Category: The Ramble (page 425 of 448)

Yammerings and Babblings

June 10, 2011 / 19 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Dirty-Ass Sex Moves

Last week’s challenge — “DOLL HEADS” — is ready to be read when you click the link.

Sex moves with hilarious nicknames.

The Cleveland Steamer. The Glass-Bottom Boat. The Dirty Sanchez.

That’s the theme of this week’s flash fiction challenge.

For a mega-complete-holy-shit list, check out this link: “List Of Sex Moves.”

That link is NSFW, by the by. Uhh, big time. In case you couldn’t figure that out, genius.

First, it’s worth reading just… y’know. Because.

“Alligator Fuckhouse.”

“Grumblefoot Grabapple.”

“The Leprechaun’s Revenge.”

C’mon. C’moooon. You can’t tell me those don’t sound like killer short story titles, yeah? Yeah.

That’s your task. Grab one such term, use it as the title to your fiction.

For this week, let’s blow out the limit the way you might blow out your orifices if you tried half of these sex moves — no limit on word count. Big or small as you like.

I don’t care if the story features the sex move or even refers to it outside the move-as-title.

But, then again, now’s your opportunity to write some down-and-dirty fugged-up shiznit. After all, some of the descriptions on these sex moves are hilarious and disturbing. Use those as you see fit.

Peruse the list.

Choose a sex move.

Write a story with that sex move as the title.

No limit on word count. No limit to genre. You’ve got one week. Return the tale by Friday, 6/17, at 12 noon EST. Post on your blog, then drop a link to the story in the comments.

Go forth and get nasty.

June 9, 2011 / 25 Comments

Blinking Neon: Thursday Vacancy

I’ve decided that, whenever possible, I’m going to take Thursdays off.

I know what you’re saying:

“Buh-buh-buh! But I am addicted to terribleminds. Every day I come here, I nibble open an artery with my bitey teeth, and I jack your sweet-ass motherfucking bloggery straight into my main vein.”

To which I respond: “Main vein is a euphemism for a penis.”

And you say: “I knew that.”

And I’m all like, “I bet you didn’t.”

And you’re like, “Nuh-uh!” And then you spit up on yourself and poop your pants.

No, no, wait, that’s my newborn son. Which is part of why I’m taking some Thursdays off. Except, here’s the thing: I won’t leave you with a vacancy of content. I just can’t do that. I won’t do that to you. I’m not that cruel. My swollen deception-filled ego reminds me with whispered lies that without your daily dose of terribleminds, you will perish from grief. Your heart will be torn asunder like a notebook page ripped in half by angry pinching fingers. (Just shut up and let me pretend, goddamnit.)

I am thus opening up Thursdays to others, should they choose to fill its space. I’ve got a couple of great guest blogs that still need to go up, so you can look for those on upcoming Thursdays.

But I’ll take more. I’d love posts from other storytellers, creative types, writers, what-have-you. I don’t necessarily believe that posts can or should always be about writing, though certainly that’s a fine theme if you feel you’ve got something to bring to the table. Really, though, the floor is yours, the forum is open.

I can’t offer much by way of payment, and though this site does get a fair share of looky-loos these days, I don’t how how meaningful “exposure” is.

I will say you’re free to cross-post.

You can definitely use the post to pimp your work.

And if you don’t already have it, I’ll toss you a copy of IRREGULAR CREATURES or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY in whatever e-book format you desire.

Also: if you’re not down with a guest post, feel free on offering yourself up on the altar of sacr… I mean, the altar of interviewing. I’d love to interview some smart storytellin’ folks about all kinds of shit.

On those days I don’t have a guest post, I’ll still charge in here and fill the void with my ceaseless jabbering and meandering waffle. Worry not, sad-faced sproglings.

So, if you’re in, well, you have to let me know. Drop a note in the comments or hit me up in the contact form. Don’t be shy. Creators gotta create, gotta put themselves out there. Invite yourselves. Be bold. Proactive. Waggle your genitals at the world and say, “Gaze upon my magnificence.”

