Monthly Archives: September 2015

Fiction

Forgotten – A very short story

Leave a comment

A very short story I wrote during a writing group exercise.  Not my normal type of writing, but it was well received.

‘Hi, honey!  Welcome home.’

What did I forget? I thought.  She’s smiling.  She hasn’t smiled in years.  I’ve forgotten something, and she KNOWS it!

‘Hi, dear.’ I hung up my jacket, meticulously putting everything back in its place the way she liked it.  It’s not February, so it can’t be Valentine’s Day.  Anniversary?  No, that’s in…shit, when WAS it?

‘Did you have a good day at work?’

A kid’s game.  I forgot to take time off for our kids…wait, we don’t have kids.  What did I forget?

‘Good enough. Yourself?’

‘Oh, I can’t complain.  I did make plans with my parents for dinner.’

I missed an email or text about dinner! I checked my phone.  ‘That’s good,’ I said, not seeing anything I hadn’t seen before.

‘It should be fun,’ she said.

I finally stopped and shrugged.  ‘Okay, I give up.  I know I forgot something.  Was it milk?  Dry cleaning?  Did I send flowers to the wrong somebody?  What did I forget?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you forgot that we got divorced.’

Writing

Planning an argument

Leave a comment

The current section of my primary project is an argument between several characters.  This section brings two challenges for me.

First, keeping the antagonist as a challenger.  It always bugs me when the author gives the antagonists the worst arguments.  Like any conflict I’ve written, it has to be  a real threat.  The other side HAS to try to win, otherwise it’s just a poor read.  As I’ve been planning, I’ve paid attention to both sides to keep it an argument.

Second is the strength of the arguments.  The topic is ‘When is it okay to rebel against tyranny’.  Now I have plenty of thoughts on this topic, but I don’t consider myself an expert on it.  And neither are most of the debaters, which makes their interactions relatively easy to write.  But one of the characters is much smarter than I am.  Planning his section is difficult because I want him to win, but I don’t want him to win because the other guy rolled over.

My answer to both challenges is research.  Not every character will be able to quote philosophers, but experience can be used to make similar points.  And the intelligent character, who probably can quote philosophers, probably should.

Only time will tell if my answer was correct.

Until then, write on!

Writing

Writing a Prologue

Leave a comment

I used to think that every book needed a prologue, basically a chapter which introduces the reader to the story.  I’m not sure why, just one of those things you never really question until it’s challenged.

I was sent this article by a friend of mine.  A lot of these I’d heard before, but the ‘Avoid Prologues’ one stuck with me.  I always started a project with a prologue; it was what I thought I was supposed to do.

This resulted in a number of conversations with friends and family, and I realized that a prologue, like any writing convention, isn’t always useful.  Most of my prologues were really just first chapters, with nothing but a POV shift into the book.

A prologue sets up the story, but is separated from the core of the book, either by time or distance.  The point can be world building, establishing the conflicts and challenges for the character, or just an awesome hook, but if it rolls directly into the meat of the book, it’s probably just a first chapter.

(On Basilisk Station is a good example: the prologue is a ground of politicians who appear only in the prologue, and make a decision that impacts the main character for the rest of the book.  )

Most of my books don’t have prologues anymore, they’ve all been renamed to Chapter 1.  It’s become something of a challenge with a project, to consider any prologues I might write for it that could be separated enough to work.  Most of the time, nothing comes of it.  Which is okay.  If anything, it’s a fun exercise in creative thinking.

Any examples of a nice prologue, let me know, and as always, keep on writing!

-Michael