Q&A: Generating Plot Points From Painting Titles

Why do the Kim sections have Dali painting titles instead of numbers? Or, is it true you auto-generated an entire relationship based on Dali paintings?

There are a whole series of funny twists and turns here. When I first dreamed up Dale Martin, I wanted a character who was often misunderstood, and decided it needed to be as such a fundamental level he didn't even get to keep his name. (Some of this may be personal projection. Aaron Rath is a pen name; my real name isn't a secret, I just opted not to use it because it confuses people. My first name is a common last name and my last name is a common girl's first name. I'm forever flipped backwards, and into the wrong gender.) I'm honestly confused now why I picked Dale Martin -> Martin Dali, since it's not even a proper spoonerism, which it ought to have been to fit the book's theme.

At that time, I knew nothing about Dali, other than melting clocks from The Persistence of Memory posters. But if there's one thing I'm good for, it's that after latching on to a joke, no matter how offhand, I will then pursue it tenaciously. So I started buying books of Dali collections, and read a couple of biographies, until it became a research project that for a year or so took up more time than I spent actually writing, even though for the most part I didn't even have anything in the book about him, except for an "Any relation to the artist?" running joke, and Ginevra's offhand comments when she first meets Martin.

I wanted to work in more, but didn't really have a place for it, until nearly at the end. One of the last sections I wrote was Martin's relationship with Kim. (In the original version, Kim was concentrated into one chapter, all of it supposed to be a unified theme, rather than mixed in chronologically with the rest of junior year, the way it is now.) I kept putting it off in part because at age 23 I still hadn't had a significant relationship and felt I didn't have much insight into imagining one for Martin, and beyond that I simply didn't have any ideas for how it would rise and fall.

Finally, one day while flipping through one of my Dali books, I noticed the title of one, The Great Masturbator. I laughed to myself, thinking he had a knack for really catchy titles, and thought it might almost make for a great story. Well, why not use it for myself? If there's a great masturbator, obviously that has to be Martin. Why's he masturbating so much? Again, obviously, it's because he's trying to get the relationship started, but something isn't working when it comes to intimacy. Okay, that's a start.

I flipped through the books, writing down all the other titles that I really loved, or that seemed to fit with a relationship, or were attached to images that I liked. I won't list them all, but some of the favorites included:

• Paranoiac-Critical Solitude
• Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds
• The Unsatisfied Desire - obviously goes with the Great Masturbator
• The Wounded Bird
• Metamorphosis of Narcissus
• Autumnal Cannibalism
• Sleep
• Swans Reflecting Elephants - a nice reversal of Narcissus
• The Persistence of Memory

Those plus a dozen more, all powerful titles. I shuffled them a bit, and started to detect certain themes: desire, struggle, a transformation, a restful peace, then more transition and a wistfulness. If that didn't spell out the full course of a relationship, nothing did. Given that auto-generated structure, actually filling in the details after that went really quickly. It was universally recognized as the strongest chapter of my first draft (and rated as surprisingly realistic, from a number of people who knew I wasn't writing from experience, but who had been there themselves), and in fact when it was over I spent a bunch of time wondering if I'd done it all wrong, because Martin clearly needed to end up with Kim after everything they'd been through. I had to really pump up the subsequent Ginevra chapter to make it convincing why he'd want to pursue her instead.

All of this was long before I thought up section numbers for the rest of the book. During the rewrite where I added them, I debated for a long time whether I should keep the Dali theme in the Kim section or convert them to numbers, too, and ultimately decided if I dropped the Dali titles I'd be cutting out too much of the original vision. So those stayed with Kim, and then that gave me the leeway to add in a few other joke titles (????, the infinity symbol, 3.14159, 2.71828) plus the Greek letters on some other sections, but that's a topic for another entry.

This technique isn't uncommon. You could just as easily generate ideas with a deck of tarot cards, or pull slips of paper out of a hat, or throw a dart at a grid of ideas. I think I've even seen plot spinners. Using Dali paintings seemed like a way to work in a little tribute and reference to the artist whose name I was borrowing.

“Show, Don’t Tell” Must Die

If we could obliterate the commonly used critique, “Show, don’t tell,” today, it wouldn’t be soon enough. Why?

It’s pithy … too pithy.

