May 2, 2012

The Third Reel

There’s a third reel to Kaleidoscope.

No one has ever seen it (but everyone knows a guy who has). It doesn’t exist. But what part of Kaleidoscope does? It’s as real as the rest of the film (the reel deal.)

Depending on who you ask, it’s meant to be played between the first and second reels, or after the second one. Some people claim it should be played first, before either of the others. All three are equally problematic.

The third reel is only five minutes long (most of the time.) In it, Carrie Linden walks out of the funhouse alone. (But is it the Carrie who stepped through the mirror, or the real one?)

If you play the reel first, there’s no context. Or is there? Does Carrie become the prime mover of the film? After all, she was there before every one else. (And she’s still there at the end.)

If you play the third reel last, after the other two, what does that mean? Why would Carrie go back to the carnival alone, after everything is said and done? (Or did she ever leave?) Does she exist here, in this moment, outside the funhouse? Or does she exist in the final frames of the movie (the ending everyone knows, don’t let them tell you otherwise), running, always running?

And if you play the third reel between the first and second reels, where it’s supposed to go (depending on who you believe), is it any better? Carrie Linden steps out of the funhouse alone. (She has always been alone.) But is it really her? Maybe it’s the ghost of Carrie Linden, following herself out into the night, made up of all the pieces she tried to leave behind when she stepped through the mirror. Maybe it’s her evil twin. Maybe it’s an imposter. Everyone has a theory. (They’re all right. They’re all wrong.)

In the end, there is only this – a reel that doesn’t exist, in a film that isn’t real. No one filmed it; it manifested itself, a ghost haunting the edges of the cinema of the mind. Like the opening sequence, (the most famous three and half minutes ever put on film) there’s no sound. Carrie Linden walks out of the funhouse alone. She stands on the gravel, cutting-sharp, and looks everywhere but at the camera. She takes a step. (Does it make a sound?) Some people think they hear a whisper as Carrie walks toward the camera (still not looking).

She’s unsteady, as if drunk. She stumbles once, but she never falls. The third reel is just this: Carrie steps out of the funhouse, walks toward the camera without seeing it, and disappears from the frame. (If you’re really paying attention, you’ll notice it’s the same way she entered the movie, but in reverse. In the party scene, Carrie walks away from the camera to straddle the lap of a man twice her age, and never once looks back at camera, as if it isn’t there.)

The third reel of Kaleidoscope is the least famous five minutes ever put on film. It doesn’t exist. Nobody has seen it, but everyone knows someone who has. And they all know, deep down in the dark, if they wait long enough, one day, they’ll see it, too.

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April 29, 2012

The Drowning Girl: A Ghost-Story

I’ve been trying to assemble my thoughts on Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl: A Memoir into a shape coherent enough to make a real, live blog post-type thing. It’s harder than it sounds. The short version – the novel is brilliant, and you should read it. The slightly longer version – your mileage may vary. The things I love about The Drowning Girl are precisely the things that may turn people off, or at very least leave them feeling unsatisfied.

Let me attempt to explain. It is a ghost story. In the very truest sense of the words. It is a story about a haunting, a haunting story, and it is a story that is in itself a ghost. It is ephemeral, shifting, you cannot trust the words on the page. It lingers.

Cut for potential incoherence, and definite spoilers.

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April 18, 2012

Death and the Captains

Bear with me, folks. I’ve been thinking about Star Trek, and the Hunger Games (the movie, to my shame I haven’t read the books yet), and the choices characters are given, and what makes for interesting fiction. Deep breath, spoiler alert, rambling thoughts ahoy, and so on.

I saw the Hunger Games recently and (see the disclaimer above about spoilers and not having read the books), there was a thing that bugged the fuck out of me. Okay, maybe that’s extreme. Let’s say there was a thing that disappointed me. The premise is interesting, the acting is brilliant, but the characters – as presented on screen – have a tendency to be dull as dirt. Every time something potentially interesting about them arose, it either occurred off screen, or was taken away from them. Let me explain.

Here there be spoilers… Continue reading →

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April 12, 2012

One Angry Man: An Interview with Paul Dias

And now, for something completely different. Today, I’m virtually sitting down with playwright Paul Dias to talk about his new play 5 Angry Men. Picture us sipping coffee and chatting in a faux-dive diner, or sipping brandy by a fireplace while we sit in wing-backed chairs, or swilling moonshine and smoking off-brand cigarettes around a campfire – whatever suits your mood. Regardless of your mental image, enjoy…

ACW: Thank you for taking the time to drop by and talk about your new play 5 Angry Men. The play opens April 19th at McGill’s Players Theater – care to give folks a quick overview to whet their appetites?

Paul Dias: The play is a Hitchcockian spoof on love and relationships. It’s a tragi-comedy that pokes fun at some of the more ridiculous aspects of dating.

