Plagiarism Denials and Disclaimers: Dumb and Dumberer

When last we talked about the increasing instances of plagiarism, I promised more lessons learned from experiences with the practice. It is important to remember this particular example comes from a high school student who was still developing his writing skills, his self-confidence and his personal moral code. Given his age at the time, his situation, and his handling of the situation, it is easy to forgive him the error of his ways.

Adults, however, particularly thought leaders and politicians, must be held to a higher standard than adolescents, especially when these "pillars of society" exhibit such devious, dishonest, and dim-witted actions as public plagiarism and undeniable denial.

They would be far better off following the example of Dave. (I've changed his name.)

Dave was a likable freshman. Great smile. Engaging. Energetic. 

Also overwhelmed by high school life, as well as his changing body and emotions. 

Academic life plagued Dave. He tried to pay attention during class and to understand. Somehow, however, the point of the lessons always eluded him. Not that he wanted them to. Unfortunately, they skated around his cranium once or twice and then slid out whatever orifice was handy before he could catch them.

And Dave was not alone in his English classroom. Therefore, when the subject turned to Romeo and Juliet, there were certain to be problems. To Dave and his friends' credit, conflicts were few. 

Reluctantly, though respectfully, they muddled through the problematic Shakespearean language, the coma-inducing audio recordings, and the trauma of seeing Olivia Hussy and Leonardo DiCaprio play the main roles. 

Nobody rebelled. 

Nobody vandalized the books. 

Nobody died.

Then we got to the required department-wide paper.

To be honest, as well-intentioned as our instructions were, they set up problems from the beginning. Just what the students were to do was unclear even to us teachers. The assignment was purposely ambiguous to allow the writer to say whatever they wanted in response to the play. Exactly what they were to say was unimportant because the overall purpose was to teach process, organization, and citation.

Some students, however, don't handle freedom well. Doing their own thing is frightening since many are unaware they even have a thing to do.

That sounds dirty. Sorry. Try this:

Few of them know they have any personal abilities.

Yeah. That's it.

With that fear in mind—well, that and the fact that I really liked the Smartboard—I decided to guide the class through the writing process via examples displayed from my computer.

Fancy graphics. Animations. Self-deprecating humor. They all worked. For awhile. 

I had them through the initial steps—brainstorming, thesis composition,  and organization. Even Dave came up with viable ideas.

Then came the rough draft.

With the need to actually commit thoughts to words came an epidemic of brain constipation.  Bodies squirmed. Breaths shortened. Noses twitched. Something had to be done.

Since mental Ex-Lax had yet to be invented and would be surely banned from public school use, I asked if a Smartboard example might help them get started. The class assured me it would. 

Not thinking that such dedicated students could possibly be trying to get out of a day's work on their project, I got up early the next morning and threw together a 5-paragraph  piece of garbage that was purposely bad. At least that's what I told myself and the students.

The point, I told them, was to simply get words on paper and fix it all later. The rough draft is by nature bad.

"You mean it's okay to suck?" asked an impudent blonde-haired girl with a big mouth barely-opened in order to hide her braces.

"At this point, yes. Just write what you think.  You can fix it later."

That was enough for most people. They were off and writing.

Dave was not most people. He still had trouble transferring whatever was in his brain to the keyboard. What came out was a conglomeration of unrelated nouns, verbs, and adjectives interspersed with commas, semi-colons, periods, and self-invented marks that resembled a pimple on the beak of a penguin. 

But through pursed lips and gritted teeth, clumsy thumbs and an overused delete button, he finished his rough draft. "That's good," I thought.

Then came revision. The class loved tearing apart my rough draft. "I was right, Mr. F. That really sucks," Blondie laughed.  Together, the class and I shredded my early-morning musings while laughing and exchanging good-hearted barbs.

"Thanks," I said after we finished. "Now let's fix it." So we did. The longer we worked together, the less garbage-y my pile of garbage became.

Lights flashed on the faces across the room. As a clean, expressive final draft emerged, one could see ideas bubbling within every student in the room.

Every student except Dave. He could have as easily been solving the meaning of life as revising his paper.

"You okay, Dave?" I asked after class.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I was just thinkin'."

"Do you need some help?"

"Oh, no. I got this. I'm fine."

"You sure you can finish this over the weekend and turn it in Monday?"

"Yep. Yep. I'll be done."

And he was. 

When the final bell rang Monday morning, there was Dave's freshly-printed final paper, his massacred rough draft, his "kinda" outline, thesis ideas, brainstorming lists ... everything I required him to submit.

When I started correcting his project, there was one minor problem. His final paper and his rough draft bore little resemblance to each other. In addition, the final seemed  more than a little familiar.

There was a reason for that. Even though the heading bore his name, IT WAS MY PAPER! The one I had displayed on the Smarboard. The one we had revised as a class.

Dave had faithfully applied the class's revisions , retyped them and submitted the paper as his own.

After a few exasperated moments fuming about this betrayal of my trust, mentally composing a nasty letter to his parents, and contemplating chewing his arm off, I took a walk up and down the stairs to clear my mind. 

I sat down, looked at the paper again and remembered the Dave I knew. A moment of clarity struck me.

I knew why Dave had plagiarized. He had no idea what he wanted to say. The time constraints had overwhelmed him. He needed assistance and was too embarrassed to ask. When I talked to him the next day, I realized that given his difficulties, his confession, and his desire to correct the situation, anger was not the correct response. 

Instead of me ranting at him and making  his life more of hell, we talked. Rather than punishment, we worked together to produce an original paper, one that he could be proud of, one that was his. We learned a lot about and from each other from that incident.

