The Evolution of a Story
Yesterday’s New York Times had an article relating the struggle that teachers face in trying to teach evolution science to junior high and high school students. The problem is rooted in the fact that there are nut jobs, primarily in the Midwest and South, that demand that scientific method and biblical myth be given equal footing. Teaching is trying enough, without interference from people who are marginally educated themselves clamoring to set the rules. Like P.T. Barnum once famously said, “You’ll never lose money underestimating the intelligence of the general public.”
One of the main things the Adam and Eve camp like to jump on are the words “Evolution Theory” – which simply proves that they have no concept of the meaning of theory as it is used by scientists. If you’re one of these people, you might as well stop reading now. You won’t like my stuff. For example, I use the word Fuck, a lot. And, if I bothered to reply to one of your rants, I’d start by pointing out that creation stories, as presented in the Christian Bible (and the Koran for that matter), are largely based on Sumerian and Babylonian mythology.
Now before I get overwhelmed with indignant blasts from idiots who think that I’m somehow attacking religion and religious thought, I want to make it clear that I’m doing no such thing. Belief in God is one thing, fundamental Christianity is another. One is a personal matter of faith, the other a mindless devotion to dogma. Can’t wait for the fan mail to start rolling in.
I actually felt guilty that I took the time to read the Times yesterday. I’m under a big deadline and I haven’t had time to devote enough attention to my other responsibilities. Like this blog. A few of the agents that I met while I was in New York last month have requested copies of the manuscript for my novel, Opening Day. That’s great, of course, but in New York I also got a few ideas that I’m sure will make my book a better read. So I’m caught between wanting to get the thing out to them as soon as possible and rewriting some basic plot points that will really amp up the dramatic tension and move the story along.
One of the things that I had impressed upon me, talking with other writers and considering their work, is that it’s important to trust that your readers are intelligent people. Which, after reading articles like the one in the Times, can be a big jump. Good writing is sparse; especially when writing a thriller you must leave out all but the essential parts. You must tell the story in a logical progression of scenes and assume that the reader will be smart enough to fill in the blanks.
It’s important to place a measure of trust in your audience. As a reader, it’s boring and cumbersome to be spoon fed every nuance of an idea. One of the pleasures of reading is catching the references or the subtle puns the author weaves into his work. Stephen King is big on showing off in this respect; next time you’re ensconced with one of his ponderous books try to catch the Shakespeare references he drops around.
But relying on the intelligence of your readers isn’t about showing off. Good writing is like having a conversation, even if it’s a trifle one sided. In a conversation you have to make certain assumptions about another person’s world view and their cultural experiences. Otherwise, you’d be so bogged down with exposition that you’d never be able to tell your story.
This is something that I struggle with constantly. I write too much. Almost without fail, anything I write is improved by being edited down by half or three quarters (Some might suggest it’s more like one hundred percent). And a lot of it is my tendency to explain everything to death. I write pages and pages of backstory and then have to figure out how to get all those details into the book in just a few lines. Writing backstory is a good exercise, but it’s also important to leave most of it out of the finished product. Hemingway, whether you like him or not, was a master at distilling a story down to its essential elements. Capturing the atmosphere or setting the mood in a few, well selected phrases.
So I’m spending this week writing. And then throwing out most of what I write. I’m getting better at editing as I go along, but even just while writing this blog I’ve cut as much as I’m going to post.
I really believe that, as far as my novel goes, the changes are going to be worth it in the end. I’m trying to, as Elmore Leonard says, cut out the parts that people skip over. And I trust that the people who read my book will be bright enough to put the remaining parts together and enjoy the process. It’s all just a matter of faith.
— Ric Hess, 11 days ago
The Tucker Max Family Values
With all the talk about values lately – family and American and moral and what not, it’s easy to forget what a crock of shit that whole dialogue is. When I was a kid my dad used to whine on and on about how the present generation (my friends and I) had lost our moral compass; he longed for the good old days when there were standards of decency, and sex was reserved for the sacrament of marriage. I told him to go back and revisit
Winesburg, Ohio. There were never any good, innocent
old days, there are just a bunch of blind hypocrites who think there were.
