Storytellers Unplugged

FORENSICS 153: MITTS

2012-05-19T15:16:22Z

This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by providing their readers with a gift of some extra details. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.

Devin had been observing the couple for some time–long enough to confirm that they played bridge with another couple at each other’s homes on alternate Tuesday evenings. On this particular Tuesday, the Engels were hosting the Brents. That would provide Devin with more than enough time.

Devin had recently come from his job as an auto mechanic and was wearing black jeans, a black jacket and a light pair of black leather work gloves. His ensemble enabled him to meld into the darkness between two large shrubs that framed a door at the rear of the Brents’ home.

The door had a common cylinder lock that barred easy access to the house. Devin took a small, leather case from his pocket, unzipped it and removed two simple tools. One was a set and the other was a rake. The set was, a slender bar bent at one end to give it an “L” shape. The rake was a thin bar having a small bump extending at right angles from it at one end. Devin inserted the bent end of the set into the key slot in the cylinder of the lock and twisted it clockwise just enough to apply a bit of torque to the cylinder within its housing. He then inserted the rake, forced the bump end upwardly and pulled it back out so that its bump sequentially forced each of a number of spring-loaded pins extending downwardly from the lock housing to move upwardly. Each raised pin was held in its upward position by the torque applied to the cylinder by the set. After all the pins had been raised, the cylinder and a cam attached to it were allowed to rotate within the housing. Rotation of the cam resulted in the withdrawal of a locking bolt into the lock housing, freeing the door to be swung open. The operation took Devin less time than it probably took you to read this paragraph.

Devin moved swiftly into the house, up stairs to a second floor and into what appeared to be a master bedroom. With a carefully directed light of a small flashlight, he found an expensive-looking jewelry box in a bottom drawer of a dresser. It was locked, and he left it on top of the dresser to be opened later. In another room, he disconnected and picked up a computer.

At this point, Devin was startled by nearby sounds of voices and closing car doors. Neighbors in a next-door house were apparently receiving visitors. As more visitors began arriving, Devin abandoned the computer and jewelry box as being too large to conceal on his person and quietly slipped out of the Brent house. He had parked his car several blocks away, and he walked as casually as he could toward it while the neighbors were busy greeting newcomers.

Devin’s apprehension was just beginning to ease as he neared his car, but it snapped back in full force when a police cruiser made a quick stop beside him. His departure from the Brent’s house had apparently not gone unnoticed. He was targeted by a beam from a flashlight and was told to stop and warm his hands atop the cruiser’s hood. Two king-sized officers emerged from the car, and one examined the contents of Devin’s pockets. They inquired of him his name and why he had been observed leaving the Brent property. Devin said he had just been taking a walk and denied having been inside the house. He was glad he had worn gloves and had not had time to take anything from the house. The police officers told him that he fit the general descriptions of a person that had been seen near the locations of several burglaries in the neighborhood, and they invited him to accompany them downtown to continue their conversation.

The Brents were subsequently contacted and asked to check their home for missing items. They reported that nothing was missing, but that a jewelry box and a computer had been displaced. Crime scene investigators found glove prints left by grease and dirt on Devin’s gloves where he had left them on the two displaced items. They also discovered a fabric print on a counter upon which Devin had apparently sat while disconnecting the computer. A forensic analyst compared patterns of the gloves worn by Devin when he had been confronted by the police to those found on the jewelry box and the computer. They matched. The analyst also compared the pattern of the fabric print found on the counter to the fabric pattern of Devin’s jeans. They also matched.

During a subsequent trial, Devin’s defense attorney tried every tactic he knew to convince the jury that his client was not guilty. Due to the evidence presented, however, the jury was not at all moved to do so. Having won the case, the prosecuting attorney went home happy. Having closed all the cases involving Devin’s previous burglaries, the police went home happy. Having had a criminal removed from the streets, local citizens went home happy. Having society provide Devin with a new home made everybody happy . . . with one exception.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Many mistakenly believe that wearing gloves while committing a crime will prevent leaving impressions at a crime scene that can be used to identify and convict them of the crime. Actually, fingers are not the only things that can leave prints.

Surgical gloves were developed to prevent bacteria and such from passing through them. To enable doctors to handle instruments of their trade with precision, they were made to fit tightly–so
tightly that fingerprints can sometimes be transferred through them. Fingerprints can also sometimes be found on inside surfaces after turning surgical gloves, and some leather gloves, inside out.

Dirt, oils, grease, blood and such materials adhere to and/or permeate leather and cloth gloves as they are being worn. The patterns and seams of the fabrics of cloth gloves differ depending on their manufacturers. Their surfaces are also modified as they are recontoured, folded, creased, stretched, cut and torn during wear. The surfaces of leather gloves suffer the same modifications. Having originally served as the hides of living animals, the textures of leather differ from one animal to another. The foregoing factors make it possible to match a glove with its print. As mentioned in Devin’s story, clothing fabric can also leave identifying prints on surfaces upon which someone sits or even upon which someone leans.

Those readers interested in fingerprinting might find two of my previous essays of interest. They can be found in the STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED archives. LASTING IMPRESSIONS was published on December 19, 2007; and THE CREATURE was published on January 19, 2008.

Note that, due to concerns voiced by latent print examiners, the term “DNA fingerprinting.” is reportedly no longer deemed acceptable.

Desperation and Impatience

2012-05-17T08:40:10Z

Several years ago, I wrote an essay for the HWA handbook On Writing Horror titled “For Love or Money: Six Marketing Myths.” While I called them “marketing” myths, in fact they were really publishing myths.

Recent events which you may already have heard about via the blogosphere inspired me to write this entry. The moral of that story is the thesis of the above-mentioned essay.

