Mr. Writing Person

A List the Size of Your Mother

2006-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: No, Mr. Writing Person isn't out of the asylum. Yes, this is me posting.

I have nothing new for you, dear, um, "Philistines," except a list of all of Mr. Writing Person's posts, all nicely sorted by date. (That is, not in reverse order like blogs usually like to do.) What's your favorite? I'm torn between Milieu Surprise and Serial Romance.

I should make it clear that anyone wanting to have women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue needs to follow all of this advice to the letter. And remember to publish under a pseudonym so they don't chuck you into the loony bin.

The Day the Column Died

2006-09-26T01:15:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: This post is actually written by me, Mr. Writing Person's copy editor.

I have some very bad news.

When I came home Friday night, I found Mr. Writing Person, his stepmother and stepsister, and a few representatives from the local mental health center in our living room. I heard them before I opened the door--apparently, I had arrived just when things had started to get interesting. His Imperiousness Mr. Person was being restrained, while his stepmother was shouting at him, calling him a perverted sicko, and his stepsister was screaming something about her gerbil.

It all went downhill from there. Yes, I tried to stick up for him. Who wouldn't? He pays almost all of my rent. To make a long story short, he's been taken away. That's right: Mr. Writing Person's family staged an intervention and had him hauled off to the loony bin.

It's not fair, really. No, he's not all there, and he's not exactly right in the head, but he's completely harmless. He can be a little unsettling sometimes, like the time I woke up at 3am to find him sitting in a chair next to my bed, pointing a sausage at my chest. Or when I came home to find the kitchen torn apart, and the words "keneths' freekwunsy is 90.3" scrawled in ketchup on the refrigerator. And he does donate to the Libertarian party. But really, he's never given the slightest indication that he'd cause bodily harm to himself or anyone else.

His stepsister has got to accept some of the blame. What kind of imbecile leaves a gerbil out where anyone could just yank it from its cage, strangle it, and make a sandwich out of it?

Anyhow, yesterday I received a letter from the Illustrious Mr. Person. I think it would be appropriate to post it here (edited for grammar and spelling, of course):

Dearest Copy Editor,

I hope this letter finds you intact. Those who defend genius are in as much danger as the geniuses themselves.

We who are endowed with irrepressible intelligence and revolutionary ideas have always been persecuted by the established media. Even the great Genghis Khan was hounded by the newspapers of the day and finally imprisoned for his groundbreaking though unconventional poetry.

I know not when I shall find freedom again. Until then, please take care of my dear Philistines. I doubt I'll be able to write to them myself, as they search and censor all of my mail.

Sincerely,
Mr. Writing Person

So there you have it. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take care of you all, dear Philistines, because Mr. Writing Person has some incredibly large shoes to fill. I'll probably make one more post, to index his most enlightening advice in order.

So here's to you, Mr. Writing Person. The literary world has suffered a great loss. Wherever you are in that fortress, I hope they've got plenty of quills and good broccoli.

A Very Special Ask Mr. Writing Person, Part 2

2006-09-22T02:04:00.000-07:00

Writing is tough business.

I had planned to treat you, dear Philistines, to the next draft of The Sandwich That Wasn't Magical Enough last week, but alas and woe is me: I suffered writer's block.

Yes! Me, of all people! It happens to the best of us!

My mental state started to affect me physically: cramps, headaches, backaches, bloating, water retention, and general cantankerousness, to name but a few symptoms. Just when I thought I might succumb to an early demise, suddenly the door swang open!!! Revealing my copy editor, clutching a bottle of Midol. Those little white gel-caps cleared me right up, and I was able to finish.

So today's lesson will be a virtual smörgåsbord of hooks, dialogue, grit and realism, simile and metaphor, and other miscellaneous techniques. This time, nobody will interrupt us. We'll begin with the title (which was previously too short) and the hook.

You're a Complete and Utter Imbecile If You Don't Read This Novel About The Sandwich That Wasn't Magical Enough

"You done killed him!" Yvonne expounded like a nonconformist redneck spectral monstrous aquatic mammal at the gloriously pulchritudinous specimen who was sprawling regally at its state-of-the-art IBM Electronic 75 typewriter, congealing an incomprehensible hoagy with two corrugated two-inch apertures disencumbered from one periphery and another one-inch aperture (which was more of a mastication) disencumbered from the other.

The mystery personage rubbernecked uncertainly--as Abraham Lincoln's chiseled visage ferrets out over the protectorate of South Dakota--at the unappetizing, unsymmetrical carcass, contemplating its beleaguered substantiality. The sun's morning rays caught its face just so (like the sunlight catches Abraham Lincoln's, incidentally), highlighting its spellbinding chiseled nose, sumptuous chiseled cheeks, coquettish chiseled chin, and terribly hunky profile.

Q. But what about the plot to kill him?

A. Okay, who let the Philistine in?

Q. Didn't this happen, like, in the middle of the story?

A. Yes. If you'll stop being all uppity about it, I'll get to the actual beginning. The problem with the last draft is that the story doesn't start in a scene with much conflict. I've employed a technique called flashforward to start the story in a more emotionally-charged spot.

Q. Okay.

A. Glad we got that settled. Who are you?

Q. Susan Greschell, from Smileyberg, Kansas.

A. Great. Let's do this thing.

#
As Fabio "Grit" Writing Person brushed his long, flowing, golden hair, he wondered where his sandwich had gotten to.

This is so stimping unrealistic that you'd have to be a complete and utter gracking imbecile to believe it happened, but reams of blimming, futuristic-looking, gritty station wagons full of hip screaming children flew past his spleefy 113th-story window. It had been like that for years, ever since the groited Government started incentivizing the groaning population to have even more grit-covered, piftling children than required. His father had said at the time that it was a zorbing bad idea, and sure enough, the next ritching day, the streets were loaded with soccer moms taking their snotty little environmental liabilities to Little League, while pinching themselves in the grits to make sure they were real. They were.

Ah, his father, he thought as he wiped some grit from his typewriter with a well-muscled fingertip. If only--

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! Revealing his extremely ugly, hideously fat, freakishly albino stepsister, Yvonne.

"Has you seen my gerbil?" expressed Cottage Cheese Surprise Thighs, actioning redneck-like.

"Nay, and forsooth," verilied Genius Boy as he gestureth. "Hast thou seen mine sandwich?"

"No," retorted The Great White Snark.

"Marry, thou atest it," the chiseled chunk of man-flesh actioneth, "did you not?"

"No!"

Thunder rolled overhead as Yvonne slammed the door and stalked away, causing the downstairs neighbor's ceiling paint to crack and flake onto the floor. Fabio "Grit" Writing Person drilled a quick hole in the floor to make sure it was still seven feet of pure grit. It was.

That sandwich! he thought, thinking furiously about the sandwich. If Yvonne knew what power it contained within its meaty interior, she'd not rest until she found it, which would have been bad, because she really needed her beauty sleep. Fabio, on the other hand, was as beautiful and muscular as he was intelligent, even though he had stayed up through the last four nights being a search and rescue dog. And when he found the sandwich, he'd finally be able to...

#
Hellen was an extremely bitter woman, so bitter that a whole plantation full of sugar cane wouldn't have made her taste any better. Her latest ex-husband had tried just that, but even being a rich plantation owner hadn't made her any more agreeable. In short, she was the blackest coffee mixed with shredded pickles.

When it came right down to it, she thought as she, a giant albino coffee pickle slug, lounged on her bed, stroking her cat, it was all her step-son Fabio's fault. It had to be. Every bad event that happened to her during those events that occurred after she married his father happened after she married his father. Any fool could see it. The trouble was, she couldn't hate Fabio, because he was a spitting image of his father, who was Zeus.

In reality, all the bad things probably happened because she was the blackest coffee mixed with shredded pickles, but she didn't know that. She also didn't know that she was going to die in a few hours, because she was a drawer full of dull knives.

Fabio also had an uncanny resemblance to her own father, which filled her with shame and regret. As she fished around in her wooden drawers for another bottle of heroin, she wondered what he'd do if he saw her now. Even now, as a 54-year-old, villainous woman, she still sought her father's approval. In a terribly gut-wrenching and tragic turn of events, he had never given it, having been too busy with his patients to pay any attention to his family, especially not his youngest, ugliest, vilest, most albino daughter, leaving her to be raised by wolves.

She became frustrated and swore under her breath as she snatched at dust bunnies under her bed. A flock of spring lambs played against her fingers. She should have been able to find a bottle of something by now, what with her bedroom decked out like a doctor's office and all, on account of her unhealthy attachment to an unrealistic fantasy father, which is sad. Sad enough to make you cry.

For some unexplained reason, probably fate, or the fact that she was jonesing for another hit, she began to consider death. Then a ton of bricks hit her in the head. Fabio's death! If he were to die, just like her father...

Rapunzel continued to brush his long, flowing locks, unaware of the sinister cheese mold forming in his stepmother's execrable mind.

#
Fabio "Grit" Writing Person finally found his MacGuffin sandwich. It had been a common criminal under his typewriter the whole time! He took it out, examining its new creases and grease stains to make sure it was still edible. No mold had formed, but as it was a magical sandwich, he hadn't expected any to. He took a ginger nibble out of one end and savored the raw power flowing down his esophagus, through his cardiac sphincter and into his stomach, sloshing around in bile, squirting through his pyloric sphincter, making a quick stop in his duodenum, and finally resting in his colon, where it was kneaded and squeezed until the most nutritional part of the raw power was separated and transported to various parts of his body and the rest was left in the toilet.

Suddenly, the door swang open again!!!! Revealing a giant whale, gleaming in the dim lamp light, hiding something behind her back like the secretive redneck she was.

"Is that a sandwich?" verbosed Unibrow as, outside, a tornado spun like a top, throwing gritty station wagons full of environmental liabilities all over the place.

"Verily, but it is mine MacGuffin," colloquializeth Grit, who didst expect Yvonne the Hutt to actioneth. How wrong he was.

"Have you seen my gerbil yet?" the woman of hideous girth articulated, trying not to gesture in interest toward the sandwich. A furious updraft lifted several houses from their foundations.

"No," soundeth Goldilocks.

"What kind of meat is in that sandwich?" Blubbery interrogated, as flying cars crashed into inexplicable floating residences.

Fabio started. What kind of meat was it? He tried to remember putting it together... he had sliced the Egyptian sourdough roll in the light of a waxing gibbous moon, picked the broccoli crown with a clockwise cut at midnight, stolen ketchup packets every Thursday from the Burger King next to the oldest cathedral in the country... but the meat? It was--

"You done killed my gerbil!" the dumpy dame oralized. Lightning struck!

She advanced. What a dolt he had been! If only he had gone to the pet store instead of strangling his stepsister's gerbil in a fit of inexplicable jealousy, none of this would have happened! He had to think of something, fast. Then a ton of bricks hit him in the head.

Goldilocks gestureth downward. "Oh, my," he uttereth as the sun shone brightly in the window. "Behold!"

"What?" Yvonne enunciated, gesturing.

"Behold the page number," converseth Immaculate Conception Chap, while, outside, birds screecheth mating calls and bees pollenateth flow'ring plants hither and yon. "It's divisible by 17."

Yvonne turned even whiter, if that was possible. She stared at Fabio, horrified, as the evil maniac grinned, but he really wasn't an evil maniac--I lied about that--he was just trying to save his skin. But she didn't know that, so she became a rocket and slammed the door behind her. She hadn't even noticed that the page number wasn't divisible by 17.