The people who clamor the loudest for the return of some elusive halcyon era – and especially those who try to legislate it – are those most likely to have some huge demon they’re trying to shove under the rug. If you want to find a closet homosexual, deviant, pederast – name your kink – look for the person who’s out in front, screaming about censoring that particular vice. Think I exaggerate? Let’s put it to the Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, Jimmy Swaggart test. There may have been a day when mankind wasn’t ruled by their collective appetites, but just in case you’re thinking it was sometime in the last century or two, read Devil in the White City or Sin in the Second City and you’ll cast a different eye on the Victorian age. People simply like to imagine there was a time when sex and money weren’t the primary focus of everyone’s private obsessions. It ain’t so. As the good book says: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.
When you want to get past the political pontificating and know how 98.7% of all men in the United States really think, at least those under forty, get thee to www.tuckermax.com and click around. Whether you want to accept it or not, the behavior recorded here is the norm, not the exception. I own a tavern in Chicago, I know this to be true. Stop in any bar on North Clark Street on a warm summer afternoon and you will find crowds of Taylor Max wannabes guzzling booze and leering at anything in a skirt. The difference between them and Mr. Max is that he has less restraint and a better game.
Of course Tucker doesn’t get laid as much as he claims, but he’s a guy – that he lies is a given. And probably, in his published stories, there is dramatic license taken with timeline, and there’s a blending of characterizations to achieve a revelatory composite; he’s a writer, that’s allowed too. What is important is to realize that when polls show that thirty percent of college students binge drink by consuming three to six drinks at a time, once a week, the polls are complete and utter horseshit. Ninety percent of young American urban males consume between three and six drinks an hour on weekends, and not significantly less the rest of the week. And that same average male will stick his penis into any quasi-sentient female or female-like creature at any given opportunity. The stories and statistics that you read to the contrary are lies that guys tell to interviewers to create a façade, and are constructed to deceive parents, wives and girlfriends and everyone else, often including the person providing the data.
What’s this got to do with writing? Tucker Max is a lout and a whore but he’s brutally honest in a Charles Bukowski kind of way. His website has a link to his ideas about good writing and they are surprisingly coherent and well constructed. The guy may be a slut but he’s not an idiot.
I don’t care whether you like him or not; the point is he’s not afraid to talk about himself and his life in a way that’s sure to attract criticism. Tucker Max talks about the size of his dick, about his bowels, about his misogynistic attempts to fuck everyone that sits down to pee. And sometimes he’s funny. Not to mention that he’s a published author and has a production deal to create a movie based on his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. He’s not unique, of course. Chelsea Handler is the female Tucker Max and she’s carved out a successful niche for herself using the same approach: reveal each glaring flaw of your character, each obsession and compulsion, and hold them up without reserve for the world to inspect. David Sedaris does it by exploiting his family’s quirks and his homosexuality and he’s funny as hell, not to mention much more literate. Honesty works.
Writing is about telling the truth. Maybe not always the literal, biographical truth, but some version of the truth as the author perceives that to be. Writing is getting down to where you expose the hypocrisy and society’s chamber of commerce spin and let it all hang out. When you try to pull your punches and start worrying about what people who know you might think (and people who don’t know you but might, and people who you’ll never even meet in this lifetime) your writing looses an essential edge and slides toward pabulum. Don’t write with an eye over your shoulder, write your story as truly as possible and you’ll be writing something worthwhile.
My dad would have hated Tucker Max, which gives me reason enough to like the guy, at least a little. My father was also the most hypocritical man I have ever met. That fact alone has made my truth radar especially sensitive. Give me some asshole who presents a public face that conflicts with his true nature and I can spot it a mile away. It’s also made me especially hard on myself, and most of the time, when I’m proofing something that I’ve written, I can see the line where the crap starts, where I start to self-edit based on my perceived audience; that doesn’t work.
Writers tell stories, and stories resonate with readers because they relate feelings and ideas that let us know that there are kindred spirits in the world, that we are not alone. They also reveal fundamental truths that we sometimes haven’t discovered for ourselves, or that we’ve determinedly tried not to hear. And sometimes those truths come from unexpected corners, surprising us when they arrive; often those are the moments that capture our attention with the most force.
So Tucker, you go right ahead, doing what you do. That you’re a spoiled rich kid with issues doesn’t make your anecdotes any less effective. That your issues are transparent isn’t a problem either. You’ve managed to make a career out of your foibles and that’s more than most can say. What you do takes a certain amount of courage; even if you have to drink a bottle of vodka to get there.