(A caveat: I’m not going to automatically publish whatever comes across my doorstep. I need to know what kind of guest post you want to write, and why I should give it space.)

This is an experiment, so let’s see how it goes.

June 8, 2011 / 87 Comments

Six Signs It’s High Time To Give Up Writing

The saying goes, “be a fountain, not a drain.”

By which they mean, “be nice, not mean, be optimistic, not pessimistic, be a shining beacon of light and positivity, not a searing enema of shadow and negativity.”

Oh, I’ll be a fountain, all right. I’ll be a fountain of urine. In your eyeball. PSHHHH.

HA HA HA HA HA.

Sorry, a little punchy today. Sleep in this household has gone the way of the dodo, the yeti, the honest politician — it is extinct. Turns out, that only stokes the fire in my belly. It pokes the coals of madness.

And so I emerge, sleepless and enraged, full of battery acid and asparagus pee, ready to once more use your head like a football so that I may kick it through the goalposts of good clean penmonkey sense.

Everybody always wants to tell you how to be a writer. How to follow your dreams. How to follow your stinky bliss like a cracked-out beagle. Eh-eh. Nuh-uh. BZZT. Not here. Not today. Today I’m going to tell you how to quit following your dreams. How to abandon your writerly ambitions on the side of the road (like a broken freezer or a fat ugly baby) where they may very well belong. Think of me as the medical examiner, and we’re going to look over your hopes and wishes and determine how precisely to determine the time of death via lividity, morbidity, and poop stench.

Trust me, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news. I hate to be the guy belching forth my septic tide, a tide that will thrash your tiny dream-boat against the black bleak rocks of reality. But, hey, fuck it, somebody has to. Last time I did a quick head count, the Internet is home to 45,691,213 writers. And you’re multiplying. It’s like a feral cat colony up in this motherfucker. You might be saying, “Chuck’s just trying to thin the herd.” Well, duh. I’m not just trying to get the dilettantes out of my way — I’m hoping maybe I get lucky and convince a few of you actually-talented-sumbitches to give up the ghost, too. C’mon. We can’t all be writers.

Anyway, let’s go through the signs. If any of them apply to you, please hold up the little yellow card I’m giving you — *hands out aforementioned yellow card* — and I’ll attend to you with this rifle. Thanks!

You’d Much Rather Talk About Writing Than Do Actual Writing

If the words you use to talk about writing outmatch the words you use in your actual writing by, say, 100:1, then you might be one of those types. The ones who would rather play pretend instead of actually wading into battle with a pistolero belt of fountain pens and ink phials forming an ‘X’ across their chests.

I mean, c’mon. You know if this is you. You know it. Someone — an aunt, your mother, your colonoscopy technician — asks you, “How’s the writing going?” and you can talk at length about all the things you plan on writing, but what you can’t talk about is all the things you’re really truly writing? Can you remember the last time you commented on a writer’s blog or wrote a post about writing advice but can’t remember the last time you sat down and wrote a goddamn story? This is not good. This is a bad sign.

You Spent Your Time Doing Everything But Putting Words On Paper

Let’s try a test.

Here’s a video game. You can play this, or you can write. No, no, let’s pretend it’s one or the other or I’ll shoot you in the face. I just picked “video game” out of a hat, but we could be talking about any activity, really, that you’d do for pleasure: watching TV, riding a dirtbike, dicking around on Twitter, reading blogs, planning your next roleplaying game session, hunting humans for their genital pelts, manually stimulating frost giants for their icy hoarfrost seed (used as a ritual component in various magical potions), etcetera.

If you always choose the fun thing over the writing thing, that’s a hash-mark. That’s a check-minus. That’s a Mr. Yuk sticker slapped across the face of your future. Note that I’m not saying you shouldn’t sometimes choose the activity of leisure — but if you spend more time with the “fun” than with the “writing,” then doesn’t that suggest that writing for you fails to be any fun?