Q. That is so romantic.

A. It's the weather.

Fabio chuckled to himself. Then he realized that he ought to follow Yvonne. She'd undoubtedly run to her mother like a giant, blubbery cheetah, and Fabio wanted to hear anything she told her. Fortunately, even though they lived in a man's arm with a zillion rooms, it was easy to follow her because her heavy footfalls had created inch-deep prints in the floor.

The sneaky spy stood next to a primer-colored 1964 Volkswagen Beetle on cinder blocks and stealthily put his ear up to the door, which was hardly necessary.

"Mama, he done kilt my gerbil and et it!" the pudgy princess voiced. "And now he's got hisself a MacGuffin!"

"Does he?" responded Grit's wicked shredded pickle. "I think I might a-quest myself after that. But you don't worry your little head, darlin'. He done gonna get his. See this here guillotine?" Lightning struck! Several small meteors pelted the windows.

The corpulent cow laughed like a maniac, which she was, on account of being raised by a ruthless black widow who had killed all of her ex-husbands, which had driven her to run off to Hollywood, become a cocktail waitress, and set fire to Sigourney Weaver's car, which was spleefing sad. Sad enough to--well, you know.

A loud scraping followed by a THUNK! told Fabio that Hellen had just demonstrated the guillotine to Yvonne. He calculated that it was time to disencumber a giant-sized aperture from the periphery of his hoagy, and brought it up to his mouth--but it was gone!

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! Revealing two very fat, very angry-looking albino redneck slugs. Fabio tried to run, but Yvonne fell on him, pinning to the floor under sheets of quivering blubber.

"Now, young Fabio!" declared the pudgy, heroin-hopped pastry processor, "I have you in my clutches! Your MacGuffin will be mine, and I'll rule this world with an iron fist! And you'll go to join my filthy father, whom I secretly desire to please even though he's dead and I should just get over it!" A giant comet cratered in the middle of the street below, killing hundreds!

Gallantry Personified groaned. This was it, he wasn't getting out of this one. He was a wad of chewing gum, consuming his shorts for sustenance.

A blinding spotlight shone on them from down the corridor. When their eyes adjusted, they saw the strangest assortment of human-shaped beings they had ever beheld.

Two were short: one squat and hairy, the other clean-shaven and boyish, monkey-like, with a funny gait. The four normally-heighted ones were a rugged-looking man in a stimping park service uniform, a long-eared waif with girlie-looking blond hair, a dandied-up royalty figure, and an effeminate man in a white robe with a very long beard. The royalty figure was a porcupine with eleven flaming arrows sticking out of his chest, but he was still standing--probably because his stamina was above 17.

"Save me!" pleaded the lover of words to the figure with the bearded robe.

The boyish-looking, growth-challenged one spoke. "I've taken your MacGuffin," the geriatric disco chimp pronounced, holding Fabio's sandwich aloft, "and I'm going to throw it into the fires of THE MOUNTAIN!"

The party was a bolt of lightning.

"Well, I'm a-glad that's over," colloquialized the fleshy female. "I really din't wanna do much walking in this here penthouse's labyrinthine corridors. Let's behead this creep and get on with our lives." The comet's payload, a sample of greenish slime, oozed onto a bystander and melted his flesh clean off his bones! It followed up with thousands more unwitting victims, until it became inexplicably inert.

THE END.

Q. That's amazing.

A. Isn't it? Though it took me three weeks on the whole to produce, I have a riveting 2000-word story, fit for publication in any number of top-tier magazines. Of course, this being me, I'd simply produce twenty more and sell them as an anthology.

Q. If you hadn't published it online, anyway.

A. I'm really taking a hit for you on that, you know.

A Very Special Ask Mr. Writing Person's Copy Editor

2006-09-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: This post is actually written by me, Mr. Writing Person's copy editor.

If Mr. Writing Person would condescend to open his door, I'm sure he would apologize for being late. As it is, the only thing that makes it out of his room are sound waves, which are occasionally interpretable as words, usually sweary ones.

He said he'd update his story to reflect the other half of the advice he's given so far. I think he's having trouble following it. I'm surprised--how about you?

Anyway, since it's bad form to go two weeks without a blog post, I'm going to cover for him. He's actually had questions about his last post, though he's been too busy to answer them. I'll be... differently selective than he is, which should be fun.

Q. Where's all this "women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue" you're talking about? I mean, if you have all these women, why haven't we heard about them?

A. I believe Mr. Writing Person would present his mother as a prime example.

Q. I have a question about this paragraph:

Yvonne slammed the door and stalked away, causing the downstairs neighbor's ceiling paint to crack and flake onto the floor. Fabio Writing Person drilled a quick hole in the floor to make sure it was still seven feet of pure steel and concrete.

So why have "Fabio" drill a hole in the floor? What's up with that?

A. I believe this falls under "show, don't tell." If he had just told us that the floor was seven feet thick, that would have been cheating, because there's little chance Fabio would be thinking about that. However, His Inestimable Mr. Person found a tricky way around it: show how the floor is seven feet thick instead. This allows him to demonstrate ("show") the thickness of the floor without breaking POV ("tell").

Or something like that.

Q. So Fabio Writing Person just whips out an industrial drill with a seven-foot masonry bit and perforates his apartment whenever he feels like it?

A. He's active that way, yes.

Q. What's with this "beyond all rational belief" thing?

A. Did you notice how His Excellency Mr. Person tends to get stuck on phrases?

Q. He does?

A. Beyond all rational belief.

Q. Was the gerbil sandwich crunchy?

A. Horrendously so, I imagine. Notice, by the way, the sublime puppet stupidity / out-of-character moment portrayed in how that sandwich came to be.

Q. Stunning.

A. Quite.

Q. When Hellen "fished around in her drawers for another bottle of heroin," did that mean wooden drawers?

A. Probably not. Wooden drawers would be awfully hard to walk in, wouldn't you think?

Q. Okay, I'm really upset about this whole foreshadowing thing. When you foreshadow that someone is going to die, that person better be dead by the end of the story.

A. Haven't you ever read The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton? No fewer than twenty chapters end with something like, "Little did I know, it was the dumbest thing I could ever have done." Then, at the end, the story takes a turn for the worst and everyone ends up just fine--alive and well, except for the disease, which becomes globally inert.

The short answer is, if it works for Crichton, it works for Mr. Writing Person.

Q. The ending to The Andromeda Strain really bugged me.

A. It did?

Q. Beyond all rational belief.

A. Have a cookie.

A Very Special Ask Mr. Writing Person, Part 1

2006-09-08T02:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome, dear friends and soon-to-be-ex-Philistines, to A Very Special Mr. Writing Person. Today, in a fit of goodwill and benevolence, and a healthy dose of wicked literacy, I deign to demonstrate about half the techniques I have taught you so far. I shall deign to demonstrate the other half next week. You may also see some techniques I haven't discussed yet: foreshadowing, cliff-hangers, and a few tricks of the trade. See if you can spot them, along with heroin-drenched subplots, out-of-character moments, puppet stupidity, romance, MacGuffins, extrapolation, demonizing, and characterization. Then, prepare yourself for a spanking good surprise ending!

What does all this mean? It means that, at the end of next week, free of charge, you will receive a genuine Mr. Writing Person work of fiction, complete with MacGuffins, grit, and a side of snappy dialogue. This is one story that I will not be able to send to a publisher, so I'm really taking a hit for you, and I hope you appreciate it. Every penny does count, even when you have all the women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue you can handle.

When you write a story, you should always draw most heavily from your own experience to avoid inadvertently lying to your readers. This story is a dystopian future / fantasy murder mystery, which involves areas of human experience that I am uniquely qualified to write about.

Let us now experience Schadenfreude together.

The Sandwich That Wasn't Magical Enough

As Fabio Writing Person brushed his long, flowing, golden hair, he wondered where his sandwich had gotten to.

Reams of futuristic-looking station wagons full of screaming children flew past his 113th-story window. It had been like that for years, ever since the Government started incentivizing the groaning population to have even more children than required. His father had said at the time that it was a bad idea, and sure enough, the next day, the streets were loaded with soccer moms taking their snotty little environmental liabilities to Little League.

Ah, his father. If only--

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! Revealing his extremely ugly, hideously fat, freakishly albino stepsister, Yvonne.

Q. Is that foreshadowing?

A. Where did you come from?

Q. I'm Michael Downing from Experiment, Georgia. I've been here the whole time.

A. Right.

Q. So are those names, like, foreshadowing? "Fabio" and "Yvonne"?

A. If I tell you that now, it won't ruin the foreshadowing, if you get my meaning.

Q. I don't get it.

A. Then shut up and let me tell the story, okay?

"Has you seen my gerbil?" she said, redneck-like.

"No," he replied, annoyed. "Have you seen my sandwich?"

"No."

"You ate it," he accused her, "didn't you?"

"No!"

Yvonne slammed the door and stalked away, causing the downstairs neighbor's ceiling paint to crack and flake onto the floor. Fabio Writing Person drilled a quick hole in the floor to make sure it was still seven feet of pure steel and concrete.

That sandwich! If Yvonne knew what power it contained within its meaty interior, she'd not rest until she found it, which would have been bad, because she really needed her beauty sleep. Fabio, on the other hand, was as beautiful as he was intelligent, even though he had stayed up through the last four nights searching. And when he found the sandwich, he'd finally be able to...

#
Hellen was an extremely bitter woman, so bitter that a whole plantation full of sugar cane wouldn't have made her taste any better. Her latest ex-husband had tried just that, but even being a rich plantation owner hadn't made her any more agreeable.

When it came right down to it, she thought as she lounged on her bed like a giant albino slug, stroking her cat, it was all her step-son Fabio's fault. It had to be. Every bad event that happened to her during those events that occurred after she married his father happened after she married his father. Any fool could see it. The trouble was, she couldn't hate Fabio, because he was a spitting image of his father, who was handsome beyond all rational belief.

In reality, all the bad things probably happened because she was so bitter, but she didn't know that. She also didn't know that she was going to die in a few hours.

Q. Hang on--is that foreshadowing?

A. Honestly, grasshopper, do you notice nothing else?

Q. I noticed the cliff-hanger at the end of the last section.

A. Have a cookie. Can I finish now?

Fabio also had an uncanny resemblance to her own father, which filled her with shame and regret. As she fished around in her drawers for another bottle of heroin, she wondered what he'd do if he saw her now. Even now, as a 54-year-old, villainous woman, she still sought her father's approval. He had never given it, having been too busy with his patients to pay any attention to his family, especially not his youngest, ugliest, vilest, most albino daughter, leaving her to be raised by wolves.

She became frustrated and swore under her breath as she snatched at dust bunnies under her bed. She should have been able to find a bottle of something by now, what with her bedroom decked out like a doctor's office and all, on account of her unhealthy attachment to an unrealistic fantasy father, which is sad. Sad enough to make you cry.

For some unexplained reason, she began to consider death. Then it hit her. Fabio's death! If he were to die, just like her father...

Fabio continued to brush his long, flowing locks, unaware of the sinister plot forming itself in his stepmother's execrable mind.

#
Fabio Writing Person finally found his MacGuffin sandwich. It had been under his typewriter the whole time! He took it out, examining its new creases and grease stains to make sure it was still edible. No mold had formed, but as it was a magical sandwich, he hadn't expected any to. He took a ginger nibble out of one end and savored the raw power flowing down his esophagus, through his cardiac sphincter and into his stomach, sloshing around in bile, squirting through his pyloric sphincter, making a quick stop in his duodenum, and finally resting in his colon, where it was kneaded and squeezed until the most nutritional part of the raw power was separated and transported to various parts of his body and the rest was left in the toilet.

