Idea Stories

A long time ago I talked about how I built an idea story. The idea came from saying, "We know that people vote in elections using names of dead people. But what if the living voted in an election for the dead." I was satisfied with the story. But it never sold to a speculative fiction magazine or anthology. I think the biggest problem was that the editors wants to see on the first page that this is really a speculative fiction story--wants to have someone casting a spell or projecting their consciousness onto the internet.

Suffrage has a vicious military incursion, matched by decisive explosive violence, followed by brief, intense sorrow, and then the zombies arise in the aftermath and the real crazy stuff starts. I never found a reader who said, "I stopped reading after the second page because I didn't see zombies." Readers glowed about the story. But writers have to take the business as it exists and under those conditions, Suffrage was not marketable without a big named author on the masthead that said, "Oh, yeah, you'll get zombies, baybee." I gave the story to my local university press. I'm glad people got to read it.

Then I formulated another idea story, set on an outlying planet in the reemerging galactic empire. I wrote almost the whole thing, worrying that it might become boring, then watching it become boring. The problem was that, unlike Suffrage, I only took a cursory amount of time to create characters, and the characters were mostly described by their professions. It was like science fiction from the 1950s.

Now I think I figured it out. The two characters from the empire were not just professions. They were student and teacher. Teacher is taking advantage of gaps in knowledge of the reemerging empire, to travel around and do good on a planetary scale. He has had five successes. But the empire is horrified that this loose cannon is interfering on a massive scale with social development--those interventions could have been horrible disasters. So the teacher is an outlaw.

He contacts his student so that he can do another intervention. She has the ability to work inside the empire and get resources to help him. That's the first page or so. She gets to the planet and he points her toward personally discovering the problem that he wants to solve. She agrees. She investigates--where the most ink is spilled.

Then she decides. Then comes the ending.

This story does not have the Suffrage problem. However, when the story was "all idea" it was dead. Adding the drama was the hard part.

Draft?

I am not sure what a draft is. I finished my 4,000 word short story, Suffrage. that I discussed here and excerpted here. I even talked about Suffrage's viewpoint here.

I finished the story, front to back, at about 5,600 words. Then I read through and diced it down twice until I got it to 4,000 words. In the process, I rearranged things a bit, edited the copy greatly, emphasized the theme, etc. Then I did another read-through for unity, tone, theme, and more editing.

Have I done one draft, two drafts, three, or four? I would think that finishing, then cutting a story by 30% constitutes at least two drafts. But then, revision and tightening--another draft?

It's all so confusing.

Gernsback

The first meeting of The Gernsback Continuum went well. I had initially worried that the group was stillborn. My mail to group members asking if they were going to participate garnered a couple of grouchy replies. Apparently my diplomatic skills are lacking.

It went down to the wire. A few minutes before the meeting, I did not know if we would be able to do a private chat with Yahoo Messenger, the tool that another group had recommended. Yahoo's help files say, "We do not have private chat," and when one chooses Chat/Create A Room, the "Create A Room" option is greyed out and inoperative.

I guess Yahoo is worried that someone will say, "A strange man took me to a private chat room and invited me to his house and took pictures of me." So Yahoo does not have private chat rooms--but they do have Conference Rooms, which is pretty much the same thing. Yahoo's help files do not say, "We do not have private chat rooms, but you can open conference rooms," though. So I tried the last option on the menu that I was unsure of, and it worked.

We critiqued two members' stories--including Suffrage. The most important thing that I got from the critiques was that the story's big turning point should be better prepared for, which is what B. J. previously told me--but I uploaded Suffrage for critique before I met with B. J. Alas.

The other author under the microscope got some good advice (I think). She has a solidly conceived world that is well researched and fleshed out. I have not attempted to create such an extensive literary environment as she has created.

We have two more on the block for our meeting in two weeks--more if time allows.

The group members are good readers. I am looking forward to the next meeting.

Theme

Orson Scott Card gets most things right. One of the many things he got right for me was the development of theme in a story.

Uncle Orson says that stories written to expound on a theme tend to be sermons, not stories. Stories rely on chains of causality. Theme arises during the process of writing the story.

That is how it works for me. When writing a story I concentrate on the characters, the action, the dialogue, and the setting. I generally know the direction in which the story is going and approximately where it will end.