Your Production Levels Are Poop Noise

Or, if you’d prefer — *sad trumpet*

Or — *lone coyote howling*

Or — *Pac Man dies*

Or — *wilting erection*

Sooo, uhh, what are you writing? Yeah? Nothing? What have you finished? Oooh. Also nothing? Really. So, all that’s left in your wake is a trail of manuscript corpses? Empty pages? Unfinished stories? Nothing done? Did you write anything today? Yesterday? Last week? No, no, and no? Oooh. Zoinks. This isn’t looking good.

You have heard the old chestnut that writers write, right? You wouldn’t say, “I’m a mountain climber” without ever actually climbing a mountain? The thing you are presumes a sense of action, of presently doing. Not “never done” or “haven’t done in a long-ass time.”

“I’m a porn star.”

“Wow. Wow! Really? Dude. I figured you were a bit old, but hey, whatever makes somebody’s grapefruit squirt. Good for you. Good for you. What was your last movie?”

“The Nine Throbbing Fists of Adonis.”

“I… have not heard of that. Is it out on Blu-Ray?”

“No. Super-8.”

“…when did you make that movie?”

“1971.”

Yeah, see? No longer a porn star. Writers write. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

That Teetering Tower Of Rejections Threatens To Crush You And Your Cats

You know by now if you’re at least a little bit good. You know because someone’s told you. Or because you got an acceptance on a short story or even a nice rejection. Or because in your heart you’ve cast aside the fog and seen into the truth of the matter: “I’m not great, but I’m good, and I can damn sure get better.”

Then again, maybe you look over at the end of your desk and you see it. The rejections. All 9,000 of them. Not a single acceptance nestled in there, like a glittering brooch inside the nest of a foul diarrhea-having bird. You’ve sent your work to the far flung corners of the literary world — editors, agents, lit mags, Field & Stream — and it always returns with a big red stamp across it that reads, FUCK NO.

By now, just by dint of taking so many shots at the hoop one of them should have gone through the little hole. If you’re having no luck, it might be time to set aside childish whims.

You Got The Wrong Idea About Writing

You think, “I really love books.” Great. So go read some. I love cookies and porn, you don’t see me starting up a career as “The Masturbating Pastry Chef” on PBS, do you?

You think, “Gosh, I really want to work-from-home.” So stuff some envelopes. Writing isn’t some pyramid scheme. You don’t just come home and poop out a bestseller because you’re tired of the cubicle farm.

You think, “I want to be famous someday.” Writers aren’t fame junkies. You want fame, go make a YouTube video where you get rammed in the balls by a charging donkey.

You think, “I want to be rich.” Hahahaha. Heheheh. Ooooh. Oh. Woo. Yeah. No.

Writing is about writing. It’s about telling stories. That’s why you do it.

Writing Is An Endless Sisyphean Misery

If you don’t like writing, stop writing.

Good goddamn I am amazed, astounded, astonished at how often I see writers bitching about writing. I don’t mean bitching like, “Oh, shucks, I had a bad day,” or, “Man, this story’s a lot harder to write than I anticipated.” But bitching like, an endless stream of complaining about the very act of putting words on paper, as if it strains them, as if it’s a ceaseless misery, as if it’s a colon full of fire ants.

If you hate to write, what the hell are you doing?

It’s not like writing offers some myriad reward, some treasure trove of benefits. Like, you could hate working on Wall Street yet love the buckets of money that come pouring over your head. Fine. Writing ain’t like that. Writing offers you one chief benefit: writing. If that is not a task you enjoy, if it’s not a task that offers you a sense of long-term satisfaction (even if you don’t feel immediate daily satisfaction), then nobody would judge you for not writing. It’s a thankless career. Don’t do it if you hate it. Why would you do that? Just be direct and eat a fistful of broken glass or something. The pain is faster and the blood is brighter.

“Hell No, We Won’t Go!”

If you’re over there, nodding along, saying, “Yeah, you know what? Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” then good for you. Quit now. Other better dreams await you. The world needs more zookeepers, botanists, janitors, space janitors, snipers, professional video game players, cat ladies, drug mules, and porn stars. Go be one of those with a Longaberger basket full of my blessings.

If you’re over there, your butthole clenching so tight it could break a broomstick, and you’re growling, “You go to hell, Wendig, you go straight to Hell on the goddamn Disney monorail system,” then good for you. Don’t quit. Continue on this path. Be a writer. Embrace it, enjoy it, claim it as your own. You got rejected? So what? We all get rejected. Countless times. You hate writing today? You might love it tomorrow.

A writer’s gotta go through this time and again. He’s gotta walk through a series of gates over the course of his career and it’s like a grabby TSA screening: sometimes they’re going to lift your junk and check all your holes just to make sure you are who you say you are and that you want to continue forward to the next checkpoint. I’ve gone through this. You think I haven’t? How can you not? Writing is a career that offers a tireless parade of moments emblazoned with self-doubt and uncertainty where you’re forced to ever reevaluate who you are and why you do this. You’ll often have to hold up your dream and examine it in the harsh light of day just to see how substantial it really is.

You have to look and say, “How far am I willing to go with this?”

Don’t worry about what some asshole on the Internet — ahem, me — says. You know the truth of your dream. You know whether or not you have the stones to carry it forward.

You want to be a writer? Then commit. You want to keep riding this dream pony? Then buckle the fuck up. Because writing is about patience and perseverance and above all else, writing through the nonsense.

Because writing takes more than wanting to be a writer. Writing isn’t about making money or reading writing blogs or seeing your name in print. Those things will come, but they’re side effects.

Writing is about writing.

Tautological enough for you?

Stop talking about writing and write. Stop reading about writing and write. Stop dicking around with your Xbox, with Netflix, with Facebook, your penis, and write. See where I’m going with this?

Go forth. Put down 100 words. A 1000. Whatever. Write something. Finish something.

The other stuff will follow. For now, embrace the purity of the dream you’ve chosen and do the thing it demands that you do. Put words on paper. Tell some stories. Be awesome.

And for fuck’s sake, don’t stop once you start.

* * *

If you dig on the apeshit crazy-face no-holds-barred profanity-soaked writing advice found here at terribleminds, then you may want to take a wee bitty gander-peek at: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY, which is available now! Buy for Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

June 7, 2011 / 73 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Character

Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series:

25 Things Every Writer Should Know

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling

And now…

Here you’ll find the many things I believe — at this moment! — about characters:

1. The Character As Fulcrum: All Things Rest Upon Him

Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of “us” staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.

2. The Cure For All That Which Ails The Audience

A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. She’s a powerful Band-Aid, a strong swaddling of gauze to staunch the bleeding. Think of the character like duct tape: she can piece the whole thing back together. I will forgive your sins of a so-so plot, of muddy themes, of a meh-ehhh-enh storyworld if you’re letting me live for a while with a great character. But don’t think character will close truly grievous injuries. A sucking chest wound — meaning, poor writing, asinine plot or perhaps a duller-than-two-dead-goats storyworld — will only swallow your great character into its gory depths.

3. And Yet The Character Must Be Connected

Don’t believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. The character is — or should be — bound inextricably to those other elements. The character is your vehicle through the plot. The character carries the story. Theme, mood, description: focus them through the prism of character, not vice versa. The character is the DNA in every goddamn cell of your story.

4. You Are The Dealer; The Character Is The Drug

The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. We’re junkies for it. We’ll gnaw our own arms off to hang out once more with a killer character. It’s why sequels and series are so popular: because we want to see where the character’s going. You give us a great character, our only desire becomes to lick him like he’s a hallucinogenic toad and take the crazy trip-ass ride wherever he has to go.

