RE-POST 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. It grew into a novel later because neither the fictional narrator nor his fictional setting would stop talking after the assignment was complete…
The Observer’s End Game
Due to the deadline imposed by the writer’s group I was in, I had to force a climax and denouement for the original short story version of The Ligan Of The Disomus. The conflict between narrator and setting I described in the last entry of this series had already pushed the story to a length I felt was verging on becoming inconsiderate to my fellow group members.
The narrator of Ligan was grumpy and uncooperative, and the setting wouldn’t stop pushing back by injecting complications that required revisions of the story from start to finish. They were like two kids squabbling in the back seat who didn’t realize that every time they poked at each other it added to our travel time.
I have to be somewhere, fellas, and soon!!
So, we “compromised” — by which I mean that I exercised my tyrannous authorial powers and pounded out a very neat, happy, Hollywood ending. This original ending would probably be very surprising to my First Readers, who know how the novel-length Ligan ends: in the short story version, the narrator ends up conceding the wisdom of Commander Thomas and going back to finish the military training he abandoned at the beginning of the story.
Talk about “out of character.”
The setting of Ligan made its dissatisfaction with this forced ending known by essentially giving me the silent treatment. Without the input of the world’s “personality,” the final scene came out cartoonish and flat.
Noir was beheaded and served up to Disney on a silver platter. The dark and saturated descriptions of the port city of Lemaigne and the authoritarian Fortress were replaced by the pastel tones of an academy exhibit hall where Commander Lea Thomas showed the narrator a golden badge in a shining glass case.
It was the ancient badge of the Messenger rank, above the Observers, Detectives, and Commanders. Lea explained that no one had earned the right to wear the Messenger Badge for centuries, the implication being that the narrator might actually be The One to become its next bearer.
(Excuse me, I just made myself sick a little remembering it all.)
If I had allowed the narrator to talk at this point, he probably would have said something like:
I wanted to smash that case to the ground and stomp the badge under my muddied boot, but instead I just huffed a breath of air from my nose and walked out.
The Exception That Proves The Rule
And the other writers in my group made clear to me that they also considered the ending a bit abrupt and pollyanna. Scribbled on the distro copies of Ligan returned to me after the reading were comments like:
Dark and disturbing … a little too cheery at the end.
and
Reminds me of X-Files and film noir, but the last part was bubble gum. Last minute crunch?
and, channeling my own narrator back at me:
I cannot stomach this ending!
Some of the other writers even suggested I simply shred the last chapter and start it over.
To be completely honest, I knew the climax was forced and incongruous with the rest of the story. It was worse than bubble gum; at least bubble gum pops.
But the crumminess of the ending was the exception to what was, overall, a positive response. They had invested, but felt cheated at the end. Looking back, this should have told me all a writer needs to know about a story. The “crazy writing” worked; the forced writing didn’t.
And, beyond the growlings of the narrator and the setting’s cold shoulder, my own mind made clear that this could not be the “real” ending, even to the point of discoloring it in my memory. When I would think about the ending of the Ligan short story, I remembered it as a washed-out blue, contrasting absurdly with the dark and vibrant black in which I remembered the rest of the short story.
The last chapter was out of place, irrelevant, and dismissible.
And, being dismissible, it was dismissed. It didn’t matter that I was satisfied with completing the assignment. The assignment wasn’t satisfied with completing its own purpose.
So, as I tried to move on to other classes, another college, and ultimately a new career, The Ligan of the Disomus kept talking…
When Glaciers Melt
Every now and then, after just waking or as I fell asleep, while eating, or when daydreaming during class when I should have been taking notes, a few lines from Ligan‘s narrator would pop into my head.
Usually it was some weary or grouchy retelling of another aspect of the Reider Case (the central mystery in Ligan) that had not been included in the short story. Often, there were hints of things that happened long before or after the events in the short story: details of his background, childhood, or training at the Fortress; or hints about the consequences of the ending of Ligan which I had suppressed in my impatience.
But, occasionally, it was a little exposition about the world, and I knew the narrator was dictating for the setting. They began cooperating almost, reaching a sort of détente in their mutual struggle against my dictatorial pen.
Most intriguing to me now is how the narrator arrived at an understanding with his world, and at the same time I was lured into reconsidering the climax I had concocted. The setting offered the narrator a series of temptations, outcomes not quite as pleasant as the Disneyfied ending I had haphazardly pollocked down for the writers’ group, but more alluring to the narrator’s tastes.
Rank and the march of armies. Is this what you really want?
Money, plenty, and beautiful women. Is this what you really want?
Duty and professional excellence. Is this what you really want?
And, of course, when the narrator considered each of these temptations, he realized they were not what he really wanted. What he really wanted was to understand what the hell was going on, and the only way to get that was to start listening to what the setting was telling him.
It wasn’t a pleasant or congenial conversation, but it was a conversation nonetheless, and it flowed like a torrent. If writer’s block is like a cold, blank, mile-high ice sheet, what I was experiencing was like the flood when an ice dam holding back a glacial lake bursts.
Meanwhile the setting was whispering things to me sidelong, outside of the narrator’s hearing. A house on the side of a steep wooded hill. A bishop driven mad by the sound of a pump oven, his mind stuck like “a door with one broken hinge.” A winter stand-off in an ancient fort. A creole girl hunted by those who had tasted the blood of God. Owls, cats, and serpents.
Write it down. Write it down. Write it down.
Alright!
The more they talked, the more I wrote. Notes became folders, and eventually I decided to make Ligan what it was meant to be: a full-length fantasy/mystery novel. Some of the details did not make sense to me, characters added or expanded in ways that confounded my Poe-esque sense of economy. Nevertheless I wrote.
But, looking backward, trusting and indulging the instincts of narrator and setting allowed them to lay the foundation of a longer story arc that incorporated not only the “true” ending of Ligan, but also the consequences that would fall out in later events, and identify the true hero of the story … which was not the narrator.
Well done, John. This is a great blog you’ve got going here.