Only in my Dreams

I'm not the type to sit and brainstorm story ideas. If I force it, I'm not going to like the finished product. My brother Tony comes up with a lot of his ideas when he's out walking in the morning. Doing routine, monotonous tasks always helps me come up with stuff. There are so many stories that are born in my morning shower. 

I'm one of those people who believes that the stories come from somewhere. I don't mean there's a cosmic reservoir of short story ideas but often they come from dreams. Literally.


This past week I awoke with a name on my mind. It was a strange name that I don't believe I've ever heard before. All day long I thought of this name and wondered what it meant. The next night I had a dream that fleshed it out for me. Gave me a whole backstory on the name. The dream showed me that this was a black teenaged boy living in Fulton County, Georgia in 1920 with his mother and siblings. (Having dreams that pick up night after night isn't unusual for me. Ask me about my lucid dreaming sometime.) There were snippets and flashes of what happened to this boy in the dream. I was a mere observer.


I awoke and knew that this was a story and I had to write it down. Now the creative part of the storytelling is all part of my conscious effort but the story itself sprang from within. And I feel compelled to write it. To birth it. It's a story that definitely fits with the stories in my two books and it will probably end up in the third volume.

Last week I had another dream about a complex story idea. The dream was difficult to put into words and I've been thinking about how I'm going to be able to write this story. It's an entirely different concept for me, bordering on science fiction. I'm excited by it because if I can figure out how to tell the story that I saw in my dream, I think it will blow people away. 

That's my process.

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Kurt Vonnegut on Short Story Writing

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 

This is definitely essential. To not do this would be the kiss of death.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

If there's no one to root for then the reader is not going to care about the story. I can think of one of my stories where there is no one to root for. But I think what holds the reader's interest is the curiosity to see what is going to happen to the character. The story is "Victuals." The protagonist, Rooster Fallow, isn't a terribly likable guy. And I think the reader can tell something, probably bad, is going to happen to him after he does what he does in the beginning of the story. 

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Motivation is so important. In my story "No Good Deed" Buck McDonald is a highly paid professional athlete but he's searching for a reason to live. His success holds no satisfaction for him. He's a man who seemingly has it all. By contrast, the narrator of the story wants what he has. And she's appalled that he's not grateful for what he has while she's struggling. 

 

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

This is why I love short stories. The economy of words. I don't believe in writing a lot of detail for detail's sake. I want to tell the tale in the most judicious way possible. 

 

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

I love this advice. I may take it in the future. Some stories I come up with the ending first. Like "Greenlight," "Sewer Rat," "Dignity Tickets" or "Urad 238." I knew exactly where those stories were going. Others, I just started the story and let it unfold for me. "Godshot," "American Roulette" and "Fire-Roasted" are stories that I started and followed to their conclusion. I can't say which method is better because "Dignity Tickets" and "Godshot" are my two favorite tales and they were written completely differently.

 

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Definitely. I recall always saying that what I like to do in a story is take a regular person and see how much misfortune I can heap on their shoulders. Stories like "Gravity" come to mind. I'm definitely sadistic in that I like to make my characters squirm. Make 'em sweat. I think it makes the reader squirm.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I'll be honest with you. I think Vonnegut was drinking when he said it. I don't really understand what he meaas by this.

 

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
This would be true if you're writing a conventional short story. A lot of my stories have twist endings so I don't necessarily want the reader to know exactly where I'm going. But if a twist ending is done well all of the clues are right there to determine the ending if you look for them. 

MORSELS VOL 1. available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.

MORSELS VOL 2. available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iTunes. 

"Godshot" is my favorite

Artists usually don't like choosing which of their creations they like most. It's like asking a patent who their favorite child is. But of the fifteen short stories in MORSELS Vol. 1 I can honestly say that "Godshot" is my favorite. For me, it's a deeply spiritual tale but I constructed it in such a way that it's a matter of faith for the reader.

The story centers around a young L.A. Crip who, after a harrowing incident with two of his homies, finds himself on a bus locked into what may be a religious discussion or a con or hustle by another young guy drinking beer. I wanted to do a story that was emotionally engaging with a spiritual theme.

The story was inspired by the old Joan Osborne song, "One of us." That song really spoke to me when it first came out and maybe this story has rattled around inside my head ever since then. All I know is that when I started writing it, it just flowed naturally from there. The characters were patterned after people that I've known. When I first wrote it, I read it to my girlfriend Cathi, who loved it. For me, it encapsulates the kind of tales I like telling.It's not scary or heavy handed. I could've made the story more overt and really pushed the supernatural in it but I think that would've been to the detriment of the main character, Beanie D. It had to go the way it went.

Two people can read it and walk away with differing conclusions of what exactly transpired.

It has coarse language in it, one of the few of the fifteen stories that does. It's necessary given who the characters are. This is how they would speak. I actually lessened some of the harsh language from the first version because I thought it may have been a bit much. My stories might shock but I don't shock for shock's sake.

Of course your favorite may differ. I love all of the tales of course but I'm biased. You can read 'Godshot' for yourself and let me know what you think of it. Got a buck? Pick up the Morsels Vol 1 ebook at Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com and iTunes. You can buy a physical copy too. Info to do that is on this blog.

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