Character Vs Gimmick A Tale Of Two Short Stories

CHARACTER VS. GIMMICK: A TALE OF TWO SHORT STORIES I have a love/hate relationship with short stories. I’ve written a couple of of them, and some have been revealed. I don’t write plenty of brief tales and since I’ve been publishing with some regularity, I actually have seen maybe 40% of them published, which is a fairly goodâ€"possibly even method better than averageâ€"record of success. But there’s success then there’s success. Based on, “when you write it and it’s printed,” then sure, all of my revealed short tales have been successful. But judged on the standards, “and I’m not embarrassed to have people learn it,” I’ve had a much less “profitable” run. Coming Soon! Once once more, this isn't me being charmingly self-effacing. This is me eager to be nearly as good at this entire writing factor as I can presumably be, and that requires some level of realism and self-critique. Recently, I’ve been exposed to a couple more quick tales than had turn out to be normal for me. I’ve been judging a short stor y contest, I’ve been educating a category that includes weekly writing assignments and since it’s not realistic to ask my students to write down a novel each week these come in the form of short tales, I’ve been reading extra short tales, and I’ve been writing extra of them myself, too. I simply completed one for Darrin Drader and the Monumental Works Group’s upcoming anthology to benefit marriage equality, am busy writing a science fiction story for R.T. Kaelin’s Triumph Over Tragedy project to learn victims of Superstorm Sandy, and I still owe a pulp SF story to Tommy Hancock at ProSe. Busy! This has got me thinking about short tales and what makes them good and what makes them bad. Let’s stipulate, to start with, that you must know the way to write. Short tales require correctly constructed sentences, phrases spelled accuratelyâ€"that type of “element stuff.” But one thing has come to thoughts recently when it comes to my very own work, and that's what I’ve co me to call “Character vs. Gimmick.” As a child I learn plenty of brief stories. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and many other nice practitioners of the form. One of the issues that drew me to the quick story was the surprise ending, the cruel accident. And this is what’s gotten in my means, too. I’ve means too often (and let’s just call it, people: Once is simply too typically) approached a brief story gimmick first then tried to force in some other “ancillary” stuff like characters, theme, plot, and other annoying little details like that. What I ended up with is either the best case scenario by way of that beginning, which is that I never completed the story within the first place. The basic failure mode is that I pressured myself to complete it then forced it on editors who then mercifully turned it away. The third possibility has only, thankfully, occurred as soon as, and that was that one of these gimmick tales was actually printe d. God help us all. Here are a number of examples: I wrote a brief story that I did actually manage to complete in a single sitting at a (a tear rolls slowly down my cheek) Borders cafe a couple of years in the past. The gimmick: We meet a suburban gentleman, a lawyer, and follow his morning routine with increasing “rigidity” until the massive reveal . . . he’s Cthulhu’s lawyer! Yup. There are bits of that story that I actually like. And I assume that’s what led me to send it to some poor, unsuspecting editors, all of whom have had the good sense to send it right back. I was so intent on “the big reveal” in that story that I forgot to provide a crap concerning the character, give him one thing interesting to do, have something like battle . . . it’s just a couple quick scenes, a gory bit, then the massive “guess what” second, which I doubt anyone’s learn far enough to really encounter. One of the to do record gadgets that I keep chopping and pasting into the su bsequent day, then the next week, is “Finish SF cannibals story.” The gimmick: Human house explorers encounter an alien species that practices ritualized cannibalism. In true missionary spirit the human explorers present the aliens the error of their methods, and the aliens promptly turn on them as a brand new food source. This is my anti-missionary polemic by way of “shocker” ending. Who are these human explorers? Why are they there? Why do they interfere? Are all of them on the identical web page? Who are the aliens and why are they cannibals, and why do they turn on the humans? Can’t be bothered with details like that! I really began writing this 3 times, and the last time it was from the viewpoint of the on-board computer. God help me. And then there was the epic fail of the revealed short story “Leviathan” in the (thankfully) out of print Magic: The Gathering anthology The Myths of Magic, which was edited by my friend and comrade-in-arms Jess Lebow. Jess was being good to me when he shouldn’t have. What he ought to have carried out was take me aside and say, “Hey, Phil, learn your story and it TOTALLY SUCKS. Let’s determine tips on how to make it not suck.” I would have gone again to the drafting board. Lest you assume that was simply me blaming Jess for my own failings, it really isn’t. At the heart of the entire thing is me writing to a gimmick again. I was doing a “fantasy tackle Jonah and the Whale,” I assumeâ€"blended in with some sort of anti- or pro-drug message? Something about utilizing restricted resources irresponsibly? I don’t even know what I was pondering, however what I ended up with was a meandering, plotless mess devoid of things like recognizable characters or some extent. I cringe even excited about this story, and the dozen years since its publication has in no way diminished my self-loathing over the whole sordid debacle. Two years later, Jess was putting collectively one other anthology and I begged him for an opportunity to redeem myself. I knew “Leviathan” was awful and I wanted to steadiness the books with Jess, Magic readers, myself, and the universe by doing higher. The result was the story “Song for the Plague Rats” in The Secrets of Magic. This is a kind of tales I really feel good about. First of all, I fell upon Jess’s knowledge of the complicated Magic again-story and forced him to give me parameters that might be significant for Magic gamers. He gave me some good stuffâ€"the primary assembly of two of the setting’s higher-identified characters: a future Planeswalker and the vampire Baron Sengir. As a Magic participant I was conversant in the Plague Rats card and combined that with a dark gothic fantasy take on The Pied Piper. Sounds like the beginning of a “gimmick” story, doesn’t it? Well, it does have a sort of “surprise ending” in the reveal of the young boy as Baron Sengir, however that wasn’t actually what the story was about. The story is a few young girl finding a way to take control of her very miserable life after her household is taken by a plague. I was given the surprise ending, the basic parameters of the characters, however I began with charactersâ€"what they wished, where they came from, their emotional and psychological baggage, their fears and needs . . . and I ended up with a story that I felt actually good about. So why, then, twelve years after the humiliation of “Leviathan” am I nonetheless attempting to drive my means via “SF Cannibal Story” or Cthulhu’s lawyer? Have I discovered nothing? I have learned my classes, although I could have forgotten them alongside the best way. The lesson of this week’s publish is twofold: Start with characters, at all times. And if at first you don’t succeed, be sincere about what you screwed up and don’t forget to maintain working to get higher. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans