How lessons layer

I spent last night with an old friend that I hadn't seen in years. It's an episode of The Twilight Zone titled 'A nice place to visit.' Most of my childhood is a vague blur, but some stories, and the first moments that I spent with them, are with me every moment of my life. It doesn't matter if I read them or watched them, and truth be told a hell of a lot of them came from my many hours of watching TV.

The first time I saw this sad story about a man named Valentine I was lying on the floor of my aunt's apartment in Washington, DC. My mother, sister, and I were up there on vacation, and while seeing all the monuments and pieces of history was incredible, any time spent with my mother's sister was tense. Children didn't really fit in her world, either the physical one around her or in her head, and her reaction to me and my sister always seemed to imply that we were the problem. One that she took personally. To stay occupied and away from her, I watched almost as much TV that summer as I would have at home, and I was always on the lookout for magic.

Bits of magic that you find when you're young stay with you, and you feel them when you encounter more. Once you've seen a young, pretty girl tell a priest that his mother is performing intimate acts in hell, or seen a freckle-faced boy turn a man into a bobbing Jack-in-the-Box, well, your concept of children is going to be a little more complicated than the 'innocent and helpless' archetype that gets used so frequently.

If, after sampling this magic, you become inclined to start practicing your own, you tend to first want to duplicate what you've seen. If you paint, and it was Munch's 'The Scream' that made you pick up a brush, you're probably going to try to paint something that evokes the same feelings, and your first tools are going to be the colors, lines, and shapes that Munch used. If you see Criss Angel levitate or see Penn and Teller make the same card appear out of nowhere three or four times, those might not be the first tricks that you learn, but they will be milestones that you judge your own ability by.

Likewise, if you start telling stories, the stories that make the strongest impressions on you are going to be your handholds when you start that uphill climb.

See how cleverly I connected this back to that Twilight Zone episode? It's almost like I saw someone else do that bit of slight of hand and decided I could do it too, isn't it?

My opinion? Our minds don't grow like the bodies of a cat, cow, or chicken, producing new cells that are a little different each time and letting the old ones die, until we're left with something that only bears a resemblance to the original form but is obviously more advanced. My opinion? We grow like trees, keeping that first fragile growth and adding layer after layer on top of it. We grow like this as we learn more and push higher, becoming stronger to deal with what the world throws at us. We all carry everything we ever were inside us, and we still have all the dozens or hundreds of contradictory points of view that we ever developed. They are part of our inner structure whether we like it or not. A child who steps out into the deep end before they're ready and gets that cold, wet sensation of water trying to push itself over their lips and nose to drown them will carry that impression with them for the rest of their life. What will they do with it? There are infinite possibilities in infinite directions. They could do nothing and just have nightmares of opportunity every once in a while. Or they could develop it into a paralyzing phobia. Or they could get an attitude about it and learn to swim so well they compete professionally.

From what I can remember, I might have seen the ending of 'a nice place to visit' coming. That mocking, insulting laugh out of someone who had been nothing but cuddly and polite the whole time was the perfect, final touch. Every story I write that has a 'twist' ending where the hints have been provided, owe something to this tale. If I can provide for someone what was once given to me, I've done my job.

Some post-viewing research revealed that it was Charles Beaumont who wrote that story, and that he produced some other damn good ones too. It also showed the sad, unfair way that he died. In the end, he couldn't write.

That's going to stay with me. Think I'll go write.

Grinding, recreating, and dealing with squatters

Rewriting a book is like opening your mouth in front of a mirror, picking one of your molars at random, and then pulling it out with a set of tweezers. I know I've said that a couple of times before, but until I find a more apt metaphor, we're all stuck with that one. There are a trillion little places in 'In The Dark' that need patching, smoothing, or nuking and paving, and going through it is slow.

While I'm at work I'm cruising around a warehouse on an order-picker, sometimes muscling ninety-pound reels into a cart while fifty feet up in the air, so I can't keep a paper or digital copy with me. Not that I would ever write when I should be working. Never.

But I do get breaks, and it's not worth it to haul stuff from my car and then back again. So to fill those voids that would otherwise be spent talking to my co-workers about baseball or football, I've started rewriting an old story of mine, from scratch. I had the damn thing done and finished some years ago, but I think it was one of the ones that never got typed in. It was all on paper, and somewhere during a divorce, a move, and then another move, those pieces of paper ended up somewhere besides where I can find them. So I'm slogging through familiar territory and hoping I can remember all the cool parts. Of course I won't be able to, but the fun part is that I have another chance to not write all the mistakes that the first version had, whatever they were.