5. Tell Us What She Wants

It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. She may not know what she wants, but the audience must have that information. Maybe she wants: her enemies destroyed, freedom from oppression, her child returned to her, true love, the perfect falafel, a pet monkey, the ultimate wedding, a secret subterranean base on the motherfucking moon. She can want a number of things, and it’s of the uttermost importance that we know what it is. How else will we know how far she’s come? How else can we see the stakes that are on the table? How else will you frustrate the piss out of the audience by standing in her way?

6. Not About Likability But Rather, Livability

It doesn’t matter if we “like” your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even “like-like” your character. It only matters that we want to live with him. We must see something that makes us want to keep on keeping on, following the character into the jaws of Hell and out through the Devil’s lava-encrusted keister. For the record, the “Lava Keister” sounds like either a roller coaster or a Starbucks drink.

7. The Give-A-Fuck Factor

It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. Ask this up front as you’re crafting the story: why will the audience care about this character? You have unlimited answers to this. Look to the narratives all around us to find reasons to care. Anything can fly. We love underdog stories. We love tales of redemption (and takes of failed redemption). We love bad boys, good girls, bad girls, good boys, we want to see characters punished, exalted, triumphant, rewarded, destroyed, stymied, puzzled, wounded. We gawk at car crashes. We swoon at love.

8. Rub Up Against Remarkability

You must prove this thesis: “This character is worth the audience’s time.” The character must deserve her own story — or, at least, her own part within it. You prove this thesis by making the character in some way remarkable. This is why you see a lot of stories about doctors, detectives, lawyers, cowboys, bounty hunters, wizards, space rangers, superheroes… but you don’t see quite so many about copier repairmen, pharmaceutical assistants, piano tuners, or ophthalmologists. The former group is remarkable in part by their roles. The latter group can be just as remarkable, however, provided you discover their noteworthiness and put it on the page or the screen. What makes one remarkable can be a secret past, a current attitude, a future triumph. It can be internal or external. Infinite options. Choose one.

9. Act Upon The World Rather Than Have The World Act Upon Him

Don’t let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. We grow weary of characters who do nothing except react to whatever the world flings at their heads. That’s not to say that characters shouldn’t be forced to deal with unexpected challenges and left-field conflicts — but that doesn’t prevent a character from being proactive, either. Passivity fails to be interesting for long. This is why crime fiction has power: the very nature of a crime is about doing. You don’t passively rob a bank, kill your lover, or run a street gang. Simply put: characters do shit.

10. Bad Decisions Are A Good Decision

Nobody ever said an active character had to be a smart character. A character can and perhaps should be badly proactive, making all the wrong moves and affecting the world with his piss-poor decisions. At some point a character needs to take control, even if it means taking control in the worst possible way. In fact…

11. This Is Why Jesus Invented Suspense

Tension is created when characters you love make bad decisions. They lie, cheat, steal. They break laws or shatter taboos. They go into the haunted house. They don’t run from the serial killer. They betray a friend. Sleep with an enemy. Eat a forbidden fruit. Jack off in a mad scientist’s gizmotron thus accidentally creating an army of evil baby Hitlers. Tension is when the character sets free his chickens and we know full well that those chickens will come to roost. But the chickens will come home changed. They will have knives. Prison tats. And evil wizard powers. Don’t let tension wriggle free, soft and pliable, from external events. Let the character create the circumstances of suspense.

12. How You Succeed Is By Not Having Them Succeed

You as storyteller are a malevolent presence blocking the character’s bliss. You must be a total asshole. Imagine that the character is an ant over here, and over there is a nugget of food, a dollop of honey, and all the ant wants is to trot his little ant-y ass over to the food so that he may dine upon it. Think of the infinite ways you can stop him from getting to that food. Flick him into the grass. Block his path with twigs, rocks, a line of dishsoap, a squeeze of lighter fluid set aflame. Be the wolf to his little piggy and huff and puff and blow his house down. Pick him up, put him in the cup-holder in your car, and drive him 100 miles in the opposite direction while taunting him with insults. The audience will hate you. But they’ll keep on hungering for more. Will the ant get to the food? Won’t he? Will he find his friends again? Can he overcome? Primal, simple, declarative problem. You are the villain. The character is the hero. The audience thirsts for this most fundamental conflict of storyteller versus character.

