Year: 2015

            It’s Valentine’s Day.  Well, almost. And any good Valentine’s Day will boil down to either love or sex.  Both, if you’re lucky.

            That being said, I thought I could use this time to talk about one of humanity’s favorite pastimes and how I can use it as a good writer.

            Apologize up front if this is a bit coarse and/ or graphic for your personal tastes.  Things may get a little NSFW this week.  I’ll try to use polite terminology where possible.  And where it isn’t, well… sorry.

            I’d like to ask you a question.  You don’t have to answer it here, but I’d like you to think about the answer in your mind.  It relates to my point this week.

            How many people have you had sex with?

            Lets take a moment while we all think about this.  For some folks, this is a very quick, easy to answer question.  For some others, there may be a small amount of finger-counting involved.  Maybe even a list. 

            And I’m betting a few of you may also be asking a common follow-up to this question, and that actually ties more into what I wanted to talk about.

            What are we counting as sex? 

            Are we strictly referring to intercourse, or are broader definitions at work here?  Does just being naked with someone count?  Only using your hands? Only using your mouth?

            Before you answer any of those, let me toss out a few of those coarse moments I warned you about. Some names/genders may have been changed or completely made up to protect the… well, innocent’s not the best word to use here, is it?  Let’s just say to protect the people involved.

            I knew a woman a few years back who’d been to bed a few times (and at least once on a couch) with other women, but staunchly insisted she wasn’t bisexual.  When I looked confused by this, she explained that she had no problem with other women doing things to pleasure her, she just didn’t like reciprocating.  Therefore, as she saw it, she wasn’t bi.

            I also had another friend who was married, but slept around a bit.  Thing is, he honestly believed he wasn’t cheating because he always, well, concluded things outside, to be polite.  He never said it in quite so many words, but after a while it became clear that was his definition of being faithful.  And since he was kind of blatant about it, I have to wonder if his wife agreed with that definition.

            And then there’s a whole school of thought in some more conservative areas of the U.S. that…  well, that sex involving a rear entry (again, to be polite) doesn’t “count” as actual sex. Both parties can do this a hundred times and, with no shame, call themselves virgins in the eyes of the Lord. 

            No, I’m dead serious.  This is an actual belief.  Google “God’s loophole.”  But you probably shouldn’t do it at work.

            For some of you, these views and beliefs might make perfect sense.  Or maybe some do and some don’t.  Or maybe you’re openly laughing at some of the mental gymnastics these folks are doing to rationalize things.

            So what’s the point of all this, besides getting the ranty blog banned from a few dozen work servers?

            Let me explain with an example.

            There’s a pretty mediocre movie called What’s Your Number?starring Anna Faris.  Anna plays Ally, a woman who sees nothing wrong with her sexual history until she reads a magazine article that points out she’s had almost double the average number of lovers for a woman her age before getting married.  At which point she becomes terrified that she may have already missed “the one,” and vows to revisit past exes to figure out who said man (or woman) is. 

            This is barely fifteen minutes of the movie, but it’s told us a bunch of stuff about Ally. It gives us a good sense of her views on sex–that she isn’t a prude, but also isn’t exactly sex-crazed.  We know she’s a bit concerned with how other people may view her, and that she’s a bit flexible about her orientation (or was, at one point).  We know she sometimes makes poor choices, like when she says she’s done sleeping with random people and then almost immediately ends up in bed with her ex-boss.  We also know she’s a bit impressionable—she feels fine about her sex life until a magazine article implies she should feel otherwise.

            So this also confirms these magazines only make you feel bad about yourself.

            Just like all of us, how my characters define, describe, and sometimes rationalize sex says something about them.  It invades their language, their behaviors, and the way they act and react to other characters.  There was a very funny moment on Orphan Black when suburban housewife Allison snidely tells her caseworker “I don’t believe I’ve ever done ‘the nasty.’”  And even if you’ve never seen the show that one response tells you a few things about Allison.

