What Inspires Me

Relatives from Colorado visited this week.  One night, as coffee and chit-chat were winding down a bit, I overheard my aunt say, "I wonder what inspires Mario."

By "inspiration," is the question, "Mario, where do you get ideas for your stories?"  The answer to that is a fit of enthusiasm.  Most of the time, I read a book or see a movie or watch a TV show about a certain topic from alien invasion to time travel to a pandemic, and I find the exposure so enjoyable that I cannot help but try to do my take on the subject matter.

By "inspiration," is the question, "Mario what keeps you going back and back to the writing?"  In that case, the correct word, I think, would be "drive," not "inspiration."  To me, inspiration is what sparks the creativity, while drive is what pushes me forward to get the work done.  I'm almost certain a great many others share my feelings on this.

So what drives me then?

All I can say is that I was put on this Earth to be a storyteller.  I enjoy it and it's something I'm good at.  I'm not a brilliant inventor nor am I a great businessman.  If I woke up tomorrow and said that I wanted to become a psychotherapist, I'd have to also acknowledge that I might be the last person to help someone with mental issues.  Most of my closest friends would agree.

Listening to Characters

They say that characters will write your story for you if you make them believable enough.  I had an experience last week that may, in my eyes, prove it right.

I thought that my novel would go down a particular road, that the plot would unfold in a particular pattern.  I thought this so much that I anticipated a long-term plan for it.  But as I wrote the latest chapter this week, I noticed that some of my characters were in clear and vocal opposition to the plan.  Now it seems that I'm rushing to catch up with them.  This doesn't seem right, does it?  Characters should be doing what the author tells them to do, not the other way around.

Perhaps it was me speaking to myself through the characters instead.  That does happen in writing when an author can't seem to get his shit out, so he uses the characters as surrogates to get his opinions out to the audience.  In this case, the audience was just me.  I guess the plot was nagging on me a little, I let that doubt slip out through one character and, before I new it, nearly half my cast was calling me out.

My point is this: don't be afraid to listen to what your characters are saying if you want to know where your fiction might be destined to head towards.  It may very well be your conscience trying to grab your attention.

The Dark Side of the Short Story

I've lied to you, dear reader, and I don't want our relationship to be one poisoned by lies.  Back at the end of August, I wrote a post about short stories and how awesome they are.  I wrote about how they are a great way to break into a write career in a quick way, how they help sharpen your skills with the written word and how they lead to mastery of longer fiction.  Basically, I made it sound about as awesome as getting laid...while wearing the Iron Man suit.

But there's something about the short story that can blow way all those reasons: if you don't like, you shouldn't write it.  This is a personal belief on my part.  There are writers who excel at short stories but write crappy novels.  There are writers that can produce a rich series of novels but cannot bring that same level of skill to a short story.  I'm part of that latter group.

Am I talking trash about short stories because I haven't been able to get mine into print?  Is this an attempt to cover up some hurt feelings?  No.  Granted, my short fiction has been rejected every time, but those rejection letters were always profession and in many ways filled with encouragement and helpful pointers.

The problem is that a short story bores me too easily.  Because of the short length of the form, they generally cover brief plots.  Any of the Harry Potter books wouldn't work as a short story because they're too complex and intricate.  However, a story about a girl stressing out preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her visiting relatives or a guy trying to cover up the accidental murder of his girlfriend's pet bunny could work.  They're short scenarios that can be resolved fairly quickly.

I'm a complicated man and I like my stories equally complex.  I like it when the pieces fall together and I get a natural high when I do that for someone else in my work.

Keeping Your Spirits Up

My family had relatives over for dinner during the holidays and the conversation got around to our latest plans.  I mentioned that I got the week off from my day job but that I was still under pressure to get work done, writing work.  My aunt said something like, "Oh, no, Mario.  What work?  You're on vacation."  Ah, my relatives.  God bless 'em, but they can be a bit clueless sometimes.  If it don't earn a red cent, it ain't work.

This isn't something I've experienced alone.  How many times have you heard people refer to your writing as a hobby, as a way to unwind at the end of the day?  "It's not like you're a real writer like J.K. Rowling."  I've heard it all before from relatives and friends and roommates, and it's a true insult.  If you're writing, you're a writer.  The only time that earning money becomes a factor is when you have to report yourself as a writer to the IRS (that's a topic for another time).

Maybe writing really is a simple pastime for you.  There are writers who never intended for their storytelling to become so fruitful.  However, if writing is a serious endeavor for you, try to maintain your optimism and belief that you will eventually get into print.  Remember that there are crappy writers on the market today.  If their publisher buys their garbage, it's only a matter of time before work of your quality gets noticed.

Or, if you need something more substantial than quality to keep your spirits up, then think quantity.  As a matter of simplicity, I keep my writing material in binders.  Dozens of binder.  Ask yourself, "Does that look like a hobby?"

Titles

Never judge a book by its cover?  Don't dis the plot just because of the title?  That may be so, but the title of a story is very important.  And if you don't want to believe that, well, you can go ahead and live in Fantasyland.  Just think about it.  Would Stoker's novel be as attractive if it were called Bloodsucking European Guy?  How about Stephanie Meyer?  You think she'd be a pop culture icon for penning Sparkly, Overly-Emotional Vampires Who DON'T Drink Blood?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

The title is responsible for establishing mood in a reader even before the first paragraph is read, and there comes a feeling when you've found the right title for your project that fills you with a kind of warmth.  You just know that it works.  Now, we can't imagine Dracula being called anything but.

