The Blue Candle Society

“This friend of mine,” Jefferson said. “Woman, was it? Blond? Nice looking gal?”

Dennis laughed. “You must have to fend them off with a stick, eh, Mr. Quinn? No, this was a Mr. Clyburne.”

“All right then,” Jefferson said, forcing a smile. “A boy can hope, right?” He continued on toward the stairs, wondering who the hell this Mr. Henderson was supposed to be. He reached his dingy room and took off his hat and coat, then sat on the bed and produced another cigarette. It was making his head hurt, trying to keep track of all the possible threats clustering around, so he drew out his flask to ease the pain a bit. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: The Figurine, Part 11’

Posted in Serials

Whatever you think of Amazon, you really can’t go wrong in Quoting Henry V if you want to rally folks against it.  Actually, you can’t go wrong quoting Henry V to rally folks to do just about anything.

To be clear, I’m talking about quoting Henry V the play, so really I suppose you’re quoting Billy Shakes.  I’m not sure the actual Henry was ever quite that inspirational.  I mean, he did win at Agincourt, but let’s face it; long bows had a little something to do with that.  Long bows and mud.  Maybe independent booksellers should look into the “old mud and longbows” approach (and as an aside, if some indie bookseller does rise and defeat Amazon, I think he or she should be called “Old Mud and Longbows” whether they actually figure into it or not.)

Posted in General writing things

I recently ran across another of those little vignettes that make Madison County, New York such an inspirational place for writing.  Where else could you spot a couple of Amish kids sitting around watching Civil War reenactors setting up their primitive tents and crockery for a weekend encampment?

Okay, probably someplace in Pennsylvania.  Shut up, smart guy.

Posted in General writing things

Jefferson waited a few moments, letting the Plymouth draw closer, so he could get a better look. There were two men in it, he could see that much, so it seemed likely he was dealing with his friends form the marsh. As he watched in the mirror, one of them drew something off the floor of the car that could have been a gun. It seemed it was time to stop playing around.

He ground the accelerator to the floor and the Ford V-8 jumped forward. In a few seconds, the Plymouth was well behind him again. He almost felt sorry for the men, trying to chase him with the gutless four-cylinder car. It was just embarrassing, really. He wrestled the Ford through a turn, slowing slightly, then accelerated again. Of course, he was going to have to deal with them soon, if they knew his car.

He had just glanced in the mirror and decided he could slow down soon when he came around a turn to see a car approaching from the other direction, taking up a good chunk of what passed for his lane on the dusty road.

He slammed on the brakes, feeling the rear end of the big car sliding out on him. He let up on the brakes enough to come out of the skid, seeing a cloud of dust behind the other car as it tried to slow. He hit the brakes again, feeling the Ford begin to shimmy once more. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: The Figurine, Part 10’

Posted in Serials

I got in a conversation not long ago about character-driven vs. plot-driven stories.  We were mainly talking about short stories, although it seems as though when most people ramble on about the distinction (as I’m about to) they are referring to novels and movies.  Interestingly, many of these folks insist that despite what you may think, character-driven stories are just as good as plot-driven, while others say the opposite.  So I think we can all agree that neither term is pejorative, even if most people seem to think everyone else thinks one of them is.

Anyway, leaving aside for the moment whether or not it matters, how do we tell the difference?  Obviously the whole thing is on a continuum, since a story that relies completely on plot and has utterly uninteresting characters would be pretty horrible, and two fascinating characters sitting around talking for no particular reason with no conflict would not exactly set the world afire either. There are lots of definitions floating around that try to at least peg the stories on one side of the continuum or the other; some focus on presence or absence of character growth, others on “high concept” vs. “small stories”.

It is tempting to define it based on how an author “got started” (well, tempting if you like talking about this sort of thing, anyway – I have a feeling most readers are utterly uninterested in a writer’s motives or process).  If a writer comes up with some neat characters and throws them out there to see what happens, it is character-driven, while if they come up with a neat idea for something that happens and make some characters that can get them there it is plot-driven.  By this definition, a lot of what I write is character-driven, since I honestly have no clear idea what is going to happen in a story I’ve just started writing half the time.  While I’m fine with having written character-driven stuff (see paragraph 1, above), I’m not sure it works.  If I come up with a single image of some conflict happening between two characters and just go from there, is it really character-driven just because I don’t know how it will end?  Or is it plot-driven because that initial idea of conflict is the driver?