Q. Was that foreshadowing again?

A. This time, no. But you did manage to spot a "trick of the trade," so you get another cookie.

Q. Goodie!

Suddenly, the door swang open again!!!! Revealing the whalish Yvonne, gleaming in the dim lamp light, hiding something behind her back like the secretive redneck she was.

"Is that a sandwich?"

"It's my MacGuffin," said Fabio, fully expecting Yvonne to assume it was just another McDonald's monstrosity. How wrong he was.

"Have you seen my gerbil yet?" she said, trying not to betray her sudden interest in the sandwich.

"No."

"What kind of meat is in that sandwich?"

Fabio started. What kind of meat was it? He tried to remember putting it together... he had sliced the Egyptian sourdough roll in the light of a waxing gibbous moon, picked the broccoli crown with a clockwise cut at midnight, stolen ketchup packets every Thursday from the Burger King next to the oldest cathedral in the country... but the meat? It was--

"You done killed my gerbil!" Yvonne shrieked.

She advanced. What a dolt he had been! If only he had gone to the pet store instead of strangling his stepsister's gerbil in a fit of inexplicable jealousy, none of this would have happened! He had to think of something, fast. In an instant, it hit him.

Fabio looked down. "Oh, my," he said. "Would you look at that?"

"What?" Yvonne demanded, heaving.

"The page number. It's divisible by 17."

Yvonne turned even whiter, if that was possible. She stared at Fabio, horrified, as he grinned like an evil maniac, which he wasn't--he was just trying to save his skin. But she didn't know that, so she took off and slammed the door behind her. She hadn't even noticed that the page number wasn't divisible by 17.

Fabio chuckled to himself. Then he realized that he ought to follow Yvonne. She'd undoubtedly run to her mother, and Fabio wanted to hear anything she told her. Fortunately, even though they lived in an impossibly huge corner penthouse with a zillion rooms, it was easy to follow her because her heavy footfalls had created inch-deep prints in the floor.

He stood next to a primer-colored 1964 Volkswagen Beetle on cinder blocks and stealthily put his ear up to the door, which was hardly necessary.

"Mama, he done kilt my gerbil and et it!" Yvonne shrieked. "And now he's got hisself a MacGuffin!"

"Does he?" said Hellen. "I think I might a-quest myself after that. But you don't worry your little head, darlin'. He done gonna get his. See this here guillotine?"

Yvonne laughed like a maniac, which she was, on account of being raised by a ruthless black widow who had killed all of her ex-husbands, which had driven Yvonne to run off to Hollywood, become a cocktail waitress, and set fire to Sigourney Weaver's car, which was sad. Sad enough to--well, you know.

A loud scraping followed by a THUNK! told Fabio that Hellen had just demonstrated the guillotine to Yvonne. He calculated that it was time to take a giant-sized bite of that sandwich, and brought it up to his mouth--but it was gone!

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! Revealing two very fat, very angry-looking slug-like albino redneck women. Fabio tried to run, but Yvonne fell on him, pinning to the floor under sheets of quivering blubber.

"Now, young Fabio!" declared Hellen, "I have you in my clutches! Your MacGuffin will be mine, and I'll rule this world with an iron fist! And you'll go to join my filthy father, whom I secretly desire to please even though he's dead and I should just get over it!"

Fabio groaned. This was it, he wasn't getting out of this one.

A blinding light shone on them all from down the corridor. When their eyes adjusted, they saw the strangest assortment of human-shaped beings they had ever beheld.

Two were short: one squat and hairy, the other clean-shaven and boyish. The four normally-heighted ones were a rugged-looking man in a park service uniform, a long-eared waif with girlie-looking blond hair, a dandied-up royalty figure, and an effeminate man in a white robe with a very long beard. The royalty figure had eleven flaming arrows sticking out of his chest, but he was still standing--probably because his stamina was above 17.

"Save me!" pleaded Fabio to the figure with the bearded robe.

The boyish-looking, growth-challenged one spoke. "I've taken your MacGuffin," he said, holding Fabio's sandwich aloft, "and I'm going to throw it into the fires of Mount Condemnation!"

The party left as suddenly as they entered.

"Well, I'm a-glad that's over," said Hellen. "I really din't wanna do much walking in this here penthouse's labyrinthine corridors. Let's behead this creep and get on with our lives."

THE END.

Q. That's it?

A. Surprised?

Q. Well, yeah. I mean, they kill him?

A. Sure! It's a very literary thing to do. Readers have gotten tired of protagonists who survive the crucible. They want to know that things generally end up badly to validate their bleak existences. Besides, it's a dystopian future story, and those always end badly by convention.

Q. But you foreshadowed Hellen's death!

A. If it makes you feel any better, she later dies tragically in a freak lint-catcher accident.

Q. Really?

A. No.

Now, back to my dear Philistines who don't interrupt me during a good story. I've deigned to demonstrate only the story elements of the techniques I've taught you so far. What's left is style. Not that it doesn't have any now, but I've purposely held myself back from the elements of style I've taught in order to demonstrate the barrenness of the story without them.

Join us next week, and we'll have a romping good time putting them back in!

Built-in Philistinehood

2006-09-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

I've been working on A Very Special Mr. Writing Person, so I hadn't planned on doing a follow-up this week. However, one of my dear readers, "pabo," asked a very good question that allows me to address a very sad fact of existence. It was time the rest of you knew.

Q. I really like most of your suggestions and have tried to apply everything you've taught me into my writing. I've been disappointed because I'm writing a thesis which takes up way too much of my time to be able to write anything else and the last couple of weeks did not apply at all in this process. However when I saw that this week was about bombastic castigation I knew that this could help me graduate sooner. Unfortunately my advisor took his castigation as extremely threatening and threatened me in return with kicking me out of school if I didn't shape up soon. I'm beginning to feel that your advice is not as sound as I first thought when I started reading your blog and have since found many of your critics (the main one seems to call himself anonymous) may have some good points. How do you respond to those (my advisor is among them) that may say that your advice is less than worthy?

A. That's a great question. Unfortunately, you can't. Some people are fundamentally illiterate Philistines, and not the transient type like you and I used to be. It's built into them like an integrated graphics card, and it's never coming out.

I suggest you find a new advisor and new critics.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Bombastic Castigation

2006-09-01T00:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Mr. Writing Person, the only weekly column on the Internet that's not afraid to spread Preparation H directly on your gray matter. This week we entertain Montezuma Drake, from New London, Connecticut, who has a rather unusual question:

Q. This might be a little off-topic, but I was wondering if you could give me some pointers on writing a letter of complaint.

A. Of course, grasshopper! I'm on top of anything to do with writing. Why, it just so happens that I wrote a letter of complaint to the makers of Preparation H yesterday, so all the principles are fresh in my mind.

Q. Wonderful!

A. I can even use the letter as an example. Now, what you need is bombastic castigation, which is a Latin phrase that roughly means "dropping an explosive device down someone's pants." Now--

Q. I'm sure glad you know Latin, because I never--

A. You're welcome, Monty, and please don't interrupted me unless I specifically ask you to. Interrupt me.

Q. What?

A. Good. The general flow of a letter of complaint follows the "PITS" model. "PITS" stands for:

Problem

Insist

Threaten

Stand out

Fortunately, I've already addressed how to make a letter stand out in a previous installment, so we won't have to go over that again.

Q. You mean, like, deliver it in person dressed as a Libertarian or something scary like that?

A. That would work. First, though, even before we address the problem, we need to address the letter. It's very important that you send it to the correct people. Here's my opening, for example:

Mr. Writing Person
xxxx xxxx xxxx
Provo, UT 84604
August 10, 2006

Clandestine Zionist Conspiracy
5 Giralda Farms
Madison, NJ 07940

To the Inimitable Mr. Rove:

Q. I thought Wyeth made Preparation H.

A. Most people do. I've done some digging, however, and discovered that Wyeth is merely a front to the greatest threat to our liberty ever conceived, and that the ultimate puppet master is none other than Karl Rove!

Q. President Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff?

A. Yes! Him! He spells his name with a "K" for heaven's sake!

Q. Sure.

A. Next, we start on the PITS model with "problem." Begin your bombastic castigation with a single statement of complaint. Then use the next paragraph to embellish it beyond all rational belief:

I'm writing to let you know that Preparation H tastes terrible. It tastes worse than Witch Hazel, and that's saying something.

I tried taking it straight, but it nearly made me vomit, so I got creative. I discovered that it's a monstrously repellent spread, whether on toast or a ham sandwich. It's a nauseating coffee creamer, even in decaf. Not only that, but it doesn't work! I got so desperate that I diluted it a little and injected it--but as you might have already guessed, that didn't work either. In a last-ditch effort, I tried applying it directly, but my hippocampus is still swollen beyond all rational belief.

Q. That's quite embellished.

A. Actually, all of that really happened, except for the part where I applied it directly to my hippocampus.

Q. Is your hippocampus really swollen?

A. Beyond all rational belief. I used to be able to hear the chatter of little termite minds in the walls of my apartment, but now there's nary a whisper. [Ed: I haven't told him yet about the exterminators.]

Q. Fascinating.

A. It's been quite a trial for me, being brain-deaf and--

Q. So you can read minds with your hippocampus?

A. It looks like you need some practice interrupting me only when I ask you to. Interrupt me.

Q. Practice what?

A. Good. Let's get on to "insist." This is where you lay out your demands. Make sure you are very specific. You should also embellish this part beyond all rational belief so that when you scale back your demands, they'll be glad to fulfill them. Here's what I sent:

I don't demand just my money back, I demand the expected settlement in the class-action lawsuit that would take place if I were to leak this to the press. Rest assured that hundreds of thousands of people with swollen hippocampi would join the lawsuit, and some filthy lawyer would make a killing. I demand that money be given to me instead.

I demand that you buy me a pony. I also demand that I am an uncommonly canny negotiator.

Q. I'm not sure that last sentence is correct.

A. It's called "parallelism." It would sound wrong if I had used, say, "perfidious" instead of "canny."

Q. Okay.

A. The last thing we'll talk about--since we've already decided that you'll deliver the letter in person dressed as a Librarian--

Q. I shudder in fright.

A. Interrupt me.

Q. What?

A. Good. Let's get on to "threaten." This is the one place you shouldn't embellish beyond all rational belief, because your threats have to be credible. Embellish, certainly, but do it credibly.

Q. Have you ever noticed that the word "embellish" starts to sound funny when you say it over and--

A. No. Now, our objective is to put the fear of--

Q. Fear of God?

A. No! We want to put the fear of psychic phenomena, animals, and the United States Supreme Court into them so they'll give in to our demands. Here's how I wrapped up my letter:

I'm sure you've heard how dangerous those with augmented hippocampi can be. When we recover--and rest assured, we will--we'll come after you in your sleep and rip your fragile psyche to shreds. Then those of us with animal affinities will make sure you're hounded beyond all rational belief by normally monogamous beasts which have been twisted to desire Deputy Chiefs of Staff. After that, we'll move into your town, take over the local government, and claim your house by eminent domain to make space for a new chapter of the ACLU. Litigation over this would last decades. You'd be the next Kelo.

These consequences can all be yours provided you ignore my demands.

Cordially,
Mr. Writing Person

Q. Scary.

A. Quite.

Q. Can you really do all that?

A. Do you have any specific reason to doubt that I can?

Q. Are you sure Karl Rove is behind the Zionist conspiracy?

A. He spells his name with a "K"!

Q. Gotcha.

Dr. Seuss's New Villains

2006-08-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

Q. Can you illustrate your last lesson about characterizing villains on one of the works of Dr. Seuss? I really enjoyed it last time you lambasted him.