Then, somehow in the characters' striving, a theme will arise.

I did not set out to make Suffrage about how bitterness about the past spiritually kills us and must be put aside in order to live.

I did not set out to make Nirvana Cat about how adoption of a strictly rational world view kills the spiritual world view.

I did not set out to make Killing Words about how we feel more a part of our community when it is threatened; and how defending our community can give us a stronger love for that community.

Once the theme arises, I rewrite, emphasizing the theme in action and symbols. C. S. Lewis once said something like this. If we concentrate too much on getting to heaven, then we won't make it. We have to look to heaven, but live here on earth, day to day. I think if we concentrate on theme we do not develop the strongest theme we can. To build our strongest themese we write a story, and find the theme.

September Gang

Yesterday we got back from visiting with Roberto's family. We got home at about 3:00 in the afternoon. I had a Gang of Three meeting that evening, so I read the one short piece that another member submitted, took care of the family, then showered and left.

One of my fellow gangsters, B. J., made it, but Barb thought we were supposed to meet on Thursday night. B. J., "got" Suffrage. She got the black humor and the tenderness and the ironic twist ending. She also pointed out one of my usual problems--I often have to work on forshadowing the weird stuff.

She even liked this: I saw Sarge’s shredded face, grey as spoiled pork, with pine straw and leaves matted, missing one eye, part of the other eye staring into Monihan’s face, a silvergreen beetle crawling.

B. J. usually challenges me on description. A frequent comment is "How does that look?" asking for concrete, specific, showing description. The "Sarge" sentence did not need any more vivid description. But that is just a testimony of how her past comments have bored into my brain.

Associating with good readers and good writers has helped me improve. Perhaps I will eventually be "good enough," if that matters.

Missed One

There are millions of details in a story that has much less than a million words. Some of the details are implied by the setting. I likely miss a few.

I know I missed one on Suffrage, which I have submitted. The quarter moon is visible on one day. Around a week later, the half moon is visible. But if the quarter moon is waxing, a week later the moon would be at three-quarters. If the quarter moon is waning, a week later it would be back at a quarter.

If the moon were not important in the story, that would not be a big thing. But, it is, so it is.*

The problem is easily fixed, though. In the story, a week passes in a paragraph. There is no problem with making two or three days pass, instead.

Here's hoping that the judges are lunarstupid, like me.


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*Comment designed for your confusement.

Sensitivity

My ancestry is strongly Irish and Injun. Suffrage has two characters with Irish accents. I am doing a reading on Saturday and need to do a passable accent for those characters.

I would prefer not to do the accent on the old Kelly's Chili or Irish Spring soap commercials. So I have been looking for Irish accents to mimic.

My son had an interesting technique. When you make a statement in an Irish accent, make it lilt up on the end as if you were asking a question. So you say, "Let's go to town," in about the same cadence as you say, "Are we going to town?" It seems to work for him.

I found some on YouTube. It is funny that the Irish guys who discuss the accent do not have much of an accent. Then they demonstrate by slipping into the accent. Perhaps that is because if they were really immersed in the accent they would not be able to tell someone what is different about it.

I got a few rules from the Irish guys on YouTube. The "a" sound in "cat" or "that" is a dominant way of saying the short "a." That "a" is broad--drawn out. The long "a," as in hate, is almost another syllable, so that it becomes hayet. An ending "t" on a word is barely there. So "that" is almost "thah." The "th" is usually made into a "d" or a "t." So maybe "that" is almost "dah."

At some point I began to wonder if they were teaching the accent incorrectly, so that they might be able to laugh at us.

I am not afraid of offending any Irish in the reading. I would just like to get it right.

Saved!

I missed the last meeting of my large writing group. I heard they just talked politics and not writing. Today they mostly talked politics. I read some of Suffrage and we read two poems--one of which was political. Then most of them talked politics.

I like to talk politics with people who analyze the issues, but my writing group has an emotional approach to politics. They believe that politicians can "help us" and think in terms of good and evil.

Here is an armchair analysis, as opposed to emotion. I have heard that the president can "create jobs." Politicians could create jobs by hiring people to stand under trees to catch falling leaves. That will also destroy jobs, since the "leafcatcher" salaries will be appropriated from people who are now, with their spending, paying other people's salaries.

