Discovering Yourself In and Through Your Writing

Just one question for this next writer roundtable.

Flannery O'Connor wrote, “I write to discover what I know" and “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

How has being a writer and telling stories helped you discover who you are and what you know?

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: Very interesting question. For me, some of my stories have helped me to touch on emotions that I didn't realize I had inside. Very much poking a blister and letting some stuff ooze out. I have also enjoyed creating characters who have the bravery I wish I had. That's also very insightful.

Jessica Nettles: Being a writer as a kid helped me embrace my differences from the other kids at school. It gave me a space where it didn’t matter that I was the youngest or the smallest or weird. It was the first thing I felt confident was mine.

As an adult, it helped me rediscover myself after a really shitty marriage in my twenties. I found this spooky girl in the middle of the debris who needed to explore the darkness, my darkness. I learned my dark parts were okay and just as important as being good. I love that spooky, magic-loving girl. I learned that I have a voice that people actually enjoy (still shocked by this) and that I’m funny. Mostly, I learned that writing is who I am. I do many things, but at my core, I am my words. That’s my magic.

Lainey Kennedy: Writing has helped me explore the human conditions by creating characters that are both over the top but rooted in little bits of everyone I know. The adventures are the escapism, but the characters are what I know.

Fay Shlanda: My writing has helped me a lot as a person. I write poetry about my relationship with the world around me, which is mostly about mental illness and being broken.

I have discovered that I have much to say on the subject and that overcoming my hardships is something I would not trade in for an easier life. They have shaped me into someone I like and I use my knowledge to help others.

October Santerelli: I wanted to be a writer as soon as I heard it was a job you could have. I was in 7th grade, and I went home that night and told my parents that was what I wanted to do. And after that, writing became a lifeline, a way to express what I couldn't say, feelings I didn't even know I had. Writing helped me understand myself, like holding up a mirror and seeing with fresh eyes.

Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram... Or Autobiography as Pulp Fiction

by Stuart Hopen

We never learn the narrator’s actual name; which is not to say the narrator is unnamed. In fact, he has many names and many identities. The narrator’s “good name” as that term is used under the local parlance, is Lindsay, but that came from a counterfeit passport. The Indian locals call him “Linbaba,” or “Mr. Penis.” He will acquire other names in the course of the novel, including the title of the novel itself, which means “man of God’s Peace.” 

The narrator’s s real name might be the author’s, for the book’s jacket touts many similarities between the fictional narrator and Gregory David Roberts. Both author and his fictionalized alter ego were driven by despair over a bitter divorce and child custody award to seek solace in heroin addiction, which led to crime, prison, escape, and then flight to a slum in India. 

Even though almost all fiction contains varying degrees of autobiography, and vice versa, a close identification between author and fictitious character carries many risks. One can’t help but snicker at the photos of Ian Fleming, gun in hand, on the James Bond book covers, or Mickey Spillane naming his tough-guy hero after himself. Falsified autobiography is a class of literary pariah unto itself, for anger follows the discovery that one has been successfully fooled, notwithstanding the way that achieving the same end is lauded as a virtue in a work explicitly labeled as fiction. Perhaps with the aim of avoiding the kind of scrutiny and controversy that befell Henri Charrière, the author of Papillion, another highly embellished, ostensibly autobiographical work about prison and escape, the author of Shantaram delivers an exculpatory disclaimer—this is fiction. But there an implicit disclaimer to disclaimer. It is kind of a con job, but it is a brilliant con job. 

Roberts grabs his reader by the labels, and demands attention with his superb opening paragraph, a near perfect fusion of narrative hook, character arc, and thematic summation:

Flat and Round: The Character Conundrum

I learned some terms this week that I hadn't learned during my time as a lit major in college. 

Flat Characters: Those who are typically not given any depth in character development, reduced to foils and/or stereotypes as a sort of shorthand for moving the plot along.

Round Characters: Those whose stories, lives, and character are developed in depth so as to make them feel more real in the eyes of readers, typically reserved for main antagonists and protagonists. 

So, as any good student, I think we should talk about it. I gathered the gang together and posed the questions around the table.

What benefits have you seen in your work for using flat characters?

Gordon Dymowski: One of the benefits of "flat characters" is that they can serve as placeholders, "red herrings" or other devices to move the story forward. Although I try to give as much background to any character (even peripheral ones), using "flat" characters provides immediate shortcuts and can help reflect the main characters' actions.

Chris Norton: Flat characters can be fun to write, sometimes you need some keystone cops action; also you just don't always have the time/space in a novel, and especially in a novella or short story, to fill out every character, unless it's a serial or has a limited number of characters.

I always feel pulled out of a story when an author takes the time to tell us all about a person whose only action is something like ringing up someone's groceries.

The benefits of rounded characters are obvious: empathy with the characters, pulling in the readers, etc.

Bobby Nash: I’ve never heard the term before your question, but I have in the past had henchmen who were basically there to e beat up or shot at while the hero worked his or her way up to the villain. These guys are just there to get their ass kicked so I didn’t really flesh them out.

Adrian G. Delgado: Flat characters are great as archetypes. Technically, even a god, especially one tied to a specific pantheon, can be flat as a pancake. "I'm a god of war and I make war. What else is there to know?" The Alchemist in Cohelo's "The Alchemist" is somewhat the same way, in so much that he is there to be used by the author to tell the shepherd's story. Come to think of it, characters can go flat and round out many times. Take Planet Hulk for example. The rest of the Marvel Heroes get reduced to Safety First goody-goods who send bad old hulk to a planet in the first few panels. Crack open any other comic though, suddenly Banner himself is a flat strongman.