The concept isn’t new, and I’ve written about it in various ways over the years, but it bears discussing again. Novice writers (and all of us were novices sometime) share a burning compulsion. Perhaps more than one, but one applies here: the need to see our name and our work in print. (These days the definition of “in print” is a little different than the classical definition, but there are analogies to be made: some e-zines aren’t so different from the typed, mimeographed zines of a few decades ago.) We’re willing to do almost anything to see that happen (deals with the devil aren’t out of the question), and this desperation can lead us to make bad publishing decisions.

Neil Gaiman writes about Yog’s Law on his blog, inspired by the same event. The law is simple: money flows toward the writer. In one form, this is a warning against paying to get published: paying for representation, paying the publisher for editing services, etc. From another perspective, though, it is an admonition to insist that you be paid for your work, regardless of the venue in which it is published. Among the six myths I wrote about, two are particularly applicable: 1) Payment in exposure and 2) Royalty-only markets.

Novice writers believe the myth that simply having something “published,” and the concomitant exposure they will receive, has some intrinsic value. They will no longer have to write cover letters where the paragraphs listing previous publications are blank. Now they can write, “My story, Title of Story Here, was published in Slapdash eZine.” This will guarantee that editors will give submissions extraspecial consideration because, after all, they’re reading something submitted by published authors. Editors might even remember those previous publications and the new submissions will get gold stars and go to the top of the stack. Woo-hoo!

Chances are: 1) The editor didn’t see that publication because it’s nothing more than a post on a blog in a dark and rarely frequented corner of the internet, or 2) Even if the editor is aware of that publication, it won’t have any impact whatsoever at best and, perhaps, a negative impact at worst. Being poorly published isn’t better than not being published at all. If your resume is a list of non-paying markets that have come and gone like the spring rains, it will make you look unprofessional.

Here’s the second sad truth: Royalty-only markets are non-paying markets 99% of the time. These books (usually anthologies) sell so poorly that they never recoup their publishing costs, let alone generate any income down the line. If they do bring in a few dollars, that will be split 10 or 20 ways, usually with half of the profits going to the editor off the top. Expect pennies at best.

Desperation—a force as strong and nearly as irresistible as gravity—allows us to delude ourselves. The only exposure that is worthwhile is appearance in a market that people 1) see and 2) respect. With the exception of literary magazines, these are almost always paying markets. Almost always pro-paying markets. Why? Because these are the markets that have major distribution channels and (generally) good reputations. With so much material out there, who do you think reads Slapdash eZine? The contributors and a few of their friends, that’s who. And that royalty only anthology that contains work by previously unpublished authors? Who will pay $18 for the trade paperback (did you ever notice how pricey those books tend to be?) or $9.99 for the e-book? Your friends and relatives might be counted on the first time or two, but even they may stop ponying up after a while.

Another issue with exposure/royalty markets is that they won’t teach you anything about your writing. In the best case scenario, your story will be published exactly as you submitted it. If you’re lucky, someone may catch your typos, grammatical errors and continuity flaws. In the worst case scenario (see above), the editor may decide to do something abysmal to your story, and you’ll have no recourse. Those of us who’ve been around a while probably would have smelled something bad about the market discussed above. One look at the web site, replete with typos, bad grammar and questionable layout, would have been enough to tell us that we wouldn’t be dealing with a pro.

With a pro market, if your story has a few flaws it will either be rejected (with or without comment) or—best case—the editor will accept the work and offer some suggestions to make it even better. Experienced writers learn the value of a good editor, one who encourages a writer to improve (not one who arbitrarily rewrites a story in his own image).

There are many codas that attach themselves to this message. For example, if, in your desperation to be published at all, you aim low and submit to a non-paying market, you’ll never know if you might have done better by sending it to a pro-market.

I know it’s hard to have the level of patience required to develop to the point where you can be professionally published. I was in my late thirties when I scored my first pro sales. I made a few mistakes in the beginning. Not many people are totally immune to the temptation to settle for something less in order to satisfy that gravitational pull, that vanity appeaser. My message is this: resist with all your might. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it will be different for you. Listen to and learn from the experiences of others.

Thomas Sullivan: BREAST-FED BRAINS vs. NOITANIGAMI

2012-05-15T22:01:36Z

Think back. Way back. Lying-in-your-bassinet back. What kind of formula were you raised on? No-no…I don’t mean breast milk/formula. I mean how was your life orchestrated? Dr. Spock baby? Schedules/organization/chaos/mommy-was-on-Valium? Meat and potatoes lifestyle? (Dunno…I’ve repressed all that)? The answer is very important to your imagination and creativity. No question, creativity can either be given wings or pushed off a cliff while we are still in the cradle – creatle.

True, hardwiring is major. By nature a few of us will never find our way out of the box, and a few others will never find their way into the box; but there’s enough spark of imagination in most of us to escape becoming a zombie spectator to life, if that spark gets kindled early-on. Whether or not that nurturing takes place in a meaningful way may be largely circumstantial. Example:

You are six again…your older sister has taken you to the Roxy theater for a double feature, and you come in two-thirds of the way through the first flick where the plot (and character relationships) has already thickened, as they say. If this isn’t the way you usually see movies, you will probably be overwhelmed, frustrated or bored by an inscrutable story. But if that’s just the way you go to shows – spectator interruptus – then over time you may simply learn to fill in the blanks and connect dots in order to make sense of the films. During that process you’ll need to recognize probabilities in the twists, and patterns in the relationships, and how to reach beyond into possibilities. Some of that will just be predicting things and events, but understanding character relationships and motivations will play large. Did the couple date/mate/hate? Is Lucille trying to marry/bury Hugo? You get good at it after a while. And whenever you’re surprised by a new character revelation or a plot twist, you learn, you grow.

