WARNING: Post may be considered self-indulgent and boring. Skip if you are supremely uninterested in hearing how some amateur writer tries to write short stories.
'Breathing In Gerry Neimeyer' is well under way, but I thought I would put together a post that details how I go about piecing together a story from the original idea to the written word. Questions about where writers find their ideas tend to be the first ones asked by those who are not writers. The reason you'd never hear a writer ask such a thing is because they know how complex and improvised the process is. About as close as you can get to providing a satisfactory answer is to write a blog post like this one and try to include as much detail as possible.
More after the jump.
In this post, I detailed how the idea first came about. It's largely uninteresting - the phrase 'I have to breathe other people in' sparked a funny little thought that got me thinking about the basic plot. At that stage I didn't know anything about the story other than it was about a man who sabotages a spaceship by hiding in amongst the oxygen tanks.
But it was enough to go on. I had the idea. I was lucky enough that day to have spent a good deal of time in a car, and was able to flesh it out some more. I needed several things to get a serviceable framework:
At first, I settled on something far too boring.
I chose 'cameraderie between men in the face of disaster'. I sat down very soon after this and tried to settle on something better.
Something happened that really highlights how this bric-a-brac writing process happens in an organic and wholly impossible to quantify way. I turned to my music library and listened for a while and stumbled on a song that I hadn't heard for a few months. It was Tom Traubet's Blues by Tom Waits, who can, at times, get across some complex ideas in very few words.
At the 1:20 mark, he sings a line that really sums up what it feels like to be at your wits end in a strange place.
And it fell quickly in to place from there. My protagonist became Korean. He hates his ship mates because they are racist toward his father, who doesn't realise it due to his limited grasp of English. He hates flying because the ship is cramped, nothing works, it's freezing cold and food doesn't work like it's supposed to. There's nowhere to go to be alone when you're on a tiny little ship. Especially not when a dead man's stench has intruded on the very air you have to breathe.
I liked this theme of being trapped somewhere that you find unbearable. I think it's got a bit of universal appeal - we've all had to work with people we hate, and had to put up with conditions that make us want to take a walk through space with only a lungful of air. The only thing that remains is to decide whether to make the ending a morality tale about shared humanity or a grittier look at people's capacity to truly hate one another.
Now I have a vague idea that Gerry Neimeyer has stowed away on a spaceship with designs on sabotaging it. The next piece of the puzzle is trying to figure out why in the Solar System he would want to do that.
Well, if they're flying somewhere, let's start with where they're flying from. Consult the oracle.
I needed their point of origin to be far away - the crew are stuck together for a long period of time, remember, and their rescue odds will need to seem slim. I settled, eventually, on Titan - a place earmarked as the most likely place humanity will spread to in the near future.
The crew's flight from Titan needs to be an urgent one, and I kind of liked the idea of The Virus. In order to make the urgent flight and sabotage make sense, I set about joining the dots. When Titan was settled, it began mining the local resources to sustain itself. In doing so, the miners contracted a dust-borne illness that slowly destroys their lungs. An evacuation was ordered to prevent the spread of the virus, leaving those infected to stay behind and run operations until better protections are implemented. The ones left behind become known as Lifers - those stuck on Titan until they die - and they become rather understandably disgruntled by the fact.
Gerry Neimeyer presents himself as a Martyr, sacrificing himself to destroy the outbound ship in retribution. Gerry is not a nice man. Then again, nor is it nice to abandon people to death on a far-away moon. Who's the badder guy is the reader's call.
I did a quick look around to see what everyone is writing at the moment. For some reason, First Person present-tense tends to dominate. I have never liked this style. It's the sort of thing that really, really sounds like someone is narrating to you as opposed to you happen to be present in the story.
It sounds like someone's telling you the story, and I don't like it. I'm going to stick to first person past-tense because it's what I know.
Many of the stories accepted to the recent round of periodicals are quick-fire, fast-paced pieces and that suits me pretty well. I prefer to keep description minimal and concentrate on the thematic details. If I'm trying to create a sense of loneliness on the ship, I need only describe the things that make it feel super lonely.
So it's settled: First Person. Quick Pace. And length? That'll depend on how much story there is to tell.
I'll leave it there, because this post is getting long-winded. This is the basic information that I began to write with. The next post will deal with the finished product, and what it's like to workshop a short story in an online forum. Feedback is where things always get interesting.
Until then.
'Breathing In Gerry Neimeyer' is well under way, but I thought I would put together a post that details how I go about piecing together a story from the original idea to the written word. Questions about where writers find their ideas tend to be the first ones asked by those who are not writers. The reason you'd never hear a writer ask such a thing is because they know how complex and improvised the process is. About as close as you can get to providing a satisfactory answer is to write a blog post like this one and try to include as much detail as possible.
More after the jump.
