REPOST BY REQUEST
While working out the larger story arc behind the novel I’m pitching, I thought it might be fun to blog a little about writing itself, as I experience it. Sort of telling the story behind telling the story.
I have written a lot of stuff over the years: tons of (mostly bad) poetry, a handful of short stories, and hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction prose.
But, for this little series on writing I want to focus on The Ligan of the Disomus, and the larger world that is still growing from its seed. It is now a novel, with three sequel novels outlined for the long-term story arc.
When it began, however, it was just a short story assignment in a college writers’ group, an assignment the narrator — a fictional character — ran off with in directions I had not anticipated. But, he was not alone in commandeering what I considered to be “my” story…
Setting Up the Setting
In the last entry of this series, “Crazy Writing,” I talk about how some writers (myself included) surrender parts of our minds to key characters, allowing them to have almost a will of their own. Such a character can thwart all attempts to adhere to a preconceived storyline, insisting on dragging it off in directions inconvenient to the writer’s expectations.
Try to force such a character’s hand, and you’ll find yourself facing writer’s block like a caveman staring at the sheer wall of a mile-high ice sheet. It’s cold. It’s blank. And, you’re not getting over it.
Today, however, I want to talk about how this creative psychological quirk does not limit itself to what we might typically call the “characters” of a story.
But first, let me back up a bit. There’s another minor element to this story, an element that might reasonably be left out of the film version of “Nelson Leith’s Story Behind The Story” but which certainly belongs in this written account of the story’s setting.
I already had a title before having written a single word of narrative.
Almost as a challenge to my writerly abilities, I had thrown two curious and archaic words together to be the title for whatever I wrote next. Thus was the phrase “the ligan of the disomus” typed into my primitive, 1990s word processor and saved for later.
Ligan being a nautical term from the Age of Sail, the setting was circumscribed somewhat in time and space.
Disomus being a truly obscure term from heraldry, the setting was circumscribed somewhat in culture and mood.
From this axis, the wheels of the story were drawn and set to rolling.
Every Reaction Deserves
An Equal And Opposite Re-Reaction
As I mentioned last time, the narrator threw down some pretty heavy attitude right out of the starting gate. After proclaiming “I cannot stomach the coast” — a sentiment completely at odds with my own feelings — he continued with a fairly damning indictment of the littoral:
The shore is a frontier forever, and all its ports are border-towns for eternity. Surf straddles order and chaos; maritime law, as strict as it may be, exists only between ships’ gunnels … Most every sighted mast on the open sea is a potential nemesis, and most every sail-monger hauling rope is but a glimpse of profit from turning brigand.
Yet there is more to it than the incivility above the waves, for the cities of the coast nestle against a vacuum of humane context that cannot be measured. Beyond the breakers and below the keel is a world that knows neither light nor law.
At the time, I was tempted to ask myself from what dark pit this resentment arose. Such bitterness! Such bile! But, the energy was encouraging (and my writers’ group deadline was looming!) so I suppressed my native analytical instincts and let the narrator rant on.
Looking back, however, I wonder if the “American fantasy hero” with whom I had been subconsciously inspired (see Part I for an explanation of this) might have been rebelling against the tyrannous insult to his narrative liberty imposed by that title. After all, what he denigrates as a “vacuum of human context” that “knows neither light nor law” is exactly where one would find a ligan.
And, immediately after trash-talking the oceanside, he took on the oddities of heraldry represented by the term disomus. Explaining how he ended up on the coast, he tells us about dropping out of his military academy:
The classes became dry and irrelevant in the fourth year, focusing on old legends and military symbology that had nothing to do with keeping law and order … Commander Thomas disagreed and urged me to stay another year, to see where the classes were leading, but I was resolute and she finally granted me an Observer post.
So I found myself barnacled tight to the streets of Lemaigne, the grungiest port on the entire stinking seaboard.
Although I completely missed it at the time, the narrator had socked the setting of his story (as implied by the title) with a one-two punch that is strikingly obvious in retrospect.
Ligan? No! WHAM!
Disomus? No! POW!
But, as we were both soon to find out, the setting was roused to punch him right back.
Setting Asserting
It might seem odd to talk of a fictional world as defending itself, pushing back, wrestling with characters … in short, having personality.
But, “crazy” writers will tell you that setting — in all its political, cultural, geographic, zoological, botanical, and technological faces — can be just as insistent about its own special character as … well, as a character would be.
And, the setting of Ligan definitely asserted its identity. But, since the story is a first-person narrative, the setting could only express its personality by knocking the narrator around at every opportunity, right up to the very last sentence in fact. In a sense, the story progresses thusly:
Ligan, said the world. “I hate the sea,” he growled.
Disomus, it said. “Archaic nonsense,” he objected.
Reject the ‘archaic nonsense’ and you end up posted near the sea, it said. “I’ll find a way inland!” he retorted.
Deeper into the archaic nonsense, it giggled.
Indeed, the story turned out to be, in part, a struggle between two stubborn, resourceful characters: the narrator and the setting.
The narrator would get a clue as to the deep nature of the world he was in and, refusing to believe it or respect it, would explain it away. Then, like the dealer at the most frustrating poker game imaginable, the world would respond by turning over another, more inexplicable clue. And the narrator would get angry and frustrated, then look for something that might pin the world under the weight of his preconceptions.
For example, by illegally retrieving and opening a murderer’s ligan bundle.
But, the setting refused to be pinned. The ensuing contest was like Jacob wrestling with God at Peniel. Or, considering the narrator’s obstinate nature, perhaps more like Balaam ignoring the Angel on the road to Midian.
Moreover, these two personalities proved just as willing to fight with me as they were each other, forcing rewrites and sidelines that I — as the #$@!* author — considered superfluous. Why are you dragging the narrative in this stupid, pointless direction?!
They provided no satisfactory answer, so I plodded onward, helpless before their obstinate, independent wills.
And, even after I forced a finish to the short story, copied it, and handed it around my writing group, these two would not stop fighting…
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Check out “Story Behind The Story – Part 4 : The Reverse of Writer’s Block.”
