Picture is unrelated

Well, I’m just going to come out and say it. I’m having trouble finishing my second novel. It’s been months since I worked it for any decent length of time and now I’m almost afraid of touching it and messing up what’s already written. Plus, each time I sit down to work on it I have to reread 65k words to get caught up with what’s going on, as well as to get into the character voice again. By the time I’ve read all that I’m out of energy to start writing. So I’ve hit a bit of a wall.

Now, the way I like to solve problems is with creative solutions that set up self-perpetuating systems, rather than solutions that rely on constant vigilance and unbounded effort. That is to say: I don’t like forcing a stuck door every time I want to open it. I’d rather take some time to study why the door is sticking and learn how to re-hang or trim the door so it opens smoothly thereafter.

Right now, for me, sitting down to work on my novel is forcing a stuck door. It takes too much effort and is a task that can only be performed via sheer willpower, which isn’t an easy thing, nor do I feel results in good writing. So I need a brainhack. I need to figure out what’s causing my stuck door and figure out how to rehang it to get back on track. I have a method that I plan to try. I don’t know if it’ll work yet, but it’s worth a shot and anything should be more effective than continually trying to force a stuck door. This post is a description of that method. It’ll take a bit to lay it all out, but once it’s done I’d like your input. If you’ve tried anything like this I’d like to know how it worked for you.

So, I’m a tech writer at my day job. This means that I regularly dip my fingers in lots of pies: graphic design, marketing, writing, training, web development, business development, and even a little light coding on occasion. I used to use a programming idea when I was teaching in grad school to teach students a problem solving method. The writing method in this post, what I like to call “Iterative Novel Development,” is also the result of adapting a programming technique to another field, in this case: writing novels.

Sometimes, when developing programs, there is a clear roadmap from the beginning. This is ideal. But sometimes when developing a program there is only a general idea of what needs to be accomplished and it’s up to the programmer to take that idea and translate it into exact instructions for the computer to execute.

In the latter case it’s sometimes necessary to sit down and plan all the features from the beginning. However, on other occasions it’s best to take the boiled down, core functionality of the program and develop that first, get it running and working, and then add more features on top. This method can cause some messy hacks if the initial code isn’t well written to begin with, or if too many “out of scope” features are crammed in later. But in general, developing something and making sure it works at each step is a better idea than trying to write a bunch of interdependent code to support all the features from the get go and then finding out it doesn’t work when it’s all linked together.

This is the idea: the idea of developing a program, getting the core working, and then adding more features. This is a method I’d like to try to develop a novel. I think it’ll be a successful brainhack to finishing the novel. Here’s my reasoning:

I’ve spent some time examining my stuck door on this one. First, I needed to answer why I don’t sit down to work on the novel like I sit down to work on other projects. That one is pretty easy to answer: I’m no longer excited about it. The magic is gone. There’s no joie de vivre. It’s old hat. I’ve solved all the problems in the story in my head and so all I have left to do is write it down and that’s the boring part. That’s an issue.

Now, before you protest (and I can already hear, even over the internet, the vacuuming breath intake that comes right before a lecture), I know that a good part of writing is ass-in-seat, pound it out, get it down, look up after the dust settles. There’s no other way to write a book than to sit down and type and type and type. I know that. That’s not a problem for me. I regularly write 10k+ words a week of documentation at work. (Hell, look how long this post is already and barely anything has been said.) Sitting down and pounding it out isn’t an issue for me.

I also hate hate hate the idea that an “artist” is this sensitive thing that only creates art when the mood takes him and the weather is right and he’s not hungry or thirsty or in a fragile emotional state and the Cubs are winning and it’s the 17^th Friday of the year and all the other bullcrap things that need to be on that list to get the project done. Besides, writers aren’t “artists.” Writers tell stories and solve problems. That’s not a sensitive emotional thing, even if the story is about a sensitive emotional thing. Writing is about calculating the best way to manipulate the reader into the desired emotional response. That’s science type shit, cloaked in the guise of art.

So believe me when I say that my stuck door here isn’t that I’m a sensitive artist who needs the stars to align to finish a project. However, I do need to be interested in it (or be getting paid). I need to have problems to solve and goals that are possible to complete quickly. I’m a gamer, too. Maybe games ruined me for this. Or maybe I like games because games operate in the way I need to work. I suppose it can be both. Can’t it be both?

So now I’m left with this: my stuck door is due to a lack of interest in the project. My only real motivation here is “finish the work” which is enough motivation for ass-in-seat of about 800 words every two months. That’s not a good timeline to finish the work in the next decade, let alone in the next year. Not to mention that the writing suffers because those 800 words aren’t in the correct voice, since it’s hard to pick up the correct voice for the character after a two month break.

So I know my stuck door is a lack of interest in the project for its own sake. I need to figure out a way to inspire interest in the project so I can get ass-in-seat and pound it out the remaining 30k words to finish the story and what I intend to be a 95k word book. That’s the problem I need to solve.

I’ve decided to test if a technique adapted from programming is the best way to renew interest in the project. I don’t know that it will work, but it’s worth a try to get this thing in the shipping bin.

Sometimes, when developing a program, first I’ll develop the minimum functionality and get it working. At that point, the project is complete. I experience the rush of finishing the project because I’ve created a working program. I like to use a Swiss Army knife as a metaphor for this. I have a Swiss Army knife with only a blade, but it’s useable as a tool. I’d done my job and I get the rush of completion after a minimum time investment. The other advantage, since the core didn’t take tons of time to develop, is that it’s easy to see if the program sucks. If I’d waited until I spent all the time adding all the features and fringe-scoped features that crept in before I actually got the program to work, and the program sucked, I’d have wasted tons more time. So I develop each section at a time, get it working, experience the rush, and then move on to the next feature.

This is a good method because my Swiss Army knife is useable from very early on in the process. It always has a blade. Later I can add a bottle opener, a file, a saw, scissors, and all the other features I want to add. Each feature is a new project that doesn’t take much time to develop. Each time a feature is added the program is complete and I experience the rush.

Of course, there can be issues that I have to be aware of as I develop. One: even though the project is complete after every feature, I have to be mindful as I develop that later I will probably want to add more features. This means writing code that is as general and expandable as possible as I go, otherwise I will run into issues as I continue to add features. Two: there is a max limit to how much a program can be expanded from a core, before the core must be scrapped and rewritten from scratch. This is okay with a small program, but can break the project if the scope grows too large.

Still, these issues can be mostly overcome with thoughtful programming and a firm stance against too much or the wrong kind of feature creep.