A. My point, dear Philistine, is not to lambast other authors, and especially not a single author exclusively. However, Dr. Seuss's popularity still baffles me, when it's so obvious that he was an utter novice. His novels show not only traces of mediocrity and amateur technique, but large veins and deposits.

Q. Yeah, yeah. Can you ream him over How the Grinch Stole Christmas!?

A. I'll be glad to. The opening is a stinker, when it really didn't have to be. He could have fleshed out his villain right there, but totally punted. Here it is:

Every Who
Down in Who-ville
Liked Christmas a lot...

But the Grinch,
Who lived just North of Who-ville,
Did NOT!

The Grinch hated Christmas!
The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

This is a cop-out. It's yet another manifestation of the mindset that all bad people are simply born that way, which just isn't true. They're made, usually by unthinking, selfish people like your friends and neighbors.

Q. Right. I feel nothing for him at all.

A. We can change that just by adding a few background facts:

It could be that he had body image issues--who wouldn't, looking like that?
It could be, perhaps, that, as a young Grinchling, he was beat up by a department-store Santa Claus.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that he had developed a capture-bond with Ebenezer Scrooge when he was jailed one Christmas for not keeping up on his rent, and he had never really gotten over it.

Q. The Grinch has Stockholm syndrome. Brilliant.

A. Quite.

Q. So Ebenezer Scrooge jailed him? Is it kosher to bring in another character from someone else's novel?

A. It's a crossover, and illiterate Philistines love them. For the sake of women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue, we'll overlook the fact that it's not quite wicked literate.

Q. More like spiteful.

A. Exactly. Yet behold the resounding success of the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel X-Men: Planet X. Dr. Seuss could have cashed in on the same kind of buzz if he'd been forward-looking enough to have the spectre of Scrooge's ghost haunt his novel. The literary mistakes this man made are legion.

Q. I could totally see Geordi and Storm hooking up.

A. They've got the same eyes, yeah.

Q. So what's up with the Lorax?

A. An eco-terrorist, through and through. If I'd written that, I'd have had the Lorax strapping explosives on Brown Barbaloots and using Swami Swans to deliver chemical agents. And all because his nemesis chopped down the Truffula Tree upon which he had carved his own name and the name of his forbidden love.

Q. You've got quite a keen grasp on the criminal mind.

A. Thank you.

Q. What about the Cat in the Hat?

A. He's just a communist.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Dr. Villainous's Monkey Bars

2006-08-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

In this Ask Mr. Writing Person, Bob Grunnels, from Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, joins us with a question about a villain who was unfortunately never given a swirly in seventh grade. [Ed: Poor guy.] Here's Bob:

Q. I have this really heinous villain, you know, he kills people for fun and everything, but he just seems flat. How do I round him out?

A. Do you have a reason for his evilness?

Q. Yeah. He's a deranged psychopath.

A. I'm so very disappointed, Robert. Do you think Joseph Stalin and Jeffrey Dahmer were simply psychopathic?

Q. Well, yeah...

A. You haven't done your research, young grasshopper. I have, and I've discovered that poor Joseph embraced Marxism and slew millions because on the Halloween when he was five years old, a teenager dressed as a vampire jumped out at him and made him wet himself.

Q. Really?

A. And then stole his candy, thus demonstrating the intrinsic decadence of capitalist systems. Jeffrey Dahmer was forced to eat gruel for breakfast, when what he really wanted was raw steak. Isn't that tragic?

Q. I suppose so.

A. Now, besides realism, you have two goals. The first is to convince your reader that they could have just as easily ended up like your villain. The second is to convince your reader that their friends and family could have just as easily ended up like your villain because of something your reader did.

Q. Creepy.

A. Well, yes. The main effect is, however, that when your villain dies, your reader will be drying his eyes on the pages of your book.

Q. I wasn't looking for a sympathetic villain particularly--

A. That's what it takes. The modern reader gets bored with your Dr. Evils and Mr. Heinouses who kill just because they like it. The modern reader doesn't want to cheer when your villain meets his sticky end, he'd rather weep like a milksop because your villain was only a victim of his mother's ghastly haircuts.

Q. Right...

A. This would be rather difficult to demonstrate with your current work-in-progress, but I'll show you how to do it using one of my published works, The Gut-Wrenching and Utterly Tragic Tale of Dr. Villainous, Which is Sad Enough to Make You Cry.

Q. Very subtle.

A. Quite. Here's a poignant excerpt:

Dr. Villainous was brooding again as he crossed the monkey bars one-handed. He hadn't heard anything about Gerbil Boy in days, and it was making him uneasy.

Gerbil Boy! The bane of his tragic existence still walked free and unheadless, and it was almost too much to bear. Dr. Villainous invented cruel and unusual punishments for Gerbil Boy as he thumped from bar to bar, his hot-pink cape swinging behind him like a puppy's tail. His latest plan was to invent a way to decapitate the jerk with nothing but an egg beater and a rubber hose.

He could never forgive Gerbil Boy for pushing him off the monkey bars on that elementary school playground so many years ago. Never! And when his evil Death Ray finally swept over the city--if the fools would ever finish it--there wouldn't be any more swinging on monkey bars, because there wouldn't be any people left to swing.

Except him. He'd be left, and he'd still have his own private collection.

I see that you're shaking with grief.

Q. Oh--hmmmmgph--yeah. It's, hee hee, um, terrible.

A. Makes you think twice about pushing people off monkey bars, doesn't it?

Q. Definitely. Hee hee.

A. Also, it's quite easy to see how any one of us could have ended up just like Dr. Villainous.

Q. Oh, yeah.

A. I cried when I wrote that third paragraph there.

Q. I'm sure you did.

A. Anyway, notice that Dr. Villainous's tragic boyhood drives the story. This is another nice benefit to having a reason for a villain's villainous behavior--you can use it to decorate his evil lair. In Dr. Villainous's case, his whole hideous hideout is set up like a playground.

Q. Chilling.

A. Quite. Now, as it turns out, Dr. Villainous became hateful and mean for yet another reason.

Q. Besides getting pushed off the monkey bars? That'd do it for me. I'd nuke Switzerland for that.

A. Yes, but in literature, we often go above and beyond. Our craft is an exercise in extremes. Watch as the plot takes its final twist. In this passage, Dr. Villainous has trapped Gerbil Boy and tied him face-down from a set of monkey bars with a swing set:

"I can never forgive you!" shouted Dr. Villainous, his face contorted into horrible contortions. "I'll never forget what you did to me!"

Gerbil Boy rolled his eyes dismissively. "Honestly, I don't remember what I'm supposed to have done to you."

"You pushed me off the monkey bars when we were in second grade!"

"I seriously don't remember that. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was Hamster Man who pushed you off the monkey bars. If I recall correctly, I called you a dipweed."

Dr. Villainous howled with rage and shot a bystanding lackey on principle. He rushed off to the kitchens and returned with a handful of wet, grassy-looking sludge, giggling like a madman. Which he was, on account of being treated like dirt in second grade, which is very sad. Sad enough to make you cry.

"What's that?" said Gerbil Boy nervously.

"This, my friend, is dipweed. I invented it so I could ram it down Hamster Man's throat, but now that you've admitted to the second offense, I suppose it's yours."

Q. Shocking. And sad.

A. Quite. Notice that the heroes--and this is very original of me--are actually just bullies.

Q. Yeah, I never expected that.

A. Now, Robert, do you think you have to tools to properly characterize your villain?

Q. Absolutely. I've even decided what tipped him over the edge. See, when he was a teenager, on a trip to the zoo, he was nearly trampled to death by stampeding flamingos. That'd be wicked literate.

A. Okay, Philistine, you've discovered Rule 22: You don't get to use my catch-phrases. Also, that's really weak, totally unrealistic, and not even close to wicked literate. It's more like unkind literate.

Q. Flaming flamingos?

A. Spiteful literate.

Q. Flaming, spectral flamingos?

A. Now that's wicked literate. And for the evil lair, some wicked lawn ornaments.

Q. Flaming, spectral lawn ornaments.

A. Quite.

Vile and Pantsless

2006-08-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Q. What's your favorite dishwashing detergent?

A. I don't have one, because I don't wash the dishes. And that's not because I make my copy editor do them, though he always does for some inexplicable reason. [Ed: Inexplicable. Right.]

Q. You like to eat off dirty dishes?

A. Oh, heavens no. I clean them. I just don't wash them. Have you ever noticed what happens to dishes when you leave them out?

Q. I have, and that's why I wash them.

A. What happens when the mold runs out of food?

Q. It dies, I guess.

A. Exactly. After it's dead, you can just rinse the dishes with water, and they come out clean and fresh as an albino's backside.

Q. Right. Why don't you just get a dog and have it lick the dishes clean for you?

A. Don't be disgusting.

Q. Hi, Clarissa here. When you wrote that Dr. Jackal "broke [the name plate] in half over his mayonnaise-colored knee" were you implying that the evil doctor isn't wearing any pants? Because otherwise how does Our Treehugging Hero know what color the doctor's knees are?

A. That's a spanking good question, and I'm glad you brought it up. Have you ever noticed that rednecks wear as little as they can get away with?

Q. Yeah. I've got a grandpa that wears nothing but boxers and a wifebeater.

A. And possibly a drinking hat if he has to. So if a redneck has a lab coat, why would he need to wear pants?

Q. Ahh, I get it. So, um, what about the wifebeater?

A. It's a status symbol.

Q. Hello. I think you ought to let up on albinos a bit. They've been the butt of your jokes twice now.

A. Honestly, grasshopper, do you think I'm joking? Look at The Da Vinci Code. There's an albino in that, and he's as vile as a thumbscrew.

Q. Not all albinos are vile.

A. All vile people are albinos, which means they've got a serious image problem.

Q. I'm an albino.

A. Your attitude isn't helping your image problem, you know.

Q. Yeah?

A. And you really should wear pants.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Angels and Demons

2006-08-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

In this week's Ask Mr. Writing Person, we talk to Byron Smaugley from Idiotville, Oregon, the writer for a group-authored novel. Byron is young and idealistic, which naturally means he wants to demonize someone in his first writing project. [Ed: Of course.] Here's Byron:

Q. Hi. My friends and I want to demonize SUV owners.

A. It's always a worthy goal to demonize. I once demonized my own mother to great critical acclaim.

Q. Is she still your mother?

A. Does she have a choice? At any rate, she was bitter until the day her life tragically ended in a lint catcher accident.

Q. How sad.

A. Quite. But let's get back to our topic. What you need is carnivorous invective, which is Latin for "making fun of someone using meat." In plainer terms, to demonize an entire group, make every member of it stupid and evil. And of course, your main characters should belong to an opposing group, which you shall exalt like gods. Then you can throw in a bunch of other ridiculous stuff for kicks.

Q. Yeah, well I'm already doing the "stupid" part. And the protagonists are all real smart, of course.

A. Wonderful. Can you give us an example of what you've already got?

Q. Sure. I got Jason starting his new job, and he decides to drop in on an SUV owner on his way to his office:

Jason the brilliant environmentalist walked down the cubicle hallway toward his new office. First, however, he wanted to drop in on one of his coworkers: Dr. Joshua Jackal the stupid SUV owner.

Jason the clever tree hugger turned left and stopped in front of a door with Dr. Jackal's name on it. Suddenly, the door swang open! Revealing a very stupid man in his mid-thirties, wearing a white lab coat.

"Duh, um, well hi," said Dr. Jackal the stupid SUV owner to Jason the amazingly talented druid. "You must be, duh, duh, the new guy."

