Storytellersunplugged

by Gerard Houarner

Again, I’m writing here not to convey any great wisdom, just reactingto the world and how I view my writing. Old pros will no doubt shake their heads,but maybe this will be useful as a point of vew to newer writers and lead to more fruitful territories for exploration.

I attended Necon last month (go back and read what I and everyone else on this blog has ever said about the rules of engagement regarding conventions, then throw it all out the window – there is no hope, no hope whatsoever, though I was stunned that Guests of Honor Brian Keene, Tim Lebbon and Sephera Giron did NOT go skinny-dipping in the bay, or at least the koi pond – what is the world coming to?).

I was on a panel called “The Sound The Knife Makes As It Enters the Throat - Extreme Horror Are Us, At Least Sometimes,” which was quite lively, especially (for me) when talking about what “extreme” means to various segments of the reading public.

But the part that troubled me about the panel was the “sound the knife makes as it enters the throat” bit. Because, you know, I don’t really know what that sounds like. I’ve watched animals being butchered, though never did it myself. I’ve had some direct and indirect contact with violence and death, as most of us have, some to a far greater and more terrifying degree. I know people who could tell me, if I wanted to engage them in that level of conversation.

The real hitch is that I’m not sure I really want to know. Which sounds odd coming from someone who may be known, if at all, for “hardcore horror.” (Though Lester del Rey bought my first novel, a fantasy, and neither nor Ballantine was hardcore back then or even know, and my piece in the latest Weird Tales, #344, is certainly not hardcore, and – well, you get the idea….I guess it’s better to be known for something most people hate than not to be known at all).
There are a few reasons for this: the cost of acquiring that knowledge can be steep; the use of the detail may distract rather than enhance the tale, depending on the style; and sometimes, it’s better to use imagination – the reader’s, of course, or one’s own creative power to come up with less clinically precise (”sounds like saran wrap being torn from the dispenser”) and more poetic (….yes, reader, use your imagination – I’m saving what I came up with for a “Max” story).

It all comes down to the writer’s need, of course. At the poles of my knowledge base, one professional writer I know will go to a great deal of trouble researching and tracking down details for a scene or a character’s background, while another will perform some general research but will rely on experience, imagination, and the artful phrase to convey a sense of the reality. Both make a living at the game, both win awards and are quite successful. You could find the same range among the writers of this blog, I’m sure.

But that’s the real point of this entry, I suppose: like everything else about writing, research is one of those things you do more or less of depending on what you require to write the story. Some of us don’t seem to need a great deal, and others can’t live without an encyclopedia’s worth of detail about characters and their worlds. Sometimes editorial guidance points the way – I originally conceived that story in Weird Tales 344 as a fable, and as such didn’t want an exact location with details specific to that part of the world, other than the land to be recognizably African. The editors wanted me to ground the tale in a very specific place, so without too much trouble I was able to satisfy them, which resulted in not only getting published in WT, but getting a nice review along the way. Which, at my level, is about as close to unconditional publishing success as I’m likely to get.

But back to what it feels like: probably the most fundamental tool or skill a writer can possess is to convey to the reader what something feels like. That’s literature’s “reaction shot,” the hook that secures the reader on the line of our stories. It separates dull reiterations of conflicts that might have too much in common with the surface texture of electronic game play from the experience of that conflict from the point of view of a character. Description, dialogue, action, they all serve to convey to the reader an emotion they can identify with, and so suspend their disbelief and become immersed in the tale.

Yes, I see the old pros are falling asleep. Sorry.

But my point is, in researching, however much or little you may do, the most fruitful line to take for a story’s effectiveness is the kind that lets the imagination focus on what it feels like for a character to do certain things and be in certain places important to your story. Depending on how your brain works, you may need a great many details, or just a few.

When researching, I tend to focus on details I can actually use in the course of a story, the kind that will have an effect on decisions and the course of action. Other writers need to feel immersed. Dan Simmons had to go to India for Song of Kali. There are people wandering the Earth gathering experiences and details for novels they’re be too overwhelmed to ever write.
You need to know how much you really need to write your story. If you’re not writing, is it because you don’t know enough, or is it because you’ve lost the story and are having more fun just looking stuff up?

So things like the following, which I ran into and helped establish a direction for this piece, can be helpful: http://men.msn.com/articlees.aspx?cp-documentid=5125971>1=10215
A brief article on what it feels like to have amnesia. An interesting idea. The seed of a character or a situation. A hook to engage readers.

I’m sure most of us collect this kind of stuff, hoard it in our little filing cabinets or notebooks, fingering the previous but raw discoveries until the newspaper or printer ink has worn off on our fingers as we wait for inspiration to hit. As a trigger for a story or a scene, it’s useful because it hints at both a premise and an emotional context and arc for a character, and a hook to engage the reader.

If you’re a barfly, oh, the stories you can hear! I’ve picked up some fascinating stuff from the techs who come to the house to service our boiler (I find them more outgoing, as a whole, then the cable, power, and telephone techs – haven’t yet figured out why, but there it is). I run a small hospital gym for staff, and I’ve listened to people into all kinds of sports and martial arts talk about their feelings when playing or training. The whole competitive thing is completely alien to me, since I’m fundamentally non-athletic (I just like to tune the machine and keep it running as best I can). But I appreciate what these people have shared with me, because it gives me valuable insight into who they are and a road map of the alien landscape inside people who are fundamentally “not-me.” Same with my clients — from lower-east side addicts, to Hell’s Kitchen schizophrenics struggling function but always fearful, haunted by their voices which meds sometimes never completely take away, to compulsive thieves and child abusers, to murderers and charming sociopaths. Of course, not all of these experiences lead to characters readers can easily identify with….

Blogs and boards are other sources for what it feels like – I mean, if we weren’t all writers already, could there be a better source for that viewpoint than Storytellersunplugged? There are of course the old reliables, auto-biographies and first person narratives, from slaves to presidents. One of my personal favorites is travel shows or segments, and not necessarily the polished promotional pieces for tourists, but the gritty, back-packing adventures into wilderness and tribal areas. I just caught a brief episode this morning (I was just having my coffee, really, I wasn’t goofing around and avoiding finishing up this entry, no, no, it was just part of my research, yes, that’s right, research) in a longer sport documentary focusing on two women hiking through the jungle and climbing part way up Mount Kenya with their equipment so they could ski down snow-covered slopes on the equator. Then there’s family, friends, people we met, old folks and young folks, you know the routine – all the experience around us that can describe what it feels like to have survived World War II or grow up in a science fiction age where everything meaningful to an individual can be contained in a battery-power box the size of one’s palm.

Of course, everything’s subjective and mileage does vary according to the make and model of the individual. Let go of the compulsion to be scientifically precise all the time. The only way you’re actually going to know how anything feels to you is do it yourself, and as I said above, there are some things you may not be equipped on any number of levels to do. In the end, what you experience belongs to you – whether you research, imagine or experience, the only thing that matters in writing is finding the words to convey whatever’s in your head (however it got there) in a meaningful way to readers.

It comes back to what Uncle Harlan always says: pay attention. Things are going on inside of you, all around you, and in far off places which, in this age of miracles, are being beamed right to you. These are the reaction shots of your scenes, the things that draw the reader closer to the story - the sighs and breaths, the moans and groans of that intimate relationship between reader and writer.

Hey, wait a minute, moans and groans – what are you people doing on the other side of this screen? Ah, so that’s what you seasonsed pros are up to as I’m sitting here spinning my wheels. Damn it, they just don’t make electronic walls like they used to…..