Dave's example teaches all of us three important lessons. First, when help is available, take it. Second, true confession is always preferable to false denial. Third, and most importantly, when you screw up, FIX IT! People will still like you. What's more, they will respect you. More than they will if you hide behind dippy disclaimers.

Thought leaders and politicians, learn from Dave. I did.

The Crabby Curmudgeon: Rules, Rigor, and Rebellion

We're taking a break from our regularly scheduled post today to bring you a message about those pesky writing conventions that either annoy us so badly we want to drink house paint or make us stick our fingers in our ears while sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Today, we hear from the Crabby Curmudgeon. The transcript follows below.

Video Transcript

Hi. This is the Write Wind and I’m Mike Frickstad: Writer, retired teacher/speech coach, and today coming to you as THE CRABBY CURMUDGEON.

Hi. You know, one of the joys of teaching English—and I say this totally facetiously—was explaining “the rules.” Spelling rules, usage rules, capitalization rules, poetry rules … Now, what made teaching them so much fun was the glazed looks, the smudged papers from sweaty palms, and the complaints.

“Oh, man! I hate rules!”

“English is too hard. When does the bell ring?”

“Whatta we need to learn rules for? We already talk good.”

(That one is my favorite.)

“Here’s the deal,” I’d tell them. “Even if you talk and write gooder than you think you need to, you need to make sure you can be understood by anybody with even a smattering of English ability. Rules give you a solid foundation that eliminates misinterpretation. If everybody has the same foundation, there will be less confusion and less conflict. Life will be wonderful.”

That would keep the little buggers satisfied for all of about five minutes, just long enough for them to begin their assignment. Oh, every new rule revived their discontent, but they eventually got sick of “Foundation. Foundation. Foundation,” and they’d shut up.

Until we got to literature. Then all heck would break loose.

We would a read a story by Ray Bradbury …

“Hey, these ain’t sentences. There ain't no verbs.”

We would read Emily Dickinson …

“What the …? Those words don’t rhyme. And there are too many syllables in the second line. And what’s with all those dashes and crap? That ain’t a poem!”

We would attempt e e cummings …

“WHAT?!?! No capitals? No punctuation? Letters and words scattered all over the page? Din’t that guy learn nothing in ninth grade? He’s nuts! Hey, if these famous guys don’t know the rules, why do we gotta?” 

Here’s why.

Read more of these people. They knew the rules. They just chose to break them for very specific and valid reasons.

Bradbury used fragments to create mood, tension, or  rapid snapshots of action. Kinda like that Instagram ... whatever that is

Dickinson used extra syllables to make sure we’re paying attention. And the line endings don’t rhyme so we’re overwhelmed by the right word, not the “right sound.” Her punctuation has more to do with pace than with grammar.

cummings … cummings ... Okay, he was nuts, but his earlier poems were purely traditional. His later poems, pure genius. Why? Because he rebelled against the rules. ON PURPOSE! Punctuation, capitalization, structure? Too confining. They force a single meaning on the reader. Instead, cummings forced us readers to find our own meaning. His way, the shortest poem—or part of a poem—can have a myriad of interpretations. Every time we read it, more and more meanings.

“Yeah? So?”

Hey! Do it my way, okay? Learn the rules. Every one of them. Use them over and over until you don’t even have to think about them. They’re just part of who you are. Then break them! Go ahead. Break them. As long as you have a GOOD reason.

“And if we don’t?”

That’s when I developed the look. You know the one I mean. Every English teacher has one. That look that wordlessly sends students back to their texts and notebooks muttering vague obscenities.

Okay. Just let me recap that advice for you writers: Learn the rules. Rigorously and repeatedly use them until they’re second nature. Then wreck ‘em! Stomp the heck out ‘em and develop your own. It’s fun.

Okay. That’s it. I’m the Crabby Curmudgeon for Mike Frickstad and the Write Wind. I’ll be back later. Until then, use the comment box. I’ll get back to you.

Plagiarism: Bogus Bits, Bites, and Big Blue Bins

When I retired from teaching, I thought the days of worrying about plagiarism were long gone. 

I was wrong.

Recent news reports make it clear that not only does the problem still exist, some people—some very intelligent and influential people—don't even have a clue what it is. And that they're guilty of it.

Pardon me for being disheartened.

With recent events in mind and our relative proximity to Halloween, I've decided to examine plagiarism, what it is, where does it come from, and look at some personal and noted stories about its abuses. The stories, to be illustrative, will take awhile, so this subject will be a multipart series. 

Plagiarism Defined:

Just so we're all on the same page, let's establish that plagiarism is not a citation problem. An MLA or APA manual entry on how to list your sources will be about as helpful avoiding plagiarism as owning The Joy of Cooking will help you avoid whiplash. The issue is not acknowledging that the words you are using are somebody else's AS YOU SAY/WRITE THEM.

According to my handy-dandy Apple dictionary, plagiarism is "The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." The school at which I worked—staff and students alike—called the offense cheating. In the English department, we had another word for it: stealing.

Some people, particularly offenders and their parents, considered our term harsh and offensive. Again, I refer to the Apple dictionary: "dishonestly pass off (another person's ideas) as one's own." The two definitions seem remarkably similar, don't you think?

For whatever reason, the similarities never quite sunk in. "Well, it's not cheating!" offenders said. When asked how it wasn't, the excuse centered on the idea that information found publicly was to be used publicly with or without attribution. "If it's in the encyclopedia, it's fair game," they explained.

That was the beginning of my misshapen forehead as palm plants became prevalent.