So I’d like to adapt this iterative programming method to writing a novel. Obviously this method isn’t needed for short stories or other projects that can be finished using the brute force (start to finish) method in one or two sittings. But for novels that require months of continued and renewable interest, this could be a good method to ensure that the zeal is refreshed on a regular basis by completing waypoints.

I imagine it would work something like this: write a first draft of the novel that is split into several chunks, whether it is chapters or sections or whathaveyou. Make each chunk one to two sentences long and tell the whole story of the book. My current novel is planned to be about 30 chapters and I’m sitting with a blinking cursor at chapter 22. Rather than trying to brute force chapter 22, I should write one sentence for chapter 22 and then move on to chapter 23. I’ll write one sentence for 23 and then move on to 24, etc.

Rather than think about this as an outline, which is what it seems to be at first glance, it seems better to think of each of these one sentence chapters as completed chapters, or at the very least, containers for chapters. Once they are done I’ve finished my book and experienced the rush of completion. Now it’s time to move on to iteration numbero dos.

In the second iteration I’ll take each of my one sentence chapters and make them into several paragraphs that expand what happens in those one-sentence events. I plan to think about this like I’m zooming into Google Earth. I start with a chapter that is the whole planet. On the second iteration my goal isn’t to now be able to read the writing on the newspaper held by the guy on 5^th Avenue in NYC. My intention is to zoom into a country, maybe. I’m not even ready for cities yet on this iteration.

Keep in mind that this is writing that is telling the story, not providing a framework to use to build the story, like an outline would be. I want to make sure that when I’ve finished iteration two that the story is again complete. I’ve added a bunch of features, but I haven’t broken the story or left parts where the story cannot be understood or suffers. This is very important. The story must be a usable Swiss Army knife at the end of each iteration.

Once iteration two is complete, I’ll move on to three, and four, and as many iterations as it takes to build in all the features I want. I suspect that each iteration will be easier than trying to develop the story from beginning to end via brute force. It’s much, much, much easier to flesh out a scene to get it to do exactly what I want it to do if I have a clear objective in mind before I finish the scene. It’s just like writing a function in a program. I know want a function that does a specific task. That’s the hard part. Now all I have to do is break that task down into specific steps for the computer to execute. It’s just logic and science, baby.

It can be the same with a scene. If my first iteration leaves me with a chapter 22 that says: “While looking for a job, Simon finds a local newspaper with an announcement that Lucian is coming to town for a book signing. Simon decides to visit Lucian at the book signing.” This works as a chapter because it tells the action, following from the previous chapter and leading into the action of the next chapter. In iteration two I can zoom in on the individual elements a little. Depending on if visiting Lucian at the book signing is in chapter 22 or in 23, I can start writing paragraphs to flesh out my scenes. I’ll have a paragraph wherein Simon is looking for a job through various methods and finds the ad about Lucian’s book signing. I’ll have a paragraph about Simon traveling to the book signing and thinking about Lucian. Finally, I’ll have a paragraph describing the book signing. Chapter 22, which was two sentences, is now three paragraphs and is feature complete. I’ll move on to Chapter 23, then 24, and on until the end.

Once I have all the chapters complete in iteration two I’ve finished the novel again. In a newly started novel (mine isn’t, but assume it is for this napkin math example), I’ve now taken my novel from 600 words (30 chapters at twenty words per chapter) to 9000 words (30 chapters at 300 words per chapter). Again, my novel is complete and I experience the rush of completion. I have a short story if I want to stop here. But I don’t. I want a novel with all the trimmings.

So on to iteration three, where I’ll break down each scene into sub scenes. I can break down the paragraph that broadly described the book signing into the needed elements: a paragraph explaining something weird Simon was thinking about in the parking lot, the people Simon noticed while standing in line during the signing, the brief conversation Lucian and Simon had during the signing where they made plans for later, the activities Simon did while waiting for Lucian to finish, the longer conversation Simon and Lucian had after the signing, and what Simon did once he came home from the book signing.

Since each expansion has a clear objective, these are much easier to writing than writing a scene with no clear objective. I know the entrance conditions of the scene (the state of the characters, the state of the plot, the state of the relationships, etc.) and I know the exit conditions (what changed in the scene, and how it changed). Now the only problems I have to solve are small, simple steps describing the exact method of what changed and how, or description problems (what are some thoughts Simon might have about standing in line? How would he express them?). This is much easier and allows me to control the pacing of the scene very precisely.  Since each node can be zoomed into (but not every node is necessary for zooming), more detail can be added with each iteration, until all the needed detail is in the story.

For the record I’ll restate that I haven’t used this method to write a novel, only brainstormed about how the method might work. But already I’m aware that I must be mindful of a few things as I write using this technique. One: each iteration will take more time than the last. The first few will be quick and easy. The later iterations will take longer. But, since the story is complete at every step, I think the excitement of adding more features will prevail over the additional time each iteration takes. This is something I plan to dispassionately observe when using this method, so I can see how it functions in practice.

Issue two: the first iteration will be dreadfully important, since it will be very difficult to change the story once the first few iterations are complete. Changing the story in the middle will require scrapping large blocks of content that’s already written. This needs to be avoided. It’s something I’m very frightened about. In general I’m not the type of writer who changes things midstream – I usually have the broad strokes mapped out in my head before I begin, but it does happen. For a writer who writes to “figure out the story” as she goes, rather than “tell a story” that’s in her head, this method would not work because of this immutability.

However, I feel like this issue can be minimized by writing a quality first iteration. Once the first iteration is done, the story can be examined for suck. If it sucks, I plan to change the first iteration before moving on, or scrap the whole thing. In a way, the first iteration is the story prototype. I stand by the notion that it’s impossible to determine if an unfinished story sucks, so a complete draft, even at 600 words, is needed. This is the first iteration.

Issue three: finally, it’s also necessary to be aware that if you are the type of writer who starts a story without knowing the ending, a writer who is writing the story to tell yourself the story as you write, this method seems very dangerous to the completion prospects. I’ve found that writers who write that way have a hard time finishing a story once they know the ending, unless they are within shooting distance of the ending and can brute force the writing of it. If this type of writer sorts out too much too soon, there is a weird thing that happens in the brain, this idea that the story has already been told somehow, and interest is lost in the story. I’ve seen this happen with people who talk about their novel too much, too. They tell the story while explaining the novel to people, and then have less interest in writing it down. This iterative method could be disastrous for that type of writer, since the complete story is told in the first iteration, the mystery is solved, and there is less reason to expand and add more features to the story.

