Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

There are a few things that everyone should keep in mind when reading my blog. The most important of these is that most of the entries are not autobiographical, and even those that do have an element of autobiography almost always have a much larger element of fiction.

For example, two recent entries got a few private comments that I feel deserve some clarification. First, the ‘On Golden Pond’ entry was inspired by a friend of mine who is thinking of moving to California.  The rest is just a daydream. It’s a long and complicated daydream, and I’ve only started recording it, but there are no plans per se. On the other hand, I think it would be fun, and if she decides to drive her car, who knows? Maybe I’ll tag along.  I’ll write the story first, and then, if it amuses Fate, perhaps I’ll actually take the trip.

Second, I don’t know how to play bridge, and I don’t even like to play cards, and I didn’t have anyone particular in mind when I created the characters–it’s not about you or anyone you know–and my knowledge of the game comes primarily from Wikipedia and Hoyles. As a result, the ‘Evening with friends’ entry changed a few times as I got feedback from my more bridge-savvy readers.

This entry is an exception. This entry is 100% real. Its matching entry, ‘What goes around’, is 100% fiction.

I tried an experiment yesterday. I hope you’ll find it interesting to read about.

In my day job, new ideas are a dime a dozen, but the effort required to turn an idea into reality is usually enormous. As a result, very few ideas are ever turned into anything concrete, or even written down. I suppose that it is the same way in every creative field, but it’s hard to appreciate from the outside.  So I thought I would take a crack at writing something longer than a few paragraphs, just to see what it would take.  The result was humbling.

Yesterday afternoon, as I washed the dishes from lunch, my mind wandered, as it often does, and in walked the idea for a story. I often get ideas like this, but most aren’t any good and I’ve forgotten them after a minute or two. This one kept my mind occupied for longer than it took to wipe down the stove, so I began to think that it might have legs.

Having no other major obligations for the day, I decided to spend my spare time trying to put it down on paper. It was a very educational experience.

• It took much more time than I anticipated.
• It took many more words than I anticipated.
• Dialog just goes on and on. It’s quicker to leave it out.  Summarizing conversations is a real time-saver.
• My characters often say things that take the conversation off-script. This is annoying, but if I don’t let them, they sound even more like soulless automata.
• Many of the details of the story changed significantly between conception and execution. It was like writing down a dream; the more I thought about it, the fuzzier it got.  The connective tissue tended to warp the story a bit.

The story originally had a happy ending, but I didn’t have time to get to it. When I was about one quarter of the way through story, I realized that the story needed to be half as long, and therefore a new ending was required.  This happened before Joe even had a chance to say his first word to Mary, so you can imagine what an impact this had. Bad endings and nastiness are apparently quicker and easier to write. Happy endings are complicated, while unpleasant endings are easy. It’s much less work to let the heros die at the hands of the villian than it is to describe their dramatic rescue and return at the head of an avenging army, so to speak.  The current ending is unsatisfactory.

After about six hours, I decided that I had used up my time budget and stopped in mid-dialog.

I present the story in its unedited form (sans even the mercy of a spell-check), in the hope that at some point I’ll be able to go back, clean it up, remove the terrible negative ending, add the happy ending, insert all the stuff carefully foreshadowed at the beginning, and you can enjoy the final product. In the meanwhile, you can see how the story devolved. It starts out playfully, with carefully structured narrative paragraphs setting the tone. By the end, however, it’s probably obvious that I’m watching the clock, the light-heartedness is gone, and it’s nothing but dialog, dialog, dialog.

In summary, I now have a new-found appreciation for how incredibly hard it is to write even a simple short story, and a conviction that I need practice before I make an attempt at anything more complicated.

Maybe Madoka will lend a hand.