Month: July 2014

Here we go again. Dammit San Diego Comic Con, you’re awesome, but you sure are a hotbed of plague.

Actually it’s possible San Diego isn’t to blame this time around, since both my mother and my wife were both wrestling with what seems to be my same symptoms before we ever packed our car for the convention. I was chowing vitamins in hopes of avoiding it, but then last Monday happened with my aunt and, well, that kind of stress and potential grief will do a number on your body. I’m guessing the virus took full advantage of that chink in the defenses.

As an update, my aunt is back at her home and stabilized for the time being. She still wasn’t able to go to the convention but we took lots of pictures and videos to share with her and the CCI staff let Dawn and I pick up the t-shirts she’d pre-ordered without any fuss. From a purely logistical standpoint this was probably one of our best trips, with little to no stress involved in our arrival or departure; a far sight better than some previous years.

On the other hand,  Southern California weather decided to take an uncharacteristically humid turn, feeling rather… what’s the word… swampy? We natives here can deal with heat by itself, but once you start adding water we can become rather soggy and miserable, as evidenced by last Friday night where pretty much everyone I knew called off their party plans in favor of just collapsing in the A/C of their hotel rooms. Meanwhile some dude from Louisiana was probably out there scooping up the swag and downing all the complimentary booze.

It was still quite fun, just had to be taken in small measures; though now that I think about it, I suppose that’s fair to say of any trip to SDCC. I just remember on Friday saying hi to some of our exhibitor friends and they had even more than the usual shell-shocked stare of Day 3, possibly because even the Exhibit Hall was feeling sticky that day; not quite “the A/C is out” but it didn’t quite seem to be compensating for the press of bodies.

I wonder how many infections I dished out? Hopefully not many, this is a miserable bug. When I think things like “I want to watch that movie but I’m not sure I have the energy to stay awake on the couch for two hours”, that’s pretty miserable. I was very, very glad we’d already decided to take the week off in terms of a story post.

Speaking of which, probably a good point for me to wrap this up and go have another lie down with some orange juice. Next week I shall hopefully be back at this spot with 100% less self-pity and 100% more something interesting to say. At least 50%. Yeah, that sounds good. I have to feel better at least in time for Guardians of the Galaxy!

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ author insert character and narrator has a famous opening monologue to the audience, which starts thus:

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

As a summation of what writers and other storytellers do, that’s about as good as it gets. Even the most outlandish fable has an underpinning to it that an audience of human beings can connect with. We recognize it. But perhaps even more importantly, even the most tragic story presented in the most realistic manner still has that pleasant disguise of illusion.

I write a story. It’s a story where people have died. Where people will die. Grief and how people handle grief is a big thing, in fact it’s been front and center for these last few comics. Then Dawn and I decided to put things on hold for a bit because we had some family issues to deal with in addition to preparations for San Diego Comic-Con.

As I stood by my aunt’s hospital bed yesterday, with no sound but the rattle and hiss of the respirator keeping her breathing, “family issues” took on a level of intensity we had not expected.

Yesterday the doctor had advised everyone that could make it to say their goodbyes. She was still awake when I got there, but couldn’t speak (obviously), and because of the sedatives could barely manage a hand squeeze. Then she went to sleep, and by the time we had to leave no one could still say if she was ever going to wake up again.

That kind of thing is, I suppose, like the difference between watching a natural disaster on television and being caught in one. It wrecked me. I really can’t remember the last time I felt such intense sadness. There was no pleasant disguise of illusion. This was happening.

It didn’t come entirely without warning. She’d been diagnosed with congestive heart failure a couple of months back and had to come to the extended family reunion on Sunday in a wheelchair, but she was awake and talking then, discussing with me about how she still planned to come to San Diego with us like she and my uncle have for the past few years, although we were looking up where to go for disability services since she’d still be wheelchair bound. Her doctor had given her the okay to go if she wanted, but she was scheduled for a biopsy Monday morning. Nothing huge. Probably would just leave her with a scratchy throat.

And then something went wrong. And suddenly not only was someone who (aside from my wife) I considered my #1 geek buddy in my family not going to make it to Comic-Con, there was every indication she Might Not Make It. Period.

Before I bum anyone out too much with this: in spite of all the negative prognoses she did wake up again as of today, and she’s off the respirator, and she’s talking and smiling and probably will be released to go home tomorrow. Not to Comic-Con, but she made sure we were still going and made us promise to send her lots of pictures.

But holy crap was that ever a close brush, and it made me think how paltry the efforts of even the greatest storyteller can be in trying to convey the whirlwind of emotions that encompass real tragedy. And how maybe that’s a good thing, like it’s one of those vaccines that contains a weak version of a virus that might otherwise overwhelm us.