The phrase is short and sweet, a three-word Band-Aid that can be applied to many different failings. It may seem useful to have a versatile phrase which quickly encapsulates the issue and suggests a fix. Problem is, it’s so dense it tends to require extensive follow-up explanation. I’ve read lengthy articles on the topic, page after page, as a supposedly competent writer tries to unpack what “show, don’t tell” really means.  

Worse, there’s a great divergence of opinion on that subject. Some say it’s a call for more detail or vibrancy, as in the apocryphal Chekhov quote, “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Sometimes it’s a call to make a passive moment more active. Others suggest the rule really only applies to emotion, where you need to demonstrate realistic feeling rather than flatly indicate that it’s happening.

But if your three words could be indicating any or all of the above, how is the writer to know? From context, maybe. Or maybe it’s a vague and lazy panacea, when something more specific would be appropriate.

It’s most often said to those who understand it least.

Due to lack of experience, beginners are the most prone to all of the faults listed above. If they knew how to do it better, they would. Delivering a deceptively simple catch-phrase about showing instead of telling doesn’t really explain the complexities of what needs to be fixed. It may be fine to nudge an experienced author on occasion if one of their scenes is flat, but there’s a good chance a new writer’s whole story suffers from multiple different show-v-tell flaws. Giving them three words is frankly almost no better than giving them nothing.

It’s the hammer of the critique world, and it turns all problems into a nail.

There’s an expression, if all you have is a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail. “Show, don’t tell,” is likely to be the first and most common of all criticisms for beginning writers. It becomes the first tool applied to their work, and then in turn is the first tool they lob at someone else when they get a chance to critique, repeated ad nauseam until more subtle tools have been learned.

By golly, I’m going to stick someone they way I got stuck.

Maybe I’m venturing too far into psychology here, but I’ve seen critiques get a little … shall we say competitive? I think there’s a lot of writers who, when first jabbed by “show, don’t tell,” particularly if it’s delivered in a snide tone, hold on to that moment and then pay it forward with a certain amount of vengeful relish. “My drill sergeant pounded it into me, and now I’m going to pound it into you,” I can almost see in their eyes, hear in the tone of their voice.

I could be wrong about this one. Maybe I’m just personally lousy about showing too often, and well-intentioned advisers really needed to hammer the point home to save me. But I’d swear at least some of the time I could see the “gotcha!” in their eyes.

What should we do instead?

I stand by my headline. I think the phrase “show, don’t tell” should die. It would be better for most writers, and especially beginning ones, to get a much more targeted criticism instead of an inscrutable mantra. If it’s too passive, tell them it’s too passive. If they’re glossing over details that would be more interesting if depicted thoroughly, say that. If you don’t think the emotional content is believable or gripping enough, explain how it could be more vibrant.

Besides, if the person delivering critique is supposed to be enough of a writing hot-shot to give advice to anyone else, shouldn’t they be able to do more than just repeat the same three words over and over? Where’s their originality?

Q&A: What Does Fractal Storytelling Mean?

What is the "fractal storytelling" from your novel Stranger and Better supposed to mean?

Short answer: your guess is as good as mine. Heh.

Longer answer: from the beginning, the idea of patterns was laced into the book. There's "The Pattern" (an acid-induced vision), Ish's Zen rock garden pattern, metaphorical patterns of Martin's stay at the school, and a lot more. The ultimate pattern was supposed to be a fractal, a self-repeating pattern that was particularly popular during the years of the book (1992-1998, roughly). You could get posters and screen savers, and it made little appearances in pop culture (though its most famous moment is probably a lyric in Frozen's "Let it Go").

I thought I'd try to adapt that concept to the narrative itself. My early interpretation was that the book would often start a scene or idea, delve into a different scene or series of concepts, and then slowly work its way back out (in other words, sort of like the Seinfeld backwards episode, but in two directions). Each chapter would open and close with two halves of the same scene, and lots of other moments would zoom in or out between layers - the same way if you're looking at a fractal, you can zoom in and out, because it repeats itself.

Later, I decided it wasn't working very coherently, so I straightened out the entire story to be chronological, thinking I needed to look at it in order, before I could choose how to artfully pull it out of order. Eventually it seemed that it was better to tell the story mostly chronologically, and I needed to come up with another way in which a story could be fractal.

