Author: Samuel Johnston

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

I’ve Been Reading Drabbles…Lots of Drabbles

In my pursuit of the form, I’ve now read something like 100 to 150 drabbles. Luckily, hundred-word stories don’t take that long to read.

In addition to the Martian Magazine, which I’ve mentioned previously, I discovered The Drabble (which does include poetry and fiction less than 100 words, rather than exactly 100 words). I also found Speck Lit, which stopped updating a few years ago, but has a large archive still available. I’ve found drabbles of the exactly-100-words definition in a handful of other places. I’m sure there are plenty more out there, especially in flash fiction publications that would accept very short fiction, but typically have max lengths of 1000 or 1500 words. They’re just a pain to find.

One of the nice things about drabbles is that you can read quite a lot of them in a short amount of time. It’s relatively easy to see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, because everything has to be laid out in a couple of paragraphs. They lend themselves to quick analysis.

My Favorites

These are my favorite (freely accessible) drabble stories so far. They surprised me, or made me laugh, or made me feel something. As usual, I skew toward speculative fiction. You can read the whole lot in less time than it would take to read a typical short story.

  1. Nicholas Was — Neil Gaiman
  2. Orbital Views — Gretchen Tessmer
  3. Todd — Jason P. Burnham
  4. The Reluctant Time Traveler Wears Two Watches — Wendy Nikel
  5. The Weave — M. Yzmore
  6. Double Trouble — R. Daniel Lester
  7. The Forest of Memory — Anna Salonen
  8. A Cabin to Die In — Anna Salonen
  9. Of Artistic Temperament — Sophie Flynn
  10. Redemption — Belinda Saville

Styles of Drabble

Having now observed quite a few drabbles in the wild, I tried to classify some of the common styles that are used to make a story interesting in one hundred words. It’s interesting to see that the limited word count really does force a wide variety of forms.

Great Writing — Can You Say Hero?

Sometimes a piece of writing just punches me in the gut. Tom Junod’s 1998 article for Esquire Magazine, a sort of biography of Fred Rogers titled “Can You Say Hero,” is one of those pieces.

Go read it.

(Or you can go here if you’d prefer to pay Esquire for the privilege.)

I think it’s probably my favorite bit of non-fiction writing, and it’s written in a way that fiction writers can still learn plenty from. While it has the advantage of profiling a wholly remarkable man, it’s not really about Mr. Rogers. Sneakily, it’s about Tom himself, and the profound impact that spending time with Mr. Rogers had on him.

Junod is a craftsman writer. A lot of the magic of this story lies in the technical execution — the structure and the choice of words — at least as much as the actual content they’re conveying.

The Hook

We’ve looked before at great hooks and how they can pull the reader inexorably into a story. This one is phenomenal.

Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy’s brain still nice and fresh, he had no memory of it as “Young Rabbit,” or even “Rabbit”; so old that Old Rabbit was barely a rabbit at all but rather a greasy hunk of skin without eyes and ears, with a single red stitch where its tongue used to be. The little boy didn’t know why he loved Old Rabbit; he just did, and the night he threw it out the car window was the night he learned how to pray.

It starts with the classic storybook opening, and a simple declaration: there’s a little boy, and he loves Old Rabbit.

That leads to the vast, meandering second sentence, eight commas- and semicolons-worth of evocative description of Old Rabbit through the boy’s eyes. In that sentence, I know what Old Rabbit looks like. I know how it would feel, held close; how it would smell.

The last sentence of the opening paragraph introduces the conflict and the tension of the story. It’s a tension that won’t be resolved until the final paragraph.

Once Upon A Time

The story is littered with the trappings of children’s stories. Junod uses the phrase “once upon a time” liberally, to the point where he gives it a bit of a nod and a wink with “ON DECEMBER 1, 1997—oh, heck, once upon a time.”

He gives the impression of a breathless child’s rambling story by starting sentences with conjunctions and piling clauses upon clauses. Like Lemony Snicket, Junod helpfully defines words for his audience, doing it as much as an excuse for poetic emphasis as for actual definition.

Thunderstruck means that you can’t talk, because something has happened that’s as sudden and as miraculous and maybe as scary as a bolt of lightning, and all you can do is listen to the rumble.

These little things are responsible for a lot of the voice, but they’re surface ornamentation. The deep structure of the story is that of puzzle pieces, slowly fitted together to form a larger picture.

The story is a sequence of short vignettes – some from Tom’s time with Mr. Rogers, some from his past, some from stories about Mr. Rogers, picked up along the way. But these strands weave together, one referencing another, referencing another; building up in layers.

When we get to the end, it makes perfect sense. It fits. Every part of the story fed into that moment, in the same way it feels like all of Tom’s time with Mr. Rogers led to that moment in his own life.

The Frame

The story doesn’t begin with Mr. Rogers. It begins with a boy who has lost his stuffed rabbit, and prays that it will return to him. The first time, the rabbit is found. The second time, it is not. A microcosm, perhaps, for how people fall out of faith.

It’s only when Mr. Rogers asks Tom if he ever had a puppet or toy or stuffed animal that we learn (or confirm our suspicion) that the boy at the start of the story is Tom himself. The rabbit becomes the through-line of the story.