ACW: You accomplish this by telling five separate stories. In Necro-Sheila, you draw on the horror genre. In Still Waiting – Act 2, you draw on the idea of a play within a play, and characters confronting their creators – was the chance to experiment with different tropes to show different facets of a common theme part of the appeal of structuring the play the way you did?

PD: Absolutely! The idea was to have fun by paying homage to different genres. By telling different stories in different ways (hopefully) it makes it more interesting for the audience to watch. It was a lot more engaging to write – especially the inclusion of a zombie.

ACW: You’ve also turned your hand to short stories, novels, and poems. Can you talk a bit about the process of writing a play vs. a story, novel, or poem? How did your previous writing experience inform your process in writing the play? Did you have to kill any previous writing habits while working on the play?

PD: The cool thing about drafting a play is that it’s far more practical than any other form of writing. You’re always thinking about staging, set-design, costumes, lighting, sound, blocking etc. Operating within those constraints makes you more focused. Also, the one good habit I did develop was plotting things out before I started. Knowing where something ends makes it easier to begin.

ACW: Too true! Dialog is something a lot of authors struggle with. Given plays are almost entirely dialog – do you have any tips or tricks to share? Did you draw on people you know and their modes of speaking? Eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations?

PD: Dialogue is so much fun to write. You’re literally putting words in people’s mouths. The benefit is that you can get away with so much more – especially in the genre of comedy. I think using slang and common speech is the way to go. I also feel that once you envision a character, you’re more or less listening to what comes out of his/her mouth and writing it down. (It’s a little schizophrenic in that respect).

ACW: This play is collaborative on multiple levels. You wrote it alone, but you’re working with a co-director to stage it, and obviously the actors bring something to the process as well. Unlike a reader bringing their interpretation to a work, you get to experience the reactions to your words in a very visceral way, watching other people perform them. Did anything surprise you the first time you heard actors reading your lines? Did they bring out aspects of your characters you hadn’t considered? Did you find yourself re-writing lines, or stage directions based on what the actors brought to the performance, or based on your co-director’s suggestions?

PD: Other people’s interpretations can make things tricky. As the writer, you always want to control how the work is being perceived. However, as soon as the words are on the page, it’s out of your hands. For the most part though, I’ve found that — transcending ego — it’s about putting on a show that the audience will enjoy. Keeping that end-game in mind means that everyone involved has to be flexible.

ACW: What are you working on now, or what do you plan to work on next?

PD: The thing I’m working on currently is the maintenance of my sanity. That’s a full-time project in and of itself.

ACW: Are there any other projects you’d like to mention while you’re here?

PD: I’ll be putting on a play for the Montreal Fringe Fest in June, specifically June 16-17 & 19-21. But after that, I fully intend on belly-flopping into a giant vat of vodka.

ACW: Thanks again for dropping by!

PD: Thanks for having me. You ask awesome questions.

To learn more about this fabulous play, visit the 5 Angry Men facebook page. Buy tickets to said fabulous play here. (You know you want to). And finally, for information about the Montreal Fringe Festival, click here. (You know you want to do that, too.)

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April 8, 2012

Journal of Unlikely Entomology Issue #3 TOC

The Table of Contents for the Journal of Unlikely Entomology Issue #3 is official! The issue itself will be available in May. Here’s your sneak-preview, so you can go ahead and start getting excited now.

My Day Came by Conor Powers-Smith
Drift by Amanda C. Davis
The Performance by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Familiar Buzz of Gone by Cate Gardner
Dragonfly Miscalculations by Steven Peck
Skitterings in Corners by Juliet Kemp
War Beetles by J.M. McDermott

Speaking of all things Grumpish, my co-editor just launched a fun project on the Journal of Unlikely Entomology facebook page. Starting today, and continuing for a year, he’ll be posting a bug-related song each day. It’s a Year of Bugmusic. Enjoy!

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April 6, 2012

The Consequences of Character

It struck me recently as I was walking to the train just what’s bothering me so much about the current season of The Office (American version, obviously.) Bear with me, author-folks, I do have a writing-related point here. The show has gone from being an ensemble-based comedy to Andy Bernard’s personal Hell. Recent story arcs for Andy, played by Ed Helms, have included romantic rejection, being a disappointment to his father, to the point he’s almost invisible to him, lack of respect and attempts to undermine his authority from his co-workers, and increasingly ridiculous and impossible to fulfill demands from his new boss. The situations he’s put in are awkward to the point of being painful.

Contrast that with the Office’s former manager, Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell. His character was the type you love to hate. He was arrogant, and almost never admitted to being wrong. He was someone to root against, someone who you wanted to see get their comeuppance. Yet, because the writers did such a good job with his character, he’s someone you wanted to root for, too. Every now and then, the plot would twist in such a way to show his vulnerability, his need to be loved, his insecurity and his loneliness.

