and food coupons, both. I’m hoping that I’m that good in another year or two. I’m getting better every day. And I’ve gone from 80 pounds three months ago to 83 pounds yesterday, so my writing must be getting better.
At first the whole essay thing didn’t go over well. There were a lot of stupid people on the planet whose grammar was so bad you could barely make out what they were trying to say, let alone what they were trying to write. Some people say a lot of it came from the way people were writing online, especially in the forums on news sites. Plus, they had a lot of stupid opinions. And there were a lot of arrogant people who could write well, but they also had a lot of stupid opinions. Their downfall was that they were too arrogant to admit their opinions were stupid, and that attitude showed in their essays.
Into the mixer.
They say almost three quarters of the world’s population died off when the food all but disappeared. Most of them died in food wars where one nation invaded another for its food, and there were food civil wars where people from different religions and political persuasion in the same country slaughtered each other for their food. But apparently, that kind of thing had been going on for a long time. This time, though, it was pretty much final. Neither side had food. But that didn’t stop the slaughter.
Nobody knows who came up with the idea to make people write essays for their meals and babies, but there’s lots of rumors. Some say it was a group of disgruntled grammar teachers who were also gentleman farmers. Others say it was an international conspiracy pulled off by newsroom copywriters who gained control of the internet and everybody’s bank accounts. Some said it just made sense, so shut up and don’t ask questions―just write.
The people who just wrote are still mostly around―except for the stupid ones, and the arrogant ones. I’m not sure if it’s a better world or not since the blights, but I guess there’s a lot less stupidity and arrogance. I guess we can be thankful for that. And that’s a lot to be thankful for. In fact, that’s just what I said to one of my clients when she wanted advice on things to be thankful for. We never got to collect the final payment from her because she died before it was due. I think I heard it was suicide. If only she had come to see me for more advice.
Anyways, I’ve finished my essay and now I just have a little polishing up to do before I send it in.
Macaroni and Cheese: A Meal for the Masses
A long time ago, the Farmers all killed themselves because they didn’t know their place and once you don’t know your place, things get out of balance and bad things start to happen, like mass suicide in which all the cows die as well, and real cheese becomes a thing of the past because there’s no more milk
But we still are lucky enough to still have macaroni and cheese because we have awesome sophisticated machines that “re-cycle” human things we don’t need any more and turn them into food (which we do need), such as cheese.
Macaroni and cheese creates a nice balance because you have your basic pasta on the one hand and delicious cheese on the other. That’s one for nutrition and one for taste. Plus, macaroni and cheese is so easy to prepare: boil pasta, add cheese, stir, and eat. Food for the masses!
Macaroni and cheese is also humble and unassuming. It knows its place, as do people who crave eat it. I’ve even heard that every bite of macaroni and cheese reminds one of how lucky one is to not be stupid or arrogant. So, no! I do not wantsavoury steaks, mouth-watering pork chops or scrumptious chicken.
I’d like some macaroni and cheese, please,
And I still have time for a good start on tomorrow’s essay, before they turn the electricity off.
This was back before the fourth blight, when people were only mildly starving, when there were two billion fewer people scratching the planet’s surface for crumbs of anything that would keep them alive for another day. Another hour. But it was after we stopped burying our dead and started recycling them like in the movie Soylent Green, which was made so long ago I don’t think most people had ever seen it. But we heard about it when they first started talking about recycling the dead. Lots of people were against the idea, but everybody was starving and it was getting hard to find places to bury the bodies. Plus, there was already mandatory organ donations (wherever those went), so we were already sort of into the recycling thing.
But let me tell you, that hamburger was delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything as good as that burger, real or unreal. And the fries! I don’t know what real fries taste like―I don’t think they grow potatoes anymore since the farmers committed their mass suicide to protest what was happening to them and their way of life―but those fries had a taste that filled my mouth and nostrils at the same time. It was a solid taste, like you would associate with real food. The root beer wasn’t so bad either, being real and all.
