Author: Samuel Johnston

Professional software developer, unprofessional writer, and generally interested in almost everything.

Razor Mountain — Chapter 7.4

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The next morning, as the people ate smoked fish and young roots, Black-Eyes-Staring, one of the older children who would soon be a man, pointed across the water and shouted. The light of the rising sun illuminated the far shore and a cluster of trees on the basin slope. Prowling out to the water, they could see a group of huge striped lions. As if in response to the boy, one of them raised his head from the water and roared. It was the sound they had heard in the night.

God-Speaker saw that Far-Seeing and Finds-the-Trail did not say any more about the wonders that awaited across the water. They said nothing as they ate, eyes squinting against the sun after a tiring night watching for eyes in the darkness.

Braves-the-Storm soon set them to work with the long tree trunks. The people lined up along one of the trunks, setting one end into the divot dug the night before, and raising it up as a group, as though they were going to plant it back into the earth. As carefully as they could, they let it fall across the river, with the strongest of the men assigned to the end of the trunk that was in the trench. They held it down as well as they could, and the far end of the trunk struck the soft dirt hard enough to put a dent in the ground on that side too. They tested it, and it seemed to stay in place reasonably well.

They did the same thing with the second trunk, although this one bounced against a rock on the far side and landed well apart from the first. Several people had to carefully roll it until it lay firmly next to the other trunk, both of them wedged into the trench on the near side of the river.

Braves-the-Storm had them tie the logs together with a long strip of good leather, a precious resource. Far-Seeing, who was good at balancing along ledges and fallen logs, took another strip and walked across. He moved carefully, not quickly, and had no trouble reaching the other side.

“It’s slippery,” he said. “It’s already wet from the night dew and the spray from the river. The bark isn’t rough enough to grip well.”

He tied the second strip of leather tightly around the logs on the other side, and adjusted them as well as he could so they wouldn’t roll or move. Then the people had to cross, one by one. Some crawled, others walked. The youngest children were given to those with the best balance, and the children who could walk went hand-in-hand with another to guide them.

God-Speaker had to carry the stone god and his pack. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the bridge and considered walking, but he saw how slick it was and decided to slide across in a sitting position, balancing his heavy load with his legs dangling over the water. He could feel his heart pumping, and he scraped his thighs on the pine bark, but he made it across.

Last to come was Finds-the-Trail. He untied the precious leather strap from the logs on his side, to take with him. Then he stepped out onto the logs. He looked sure-footed and confident, but the logs were now slick with moisture. God-Speaker and Far-Seeing held down the logs on the far side as he stepped out over the fast-flowing river.

God-Speaker envied Finds-the-Trail and Far-Seeing. They were strong and agile, while God-Speaker always felt as though he were fighting against the clumsiness of his own body. God-Speaker watched Finds-the-Trail’s feet as his toes gripped the log. The muscles in his ankles and legs flexed as he walked. He wasn’t fast, but he looked confident.

God-Speaker noticed the piece of loose bark a moment before Finds-the-Trail stepped on it. It slid from the log as Finds-the-Trail put his weight on his left foot. His left leg went over the side of the log, while his right knee slammed down, throwing all his weight after his left leg, over the side of the slippery little bridge.

Finds-the-Trail managed to grab the bridge with his right hand, leaving more than half his body hanging over the edge. Even worse, the log he hung from was rolling and twisting over the top of the other log, no longer held in place by the strap. The toes of his dangling leg brushed the freezing water rushing below.

God-Speaker saw what would happen. One log would roll over the other, and Finds-the-Trail would tumble into the river. It would wash him far out into the lake. Even a short time in that cold water would sap a person’s strength. God-Speaker saw what would happen, and he imagined what it would be like to live in a tribe without Finds-the-Trail. The moment seemed stretched and thin. He heard the others suck in frightened breath, start to shout.

Next to God-Speaker, Far-Seeing was fighting to stop the logs from turning. Nobody else was close enough to do anything. God-Speaker pushed down on his own side of the bridge, pulling his legs into a crouch under him. Then he threw himself out onto the bridge. Without his weight on the end, it flipped completely. He landed hard on his chest at an angle, his legs hanging out over the opposite side from Finds-the-Trail. He clasped hands with the hunter as he slid off the log. God-Speaker felt that Finds-the-Trail’s grip was stronger than his own, but it was enough to hold him until other hands pulled them both back onto solid ground.

God-Speaker lay in the moss and soft grass, a rock pressing on his spine, breathing hard and staring up into the blinding blue of the sky. His stomach was streaked with red scrapes from the pine bark. Finds-the-Trail landed next to him, but jumped up as if he had been burned. He stood over God-Speaker, and stared down. God-Speaker saw different expressions flit across his face in the span of a moment. Then his face went blank, and he turned and walked away.

God-Speaker lay where he had landed. He heard the sounds of talking among the people, but they meant nothing to him. His mind was as empty as the cloudless sky. A bird soared in a lazy circle far overhead.

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Storytelling Class — Nonlinear Structures

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was nonlinear storytelling.

We always start with two questions: What did we read, and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

I read the usual fiction blogs, and got about half-way through both Chuck Wendig’s Damn Fine Story, and The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Wendig’s book on storytelling is a very in-the-trenches guide to good storytelling structures that can be easily and immediately deployed in whatever story you’re currently writing. It has the exactly same zany energy that makes Wendig’s blog fun, and while it mostly covers tried-and-true ideas about story structure, it’s a good review and packed with useful pop-culture examples.

The Wes Anderson book is a collection of interviews, photos and other Anderson-esque artifacts documenting the director’s work from his Bottle Rocket debut up to Moonrise Kingdom. It looks like the book has become a series as Anderson continues to make movies, so I may have to check out the Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs volumes next.

