Big Ed's Place

I found an enjoyable set of blogposts by Dean Wesley Smith on “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing.” The one that caught my attention most was on practice, and included the quote that headlines this post.

The premise of the post is that every story and every novel should be practice, preferably focused practice in which the author is trying to consciously get better at one aspect of writing. That doesn’t mean the works aren’t published along the way, because gawd knows that perfection is the enemy of good enough. It simply means that instead of doing writing exercises, one makes all writing an exercise.

I like the philosophy. A lot of that is because I don’t see the value of writing exercises for the sake of putting them in a drawer. If I’m going to ‘practice’ I should give it enough of a shot to have something I can put out to readers. At a minimum, that makes me take the practice seriously. More likely, it gets me feedback on how well I did (even if I didn’t solicit it).

But I was also hooked by the value of ‘focused practice.’ I’ve been spotty on that, sometimes being focused and sometimes not. A lot of my recent practice has been on maintaining a commitment to the ‘crappy first draft’ and not letting my internal editor get in the way of the first draft and sabotage the story’s flow. I’ve also deliberately aimed for length and deliberately tried to see if I could incorporate specific elements or techniques. The Devil in the Details, in my queue, is specifically there so I can practice writing erotica from a female point of view. Its predecessor, Dealing with the Devil was explicitly written to see if I could tackle morally ambiguous characters. And let’s not kid ourselves, Deep Dish is nothing more than jumping into the deep end of a new medium (graphic novels), which kind of goes beyond focused practice into focused trying-not-to-drown.

Unfortunately, the ‘nots’ have also showed, and I think those are the ones I struggle on the most. Like Unmasked. I pick it up and I find I’m wandering a bit too much. I’m not exactly sure what I’m practicing with that work. As a result, it’s harder to write and I question whether it will be as good.

Because, despite Dean Smith’s comments on another post about talent being just hard work and practice, I also think there’s an element of putting your soul into it. My better stories are more than purely intellectual affairs. I have to throw in something from the gut/heart/soul or it comes across flat. Now maybe other writers do this automatically, but my creativity really requires me getting my logical/language side of the brain out of the way. That’s the second hardest thing for me to do (finding meaningful time to write being number one).

Focused practice may be able to help with that. It’s throwing a bone (what I’m practicing) in front of that logical junkyard dog and letting the spirit sneak around the other side.

It’s something I will definitely keep in mind as I go forward.

I recently caught an old movie showing on television–the Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  There’s a ‘kick the dog’ scene early on, and it reminded me how much I get irked at poorly drawn villains.

A ‘kick the dog’ scene is one where the villain does something nasty or evil simply to demonstrate how nasty or evil they are.  In the Running Man, the villain fired a janitor for the sin of spilling water on the villain’s shoes.  After accepting the janitor’s apology, of course.  It’s a trope (a scene used so often in fiction/film/TV that the audience knows what it means) and so I’m sure y’all can come up with your favorite examples.

The thing is, it’s gotten to the point where it irritates me enough to take me out of the story.  Because no one’s a villain in their own mind.  Despite Iago’s protestations and despite the skulking of countess Hedleys tying women to the railroad tracks, that’s just not the way people think.

Hitler wanted to make the world a better place for the Germans and the Aryan Race.  Osama bin Laden wants to re-establish a Muslim based world, without the ‘evil’ of the West.   Even your petty crook often sees himself as a daring bandit, demonstrating how clever or powerful he is by ripping of “those chumps” or “those people who deserve it.”  Think about how we romanticize pirates.  Isn’t it cool to call out yar har! and “avast ye matey” and talk of booty and plunder, and gloss over the murders committed by the same pirates?  I’m sure the pirates downplayed that end of it as well.  We romanticize Westley from The Princess Bride, when, as the Dread Pirate Roberts who never lets any of his prisoners live, he has to have murdered a great number of people.

I think it’s partially the nature of being human.  We have no choice but to be the protagonists in our own stories.  There’s also some good psychological literature on how people justify bullying or being prejudiced (and some day I’ll post about it).  The point is, people find some rationalization or some belief system that allows them to be the hero, and not the villain, in their own mind.

So, back to fiction–why take the trope shortcut?  It doesn’t take that many more words to give the villain a more realistic motivation and improve the piece.  Taking an example from my own work–Hayley in Dealing with the Devil.  Hayley’s a freaking sociopath, who manipulates and abuses those around her.  But what’s going on in her mind?

When I wrote her, I imagined that her dominant mental conversation was all about how great she was and how much fun it was to show how great she was.  She was a ‘hero’ by being so clever and so ‘powerful.’  And she was even doing a favor by passing on some of her skills and attitudes to her ‘little sister’ (Regan).  She’s even sees herself as generous for the favors (well, she calls them that) she does for her friends.  I think it comes across well, making her far nasty than someone who’d just kick the dog.

There are some other good examples.  I love Silence of the Lambs, because you see how both villains think and operate.  I like the movie Heat, which also gives you both the villains and the cops point of view.  I haven’t seen the Sopranos, but from what I’ve heard, it does the same.

Which makes it so annoying when I do encounter the ‘kick the dog’ trope.  Take The Running Man–c’mon.  Can’t you have simply replaced that 30 second scene with a discussion about how the death of Arnie would be so spectacular to see?  Show the lust for ratings.  Show the complete disregard for the humanity or the innocence/guilt of the condemned.  Hell, throw in a dialogue line like “Burn, baby burn!” which demonstrated how evil some Enron folks were and are.  It wouldn’t have been than much harder, and it wouldn’t have taken more screen time.

And so I’m irked at the writer, completely losing the fun of an escapist old movie, replaying on TV.

This story arose from a discussion on Nick Scipio’s Yahoo forum about ‘the truth’ of what happened in Vermont. I suggested Nick write that “lost chapter” from the point a view of a different character. Nick challenged me to write it, and, in a moment of foolishness, I agreed.

For this was a significant challenge. Thirteen of the fourteen characters in Devil make at least brief appearances in Book 3 of Summer Camp. I’ve had to be consistent with how these characters talked and behaved, even though they were now seen through the eyes of a different narrator. Some were brief enough, like Patricia who isn’t even named in Summer Camp, to give me lots of room to work. Some were so complex, like Gina, that I knew every word would be scrutinized for consistency.

Additionally, my plot was very constrained. I had to match events that happened before and after the trip, again to a level that would survive scrutiny. In the end, with the generous help of Nick and his reality team, I think it all worked out.

However, the challenge was not my only interest in this story. I wanted to examine the struggle to remain moral and ‘good’ in an amoral environment. All too often our behavior changes to conform with our peer group; something heavily documented by psychologists and in literature elsewhere (ex: Lord of the Flies). How would someone who is fairly normal like Jessica handle being in a microcosm controlled by someone like Hayley? How would she ‘deal with the devil’? The answer to that question is the story that you’ve just read.

I know that not all the loose ends have been wrapped up. I can only say that they weren’t part of the trip. Someday, Paul or Jessica may tell us what happened after Jess and Patricia and Hayley returned to campus, but then again, they may not. In the immortal words of Nick Scipio: “You’ll have to read to find out.”