So that’s the idea and I’m going to give it a shot to finish my second novel. Since I already have 65K words brute forced up to this point, I’m only going to try iterative novel development on the remainder of the story, rather than the whole thing.

I am aware that it may be easier to iterate the remainder of the story, since I already have a firm grasp on the characters and plot, than it would be begin iteration from the beginning. This may mean that when starting a third novel I should brute force the first 20k words while the excitement alone is enough to carry me, so I can get a firm grasp on the characters and plot, and then iterate from there. It’s something to be tested in the future.

Gosh. That took awhile to write. It probably took awhile to read, too. Now that it’s all out: has anyone used a method like this to write a long form work? How did it go? If you haven’t used it, what problems or advantages do you see with this method? Do you use something similar to this? Or do you use something else? If this isn’t your writing process, what is your writing process?

Please let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve collected Legos on and off since I was a kid, castles mostly, although I dabbled in the town, space, and pirate themes a little. When I was a kid my favorite thing to do was build castles and spend hours playing with them, inventing stories as I went, playing out new “episodes” with none of the adult terror of losing a good narrative to the ages. I didn’t need to write it down. I didn’t need to preserve it. Play was the end goal.

Now, as an adult, I enjoy building the sets and posing the mini-figures in battle scenes, but I don’t invent stories with them the way I used to. For one, it feels a bit silly to do the voices, but also there is this strange sensation that giving the mini-figures names and back stories somehow limits their possibility. It gives them a mythology that I’m either forced to preserve or continually revamp. I am never satisfied.  So I refrain from that. I resist the temptation, though sometimes it’s difficult. It’s a bit awkward to admit strong opinions and feelings about little plastic blocks, but there it is.

Lego Diorama Plan - click for full version

What I do enjoy, though, is building a world with them, creating a scale that allows for many different possibilities. Two years ago I planned a huge Lego Diorama, an epically scaled display that would incorporate my favorite Lego castles and something akin to war gaming terrain: Styrofoam mountains, rivers, and fields, covered in plaster of Paris, and painted. The thing was epic – 3 feet by 12 feet, with very rough plans for expansion into a 6 foot by 18 foot version.

Sorry for the awful iPhone picture, this is the only picture I have of it.

I even started building the first section of the thing, but decided to abandon it when I moved from one apartment to the next – aside from feeling very “adult” at the time, which always causes a purge in everything but “serious” creative things (which is a shame), this type of hobby is simply unsuitable for apartment living. I need a house with a basement, which is still a number of years away. So when I moved I tossed the thing into the dumpster. All I have left is a few pictures of my progress.

Still, I often think about it, with conflicted emotions, almost like one would think about an old girlfriend or missed relationship. It’s bittersweet, in an awkward way that you can’t really share with anyone else.  Certainly you can attempt to explain it, but no one ever understands. It just comes out sounding dumb or overly sentimental.

But lately I’ve been wondering, trying to sort out why this idea, this world building, these little plastic figures and bricks and castles matter so much to me. As a rule I hate the fantasy genre. It seems so stale and predictable to me, all those swords and spells that just can’t evoke any narrative magic. But Lego castle is still my favorite genre. There’s that quandary, too.

A long time ago, when I barely started writing here, almost two years ago now, I wrote about “universes.” Not the star-filled thing we live in, but universes in the world-building sense, the kind of universe someone would mean when they said something like “the Star Wars universe” or the “Lord of the Rings universe.” My complaint was that there is a certain point, once a story had been mythologized into “cannon,” that imagination and possibility is severely limited. After that, I had no interest in reading yet another story about Luke Skywalker’s adventures. I knew what he was capable of, and what the “universe” was configured to support, plot-wise.

That idea translates into my fear of giving my Lego mini-figures back stories or a permanent narrative arc. I don’t want to think of the gold-crowned king who came with my big grey castle as “Harold, the King of Mystasia.” Or whatever. I don’t want to know his personality, because it makes it less malleable. I would rather build the little plastic dudes a world where they could be anything I wanted them to be, at just that moment. Capture scenes, rather than characters and “lore” (god, I have such a powerful distain for that word as applied to the fantasy genre).

But could this characterlessness, this world building idea, still be applied to written narrative somehow? Could you write a good book or story with this as a driving force, building a loose structure but no specifics? I’m not sure. Good stories are usually about tying down the details of who the characters are, providing them with limits in hopes that they can overcome those limits. Would a story that was all action and no character be incredibly dull? Hemingway seemed to pull it off, sometimes, writing stories that were mostly just facts, but there was still some characterization there, too, not to mention that his stories took place in our world – he didn’t need to define the countries for readers. We understand the factions.

Okay, so my buddy and I might have actually played Brikwars one time. http://www.brikwars.com/

Now, mini-figures are pretty small. They have little painted faces and limbs with a single joint and holes in their feet so you can stick them to things. They are viewed by us as though they are small, insignificant things. To them we are gods. It’s funny, because some writers consider themselves gods of their own worlds, as well, but these writers still learn about their characters lives, create details for them, humanize them. Writers bring themselves down from heaven to interact with their characters.

But could it be done another way? Could the scale of the story be pulled backwards and upwards until the level of characterization was no more than mini-figures? Would that ruin the story? Could you write adventure or tragedy without major characters or “universe” building?

I don’t know.

But I’m curious to see someone try to tell a story without characterization, from a high, top-level view, with an emphasis on limiting the amount of details that removed possibility from the world. Is a story about “a knight” less interesting, inherently, than a story about “John Fighammer, Champion of the Kingdom of Nostro, Slayer of the Giant of Kroth, Weilder of the Basalt Battleaxe”?

My fear is yes.  My hope is no. Because I think there is something to this idea, that the addition of all those names and details and ridiculous “lore” takes something human from the characters that can’t be brought back, no matter how epic the world.

Of course, it could just be that most fantasy writers are hacks.

Hard to tell.

In a nutshell, the book’s thesis is basically this: In order to solve problems, societies must add complexity. Complexity is a valid method for solving problems, but increasing complexity comes with increasing energy needs.

Once a society is no longer able to sustain the energy costs of its level of complexity (i.e. when it reaches the unsustainable end of an unsustainable model) the society collapses. Tainter provides many examples of this model in previous societies including the Roman Empire. Specifically, he claims Rome collapsed because the level of energy and capital needed to maintain the empire was solved by the continual conquering of external societies. Once there was nothing close to conquer to acquire easy resources, the society became unsustainable and collapsed.

The idea the book presents fascinates me for several reasons, because the idea seems to easily extend itself into all complexities that could aptly named societies: personalities, gadgets, markets, businesses, and even our own current struggle with oil and energy in America. But the aspect that fascinates me most, as a writer, is narrative.