In this post, I detailed how the idea first came about. It's largely uninteresting - the phrase 'I have to breathe other people in' sparked a funny little thought that got me thinking about the basic plot. At that stage I didn't know anything about the story other than it was about a man who sabotages a spaceship by hiding in amongst the oxygen tanks.
But it was enough to go on. I had the idea. I was lucky enough that day to have spent a good deal of time in a car, and was able to flesh it out some more. I needed several things to get a serviceable framework:
- A twist - something that would make the story more interesting than a slice of life about an accident on a spaceship. In fact, when you're trying to think of a twist, resorting to 'it wasn't an accident, it was deliberate' is a bit naff - it's been done before, several times. These were early days, however, and so I adopted it.
- A protagonist - someone that could put a unique perspective on what was going on. It's all well and good to have a story about space sabotage and a fight for survival against the relentless nothingness beyond the walls, but it cannot be told by a dullard. The little ship was populated by scientists and engineers. One thing there would be in abundance was diligent workmen who knew what they were talking about. I needed someone apart from all of that, and so hit on the idea of the son of a couple of scientists. Just the right amount of naive and differentiation.
- An ending - I firmly believe that you can't start a short story without knowing how it's going to end. I didn't know exactly where things were going, but I landed on the notion that the little ship goes through a series of dramas that result in them being picked up by another ship just in time. Knowing your ending is as simple as that.
At first, I settled on something far too boring.
I chose 'cameraderie between men in the face of disaster'. I sat down very soon after this and tried to settle on something better.
Something happened that really highlights how this bric-a-brac writing process happens in an organic and wholly impossible to quantify way. I turned to my music library and listened for a while and stumbled on a song that I hadn't heard for a few months. It was Tom Traubet's Blues by Tom Waits, who can, at times, get across some complex ideas in very few words.
At the 1:20 mark, he sings a line that really sums up what it feels like to be at your wits end in a strange place.
No-one speaks English, and everything's broken.And my Stacys are soaking wet.
And it fell quickly in to place from there. My protagonist became Korean. He hates his ship mates because they are racist toward his father, who doesn't realise it due to his limited grasp of English. He hates flying because the ship is cramped, nothing works, it's freezing cold and food doesn't work like it's supposed to. There's nowhere to go to be alone when you're on a tiny little ship. Especially not when a dead man's stench has intruded on the very air you have to breathe.
I liked this theme of being trapped somewhere that you find unbearable. I think it's got a bit of universal appeal - we've all had to work with people we hate, and had to put up with conditions that make us want to take a walk through space with only a lungful of air. The only thing that remains is to decide whether to make the ending a morality tale about shared humanity or a grittier look at people's capacity to truly hate one another.
Now I have a vague idea that Gerry Neimeyer has stowed away on a spaceship with designs on sabotaging it. The next piece of the puzzle is trying to figure out why in the Solar System he would want to do that.
Well, if they're flying somewhere, let's start with where they're flying from. Consult the oracle.
I needed their point of origin to be far away - the crew are stuck together for a long period of time, remember, and their rescue odds will need to seem slim. I settled, eventually, on Titan - a place earmarked as the most likely place humanity will spread to in the near future.
The crew's flight from Titan needs to be an urgent one, and I kind of liked the idea of The Virus. In order to make the urgent flight and sabotage make sense, I set about joining the dots. When Titan was settled, it began mining the local resources to sustain itself. In doing so, the miners contracted a dust-borne illness that slowly destroys their lungs. An evacuation was ordered to prevent the spread of the virus, leaving those infected to stay behind and run operations until better protections are implemented. The ones left behind become known as Lifers - those stuck on Titan until they die - and they become rather understandably disgruntled by the fact.
Gerry Neimeyer presents himself as a Martyr, sacrificing himself to destroy the outbound ship in retribution. Gerry is not a nice man. Then again, nor is it nice to abandon people to death on a far-away moon. Who's the badder guy is the reader's call.
I did a quick look around to see what everyone is writing at the moment. For some reason, First Person present-tense tends to dominate. I have never liked this style. It's the sort of thing that really, really sounds like someone is narrating to you as opposed to you happen to be present in the story.
I look to my left. The plate is empty but I'm not full. I curse and kick it away and it tumbles about, shaking off scraps of powdery goop in the weightlessness of the kitchenette.
It sounds like someone's telling you the story, and I don't like it. I'm going to stick to first person past-tense because it's what I know.
Many of the stories accepted to the recent round of periodicals are quick-fire, fast-paced pieces and that suits me pretty well. I prefer to keep description minimal and concentrate on the thematic details. If I'm trying to create a sense of loneliness on the ship, I need only describe the things that make it feel super lonely.
So it's settled: First Person. Quick Pace. And length? That'll depend on how much story there is to tell.
I'll leave it there, because this post is getting long-winded. This is the basic information that I began to write with. The next post will deal with the finished product, and what it's like to workshop a short story in an online forum. Feedback is where things always get interesting.
Until then.
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