Author: Bob

When my friend suggested that I should focus on writing horror, it bothered me (see my previous post). I wondered what I did in life to make a friend associate me with things that most people see as sinister or unnerving. This drove me to review my life and compare it with my writing. It turns out, he is not the first to make the suggestion.

Years ago, I belonged to a very productive writers’ group. The group lasted eleven years and I joined in its third month. During that time, I learned much about writing and managed to turn out quite a bit. I believed at the time that my main area of writing would probably be science fiction or fantasy. That was laziness on my part; if I could make up my own world I wouldn’t have to spend much time learning all the facts about the real one.

A Request

One day, a friend from the writers’ group asked me for some help. She was writing a short story involving a mother and daughter arguing over the daughter’s choice of music. The mother hated that the daughter listened to a song about a female serial killer. My friend said she didn’t know any such song and asked if I did. I didn’t even know where to start looking for one, so my friend asked if I could write one. Five minutes later, I handed over the lyrics to a song called Surgeon Sally.

There are three relevant things to this story. First, my friend assumed that I would be the one to know about serial killer songs. Second, when I didn’t know, she assumed that I could write the lyrics to one. Third, and probably most disturbing, is that I actually did and it took me no time at all. I have since rewritten the lyrics and am planning to set them to music.

A Challenge

Remembering this occurrence, I looked for others. I found them. One night in my writers’ group, we had all the core members, many of the peripheral members, and a couple of new people attend. The crowd numbered around forty. Unfortunately, our stack of things to critique had run dry and we needed something to discuss. This usually meant someone would offer up a poem they could read for the group. One of the new people took the challenge.

This poor girl, probably about fifteen, presented her poem. It was a standard, teenage angst, death poem in the standard dirge style. I felt sorry for her because she received a very thorough, constructive critique from a large crowd of people who were genuinely interested in helping her.

The members asked the general questions. Could you tell us more? Everyone knows that death is sad, but what was particularly sad about this one? What made this death worthy of a poem? Why pick a dirge style instead of some other poetic style?

The topic of styles got many of the writers to suggest different poetic styles and their various merits and applicability to death poetry. Then someone said the name Dr. Seuss.

The entire group went quiet and turned to look at me.

I was not the one who said it.

Over the next few minutes, they delivered to me a challenge. Write a death poem in the style of Dr. Seuss. It needed to address all the questions they had directed to that poor teenaged girl. How did the death happen? What were its details? Why was it important? Tell us about the decedent.

The meeting ended that night at midnight and I finished the poem around two in the morning. The title of the poem is Bernie the Bhoozel Kicks the Can. Crowds who’ve heard me read it aloud start with smiles and end with looks of horror and disgust. I’m very proud of it.

This incident follows the same pattern as the serial killer one, but with a slight twist. In this case, the idea of death was a generic thing among the group. It wasn’t until someone added something inappropriate to the topic that the group turned to me. Still, the turning was universal and instantaneous. It was naturally assumed that I could generate this happy, sing-song abomination. Like in the earlier situation, I did and without any great effort.

Over Analysis

These two situations, and I could probably find others, mixed with the comments from my friend, seem to suggest a pattern that people pick up in my personality. Without getting too heavy into my entirely subjective take on my psychology, I have to assume that I say or do things that help people associate this darkness with me. Somehow, they think, “I need a morbid, twisted, death thing. I should talk to Bob.”

It doesn’t bother me if they do this. What bothers me is that I cannot see it well enough to be able to use it profitably. It is always a good idea to minimize one’s weaknesses and capitalize on one’s strengths. If this perception is something that comes to me naturally, I need to find a way to channel it constructively.

To that end, I’ve changed some of my reading. I’m putting more emphasis on horror and suspense: magazines such as Cemetery Dance, and authors more in the vein of Stephen King. I’ve also been reading a bit about the mechanics of suspense and horror. We will have to see how that goes.

One thing that worries me a little is the tone of my writing. Even when I write about horrible things, it usually has an upbeat quality to it. There may be monsters, but they are bubbly, excited monsters. After all, a well-fed monster is a happy monster.

In a recent conversation with an old friend, for whom I used to work, he suggested that I focus my writing on horror. This came as a surprise. This fellow is not one of my writing friends and has not read any of my fiction. We haven’t discussed horror or anything of the kind, so I started to wonder, what made him think I would be better at writing horror.

In the past, I have tried writing some horror. I had an idea for what I thought would be a good horror story, but I don’t usually read horror. The plan was to read horror stories, do some research, and then figure out how to tell my tale. That involved some practice prose with dark settings and general unpleasantness. Still, most of my writing did not go that way.

The main reason I don’t usually read horror is that I don’t get it. Horror writing said to unsettle others has no effect on me. It always seems hokey or forced. The characters do horribly stupid things and walk blindly into danger. In many cases, I just hope for the bad thing to take out the victims quickly to end the tale and let me go onto something else.

The things that would frighten me are tales where stupid people in large numbers overwhelm someone who cannot fight back sufficiently. Stories like that can leave me more unsettled than a story of monsters or serial killers. None of this explains why my friend recommended a focus on horror.

