A Story Like No Other

Zestful Blog Post #169

I hope the title of this post made you do a double-take, because of course every story is like no other; every story is unique to some extent. Not every story in the world, to be sure, is terribly interesting or even worthwhile, which is the point. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook—or Facefriends, as my brother, who does not have an account there, gamely refers to it—you might have seen my post the other day about my YMCA buddy Chuck. I’ve copied the post below, after the picture.

Of any post I’ve ever put up on FB, this one has received the most likes, comments, and shares. I’m not terribly active on FB, so to me the following stats are remarkable: as of this writing, 197 likes, 29 comments, 5 shares. I have 1,087 friends on FB, though almost all of my posts are public and I think anybody can like, comment, or share. People have been moved to tears by the post. It’s a story about a guy who got a tough break and who is working his damnedest to overcome it.

My point today is to reinforce simply this: People love stories. People learn from stories. People get inspired by stories. People NEED stories. If you tell a story from your heart, with love and truth, you will succeed. What is success? It’s reaching readers, even one, with something meaningful to them. If you are a storyteller, you are a core asset to this world. Tell it plain, tell it fancy. But tell it.

Took this selfie yesterday while chilling for a few minutes with Chuck in the snack room.

FB post:

So. This story. Last year while lifeguarding part time at the local YMCA, I met a guy named Chuck. Middle-aged, scrawny, disabled from a stroke. Used a base-line manual wheelchair, shoved himself along mostly with one hand and one foot. Had much trouble making himself understood, but I learned he'd been doing rehab for months. I operated the lift to get him in and out of the pool, where he regularly, doggedly attended water exercise classes. Made a point of calling him by name and cheering him on.

Last summer, a few months after getting to know him, was driving past the bus stop near the Y and saw him sitting in his chair in the hot sun waiting for the bus. The bastard was using THE BUS to get to and from his water exercise classes. How much easier to just stay home and vegetate in front of the TV? How much easier to just say, "I can't; (it's too much trouble)." How much easier to say, "I don't have a helper; I can't." Solo, he was helping his own crabbed-over, big-black-glasses-wearing, buck-toothed, determined ass.

After my six-month stint lifeguarding, which ended last December, I didn't see him as often, but I did see him. Yesterday, when I was swimming my lengths, I saw him in the water exercise group and waved. Later, as I was leaving the building, I saw him WALKING along the sidewalk outside. Using one arm-cane, big brace on his leg, glasses held together with a walnut-sized wad of Scotch tape, slowly, slowly, he was walking on his two feet.

Ran up to him. "Chuck! You're walking!" He smiled and nodded, and that was a hell of a great moment. A hell of a great moment. A hell of a beautiful sight. [end of post]

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Reverse Reading

Zestful Blog Post #168

Hi! I’m always so happy to see you. (I’ve never said that before in this blog, but it’s true. Everyone who reads my blog is my friend, because I get about as intellectually intimate as it’s possible to get, here. As soon as I upload a post, I imagine you reading and thinking along with me.)

The other day I wanted something to read that would be pleasantly stimulating but require no heavy lifting, so I cracked open my old Sherlock Holmes collection at random and read “The Naval Treaty.” Reread it, actually, but it had been so long that I didn’t remember the plot. As all Holmes readers do, I tried to guess the solution to the mystery. [Spoiler alert from here on; I’ll be discussing plot specifics.] I was fairly lazy about it, but one early hint stuck in my mind, and lo and behold, yep, the criminal turned out to be the fiancée’s brother.

Sometimes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote stories with so few clues for the reader that you have to just wait until Holmes tells you what he was up to offscreen, so to speak. But this one actually revealed to the reader pretty much all the information Holmes was privy to. So I went back in one-page increments (roughly) from the end, noting specifically how Doyle constructed the plot and planted clues.

The setup: A trusted Foreign Office employee named Phelps is given the original of a pending naval treaty between Great Britain and France to copy over. In the midst of the job, he steps out of the room to get a cup of coffee, and the original is stolen. Phelps is in deep trouble, the British government could be screwed if the treaty ‘should fall into the wrong hands’ (love that trope), the police are stymied, and Phelps appeals to Holmes for help.