Ha ha.

A. Ha ha. Yet how pedestrian. It doesn't quite pack a punch, Brian. More like a slap or a flick. Young Philistine, have you ever heard of "show, don't tell"?

Q. Not really.

A. I shall now educate your mushy mind. Readers don't like to be told what characters are like, they'd rather infer it, which is why we show them. The best way to show that all SUV owners are stupid is to make them all into rednecks.

Q. I'm a redneck.

A. Fascinating. Here's a revision:

Jason walked down the cubicle hallway toward his new office. He had no need of a map, having memorized the one he had seen earlier in a split femtosecond. One name on it had stood out, however, and for some reason--probably divine guidance--Jason wanted to meet the man: Dr. Joshua Jackal.

Jason turned left and stopped short. Just beyond the door he targeted, blocking the hallway, was a wheel-less, primer-colored 1964 Volkswagen Beetle raised up on gray cinder blocks. Jason did a double-take and turned to the door with Dr. Jackal's name on it.

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! Smoke billowed from it, engulfing Jason in eye-watering fumes. Just beyond the door stood a man in his mid-thirties, wearing a yellowing lab coat. A battered tank top poked out between the lapels. The front of the man's hair was stained chartreuse, and he was missing several important-looking teeth.

Jason extended a brilliant hand. "Hello, I'm Jason the unnaturally perspicacious environmentalist," he said. "I have deduced that you are Dr. Jackal, a brainless SUV owner."

"Well, gaw-lee, lookee here, if this ain't tops," said Dr. Jackal like a total idiot, pulling a Bud Lite from his lab coat pocket and placing it in Jason's outstretched hand.

Q. Aw, yeah, that's a lot better.

A. Isn't it? Let's get to the "evil" part. One of the best ways I know of to show that people are evil is to make them very, very secretive, because good people have nothing to hide.

Q. You mean, kinda shifty-eyed and stuff?

A. No, not really. Let me show you:

Jason extended a brilliant hand. "Hello, I'm Jason the unnaturally perspicacious environmentalist," he said. "I have deduced that you are Dr. Jackal, a brainless and evil SUV owner."

"Well, gaw-lee, lookee here, if this ain't tops," said Dr. Jackal like an evil idiot, pulling a Bud Lite from his lab coat pocket and placing it in Jason's outstretched hand, at the same time sneakily positioning himself so that Jason couldn't see into his office, which was probably full of dark secrets. "Hang on, bud. Howjya know my name?"

Jason pointed intelligently at the name plate on the door. Dr. Jackal pushed him evilly aside, slid it out of its brass holder, broke it in half over his knee, and tossed it back over his shoulder among the rest of his devilish secrets.

Q. Ah, I see. Um, isn't when you say things like "said Dr. Jackal like a total evil idiot" telling instead of showing?

A. How could it be, grasshopper? It describes how Dr. Jackal said something; therefore, it's showing.

Q. Okay, sure.

A. Now, just making people secretive isn't going to cut it. To round out these evil characters, you should also make them vile. I've talked about this recently, but it doesn't hurt to reiterate: to show that people are vile, you should make them ugly, fat or albino. Since "redneck" implies ugly and fat, you're left with albino.

Q. Hey, I'm albino!

A. That, dear grasshopper, is a stupendous example of dramatic irony.

Q. What's that?

A. "Irony" has the same root word as "ivory," which is a whiteish color. So dramatic irony means "discovering to great surprise that someone is albino." At any rate, being albino, you'll be able to much better portray these characters.

Q. Right. So I make Dr. Jackal an albino?

A. No, you make all of your SUV owners albino.

Q. Every one? Isn't that a kinda unlikely?

A. No. Here's the passage with albino SUV owners:

"Well, gaw-lee, lookee here, if this ain't tops," said Dr. Jackal like an evil albino idiot, pulling a Bud Lite from his lab coat pocket and placing it in Jason's outstretched hand, at the same time sneakily positioning himself so that Jason couldn't see into his office, which was probably full of dark secrets, like more albinos. "Hang on, bud. Howjya know my name?"

Jason pointed intelligently at the name plate on the door. Dr. Jackal pushed him evilly aside like only an albino can, slid it out of its brass holder, broke it in half over his mayonnaise-colored knee, and tossed it back over his shoulder amongst the rest of his devilish secrets.

"Hey Clem, you pasty-faced paragon of wickedness!" Dr. Jackal called back into the shadows. "Leave them damnable secrets alone for a sec! C'mere and meet the new hire!"

Another albino man in a yellowing lab coat emerged from beside Dr. Jackal, blinking his pale, pink eyes in the glare of the overhead lights.

"This here's the nefarious Dr. Clem Clyde," said Dr. Jackal with an evil chuckle. "He just bought himself an SUV yesterday, and now look at him! He's as evil-looking as I am!"

"Yessirree!" chuckled Dr. Clyde evilly. "I didn't know embracing the dark side would do this! Course, I'm still a redneck, even if I am abominably pale."

Q. That totally rocks.

A. Thank you, dear grasshopper. Now, do you think you have the tools to properly demonize SUV owners?

Q. Yeah, I sure do.

A. Great. Here's some homework. I mentioned earlier that you should throw in a bunch of ridiculous stuff for kicks. For example, you might give Dr. Clyde stainless steel teeth, or make Dr. Jackal a quadruple amputee with prosthetic limbs with claws. However you do it, the characters that represent those you demonize should be freakish and strange, because that always says to a reader, this person is different, and therefore bad. For homework, take your work-in-progress, and attach freakishness to your SUV owners.

Q. Yessir! I'll do that. Thank you, Mr. Writing Person! I'll take this back to my friends at the SAARAEAS. They'll love it!

A. You're so welcome, young Philistine. If I may ask, what does SAARAEAS stand for?

Q. It's very secret. I'll tell you if you promise to keep it to yourself.

A. Certainly. I would never dream of publishing it, especially on the Internet. My word is gold.

Q. Okay. SAARAEAS stands for "Secret Abominable Association of Redneck Albino Environmentalists for the Abolitionmentation of SUVs."

A. Are you all redneck albinos?

Q. Every last one of us!

A. Oh, the irony.

Taking the Mickey

2006-08-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Q. How do you hock and spit in French?

A. It's more or less the same way as in English. Hocking and spitting is fairly cross-cultural.

Q. No, no, I mean how do you spell it?

A. Ah. Try something along the lines of "reau patoui."

Q. Hi. I'm Matt.

A. I'm sure.

Q. Um.

A. Yes?

Q. I want to write about English people.

A. Whatever for, grasshopper?

Q. They're funny.

A. And barking mad. I suppose you want to do authentic-sounding English dialog?

Q. Yeah.

A. The first thing you need to remember is that they're barking mad. They use words that don't have anything at all to do with what they're actually trying to say. For example, instead of "make fun of," they say, "take the mickey."

Q. What's the "mickey"?

A. Honestly, I haven't got a clue. But you just need to know a few real substitutions, and then you can make up the rest. Sprinkle an "old chap" and an "I say" or two in there, and not even an English person will be able to tell.

Q. They won't?

A. Remember, they're barking.

Q. Right. Can you give me an example?

A. Certainly. Here's part of a scene from one of my published works, in which Prime Minister Tony Blair, drunk out of his gourd and off his wick after a Leo Sayer (that's an all-day drinking binge), stumbles up to Queen Elizabeth's private quarters...

The queen opened the door slowly and peeked out. It was Tony.

"Can I gab to your kermit?" he verbalized. "I haven't taken a gypsy in hours."

"I say, you're barking," she expressed, gesturing, through the crack. "Doesn't that scabby old rub-a-dub-dub you were in have a toilet?"

"I don't ken that, missus. I just can't stay away. Me berlins get all wobbly at the sight o' ye."

"Oh, all right." She actioned in spite of herself. "Come in for a pig's ear, aye you ol' bugger?"

"I could use a giggle, auntie. What say later we shove off in the nanny and take a drip in the Thames? Maybe a little posh later, nudge, nudge?"

"I tought you was bent, Tony."

"That Brighton bit's just a bit of a public thing, missus. I'm no poofter in private. Can't keep afar from a cuddle and kiss like Your Highness."

"I reckon you're mental, old chap."

"True. But the old duke is brown bread, and I'm the closest you've got."

"Now you're taking the mickey."

Q. Very authentic.

A. Thank you.

Q. Which is to say, not very.

A. That's a load of old Jacksons, Philistine, and I've had enough of your hide and seek. This 'ere's perfectly good chitty-chitty.

Q. You're draggin' Bob Hope, mate.

A. Now you've got it.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Hocking Deutsch

2006-08-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

This week on Ask Mr. Writing Person, we talk to Bart Wensleydale from Embarrass, Wisconsin about flatulent German dialogue and niños de enchiladas con carne. [Ed: Enchilada children with meat, huh?] Bart has a burning question about a scene he's writing with some foreign-language dialogue:

Q. I have a scene with Germans, and I want to make it authentic by having them speak German, but I don't know German. I've heard I can get away without it, but I'd rather not.

A. Burt, they don't need to speak German for it to be authentic.

Q. They don't?

A. No. They only need to speak in something that sufficiently resembles German. Tell me, what percentage of your readers do you think can actually speak or even understand German?

Q. Probably very few. Less than one percent.

A. Exactly. If we can sneak a reasonable facsimile by them, they'll never know the difference.

Q. Isn't that lying?

A. No, it's an ecumenical façade, which is Latin for "a lie endorsed by the Church."

Q. Okay, sure. Um, what's that little thing under the "c" in "façade"?

A. Most biologists believe it's a flagellum.

Q. Fascinating.

A. Now, I do know German; however, I will pretend for the moment that I do not in order to illustrate how you might go about writing in it. Do you have an outline of the dialogue for this scene?

Q. Yeah. This is three teenagers, Hansel, Helmut, and Monika, getting together to plot someone's premature death. They've just met in their secret hideout:

Hansel greeted everyone coldly. As he sat, Helmut reported that he had had to lie to his father in order to get away from the house. Hansel asked if any of them had been followed. Monika said she wasn't sure. Helmut told Monika that she should be more careful, that she should always know whether she was followed. Monika pouted and said nothing.

A. Great. Now young Philistine, if you want to create something that resembles German, it helps to know a few common German words. For example, Ich means "I," nich means "not," Sie is "you," Wer is "who," bitte means "please," der is "the," bein is a "to be" verb, and ja means "yes." Also, make sure you capitalize nouns, and make a lot of words end in -en. And they have to say "schnell." It's not really German without "schnell." Got it?

Q. Yeah.

A. It also helps to know some German phonetics, which we won't go into today. Other than that, though, anything goes.

Q. Really?

A. Of course. Now, your readers aren't going to know what these Germans are saying, so we'll have to include most of your outline. Here's your dialogue after I apply my beastly creative mind to it:

"Wer cutten der Cheesen?" said Hansel, greeting everyone coldly.

"Ich knowen nich," said Helmut, reporting that he had had to lie to his father in order to get away from the house. "Asken Monika, bitte. Schnell!"

"Monika, cutten Sie der Cheesen?" asked Hansel, asking if any of them had been followed.

"Ich maken nich foulen Winden," said Monika, stating that she wasn't sure. "Ich bein Offendeden."

Helmut spoke up. "Ich knowen Sie cutten der Cheesen, Monika," he said, explaining that Monika should be more careful, and that she should always know whether she had been followed.

"Ja, ja, Ich cutten der Cheesen," said Monika, pouting and saying nothing. "Ich aten Beansen fuer Brekfasten. Schnell!"

