The Story of the Storm

I feel it necessary to offer a modest apology for the tardiness of this post. Now, as some of you know from my posts or from having talked with me, I have been recovering from surgery in June. Well, my recent lack of content has nothing to do with that. Rather, the larger influence on my creative process has been the impact of the tornadoes that rolled through this region a week ago, downing trees everywhere and knocking out power lines wherever they could be found. I spent five days without power, sitting in the dark, listening to everything spoin in the refrigerator, and I was one of the luckier ones. There are souls who still don't have power and might not see electricity for another week. I am guessing they won't be posting much either.

Now, when about half-a-dozen tornadoes come storming through your area, etching a path of destruction in their wake, we want to tell this to others. Writers want to turn this into a story, of course, but this is where it gets difficult. Tornadoes are terrifying things - everyone knows that. They sound like freight trains rolling toward your house, and the sound of a one-hundred-year-old oak tree snapping its trunk resonates like an explosion. The wreckage afterward can be other-worldly, leaving us just slack-jawed at the carnage surrounding us. And yet, where is the story? What is it that we, as writers, can pull out of this to bring the interest to our story? This is where it gets tough.

For a story to be something more than just reporting on what happened, there needs to be a thread woven through the entire thing that contains a unique mood, a sentiment, a perspective, or something the reader can follow through like a clear path through the disaster. Without that, stories drift around aimlessly, providing a lot of information but not really taking the reader through an experience. 

I offer my experience as an example. I had been outside for over two hours that morning, and the humidity was unreal. Even though the sun was not very intense, my clothes were saturated with sweat, my energy quickly draining. Then, just as I prepared to walk back home for a video call, I felt the air change. The sweat on my body chilled as the air pressure dropped, and heavy clouds rolled in, their ominous green tinting speaking of dangerous weather. I walked a little faster as the wind picked up, the first rumbles of thunder coming in from the west. I wasn't inside five minutes before the rain sheeted down in torrents, and with one flash of lightning, the power went out. I made my video call on my phone and tried to focus on the other voices, but for twenty minutes there was the constant interruption of thunder, of something hitting off the house, of a tree trunk rupturing, and the rain trying to sweep away the house.

And then it ended. Within a minute, Nature's wrath was over, the torrent was a drizzle, the green sky now just a boring, overcast gray. However, looking outside, the weather had rewritten the geography of my street. Mighty trees were horizontal, pulled up from the very roots, my street now a river of branches and garbage clogging up the sewer drains. My shirt was still damp with the sweat from a muggy morning, yet I was in a new, unrecognizeable world.

My thread in that story was change, my vehicle simple sensory pickups. I was lucky - no large trees fell on my house or car, no structural damage, just no electricity for about 121 hours. People a few towns over would have much worse stories to tell, so I am not complaining. For now, I am just offering this as my story - it's what happened to me, and this is how I offer it as a writer.

And I do apologize for the recent lack of content. I will try not to have disasters interrupt me in the future.    

Nobody's Perfekt

Now that I am getting back some of my energy and feeling a little more up to speed, I thought it best to provide some fresh content. More to the point, I wanted to bring up a writing trait worth complaining about. Or, rather, I should say, a not-writing trait worth complaining about. It has everything to do with the art of perfection, and what some people do to their writing in pursuit of this goal.

Let me preface this by saying there is nothing wrong with perfection. By definition, that statement is true. Pursuing it is also admirable, since such an endeavour forces us to become better writers. Now, having said all that, let me drop in the little caveat: We should all pursue perfect, but we should never expect to achieve it. This is where a lot of writers go off the rails.

I was reminded of this by a story told by a fellow member of the workshop I facilitate. He told a story of someone known as The Maker, who tried to create the perfect being, only to be disappointed each time, leading to an obsession that eventually brought about The Maker's own destruction. This is very much the writer's dilemma, and I have witnessed it in many people trying to write their stories. They know their story, they have it all in their heads, but translating it from neurons into words on a page becomes a challenge they did not expect. They get bogged down in details, trying to create the perfect page, the perfect paragraph, the perfect sentence. The frustration takes them away from the act of creation, and often that story never gets told in full. This is truly a tragedy.

Now, do I complain about these writers? Hardly - I try to push them to write first, to create before they edit, and to commit to the story before working on the grammar. The rest is up to them. Then there are writers who bring a rough draft of their story to the workshop - any workshop, really - they read their rough draft, then apologize for it being a rough draft. At that point, I let them know a few facts. First, I tell them there's no need to apologize because what they have done is created something. That's the win for any writer. Then I ask them what feels so rough about what they just read. This forces them to do a little self-critiquing: Was there word repetition? Passive voice? PoV problems? Usually their instincts are on par with exactly what I would've commented about. Sometimes they admit it's not the story they were hoping to tell, and we discuss that as well. But all of this comes with the insistence that there's no need to apologize.

So, what do I complain about with writers? My one complaint is when a writer wants to tell a story but decides in advance they don't have the skill, tanent, vocabulary, or whatever, and they never try to write it. That one gets me every time.  

Finding the Story

Today was quite the day. The morning kicked off with some absolutely tropical humidity, and then the temperature started to rise. I was out there this morning melting away, getting chased by a stray dog, wondering how it could get so hot so fast, but then the clouds came in. Quickly. Then my phone chimed off with one of those shrieking alarms telling me (and everyone else) to head for shelter in light of the tornado warning. I went inside, the winds picked up, and a monstrous storm exploded onto the scene, replete with green skies, twisting winds, and debris everywhere. It was a drive-by storm, with the worst over before it could be appreciated, and before long the rain ended. In its wake, however, were flooded viaducts, scattered branches, downed trees, blinking traffic lights and power outages.

So, as a writer, I am thinking, "Where's the story here?"

When I say, "Where's the story," you might think, "It's right there in the first paragraph. You sketched out the key points in that one space!" That's where the difference lies - the first paragraph contains the information of this afternoon's events, and the setting for whatever story I may write. However, the storm itself is not very story-worthy. It was impressive, yes, but telling people all about the details of the storm is not storytelling, it's reporting. Finding the story is locating that one thread within the events and tracing that valuable path as it tells about a specific aspect of life. 

If I were to tell a story about this morning and the run-up to the storm, it would've involved the tensions surrounding my late-morning/noontime events. I was hot, tired, and saturated with sweat, trying to get my work outside completed. However, nature had other plans. I was repeatedly approached and harrassed by a stray dog acting erratically and drooling around the mouth. My legs grew exhausted as I tried to complete the last mile's-worth of work - all with this dog lurking nearby. I called the local police and got animal control to come out and round up the dog, knowing my clock was ticking and I had very little energy left but work had to be done. With the dog situation in someone else's hands, I went back to my last responsibilities, but saw the clouds on the horizon. Dark, scary clouds. Now I had to make a choice - race against time in my fatigued state and try to wrap things up before the storm hit, or play it safe, get inside, and dive for cover because my work could be finished afterward. 

The focus onthe challenge of time and fatigue versus completing the tasks at hand draws interest; it creates an urge in the reader to figure out how things will go. There's a need for resolution that only the story can satisfy. The storm itself is one of the forces working against the character, along with fatigue, heat, and the ever-present dog, but the story is about the challenge of completing things.

And to offer some closure, I did wrap up my duties, got inside, watched the storm from the relative safety of my own home, then went out to hand off my work.

I do not, however, know what happened to the dog.    