It would take many paragraphs to unpack and discuss all the complex facts and clues, including a nice red herring subplot involving the office charwoman, but here’s what grabbed my attention first: Holmes and Watson go to the unfortunate official’s house in Woking and are welcomed by his future brother-in-law, a guy named Harrison. Holmes remarks that the man is not a member of the family; Harrison looks down and sees that Holmes must have noticed his monogram, and says, “For a moment I thought you had done something clever.”

A most generous hint from Doyle! One who belittles the skills of Holmes usually pays a price. Going back further, I saw that Harrison was placed in London the night of the theft; Phelps had planned to ride the last train home to Woking together with him. Now that is an actual clue: a factual bit of business that twines into the plot. That thread is left lying through most of the rest of the story, though Holmes, we learn at the end, picked it up and made use of it immediately.

Then I read the story again from the beginning and noted all references to Harrison. Most were minor and offhanded, with the main sturm und drang involving the charwoman. I noted Harrison’s behaviors and figured out the timeline for him, and saw how Holmes would have zeroed in on him after excluding other possible thieves.

So: For learning good plotting skills, repeated close readings can be tremendously helpful. As a reader, you can pretty much figure that the shouting and arm-waving are often a smokescreen; the train tickets and bedroom assignments can tell the real tale. As a writer, take the time to read closely, reread if possible, and make notes, zeroing in on particular elements that catch your attention. Try reading out of sequence: backwards, as it were. Watching one key character all the way through a story can yield great insights. Short stories are wonderful for this, because you don’t have to invest a ton of time to learn valuable stuff. I don’t read everything so tremendously closely, but I do read slowly, and I like to reread books and stories I consider excellent.

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Inside Interior Dialogue

Zestful Blog Post #167

Before getting on to today’s post, here are a few announcements about new books by friends:

Congratulations to BJ Phillips, whose first novel, Hurricane Season, is now out from Desert Palm Press! That first one is always so special… We hear there’s more in the pipeline from BJ. (See the book and more about her at her web site, linked to her name just above.)

And it’s high time for a plug for my buddy and all-around gentleman (hey, those two things are not mutually exclusive) Neil Plakcy, who keeps writing and publishing top-selling books in several genres. A slew of his new books are featured on the front page of his website. I admire Neil’s work ethic and prodigious output. He’s really a role model for me, and what’s more, he’s a fellow Floridian—as is BJ, coincidentally.

I might add that both Neil and I will be at the Novelists, Inc. conference at St. Pete Beach later this year. We’ll be participants, not presenters. Novelists, Inc., or NINC, is an association of professional authors who are committed to a) writing quality fiction and b) selling the hell out of it. I’ll let you know how that conference goes!

Have I mentioned that I’ll be doing the Florida Writers Conference in Altamonte Springs this year? Sorry if this is a repeat, but they’ve put up much more information on their website now. I’ll be presenting a couple of workshops, participating in a panel discussion, and will also be available for individual conferences. They cost extra, but all the money goes to FWA and its special programs for aspiring authors.

Oh, and gosh, local friends alert! Join me at the Selby Library in Sarasota (the main one with the pudgy white columns downtown) at 6 p.m. this coming Tuesday, July 5. I’ll be doing “Looking for Trouble: Doing Research for Fiction is not for Sissies.” More here. It’s free.

OK, so the latest compendium from Writer’s Digest Books is freshly available, Crafting Dynamic Dialogue: The Complete Guide to Speaking, Conversing, Arguing, and Thinking in Fiction. It has four chapters by me, as well as multiple chapters from other WD stalwarts such as James Scott Bell, Jeff Gerke, and Gloria Kempton. And hey, gosh, the first reviewer on Amazon said this, in part: "The two chapters on Dialogue and Suspense by James Scott Bell and Internal Dialogue by Elizabeth Sims, are worth twice the price of this fine volume."

So, cool. Two of my chapters are excerpts from You’ve Got a Book in You, and a third is a reprint of one of my articles for WD magazine. The fourth, “Understanding Internal Dialogue,” is original to the book. The excellent Cris Freese, editor of the book, invited me to write something on internal dialogue, and I gladly took up the challenge.

