Category: Writing

Slings & Arrows: SPOILERS!

The Canadian TV show, “Slings & Arrows” is so good I almost can’t stand it.  Three seasons, six episodes per season, and it is a gem.  The writing, the acting, everything.  There are many things worth talking about with the show, but my main focus, of course, is on the writing.  I may return to this show in the future as I consider more of the techniques they use, but for this post, I’m just going to look at one particular thing Jen and I were discussing today.  Very much spoilers, in case you didn’t notice the title of the post.

There is a delicious moment in the third season where Geoffrey, finally willing to see a therapist, sits down with Oscar’s ghost and has a conversation with him.  The therapist wants him to pretend that Oscar is really there (obviously, he is) and they have that talk they’ve needed to have all along.  It is heart-rending and hysterically funny, with the therapist making comments like, “You’re really good at this.”  In a sense, it is the payoff we didn’t know we were waiting for since the Geoffrey-Oscar issues were introduced in season 1.

Note that: the payoff we didn’t know we were waiting for.

But then, in the last episode, something happens that makes me want to bow down before the writers as nothing on TV has since “Rome” pulled off the, “You too, mother?” thing.  The payoff referred to above, which is complete, and elegant, and fulfilling by itself–turns out to be a set-up for the epilogue.  Suppose I told you, “Then, at the end, one of the characters sits there talking to an empty chair and fills the viewer in on all of the ‘here’s what happens to the characters after the show’ stuff.  Lame.  Stupid.  Artificial.  Forced.  Except, because of the set-up with the previous conversation, it is closure in several ways at once; it is breathtaking.

In other words, the writers manage to use a payoff as a set-up for the next payoff, which turns a cheap trick into an elegant device, all without the viewer realizing what is happening.  It is a tour de force.  I don’t know what I can learn from this beyond, “Some writers are really, really good,” but I know I’m going to be keeping an eye out for a way to pull that one off.

Who Do You Write For, and The Effect of Good Criticism

One of the fun things to consider about writing is: who are you writing for?  My stock answer is that I’m writing to entertain an imaginary reader out there who just happens to like everything I do.  In fact, it is a bit more complex than that.  Sometimes people who are important to me get passages.  “I’m going to put this in there for Jen,” or, “Pamela will like this,” or, “This will make Will chuckle,” or, “Okay, Adam, here’s one for you,” or, “I wish I could see Emma’s face when she gets to this bit.”  Obviously, this is even more fun when collaborating: writing to delight your collaborator is a big part of what drives you.

That’s one of the things that makes writing fun and enjoyable.  And I make no apologies, because if Adam, for example, is going to be pleased when I make fun of elaborate, stupid dream sequences, well, I’m pretty sure some other readers will also be tickled.  And tickling the reader is good in at least two ways:  One, I like to make readers happy.  Two, a good tickle tends to disarm the reader, thus setting him up for a good, hard, kick in the ‘nads.

I now abruptly change subjects.

I adore good criticism.  By good criticism, I mean a piece of writing that makes me go, “Oh, man.  I hadn’t noticed that.  Cool!”  The platonic ideal of a critic for me has always been the late and very much lamented John Ciardi.  Of those working currently, one of my favorites is David Walsh of the World Socialist Web Site (he’s just written this, which I highly recommend).  Now, unfortunately, Walsh doesn’t often review Hollywood movies, which means he rarely discusses anything I’ve seen.   But, in the first place, his insights can be delightful even if I’m not familiar with the work, and, in the second, that makes it all the more fun when he covers something I have seen.  A good critic makes you think about how the creator achieved the effect, about subtleties that are obvious now that they’ve been pointed out, and about how this work fits into a broader context both within the genre and within the society that produced it.  This is stuff that I happen to enjoy, and is obviously useful, at a minimum in the sense of making you go, “Oh, hey, I know what I could do!”

And now we tie the two sections of this post together.