Obviously, he thinks there is something about my personality or worldview that could frighten others. We have differences of opinion on many matters; we once discussed that I have an easier time firing someone than he does, once it has been deemed necessary. He has laughed at plenty of my jokes over the years, though he hasn’t really told the same kind.

It is also notable that, though plenty of people seem to like me, many more like him. He is a very popular manager whereas few people want to follow me for long. I’m more of the problem solver that needs to meander on to the next problem when it’s done. He has an active social life, a wife, and kids. I have friends that I see occasionally. That may be a clue.

He may be thinking that I am odd enough to think strange things that unsettle others. My ability to solve problems by seeing both sides would mean that I could probably see the monster’s point of view and articulate it. A history of somewhat pragmatic, and sometimes harsh, solutions may provide a story that others are less comfortable with.

Back when I did experiment with horror, my writing friends seem to approve of the outcomes. For one piece, I was slapped by a couple of them because they read it just before bed. Those kinds of feedback suggest that my friend may be correct.

I guess it’s time to start putting more darkness to paper.

I haven’t had much time for writing lately and it started to show. I can feel it in everything else I do. There’s an extra level of crankiness, like when my blood sugar is low or when politicians talk. I know I have to take time for writing, but sometimes life is extra full of other stuff and you have to keep postponing the narrative. That’s when you risk it taking things into its own metaphorical hands.

In my day job, I teach at a small college. My subject is software development and I have really great students. Because of that, I put a lot of effort into preparing materials and giving good feedback when I grade. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time. Especially in a term like this one where I have one new course and one course that has new curriculum.

Saturday night, I sat grading. I knew I needed to get it done. My students depended on me to give them prompt feedback so they can adapt and learn. The grading kept getting harder, though. About nine o’clock, I could grade no more. My muse had gotten me.

I opened up the novel I am supposed to be rewriting and started in. I figured a little prose would help take the edge off. It probably would have too.

At five in the morning, my aching fingers and constant typos told me it was time for bed.

That’s right; my writing madness had driven me through the night.

Obviously, this is a sign that I need to make more time for my writing. It would be that work-life balance that people go on about. Since I was able to do go through about half the planned changes to the novel in just one night, it probably wouldn’t be too long before it was ready for the resubmission circuit again.

The alternative is that, one day in the not too distant future, they will find me in the fetal position, staring into the distance. The only sign of mental activity shown would be the furious flutter of finger movements as the remains of my subconscious typed out glory on an imaginary keyboard. As fun as that sounds, it may not be my best option.

I received some agent feedback on the first ten pages of my novel. Though it stated that the writing was generally good, the story introduced by those pages was not enough to catch a reader. I found the input to be very helpful and insightful. Best of all, it immediately illustrated to me something I knew to be wrong but couldn’t put my finger on.

Back in my Old Writers’ Group we discussed the concept of a story having too much “front porch”. I don’t know the origin of the phrase, but it had a clear meaning. Basically it means that you have supplied too much supporting story in front of the exciting part of your story. That’s what I did with my novel.

Even though my checklist told me to watch out for this particular problem, I hadn’t seen it. My guess is that I was just too close to the work. The exciting and fun part of the novel started many pages in but my story started with earlier events that the reader would eventually need to know. It was like starting a murder mystery by telling why the killer did it and then walking through the details of the murder.

With this new insight, I’ve started the rewrite of my novel. This time it starts at the critical conflict. The reader will learn about those supporting parts at the same time as the main characters. I think this will make it a much stronger novel and make it more fun for the reader. With any luck, it will also make the first ten pages more attractive to an agent.

Having seen this now, I’ll have to make more effort to watch for it in the future. When I look at my diagramming, it tells me where the conflict happens. If I have too much before that point, I know what I will have to do. Wish me luck.

I cranked away at my second novel, and things were really flying. Over a couple of weeks, I was almost halfway done with the first draft. The image of the final scenes was clearly fixed in my mind. Then, everything came to a halt. Between that ending and where I stood was a massive chasm. My story had no way to get from the mid point to the end.

My hero is very well developed. There is a character arc. All of his growth and such area all laid out in great detail. In this particular story, the main character was never a problem. His destiny stood tall and demanded that I write the story in the first place. That story just required some bad guys to move it along. The details of that movement eluded me.

Fortunately, a storm arrived in my area, and I love storms. I made quick drive to one state park to watch lightning. On the way home, I took a forty mile detour involving a stop at another state park. There, I sat in a shelter and listened to the rain while scribbling in my notebook.

The drive gave me time to ponder my novel. It occurred to me that my bad guys were not well developed. I knew who they were on a superficial level, but I hadn’t created their world. Without that world, they had no motivation. That’s what was missing.

The scribbling defined the world from their point of view. It gave complexity and depth to them. More importantly, it gave them a good reason to go after my protagonist. Once I knew why they engaged in dastardly deeds, the deeds themselves lined up to happen. Those deeds built a bridge across my chasm.

There’s no way to know if the story will work. I still need to write the last half and all the appropriate revisions. There’s still the matter of not having an agent for the first novel yet. It was a good lesson for me that, if I’m not sure where my story is going, I may not understand part of that story’s world.