Want to know the craziest thing? My aunt’s name is Suzie. We didn’t consciously name the protagonist of Zombie Ranch after her, but she was always tickled to share the moniker. It seems they definitely share some of the same stubborn fighting spirit, and thank heaven for that.

This is probably going to end up as another one of those “personal experience masquerading as wise writerly advice” posts I seem to gravitate towards. I’ll be honest, a lot of times when I put these posts together I have no idea if they’ll necessarily be helpful to anyone. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even my primary goal to be helpful, so much as that might end up being a side effect of whatever screed I happen to be spewing on any given week. My experience and insight are not on par with that of, say, a Neil Gaiman or Mark Evanier, so I hesitate to act like you should give me your hand and let me guide you down the perilous path. If you take my hand regardless, I feel it’s only right to mention that, while I don’t exactly feel like I’m completely blind, I may have misplaced my glasses.

But you know, I’ve read my share of advice snippets from all manner of authors far more published and successful than I, and what’s struck me is that the only thing they have in common is that they’re names I recognize. Everyone seems to have a different method, a different approach, a different style, and in the end all they can do is give you advice on how to be like them. The downside of this is that there appears to be no set formula, no one correct and proper method to being a good writer. The upside is exactly the same. You can cherry pick from all the words of wisdom and take as your role models those folks you feel are most in line with your own philosophies. You can even spend time reading what I write here, and if it happens to help you out, then more power to you. More power to us all.

Where was I? Oh yes, the title. It refers to a sticking point I got to in my script, in point of fact the script for this very week’s page. I had written it out originally as a dialogue between Suzie and Eustace where they were talking about ownership rights and restitution and blah blah blah. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s important stuff, but I kept coming back to what I’d written and huffing with a sense of frustration. Just the act of re-reading it was making me, the writer himself, tune out of the scene. It wasn’t interesting. It was, in fact, f-ing boring, and even moreso because a lot of what was being said had already been covered, such as in the recent “A Moment With Suzie” pages. I get itchy with works of fiction that keep repeating the same stuff over and over unnecessarily, particularly in terms of things that could be categorized as exposition. The 2011 Green Lantern movie comes to mind as one of the worst recent offenders for me. Yes yes, we know this. Yes, we get it. MOVE ALONG ALREADY.

Well there I was, feeling that exact same way about something I myself had produced. But what could I do? Scrap the scene entirely? That’s always an option, and I certainly haven’t shied away from “offscreen” conversations before, but I’d been skipping around (and ahead) already several times this episode and I worried that had become a bit dizzying. Suzie and Eustace needed to talk, but any way I wrote that dialogue was straying awfully close to “As you know…” territory, which seemed like a really crappy use of a weekly installment. And poor Frank. Yes, he’s a stoic guy who doesn’t talk much, but here was another page where he’d just basically be standing in the background.

That’s when the epiphany struck. The me of two weeks ago that wrote a whole article about character perspectives moseyed up, knocked on my skull, and drawled, “Howcum you don’t flip it ’round and show this part from Frank’s point of view instead?”. Past me apparently drawls and moseys and is altogether much cooler than present me, although he’s still rocking an Aloha shirt.

But anyhow, damn if that didn’t work just fine. In fact, suddenly I had a way to bring the Zeke/Frank dynamic back into the picture, which felt far more interesting than Suzie and Eustace talking business. Let that happen over yonder, where we can clearly see that it’s happening but don’t actually have to listen to Suzie reiterating that all the McCarty zombies are legally her property, except for Zeke, because now Frank’s bought Zeke and is ready to gift him back to your family, and…

Sure, I suppose the Zeke/Frank thing could be its own measure of “Yes, Frank’s guilty and conflicted about Zeke, WE GET IT”, but… eh, I think it’s moved along now from the business in earlier episodes since we get to see Frank attempting unsuccessfully to rid himself of the “problem” in a way that would have perhaps satisfied his conscience as a good deed, only to be shot down by Eustace coming to the realization that he doesn’t really want or need a walking corpse that looks like a green, decaying version of his son.

Good try, Frank. And good drama for me, and hopefully the readership. In a scene that even I was feeling bored and unsastified by, flipping the perspective was all it took.

There’s at least one of my friends working as a professional author who will reflexively rage shudder if you mention the word “likeable” to him.

It’s not the word itself. I mean, perhaps there are people out there prepared to scuffle over whether the spelling should be “likeable” or “likable”, but the dictionary accepts both and I haven’t met any. No, it’s just that he’s just gotten too many feedback notes over the years on his novels and attempted screenplays where the gatekeeper executive has asked for his protagonists to be “more likeable”.

There are a few problems with this particular note. One is that it’s rather vague. If you question the person involved on what they mean, there will more often than not be some hand-waving and “Oh you know… not so much of… well, you know…. more likeable.” It becomes circular and generally boils down to some gut, subjective reaction.