I also finally finished reading The Lord of The Rings to the kids. Whew! It has been years since I read the whole thing, and I had forgotten a few things. It’s quite a series to read out loud.

What Did We Write?

I wrote my usual bloggery, and finished Razor Mountain chapter 7, which turned out to be a very long chapter. Freya didn’t write any fiction this week.

Nonlinear Stories

The main topic this week was nonlinear story structure. This was something that came up in our previous conversations that Freya wanted to know more about.

Linear stories show events happening in order. Nonlinear stories show at least some part of the story out-of-order from when it happened in relation to the other events. One could also argue that a story told in-order, but leaving some events out is also a form of nonlinear story structure.

Nonlinear structure is more effort for the reader to understand. Using too much of it, or not using it to good effect may end up frustrating the reader. If you’re going to use a nonlinear structure, do it purposefully.

Skipping Ahead

The simplest form of nonlinearity is skipping ahead. This is typically used to get past events that logically need to happen, but simply aren’t interesting enough for the reader to want to see them played out.

This can also sometimes be used to heighten excitement, often as part of a mystery, by leaving out some important event. In this case, it’s typically revealed later on, at the point when the revelation is most important. This can be dangerous because it can sometimes feel “unfair” to the reader that the knowledge was kept from them, especially if it was readily available to the characters.

Events Out of Order

A flashback is the most common way to show events out of order, inserting some previous events into the narrative near the point where they become relevant to the story’s “main” timeline. A flash-forward is a less common version of this, jumping ahead into the future to see some outcome that results from events in the story’s “main” timeline.

A frame story is a case where the bulk of the story is told as a flashback or “story within a story.” The recounting of the story is the “frame.” Examples of this are Scheherazade’s storytelling in the One Thousand and One Nights or the grandfather and grandson in The Princess Bride.

Parallel plots are often employed in stories with larger casts of characters, where individuals or groups have their own plots going at the same time. These stories will cover a certain amount of time for one character or group, then cut back to the start and show what happened during that period for the other character or group.

Events Disconnected

A more complicated nonlinear story may have many events out of their linear order.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind mostly consists of memories of a relationship, shown out of order. Memento follows a man with a brain injury that prevents him from forming long-term memories, starting with scenes at the beginning and end of the story, then going forward and backward in turns to eventually meet in the middle.

The video game Her Story tells a story through a series of interview clips, with the player able to discover different clips through play, and choosing the order to view them in.

Time Travel and Alternate Universes

Time travel stories almost always involve some nonlinear structures, and often complicate them with characters that go into the past and change the future, or muddle it with closed time loops where future characters participate in past events that contribute to the state of the future (their present).

Stories with alternate universes often use similar structures, with the added complication that similar events in different universes can have different outcomes, and at some point the alternate universes typically affect one another.

Homework

Freya and I both slacked and didn’t write anything for the previous class’s homework. This week, we’ll be playing catch-up. We’re both going to write something and either incorporate some non-linearity or use it to discuss beginnings, middles and ends.

Some of Freya’s ideas from our Ideas class were for homemade movies, so the next class topic will be script-writing 101. (I’ve never written a script before, so I’ll probably learn some things too!)

Razor Mountain — Chapter 7.3

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The next day, the people packed their things and broke camp. God-Speaker made signs to the river and spoke quietly, standing apart from the others. He knew now that he was not really leaving her. He had seen how weak the barriers between the worlds could be. He could reach out and find her, if he had the skill. Still, it felt like a goodbye.

It was easy travel along the lake shore, a relaxing change from the hard scrabbling through the mountains. Their surroundings made it clear though, that this was only a break. There were more mountains in their path, regardless of the direction they chose. The sun was bright in the sky, and the snow on the slopes was melting. There were puddles in every little depression, and little rivulets running over the rocks everywhere. They crossed several small streams that had clearly only just started to carve their way through the soft dirt, growing moment by moment.

It came as little surprise then, when they came over a low hill and found a real river. It was at least as large as the river they had followed to the basin, the river of Makes-Medicine. It came over a great rushing falls far up the slope, visible by the cloud of rainbow mist, but barely a whisper of the rushing water to be heard from their place far below.

This river was not just from the spring snow melt, although it clearly had swelled in recent days. It followed a path carved deep into the rock, and it had a wide mouth that spread out well above the current lake shore. The level of the water was several feet below the lip of the river’s gorge. The water was deep and dark, and rushing fast. At its narrowest, it was too wide to jump, and though it was shallower closer to the lake, it was many times wider there. Though the weather had been warmer in the basin, it would be dangerous to wade through. Even if nobody was taken by the current, the mountain water was freezing. Pieces of ice came floating down, crunching against the rocks and showing the speed of the water.

“There,” said Far-Seeing. “Not even a day of good travel before our way is blocked.”

He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun, looking across to the far shore of the lake. “It looks like easy terrain on the other side.”

Braves-the-Storm looked in the opposite direction, away from the lake and up the slopes of the basin, toward the falls. “The trees are better here. There is something we could try.”

The slope was soft rock, layered with rich black dirt and green with moss, grasses and shrubs. It was enough soil for a decent number of pines to find places for their roots to take hold. There were a few that rose straight and tall. They could provide enough wood for a few days of fires at least.

“Let us stay here for tonight,” Braves-the-Storm said. “This is a good place to camp, on the hill. We could not get back to the old camp before night anyway.”

“But we will go back?” Far-Seeing asked.

“Of course,” Finds-the-Trail said, leaning on his spear set in the soft earth. “We agreed to try this way and see if it was passable, and then go around the other way if it wasn’t.”

“Another day of travel will only make more rivers of these little streams,” Braves-the-Storm said. “As long as we are here, let us try to make a bridge.”