With Handsome Devil coming out in January, I've been putting thought into promoting it, and myself, in every single way that I can. Which means it's time to get dragged another precious few inches into the twenty-first century. So one night I wrapped my security blanket around my shoulders, and (with the help of my wife, who has mumbled more about this type of thing in her sleep than I will ever know) tried to buy a website with my name on it. Now imagine the look on my face when I found the dot com address already taken. I've known that other Stephen Pope's exist for a while now, and some of them even have my middle initial, but there was nothing about a person on the site. Just a colorful, cheery-looking ad for all the great stuff a certain web company offers. Nothing at all to do with the site name.

Was the site mine to begin with? Heck no. That company could and probably has made the claim of just taking the initiative and getting their name out there. But of course, the old, childish argument of 'I didn't see your name on it,' comes to mind. Websites are organized according to our language system, and that means some have people's name on them. That makes them not interchangeable, as it makes no sense for Ed Gruberman dot com to be a page dedicated to the life of Albert Einstein, and it was about Mr. Einstein hardly anyone would ever find it.

Should we have to pay for those sites? Yes, because that's how the computers that store the sites are paid for. That company paid for the site, and they got it. There's not really a right or a wrong at work here, I believe. Just that sense of recognizing, again, that the universe does not take our feelings into account.

So I bought Stephen Pope dot net. Now all I need is to pay someone who knows what they're doing to make me a really cool website on it, full of zombies, ninja, and sparkly unicorns that twerk. Fame and fortune are bound to follow.

Until then I'll keep writing.

Mister Chick, what the hell are you doing here?

It is October. I'm sure this month means different things to different people, but to me it means Halloween. Halloween. This entire thirty-one day period is given to us so that we can revel in horror movies, scary books, and dress up like we secretly wish we could all year long. This is what it meant to me as a kid, and it's what it means to me now.

For the past couple of years I have been reasonably successful in my efforts to come up with costumes and themes that send small children and grown adults running away from my yard as fast as they can while still screaming at the top of their lungs. I take great satisfaction in this. So this weekend I took my wife shopping for tools and props to achieve those noble ends. I love those huge Halloween megastores that pop up this time of year that are a cross between a haunted house attraction and a Walmart. I have the same amount of fun wandering around in them that I did sorting through the comic book rack when I was a kid.

So we're looking around, and as I check out a nice collection of little skulls that sit on a shelf, I see something that slams the breaks on in my head. It's a little booklet a couple of inches tall and about five wide with a black and orange picture of a jack o' lantern on its cover, sitting there doing an excellent job of blending in with all the Halloween decorations.

I read some Chick Tracts when I was little, and ended up disliking them. The comic-book style format got me to read them, but I always came away with negative feelings. The first few times they were effective in getting me scared that I was headed to hell for little things like reading House of Mystery and not basing every decision I made on what someone's version of God might think of it, and inducing that kind of fear in a child is the kind of mean act that creates mean adults. Also, the first time I read one I could tell whoever wrote the stories only saw the world in black and white. When you claim a TV show (Bewitched) has lead people to worship Satan, you're not living in the same zip code as the rest of us.

As far as the person who left it there, I'm of two minds. I've read the literature, which suggests leaving them where people can find them, and I've seen them laying out at bookstores and different kinds of conventions. If that person genuinely believes that their faith is the absolute truth, and that a person might be saved from hell by dropping off a little book, then I can't find fault there. But to believe in the kind of world that Chick shows you, you have to believe in a world where nothing is ordinary, and nothing comes from man. It's either God's, or Old Scratch's. That attitude forbids any expression of doubt, and you can't have honest soul-searching to ponder whether you're doing the right thing or not because anything other than their version of truth sends you to hell. There's no room for you to contribute anything because God's already provided everything you'll need, and there's no room to grow. Just stay exactly as you are, and don't think for yourself.

Funny how I grew up loathing that mindset, isn't it?

My wife and I saw 'Machete Kills' today. That movie is pure silly, bloody, over-the-top-and-then-over-the-hill fun. Watch it.

Still writing.

Back from FenCon

Saturday I took a bus up to Dallas to help my best beloved pack up her booth and come home from FenCon X. She had gone up to work in the dealer's room, and I went up to do the heavy lifting (my wife has no trouble abusing my machismo) and to see some friends with her.

FenCon is always fun. Apart from the fondness that I will always feel from tying for third place in their short story contest with 'Trolls' once upon a time, it was one of the first fun and relaxed conventions that I started going to. It's a bit more literary-minded than a lot of others, so I can usually find a panel or two with subjects that match my interests.

My time was short this trip, so I didn't get to hit any events, but there was a room party with good friends, including the fantastic lady who proofread 'Dirty' for me. Good luck helped me make a couple of contacts that will be handy when I get down to editing the gritty details of 'In The Dark.'