We’re reminded of it a third time, when Mr. Rogers talks to a little girl with a stuffed Rabbit. Junod makes sure it’s front-of-mind. It’s the same reason he leaves the question unanswered, “What kind of prayer has only three words?”

We don’t find out until the very end; the end of the story that started with the boy and the rabbit.

The Words

While I appreciate the structure of the story, it would be negligent to not mention the joy to be found in Junod’s delightful little turns of phrase.

The place was drab and dim, with the smell of stalled air and a stain of daguerreotype sunlight on its closed, slatted blinds…

And then, in the dark room, there was a wallop of white light, and Mister Rogers disappeared behind it.

…this skinny old man dressed in a gray suit and a bow tie, with his hands on his hips and his arms akimbo, like a dance instructor—there was some kind of wiggly jazz in his legs, and he went flying all around the outside of the house…

 …in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are….Ten seconds of silence.” And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked…and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds…and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, “May God be with you” to all his vanquished children.

What is grace? I’m not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella.

Razor Mountain Development Journal #36

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I worked through two more chapter summaries, 35 and 36. Most of the mysteries are now resolved, and we’re approaching the climax.

Chapter 37

Christopher meets with the Acting Secretary of Justice in his office, with Cain present. The secretary wanted to meet first thing in the morning. First, he asks Christopher whether “he’s God-Speaker yet”. Christopher explains that he thinks it is more of a gradual transition, and it doesn’t seem to be complete. He’s still missing memories.

The Secretary of Justice says that the patrols have finally captured the last of the exiles, including a young woman who cannot speak. She gave them a lot of trouble, but all the exiles have been treated gently on Christopher’s orders and locked up in a comfortable facility. He suggests Christopher could go observe the conditions and make sure they’re satisfactory. Christopher wants to go talk to them, but his God-Speaker side knows he shouldn’t. He should maintain his anonymity outside this inner circle.

Christopher agrees to go observe their conditions. He has a sudden “spidey-sense” feeling that something’s not right. He takes Cain aside and tells him to call a meeting of the cabinet in 30 minutes, then get a weapon and follow at a distance.

Christopher follows the Secretary of Justice through the mazes of halls that give them access to the rest of the mountain facilities. He hears what he thinks is Cain following, out of sight behind them. The man looks more and more nervous. Christopher probes him with small talk, asking him about family, how he came to the position, what he likes to do in his free time. The man finally stops and breaks down, explaining that he’s part of a trap, planned by Reed.

Even as he says it, Christopher hears footsteps behind him. It’s not Cain, it’s Reed coming at him with a knife. Reed isn’t a young man, or particularly adept, and Christopher is able to disarm him just as Cain comes with an armed MP. The soldier handcuffs Reed. Christopher asks if they actually captured Amaranth, and they confirm that they did not.

They walk back to the cabinet meeting. Christopher is overwhelmed by the feeling that this was all awfully easy. His God-Speaker self is a little smug. Flashes of memory come to him, from the last time Reed attacked him. They arrive at the cabinet meeting as the others are still coming in.

Christopher calmly explains what just happened, and describes what he remembers of the original attack. He questions Reed and the Acting Secretary of Justice in front of the others. The original Secretary of Justice was falsely accused. Her replacement, the Acting Secretary has been under Reed’s sway for years, but is ultimately a weakling looking for easy power. He didn’t have the guts to go through with the plan.

Reed admits that his plan was a poor one, but he had few options, given the circumstances. He thinks it was clever how he co-opted Cain’s spies on Christopher’s plane in order to crash it, but once that gambit failed, what else could he do?

He has no remorse for what he did — he sees God-Speaker as just an autocrat “with fancy toys,” and one autocrat is as good for Razor Mountain as another. Reed’s only regret was that he didn’t have centuries of practice at keeping everyone under his heel. He was never able to consolidate all the power he wanted in God-Speaker’s absence.

For a moment, Christopher considers making a bloody example right in the conference room, but he decides against it, and MPs take Reed and the Acting Secretary to holding cells.

Cliffhangers: No.

Mysteries:

  • Resolve 1.1 – Why do the other passengers on the plane disappear while Christopher is asleep? Where did they go?
    • They were supposed to be Cain’s spies, but they were actually Reed’s. They left Christopher and jumped out while he was drugged, intending the crash to look like an accident.
  • Resolve 4.2 – The passengers and pilot – something about their looks and clothes were slightly off, slightly old-fashioned.
    • They were Razor Mountain spies.
  • Resolve 31.1 – Why did Reed betray him?
    • He wanted power, and he didn’t think God-Speaker was any more fit to rule than anyone else.

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher senses that the final gambit is about to happen, and with God-Speaker getting stronger, he feels excited and prepared for it. It’s shockingly easy to anticipate Reed and stop him. With the betrayal resolved, Christopher realizes that everything is back to the way it was. And he’s miserable about it.

Chapter 38

Christopher sits on a private balcony as the sun sets, looking out over the beauty of the mountain valley. He’s not really a drinker, but he drinks something he found in God-Speaker’s rooms – he thinks it’s whiskey.