I have finally developed what I call the “Hmm-Huh Hypothesis”.  According to the HHH, if you describe the plot of a story to someone in a few sentences and they make an interested “hmm!” noise, it is plot-driven, while if you can’t really do it, or do so and the listener responds with a neutral “huh.”, it is character-driven (or plot-driven and just bad.  Or you’re not good at summing up plots.  There are some bugs to work out, here).

Perhaps the best thing is to just ask an author whether their story is character or plot-driven.  You’ll make their day; just be prepared to listen to them talk about “just sitting back and letting the characters do what they need to do” or “building the connections that allow the characters to come alive” for a while.

Posted in General writing things

A while back, I grumbled about a scene in Hell on Wheels where they show someone using a transit improperly, and, more to the point, show a view through what appears to be a rifle scope rather than something with stadia hairs when they switched to the “through the scope” view.  Well, I recently saw an episode of Deadwood where the appear to gotten it right, showing a scope view with proper surveying hairs rather than crosshairs.  So good on you, Deadwood.  I’ll just point out that Deadwood won a whole bunch of Emmys, much as I pointed out before that Mad Men, a show with obsessive attention to historical detail, has also won a bunch of stuff.  I think we can safely conclude that careful placation of technically-minded nerds pretty much inevitably results in awards.

Posted in General writing things

“I don’t know, Mr. Quinn, it seems kind of pricey.” The farmer turned his head and spat out a stream of tobacco juice, then resumed staring up the roof of his barn.

“Cheaper than your barn, Mr. Jessup,” Jefferson replied.

“Well, it’s been standing there purt-near twenty years and it ain’t been hit by lightning yet.” He turned, unhooking one thumb from his coveralls and pointing across his field. “That maple over there was struck, back in ’23.”

Jefferson turned to regard the big, dead tree standing out in the middle of a field for a moment, then looked back at the barn.

“Wellsir, they do say that lightning doesn’t strike the same thing twice. Now that tree’s been hit, well, there’s one less thing around here to take the hit from the next bolt, don’t you know.” Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: The Figurine, Part 9’

Posted in Serials

But in the meantime, I just had to link to this post in Language Log, which is the latest in a series of posts on “hopefully”, just because of the line That’s what usage fetishism can drive you to—you cross out an adverb and replace it with a six-word impersonal passive construction and you tell yourself you’ve improved your writing, which I believe is the best quote ever.  I’m ashamed to admit, though, that I was largely unaware of the prohibition against “hopefully”, and was just going around using it.  This in contrast similar zombie rules against split infinitives or ending a sentence with a preposition, or the gender-neutral singular “their” which I was well aware of and cheerfully ignored.

Posted in Grammar Gripery

I’ve always sort of favored interesting names for fictional characters.  Much as I don’t want characters in fiction I read to talk like real people (seriously, have you ever tried to read a word-for-word transcript of something someone says?  Painful), I think it is perfectly okay for character names to skew toward the unusual and mellifluous.  I think it is good to aim for  a sort of “tuned up reality” in both dialogue and names – highlight what is going on by brightening it up and so on.  This may be, of course, because I have a crummy memory for names, and get confused when there are a bunch of important characters running around with the same names as people I run into at work.

However, as a lad in the mid-80’s and fan of McGyver, I learned a valuable lesson about character names, one I’ve carried with me ever since.  Don’t fall in love with a character’s name, no matter how awesome it is.  Even if you secretly think it is just the most badass name ever, use a light touch.  This is all basically explained in a post and accompanying video at CGHM, so I’ll link there for an explanation.  Oh, it also taught me not to cast primary villains in a TV show with people who would need all their dialogue dubbed over, but I suspect that lesson will have less direct impact on my life.

Posted in General writing things

Jefferson heard the report of the shotgun as he ducked toward the side of the road. As he made the brush the sound of raised voices drifted over–someone telling him to stop, he thought, which didn’t seem like the thing to do.

He pelted through the thin line of trees along the side of the road and into the tall swichgrass on the other side. He slid to a stop, cursing, and ducked back into the trees before taking off again, running parallel to the road. Behind him, he heard the sound of the Plymouth starting up.

He glanced from side to side as he ran. The line of trees was too thin for a reliable screen; there was a good chance anyone driving slowly past would spot him, unless he hunkered down behind a tree. But if the two after him had any sense they’d split up, and one of them would come along on foot through the trees or on the other side. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: The Figurine, Part 8’

Posted in Serials