The Cyber-Outburst

Back in the olden days of hard-copy everything—notecards, outlines, rough drafts, final drafts, and work cited pages—teachers and parents could easily monitor a student's research. Then came the proliferation of computers. 

Word processing quickly replaced typing, abrasive erasers, and correction tape. At first, it was a revolution, a release for the creative juices. Editing became painless. Words, paragraphs, whole pages could easily be moved. Additions/deletions could be applied at will. Drafts which used to take hours or days could be generated and printed in mere minutes. What had been drudgery became simply distracting.

And then Al Gore invented the Internet. 

Or somebody did. 

After that came the World Wide Web and all Sheol showed up. Library stacks rapidly became obsolete. All the research a normal person needed to do could be done at a single monitor rather than having to prowl through the numerous volumes of Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, list article after article that may or may not be in the archives, and transfer information to 3X5 notecards.

Netscape and Google became more important than Encyclopedia Britannica. Magazine and newspapers appeared online. The blogosphere exploded. Information that once took weeks to find now took seconds.

It was great for teaching writing and research.

And then it wasn't.

At the same time writing became simpler, so did cheating. Particularly plagiarism. In fact, with the advent of the computer and the Internet, plagiarism became as commonplace as flatulence in a chili shop, the difference being that plagiarism is more accepted.

The culprit? Copy-paste.

One of the best tools of word processing became the most abused by writers in a hurry, especially the dilatory student hamstrung by shrinking deadlines. It was now too easy to find a source or complete paper, highlight the pertinent information, copy it, and plop it into your paper.

And it was "your paper." It had your name at the top. That's all that mattered. You knew it was good information. After all, it was on the Internet. No need to edit. Just plop it, print it, present it. NEXT!

Assuredly, "copy-paste" is a wonderful tool for dealing with quoted material. I don't mean to discredit it, and I surely don't want to give it up. But its ease of use is not a license to plagiarize. The information that can be easily quoted still needs to be attributed. It seems, though, that adding a simple According to ... prior to or immediately after such a quotation is too much work for some people. Hence, the rise in plagiaristic practices.

Sigh.

That brings me to the first of three horror stories that haunt me from my teaching days. Each is illustrative of the mindset of the plagiarist, indicative of the apparent futility of combating it, and instructive of the ignorance of the ethics of writing.

The Procrastinator

The assignment was simple. "Write a review of something artistic—painting, music, sculpture, movie, book—whatever interests you." The opinion expressed could be positive, negative, praising, scathing, humorous, or serious. Time was given to search material, organize thoughts, write a rough draft, revise it, and finish the final draft. Each class had its allotted computer lab time. The teacher was at the students' beck and call for assistance and direction.

As normal, some students used their time and resources wisely; some not so much; still others became quite adept at circumventing the school's firewalls preventing access to Facebook and YouTube. One particular young man managed to accomplish nothing in nearly five days in the lab, save inhaling and exhaling his appropriate share of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

No outline. Not even a Roman numeral.

No rough draft. Not even a title.

Heck, he didn't have a SUBJECT!

But he did keep the keyboard clear of fingerprints.

Then, on Friday, miraculously, a fully-formatted, albeit citation-deficient, movie review with his name attached appeared in my collection folder.

Confused by this apparent time warp/wondrous manifestation, I asked him, "Where did this come from?"

He stammered, shuffled, and muttered, "I ... uh ... I've been working at home." Then the bell rang. He slid amongst the exiting horde and disappeared out the door.

Just for fun and since it was my lunch hour, I typed the first five words of the boy's paper into Google. Strangely, the student's paper appeared on screen complete with still photos from the movie, a cast list, and a picture of somebody closely resembling Roger Ebert.

I printed the Google article and took it, along with the student's paper to the cafeteria. I found the boy with his friends and asked to talk to him privately. Before I could even ask the student anything, the boy blurted out, "I didn't cheat. I did that all myself!"

I paused a moment, then held up the two articles side by side.

Nervously sucking on his lower lip, the student leaned forward and quickly examined the papers. He straightened, put on his best befuddled look, and said, "I don't know how that happened."

I answered, "It's called plagiarism."

The boy' face twisted and in all seriousness asked, "Plagiarism? Is that another word for cheating, 'cause I didn't cheat. I printed that off myself."

So evidently, if you have command of keyboard shortcuts Command-C (copy), Command-V (paste), and Command-P (print), whatever emerges from the printer is yours, whether you composed the words yourself.

Unfortunately, the practice is not confined to high school sophomores; it has found its way into all areas of writing––professional, political, and personal. Here's hoping that audiences, voters, and romantic partners will react similarly to me in this story: Expand the supply of recyclable materials in the big blue bin at the end of the hall.

Reality and Fiction: The Natural Absurdity

An old adage states that "Truth is stranger than fiction." And the old teacher in me says, "That is disgustingly trite. Stop it!"

Yes, the saying is a cliche, but banality aside, there is a validity there we need to talk about, especially as we finish our series on reality in fiction.

Thus far, we've explored the pitfalls of too close an adherence to authenticity—boredom, distraction, and outright abandonment of the material—and the areas of a story that demand Steven Colbert's element of "truthiness"—sound, reactions, and relationships. Today's installment explores the elements that are simply rife with possibilities for stretching credibility (rife in a good way):  imagination, conflicts, and resolution.

First, be aware that stressing over a creative subject is not only destructive to the writing process; it is also totally unnecessary. To see why, look at the back pages of the newspapers/magazines and observe the barrage of bizarre reported there on a daily basis.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, prolific novelist Carl Hiaasen, author of Skinny Dip, Strip Tease, and assorted children's stories (strange man ...), credited the Miami Herald as a major inspiration for his novels. 

