Starting Little Fictions

Story ideas come and go, but they all start out as stereotypes. I nursed one according to rules laid out for me by one of the writing “manuals” I house in my priority bookcase.

The pitch was this: if you get an idea for a story write it out quickly, and then begin to exaggerate each theme or impulse in the tale, making it unlike the stereotypical account dreamers usually mount. (As in riding a “nightmare”, a kind of horse.)

I tinkered with a tale of a captured soldier who is set to the work of a bomb-defusing specialist. Each morning a number of his prisoner colleagues are shot, just to remind the group that the captors are intent. Keep in mind the warden knows he’s running out of food and wants to intimidate the surplus survivors, hoping those subjected will more easily accommodate themselves to reduced supplies.

No one in the oppressed group is trained in defusing bombs. It’s a matter of teach yourself as quick as you can. The area where bombs and shells are mixed with debris is sectioned into same-size parcels, and each parcel becomes the domain of a captive/defuser. There are dozens of these parcels, and from time to time one hears a pop or a boom as a defuser is blown to bits by a mistaken effort to shut off the detonator in an assembly. All to the good, says the warden. One less mouth to feed.

As things proceed it becomes clear to the dreamer that he is lucky to be alive and even more fortunate to be learning a skill that will come so quickly to good use. He has become a student not only of explosives but of the defensive thinking applied by designers of bombs, shells and booby-traps. Many bombs have screw-in detonators and are designed to go off if touched after charging. That’s a problem with bombs that are mass-produced. Others are home-made and offer no consistent solution. In some of those cases, he learns the bomb may be designed to go off if a test-probe is applied to the detonator from the right. Clearly, the assembly kills defusers who are right-handed, or think right-handedly. Other bombs may be designed to detonate if addressed from the left. Or precisely at the middle. Figuring out what the designer expects, should his/her missile turn into an apparent dud in a field of still-live ammunition, is no small task for the amateur defuser.

But the larger topic here is that a story idea can be plain vanilla, and become interesting only after changes are made at the turns of the original plot. I spent a half hour, while wakeful last night, trying to change each of the corners in this story, to test the quick-change principle espoused by one writing-manual author. The author’s advice (Janet Barroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 3rd Ed.) was to develop three scenes in any short story idea, one of the scenes handling a transition. I’m not sure I got that far. I just kept changing changes. That’s where the right- and left-handed detonator fixes came from. I’m not sure they were worth the trouble. Seems to me a larger fix was intended. Like switching from detonators to tumors.

Long Time Listening

The last post on this blog was nine months ago. At the time, I was saying goodbye for a while. You'd think after all that time something fresh would show up. That just shows you how safe and anonymous a blog can be. The fact is, if you want to keep something a secret these days, the best place to hide things is in a blog or any individually owned website. Trust me. It would seem by now that if you wanted to totally hide your identity you'd be best off taking up space in YouTube or MySpace. But I admit to having been to YouTube only once in my life, and Istill don't know where they hide MySpace. I'm not a late bloomer. I was planted upside down. Any response?

Off to Another Venue for Now

All of the entries in this free Google blog (whyknott.blogspot.com) have now been moved to my older site (www.bruk.us), a commercial spot I've owned for several years at another host (Gate.com).

The old www.bruk.us site held a blog for a couple of years using software called Greymatter. I lost interest in the site, but can't tell you why. Maybe I got tired of the sound of my own voice. In any case, I've resurrected the old blog at www.bruk.us using WordPress, a newer and much respected "open source" blog program.

I've a great deal to learn about how to run a blog using the controls WordPress places at our disposal. And I'm excited about the prospect. In small ways I hope to give you a feel for building and nursing a blog, yet not bore you with the details. We'll see if that's possible.

In any case, you can expect to see less traffic here at whyknott.blogspot.com and more at www.bruk.us. Why not hop over there and check it out right now? Click here.

Heavy Hitter Swings Late?

The article that most impressed me in today’s Sun News appeared in a section called "Nation & World". The piece stands under the heading of "Voices of Dissent" -- which may cast a shadow on the validity of the section since it must be by “one of them other guys”. The title of the article in 48 point type shouts, "Experts Warn of Repeating Cold War Folly". The gist of the article is that George W. Bush misinformed us about Iraq's alleged holding of weapons of mass destruction and that the President planned a war on Iraq prior to September 11, 2001, though he just thought of going after Iraq when it terrorized New York City that day.

These are not new assertions but to see them now in orderly assembly as a "lead" article in the Sunday paper may give heart to those who oppose the administration's enthusiasm for war. The article points out that the four decades of the Cold War and the era of the Vietnam war rehearsed arguments virtually the same as those George W. Bush now advances for continuing our war in Iraq, to whit, we're battling a worldwide movement that will rain bombs on our heads in the U.S. and will in turn lead to the domino collapse of nations around Iraq and further out.

The byline of the article identifies Ron Hutcheson as the author speaking to us from "Washington Bureau". I'm not sure where that Bureau is or who owns it. The section of the paper where it appears is subtitled with a red header “MYRTLEBEACHONLINE.COM” (yes, in caps), probably implying what appears there lacks the kind of journalistic review typical of a Sunday paper.