A generation ago that kind of fragmented assimilating was early training for recognizing and understanding patterns and possibilities. You seldom got to hear complete radio shows or saw movies starting from the beginning, owing to the fact that the former were usually heard in short car trips and the latter was the way kids went to theaters – just dropping in, not waiting for a starting time. The result was learning to make inferences, exploiting all the possibilities gleaned from experience, and going beyond into the realm of creativity. It was the beginning of playing “What if…?” But radio as a story medium is largely gone now, and visual media is so comprehensive that there are fewer dots to connect. Imagination, alas, has been spoon fed into dormancy in the average person.

As a writer –and former teacher – I think I’m describing a pretty major generational change here. In short order we’ve evolved from think-on-demand lifestyles through prefabbed consumerism into a world of intense media that seductively offers to relieve us of our last outpost of independent thinking if not individualism itself. Even the process of producing that media has become digitally packaged to play out variables with less need for organic imagination. Need a plot, a character, a story arc? Plenty of apps out there to help you along in whatever medium you are working. Or in almost every other phase of life and labor, for that matter. It’s number painting for the mind. You see the problem here? We need some imagination about our imaginations.

Of course, you don’t have to sign onto passiveness and there will always be mavericks who do not. Is surrendering evermore to the alluring orchestrations of life a moral question? What’s wrong with enjoying the ride, a life of ease and input from outside sources? Well, nothing in an instant gratification and emotive culture; but being dumbed out of the management of existence other than to feel in a world that increasingly offers to take care of you from cradle to crypt has its price. Hello, Big Brother. And if you don’t particularly want to have another sib, big or otherwise, if you bristle at the idea of being kept, if you want to preserve and enhance your native skills and self-reliance, there are ways of doing that. Because the good news is that if you can’t teach creativity, you can still train it. Anyone who enjoys thinking can use the kind of sampling approach I described above to strengthen their grasp of the world around them. But it is always easier to feel than to think. Easier still to make them mutually exclusive and just go with instant gratification and an emotive reflex to the life around us. So, at first, it may require a conscious effort to look for the dots in life that need connecting in a purely analytical way. They’re still there, however. In nature. In prima facie life. Peek through a keyhole, put a cup to the wall, follow some footprints in the snow, or just go stand in nature until “you get it.” Practice extrapolating and interpreting full scenes from scraps and vignettes. It may be as much a matter of NOT joining the masses in the grandstands of life as it is finding your own way. At least that’s a start.

Yeah, I know, sounds silly. Sounds Orwellian or Huxleyistic or some other dire apocalyptic warning done in flashing crimson neon about society going to hell in a basket. But really, evolutionary changes are not revolutionary. They are slow, sometimes insidious. If something restless inside you sparks with recognition as you read this, then maybe you’re a candidate for escaping group-think, for living more freely and independently, for resisting the wave of media-driven usurpation. Maybe you’re an – oh, I don’t know – A WRITER! Leave the crowd behind and you’ll be on your way to something. I don’t have a clue as to what. I mean, this isn’t a formula, is it? That would be going back to breast and bottle. You’re on your own now. IMAGINE that…

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

Do u c wot ic?

2012-05-12T02:26:48Z

if u cn read this ur less likely 2 bcum a gd writer.

I don’t mean that for people who can translate it in their minds, but rather those who see the above statement and immediately recognize what it says: “If you can read this, you are less likely to become a good writer.”

Textspeak is not English. It is a language similar to and rooted in English, but that is where the association ends. It is a variant form of English utilized by those who are inhibited by speed or character availability limits. Call it textspeak, SMS, Lingo or any other term, but it is not English and it should never be mistaken for such.

The use of this pidgin dialect is on the rise, and I am not complaining. Anything that facilitates communication between people is something to be embraced, in my opinion. But it must be recognized for what it is. Equating textspeak and English inexorably leads to mingling the pair, and the habits of textspeak are not the habits of English.

The spelling differences are apparent. Also evident, though somewhat less so, are the loss of capitalization - commonly a bloody sacrifice on the altar of speed – and the abandonment of punctuation which accompanies character limits. Least obvious, however, and therefore most insidious is the diminution of vocabulary.

English is a popular language for writers for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the array of words available. Note I do not use the term panoply; it conveys a meaning similar to array, but with militaristic connotations. English is full of slight variations and subtleties, enough to popularize a book which simply gathers and cross-references such under the name of thesaurus. Textspeak, in its need to be understandable to another in the smallest character set available, relies upon extensive use of acronyms and shortened versions of common words.

If a person intends to be a writer, they need an extensive vocabulary, and vocabulary expansion isn’t simply a matter of encountering a new word. Ideally, a person should learn the precise definition of a new word (surprisingly uncommon; many people merely glean the definition from its context when they encounter it, and this is a contributing factor to the evolution of word meanings.) After learning what a word means, it has the potential to become part of their vocabulary – but only if it is repeated. If left to disuse, a word’s precise meaning becomes distorted, then forgotten.

Textspeak is ideal – for texting or tweeting. When it becomes the default language for activities where English is typically used, it hinders vocabulary exercise and growth and that greatly reduces a writer’s prospects for success. It can also lead to a familiar experience for multilingual people, and that is the unintentional slipping in and out of multiple languages. While it may be charming to hear someone drop into their native Spanish or French in the middle of a heated discussion, it is not charming to a copyeditor to see a sentence in their latest submission that includes “u” where “you” was intended, or “b4″ in place of “before”. You will get a rejection letter, not an appreciative smile.