In this post I’d like to talk about the narrative as a society and see if it’s possible to apply Tainter’s ideas to building a functional narrative. I’d like to examine the idea of writerly resources, and also see if there are any lessons we can glean.

Why You Should Bother Reading This

But first, I’d like to get the “why” out of the way. (Feel free to skip to the next heading if the overzealous “why” doesn’t interest you.) Why apply Tainter’s ideas to an aspect of human creation that he did not intend? I absolutely loathe the tendency in literary theory to apply, with seeming random chance, the ideas of one thinker to a system of ideas for which those ideas were not intended.

There are so many dreadful examples of this type of thing in literary theory that I can’t even begin to address them all, but, in case you don’t know what I mean, the most egregious have titles like “A Marxist Application of Capital in Examination of Dr. Suess’ The Snetches” and “Horton Hears a Who: An Neo-ecological Critique in Seventeen Parts” and “The Lorax Versus Gwendolyn Brooks: A Jungian Microbattle” and so on. Obviously, these are all fictitious examples, but you surely understand the concept.

The problem with these types of analyses is twofold:  one – these types of articles are based on the understood premise that one must publish to gain and retain university tenure and one of the easiest ways to do this is by applying whatever thinker’s ideas happen to be in vogue at the moment to whatever fiction or nonfiction also happens to be in vogue at the moment, with the understanding that the combination of the two must not have been broached before. Of course, since the spread of the vogue is tumultuous, one is never short of topics. Whether this is a valid juxtaposition (aside from its use to build a career out of gibberish) is never considered.

Two, as an extension of one: these types of articles do nothing to extend human understanding of epistemology, literature, or anything else useful – they only do what they are intended to do, which it is to create a vortex of verbose verbiage so devastatingly complex so as to shame university colleagues to admit they had neither the time, interest, or capacity to delve into its dark, demonic depths to attempt to understand it, and will be happy thus far, to extend tenure if only, please, would the Professor kindly leave the room and never speak of the broken artifice of the system again. Or, at the very least, if it must be spoken of, maintain that the system is both a healthy and valid method for determining suitability for a teaching position at a place of higher learning and the apt self-aggrandizing pat on the backside in front of lesser-published colleagues.

So, why, then, knowing all that, must I persist in this seemingly random application of Tainter’s ideas to narrative structure if I’m not pursuing tenure and know that this post will be overlooked by 99.7% of the reader’s of this site because it also seems a dark, demonic vortex of verbose verbiage? To that I answer, with a bipartite bellow: “Screw you, you dissenting curmudgeons!” and “Well, I’m interested – please feel free to regard this as a type of mental masturbation in the worst possible way.”

But in all seriousness, I’m writing this because I believe there is actual gold to be mined here. There are lessons to learn and time to be stolen from writing fiction. And I am no one if I am not a writer who enjoys analysis, lesson learning, patronizing talk, and procrastination. So onward and upwards!

Narrative as a Society

With those shenanigans out of the way, we first have to examine narrative as a society. We need to determine whether this idea can function as an actual concept, not simply a metaphor that drops its screws and cracks once sat upon by a voluptuous mental concept (a poorly built chair under a fat guy, as it were). So is it? Can a narrative be looked at as a society?

Well, a society has many things: rules, people, a structured organization, a large number of dissenting parts sometimes working together and sometimes in opposition, a beginning and an end, a capacity for thematic ability (at least as reported by the media), and a system for resource management.

Narratives also have these things – rules for format and structure (don’t you post-modernists sass me now – even in your wacky BS exploratives you still create internal structure and rules, even if they are only internally consistent, not externally), characters, plots and subplots that sometimes work together and sometimes oppose each other, a beginning and an end, themes, and creation via resource management. So far, so good. We’ve passed the fat guy test, at least, and can happily move into further exploration – can Tainter’s ideas apply to narrative?

From here on in, I’m going to assume you have either read the book or are willing to take my word on what it says (deity help you). If you’re the latter I’ll do my best to present his ideas with as much due diligence as possible, hoping not to misrepresent him in any fashion, with the exception of where it suits me to be polemical. If you have read his book and I misrepresent his ideas, feel free to call me out in any manner you see fit.

An Examination of Resources

The central tenet, as I understand it, of Tainter’s work is this: problem solving requires complexity and complexity requires energy.

Let’s take for an example a theoretical society that’s troubled by shit in the streets. They can solve this problem by adding a sewage system. However, adding a sewage system introduces complexity that requires energy: labor, capital, and the creation of some sort of regulatory body to manage the construction and maintenance of the system. If the society is able to sustain that level of energy, they can happily build a sewage system and reap the benefits. However, one of the benefits of a sewage system is the elongation of life, due to reduced disease.

Now, because members of the society are living longer, they have a new problem – they must solve the problem of a larger population of the elderly. They can solve this by building larger dwellings so old folks can stay with families, or retirement communities so they can live alone with the care they need, or by slaughtering everyone over the age of 65.

Separated from morality, these are all valid solutions, but each solution requires more complexity and energy, whether it’s more building materials, capital for some sort of social security, or the training of death-squads (not to mention an axe-sharpening program to sharpen their axes – they dull quickly). If the society is able to sustain the level of energy required, they move on, happy with their solution and onto new problems to solve. It continues until the society has introduced complexity but does not have the energy or resources to maintain that complexity.

Now, the main resource, or energy, as I see it, when it comes to building complex narratives is this: writer attention span. A writer can only build a narrative so long and so complex before she can no longer sustain the time and energy required to finish it. This resources contains all the constraints a writer must contend with, because they trickle down into all the aspects of writing a complex narrative: mastery of craft, mental attention span, time-management, monetary resources, artistic license, and everything else. With an unlimited amount of energy (understood to mean time, attention, and money) in the writer, a narrative of unlimited complexity can be sustained. Since this unlimited resource pool is a mere fantasy, not a reality, constraints must be introduced.

How to Structure a Narrative Based on Available Resources

The most obvious way to tailor narrative complexity is to put constraints on length. This is why so many budding authors are encouraged to begin with short-form narrative, such as the short story. Limiting the resources limit the complexity of the narrative to a sustainable amount – the hope is that the author will reach the constraints of the medium before exhausting all available energy (attention, time, money, etc).

This is, of course, assuming that the short story is compiled at a reasonable level of craft. A story can be anything, but remember, more complexity requires more energy, so the most ingénue authors should probably begin with one sentence stories. Flash fiction is the current term in vogue for this concept. Once flash fiction has been mastered, and indeed, this requires a mastery of sentence level grammar, pacing, and all those other tiny little rules that loom so monumentous on the dark horizon, other lengthier forms can be attempted.