Writing and RAGBRAI

Regular readers of this piece know that I enjoy bicycling, particularly long-distance bicycling. In the spring and summer months (this year being an exception), I can often be found conquering the roads and trails throughout the region. I love covering the miles, taking in the fresh air, maintaining a heart rate higher than my cholesterol reading, and zooming along on my trusty Schwinn. And like any distance cyclist, I have had an interest in RAGBRAI.

My trusty Schwinn

For the uninitiated, RAGBRAI is a ride held by the Des Moines Register, going by the full name of  Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). It is a nearly 500-mile, week-long journey across a state which, much to my surprise, is not entirely a flat, empty prairie full of corn. This grand ride is one of the longest continuous ones in the country, and you will get to go with approximately 60,000 of your compatriots-in-cyclingon this grand travel. RAGBRAI has always drawn my attention because of its epic length, its challenge to the human physique, and the skill required to endure such a long ride. And yes, there's a part of me that would love to take this grand trek throughout the Midwest.

Then I face the simple fact: I would die. The ride would kill me. Literally kill me.

Why do I go on praising RAGBRAI just to shoot myself down and walk away from the challenge? Simple: I know what my training has built me for. Now, I openly admit that if I was able to dedicate myself to such distance training, get a bike better suited for distance than my trusty Schwinn, and apply discipline to other parts of my life (health, diet, physique), RAGBRAI would be very doable, and indeed enjoyable. However, that's not what I've trained for. My cycling style is slower, more methodical, and used primarily as a physical meditation on the world at 15 miles per hour. The distance happens, yes. Howevber, seven consecutive days of rides averiging almost 70 miles a shot would take their toll. I would die, and that would be the end of it. Mission unaccomplished.

 Why am I going on about this? Because I think about the same trek I have taken with writing. Without question, I wanted to write a book for many years, but the thought of it was freaking impossible. Four-hundred pages of continuous storytelling, complete with a satisfying character hourney, complete story arcs and subplots, and constant reader interest? Never gonna happen. However, I realized back then that, just like RAGBRAI, that writing journey was not possible because I hadn't trained for it. My writing was research-based, and my creative muscles were rather stunted. So, instead of disposing of the dream of writing a book, I trained for it. I worked hard, learned my lessons, wrote constantly, practiced my voice, and developed the tools necessary to write a complete novel. Then I went off and did the unthinkable: I wrote that book (and another, thank you). I just needed the training.

RAGBRAI ends tomorrow in case you want to zip over to Iowa to congratulate the finishers (it's non-competitive - the only goal is to finish). You can look at the cyclists crossing the line and taking in a little amazement at their feat. Feel free to appreciate what it took for them to do this. And then, after the last rider crosses the line, fingure out what your own RAGBRAI is, and start training for it.    

Writer At Play

Let's face it - being a writer is hard work. Maybe not in the same way as other, more labor-intensive jobs, but it's tough. There is a lot of training, all kinds of repetitive tasks building up your skills, a lot of setbacks, and the inevitable pain of failure. And we do all of this and go through all of these things in order to become a better writer, and to eventually reach some point where writing flows naturally - but there's no promise we'll hit that pinnacle. As I said, writing is hard work, which is why we need to have our fun and games now and then. 

Now fortunately, writers do differ from more labor-intensive jobs in the sense that if a writer decides to fool around, there's minimal risk of an industrial accident and a lawsuit from OSHA. Rather, when writers have some fun, they don't even need to actually be writing. It can be all mental fun and games, or letting meaningless ideas coming to mind that the writer just indulges. Most of the time, the best way for a writer to help themselves while at play is to simply challenge themselves to let go of rules, structure, and all the formalities, and look for the unexpected - then play with it.

I was trying this out with a simple idea - a writer's prompt, if you will. Someone sits down to have their fortune read, and the medium brings out the tarot deck and places down the first card  - and it's the...

What is it? Is it the Death card? The Ten of Swords (literally the worst card you can get)? Well, if you don't know the cards in a tarot deck, that actually helps. "Playing" with this story means giving ourselves the opportunity to step outside the reader's (and the writer's) expectations and draw on something new and unexpected. What if the first card is... the Mother-In-Law. Now, a normal tarot deck does not contain this card, but maybe that's the point you play upon. Maybe the medium has never seen this but feels obliged to explain the card. Maybe the medium has a truly magical tarot deck and expects weird things to appear. The next cards could be the Sloth, the Cheeseburger, the Loft Apartment... whatever you want. Play with it. Have fun.

When I went with this prompt, I had the medium draw the Death card, then explain to the frightened customer that it didn't necessarily suggest death was imminent but rather some form of change. The medium then drew the next card and it was... also the Death card (utterly impossible to do). And yes, the third card of this poor soul's fortune was - you guessed it - yet another Death card. I didn't go wild with the play aspect, but I definitely mixed it up. My thought was, "what would it be like to be constantly pursued by the Death card?" So I played with ideas, and there it was.

If you are in the mood to flex your writing muscles but not in the place where you can create, just take in an idea and try to process it through your creativity. Leave the proper and practical structure behind, and stretch your mind as far as possible outside the boundaries. It's the kind of play that will show up in your writing... you just might not realize it until you see how your horizons seem broader.  

A Few Choice Words

I am sure you have heard about the last heat wave that hit the Midwest a week ago, and astute weather-watchers will know that another heat wave is beginning as of today - the "heat dome" effect that is becoming so popular to talk about. However, it takes a real fan of weather trivia to know that this is also the 31st anniversary of the great heat wave that hit Chicago, taking over 700 lives with it before things cooled down from their 105-degree peaks. It was a genuinely miserable three days in the city, and for people without air condition (as was the case in my apartment), the heat was something I will never forget.

The part of the heat wave that applies to today's post, however, has nothing to do with fatalities or the weather pulling the sweat right out of us. Rather, I recall how people were so amazed and overwhelmed by the heat that the temperature apparently melted away their vocabulary, reducing people to as few words as possible. A discussion in the morning with my then-girlfriend would go something like this:

Me: "How bad is it outside?"
GF: "It's hot."
Me: "Hot?"
GF: "Really hot."
Me: "Like how hot?"
GF: "Like really really hot."

Looking bad, I can appreciate how this did, in fact communicate the temperature in a very human way. Really hot was a few degrees higher than hot, and really, really hot was a few degrees higher still. In the midst of a heat wave, not much more needs to be communicated. However, as writers we have an opportunity to write about hot environments from the luxury of a more temperature-controlled place (if we choose), and use the full breadth of our vocabulary to express to our readers just how hot it is. Or we can surrender to the ease and comfort of "really, really hot."

This is one of the areas where we can make our writing really shine without too much work, and it's by keeping a lookout for words like "really" (or its cousin "very") as a way of amplifying our adjectives. Instead of emphasizing how hot it is by the number of times we use the word, "really," we can switch words altogether. Temperatures can rise from "hot" to "exhausting," to "scorching," and up to "hell-on-Earth." Save your very, really, incredibly, etc. for a special occasion, or for a fallback when you are just too tired to flex with a stronger word. 

For a little elaboration on this, I recommend my post, "Dirty Modifiers," to get more of the point across. Otherwise, my only advice is to be careful outside the next few days, because it's going to be hot. You know... really hot.   