            Is it sex?  Making love?  A quickie?  A nooner?  Something a little more graphic or coarse?   There are still lots of people who wait for marriage before having sex.  Some folks only want to do it with people they’re in a serious relationship with, while others are fine with jumping someone on the first date.  And then there’s one night stands, friends with benefits, and a bunch of other situations that all boil down to sex.  Plus, views change over time and depending on the situation, too.  

            And any one of these things will tell a reader something about a character.

            Now, here’s one last  thing to keep in mind.  Just because I know Wakko never sleeps with anyone on the first date doesn’t mean I need to show a second date.  Or even a first one.  I’m not saying every short story, novel, or screenplay should have a sex scene so I can develop the characters more.   But, as I mentioned above, if I know how my character would react to such things, there’s a good chance it’s going to give me a better sense of how they’ll speak and act. 

            So go forth this weekend and have fun.  And take notes.  For writing purposes.

            And now, after all the fun sexy talk, here comes the big let down.  As usual.

            Probably going to miss next week because I have a deadline coming up and I really want to get this draft done so I have time to do one, possibly two, more before this book’s due.  So next week is all focus.

            In the meantime, if there’s a particular topic I could blab on about that interests you, please mention it in the comments below.  I like taking requests.  Makes me feel like I’m helping.

            If not, two weeks from now I’ll probably end up talking about spelling again.

            I’m deep in a draft right now, so I just wanted to offer a quick tip this week.  Every now and then I’ve mentioned keeping an eye out for certain words.  Ones that are redundant or often unnecessary.  Here’s another one that just struck me the other day.

            From here on in, I’m going to go over my manuscripts and get rid of “felt” in my writing.  Not the fabric, the word.  Felt is one of those words that knocks my writing one step back from the reader.  It keeps them from getting immersed, from identifying with the character.  Because when I use felt, Yakko isn’t having things happen to him… he’s feeling things happen.

            Check out a few examples and see how much stronger these sentences become without feltin them

She felt razors of flame slash at her arms.

Razors of flame slashed at her arms.

He felt a deep, yawning pit that could never be filled open in his chest.

A deep, yawning pit that could never be filled opened in his chest.
 ————
Phoebe felt her heart stir as Wakko appeared outside her office window.

Phoebe’s heart stirred as Wakko appeared outside her office window.
 ————

Yakko felt the bullet punch through his vest and into his ribs.

The bullet punched through Yakko’s vest and into his ribs.

  ————

            Don’t those second versions have a lot more energy?  They’re each a word or two shorter, but they’ve got a lot more power behind them.

            Y’see, Timmy, if you want to get technical, using felt like this is a weak attempt to turn passive writing into active writing by making the character “feel” the actual action of the sentence.  So getting rid of felt isn’t a hard-fast rule, but I’d bet at least four out of five times my writing’s going to be a lot tighter and stronger without it.

            So get rid of felt.  You’ll feel better about it in the long run.

            Next time’s going to be very close to Valentine’s Day, so I figured we could talk a little bit about… well… you know.

            Until then, go write.

            Y’know, while I was pulling links for this post, I realized something kind of amazing (and I’m glad I caught it).  This is the 300th time I’ve posted on this page.  Three hundred ranty posts about characters and dialogue and spelling and structure. Wow.

            I’m kind of surprised we’re all still here.
            But let’s get back to it…
            Odd fact—I’ve probably fired more types of handguns and rifles than anyone reading this.  You might be a firearm enthusiast, you might be former military, you might be in the military now… but there’s a very good chance I’ve got you beat.  I once compared notes with an Army weapons specialist and it turned out I could name almost twice as many firearms than him that I’d used, including a few obscure ones he’d never even heard of.

            The reason why I can do this is all my time in the film industry.  With the different procedural and crime shows I worked on, it was very common to have a new murder weapon every week, along with a red herring weapon and possibly some random thug weapons as well. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, bolt action, lever action, pump, semi-auto, full-auto…  And every one of these that was actually used on screen had to be test fired by me and then by the actors. 