13. The Code

Just as a storyworld is beholden to certain laws, norms, and ways, so too is a character: every character has an internal compass, an invisible set of morals and beliefs that comprise their “code.” The audience senses this. They know when a character betrays his own code and violates the program — it’s like a glitch in the Matrix, a disturbance in the dream you’ve crafted. That’s not to say characters can’t change. They can, and do. But a heroic fireman doesn’t one day save a cat from a tree and the next day decide to cook and eat a baby. Changes in a character must come out of the story, not out of thin air.

14. A B C

The law of threes. Find three beats for your character — be they physical, social, emotional — with each beat graphing a change of the character of the course of a story. Selfish boy to exiled teen to heroic man. From maiden to mother to crone. Private, Lieutenant, General. Knows everything, everything in question, knows nothing. Birth, life, death. Beginning, middle, end.

15. Boom Goes The Dynamite

Blake Snyder calls this the “Save The Cat” moment, but it needn’t be that shiny and happy. Point being: every character needs a kick-ass moment, a reason why we all think, “Fuck yeah, that’s why I’m behind this dude.” What moment will you give your character? Why will we pump our fists and hoot for him?

16. Beware The Everyman, Fear The Chosen One

I’m boring. So are you. We don’t all make compelling protagonists despite what we feel in our own heads, and so the Everyman threatens to instead become the eye-wateringly-dull-motherfucker-man, flat as a coat of cheap paint. The Chosen One — arguably the opposite of the Everyman — has, appropriately, the opposite problem: he’s too interesting, a preening peacock of special preciousness. Beware either. Both can work, but know the danger. Find complexity. Seek remarkability.

17. Nobody Sees Themselves As A Supporting Character

Thus, your supporting characters shouldn’t act like supporting characters. They have full lives in which they are totally invested and where they are the protagonists. They’re not puppets for fiction.

18. The Main MC, DJ Protag

That said, they don’t call your “main character” the MC for nothing. Your protagonist at the center of the story should still be the most compelling motherfucker in the room.

19. You Are Not Your Character, Except For When You Are

Your character is not a proxy for you. If you see Mary Sue in the mirror, put your foot through the glass and use that reflection instead. But that old chestnut — “write what you know” — applies. You take the things that have happened to you and you bring them to the character. Look for those things in your memory that affected you: fought a bear, won a surfing competition, lost a fist-fight with Dad, eradicated an insectile alien species. Pull out the feelings. Inject them into the face, neck, guts, brain and heart of the character.

20. Fugged Up

Everybody’s a little fucked up inside. Some folks more than that. No character is a saint. Find the darkness inside. Draw their imperfections to the surface like a bead of blood. You don’t have to give a rat’s ass about Joseph Campbell, but he was right when he said we love people for their imperfections. Same holds true for characters. We love them for their problems.

21. A Tornado Beneath A Cool Breeze

A good character is both simple and complex: simplicity on the surface eradicates any barrier to entry, and complexity beneath rewards the reader and gives the character both depth and something to do. Complexity on the surface rings hollow and threatens to be confusing: ease the audience into the character the way you’d get into a clawfoot tub full of steaming hot water — one toe at a time, baby.

22. On The Subject Of Archetypes

You can begin with an archetype — or even a stereotype — because people find comfort there. It creates a sense of intimacy even when none exists. But the archetype should be like the leg braces worn by Forrest Gump as a kid — when that kid takes off running, he blasts through the braces and leaves them behind. So too with the “type.” They’ll help the character stand on his own until it’s time to shatter ’em when running. Oh, and for the record, Forrest Gump was a fucking awful movie. In short: worst character ever.