God-Speaker’s memories are washing over him like a flood, as though the memory of his own murder was a blockage, and now that it has broken loose, everything else is rushing in behind it. He remembers conversations with his wife. He didn’t realize it at the time, but she was trying to gently nudge him toward being less selfish, toward accomplishing something good in the world. She was trying to help him overcome his pathological fear of death.

Christopher thinks that that the world would be better off without God-Speaker and Razor Mountain. He watches the stars come out and thinks about her. He thinks about his parents and his brother.

Slightly drunk, he walks the back-halls of Razor Mountain to Cain’s room. It’s very spartan. Christopher pulls a chair up to the old man’s bed and stares at him. Cain wakes, and is oddly calm to see Christopher there.

Christopher asks him why he worked so hard to bring God-Speaker back. Cain explains that he has seen God-Speaker at work. He knows God-Speaker constructed this place out of nothing, and is the best caretaker of it. To him, it’s a utopia.

Christopher asks if Cain would still trust him if all of Razor Mountain was just a safeguard for God-Speaker’s immortality. Cain says yes. Even if that is true, good things have come from it. Christopher suggests that Cain is every bit as brainwashed as the ordinary inhabitants of the mountain, and he might think differently if he had lived in the outside world. Cain explains that he has seen plenty from the outside world, and it seems like they have plenty of problems out there too.

Christopher feels that God-Speaker is exhausted from this endless cycle, but also trapped by it. What’s left of Christopher is no longer afraid of death. He’s afraid of living forever. He realizes that he’s trying to justify the choice he knows he has to make – not for others, but for himself.

Cain asks if God-Speaker is almost back. Christopher says “almost.” Cain suggests that Christopher will feel better when he’s “back to himself again.”

Cliffhangers:

  • What is Christopher going to do?

Mysteries: None

Episode Arc:

  • With the external conflict against Reed resolved, Christopher is overwhelmed by his own internal conflict: Christopher vs. God-Speaker, acceptance of death vs. fear of death. He tries to use Razor Mountain and Cain to justify his desire not to become God-Speaker and go back to the status quo. Ultimately, he realizes he will have to find that justification inside himself.

Notes:

  • I decided to combine what were previously Chapters 39 and 40 into this single chapter. They’re both about Christopher working out this final conflict between himself and God-Speaker.
  • I came to a pretty important realization while revising this chapter. Christopher doesn’t stop God-Speaker at the end of the book to be the savior of Razor Mountain. He does it for himself. His conflict isn’t about overcoming external challenges anymore. It’s about overcoming his own fear of death. He has to learn to accept the time he had, and stop being trapped, effectively immortal but utterly miserable.

Chapter 39

Christopher goes to the artifacts’ chamber. He feels himself teetering on the edge between Christopher and God-Speaker.

He throws his mind back through time, in the same way he has trained “oracles” to send warning messages to his past self when things go wrong. Once he starts the process, he feels relief. There’s no going back now.

He goes back thousands of years. The hollowing of the mountain is reversed in high-speed. The population dwindles. The technology devolves. He returns to the scene where God-Speaker first entered the Razor Mountain caves (mirroring the language of Chapter 16, and Christopher’s half-dream at the beginning of the book).

Christopher enters God-Speaker’s mind, a much stronger voice than the first whisper of the artifacts. Where God-Speaker previously jumped across a crack, Christopher distracts him and trips him up. He falls deep into the mountain, where his body is shattered. He’s surprised to feel no pain, only numbness. Death is peaceful for him. Maybe he glimpses something beyond.

The artifacts are left to whisper alone, in the depths of the mountain.

Cliffhangers: No!

Mysteries: None!

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher has made his choice, now he just has to execute it. He stops God-Speaker from entering this eternal cycle, and accepts his own death. In the end, Christopher and God-Speaker are both at peace.

Results

I worked through the chapter summaries for what is now chapters 37, 38, and 39. The expanded second draft outline for the book is done!

Haunted (A Drabble)

It sounds fun to rent a house haunted by a sexy ghost. I guess it was, at first. The dreams were amazing, until she got stabby.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been reading and writing drabbles recently. If you’re not aware, drabbles are just short stories with exactly 100 words — no more, no less. It has been both interesting and frustrating. Where microfiction stories feel like little toys, drabbles feel closer to “real” stories.

Closer, but not quite.

The Challenges

Drabbles invite experimentation and strange forms, like a story-as-a-list, story-as-app-review, or story entirely in dialogue with no context. They require odd tricks, unusual style, or very clever wording to be engaging.

Dialogue is hard in a drabble. Even the vanilla “he said, she said” tags use up precious words. It’s tempting, because dialogue can do so many things at once, but I’ve found it very difficult to write drabble dialogue in practice. It needs to be tight without becoming artificial, stilted, or confusing.

What Makes A Good Drabble?

Drabbles love little twist endings. A twist ending is one of the easiest ways to make a drabble interesting. I’m not convinced that it’s the best way though. I can’t help but think that it’s a bit of a crutch, which may be silly considering how challenging it is to write a good drabble without any additional restrictions beyond word count.