A Good Reason to Write

I hope everyone had a festive Fourth of July. I tried to - really, I did - but sometimes those aren't how the cards get played. With the storms rolling through I had periodic power outages and it basically ruined my Friday night. I had a little recovery setback in the form of a mild fever. With my car sitting idle, one of the wheels decided to deflate (and I had to rely on other people to repair it because I cannot exert myself in that way). And as the topper, I found out today that someone I know was killed Saturday in a freak accident during those horrible storms. It just wasn't a great holiday weekend.

Of course, such a bad stretch of days can lead anyone back to the idea that it's been too rough a time to sit back and write anything. Even the most devoted writers would not be scolded if they had a bad weekend and said, "That's it, today I am not writing a thing." No shame there, but I would make the argument that times like these are actually the kind of situations which should move us toward the keyboard, not away. 

Personally, I find that one of the greatest power a writer possesses is the ability to create a new form of reality. Obviously, no writer can change what has already happened, but they can draw up a different world and explore it for some of the truths not currently available to them. Writing about the perfect Fourth of July weekend will not remedy the shortcomings of this one, but for one glorious flurry of words, we can talk about our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and everything we felt inside that did not get a chance to be expressed. No storms, no fever, no flat tire, no freak accident. For that time on the page, life can be good again.

Some might say, "That kind of escapism isn't very healthy." Well, if it was escapism, maybe it wouldn't be. However, as we develop our skills as writers, we learn not just how to write about other events, but also to pick out the universal truths in those stories and better understand them. Instead of wailing woe and lament for all the things that didn't happen, we can discover just why those things were so important at this point in time and why we are so shaken from their loss. As I wrote about this past weekend, I came to the realization that I just wanted the world to return back to normal again. My recovery has not been too bad, but being cooped up in my house for about two weeks has really made me yearn for the simple things in life to come back, and be frustrated by those things that have changed forever.

It might not be a big revelation, and there's a chance I would've figured things out without having to write a bunch of stuff. However, the tool of writing expedites matters, and grants me a shortcut to some valuable lessons. Now I can move forward with my recovery, hopefully get back to a new kind of normal, and begin to pick up where I left off before everything changed. And for those things that are irreversible, I hope to find peace with them.

RIP, Dana.   

Getting Weird

There was this unintentional exercise in creativity I participated in totally by chance many years ago. It was a simple prompt: Create your own alien life form, and describe it. The important part was not to just pick some alien like ET or the infamous xenomorph in the Alien franchise, but make up one of your own. The hook here is that, by definition, your alien could be anything in the universe. A number of us participated in this, and it was actually very telling in just what it meant to be creative.

Of the people who participated, they stretched their imaginations. Aliens with eyes on their feet, with tentacles and feelers to investigate the world around them. Some changed colors, some were invisible. Large, small, winged, everything - they covered the spectrum, each one a derivation on the creator's idea of a cool alien. My alien was a little creature that, for all intents an d purposes, resembled a pair of sunglasses. It was a parasite that would control the minds of potential hosts, and make then wear the alien sunglasses, which would then latch on to the host around the eyes, slowly feeding off of it. Outsiders would just see someone with a cool pair of shades, but it was the alien pair of sunglasses in control.

Needless to say, I got some looks when I read this idea for my alien. People found it amusing and out-of-the-box, and it was mentioned that it had the potential to be a B-movie classic. However, the real stunner was that after everyone was done showcasing their aliens, the moderator brought out the clincher. They pointed out that while everyone did create an alien, they were surprisingly contained in their ideas. Regardless of how creative they were, all these aliens across the universe apparently were roughly humanoid, with arms and legs in the standard pattern, they walked upright, and were still just modifications of homo sapiens himself. Except for the sunglasses, of course.

Now, fundamentally is it creative to have a pair of sunglasses as the alien of choice? After all, sunglasses are already kind of a thing, right? The moderator didn't chide me for borrowing a household item, but instead pointed out the whole takeaway of this exercise: being creative is often about going beyond what we identify with. Creativity shows not just in making one's own version of an upright humanoid alien, but finding something fresh and new that reinvigorates the idea itself. I play this game with other people, and point this out after they introduce their mostly-humanoid creation. It gives them a revelatory moment, and the concept sticks with them for a bit. (One friend made an alien that was a cloud - she is just freakishly creative, so she wins).

Sometimes, the best route toward developing the "new alien" idea involves escaping the concept itself. Too often, we hear a challenge like that and we start thinking about what would make an alien more interesting than what we currently think of. Unfortunately, this anchors us to a predefined idea of what an alien might be. Engaging creativity often involves starting from a completely unattached point - the "fresh cloth" approach - and finding out what concept you want to express then building it out around that point. It means getting rid of preconditions and locking onto one point of the concept that triggers your creativity. From there you cut the new pattern and make something completely your own. Even if it ends up being just a pair of sunglasses.   

Let Me Tell You A Story...

As a writer, I enjoy engaging people with stories about my various adventures. They can be simple, mundane events, but there are plenty who have told me they know when I am at a party. They will arrive, circulate, then realize "someone is holding court in the other room." That court is held by me telling some anecdote or story from days past. It's what I like to do. It relaxes me. But, despite what people might think from watching me go about my business, it is not easy at all. It's very hard, it takes practice, and it's not always appropriate,

What creative types already know is any event can constitute a story - it's just a matter of getting the right perspective and reading the room well enough to know when the story fits the mood. I have had the unfortunate experience of being with friends when someone's name comes up and a person in the room proceeds to tell a story about that named person. The story is inappropriate to the point of awkward, total cringe content, and probably something that the named person didn't want to spread around. And yet, here we are and there it is. Other times, people will be together and someone will start telling a story. About thirty seconds in, everyone but the teller realizes this story has nothing do do with the general tone of the gathering, and that the teller basically wanted to tell this story for their own person reasons. It might be a great story, but if it doesn't fit the mood of the room, it is lost before it starts.

Now, as I mentioned in my last post, this week I donated a kidney. The surgery went fine and the kidney is now working for someone else. This event is naturally excellent fodder for a great story. However, as I recovered from the procedure (on massive painkillers), I considered what the best story actually was. There is the story about what brought me to make such a decision to be a donor. There is, of course, the retelling of the pre-op process and the highlights of my hospital stay (note: after kidney donation, the next 30 hours in the hospital invovles a lot of people examining your bladder and bladder-adjacent areas. I no longer have secrets at Loyola Medical Center). These are valid stories , but could there be more than just a travelogue of the donor adventure?

After a few more painkillers, I thought the real story might be from the kidney's perspective. After all, it was now called to duty at a new location - a rare thing for organs. Would it be excited? Nervous? Anxious to get out and see the world? What would it be like to meet a new body? This seems like fertile ground for story-telling, since anything is possible.

Now here's the closer: They're all great stories. They all should be written, or thought about, or put together during some kind of writing exercise. What makes them interesting? Well, they really become interesting if they are told at the right time to the right crowd. Maybe the whole "having my kidney pulled out through a navel incision" story isn't something people at the barbeque would like to hear, but that crowd would appreciate the quiet embarrassment as I disucss the Loyola medical staff lining up to examine my junk. In either case, there are plenty of stories to be told. Just make sure you match the story to the crowd and the mood. The story will do the rest.     

"I Have Nothing to Write About"

Among the many writing workshops I attend and the one I facilitate, I hear this common theme. Someone, when asked to write about something from their own life, will say either nothing big ever happened in their life, or they don't have a lot to write about these days. I will give the first excuse more credit than the second one, but they are still both excuses. Therefore, I thought it best to point out why these reasons just don't fly with me. 