The people were used to traveling, but they usually went around obstacles like this, rather than crossing them. Many seasons ago, when they traveled along the shore of the endless ocean, they had made small boats. Now, the knowledge of making them was lost to all but one or two. They had some knowledge of bridge-building too, but it was a rare thing to build a bridge to only be used only once, and the people rarely stayed in one place for long.

While some of the tribe gathered wood for fires, and several of the hunters went off in hopes of finding more game, Braves-the-Storm directed God-Speaker and several of the older men to the straightest, tallest trees, and they took turns chopping with their broadest stone hand-axes. The trees were as thick as a hand’s length, from fingertip to wrist. It was fairly soft wood, but it was still hard work to chop through, and they had to be careful that the tall trunks didn’t fall onto anyone. By the time they were done, their hands and tools were sticky with sap.

As night fell, they dragged the two trunks to a flat place near the river. Braves-the-Storm had them dig a trench in the dirt near the edge of the river. Then they rested and ate.

The hunters came back without having caught anything, and God-Speaker could hear Far-Seeing and Finds-the-Trail complaining about the time they were wasting on the wrong side of the lake, and speculating about better hunting across the water. Everyone else, however, seemed happy enough to have good food to eat and less freezing weather for sleeping.

That night, there were strange noises in the distance: roars and yips. The fires were kept burning bright, and several of the hunters stood guard with their spears in hand. Nobody heard anything come close, or saw any predators’ eyes reflecting the firelight in the darkness. Still, it was a potent reminder that even in this seemingly peaceful valley, the world was dangerous.

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 7.2

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The hunters and the fishers came back to the camp within minutes of each other. God-Speaker was feeding the fires, half lost thinking through his visions. The sun was behind the mountains, but still lent its light to the sky and the tallest peaks.

The hunters had stalked around the dam, and brought back a giant beaver and two of its young. The adult was as large as a black bear, and took three strong men to carry, slung across poles made from saplings. The hunters were more tired from hauling the creature than from the hunt; it had been felled with two well-thrown spears. The beaver young were much smaller, but still large enough to make several good meals.

The fishers had also done well. One of the nets had broken, losing most of the catch, but it could be fixed. The other two had come out of the river thick with fish. After weeks with hardly any fresh food, the prospect of so much made the people giddy. There was a flurry of activity. Some of them cut fillets of the fish and prepared them to cook or smoke on simple wooden racks. They scooped the roe from the bellies of the silver fish and passed them around. The bones and bits of leftover meat were put in waterproof skins and covered with fresh water. Then the people used fire-heated rocks to heat the mixture into a soup. Meanwhile, others flayed the huge adult beaver and the smaller young and butchered them with sharp stone knives.

God-Speaker volunteered to go back along the ridge and find clean snow and ice in the shadowy places where spring sun had not yet reached. It gave him more time to be alone with his thoughts.

The people cut up the meat and offal and wrapped it in skins filled with the clean ice and snow to keep it fresh and free of flies. It also lessened the smell of fresh meat, which could draw scavengers and predators, hungry after the long winter.

That night, they feasted on fresh fish, fish stew, and the organ meat of the beavers. The mood was festive. The fires were stoked with the deadwood strewn around the basin, and it sometimes burned with hisses and hints of strange colors, reminding God-Speaker vividly of his vision.

The hunters told stories of hunts in years past. The fires burned low and the moon fell behind the mountains, leaving a clear sky of bright stars. Braves-the-Storm spoke quietly about the journeys of the tribe through strange lands that the younger people had no memory of. He talked about the open sea in storm, and wild, crashing waves peaked with white foam. He spoke of icy shores in deep winter, and the booming of cracking ice underfoot. His low voice and the steady rhythm of his words were a sort of primal music.

They slept well, tired from hard work but full and happy and warmer than they had been on the mountain slope.

It was cooler the next morning, but still comfortable when wrapped in furs. There was plenty of work still to do, smoking meat and fish to preserve it, and taking in another, smaller haul of fish. The fires had to be fed, and the people now needed to go further and further to find wood. There were bits of old driftwood and long-drowned trees, but the only living trees in the basin were young saplings.

God-Speaker busied himself gathering wood and helping with other tasks here and there as he saw need. He had no particular skill in butchering animal or fish, or in preserving the meat or preparing the hides. Like any member of the tribe, he knew enough to participate in those tasks, but he had no names given to him for skill in these things as others did.

The people stayed at camp that day, but talk turned to travel again. As they took their mid-day meal, Braves-the-Storm sat near God-Speaker, Far-Seeing, and Finds-the-Trail. He chewed a piece of fish and nodded to God-Speaker.

“We followed the river to her ending, and she has given us a great spring bounty. We have new strength and we have good weather. We must give thought to the journey ahead.”

“We have only just arrived here,” Far-Seeing said. “Are there no more fish in the river?”

Finds-the-Trail smirked, but he said, “Fish are as good when your belly is aching from hunger, but I want more game to hunt. The animals are hungry after the long winter. They will come to the open water, but we will have to walk the shore to find them.”

Braves-the-Storm nodded. “There is the problem of wood, too. We cannot stay here and keep our fires lit. Already we must walk a long way to find wood. We might find another place like this further down the shore, with fish or game, and more trees.”

God-Speaker was hesitant to speak up, but he felt a tightness below his heart. The stone god hummed next to him.

“When we first came to this place…I had a vision,” he said.

Braves-the-Storm frowned. “Why did you not speak of this?”

“It was not urgent. There was much to do and I thought it could wait.”

“What did your vision tell you?” Braves-the-Storm asked.