And then it was back to starving. Things have gotten worse since then and I’ve given up on ever getting another hamburger or anything like that. I’ve scaled my expectations down to more realistic things like powdered milk, pollock, noodles…stuff like that. Most of it’s probably recycled people, but you never know because they don’t put that kind of information on the food labels. May contain human parts. Ignorance makes for blissful eating. I tried telling my friends and family to keep it simple and humble, but they kept writing essays about the big stuff: steaks, turkey, spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread. They’re all dead now―starved to death.
Into the mixer.
I keep my essays limited to the possible things. Last night I wrote an essay about how eating a bowl of beef-flavored texturized vegetable protein soup would improve my attitude toward work. I work for a small company that advises people. We cover just about everything. When somebody wants good advice, they come to us and if we don’t have the advice on hand, we find it for them, or we just use our imaginations. We’ve never once failed to advise a client. Sometimes they take our advice, sometimes they don’t. But they pay for it and there’s no refunds because once advice is out there, hell, there’s no getting it back.
Tonight I’m writing about macaroni and cheese. The cheese may be a little extravagant but sometimes you have to push things a little into the “I’m way out of control” zone. But not too often and not too much. You could starve to death. My theme is Macaroni and Cheese: A Meal for the Masses. Which it was in the long ago when there were farmers and cows around to make milk and use it to make real cheese. Damn farmers took the cows and pigs and chickens with them and started the first wave of blights that threw the world’s biggest cities into war zones with everybody killing off everybody―trying to steal their food―and breaking into stores and food banks and the government food distribution centers, even after the centers ran out of food to distribute and the stores were full of empty shelves and the food banks were bankrupt.
But that’s ancient history. We have better ways of feeding the populace now. And better ways to determine who should survive. These days, we weed out the stupid and the arrogant. Literacy rates are higher than they’ve been in all of human history―mostly because the illiterate were the first to starve off under the new system, but also because a lot of people became literate really fast. Of course the really stupid ones wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer and send an email. I mean, how were they supposed to submit their essays? As for the arrogant, well, did I mention what happened to my family and friends who wouldn’t take my advice and tone it down?
Now, something like macaroni and cheese creates a nice balance with your basic pasta on one hand and synthesized cheese (probably cheese-flavoured human extract) on the other. One for nutrition and one for taste. Plus, it’s easy to prepare: boil pasta, add cheese, stir, eat. If ever a food was made for the masses! And there’s something humble and unassuming about macaroni and cheese, something to tame the tethered masses, remind them of how lucky they are to not be arrogant or stupid.
These are things I’m putting in my essay. I can almost taste that macaroni and cheese now. I don’t want to get too cocky, but I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in an essay. Certain things seem to be “right.” For instance, mentioning things like humble and unassuming seem to work. Mentioning things like bold and strong can get you starved. Mentioning balance is another good thing. Talking about how much you need what you’re writing for is almost certain to fail. What you need is good writing skills and a realistic approach to composition. It also helps to know your place.
I have a nice writing desk and a nice room. I have a view of the river. Last week, I saw a man fall into the river―though it almost looked like he jumped―he disappeared under the gray water and didn’t come back up. I didn’t report this. You have to be careful about whose attention you draw. And besides, I doubt if that man would have been recyclable after being in that water.
If water doesn’t come in a bottle, you don’t drink it. You don’t use it to cook food and you don’t use it to wash either yourself or your clothes. Tap water is still good for washing floors and other stuff, and if you have real grass in your lawn, it might be safe for watering. That river water though…just as bad as lake water. Good thing there’s lots of bottled water. Farmers didn’t have any say in that.
I share a bathroom with about twenty other people who have exactly the same kind of room as me. And like me, they all live alone because, like me, they don’t have Relationship Permits and they haven’t had their parts re-connected so that they can have babies. I think everyone’s in agreement that we don’t need a lot of new babies. But that doesn’t stop people from writing essays about why they’d like to have a baby. Not me, though. I stick to food. I’ve heard about people being allowed to have a baby but they spent so much time taking care of the baby that it cut into their food essay writing time and they and the babies starved to death. You have to be careful about what you commit to.
But I like it here. It’s quiet. Nobody intrudes on my personal space. Hell, I don’t even know the names of anybody in this building and they don’t know my name. It’s safe that way. And you don’t have so-called friendly neighbors yakking in the hallways at all hours of the day and night and distracting you from writing essays. Loud neighbors can get you starved. But we’re always sure to smile and nod to each other in the halls and coming in and out of the washroom. When you don’t smile and nod, you’re thought to be out of balance and being out of balance can draw attention
I’d like some macaroni and cheese, please.
