Tag: short story

the story behind the story

I’m published!

And about damn time – I’ve been writing about writing for the past 7 years but didn’t have a scrap of fiction to share…until now.

Some context: the latest round of edits on Fool’s Gold slowed (further) over the summer due to burnout. I needed to get the creative juices flowing again, and what better way than with a short story? Something with a simpler plot and less time/emotional investment.

When I stumbled over evidence that Rudolf II had a pair of Mexican hairless dogs in his extensive menagerie I couldn’t resist playing with the notion of a yipping lapdog that turned out to be more than it appeared.

I queried through the fall. Of twelve publications, six rejected me, five didn’t reply, and one accepted. This, I gather, is par for the course. Persistence really does pay off!

My put-upon animal trader, Janek, is entirely made up. And goddamn, it was freeing to write a fully fictional character! No timelines or documentation to work around! I based his curmudgeonly attitude on Rowan Atkinson’s character Edmund Blackadder, a long-suffering servant to idiotic royals in a series of 80s British comedies. My logline for “The Zolo Hound of the Newly Found World” was “Blackadder runs a zoo”.

Laurenciana Pylmannova, however, was completely real. What little I could find of her was fascinating and still left me enough room to make up a personality.

Please read and let me know what you think, either here or over at Tall Tale TV.

Janek and Laurenciana WILL return, along with Felipe.

what’s my motivation?

I’m writing a short story. The premise of “chupacabra in Rudolf II’s court” just wouldn’t leave me alone. So I thought I’d tame the plot bunny, practice writing an (original) short story, and work out my writing muscles between books*.

But when I sat down to write it I couldn’t make it go anywhere. I described the setting. I described the chupacabra. I walked my protagonist and the chupacabra through different scenarios. I even tried naming them**. I couldn’t get any of it to cohere into something resembling a plot.

So I turned to Oblique Strategies, a card deck/randomizer developed by Brian Eno in the 1970s to help him unwind creative snags. I got “Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics”.  Frustratingly vague, but enough to shatter my rigid mind.

So I noodled with specific mannerisms for my protagonist: rubbing his eyes, tugging his doublet, smoothing his (thinning hair). But what in his personality would make him do any of these?

Is he tired? Fussy about his clothing (or does it not fit)? Why do I imagine him with thinning hair? Why do I imagine him as a “he”***?

Ryan Reynolds in scrubs saying

So that got me thinking about his personality, and what would lead someone of his inclinations and situation to rub his eyes, smooth his clothes, and drag a potentially deadly creature across Europe to give to an Emperor.

Which gets into backstory, because why would anyone travel with a chupacabra (threats? Prestige? Serious money? A death wish?) Which brought me back to:

The story is always about people (or aliens/animals/something standing in for people) and what motivates them, and how they act in situations they encounter or seek out. I couldn’t begin to get at a plot until I had at least some idea of character.

So now the story is moving along, if not perfectly at least better.

Don’t know what I’ll finally do with this thing – maybe it’ll just sit on my hard drive forever. But it continues to be a useful exercise.

*I’ve started research for the new book. No spoilers but I’m feeding the muse.

**Good thing I based my first novel on real people because I can’t name a damn thing. Thank doG for Scrivener’s Name Generator function.

***I already know the answer to this one: the story takes place in the sixteenth century and regrettably in most historical times and places (hell, even today) men had more freedom of movement than women.