First, let's talk about nothing big happening in someone's life. At face value, I can appreciate what they are saying. They don't have this big, landmark adventure in their history to talk about. They never pulled someone out of a burning car, jumped a motorcycle across a canyon, saved Nakatomi Plaza from the ruthless plans of Hans Gruber, etc. That's fine - those stories are very rare anyway, and often exaggerated anyway. However, those stories aren't requirements for writing about something from their own life. The only requirement is to have an event in your life that you remember - then write it down. It could be the disappointment of discovering all the Diet Coke is gone, waking up in the morning with an inexplicable bug bite, or getting drunk with your friends and ending up face-first in a toilet - again - at your local bar. Those are all stories that you can write about. No, they are not likely to become screenplays or an eight-part limited series on Netflix. However, they are honest, frank stories of life that will help you hone your writing chops.

The second excuse - not having a lot to write about these days - is a redirection from the point. As writers, it is our job to see the difference in every day, whether we write about it or not. We are supposed to tease out the details and discover what makes everything unique, funny, entertaining, scary, boring, mundane, or whatever we choose. The various events of one single day in our life all have a lot to work with, and they are all unique. And before you mention that you're kind of in a rut where one day just bleeds into the next, well, that's an amazing subject to write about. Describing repetition, monotony, and the endless tedium of existence is a challenging exercise and also a great way to pull ourselves out of that rut because we examine just what has us bogged down. Again - probably won't end up on the big screen, but it gets you writing, and anything that you write is worth the effort because you've pressed your skills just that much further.

On that note, I am venturing into a challenging area of life. Tomorrow I am going to the hospital and donating a kidney (the left one if you're curious). It is promising to be an exhausting process, and it might pull me away from posting my twwice-a-week writing commentary for a little bit. However, do not doubt for one second that I will not be writing about it once I get home. The only catch is that I might not be posting regularly while I recover. Consider yourself forewarned.

Now get writing!

How Do You Get Better at Writing?

I am not one to brag (okay, I am totally one to brag), but I have done quite a few posts on this site. Some are better than others, but each one of them was worth publishing as a part of my work on this site. Now, some are better than others, and new ones are generally better than old ones - though my early-on entry, "Obi-Wan Kenobi - You Suck!" still holds the record for the most hits by one post. Jedi masters aside, there has been a lot of writing placed onto this site, and a lot of valuable information. There's also a secret within these entries that I shall now reveal (it's not a big reveal).

Some people have asked me, "What on Earth has possessed you to do so many entries?" or something similar to that. And in fairness, looking back at the 665 entries I had as of yesterday, that's a lot of writing. At 500 words per entry, I have basically typed the equivalent of three works of Tolstoy along with three or four of Poe's short stories to boot. Is this abnormal behavior? Manic? With a tally over 332,000 words, I must have some kind of problem. And I will admit that problem here and now - it's not enough; not by a longshot.

Someone said that to become good at anything, you must make the unthinkable feel ordinary. If you want to be great at football, you have to see yourself making the one-handed catches or breaking every tackle as just another day at work. Want to be a great illustrator? See yourself creating the images and worlds you hold in highest regard. Want to be a poet? Pursue that perfect combination of words that make people clutch your pages ot your chest, and know you will be able to create those at will. Sure, your first great work will be personally impressive, but that's only half the battle. Hopefully, you will realize that just by writing that first great work, you realize you have done the unthinkable, climbed Everest and stood at the top, and nothing can stop you from doing it again.

So, why the 665 posts? Because each one forces me to write something a little better than the last - or at least to try. Each post might help a few writers out there, but it definitely helps me hone my skills. The statement I follow the most is, "Practice Makes Permanent" (yes, I said it right). The more you do something, the better you get at it both with your conscious skills and your mental muscles that learn all the little tricks and burn them into your subconscious. The more you practice, the more your "new tricks" become habits. You become even more of a writer.

So, as I continue posting on most Mondays and Fridays, just keep this in mind. Amidst all the advice, stories, and sometimes-odd metaphors, I am also advancing my own personal skills by the simple act of making these posts into a habit, and turning thoughts into little capsules of wisdom (I hope). And the more you follow your dream of writing or creating, the furthert you will get toward doing the unthinkable, and even advancing beyond.       

More About AI

In late April, I wrote a post, "A Writer's Warning," which discussed the seductive dangers of AI as a surrogate for actual writing. My focus was largely on poetry, and I admit to using AI for the catch picture that accompanied the piece (I do this without reservation - my written words are my own since this is about writing. Art, however, is not my thing). Today's piece, however, will discuss the upside of AI in writing, particularly as a tool to help you improve your game.

An AI monster created by the monster that is AI

The scary thing about AI is that it can now write a novel, pretty much with minimal prompting. There have been cases where authors have been caught using AI to produce their works, and in some cases, more formulaic writing genres are quickly becoming infested with artificial works. Some technical algorithms and software packages can currently sniff out computer-generated verse, but it's just a matter of time before those are defeated. In short, AI is rapidly  becoming a part of the writing environment whether we want it to or not. However, instead of fighting it on every front, I recommend using it where it can serve you best as a writer.

I will use ChatGPT as my example AI, but many different packages can do this task. I am wrapping up the workshopping process for my latest novel with the working title, "Easier Than the Truth," and in a few months I plan on taking all those workshop points and working them into the copy. However, as an experiment, I decided to call in my AI frenemy and asked it to provide a grammatical review of my work. I dumped all 104,000 words into it, made sure to ask for a grammatical critique and scoring (ChatGPT can be a real kiss-up if you don't ask for objectivity), and hit enter. Boom! Seconds later, it gave me a full write-up of my work, including strengths, weaknesses, problems, and an actual scoring:

Category Score
Grammar            8.5/10
Punctuation 8/10
Sentence Structure 9/10
Dialogue Mechanics 9/10
Professional Readiness 8.5/10

It then explained, and offered examples from my text, weak spots, including the usual gallery of dangling participles, split infinitives, hyphen issues, etc. It didn't do the correcting, of course, but it gave me some good notes on whether there were structural problem versus basic editing issues, pacing problems, and so forth. In short... it offered a lot of advice within seconds without actually writing (or changing) a word. It served the role of the fastest beta reader I had ever worked with.

Admittedly, my experiment with giving me an outline and synopsis of the novel was less satisfying, as it mostly regurgitated the points I had typed up in narrative form. Its review of the work as a whole was also very complimentary, as ChatGPT is prone to do, which didn't help anything save for my ego. 

My point through all this is that, yes, AI can be a writer's friend if you let it. If you learn how to talk with it, how to interpret its responses, and bring more than a grain of salt with you for its reviews, it can help you. It should not, however, be anything more than one of your constructive critics. It's not a writer, you are. That boundary is very important, and will become more so as AI evolves.       

What is your problem?

In writing, we know that good stories have tension and conflict if they are written to really grab the reader. These center around very simple ideas - a character wants somethings and tries to get it despite the obstacles, two people vie for the same thing, someone tries to escape an undesireable outcome, etc. In many cases, the desire and the obstacle are fairly straightforward and require little if any explanation. Writing about someone lost in the woods pretty much presents its own issue in the mind of the reader, because being lost implies an interest in becoming "un-lost." However, in more complex writing, and with more adventuresome works, sometimes part of the writer's goal should be to get the reader to understand why the situation is a problem in the first place. The reader should be able to empathize in some way with the character, perhaps even before they understand the character is in danger.