I think I’ll end my essay with that. I don’t think it’s too presumptuous, and it might even give the editor a smile. I’ve heard that people with really good writing style and things like a subtle sense of humor and wit get offers for work that pays in money and food coupons, both. I’m hoping that I’m that good in another year or two. I’m getting better every day. And I’ve gone from 80 pounds three months ago to 83 pounds yesterday, so my writing must be getting better.
At first the whole essay thing didn’t go over well. There were a lot of stupid people on the planet whose grammar was so bad you could barely make out what they were trying to say, let alone what they were trying to write. Some people say a lot of it came from the way people were writing online, especially in the forums on news sites. Plus, they had a lot of stupid opinions. And there were a lot of arrogant people who could write well, but they also had a lot of stupid opinions. Their downfall was that they were too arrogant to admit their opinions were stupid, and that attitude showed in their essays.
Into the mixer.
They say almost three quarters of the world’s population died off when the food all but disappeared. Most of them died in food wars where one nation invaded another for its food, and there were food civil wars where people from different religions and political persuasion in the same country slaughtered each other for their food. But apparently, that kind of thing had been going on for a long time. This time, though, it was pretty much final. Neither side had food. But that didn’t stop the slaughter.
Nobody knows who came up with the idea to make people write essays for their meals and babies, but there’s lots of rumors. Some say it was a group of disgruntled grammar teachers who were also gentleman farmers. Others say it was an international conspiracy pulled off by newsroom copywriters who gained control of the internet and everybody’s bank accounts. Some said it just made sense, so shut up and don’t ask questions―just write.
The people who just wrote are still mostly around―except for the stupid ones, and the arrogant ones. I’m not sure if it’s a better world or not since the blights, but I guess there’s a lot less stupidity and arrogance. I guess we can be thankful for that. And that’s a lot to be thankful for. In fact, that’s just what I said to one of my clients when she wanted advice on things to be thankful for. We never got to collect the final payment from her because she died before it was due. I think I heard it was suicide. If only she had come to see me for more advice.
Anyways, I’ve finished my essay and now I just have a little polishing up to do before I send it in.
Macaroni and Cheese: A Meal for the Masses
A long time ago, the Farmers all killed themselves because they didn’t know their place and once you don’t know your place, things get out of balance and bad things start to happen, like mass suicide in which all the cows die as well, and real cheese becomes a thing of the past because there’s no more milk
But we still are lucky enough to still have macaroni and cheese because we have awesome sophisticated machines that “re-cycle” human things we don’t need any more and turn them into food (which we do need), such as cheese.
Macaroni and cheese creates a nice balance because you have your basic pasta on the one hand and delicious cheese on the other. That’s one for nutrition and one for taste. Plus, macaroni and cheese is so easy to prepare: boil pasta, add cheese, stir, and eat. Food for the masses!
Macaroni and cheese is also humble and unassuming. It knows its place, as do people who crave eat it. I’ve even heard that every bite of macaroni and cheese reminds one of how lucky one is to not be stupid or arrogant. So, no! I do not want
I’d like some macaroni and cheese, please,
And I still have time for a good start on tomorrow’s essay, before they turn the electricity off.
May 19, 2017
How to Write a Poem and Become a Poet
OK, so I’m not really a poet. I’m a prose writer…novels, short stories, non-fiction and blog ramblings like this one. But I’ve managed to trick more than one publisher into accepting a few poems I inadvertently wrote in moments of temporary madness. And that, of course, makes me an expert on how to write poems and be a poet, whether I know how or not. Because it's all about tricking the publishers.
So listen up because I’m not going to repeat any of this to either of you.
“A little harsh tonight, Biff?” said the fox. “And maybe a little out of contact with reality? All they have to do is re-read it.”
“It’s always better the first time around. Don’t you have some hounds to avoid?”
Now, while the fox is looking around for hounds, I’ll tell you how to write a poem and become a poet.
