Tête-à-Tête-Tête » Fictive

Fictive Discussion

smijer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:05:07 +0000

Time is not on my side. The “free time” I bragged about a while back evaporated. So I apologize for being slow. I have started Chapter 2, but only have 300 words or so… not ready to publish yet. I may set a record for slowest writing ever. But it’s still coming. Discuss, if you like.

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Deliverance of the Body Installment 3 – Chapter 1 close – first draft

smijer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:03:16 +0000

The first deaths came on Sunday, during the night. Monday morning, five members of a family of seven were found on the south bank of Yoa, less than a hundred yards from the roof of the house they had lived in before. The house had collapsed from the side and had slid into a watery hole that had washed out around the base of it. Osmani and Abdal-Malik, twin boys aged twelve, had been found face-down in mud, not far from their parents and siblings. Miraculously, both were still breathing.

Sunni families and neighbors rarely took advantage of the mission services, but there were always exceptions, and there was no need for discussion in the case of Osmani and Abdal-Malik. They were hastily moved to the mission, and were under the care of mission staff, a doctor included, within an hour of being found. The rest of the family were moved to a site just outside the town, covered and readied for burial.

It was also Monday morning when the rain stopped. By noon-day the sky was completely clear from horizon to horizon. As the water ran quickly into the lake, eroding away sand, street and shelter, the attitude of the village changed instantly and spontaneously. People moved with purpose, surveying damage, shoring up what could be salvaged, looking for those who were injured or trapped, grieving loudly when a body was found. The mood was serious, but by evening there were signs of relief and even some humor in some quarters. For the several days prior, silence had been the general rule. Now, speech returned. With speech, came stories. Reports of deaths, real or rumored. Whose homes were destroyed or damaged, what stores of food were lost. Who had narrow escapes, who was injured. The story told and retold more than any other was that of Osmani and Abdal-Malik.

As it was repeated in the mission, the general contours of the chronicle were as such: rainwater had begun to encroach deeply into the house on Sunday night, leaving only room for a pile of mattresses in one corner, where the family took refuge. The water rose slowly, and the family decided to wait until they must before seeking shelter elsewhere. The father kept spirits up by telling jokes and funny stories, and by singing songs. The boys laughed and sang along. The girls and their mother smiled and seemed at ease. As this was going on, an explosion of thunder and lightning came. While they were still gasping, a torrent of water rushed into the room, which itself began to tilt crazily as bits of brick and mud rained down around them. Abruptly, the boys found themselves underwater. They frantically searched for the surface and air, but were unable to. Osmani felt something strike him hard on the head. As each felt they could hold in the air and out the water no longer, the scene changed.

Both were said to have reported the same vision. They were standing hand in hand in a field of low wheat. Opposite them stood a large, snow-white horse and on it a man dressed in white. Behind him were their parents and sisters. The sky was clear blue, but lighting traced across it – thunder was instantaneous. Their father was laughing just as he had been a few minutes ago. Their sisters were smiling, just as they had been. Only their mother spoke. She motioned to the man on the white horse and counseled them never to grieve over their family, but to celebrate. Strangely, she counseled them not to be afraid to breathe, saying that even dirt and mud have the breathe of life for those who are alive. Their family turned and walked away. The man on the horse looked down on the twins with a gentle expression, but said nothing. The twins felt only calm and peace. The horse turned and followed their family members. The last image the boys saw was on the horizon in the direction all the others had gone seemed to be hundreds or maybe thousands of other people, slowly walking toward them.

The vision disappeared. The next awareness either of the twins had was of being lifted from the mud and taken to the mission. This was how Marty presented the story to Jacob as they walked back to their shared house Monday evening after spending the day doing whatever they could to assist the recovery and clean-up. Details had changed somewhat from the first telling Jacob heard early that afternoon – that the father laughed in the vision was new – before he had been grim-faced. Before, the lightning had come in circles over the rider. Such is story-telling, Jacob supposed. At home, Jacob composed more reports, including a note about the twins’ experience, and sent it all back home easily using the satellite phone, which appeared to work quite well under the first completely clear sky since it had arrived.

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Free Time for Fictive

smijer — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:48:22 +0000

I hope no one has given up on the next installment of Deliverance of the Body. It’s coming. I need some free time to work on it, and I am truly grateful that I have some coming up soon. Installments coming asap. Thanks for hanging in there.