Nevertheless, finding the right title can be a journey on its own.  I'm not saying that it needs to take up all of your time - something's wrong if you're spending five hours a day figuring the title but only five minutes writing the story - but you need to put some thought into it.  A working title will suffice only until it's time to present the final product.

Don't be afraid to ditch a title you thought was great at the start.  It happens.  The title of my alien invasion novel was, for me, set in stone for nearly two years.  Recently, however, I've felt it's kind of drab and now I'm looking for a replacement.  Also, don't ever - EVER! - make your title so lengthy that no one will easily remember it.  Ellen Bass has a poem called When the Young Geneticist Was Asked, "Aren't you worried about the implications of your work?" with a Toss of Her Sun-Streaked Hair, She Declared, "No, not at all.  I can't wait to fuck a clone."

I'm not kidding.  That's the full title.  The poem itself isn't long; I read it a few times in grad school.  But ever time I'd discuss it with my adviser or fellow students, I always called it "that geneticist poem."  How else was I to remember it?  So my cardinal rule is to keep the title short, no more than ten words.

That said, here are some ideas that might help you on your way:

1. Quotations: For my alien invasion novel, I used a quote from Ronald Reagan that I thought would fit the overall theme.  You can use a historical reference or you can quote something said by a character of yours.  They do this in movies a lot with Saving Private Ryan, As Good As It Gets and (dare I say it?) Hot Tub Time Machine.
2. A character:  You make a character's name the title like Stoker did with Dracula.  Other examples are Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.  The title or nickname of a character works very well too: Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
3. Place names: Off the top of my head, Dante's The Divine Comedy is a good example with each part relating to a certain place in the afterlife - Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Paradise).  The Road by Cormac McCarthy is another good one.
4. A hidden meaning: This is a great way to add layers beneath the obvious.  Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead is a good one, relating the zombies (obviously) but also the notion that the survivors are in a state of death as well.  Justin Cronin said that The Passage refers not only to the journey of the characters but also to the world's transition from a living one to a place of death.
5. An event: The title can relate the main situation of the story such as H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds or Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

There are some other ways to name a story, but these, I find, are the most common guides.

Back to Basics

I think it's easy to lose sight of which methods work for you as a writer and which don't.  Everyone has a particular way of writing, a certain way of doing things when approaching a project, and sometimes you can forget that.

Ben Franklin, I've heard, did his best writing in the bathtub.  I don't, and I don't use a quill and ink either.  I've always been a computer writer - I just feel more at ease typing, and it's faster for me as well - and I find that my words come out best with loud music playing.  There are only ten bands that I listen to when I write: AC/DC, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains, Eagles of Death Metal, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Motley Crue, Nirvana, The Offspring, and The White Stripes.  Music has such a profound impact on a writer's productivity that most of us pay almost no attention to, but it's there.  When I want to crank out a few thousand words, these guys help like no other.  I don't know why.  They're just my bathtub.

Now, if the myth is true, imagine Franklin writing out of the tub.  I realized this week that I tried to balance writing with family time, taking my laptop with me when I hang out with my parents or my siblings.  And because I want to be polite, I usually go without the music.  Big mistake.  It's a mistake because now I'm more focused on carrying conversation in quiet.  I'm not that kind of writer.  I'm a writer who needs to be locked up and screaming "Girls!  Girls!  Girls!" along with Vince Neil.

If you feel like you've lost some of your steam, then maybe it would do you good to take a moment or two and reflect on what gets you writing like a madman.  And if you are a writer who works best alone, don't be afraid to let your friends and family know that you need that alone time.  They'll understand.  If they don't, turn the table on them and demand that they try writing your book.  That tends to shut people up.

Character Summaries

If you're working on a writing project with more than a handful of main characters, it's really easy to loose track of who's doing what.  With my alien invasion novel, I've tried keeping an eye on things by marking down what pages each character appears in, but all that really tells me is how frequently they appear.

This week, I stumbled upon a new idea: character summaries.  It's a simply concept.  You mark down the pages that a particular character appears in, and write a few sentences on what goes on with that character from point to point in the story.  Doing this is especially helpful for long projects, saving time that you'd otherwise spend sifting through dozens or even hundreds of pages of material.

Don't worry about going into heavy detail or motivations.  You know what drives your characters.  If there is a change in motivation, a brief sentence on that change will do.  If a side character appears that you think might become important later on, make a note of that in the relevant annotation.

Just keep in mind that it's not a synopsis that you're writing, so you don't need to go crazy on the amount of information you record.  If a few months go by between vignettes for a character, chances are that he or she will have forgotten some of the finer details of that last scene.  Unless, of course, that character has a photographic memory.

Even then, photographic memory or not, you as a writer will want only the bare essentials of each scene.  The summaries have less to do with character development and more to do with how the plot flows.  For example, you don't want to have the first vignette take the character down one road to a particular goal, forget about that goal a hundred pages later and then have him or her go down another path that doesn't logically connect with the first one.