(Note: art of Leslie Odom, Jr. as Burr done by the inimitable Amy Houser, who did the cover for Irregular Creatures. You can find Amy’s Twitter here, and her website here.)

I was going to write a post about The Walking Dead. I don’t watch that show anymore, but even without watching it I’m roughly abreast of what’s going on there because, ha ha, social media can’t shut its mouth for 60 seconds, much less 60 minutes, and so I know who Negan killed in the opener of the current season. (Spoiler warning: Negan kills all our hopes and dreams.) And I wanted to talk about why I don’t watch it anymore, why I think the show has become something approximating PAIN PORN, why I think it’s gone too far down the rabbit hole of FEEL BAD TV, why I think it’s all pure surface now and has very little deeper going on — and, above all else, why I believe the entire conceit of the series summons my disbelief.

But, y’know, c’mon. I’d rather not waste my time or yours — plus, some people continue to love the show, as they should. Love what you love, and don’t let me pee in your pool. I mean, I already peed in your pool, so it’s too late on that particular front, but I mean, metaphorically, I don’t want to urinate in any of your cherished psychological spaces.

Instead, let’s talk about something I like.

Let’s talk about Hamilton.

Or, more specifically, the so-called Hamildoc — Hamilton’s America, a PBS program detailing both the rise of the musical and the history that forms its bones and its blood. As noted, I came to Hamilton late — I was particularly hesitant to listen to the musical once I discovered it had little to nothing to do with actual delicious ham. And once I did listen to it, I listened to it the wrong way: a slap-dash listen where I dicked around on the Internet as it played. Once I finally ceased all such dicking around, and once I sat with it and listened to it straight through, any resistance I had was sandblasted away. The musical planted its seeds. I still hum and sing it daily. My wife does too, now. In the car, the five-year-old-known-as-B-Dub will ask to have either Star Wars put on the radio — or Hamilton. (He also likes to use the name “HERCULES MULLIGAN” as his battle cry. He’ll just bust into a room, fists up, muscles out, and he’ll growl, “HERCULES MULLIGAN!” because he’s pretty sure that’s the best name of all time.)

So! I watched the doc with glee straining the ventricles of my poor mortal heart and I was not disappointed. More importantly, though, I took home a number of storytelling lessons as I watched it — because to me there’s nothing more fascinating than watching an interesting creator in the process of creation, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is nothing if not a very interesting creator, indeed. To be able to watch the genesis of the musical and the unfolding of the narrative was not only fascinating — it was informative.

And thus I present, five storytelling lessons I grokked from the doc.

Do with these as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

It Takes The Time That It Takes

It took Lin-Manuel six years to write Hamilton.

It took him two years to write the first two songs.

I think we have this idea in our heads that creation has to be fast and furious, that it’s either pyroclastic fucksplosion time or it’s nothing. And sometimes it is! Sometimes writing something is like having an INSPIRATION GRENADE shoved down into your undies and then it detonates, and the only thing you can do is ride the shockwave to a finished piece of something.

But sometimes, inspiration comes in threads. A red thread here, plucked out of the air. An orange thread there, found wound around your pinky. You find these threads over time and only over time do they start to come together into a proper rope to climb. I tend to write pretty fast, but Blackbirds famously took about five years. Atlanta Burns was a book that had all these separate parts that took a year or more to come together. Exeunt (recently announced!) has been in my head for about two years and it was all these ill-fitting but interesting pieces that needed just a few more bits and a couple dollops of creative glue to bring them together.

Point is, it takes the time that it takes.

It takes a week, a month, a year, six years.

The brownies gotta stay in the oven till they’re done, son.

Read Broadly, For Inspiration Is Fucking Weird

Lin-Manuel found the inspiration from Hamilton in Ron Chernow’s book. At least, that was the match that lit the powder keg — Miranda was sitting on an explosive barrel packed with hip-hop culture and historical musicals and his own life (and his own father’s life, too). There is an astonishing creative alchemy there, but it only happens when you let it. When, in a sense, you force it — or, rather, you maximize conditions. As I am fond of saying, lightning strikes are rare, but only because we try to avoid them. If you want to get hit by lightning, you can swaddle yourself in metal foil, grab an umbrella, and run out into a storm.