Rus Wornom: I LOVE THESE TERMS. My flat characters help the main characters either develop as real people, or they move the action along...or they develop the character of the setting, which can be just as important as a character. For instance, I use flat characters in Ghostflowers to make a party in the woods seem real. They interact with the main characters as they progress to a certain point, not only in the woods but in the story.

John L. Taylor: In my writing, I get good use out of flat characters. As a horror writer, the important thing is to make the reader care about the character's fate. That doesn't mean extensive backstories or long conversations between them, just that the reader bonds with them and it isn't obvious who's going to die/suffer. 

Sean Taylor: Flats for me make perfect foils. I like to tease their backstories but then never deliver, so that they feel more important than they are actually. That way, particularly in a mystery story, they can serve as a kind of next-level red herring. They also make great hench-people for villains for pulp heroes, and hangers-on for the A-level cast in just about any genre. 

What line divides the need to make a character flat or round in your stories? 

Kellie Austin: I honestly don't think of characters in those projections. Flat or round-based characters start out for me as all being "Round". I'm very detailed oriented when I write and am constantly world-building. When I'm done with my book or story, I always go back and omit much information regarding some of the characters used, whether they are primary or supporting. Then I place the once rounded characters into the "flat" position until I can re-insert the back story in future stories. Some characters stay in the rounded section as they are the main hero(s). I find creating a character to move the plot along is worthwhile, and I can always use them again later when I need them. If I write a short story, then my characters are most usually always to be flat based as I have problems writing under restraint of words. So, I usually write more action, knowing that as my stories continue, I can begin transforming them into fully rounded characters to accompany the story I began with.

Adrian G. Delgado: If I have no reason to believe that either the reader or the MC or the character holding the point of view needs to see all the nuance of a character's life, they stay flat. If, however, this humanity needs to be discovered in the course of the story, I'll pump the air pump to it.

Bobby Nash: I like to give my characters some kind of identity. Even the henchmen and the like I write these days, I try to at least give them a name or something so they aren’t just a henchman.

Austin S. Camacho: Mysteries often have large casts - drivers, servants, people you get one important bit of info from, etc. Flat characters are a short-hand for readers: "the cab driver is not important to the plot - not a suspect." the better developed a character is, the more the reader expects them to have an important role.

Bill Craig: I agree with Austin. As you know, I love writing ensemble casts, so I try to develop the flat characters as well, just to make them important to the main characters. In the way I build characters, even the less important ones, I want them to be someone that the readers can relate to.

Jonathan Sweet: Like some others have said, my flat characters are usually shortcuts. I figure that if a nameless henchman is going to be offed by the hero, why give him a back story? On the other hand, I do like to give backstories even to minor characters. For example, in Enter the Jackal, I have Ole Karlsson, a cemetery caretaker that finds the first victim of a killer. Adding details about his feelings about the job, the fact that he's hungover from the night before, that he has a dog -- they help round out the character and maybe make us care a little bit about him.

John L. Taylor: In that respect, ALL characters are somewhat flat, including the POV character, based on archetypes with one or two quirks who the reader can empathize with. That distance between the reader and characters helps elevate the horror because the element of the unknown extends to the characters. None is so developed that they couldn't be a secret part of the threat to the protagonist. We don't know them that well to rule them out. We can't guarantee they won't survive. It's the archetype that needs to be compelling, and the plot that subverts that expectation.

Gordon Dymowski: Part of what I do for "rounded" characters is giving them more of a background and provide some motivation as to the "why" of their actions. Many writers create extensive biographies for their main characters; I usually think more of informal "backstories" that stay in my head when I'm writing them. (It also provides authenticity for character actions - having someone who has a history of stealing look longingly at a diamond, for example, makes more sense than having someone who is just "background", so to speak).

Mark Barnard: I always feel that even giving a character with a brief appearance some quirk to set them off adds depth to a story. It may be like describing a brick wall in the background as red and ivied, but for me it's part of the whole.

Rus Wornom: There is no line between flat characters and round characters. Writers don't write while distinguishing characters in that fashion. We develop spear carriers as much as is needed for the story...and sometimes those minor spear carriers become more important than we initially believe.

Sean Taylor: Quite often, a flat will make the jump to a round in my work, as I need to develop a background character because suddenly the story feels like it needs that character. It's more a "vibe and feel" thing though, rather than any kind of rule, at least for me. 

Show us an example of your characters, both flat and round, that you consider successful and effective -- and why you wrote them that way. 

Bobby Nash: Abraham Snow is a rounded character. The unnamed guard Domino Lady knocks out when breaking into a bad guy’s stronghold is flat.

Chris Norton: Flat characters I've written, who first comes to mind are Uther Pendragon's knights in the 2nd season of Young Merlin. Comedy relief, so they could be dispatcjed without hurting the audience, and to make the heroes look better,

Rounded characters, I'd like to think that most of them are, but probably the American Pride Superheroes, 3rd Generation of Militant Mechanical Men, The Demon detectives, and the heroes of Young Merlin all slowly get fleshed out, while the title characters of Hell's Angel and Sword (The Armorer Duke) in Hell Horror are the most fleshed out, but they also started out very two dimensional when I was writing their bios for personal use (HA about 12pp, Sword about 8pp) but even then, just following their adventures (or the ones I'd plotted out before writing them) gave them depth and personality.