That’s the idea, anyhow. But artificial constraints on length doesn’t really teach us anything about narrative structure, only narrative form, so perhaps it’s not the best place to limit our resources. We could, of course, focus on plot instead. Instead of limiting ourselves to 3000 words, limit ourselves to a single thread or plot, or two threads at most, and put upon ourselves the idea that every sentence in the narrative must advance either of those two threads – any sentence, or even word, that does not advance those threads must be trimmed so as to maintain sustainability. This is another obvious notion, once it’s considered.

So we have two limits so far – length and plot threads. Other constraints can also be applied – number of characters, length of scenes, length of sentences – aspects of the narrative can be limited forever until we can reach a sustainable medium. But how, exactly, does one determine what to limit? Maybe you’ve found no difficulty writing a 200,000 word magnum opus when given the chance, but the work never feels complete. Or maybe you can’t seem to write for more than 20 minutes without needing to eat, sleep, drink coffee, urinate, play with the thermostat, or see what the significant other is doing and whether she/he/it happens to feel particularly amorous at the moment.  What then?

The trick, I think, is to examine what exactly you were writing before your energy (attention) became unsustainable and simplify that aspect of your narrative. Please keep in mind that this does not have to be the last sentence you were writing, or even the last paragraph. The lesson to be learned from Tainter is that the issue is the problem that was solved that increased complexity to an unsustainable energy level. This is the thing that must be eliminated. Maybe this happened three pages ago when you introduced your third new character in as many pages and had to take a break because now all the characters are meeting for the first time and you can’t figure out how to make character three interesting. The issue is the addition of the character, not the meeting. It happened three pages ago. Of course, it doesn’t just have to be the character, it can be any of the constraints we previously mentioned or something else we haven’t considered.

Now, this lesson needs two important caveats that must be introduced right now, right before the protests comes tumbling out of your mouth. I can hear you mumbling under your breath already (or was that the cat in the other room? Can cats mumble? HEY! DON’T GET DISTRACTED!) – so I have to address these two things.

One, don’t use this idea as an excuse to not test yourself. That’s a gross misapplication. If you know that you’ve gotten messed up by adding a third character in the past, that doesn’t mean you always have to limit yourself to two characters. You don’t know with all certainly, unless you’ve performed extensive experiments, that it was the third character (and not just the third latte) that made your narrative unsustainable. Also, self-limiting in all circumstances is lame. Keep trying. Each narrative is a new society and you don’t know what limits that narrative has until you reach unsustainability.

Two – Tainter writes in his book that once a society has reached a level of complexity, even if that level is unsustainable, that the complexity can probably not be removed, because removing the complexity simply adds more complexity, which requires more energy, and speeds up the collapse of the society. What lesson can we draw from this?

Well, first we have to assume that he’s right. Second, we have to assume that he’s right even when applied to narrative as a society. Third, if we’re cool with those two assumptions, we should draw this lesson: finish the narrative as soon as possible.

The reasoning is this: societies become unsustainable (cue music: Danger Zone) before they collapse. The trick is to practice enough that you understand and recognize the threshold when your narrative crosses over into unsustainability and finish the narrative before that unsustainability requires the collapse of the narrative. There is a window there that can be exploited, and indeed, must be exploited with as much caffine, adderall, alone-time, and whatever else crammed into as short a timeline as possible.

Oh, and just in case you’re reading this, Stephen King, the Dark Tower series reached unsustainability at the beginning of book five, but you didn’t finish the narrative inside the important window, hence, the rest of the series sucked. I commend you for trying something absurdly grand, however, and I look forward to you trying again. Also, did you get the flowers I left on your doorstep, Stephen? I waited outside for three days, but left when I saw the cops coming. I hope you liked them!

Call to Action

Okay, let’s review, before this article becomes unsustainable, too. I’m in the window, folks. I’ve written this all in one sitting and my brain is starting to hurt, just a little. So let’s sum up, draw some conclusions, and get outta Dodge.

What have we learned here? Quick, let’s say it out loud before we get too distracted: one – narratives should be limited somehow to our level of sustainable energy. Two – we still need to determine the mechanism by which the unsustainable threshold can be identified so we can practice spotting it and know when to dial it back and finish the thing. Three – uh, is there a three?

Ummm…three…uh…crap.

My attention has just collapsed.

Now, it is a fact that not all stories are character-centric, focusing on an individual or group of individuals who form the core of the story. The works of Annie Proulx, for instance, often have weakly defined characters. This is not an inherent weakness, however, since the “character” of her stories focuses more on the environment the characters live in rather than who they are and what they’re doing.

Annie Proulx, 1999

Writers who take this approach often consider individual people to be largely inconsequential to the greater scheme of things, and they are generally powerless to affect great change. This is a philosophical choice a writer must make, and I cannot argue with Ms. Proulx’s success, but I will say that it is a style that I personally dislike. The best stories, the ones people come back to and cherish the most, I feel, are the ones that possess a character that draws us in, that allows us to connect to the story, rather than to observe a tableau where largely faceless characters struggle against inexorable fate. These are the timeless stories, such as with Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Sethe and Denver in Beloved, and Abel in House Made of Dawn. These stories allow the reader to delve in to the minds and lives of people as they learn and develop, allowing the reader to connect directly to the story.

It is also no mistake that most works of popular fiction also focus so strongly on characterization. It’s human nature, voyeurism, the ability to look in on other people’s lives and observe what they do. Why do you think biography, memoir, and reality TV have become so popular in recent years?

Harper Lee, 1960

They’ve been around in one form or another for a long time, but the trend has become stronger more recently, and writerswho wish to be published in the here and now would do well to know what people want to read. They want characters to bond with. Lords know that even a weak story, plagued with iffy writing (Twilight) can survive on the backs of characters that allow readers to connect with them. This is especially true of serial stories, where the same characters appear again and again.

For instance, Terry Prattchet has constructed dozens of characters that regularly appear off and on in his Discworld novels, such as the incompetent wizard Rincewind, and the cunning Commander Samuel Vimes. Jim Butcher has built a career on the back of his powerful but notoriously unlucky wizard, Harry Dresden, in The Dresden Files. These are characters that compel readers to return again and again, to see what trouble they have gotten themselves into now.