& that isnt gd for ne1.

5 Undying Myths About Published Writers And Their Eerie Powers

2012-05-09T07:24:39Z

“What’s that, you say? Please send you my six volumes of unpublished gothic poetry? I’d be delighted!”

To the unpublished writer — and maybe there’s another level here we’ll call underpublished — life on the other side of the divide can seem like a place of rarefied air.

This can lead to some erroneous assumptions about what writers farther down the path can actually do for someone still at the trailhead.

I doubt I know a single veteran writer who didn’t, at some early point, reach out to touch some of that mojo and see if a little might rub off. I certainly did. Most accomplished writers, I’m convinced, won’t hesitate to give others the benefit of their experience, when asked.

But if your expectations are unrealistic, or based on erroneous assumptions, this will, at best, lead to a fruitless exchange. At worst, it could completely undermine what might have been a valuable association.

Myth 1: Publishing is a tight-knit cabal intent on keeping you out.

Some people apparently believe that the publishing world is structured like a coalition of country clubs where everybody with a byline periodically gets together to compare elbow patches on their tweed jackets, then circle the wagons and blackball everyone else.

This can, perversely, be more comforting than this unappealing diagnosis: that if you’re not making any headway, maybe it’s because your stuff isn’t ready for prime time. Yet.

Another possibility: You know how you’re always hearing about people losing out on job opportunities because prospective employers know how to use the Internet too? And can see what these people are really like? Editors are more likely to shy away from someone whose online conduct makes him look like a paranoid sociopath with rage issues.

You only have a certain amount of time and energy. Devoting them to conspiracy theories may mean you’ll never lack for company … although it will never advance your cause.

Myth 2: Authors are eager to read the unpublished, unsolicited work of strangers and will drop everything to get right on it.

They’re not. Sorry.

Most of us already have reading lists that would take 3 lifetimes to get through even if all we were was a head in a jar, with one finger on the outside for turning pages.

Another reason? Fear of accusations of plagiarism. We live in a litigation-happy world where anyone can sue anyone else for anything. Including “stealing my ideas.” If this is a factor in a writer’s refusal to read your work, it’s no reflection on you. It’s simply a policy in place to deny that one buzzing human mosquito out there an entry point to sink his proboscis. It’s easier to fend off a potential accusation by establishing a clear precedent of not reading unpublished works, period.

Now, why ask a stranger or distant acquaintance to read something in the first place? Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of it…

Myth 3: It materially matters whether a writer tells you if something is any good or not.

We all need validation. We all want to know, early on, whether we might actually have something going, or if we’re just deluding ourselves and wasting our time.

Except, in my experience — and I bet I’m far from alone in this — the person who’s asking for an honest reaction is really prepared to hear only one answer.

Yet even if they get an appraisal that raises their hackles, so what? It’s just one person’s opinion at one point in time. And one person’s opinion, in a vacuum, doesn’t mean much.

It’s just a verdict. This isn’t what a hopeful writer really needs. In truth, if it’s so early an effort that the writer can’t even tell whether it’s any good or not, then the odds are that it’s not publishable. As is. But could be, with more work.

What a hopeful writer really needs here is detailed feedback, possibly on an ongoing basis. This isn’t something that a working author is in a position to provide on demand. It’s time-consuming and takes a lot of focus. Most working writers are too busy with their own work to act as an unpaid editorial advisor.

The alternative? Classes. Workshops. Reading and critiquing groups. None of which, thanks to the Internet, have to be based close to home. These may not provide the immediate encouragement or ego boost of having the writer give some piece of work a thumbs-up, but in the long run, they’ll do the writer more good, by providing actionable feedback.

Myth 4: Published authors can hook you up, no sweat.

“I just need a publisher,” someone once told me.

As if I could tell this querent right where to go, and done deal.

Contrary to popular belief, authors aren’t plugged into the system in any broad sense. Their connections are often limited to a relatively tiny sphere of active participants in current projects. They don’t necessarily know, or even need to know, who’s reading for what, who’s buying, who may be a likely candidate for a particular manuscript. This is what agents are for.

Oh, okay, I just need an agent, then. Could you…

Not so fast. Working relationships like these are valued, and virtually all working writers are sensitive to how insanely busy editors and agents are. And are reluctant to add to their workload with continued referrals. To expect otherwise is to put the writer in an awkward position.

I can count on one finger the times that I’ve actively interceded, sending a novel to a likely-to-be-receptive editor. But in this instance, the writer had been a friend for years, and someone whose work I’d admired for even longer, who’d published numerous pieces of short fiction, and had a lot of people anticipating what she would do for a first novel.

At most, I expedited what was already destined to happen as a result of her own hard work.

These things do happen, certainly, but when they do, they’re more likely to happen because a friendship or association developed naturally, without expectations. And because they were earned through years of sweat equity.

Myth 5: Published writers don’t care about anyone else and are only out for themselves.

Which is sometimes the conclusion after all else fails.

Again: Most writers, I’m convinced, are willing to give others advice and the benefit of their experience. They want to see others do well. They want to see hard work rewarded and new talent flourish.

But, realistically, they can do only so much. Their time is short and their influence limited.

Ironically, the people I’ve felt most compelled to assist, in whatever small way I could, were the ones who asked for the least.

These are the ones who seemed to understand — by their actions, and not just lip service — that one’s time is a valuable resource.

That the hard work and legwork were up to them, and nobody else could do it for them.

In short, these were the ones who had already mastered the art of professional conduct, regardless of how many times their bylines had seen print.

They got it, and this was obvious in how they presented themselves.