Stuart Hopen: Here's a passage from one of my books, Twilight Patrol #5, where one of my characters wrestles with the problem of whether to be flat or round, which in some sense all of do, in life: 

Wootin had been brought here by yet another summons from Cassiopeia, the Queen of Cassiopeia. He was getting used to this business. It was getting to be a routine, almost mundane, though her perennial protestations of urgency and impending doom never proved to be unfounded. And yet there was something different in the way she spoke to him this time. For once, she phrased her requirements as a request, rather than a command, and she prefaced her entreaty with concern that he might have competing priorities. There was a subdued undercurrent of feminine hysteria in her voice, a hint of weakness he’d never heard before, and an uncharacteristic acknowledgement that obedience on his part was not taken for granted. Maybe she really believed she was dying, as Congrieve had reported, dying, along with the rest of her old world order. Perhaps her new affectation was part of the way she was coming to terms with these developments.

“Consider the nature of our foes,” she said. “Consider what has happened before. This is so much the worse than the horrors we’ve already seen.”

Wootin wondered what could shake the unshakable Queen. His curiosity had been piqued. He marveled at her masterful self-negating offer of a choice, and yet it gave him pause. He had the nagging sense that he’d been somehow tricked, and pressed into the service of some folkloric pattern. He questioned what enchantment or post hypnotic suggestion had so unmanned his free-will and condemned him to the role of a mere character, ruled by the laws of fairytales. He felt that way more often than he cared to admit, as if he were an unreal person in an unreal setting. There were other occasions, albeit far more rare, when he felt the opposite way, wholly alive and authentic. These rare occasions might happen during moments of intense concentration—in the midst of composing poetry or mortal aerial combat—and he would lose his individuality altogether, merging himself into a vast design of being that manifested itself through himself, somehow miraculously producing results that were far superior to that which he’d otherwise be capable. Wootin wondered whether these phenomena, though seemingly distinct and contrary in nature, might be inseparable aspects of one another. There was little doubt in his mind that his friend Hollister Congrieve played a role in these patterns and conventions. He knew Congrieve had already been conscripted into this new mission." I try to take a holistic approach to my writing, that character development, plot, theme, and philosophy, or world view are not separate elements, but all flow from one another, and all have to be integrated and balanced.

Sean Taylor: One of my favorite flats is Broomstick from the Rick Ruby stories. He started out as little more than the guy behind the bar who had a shotgun at the ready if he was needed. But over the course of several stories, he can getting more and more real, until the point when I wanted to write a story honoring the late Derrick Ferguson, I needed Broomstick to be more round and real for his own funeral. His death made him more round, as people honored his life. 

Gordon Dymowski: Some "rounded" characters I've written include Joe Magarac in Pro Se's TALL PULP - taking a mythic/folklore character and giving him dimension was not easy. Much of it involved both researching Magarac's "mythos" and integrating my own family background (my great-grandparents came to this country from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century) into the character. What could have easily been a one-dimensional strongman turned into a more nuanced character. (I also took a similar approach to writing the main character in "A Town Called Malice" for THE MASKED RIDER VOL 3. The original Masked Rider pulps hinted that his "civilian identity" of Wayne Morgan was also a ruse; I simply had the character make slightly ambiguous and off-handed remarks that suggested a possible origin...but just left it there for the reader to conclude).

One example of a "flat character" would be the antagonist of "In the Frame" in Pro Se's HOLLYWOOD PULP. Without spoiling, it takes a well-worn cliche and gives a greater context for *why* that person would do what they did. (I must admit that I take pride in making both Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton pulp heroes in their own right in this story).

Adrian G. Delgado: For me, I have made flat victims, mooks, villains, you name it. I let my characters discover the roundness of their fellow man naturally: a pancake flat crime victim naturally gets pretty round as the detective learns more about her.

Myth Making (A Pulp Factory Discussion)

 

Writers need myths. Myths are the shorthand we understand that helps stories come to life. As such, when you get us together we talk about them… more often than not.

This article is one such discussion about myths and the making of them over at a pulp writers group I’m a member of. I thought it was particularly interesting in light of what our current understanding of myths says about us culturally, politically, and of course literarily.

Enjoy!

Stuart Hopen:

There’s a world cultural crisis in progress.  Whole cultures are in a state of turmoil over what is actually true and what isn’t.

It’s an old story.  A change in the environment produces a challenge to the culture.  There’s a lag between the effects of the change and the ability of the culture to adapt to it.  The process of adjusting to the change causes conflict within a culture, and/or between cultures.  The old white rabbit of Truth gets caught with the cross-culture cross hares in the cultural cross hairs.

Joseph Campbell conjectured that social instability was caused by the failure of a society to correctly use and connect with myths.  Perhaps that’s what’s going on in the world today.

Myths are useful tools in understanding the nature of truth. They function like software that can be loaded into a culture’s hard drive.  They are the embodiment of the interface between magic and science, materialism and idealism, since they are stories that are understood to be untrue, but by their structure and details are understood to represent intangible truths.  Because the nature of myth is based on contradiction, it is a mental tool for navigating the maze of reality whose essential nature is paradox and contradiction—except for those portions of that are not paradox and contradiction, which is all of it and none of it.

I believe that the world needs a compelling new myth and that the source of the myth might lie with the pulps.  But then, I’m kind of a dreamer.  It comes with the territory, being a writer and into pulps.

I have this notion that in the pulps of the 1930s one finds a sort of mythic and folkloric bedrock for the dominant myths of the contemporary West.

I have my own ideas about what kinds of myths are needed.  I’m willing to share them.  I’d like to start a kind of movement—similar to the folk music revival of the early sixties, promoting positive social change through a revival of interest in the pulps.

Is anyone interested in sharing ideas?

I.A. Watson:

Some interesting thoughts there.