            Even with some common weapons repeating, over the course of fifteen years… I fired a lot of weapons.

            Now, with all that being said, even though I’ve worked with a ton of weapons, I would never consider myself any kind of marksman.  Definitely not a sniper.  Because there is much, much more to being good with weapons then just being able to pull a trigger.  An AK-47 might seem like a ticket to badass-dom, but not if I don’t know how to load it. Or hold it.  Or turn the safety off.  I’ve heard some great (and kind of awful) stories from soldiers about gunfights with people who don’t know how their own weapons work.

            I bet a few folks reading this have an acquaintance who buys nothing but the most expensive, top-of-the-line tools yet still can’t put an IKEA bookshelf together.  Most of us have heard stories about some guy who spends a quarter-million on a car and then wrecks it within a week because “the car outperformed the driver.” Heck, we’ve all seen proof that giving a director access to grade-A actors and millions in film technology is absolutely no guarantee of a decent movie.

            Y’see, Timmy, having high-level tools doesn’t automatically make me skilled.  They’re two entirely different things.  Sure, I can keep jabbing at that bookshelf with my $300 DeWalt Max XR  20 volt hammer drill, but if I just need to tap in a few finishing nails it’s not going to help much. And the parts the drill would actually work for… well, a Phillips head screwdriver would do the same job.  It might even work better, all things considered.  DeWalt’s are great, but they can kind of suck when you need to work in tight spaces.

            Anyway… where am I going with this?

            I’d like to share something with you.  As I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, I used to work on a text-based online game, what some of you might know as a MUD.  Because it was text-dependent, it was a chance for some people to really show off their skills.  Or complete lack thereof.  A friend of mine still works there and sometimes she shares things with me.

            So, check out this sentence…

            (names have been changed to protect the horribly guilty)

“Lashes aflutter like the wings of a satin bird, Phoebe sets glaukosphaerite lagoons on the newcomer, a smirk glissading across twin folds.”

             WTF…

            Now, I was going to try to sift through this sentence and break down all the places it went wrong.  To be honest, I did.  And I had a page and a half of notes, which is a lot more negativity than I want to have here.  So, instead, let me break all of that down into four simple rules for your writing arsenal.

            And yes, these would be rules, not advice.

            Know what words mean—It doesn’t matter how much my reciprocal saw cost if I keep trying to use it as a butter knife.  An elephant gun is not a sidearm.  And diffuse and defuse mean two entirely different things.

            This is the most important of these rules.  If I want to make my living with words, I need to know them intimately.   Not more or less what they mean or a general idea of how they’re used.  I cannot say words are the tools of my trade and then get repeatedly stumped by vocabulary questions on Jeopardy!. I’ve been doing this for many years, full time for over eight now, and I still pick up the dictionary once or thrice a week to make sure I’m using a given word correctly.  Because I have to know what they mean.

            This is also one of the worst rules to get wrong because it’s a mistake that’s hard to catch.  I won’t catch it because, well, I don’t know I’m using the word wrong.  My computer won’t catch it, because computers are idiots and will only tell me if a word’s spelled right, not if it’s being used correctly. Which means the readers will probably be the ones to catch it… and it won’t give them a good opinion of my skills as a writer.

           

            Don’t overcomplicate—Stephen King once said that any word you go looking for in the thesaurus for is the wrong word.  I’ve mentioned a few different versions of this rule at one time or another.  I’m not saying my writing can’t have some clever bits to it, but I should never confuse (or equate) overcomplicating my writing with complexity in my writing.

            If I have metaphors for metaphors (like using lagoons instead of pools because I don’t want to use eyes), I am pushing my audience away from reading and into analysis.  This is the kind of thing that destroys the flow of my writing.  And that’s the kind of thing that gets my writing set aside in favor of something else.

            Know how things go together—Remember that AK-47?  It’s not going to be half as effective after I force a lot of shotgun shells into the magazine.  They’re two powerful items that do not work well together.