I was also able to hear two separate people refer to a certain iconic Dr Who monster as a 'Darlek.' Where else could you find that but Texas, I ask you?

The bus trip also enabled me to get a big chunk of reading done. One of the good movies I saw when I was little was 'The Day of the Jackal,' and it set the bar in my head for thriller movies. One of the cool things about having an e-book reader is the ability to make all those impulse purchases at home that I used to have to go out for. ( A leading cause of why book stores are closing everywhere. I really hope they figure out a way to adapt) A while back I bought the Frederick Forsyth novel that the movie was based on.

It turns out that the film was a fairly true adaptation, and reading the book helps clarify a couple of points that can be a tad murky on screen. From what I was able to gather with a bit of research on the setting of the book, Forsyth painted a pretty accurate picture of how a lot of people in post WWII France felt about Charles de Gaulle, both for his foreign and domestic policies. That's the sort of detail that doesn't make it into most history books, the sort that gives you a fuller understanding real life. The book was a damn good read, and I may get his 'The Dogs of War' next, because that's another movie that I love.

Damn, now I'm inspired to go write. What a shame.

Necessary Stupidity

So many of these posts start out as discussions with my wife. We were having lunch today, I was shooting a story idea at her, and we ended up going back and forth about the stupid things that we see fictional characters do. It happens in pretty much all the different genre, but we see it in horror and thriller movies and stories primarily. The worlds where bad things happen.

For my two cents, we all have various degrees of empathy for our fellow human beings. We see them driving expensive cars, read about how many of them have lost their jobs, and see them begging in the streets. We can say to ourselves, 'That's life.' We move on. But sometimes something horrendous happens. The kind of something that shocks us out of our comfort zone.

Because newspapers and sleazy book publishers want to make money (and I can empathize with that, at least), they write about these horrible things, and they put a lot of energy into making us feel them. They give the details that make us cringe and shudder, but it's our reactions that I'll focus on here. I read Yahoo news a lot, and when I read a story where something bad happened, I'll often also read the comments that people post. A huge amount of them pick the story apart, finding little things that the victim did that they imply contributed to it. Some of them even post assumptions or guesses that do the same. Victim blaming? Yes. But why?

Back to scary books and movies. Nine times out of ten, the innocent people do something dumb. We see them go into the old, dark, house. They pick up the spooky artifact or read from the ancient book that's lying out. They split up. Again, why?

The characters in these horror stories may be dumb, but I don't think the people writing or producing them are. They want you to buy their product, so they put some thought into making it something that you would want to buy. Similarly, we can complain about how dumb people are in general, but most don't usually make dumb decisions that would put them in harm's way, and we know that.

Remember when I described how people create their own worlds in their heads? In order to be able to get up out of bed in the morning and fall asleep at night, most people convince themselves of something: that the world is basically a safe place, and that if they just play by 'the rules,' they'll be safe. Nothing bad will happen to them. They have to believe that.

Now maybe some writers do it on purpose, maybe some do it on instinct without being consciously aware of it, and maybe some do it just because that's what everyone else does. But the fact that so many people do it, leads me to think I'm on the right track when I say there is a reason for the stupid choices that victims in horror stories make. That gives our audience something to grab hold of and say, 'That person isn't me. I would never do something that dumb. The horrible things that I'm seeing can't happen to me.'

I advocated for the dumb heroine in an earlier post, comparing the mistakes we see that stereotype character make to what might happen in real life. But, as I pointed out at the end, she doesn't exist in real life. She's a part of something we read or watch for entertainment, and when that entertainment is horror a lot of us need a buffer between what happens to her (or him) and them. That way it stays entertainment, and doesn't become something to worry about. That way, it's something that we buy, and might remember later when we see something else by the same writer.

So now, let me go write something like that.

If you take the wrong road ---

Then it might not be a good idea to turn into the trees and tear a hole through the woods as you get back to the one you want. Claudia and I saw the new Riddick movie last week, and in the first few minutes they addressed a rather large pachyderm that was standing in the corner. The movie has our hero on his own again, without the female sidekick/love interest that Riddick never showed any love for because that would compromise his machismo.

(I'm not being sarcastic on that last point. If it's believable, not showing romantic feelings can be a really powerful component of characterization.)

But also absent from any contribution to the action are the million or so followers that our hero had acquired in the last film. That, as James Perfoy once said, is where the onion is.

They show us a quick flashback where our hero is trying to find his home planet, and the treacherous SOB from the previous film tricks him into going down to a desolate world and arranges an ambush. Riddick survives, but is not pursued because his attackers think he's dead. Now we can get on with the story we wanted to tell. Does it work?

