Post #222 July 27 2020

“Novels and Short Stories”

I’ve been writing novels and short stories since the late 1970s.  I’m more comfortable with the longer form.  I’ve often asked myself why this is. 

Short stories can range in length from a few thousand words to maybe 15,000 words.  Anything longer tends to be called a novelette or a novella by industry.  For round figures, let’s say a short story should be less than 10,000 words.  That’s about 30 plus pages using average type and font.  So the whole story has to be set up and delivered in that length.

For comparison’s sake, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) calls a short story something no longer than 7500 words.

Whether a novel or a short story, any story has to have some kind of plot, with one or more characters, some kind of problem to solve and some obstacles to solving it.  A novel is more expansive in laying this out.  Here’s one of the main differences between the two forms:

1. A short story sets the character right in the middle of the problem immediately. 

A novel has some luxury in the way it opens, setting the character in his setting and presenting him with a problem.  In fact, there may be a rising crescendo of problems in the longer form.  You can’t do that in a short story. 

Short story writers have to be sparse with words, extremely selective and make every word count and carry the story.  No long soliloquys, no luxuriating in philosophical discourses about the meaning of life and “what I did when I was four years old to make me the murderous sociopath I am today.”

1. In a short story, the character usually faces one problem.  It could be a big one or a small one, but there isn’t room or time to build a number of problems up to some cataclysmic ending.
    
   Short story characters run headlong into their predicament pretty quick, ideally on page one.  Fiction editors say (and most readers would agree, I believe) that they want to be grabbed from the very opening sentence.  There’s truth in that for novelists too, but with short stories, lay out the problem early and plunge the main character in it like he’s taking an ice bath in Sweden in January. 
    
   Novels can have subplots, all of which hopefully contribute to and lead to the main character encountering and resolving (or not) the big problem.  Short stories have one plot line and one or a few problems.  There isn’t time or space for more.
    
   Literary historians say that short stories evolved from our oral storytelling traditions, that is, from parables, fables, even anecdotes.  They’re compressed and concentrated, though they should have the same elements as any good story: exposition, complication, crisis, climax, resolution.  Sometimes the resolution part is pretty abrupt, unlike a novel.
    
    Short stories are not little novels. 
    
   The third main difference between the two forms is this:
    
2. Short stories get written, published, critiqued and turned around faster in the marketplace.  Writers get faster feedback from short stories.
    
   In my own case, I have found that my particular talent, such as it is, needs a longer form to stretch out and become manifest.  A short story is a closet, a novel is a veranda or a screened porch (if you grew up in the American South as I did).  You can’t relax with a short story.  You have to squeeze every bit of story you can out of every single word.  Thus, writing short form fiction is a great discipline for any writer, however successful they may be at it. 
    
   Now to answer my original question: why do I personally prefer novels to short stories?
    
   I like being able to explore a fictional world (especially important in science fiction) in detail and I like being able to explore more than one character and from more than one direction.  I particularly like developing parallel plot tracks that intertwine and support each other and come together in the end to slam the reader with one big aha!  It’s like juggling a lot of story “balls” at the same time but when it works, it’s a sight to behold.  It resonates.  Hell, it virtually twangs with meaning, like a guitar string vibrating with harmonic frequencies.  I know that sounds corny but the great novelists can do that.  As for me, I’m still learning. 
    
   I write novels more than short stories and enjoy them more because I feel more comfortable in them as a storyteller.  Like many writers, I sometimes archive short stories and novelettes into story collections, if I can’t publish them in print.  I’ve done that with my online collections Colliding Galaxies and Elliptical Galaxies, both available at Smashwords.com. 
    
   But I still like the novel form better.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 3.
    
   See you then
   Phil B.

Post # 221 July 20 2020

“The Eureka Gambit”

As a writer who feels more comfortable in longer fictional forms, I often have to plan new projects ahead by several years. 

One of my next projects, likely not available until summer 2021 or possibly later, is called The Eureka Gambit.  It’s an alternate history novel, a sort of what-if? story.

Below is an excerpt from my notes on Chapter 1.  I’ve actually plotted and outlined the entire story, but there is still a lot of background and research work to do.  Note the date in the chapter intro.

Chapter 1

Dasht-i-Kavir Desert, Iran

Lat. 35 North, Long 53 East

November 26, 1943

0235 hours

It is past midnight in the Iranian desert, some 150 km from Tehran.  A convoy of trucks waits patiently alongside a cleared landing strip in the desert hardpan.  There is a sound of distant aircraft.  Suddenly, landing lights come on, outlining the crude runway.  Then, one after another, three Junkers Ju-52 small transports bearing no markings make bumpy landings on the strip, a location their maps call Alpen-Eins.  The landing lights go out immediately and the scene is then illuminated by lights from the trucks.