God-Speaker pointed across the lake. “There is a hill there that looks like a bald head. It stands in front of a wide valley between those two mountains. If we travel along this side of the lake, we can climb that hill and see what lies beyond. My vision guided me toward that place.”

“That’s it?” Finds-the-Trail asked. “Go to the top of a hill and look around? I could have told you that the best place to see your surroundings is from a high place.”

“It is warmer here, near the lake,” Far-Seeing said. “Now is the time to stay and gather what we can. Fill our packs.”

“We can travel along the shore and still hunt and fish as we go,” Braves-the-Storm said.

Far-Seeing looked out across the lake. “There is another thing. Over along the opposite shore, I see more trees. The land looks like it makes shallower slopes. The streams from the mountains look small and easier to cross.”

He pointed down the shore on the left side of the lake. “This side looks more dangerous. There are fewer trees and that river looks much more broad.”

God-Speaker frowned. “It will take many more days to go around the other way to the bald hill.”

Braves-the-Storm took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “The streams from the mountains will run faster every day. Crossing rivers will be dangerous. We should avoid that if we can.”

God-Speaker’s vision had not been specific. How could he translate vague feelings into urgency?

“I do not know. I do not want to leave the river either. But I am called to that hill. If the rivers are growing with the melting snow, it may be easy to cross now, and impossible in a few days.”

Braves-the-Storm nodded. “You make a good point. Perhaps we should try the shorter path, along this side of the lake. If it proves unsafe, we can go back and try the long way.”

God-Speaker nodded in agreement. The two hunters frowned, but they didn’t argue. The matter seemed settled, for now.

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 7.1

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The mountain steppes gave way to gentler, gravel-strewn slopes. The people continued to follow the deep gorge carved by the river as it fell through a series of falls. The air grew warmer, and soon the mist coming off the rapids and falls landed wet on the rocks around the canyon, instead of turning to ice.

They came to a rock shelf, and standing at the edge they looked down into a huge basin: a low point between the many mountains all around. The river fell over the cliff in a roaring falls, then cut across the flat ground of the basin toward a lake pooled at the center. However, before it could reach its destination, it was blocked by a pile of felled trees. This dam had backed it up to form a smaller pond. From there, it cut a new, shallower path around the blockage and found its way by a longer path toward the larger body of water.

A murmur ran through the people as they gathered on the ledge. The dam meant there would be giant beavers who had wintered in this warm valley. However, other streams glinted along the slopes around the basin. The lake would be growing daily as the spring melt from the mountains funneled down into the basin. It would cover the dam, and possibly fill the entire area. The beavers might already have fled the rising waters.

They had to leave the river and walk along the ridge until they found a place where a slope gave them access down. Once they reached the basin floor, travel to the beaver pond was easy. The ground was thick with green growth, thanks to the rich soil surrounding the lake.

They stopped to make camp in the early afternoon within sight of the beaver dam, but distant enough to avoid spooking the creatures. The hunters prepared their spears and crept off to hunt. Some of the people made fire, while God-Speaker and several others went to look at the river and get fresh water.

The river cut easily through the soft earth of the basin’s floodplain, but not through the layer of rock beneath. It was wide and shallow here. As they approached, God-Speaker could see the gleam of fish in the water. Some were small and silvery, others were larger, with pink flanks. The people filled their water skins, then returned excitedly to the campsite. As soon as there was word of fish, they unpacked nets made from braided animal sinew, carefully maintained for opportunities such as this.

Swims-in-Cold-Water was the best net-maker, and she examined each net for any broken or brittle sections. She rubbed them with a fresh coating of precious animal fat to ensure their suppleness and prevent the water from drying them out.

Hunting was the purview of the young men, but fishing was something that most of the tribe could participate in. Older men and women without young children, as well as the children verging on adulthood could all participate. The most limiting factor was the number of nets. Most of the remaining people gathered the nets up and went back to the river. Even if they couldn’t all participate, they could watch.

God-Speaker remained behind with Strikes-Flint and Cuts-Hide, the mothers of the youngest children. He found an area of soft moss and new grass where he could sit away from the noise of the children playing and meditate with the stone god. He looked out over the still water of the lake and the spring colors around the basin, up to the white peaks just starting to verge into the orange and purple of the setting sun. The colors spread across the sky.

God-Speaker listened as Makes-Medicine had taught him. With his inner voice, he asked for her guidance. They had reached the end of the river. Soon, he would have to leave her.

The stone god did not speak with words. It had rarely spoken to him since Makes-Medicine died. It hummed with life, sometimes so soft that he could barely perceive it, sometimes an almost violent vibration. That humming told him things, showed him things. The colors of spring and the colors of sunset blended and mingled. He was surrounded by color. There were no edges, no barriers between one thing and another. No barriers between one world and another. Sky and earth and water and even the invisible world of spirits were intermingled.

It was always this way, God-Speaker realized. Everything connected to everything. It was only his own weakness, his own mind turned in on itself that prevented him from seeing more than a glimpse here and there. He wondered if this revelation came from Makes-Medicine, or the stone god, or if it was simply a fact of the world that he had discovered by accident.

Makes-Medicine would be there in the spirit world. He could reach out to her, just as he could reach out to the stone god. He didn’t need the physical presence of the river or the stone. If only he could see this way all the time. If only he could believe in the permeability between one world and another all the time.

He wondered how long he had been in this state. Time had no meaning here. Even as he wondered, he felt it beginning to slip away. He wanted to hold on, but he couldn’t. He was afraid that this was some unique moment that he would never be able to recreate, but he sensed that fighting it would only cause it to dissipate faster. He let it fade slowly, savoring. As the world reformed itself around him, one thing stood out.

