We Are Certain The Contaminant is Biological

  • k-avataris biological in nature
  • the gentleman bowed
  • indicated the formation of the first crystals
  • certain dark and dirty chambers
  • but the Impala is a spacious automobile

“We are certain the contaminant is biological in nature,” I was advised, and the gentleman bowed as he told me the news and indicated the formation of the first crystals in certain dark and dirty chambers of the passenger compartment, “and, we fear, quite virulent,” the dapper mechanic went on, “but the Impala is a spacious automobile, so just stay out of the affected zones and you’ll be fine.”

Bonus points for using them in one sentence, and in order!

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Blaine Approached the Tennis Court

  • by jenin small gold letters
  • five minutes or an hour
  • your love was just a game
  • “Let him speak!”
  • so weak and emaciated

Blaine approached the tennis court bleachers where Lucille sat with her gaggle of girlfriends, watching the match. She saw him coming and stood to leave, but Gertrude grabbed her by the elbow and said, “Let him speak!”

It mattered not if he spoke for five minutes or an hour, Blaine knew he had no hope of winning her back, so he read the speech he had prepared ahead of time which was printed in small gold letters on an index card and cupped in the palm of his left hand. “Your love was just a game, Lucille, like tennis, and I so weak and emaciated from the nonstop playing of it that I could not help but lose.”

And with what little dignity he still possessed, he turned and strode away, leaving Gertrude and the others all awhisper.

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Can’t Stand the Pressure

r-avatarAmong the most common recommendations thrown at writers is to always end a chapter/scene/paragraph/sentence on rising tension. Man, that makes for irritating prose.

Like most advice, good or bad, this is primarily aimed at those still learning. Limp plotlines are a common problem for newbies, so the impulse to remind them to keep us engaged is understandable. And even veterans are susceptible to info-dump and purposeless dialog and throat-clearing, all the bugbears that make the text drag. The problem here, as with all bad advice (badvice?), is not the intent.

The problem is that it’s the wrong prescription, and it’s overprescribed to boot. In some genres, a pell-mell dash with no letup is desired. But if you’re writing in that niche, you know that’s what you’re about. The reminder probably doesn’t mean much. No, this advice gets broadcast all the time as general-issue guidance. Did you think you were going for a somber tone, evoking loss and regret through imagery? Wrong — go back and punch it up. Laying the groundwork for a stunning reveal? Nope, we can’t allow that — tension only ever rises, haven’t you been listening?

Given the goal of reader engagement, writers have several options that are unrelated to the state of tension. Having something significant to say is a great start — wanting to write as opposed to wanting to be a writer. A strong voice will carry just about anything. An inventive premise will hook readers, as will rich world building. Stories do need tension, sure, but the art lies in managing and manipulating it. Requiring that it go up and up and up, always up, makes it predictable and wearying.

The reason most advice fixates on things like rising tension has less to do with whether it’s a common deficiency and more to do with it being somewhat empirical. Readers are likely to agree on whether or not tension is increasing, whereas tastes and moods determine our assessments of things like voice. But just because they’re difficult to quantify doesn’t mean you can’t get better at them. Let your story flow where it must. Never artificially raise the tension.

For more thoughts on the scarce good and copious bad advice writers receive, you can view our “advice” tag. Also, Reggie Lutz has weighed in on the matter recently, so go check that out!

It Was The Kind of Memory

  • k-avatarmadly dig at your ears with a Q-Tip
  • endless chain of consequences
  • the submersible’s robotic arm
  • aka the Maine lobster
  • a solitary llama was squeezed in

It was the kind of memory that makes you want to madly dig at your ears with a Q-Tip, or with a fork, some implement that can eradicate it from your head. One little lapse that led to an endless chain of consequences and ever deepening despair, depths both figurative and literal. Allowing the code book to be thrown overboard, which meant the message from HQ couldn’t be deciphered and the ambassador’s questions couldn’t be answered. Now, a mile below the stormy surface, using the submersible’s robotic arm to retrieve the errant codex from the muck. Hoping to complete the task quickly and avoid a run-in with the armored patrol sub of Jack Rabies, aka the Maine Lobster. The ambassador knows more than he’s telling you, has some disturbing personal stake in the outcome. At his insistence, a solitary llama was squeezed in with you on the tiny sub. Fortunately, it knows how to operate the sonar array.

 

bonus points for using them in order!

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As the Butler

  • by jenonly marginally shorter than the average man
  • he hissed
  • came from the heart and not from the lips
  • the butler put my cloak
  • I know you may be skeptical

As the butler put my cloak in the closet he hissed, “I know you may be skeptical, but I am only marginally shorter than the average man,” but the sound came from the heart and not from the lips, for there is no way to truly hiss a phrase with so few sibilant sounds in it.

bonus points for using them all in one sentence!

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It’s Just Like Riding a Unicycle

r-avatarThey say that you never forget how to ride a bicycle, and in our experience that’s true. The problem is that sometimes novel writing feels more like riding a unicycle, and neither of us ever figured out how to do that (Jen does get bonus points for actually owning one when she was a kid).

The manuscript currently checks in at a little over 23,000 words, which means yay! we’re making progress. That’s double what it was the last time we talked about it. But the last time we talked about it was several weeks ago and that’s really not a ton of progress when you consider that there are two of us.

The current speed bumps are thus: Kent keeps falling down research rabbit holes and trying to write scenes to incorporate all of his new learnings, but those scenes are far ahead in the outline and haven’t been stubbed yet, and this causes angst and rewrites. Meanwhile Jen is trying to check the work we’ve completed so far against the stubs to make sure that every important detail has been included before she files the stubs away. That wouldn’t usually be a very time-consuming job, because usually we’re meticulous about following the blueprint presented in the stub. Right now, though, we’re still trying to remember how to balance on one wheel, and some details are falling through the cracks.