I think a good drabble uses one, maybe two, storytelling structures. Drabbles are too short to include a setting, characters, a real character arc, a conflict, a resolution, dialogue, strong voice, and all of the other scaffolding that we typically use to hold up a story. A good drabble has only one or two of these things that it does really well. It might glance sidelong at one or two more, but that’s pushing it.

So far, I only have one hard and fast rule for a good drabble. A good drabble makes you think, “There’s no way that was only one hundred words.”

My First Drabble

Haunted

It sounds fun to rent a house haunted by a sexy ghost. I guess it was, at first. The dreams were amazing, until she got stabby.

It took a while for her to stop shrieking and talk, but she eventually told me about the adultery, the murder-suicide, and the whole “vengeance against all men” thing. She says she’ll be free if I burn the bones buried in the cellar. Free to leave, and kill as she pleases.

It wouldn’t be right to unleash a murder-ghost on the world. But if she keeps breaking things, I’ll never get my deposit back.

This is my very first drabble, a little parody of horror tropes. The idea came from a Story Engine prompt.

You’ll notice it has no dialogue. I summarized the conversation, because dialogue is hard in a drabble. It has two characters and approximately three words of setting. No arc. A conflict, but no resolution. It does have a twist, although the twist comes in the form of a joke. I’m happy with it, for a first attempt, even if it doesn’t make me think, “There’s no way that was only one hundred words.” On the other hand, I had to carefully whittle it down to those one hundred words, so maybe that rule just doesn’t apply when I’m the one writing it.

State of the Blog — August 2021

Has it been a year already?

In the spirit of being open about my process and progress, I decided to do a State of the Blog post every six months. This gives me a chance to evaluate my work, and hopefully will be helpful to others.

Goals

Why am I blogging?

  • To hold myself accountable to a writing schedule
  • To develop an audience of readers
  • To provide something useful to other writers
  • To make connections with other writers

This is the context that helps me decide how well I’m doing.

I started the blog around August 2020, deep enough into the pandemic to know that it wasn’t going away any time soon. Like many people, I was tired of the dread-induced lethargy, and looking for some creative outlet. I also needed something to help me keep my writing on a schedule; something to keep me accountable.

I didn’t have a plan exactly, but I did have a bunch of ideas. I’ve made vague attempts at blogging before, and they’ve never gone anywhere. This time, I was determined that if I was going to do it, I’d do it properly.

I had the idea of writing a serial novel, released episode by episode. I have a love of writing, and I knew that I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others. So before I started, I forced myself to list 100 possible topics for blog posts — to make sure I had enough fodder to keep me posting twice a week for at least a year.

The Metrics

  • Months blogging: ~12
  • Posts: ~85
  • Followers: 29 (and 9 on Twitter)
  • Monthly Views: 93 (average over last 3 months)

These numbers are small. That doesn’t bother me. I’d love to reach a bigger audience, but the important thing is the trend line, and the numbers are steadily growing. I can still get excited when I set a weekly or monthly record in some metric, and right now that’s happening pretty frequently.

Two Posts

After the first few months, I settled into a consistent schedule. On Mondays, I post something about the craft of writing. On Fridays, I post a development journal, where I document my progress on my serial novel, Razor Mountain. I always write my posts early, do a fairly quick editing pass, and schedule them for release.

This basic two-posts-per-week model has worked pretty well. The Monday post provides variety. I can write a Reference Desk post about useful tools, or a post about writing concepts like hooks, conflict, or outlining. Meanwhile, the Friday Razor Mountain posts provide consistency.

Writing these two posts per week also gave me a good baseline for how much time I could devote to the blog. I’m not a full-time writer. I have a day job and other projects keeping me busy. I needed to make sure I wasn’t trying to write more for the blog than I could sustain long-term. Two posts per week was good for me.

Three Posts?

After months of that cadence, I’ve started experimenting with more content. Part of this was finding things that I enjoy posting about, and that readers would enjoy reading. Part of it was finding ways to avoid dramatically increasing the time I spent writing for the blog each week.

I’ve decided to add a Wednesday post to my weekly schedule. I set myself a rule that I can’t spend more than an hour on a Wednesday post. These posts can be shorter and/or sillier than my other posts. I’m also trying to tie them into my other writing projects. Some examples of these Wednesday posts are my series on Twitter microfiction and my “ground-breaking” Writing RPG™.

I still consider the Wednesday post optional. I may skip it sometimes.

The Future

My biggest goal right now is to finish outlining and prep for Razor Mountain. Once that’s done, my posting schedule will probably change again. I still plan to post weekly development journals to talk about the writing process, but I’ll also be posting the actual chapters/episodes.

Being an inveterate planner, I will be writing chapters ahead of my posting schedule, so I have time for beta reader critique and revision. I plan to post episodes on other services as well, and I’ll be going into the details of that process.

I’m also working on interacting more with other bloggers. As a classic writer introvert, it takes a bit of effort to overcome the imposter syndrome and convince myself to comment on other blogs, even when I think I have something to contribute.