In my experience — and I bet I’m far from alone in this, too — there are 3 kinds of people who ask for advice:

(1) Those you never hear from again, because what you’ve told them sounds too much like more work.

(2) Those you don’t hear from again right away, because they’re too busy acting on the advice they’ve received.

(3) Those you do hear from again right away, because you must’ve been holding back before, and there really is more you can do for them, if they’re just pushy enough.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

***** For a potentially too-close-for-comfort look at the writing life, please check out my own blog’s latest, “A Survival Guide For Writers In Love (And Those Who Love Them).”

The Invisible

2012-05-04T08:47:17Z

This is a “reprint” of a “lost” post (you’ll notice on the list of my posts that there’s about a year’s worth of stuff that never made the transition to the new blog). Don’t know if the references are still available (for instance, Nick Kaufman’s post, but you should google him and check out his new site and friend him on facebook and read his stuff, anyway), but I think it’s still relevant.

Even if you read it before, you probably won’t remember it from years ago, so it’ll still be as new to you as to the rest of you just dropping by for the first time. Here goes:

The idea of “dark matter” has been banging around loose in my head for quite some time. For a quickie definition, Wiki says it is invisible energy whose presence “can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter.” It’s there, we think, we just can’t sense it other than the effect it has on things we can sense. Dark matter and dark energy apparently account for most of the mass in the universe.

I also like this Wiki tidbit, attributed to David B.Cline, “The Search for Dark Matter“, Scientific American.: “It has been noted that the names “dark matter” and “dark energy” serve mainly as expressions of human ignorance, much as the marking of early maps with “terra incognita.””

I like the dark matter metaphor for the kind of force that makes a story, or any piece of art, great. The “force” exerts an influence inside the work, and on the people experiencing the work. We know it’s there, we analyze and argue and deconstruct, but still, the nature of that dark matter eludes us, or changes with the times and cultural context. This dark matter engages the reader/viewer/etc in ways hard to define, but fun to talk and think about. The easiest example is Shakespeare.

Of course, excellent Storytellerunplugged entries over the years have addressed the issue of giving a story dimension, depth, importance. Like many others, I struggle to develop a story into something about more than what it appears to be, trying to find connections, meanings, layers (thanks, Dave), imagery, resonance, theme – the names for various tools go on and on. The idea of “dark matter” connects many of these concepts for me, but I’ve never been able to come up with a “unified theory” to explain how and why. (Don’t hold your breath.)

Recently, my fascination with dark matter was justified (at least in my own head) by an interview with a Fang Lijun, a Chinese artist who defined his work as dealing with the invisible. (The art critics out there will rightfully cringe at my misappropriation of his concept, just as scientists will protest my profound ignorance of dark matter. I plead guilty, but that’s what inspiration does – takes and mutates. Sorry ‘bout that.) Beyond the politics, I found the idea of the “invisible” a bit more inclusive and energizing.

“Horror” (whatever that is, and please let’s not get into that right now) uses terms like the sublime, the cosmic, and others to get at the kinds of things I mentioned above – imagery, resonance, the nature of the story’s layers, etc. But my attraction to “horror” spills into fantasy, science fiction, literary (sorry, not so much mystery, because I like mysteries that remain so). So invisible for me begins to take into account all the things we don’t see in our reality but which have an impact in our lives – big, “real” movements and policies and natural forces, yes. But there’s also plenty of other influences, from psychological to subtle supernatural (yeah, I know, no difference, really).

I had a brief affair with “dark” as a catch-all word, but, like “horror” or any genre association, it’s too limiting. But writing about the invisible – there’s something that for me captures the issues raised by writers who distance themselves from genres.

The tropes are fun, for whatever genre you’re using – from rockets to murders to the existential despair of college professors – because they give something for the reader to hang on to, but really, for the stories that stand out, there’s something else going on. The things going on in those stories, the background, the mood, all the storytelling tricks of the trade, have a relationship with something much larger, lurking inside and all around the story and the reader.

Let me try to be a little more concrete. Nick Kaufman talks and makes others talk about Cormac McCarty’s The Road in his latest www.darkscribe.com column. The discussion focuses on whether or not the book is horror, and the nature and blending of genres. But what’s also interesting to me is how many things people think the book really is about, and the uses of the “real” and the “fantastic” in telling a story.

In a seemingly simple story about a man and a boy struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with very few joys and even less hope, there’s a hell of a lot of depth, resonance, meaning, layers, and all that other good stuff. There’s past and future, the moment, primal survival and nurturing and protection, savage violence, and, well, yeah, even more stuff.

There’s a universe full of “dark matter” bearing down on the events of the story; the action has a relationship with the invisible, inside the story’s world, and outside, that draws us in and makes us wonder and question and think. Like Lijun’s paintings of faces, screaming and otherwise, the story is more than about itself or its immediate source material.

Okay. Let me take another tack. I’m Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine, a small press publication older than some of you other there. It’s so old it published my first story 35 years ago. Along with a “merry band” of associate editors, I read a lot of stories by a wide range of writers, from stone cold pros to people sending out their first stories. Can’t buy everybody’s story, and reasons for rejection vary.

The easiest rejections to make, the automatic ones (very rarely to the stone cold pros), are for stories that are only about the events in the story. The characters have no past, no future, no relationships beyond the other characters (if any) in the story, no needs or wants besides the immediate conflicts (if any) driving the story. There’s no hint of a larger world, no tension inside the story’s world with forces and characters just outside the plot line, and no tension in relationship with the reader’s world.

These kinds of stories are, indeed, “generic.” They are often heartfelt, sincere, and there are often clues about what initially made the writer want to put words down on paper – an idea, an image, a piece of action, a particular piece of the puzzle that sparkles with a little life, that received more attention than the rest of the piece.