Let's re-examine our story of the person lost in the woods. What if we start writing about the character in the woods, but we don't explicitly state they are lost. What if we describe them walking through the woods, frustrated by the undergrowth and the thorn bushes tearing at their jeans, the tangles of weeds making some places mipassable, all while the character keeps an eye on the sun peeking through the canopy as it gets lower and lower in the sky. Are they lost? Are they just in a hurry to get home? Are they being pursued? Why the frustration? If we can get the reader to feel what the character feels before explaining the circumstances, it gives the writer more command over how they draw in the reader. If we open up by explaning that the character is lost, we immediately trigger a bunch of pre-determined associations within the reader, and lose an opportunity to introduce the reader to that character's very unique situation.

One of my favorite quick reads - Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - offers the lost-in-the-woods scenario and we immediately make all these assumptions about the girl getting lost during a trip. However, we are also offered enough insight into the little girl so that it becomes more than that, and when an external threat becomes another concern, we as readers are so deep within the character that we accept this sudden change of pace. If the additional element was introduced before we got to know the girl, it would've changed our assumptions about the girl's actions and become a different kind of story.

Now, why am I bringing up all this talk about getting the reader to empathize with the character and better understand their situation? Well, this is Pride Month, and a lot of people hear that term and dig up a lot of assumptions and phobias while forgetting to try and understand why it is an actual thing and its importance to many people. My response to them is just maybe to get to know the people first, try and understand their experiences, their obstacles, and why their situation, while different from other people's situations, is still valid and worth recognizing. Maybe use that empathy thing to figure out what the real story is instead of riding a bunch of predefined assumptions.

If you write with the goal being a reader empathizing with the character, you can get messages across a lot easier. And maybe if you live with a little more empathy, well, you can understand a lot more about the world around you.    

Whose Story Is It?

I had a real writing challenge before me this week. Not like a writing prompt or anything; this was more of a crisis of skills. I mean, I like to think I have developed a good toolbox when it comes to dealing with writing problems, but this one had me all tied up. I wanted to write about how I knew this person over the years, how my perception of them changed as I learned more about them, and my admiration for the person they had become. The story dealt with sensitive subject matter, but that wasn't the big hold-up. It was all about the presentation, and I didn't know what to do.

Here's a big writing lesson: When in soubt, write down something. Anything. Put words to the page, stitch some monstrosity together, and take it to a workshop to find out what other people think. Present the piece by saying, "Here's a thing I made - what is it and what does it need to be more than just a thing?" Leave yourself open to other people's input and opinion, and listen to every word. They may not know better than you, but they sure will be able to give you a perspective untainted by whatever your personal issues are. That's exactly what I did, and I will tell you why it helped so much.

As I mentioned, this was a story about how I knew this person from decades ago and how things evolved over time. Part of the feedback I received (particularly from several emails after the meeting) was that it was trying to be two stories - I was trying to tell the story about how my view of this person changed as I discovered more about them, but I was also trying to tell my friend's story to some degree, and this was creating problems with the task at hand. Depending on which story I wanted to tell, I should've drawn my focus toward one particular story arc and let the other characters support that story. However, this came with a monstrous caveat that writers have to acknowledge.

If I were to talk about my story exclusively, demonstrating my life and my growth as the world changed, that's fine. I can also discuss it from the perspective of how information changed my perspective, and thus how I perceived reality - perfectly allowable. The catch is, if I were to tell my friend's story and how it changed me, I am walking into dangerous territory because that's not my story to tell. I may be a part of it, but my license as a writer doesn't extend into explaining that friend's life. It would be similar to telling someone's secrets, to outing them or revealing a secret identity - absolutely none of my business. Now, I have written extensively about other friends who have shaped my life's pattern, and I write about them without hesitation, but that's because they either gave me permission to, or mostly because they were dead and could no longer tell their story. And in the latter case, I always make sure I keep it within the realm of the known world, revealing them only in the sense of how we related to each other.

So, to recap, if you are tied up in a writing project, here are the main tips to follow: First, write down something. As the saying goes, it's easier editing bad writing than editing no writing. Second, know the story you want to tell and hone in your subject matter to that arena. When a sentence feels awkward or out-of-place, ask yourself if it's sticking to the subject. And lastly, make sure it's your story to tell. Or, at the very least, make sure you are not disrespecting them in any way, shape or manner - living or dead.   

The Role of the Hero

In every traditionally-structured story, there is a hero who faces adversity and in the end, overcomes it. Depending on the genre, this may determine how the hero overcomes the antagonist - in action-adventure and thrillers, usually the bad guy is jailed or killed. In more cerebral stories, the enemy is overcome through a triumph of the spirit, by defeating the urge to yield to the temptations presented, or simply by living in a genuine way. Of course, in more nontraditional stories, the main character is defeated, or learns an unexpected lesson that changes their life path. Sometimes the bad guys win. However, to get to this conclusive point, we have to ask ourself what we want to say with the main character's final situation in the novel, and what the message to the reader should be. A little more tricky than expected.

I will offer this from my real life: I have a constant back-and-forth with a friend of mine - let's call him Steve - about a particular story and the hero's decision. The situation is that a man has the opportunity to defeat his tormentor (and what a tormentor he was), killing him outright in an act of revenge, or he can place his tormentor in the hands of justice. Now, after what our hero has been through with a villian who has killed some of his friends and made his life quite horrible, the go-to move would be to kill him and be done with it. Now, Steve believes that is the very natural, very human response to such an action that most of us would choose without hesitating, and on that part I believe him. However, this is our hero. We ask more of our heros because readers often need their heros ot be the kind of person the reader can't be. In this story, the hero hands the villian over to the hands of justice. Steve is infuriated at that choice, but I see it as the best way to communicate that our hero has seen so much horror but still believes in the value of life. As a writer, you need to know what your characters' decisions will say and communicate about them and about the story.

In a more grounded example, I offer the classic novel, George Orwell's 1984 (spoiler alert). Our protagonist, Winston Smith, is a man whose dislike of the maleovalent Big Brother leads him to investigate the potential for rebellion. He is caught, captured, tortured, and eventually broken, then allowed to return to some semblance of a life, but now he openly accepts that he loves Big Brother. This is a horrible ending for our hero, and his final words, "I love you, Big Brother" are painful to read because any trace of Winston's rebellious self vanish with that confession. However, that is exactly what the author wanted to say. This hero was crushed by the state, but the message of this book is clearly a warning call about the dangers of overarching authority when it finds its greatest interest is keeping itself in power.With that being the message at the end, it's inevitable that poor Winston never stood a chance and that his fate was sealed. 

There's nothing saying a hero has to win, has to live, or has to reach their goal. What they are obliged to do - in order to address the reader - is act in a way that matches the message of the story. Do they maintain the moral high ground? If your message is about the importance of such a thing, then the hero either does that or pays the price for failing to do so. If your message is about the satisfaction of revenge, well, the ending is probably more like an action movie. However, in every case the important part is that the message and actions are consistent.        

The Importance of A Good Read

I am in the process of reading one of the classics - a habit I picked up back during my career as an economist. Back then, I would pick one book that was well-regarded, pretty thick, and could be read in a bunch of small, half-hour bites. Past novels have included Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and many others. The results have been mixed - a few now rank among my favorites, others were a challenging experience , and some were just kind of... meh. Right now I am in the midst of reading quite a whopper. It's a turn-of-the-20th-century book, well over 700 pages, and while I am a quarter-way into it, I am just not... into it, I guess. I will leave the name out for now, but let's just say I might not be Irish enough for such an endeavor.