Jim Butcher, 2000

All the aforementioned characters share something very special in common. They are fairly average people. Some may be possessed of extraordinary abilities, but at their core they are people. Flawed, at times vulnerable, and their concerns and worries are not so dissimilar from our own. Often times they are down on their luck, or put in untenable situations, or have significant hurdles to overcome. Everybody loves an underdog. This trait is not universal, but it is common enough. Even the most competent or powerful characters, such as the legendary Sherlock Holmes or superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc, possess the same basic human traits and must overcome significant odds in order to succeed. The struggle to persevere is central to every single character and story ever written. Without struggle there is no story to begin with. And without a connecting character or characters it is often difficult to become connected with the struggles in the story. People like stories about other people – especially extraordinary people.

When it comes to my own writing I usually begin with a single character, a primary protagonist. I get to know this character usually by constructing a character philosophy, answering certain questions that help me get into the character’s head. How did he/she grow up? What interests him/her? If confronted with X situation, what will he/she do? Then, sometimes, I compose fictional journal entries for the character, giving the character a written voice. This allows me to delve into the head of the character, especially if the story is told from a third person perspective, where it is more difficult to get into individual characters minds without breaking the barrier between narrator and character. In first-person perspective stories it is easier to get into the character’s head, but the philosophical questionnaire still guides me to think from the character’s perspective, allowing me to distance myself stylistically from the character while still engaging with him or her in writing. This may seem a little overly-complex, but think of it in terms of being an actor, getting into character. Once I know who this character is, I can then build a story around him/her, or them in the case of an ensemble group.

The hope is that in the end the characters feel very natural, and in the case of groups of characters, that their interactions among each other are consistent with their personal philosophies and manners of thought. In the end, though, it saves on editing time for me. When I first began I simply wrote, letting the chips fall as they may. Some writers can get away with this, but I suppose I’m a bit of a scatter-brain, so these character outlines allow me to maintain style, voice, and consistency throughout the first draft, limiting how often I have to go back and alter previous sections where I find a character “slipping,” or simply fading into the background (unless the character in question is meant to do so). When building a character in outline I first envisage basic physical appearance, age (not always specific, but generally in the age range I intend the story to focus on, such as Late teen/Early twenties), and then answer certain questions in-character. Most of my outlines read a lot like a personality test, determining what actions they would take if, say, they were confronted by a physical threat to themselves or a friend, and then a stranger. The outlines are never long, but serve me as a touchstone as I craft the story.

While it is not universally true, characters will often be of a similar age to their intended audience. For those that don’t, their mentality, actions, and the situations they find themselves in will be relatable to a certain age-range. Take Rincewind of Terry Prattchet’s Discworld novels. He is older, never determined specifically but he is likely in his mid-late forties, but the situations he finds himself in as the universe’s punching bag, running through a story filled with socio-political pop-culture references makes him a character more appealing to a 20+ year old age bracket, whereas Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird is a child, but the story is certainly not childish. It may be seen from the point of view of a child, but her story is one that has touched people from their teens and into their twilight years, since her story is a universal one. Other characters have a definite intended audience, the largely teen-based fans of Twilight for example, but they still share qualities that appeal to women in their twenties, thirties, or forties. Truth to tell I can only guess why in this case, but such is the nature of voyeurism and the desire to live vicariously through another. If you want to attract the widest possible audience, this is an important lesson to learn for commercial publishing: the characters you create must reflect a target audience, but still be accessible to those outside that audience. This is even more important if the characters you create will appear again and again, sufficient to attract a following.

One final element to character design that I feel is important is to view the world in which the characters operate as a character in and of itself. This is especially true in the genres I operate in most – Science Fiction and Fantasy. The world has a way of working all its own, and defining how it works is vital to building a story that remains consistent throughout. In The Dresden Files for instance, Jim Butcher builds his world-character from a combination of various myths, legends, and histories. In the world of Harry Dresden, Earth has languished under the yoke of the Age of Reason, but in the modern times magic, the supernatural, and the many creatures of folklore and legend are beginning to return in force and to become more noticeable. Most people still ignore the strange and unusual, since it defies the logic we as a species have nurtured for the past few centuries, with the rise of science. The world operates by unique laws, governing how magic is used (a la the White Council and its rules regarding the use of magic) to how practitioners of magic interact with the modern world (such as shorting out complex machines, frying computers by simply being near them, etc). In Terry Prattchet’s Discworld, the world itself is actually the most important character, the one major constant in all the many stories that occur on it. A disc, resting on the backs of four elephants that in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle, floating through the vastness of space. The unique play of magic, light, and forces on the Disc determine how the characters operate, and what stories occur.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, 2004

What a particular character is like is of course important, but understanding how they live in their world, especially when that world differs so much from the real one, is even more important, since it will guide how they operate and how the story unfolds. Once that is done the story itself is comparatively easy, especially since all stories ultimately boil down to two things: Stranger enters the scene and stuff happens, or the character goes abroad and stuff happens. Frankly, when it comes down to it, that is the operating system of all stories ever told, with the only defining factors being what specifically is happening, and what the characters do about it. Building the world and building the characters, really getting inside their heads, and then working on the story or stories has for me been the most effective method of writing with consistency and focus. It is not a method that works for everyone, and it might seem overly mechanical, but I recommend giving it a try, experimenting with it, and seeing how it works for you. And hey, once you have a whole universe built-up, the possibilities for new characters and stories is endless.

Cheers, everyone, and good luck in all your future writing endeavors.

That’s all well and good – artists in other mediums have needed tertiary skills like this for a while – and it’s probably time for writers to catch up. That’s cool. I get it.

I also get that all writers aren’t Emily Dickinson or Thomas Pynchon. Some writers thrive on self-promotion. Indeed, self-promotion might BE the logical extension of the urge to write in the first place, if the urge to write stems from self-expression (I’m not convinced that it does, but that’s another conversation).

But what about the writers who tend away from self-promotion? There’s a dilemma there, especially for self-publishers who don’t have any corporate help.

I’ve been considering all this because of the #amwriting hashtag that’s recently appeared in the self-publishing community on twitter. Including the hashtag in a tweet is the first step to being included in the corresponding website, amwriters.wordpress.com, a writer biography portal and storefront.

It’s silly to be conflicted about little things like a hashtag, but damn it, I’m nothing if not a dude who over-analyzes things.

So, while I respect what amwriters.wordpress.com is doing for the community by linking writers together, I can’t help but feel the same way about the #amwriting hashtag as I do about that hipster I see in every coffee shop ever. You know the one I’m talking about. He’s always sitting in the corner, typing away on a Macbook, wearing emo glassses, a plaid shirt, and pants so tight I can see his sack, all while trying his best to look like he’s concentrating on the NEXT BIG THING even though he’s really just blogging to rant about silly things that don’t matter (VERY AWARE OF THE IRONY, THANK YOU).