I’m also trying to reblog more of the good writing craft posts that I see, especially on days when I don’t have my own content scheduled. It took me a few months to find a decent list of WordPress blogs in my wheelhouse, but now I’m regularly seeing post in my feed that are worth sharing.

Next Stop

I’ll see you back here in six months, for the 1.5 year blogiversary!

Razor Mountain Development Journal #35

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I started tracking the resolutions to the mysteries I’ve set up, which helped me to think about how I’m going to structure all the info-dumping toward the end of the book. I added two more chapter summaries: 33 and 34.

Chapter 35

Christopher awakes, still himself, but feeling different. He realizes he cares less about returning home. His former life feels far away, like things that happened to someone else. He assumed the transition would be like flipping a switch, but he realizes that he may not even notice when he has stopped being Christopher.

He studies the voices of the artifacts that he can hear whispering. He finds a vast array of memories, strange and divorced from their context in many cases. Some are of other worlds, other beings. Some are human memories from the people who were subsumed by God-Speaker. He sees the moment when the artifacts crashed into the mountain. They are alien consciousnesses.

Cain arrives with breakfast. He explains that he has scheduled meetings with other secretaries of the cabinet. Christopher can ask questions and answer them. He explains that many are eager to have God-Speaker back, but a few are content with the stagnant state of things, and a few are just less trusting.

First, Christopher meets with the Secretary of Communications, who is clearly distrustful of him and brings a list of questions that only God-Speaker should be able to answer. Many relate to the propaganda and lies used to keep the populace of Razor Mountain under control. Christopher answers some, but doesn’t remember others. X is not entirely convinced.

Next, Christopher meets with the new Secretary of Justice, who acts completely certain that Christopher is God-Speaker. He clearly wants to curry favor. Christopher is irritated, but isn’t sure if it’s his own feeling, or God-Speaker’s. He realizes that God-Speaker was treading a fine line: trying to cultivate competent subordinates with absolutely no desire to gain more power, so he wouldn’t have to deal with attempted coups. He asks about the Exiles. They’ve been recaptured (except for Amaranth). Christopher demands that they be treated well.

Cain takes Christopher on a tour of the facilities, explaining the many ways that things have degraded while God-Speaker was absent. They eat lunch. Christopher takes some time to quiz Cain, but it seems that Cain is the perfect subordinate. He loves keeping everything going like clockwork. He wants to innovate and improve. But he does not want to lead. He doesn’t want more power. He just wants to make things, and make things better.

They visit the former Secretary of Justice, who is imprisoned, and has been since the coup. Cain has talked with her often, and believes she may be innocent. If not, she was not the only perpetrator. They talk, and she reasserts that she is innocent. She seems to have been broken, and shows little interest in anything.

Finally, Christopher meets with Reed. Reed is taciturn and polite. He says that he neither believes nor disbelieves that Christopher is God-Speaker. He will wait and see. He outlines what he is in charge of, and pushes back against Cain’s characterization that everything has gotten worse in God-Speaker’s absence. After the interview, Christopher has a nagging feeling about him. He tells Cain that he got the impression that Reed is one of those who would like more power. Cain agrees – he has been trying to block Reed’s careful little power-grabs for years.

Over dinner, Cain informs Christopher that an attempt was made on his life. Cain ordered breakfast for Christopher, and had an assistant taste it first. The assistant had a severe reaction and had to be rushed to a doctor.

Christopher is shocked that Cain would use another person like that, but Cain is clear that he essentially thinks of God-Speaker as his king. They discuss the likelihood that the killer will strike again, and1 soon. They know that God-Speaker’s memories are returning. The question is if the killer will try to make it look like an accident, or if their desperation will make them sloppy. Cain suggests that they could pretend they already know who is responsible, in an effort to flush them out. Christopher thinks it’s safer to play defense and wait for the memories to return. Cain defers to his judgement.

Cliffhangers: No.

Mysteries:

  • Resolve 2.1 – Is the stone god actually supernatural, or is God-Speaker’s interpretation entirely in his head?
    • It’s somewhere between imagination and hallucination. God-Speaker’s mind is uniquely open to external thoughts intruding, which is what allows him limited communication with the artifacts.
  • Resolve 7.1 – What is happening at the mountain? Meteor? Volcano?
    • This was where the alien ship containing the artifacts crashed.
  • Resolve 10.1 – What are the spirits that God-Speaker thinks he hears? Or does he just have a head injury?
    • They are the voices from the artifacts – alien minds reaching out.
  • Resolve 11.1 – What was the ruined building? How and why was it destroyed?
    • There was a small rebellion led by a group of soldiers who realized that the populace of Razor Mountain was being lied to. That bunker was where they made their last stand.
  • Resolve 16.2 – What are the voices/artifacts?
    • Alien minds.
  • Resolve 16.3 – What is being done to him?
    • The alien minds in the artifacts attempt and fail to move into his mind, but they cannot. He gains access to their knowledge and memories.

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher is overwhelmed by everything he is learning, and is becoming more and more God-Speaker-like. He feels God-Speaker determined to snatch victory out of decades of near-defeat.