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Missed Fictive Opportunity

smijer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:49:23 +0000

If I had written a few years earlier, and had tweaked my flood story-line just a tad, I could have “predicted” this (via Balloon Juice). I would have been a modern-day prophet!

As it stands, I may not be able to resist integrating it in some way.

And by the way – sorry about the installment delay. I’m hoping I can get myself back on track & have one ready for you early next week.

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The Deluge: Fictive

smijer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:00:39 +0000

So… second installment is up. Anyone have any thoughts? Big question… if there were yet a next page to turn to, would you turn to it?

What looks or sounds amateurish? Is there anything in particular I did well? How was the snippet of dialogue?

Other concerns on my mind. Number one, writing is hard. I haven’t quite figured out the relationship between the plot and the premise. As I mentioned before, I feel good about the premise. But I sense a trap in letting the premise define the plot. I feel that doing so would weaken both. The plot is pretty darn sketchy in my noggin’. I know a lot of things that have to happen, but few are so specific that they cannot happen different ways to different people. They are generally big-picture events that will have to emerge in the context of detailed plot-lines, which really could use some development upstairs. This was the case with the deluge. I didn’t really need a flood right away, nor the planned related events that I haven’t written yet. It served purposes I could have managed any number of ways. The chief reason it came in when it did was to provide some narrative movement and create some tension, since so much contextual groundwork is still needed before any of the “big” plot-lines really get started. Its chief purpose is to keep y’all from getting too bored, too quick.

Another thing I worry about is humor. In certain real life contexts, I have a very zany sense of humor. Not the kind that works well in grown-up conversation. Blog readers know how I treat humor in the written word. If it isn’t a cheap pun or a throw-away line of sarcasm or irony, I’m usually better served not to try. That’s not too big a problem for writing narrative. But what to do about writing authentically about a person who is genuinely funny and who lightens real, grown-up conversations with real, grown-up humor? I’ve read authors who were aware enough of their own limitations to avoid trying to reproduce humor that they aren’t adept in producing in the first place. One strategy is to narrate it.. “Bob told one of his howlers and everyone laughed”. Bleh. Another is to make everyone humorless and avoid the problem. Which leads to a pretty dull result most times. A particularly poor idea is to distract the reader with a character who has a very poor sense of humor and embarrass that character by repeating their jokes when something of the sort is called for. I feel embarrassed for authors who do that. I guess the best authors are good conversationalists with well-formed, mature senses of humor. Short of renting a ghost-writer who fits the bill, any other solutions come to mind? Dare I produce the humorous dialogue I can dig out of myself and hope for the best?

My mind is actually spinning right now. I thought this would be a good time to compare my first half chapter (or should I call it my first short chapter?) with similar starts of other books in and out of the genre. But I think that is a tad premature. I don’t want to pass judgment on my goal of being better than Dan Brown until I get pretty thick into the development of both plot and premise. But, for those who have in mind some kind of reference point… I am curious. Moving way slower than what you are used to? Boring compared to the starts of books that require similar levels of contextual frame-work? Poor use of language? Good use of language? That last is pretty big to me. I know I’m not writing Hemingway novels here. I know I’m not a craftsman with words like Carroll. I’d be happy to exhibit skill with words that even approached pop-fiction writers like Grisham or Clancy. I’d settle begrudgingly for Dan Brown’s skill. But even if I am setting the bar low, it’s a goal that is very important to me. Next to drawing out the premise and digging into the general psyche with it – it’s probably the goal I’m most concerned with. I don’t want to come back and read this after a bout of amnesia and pity the author for his lack of mastery of the language. But, as I’ve said before – I can’t self-evaluate this stuff… so I need some feedback from you, and I need it honest. Even if it hurts my feelings. (Don’t worry too much on that score – I’m not proud, and I can take it well enough if I know you aren’t just trying to hurt my feelings because you hate me).

I said my head is spinning and it is. I just want to express a little more frustration with the knowledge/research problem. I feel like I need to know whether, in the aftermath of a flood like this in an otherwise desert region, our poor villagers need worry about an invasion of malarial mosquitos. And a million other similar details. Every time I go to Google to try and learn something that someone who had spent a week in Africa would carry as common knowledge, I feel like I’m cheating. The only saving grace is that I’m not writing Heart of Darkness – Africa figures in Deliverance of the Body (still only a working title!), but it isn’t supposed to be a portrayal of Africa. It’s about other things. Things that I do know. Places and people that I do know.