Miranda isn’t absorbing a creative diet of only other musicals. That’s part of it. But it’s also his life. His experience. And then it’s also about reading broadly. Go beyond the fence. Leave the comfort of the town and head out into the woods where unexpected books offer unanticipated mystery — and, better yet, unseen inspiration. Exeunt for me only started to come together when a few non-fiction books added the bridging components, bringing context to these disparate ideas. (I won’t say what books because, well, that’d spoil the story a bit.)

Let Your Fear Of Mortality Drive The Car Once In A While

Both Alexander Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda were driven by a fear of mortality. What days you have, what days you don’t, and how you choose to fill them. There’s no great lesson here except that, I think, fear of mortality is exceedingly common, as it is the one thing we literally all share. We all share that end. And you can be hamstrung by that.

Or you can use it.

There is an energy to that fear, if you can seize it.

You can use that energy to create. To fill your life with purpose.

Don’t wait. To wait is to die. (Just ask Burr.)

Just Write The Parts You Need

In the doc, Miranda is talking to Sondheim and Weidman about writing historical musicals, and Weidman recalls telling Miranda some pretty simple — yet amazing — advice. When talking about how much research and history there is to absorb, and further how to distill that down into a musical, Weidman said: “Just write the parts you think are a musical.”

*mind asplodes*

I can’t tell you how freeing and how clarifying that is. Not just about musicals, but about whatever you’re writing. Just write the thing you’re writing. If what you’ve got is not the thing you’re writing? Then scrap it. Write what you need. Keep what suits the work. You owe the story — and the audience, eventually — only that.

Dig Into Deeper Dirt

If you play Minecraft, as I have and as my son does now, you learn that the deeper you go, the better resources you find. You start to find coal and iron — then, deeper still, you’ll find gold, and even further down, you’ll find diamond. It’s a good metaphor for the act of creating a story, I think. Most of a story exists on the surface or near it, and that’s okay. It should. It can’t spend all its time down there in the dark.

And by “in the dark,” I mean in the loamy silt or hard schist of theme, metaphor, and motif. These components are often invisible, but can be sensed —

And, with repeated reads or listens, excavated.

Part of what’s great about Hamilton are those repeated listens. Listen again and again and you begin to find things you didn’t find the first — or the second, or the eighth — time through. You find flecks of gold and the hint of diamonds down there in the narrative, little character and story bits you missed, interesting turns-of-phrase or better yet, unrealized turns-of-narrative. And then you watch the doc and you see even more: like the way “Burn” takes a historical element and makes it a symbol of her character at that point. Or how the rap styles evolve throughout the work and through different characters. Or how Jefferson’s been gone away so long, he’s figuratively missed the cultural advancement into hip-hop storytelling and so his introduction is jazzier, older, out-of-touch. Lin-Manuel doesn’t shine too bright a light on those things; he has them there if you want to find them. No trail of breadcrumbs. No sign saying DIG HERE. But if you dig, you might find these bits over time.

And that’s vital for a storyteller. As I said, most of a story lives on or near the surface. But a lot remains invisible, and that doesn’t necessarily happen accidentally. That’s something you put there. These are things you hide in the dirt, unseen yet discoverable. Deeper thinking about what the story means, who these characters are, even how the mechanism of the narrative relates to the events of the narrative — that’s huge. Not only does it give the tale a stronger backbone, but it also rewards the audience who revisit the work.

It rewards the audience who grabs a shovel and digs.

Bonus Round: The Two Truths Of Every Character

I know, I said five, and this is number six.

I’m a writer, not a mathematician. Shut up.

In the Hamildoc, we see one thing discussed again and again in relation to these (very real, very historical) characters, and that is how they are both beings of light and darkness. They are angels and devils at the same time. Washington and Jefferson are the architects of this nation and of the freedom we enjoy, and they both also owned people. They both somehow believed all men are created equal while simultaneously demonstrating how untrue that was for them. Hamilton is driven by his own manic genius, but his heroism in the first half of the work burns him out, and soon he becomes grist for the tragedy mill by the second half. Burr is a villain in our history books but the culmination of his villainy is given context and empathy throughout. We see two sides of him as we see two sides of most of the characters. As Miranda notes in the doc: none of these people are saints. And, I’d argue, none of them are truly villains, either.