 

Standartenfuhrer Otto (‘Scarface’) Skorzeny emerges from one of the planes and witnesses a hurried transfer of men, equipment, guns and munitions from the planes to the trucks.  There are nearly a hundred men, three detachments of Operation Long Jump, all handpicked from SS Battalion Friedenthal for this special mission.  Their target: Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, all meeting in two days in Tehran at the Soviet legation.  The gathering is code-named Eureka.

Skorzeny knew that an advance party of six German radio operators  had already dropped by parachute near Qum, 60 km (37 mi) from Tehran. An existing Abwehr network had been set up in a villa in Tehran. From this location, the German observers had radioed numerous intelligence reports back to Berlin. A second group of operatives, led by Skorzeny, had now been dropped into Iran for the actual kidnap attempt in late November.

In Tehran, the Abwehr field station had readied a villa and a warehouse for their stay. The first reconnaissance group had traveled by camel, and were loaded with weapons. They would stay at the villa. The second group would be led by Skorzeny himself and would be housed in the warehouse.

Skorzeny supervises the transfer and loading of gear, discusses conditions with White, Gold and Black detachment commanders (Obersturmfuhrers) Hans Eisler, Jurgen Holtz and Fritz Born, and reviews the latest intel on Soviet, British and American security force deployments in and around Tehran.  Consulting crude maps by flashlight, they discuss the best route into Tehran to their safe house, their weapons and ammunition supplies, the forecast weather and the best exfiltration route, for they fully expect to be back at Alpen Eins with their special ‘cargo’ in less than three days.

 

There is a sudden commotion on a nearby road.  Detachment troops have spotted an old bus wheezing along the road in the middle of the night.  It’s a routine passenger bus, en route overnight to the nearby town of Samnan.  At Skorzeny’s orders, the German commandos flag down the bus, order all passengers off for interrogation, and then commandeer the bus for their own use.  The passengers are marched off into the desert (there are some sixteen of them, men, women and two children).  We hear staccato burps of machine guns in the distance.  The commando detail escorting the passengers returns to the convoy.  The passengers don’t come back.  They have all been executed and left in the desert.

 

Finally, the transfer is done.  The trucks form up into a crude convoy with the bus in the middle.  Several dozen troops board the bus.  It will be taken to the safe house in Tehran that is their destination.  The convoy gets underway, even as the Ju-52 transports are revving engines and preparing to take off again into a black, moonless night sky.

 

The last of the planes is airborne and the landing lights are doused.  But a small crew stays behind to gather up all evidence of their work.  The runway lights and markers will be used again in three days, for if all goes well, the convoy will return with their hostages in tow and the planes will be used to exfiltrate them to distant places, ultimately to a castle in the Austrian Alps, guests of the Third Reich. 

 

The convoy moves quickly through the desert and approaches Tehran before sunup. The trucks scatter and disperse to take different routes into the city, though they will all wind up at the same place.  Their destination: an abandoned warehouse on Mehrabad Street, down the street from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Ascension. The trucks all contain various innocuous-looking gear and even farm produce to cover their real cargo. 

 

One truck encounters a Soviet military checkpoint as they enter the city.  There is high tension as the Soviet troops (part of a 3000-man contingent of Red Army, NKVD, Interior Ministry and Border Patrol troops) examine the truck, its crew and cargo, and their (forged) papers.  But the Germans manage to elude or pass through the checkpoint, thanks to Iranian sympathizers who ride with them.  One Iranian is even a local police chief and he vouches for the truck and its equipment as needed to support crowd control for the upcoming conference.

 

After some discussions and consultation with headquarters, the Soviets let the truck pass. 

 

The truck eventually reaches Mehrabad Street, which is mostly deserted at this early hour.  Skorzeny gets out, hears the local call to worship from loudspeakers of a nearby mosque and brusquely orders the truck to be quickly off-loaded and hidden.  Then, over the next hour, the other trucks and men of the convoy and appear at the warehouse and do the same.  The other detachment commanders have safely made it into the city without major incident.  Skorzeny knows the easiest part of Operation Long Jump has been successfully completed. 

 

As the men check off and stow their gear and bed down to lie still for the daylight hours, Skorzeny and his commanders go over the details of the next phase carefully, reviewing every little detail: the route to the Soviet Embassy compound, likely security deployments, the floor plan of the critical buildings, the timing, the weather, traffic conditions in that part of Tehran, their supplies and route out of the city back to Alpen Eins.

 

Finally, exhausted but unable to relax, Skorzeny walks outside with Fritz Born and they  reminisce about the operation they just finished several months before, rescuing Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans.  Skorzeny opines that Mussolini was a breeze. 

They both know that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt will be much harder targets.  The sun comes up over the ornate gold dome of the Greek church, they see churchgoers beginning to appear and both hear the wailing of the muezzin admonishing Muslims to come to a nearby mosque.

 

“Perhaps, we too should be praying,” Skorzeny mutters, dousing his Sulima-brand (Turkish) cigarette.  They both laugh at the idea and duck back inside. 