I see this post is already getting long, but I wanted to include an in-depth excerpt from the chapter, and here it is:

[Excerpt begins]

For both form and format, you can select something that feels right for you and your manuscript’s style and voice. Read closely to distinguish the differences in the six versions of this passage:

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. He felt like robbing a liquor store. Would a knife be sufficient? He didn’t know. [Entire passage, including inner voice, is third person, past tense.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense; inner voice is first person, present. And the inner voice is rendered in direct thought-speech.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [The identical passage as above, with Marco’s thoughts in italics.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. I sat at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is first person, past tense. The inner voice, in direct thought-speech, is first person, present.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should, he thought. Be something to do, anyway. He had his knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense. The inner voice is first person, past (though verging on present), and the narrative resumes in third person, past, in the final sentence.]

Saturday night comes, and still Sheila doesn’t call. I sit at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should rob that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Everything is first person, present.]

Any of these forms are correct, and they all have slightly different flavors—some seem more formal, some less. First person always reads as more informal and immediate. Just be as consistent as you can, once you’ve made your choice.

[End of excerpt]

This is the kind of attention to detail that marks out serious authors!

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How to Switch Gears Cleanly

Zestful Blog Post #166

This I know: Your life is a lot like mine. You have too much stuff to do, too many projects on deck—work and personal—and half the time you feel behind. I hate feeling behind, hate that mental fragmentation that happens when I try to do or think about multiple things at once. Probably like yours, lots of my projects overlap, and I have to do parts of them, then wait to do other parts until something else happens, or I have to set them aside because some other thing has risen in priority. It’s easy for me to overcommit. I like to say yes to people and projects.

But as I’ve written before, time is a zero-sum game. Eternity is eternal, but we all have a lifespan. I’ve been doing two things to save my sanity.

The first is cutting back on my editing/consulting work. I’m looking into other ways to help aspiring authors; stay tuned for more on that.

Second, I’ve been doing a simple, but conscious, technique to help myself not feel mentally fragmented. When I’m not actively doing a task, or am switching between tasks, I try to blank out my brain. Which makes me aware of all the mental clutter that’s there! Then, with awareness, the clutter more or less disappears by itself. Like, when I’m opening my computer and turning it on, I don’t have to be thinking about five things I haven’t gotten done yet this morning. Blank it out. The crap goes away. Powerful. Then I find my attention better focused on the here and now. Oh yeah, I'm breathing! Right! My inner self is more calm. I’m able to switch gears more cleanly, without extraneous thoughts dribbling around. I guess it’s like meditation. Only without the label meditation, which always sounds like work to me.

So my advice to us today is: Don’t feel overwhelmed. Just choose not to feel that way. Just do stuff, one task at a time. Blank it out now and then, and see how you feel.

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Fringe Life

Zestful Blog Post #165

I started to write a few paragraphs about the terrorist massacre in Orlando, but others have said everything already, and I need to keep this blog about what it’s about: zestful writing, zestful living. In that spirit I wish to tell you the results of a small choice I made yesterday.

I’m in my hometown of Detroit, on family business. (Local friends, don’t hate me for not getting in touch. Very tight timelines. I love you.)  Marcia and I are staying with a friend in the leafy, low-crime, northern suburbs. I happen to be under contract for a new article for Writer’s Digest magazine, so yesterday when I had a few hours to myself, I decided to start work on it.

My protocol for developing a new article is to hang out in as large a library as is available to me, brainstorm initial notes, and do research in the stacks. Yesterday my choice was to go around the corner to a nice suburban library, or take half an hour and drive down the crumbling Woodward corridor to the Detroit Public Library.

I tried to convince myself to stay north of Eight Mile, but the pull of the old cultural center was too great. They call the area that comprises Wayne State University (where I got my master’s), the main public library, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and assorted newer museums the Cultural Center. I knew I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t go to the DPL, for old time’s sake if nothing else. But I knew in my heart it would be worth it. The trip cost extra time, trouble, and, to be honest, anxiety. You just can’t grasp the enormity of the city’s decay via web posts and pictures. I stopped to take a couple of ruin-porn photos en route, steeling myself to be this white lady getting out of a twenty-year-old Lexus and photographing bombed-out buildings with only black folks around. Needless to say, no one bothered me.

En route I found the whole of Woodward Avenue to be blocked off: all seven lanes, with police barricades and mounted officers. I slowed down and saw the cathedral off to the left, remembered I’d listened to the radio yesterday, and thought: right, Gordie Howe’s funeral. So I found a parking place in the Boston-Edison district and walked up to see. Nobody who wasn’t invited could get in to the funeral mass of the hockey legend, of course, so I hung out on the fringes, across the street with some photographers and a few citizens who showed up to honor the sportsman.