            Know what words mean—Did I mention this one already? Well, it’s probably worth mentioning again.  It is the most important of these rules after all.  And the one most people will ignore, because I need to be able to admit I don’t know stuff before I can learn new stuff.

            Have a big arsenal of words because you need it and you can use it.  Not just because you think it makes you look cool.  I can spend twenty minutes looking up glaukosphaerite and making sure it’s spelled correctly (because it won’t be in the spellchecker), but I could also just use green and then finish this whole page in that same amount of time. 

            And more people would understand what I was trying to say.

            Next time, I wanted to tell you about something I’ve felt for a while now…

            Until then, go write.

            Late again.

            But I’m keeping lots of other schedules, if that matters.

            Anyway…

            I’d been playing around with the basic idea for this post when I was scooped by Welcome to Night Vale.  If you’re somehow not familiar with it, it’s a fantastic podcast that purports to be the community radio show from a very, very odd little town out in the desert (although not as odd as those jerks in Desert Bluffs).  If you follow them on social media, they occasionally toss out little Night Vale-ian sayings about life, death, horoscopes, janitors, and so on. A week or so back, there was this one…

           

            Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

            Which is a funnier way of saying what I wanted to talk about.  See, I was going to tell you about the dinner I had the other night.  It was one of those nights where my girlfriend and I just decided to scrounge up meals for ourselves rather than make an actual meal together, and I’d been having odd cravings for scrambled eggs.  I’d also been feeling a little nostalgic because—silly as it sounds—we didn’t eat breakfast Christmas day.  And I’d been thinking about the breakfasts my dad would make on Christmas mornings when my brother and I were kids and we still lived at home.  It was a small, simple tradition, but it was something I’d been thinking about.

            So… That’s what I had for dinner.  Breakfast.  I sliced some kielbasa—yep, kielbasa as breakfast sausage—scrambled three eggs, added a few mushrooms and a bit of cheese, and cooked it all together.  Which I ate while watching an old episode of Home Movies. The ren faire episode, if you care.

            It was a wonderfully satisfying dinner.

            Well, it was to me, anyway.

            What am I getting at?

            There’s a Mel Brooks quote I’ve paraphrased here a few times before.  “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”  It’s usually used to emphasize the comic aspect, but I think it works well in reverse, too.  Many people fail to see that what they consider great, powerful drama is actually, well… not.

            I’ve mentioned before—several times before—that for screenplay contest readers one of the most dreaded scripts is one that comes with a “based on a true story” label.  And the reason for this is that most of us live pretty average lives.  Yeah, even the dramatic parts. We have great successes and miserable failures.  We get knocked down and we pick ourselves back up (or not, sometimes).  We lose people we care about and we find new loves.

            So a lot of these “based on a true story” scripts tend to be… well, dull at best.  Tedious at worst.  Neither of which are labels we want on our writing

            Y’see, Timmy, my life feels special to me because, from my point of view, I’m the main character.  So lots of elements of my life may seem exciting. boring, hysterical, or tragic to me, but that doesn’t automatically mean they will to you.  Or to him.  Or to her. 

            Honestly, quite a bit of my life is average.  Many of you would probably even call it boring.  And I recognize that, which is why I rarely use me as a reference.  Or as a guideline for what most people should know or how most people would react.

            One of the skills we all need to develop as a writer is the ability to sift good ideas from bad ones.  Or common ones.  To recognize that just because something hits me hard doesn’t mean it will have the same resonance with everyone else.  It’s an empathy issue, something I’ve brought up many times before.  If I have trouble honestly seeing the world through different people’s eyes, I’m just not going to be good at this.

            I don’t want to tell you my story.  My story is boring.  That’s why I want to tell you St. George’s story.  And Danielle’s story. And Mike’s story. And the story of how Eli and Harry met three times before they ended up traveling together.

            What story are you going to tell?

            Next time I’d like to talk about firearms, power tools, sports cars, and other expensive things people spend money on for the wrong reasons.

            Until then, go write.