Private markets, left alone, can create jobs only when those workers create value for consumers. If the private market has not already created leafcatcher jobs then those jobs must not support enough value in the market to pay the workers' salaries and benefits.

The politician will create more jobs than he destroys only if government is smarter at spending your dollars than you are--if the most massive bureaucracy in existence is more smart, knowledgable, and efficient at pleasing us than we are. Alas, I am begging the question, since the answer is obvious.

This kind of analysis leads me to believe that politicians do not have much power to make our lives better. We have that power, and politicians can help us by giving us more power to act in our own interest and in the interest of others, but they cannot, by their own actions, make us better off.

Alas, few politicians want to run on the platform, "I am going to leave you alone." (I can just hear the response those with the emotional approach, "Leave us alone? Please don't! We don't want to be alone.")

The writerly types and others in the publishing industry seem oriented toward emotional, rather than analytical approaches to policy. Perhaps I will always be the quiet one in the room, since I do not want to try to convert the convinced. Policy is more of a religious matter with those folks and I do not want to try to talk them out of their religion.

Suffrage (Excerpt)

“When I die, bury me in Tangipahoa Parish, so I still can vote.” -- Huey P. Long


I made my way along Buttermilk Creek at dawn, checking my traps when I heard cussing, somebody spitting words out like hammering a nail. I settled down in the brush, then snuck up the hill to our family plot, quiet pine straw under my toes. Their horses and tents was at sides of the flat hill. I counted eleven dirty white shirts and blue caps, and then I saw one more, head to toe in Yankee blue.

A scrawny one cawed, “Hey Sergeant, Eli Fox was born in 1824 and died in 1864. Change the two to an eight he was born in 1884, twenty years after he died!”

“That’s ten years from now,” growled the big Yankee in blue. “Doesn’t make good sense.”

“That’s why it’s funny!”

Sarge stood on Daddy’s grave. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.”

Lightning crackled in my head. If I’d had our shotgun I would have blown their heads off. I waited until I caught my breath, and crept back down. My brother, Ernest, would know what to do.

When I jumped the gully, I ran right into a blue coat. “Ho, there, lad,” he said wrapping his arms around me, making me drop my sack with the two dead coons. He took me down hard.

“Easy, lad. Let’s chat, shall we?”

“Turn me loose, damned Yankee.” I almost sobbed, short of breath with him on top.

“We’re looking for the White League. I know a fine lad like you wouldn’t have nothing to do with murders, but maybe you know who would. Tell me and I’ll go about my business.” Irishboy Elliott’s whole family talked like this Yankee--I didn’t know there was Irish Yankees.

“Let me go!” I shot halfway out and grabbed a handful of red hair. He hit me so hard that my head rattled.

Yankees thundered down the hill, yelling. They drug me back up and tied my hands and feet, so that I was hugging daddy’s tombstone. It was a sandstone slab from Buttermilk Creek with nooks and crannies for their rope to seat down in, except for the face that Ernest had flattened out, where my chest and neck fit.

Sarge squatted on the other side of the stone and glared until I quit cussing. “What’s your name, boy?”

I clamped my jaw shut. I was madder than I had ever been.

“Not ready to talk? Well, I can cure that. Get my whip, Monihan,” he ordered the Irish Yankee.

Monihan puffed his cheeks out, stood there a second, and drug off. Sarge stared at me from under his Yankee hat and bushy eyebrows. “You know any White League around Muddville?”

I just stared.

“Traitors buried here, boy. You wouldn’t be one of them?”

Through my teeth, I said, “My Daddy wasn’t no traitor.”

He spit on Uncle Van’s grave. “Your Pa took arms against his country. And before you say Louisiana left that country, I’ll tell you that the Union voted--majority rule--for Louisiana not to leave, so they broke the law. Your Pa’s a traitor.”

Monihan brought a black bullwhip. These Yankees wasn’t herding cows so I knew Sarge liked to beat people. Ernest would never hear me scream way out here. I yanked up on the rope and felt my feet move, too--trussed. Salty sweat ran into my eyes and mouth, but I couldn’t wipe. Monihan handed Sarge the whip. I blurted out, “You never voted to whip me, you cowards.”

