Plot: Begins with an Idea and a Character

Plot.  It’s the elusive thing that drives every book, movie, tv show, story we tell and broadcast.  Every minute of our lives revolve around plot lines, whether we consciously know it or not.  For a storyteller, someone who crafts a fictional tale, plot can be the more terrible thing on this planet.  It can make and break a project.

I struggled with plot for the longest time.  I tried all the techniques from outlines, to webs, to chapter break downs, to diagrams.  Everything.  All the while it remained one of those very elusive creatures, just out of my reach.  If I was honest, this struggle was probably why I never completed a novel until now, when I’ve finally found my way into plot.

How I craft a plot is to first craft a character.  A well developed character with tell you their story, the plot of their life.  They’ll go through each point of it and they’ll help you walk along their path.  Is it easy?  Not in a million years.  Dozens upon dozens of characters will fail you before that one character will walk out and show themselves to you.  And it’s really hard just to wait for them. 

After the character prances out with their story, I find that one thing I want to deliver.  What is that over-arching idea that will carry the book…  Is it something symbolic, metaphorical, deep, shallow, adventurous, quiet, what is that thing that will capstone this story.  One arch is a revenge trip, another  a choice between a father and a sister, another is to help or hinder a man returning to his home, this is the first plot.  It’s the most important plot.  It’s what your story is all about.  Does it need to be fully fleshed?  Not for me… which is an odd thing to say, I realize.

With just these bare bones: a world, characters, an over-arching idea, I set out and let the characters I have crafted guide my story.  I used to fight them.  Like I said, I used to outline and pave the road with neon signs, but I’ve learned that my best work comes from trusting in these boundaries and creations and letting them go.  All I have to do is record the story of their lives. 

It isn’t always easy.  Each little character wants to be seen and heard and that’s where I have to come in as the editor and narrow the scope, but that’s only after letting everything settle and talk and form.  I have found that these little twists and turns happen naturally as I throw these pieces together.  Plot emerges from the swamp and gradually comes together, usually leaving me to try and tie up the ends… but that’s the fun part.  Finding out where this plot has gone and where I get to end it…

Even if ending it happens mid-sentence; even if…

Short Story: Whispers in the Wings

Short story week!  These little vignettes are what I used to do as a high schooler.  I'd jot this down between classes, or when there was quiet free time in class.  I like them and I'm glad to share them.

This week we decided on a theatre short since all of us our theatre people.  We're performers and so involved in that world that putting together a story set around theatre seemed like an easy and natural thing...except I took it in an unnatural direction.

Because, aren't all theaters haunted?

Whispers in the Wings


They came barreling into the darkness with their flashlights and giggles and shouts.  The silence of my revere was broken by this rambunctious group who were dressed in black and carrying all sorts of ridiculous supplies: candles, a Ouija board, incense.  These young intruders filled up the space with their warmth and their heartbeat and their life.  I wanted to resent them.

Their little group, about six in all, settled into the center of the stage.  The thick black curtains hung around them, framing them like a comforting blanket.  My blanket.  One of them, a boy, went about their circle and set candles while another followed behind with a little hand-held lighter that was pink; the kind I saw the stage hands use during performances but not the kind I had ever seen when I was alive.

The candles caste a flickering, orange glow around the whole space, even trickling into the rows upon rows of red velvet backed chairs in the audience.  I could easily imagine the light dancing off the cheekbones and glittering headbands of the audiences I had once performed for and a longing overcame me.  I wanted to walk on that stage with beads dancing on the hem of my dress around my calves and make them cheer.  But there was no one in the audience.  All I had were these six, squeaky children cluttering up my stage.

I circled them as they unfolded the board and took out the triangle.  There was some argument about whether it was a good idea or not (I was on the ‘not’ side) but as always, their voices and words were muffled through the veil that kept our sides separate.  It was why they had always heard my voice as a distant echo or a whisper in the wings.  It was frustrating.

The giggling died down as they settled in to ask their questions, fingers pressed on the sides of the triangle and eyes closed.  No other fingers joined them, but the thing moved around the board.  There was some debate about whether someone was doing it and I wanted to chime in with my own agreement, but I said nothing.

So they tried again.

“Should we have some fun, little Edith?”

The voice, deep and dark and like an echo in the mountains, came close to my ear.  If I had existed in a place where wind could touch me, it would have moved my carefully constructed finger-waves.  I shuttered.  “Let’s not.”

“Wouldn’t it be grand?  Give them a real scare?”  The voice was further away, somewhere in the wings that framed all of us. 

“No.  It wouldn’t.”

I wasn’t heeded. Instead, thick and calloused fingers joined the six living, youthful sets.  His patchy and torn suit should have brushed up against them and those he did touched shifted just slightly but they didn’t see him.  They didn’t open their eyes.  They just asked their questions and those horrible, cut up and bleeding fingers from a time even before me, guided them to the answers they thought they craved.

As the Ouija moved, hands flew back to their owners and eyes shot open.  I could see the whites around their colors and hear their heartbeats flutter.  I wished mine would flutter.  One girl backed away from the circle entirely, almost smacking to me.  I stepped away to the side, afraid of what might happen if we smooshed into one.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” she was saying.  “This is stupid.”

“Then why are you running away?”

“C’mon.  It’s fun.  Just sit back down Meredith.”

“No.”

“Just one more question.”

I watched, my eyes glued as the horrible man pushed, his greasy face scrunching up, and moved the triangle to the word: no.  No fingers were on it and Meredith screamed.  She waved her hands and backed out of the light of the candle circle.  Very slowly, I watched as he spelled out his message: G-E-T-O-U-T-B-E-F-O-R-E-I-T-S-T-O-L-A-T-E.