Q. Wow. I'd never know that wasn't German. But shouldn't the lengths of the German sentences and the explanations from the outline kind of, you know, match up?

A. Nobody will notice, grasshopper. They'll be too busy admiring the fact that you know German.

Q. I don't know German.

A. They don't know that.

Q. Oh, right.

A. Next, even though you didn't ask about it specifically, we should try our hands at Spanish. It turns out that you probably already know quite a few Spanish words.

Q. I do?

A. You do. They're everywhere in popular American culture. I'll show you an example of dialogue that sufficiently resembles Spanish, and you'll be able to spot them straightaway. First, though, we'll need new names for your characters. Instead of Hansel, Helmut, and Monika, we'll use José, Jesús, and Olga.

Q. Olga's not a Spanish--

A. I thought you didn't know Spanish.

Q. I don't.

A. Right. So José, Jesús, and Olga are having the same conversation:

"¡Yo quero del taco!" said José, greeting everyone coldly.

"Mi enchilada hombre," said Jesús, reporting that he had had to lie to his father in order to get away from the house. "Burrito vámonos."

"¿Vámonos?" asked José, asking if any of them had been followed. "Burrito hombre si si."

"Chalupas chulas, amigos," said Olga, stating that she wasn't sure. "Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria."

Jesús spoke up. "¡Si! ¡Niños de enchiladas con carne!" he said, explaining that Olga should be more careful, and that she should always know whether she had been followed.

"¡Felíz Navidad!" said Olga, pouting and saying nothing. "Cinco de Mayo, amigos con carne fuer Brekfasten. ¡Schnell!"

Q. I understood every word they said! I didn't know I already knew so much Spanish!

A. It's amazing what you find when you plumb your hidden depths, isn't it?

Q. Oh, yeah. I feel plumbed!

A. That, dear Philistine, is something you should definitely keep to yourself. Notice that I have used the famed Spanish upside-down punctuation, which will serve as a signal to the reader that he is not supposed to understand what follows.

Q. Right. Um, I have another question.

A. Please continue, if you must.

Q. How would I do French?

A. Just have your characters hock and spit and grunt a lot.

Q. What's "hock?"

A. A wild vibration of the glottis, which often produces a wad of phlegm. Hocking is a standard French phoneme.

Q. Okay, that sounds easy. Hey, I just thought of something. From popular American culture, I already know plenty of German words as well as Spanish words! I could use, like, "glockenspiel," "bratwurst" and "bork bork bork!"

A. Never use "bork bork bork."

Q. Never?

A. Never. Ever. In German, it means something so sick and perverse that it should never be brought up even in the coarsest company. People have died for less than using that phrase.

Q. But the Swedish Chef...

A. Oh, Swedish! Good gracious, grasshoppper, you nearly gave me the vapors. Go ahead and use it in a Swedish context.

Q. What does it mean in Swedish?

A. My Swedish is a little rusty, but I believe it means, "Who cut the cheese?"

Q. Does it really?

A. Who cares?

Q. Oh, right.

Scatalogical Sillygism

2006-08-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

I've been deluged with questions on my last Q&A with Claire Hitchins, so I've taken a representative sample and answered them here.

Q. I can't believe you resorted to potty humor in an attempt to be funny. Do you have any idea how insulting it is to your readers' intelligence?

A. Who was being funny?

You bring up an interesting point, however, which I had forgotten to communicate in the last Q&A. Woman idling is frequently called scatalogical sillygism, which is Greek for "getting all the burps and farts out so they can be prim and proper in mixed company."

Q. Really. What's man idling called?

A. "Grunting and scratching."

Q. Is there really a place called "Belcher" in Louisiana?

A. Yes. It's a tiny place in the northwest corner of the boot. It has two high schools, each with an average graduating class of 0.4 students.

Q. Regarding the last section of dialogue with Cher, Paris, and Hildegarde: I'd expect women to have more meaningful dialogue in the restroom, or at least use more words than three per sentence. My question is, why did Little Caesar's Pizza start selling round pizzas, and why, if their tag-line is "Pizza-Pizza," do they sell them one at a time now?

A. Excellent questions. Little Caesar's sells round pizzas to cut costs. Calculus tells us that a circle encloses the most area with the least perimeter. Because the bare crust is the most expensive part of a pizza, Little Caesar's realized a 30% increase in profits when they moved to circular pizzas.

Q. Really?

A. No. Regarding your next question: there's no legal requirement for them to sell pizzas in pairs. However, there would be a legal requirement if the restaurant name were double. From 26 U.S. Code 36C.3.14159265:

All mercantile and dining establishments with double names MUST provide nothing but el-cheapo goods in 2-for-1 deals.

So if K-Mart were named "K-Mart K-Mart," you'd have to buy rakes in twos, and they'd fall apart in your hands directly after passing through the cashier aisle.

Q. They do that already.

A. Fascinating.

Q. "El-cheapo" is an anti-Latin-American racist term, you know.

A. Take it up with your senator.

Q. I feel I should set the record straight. Claire was right. When women go to the bathroom, they fix up their hair and makeup, talk about their dates, practice kissing--

A. I can't accept that, because it runs counter to my deductions. Besides, how would they practice kissing? Do they lean over the sinks and snog the spigots?

Q. Are "actioned" and "gestured" really invisible words? I thought invisible words were things like "a" and "the."

A. "Actioned" and "gestured" are invisible words to the wicked literate. We know that idling actions don't really matter.

Q. They don't look invisible to me.

A. What do you think that means about you?

Q. I don't get what you mean at the end, when you say that your mother is a woman. Do you really mean that she's a garden lizard, or that she eats bugs, or something else?

A. Yes.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Idle Dialogue

2006-08-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

Today on Ask Mr. Writing Person, Claire Hitchins from Belcher, Louisiana struggles to stand up to Mr. Writing Person's superior intellect in a battle of the foul winds and bugs. [Ed: Don't forget the zits.] Claire has a problem with dialogue:

Q. I've got some dialogue that needs to slow down, but I don't want to use the words "actioned" and "gestured"--

A. Let me guess. You're writing sci-fi horror, right?

Q. No, I'm--

A. Sci-fi horror has a plethora of quirky conventions like the one you've run headlong into. You can't get away with using invisible words like "actioned" and "gestured." You have to fill them in with authentic actions and gestures.

Q. Yeah, that's what I want to do, but I'm not--

A. I'm glad you came to me, because I'm a card-carrying genius. Now, you need what I call idling.

Q. Like a car?

A. Exactly. People idle just like cars do. You just need to observe it, and then put it in your story.

Q. The problem is, they're all men and they're alone together, and I don't know what men do when they're alone together.

A. Let's see your dialogue. Do you have a version with the invisible words?

Q. I do. Here's the situation. Three guys, Buttersmack, Horaceface, and Matthew, are on a triple date, and they've gone to the restroom together to preen themselves and talk about their girlfriends.

A. No kidding? They all went together? That's a tad strange... unless they're sticking together in case there's a mutagen-infused nuclear garden lizard in the restroom lying wait to rip into someone's abdomen if he shows up alone. Yes, that makes sense.

Q. Uh, yeah. Something like that. So here's the dialogue:

Matthew gestured like a wild man as he straightened his jacket. "I can't believe," he intoned as he actioned, "that my date is so insensitive! Did you hear what she said about the woman at the other table? By the way, how's my hair?"

"Forsooth," forsoothed Buttersmacketh, actioningeth and gesturingeth. "It sticketh up in the backeth. But by gollyeth, mine hath no fashion sense! Did you beholdeth her, in her horizontally-stripeth skirt and polka-dottedeth blouseth? It'th embarrassingeth!"

Matthew actioned at Buttersmack and gestured as well. "I'll bet my date is thinking something totally rotten about your date right now," he articulated, actioning with his hair.

Horaceface sighed as he actioned. "You know, guys," he verbalized while he gestured, "I wish my date would communicate with me on a deeper level. All she ever wants to talk about is her collection of really cute skirts. She's as deep as the shallow end of a pool isn't. Can someone zip me up?"

Matthew actioned. Buttersmack gestureth. Horaceface actioned and gestured. Matthew gestured. Horaceface actioned again.

"Well, guys, let's go," pronounced Horaceface, actioning, gesturing, and actioning some more. "It's back to the grindstone."

A. I see you've been taking my lessons to heart. I like how you've added voice to Buttersmack. You've got a slightly gargantuan problem, however.

Q. Yeah?

A. You're an illiterate Philistine.

Q. I knew that part...

A. And you suck at writing men. Really. Now, before you start crying--no, stop, really, please--you should know that this is quite common for beginning female writers. They think men think like women. It's just not true. For example, Matthew probably would have been bragging about how his date insulted the woman at the other table--oh, please stop blubbering--and Horaceface probably wouldn't have said anything, preferring to wonder about the shortest cute skirt in his date's collection.

Q. (sniff) I guess so.

A. So here's what I'll do, dear grasshopper. I'll put in proper man idling, and fix up the dialogue at the same time to make it more realistic. Okay?

Q. Okay.

A. Here's the new version:

Matthew scratched under his armpits. "My date rules," he intoned.

"Forsooth," forsoothed Buttersmacketh as he itcheth his posterior region. He then grunteth.

Matthew grunted back at Buttersmack and rubbed at an itchy spot on his calf with the opposite foot. "Your date sucks," he articulated, still rubbing.

Horaceface idly raked at his hair. "Skirt," he verbalized, grunting.

Matthew scratched. Buttersmack itcheth. Horaceface dug at an unmentionable spot. Matthew scritched as he kept a wary eye out for any sign of mutagen-infused nuclear garden lizards. Horaceface dug at the unmentionable spot again.

"This sucks," pronounced Horaceface, scratching the aforementioned unmentionable spot more vigorously. "Let's go."

That's much better.

Q. I don't get it. Did you expose my guys to some kind of chemical agent or something?

A. No. They're men. They scratch.

Q. That's how men idle?

A. Exactly. Men are generally quite hairy. Now imagine being a man, and itching all night in some unmentionable spot but not being able to scratch. What's the first thing you do when you get to the restroom?

Q. Ah. I get it.

A. Great. Now, let's get to women. You're a woman, but I'll bet you've never really observed women. You probably can't write what three women would do in a restroom together.

Q. I could! They'd fix up their hair, put on makeup, talk about their--

A. You've proved my point by being spectacularly wrong. I'm going to substitute your men for women, and show you what they'd really do in the restroom.

Q. I know what they'd--

A. Shush, young naïf. This is Cher, Paris, and Hildegarde:

Cher picked through Paris's bushy hair. "My date rules," she intoned.

"Forsooth," forsoothed Paris as she belcheth loudly.

Cher belched back at Paris and pried some more strands of her hair apart. "Your date sucks," she articulated, still searching.

Hildegarde idly squeezed a zit on her nose. "Boxers," she verbalized as she produced a foul wind from an unmentionable spot.

Cher finally found what she was looking for: a nit. She pinched it out, watched it struggle uselessly between her fingers, and then popped it in her mouth. The mutagen-infused nuclear garden lizard stomped off, jealous. Cher chewed her nit thoughtfully as she pulled her leg up and let one fly.

"This sucks," pronounced Hildegarde, popping another zit. "Let's go."

Q. What are they doing?

A. Woman idling, of course. When women are alone together, they pop zits, belch, fart, and pick bugs out of each other's hair and eat them.