Sarge blinked. He smiled. “Nope, I never did. All right, let’s vote it.”

“I vote no, so it’s a tie. Let me go.”

He grinned. “We got thirteen here. You’ll have to submit to what General Blount calls the tyranny of the majority.”

Could I keep him talking until somebody could save me? “You Yankees got boys of your own. Why do you want to bullwhip me when I ain’t done nothing?” Tears leaked out of my eyes; my body was stinging on the sandstone.

Sarge said, “All in favor of me whipping this boy?”

Lots of “yes sir” from them.

“Against?” he said.

I said, “No!”

Monihan said, “No sir.”

Sarge looked like Monihan hit him. “What the hell?”

Monihan said, “Since we’re voting it, I allow that if we whip him we’ll make more enemies than we want. Free him and we’ll get just what we want, Sir.”

“Hrmph. Well, you lose. Since you like this traitor, you get to beat him.” He handed the whip to Monihan. I relaxed a little since Monihan didn’t want me beat anyway. Then Sarge said, “Three lashes. If some aren’t good enough, you’ll get those, plus one.”

Daddy whipped me some before he died at Mansfield when I was eight. Mama didn’t have the stomach for whipping me after Daddy died--she got pneumonia a year later. Ernest whipped me once, but he ended up crying halfway through. He had the gumption to take their place in most things, but not that.

I stared hate at Sarge and ran my fingertips over Daddy’s stone.

The whip whistled through the air and lashed me. Every muscle bent backward and I screamed like a girl. My muscles didn’t let go. I ran out of air, caught more, and screamed it out, too.

While my back still blazed, another lash burned across it. I couldn’t breathe. My muscles was so tight I was paralyzed.

Sarge said, “Wait. He needs to feel them all.”

When I caught my breath I pled, “Oh, please, damned Yankees, oh please don’t ...”

I begged until I whimpered and twitched like a dying squirrel. Sarge raised my chin with his hand. “Two hundred black men murdered in Colfax last week. Where is the White League in Grant Parish?”

I blurted the truth. “I don’t know, Ernest says we ain’t got time for such, we got to make a living, we ain’t no better off than black folks, we sell them chickens at their boarding house, we swim with them, we call them names but they calls us names too, I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

“Shut up!” He growled. “I don’t think the boy knows nothing. Still, we voted three lashes. Monihan.”

I sobbed, “No, oh please, no.”

Monihan leaned and touched me on the shoulder with the tip of the bullwhip. “That’s three, Sarge.”

“You Irish bastard! On your knees!” Two of them stripped Monihan’s jacket and shirt and shoved him down on the other side of Daddy’s stone, facing me. He put his hands on my shoulders and nodded.

Sarge’s first lash bent Monihan backwards and he fell over, trying to reach behind, screaming not nearly as loud as me. Four Yankees held his arms around the stone while Sarge lashed again. He screamed and cried, and in a while he was moaning and they let him up.

Sarge said, “Sorry you did that, Monihan?”

Between gasps, Monihan said, “Aye, Sarge.”

***

When I staggered home with my coons, Ernest was plowing behind the mule. I still had the shakes and whimpered when I took a wrong step. I could never sneak up on Ernest because he was always looking over his shoulder. Sitting on the porch one time, I asked, “What are you looking back at?”

He squinted at me and said, “Mansfield.”

“Why are you scared? You won at Mansfield.”

“Maybe somebody won at Mansfield. I sure didn’t, and neither did Daddy. And you didn’t win neither.”

When Ernest looked back he could see I was bowed up. “Jake?”

“Yankees, Ernest. At the graveyard.”

“What did they do?”

I’d start crying if I told him, so I just turned my back.

“Lord! Why, Jake?”

“The League killed hundreds of black folks at Colfax last week. Yankees thought I knew something.”

Ernest hugged my forehead to his sweaty shoulder, like when we prayed every night. “I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault.”

He pulled back, looking me over. “Skint up ... all over.”

“They tied me to Daddy’s gravestone. One named Monihan took two lashes to save me from getting another. Don’t hurt him.”

Ernest swallowed hard. I had known we couldn’t fight Yankees, but I forgot somehow, because Ernest always set everything right for me. He was Daddy, Mama, and big brother, too.

“Let’s go see Irishboy,” he said.