— Ric Hess, 31 days ago
Convocations and Contacts
Earlier this month I was in Manhattan for Thrillerfest, wherein a large group of similarly minded people get together and talk about ways to kill, maim, blow things up, save sultry damsels from evil villains and pull off great and improbable heists. Writers are a pretty twisted lot. These otherwise seemingly normal folk filled the meeting rooms of the Grand Hyatt to hear accomplished authors speak about topics like plot lines, building tension, character arc, and to listen to their theories about pro- and antagonist balance and creating conflict in the scenes. Real exciting stuff right? And it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard about a hundred times before. In the thriller business, the craft gets pretty formulaic; it all comes down to the plot and the voice.
The week’s real work took place after hours at the hotel bar. I walked around and talked to people, dropped a lot of business cards, bought a lot of beer. There were hundreds of people there. Every level of suspense and thriller writer from Sandra Brown and James Patterson to… well, to me. And there were agents. Lots and lots of agents. One day a few dozen of them sat at small tables in a big room and listened to pitches while prospective authors extolled the virtues of their stories. Writing is a tough business, but these guys were not on any picnic. Toward the end, their eyes started to glass over. I don’t know how they managed to keep all the names and the stories straight. Probably they didn’t. But I jumped in and made my pitch, one that I’ve rehearsed many, many times in front of the mirror. Pitching is tough but it’s a part of the game, and it’s always good to practice. It was an expensive week but it was seldom dull. Will the time and expense prove justified? Only time will tell.
One thing that really caught my attention was to note the sheer number of writers who are trying to break into this business. It’s at events like this that you look around and realize, Holy Shit, there are really a lot of people trying to do what I’m trying to do. You also realize, of course, that not everyone can succeed.
Does that let the wind out of your sails? Maybe a little. But if you’re like me, you look around and, as you talk to people, you realize that very few of them, even the big guys, are all that special. Most of them are where they are because they worked hard and persevered and had some luck. And if you’re really like me, you go back to your room and read some of the stuff that other people like you have had published and you think, I can do better than this. And that cheers you up and gets you stoked to jump back into the fray.
The focus of all of this frenetic activity, of course, is selling a book. Everyone was there to snag a deal and some of us will do it. That’s the rush we all strive for, that letter or phone call that wants to publish our manuscript and is willing to pay for the privilege. The flip side of that is that while publication is what we all dream of, it’s not always a good thing for the writer. The dilemma about being published is that your first novel lays the foundation for the rest of your career. Publishers need a constant stream of words to publish; not all of what comes out of the pipeline can possibly be good and some of it’s downright junk. Wouldn’t it suck to work so hard to achieve something and have it be less than you knew you were capable of? But with many writers, the pursuit of publication becomes a quest onto itself and they forget about the quality of the work. That can be fatal.
Even though the conferences were rehashing dramatic structure 101, it was good to hear it again. It made me think about how my scenes are constructed and whether or not I’m sticking to the rules. The one rule about rules is that you have to know them before you can break them, and then you break them for a specific purpose. Sometimes a writer gets so caught up in their story that they forget to examine the structure and make sure their efforts are rooted in good craft. And sometimes the job of selling the book becomes more important than the writing.
Editors don’t edit much these days; that’s up to the author. And there aren’t much in the way of advertising budgets, either. It’s up to the writer to take care of shilling for his work. So it’s easy to forget that the primary thing a writer is supposed to be doing is writing. And writing well. And that not until that job is done, and polished, should a budding author push on to the sales part of his job. It’s a lot to remember and there are so many voices competing to for your attention it’s hard to know who to listen to. When that happens, get back to basics and write.
Would I do Thrillerfest again, was it worthwhile? Like I said, time will tell. But being thrown into the mix with so many other likeminded people was inspirational and motivating; so that’s something. And being reminded about the importance of craft was important too. But the main thing to remember is that we’re writers with a goal, but that achieving that goal should never be done at the expense of doing good work. Like the man said, what’s important is not the destination, it’s the journey.
— Ric Hess, 37 days ago
Blogging through it
Okay, okay, I’m late with this posting. As Luther said in 48 Hours, when he went to pick up Reggie’s car at the garage – I’ve been busy! Yesterday was the Fourth of July and I’m glad for the holiday weekend; the phone stops ringing for a while and I can catch up on the stuff that’s fallen by the wayside. Like this blog.