The other five backed out.  One boy grabbed another’s sleeve and tugged him toward the stage door exit.  The girls clutched at each other and didn’t even bother to make sure their friends were following, they were leaving.  Screaming.

Meredith was the last.  She looked like she was trying to decide if she should blow out the candles and then my horrible companion went off and blew one out himself.  She was decided: she ran and after the loud bang of the side door, we were alone.

“It’s for the best, Edith.  Don’t want them trapped here with us.”  Then he was gone.  A slippery whisper of smoke.

Alone in my silence, I walked over to the board and candles, the clicking of my beads in my ears.  I blew out each candle with a little puff, then, when the darkness wrapped around me once more, I went into the circle and knelt in Meredith’s seat.  It was warm.

Very slowly, I put my fingers on the triangle.  With my whisper, I asked: “Are you lonely.”  Then, pulling and pushing with every bit of whatever spirit I had in me left over from life, I pushed the triangle up and over.

Yes.

Main Girl - Short Story

I meet Aly downstairs. 

"Hey girl."

"Hey!" She sounds way too excited to see me. Me. Her main girl from Day One. Why is she so excited? I just saw her yesterday. "Have you seen Momma J today?"

I lay my messenger bag atop a pile of men's boots. "No, thank God."

"What's wrong?"

"Momma's just up to her old shit again."

Aly touches her belly as she crouched to grab a bag of bowties. The crinkling plastic works on my nerves but I zip my lips.

"Don't tell me she asked you--"

"Oh, she asked. I told, months ago, I'd be willing to play stage manager. So what does she do?"

"Hires a stage manager."

"Sure did. She's such a bitch. I swear to God."

Aly drops the bag of bowties. As if her magic fingers--the same ones that patched these jeans I'm wearing, the same ones I paid to handstitch my Jana Solo costume for Electric City Comic-Con--suddenly lost all feeling. Air compresses from the bag as Aly, after bending back down to retrieve it, presses the bag tight against her chest.

She dangles a couple bowties, red and blue, in front of me. "Whatcha think?"

"What am I supposed to think?"

"Think whatever you like." Her voice raises in volume, though her pitch remains cheery. I wanna slap her. I wanna know what's the matter with her. I wanna know what she's withholding from me.

Me.

Her main girl.

Day One.

"I like them both," I tell her.

"Good. Then perhaps Momma J will actually look at them."

We exit the costume shop and head into the main dressing room area. Aly takes a stool while I, messenger bag propped on my shoulder, opt to stand. Leaning over a clipboard, Aly pencils in her hours.

"Okay." She sighs. "Well I'm done here. You have rehearsal tonight?"

I stare at her. She crosses her eyes.

"What?" She punctuates her discomfort with a kitschy smile. The kind that says, "Nothing's wrong with me" when really there is.

"You're hiding something. Either you can tell me here and now or wait until later tonight but you will tell me."

"Keda--"

"Don't 'Keda' me. I know you, girl. Whatever secret you're keeping is eating you alive."

She averts my gaze, staring behind her at the washer and dryer; past me at the ironing board; over toward the dingy one-toilet bathrooms. Anything but me. Anywhere but my eyes.

"Later," she breathes, touching her stomach again.

Like it's aching. Like it won't stop aching.

This damn girl, I think. Not because of her belly or her impending news. But because I hate the damn boy she's screwing.

I'm her main girl from Day One, though. I'll be there--even when he won't.

What's In a Name?

Names are a description of being in one word.  In that singular word, you can tell the world that a character is Russian or Chinese or African.  You don’t need to constantly repeat what they look like because a picture has already been painted simply by giving a character or being a name.  But what does that mean for names?  It means that they are fundamentally important and any writer who says they don’t labor over the naming process, is lying.  They do.  Even subconsciously.

For myself, I’m obsessed with the naming process.  I love it like someone might love chocolate cake or cherry pie or burning hot salsa.  You just do and there’s no way to explain it. 

I love spending endless hours pouring over baby name websites, name generators and behindthename.com, a favorite.  My eyes scan each name, then roll it around in my head and then try to connect it to a character because that character has to own it and love it and accept it.  Or it just won’t work.  Case in point: my current project has a character with a name I don’t particularly like, but she refused to let me name her something else.  She put her foot down and I gave in and I realized that yes, that name was absolutely who this character embodies. 

Other times, I pointedly research the names for their meaning.  If a character is firey, then I want their name to mean ‘fire’ or some variation thereof in their name.  I feel as if I do that, then every time their name appears, that characteristic will make it to the page and define them.  That’s why the process is so painstakingly long for me when I approach it from this angle.  The name will pull the character and so I cannot just take it lightly… but that’s fun.  That’s research and for whatever reason, I love research.

Now, I don’t go through this every time I need to name a character.  When I’m working on something that has a specific period such as my 1870s project or my fantasy based in Viking and Celtic cultures, I tend to generate a database of names that speak to me.  I form lists of male and female names so that when I do come across a character who needs a name, I can go to my list and pick one.  I don’t have to remove myself from that grove to go and find a name.  I will say that this tends to be a more period/fantasy specific technique for me.

No matter which way I find a name, I’m always looking to make sure that that name properly represents my character.  I’ll be stuck with it for however long it takes to write their story and that name has to matter.  It has to define and inform and pull a character.  It isn’t just an arbitrary combination of letters that we call a name.  It IS that character and it has be thought about… even if it comes as an epiphany or through hours of absolutely fun database searching (I mean that sincerely).

Name: Definition.  Description. Personality.  Force.  Being.