Well, maybe. According to everything my psychic powers and the mighty internet tell me, there was a consensus that Riddick needed to be on his own for this new sequel. There's a reason my wife calls the Riddick movies 'Conan in space.' The similarities are many and obvious, and both heroes share the same type of appeal. They are inhumanly strong, deceptively cunning, and always do more good than they do harm. Both are incarnations of the same archetype, and a heavy component of that archetype is independence. Who does Conan/Riddick need? No one. Period. They'll spend some time with people that they can tolerate, and are quick to form alliances of necessity with good guys and bad guys. But at the end of the story, they're on their way to the next planet or town, and we already know that if they can't find some fresh trouble, they'll make some. Note that Riddick is a bit darker than our favorite Cimmerian. We never see him carousing in a bar, buying beer for his fellows and singing obscene ballads, and he doesn't hesitate to scare someone, male or female, if he thinks they deserve it. This may be due to the fact that Riddick is a more modern character, needing to build on R. E. Howard's legacy instead of just copying it.

Which might be exactly where the onion is. Howard only wrote a few tales in which Conan had won himself a crown, and if memory serves, most of them involve him needing to leave the palace either to defend his kingdom or because it's been stolen from him. Someone out on their own making their own place in the world has more appeal to us than a guy in a huge castle with swords, gold, and women at his disposal. So yes, a change of address for Mr. Diesel's character was in order.

But doing it all at once, taking the whole mass of people, firepower, and ships out of the equation in one big Whoosh, stretches disbelief. Was there no ally among them at all? How about some self-serving toady who knows that if this particular treacherous SOB takes over, he's going to get a one-way trip out the nearest airlock? Some blindly loyal, new member of the guard? No one?

So in a perfect world, it would still happen, but not exactly as we see it. Maybe a revolt, that our hero may or may not have seen coming. If he didn't really trust them, it would have a nice way of disorganizing them.

By the way, if I haven't said so before or recently enough, these little critiques aren't my way of shooting down other people's works. I write, and the point of looking at movies, books, and stories that are out in the world is to see what people watch and read, so that I get a sense of what has already been done, so I can write my own stories instead of copying others'. When I point out what I see as flaws, it's so I don't write something, let it sit while I go around thinking I've got the next Stoker award sewn up, then go back and read it and scream, “Oh hell, what did I do here?”

It's so I can write the absolute best stories that I am capable of.

The principle of Newton's Cradle as applied to a kick in the head

You all know what I'm talking about, right? That cool desk top toy with four or five steel balls suspended in a frame. You lift one at either end and let it drop. When that ball hits the others the energy is transmitted right through them, and the one at the far end swings out, falls back, and so on back and forth.

Now we're going to get into a bit of a rant here, but that's okay because -

A: this is my blog, and I can do whatever I damn well feel like with it, and

B: this ties into writing. Everything ties into writing.

My wife, who busts her backside at anything and everything she does, got 'let go' from her job the other day. It seems she finished an assignment (not her first), and was told they didn't need her anymore.

I love my wife. Take that as fact. You may also take my statement that she is not the sort of person to be satisfied with 'just doing her job' as a fact. Once she gets her feet under her, which doesn't take very long, she ends up finding better, stronger, faster ways of doing the work. This is part of the reason that no matter what the explanation, I'm not on the side of the people who cut her loose. Just not going to happen.

Now we come back to writing. I've read a lot of books over the years. Some were good, some were bad, and some were so bad that the publisher should have been sued and forced to plant more trees to replace the paper that was wasted printing the books. One of the factors in the latter is that the stories feel like they're taking place on a stage somewhere in an abandoned theater, being played by people who couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. The characters have no real passion. They have no spark as individuals, and they don't have that interactive spark that could make us identify with them as a group. When one of them yells, their next door neighbor doesn't bang on the wall, call the police, or come over to see what's wrong because that neighbor is offstage taking a smoke break. When the plot, such as it is, lifts one of the balls in the Newton's cradle and lets it go, that ball smacks into the next one with a dull thunk. Nothing else happens. Energy is destroyed.

Now let's get a more passionate response in there. After I found out my best beloved was canned, I tried to emotionally support her as best I could, and then the next day I told one of my co-workers that if he didn't start looking behind him when he backed up in a forklift, I was going to turn his head all the way around so that he could do it automatically. There's a little more to the story than just that, of course, and I'll put in a disclaimer here that I might be stretching a truth to tell a good story, but you see my point. The energy of what happened to one ball gets transmitted to the next one, and then that ball passes it along to the next. Energy doesn't disappear.

So that's how we make our characters a little more lifelike, and how we vent to the whole world that our spouse was treated in a way that we do not approve of.

And I'll write with that in mind.