I know this: I need an editor. Or I need to get to some hard work on self-editing. I corrected a word from the first installment today – how it escaped my attention before I don’t know. But if you were scratching your head, those death curses were lifted just after a heartbeat and breathing had stopped. I found some other problems in installment one, but I haven’t worked on them yet. I also had to do a couple of quick revisions on installment two as soon as I re-read the published version of it. I believe there are more lurking.

About the next installment. It will be at least another week. I hope to hit a stride before long where I can add something two or three times per week. Not there yet, though. I actually do have to puzzle out which of several strands needs attention at this point. It’s more difficult than you might imagine deciding whether to further develop the flood scene in Chad, get back to Roger and April, or introduce something new. I feel it would be a mite jerky to jump to something new, but it will be hard for me to develop the others without more situational fodder for them to run on. So, I once again beg your patience. And your feedback.

Mainly your feedback.

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Fictive preview: Religiously inspired child abuse

smijer — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:01:00 +0000

I’m behind my deadline for the next installment. It is only half written… I came upon some snags I was not expecting in the construction of the next phase of the story. So, I apologize. I’m hoping to have it complete by this time tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to hint at a future line I plan to develop… for discussion.

I would be remiss if I centered a story around Africa and Pentecostal religion without mentioning the epidemic of accusations of child (and other) witch-craft going on in parts of Africa, and the child-abuse that often results. This isn’t going to be a big story line, but readers will learn something about it, and get a chance to think about what might be behind it. The trend finally got some major media attention this week. Apparently a father whose son was accused of sorcery tried to force him to drink acid and burned his son’s face to the point of disfigurement in the process. The best discussion is always at Bartholomew’s Notes. (The Wild Hunt also has a round-up). I’m not sure if this is a big issue in the Saharan stretches of Chad. I suspect it isn’t. But I plan to address it anyway. You can call that “license”, I guess.

My take on this is that the majority of American Pentecostals are unaware of this problem and would largely disapprove of those developments if they did know about them. I don’t know how many would feel a responsibility to try and do something to stop it – or even how many are in a position to do so if they did feel that responsibility. I do think that Pentecostalism – as harmless as it may be in a western, educated, politically stable place – has some characteristics that make it vulnerable to harmful trends – especially in a third-world nation where animistic and magical religion still have a strong foothold.

Pentecostals, more so than other evangelicals, take seriously the notion that spirits are active in the real world. They are apt to see most any difficulty or problem as the result of spirits harassing or even possessing non-Christians or insufficiently protected Christians. It’s less true that they disbelieve in the Gods and spirits of other religions than that they see the Gods and spirits of other religions as being the same as demons of the Christian religion. And they see this as relatively literal. Spirit-magic works, because real demonic spirits are involved in it. It isn’t a far jump to there, for an African pentecostal, to see tribal animistic or ancestor-worshiping religions as sorcery or witchcraft, and to fear them. And, when prayer or other harmless approaches do not solve the problems attributed to witchcraft, then it isn’t a big jump to more extreme responses to fear. There may be more to it than that. Of course there is. Nothing in life is so simple. And this is largely guesswork – guesswork that I am adamantly not going to place in the mouth of a fictional expert to propound upon as though it were scientific fact. That’s what Dan Brown does.

It is worth being aware that the “excorcism” or “deliverance” practices of American Pentecostals are not always entirely harmless, and not always simple to distinguish from the rare case that becomes actual abuse. That’s one issue – it’s hard to know, whether for the outsider or the insider – what lines are there to cross and where in that gray area there is a line being crossed. I’ve never discussed it with a clinician, but I suspect that the therapeutic value of these “deliverances” is very poor, with only superficial, short-term “good” results to those who are “delivered”. I also suspect that, partly because it may sometimes displace the role of needed real therapy, and partly because it has the potential to reinforce a neuroses. But I won’t talk much about any of that.

I’m sure there is some anthro-, socio-, or psych-ology that explains why children are often the target of the kind of witch-hunts that are becoming such a problem in Africa. I suspect it has something to do a community’s response to poverty, but I guess there is probably more to it than that. I hope to learn more about it as I go, so I can treat it seriously.