First, you’ll need wine. Lots of wine. Preferably red wine. Poets always drink red wine. In my delusional college days when I thought I was a poet, I drank red wine while writing poetry and stopped only when I was too hammered to hammer out the words. Sure, this approach does put a lot emphasis on revision but isn’t that what writing is all about anyway? Poet Rule #1: A healthy liver is a sure sign of an under-achieving poet.
You need a quill pen and a bottle of ink. Sorry, but word processors don’t cut it for poetry. There’s no pain. You have to prick yourself with pen nibs, spill black ink on your best white sweater, scratch the crap out your mistakes and first thoughts so that you can barely read the manuscript the next day, when you’re sober enough to read what you wrote the night before. Think of the ink flowing onto the parchment (yes, parchment) as you...bleeding your life onto the paper. I tried this with red ink once, just once. It was almost impossible to distinguish between the red ink and the wine spills. You're welcome.
You’ll have to sell your car and buy a horse. Poets have an image to keep up and they don’t ride anything they can’t wrap their legs around. It’s all that bumping and fresh air that stimulates the brain and the brawn and makes it possible for the poet to drink wine longer and therefore write poetry for longer periods. Which, of course, means more re-writing, but that’s what it’s all about. If you have car keys in your pocket, you’re not a poet and therefore you cannot write poetry.
“Biff,” said the fox, “you used therefore twice in the same paragraph. Don’t you think that’s a little pretentious?”
“I think I hear horns in the distance. Can’t you hear them?”
So, if you have a car and you have one or more volumes of poetry published, then you’re much better than me at tricking publishers.”
You have to live in torment. If you’re happy, write self-help books. Poetry has no room for the un-suffering. If you’re happily married, do something to really piss off your partner. Do it every day and then wallow in self-pity when you arrive at an empty home and a note on the coffee table. Wallow with your quill. Cry and pull at your hair as you slurp wine and spill soul blood onto the parchment. If someone tells you it’s a beautiful day, doubt them. Wait for the storm. If it doesn’t come, go to the storm. There’s always a storm somewhere. Find it. Wallow in it. If there are no mud puddles, make one. Fall into in it and curse your luck for falling into the only mud puddle for miles around. Then…write. Write poetry. Fill page after page with your misery.
Find a biographer, someone who will put up with your whining and crying and think that it makes you the stuff of great literary history. Your biographer will be a constant source of ego, and you’ll need lots of ego if you’re going to be a successful poet. Poets are famous for their egos. Without the ego, people won’t read you. Don’t ever let your biographer catch you being humble. Treat your biographer with contempt or they’ll desert you and find someone with a real ego to treat them like shit.
Eat lots of cheese, the raunchiest cheese you can find. Obnoxious blue cheese is good for this. Carry some in your pocket and bring it out often when you’re in public. Chew it with your mouth open. This will attract attention and convince people that you’re a rebel, that you’re living in hell and only the strongest cheese will assuage your pain. And don’t forget to attack the cheese as though you haven’t eaten in weeks. Poets are all about the drama.
Die young. But not before your biographer. Now…you have to get this one right because you don’t get a second chance. Die tragically. Die with drama. Fall from a 300 foot cliff, be trampled by a herd of mad cows, go for long walks in thunder storms, ski in avalanche territory, be bitten by venomous snakes, catch a topical disease and drag it out for all it’s worth. Canes help in your last days, especially if it’s all that’s left behind when your body is swept out to sea in a tempest.
When you’re dead, come back and haunt the last place you lived in, preferably a hotel or bed and breakfast by a graveyard or moor. Don’t actually hurt anyone. Just give them the creeps enough so that they’ll recommend your haunting to their friends. Nobody likes a ghost who plays hardball.
Now, before the fox gives up trying to hear the horns, pick one of the pictures below and write something poetic. It doesn’t have to rhyme and it doesn’t have to make sense…it just has to show your pain. Like...stairs were my Waterloo. Grass pierced my soul. Go for it.
So listen up because I’m not going to repeat any of this to either of you.
“A little harsh tonight, Biff?” said the fox. “And maybe a little out of contact with reality? All they have to do is re-read it.”
“It’s always better the first time around. Don’t you have some hounds to avoid?”
Now, while the fox is looking around for hounds, I’ll tell you how to write a poem and become a poet.