I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s essay collection, What Makes This Book So Great.  It is delightful on several levels, not the least of which is that I come in for a lot of ego stroking.  To semi-quote Twain, we like compliments. All of us do: writers, burglars, congressmen, all of us in the trade.  But with Jo’s book, I’ve noticed something else.  She keeps nailing me on things I did right, then backed away from.  I still remember writing my first book, Jarhead or whatever it was called, and thinking, “Why the hell can’t people write books with ongoing, happy romantic relationships where that is just part of the backdrop?  Fuck it, I’m going to do that.”  Then I didn’t hang with it, and Jo called me on that.  Or when I wanted to add a bit of revealing background by talking about how there weren’t carriages any more, now that teleportation was so common.  Then I slipped away from that, because I wanted a carriage in a particular story, and she noticed that (I’m working on a retcon for that one).  Critics who notice what you’re doing, like what you’re doing, and can point out things about your work that you didn’t notice, are incredibly valuable.

It just hit me today, as I was looking over the final draft of Hawk and considering the early chapters of Vallista, that at the moment I’m kind of writing for Jo Walton.  I can live with that.

Our Girl

Skyler and I finished a first draft of Incrementalists #2 last night. Working title: The Backmeddle.  That may change, as may everything else, during revisions.  The next step will be to chop scenes, or parts of scenes, that we don’t need.  But even after we do that, this book is going to be big.  By One True Word Count, she comes in at 135,000 words.

But our girl is tall; she was never meant to weigh 100 lbs.  And, more important, she has a healthy body-image.  When critics tell her, “You can never be too thin,” she rolls her eyes and just gets on with her life.  She is a strong girl, and likes it that way.  She chooses not to carry any fat–she wants everything to be there for a reason–but she will certainly not listen to those who tell her what she is supposed to look like.  She runs the hurdles of intertwining plots, she swims through complex themes, she lifts the weight of being a sequel, and she climbs rocks of multi-layered character.  She’ll look like she can do all of those things, and she sees no reason to pretend otherwise.   When we have finished her training, she will be exactly as big as she wants to be, and anyone who thinks she should be smaller can go fuck himself.

Skyler and I are not done helping our girl train, and become everything she is able to be, but she already knows herself, and we’re very proud of her.

 

The Idea of Guilty Pleasures

Disclaimer: If anyone is expecting this blog post to arrive anywhere near a conclusion, it is best to step off before the train gets rolling.  It arrives nowhere.  Stay on board if you think you might enjoy some of the scenery we pass on the way back to where we started.

Last night on Twitter, the subject of “guilty pleasures” came up. What do we mean by it? Is it an inherently objectionable concept? &c &c.  Some questions were asked that I’m having trouble answering, so I’m going to explore them a little.  Guilty pleasure, I think, is a concept worth taking some time with, if for no other reason than because it has some interesting interactions with the question of what we mean by “good.”  And, at least for a writer, it is always worth exploring that question, seeing as how, you know, writing stuff that’s good is kinda the goal.

Those who are saying, “it is time we get rid of this whole concept of guilty pleasures,” have an interesting point.  At least as I understand it, the argument runs, “If you’re enjoying it, there is something of value in it.  If there is something of value in it, maybe we should spend more time figuring out what that is and seeing if others will enjoy it, instead of castigating ourselves for enjoying it even though it does other things badly.”  That’s kind of hard to argue with.  Let’s see where it leads us.

First of all, to be clear, I do not actually feel guilty–in the strict, literal, I-have-just-hurt-the-feelings-of-someone-I-love sense of guilty, about enjoying something I call a guilty pleasure; nor does anyone else I know who uses the term.   What it means for most of us seems to be something along the lines of, “I like this, but I’m afraid if I admit it I’ll be teased about it,” or, “I recognize that this is a bad one-of-these, but I like it anyway.”  Hidden (or, perhaps, not hidden at all) in the idea of guilty pleasures are, therefore, two interesting concepts: one, that we worry about being judged for our taste, and, two, the idea that it is reasonable to have a sort of “good/bad” scale that is at least somewhat independent of one’s “like/dislike” scale.  At which point we realize that what we’re saying (to ourselves if not to anyone else) is, “I’m sorry I’m enjoying this.  I apologize.  I know I shouldn’t.” Sounds kind of dumb, doesn’t it?

Another thing that enters at this point is snobbery.  I don’t terribly care for snobbery, nor do I terribly care for those who point and cry snobbery whenever someone dares to suggest that the food at White Castle may not be as good as at the 5-star restaurant of your choice.  Here, too, we have the idea that there is something to the judgment of good/bad as distinct from like/dislike.

