The Verbosity of the Lamb: The Cyborg Anatomy of Stories

Kristen Lamb is an intelligent and eloquent writer and blogster. You can see her blog here.

She does this thing that many writers do, which is to describe the methods and means of storytelling and writing via metaphor. A sensible mode of instruction, of course. Tried and true as a thing that's been tried a lot and determined to be pretty true.

Thing is about metaphor, though, is it's like describing things with smells: when done aptly, has the power to reach into people and make them remember their childhood like the smell of vomited summer squash (a traumatic memory of mine, at least).

Her metaphors work well usually. She describes plot as the story's bones and she describes the antagonist as the story's engine. I like both of these ideas, not the least because they imply that stories are a kind of diesel-punk skeleton monster, tortured to action by the very thing that gives it life, which sounds cool (and I'll be logging it away as a thing to write about someday). There's a metaphor she uses that I don't think works, and that's something she says about character.

Characters, she says, are like your story's heart.

I don't think so, and this is why:

In modern, western culture, the heart does two things: it provides (figuratively) provides emotion, and (literally) maintains life. I agree that characters have a part in giving stories life and emotion, but I don't think that those are a character's primary functions.

I think that a better metaphor to describe characters in stories would be fingers. This is why: if the diesel-punk skeleton from above has a heart, but no fingers, then it's an interesting idea, but it doesn't do anything. With fingers, the diesel-punk skeleton has the ability to move around and change things.

In a reductionist practice of analysis, stories need to move around. They need to misdirect, conjure, scratch, play music, make signals, conduct, strike out...they need to move. Characters provide movement--they're interactive--they do things.

I do not disagree that the diesel-punk skeleton/Antagonized Plot requires some sort of emotional center and maintainer of life like a heart; I also don't think that the fingers/characters would be divorced from the emotive and living functions of the heart. The characters, I will forever contest, express ever significant part of stories--the "heart" included. I just think that the heart of stories is kept somewhere other than in its characters.

I think that the heart of stories is kept in the reader and the writer, but I'm not sure how to describe that, so I'm going to think about it for a while before I try to explain.

Midnight Thought to Remember

I want to record this where I know I can find it again.

My creative process has five parts.

Part 1 (Spark): This is when the whole work, in a nebulous rush, arrives in my head. All of it comes at once, maybe more than I can handle, but it has no definition. Nothing can be done with it yet. It occurs the same for all my endeavours--stories, business, papers, whatever. It occurs often with some other thing as a catalyst. Like say I hear a snippet of odd conversation, that'll spark an idea. Music get my juices flowing, or reading things, or seeing how things work or wondering how things work. The spark happens in a flash.

Part 2 (discovery or framework): In this chunk I think through the logistics of a real-world execution of the sparked idea. This is where outlining takes place--outlining, research, technique. I like the word "discovery" for it because often this step is more of a rearranging of the world into a good shape rather than any intense product of my mind, or it feels like that. "Framework" is also a good word, though, because this step is like construcing a skeleton.

Part 3 (articulation or fleshing): In the great scheme of things, the least important part. This is where the bulk of time is spent, however, in the most visible bits. In writing, this is where most of the drafts appear. This, however, is the draft that will never see the light of day and only serves to give enough shape to my outline so I know what the story is supposed to eventually be. This part, ironically, is the part that writers are most famous for doing, and if we aren't doing it our loved ones assume that no work is happening. The truth of it is that the fleshing step squanders more time than any step except, perhaps, the lastest step.

Part 4 (revision or dressing): In this step the "fleshed" or "articulated" stage is given beauteous form. It is, after the second step, the least valued and, after the second step, the most important stage in this process.

Part 5 (showing): And this is where the product is seen. Without this step it is questionable, in my opinion, how real it is.

Whew. That is all. Just wanted to get that out there while I had it on my mind.

Thanks.

Fish

In the name of efficiency, I'm shortening the damn word to "fish." So shut up.

"Fish" is when you get shit done fast without leaving shit out. (I'm listening to Keith Richards' autobiography read by Johnny Depp. Cope.) Ain't much needs be said about fish. Everyone's got their own idea about how to do it, but the damn word means doing shit fast without leaving shit out however the hell you do it. Weird part is when cats run around ignoring rules of fish for their own no doubt nefarious reasons. There's skeazeballs everywhere guilty of flagrant unfishincy--left-lane grannies, coffee shop nerve-wrecks, diner Sallies. In literature cats ignoring good fish spend their energies in fantasy, building worlds that ought to take care of themselves and explaining fascinating characters that capture the imagination and never do a damn thing till you've pissed off to watch some film or other. Fantasy bloat they call the act of spitting on good fish. Fucking annoying.

Whether I succeed or nay, my pledge to you my droogs, made with blood and piss and fuck all, is to make a hell of a charge at a smooth story. If it burns on reentry then it'll be a bright show.