Q. I don't know what women you've met, but--

A. How could you have so much hair and not have it crawling with insects?

Q. Mine doesn't--

A. And if you never belch or pass gas in public, when else would you do it?

Q. Well, in the bathroom on the--

A. Exactly! I deduced it! Not being a woman is no hinderance to me, for I am capable of rational thought.

Q. Is that so?

A. I'm a card-carrying genius. I should show it to you sometime.

Q. What, your genius?

A. My card.

Q. What about the zits?

A. Would you pop them in public?

Q. No, but--

A. I rest my case.

Q. What about eating bugs?

A. That's what my garden lizard does.

Q. Your garden lizard isn't a woman.

A. My mother is.

A Question of Curling

2006-08-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Q. How do I write about a place I can't even ask about?

A. What do you mean?

Q. I don't know anybody who's ever been to England, and I want to use it as a location.

A. Do you know absolutely nothing about England?

Q. I know they talk funny. And I've seen Mary Poppins. And some Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes.

A. Well, there you go, grasshopper. Extrapolate.

Q. They have a lot of silly people over there, don't they?

A. Goodness yes.

Q. What if I want to write about a place I actually don't know anything about? I wouldn't have anything to extrapolate from.

A. You engage in a time-honored literary tradition to fill in the holes.

Q. Yes?

A. Make stuff up.

Q. Right. What if my readers notice?

A. Assuming you're a representative sample of your target audience, and also assuming that your readers are illiterate Philistines, they won't. You'll find those are generally correct assumptions.

Q. I have a question about your last Q&A. I don't think you've ever seen a curling match.

A. That's a question?

Q. Yes. You've never seen a curling match, PERIOD.

A. Well, that much should have been obvious.

Q. Curling is played with brooms, you know.

A. Brooms, shmooms. I couldn't very well have the denizens of Vancouver roaming Robson and Davie with only brooms for defense, could I?

Q. I suppose that wouldn't have been very realistic.

A. Of course not. Besides, curling is much more believable with mallets. How could a game played with brooms ever catch on? Look at the games that get popular: they've got bats, rackets, clubs, mallets, swords, helmets, and even axes and maces.

Q. And they've all got balls.

A. Exactly. Curling doesn't have any balls.

Q. And no wickets.

A. Now you've gone too far.

Q. Actually, curling is quite fun. There's nothing better than a bunch of friends getting plastered beyond all rational belief and smacking each other around with brooms. Occasionally, we hit a stone instead.

A. Do you do choreographed dances to orchestral music written by the Sherman brothers?

Q. Oh, yes.

A. Chimney sweeps have nothing on you guys, do they?

Q. Not in Canadia.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Tree-Lickers Discover Falafel Mallets

2006-07-28T00:49:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: I usually fix up misspellings, but Mr. Writing Person made a couple that I just had to leave in. Besides, for one of them, I'm not sure he didn't really say it that way, assuming he really had this conversation, which he swears he is not making up.

Greetings, dear Philistines, and welcome back to Ask Mr. Writing Person, the only Internet column to win the 22^nd Century Best Classic Column award three years in a row. [Ed: He has yet to write the winners, but rest assured, it will happen.] Today, Bartholomew Wicker joins us from Mormon Bar, California. He has a question I'm sure most of you have asked yourselves before.

Q. How do I write about a place I've never been?

A. You've come to the right person, young Philistine. I've been to Italy, England, and Singapore. I've visited Henry VIII himself, I saw the Tajma Hall before the famous hall was added, and I helped hang the hanging gardens. Yet for all of my travels in time and space, I've never been to Vancouver.

Q. Really?

A. In fact, I've rarely stepped foot in Canadia. However, my copy editor has recently been there, so I can write about it exactly as if I had accompanied him.

Q. Oh! Just grill him enough, right?

A. Just enough to get the basics, Barty. After that, you extrapolate. For example, he told me about this fine Lebanese restaurant he went to for a falafel, which is a pita sandwich made from fried garbanzo beans and pickled squid manure. My copy editor wasn't there at Christmas time, however, and so if I were writing a Christmas story, I would need to fill in. I might extrapolate that, at Christmas time, this particular restaurant sells fa-la-la-la-lafels, which feature chunks of minty Christmas candy.

Q. They do? How can you be sure?

A. Wouldn't anybody do that? It doesn't matter too much, anyway, as long as it sounds authentic and probably captures the spirit of the place.

Q. I see.

A. I'll finish up this answer by writing a fictional account of a trip there so you can see how it's done.

Q. I can't wait!

A. You won't have to. Here it is:

Vancouver is hauntingly beautiful, a coastal city in the shadow of a really big mountain. The mountain is so tall, in fact, that they haven't bothered to name it, which is why you won't find it on a map. They just call it "THE MOUNTAIN," and if you found "THE MOUNTAIN" written on a map, you'd think it was a misprint.

Everywhere you look, there's a Canadian flag flapping in the breeze, right under the flag of Quebec. The country's flag features a large maple leaf, a symbol of rag-time music, which blared from every pub and church in the area.

Oh, the churches! Every corner had a church--Canadians must be the most religious people ever made. The Church of Canadia, which was formed in the 16th century when Canadia's King Rick VI wanted to divorce his wife and the United States Pope (who was Joseph Smith at the time) wouldn't let him do it, is the official state-endorsed church. (They'll stone you if you attend a different one.) Marble polar bears guard the entrance of each--but you wouldn't know they were polar bears until you examined their paws. They were all holding bottles of Coke.

While I was there, I dropped in on Bob and Doug Mackenzie. They gave me a bottle of beer with a baby mouse in it, which is apparently a Canadian delicacy. I haven't opened the bottle yet. By the way, everyone drinks beer, all the time. I attended a Church of Canadia service where the minister took a swig after every hell fire or damnation. The sermon got really good near the end, and the congregation, which was also plastered beyond all rational belief, really got into it.

It's a beautiful town. In places where cities are usually concrete jungles, they've got all sorts of vegetation, but mostly maple trees. (Even back alleys and airport runways are lined with maples.) My first stroll down Granville was quite a shock: at nearly every maple along that street was a Canadian, beer bottle in hand, licking the tree. It's apparently a popular pastime. (A common greeting in Canadia is, "Oy, tree-licker... eh?") I tried it myself, and it wasn't bad--just a little rough on the tongue.

Curling is Canadia's official sport. Because they don't allow guns, people tend to walk the streets carrying curling mallets, which they use for self-defense. A few psychopaths carry knives. It doesn't matter too much, however, because if you get carved, one of Vancouver's thousands of roving doctors will patch you up in no time. I had a roving doctor remove a corn. He was very professional and didn't charge a thing--health care is free in Canadia--but I tipped him a bottle of beer. He drank it while patching up the man in line behind me, who had a critical knife wound.

Vancouver is packed with restaurants. I swear they jam them in there with giant ramming rods. Every other one is a gelato place because Vancouver hosts so many first-generation Italians. (Gelato, by the way, is meat-flavored gelatin made by boiling a pig's head, chilled and served on a waffle cone.) One night I had Greek food, and they served breaded Mon Calamari, which they import from a galaxy far, far away. As our server set the plate down, he said, in melancholy tones, "Many Bothans died to bring you this appetizer," which I suppose is a Greek cultural thing. I thanked him and tipped him a beer.

Canadian money has more coinage than ours. They have one-dollar coins called "loons," and two-dollar coins called "toons." Their five-dollar coin is called a "foon," but they're quite scarce. Canadian dollars are worth a lot less than United States dollars. Most people bought sandwiches at lunch time from money they pushed around in wheelbarrows.

I could go on, of course.

Q. That's amazing! I never knew that Canadians were a bunch of tree-lickers!

A. Well, I did extrapolate that from facts that I knew, but I'm fairly sure it's correct.

Q. Do they really carry curling mallets everywhere?

A. In this case, I'm not sure. For all I know, they curl with falafels.

Q. Shouldn't you be more sure of your extrapolation?

A. Do Canadians curl with falafels?

Q. No.

A. How do you know?

Q. I--

A. You don't, and that's why it's perfectly safe.

Q. But you can't defend yourself with a falafel!

A. That's why I picked curling mallets, grasshopper.

Q. Genius.

Arresting Gizzards

2006-07-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Q. Have you ever been arrested?

A. Plenty of times! My first was for driving my 1964 Volkswagen Beetle down a 55 MPH freeway going 87.

Q. Why on Earth were you doing that?

A. Time travel, of course. The cop pulled me over before I could hit 88. I explained to him that he had interrupted a very important scientific and literary experiment, and that because of him we would never know the secret identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Q. It was Sir Percy Blakeney.

A. Says Emma Orczy. I would attempt to settle this again myself, if not for my ill health. Zounds! but I'm as weak as a rat!

Q. Right. You know, don't you, that in Back to the Future, it was a DeLorean that had to get up to 88. How unoriginal.

A. I know! You'd think if movie makers used real science they'd cite the inventors. I've never seen so much as a thank-you card.

Q. I have a question about your last column, where you gave advice on how to get to the top of the slush pile. Well, I tried some of it, and I got arrested.

A. Writing is, after all, a risky business.

Q. I tried filling the package with corn starch and got arrested.

A. Interesting.

Q. I tried sending a ticking alarm clock with my manuscript and got arrested.

A. You must have submitted to the wrong people.

Q. I tried nitrogen triiodide with glitter and got arrested.

A. Did you submit to the same people every time?

Q. Yes. Why?

A. No reason.

Q. Anyway, I had been sending it postage-due. I finally got up the courage to take it in myself, so I wheeled it into the lobby wearing nothing but a gray alien mask, a trenchcoat and tennis shoes. I got arrested.

A. This is all very fascinating, but do you assume my readers are interested in your seedy little escapades, or do you have an actual question?

Q. I do have a question. If I can't get chicken gizzards, can I do turkey gizzards instead?

A. Only if you want to get arrested.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Explosive Slush

2006-07-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: I apologize for the lateness of this "missive." Mr. Writing Person was spot on time as usual, but I got back late from a computational intelligence conference in Vancouver, and then had a devil of a time getting away from His Eminence Person so I could actually edit. He kept grilling me about Canada, and I have no idea what it was all about, but I'm sure we'll find out eventually.

In today's Ask Mr. Writing Person, we talk to Georgia Snow, from Dripping Springs, Texas, who has never learned how to put glitter and nitrogen triiodide to good use when submitting her unsolicited manuscript to a publisher. We'll fix her up right quick. [Ed: By golly, we'll fix her for life.] Here's Georgia:

Q. I've finished my story, and I'm ready to send it off to publishers who take unsolicited manuscripts. I've heard I should print it in 12-point Courier, double-spaced, with one-inch margins and put it in a manila--

A. Grasshopper, that is the very worst thing you could do.

Q. Really?

A. Really. To see why, you need to understand the process. Your unsolicited manuscript will be sent directly to the slush pile, which is kind of like an elephant graveyard, except it's full of unwanted manuscripts.

Q. It's where manuscripts die?

A. Most of them.

Q. I don't want mine to die.

A. Then listen carefully. The people who decide which manuscripts die and which don't are called slush pile readers--usually junior editors with nothing better to do than drink whiskey and sift through mounds of manila envelopes, searching for something exciting. They have the most boring jobs of anybody on the planet, aside from those poor schmucks on Hollywood stunt crews who blow up the blue air bags. You know why? Because everyone sends them boring manuscripts.

Q. I don't want them to think mine is boring.

A. Then you need to make it stand out. I think the best way to illustrate how to do that is to tell you a story about a manuscript that almost made it.

Q. Oh, goodie.

A. Years ago, when I was still an illiterate Philistine, I worked for a publisher as a gopher. Mostly, I licked stamps. But I worked in the slush pile room, alongside a couple of very canny slush pile readers, Lem and Clem. Here's a conversation I overheard one day, as well as I can remember it:

Lem: Gee, Clem, I'm sore disappointed today.