Why am I mentioning this (the reading part, not the Irish part)? I am jumping into this subject matter because as a writer, it's always good to explore things and sources that can inspire creativity. Books are the natural touchstone for a writer's creativity, simply because they share the same medium but offer different approaches toward telling a story. Lewis's Liar's Poker, for example, was a book I read while I was exploring economics and trying to understand the behemoth that was the financial markets of the 1990s. The financial geek in me wanted graphs, numbers, and data, but the book actually appealed to the creative in me - showing me the world of high finance through the eyes of someone fresh off the boat and incredibly green. That's when I felt just how powerful a book could be in showing me the real world from another perspective. Yes, it was all about financial instruments and the build-up of amazing levels of greed, but I now understood it.

Angier's Natural Obsessions hit me a similar way. Microbiology was a hobby of mine as it were, and I studied it in college with a bunch of electives and side-projects (If not for a scheduling conflict, it would've become a minor degree). However, what really set me going was reading Natural obsessions along with Watson's The Double Helix, and pairing off their approach to scientific research. I also read The Eighth Day of Creation, but the author eludes me. These all showed me parts of the world that fascinated me (and still do), but through a different lens. Watson reminisced about being a 23-year-old grad student tossed into the race to discover the structure of DNA, while Angier looked at the molecular level war against cancer from the perspective of an investigative reporter. All these demonstrations of how to see the world from outside my own framework opened up my mind to a world that was something more than me on my own. I now wanted to expand myself to fill that space.

Lastly, a classic I still appreciate is Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Nothing will get a writer more inspired than reading about another writer struggling to get along. More to the point, however, Bellow wrote about the areas of Chicago I knew very well - his protagonist lived in my college stomping ground of Ukrainian Village, for crying out loud. However, now I got to see it from the view of someone else's creativity, and indeed I learned a lot about myself. From that point forward I had a new appreciation for my Chicago life, thank to my golfing buddy Sual Bellow (inside joke).

So, to all the writers, poets, essayists, and creatives out there, I offer you this summer challenge: Read a book; one of the classics preferably. Find one that catches your eye or that has eternally drawn your curiosity, and read it during your lunch breaks this summer. And don't be afraid to let it open your mind a bit - you might be surprised.

Just watch out for those Irish authors. Some can be real... wordy.    

Writing the Adventure

I apologize in advance if the quality of this post is not up to the standards you expect from this blog. I am currently very distracted, as a rather obnoxious raccoon has taken residence in my attic, just above my office. This raccoon and I have never met, but I can already tell this will not be the start of some hilarious odd-couple mashup comedy. The rustling and scratching alone tells me this raccoon does not have any sense of personal boundaries, and I know myself well enough to know that while I do not suffer fools lightly, my tolerance for large creatures in my attic is basically zero.

However, to this soon-to-be-evicted past's credit, it did remind me about some of the key writing elements that make a story interesting, and that is the impending approach of the unknown. Most commonly seen in adventure stories, the unknown should be a key player as early as possible. If your story starts with a fight scene, don't let on too quickly that the main character is getting beat up by the school bully for having no lunch money to steal. Start with the character taking a punch and stumbling back, only to take another punch. All the reader knows is that this person is getting beaten - everything else is a question demanding answers, and the reader drives forward. 

Also, before revealing too much of the unknown, reveal the character's feelings toward it. Fear, hatred, animosity, or any other feeling one might have toward a person hitting them or toward a raccoon running roughshod in one's attic. Peel back the story from a personal perspective rather than an objective one. Don't tell the reader, "The 5th-rgade bully beat up everyone because of his frustration of have been in 5th grade for three years running." That creates too much information toward things like motive and personality. Instead, offer up the victim's thoughts about how they wanted to escape this cruelty but nobody in the school seemed to want to change things. That develops the important part - the main character's perspective - while leaving the antagonist bully as this unstoppable force making them miserable. 

Through all this, however, you as a writer need to know your bad guy as well, and know in your own way what drives them, what makes them tick, and how they see the world. You don't need to tell the reader this information immediately or in some cases, ever, but your writing should come from an informed place. If, say, your 5th-grade bully just beats kids up for their lunch money because he likes to fight, then you need to specifically portray that aspect of him. If he, however, has a tragic backstory and is acting out his anxieties against smaller kids because that's how he's been treated all his life, then play that out as well. The antagonist doesn't need to be a sympathetic character, but it definitely helps for the writer to know where they come from and how they want the reader to respond.

And of course, the adventure part should always involve reluctance by the main character, at least at first, in order to reflect how important this choice to pursue change really is. Whether it's the kid finally standing up to the bully or the writer going into his attic to bag a raccoon, it should take some effort in order to make for a good story. Otherwise, it's not as much an adventure as it is a person going out and doing stuff.

Once the adventure starts, questions can be answered, information offered, and a full perspective can be presented. But at least in the beginning, it should be an exploration of unknowns, with a slow-burn reveal of the key elements. And on that note, I am going to grab my welding gloves, an old tarp, and a baseball bat and have a little adventure of my own in the attic. Wish me luck!   

Writing vs. Journalism

Every now and then I feel obliged to point out a few little points about what writing is and isn't - and by "writing," I mean of the primarily creative sort. Most every type of quality writing requires some degree of creativity, but I think we can all agree that the different areas of writing - research/academia, analytical, explanatory, etc. - each have different amounts of latitude compared to fiction or poetry, where creativity is the primary focus. And then, of course, there's one area that some creatives tend to avoid, and that it the art of journalism. But not so fast, I would warn you. The hard rules of fact-based journalism have a lot to teach even us creatives and poets.

Let's look at some basic journalism rules. First, your primary objective is to convey the five W's of any situation - Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This is the mandatory conveyance of information necessary for any good news story, and good fiction writers have to recognize these as well in their storytelling. However, writers have the right to be biased, so they can, in turn, determined which W they want to prioritize, minimize, or leave as the big question. If I am writing some fiction-fantasy, I really need to look at Where first, recognizing how different my world is from the reader's reality. Mysteries and legal thrillers usually focus on the Who and/or Why, while historical novels (fiction or otherwise) target the When of it all. And all of them need to have an eye toward What - the actual purpose of the piece being written.

Now, another part of journalism is regarding questions. A good journalistic piece provides answers to the five W's, but the better writing knows how to present the deeper questions in a way that asks the reader these questions before addressing them. A story might present a situation and highlight particular aspects of the story in order to make the reader say, "What?" or "Why?" then immediately address those issues. Creative writing does the same thing - it gets the reader thinking about the characters, motives, scene changes, and plot wrinkles just before offering the answers. The result for both writing schools is the same - the reader gets their answer from a special "a-ha!" moment, and there's some satisfaction in the accomplishment... so they read further.

Unfortunately, I do not know where the common space is between journalism and poetry. If those two circles on the Venn diagram overlapp, that intersection is smaller than anything I can perceive. If any poets or journalists wish to chime in on this, please do. Otherwise, I will just leave it by saying I have never seen a serious news story rhyme.