But the kind of story I’m talking about, as a whole, (and I quote from my personal library of rejections, which I stopped collecting after 1,000 – but hey, I’ve had over 250 stories published, and most of those early ones certainly did earn more than a bundle of rejects), doesn’t “hang together.” It doesn’t “rise above the other stories under consideration,” doesn’t “engage” or “stick in the mind.”

The easily rejected story doesn’t have a bit of dark matter. It has no relationship with the invisible.

I don’t think most writers can map out a story’s invisible aspect, any more than critics can definitively identify the story’s dark matter. I do think you can listen for it, in the details you pull out of the air (things you just “happened” to notice and use), the odd things you drop in for no reason, the “dead ends” you run yourself into. Lots of writers go on instinct, teasing out character developments and plot points out of things happening in previous sections of the story. More follow plot outlines they either change on the fly, or are able to inhabit, fill out, and electrify with life because they don’t have to worry about where the story’s heading. Different writers, different strokes. The point is, for successful stories, there’s a sense of something more going on in a story than you can put your finger on.

More hooks to hang your hats on:

The invisible references the unconscious, the mythic, wonder and mystery, the subterranean, the ethereal.

The visible events of the story – what the characters do and say to each other, the conflicts and their outcomes – are influenced by the dark matter of the writer’s life. Let it flow. Put it in there. You don’t have to name names. But make it personal. Make the story mean something to you, beyond a nifty speculative idea or engineering concept or quirky character with snarky lines. Let the story reflect some of the things that give you joy and pain. You don’t have to understand the how and why of those sources. Maybe it’s better if you don’t, because if you think you do, you might be lying to yourself. Yes, there’s a surface layer of a character’s motives which should be clear to yourself and the reader, if those motives have an impact on the story’s plot. But you don’t have to explicate every last little mechanical detail of what’s going on in those characters’ heads.

The mechanics of someone going from a to b to c, with a few clichés thrown in to dress the background, becomes almost immediately mind-numbing.

Tension is not only found between characters in conflict heading merrily for a showdown and plot resolution. It’s in the setting’s background (I’m thinking Campbell) and in the sensory details. It’s in the bits left hanging, unresolved, apparently quite ancillary to the plot, brief intersections with other aspects of the story’s world that helped the plot move along , deepened a character’s motivation, grounded the reader in the physical details of a scene. There’s the tension of which character is going to “win,” and there’s the tension, often invisible, in what that victory or defeat really means, inside and outside the story.

Well, by now I’m sure many of you are thinking the point of all this is pretty damn invisible. Sorry. I guess I’m just trying to translate what I’ve heard so many writers talk about over so many years – theme, conflict, meaning, layers, what have you – into something personal that I can use in the fight to be a better writer. For me, thinking in terms of “dark matter” and the “invisible” helps. On the other hand, I haven’t earned fame or fortune thinking like that, so be warned. Mileage may vary.

Still, stories I like, the ones I recommend that Space and Time’s publisher buy, the ones that have stayed up on my shelves for decades, as well as on the shelves of people much smarter than me, I think deal on some level with the invisible. At least, that’s why I like them. I hope mine manage to do the same, every now and then.

A Room With a View

2012-05-02T16:45:28Z

Last month, I went hiking off into the desert and completely forgot what day it was. By the time I realized I’d missed my April Storyteller’s post, I was a good fifty feet into the black depths of a dusty mine and at least thirty or more miles from the spot where the last lone bar on my husband’s iphone weakly bled away. There was absolutely nothing to be done about the missed deadline and yet, for a split second, I twisted around and looked back at the little hole of white sunshine that was the opening of the mine. It was no bigger than a flashlight beam by this point and the only civilization to be found beyond were five dirty four wheel drives, two blue tents, a rather handsomely preserved but primitive miners cabin, and the rusted bits and pieces of a community that died off over a hundred years ago. Still, I had the uncanny urge to sprint as fast as I could toward the light and try to get something worked out. Alas, Google wasn’t out there. The majority of people I keep in my phone weren’t out there either. I’ve grown so used to being the press of a button away from everything I “need” in life that I felt the remoteness of where I was more keenly than I ever have before. But hey, this is why I love camping in Death Valley, right?

Missing deadlines is no good and I don’t suggest doing it, but if you prepare right (and I usually do), taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. A good number of people here at Storyteller’s Unplugged have said it better than I will say it now, but its a plain fact that you need to step out of the office sometimes and live a little in order to feed your soul and your memory banks.

Here’s the thing: I’m made unreasonably happy by my cluttered desk with its vast piles of un-pitched junk mail, half-emptied coffee cups, and hundreds of little post-it notes reminding me that I need to kill off someone or change the chapter title on page 32 or pick up milk. And yes, I’ve completely buried the postcard that tells me it’s time for my next check-up, and it takes me, on average, six and a half minutes to find a red pen, but I still adore it and am loathe to ever separate myself from the unholy mountains of mayhem. When I’m in the zone, I want to do nothing but write. And maybe eat Frosted Flakes while I write. That feeling carries over sometimes even when I’m not in the zone. That’s when taking a hike is advised.

My first book came out the end of October and I’ve been working my tail off ever since. You won’t hear me complaining about that but hitting the road and driving until the running boards on the truck became shredded by the narrow, brambly one-way passage that led far from my desk – this was a very therapeutic thing! Sometimes the only way to recharge your batteries is to leave the battery-operated world behind.