For example, Skinny Dip involves a man throwing his wife off the back of a cruise ship only to have her land on a plastic-wrapped bale of marijuana, which saves her life. Far- fetched? If you live in Wyoming or any spot 300 yards inland from the Atlantic, of course, it would seem fanciful, if not totally impossible. Yet Hiaasen claims he read it in the Miami news. His 60 Minutes interviewer later confirmed the story.

One could blame such implausible occurrences  on an overabundance of alligators, pink flamingoes, and octogenarian golfers dressed in shorts and Panama hats. One could blame them on the intellectual influence of DisneyWorld's resident Goofy. Or one could simply write off the behavior as typical to any landmass surrounded on three sides by seawater.

However, ridiculous reality is not limited to the fringe life of Florida.

It's everywhere! 

Google can provide an abundance of examples. Simply search "News of the Weird" and you will find a virtual conflagration of creativity. Except it's not created by the machinations of a warped mind; it's all true. 

One may not want to believe what is found there, and that's all right. Most "normal" people are reticent to enter the realm of the ridiculous; however, it is important to know that readers are often more adventurous than writers. Note the success of Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Few rational human beings would conceive of a shipwreck survivor adrift on the Pacific Ocean sharing a lifeboat with a hungry Bengal tiger. Martel did, however, tapping into his readers' need to believe. The book became one of the most successful of the decade.

It wasn't the first either. If you're not convinced that preposterous succeeds, note Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and C.S. Lewis's Perelandra.

As contrived as the concepts of these books were, they all found an audience. How did they do it? By stretching reality.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull describes the search for spiritual perfection through the everyday physical and societal struggles, failures and successes of a BIRD! 

Baum turns his Populist political philosophy into a children's story, transforming the turn-of-the-century industrial worker with no heart into the Tin Man, the Robber Barons of the coastal states  into the Bad Witches of the East and West, and perennial Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan into the Cowardly Lion. (I have more. Ask me sometime.)

Lewis retells the familiar Bible stories of creation and salvation by transporting good/evil earthlings to Venus to prevent/ensure the Fall of Man on that planet. 

In each case, the author blends the familiar with the fantastical, permitting the reader to flee everyday existence to a magical yet authentic world apparently created just for him/her.

In this new world, new conflicts naturally arise from the settings and premise. How does the writer go about making them "real"? By paying attention to detail in the settings, plot, AND characters. With clarity applied to these elements, inventive conflicts arise naturally that in real life would be considered absurd. It is this natural absurdity that hooks and retains the readers' attention.

After guiding the reader through the fictional verities of the plot and climax, the resolution, to be credible, requires the greatest stretch of imagination and the strongest attachment to reality at the same time. The best ending need not be the expected nor the unanticipated, but should result in the reader reacting, "Of course! That's the way it has to be.”

A couple  examples:

Despite the clunky travelogue nature of a great deal of Dan Brown's Inferno, the ending is uniquely successful. After a number of chases, misdirections, and world-threatening chaos, the reader positively needs a solution to the conflict, but never suspects the one that actually occurs. Even though the resolution is not suspected, it is ultimately satisfying which is strange in that neither the protagonists nor the antagonists win. In fact, in the final analysis, the reader isn’t even sure who were the protagonists and who were the antagonists. (I’m purposefully vague here to avoid an ever-annoying spoiler alert.)

A more classic example of the Huh?-Wow! ending comes in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. The climax and resolution occur so fast, they are a one-two punch to the gut, eliciting a shocked gasp and frantic blubbering search through the last chapter trying to discover what the reader missed. Nobody I know has LIKED the ending to this book, but after re-examining the story, everybody reluctantly admits it is the correct one, as well as the perfect expression of the overriding theme of true friendship.

Which brings us to the moral of our three-part odyssey into fictional reality.  I propose the  lessons are threefold: 1) Be real. 2) Stretch your creative muscles, and 3) ... uh ... Eat your vegetables? 

I'm getting forgetful and lazy in my old age. I know that wasn't really one of the lessons. It's what my wife has been telling me all week as we work on our Weight Watchers diet. Sorry.

Yes, dear. I'm listening. I'll be right there.

It all comes back to the Greek ideal of balance. Balance in fiction. Balance in reality. Balance in eating habits. 

Remember, no matter how fanciful a story's premise, the audience also needs to empathize with its characters and their lives. With that in mind, a writer must be careful. The readers'  desire for authenticity does not override the craving for a good story and the hunger for diversion.

That is t0 say, keep it real ... but not too real. Naturally  That would be absurd.

Where Reality Goes Wrong

Funny thing about reading. Many people use it to escape their mundane existence, yet they also demand that the writer take them away from reality by using ... reality.

Huh?

We have already seen where reality works best in fiction. In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain brought life and energy to what could normally be called a tall tale by conveying authentic sounds, reactions, and relationships to engage the reader.

While Twain was a master storyteller, the problem for modern writers to avoid is becoming so entranced with reality that we forget to pay attention to its overuse, particularly in the detail, dialogue, and pacing of the story.

Detail

A single early literature survey class will quickly illustrate how classic authors REALLY paid attention to detail. No matter who/what a character was, the reader had no trouble picturing what that person looked like, smelled like, or sounded like.

If a matriarchal crone had a wart on her chin, the author provided a topographical map of its surface, the precise location, and its ability to frighten small children, dogs, and the illegitimate offspring of a red-eyed tree frog. (I have no idea where that image came from. Sorry.)

Pub scenes choked the reader with odors of sweaty coal miners, stale beer, and the patrons' horses just outside the door. 