We all know that, for many, many years, science-fiction itself was something that certain literati who enjoyed it have called a guilty pleasure.  For me, the idea of apologizing for enjoying Theodore Sturgeon or Gene Wolfe is silly at best.  And I know that it would hurt my feelings to have someone call my work a guilty pleasure.  So, then, what am I doing apologizing (even if only to myself) for much the same thing?

Can I find a rational argument to support this position? Well, aside from cases that are so extreme as to be useless (horrible errors in spelling, grammar, syntax, or other technical problems) I really can’t. But I do feel that way.  I do feel that, for example, The Destroyer novels (one of my guilty pleasures) is, quite simply, not as good as, say, Zelazny’s Lord of Light.  I’m not at all certain I can justify that feeling, but neither can I ignore it.

I don’t know. Is my belief that there is good and bad in the arts anything more than rank pragmatism?  In other words, is it more than the knowledge that, if I don’t believe in “good,” I’ll be less driven to do my best work? I hope there’s more to it than that. My opinion of pragmatism is something I’ll save for another post, but it isn’t pretty.

There are a some subjective observations that might provide insight: 1. When I think of something as a guilty pleasure, it is based in part on the feeling that the artist did not do his or her best work–that this could have been better if the artist had cared enough.  2. One thing that I always feel when in the presence of what I consider great art, is a sense of awe that a mere human being, just like me, was able to do this, combined with a sense of pride in being a member of a species that could produce it. 3. Confession time:  When addressing a work that I consider good, especially a story, there is at least little part of me (and sometimes a big part) that is feeling, “Damn, I wish I’d created this!”  I never have that feeling with those works that I categorize as guilty pleasures.

So, as promised, I have arrived nowhere.  I’m still not sure what I think about this, or why I think it.  I know it is interesting, and I believe it matters, so I look forward to hearing what some of you think about it.

 

Margarine

The place was called The Bakery, and it was something of a Chicago institution.  Insofar as Valabar & Sons is based on any real place, it is The Bakery.  We used to drive from Minneapolis, eat there, then turn around and drive home.  It was well worth the journey.

Chef Louis — Lájos Szathmary — was an immense man with a massive gray mustache.  Periodically, during dinner, he would come out to meet the patrons and say hello.  Once, while he was chatting with us, it came out that I was a writer and we spoke about that for a bit.  From there, we got onto the subject of art in general, and I brought the conversation back to cooking.  I expressed the opinion that he was an artist.  He considered for a moment, then said, “I am an honest cook.”

“Can you explain that?” I said.  “I understand what honesty means in writing, but what does it mean in cooking?”

His Hungarian accent was thick, but his English was perfectly understandable.  He frowned a little, then said, “Every year, we use one pound of margarine.  For everything else, we use butter.”

Obviously, I had to know.  “What do you use one pound of margarine for?”

“We have a Christmas show once a year,” he explained.  “And to do it, we have to open up the building behind us.  The walkway is always icy, so we put margarine on our shoes so we don’t slip on the way.”

That’s what margarine is good for, you see.  For actual cooking, you use butter.  You use the best ingredients you can find.  You don’t scrimp on the details, and you don’t try to pull a fast one on the reader–excuse me, the customer.  If you ever find yourself thinking that the person you’re cooking for can’t taste the difference between butter and margarine, you’ve started down a road that leads to McDonald’s.

If there is joy in the story, let it flow naturally from events that feel inevitable, because the ingredients you have acquired and prepared and mixed together have formed that way.  The same if there is sorrow.  If there is death, make it real, make it meaningful.  If there is love, earn it.  If the food is spicy, let it be because the flavor combination you wish requires it, not because you added extra peppers to show how hot you can cook.  Sweet confections are fine, but you know and I know that there is a cloying, over-sweetness that can ruin the best dessert.  And if someone doesn’t care for your concoction because there isn’t enough sugar, or because it is too spicy, or there wasn’t enough action, or there was too much dialog, then at least you can know that what you set on the table was truthful.

The point is not to impress the reader with how good you are, but rather to delight, amaze, move, and even, if I may, epiphanize.  I am not the best writer whoever set fingers to keyboard, and sometimes my dishes don’t emerge from the kitchen tasting the way I want them to.  But I don’t cook my stories with margarine.  And neither should you.