Looking at the main middle-of-20th-century pulp tropes I'd characterise three main strands:

1. The Western—this is about frontiers, about independence and the slow victory of civilisation over savagery, about one person's ability to make a difference. By the time the Western became really popular, the West was tamed, so in some senses its as nostalgic as those stories of today set in Victorian London, actually set in a sort of group-consensus fantasy themed with trapping of the actual era. But it speaks to a readership feeling increasingly powerless in an increasingly impersonal and homogenised society of a different time where values were easier to hold and express.

2. The Crime Story—hard-boiled detectives in mean streets, the one good man in a corrupt world, the tarnished angel who takes the knocks bit comes back plugging. Most of those stories were set in a contemporary world, albeit one that played up the most glamorous or infamous parts of it. Some of the best stories explore personal values in an increasingly corrupt civilisation. Again, there's a lot about the little guy pushing back, or about the lone vigilante accomplishing what the authorities can't do. Some of it is wish fulfillment, but some of it is just "this is how it is but we can try to make it how it should be."

3. The Future Story—science fiction and science fantasy were starting to take hold, allowing some flights of fantasy for readers perhaps starting to shy away from supernatural fantasy but also enabling allegorical discussion of all kinds of issues from racism to imperialism – and plenty of sex. There were plenty of potential utopias with lurking serpents in New Eden and lots of bogeyman "others" coming to take what is ours and destroy our way of life.

One might argue that any or all of those strands are attempt to process and mythologise changes that were then contemporary and which still continue today.

Since then, the Western had somewhat gone out of fashion. There are less people with experience of that country/frontier life and less people who yearn for it. That genre is perhaps now replaced with the Superhero story (about extraordinary people in an ordinary world, often a world that doesn't understand them but desperately needs them).

Much has been written about the parallels between the pantheons of superheroes and the pantheons of myth, but I think one significant difference is that superhero stories, along with many other "brands" of modern storytelling, are owned and moderated for profit by a creator or company. Hence we have less stories with actual endings; there must always be a sequel or spin-off. There is a Death of King Arthur, a Death of Robin Hood, a Death of Hercules, but the Death of Superman, Captain America, or Batman lasts only as long as the next marketing campaign. The ownership of many modern myths by patent and copyright holders probably prevents their universality in the way that previous stories have embedded themselves as common legends.

Sean Taylor:

As a writer who cut his teeth on superhero stories with iHero Entertainment (then Cyber Age Adventures) and comic book writing, I think Ian’s on to something with the superhero idea. He also nails the biggest drawback that keeps them from becoming true myths themselves, and instead relegated to simply retelling the older myths of the Western gods (though those are being patiently infiltrated by the myths of other societies such as those of the East and native cultures—which is a good thing, I should be sure to add, after such a loaded word as "infiltrated").  Being owned property by trademark and copyright holders, usually entities and not individuals, they don’t belong to the collective voice, and thus they can’t be made mythic through the stories the people put onto them. Only what the corporate gatekeepers allow can become canon, and therefore “true fiction.”

We can’t own them ourselves. They’re not ours. Instead we’re allowed to keep telling the story of the only kind of hero we can really believe in, the one who can stand up to those powers (like the corporations who own our myths, our governments, the owner of the local laundry mat who can choose not to serve “those kinds,” etc.).

I.A. Watson:
There's really not as big a difference historically as appears at first. Heroic storytelling has always been somewhat moderated. The people paying the bards and writers dictate the content. Some examples:

* Greek orators telling the stories of Jason and the Argonauts as after-dinner speakers at banquets, adding in the name of their patron's illustrious ancestor to the roster of Argonauts, to the point where Jason's 30-oar ship had 71 oarsmen.

* Various local god and hero stories being recast to star saints on Christian hagiographies.

* Print publishers from Wynkin de Worde onward selecting the materials he believed would sell (profit over scholarship) and making amendments to text for that purpose.

And there have always been "bypasses" to avoid the gatekeepers. Just as today there is-self-publishing, fan-fiction etc., so there have been oral traditions, 'forbidden' books, the explosion of the 18th/19th century unlicensed pamphlet press and Penny Dreadfuls etc.

What has changed in the last century is close-to universal literacy in the West leading to writing being the primary storytelling medium, and then the rise of cinema and TV. Since publishing is costly (still is if you want to reach a mass market) and film-making is very costly, all the old financial and sponsorship gatekeeping is magnified.

Sean Taylor:
Unlike the classic pulp tropes, I think there’s really only one real, “allowed” myth in the public consensus of modernity - particularly in the U.S. - and that’s the myth of the self-made man (or woman nowadays, though it’s origin is most definitely a male character). It’s the one truly pervading myth that drives our reality. Our folk tales are full of them, from Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed to John Henry and the legends built up around and added to the narratives of historical figures like Washington and Lincoln and Stonewall Jackson.

I.A. Watson:
There have always been attempts to monetise tropes and to sanitise contents for a different mass audience.This week I re-read my Robin Hood novel trilogy and it reminded me of how that legend developed. The earliest stories were definitely tavern tales of a peasant outlaw (often said to be from the village of Loxley in Yorkshire) who tweaked the noses of the rich and powerful - subversive, working class, put-one-over-on-our-supposed-betters stuff. The earliest printed stories, preserved in the Child Ballads, are very much about a people's champion, of the people, for the people.

The next development, on the Elizabethan stage, was authored by educated professional writers who were writing for their patrons (who then funded the plays that the masses eventually saw). The big development here was that Robin was now an outlawed nobleman too, the Earl of Huntingdon, who left his estates to be "down with the people" and give them the vital leadership to resist tyranny that they could not possibly possess in their own humorous uneducated way (c.f Spanish nobleman Zorro championing the Mexican peons and many other "white saviour" stories). The Hood legend is appropriated for a different use for a different audience.

Then we have the Victorian sanitisation, cutting out the crude bits, streamlining the narrative to offer a satisfying 'complete' story that can be absorbed into culture as a quaint and nostalgic old folk-cycle. And then the Hollywood era where the myth has been rediscovered and reinterpreted many times (to varying degrees of success).

But for all of that, when someone stands outside the law against overwhelming authority and who redistributes wealth outside the law, we still tend to call them a Robin Hood. His myth has not entirely been appropriated. His trope appears again and again with every good-natured rogue who joins with a band of comrades to thwart authority (from Bo and Luke Duke to Han Solo).

Sean Taylor:
It’s the myth so deeply ingrained in American culture that it is behind both successes and failures. It’s the reason we love Teddy Roosevelt and understand why Hemingway blew his brains out. It gave way to the “heroes” that follow it – such as the man against the world who can only win by standing firm, the existential hero – and the spies (both male and female) who make their own rules in a world where the rules stifle and get in the way, and because they chose their own way, they win, regardless of whether they die at the end or not.

It’s the myth that supersedes all other, and it’s not just behind adventure tales, but also literary fiction. Hemingway’s hero leaves the army for love only to lose that love to illness and death. Jay Gatsby chooses to chase “the American Dream” and redefines himself, only to lose to the establishment of wealth. It’s a failure that leads Sylvia Plath to take her own life in the face of not being able to live up to the idea of the self-made hero. Her heroine in The Bell Jar rejects the idea of the self-made hero, and pays the price for that rejection.

I.A. Watson:
It is a significant and pervasive myth, but not the only one, even in the USA. The "rebel with a cause" Robin Hood thing is distinctive enough. There is also the "King Arthur and His Round Table" stuff, iterated in everything from Doc Savage to the Avengers, and its distinctive sub-theme of the Lost Hero Returning to Set Things Right. There is some crossover with the "Self-Made Man" idea, but not always and not as the core concept.

Sean Taylor:
Speaking of Gatsby, here comes the irony of the idol of the self-made hero. It is propagated by the very class of people who refuses to let others join their society. They can control the thoughts of the masses by helping the masses believe they can become self-made heroes (just like the rich, upper class, etc.) only to learn eventually that those people have walled up the doors and gates behind them so as to no let anyone else into the club. They just want people to believe they can. (Sure, I know, every now and then some rabbit sneaks through a hold in the fence and dons a bow tie and joins the party, but that hole is immediately blocked up again. (Can’t have any more of the rabble coming in, can we?)

I.A. Watson:
I'd go so far as to say that sometimes a rabbit has to be let in, or the fence breaks.

Sean Taylor:
It’s a myth built into the Constitution as a right – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Just don’t set your sights too high. Keep to your place.

Which leads me to the beginnings of the new myth that slowly entering into fiction – the counter to the self-made hero. This new hero either tries and fails or rejects the old myth and is able to redefine what happiness, liberty, and life actually mean in the fabric of his or her own life – reality be damned. These heroes set their sights on something higher than a traditional hero’s reward. They do their thing to pull together a family, or to save the world in a way that no one can ever know, or to raise a child, or in the case of my own Rick Ruby, to maintain a status quo that allows him fleeting tastes of real, genuine – impossible to hang on to – love. He doesn’t want to improve his status, just live within it in a way that allows him some, albeit fleeting, happiness.

I.A. Watson:
I suspect that Campbell's idea that every story type also includes its opposite - Boy Loses Girl, Man Does Not Learn a Lesson etc. is valid here. Tragedies often pivot on one subversion of a concept, one fatal flaw that denies the protagonist happiness and a future. Sometimes that flaw is in the circumstance of the story, and since circumstance - plot - in stories derives from the myth-type it is using, subverting or flipping that myth-type is what causes the character's downfall.

In other words, if the author decided that the premise of that kind of story doesn't work, then that character's event-line will morph accordingly. It's as if suddenly real-world physics caught up with Batman and he could no longer dodge a spray of machine-gun bullets.

Sean Taylor:
Sure, but it seems to me that one prevails while the other is considered subversive of “counter” rather than mythic.

I.A. Watson:
It's certainly true of superheroes and pulp heroes. "One man can make a difference."

Just borrowing the incarnations of the story-form that we see in our major current comic book heroes:

The Avengers/Justice League - a Varsity of heroes banded together against the greatest of threats; the "best of the best" aspect has been vitiated by multiple teams with massive line-ups now, but up till 1988 neither team had topped 20 members ever. The reader hook here was to identify with a band of heroes who interacted at the highest echelons of herodom, to be in the locker room with the elite.

Sean Taylor:
The oldest and most tied to the original myths, I’d say. This is your gods of Olympus, your gathered heroes of Valhalla.

I.A. Watson:
I can't actually think of many stories where pantheons gathered together for a "mission", or indeed where more than a couple of gods (e.g.Thor and Loki) head off for an adventure together. The first big Greek myth team-ups were the heroes, for Jason's All-Star Argonauts and for Team Hercules.

Sean Taylor:
I'll have to concede that. But that group of characters created the archetypes to later form an actual team. Grant Morrison even used the Greek/Roman pantheon for his version of the Justice League when he was writing the comic book. Per Morrison:

Superman - Zeus
Wonder Woman - Hera
Batman - Hades
Flash - Hermes
Aquaman - Poseidon
Green Lantern - Apollo
Orion - Ares
Oracle - Athena
Huntress - Artemis
Steel - Hephaestus
Zauriel - Aphrodite
Plastic Man - Dionysus
Barda - Demeter

I.A. Watson:
The X-Men - outcast misunderstood outlaws prove themselves to be heroes better than all the people who look down on them; a powerful story dating back at least as far as the heroes of the Water Margins, speaking to every reader who feels him or herself excluded because they are different. But in these stories different = special and individuality is good.