On the far side of the basin, just to the left of the lake from where he sat, there was a gap between two distant peaks. Blocking that gap was a wide, round hill with a bare top. It looked like the top of the bald head of some great giant almost entirely buried under the world. God-Speaker saw that the bald hill would be the perfect vantage point to look out at the world beyond those two mountains. This, he knew, was the direction the people must travel.

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Storytelling Class — Beginnings, Middles and Ends

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was beginnings, middles and ends.

We always start with two questions: what did we read and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

We each read a lot of things this week!

I read the usual fiction blogs, and a whole bunch of graphic novels from the library:

Freya read:

She also continued reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

(FYI – bookshop.org links are my affiliate links)

Freya really enjoyed the Iliad and the Odyssey, although she said she likes the Odyssey better. She enjoyed the cliffhangers in the Odyssey and the perspective shifting between Odysseus and Penelope.  She didn’t like the limited choice that Penelope seemed to have in the story, and I don’t blame her. We discussed the agency of women in ancient Greece and in our society today.

What Did We Write?

I wrote a few blog posts, and worked on Razor Mountain chapter 7. It’s going to be the longest chapter so far, by a significant margin.

Freya wrote her Ivan reading journal at school, and a 101-word story. She was inspired by my explanation of drabbles, and decided to write one herself! However, she tried to write it in a single draft, and had a hard time finding an ending at exactly 100 words. Hence the 101.

I explained that my process for drabbles is to write a first draft that’s relatively short, but captures the story that I want. Then I trim it down over several drafts until I get to exactly 100 words. Drabbles really force brutal cutting, and I explained that she was making it extra hard on herself by trying to do it all in one go.

Last Week’s Homework: Ten Story Ideas

Freya and I talked through some of the story ideas that we came up with for last week’s homework. She only came up with eight, but eighteen ideas is still a lot to get through, so I won’t go into great detail in this post.

Freya’s ideas included movie scripts and a series of Felix the Cat stories (no, a different Felix the Cat), as well as a story based solely on an interesting title. We got the idea that she often likes to start with a particular media or “shape” of story and figure out the details afterward, which is interesting, and different from the approach I usually take.

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

The main topic for this class was beginnings, middles and ends.

We often split stories into three parts, because three parts feels good (the “rule of threes”) and because the beginning and end tend to have specific things that need to happen, and the middle holds everything together. A lot of talk about three act structure can also be said to be about beginnings, middles and ends.

Beginning (Act I)

Beginnings introduce the important characters, the setting (or world), the situation, and any overarching mysteries.

Beginnings often start with a “hook,” which is something exciting that draws the reader into the story long enough to get them…well…hooked.

The beginning typically includes an “inciting incident,” something that goes wrong or changes the status quo. This incident breaks normality, forcing the action of the story.

Middle (Act II)

In the middle, the characters pursue their goals and try to overcome the main conflict through try/fail cycles. They progress mysteries without completely solving them. Most of the interesting action in the story happens here, and this is usually the biggest chunk of the story.

How do the characters deal with their “broken normal?” Do they try to restore the old order, or make a new order?

Ending (Act III)

The ending should bring the story to a resolution. It may be “happily ever after,” or not. This is where big mysteries should finally be solved. It’s where big questions should finally be answered. Characters succeed or fail at their major goals, or change goals completely.

At the end, the main conflict should be over. The villain should be defeated (or at least no longer in opposition to the good guys).

The major characters will often be clearly changed or have learned something by this point. This is the time to highlight that.

The most important thing here is that the story feels resolved. Finished. The world and characters may go on, but the story is done and they’re moving past it.

Examples

We talked through some different ways you can delineate the three parts in some particular stories, including The Martian, The Lord of the Rings, and the Harry Potter series, as well as Freya’s own Felix the Cat story from last week’s class.

There aren’t hard-and-fast definitions for splitting up stories, so it’s up to each reader’s own interpretation where the transition from beginning to middle or middle to end occurs.

Series

Freya also asked about series such as books in a trilogy (or septology or whatever-logy) and episodes in a TV show.

Typically, each piece of the whole should have a beginning, middle and end, and work at least somewhat on its own. However, there may be larger arcs that span all the books, or a whole season, or only a few episodes. These larger arcs will also have their own beginning, middle and end.

On the other hand, some series, especially comedies, rely on a basic premise that remains the same. Each episode contains a beginning, middle and end. The characters resolve a problem and everything returns to baseline “normal,” ready for next week’s episode.

There are other, stranger ways that series can be handled, but I think this covers the majority. Maybe in a future class we’ll go into other, more unusual styles.

Homework

The homework for next class was to write another short 1-2 page story, thinking specifically about the beginning, middle and end, and what happens in each.

The Principle of Minimum Necessary Information

Have you ever read a bad fantasy book prologue? Maybe it starts with a creation myth, only to go into the history of entire countries and important figures. Finally, it narrows down to the time and place that the book actually focuses on, and you get to chapter one.

Either that, or you’ve already given up and closed the book, wondering how all of that history could possibly be relevant.

The truth is, it’s probably not. Prologues are always fraught with danger, and never more so than in speculative fiction, where the author naturally builds up a rich and complicated world and history as part of the process of creating the setting. When you’ve gone to the trouble to create all that wonderful stuff, it’s so tempting to put it on the page.

Even if every single thing in that history-dump prologue is important for the reader to know, chances are good that it’s not all vital for the reader to know at the start of chapter one. It violates the Principle of Minimum Necessary Information.

The Principle of Minimum Necessary Information suggests that you should give the reader information only if it matters the story, and ideally right when the reader needs it.

Information, Just in Time

The history-dump prologue gives the reader more information than they need, long before they need it. If that info does matter later on, there’s a good chance they’ve already forgotten it, since they lacked the context to understand it in the first place.