23. Dialogue Over Description, Action Over Rumination

Don’t bludgeon us over the head with description. A line or three about the character is good enough — and it doesn’t need to be purely about their physical looks. It can be about movement and body language. It can be about what people think, about what goes on in her head. But throw out a couple-few lines and get out. Dialogue is where a character is revealed. And action. What a character says and does is the sum of her being. It doesn’t need to be more than that: a character says shit, then does shit, then says shit about the shit she just did. In there lurks infinite possibilities — a confluence of atoms that reveals who she is.

24. Take The Test Drive

Write the character before you write the character. Take her on adventures that don’t count. Canon can go suck itself. Fuck canon. Who cares about canon? Here I say, “to Hell with the audience.” This isn’t for them. This is for you. Joyride the character around some flash fiction, a short script, a blog post, a page of dialogue, a poem, whatever. Test her, try her out. That sounds porny, but what I mean to say is: cut off her skin, wear it, and dance around the goddamn room. Which leads me to…

25. Get All Up In Them Guts

Know your character. Every square inch. Empathize, don’t sympathize. Understand the character but don’t stand with the character. Get in their skin. The closer you get, the better off you are when a story goes sideways. Any rewriting or additional work comes easy when you know which way the character’s gonna jump. Know them like you know yourself; when the character does something under your watch, you know it comes justified, with purpose, with meaning, with intimate knowledge that the thing she did is the thing she was always supposed to motherfucking do. Unrelated: I really like the word “motherfucker.”

* * *

June 6, 2011 / 3 Comments

Unexpected Guest: Chuck’s Picks

Here, then, are my Top Ten favorite flash fiction bits from the “Unexpected Guest” challenge. It was a hard pick — I had to keep whittling it down and down and down. I will say that some folks fell out of the running due to things like formatting: tiny font or muddy dark backgrounds make it very difficult to read the fiction. A few others had great stories but were a little messy in terms of writing (spelling, grammar, and so forth).

Anyway, here they be — if you’re one of the ten, please hit me up using the contact form in the menu bar, and I’ll swing you an e-book copy of either IRREGULAR CREATURES or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. Thanks all for diving in, this was awesome stuff.

http://damyantiwrites.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/flash-fiction-challenge-unexpected-guests/

http://www.falconesse.com/2011/06/03/flash-fiction-challenge-companys-coming/

http://jamiewyman.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-more-for-wendig.html

http://www.sydgill.com/flash-fiction-challenge/

http://lesannberry.blogspot.com/p/unexpected-guest.html

http://innocentsaccidentshints.blogspot.com/2011/05/terrible-minds-challenge-more-noodles.html

http://cjlemire.blogspot.com/2011/05/flash-fiction-unexpected-guest.html?zx=c5a59146f3b1dd13

http://sittingindarkness.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/an-unexpected-guest/

http://adiaryofawriter.blogspot.com/2011/05/chuck-wendigs-flash-fiction-challenge.html

http://shaunasspot.blogspot.com/2011/06/unexpected-guest.html

(Apologies for just making this a list of links — but with a baby on my lap, this is the easiest fastest way for me to get these links and this post out there!)

June 5, 2011 / 46 Comments

Adolescence Sucks, Which Is Why YA Rocks

When I was in high school, my father told me, “Be happy, this is the best time of your life.”

Later, when I reminded him that he said this, he laughed, then said, “I was lying. I hated high school.”

Being a kid bites. Adolescence sucks.

The other day, the Wall Street Journal shat in its own mouth in declaring Young Adult fiction too dark and too ugly for kids. One assumes that’s because when we hear the word “kids” we receive with it various associations: lollipops, ponies, pigtails, carousels, squealing giggles as children play in a twilit meadow whose golden wheat sways and where everything is cast behind the gauzy Vaseline smear of youth.