Notes:

  • This is going to be a huge amount of dialogue. May need to be split into multiple chapters.
  • Need names for the new Secretary of Justice and Secretary of Communications

Chapter 36

Christopher researches the history of Razor Mountain through the records and computer systems in his office, trying to align what he reads with his own memories. He looks up information on the exiles and on his own interrogation.

He tries to remember who killed him. He discusses the problem with Cain, who suggests that God-Speaker could always read people exceptionally well, and perhaps he should rely on that.  Christopher counters that it apparently didn’t work the first time, but he decides to rely on his God-Speaker abilities.

He goes to the chamber of the artifacts, alone. He tries reaching out to nearby minds, looking for possible replacement bodies. He still has trouble using the artifacts, but he’s becoming more and more God-Speaker. He realizes that the God-Speaker part of him is already back in the rut of spending all his time fending off death. As Christopher, he accepts that he may die. He is already resigned to a sort of death of himself, as God-Speaker takes over.

Cliffhangers: None.

Mysteries:

  • Resolve 17.1 – Why do the exiles seem to have strange ideas about the outside world?
    • They’ve been fed false information through systems engineered by God-Speaker and his Secretaries of Communications.
  • Resolve 18.1 – What is Razor Mountain? Why do the exiles seem afraid of it?
    • It’s a closed-off city with strict restrictions on coming and going, enforced by a small standing army.
  • Resolve 20.1 – Who is up on the mountain? What is the 550th?
    • An entire city of people. The 550th Infantry is the fake army regiment housed there.
  • Resolve 20.2 – What is the situation between the Razor Mountain people and Garrett and Harold’s people?
    • They attempted to escape without permission.
  • Resolve 21.1 – What was the conflict between Razor Mountain and exiles? What lies are they feeding their population?
    • They are told that they cannot leave the city. It is supposedly a US Army group that operates almost completely independently, under special laws. The exiles only know enough to believe they have been deceived.
  • Resolve 23.1 – Who has captured him? What do they want?
    • The 550th has a policy of capturing anyone found within the perimeter they patrol around Razor Mountain. They believe foreign spies are constantly trying to find the place and gain information.
  • Resolve 24.1 – Who are his captors and what are they planning to do with him?
    • The intelligence officers of the 550th. They suspect he is a spy and are trying to get information out of him.
  • Resolve 25.1 – What exactly is he building under the mountain?
    • A self-sufficient city.
  • Resolve 27.1 – What information is Meadows actually trying to get out of him? Who do they think he is?
    • They suspect he is a spy and are trying to determine who he works for and what information he knows about Razor Mountain.
  • Resolve 29.1 – What is this city and who’s in charge here?
    • The 550th Infantry is in charge at a lower level, but they are directed by the city secretaries. The citizens and soldiers believe these positions are assigned by the US Army leadership and the president. They are actually assigned by God-Speaker.

Episode Arc:

  • The God-Speaker part of Christopher is becoming more and more obsessed over the threat of death. The part of him that’s still himself is less and less concerned about it, however. As he learns more and more about Razor Mountain, he decides that it’s a terrible place, full of people whose motives and entire lives are warped around God-Speaker’s goals.

Notes:

  • The most expositiony chapter in the book?

Results

I worked through two more chapter summaries, 35 and 36. Most of the mysteries are now resolved, and we’re approaching the climax.

Do Characters Need to Change?

I’m always excited to see someone make a well-considered, articulate argument against the traditional “rules of writing.” Lincoln Michel does exactly that, when he suggests that maybe characters don’t need to change over the course of a story.

Can a good story contain static characters, and instead change their circumstances, change how the reader views them, or just make that static viewpoint incredibly compelling?

Reference Desk #13 — Writing Excuses

I have a system for listening to podcasts. First, I hear about a podcast that sounds interesting. Then I subscribe to it on my phone. Then, for weeks, sometimes months, I occasionally look at the icon in my podcasts. Once the podcast is nicely aged, I might decide to try listening to it. Either that or I get irritated with the number of things I’m subscribed to, and I delete it.

I’m glad I didn’t delete the Writing Excuses podcast. I finally got around to listening a week or two back, and now I’m listening to it pretty much every day during my lunchtime walks. It’s my new favorite writing podcast.

There are four regular hosts in the episodes I’ve listened to thus far: Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells. Each episode typically includes several or all of the regular hosts, along with one or more guests.

The resulting discussions feel a bit like writing conference round-tables with a rotating selection of professional authors. This is a speculative-fiction heavy podcast, with all of the regular hosts and many of the guests working in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. However, they also bring a diverse set of writing backgrounds, with work ranging across short stories, novels, web comics, traditional comics, audio books/plays, and RPGs, along with the specialties brought in by the guests.

What’s in an Episode?

  • Each episode is about 15 minutes. Occasionally it runs long when the hosts get excited about a topic. This relatively short length makes it easy to listen to an episode in a spare moment here or there.
  • The hosts and guests discuss a single topic. Sometimes it’s stand-alone, sometimes it’s part of an over-arching series that may stretch across as many as ten episodes. Recent multi-episode topics include poetry, writing for video games, and business considerations.
  • Each episode also includes a reading recommendation (or rarely some other media), and a little homework assignment related to the topic.