People are rarely all good or all evil. That’s true of characters. It’s true of people. People routinely do great things while believing bad ideas — and they do bad things in support of pure ideals. In this age of political bullshit, it’s important to see people as people, as wildly imperfect creatures. And as a writer, that’s vital. Every character is seeing themselves in a broken mirror. Every character is complicated and flawed — often to different degrees depending on the type of story you’re telling, sure, but flawed just the same.

It’s good advice for storytelling. And it’s not terrible advice in life, too.

*salutes Alexander Hamilton*

*salutes Lin-Manuel Miranda*

Your Obedient Servant,

C. Wen

(Note: you can watch Hamilton’s America in full right here.)

Here’s the prior round!

Same rules apply.

Go there. Read up on the stories. Pick one that already has its second part written as per the last challenge. Then, it’s time to finish it. Do not choose one where you have already written. Choose a new one. Continue the tale and, more importantly, conclude the tale. Make sure to drop links to the previous two stories — and author credit to those writers! — in your new post.

Due by Friday, Oct 28th, noon EST.

Write up to 1000 words.

Leave a link in the comments below, and again, be sure to share credit where due.

If you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you’ll know I’m a bit of a runner. Have been for a long time. I’ve been running the odd 5Ks here and there, but I wanted to really reach for a goal. A full marathon, I’ve accepted, is just not in the cards for me. I will never have that kind of time to train. Not on a writer’s schedule. But a half-marathon? Yeah, that felt right. Something I could train for.

Here’s the thing about half-marathons, something I learned around Mile Marker 4. You are going to run. A lot. For the same length of time as an average summer blockbuster movie. So with a lot of time and a lot of running ahead of myself, I focused on trying to find a zone where I wouldn’t worry about the mileage…

…and wouldn’t you know it, over the thirteen-point-one miles of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Half-Marathon, I came across a few connections between this half and my own writing career.

Don’t Mind Others. This is Your Career. Not theirs.

For the first handful of miles, all of us were running to the left. I wasn’t sure why until I saw just shy of Mile Marker 4 a police car coming in the opposite direction. I heard a runner behind me say, “Here comes the lead.” The pace car passed us, and right behind it was a guy easily keeping an 8-minute mile and he was showing no signs of stopping. Same for the runner only a few hundred yards behind him, and the pair of runners behind him by a quarter-mile or so. I was one of the runners cheering them all on before getting back to my own run, watching some continue to pound the pavement ahead of me while others needed to walk it out. Now those people in the lead? Those are your Neil Gaimans, your Chuck Wendigs, your Elizabeth Bears, and your Delilah S. Dawsons. They are setting the pace for the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean you compare yourself to them. You don’t say “I must suck at writing because I’m not there.” The pace setters never start at the head of the pack. They train for that shit with each book. They hit personal bests on sunny days. They slog through to the end on the worst. They focus on the story in front of them, not the stories and storytellers around them. As Chuck would say, you do you.

Set a pace. Stick with it.

This race would be the first time I would ever be running any distance taking on double digits. Race rules stipulated “You’re committing to finishing the race at a time less than 15-minutes a mile.” I found that maintaining a ten-minute mile was hard. I could easily pick up the pace, sure, but I was only at Mile Marker 5. Eight to go. No, I wanted to end this race strong, not stumbling across the finish line. Any of this sound familiar? Because it should. You want to finish that book in you, but if you try and shit out a metric fuckton of words you might find yourself struggling just to type out “It was a dark and stormy night…” the following day. Same goes for that pledge of “I’m going to hammer out 2000 words tonight…” only to hit those writing blocks where you may score only 500 words at the end of the day, 750 the next. You might start feeling a little disheartened. This is why setting a pace is so important. Maybe “2000 words a day” is good goal to shoot for, but start off with a 500-word count. Keep with that for a month. Get into a constant, consistent zone of productivity. Remember, this is a long game we’re playing. Not a sprint.

Step up that pace when you’re ready.