First, you’ll need wine. Lots of wine. Preferably red wine. Poets always drink red wine. In my delusional college days when I thought I was a poet, I drank red wine while writing poetry and stopped only when I was too hammered to hammer out the words. Sure, this approach does put a lot emphasis on revision but isn’t that what writing is all about anyway? Poet Rule #1: A healthy liver is a sure sign of an under-achieving poet.
You need a quill pen and a bottle of ink. Sorry, but word processors don’t cut it for poetry. There’s no pain. You have to prick yourself with pen nibs, spill black ink on your best white sweater, scratch the crap out your mistakes and first thoughts so that you can barely read the manuscript the next day, when you’re sober enough to read what you wrote the night before. Think of the ink flowing onto the parchment (yes, parchment) as you...bleeding your life onto the paper. I tried this with red ink once, just once. It was almost impossible to distinguish between the red ink and the wine spills. You're welcome.
You’ll have to sell your car and buy a horse. Poets have an image to keep up and they don’t ride anything they can’t wrap their legs around. It’s all that bumping and fresh air that stimulates the brain and the brawn and makes it possible for the poet to drink wine longer and therefore write poetry for longer periods. Which, of course, means more re-writing, but that’s what it’s all about. If you have car keys in your pocket, you’re not a poet and therefore you cannot write poetry.
“Biff,” said the fox, “you used therefore twice in the same paragraph. Don’t you think that’s a little pretentious?”
“I think I hear horns in the distance. Can’t you hear them?”
So, if you have a car and you have one or more volumes of poetry published, then you’re much better than me at tricking publishers.”
You have to live in torment. If you’re happy, write self-help books. Poetry has no room for the un-suffering. If you’re happily married, do something to really piss off your partner. Do it every day and then wallow in self-pity when you arrive at an empty home and a note on the coffee table. Wallow with your quill. Cry and pull at your hair as you slurp wine and spill soul blood onto the parchment. If someone tells you it’s a beautiful day, doubt them. Wait for the storm. If it doesn’t come, go to the storm. There’s always a storm somewhere. Find it. Wallow in it. If there are no mud puddles, make one. Fall into in it and curse your luck for falling into the only mud puddle for miles around. Then…write. Write poetry. Fill page after page with your misery.
Find a biographer, someone who will put up with your whining and crying and think that it makes you the stuff of great literary history. Your biographer will be a constant source of ego, and you’ll need lots of ego if you’re going to be a successful poet. Poets are famous for their egos. Without the ego, people won’t read you. Don’t ever let your biographer catch you being humble. Treat your biographer with contempt or they’ll desert you and find someone with a real ego to treat them like shit.
Eat lots of cheese, the raunchiest cheese you can find. Obnoxious blue cheese is good for this. Carry some in your pocket and bring it out often when you’re in public. Chew it with your mouth open. This will attract attention and convince people that you’re a rebel, that you’re living in hell and only the strongest cheese will assuage your pain. And don’t forget to attack the cheese as though you haven’t eaten in weeks. Poets are all about the drama.
Die young. But not before your biographer. Now…you have to get this one right because you don’t get a second chance. Die tragically. Die with drama. Fall from a 300 foot cliff, be trampled by a herd of mad cows, go for long walks in thunder storms, ski in avalanche territory, be bitten by venomous snakes, catch a topical disease and drag it out for all it’s worth. Canes help in your last days, especially if it’s all that’s left behind when your body is swept out to sea in a tempest.
When you’re dead, come back and haunt the last place you lived in, preferably a hotel or bed and breakfast by a graveyard or moor. Don’t actually hurt anyone. Just give them the creeps enough so that they’ll recommend your haunting to their friends. Nobody likes a ghost who plays hardball.
Now, before the fox gives up trying to hear the horns, pick one of the pictures below and write something poetic. It doesn’t have to rhyme and it doesn’t have to make sense…it just has to show your pain. Like...stairs were my Waterloo. Grass pierced my soul. Go for it.
Writing Hurts Like Hell
Writing Hurts Like Hell is a workshop taught by Biff Mitchell for a decade through the University of New Brunswick's College of Extended Learning. Held mostly off-campus in coffee shops, bars, studios
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