Sean Taylor:
What stories and legends do you know to support this pre-comics? Robin Hood was an outlaw and outcast, but not because of his differences, instead because of monarchist greed, so that's probably not the same thing.

I.A. Watson:
We might have to look to fairy stories, where an Ugly Duckling becomes a Swan, a Cinders-girl becomes a princess etc., or to some Irish myths where heroes are given great handicaps at birth which they must overcome to gain their destiny (for example, not being allowed a name, to hold any weapon not given by one's mother - who won't grant one - and not being allowed to marry any wife born of woman). But I admit that those are all individual stories and may be more about desired qualities not being recognised (the Loathly Lady trope). Nor are any of them groups.

Outcast bands are a pretty old tale, though. It's not just the rich and powerful that tell each other stories.

Batman - an extraordinary individual responds to tragedy by becoming a guardian and avenger through his own personal qualities and efforts. He solves problems by being physically, intellectually, and morally superior. He is right by virtue of being better than a failing law enforcement system.

Superman - an extraordinary individual with remarkable abilities becomes the greatest hero of his age, but hides his brilliance in a mundane mortal identity; only the reader is on on the secret. The secret identity twist is a relatively new part of the story-form for heroes (starting in modern literature with the Scarlet Pimpernel as best I can tell, although it might have been drawn from the "Ruritanian prince' literature of the mid-Victorian era), but it is a separate and potent element, about "if only they knew who I really was..." which also speaks to a shy, overlooked, or bullied reader.

Spider-Man - a hard-luck hero does the right thing even when fate dumps on him for doing it; secret identity, real-life hassles of school, job, and relationships, and stories that juxtapose the hero's basic decency with the fantastic villainy of his rogues gallery and the mundane venality of JJJ. The reader is encouraged to identify with "Hard Luck Parker"because we too have our Flash Thompsons, our Jolly Jonahs, and our Aunt Mays.

Sean Taylor:
Of them all, this seems the most recent development in myth making. Prior ages always seemed to laud the demigods or brightest and best. Are their old, ancient examples of this type of hero?

I.A. Watson:
I think this sort of story works best with our modern serial-form. Everyone wants Peter to win, but then his story is over. Hence the MJ-marriage being continually rewritten. Older stories often feature a hero or heroine being misunderstood, wrongly accused, suffering for doing right etc., but they are either presented as tragedies or they have a conclusion where the hero's virtue is recognised and rewarded at last. You're right that there aren't any really good ancient examples. Perhaps Anderson's Little Mermaid was one of the earliest?

Cutting across these incarnations and their variations are some other circumstances that also depend upon the extraordinary individual:

The Official Hero - that's Captain America, Superman shaking the President's hand, the Avengers A1 Priority Clearance Card etc; patriotism was still major a thing when many of these characters were moulded.

The Rich Dilettante - the hero is a millionaire playboy, collector, amateur criminologist etc., although he may hide his expertise in a secret identity. He has every reason to enjoy his lifestyle and not care about others, but because he is a superior man he eschews the rewards of his wealth and station to fight evil.

Sean Taylor:
If anything, the cynic in me holds this one up as the ultimate prooftext for corporate overlords having their own Mary Sue. Except, when that millionaire resists and fights against the corporate structure and culture. While Luthor is closer to the example for this, Tony Stark is partly there, while Bruce Wayne is the in-disguise Robin Hood who has infiltrated the castle (so to speak).

I.A. Watson:
An assumption of this archetype is that it takes one to know one. Only a wealthy billionaire can take on another one, only the superior-born or proved men could possibly overcome the problems that normal proles could not tackle; in older stories, the disguised lord who goes amongst the peasants ha the education, training, breeding, and natural leadership to help them to happiness they cold not achieve alone because only he can show them how to fight people who have skills like his.

It's the sort of thinking behind "the White Man's Burden", that those with advantages of intellect, education, and moral superiority have a noblesse oblige responsibility for those lacking it.Although that's an unpleasant concept these days, with racist, sexist, and elitist undertones, it did inform Western culture during our great period of expansionism (including the settling of the Americas) and it is irrevocably embedded into our heroic and superheroic myths - "with great power comes great responsibility,"

I.A. Watson:
The Chosen One - by birth or circumstance the hero has been given a destiny, and must now choose to take up a duty; e.g. Green Lantern, Namor, Black Panther, Dr Strange

The Alien - the strange visitor from elsewhere brings something that is missing from our culture; e.g. Wonder Woman, Thor

The World Expert - the hero is #1 in some field of science or academic study that informs their heroic exploits; e.g. Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark, Carter Hall.

Sean Taylor:
Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes, or even John Henry, if counting track laying as a skill to be #1 in.

I.A. Watson:
The Saviour of Another Culture - the hero is from our culture but the qualities he brings prove invaluable in another culture where he becomes pre-eminent; e.g. Ka-Zar (copying Tarzan), Adam Strange (copying John Carter), Iron Fist

The Monster - our hero must master his demonic side to do good; e.g. the Hulk, the Demon Etrigan, Ghost Rider, anybody with a cursed magic item/weapon

Sean Taylor:
Mary Shelley was key in getting us to view the monster sympathetically, but it wasn't until not so long ago (mid 20th century) we were able to cast the monster as the hero. A major step in that development was Phantom of the Opera, but perhaps the earliest story to go all the way with it would be the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Regarding them all, as a cynic, I’d argue that those have become easy marketing stereotypes rather than mythic ideals. Those have become the shorthand for getting readers onboard without having to do more complex character development.