Except, the reality is, the associations that come part and parcel with adolescence aren’t like that. Or, at the very least, it comes with some far grimmer associations standing in stark opposition.

Consider, then, these associations: rape, suicide, drugs, bullying, domestic abuse, homelessness, abortion, failure, self-loathing, cutting, peer pressure, gangs, and so on, and so forth.

Adolescence is fucked up.

Let me say that again, but with more letters and syllables for emphasis.

Adolescence is fuuuuuu-huuuuuuuuh-uuuuuuuuuuucked up.

All that shit hits like a perfect storm. That’s life in the high school, kids. The depredations of the real world have been hanging above your head for years, just out of sight. You reach a certain age, that’s it. The string snaps. The sword comes plunging down. And there’s not much you can damn well do about it.

People say, “Oh, the news on TV is so terrible, with the terrorism and what-not.” Well, yeah, it is, but that’s not the problem. The news is out there. But what goes on with adolescents isn’t out there, but rather, right here. Smack dab in front of them. Complex, troubling issues are suddenly flung in the face of human beings whose brain chemistry isn’t yet fully developed, whose hormones are tossed about in a storm-swept cauldron, whose emotions aren’t yet ripe on the vine.

Here, then, is why Young Adult (YA) fiction is awesome: because it takes all that hard, nasty, awful stuff and it never looks away. It doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t bullshit anybody — and if there’s anybody who can smell bullshit, it’s a teenager. It has the courage and compassion to not treat teens like coddled pinheads and instead gives them fiction that represents them. These aren’t protagonists who are unfamiliar to young readers. These aren’t stories and situations that seem alien. This is shit that’s happening to them, their friends, their acquaintances online — but here, the fiction allows them to see it, hold it, deal with it both at the ground level and from a sky’s eye view. They see protagonists who are able to suffer the slings and arrows of youth — and Sweet Jesus are those some poisonous arrows — and who are then capable of rising beyond and above, persevering and above all else, surviving.

Because that’s what adolescents need to know: that they can survive this time of their life, a time that could easily be noted as the “Dark Ages” of one’s own personal history.

Like I said yesterday on the Twitters, YA is the fiction-born equivalent of the “It Gets Better” phenomenon. It brings meaning and context to the most troubling time of one’s life.

Do we really believe that teens don’t embrace darkness to make sense of darkness? To see the power that comes from mastering it?

When I was a very young child, I had a dream with old classic movie monsters that scared the piss out of me — but eventually, I learned to control the dream and master the monsters and in doing so, stole the power away. The dream then ceased to be scary. Why would we want to rob teens (or pre-teens, or adults, or anybody) the chance to look into darkness to understand and master it? Why does WSJ pretend that the issues and “ugliness” put forth by YA fiction aren’t the same things that teenagers are thinking about, worrying about, talking about, and above all else dealing with day to day? To take that away, to give them sanitized, bleach-washed fiction that fails to speak truth would be a true crime, and would represent a far more serious danger. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with escapist entertainment, I just don’t know that adolescents always want an escape. I think they’d rather find a way to understand.

At least, that’s how I was when I was that age. When I was a teenager I left my “reading level” behind and read scads of horror, thriller, and crime books. Because it felt more real. Now, the “reading level” has caught up with the expectations of the age, which sounds to me like a great thing. A brave thing, even.

It’s why I wish we saw more bravery in terms of Hollywood. Films sanitize where (at present) fiction reveals. One pretends the scab isn’t there; the other rips it off and lets it bleed fresh blood.

Right now, some of the strongest, strangest material being done right now in fiction is being done in the realms of YA. It’s good to get outside that comfort zone, because trust me, teenagers have no comfort zone.

I don’t think they’re afforded that luxury.

So you can suck it, WSJ.

(Be advised, normally I don’t do a Sunday post and instead post on Mondays — let’s just pretend this is Monday’s post that has ended up traveling backward in time and posting on Sunday. Shut up.)