Storytellersunplugged

Gerard Houarner

For many beginning writers, and even experienced/famous/popular ones, talking about writing means explicating the mysteries of where ideas come from, how to come up with characters, plots, settings, and that most dreaded of enterprises – marketing. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time, energy and money pursuing the answers to these mysteries. Nothing wrong with that, and quite a lot useful and essential.

But at this point, looking back and to the future (and this is why I put myself in context for the first essay I wrote, because you may not want to swing along with me on this), I think it’s important for any creative endeavor to start off with a vision.

(No, not the Vision, a comic book character first appearing in the 40’s, re-created in the late 60’s, and apparently recently reborn through another metamorphosis –

– Ma, he’s talking old again, make him stop –

– Nor am I talking about the answer to the eternal question – how am I going to make a buck without working a day job? – or any of the other eternal and crucial questions – How will I get through the day? When can I eat, drink, have sex again? And for the more evolved, When can I play with my kid again? Be with doggie and/or kitty? Kiss my significant other? – that are sometimes resolved by a vision which transforms normal, intelligent human beings into….well, writers –

– Ma, he’s freaking me out, man – )

I am defining vision (for the moment, for the sake of argument…more definitions to come, I’m sure) as an internal experience that seems real, and even more real than reality, engaging all the senses (in an illusory kind of way), frequently a consequence of an event, need, compulsion, emotion, and/or ideas, which sets off a cascade of reactions resulting in a view of the world. Vision is an expression of personality. Vision is your place in the story, the part of your head you are putting down on paper. (See, three possibly conflicting definitions, already!)

Writers frequently talk about something they see or hear setting off a story idea. We catch fragments of a conversation, glimpse frozen bits of action. Sometimes a dream haunts us. We drink too much coffee and do too much random research or reading and suddenly a trilogy comes to us with major and minor story arcs, thematic imagery and compelling characters, all in a ten second flash. That’s why a lot of writers carry notebooks and pens. Or a PDA. They scribble incessantly, like an artist sketches.

The poor, ink-stained, or electronically irradiated, wretches…..

But what I’m talking about is more than just inspiration (though inspiration is definitely part of vision). Inspiration is more like the symptom of the disease.

You can write and be published without vision. But your work won’t last, and neither probably will your career. Technical writing doesn’t require the kind of vision I’m talking about. Fiction does. All art does.

You have to have a vision inside of you to translate random stimuli into specific ideas that energize you into a creative frenzy.

I’m not talking about a need, like an addict, to express yourself or create something. That’s a little different, and if I or someone out there can figure it out I’ll talk about it at some other time.

What I’m talking about here is rooted in your personal point of view on life, the universe and everything, that informs most if not all your creative efforts, no matter what the medium. You may not know you have it. You may not think about that kind of stuff, or care. What the hell, as long as you’re selling and have an audience, who should care? Or you may think you don’t have a vision, that somehow you’re putting all this stuff down on paper or disk for no particular reason other than you happen to be good at it or to scratch an itch.

That may well be.

I know – writers making a living at the craft wake up in the morning asking, How can I make a sale? This is not a dramatic question. It’s a reasonable professional query which can have an effect on artistic expression – what does a particular well-paying market require? What I’m talking about is the next step such a writer might take: Given those requirements, what is a relevant dramatic question for me? How can I integrate my own interests and obsessions into this theme, universe, genre, age-bracket, medium?

Those particular questions may not be voiced, but people can’t help having a point of view. It may not be well developed. A point of view may actually be rather malnourished, scrawny, unable to free itself from the currents of habits, upbringing, religious/political training, and general ignorance that can sweep us through life completely unaware of what is happening inside or outside of ourselves.

Everyone has a point of view. An individual may be scared to look at what that view may imply, what consequences, intended and unintended, it may produce. There are at least some inconsistencies and contradictions in the pattern of closely-held opinions and beliefs. There are levels, what we present to the world and what we really think of things.

You may not care why you’re writing, or what is you’re trying to express. But you do have a point of view. It’s my belief that if you’re going to write anything worthwhile, you’re going to have to take a long, hard look at that point of view, and everything that might challenge its various components, and nurture from the surviving conflict a vision of life, the universe, and everything else that will fill your writing with the kinds of characters and ideas and situations that will make your work stand out from all the rest, and make readers take notice.

Yes, in horror, everyone’s vision is “dark.” And yes, in every genre some ideas and tropes are more popular than others. But there are an infinite number of shades to the darkness. It’s what those ideas and tropes, what “dark” means to the creator, that’s important and sets apart the work, gives it a particular shade unique from all the rest.