I.A. Watson:
Caliban?

For that matter, Hercules was a huge rage-monster who slaughtered his own children and nephews when he lost control, but form whom listeners continued to have sympathy as he tried to atone for his crimes. Or, if you want to have a sympathetic monster before even that, look to the Death of Enkidu.

Stuart Hopen:
Thanks for sharing your input.  Ian provided a useful reminder that the appropriation and exploitation of myth is a process as eternal as the myths themselves.  And I think you're right, Sean, that the veneration of the individual is a myth that has become so dominant, people are losing sight of the countervailing nuances and complexities that are part of a healthy culture. 

Literary Pulp -- The Roundtable

 

Several of my fellow writers have asked to be able to chime in on the discussion about blending literary fiction and pulp fiction, so this new writer roundtable will be that very topic.

Robert B. Parker

Can the two be mixed together, or does a literary story with too much fast-paced action or a pulp story with too much literary technique cease to be the thing it was created to be? Where does one draw the line?

Bill Craig: Why does one have to draw the line? Literary stories can contain mystery and romance and action. Pulp stories can tell literary tales of redemption and self-discovery. The only real difference that I have ever found is in the eyes of the reader. Lord Jim, literary fiction, but it also has elements of pulp to it. Some people refer to the collected works of the late Robert B. Parker as literary fiction where I've always considered them to be hard-boiled pulp mystery fiction.

PJ Lozito: Distinctions are made up. My friend told me in Italy, the common folk go to the opera, know all the words and sing along!

Robby Hilliard: Yes they can be mixed. Does it change what they are? I don't know. I'm sure someone will claim it does.

Stuart Hopen: I think it is mostly an arbitrary distinction. You might want to write the kind of spy novels that appeals more to fans of John LeCarre than those of Ian Fleming, but both authors have a mix of literary and pulpy elements. I mean, Anthony Burgess listed Goldfinger as one of the top 100 novels of the 20th century, along with Finnegans Wake and Gravity's Rainbow. A great deal of really classic literature has pure pulp elements. Poe for certain. Melville. Hawthorne. H.G. Welles. Shakespeare. I mean, what is Macbeth if not a horror story? Yeah, Melville could have picked up the pace by deleting the cetology chapters (many abridged versions do) but then he wouldn't have created a bible of the whaling industry, which was part of his vision as well. You might think of the slogan they used to sell the pulps initially -- all action and no philosophy. But you also can express philosophy in terms of action. Robert E. Howard did. Or you can stop the action and have someone give a speech, but that's also the hallmark of sloppy writing whether you're in the literary aisle or the pulp aisle. But it worked for Ayn Rand, whose work has deep pulp roots.

Ayn Rand

Gordon Dymowski: I think that there's a false dichotomy between "literary" writing and "pulp" writing. Dashiell Hammett is a great example: his prose influenced both Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway. Jim Thompson's novels have as much creativity in its prose as it does "pulpiness". Modern authors like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Kellerman, and Sara Paretsky have as much "pulp" in them as they do "literacy". (And there's something very literary about how Emile C. Teppermann uses the "retrospective-on-alternate-history" approach in his Operator 5 Purple Invasion novels)

Yes, I'll get in trouble with many authors for lumping those three in the same category.

I think the line comes when the writer is focused more on "art" than on writing. There's more literary content in a Mickey Spillane novel (and let's be honest - this was a guy who believed that literature was "anything that sells") than in any flavor-of-the-month literary honor. Every writer has only one job: to be honest in their writing. Tell the story and tell it the best way you can. Don't worry about posterity -- it will take care of itself. Just tell the damn story.

(And remember what Groucho Marx once asked - "What has posterity ever done for me?")

Lucy Blue: I think the line between literary fiction and pulp fiction is getting thinner and more transparent all the time, at least for readers. I mean, the winner of this year's National Book Award for novels, Sing, Unburied, Sing, is an incredibly artful, clear-eyed, brilliant literary novel - which also happens to be one hell of a horror story. The winner the year before, The Underground Railroad, has strong elements of dystopian science fiction. And if you look at contemporary pulp, you find some of the most word-drunk writers alive -- if you're going to stand out and show pulp readers a world they haven't seen before, you have to get poetic and creative while staying focused, and you have to be madly in love with the language--all keystones of real literary fiction. I think all of us, pulp and literary writers and publishers alike, have been hornswoggled into believing that "literary fiction" is the stuff that happens when people with other sources of income get graduate fellowships in fiction and get their MFA thesis published by their mom's college roommate who now heads up Blah Blah Division of Scribner & Random Penguins, Inc. (a division of Big Corporate Everything) and genre/pulp fiction is everything else. And it doesn't have to be that way. It ISN'T that way for anybody but people actually in publishing; readers couldn't care less.

Raymond Chandler

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: I've been fighting with this very question. I know a woman who only reads novels that have won Pulitzer's. Even if she hates the book, she will spend months reading it. I asked her why? You're 70 years old. You don't have time to wade through shit that doesn't sing for you. Ugh. She is blinded by branded. And I think that's a big problem: Blinded by Branding. A good story is a good story is a good story. And that's what a writer should be focused on. A good story tells an entertaining tale. A great story tells an entertaining tale but also has a deeper meaning IF you are of the mind to find it. But, in the end, the story has to be ENTERTAINING. Look at Aesop. His stories have lasted for millennia. Why? Because they masquerade as children's tales but are actually life lessons for those that can see it. The same goes for Pulp/Literary or whatever you want to call it. Tell a story, make it good, leave branding to damn marketers.