One option for exposition that often gets overlooked is to simply tell the reader what they need to know, in straight exposition, at the exact moment it’s relevant. Too much of this starts falling back into history lessons, distracting from the flow of the story, but little bits sprinkled here and there can add context without too much distraction.

She is three stories up, ensconced in brick and mortar, almost a monument, her seat near the window just above the sign that reads “Hoegbotton & Sons, Distributors.” Hoegbotton & Sons: the largest importer and exporter in all of lawless Ambergris, that oldest of cities names for the most valuable and secret part of the whale.

“Dradin, in Love” – Jeff VanderMeer

It will slow down the story to take these little detours, so be careful.

Multitasking

A more subtle option is multitasking. This is when the text serves more than one purpose at a time. A description of a character’s surroundings as they travel is part of the action as it happens, but it might also reveal some of the history of the place that will matter later.

In The Return of the King, when Pippin and Gandalf first arrive at Minas Tirith, the city is described in detail.

For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate. But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was that the east point of th ecircuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned first this way and then that across the face of the hill. And each time it passed the line of the Great Gate it went through an arched tunnel, piercing a vast pier of rock whose huge out-thrust bulk divided in two all the circles of the City save the first.

Tolkien isn’t afraid to spend a good page or two describing a landscape, and this description of the city goes on for several paragraphs, but it does serve double-duty. First and foremost, this is exactly the awe-inspiring view Pippin sees as he approaches this last great city of men in Middle Earth. However, this will also be the site of an epic battle, and one where Pippin and Gandalf will find themselves racing around under dire circumstances.

By describing the city in detail on Pippin’s first viewing, Tolkien captures the majesty of what he’s seeing in a relatively quiet moment. Later, in the rush of battle, when the pace is fast, we already understand the layout of the city. Tolkien doesn’t need to interrupt the action to describe the characters’ routes.

Clue the Reader In

Even further away from straight exposition are clues and hints. Some stories just contain ideas, events, or settings that are complicated, requiring (and deserving) extensive description. Instead of springing them on the reader all at once, it can pay to lay some groundwork.

By layering small clues here and there before the Big Event, the reader has less to take in when it arrives. This is akin to multitasking, but spread out in little bits beforehand. Once again, when done well, it’s seamless and the reader doesn’t even realize that they’re catching fragments of something that will be fully revealed further on.

Make it a Mystery

If a character has good reason to be missing the same knowledge as the reader, they can act as a reader-surrogate. In that case, the missing knowledge can be treated as a mystery. The story doesn’t need to be a mystery story, and the mystery itself doesn’t even have to be a major driving force in the story. It might only be a very minor goal of the character to find the answers to their questions.

The great thing about couching exposition in mystery is that it stops being a chore that has to be cleverly imparted to the reader without slowing down or distracting from the story. Instead, it becomes a little treat, a tiny reward for the reader and the character, when they find out what’s going on.

There’s a reason the outsider-as-a-proxy-for-the-reader is so often used: it’s a very effective way to impart information. Just be aware that this frequently-used pattern can easily become tropey. The mystery has to make sense within the story. If it’s shoehorned in as an excuse to throw some exposition-as-mystery at the reader, it can backfire horrendously.

Keep it to Yourself…For Now

What if you just don’t tell the reader?

No, seriously. Sometimes the reader just doesn’t need all the context for what’s happening. Yes, it’s going to be a little confusing. But if the story is compelling, the reader wants to keep reading. They’ll accept that they don’t understand something, at least for a while.

This “suspension of comprehension” can work, but it incurs a debt. The reader will be slightly confused while they keep reading. If that confusion is resolved by an explanation later on, the debt is paid. If more confusion is layered on, the debt grows. If it grows too high, the reader will decide that the story makes no sense and give up. Every reader is different, but most have their limits.

This is a tactic that readers of speculative fiction are more used to. Sci-fi and fantasy often involve elaborate worlds that are wildly different from the place we live, and readers of these genres understand that the setting will unfold over a large portion of the book, simply out of necessity. Readers of other genres may have less patience for this style of ongoing world-building. This is a case where the genre your story is marketed under can make a difference in reader expectations.

Principle, Not Law

Exposition sometimes get a bad rap. It’s easy to put in too much of it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used carefully and sparingly. Still, when you have a lot of info to get across, don’t just dump it on the page. Remember the Principle of Minimum Necessary Information. Give it to the reader when they need it.

Reblog: Does Social Media Sell Books? — Chuck Wendig

Yes! Of course! I mean, sure, probably. Long-standing publishing orthodoxy takes it as a given.

And, of course, I’m a writer with a blog. Based on my typical audience, chances are pretty good that you, reading this, are also a writer with a blog. We have some sunk costs. It’d be much easier to not ask this question. Because if the answer is anything other than an unqualified “Yes,” we might have to consider how well we’ve been spending our time.

Chuck Wendig asks the thorny question, and doesn’t shy away from the answers. And like so many things, the answers turn out to be complicated and nuanced.

Way back in THE OLDEN DAYS, in the BEFORETIMES, at the outset of this current wave of social media (Twitter, FB, IG, eventually not Tumblr, eventually yes Tik-Tok), it was a common refrain that an author had to have a “platform,” which was something of a corruption of the notion that non-fiction authors had to have a platform. For non-fic authors, that platform meant they had to have a reliable reputation in the subject matter at hand and/or some kind of demonstrable expertise in it. But the dilution of that became simply, “As an author, you should have a social media following at one or several social media sites.” (At this time, blogs were still acceptable. Remember blogs? Yeah, me neither.) It was a little bit advice, a little bit mandate. What that social media following meant or needed to look like was a set of teleporting bullseyes, and though I’m sure some publishers had hard and fast numbers they hoped to see, they did not share them with any authors I know.