For helpful critique purposes, it would be far better to get into specifics such as “This protagonist keeps talking about how they value all life and then casually murders people. Did you mean for that disconnect to exist? Because hypocrisy on that scale can be a bit of a downer.” But even there it doesn’t mean a property won’t sell with an unlikeable protagonist attached to it. Look at Twilight. And anyone who thinks that was a cheap shot just proved my point about likeability being subjective. I hate, hate, hate Bella Swan as a protagonist and could write many specific paragraphs on why, but legions of people don’t agree with my assessment, or at least don’t care enough to stop them from being fans of the book.

Another problem with the note is that, while it might cross my mind that an author deliberately intended to imbue their protagonist with unlikeable qualities, the people providing an “unlikeable” note often seem to be genre blind. They’d turn up their nose at the asshole qualities of a Snake Plissken or Mad Max, despite the post-apocalyptic setting and an author’s protests of “that’s the point!” I don’t know, maybe that’s why Mad Max ended up having a pet dog when he seems barely capable of feeding himself. This is probably the aspect that caused my friend the better part of his twitch response, since his zombie apocalypse manuscript gathered dust for years until he could finally find a publisher willing to accept that his main character wasn’t much of a traditional hero.

And as bad as the situation can be with male characters, I ponder also if the “likeability” note is given more in response to a female character with negative qualities. I don’t have the statistics on that, but certainly in the political and business worlds we as a culture seem far more obsessed with successful women being “not nice” or even “not pretty”.

Dawn and I have the luxury with Zombie Ranch of not dealing with any gatekeepers, just a direct audience, and so I have never experienced any personal frustrations on this level. We get to present our characters in all their sordid glory, without worrying about theoretical appeal to the masses as funneled through the opinions of a single person or focus group.  The masses are already here, making up their own minds… and wouldn’t you know it, people have found things to both like and dislike about the characters without it necessarily making them stop caring.

Your characters can be complete saints or total jerks or anywhere between, but someone’s got to give a damn about what happens to them next. That’s probably a better indicator of a successful story than likeability ever was.

I’ve talked about the concept of point of view in storytelling before, but as this week’s page prepares to go live it’s on my mind again. Have you ever considered how much of good writing is information management? Not just in the sense of the information being given or withheld from the audience, but in the sense of what the characters in the story know at any given moment.

The need for effective information management in the story has been with us since some of our earliest surviving examples, hasn’t it? Oedipus Rex wouldn’t go much of anywhere if the title character finds out Jocasta is his mother before all the murder and incest happens. The audience knows full well, but he doesn’t have a clue. Sure, there’s a mandate of fate involved, but Sophocles thankfully didn’t use that as an excuse for lazy writing. Shakespeare was another scribe who took great pains to make sure that characters knew and acted on only the information they had available to them. Othello certainly doesn’t work if Iago’s many monologues detailing his evil plans are somehow overheard by the other dramatis personae, but his bond villain tendencies are confined to the folks watching the play, until of course it’s too late.

Have you ever been watching or reading a work of fiction and suddenly asked, “Wait, how did they know that?” or “Did they forget about that?” Well, I have, and unless a good explanation comes forth at some point, I’ll often feel let down. This management of character knowledge is something that I feel is at least as important to the immersion and suspension of disbelief in a story as Frodo Baggins not suddenly gaining the ability to fly like Superman.

Sometimes it’s rough to be faced with it, like in the aforementioned tragedies where you might want nothing more than to get between Desdemona and Othello and shout, “Just calm down and talk to each other!” You end up hating Hamlet for what he does to Ophelia, even though from his perspective he thinks she’s just another spy for his uncle and his co-conspirators, perhaps even worse than most because she’s trying to play on his past affections. She for her part has been told that Hamlet’s acting very strange and her father has implored her to try to use that past affection to try to find out what ails the poor boy. And it’s tough to watch it all play out in the tragic way it does, but damn if it doesn’t make sense.

Zombie Ranch has been going on for almost five years now, and I’m hoping I’ve still got a good track of who knows what at what time, and how that’s coloring their interactions. Like I said, I feel it’s really important. But I also recall seeing this current page and thinking, will readers react negatively to Suzie angrily telling Frank to back off from making Clearstream out as villains? From our more omniscient perspective, yeah, there’s some shady, shady stuff going on. From Frank’s point of view, he has some suspicions but nothing really concrete, beyond his predisposition to not like their presence. Then there’s Suzie, under stress from all angles, suddenly having to have *this* argument again not long after Frank agreed to back her up.

It’s a confrontation that doesn’t happen if the characters know what the audience knows (or for that matter, what the writer knows), but since they don’t, drama ensues. And as long as that makes sense from their perspectives, then we can love or hate them as we wish but still be satisfied with what’s occurring. True omniscience might make living their lives easier, but it’d pretty much put guys like me out of a job.