What are your favorite "art" techniques for decorating the bare bones structure of your pulp prose?

Gordon Dymowski: One of my best creative "arty" tools is Oblique Strategies (Google it) - musician Brian Eno would utilize a series of cards to jump-start creativity. I use an online version to give me a sudden flash of inspiration, and that usually helps me take the story in a unique direction.

When I'm writing, I also try to express complicated emotions and situations in a simple, straightforward manner. I think too many writers (myself included) aim for being "clever" rather than being "honest." (See, there's that word again!). It's easy to think that creating stories gives us superhuman powers and authority...but it doesn't. At the end of the day, we're working hard at writing stories that people will read.

(And if you ever need an additional dose of humility -- try copywriting for a living. Cranking out boilerplate, commercial text has helped me not only develop an appreciation for the work, but also the awareness that there's a difference between straightforward prose and trying to tell a story. Plus, cranking out marketing/web copy/blog text that doesn't emotionally engage people? Soul crushing. And that's what I try to do - engage emotionally as well as intellectually).

H.P. Lovecraft

Lucy Blue: For me, I don't know if this counts as an "art" technique, but in writing genre and pulp fiction, I still try to make the story relevant to real time and place and experience, to have something to say beyond a curiosity or freak show or roller coaster ride. And in fiction I intend to be literary, I always make sure to have enough curiosity, freak show, and/or roller coaster to make it a good read -- I've lost all patience for navel-gazing, my own or anybody else's. I want my characters to be real, but I want them to do and experience something beyond exploring their own unique psyches, which is where I think bad literary fiction fails.

Bill Craig: Art techniques, I assume you speak to adding the grit and texture to the story. Make your character human and give them flaws. Nobody wants to read about someone who is perfect because nobody has ever met someone who is perfect. My characters get hurt, they bleed, they cry. I use my words to paint a picture and then give it color and texture by showing what they are feeling, how they react or how they prepare for what is coming at them. Fear is a natural part of life. Everybody fears something.

Robby Hilliard: Characters with complex and conflicting emotional and moral depth. All too often we see simplistic characters in pulp (not a bad thing if that is the goal) when a little more depth might add that "oomph" to a pulp story. Especially if it is something to be serialized. Make the characters complex with tons of issues to deal with over time. How do we do this? We give our characters real backstories, real past traumas, and real human reactions to them. Then we manifest those demons and flaws from the past into current behavior/traits.

Sara Paretsky

What advice do you offer to those who would like to either pick up the pace of their literary stories or increase the artistic content of their pulp stories?

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: Remember the three things a story needs: Scarcity, Danger, Courage.There is something you want, something in the way, and you pull up your Big Girl Panties and go and get it.

Lucy Blue: This is the best advice I could offer anybody; find a balance. Give the reader a strong story to hold on to but don't act it out with stick figures.

Gordon Dymowski: Read, read, read. But read with a critical eye towards "what makes this story work" -- I've read comments by my fellow writers that suggest they only read one type of pulp...or even one type of literature.

Head the library. Renew your library card, if needed. Go shopping for books that you're curious about. And read them. (I've been getting involved with the work of Chester Himes). Because being exposed to different types of literature will help you develop a greater skill set. And read more than just your favorite genre - take a chance and read something you never thought you would. Because the only way to build your writing muscles is to read how others have done it...and then adapt to your own style.

And again, focus on the damn story. Posterity will take care of itself.

Michael Chabon

Robby Hilliard: For literary and pulp, make the characters face realistic moral/emotional/ethical dilemmas. Sorry, but if your character is just running to the store to pick up a jar of mayonnaise and decides on the spur of the moment pick up a hitchhiker AND decides to screw around on spouse, all without some kind of meaningful backstory AND this is supposed to be 'literary', guess what? I don't care about your character's inner journey. Sounds like a piece of sh--,uh, someone I don't like. So why would I care about his or her decisions? (Sorry. Short story from college popped into my head. Yeah, that really was in the story.)

For pulp, sure, stay focused on the action. That's why we read pulp isn't it? Just maybe layer in something that is orally/ethically/emotionally complex as well. Throw in some symbolism if it fits and works with your story. Make it pose a question, one the story doesn't attempt to answer, that will keep your reader pondering your story long after they've finished reading it.

For literary -- Use actions to flavor and imply/show internal state. It's great to have internal monologue, we all have them. But also add in some actual action and some stakes to be won or lost. It's great that you're character experienced change. But was there anything riding on whether or not that change took place?


Bill Craig: Read, read, and read some more. Look at what has been done before and then figure out what you can do to add texture to your characters and stories to make them reach out and grab the reader by the throat and drag them into the story!

Walter Mosley

Stuart Hopen: I would submit that excellence in pulp or literary fiction depend on the simple formula of maintaining all the elements in balance, recognizing their interdependence. Plot is driven by players being confronted with hard choices, with outcomes based on the exercise of will in making those choices, and style shaping perception of the characters and conveying the way they perceive the world, and they way in which their perceptions are transformed by the unfolding of events, all of which relate to theme. Unity of all elements is the simple basic formula, whether you're dealing with a style as ornate as Norvel Page, H.P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, or James Joyce, or as simple as Mickey Spillane or Ernest Hemingway. Unity and balance -- that's the simple formula. Only it is the hardest thing in the world. What I learned from pursuing a vision of literary pulp while holding myself to rigorous standards imposed by a merciless muse is that what made the most sense for me is not to depend on it for a livelihood.