If you’re a writer straight through to your core, you will be writing even as you live through the big and small things in your life. Your desk will not end with the dust-covered globe that sits atop the Papa John’s coupons. It will stretch to your grandmother’s bedside, to the weeds under the rose bushes, to the curve of broken ore-cart tracks that wind through the mine you visited on vacation. Its important to remember that inspiration does not come at the keyboard, rather it is brought there from points beyond. Even the realization that you’ve missed a deadline and can’t do anything thing about it can offer you something to write about in the future.

Of course, all of this probably goes without saying but sometimes I personally need a little kick out the door. My hope for you is that your desk will stretch to many fine places this summer and inthe wintery months beyond.

Happy writing!

Carole Lanham is the author of a collection of award-winning short stories called the Whisper Jar.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Whisper-Jar-ebook/dp/B0062ID33K

Playing with dolls

2012-04-30T21:16:52Z

When I was young, I had dolls. I remember them, clearly – all of them.

There were the pretty ones – a couple of blondes and my favorite, the little black-haired one with cute bangs and eyes that opened and closed and eyelashes to die for and a curious half-smile painted on her rosebud mouth. These were real dolls, maybe a foot or two in height, no silly poseable Barbies with wasp waists but REAL dolls, to me real “people” with names and stories each her own.

There were also the other kind, the odd kind – I had a rubber Pagliacci character (a clown with a pointed hat with a pompom, all in a single piece of rubbery material) and I had my bears.

I had the Barbie tribe, later, too – I had several, but again, my mostest favourite was not the classic Bland Barbie Blondie but instead a fairly rare Amerind-looking specimen with this long silky black hair that fell down to her (relatively natural, proportion-wise) waist, a Pocahontas type whose origins were obviously far from mine – distant, exotic, full of stories of her own.

I had an entire collection of other dolls, ones I didn’t “play” with, but which stood as mute witnesses to my life and the way it was unfolding – they were dolls wearing national costumes of many different countries, places where I’d been or my Dad went and brought me back a National Doll. I had a little blonde Dutch girl with carved wooden clogs. I had an American Indian woman with a baby board and a tiny bronze baby on her back. I had a flamenco dancer in scarlet flounces. I had an Austrian girl in a dirndl with two fat blonde plaits wrapped around her head. These lived in a glass-fronted display cabinet and were rarely exposed to dust and direct sunlight.

They are gone now. All of them. Somewhere. I still have my original teddy bear – the one I was given on my first birthday – the bear who is pushing fifty now, about to turn half a century old in just a handful of short years thus making him into what is probably a genuine antique. But the rest of them, all the dolls, they vanished somewhere along the way in our many moves from home to home, from continent to continent, as I grew and they were deemed superfluous.

But I played with dolls until quite late – probably later than most girls would admit to doing so very probably much after some of the more precocious members of my gender were out with real live boyfrirends. And for me, part of the joy of it all was the stories I got to tell. I guess I was writing even when I wasn’t writing, the stories came to nest in my head and all of these creatures just happened to be stiff and plastic and porcelain and rubber and plush and inanimate only when I happened to be DIRECTLY looking at them, and when I put them away they would sit up and wake up and live the secret lives that dolls live inside of toy boxes and toy chests and the backs of wardrobes where they might ordinarily live.

The reason this all came swimming back into my head right now was because of a recent episode of the show “Castle”, where the eponymous title character opens this particular episode by “acting out” a scene between a Barbie doll and a plastic dinosaur, complete with dialogue spoken in “character voice” as the two doll figures interact.

His mother walks into the room. “Playing with dolls?!” she asks, with a degree of incredulity.

And Castle, the writer, the creative mind, puts his avatars down hastily and corrects her. “ACTION figures,” he says.

Somehow, dolls are bad, you see. Dolls are what little children play with. Dolls have no role in even an older girl’s life, let alone an adult man’s. But hey, action figures now, they’re…

Oh, I don’t know. There’s a lot of baggage here. Dolls can be anything from pretty-pretty-cute to downright scary and menacing (Chucky, anyone…?) Dolls can have exquisitely detailed features, or they can be completely faceless ragdolls, or they can lack bits of faces (like noses, like mouths…) and I don’t know which could be construed to be potentially scarier, really, the kind that look like they could just draw breath and walk and be as alive as you or I – or the kind that are forever alien by simply missing the signals that let us interpret human thought and emotion on a human face.

But whatever they are or do or represent, dolls are – have always been – so much more than “action figures” and they so don’t need the rationalization or justification of that defensive terminology.

Being caught playing with dolls hardly disqualifies you from being a grown-up, and even if it did, what of it? Sometimes it is just fine to be a child, to let a child’s unfettered and unfiltered mind loose in a story and see what comes out of it all in the end.

I’ve been in classroom situations where I’ve given kids as young as 11 or 12 writing exercises to do – and the sheer unbelievable and exuberant gush of potent creativity that comes out of this, the juxtapositions and connections that an adult mind would never have made because they were too unlikely, the incredible leaps of faith of and imagination – these are the products of minds which are free to tell and to explore the stories that our kind has evolved to tell, to listen to, to crave.

And sometimes it takes a doll.

I miss mine, now, today, with a sudden and terrible fury. My little black-haired girl with the long lashes and her gingham apron and the white plastic shoes on her broad plastic feet. My Pocahontas (and I had her, and dreamed her dreams, long before she became the poster girl for Disney, and I BET mine had the more glorious adventures). All of my little national-costume dolls, my little clog-footed Dutch milkmaid and my regal Spanish dancer that was my pride and joy.

I wonder if they were given away, if some other little girl’s worlds were shaped by these tangible incarnations of my own past existence as a child. I wonder, and I have to hope. And somewhere out there, at the back of some wardrobe, they may be sleeping it off, all of their adventures, waiting for the hour in which they wake again, and walk, and touch the place from which the stories come, and give the stories their own faces.