If you’re lucky, you’re born with that vision. But if you’re not, if you can’t make a sale or break through to professional markets, if nobody ever notices your work, then you might want to take a closer look at those ideas and characters and plots, see where they come from, why you’re choosing those particular images and devices. What do they mean to you? How can you use that meaning in the stories?

If you’re writing about fear, what do you fear? Is it something physical, or emotional?

There’s a certain amount of excavation required to find this vision, by whatever culturally appropriate means necessary (walkabout, hallucination, meditation, discipline, volunteering, military service, library time, even *shudder* college).

The point, as ole Jack Ketchum likes to say, is not to flinch.

Stare down that darkness drawing you to create its mirror image. Look at it. Don’t blink or runaway or throw up. Don’t reach for the axe murderer or the random accident or the cliche dialogue exchange, the film image or barrage of music. Dig deeper. What are you really saying, thinking, feeling, when you come up with that story idea, or that character who won’t let you go, or that dream that haunts you.

Ask tough questions, expect tough answers. Those are the stories that move readers. If you ask the question and answer it in a way everybody expects, you’ve done a movie novelization. Or a book in someone else’s series. Or turned out a piece of pulp fiction. You haven’t really faced the darkness. You haven’t really uncovered your own, personal vision.

Nothing wrong with any of that, if you’re getting paid, or if that‘s all you expect out of life. But frankly, if you’re not getting paid, you might find more satisfaction from playing video games. Writing is an intensive, insane endeavor, much like leaping off a cliff with what you hope is a working parachute (some idea of what you’re doing). Sometimes the chute opens. Other times, it doesn’t. It’s an awful lot of work for very little reward for many, so why write?

One answer to that question is to question. Critical thinking is a rare art. Almost inhuman. Knee-jerk reactions rule many interactions, learned from authorities and families and experience, and discovering how to question those knee-jerk reactions puts us closer to the source of who and what we are. Gives us the power of choice. Puts us in control of our reactions, and our actions.

So writing, with the focus of asking a (dramatic) (personal) question, allows us to explore ourselves, and the readers to explore themselves, and you.

The act of questioning and searching for new answers conveys a vision.

Maybe you’re writing the story to find out what the hell the vision is. Maybe you write to put it to rest, to give it its say and make it go away. Maybe you’re writing thinking you don’t have any damn vision, you don’t have anything to say, you’re just writing and randomly putting in people you know and having them experiencing things and putting in certain kinds of backgrounds and situations, but no, you don’t have a vision.

Every strong writer, every strong creator, has a vision that unites much of his or her work. It permeates plot and style and character choice. I think the great writers know exactly what their vision is, and even if they can’t articulate it for an interviewer or a critic, they are in touch with that vision and it serves and permeates everything they write, no matter what the genre.

Bradbury has a vision. King. Ellison. Piccirilli. The writers on this board. Every one of them. You see it, even if you haven’t read their fiction, by the questions they ask of you and of themselves. You may or may not sympathize, like or even understand a particular vision, but what those visions do is draw an audience because the work they produce are not anonymous and safe and interchangeable. Visions have at their heart strong and passionate perceptions of the self and the world. They can comfort, provoke, disturb. Most importantly, they break through the barriers of disbelief. They demand attention.

As an artist, in order to separate yourself from the herd, from the thousands, the tens of thousands of other artists out there doing exactly the same thing you’re doing – some with a lot more talent than you – you have to show something extra. And I don’t mean just exposing the tawdry details of a personal life. I mean a vision, a way of looking at yourself, your place in the world, and most importantly, a view of the world, itself – how and why it works. It doesn’t have to be real. Not all of it. Not even most of it. But it must be true on an emotional level.

We all make up a way of looking at the world based on our experiences, needs, the way we’re wired to react. That’s the foundation of a vision. How deeply we understand or become involved in that vision – down to its colors and tastes, the rhythm of language, the sounds it makes – is how fully that vision will permeate your work, make it more interesting than other manuscripts in the slush pile, make your work memorable. Perhaps even develop readership.

Sometimes the vision is born from pain.

A sense of wonder.

Joy.

Dread.

Whatever you discover, however deep you go, how close or far you keep your discoveries, you’ll know you have vision when you know what kind of story you want to tell and who your characters are going to be before you ever get to a set of submission guidelines, or if you’re the type who needs that kind of structure, you’ll find yourself getting excited over the sparks generated by those guidelines because they’re giving you the opportunity to go “here” or “there” – countries you may have never heard of before, but which you feel the need to explore because you have something to say about those kinds of places.

Or maybe not.

My vision about all of this is, predictably, just a bit cloudy…..