My next idea was that certain themes would repeat themselves. Scenes would parallel each other, sometimes direct repeats, sometimes mirror images, or occurring in other variations. For instance, there's one paragraph that appears three times, verbatim, but it comes as a response to three totally different scenarios, and then triggers three totally different results. Certain locations are revisited with different combinations of people, certain conversations are rehashed with different friends, or in some cases the same point is rehashed with the same friend, to a different conclusion. There's another scene where Martin's friend Leon ends up running away from him while standing in a park; in a much later scene, Martin ends up running away from Leon at that exact same spot.

Originally, briefly, I thought maybe I could make an entire book out of four themes: drugs, angst, lust, and competition, which would make up the four sides of the squared-off spiral that recurs as an image in the book - call it the four walls of the structure, or the four cardinal directions. Even further, I thought maybe I could even rotate through them, always in order. Probably two-thirds of the scenes do cover one of those four elements in some way, but as a guiding structure for a novel I couldn't make it work. It's on my wishlist for things to try again when I'm more skilled.

I dropped the four directions/themes idea, but the repeating scenes angle did make it into the final draft. Still, it didn't seem enough by itself to make things really "fractal." To add another dimension, I decided what the book needed was layers of commentary. So there are points where Martin comments on himself, on his writing, and on the writing process. But then I've worked in a kind of editorial train-wreck, where the characters who are supposed to have been assembling the book for publication start making comments about the narrative, and in some cases begin to bicker with each other and provide meta-commentary and meta-meta-commentary on the text. This culminates with a final layer, mostly revealed in the book's conclusion, which I won't explain to avoid spoilers. 
  Stranger and Better is available in digital format from Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZKVT62 ) and in print from most major online retailers.

'The Eight-Bit Bard' Now on DriveThruFiction

I'm branching out and trying The Eight-Bit Bard on DriveThruFiction, sister site to DriveThruRPG, a place full of role-playing-gamey goodness. It seemed like a great location to try out my fantasy novel, which is full of subtle nods and rich parody of computer role-playing games and role-playing in general.

https://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/218202/The-EightBit-Bard

Q&A: The Five Drafts of "Stranger and Better"

The dedication in Stranger and Better indicates that parts of the novel are 18 years old. How does that happen, and what changed in the interim?

I wrote the first draft between 1998 and 2001. It took that long in part because it was my first effort and I was still learning how, but also because it was 200,000 words, nearly twice as

long as the final project. Some of that was lack of focus, some of that was inability to condense, and some of that was my habit of reading 600-page novels and believing mine needed to match.

The original version had only 9 chapters. They were theme-based rather than chronological, so you'd have a chapter about Ish, a chapter about Kim, a chapter about Ginevra. All the subcomponents were mixed up, but that was supposed to be okay because it was fractal, which in the early version just meant "jumped around a lot, while folding in on itself." Each chapter began and ended with the same scene or idea, book-ending the other events. Each chapter also had a theme (quintaphones, spoonerisms, Dali paintings). Those items are still in the final product, but more scattered rather than concentrated. So those ideas broke down a little, but I think it ultimately made sense, because chronological continuity really helps follow the rest of the story.

The last chapter in particular was problematic. I had front-loaded a lot of the difficulties and angst that Martin feels, and the final chapter was supposed to be a combination of acid trip, flashback, and total re-assessment of his experiences. It was fifty pages long, two thirds of it in italics for the flashback, and very jumbled. Also, after a lot of reflection, it just felt dishonest, to paint a miserable picture and then say, "Oh, by the way, here's all this other stuff I kept from you." Some of that was supposed to reflect Martin's mood, so it wasn't so much a total lie as just what he was focused on, but it still didn't seem right.

For most of the next decade I didn't know what to do with the book. I knew it wasn't polished enough, but I didn't know how to self-edit. Maybe I still don't (maybe it's not even really possible), but I started and stopped a couple of times. Then my brother (who is an editor) gave me notes on the first chapters, and I started up again. But that still left me 7 chapters short of a final product.

In the meantime I'd been writing other books, and eventually published Chicagoland in 2013. Working with an editor on that project taught me a lot about brevity, coherence, and making sure everything in each scene is actually relevant to something.

I finally decided I wasn't doing "fractal storytelling" right, and figured the only way to sort it out was to first write the entire book chronologically, and then figure out how to interleave the sections meaningfully. So I completely straightened the narrative and cleaned it up. That was Draft 2.