“But, luke,” you say, “Aren’t you the guy who always writes his name in lowercase like a pretentious tool and shamelessly promotes your work even while you’re still writing it?”

“Why yes,” I’d say (in our theoretical conversation. Also, you should back up a little – I can tell you had garlic for lunch), “I am indeed such a person. But, lo, I sayeth unto you – there is a key distinction between promotion of the work itself and promotion of the activity that produced it, and therein, as they say, lies the rub.”

What the hell am I talking about, you ask? I’m talking about people who have to declare that they #amwriting. It feels to me like something they are doing to “be seen” rather than just doing because they like it, just like that hipster guy who has to write in public.

Writing is inherently a solitary activity and the real thing that matters is the product, not the activity itself. The actual act of writing is stupidly boring to the outside observer – that’s the reason they’ve never made writing into a reality show ala Project Runway. Writing is some person sitting at a desk for hours typing and playing “let’s pretend.” There’s no reason to broadcast that activity to the world – when you put out a book, a story, or anything else written, people know how you did it. You sat there and you wrote for awhile.

Now, I get that some people might include the #amwriting hash tag not to be seen, but to feel community solidarity and encourage themselves that they are doing something meaningful. But it seems to me that if they need those things – a community and public encouragement (for performing the activity. Encouragement for producing a quality work is something totally different) – then they should question why they are doing it in the first place. The meaningful thing is the work that’s produced.

Unless I completely misunderstand the intent (which is possible, I suppose), including the #amwriting hashtag is no different from informing people you’re doing other things. Perhaps I should start including #amdefecating or #amstokingmyego hashtags in my tweets.

Because it’s the same damn thing.

Or, it’s even worse – it’s attempting to buy into an idealized conception of an artist, the idea that artists are these mystical unicorns that should be encouraged for doing what they do. But that’s dumb and not anything like the actual experience of writing.

Robert Heinlein said it best when he said, “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

I am blogging. Yes, yet another random person hurling their random thoughts onto the net in the hopes that someone will care enough to read them. I had the same reaction to joining Facebook a year or so ago, but folded under the constant nagging of a friend of mine.

But do not expect me on Twitter. EVER. There’s a line, dammit.

So, who am I? What do I have to write about, and why should anyone bother reading what I have to say? In short, my name is Elric, and if anyone out there is familiar with the works of Michael Moorcock, yes, that Elric. My father was a fan, otherwise if my mother had her way I would have been Sumner. Thanks, dad, I mean it. I’m a writer (as if that should be any surprise, given the nature of this site), focused mainly on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genres, a historian specializing in military history, and a literary scholar with a Master’s degree in English. This means three things: One – I have spent most of my twenties hiding in the halls of academia, learning to analyze literary works that most people don’t give a shit about, and they don’t want to hear anything about it because they’re busy watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Two – I am in debt up to my ears and still can’t find decent work because I have an MA in English, which at this moment is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Three – that I am skilled at performing in-depth analyses of media in order to discover what techniques they use to communicate with the public.

That sounds like awesome fun, doesn’t it? No? Don’t worry, I can still enjoy Adam Sandler movies and read old Robert Asprin novels, which allows me to both enjoy the less dramatic things in life while still being able to look inside and see how all the metaphorical bits work. Even “dumb-comedy” has its key techniques, just like dramatic literature, and when it works it works (Airplane, Happy Gilmore, Hot Shots for example)

Bob gets physical with Happy

but when it doesn’t, it doesn’t (Epic Movie, most anything by Will Ferrell).

LOL? No? Me neither.

When I do write a review or analysis for a book, movie, video game, or what have you, know that I do not judge all works based on one set of criteria. I seek to understand what it tries to do within its particular area, and then I break it down to see how it does it and whether or not it failed to meet expectations. My expectations, anyway. Everything with a grain of salt and all that.

Which brings me to what I write about. As you have probably guessed by now you can expect reviews and analyses of books, movies, and whatnot from me. I tend to focus on genre fiction, but I may also pop-up with a piece of non-fiction literature when something catches my attention. I am also an anime/manga geek – but not an otaku. There’s a line there, too. And that line is Man-Faye (look it up – at your own risk). Anyway, look for anime reviews and recommendations from me from time to time, if you care for that sort of thing. Also, I will be tossing up some of my thoughts and techniques when it comes to writing. I do not speak as an expert here, as I haven’t published diddly of any importance, but I do have some ideas that might be useful to others who struggle with certain aspects of the writing process, especially when it comes to characterization and dialogue, my two strongest areas, and I know many writers have trouble with those aspects of the writing process. So, consider this more friendly advice and brainstorming than expert commentary.

My attention tends to drift a lot though, so expect a healthy dose of random crap to come from me, including socio-political commentary, scientific developments, and gluten-free recipes (I was recently diagnosed with celiac disease, and it’s a bloody pain in the ass). I’ll also be shamelessly pimping my own work, too, so look for that, check it out, and give me money. Please. Pretty please?

Oh, I didn’t answer why you should be reading any of this crap from me. Well, I’ll leave that up to you all. Maybe I’ll bring some insights. Maybe I’ll make you laugh. Maybe I’ll point you towards something interesting and off-the-wall. Or maybe you’ll like my recipe for Chicken Curry. Anyway, that’s all for now, look for my first substantive piece of writing, “Constructing Character,” in the next couple of days. Until then.

While you’re there, you can also read Waiting, a short story about a young man who returns to his home town for an ex-girlfriend’s wedding.

Thanks for reading! Comments always appreciated!

However, it does have its drawbacks. Fear of failure is the top of the list, as well as social comparison. But those things are well documented (by better writers than me), so there’s no sense retreading old ground. Instead, I want to talk about one of the minor drawbacks to being a writer (though it might be a boon, if you’re the half-full glass sort), and that’s something I call writing the self. Hold on to your hats, we’re about to get all deep and shit (ha!).

The thing about writers is that they are both creators of culture and also perhaps those most easily swayed by it. The reason for this is that writers exist in the realm of ideas more than non-writers, if for no other reason than we spend long hours thinking up stuff that doesn’t exist and pretending it does. It means that other stuff that doesn’t exist can hold great sway over us, since imaginary stuff is very real to us.

This is fine and all well and good – it allows writing to happen – but it also makes us more susceptible to powerful ideas that we didn’t imagine, ideas that someone else imagined, like social concepts. Justice and love are just as imaginary as the characters in a novel, both are ideas and can have an effect on our lives, but have no physical location in the “real world.” (I don’t want to get into a debate here about love and justice existing or not existing here: show me a handful of justice and you’ll prove me wrong. Until then, just chill and listen to my armchair philosophizing. These things are ideas. The fact that they are so pervasive just makes them POWERFUL ideas.)