I congratulate the Sun News for printing the article/opinion.

I criticize the Sun News for presenting Hutcheson's piece with insinuations that it as an orphan. Hutcheson's work is on the contrary an informed analysis and a professionally argued opinion, backed by current facts and authorities, and really well done.

Death and the Maiden

A dear friend is quite heavy and had an infected gall bladder. She said afterward the pain was so severe she would rather have a baby (she has had two) than have a gall bladder attack or have the organ removed. She said this after the operation. The discussion took place when I had my gall bladder removed and was recuperating and probably asked for sympathy. But she was the first and only woman I’ve met who says there is any pain greater than childbirth.

Some don’t often think of women as subjects of torture, where the pain could be increased ad infinitum, but there were women who were tortured in Argentina thirty years ago who could testify to the horrible talents of dictators in an era when young people were “disappearing” there by the thousands. The bodies of the desaparecidos were hidden partly to conceal evidence of the torture that killed them. Iraq competes for the worst torturer’s award today, I think, in numbers if not in degree of pain administered. Wouldn’t you think humanity would have better things to do than practice giving pain to its own kind?

If you ever have a chance to see the movie entitled “Death and the Maiden” you would see magnificent performances by Sigourney Weaver (as Paulina Escobar), Ben Kingsley (as Dr. Roberto Miranda) and Stuart Wilson (as Gerardo Escobar). The characters are caught up in their own hate and fright and flashbacks of the horror. And they are only too human in the face of their accusers.

I mention this movie (directed by Roman Polanski) because it deals with the torture of Paulina in the past maybe by Dr. Miranda and displays the depth of psychological damage to the subject years later – the time of the drama. Her husband is about to be appointed to the supreme court of a Latin American republic that regrets its bad past. Dr. Miranda gives the husband a ride home in a storm. Paulina thinks she hears her old torturer’s voice. It must have been a stage play done up for movies, but it is powerful and significant on film. Rent it. It will never come back to your theater.

Where's the Reader Headed?

There's a lot of talk about the dark future of the newspaper. The story goes that old duffers who read the newspaper are dying off and youngsters are not replacing them. The Nation says we have the same number of subscribers now as in 1950 though we now have twice as many reading citizens. In spite of newspaper profits being much better than other kinds of large corporations, many pundits predict a fall-off in circulation as management pares staff and readers stop their subscriptions even before they die off. The problem is that no one I've read talks about what has always been wrong with newspapers, since long before the Internet. Newspapers are one-way streets.

True, newspapers speak out to us. But till lately readers could not talk back in large numbers. Letters-to-the-editor have always been filtered by staff with agendas. The result was two or three paragraphs from a half dozen subscribers sampling a readership of tens or hundreds of thousands. Yet the Internet has shown us with blogs and you-tubes that news and opinion can be fed back into the media stew by independent citizens at a rate that must make elder newsfolk's heads spin. If newspapers are on the wane it is perhaps because readers have found a voice, can talk back, and will not have to wait for the clerk in charge of the op-ed page to filter what's coming in. Newspapers like Kafka's Castle cannot accomodate feedback, while the Internet can. That's why these days newspapers add a slug to nearly every article that identifies a website and often a staff member's email address.

It's also true that the Web gives voice to many with less authority, to scribblers with few credentials. Why, they may only be voters. As a result of the amateur's ascendance, it's more work staying informed. We have to sift and filter for ourselves. This reminds us that liberty is hard to live with. But it's time to declare that newspapers and internets offer remarkably different chances for the individual to matter. We may see not only a better informed public when search engines roam oceans of opinion, but also a better informed government by an electorate that votes with its words long before November.

All for One and One for All

THOMAS B. EDSALL, an op-ed writer in the NYT today, says the eight-point Democratic laundry list voted or advanced during the first 100 hours of this term in the House suggests that our two parties in Congress are in an encouraging mode of cooperating to get new laws passed or old laws corrected. At the same time, he argues, you can’t enact measures that cost money without either raising taxes or cutting what else is spent, if you intend to hold the line. I want to go down on the list of those courageous citizens who are willing to cut federal costs for programs that don’t affect them, and the increase in funds for measures that do. I also want to note that Edsall has (1) come down as pleased that Democrats got things done in the early hours of this Congressional term and has (2) declared his reservations about a party that could end up increasing taxes to pay the bills. The country needs more of that kind of bipolar commendation.

Drug Block

Q: What three factors in a 2003 federal law have boosted the price of prescription drugs?

Answer:

- banning the import of cheaper medicines from Canada,
- forcing 7 million Medicaid patients to buy drugs that lack price limits
- requiring private insurance plans to stay “small and numerous” to keep them from gaining leverage and bargaining with drug makers.

Related Facts:
- President Bush got $1.17 million from the drug companies for his 2004 reelection campaign
- Bush has promised to veto a Democrat bill that would modestly change prescription legislation.
- To block this legislation, drug lobbyists plan to ignore the House and focus on the Senate where 51 members are Democrats and 49 are Republicans. And 60 Senate votes are required to change the legislation.

Check it out!!!