Opera scenes not only related the songs and the girth of the singers, the readers experienced the basso's rumblings in their chests. The prima donna's excursions into the musical stratosphere shook the chandeliers until the readers heard their trembling and ringing.

No doubt the description thrilled the audiences of that time. Today, not so much. More often than not, the issue today is that modern readers regard such attention to precision as TMI (too much information). Accustomed to the cinematic pace of movies and television, today's audience simply desires to know only what is necessary to the story. Anything else is dross.

One can argue that this attention deficit disorder is unfortunate. Impatience and preference for the visceral can be detrimental to the reader's final appreciation of the work as a whole. For example, my first reaction to the first 70 pages of James Michener's Hawaii was "I don't care how the stinking islands were formed. I don't care if a bird pooped a flower seed onto the volcanic rock. Tell me a story!" Had I given up, however, I would have missed a fantastic tale of love, violence, intrigue, and history.

That said, it's important to remember Michener was Michener. Those attempting to break into the writing business don't have the reputation and history he had in order to force their readers through the thoroughness the writers want to provide.

Consequently, we need to address this shortcoming of our audiences. One does not accomplish this by talking down or cheapening the final product. Rather, it means recognizing the issue and finding techniques to alleviate its effects. Two important techniques involve the use of dialogue and control of pace.

Dialogue

One of the simplest yet most dangerous ways to engage the reader is the use of dialogue. Earlier entries on this blog have shown how extended, overly realistic dialogue can glaze the reader's eyeballs and turn him/her into a quivering, gelatinous mass of protoplasm. 

That does not mean writers should refrain from utilizing dialogue, however. On the contrary, in addition to its dangers, dialogue has numerous advantages as well.

First is the wonder of white space. Some call this a cheap psychological trick, but it really works, especially if you have just inundated your reader with thirteen pages of dense, gray description. The fact that grammar rules demand that you hit return (enter) after every time somebody speaks provides welcome relief from all the type. Even if you use the same amount of words, the pages look less daunting, the text flies faster, and the reader feels as if he/she is accomplishing something.

Secondly, in what may be an even more blatant psychological manipulation, dialogue allows the reader to imagine himself/herself eavesdropping on a conversation. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have a bit of the voyeur in us. We like to know what is going on in other people's lives. Hence, the success of the tabloid press.

This is not anything new. Writers have been using dramatic irony since the inception of the written word. Why? Because through its use, the readers know something that the characters don't. They know what everybody is saying, doing, thinking, wishing ... And they know why. Hence, they feel smarter, privileged, sneakier. Heck, they feel superior, almost god-like in their omniscience.

They are happy! And happy readers buy more books. And when readers buy more books, writers are happy. Cheerfulness reigns. What a wonderful thing!

Thirdly, dialogue simplifies the writer's task of storytelling. What a character speaks allows the reader to ascertain what that character feels without the author using excessive adverbial attributions. (he said perturbedly ... she answered with all the excitement of a tranquilized sloth ... and so on.) This use of the imagination allows the reader to interact with the words, not simply decipher them. This interaction leads to the transportation to the core of the writer's world. It is here that the writer and the reader bond.

Pace

Both constant rushing and relentless slogging can turn a story into mush. Mush like oatmeal may be good for breakfast, but mushy stories are bad and sure to turn off the reader. The key to pacing your story appropriately is simple. Variety.


One of America's greatest writers, Ray Bradbury, gave us a superb example of how to properly pace a short story in "August 26: 'There Will Come Soft Rains'."

Several things make this story unique, not just Bradbury's control of speed. First, there are no characters. All living organisms except one unfortunate dog are dead. Second, because there are no characters, there is no conversation.

As constraining as the premise is, the major fictional elements are clear. The exposition tells the reader what has happened and establishes the conflict. Complications intensify it and dramatically lead to the climax. The stunning resolution answers all the major questions and leaves the reader chewing on the story's theme/moral.

To accomplish this feat, Bradbury gives a clinic on managing rate.

The exposition, while detailed and explicit, consists of short paragraphs of no more than four sentences (Usually, two or three.) From the opening words, there is a quiet, passiveness to the setting, one remaining house amidst the radioactive rubble of a city destroyed by a nuclear explosion. The quiet pace belies the tragedy that has already occurred. It also invites the reader to enter the narration to find out what could possibly happen next in a world of blankness.

As the story and its tension escalate, mental pictures intensify, growing ever more graphic, ever more excruciating. To both attract and torment the reader, Bradbury turns up the pace. 

The conflict not only moves; it bolts, racing faster and ever faster uphill toward the climax. Sentences snap into fragments. Fragments shatter into lists of nouns, verbs, and flashing images. Periods become commas. The reader cannot help stumbling forward through the chaos and confusion to toward the shattering conclusion.

At the climax, the story flies off into nothing and crashes into silence. It is the thunderous race into the quiet of oblivion that gives the story its impact and ultimate significance.

Had Bradbury fallen into the trap of replicating desolation and meaningless destruction in fine detail, the story would have failed miserably. Instead, he managed reality to write one of the most effective pieces of fiction of the 20th century.

And that's what we aspire to, isn't it? To write effective, even monumental fiction?

That then is the point of today's installment: To write our best, we must use reality, yes, but manage it to most effectively communicate our theme, our purpose. In other words, keep real right. Reject wrong.

Reality: A Huck of a Mess

Old grudges die hard.

Last week's tirade against Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises proves the adage. Portraying reality is tricky business and sure to incite strong responses. Such perilous territory should not dissuade the journey, however. Reality in fiction definitely has its place.

In fact, it has at least three places: the sounds of the story, the characters' reactions, and the relationships in your story.

Sounds

Earlier in this blog's history, we examined the use of realistic dialect and how it influenced the impact of Huckleberry Finn. I said that dialect can enhance the dialogue's authenticity, which is a good thing. 

While a conversation's authenticity is important, realize that the sound of the dialogue is what makes it genuine and unique, not the use of exact words. It was not simply the words that Huck heard as a covert listener that generated excitement and fear during his adventures with the runaway slave Jim. The totality of sounds—tone, emotion, accent, and volume—practically put us on the raft with Huck and Jim. We not only hear what he hears; we feel what he feels. The verisimilitude Twain created with sound proves far more effective than had he simply recounted the words.

It is the portrayal of conversation at which writers today fail the most often. Somebody somewhere told them that to make conversations accurate all they need do is relate the conversations you hear in real life.

Those somebodies somewhere are human ferrets—weaselly little animals who like to play with your mind and actions. 

The problem with "relating conversations you hear in real life" is the vast majority of modern-day conversations are pointless and boring, filled with incomprehensible slang, jargon, and throwaway words of which even they don't know the meanings. 

For example, ask a teenager who comes home after curfew where he's been, he will usually answer, "I was just hanging out with friends." Maybe I'm an over-concerned parent, but I really don't want to think of my child "hanging out" in public, especially with the indecent exposure laws being what they are. It would be far better to say, "I was with Bob and Oscar planning the philosophical takeover of Rwanda." It would at least make you sound intelligent.

The important thing about the characters in your fiction is to use them to tell a story. Stories have conflict, action, and resolution. It is difficult to depict this with the aimless discourse one hears at the local McDonald's, on ESPN interviews, or during the audience-less speeches on CSPAN. It is far better to replace all the cliches, slang, and throwaway words with intelligible sentences that can advance your plot. For example, instead of saying, "She was, like, all up in my face and goes, 'Outta my way, #@*%!' So I laid the smack-down on her åßß!", perhaps it would be better to say something like, "She was highly perturbed with me and attempted to push her way past me, at which point I became violent and paddled her buttocks with a badminton racket." 

All right, that would be a mistake. Although the correction uses "nicer" language, it lacks the important qualities that the former has: its passion, its enthusiasm, its reality. The key is to maintain those elements without allowing the words to cover them up. The way around that is to keep the conversations short and pointed rather than letting the likes and the she goeses induce the reader to bang his book against writer's forehead.

Remember, you don't create passion, enthusiasm, and reality just by using the common words used in dialogue. You need to capture the energy and the fervor of the characters as well if you want to capture the reality of the scene. In other words, capture the sound of reality. It is that sound which will reach your audience and advance your plot.

Reactions

A second area where reality is essential is in creating characters. The important aspect about building authentic characters is not deciding whether they are people you like, people you dislike, or even if they are people at all. The most essential trait to develop is how they react to any given situation. That is what they do with the complications you throw in their way to intensify the conflict. It is their reactions that make them memorable.

What readers like about Huck Finn is not simply his cunning, his bravery, or ability to talk himself out of virtually every situation. It is his uncomplicated and unflinching humanity he relies on in complicated situations.

As resourceful as he is, Huck is a vulnerable, compassionate character. He thinks. He feels. As a result, so does the reader. Through Huck's reactions, we share his confusion over the ethical dilemma of aiding a runaway slave escape. Through Huck's reactions, we empathize with his frustration with authority when a judge orders him to stay with his abusive father. Through Huck's reactions and despite our own spiritual beliefs, we cheer when he consciously risks hell-fire and damnation rather than hurt his friend Jim.

While Huck's actions may be far-fetched and illogical, his reactions to people, situations, and values are real and engaging.

Relationships

One could go off into an analysis of Huck's relationships, but you will appreciate the novel more if you discover them for yourself. I urge you to read or reread and marvel in Twian's depiction of real and engaging relationships, but let's use a more modern example to prove the importance of reality in relationships. Something newer than the 19th Century. (English teachers DO read newer material. I promise.)

Like the 21st Century.

Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys takes fantasy, mangles the reader's concept of life and death, and thoroughly convinces him/her that even in the spirit world, people are people. How? By making the relationship between spirit-human siblings genuine. Even though everything else in the novel is beyond our experience, the relationship between the two brothers is common to our everyday life.

Two brothers, sons of the trickstaer-god Anansi, live with one foot in the human world and other in the world of spiritual legend. While the conflict between the two is at once fantastical and hilarious, the reader latches onto their familial bond, cheering for both even though they are clearly protagonist and antagonist. These are brothers with an authentic love-hate relationship with which anybody with siblings can immediately empathize. 

The conflict may be unreal, but the relationship is authentic. It draws the characters closer.  The conflict becomes secondary and the reader is glad.

In summary, reality has its place in every story, particularly in the sounds, the reactions, and the relationships. When used well, reality can illuminate and inspire. When overused or misdirected, it can frustrate and anger.

Choose to put reality in its proper places, and everybody will be happier.

Happy is good. Happy destroys grudges ... like the one against the overuse of reality in ...

We'l save that for next time. Stay tuned.

Effective Fiction: Twisted Reality of The Sun Also Rises

I like to read. Reading is fun. Reading is relaxing. Reading is my life.

Okay, part of my life, but a large part. Good thing, too, because I also like to write. The two go together cheek by jowl. (Do you like the Shakespeare allusion? I'm kind of proud of it. It took me years to fit it into conversation.) In fact, reading and writing are so interrelated that everything I've ever read finds itself, in some measure, influencing whatever I write, whether by way of inspiration, direction, or methodology.

