‘Critters’ kitty

Due to the combination of angle, light, and his bouffant coif, this photo made me laugh so heartily that I broke into a painful coughing fit.  I didn’t care.  It’s so funny.  I find the photo amusing because it reminds me of a very, very, very bad science fiction movie called Critters.  It’s not just a B movie; it’s one of the most horrible film creations ever conceived—and then they made a bunch more to boot.  Bah!

I never watched the first one the whole way through.  I barely tolerated it long enough to see the alien invaders roll into fluffy balls so they could move about.  At that point, I had already burned far too many brain cells.  Rubbish, I say, pure rubbish!

But if you’ve ever seen the film, perhaps you’ll understand why this photo made me think of Vazra as one of those overly-furred, rolls-into-a-ball-to-move, terrible examples of Hollywood puppetry that wouldn’t entertain five year olds if it were the last thing on Earth they could watch.  He looks like a big head with too much fur standing on a tiny pair of feet jutting out beneath him.

An angled shot looking down at Vazra as he sits looking out the window (161_6125)

Vocabularium

Another day on the road to recovery, and that means it’s another day of pedestrian vocabulary sharing.  I can’t help that I don’t have the mental strength to think of better words at the moment, but at least I feel better today—somewhat better, I mean—and am finally climbing out of the pit of agony I’ve wallowed in for a week.  Hopefully that means I’ll be back to my snarky, esoteric self in short order.  Meanwhile, mayhaps you know the words I’m offering and mayhaps you don’t, so I feel confident at least one person might be learning something new.

staid (staid): / stayd /
adjective

(1) characterized by a sedate, sober, or settled character (especially a sense of straight-laced propriety); not capricious, erratic, or flighty
(2) static, permanent, settled, stationary, or fixed

[From English ‘staid’ meaning “fixed, settled,” the obsolete past participle of ‘to stay.’]

Usage: Her staid demeanor often came across as dull lifelessness.

Random Thought

There are many in America today who have little sympathy with those we torture and torment. They are our enemies, they say. They would do worse to us if the situation was reversed. Maybe so. But those young men and women who we have turned into torturers and inquisitors, they were soldiers once. What are they now?

— Jay Elias

start_write and other mechanisms

As I continue recovering from my weeklong embrace with The Plague, I thought I might start today, the first day of the new year, with a short tour of the inner workings of my writing.  I don’t mean blog writing since I’ve already covered that.  What I do mean is the offline novel work I’m doing.  This will not be an in-depth review of the process from start to finish because I still lack the mental clarity needed for serious writing, something I hope will go away soon as it’s significantly cramping my style.  What I will share is a cursory examination of the overall process along with a few particulars.

Outline
I do not utilize outlines in the common sense of the word.  My stories, much like my blog posts, develop as stream-of-consciousness outpourings.  That said, I do utilize an outline of sorts.  Each of my novel ideas starts with a notes document.  That set of digital pages includes high-level information.  Here are some examples of what can be found in them, although this list is not all-inclusive and changes depending on the story itself.

List of characters: Names and nicknames, brief descriptions (physical, history, role, etc.), speech examples and guidlines (to ensure each has a relatively unique voice), relationships to other characters, and other pertinent information.

Lists: If the idea includes any significant list items (e.g., Dave Lloyd’s published and in-progress works), those items are listed out and notated with pertinent information (e.g., dates and/or times, relevance or association to events, and so on).

Quotes: Quips, phrases, and quotes pop into my head all the time.  They are not necessarily attached to anyone or anything in particular, although mostly they do come up with a specific character in mind.  When they hit me, I jot them down in this section for use later.  For example, Dreamdarkers has many such quotes like the following examples: “what the bear does in the buckwheat,” “my swan,” “Jesus wept,” and “that’s when the penny dropped.”  There are many others but I suspect that gives you an idea of what I’m talking about.  Most or all of these will find their way into the manuscript, yet their present form is not always indicative of how they will translate when added—but the idea and general usage remains the same and is why I make note of them when they come to mind.

Summary: Two or three paragraphs outlining the story.  This does not delve to great depths unless required (e.g., if a particular plot twist or detail seems critical and may not otherwise survive the writing process).  It does, however, serve as a guideline.

Miscellany: This area contains anything not already included.  That may be preliminary explorations of the narrative (e.g., dialogue or scenarios that already formed and needed to be jotted down), random tidbits from throughout the story that play major roles or seemed terribly important at the time they popped into my head, and pretty much all manner of hodgepodge.  An example from this section for Dreamdarkers is a time line showing when Dave and Beth met, when they married, when each of his books was published, when Beth’s grandmother died, when Beth died, when Dave moved to Kingswell, and on and on.  It’s literally a date with a line of text followed by another date and line of text.  It serves as reference material so I don’t put something out of order.

start_write
This is a label of my own making because I needed something I could search on that could never be confused with part of the narrative.  The start_write insert allows me to note in the manuscript where I need to begin writing, but by that I do not mean only where I left off during my last session.  At present, there are approximately one dozen of these labels spread throughout the pages of Dreamdarkers.  Some include notes reminding me of what precisely I needed to add in that specific place, and others are solitary markers in the road that are self-explanatory because of the content and context surrounding them.  For instance, following the paragraphs explaining Dave’s alcohol habit when finishing a novel but before he finds himself standing in front of the beer coolers, there is this note:

start_write [explain arriving at store, what it looks like from the outside, walking in, and what it looks like on the inside: see indstore7.jpg in WORKING for interior ideas]

The image referenced as indstore7.jpg is an interior shot of a very old general store from the early twentieth century, something very similar to what might have existed in small towns throughout the U.S. and that seems (to me at least) to have been used as reference material for many a western movie.  The store is all wood, packed from floor to ceiling with shelves filled with various and sundry items, dimly lit by artificial light yet illuminated wonderfully by a wall of windows at the front, and otherwise cluttered in a perfectly nostalgic way that fits nicely with the idea I have for the Perenson store in Kingswell.  The visual, one which my imagination has updated with an in-store deli and updated wall-mounted coolers, should develop nicely once I get back to that section.

Flow Symmetry
Lacking an outline, the question of how I keep a story defined and flowing evenly arises with ease.  The answer is equally simple.  Let’s take Dreamdarkers as an example.  Its precursor, “Darkness Comes to Kingswell,” developed as a stream of consciousness.  All ~100 pages were produced over the course of two weeks simply by sitting down and writing.  I would read the last few paragraphs from where I left off during the previous session, and then I would pick up and move on.  Since the narrative itself existed in its entirety within my mind, all I needed to do was give it form.  This happens to be the basic mechanism of my imagination.  Something inspires me, a tale jumps into being, and I write it.  Are all of the details intact?  Of course not.  In some cases, the story survives in my head as highlights only.  In other cases, like “Darkness Comes to Kingswell,” almost the entire thing is mentally written before I type “Chapter 1” in a document.

But does this approach lend itself to keeping the flow symmetrical from beginning to end?  Mostly yes, but not always.  The more complex a story becomes (e.g., The Breaking of Worlds), the more I find need to notate my thoughts in such a manner that will keep them organized.  If that ultimately requires an outline of some kind, I’m not adverse to the idea.  The point is, however, that most of it is free-flowing thought organized only in mental form before finding its way to text.  That’s why rewrites and edits are necessary.