 

 

So that’s the excerpt and this is a good example of how I outline a novel chapter.  From what you have just read, I should be able to write a 15-20-page chapter, with characters and appropriate background to kick this story off.  I expect to begin writing this one next fall, at the latest.

Look for it in late summer 2021.

The next post comes on July 27.  See you then.

Phi. B.

Post #220 July 13 2020

“What Makes a Believable Character?

Think of your favorite stories, the most memorable stories.  Chances are that one reason they’re so memorable is the characters.  They speak to you.  You can put yourself in their place.  You can live what they live, endure what they endure.  Literature has many stories with memorable characters: Captain Ahab, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Luke Skywalker (well, maybe not that one), Portnoy, etc.  These fictional creations are memorable and believable for a reason.  Let’s look at some of those reasons, as a way of peeking behind the curtains of the storyteller’s craft.

As a current American storyteller, I find at least three reasons why literary characters endure in our imaginations.

1. Details matter.  Literary characters, imaginary people all of them, are conveyed to us largely through the details of their lives.  They have specific traits, specific physical descriptions.  “He had the long head of a horse, complete with a mane of hair and flaring nostrils.”  Paints a picture, doesn’t it? Maybe not a pretty one, but one vivid and easily seen in your mind’s eye.  Writers should imbue their characters with the same vivid details.  “He was a twitchy little rat of a man.”  I used that one to describe a character in a recent short story.  Do enough background development so you can describe your character in some kind of memorable way.  Often this doesn’t require a lot of words or text, just well-chosen words.  When you look into your imagination and see this person, what do you see?  One way to practice this is to mentally describe people you see on the street, converting what your eyes sees into words.
2. Readers can identify with the character.  Put your character into situations that people can identify with…a divorce, a trip to the dentist, selling a house, confronting a car thief.  Then, once you know your fictional creations well enough, describe what they do and how they react.  One key aspect of memorable characters is contriving to make them seem real, putting them into places and times similar to what your readers have experienced.  Similarity and familiarity go a long way toward helping your readers feel disposed to follow your character as they encounter whatever you throw their way.  In my recently published sf novel Monument, I deal with two architects with outsized egos.  In this story, I show both of them involved in conferences with sponsors and patrons and all the compromises they have to make with these sponsors to see their architectural vision realized.   How often have you been involved in meetings and conferences and briefings where your brilliant idea is watered down, kicked around like a football, and sliced to pieces?  By involving these characters in such a seemingly familiar setting, even though it’s hundreds of years in the future and involves building new worlds, the reader finds something ‘normal’ and familiar to hang on to.
3. Believable and consistent response.  Nothing turns off a reader faster than a character who responds to a problem one way in Chapter 3 and a completely differently way in Chapter 8, without some intervening reason to explain the difference.  Readers like to be able to predict how a character will respond to a challenge.  It’s okay to have your character respond in a way that isn’t so usual, as long as you’ve laid the groundwork for that earlier.  One of the great pleasures of reading stories is to be able to put yourself vicariously into the mind and body of a character who’s undergoing something that would never happen to us…in other words, to live something new and different and exciting through that character.  But to be able to do that, the character has to be believable and consistent.  I might not react the way Joe Shmoh reacts but, if sketched properly, I can sort of understand why Joe reacted the way he did.  It makes sense.  I understand it, even if I don’t agree.  One way to achieve this consistency is to give your character a bio before you even start the story.  I’m a big believer in doing extensive bios for my main characters.  As a storyteller, it gives me something to hang a character on, and a way to enforce consistency throughout the story.  In fact, with a bio done beforehand, it’s easy to have Joe Shmoh wind up in a predicament and tell the reader that the situation reminds him of….and that’s where you paste in a few sentences from the bio you did weeks before.  It’s very satisfying to be able to do this.
    
   Below is a brief description of one of the main characters in my novel The Farpool.  His name is Chase Meyer.

Age: 18

Height: 6’0”

Weight: 165lbs

Hair: Blond brown, wave on top, short on the sides, has a lock that he combs down over his right eye.  Sort of a surfer look, circa 22^nd century Florida.

Face: faint blond beard and moustache, blue eyes, scar above right eye due to fishing accident, chin dimple (not easily seen), big ears

Other Distinguishing Features:  broad shoulders and thin waist of a competition swimmer; big feet; girls at AHS sometimes call him “Flip”, short for Flipper, since he’s a natural and powerful swimmer; friends sometimes make a play on his name by saying “Chase is the place”; long, pianist fingers. Has an artistic bent, is good with the guitar and a hybrid musical instrument called a go-tone (sort of a cross between a guitar and a violin).  Tall and lanky (think Michael Phelps).

 

Memorable characters should have detail, something a reader can identify with, and consistency. In other words, they should be like you and me.  Time spent describing and developing these imaginary people will pay big dividends when the day comes to start writing your story.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 20.

See you then.

Phil B.