Somewhere around there I realized that Martin's philosophy major needed to take a more prominent role, and decided on a quest for the meaning of life as the main thrust of the book. On top of that, I'd learned to recognize junk scenes and pointless digressions, letting me cull about 30% of the old book, while adding a new 25% in meaning of life sections. I did the same thing with a whole bunch of other scenes that were passive discussions, which were re-written to be more active. That was Draft 3.

Then I read a lot of Vonnegut one spring, and decided to introduce the concept of fragments found in a library. That introduced the section numbers and pulled the story further into pieces. Around this time I also realized the chronology had problems. I had to make Martin start college a whole year earlier in order to line up events, and then for pacing and narrative development about a third of the book shifted order, changing semesters and years until it all fit again. Thus was Draft 4.

Around there I roped in a couple of test readers, who noted the book still wasn't coherent enough and started kind of slowly. So I really played up the meaning of life, took out some more scenes that I liked but could finally recognize as not useful to the story, and then also re-inserted a flashback into the first year, so that I could open with an acid trip rather than letting the book start slowly. That made the fifth and final draft, and is where I decided to polish, beta-test, and publish.

Stranger and Better is available in digital format from Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZKVT62 ) and in print from most major online retailers.  

Koala's March - A Story of Pocky and Bad Translations

This is not my creation. It’s something from the internet a friend shared with me so long ago it’s not even on the internet anymore. I am doing my job to repost it, because it is in my top ten favorite poems of all time.

Koala’s march:
The flavor of strawberry, of Koala’s march
Do you know?
In the inside of Koala’s march
A part of chocolates tastes of its flavor of strawberry.
Eat it,
And you taste giant strawberry pocky.
Therefore, next time, part 2 (last time)
I wish you are looking forward to.
I have what it must say to you by all means.
The koala’s march, the flavor of strawberry,
Is not sold in Hokkaido regrettably.
The taste was written last time.
But its koala has eyebrow,
And you may feel tasteless.
Bye.

Interesting addendum: I've loved this poem since about 1998. At the time, I thought the word "pocky" was a mistranslation, or a typo for "pocket" or something. Eventually I learned that pocky is an actual thing. Just this spring, in April 2017, I was in New York City and found pocky on the shelves of a convenience store. I bought some (strawberry, even), and it was delicious. Since then I've also had some chocolate pocky. I'm now a huge fan, both of the food and the poem.

Q&A: The "Stranger and Better" Numbering System

Most sections of your novel, "Stranger and Better," are numbered. Can you explain the system?

 At one point, I thought the book would unfold as a mystery, following a librarian character who unlocks a numeric code and uses that to locate and piece together all the entries. That eventually proved to be unworkable, partly because I couldn't come up with a good enough mystery code, and also because I didn't want to make the book 20,000 words longer, just for the sake of a mystery.

The final implementation of the code was supposed to reinforce the "fractal" theme - repetitions and iterations, mostly, more easily depicted and understood with short numbers than in the text. There are a couple of sections that mirror each other, either with an opening and closing, or a reversal, and their section numbers are mirror images (427 and 724, 421 and 124, 26 and 62).

Many of the remaining section numbers serve as a shorthand for the content of that scene. You definitely don't need to know the code to appreciate the text, but I hoped if someone was following along they'd pick up little hints and enjoy it on a second level. It's not particularly deep, just a sort of paint-by-numbers style (3 is Ish, 4 is happiness, etc. - it's more or less spelled out in some "editor's notes" inside the text).

Finally, we have the jokes. 101, 201, and 301 apply to sections with introductory, intermediate, and advanced philosophy. The 39 section mentions Rolling Rock, 151 involves rum, we've got "???" in a section on forgetfulness, 420 in a marijuana scene, and so on. Occasionally the number on the heading just matches a number inside the scene (Camel 99s), and on the really subtle side we've got section 413 which is code for the letters D (4th) and M (13th) in a scene that talks about the initials DM.

Then there's 42. At this point it's a cliche more than a joke (for those who know Douglas Adams) so I didn't want to play it up too much, but it appears twice in the book. Once as a header to a section about the meaning of life. The second is more subtle, but a book about the meaning of life also needed to have 42 chapters. 

Stranger and Better is available in digital format from Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZKVT62 ) and in print from most major online retailers.