The good and the bad, the genius and the mundane, the enlightening and the exasperating all give me something to emulate or avoid.

Interestingly, the trait that weaves its way memorably into all literature is the use of realism. Not Realism, the literary movement of the 19th and 20th century, but realism, the faithful recreation of actual life experiences, situations, conversations, and characters.

"The faithful recreation of actual life experiences, situations, conversations, and characters"....Sounds laudable. Every piece of fiction should attempt to be real. Right?

One would think. But too much reality, especially poorly done or pointless reality, can annoy a reader to the point of using a Kindle to actually start a fire, a fire that annihilates every paper and ink factory, every book binder, and every forest that provides the raw material used for printing books.

Few people can imagine that level of frustration, but it exists. At least it did when I took American Literature III in college.

The American literature survey course at my school had three levels. Each had its positives and negatives. It was school. Nothing is perfect.

For example, American Lit I, the first class in the survey, had itsdown side. You can only read so many overwrought ramblings of Hawthorne and Poe; so many political tracts and documents of Jefferson, Paine, and Hamilton; and so many infernal images of Jonathan Edwards' sermons before you want to help God cut the spider web holding you over the Lake of Fire. But we knew once we were finished with that step, it would be over and we could move on to more modern writing. Like the intrepid students that we were, we got over it and moved on.

Thank goodness for American Lit II. Realism! Realism as it should be. Mark Twain made us laugh. Stephen Crane revealed the horrors of the overly-romanticized Civil War. Walt Whitman energized and unveiled true poetry.

Those realistic writers of the 1800s created worlds in which we could never live, but worlds we knew actually existed. We knew because of their words. Through words, we heard Twain's paddle wheelers working their way up and down the Mississippi. Through words, we smelled the gunpowder explode and felt the sticky on our cheeks as we trudged across Cranes's battlefield. When Whitman wrote "O Captain, My Captain," we felt the sorrow over Lincoln's assassination rise in our throats and choking the breath from us.

"This is literature the way it should be," we thought. "It captures the senses. It inspires our thoughts and reinforces our values. It is real! Yea, Realism!"

Then came American Lit III. The 20th century and the Lost Generation.

I wanted to bite the head off a gopher.

Oh, it was a good class for a few weeks. Then came the most frustrating book I had ever read. It is still in my bottom five of all time. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

I know, Papa fans. Saying that any item in the Hemingway canon might be bad is blasphemy punishable by flaming bamboo shoots stuck up your nostrils, but I have my reasons for believing that book is terrible. Here's the story:

Springtime came early that year. It was April and the snow was only six feet deep.

The class syllabus said it was now time for Hemingway. I had read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, and unlike my classmates, I thought it was brilliant. I loved the story, the symbolism, the language, the warm weather, the conflict of man and nature, everything. So when the prof smiled and assigned The Sun Also Rises, I was not daunted. I was excited. "Lemme at it," I snarled. "Hemingway. HEMINGWAY! This is going to be so good."

Then I began reading.

The story was so...meh. After a few hours of reading Jake Barnes's ramblings, I began to wonder, "Is anything ever going to happen in this book?" Concerned that I might be missing something, I asked the prof. She told me just to hang on until the end, so I did, confident––well, half-confident––that even though there were only ten pages left, this "classic" surely had a gigantic climax that would leave me gasping for air and mouthing an awestruck, "Oh, my ... Wow!"

(Spoiler alert)

No such luck.

NOTHING HAPPENED!!

Not in the last ten pages. Not in the preceding 240 pages. NEVER! In 250 total flapping ink-infested leaves of paper, not a single event of note occurred.

I was miffed. Miffed? No, strike that. I was livid. Did I say livid? Heck, I was thoroughly urinated! Unable to wait for class in two days, I jammed the book into my backpack and climbed the six flights of stairs to her office two steps at a time. I barged through the door and plopped angrily into the chair in front of her desk.

Words would not form. Instead, I just kind of growled. Spittle drooled down my chin. My teeth itched. I was still mad, so mad I wanted to chew off a leg. Mine. Hers. I didn't care.

"Is there a problem?" she asked, annoyingly polite and unruffled.

I huffed. I lowered my head and peered over my glasses.  I wiped the spit from my jaw with my forearm. "You told me something would happen," I grunted.

"I told you to hang on and finish the book. Did you?"

I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on the space between her eyebrows. If I could hit that spot just right with a hurled piece of chalk...

"And ...?"

I took a deep breath, sat back in the chair. and collected my thoughts. Finally certain I wouldn't scram and attract campus security, I began, "I have to ask a question, if you don't mind."

She leaned forward, her arms on the desk. "I'm here to answer questions. What would you like to know?"

I gulped, pursed my lips, and closed my eyes. "Okay,"I said. "What was the point of that?"

Maybe it was the sound of my book slamming onto her desk. Maybe it was because I accidentally knocked over the stack of books next to the door. Maybe it was because, despite my best efforts, I did scream a little when I uttered the word that. Whatever it was, it resulted in a pounding on the door and an urgent clamor of "Are you all right, Professor?" "What the hell's going on in there?" and "Leave her alone alone! I've got a gun!"

The professor rose, patted my shoulder to calm me down, and answered the door. She stepped outside and assured everybody she was fine. (But I swear I heard her say, "It's just a student who finished The Sun Also Rises. It will be fine.")

In retrospect, I have to admire the instructor's patience and inner peace when she came back into the office. She calmly poured herself a cup of coffee, returned to her chair, and cooly explained. "You have to understand Hemingway's purpose here. This was more than people traveling through Europe, going to bullfights, and wanting to have sex they can never have."

"What was it then?"