At Mile Marker 9 I checked my average pace and had slipped a few seconds. I was still feeling good though, considering this is the farthest I had ever run. I knew if I could keep this pace, I would have enough in the tank for finishing at a confident stride. From the writer’s perspective, this is what you work towards—a pace that, once you got it down, can pick up. Roughly a month later of consistently hitting, if not shattering, that 500-word goal, push your count to 1000 words. Then stick with that regimen for a spell. Then, if the consistency is there, raise your regimen by another 250 or 500 words. Pace makes a difference in your progress; but when you have it down, raise the bar and step it up. You will want to finish strong.

Never stop pushing yourself.

When I hit Mile Marker 10, I had hit a serious milestone. If I was lucky, I would finish the race in two hours-fifteen minutes. If I was lucky. At this point, all that was left was three miles. Roughly five kilometers. My feet and legs were wanting a bit of a break, but I only had three miles to go. Fuck it. I’m all in. No different than when you challenge yourself in your writing. Once upon a time, I didn’t do short stories. I couldn’t keep it tight like short stories demand you do. Now, I’m cranking them out every season with Tales from the Archives and editing anthologies. Once upon a time, I was working a novel a year. In 2016 alone, I’ve got two novels, a novella, and a new season of short stories to launch. While you have to set a pace, you should strive to push yourself to be better, to work harder, to write better.

Fucking Finish the Damn Race.

It was an incline. A long, slow incline. At Mile Marker 11. Well, fuck me running. Literally. I made it 11.25 miles and my body finally said, “Walk. Now.” So I walked for roughly a quarter of a mile. Yes, I was frustrated. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was seriously thinking about just sucking up my pride and walking it out to the end. I watched the distance tick off, did the math in my head, and said to myself “Finish this. Finish this before two hours and thirty minutes. Finish the fucking race.” At 11.5 I started running again. I didn’t feel graceful, I didn’t feel powerful, but goddammit I was running again. Regardless of the 30-degree incline ahead, regardless of the pain, regardless of the lost time, I pushed on. Rounding the corner, I was off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and saw the finish line ahead. My time on crossing—2:22:53. My wife, Pip, had never been so proud of me, not even after we hit Number #1 on three of Amazon’s Steampunk lists only two days prior. That—right there—is so important to your writing career. Your novel, novella, or short story, remains nothing more than an idea and words on paper until you finish it. Finish that story. Finish strong. Finish confident. Fucking finish the story.

The Wilson Half was an amazing experience, but I remember getting home, fired up to write. Honestly, I can’t remember if I did or not. There was a lot of napping and re-hydration after I got home. Still, would I do it again? Yes. Oh hell, yes! Running a half-marathon offered me a lot of perspective on this crazy career as a writer.

Plus, I’ve got to step it up my regimen. Considering what Jim Hines, Chuck, and I have agreed to do for charity, we need to look our best for whatever ridiculous pose people vote for us to recreate.

Lace up, gents. We got some miles to shred.

Hanna is a 1st gen American of German immigrant parents. When WWII breaks out, she seeks to prove her allegiance to the U.S. After rigorous training at Camp X (Google it!), she becomes a spy. Our graphic novel opens in early 1945. Hanna’s assignment? Take a German officer from Munich to Genoa — avoiding the Nazis, the Russians, the Americans. Why? Well, maybe this assignment isn’t exactly ‘authorized’…

Ever see a movie with a know-it-all?

If you haven’t, you probably are that know-it-all. If so, you relish pointing out every inconsistency possible. “There were no such things as chastity belts.” “Eva Peron was a terrible person who didn’t sing with a suitcase.” “No way Braveheart banged the Princess of Wales. He would have smelled like a farting Shetland pony.”

So… I’m one of those know-it-alls. And it can be delightful to point out discrepancies, misinterpretations and general fuck-ups in historical adaptations.

But what if you’re on the other side of it? Do writers really not know their history? Did they not spend months and years researching? Are they inept morons?

OK, probably some of them are. But as someone who’s written five projects based on real events – each with its own historic inaccuracies – I can tell you, most of us make deliberate decisions to benefit the overall story.