Anyhoo, I’m not going to start a metaphorical witch-hunt of my own. This difficulty with the Pentecostal mindset in context of a foreign culture is worth mentioning – but I’m not going to lay all of those ills at the door of every pentecostal believer. I’m just going to give a couple of fictional believers a chance to struggle with the issue and maybe even make decisions that will have an impact for good or ill in their fictional world.

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More fictive notes

smijer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:00:55 +0000

Did I mention that this writing stuff is hard? Is for me, anyway. I’m guessing that one of my biggest challenges is going to be in the dialogue department. It’s a deficiency of mine – conversation is not a strong point with me. I don’t do it well, and I don’t remember it well. I feel like I lack a reference point for it. At the same time, I’ve read books that skimp on it, and I know I can’t do without it. So, there’s that. And then there is the Tom Swifty problem. I’m tempted to write lines of dialogue using only the sequential alteration and speech clues to indicate who is speaking. I don’t know that I can beat the “he said, and then she said” problem effectively (this was probably the most odious of Jerry Jenkins & Tim LaHaye’s stylistic faults). Before the next installment, which includes dialogue… I plan to review some favored books to see how they manage it.

I also look forward with trepidation to the introduction of sex and romance. I think that I might be better suited to Sci-Fi, where all that can be left aside in favor of pure ideas. But, at the end of the day, this book has to say something about people… and people are messy critters made out of cells and fluids and hormones and neurologically wired to associate with one another in all kinds of relationships. Primates, we are. So, I have to be true to that. On the other hand, there is a strong religious theme to the premise behind this book and I have no desire to alienate religious people who prefer to keep our messy organic selves gracefully concealed behind closed doors. I don’t want to paper over the issue with pithy euphemisms. To top it off – as I mentioned in response to a comment on the last fictive post – I’m not much of a romantic myself. So, that’s a lot of challenges.

And then there’s the related problem of swear-words. Long-time blog readers have probably noticed that I don’t like to write in coarse language. And just as when we talked about issues related to our carnal nature, I don’t want to alienate readers who are prudish about reading what I’m prudish about writing. But I don’t want to paper it over… and in certain circumstances, there aren’t many other options.

So, I’m worried about that.

You see I’m struggling with this. But there are things I do feel good about. I feel good about the premise. I can see the premise playing out as though in a movie. It’s wild enough to surprise, but not too wild to believe. And it illuminates all these areas of life that it impinges upon. I feel pretty good about the story – that is, the plot. I have some issues there, but I can see where the premise and the characters both have the potential to help me push the story-line down the road. I feel good about the subject-matter. It may be a cheap sell, but it does sell. And the angle takes some of the harsh off of that “cheap” qualifier – at least to my mind.

So, anyway… off to the bookshelf to refresh my memory on how the pro’s do it.

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Fictive

smijer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:00:02 +0000

(Installment 1 is here.)

So, a few hundred words in… Don’t look for installment two for at least a week. That few hundred words was pretty tedious. Now, I’m welcoming feedback of any size or shape but mainly I’m hoping for points on style. One more thing – I am going to close comments on the installment posts. Each will be followed shortly after with a separate entry for discussion. I’d rather have comments here than there… and certainly rather in one place than two for each installment. I’d like to keep the installments as book-like as possible… with one exception. I don’t want to turn it into a blog… but what do you think of an occasional hyperlink? Just for an interesting related note. Just for the internet readers?

Research. I’ll be honest, I don’t have the time to do much research outside what I already do out of sheer interest in the subject matter. I can’t go to Africa. I don’t count any northern Africans among my current friends. I knew one or two years ago, but not very closely. I can’t go to Asheville. I’ve been to Ducktown maybe twice. I rarely even get to Atlanta. I can’t travel back in time to 1980 to see the old small-s southern Baptist heritage with the eyes of an older man. I don’t know a thing about journalism. I’ve never been to an Orthodox service (but plan to if and before an Orthodox presence enters the scene). So, to whatever extent I can’t rely on personal memory, I’m going to have to be flying by the seat of my pants. I have it going for me that human nature is the same everywhere, and that I’m pretty well read across cultural boundaries. I read blogs by a variety of bibliophiles, apocalypse-watchers, and people with international perspectives. So that helps. And I definitely welcome corrections from readers who have an inside line on a subject I’m writing about. On the other hand, there aren’t that many readers – at least not now – so I can’t assume that I can get by on crowd-sourcing the research. I’ll do what I can.