Summer is the busy season at Sheffield’s, one of the bars that I own with a friend of mine in Chicago. We’ve gone through a lot of changes there lately, and so the business takes a lot of time and attention. That, of course, is no excuse not to write, but it does prove an additional distraction, coupled with what I already suspect is adult onset ADD.
But the minding of other business isn’t everything that’s been clamoring for my attention. There’s the story that I told you about in my last entry. The wild ride of a woman whose life began as the daughter of a Chicago labor boss and friend of the Outfit, a guy whose own business was mixed up with helping cook Prohibition Era alcohol and hustling votes for the Chicago political machine. This thing really has got my attention and I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to put it together.
During the week I recorded a number of hours of my new friend telling me what she recalled of her life; I’ll be going back again soon to get some more of her story on tape. And I’ve been doing independent research, spending hours combing through the archives at the Chicago tribune and the historical society. Some of the story is easy to document; her father cut a large swath through his part of Chicago in his day. Other parts – the parts that really set her story apart from the Outfit tales that have been done a hundred times before – are more problematic; reportedly she worked for the FBI after her father was murdered, going to work for gangsters and giving the Fed’s inside information as a way of retaliating against her father’s killers. Obviously, this is a little harder to confirm.
In the wake of the shameful antics of pseudo-journalists such as Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, I want to be especially careful to document my work. But what does a writer do to get information from the federal government about their pursuit of organized crime? Neither side is really in a hurry to share their information with a stranger.
I beat my head against the wall trying to determine how best to corroborate my subject’s story. I thought about it and, finally, the obvious answer jumped up and bit me on the ass (scanning that last sentence it seems that I have to watch out for both head and rear, this writing thing is a dangerous endeavor). Anyway, as with most complicated questions, the Occam’s Razor approach is often the best. Why try to do a bunch of investigative gymnastics to discern vague details when it makes so much more sense to go straight to the source? Have my gal pull her FBI file, as is her right under the Freedom of Information Act. If she’s telling me the truth, her story probably won’t all be there, but enough of it should be that I can check some of the facts.
Now I’m not all that keen about poking around, looking for FBI case files. I know that it’s my right, but there are a lot of guys stuck away in remote cages, cut off from the rest of the world, who had rights too. The antics of this current administration have left me a little gun shy. Which kind of pisses me off, when I think about it. The FBI’s homepage states:
Our mission is to help protect you, your communities, and your businesses from the most dangerous threats facing our nation…
So if they work for me, why does even the thought of my name coming across
some knucklehead’s desk at The Bureau make me nervous? I don’t have a guilty
conscience, I just don’t trust them. Ever since I read Stephen King’s Firestarter
when I was about ten, my imagination has run wild with what a misplaced sense
of priorities and unlimited power can do to disrupt a life.
But I digress. One of the things that comes with being a writer is going outside
your comfort zone, digging around to learn something new and then being able
to talk about it in a way that you couldn’t have before. So fuck it; I’ll petition
the FBI for a few files. Along the way I’ll have to
get over being worried about asserting my right to information that was mine
to begin with.
At the end of my last blog, I said I was going to talk in this one about how my story was going to be shaped. I think I’ve finally settled on what that is going to be. I’m going to start out with the story of a little girl who was raised in privilege, who adored a father who doted on her and gave her everything she ever desired. A father who also happened to consort with rum-runners and crooked politicians and who was gunned down in front of his young daughter for the problems that inevitably arise from those kinds of associations. His murder will frame a brief intro into the story, his history and rise to power will comprise the first section and then his daughter’s work for the FBI and her fall from wealth and luxury will round it out and give it an original spin. The conclusion will describe her and her family today and what has happened to her in the ensuing years. I think it will make a hell of a book.
Next week I’m traveling to New York to pitch this and other projects. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get my pages into some well connected hands and receive their feedback. I’m also hopeful that I’ll have something good to report on the progress of my novel Opening Day. I’m going out there with a full menu of ideas. One thing I learned in my time in LA was to never come to a meeting with just one project to sell. Always have something in your back pocket that you can pitch, in case the first one sails out and falls flat on its face.
I’ve got a couple of meetings set up to hawk this new story and I’m trying to line up more. Next time I’ll tell you how my time in New York goes and what the result of our Freedom of Information Act petition is. At any rate there’s something happening, a lot of things. Which is the way it always is; feast or famine. But I’d rather have it that way than the other, sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. JFK famously said that there was an ancient Chinese curse wherein one would wish that one’s enemies might live in interesting times. Of course it turns out, there never was any such curse and JFK never said that. But the story makes for a good quote. When you think about it, even if that ancient curse never existed, maybe it should have.