    

The Law of Writing

I am guessing that today, everyone is taking some time off of work to commemorate the holiday. I am guessing many citizens are gathering around in parks (weather allowing) or in public areas to chime in this very important holiday that has been recognized since before I was born. It actually became an official day in 1958, and has been a part of our country's culture ever since. Now to be clear, I am not talking about May Day - your confusion is understandable. No, I am talking about Law Day, the day commemorated by President Eisenhower to recognize the importance of the legal framework of our country or of any functioning governed body.

Upon further reflection, I am guessing all the hype today is actually about May Day and not Law Day. After all, working is quite popular in this country, but following the law comes with a lot of squishiness. Just one drive down I-294 will demonstrate with terrifying clarity how people disregard certain laws if it gets in the way of their preferred NASCAR-like habits. We still do have laws in this country, and a number of them sometimes get enforced (I actually once saw someone on I-294 receiving a ticket). The thing about those laws, however, is that plenty of them look good in theory but don't translate to the real world.

Moving this to writing, you've probably heard that you are not supposed to end a sentence with a pronoun. It's a rule, right? Well, regardless of whether it is or isn't, like most people, it's something I don't put up with (because if I did, that sentence would read, "...it's something I don't up with put."). There are plenty of rules that get neglected just as much as Law Day, but this is a part of the writing process. First, we learn the rules. Second, we discover their purpose and intention. Third, we look at what can happen if we bend or break those rules. Lastly, we put those results to use. In the case of the symbolic speed limit on I-294, I know what it is, I recognize it's there as a traffic regulator and as a means to reduce the severity of accidents, I know that if I bend it a bit, I get to my destination a few minutes earlier, and so I respond by keeping up with the flow of traffic zooming along at about mach 3.

If you know your rules of writing, then play with them and find out how they bend. Technically, rules of grammar are less flexible and more confusing when they are twisted about, but as a stylistic measure it can be effective - you just have to brace yourself for the consequences. If you opt to consistently use pronouns for representing characters, you should expect there the be some confusion during crowded sequences. If what you want is to give the reader a sense of confusion and disorientation, well, mission accomplished. Just be prepared for some people to set aside the book entirely. Just like if you're driving 80 down I-294 -  there is a chance you end up with a ticket for your efforts or an epic accident that will likely make the local news.

During this holiday - whether it's Law Day or May Day or Worker's Day or the Feast of Julian of Bale (a real thing), I hope you get to put in a little time for writing, and maybe even get a chance to break a rule or two. Just not on I-294.    

A Writer's Warning

If my calendar is correct (and it usually has a better accuracy rate than I do), my next post will be in May, and National Poetry Month will be over. Of course, this will be a bittersweet moment for me, mostly because April gives me a formal reason to lobby for poetry - for reading, for writing, for thinking about, and for exploring the many different poetic forms. Now, I do not claim to be a poet in the deeper sense. I have written poems but I don't feel I have built up those skills enough to deserve the title - yet. However, I have written enough verse to offer fair warning about something I think is a big threat to poetry, and that is AI.

To be clear, I am no Luddite. I use AI for various functions. I let different AIs examine my writing, search for themes in my longer works, and map out plot arcs when I feel they might be wandering. However, some people fall into the habit of letting some bot take the next step and start creating things, and poetry is, unfortunately, the easiest target. Since many forms of poetry work within a format and structure, they become easy prey for people to create through even simple AI use. And having seen a number of specimens of AI-generated poetry, they have the look, shape, and even a surface feel of a legitimate poem. However, don't be fooled. Poetry is something more than just filling in the blanks of some formula. It's not a Mad-Lib, it's an art form.

I am reluctant to suggest this, but it might get the point across. Go to the AI platform of your choice and ask it to write a sonnet about unrequited love. Within seconds, you will likely get a 14-line poem, probably in iambic pentameter, discussing that very subject. The rhyme scheme will work, the words will flow nicely - mission accomplished. You will, in fact, have a sonnet. However, dig into it. Search for the underlying heart of the poetic AI slop you just created, and see if you feel a pulse. Do you see the subject the poem discusses? Do you connect to the underlying meaning? Or do you just find some words triggering emotions, like a verbal ink-blot test where you see what you want to? That's where the difference lies. Ten people can read an AI sonnet and come to the same conclusion about it. A human-generated sonnet will get a variety of reactions, and often disagreement. There's a pulse with the handwritten poem. The AI piece is lifeless.

So, if and when you write a poem - sonnet or otherwise - remember that you are performing a very human task, and your humanity is a part of your creation. Pour in whatever it is that makes you a human being, and let that do the speaking. Make mistakes, have fun with it, and remember you are creating something very personal that some AI cannot match with depth of feeling.

On that note, I close with this untitled piece of freeverse:

Words.
Building blocks of communication.
Description.
Capturing what we perceive with those words.
Narrative.
Explaining the world to each other.
Stories.
The events of our world, as we see them.
Writing.
A tool for filling the space between us.

Surrounding this galaxy of words lies the interstellar force of poetry and everything it encompasses.
Poetry is the language of the soul, the quantum forces explaining life beyond just living.
We describe things outside the tactile, capturing feelings, concepts, states of being.
Poetry bridges the gaps between our worlds, connecting you and me, making us.

The abstract becomes concrete, the breeze captured, the sunlight embraced.
Writing shares our worlds, poetry unites us into something greater than our little selves.
For all of the things writing can accomplish, poetry alone makes us whole; makes us complete.
With poetry, we are one. 

(No AI here)

The Wide World of Poems

As the end of National Poetry Month fast approaches, I wanted to throw one last piece about poetry to my many readers. As my regular readers know all too well, I am an advocate of writing poetry as one of the many exercises people should perform to be a better writer. This does not mean you will be an awesome poet - no guarantees in life - but the art of poetry helps us distill our thoughts and feelings into more concise ideas. We lose a lot of the wandering thoughts and bothersome distractions that make writing feel flabby and loose, and instead sharpen our focus on a simple thought or theme.

With that in mind, I felt the best way to get the poetry inspiration going was to offer a wide variety of poem styles and formats, and give you, the writer, the opportunity to try them out and see what fits best. Poems come in many shapes and sizes, so I won't go into the little details like writing in meter and so forth (although it is worth knowing). Rather, I will just lay out some options and you can choose your own.

• Monostich: As I discussed in my last post, this is a one-line poem, without commas or pauses, to convey one idea
• Haiku: a three-line poem where the first and third lines are five syllables long, with the middle line being seven syllabes. Often these are about nature and the last line sums up the other two, but that's optional
• Tanka: Similar to a Haiku, but instead of the 5-7-5 syllable structure, it closes with two extra seven-syllable lines
• Limerick: A five-line poem where the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines rhyme (known as the AABBA structure)
• Triolet: An eight-line poem where the first line is repeated and in the fourth and seventh lines
• Pirouette: A ten-line poem made up of two five-line stanzas, where the last line of the first stanza is the first like of the second stanza
• Trimeric: A four stanza poem, with the first stanza being four lines and the subsequent three being three lines. In this format, the second, third, and fourth lines of the first stanza become the lead lines of the second, third, and fourth stanza, respectively
• Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem with a matching rhyme scheme (AABBCC...). The traditional sonnet presents a question in the first six lines, a realization in the seventh and eighth lines, and the last six lines present a resolution
• Villanelle: A 19-line poem composed of five three-line stanzas, followed by a closing quatrain. These usually have two recurring ideas that are repeated intermittenyly throughout the work.