So – back to style. This isn’t supposed to be great literature. I’ve read Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, (ahem) Tolkein, (cough, cough) Rowlings, Dickens, and a few others. I would like to think that – if I gave my whole life to writing – I might produce one work approaching their level. My goal here is to be better than Dan Brown. My goal is to get the story moving so readers want to know what happens next… but I also want them to feel a little more in tune with themselves and with other people when they’re done. And, of course that applies specifically to the area of religious thought, but more to human psychology in toto.

I’m going by my own reading experience here, but I’m trusting that most people will not be ready to give up at this stage of the story for lack of a compelling hook. I generally allow a writer at least a chapter to create a foundation before I expect to be pulled into the plot. For those who can set the hook on the first page, more power to them. But this story requires some context, so I am hoping that I am doing a good job of creating it while getting the ball slowly rolling toward a narrative. How am I doing?

As a reader, if I close a book at this point it is usually because the writer is just terrible. That’s what I wanted to do (but didn’t) with Left Behind. It isn’t that the story is no good – it’s that the word craft is so labored, the dialogue so fake and stilted, the scene so garishly painted, and without contrast – that I feel the author is riding a hobby horse of his own instead of working hard to make a story I can buy into. I can’t read my own words objectively. I *think* that they pass this test, so far… but I want to hear from somewhere else. If a friend loaned you this as a real book and you read this far, would you be ready to put it down at this point? Would you dread turning the page and slogging through another boring 1800 words? If the answer is no, then I’m satisfied. If, instead, you’re thinking something closer to “cool… I can’t wait or the next installment”… then I’m ecstatic. But, really – all I want is the truth. Do I need to start over? Do I need to spruce something up? Or do I need to keep going? Why?

Any way… That’s all for today. I’m not sure how much more discussion I’ll try to do on the subject before the next installment, but I have a couple of other subjects in mind or posts this afternoon or later this week.

And of course, links with your eye boogers never go away… so there’s always something to do here. Y’all come back!

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Deliverance of the Body Chapter 1, First pages, Draft 1

smijer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:53:02 +0000

Deliverance of the Body Chapter 1, First pages, Draft 1
Text begins below… if reading from Facebook or an RSS feed, click below to continue reading at Tête-à-Tête-Tête. And welcome to this literary experiment. Feedback is welcomed, both positive and critical. I will provide more discussion in blog posts between installments. Just let this soak in, and I’ll start a discussion thread tomorrow morning.
(...)
Read the rest of Deliverance of the Body Chapter 1, First pages, Draft 1 (1,967 words)

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Even Harder than That

smijer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:00:23 +0000

I fully expected that this fiction thing was going to be hard. I even expected that it would be harder than I expected. Turns out, it’s even harder than that. I have a page or two for chapter one almost ready to post, but I’m not entirely satisfied with it.

A lot of religious genre fiction takes pains to avoid the inside of a church. A lot of people like and enjoy church… but it’s not much of an attention-grabber. I’m sure the authors guess that their readers will no more want to sit through two pages of church in a book than they really want to sit through an hour of it in real life. So, they try to set a scene that doesn’t lead the reader to automatically check their watch.

So, I’m taking a chance by starting the narrative with a church service. It’s important to me to get inside the dynamics of religion early, since a great deal of the premise arises there.

I’m also taking a chance by describing a church service that isn’t very familiar to me. I’ve had limited exposure to pentecostal and non-denominational type services. I’m taking this route for three or four reasons. One – I need to push outside my comfort zone. I’d be tempted to be lazy describing church the way it is second nature to me. Two – the pentecostal/non-denominational mindset is particularly open to innovation. Since innovation is key to the premise of an emerging new eschatology, it is likely to be most believable coming from within pentecostalism. Three – if I write about church as I’m familiar with it, I’ll have a hard time not checking my own watch. The Third Wave / rock & roll / Praise & Worship / non-denominational service has less inherent drab factor. In fact, if you are in the mood for it, that way of doing it can be fun and energetic. So, maybe it can help – Four – keep other people interested.

But, like I said – it’s some work writing about something you’ve experienced relatively infrequently. And a church setting doesn’t make introducing characters particularly easy.

So, when I publish the first few pages, give me some feedback. And bear with me.

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