— Ric Hess, 61 days ago
Building A Story One Brick at a Time
Last week I was contacted by a woman who stumbled over my website and wanted to see if I could convert her life’s story into a screenplay. At the very least I was heartened by the fact that someone out there must be reading these things, but an added bonus was that the story actually sounded interesting. Her pitch was at least compelling enough to get me to drive out to Carol Stream, and this is from a guy who considers anything west of Cicero Avenue or north of Howard Street to be practically another country. And I’m not even going to get started on the South Side; that’s another planet.
The commute out on the Eisenhower Expressway reminded me again of why I don’t drive to the suburbs, but I ended up spending more than four hours with this lady, her son and nephew, listening to her tell her tale. Since we’re still in negotiations about how to go forward, I can’t really talk a lot about the story, but it involves a Capone era Chicago gangster with plot twists that encompass everything from the FBI to JFK. It’s a hell of a story, rich in history and intrigue. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be driving out there again soon.
Actually, this woman has at least four or five stories, and that’s the problem. She started talking and if I hadn’t had another appointment she would have kept on until midnight. She’s in her early nineties, and, as she said, “all I’ve got left is my mind and my big mouth.” She’s quite gal.
When a writer is confronted with a project that involves distilling some huge epic down into a one hundred and twenty page screen play, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. What story am I trying to tell, after all? Is this the story of the woman, of her father, of her father’s associations, of his gangland style murder, of Chicago in the early twentieth century with the all the gambling and whores and bootlegging that that era was infamous for? I have to choose.
Most stories are like that in some respect. When a writer attempts to construct a narrative that spans years, or even only weeks or days, there’s only so much you can use. Choices have to be made about what to include and what to omit. One of the basic mistakes that many a writer makes is to try to tell too much. It’s an often fatal mistake because then you lose control of your story. Once that happens you can be sure you’re going to lose your audience as well.
In his philosophical tour de force, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author Robert M. Pirsig writes about a student that he encountered while he was teaching at Montana State University, Bozeman. He instructed his class to submit a topic for a five hundred word essay and one young lady responded that she wanted to write about the United States. Obviously trying to boil the story of the U.S. down to five hundred words is a formidable task. Not surprisingly, the girl returned in frustration; the topic was so large that she couldn’t think of where to start.
Pirsig thought about it and he told her to try again, but this time to just write about Bozeman. Still no luck. Then he told her to write about just the main street of the town. Nothing again. In frustration, he flippantly told her to write about the face of the Bozeman Opera House, starting with the upper left-hand brick. She came back the next morning with five thousand words.
When you’re trying to tell a big story, it’s important to determine exactly where to begin and where to end. It’s not that you don’t have enough material, it’s that you have way too much. No matter what you’re trying to do, at base you’re still trying to tell a story. It has to have a narrative arc; a beginning, middle and end. There have to be character arcs there too, and the narrative has to have a shape that the audience can understand and respond to. Whether your story is a straight ahead crime noir entertainment or an expansive biography, it’s still a story and it has to look like one on the page.
This project is going to require a lot of time spent listening to a woman who’s had an exotic life. Obviously, she’s going to want to tell me everything. And, of course, I can’t use everything. I’ll only be able to use a fraction of what she has to tell. It’s in deciding what to tell that the success or failure of the project will rest. Because, if I don’t make the right decisions, if I don’t take control of the project early on and drive it in a manner that makes sense, it will be a waste of everyone’s time. Time is something that none of us can afford to waste.
I think this is going to be a story about a woman’s relationship with her father, and how that relationship formed the basis for everything else that was to happen in her life. It’s about how someone who seems venal, violent and corrupt from one point of view could appear benevolent, charming and larger than life from another. It’s about the relative nature of sin and the nature of revenge and atonement. It’s a story about a life.
Next week I’ll talk about how I intend to attack this saga; this week I’m going to determine that approach. My goal is that when I go to sell this thing, I’ll know my angle inside and out. The future of the project will rest on how I spin the story, how I condense it and which points I decide to emphasize. These are critical decisions. After all, if Capra had gone to the studios pitching a film about a drunken loser who never escapes from his hometown and eventually gives up on all his dreams, he probably never would have gotten the deal to make It’s A Wonderful Life.
— Ric Hess, 81 days ago