FORENSICS 152: WHAT’S SHAKING

2012-04-19T12:28:55Z

Many harbor the thought that seismology has to do only with measuring and recording energy releases of earthquakes and has nothing to do with forensics. A definition of the word “forensics” states that it generally refers to scientific methods used to investigate crimes. This piece describes how a geoscientist, Terry Wallace, who had no apparent connection to criminology, used seismology and smarts to discover a number of criminals and to enable him to actually witness their criminal acts.

Terry was a member of a group scientifically studying ground movement in the area of the Andes Mountains along the Bolivian-Chilean border. He was puzzled by recorded measurements of occasional micro-earthquakes emanating from an out-of-the-way plain located more than 13,000 feet above sea level.. This itself was not too unusual, but the quaking was mysteriously happening only late at night.

Micro-earthquakes are those having a magnitude of less than 2.0 on the Richter magnitude scale and are too feeble to be felt. Many readers will recall having heard of the Richter scale. It is used to quantify energy released by earthquakes and is often mentioned by newscasters when reporting them. A few readers might remember that the Richter magnitude scale is base-10 logarithmic. For example, an earthquake having a magnitude measurement of 5.0 on the Richter scale would indicate that the earthquake had a shaking amplitude of ten times that of an earthquake having a magnitude measurement of 4.0. Accordingly, the amount of energy it released would be equal to the square root of 1,000, or 31.6, times that released by the 4.0 earthquake. Those who stayed home from school with the flu on the day that the Richter magnitude scale was being taught need not be concerned. The Richter magnitude referred to in this piece is less than 1.0.

Knowing that earthquakes were not the only phenomenon that shook seismographs, Terry developed a theory about what might be causing the quaking. Close examination of seismographic tracings led him to believe that the source might be trucks driving across the plain. The approach from one direction would have been across flat land. From the opposite direction, it would have been uphill. He believed he could determine the direction of the trucks by the different traces made when the trucks had been shifted into low gear while driving uphill. Eventually, Terry even began estimating the weight of passing trucks.

Given the route along which they were traveling and the time of night they were doing it, Terry figured that smugglers might be transporting contraband. Confirming that trucks were the source of the seismic disturbances might have cost him his life, but he was sufficiently adventurous to meet such a challenge. He hid one night and observed, as he had suspected he would, a passing parade of blacked-out trucks.

In addition to detecting the passage of trucks in the night, seismologists use thousands of sensitive instruments permanently located around the world to pinpoint and monitor, as they were originally designed to do during the Cold War, nuclear weapons tests. The instruments also provide information bearing on such events as submarine explosions, aircraft crashes, tectonic plate movements, landslides and mine tragedies. Other gathered information aids in predicting tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic actions.

According to Terry, water conducts sound so well that a submerged seismometer (hydrophone) can detect an underwater explosion of a single stick of dynamite anywhere in the world.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A magnitude 4.0 on the Richter scale would rattle loose items within buildings but would not likely cause serious damage to the buildings. A magnitude 5.0 might cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings, but would not likely cause more than slight damage to those that were well constructed.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that caused the devastation in Japan in March of 2011 had a seismic energy yield equivalent to the energy yield of 480 million tons of TNT.

To put energy yields in some perspective, the asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico some 65 million years ago had an energy yield equivalent to that of 96 million, million tons (a teraton) of TNT. The asteroid was estimated to have been 6.2 miles in diameter, and it left a crater (the Chicxulub Crater) that was 110 miles in diameter. The strike would have created a tsunami rising thousands of feet.

Asking questions or getting answers?

2012-04-14T15:13:08Z

A couple of months ago I wrote about my experiences interviewing people. Since then, I’ve had some more thoughts on the subject that I thought I would share.

I recently read an interview where an ardent fan asked questions of a well-known director. The interviewer had several hypotheses about the director’s work that he wanted the interviewee to confirm. His questions were long and involved as he laid out his theories in intricate detail. The director’s responses were mostly only a sentence or two. Often just a couple of words, generally refuting the hypotheses or claiming that he didn’t remember what he was thinking when he set up a particular shot. As a result, the interview ended up being 85% about the interviewer and 15% about the director. In another article, it seemed like this same interviewer was trying to prod a different subject into criticizing a third party, making him party to the interview’s admitted disdain for the other person. The subject didn’t take the bait, but that didn’t stop the interviewer from trying again.

I don’t know about you, but when I read an interview, I’m more interested in hearing what the subject has to say than I am in parsing convoluted questions. It made me think about my approach to interviews. There are times when I want to elicit certain kinds of information from the subject, but I don’t want to try to coerce the subject into saying something.

While I was writing up the interviews I conducted for the manuscript I submitted recently, I found myself editing down my questions until they were no more than a sentence when possible. The actual questions were longer because I wanted the interview subject to understand where I was coming from. However, having garnered a response, that setup was no longer important. The questions functioned as signposts in the text to indicate a change in topic.

The extreme example of this is the Locus magazine style of interviewing, in which no questions are presented at all. The interview is published as a first person monologue. It completely abstracts the interviewer from the process. I’m not sure how they go about doing this because it means that the interview subject has to answer in fully formed sentences that, in a way, contain or summarize the question. One issue I encountered in conducting my interviews is that the subject would often answer in sentence fragments, switching gears, backing up, changing thoughts in mid-stream. The answers by themselves would often have been unintelligible.

I think I found a middle ground between these two approaches. The interviewer is present, but only as a guide, stating the question in the barest possible manner, without a lot of folderol. I wanted to get out of the way and let the interview subject take center stage. If someone wants to know what I think about something, then they can interview me.