Bryant Delafosse's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

While I was at work today at my non-writing, better-paying full-time job, an errant yellow balloon literally rolled past my cubicle entrance from another co-workers birthday celebration. I confiscated it and stowed it away for my toddler waiting at home.

It was a simple object that cost me nothing but the time it took me to tuck it away and transport it home. But the joy it brought to my son was indescribable. That level of laughter and fun I couldn’t have bought him even if I’d wanted.

Simple pleasures are what make up the body of our living narratives as human beings between the climaxes and the resolutions.

To paraphrase John Lennon’s song “Beautiful Boy,” “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.”

I always thought that particular line was genius. Not only does it point out the foibles of ambition, but the line itself seems to offer a solution. It’s as simple as this.

Stop planning for a change and just live.

After all, he was the Walrus, right Ferris?

That’s good advice no matter what you do for a living, but it got me thinking that as a writer we have to step back sometimes and live our lives so that we have honest material to write about. That’s why older, more experienced writers tend to write dense, layered narratives. To use an old literary metaphor, they have “full wells.”

One of the reasons why we as readers buy some of Stephen King’s more fantastic elements is because he often creates vividly real characters that we believe in when he takes them out of their mundane surroundings and puts them in haunted houses and alternative universes. Those characters came straight out of the life he lived before he ever touched pen to page.

And that’s where the simple pleasures come in.

If you, as a person, don’t live and love and hate, the characters you create will not feel “lived-in.” They will be hollow constructs that you hang stories around. I don’t know about you but I know right away when I don’t invest emotionally in a character, because I don’t care if he achieves his goal.

So here’s your assignment for this weekend. Step away from the word processor and go on an adventure outside your office.

Hey, it doesn’t even have to be real fun. It just has to be real.

Live a little, so you have something to write about.

(Bryant Delafosse is the writer of the supernatural thriller The Mall, now available on Amazon Kindle)

Last week, a fellow indie author and blogger named M.C. O’Neill (The Ancients and the Angels) recommended me for the Booker Award. This award is given to authors who are described as those “who refuse to live in the real world” or as I call it, the “outside-of-the-box” quotient. My job as a recipient is to recommend five other bloggers who fit that bill and then give a list of my favorite all time authors who have inspired me as a writer to live in that brave new world. I’d like to heartily thank Mr. O’Neill for the mention and get right to my list of those authors that have blazed the pioneering trails that have made me want to become a writer in the first place.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: When I picked up this weighty tome as a child, I remember thinking, “This is much longer than The Hobbit. Hope I can get through it.” By the time I reached the third volume I was purposely reading much slower, savoring every word and resenting the fact that I would soon be forced to leave Middle Earth and my dear friends behind. If truth be told, I tested my wife during our courtship by lending her my copy. Not only did she love it, but she had grown so attached to the characters that a few days after she’d started reading it, she slugs me on the arm resentfully because a major character had just died. That’s the effect Tolkien has on his readers. His description of Middle Earth and the characters that live there is miraculous to the point that I refuse to waver in my firm belief that he had access to a dimensional portal and visited another world to mine the wealth of detail he peppers throughout the book. Of course now there is a motion picture industry built up around the books, but fans of the literary base lament the fact that some may never read the source material out of sheer laziness. And those that do read the books only after seeing the movie will never have the blessed gift of seeing the word-images that Tolkien created without the influence of Peter Jackson’s own personal vision. Tolkien should be canonized as a minor literary saint. It is a tragedy that he did not produce more. But perhaps he needed the time and effort he spent on his three masterpieces (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) in order to perfect them and imbue them with life. If anyone deserves an award for refusing to live in the real word, it is Tolkien. He essentially created the high fantasy genre.

Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel: The first book in Asimov’s Robot Mystery series starts simply enough with a simple pairing of Detective Elijah Baley and a humaniform robot named R. Daneel Olivaw in order to solve a murder in the enclosed super-city of New York. It’s impossible to know from this simple concise mystery story that these characters will impact the entire universe and dovetail with Asimov’s other masterpiece Foundation series, thus creating a single enormous epic across 14 books which successfully retain coherence with his other free-standing novels--a feat that Stephen King attempted and failed with his Dark Tower series. This series has everything science fiction has to offer: hard science, action, character development, romance and an epic universal theme, and no one rivals Asimov for his impeccable logic and air-tight plots. The story goes that Caves of Steel is a response to a bet Asimov had with his editor that the science fiction and mystery genres were compatible. Asimov believed that science fiction could be applied to any other genre and create a fresh hybrid genre—a belief to which I heartily subscribe. Asimov and Caves of Steel in particular was a great influence to me in the writing of my own science fiction/horror novel The Mall.

Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine: When I first heard that Mr. Bradbury passed away earlier this year, a little of myself died as well. He is secretly every science-fiction/horror writer’s adopted father. There’s a famous anecdote that in his youth a magician named Mr. Electro touched Mr. Bradbury with a sword and declared that he would “Live forever.” Well at 91 years of age, he came as close in this physical world to doing just that. But we all know he was never talking about his physical vessel, but the worlds he created and the lives he inspired through his books. As I considered which of his books to recommend, I could have chosen such genre classics as The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or The October Country, but the favorite of my heart is Dandelion Wine, the lyrical love letter to our lives as children, especially we boys. What a wonderful treasure trove of life lessons, ranging from such broad subjects as personal happiness to Death itself. When I revisit Green Town, Illinois and race through the tall grass with Doug and Tom Spaulding, I equally laugh, shudder, and well with tears. To further appreciate the story, one must read the novella Farewell Summer (published 50 years after the original) as it was the intended ending when it was originally written. Once again, I want to thank you, Mr. Bradbury, for your work and your inspiration to other writers. Thank you.

Stephen King’s The Stand: When I was still just a kid and developing my taste for “adult” books, I found a big fat hardback by an author named Stephen King while snooping around my older sister’s room. After she had yelled at me for going into her room, she said that I could have the book for all she cared. Seems an ex-boyfriend had loaned her the thing and she had no intention of ever seeing the loser again. What I found between those pages warped my mind, made me lose sleep, and affected the rest of my life. To this day, every time there is a flu outbreak somewhere, I wonder if Captain Trips has finally paid us a visit. The Stand is THE book about the Apocalypse, before every hack writer had their End of the World book, and believe it or not, there’s not one zombie in it. It is the visceral horror of what could happen in a world without vampires and werewolves, just old-fashioned evil and shitty luck. In my view, it is King’s hands- down masterpiece, back when Steve was a cocky bad-ass, S-O-B that spun a yarn without all the hang-ups of his personal demons or politics that weigh down the 1000-plus-page-seemingly-editor-free treatises he writes today. Sure, The Stand is a thick book, but that’s because it’s epic-sized horror and makes use of every page. The original (not the restored version) is lean, mean and moves as fast as a stripped down ‘58 Plymouth Fury. You get to know Stu and Franny and Larry and Nick and Harold and care for them so much that when things go south and the betrayals and deaths begin, you love and hate along with them. In The Stand, King showed us the unconventional and horizon-expanding possibilities of modern horror, and essentially set the bar higher for all other authors in the genre. It inspired legions of writers such as JJ Abrams who used the book as a “Bible” for his series Lost. This is still the singular book I think about when I pick up King’s most recent bestseller and, despite the last disappointing outing fresh on my mind, give him “just one more chance.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: If you’re a fan of Vonnegut’s particular brand of madness, it’s a little difficult to choose a favorite. After all, the man is the author of Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions. But for me, his wry commentary on science and religion reached its perfection in this science-fiction-laced, satirical, pseudo-memoir. Like all Vonnegut’s works, Cat’s Cradle is a little hard to categorize. He’s not big on character development or plot. In most of his books, both are usually there for the greater purpose of serving up his commentaries on life. But of all his works, this one comes closest to offering the whole package. And it’s the most fun, because of the apocalyptic sub-plot involving a weapon called Ice-Nine. One of the wonderful conceits of the novel is Vonnegut’s use of a lexicon of new words used by the practitioners of the fictional region called Bokononism. I still use words like “karass,” “wampeter,” and “granfalloon.” (For example, every karass has two wampeters, one waxing and one waning, yet a granfalloon has none, as it is a false karass.) Science-Fiction author Theodore Sturgeon once described its storyline as “appalling, hilarious, shocking, and infuriating.” He went on to say that “you must read it. And you better take it lightly, because if you don’t you'll go off weeping and shoot yourself.” That essentially is the dark beauty that is Vonnegut. He makes the horrific realities of existence more palatable by keeping you laughing your ass off.