The purpose of this social media following was unclear, though it was usually sold as some combination of, hey, be funny, be informative, earn an audience, oh and don’t forget to SHILL YOUR BOOKS, BOOKMONSTER. Drop the links, use the graphics, do the hokey-pokey and shake it all about. You’re an author! Also a brand! Standing on a platform! Asking an audience to love you with money! You’re like the Wendy’s Twitter account — be funny, be individual, be the best version of yourself, get attention, but also get them to eat your goddamn wordburgers.

The question is, did it work then? Does it work now?

Read the rest over at TerribleMinds…

Storytelling Class — Turning Ideas Into Stories

Every week, my daughter Freya and I have a “storytelling class.” Really, it’s just a fun opportunity to chat about writing stories. This week, our topic was how to turn ideas into stories.

We always start with two questions: what did we read and what did we write over the past week?

What Did We Read?

This week I read the graphic novel version of Dream Hunters and my usual blogs. I’m continuing to read The Lord of the Rings to the kids. The day has now been saved, and we just have to get through the final 100 pages of endings.

I picked up Dream Hunters from the library. I like anything by Gaiman, and although I read the original Dream Hunters illustrated story, that was years ago and I remembered almost nothing about it. This full-on graphic novel version was a great story with excellent art.

Freya was in the middle of rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in her free time, and The One and Only Ivan at school. We talked about an exciting part of Ivan, and how she likes action sequences more than lots of dialogue.

What Did We Write?

I wrote my usual blog posts, Razor Mountain chapter 6, and my “homework” short story for this class.

Freya wrote things for school, and her homework story for this class.

Last Week’s Homework

Our homework was to complete a story of two pages or less, as practice for finishing stories.

I wrote a drabble version of my microfiction story “No More Kings.” I like how drabbles force you to cut to the essence of a story (and usually force you to cut more than feels comfortable). But unlike microfiction, they actually feel like a complete tiny story that doesn’t require a gimmick to work.

Freya wrote a two-page story called Felix the Cat Goes to School. This has nothing to do with the cartoon character—it’s actually about a green-furred cat named after her little brother. (His favorite color is green.)

Turning Ideas Into Stories

Our main topic was discussing ways to turn ideas into full stories.

As an example of building up ideas into a story, I talked about a story I’m working on that’s still missing some pieces (like a clear ending). It started as a detective story in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, in a world where magic exists. Eventually, it transformed into something closer to a steampunk James-Bond-with-magic spy drama. It also expanded from something short story length into something novel-length. As I built up this story idea, I had to add in a magic system, a setting, and a background and personality for my main character. Each of these things changed what the story wanted to be.

1. Idea Journal and Brainstorming

I’m a big believer in having a writing journal. A place to keep story ideas is one of the most useful tools a writer can have. Sometimes the muse gifts us with ideas, and this journal gives us a safe place to keep them. However, it can also be useful to dedicate some writing time specifically to brainstorming story ideas.

I showed Freya my idea journal. I used to keep an actual, physical journal, but I switched to a OneNote journal that I can sync between my phone (for ideas on the go) and my computer (for writing time).

We also discussed brainstorming time. This doesn’t have to be time spent hunched over keyboard or journal. It can just as well be a walk in the woods or whatever other environment helps you think creatively, as long as it’s free from distractions.

2. Build Idea Combos

Cory Doctorow talks about story ideas coming out of a “super-saturated solution” of things that catch your interest. You can also think of ideas as the bits of dust in space that accrete into planets and stars. The basic idea behind these metaphors is that one idea—a character, setting, situation, etc. is usually not enough to sustain a story. Instead, each story is a mixture or combination of interesting ideas.

3. Fill In Missing Pieces

Most stories need a specific set of components: characters, setting, a source of tension, and so on. Sometimes fleshing out a story idea is a Mad-Libs-esque exercise in determining the “blanks” and filling them in.

This doesn’t have to be a hard commitment. It can be an experiment. If you know you need a setting to make the idea work, you can pick one you’re not sure about and try it out. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

4. Prompts, Challenges, and Games

Another way to expand your ideas is to mix and mingle them with outside influences. These might be writing prompts or challenges, or games/tools like Story Engine.

Next Week’s Homework

In keeping with the theme, we decided that next week’s homework will be to come up with ten story ideas. These don’t have to be fully fleshed out; they might be a single character or some other piece of a story. We can then talk about what other pieces it needs to become a functional story.

The past two class topics have come from Freya’s questions and thoughts in the previous class. This time, she had no strong opinions on what the next topic should be.

Luckily, I had a list of potential topics for us to consult. After some discussion, we decided that next week’s topic will be beginnings, middles, and ends.

Five Things I Learned From “Over the Garden Wall”

Over the Garden Wall is a strange show. It’s a cartoon mini-series of ten tiny episodes, less than twelve minutes each. It purposely evokes an old-fashioned style, and while it’s not afraid of a joke, the mood of the show is often one of slowly building horror.

The show is the story of two brothers, Wirt and Greg, who are lost and trying to find their way back home. Where exactly they are (in geography or time period) and where their home might be, are all left a little bit unclear. But that doesn’t stop them from continuing down the road, accompanied by a pet frog and a talking bluebird named Beatrice.

It is strange enough that it seems a small miracle that it was ever made. It’s the sort of thing that knows exactly what it wants to be, even though that doesn’t fit very neatly into television seasons or half-hour slots, or precisely-delineated viewership and advertising segments. I expect it’s the sort of thing that people mostly either love or hate, and I fall firmly into the first camp.

As usual, I’ll eschew a traditional review. Instead, I want to comb over this beautiful oddity to see what lessons we can learn from it, to improve our storytelling.