Why do we do this? Well, there’s a lot of boring shit that’s happened in 3,000 years. A helluva lot of waiting in doctor’s offices. Blow-drying hair. Scooping kitty litter. Watching CSPAN…

So here are five criteria I use to determine whether to break with documented history. Use and abuse at your own peril.

1. Pace

From moment-to-moment are you keeping the reader engaged?

A reader must want to know what happens next. If you lose this, pages stop turning. The overwhelming majority of stories already truncate time to some degree, so ask yourself if a minute, inessential historical detail pushes the reader forward or stops him in his tracks.

2. Space

Can your overall narrative survive going off on Dostoyevskian tangents?

You may be keeping readers reasonably engaged from moment-to-moment, but most of them have overarching expectations for a narrative and how it should move. It’s possible, if you’re Steinbeck, you can get away with an entire chapter on a turtle early in your narrative. However my guess is that, you, Sir, are no John Steinbeck.

Mostly, tangents work more like the begets and begots of Genesis. You see how crazy long the Bible is… and how you’re only on Chapter 5 of the first book… and, yeah, I think I’ll watch Orphan Black.

3. Interest

Does adding accuracy add interest?

In my screenplay for about the 1924 teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, I tried to scrupulously follow the recorded history. But at times, in order to do so, I’d be adding scenes unnecessary to the plot – which would have slowed the tempo, added money to the budget and been, well, tedious.

For example, in real life, when the ransom call for their victim came in, only the mother was at home. This seems odd as if my child were kidnapped, certainly my partner and I would BOTH be there waiting for the call. Therefore, to be accurate to history, I would either need to 1.) leave the audience wondering where Dad is or 2.) show where Dad is – which was at his hoity-toity gentleman’s club seeking more information (which he didn’t find).

Did that last graph put you to sleep? Exactly.

So in the script, Dad and Mom are together to get the call – there’s no unnecessary scene and no weird questions in viewers heads. But it’s not accurate.

4. Room for interpretation

Do we even know the established history is accurate?

This question came up when I was working on a project about the Borgias. So anything before recorded times – and I mean film, vinyl, photograph, sex tape – is potentially suspect. Especially when it comes to European history during the Renaissance.

Basically, the people writing shit down were either paid by the subjects themselves or by people who loathed the subjects with the passion of a thousand suns.

So which is accurate? Probably neither.

5. Intent

Have you stayed true to the event / character it/herself?

In my latest project, a graphic novel called RATLINE, an OSS agent is tasked with transporting a Nazi out of the shit-show that was central Europe in the waning days of World War II. She’s instructed to avoid all of the armies, including our own, in order to sneak this dude out.

IRL, the U.S. DID have an official, top secret operation called BLOODSTONE in which we enlisted known Nazi war criminals to help us in our post-war struggle with the Russians.

There were also things called “ratlines” that operated like an Underground Railroad for escaping war criminals.

Now there is no evidence that they were as operational as I made them in April/May of 1945. And there is no evidence a U.S. agent ever escorted a Nazi through them. But possible? Hell yes. And true to historical intent.

* * *

Bottom line: With every choice, ask yourself does the “reality” of this contribute to the overall understanding of the narrative / story / philosophy? Does the absence of it invalidate the history?

Bottom bottom line: Writers usually know the history they’re messing with.

Bottom bottom bottom line: Did you make it this far?

Katie Fetting is a screenwriter and aspiring graphic novelist whose first graphic novel RATLINE with illustrator Mark Rehill is currently in the midst of an IndieGogo crowdfunding campaign. Those who donate will get into heaven.*

*No money back guarantee.

GET IT

CURRANT AFFAIRS

BECAUSE IT’S A CUP

OF CURRANTS

GET IT

okay, shut up.

ICYMI: new book deal announcement!

Happy Monday, y’all.

Psst.

Yeah, you.

*pulls off werewolf mask*

Click here.

See in the comments? People have written scary stories — or, rather, the first part of a scary story. Your job now is to continue the tale. Grab one you like and write PART TWO of it —

But once again: do not end it. You are not to conclude the story! But rather, leave it open.

Write part two at your online space, but please make sure in your tale to link to the first part.

Your second chapter is due by Friday, October 21st, noon EST.

Length should be ~1000 words.

GO FORTH AND BE SCARY.