There are many social ideas we’ve given cultural power by adopting, but the one I want to discuss here is the idea of being an adult, and why it can be problematic. The thing is, writers believe so strongly in the power of imaginary ideas that we have no problem taking an imaginary idea and believing it has a bigger effect on our lives than someone who didn’t spend so much time imagining things.

The idea that I’ve become an adult is something I’ve done my best to adopt, but because I didn’t know what exactly being an adult entailed, when it seemed like it was time for me to be an adult, I reached for cultural markers, imaginary standards, and did my best to emulate them.

This involved two things: the completion of common adult milestones (college, real job, paying bills, etc.), and a reach into the religious mythos of the past, specifically Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11.

Both the milestones and the biblical advice are imaginary ideas, but because I am a writer (someone who entertains imaginary ideas on a regular basis), it was easy for me to accede to the cultural power of these ideas. I made them my own. In effect, I took ideas and wrote my self.

I’m not sure if other writers have struggled with this or not, but it seems my experience that my association with imaginary things has made commonly accepted social concepts very easy to adopt without knowing it. They just sort of sneak their way in, and invoke very powerful feelings, because I take imaginary things seriously. The problem with that is that adopting ideas without knowing it can lead to some very strange results.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved Lego blocks and comic books. If I had to guess why, I’d say it was because I love the power of imagination contained in the mediums. Building a Lego castle is very similar to writing – blocks of ABS plastic can be arranged in countless different forms, but the blocks stay the same. I feel like words are similar (even though words do change, over many years).

I wasn’t a poor kid growing up, but I wasn’t rich, either. So when I got a new Lego set, or a new comic books, I would have fun with it, but also spend hours flipping through the included Lego catalog, or list of comic book back issues I missed, and tell myself that when I grew up I would buy all the Legos and comic books I wanted.

Then, of course, I did grow up, or at least, I got older. It happens to everyone. But beyond that, I wrote myself as an adult, adopted all the ideas that I thought would make me an adult. But I still wanted Legos and comic books. So I bought them.

It’s funny: I avoided Legos and comic books for so long because I’d written onto my self that adults don’t want those things anymore. But then, once I saw that the whole idea of an adult was just a cultural ideal I’d adopted, it was imaginary, and I’m susceptible to imaginary things, I bought a bunch of Legos and comic books and enjoyed the hell out of them. I rewrote what I thought an adult was, or maybe just said to hell with it, and didn’t worry about being an “adult” anymore. I’m not sure which it was.

Either way, it frightens me how easy it was, once I started thinking about it, to rewrite things I thought I knew about myself. Thinking about it further, the ease I had, rewriting my adopted idea of what an adult is, I wonder if that’s the reason that writers and artists seem like they are always on the forefront of “causes” and why they sometimes seem to be the strongest proponents those causes, only to switch to something else 15 minutes later.

I guess you could call that wishy-washy. I think I’d call it rewriting the self. The thing is, the imaginary is so strong for us, and we develop such fluency with it, that trying on multiple ideologies like suits or hats (or pick your favorite clothing simile) is easy. This rewriting of the self is probably why I love the internet so much, because without physicality, it’s easy to rewrite who I am to the rest of the world.
I don’t know, myself by talking about writers doing this I’m grouping in more people than should be lumped in. Maybe it’s not writers. Maybe it’s just my generation. Maybe it’s just me. I’m not sure.

I’m just surprised by how it is to rewrite the self, when the rest of the world seems to struggle with it so much.

-m.

It’s unfortunate, but I like being able to pay my bills. The jury’s still out on whether I’ll be able to keep pace without writing as much as I’d like to (need to?) for long. Every day I feel like the other shoe is going to drop. And it’s a long way down.

But it’s not just time that’s constricted me lately. I’m not stuck in my current project – I know where I am and where I’m going, but the words just come out wrong. My brain feels thick and empty.

At least, until tonight. And I know why. I just always forget.

I’ve barely read anything lately. I’m about to move (Tuesday) and so I’ve been putting off going to the library. But a buddy of mine recently convinced me to borrow one of his books, the first in a series he’s been trying to get me to read for months, The Dresden Files – Storm Front by Jim Butcher.

I put it off because, as I mentioned in a previous post, I have an intense distaste for series and universes, especially for those that tend toward the episodic. You won’t hear me change my tune here – I’m only halfway through the book, and though I always force myself to continue through to the end once I’ve started a book, it’s just as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Aside from occasional bits of punnery and humor which have made me chuckle, the book is poor, for the simple reason it’s written with words and not with imagination. There are certain stock phrases that writers tend to use when they are attempting to describe a scene or a character, phrases that work in language but not as visual descriptions. These phrases have become shorthand, shortcuts, for writers, and they betray that the writer is not visualizing the scene while composing it. Rather, the writer is shortcutting straight to words.

The line that gave this realization to me was Butcher’s description of a character named Morgan, a man with “boyish good looks.” A stock phrase, “boyish good looks” doesn’t convey any fresh image in the reader’s mind. It tells me that Butcher wrote the words but did not picture the scene. What exactly are boyish good looks? Yes, if you focus on them, try to dig into the words, you can realize a crude image in your mind’s eye, but more likely you’re trying hard to play devil’s advocate to my assertions, rather than actually being able to claim that “boyish good looks” conveys to you a descriptive and interesting character portrait.

I admit, Storm Front is Butcher’s debut and must be taken as such. But this type of thing conveys to me the type of writer he is, one who begins with a story and dry words, rather than beginning with visualizations of the scenes and images. He doesn’t find “the hole in the paper” as Stephen King’s character Paul Sheldon in his book Misery would say.

However, the critique aside, Butcher has afforded me another reminder of what I’ve known and been told for a long time, that one cannot expect to constantly write without constantly reading. As much as I dislike Butcher’s first novel, after only reading half of the short tome, already the words flow much easier through my fingertips.

Reading is brain fuel for the writer, as if by typing out words on the page, a gastank in the mind is drained with each keystroke. And even by reading words that don’t particularly ignite my interests, the tank in my mind is fuller than it was before I started.

It’s bookfuel. I always forget that. And always remember it again after I get stuck somewhere and remember to just read for awhile before returning to the keyboard.

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. Bookfuel. Remember it. As for me, I’m returning to Butcher’s cheap newsprint pages. It’s saccharine schlock, but maybe a sugar rush was just what I needed.

-m.