"It was a great author showing the aimlessness of an entire generation."

"In other words,  the theme is 'Life is boring'?"

"Yes."

I shook my head.

"Is there a problem?" she asked.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You wanted us to read this book to show us life is boring?"

"Yes. Well, not me. Hemingway. He does it pretty convincingly, don't you think?"

I inhaled deeply and sighed. "Ma'am," I explained, "I live in a town of 124 inhabitants, including dogs, cats, and my neighbor's pet skunk. We have no school, no library, no entertainment. My parents have one car they use to go to work. I have no money, so I ride a bicycle sixteen miles one way to get to school. I KNOW BOREDOM! I don't need to be reminded."

"But the book is so real," she countered.

I stood, went to the door, and opened it. I paused and thought. "You know what?" I said. "I hate real."

I've grown up since then. I've learned to read critically and to read widely. I've learned to accept the bad literature with the good. Consequently, I know a certain amount of realistic portrayal is a good thing.

I've learned another lesson about literature, however. The whole reality thing—while positive in the right amount—is easily overdone. Overdoing anything is a practice to avoid.

So that's what I want to talk about next.

For the next few postings, then, I'm going to explore the role of reality in creating good fiction: Where reality goes wrong, what MUST be real in a story, and what areas of your story can use a bit of invention and stretching.

I know there are more areas to explore, and I'm certainly willing to delve into them or let you have your say.  If you have more ideas, please leave a comment or send me an email.

Dealing with Change: Joyfully Hugging the Cactus

"Change is chaos!"
"Change is life."
"Change is a #@$&*!"
Change is a blessing!"

The cliches abound. And the important thing about cliches is, despite their irritating overuse and simplistic view, they are—at least in part—true.

Don't you hate that about them?

The truth of the change cliches above came home this past week as my wife and I underwent a forced transition from carefree, secure, vacationing tourists gallivanting about the Texas hill country into fraught, frantic, and furloughed wanderers whose lives had been upended by the turbulence of a government shutdown. 

Okay, I was fraught and frantic. O wondrous wife of mine, the one actually furloughed, faced our return rather calmly. While I ranted, raved, and turned several shades of purple sputtering mangled and senseless expletives at the politicians on television who made excuses for the shutdown, she calmly pulled out the laptop and began revising her resume and checking out job openings elsewhere outside the federal government.

She's learned much more from the changes in her life than I have from mine, particularly how to deal with adversity.

In the eleven years we've known each other, she's taught me to recognize that despite all the upheaval we've endured separately and together, we will get through this and all will work out for the good.

I don't want to admit that, but it's true. 

Truth can be so annoying, especially when you want to wallow in misery. "C'mon, God! I just wanna wallow!" 

Numerous times our lives have changed, both purposely and passively, both beneficially and adversely. All of them contributed to making us who we are today. To illustrate, let's look at four areas of change (career, health, relationship, family life) and the payoff they brought:

Career: When you're 18, you think you know what you want to do with your life. However, when you start post-secondary school, you begin to wonder. Then when you actually go to work ... Yikes!

On my first day on a job, when everything started falling over my head like a downpour of sticky, runny oatmeal, I just wanted to smash my mushy forehead with an open palm and scream, "What was I thinking?" So I changed track a few dozen times, each time cleaning off the same mushy oatmeal and starting over, until I found the job that allowed me to truthfully say, "I GET to go to work today." The truth is I would never have found that job had I not accepted changes brought on by the strange meteorological phenomenon of oatmeal precipitation.

Relationship: Adolescence is marked with relationship changes that are confounding and sometimes stupefying. Then comes adulthood and the really messed-up stuff happens ... at least it's messed up until you learn from the changes you've encountered before. Before meeting each other, my wife and I had both been married and divorced. We both endured subsequent failed relationships. But when we finally gave up trying so hard to "find the right person," when we finally stopped looking "for our type," the right type showed up.

Health: Life is a dangerous occupation. It seems as if nobody gets out of it alive. When faced with life-threatening experiences, in our cases a traffic accident and a stroke, one could give up or he/she could accept the challenges, face the hazards, and move on. We both chose the latter. Doing so, we realized the blessing of existence.

Family life: Family members come and go. Children are born, mature, and go off to live their own lives. Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, grow old and pass on. There is joy and there is pain. Amidst it all is family. And family is a blessing

The pay-off: Through the trials and tribulations of using cliches like "trials and tribulations" to describe how change affects your life, it's all right to maintain a safe and comfortable contentment. Nothing exuberant or nutzoid. Simply content. 

But to be perfectly honest, contentment is boring and pointless. The aim of life is not simply to exist, but to excel; not to seek contentment, but to seek joy. And when you accept and even embrace change, you can find it. 

There are dangers, I can assure you. Hugging a cactus or a porcupine hurts, but sometimes the result can be tremendous.

Don't ask me what. When I first wrote this, I lived in urban Minnesota where there were few porcupines and even fewer cacti. It's hard to imagine hugging either. But I do know that accepting change has  graced my life with family, friends, and a satisfaction I could never have found without it.

So in the face of the shutdown furlough, my wife and I move on to whatever change can bring us. 

I will continue to write, looking for ways to improve my art by changing genre, style, format, wording ... whatever will make it better. 

My wife will look for what work options are available, and in the meantime she'll wait patiently and blog about a variety of things at her site Managing Forward (http://managingforward.blogspot.com).

In Washington, the powers that be (at least temporarily) can fuss and fume, fluster and flail wildly about, accomplishing little or nothing. The Storyteller family will carry on, knowing this too will change and somehow we'll be the better for it.

We will hug the cactus of change and we will be joyful.