There may be some light spoilers here, but I’m going to try not to ruin the mystery for those who haven’t watched it. If you don’t want to be spoiled, go watch it first! It’s on Hulu, and only slightly longer than a movie.

1 – Succinctness is a Virtue

When I was a wee lad, I loved giant stories that spanned many volumes. I loved giant jRPGs that shipped on half a dozen discs. I loved TV shows that ran for the better part of a decade.

There are still examples of those things that I love, but now that I’m kind of an old guy and there are never quite enough hours in the day, I really, really appreciate things that fit greatness into a small package. I love a good short story or novella. I treasure a good miniseries or single season show.

Over the Garden Wall clocks in at under three hours in total. You can watch the whole thing in an evening, and you don’t even have to stay up late. And although each episode is quite short, each one is gratifyingly complete. Across the episodes, every major character has an arc, and the little mysteries build into big mysteries.

Even the twist ending (which could have been disastrous) is satisfying, layering additional meaning onto the episodes leading up to it. When I finished the series for the first time, the first thing I thought was, “oh man, I need to rewatch that to find all the things I didn’t pay enough attention to.”

It’s easy to make a big, messy, sprawling story. The real artistry is in crafting that story down into a svelte package where every single word is in exactly the right place, and even doing multiple things at once.

2 – Mood Matters

Over the Garden Wall is autumnal. And I don’t simply mean that it’s set during the fall, although it is. The backgrounds are scattered with orange leaves verging on brown. There are fields, ripe and ready for harvest. There are fall festivals and Halloween parties, and as the show goes on, the chill of winter descends over everything.

There’s also the music, which is original to the show but sounds decidedly old-fashioned. It’s sometimes jovial and silly, sometimes morose and melancholy. It hovers between major and minor keys. It captures the mood of Halloween, an old festival that has continued into modern times, stripped of its original meanings: a hint of the ancient and sacred, a hint of the otherworldly and evil, a hint of banal silliness.

Almost every single episode manages a difficult trick. Each one feels like a horror story, beginning with the mundane, leading into strangeness and rising dread. Then, in the end, that menace turns out to be overblown. Everything works out fine, but that dread lingers and grows as the episodes go on.

Autumn is the season of dying. The cold death of winter is on its way, and the plants and animals seek shelter and hope for the rebirth of spring. The show is keenly aware of this, and almost everything is built around these themes of fall, winter and spring, of death and rebirth.

An overarching mood or theme like this can elevate a story beyond the individual components.

3 – Don’t Explain Everything

The last two episodes of Over the Garden Wall come out of nowhere. At least I certainly didn’t see them coming. And yet, they’re a satisfying conclusion. They provide an explanation for what’s going on, and they provide the emotional closure that makes the whole thing feel complete.

What the ending doesn’t do is explain everything. Did everything literally happen? Or was some of it metaphorical? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, and we can each ponder and debate what we think really happened.

I know there are some folks who need to have every mystery wrapped up neatly with a bow, but…I don’t understand those people! Life in the real world is mysterious, and things often go unexplained. Hundreds of years of scientific exploration have only shown us how little we really know. Stories, like science, are a way to explore the universe.

By all means, resolve those big mysteries in your stories. Answer those burning questions. But when you get to the acknowledgements or let the credits roll, consider leaving one or two things open to interpretation. A little ambiguity can make a good story feel like it was just a little too big and too real to entirely fit onto the page.

4 – Comedy Enhances Tragedy Enhances Comedy

There are great dramas and great comedies, but I’ve always felt that the greatest works of art straddle the line between comedy and tragedy. There’s something magical about laughing at the start of a sentence and crying by the end of it.

Over the Garden Wall has some amazing jokes that have become a part of my daily conversations with my family. None of them bat an eye when I talk about burgling turts, call harmless lies “rock facts,” or mention horses who want to steal. But the show also has some relatable teenage angst, tear-jerking brotherly love, and even maybe some life-and-death stakes.

Just because you’re creating “serious art” doesn’t mean you can’t crack wise once in a while, and if you’re crafting a work of comedy you can still sneak in an emotional gut punch or two. In fact, those things can be even more effective thanks to that juxtaposition. The real world isn’t all good or all bad. It’s a mix of both. Stories that acknowledge that feel true.

5 – Wear Your Influences Proudly

Have you ever had a great idea for a story, only to realize it’s not your idea—it’s actually from a movie or book that you forgot about long ago? I have. It’s mortifying.

As artists, there’s an incredible pressure to create something unique and new, with your own voice. To be called derivative is an insult. But the fact is that each of us is a creative soup whose ingredients are all of our most beloved influences. The art and media that you consume inevitably influence the art and media that you create.

Over the Garden Wall emulates a turn-of-the-century style in its painted backgrounds (often with sweeping countryside or dark forest), its new-yet-old-timey music, and even in the mode of speech used by many of the characters. The animation evokes Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, and early Disney.

The show isn’t afraid to look, sound, or act like things that have come before. It pulls wholeheartedly from its inspirations. It wears its influences proudly. And wonderfully, by amalgamating all of these old influences with its modern writing, voice acting and processes, it manages to create something that feels unique and fresh.

Over the Garden Wall is a Modern Masterpiece

What can I say? I love this show. I love the mood that it puts me in, and I try to watch it every year around Halloween. I love how difficult it is to find any comparisons for it when I’m recommending it to people. I love that I keep finding little secrets hidden in the dialogue or visuals, even after multiple viewings.

If you haven’t watched it, go check it out. As I said in the intro, it’s on Hulu and only slightly longer than a movie. And I hope, like me, you get a little inspiration from it for your own creations.

“It’s a rock fact!”