Therein lies the problem. Michael Scott had a crunchy outer shell off of which the show could spark comedy. Andy Bernard wears all his desperate vulnerability on his sleeve. All his puppy-dog-eager-to-please-ness is right there on the surface. He puts others before himself, and goes above and beyond to make them happy, and the shows insists on kicking him right in his puppy dog face again and again. Puppy kicking is not comedy.

Here’s where I get to my point. Probably. The Office is a great example of creating well-rounded characters for the audience to care about. The characters have distinct personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and you wouldn’t mistake one for another. It’s also an example of how shoehorning your character into a plot, rather than letting the character’s actions and personality drive the plot, can be a huge mistake. Maybe it’s a conscious choice, but at the moment, the writers of The Office seem to be writing the show as if Michael Scott is still in charge. The plots haven’t adapted to suit Andy’s character, and the result is, instead of a character-driven show, a show that drags its characters along in the plot’s wake.

The point, as promised: Authors, your character is there for a reason. If you could swap out your main character for any of your other characters, and it doesn’t make a difference at all, something is wrong. Let your character have their passions, their opinions, their shortcomings, and their victories, and let those shape how they move through the world. In short, don’t kick the puppy, or if you do, make sure you have a damned good reason.

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March 26, 2012

The Devil is in the Details

Thinking about the language of genre and tropes as shortcuts got me thinking about descriptions in fiction and when enough is enough.

Sometimes, shortcuts can be incredibly useful. Common experience and the basic intelligence of most readers means you probably don’t have to describe the mechanics of a doorknob, how many steps it took your character to reach the door, or the material the door is made of every time a character enters or leaves a room. Most people know what it’s like to walk through a door, so unless it’s particularly germane to the plot – your character suffers from agoraphobia, and leaving the house is a big deal for them, or the room is on fire, and your character is fighting for their life – you can probably skip the details and simply say X entered/left.

But there are some things you don’t want to shortcut. There’s nothing wrong with spare, stripped down language, but leave out everything and your narrative may end up suffering from ‘white room syndrome’. Your story could be taking place anywhere, anywhen. If there are no sensory details, how will you pull the reader in and make them want to get lost in your world?

Janice Hardy has a wonderful post on her blog about how much description you need to set a scene. Two points from her post that struck me in particular are: focus on what makes your setting unique, and focus on what affects your character. It’s damned good advice.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that, because nothing ever is. Going heavy on the description can be a stylistic choice, and one that can be very effective. Elizabeth Bear makes the description of her characters’ movements, their appearance, and their environment part of the rhythm of her prose, and it’s one of the things I love about her writing. On the other hand, after about the third chase scene where Stieg Larsson named and described in great detail every single goddamned street his characters ran down, I wanted to throw his books across the room. All three of them at once. Seriously. So, your mileage may vary.

Historical fiction and far-future hard sci-fi are particularly good case studies for the detail question. When you’re dealing with a world outside most readers’ every day experience, you have to work a little harder. Most people know what it’s like to walk through a door, but very few people know what it’s like to live in Ancient Rome, or on a space station. The thing that turns me off when it comes to historical fiction or hard sci-fi is when it’s clear the author is super-proud of all the research they’ve done, and they’re determined to show their work, math problem style. Look at me! Look at all the things I know! Praise me! Praise me!

Obviously, you want your world to be plausible, but that doesn’t mean you constantly have to rip aside the scenery to show the framework backing it. This is where the tips in Janice Hardy’s post come in particularly handy. Do your research, then focus on the details that make the world you’re describing unique, and those which are most relevant to your character. If the gravity on your space station is failing, sure, it may be worth it to describe what makes it work in the first place. However, if your character is simply walking down the hall, they don’t need to stop and reflect on what’s keeping them on the ground. After all, how often do you think about gravity on a daily basis? I’m willing to bet you take it for granted until you’re tripping and falling down the stairs.

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March 25, 2012

Shortcuts, Or The Language of Genre

I’ve been talking a lot about tropes lately, and how they can be used well, or not so well. Tropes can be reasonably described as the building blocks of any genre. It’s how you assemble those blocks that allows a story to transcend. There are a lot of good reasons to play with tropes – to subvert them, to use them in new and brilliant ways, and because, as the old saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun. Tropes can be like words, strung together to make a sentence. A skillful author can use them to build something brilliant and wonderful. Just because you aren’t inventing a whole new language doesn’t mean you have no right to tell a tale.

