Story Ingredients

A nerd, a punk, a jock, a highschool football star, and the star's girlfriend. Oh, and a Senator. That's the goofy blend I'm stirring for my current book-in-progress.

I love mixing characters together. It's just like cooking. You take a bunch of completely disparate ingredients and mix 'em together. Sometimes you do it with a specific goal in mind. Sometimes you do it just to see what you come up with. Sometimes ingredients work peacefully together and blend well. Sometimes they froth and hiss and bubble -- not liking the combination but still working together to make the recipe turn out.

And sometimes the combination fails entirely. You toss out the whole mess and start over.

My wife loves cooking, and I think she and anyone else who cooks can get this analogy.

Writing is the same way, I realize. You try mixing together certain characters, plot ideas, and other elements, and see what happens. When it works out, it's a delight. When it doesn't . . . hit "delete" and try again.

I wonder if I should start calling myself a cook. A story chef, perhaps? That sounds more impressive.

Cheap Date

I'll admit it up front: I'm a man of simple pleasures.

I get a kick out of things to which most folks probably can't relate. Part of it may be that, aside from going to work, I don't get out a whole lot these days, thanks to having two kids under the age of three and a pregnant wife who (this time around) is constantly exhausted, in pain, and/or nauseated. So when I do get to enjoy something, it's usually pretty low-key stuff.

Like yesterday. I wrote over 2700 words on my most recent literary endeavor while waiting to punch in at work, on my breaks, and when I got home. That's despite having a little boy who's gotten into "crashing", which is his term for spinning around the room, flopping against me as hard as he can, bouncing off, and taking it personally if he hurts himself.

2700 words. 2711, to be exact. I think it's a pretty big deal. My wife and my brother, when I bragged to them, nodded and smiled and gave me a "Wow, that's awesome" -- the same way you praise and agree with an insane person so he won't go ballistic and hurt somebody.

Some folks just can't relate.

It's a good feeling though, when you're writing fiction and you surpass the 1000-word mark. Typically, writing more than a couple hundred words can be a massive labor. So when you nail 2700, you feel like you've been flying. It means the story is coming together. The characters are working out their kinks. The dialogue is flowing better. Plot lines are evolving and moving forward without any major issues. And you're that much closer to typing "THE END".

It's great. Time to celebrate . . . Maybe treat myself to a little down time with closed eyes, music, and a pair of headphones.

But only for a little bit. When the story is flowing like that, a writer needs to ride the wave as long as possible.

Kowabunga!

Spin City

19th century humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw once said, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."

Ain't that a fact.

Even Hollywood, with an army of writers and directors and creators and producers, can't seem to come up with anything original anymore. All the really, truly, genuinely unique plots and concepts have apparently been exhausted. I have no idea what they're gonna do once they run the superhero genre into the ground like an overworked racehorse.

But I digress . . .

Writers of fiction sit in a whirlwind of ideas. We can pluck any one of them out of the air, and one can bet, dollars to donuts, that someone, somewhere, at some point, has beaten us to the punch and used that idea already. All we can do is take that idea and put a whole new twist to it. The fiction art has been reduced to producing twists rather than new ideas.

A World War II novel? Already been done. But what if mutant turnips took over Nazi Germany and threatened to destroy humanity altogether, and mankind's only hope was to put aside their differences and band together? Hmm . . . The turnip part may be a bit over the top, but the rest of it? It could go somewhere.

But I still think there's hope. Reality is not restricted by the limitations of our feeble mortal minds. Reality is an unending source of events we could never dream up on our own. It's packed with idea sources for storytellers. The one catch is that the adage, "Truth is stranger than fiction" holds true. Sometimes things happen in real life that would never work in fiction because it just isn't believable. Life is full of coincidences. Fiction has little or no tolerance for coincidences.

So is it worth the pain to sweat and agonize over what is ultimately a different spin on a hackneyed plot? I think so. More often than not, people will recognize that they've read or watched this story somewhere before and bemoan the lack of originality these days. But when we writers manage to disguise the story in twist and spin and angle until the reader sees a rare gem rather than old clothes, the sense of accomplishment outweighs the disappointment.

So, failing originality, I'll settle for spin.

Nothin' Personal -- Jus' Good Bidness

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.  -- Jackie Collins

I feel sorry for my characters.

That old saying that a writer becomes attached to his or her characters is true. The imaginary person takes on dimensions and traits and personalities that evolve over the course of the story, and by the time you get done you've come to appreciate the character as if he or she is a living, breathing person. As you type the last words of the manuscript, you experience an odd combination of regret that the story-journey is over and sadness that you may not ever get to work with this character again.

Unless the story becomes a series . . . but let's think realistically here.

But here's why I feel sorry for my characters.

I create them, sort of like God. I conceive them in my mind. I mold them out of the clay of my imagination. I set their life course with character sketches and plot lines. And then I set them free to follow their lives, to grow and develop.

But I'm also a cruel god to my characters. Without conflict, there is no story. And my characters encounter lots of conflict. I bash them around, frighten them, destroy their lives, send them into danger, maim them, make them fight each other, freeze them, cook them, starve them . . . and eventually (at least, in the case of many) kill them off. Only a few come through to see a happy ending, but not without going through a lot of misery beforehand.

I should actually feel guilt that I've been so mean. Relief that the ordeal is over for those who survived. Pity for the characters in my next work of fiction.

And sometimes, such as now, I do feel a certain amount of sympathy for what they go through.

I love them -- but I certainly have a funny way of showing it.