History

The pod has been around for a long time. It’s been running since 2008 and is currently in season 16. If you’re starting on it now, like I am, that’s a backlog of hundreds of episodes. Unless I really binge, that’ll take me ages to work my way through. As an added bonus, it means that when I’m looking for info on some random writing topic (like serialization or alternate history), there’s probably already an episode covering it.

(I did notice an oddity: on Apple Podcasts, there is a separate listing for seasons 1-6, and another for seasons 7-10. Seasons 11-14 and most of 15f are completely absent. However, all of the episodes seem to be available from the official podcast website.)

Links

The official website (with all episodes, transcripts, and additional stuff) is https://writingexcuses.com/.

There is also a discussion forum for the podcast on Brandon Sanderson’s website: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/forum/34-writing-excuses/.

Who to Write For When You Have No Audience or Readership

Elliot Chan's avatarElliot Chan

At the beginning of your writing journey, you won’t have a following. No audience. No readers. Nobody knows who you are. It’s almost impossible for them to find you. It can be an awfully lonely place at the start, and in this solitude, you’ll ask, “Why am I even writing this? Nobody will read it.”

Writing is more than putting words on pages. Writing is communicating. To solve the problem of not having a readership, all you have to ask is “Who am I communicating with?” Now, at this point, you might have an epiphany and discover your audience are the children of Mexico or all the pregnant women in their second trimester. If that’s you. Great! All you have to do then is direct your writing efforts towards schools in Mexico or building a pregnancy blog, and in a matter of time, you’ll have an audience.

But then…

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Razor Mountain Development Journal #34

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I finished summarizing the last two chapters in Act II. I spent some time working on (or at least worrying about) Christopher’s characterization.

Resolving Mysteries

As I move into Act III, I’ve built up a nice backlog of mysteries. It’s time to think about resolving them. One of the most annoying problems with “mystery box” plots is when mysteries are set up or unexplained things happen, and then they’re never explained or resolved. Even if the ride up to that point was fantastic, the audience will sour on the whole thing as soon as they realize that a bunch of that stuff that seemed cool and important just didn’t mean anything or matter.

As I’ve gone through the outline, expanding these chapter summaries, I’ve been trying to call out mysteries in almost every chapter (and numbering them by chapter when I remember to). That way I can call out where the resolutions happen, and make sure I’m not missing anything.

I realized this week that I haven’t been noting when the resolution of these mysteries occurred, so I went back and fixed that where I could:

  • 6.1 – What are the locations on the map?
    • Ch. 11 – At least one is a burnt ruin, but it looks like it was similar to the bunker he came from.
  • 8.1 – Who made the little wooden doll and left it in the wilderness?
    • Ch. 15 – Amaranth. (Show her carving something similar)
  • 9.1 – Was there a person in the woods?
    • Ch. 14 – Amaranth was watching him.
  • 12.1 – Who left the fresh rabbit for him to eat?
    • Ch. 15 – Amaranth. (She carries more rabbits for her fellow exiles)
  • 14.1 – Who is shooting at him?
    • Ch. 23 – Soldiers from Razor Mountain
  • 15.1 – What is the place that Amaranth has brought him to?
    • Ch. 17 – A bigger building in the style of the bunkers, where the exiles are hiding.
  • 15.2 – Who is the girl who can’t speak?
    • Ch. 18 – Amaranth, one of the exiles
  • 15.3 – Who are these other people?
    • Ch. 17 – The other exiles, who left the mountain compound for some reason.
  • 16.1 – What is this place inside Razor Mountain?
    • Ch. 25 – The chamber of the artifacts.
  • 28.1 – Does Cain intend to betray God-Speaker?
    • Ch. 31 – No. Reed is actually out to betray him.
  • 28.2 – What will Reed find out?
    • Ch. 31 – Nothing interesting about Cain.

This work (along with trying to figure out which mysteries should resolve in the next couple chapters), led me to an unexpected problem. I’ve been focused on building up questions for most of the book. Now there aren’t many chapters left. Trying to lay out all of the necessary information may feel like too much of an info dump. So, I may need to try to seed some more hints and answers in earlier chapters, just so there’s a little less to explain as we approach the end.

Chapter 33

Cain leads Christopher to the artifacts’ chamber. It is a cylindrical room of some gray stone or metal, etched with faint markings. There is no ceiling, just darkness above. Cain asks Christopher what he feels (he’s not sure if he has to do something to kick off the process).

Christopher hears whispers, sees ghostly faces, then the chamber fades to blackness around him. He senses the long line of all of God-Speaker’s past selves, and a murky lineage beyond even that: millions of minds foreign to human thought. Finally, Christopher realizes that he is the terminating point of God-Speaker’s lineage.

Christopher opens his eyes and finds himself lying on the floor of the chamber. Cain sits next to him, trying to look patient, but clearly excited. Christopher asks what Cain did to him, even though he’s already beginning to understand. Cain tells him he is God-Speaker, and the chamber has renewed his memories, though it will take some time. Christopher wants to ask more questions, but he keeps having flashes, like visions.