The flip side of that, of course, is that over-reliance on tropes can lead to laziness. There’s a real danger when playing with archetypes of having them stand in place of character, or when playing with tropes, of having them stand in for plot. I’ll trot out my old example of the hero’s tale, because everyone is familiar with it, and I don’t have to explain it. (See what I did there?) There can be a tendency, or even a temptation, to use the hero’s quest tropes to kick-off a narrative, because it’s an easy way to get the ball rolling. The hero’s family is slaughtered, or someone informs them they have a great destiny – it’s a great reason to get your hero out into the world and have them encounter all the wonderful adventures you have in store for them.

But why? What really motivates your hero? What repercussions does their family’s murder, or the weight of destiny have on them? If an author is doing their job, the initial set-up will ripple throughout the book. If not, well, the trope comes off as en excuse to kick the hero out the door, and then have them get distracted by something shiny. It comes off as lazy.

One of my pet peeves in comedy is the ‘it’s funny because that character is fat/short/foreign/etc. trope.’ It’s the worst kind of laziness, because it can so easily cross the line from lazy to downright offensive. While I liked the first Austin Powers movie, the second two were frequently guilty of that lazy form of comedy. Mini Me is a perfect example. He doesn’t have any lines. He’s reduced to a prop, a sight gag, so the majority of his comedy is ‘it’s funny because he’s short’. He’s not a character, he’s a caricature.

Coming back to the written word, I’m not arguing for abolishing archetypes or tropes, I’m saying authors need to be careful deploying them. It’s not practical to re-invent the wheel every time you want to drive a car, and it’s not practical to re-invent the genre language every time you want to tell a tale. There’s an equal danger that you’ll end up with a square wheel, and a car that goes nowhere. The trick with tropes is ‘use with caution’. Examine your motivations for using them, and look for points where you can break them, push them further, and really make them shine. A shortcut may get you there faster, but it doesn’t always make for the most satisfying journey.

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March 19, 2012

Moving the World

Today, I’m delighted to have a guest post by Mike, Linda, and Louisa Carey, talking about gender politics, and their new novel The Steel Seraglio. There’s a free sample of The Steel Seraglio available here, and the book is available in paperback or as an e-book from ChiZine Publications. If you’re the visual sort, there’s also a lovely trailer for The Steel Seraglio, which you can find here. Now, without further ado, welcome, Mike, Linda, and Louise!

“Did the earth move for you?”

This phrase from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is a comment that could never be made with a straight face, these days – raising the bar for sexual performance to an ironically impossible high, the better to handle the disappointment when the experience falls short.

In that novel, when Robert puts the question to Pilar, he is anxious to find out if their lovemaking had the same impact on her as it did on him. The character’s concern is amplified in Hemingway’s behaviour towards his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Papa is our poster boy for a certain tendency in human behaviour: the overbearing and possessive side of romantic attraction. When they lived together in Paris, Hemingway is said to have resented Hadley’s few friendships fiercely, and tried hard to shake her free from any attachment that wasn’t to him. (We’ll get back to the whole earth-moving thing later.)

Possessiveness in love is probably a universal human trait. Different people feel it and express it in different ways, and give in to it or resist it to differing extents, but it tends to be there, in some form, in every relationship, however it may choose to disguise itself. Along with all the other intense emotions that romantic/sexual attraction brings, there is usually somewhere in the mix this sense that the bond between you and the person you love is special and unique, that you have a stake in areas of that other person’s life that may not even directly concern you: that you’ve got a right to speak up if your lover is spending too much time with friends, or not sitting next to you all evening, or wearing clothes that are too revealing. There are an infinite number of gradations, from the unexceptional and banal to the obsessive, controlling, perverse and indefensible.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is when the relationship is over and one or other of the two former partners feels unable or unwilling to let go of that sense of possessiveness and entitlement. We have a good friend whose marriage collapsed after she discovered that her husband was having an affair. Inexplicably, when she finally went back to dating, the ex-husband felt entitled to discourage potential wooers by slashing their car tyres and in one case administering a beating.

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March 14, 2012

It Girl

Women in Horror Month is over, but that won’t stop me from carrying right on talking. This time, it’s women on the page, and I’ll be picking on Stephen King’s It, and the problem of the token girl. In the interest of full disclosure, I liked It, but Beverly has always kind of bothered me, and my thoughts about her character have only recently crystallized.

So, right up front, she’s a token girl in a story about a group of boys. She’s a tomboy, because she has to be to fit in, right? She can’t just be a girl, because girls have cooties. She has to be a girl pretending she’s not a girl, and that’s just for starters. As both a child, and an adult, she faces abuse/sexual abuse, first from her father then from her husband. It defines a large part of her character; when the monster comes for her, it comes for her in the form of her father, wanting to hurt her all over again. As a child, within the group, her usefulness is limited. She’s a whiz with a slingshot, so she has that, but her ability to use it against the monster in its werewolf form amounts to nothing much, and she mostly fades into the background again, until the final showdown.

Uh, spoiler alert below the cut.

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