Okay, that shouls give you plenty to work with. However, if none of them appeal to you, I offer one last form that can offer some artistic freedom: Freestyle. Also known as Free Verse, this is just expression in its pure form. It can be anything - it is open style. If you've never seen this style, hunt down the various clips from "Louder than a Bomb" on YouTube. It's not that hard.

Happy Naional Poetry Month!

    

One-Liners

"Nature serves as the eternal artist of life's portraits lost to time."
- An actual poem

I haven't done a poetry post in a while, and since this is National Poetry Month, well, here it is. However, because so many people are uncomfortable with the concept of writing poetry and the many demands that come with it, I am playing this one a little fast and loose. It will be a shorter post, and it will be about one of the shortest forms of poetry around: Monostich.

I wish I could say I was an expert on the monostich poem, but I can't make that statement. Rather, I was introduced to this form by a fellow writer in the Wednesday workshop I attend. He brought up the subject as a question of, "What's that term for a poem that's only one line?" Sarcastically, I responded, "Slogan." Well, after he took a quick trip to the internet, it turns out that it was, in fact, the monostich - a one-line poem, preferably without pauses, additional clauses or phrases, or diversions. This form is the epitome of the short, sharp usae of words to explain some concept or quickly make a statement about the world. It is usually painfully brief and to the point, boiling out all but the significant bits.

Now, you might think to yourself, "This sounds like a sideways approach to a haiku but without the syllable rules." In some ways you would be correct. Any number of haiku are actually just one idea spread across three lines with a syllable pattern. In fact, if you reread the poem above, you can rewrite it as such:

"Nature serves as the
eternal artist of life's
portraits lost to time."

Voila! It's a haiku (sort of)! Put it back into one continuous line and you are back to a monostich. Same message, same words, different categorization all because of line breaks. It's a simple way to write a poem, with the only real challenge being the demand of distilling it down to the core meaning, without any distractions.

So, my request on this day as a commemoration to National Poetry Month, write one profound sentence. Let it be something that interprets the world in some special way - writing "I am hungry" might be true, but it's not as profound as you might think, even if you are profoundly hungry. Give it a shot, see what happens, and if you are feeling particularly bold, leave it in the comments section (anonymously if you prefer).

Happy National Poetry Month!  

The Personal Experience

There's a common hurdle writers will come across, time and again, where they have the temptation to get themselves immersed head-to-toe in a scene, poring through the details, describing every feature, and really giving the reader the full and complete experience they deserve. Any scene with a magnitude of intensity - action scenes, love scenes, death scenes - present the writer with this opportunity, but it's a temptation that comes at a price. Getting too far into a scene can actually weaken it as an experience if the writer leaves out one key part - the character's participation in the event.

Sometimes, in life, we experience things so intense that our memories of the event overwhelm our capacity to process everything that happens. In particularly extreme cases we detach ourselves from the experience - disassociation takes over, and while we might still remember the event, we disconnect our own place within it, sometimes not even fully realizing we were a part of the experience we remember. This occurs in writing as well, but at least we, as authors, have control of how we discuss the character's participation.

Action sequences are very easy to lose the characters. Let's look at a car chase - not as fun in writing as it is in the movies, but for now let's overlook that. One car is being chased by several others through the city streets, dodging traffic, swerving around pedestrians while the horn honks away trying to clear a path. There might even be gunfire - bullets fly around the lead car, shattering the windows, ricocheting off the trunk - all during a 100-mile-per-hour chase down a one-way road. This can be several pages worth of action, but I can guarantee you it will get boring, or at the very least it misses a great opportunity to actually be interesting, because it lacks any reference to the characters involved.

It was no coincidence that in the brief example above, I made no mention of the characters. The action was the cars, the guns, the bullets, but no actual people. This is where scenes lose their punch - the cars drive through the scene, but it's just action, not tension. Now, what if you describe that car chase from the personal space of one of the drivers - pursuer or the pursued, your choice. If they are being chased, how are they deciding where to go? When the light up ahead turns red and crossing traffic fills the intersection, how does that character respond? We get very used to the movies where the car just magically flies through the crowded intersection with precision timing, but in writing, that's our opportunity to show how the driver responds. Does the driver see an opening that just might work and rushes toward it, or just lean on the horn and pray for daylight? Do they have a deathwish and no concern for the drivers ahead? Is their desperation so extreme that they will do anything to evade the cars behind them?

Of course, this doesn't mean the story has to be a cerebral exploration of a character's driving habits. However, it should be going on with a critical awareness that the character's actions and decisions are a part of the scene, and how it unfolds needs to fit the character. A driver who holds every life to be sacred might have a real problem taking a detour through a public park, but this can be a great source of tension for the character if they are just that desperate to escape.

Writing is a great form of escapism from the real world, which can frankly be very boring at times. However, good writing brings the real world into that space just enough to make anything interesting and make everything personal.   

Conflict and Story Openings

After doing a little review of my last post, I did a little more thinking about the importance of the opening line and just what it needs to bring to the table. My thesis in Friday's entry was that it was the hook that brings in the reader, and I will stick by that one. However, I think it's only fair to discuss what a good hook really is. Yes, it should provide a great mix between information and presentation of the unknown. It should also be worded quickly and sharply to bring that point to the fore. However, there's one problem to address with all these routes, and that is... the problem.

Courtesy of Battlefield 2

What do I mean by a problem? Well, let's put it this way: Presenting a question in your opening line or paragraph creates a natural urge for the reader to seek an answer - that part is great. However, a technique that can be even stronger is bringing up not just a question, but a conflict. Not necessarily a fight or an argument, but a clear, discernible issue that is creating some sort of friction with our main character. They can be in whatever starting pose you want, but bringing out the problem they face in the immediate first sentence or so creates a tension. It's no longer a question about what's happening, but whether or not the character can overcome it. 

This about this opening: The story begins with a sniper lining up his target in the crosshairs, his trigger finger trembling as he hesitates to take the shot. This creates questions immediately - is our main character the sniper or the target? Is the sniper a good or bad character? What is the situation around shooting someone? Good questions to put out there for the reader to ponder. However, we create a larger issue with the sniper hesitant to take the shot. After all, that's what snipers do, right? They shoot people from a distance. So why the trembling hand, the reluctance? This is a question, but it is conflict - the situation is going against the character's intended action, and needs to be overcome. At this point, the stakes are higher for the sniper, not just to take out the target but to overcome some personal resistance to this particular mission. The interest builds.

At this point, the writer now has a game to play, which is offering a little bit of information to suggest possible reasons for the inaction, but still leaving some ambiguity as to what the best answer is. We can inform the reader that the target is a friend of the sniper, making the conflict even sharper. We can also point out that the friend is a double-agent, now creating a conflict between duty to the mission and believing the friend is somehow innocent. We build the conflict without resolving it, merely giving it more shape and texture without giving the reader an easy out. If we establish this early, we can carry this conflict throughout the story, piling layer upon layer of challenging beliefs onto the poor main character, giving the reader so much to think about that it might cause an argument at the book club. (The goal of any author should be to cause arguments at book clubs.)

As a last note, don't throw too much conflict on the reader at once. If, in our sniper scenario, we introduce the sniper with the shaking hand, the target, then point out the target is the sniper's friend, then challenge the friend's loyalty, and oh-by-the-way the friend is married to the sniper's sister, and the sniper's hands are shaking from a progressive nerve disorder, and taking out the target could save thousands of lives, but it might be the wrong person... well, there's such a thing as too much information at once. The slow build of our sniper's situation should be savored by the author because the reader will enjoy it that much more.