Why doesn’t Jen just go ahead and make the necessary changes? That was the plan, until she got into the thick of things and discovered that she’d forgotten how to steer something with no handlebars. It took many reassurances from Kent that, yes, she is allowed to — nay, is expected to — make changes, even to stuff Kent wrote, before she felt comfortable doing just that. It was a strange headspace for her to be in, and she seems to have figured her way out of it, finally.

We might not be ready to ride our unicycles in the circus, but at least we have each other around to help balance.

To The Cocky Princeton Freshman

  • k-avatar(What we deem offensive is probably about what you’d expect)
  • cocky Princeton freshman
  • instill fetishes in human beings
  • the police force in Prefrontal, Nebraska
  • she says, “Open up your mouth, man.”

To the cocky Princeton freshman she says, “Open up your mouth, man.” He does. “Shut your eyes.” He does. The waitress was holding a can of whipped cream the whole time, so his cooperation was understandable. Of course, he’d been hitting on her relentlessly for an hour, so it was also understandable that she crammed his “generous” tip into his ignorant maw and then sprayed him in the puss with the whipped cream while he spat out nickels.

The ensuing disturbance at Tipsy’s Diner was not the sort of event that the police force in Prefrontal, Nebraska was really prepared to deal with. They overreacted a tad, storming the place in full SWAT getup and arresting everybody they didn’t recognize as a local.

Of course, being a frosh, this cocky twerp had never been in cuffs before. In the back of the van he discovered that he liked it, which would eventually inspire his master’s thesis on factors which instill fetishes in human beings. Which was what got him kicked out of Princeton. His advisor wrote, “This offensive paper made our chihuahuas retch. (What we deem offensive is probably about what you’d expect)”

So, yeah, I knew him before he was a supervillain.

 

Aureliano is Really Quite Masculine

  • by jenalthough his solid chin is clear of any hair
  • with a canine-skin collar
  • “Big Apple” cufflinks
  • dark blue eyes and a beautiful belly
  • overruled by Judge Maurice

Aureliano is really quite masculine, although his solid chin is clear of any hair, his chest as well. He has dark blue eyes, and a beautiful bellybutton rests in the center of his rock-hard abs. Dancing at my bachelorette party with a canine-skin collar around his thick, manly neck, and absolutely nothing else on but Chippendales style faux-cuffs decorated with “Big Apple” cufflinks, he is the very definition of virility.

“What the heck,” I say to myself, “I’m not married yet!”

I throw caution and my clothes to the wind and smile enticingly at Aureliano. He smiles back, but our tryst is overruled by Judge Maurice, which is what Aureliano calls his penis, which refuses to cooperate, if you know what I mean.

I tip him well anyway, to ensure he doesn’t mention this to my fiancé Dirk tomorrow when Aureliano stands beside him as best man at our wedding.

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Working Without a Net

r-avatarIt started off as research notes. We need to nail down the methodology of one of our characters, incorporating a bit of near-future seasoning.

Then Kent said, “I should write an apocryphal scene depicting all this stuff, to get a feel for it.” The next bright idea was, “Why not consult the outline and find a beat that belongs in the novel, so the prose doesn’t just get discarded?”

That’s fine in theory. Economizing effort. Thing is, the stubbing process hasn’t progressed that far into the outline yet. So, it became an object lesson in our dependency on stubs. When Jen heard the first draft, she said, “It’s well done…”

Uh oh.

Some of what Kent invented on the fly wasn’t right for that moment, or for that character. We both liked the imagery and the conceptual basis, though, which gave us a minor dilemma. The whole idea had been to avoid discarding the practice-prose, but now we had something that wasn’t working.

Fortunately, we have each other to talk to. In short order we determined that what Kent had come up with makes more sense if it’s attached to another character. And it does — it’s more in line with her personality, and it dovetails more smoothly with some later plot developments. One wonders how things would have taken shape had we played by our own rules. We’ll never know, but we know we’re pleased with how it’s working out.

I Know It’s a Taboo Subject

  • k-avatarlike the tears of a manatee
  • chews on bed sheets
  • Considering the circumstances?
  • his penis hung from the bush
  • into a dazzling brilliancy

I know it’s a taboo subject, but I’m afraid I must insist we discuss it. Would it be easier if I substituted a code word for the offensive term? Very well. Rather than actually saying that word which so distresses you, I shall say “penis.” Agreed? Excellent.

First off you have to bear in mind that Hinshaw was there. Yes, that changes everything. I mean the man chews on bed sheets, and we’re talking fraternity bedding. No class. Anyway, for all his faults the man’s a marvelous mixologist. On the night in question he took Winston’s — er, Winston’s penis — took it behind the bar with him. Winston didn’t know, poor thing, and spent half the evening searching for it. But Hinshaw used the penis to invent a new cocktail, and it was like the tears of a manatee muddled into a dazzling brilliancy with ginger and a hint of cloves. Winston got so sloppy on them, it’s no wonder he lost track of where his penis got to.

Me? Did I have any of this devilish concoction? Considering the circumstances? What do you take me for? It was delicious. I think Winston deserves at least half the credit, though.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter. Hinshaw, that madman, doesn’t know how to take proper care of himself and his own things, so you can imagine his cavalier treatment of Winston’s… So as the sun came up, Winston and I split up and it was me who found it. His penis hung from the bush next to the driveway. Well I’m afraid I panicked and hid it in my pocket. I lied to poor Winston and so as far as he knows the thing’s still missing. I have it with me. It doesn’t feel right to just leave it lying about, you know?

I really do need some advice.