And now here’s my list of fellow author/bloggers that I believe deserving of the Booker Award
(Please pay it forward, folks, because with great power comes great responsibility!):

Ernest Cline: http://www.ernestcline.com/blog/

Jool Sinclair: http://joolssinclair44.blogspot.com/

Graham Storrs: http://grahamstorrs.cantalibre.com/

Joshua Graham: http://joshua-graham.com/blog/

G.P. Ching: http://www.gpching.com/

Bryant Delafosse is the author of The Mall & Hallowed for Amazon Kindle.

I was recently asked 10 questions by the website Books Go Social and thought the outcome was interesting enough to post as a blog:

1) Tell us something unexpected about yourself.
I'm the guy you pass every day on the way home from work holding the sign that reads: "Will write for food."

2) What kind of books do you write?
First and foremost, I write the kind of books I’d be interested in reading, mostly thrillers, horror and science-fiction. As a writer, I put ordinary characters in extraordinary situations. I grew up on Stephen King novels, Marvel comics, and the films of Spielberg and John Hughes. Their work can’t help but bleed into the worlds of my characters.

3) What inspired you to write?
I grew up reading and drawing my own versions of comic books. Eventually, I graduated to reading mainstream fiction and gravitated to King, Bradbury and Asimov. It seemed only natural that I start telling my own tales.
Coming from an Acadian heritage (dat’s Cajun, Sha), the storytelling gene infected me early on. All of you have to do is listen to some our music to know the truth of that statement. (For the uninitiated who may be interested in a gateway drug, try some of the new generation, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys and Pine Leaf Boys. Then try the bayou-masters like Nathan Abshire and Lawrence Walker.)

4) What makes your writing stand out from the crowd?
Once again, my childhood revolved around the works of Stephen King and Isaac Asimov—if you read THE MALL, a story about a fully automated shopping complex that goes dark during an EMP, trapping a single mother and her two children, that much would be obvious. Together, the pair is the yin and yang of my literary universe. King is all gut, while Asimov is all head. Therein lay each writer’s greatest strength and weakness. I try to inject all of my work with a balance of both logic and emotion and satisfy both parts of the reader’s nature. In addition, I love testing the boundaries of genres, until I get something like a haunted shopping mall overrun with killer robots.

5) What is the hardest part of writing for you?
With a six-year-old son and a wife with health issues, time is my greatest enemy. But with any passion worth pursuing, writing is a compulsion for me and I take every opportunity to create new worlds.

6) Where do you like to write - what is your routine?
I write anywhere and everywhere from Metrolink trains to the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices. I happen to prefer to write either early in the morning or late at night. My muse seems to speak to me all the more clearly during this twilight zone.

7) What do you do when you are not writing - do you have a day job?
Yes. Unless you’re the aforementioned King or Asimov, we all have to put food on the table. And remember, both King and Asimov were college professors until they hit it big.

8) Do you work with an outline or just write?
When I put pen to paper, I’ve already mapped out a route in my head, but I give myself enough flexibility for the characters to move in any direction that seems natural to them once they’ve developed sufficiently to dictate to me. When a character has enough flesh on them, they organically start calling the shots. The best thing a writer can do when his character becomes that real is to hoist up his ego and get out of the way of the story.

9) How important is marketing and social media for you?
For an e-published author, social media is everything. It took me a while to realize that this is the new world of the 21st century writer. I’m still acclimating to this new reality and services like Books Go Social really help the struggling author who barely has enough time to write, much less promote.

10) What advice would you have for other writers?
Write at least a little something every day (even when you don't feel up to the task) and support other up-and-coming authors as you gain popularity. I love hearing anecdotes about the Golden Age of science-fiction when still unknown authors like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein all seemed to know each other. That sort of camaraderie would be a welcome change to the all-for-one attitude we seem to have these days.