Cain brings him down a zig-zag of hallways. They pass occasional people here and there. One older person looks oddly familiar to Christopher. Cain talks to himself as they walk, apparently debating whether to keep Christopher hidden or not. He seems to come to the conclusion that there will be no way to keep him hidden for long, and it’s better to just move forward with courage.

Cain takes a deep breath and leads Christopher into a locked room. Inside, there is a teardrop-shaped table with many people already sitting around it. They complain about Cain being late, then ask him who Christopher is. Cain just leads Christopher to the empty seat at the rounded tip of the teardrop and tells him to sit. There is a clamor around the table.

Cain tells these people that after many years and much effort, God-Speaker has been restored to his seat as the rightful ruler of Razor Mountain. He says that Christopher has only just undergone the process of retrieving his memory. Meanwhile, Christopher is still trying to sort out his head. The members of his council shout questions (and other things) at him, Cain, and each other. Many of them demand proof.

Christopher feels something stirring inside him. He wonders if this God-Speaker is waking up. He addresses several of the disbelievers by name, but he doesn’t remember others. Some want to quiz him. He answers one person with detail, but doesn’t remember what the next person is talking about.

Cain cuts them off. He says that Christopher needs some time to complete the process, but Cain will be the go-between and make sure any who want to can talk to Christopher one-on-one. Nobody is satisfied, but Cain whisks Christopher out of the room, to God-Speaker’s office.

Christopher studies the office and asks Cain what the hell is going on. Cain explains that Christopher has within him all of the memories of God-Speaker, the immortal ruler of Razor Mountain. He explains that God-Speaker was nearly murdered. Now that he’s back, whoever was behind it will likely try to strike again.

Cliffhangers:

  • Could add an episode break at the “rightful ruler of Razor Mountain” bit.
  • Will the attempted murderer strike again?

Mysteries:

  • Resolve 1.4 – What are the strange thoughts that seem to be guiding Christopher?
    • The minds that reside in the artifacts and provide their knowledge to God-Speaker.
  • Resolve 31.2 – What happens to God-Speaker?
    • He went into baby Christopher.
  • Resolve 31.3 – What happens to Razor Mountain with God-Speaker dead?
    • It falls into slow decay.
  • Resolve 32.1 – How does Cain know him? Is Christopher actually God-Speaker?
    • Yes.

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher starts out mildly confused, hoping to convince someone to let him go home. Instead, he finds out that there’s an immortal mind living in his own brain, along with the faint voices of a whole lot of aliens. He has an inkling that he might be about to cease existing.

Chapter 34

Christopher talks with Cain. Cain explains how Christopher was found murdered, and the imprisonment of the previous Secretary of Justice for the crime. Cain believes there may be another involved, who will want to kill him again before his memories fully return.

They talk about how Cain used what little connection he could make with the artifacts to see Christopher, and the years of work that went into tracking him down. Then he tried to bring Christopher to the mountain, only to have something go terribly wrong in the plane crash. Cain had thought Christopher dead, until his picture came across the desk a few days ago.

Cain suggests Christopher sleep, and gives him a little phone/walkie-talkie device to call Cain when he wakes. He shows him how to access electronic records and a library of paper records. He shows Christopher an attached bedroom, then locks the place up and leaves.

Christopher looks inside, at the process that’s happening in his own mind. He feels God-Speaker “waking up,” but also starting to pull Christopher into that much older, much larger blob of thought and memory. He feels the dread of understanding that he is going to cease to exist.

He is exhausted. He sleeps, even though he’s not sure he will be himself when he wakes up. He dreams of people and places past. He sees glimpses of the mountain compound as it’s built out; of the bunkers and buildings hidden for miles around it. Of patrolling soldiers receiving coded orders and maintaining a perimeter, all to protect God-Speaker. He dreams of the first time he entered the cave and came to the chamber of the artifacts.

Cliffhangers:

  • Will he still be Christopher when he wakes up?

Mysteries:

  • Resolve 1.2 – What is the bunker and why is it here in the wilderness?
    • It was built as a perimeter around Razor Mountain.
  • Resolve 1.3 – How does Christopher know the door code to the bunker?
    • He had access to all the information about Razor Mountain, and an very good memory.
  • Resolve 3.1 – Who built the bunker and stocked it so thoroughly. What is the geothermal technology that seems to power it?
    • God-Speaker’s workers built it, using technology that combines the alien knowledge and tech from the outside world.
  • Resolve 3.2 – What is the numbers station signal on the radio?
    • Coded orders to the soldiers that patrol outside Razor Mountain.
  • Resolve 3.3 – What are the landmarks on the map?
    • The bunkers and out-buildings (like power generation and comms) of Razor Mountain.
  • Resolve 19.1 – Can the artifacts actually make him immortal?
    • Yup, in the body-hopping brain kind of way.

Episode Arc:

  • Things are finally beginning to make sense.

Notes:

  • Lots to resolve here. These dialogues will be a lot of work.

Results

I started tracking the resolutions to the mysteries I’ve set up, which helped me to think about how I’m going to structure all the info-dumping toward the end of the book. I added two more chapter summaries: 33 and 34.