So yeah: They were broadcasting the mass outside, so we could hear everything. I noticed that the camera guys were positioned directly across from the church main doors, and realized that’s the correct spot to get the classic casket-being-carried-out shot. Chatted up the fans, who had their Gordie stories. Chatted up the cops, thanked them for serving. Watched the mounted officers get down next to their trailer, water their horses, and pour coffee for themselves.

Got back in the car, fought the construction along the rest of Woodward, found a parking spot near the library, figured out the new parking-pay kiosk, went in, and got a spot in one of the reading rooms:

It’s the coolest library I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in a lot of major ones. As soon as I established my campsite, my breathing slowed down, and I got to work making notes and thinking. Who wouldn’t feel completely at peace in a place like that? Who wouldn’t have wanted to stumble upon a little piece of Detroit history along the way?

There’s a lot to be experienced along the fringes.

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Finishing Sets You Apart More Than You Know

Zestful Blog Post #164

My wife, Marcia, is currently serving as a teaching assistant for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an online course in game design. (She is a very good programmer and designer.) The course is free; 11,000 people around the world signed up for it.

The course is in the fifth week of its six-week term. As of now, 2,800 people have either introduced themselves or made a comment in the online forum: that is, 2,800 people have participated at all. And 37 have submitted the final assignment, which is a finished game. (Finished more or less; we all understand the concept of a first draft…)

From 11,000 starters to 37 finishers.

Lots of people want to be game designers; they love to play games and they figure they could make one as good as or better than the ones they love. Lots also believe they can become millionaires by designing a cool new game. So they sign up for the course. This is not some crummy tutorial, it is a course designed and presented by MIT, home to the most innovative game lab in the world.

You see where I’m going with this. Lots of people want to write a book; they love to read and they figure they could write a book as good as or better than the ones they love. Lots also believe they can become millionaires by writing a cool new book. [Tiny pause for bark of laughter.]

Your competition is far less competent than you think, and far less committed.

Side note: Marcia took that MIT course herself in 2014. She was one of the few finishers. Apart from designing her game, she actively participated in the forums; she took the trouble to offer ideas and helpful feedback to the others. The professors and assistants thought highly of her. Come time to renew the course in 2016, guess who they asked to be the TA?

That’s all you need to know today.

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Close Reading 1

Zestful Blog Post #163

His mother peers out over his head to the end of the walk, where his father is waiting for him. Good-by, good-by!—until tonight he is off with his father, the whole week has exploded white-hot on Saturday morning, and not even his mother's worried angry kiss can distract him. Out there his father is waiting with his hands on his hips, a man. Yes, he is coming!

That is the second paragraph of "Wild Saturday," a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, one of my literary heroes. It was first published in the September, 1970 issue of, unbelievably now, Mademoiselle magazine. Oates had burst on the literary scene as a very young woman, and won the National Book Award with her novel THEM in the same year this story was published. She was 32.

When one reads for pleasure, whether one is a writer or not, the way to learn from another author is to ask, always, these two questions: What is really going on? What am I being told or shown?

What's so special about that paragraph from Oates's story? Nothing and everything. It shows us a young boy being handed off from Custody Mom to Weekend Dad. The breakup of the marriage was acrimonious. How do we know this? If we're paying close attention, we notice that the parents are so estranged that Dad doesn't even come up to the front door to greet his ex-wife and collect his son. Is he afraid, ashamed, a wuss? These questions might crop up in our readerly minds. And as we read further, we might be on the lookout for answers.

If we hadn't caught any significance to dad-on-sidewalk, we're told more by the mother's "worried angry kiss." Yes, the dad could be a little leery of his ex's suspicion and fury, which is perhaps well justified. We might already be developing a feeling of uh-oh.

Because "the week has exploded white-hot" just now, and the mom evidently has reason to be worried because this isn't the first time the boy has gone off with his father on the weekend. We know this because the situation is presented as if routine, not the first time.

And because this is the beginning of a story, we know we're going to get a story, and the title of the story has the word 'wild' in it, and we know that the author is Joyce Carol Oates, and because we know her, we know that this will almost certainly be a harrowing, spellbinding trip—especially if we read it with fine attention.

That is how good authors work: with economy and attention to every detail, to make the most of every word. Do you like this? I'd like to do more of these if you think it would be interesting/helpful. To post, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

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