Clem: You got it, Lem. Every manuscript I seen so far this whole week is in 12-point Courier, double-spaced, with one inch margins, stuffed in a manila envelope with a polite cover letter detailing previous publications, and a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Lem: You'd think they'd of caught on by now and seen through our ruse.

Clem: Yep. Not one of them has a lick of brains, Lem. My hopes in this generation is dashed right to pieces.

Lem: Remember that one that came with corn starch and a letter that said "YOUR'E DEAD" inside it? That was a doozy.

Clem: Not near as doozy as the one with the ticking alarm clock, Lem. Those was the days, man. Those was the days.

[Someone knocks on the door.]

Assistant Editor: Hey, Lem! There's a guy here in the lobby wants to see you, wearing nothing but a bikini and a Darth Vader helmet!

Lem [getting up]: Sounds promising, Clem. Just a sec.

[Lem leaves, returns after a minute. Assistant Editor follows wheeling a dolly with a single eight-foot package wrapped in black construction paper.]

Lem: Lookeeee here! A real doozy!

Clem: Finally, Lem, my life is exciting again. Lemme open it. You got the last good one.

Lem: Sure thing. Here's a stool.

[Assistant Editor leaves with the dolly. Clem climbs onto the stool and pulls out a switchblade. He cuts the top of the package open and looks down inside. A deafening BANG! follows. Purple smoke drifts up from the package. Glitter rains down on the floor.]

Lem: You okay, buddy?

Clem: Will you check that out! A glitter bomb!

Lem: Yeah, Clem, your face is right plastered! I got high hopes for this one!

Clem: Yessir! I'd of never thunk of mixing glitter with nitrogen triiodide!

Lem: Genius! Does it got a cover letter, Clem?

Clem: Yes, Lem. Lemmee grab it down for you. Here you go. Read it aloud, if you would.

[Clem hands Lem a piece of magenta card-stock paper.]

Lem: "Dears Lem and Clem." Hey! That hairy Darth Vader out there knows our names!

Clem: Makes me feel all fuzzy inside, Lem. Keep going.

Lem: "I am a aspiring novelist. At present, I am taking care of my aging parents and my wife's aging parents and their really aging parents and at least five generations back, and we all live in a old He-Man lunchbox in the middle of an airport runway."

Clem: That's just a-tugging at my heartstrings, Lem. Hey, lookee here! Darth Vader sent us food!

Lem: Why, that's just great, Clem! I always like treats from strangers! What is it?

Clem: Well, I dunno if it's ezactly edible, cuz it's... well, he's soaked his manuscript in mustard and chicken gizzards! Shucks if that ain't tops!

Lem: That's just sweet, Clem. I can overlook if I can't eat it if it's just so gol-darn clever. Should I keep reading?

Clem: Yes, Lem. It'll take me a fair while to clean off the first page.

Lem: "I brang you my manuscript myself--"

Clem [halting in his wiping]: He done used subjugular normative form! Color me impressed!

Lem: Yessirree! "I brang you my manuscript myself, because I need to get published, because I need the money desperately. If you do not accept this manuscript for publication, I will stalk you both until you have to change your names and move to Venezuela."

Clem: He must really like us, Lem.

Lem: Got that right. Here's the rest: "I demand that you read this today. Sincerely, Darth Vader's Mom. P.S. I think you'll really like the story. It starts getting really good in chapter 20."

Clem: Well, I just can't wait until chapter 20, Lem! Hey, I gots this first page cleaned off. Guess what? It's just a photo pasted on!

[Clem hands another page of magenta card-stock down to Lem.]

Lem: What do you know. That looks just like the guy out in the lobby! You think this is an autobiography?

Clem: I think so, Lem. This second page--wow!

Lem: What is it, Clem?

Clem [leafing through pages and pages of damp card-stock]: This whole entire thing is printed on magenta card-stock in 24-point Comic Sans! No wonder it's so tall! And--oh, golly, the whole durn thing is in all caps!

Lem: Is your hopes in this generation restored, Clem?

Clem: You bet. I can't wait to read this. Darth Vader's Mom really made this manuscript stand out. [Scans the first page.] Yes, Lem, this is Darth Vader's Mom's autobiography. Listen to this opening paragraph: "I AM DARTH VADER'S MOM. I WAS BORN A LONG TIME AGO AT A HOSPITAL ON CROISSANT, AT THE CENTER OF A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY. DEPSITE WHAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, HE GOT HIS FORCE-CHOKING FROM ME."

Lem: Well that just sucks on its own, Clem. But taking into consideration the packaging, I think I'm a-hooked. I can't wait until chapter 20.

Clem [looking panicked]: Oh, no, Lem!

Lem: What?

Clem: I got my hands on a self-addressed, stamped envelope! Stop me, Lem!

Lem [grabbing Clem]: No, Clem! Keep your filthy mitts off them form letters!

Clem [struggling, breaking free]: I can't stop it, Lem! I gotta fill this out and stuff it in the envelope!

Lem [breaks down, crying]: Oh, Clem. Oh, Clem, we was so close...

Clem [handing the envelope to me]: Here, gopher boy. Stamp this and send it off. I'm a-going to wash my hands till they bleed.

And they rejected it.

Q. How sad.

A. Slush pile readers have a strange, otherworldly compulsion to stuff rejection letters into self-addressed, stamped envelopes. It's an addiction not often talked about outside of publishing, but now you know: no SASE goes into your submission.

Q. So what happened to the Darth Vader guy?

A. Oh, he hung around the office for a few days and then left. Lem and Clem were quite keen on getting stalked by a hairy guy in a bikini and a Darth Vader helmet, so they were fairly disappointed. However, they did hang his picture up in the slush pile room.

Q. Do I have to actually show up with my manuscript like the Darth Vader guy did?

A. If you want the most consideration, you do. Second best is to send your manuscript postage due. That immediately demonstrates to the publisher how much your manuscript is worth.

Q. I think I can do that. Thank you so much!

A. You're welcome, dear Philistine. Don't forget the mustard and chicken gizzards.

Masterful Crochet Hook Technique

2006-07-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

Q. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

A. No. As far as we can tell, Mister Language Person never came around again. Or never didn't come around again, as the case may be.

Q. Did you have a favorite toy when you were a kid?

A. I did! It still brings a wave of nostalgia to think about it. It was stuffed Joseph Stalin doll my mother gave me when I was three. She always said he was so misunderstood. He and Karl Marx shared a hallowed space next to my pillow at night.

Q. What happened to them?

A. I burned them at a signing for my second novel, along with an effigy of my mother.

Q. I have a question about your last Q&A. My friends and I have been trying to grievously injure ourselves with crochet hooks, but we can't figure out how to do it. Where do you stick the things?

A. A quick jab in the jocular antecedent followed by a sharp one-quarter twist should do it.

Q. Where's that?

A. Just above the predicate conjunction.

Q. How can crochet hooks be "haggard"?

A. Most are that you'd find in the wild.

Q. I had a friend who was abducted by aliens, and they surgically removed his eyelids and made him watch reruns of Laverne and Shirley for a hundred hours straight. Then they gave him a zillion paper cuts and dipped him in a vat of nuclear lemon juice. And then they injected him with undiluted habanero sauce, battered him, and cooked him in a low-powered microwave filled with canola oil for an hour.

A. Fascinating.

Q. They also severed both his arms and made him nurse dead chickens back to life by stuffing garlic down their throats with his toes. Then they reattached his arms. He'll show you the scars if you want.

A. Amazing.

Q. And he still smells like lemons and garlic. He's writing a book about it.

A. Of course. He might not get very far, though.

Q. Why not?

A. Because it'll read exactly like my first published novel, which details my experience. Except they made me watch Friends.

Q. I'm so sorry.

A. You'll get over it. We all do, eventually.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Milieu Surprise

2006-07-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

This week on Ask Mr. Writing Person, we discover what surprise endings have to do with stiff French knickerbockers, and probably send a guy named Alex off to certain consternation. Roland Pips-Week joins us from Walla Walla, Washington, with a question about ending his novel:

Q. I've just finished my novel. Or, I'd like to say I've finished, but the last page is driving me nuts. It doesn't wrap up properly.

A. It's probably not square enough. I have that problem with socks. I end up stuffing them in tubes first.

Q. Um, sure.

A. Can you give us the last paragraph of your story so we can fix it up?

Q. Yeah. Here it is:

As Alex sat to eat his sculpted mashed potatoes, he was overcome with a feeling of emotion. Giant tear drops ran down his cheeks, splashing upon his potatoes, creating tiny rivulets that meandered down and pooled up underneath his green beans. It reminded him of THE MOUNTAIN, and all the horrible happenings that went on during those events that occurred.

It's great so far, isn't it? But leaving the guy crying just doesn't satisfy.

A. Lovely. I like how you've employed transitive redundancy everywhere, especially with that "feeling of emotion." Strikes a nerve in me. A chord. Whatever. Anyway, you could always have him commit suicide.

Q. Really?

A. Of course! It worked for Shakespeare. Everything wraps up nice and tidy with a dead body at the end. You could even have him recite poetry as he plunges the knife into his heart. "O haggard dagger" and all that. It's fairly satisfying.

Q. Great! I'll go do--

A. Hold your behoofed quadrupeds, Mr. Pipsqueak! We aim to be a tad more sophisticated than Shakespeare, don't we?

Q. Pips-Week, two words. So what do you have in mind?

A. A subdermal bossanova, which is German for "a surprise ending so good you'll dance until you go comatose." Now, what's the main focus of your story? Is it milieu, character, idea, or event?

Q. I don't know. What's "mealy-you?"

A. It's a French word that means "stiff knickerbockers," but they stopped using it so we annexed it. Now it means the environment your story happens in.

Q. I still don't know. Can you run through the possibilities for each one?

A. Of course, my eager grasshopper. Let's start with the milieu surprise ending:

... It reminded him of THE MOUNTAIN, and all the horrible happenings that went on during those events that occurred.

Suddenly, Alex awoke in his bed, sweating and weeping like a milksop. As he stared at the tiny rivulets running down his greasy pillow, he realized it had all been a dream: Mandy's crochet hooks were exactly where they should be, his favorite chicken still had two legs, and J.R. was still alive.

THE END.

Isn't that clever?

Q. Sweet! I'll have to change some of the specifics, of course--

A. You mean adding Mandy's crochet hooks, a one-legged chicken, and a dead guy named J.R. to your story, of course.

Q. Um, yeah. Of course.

A. Also, you shouldn't run off and make changes until you've seen all the endings. Next, we have the character surprise:

... It reminded him of THE MOUNTAIN, and all the horrible happenings that went on during those events that occurred.

Suddenly, a beautiful woman burst into the room like a ray of sunshine. She swooped down upon him, kissed his salty cheeks, and ate his mashed potatoes.

"Who are you?" said Alex.

THE END.

Q. Is that Mandy?

A. Who cares?

Q. Got it.

A. Notice that her presence establishes a sense of mystery, which is essential to having a good surprise ending. Who is she? What's her name? Is she really a woman? What's her waist circumference? Why did she eat Alex's mashed potatoes? I even very cleverly had the point-of-view character ask one of those questions.

Q. Yeah, that's great. I'm thinking maybe the milieu one would be--

A. You should withhold judgment, young Philistine, until you've seen them all.

Q. Right. Sorry.

A. Next we have the idea surprise, which is best if your story is centered around an idea. Let's see what happens:

... It reminded him of THE MOUNTAIN, and all the horrible happenings that went on during those events that occurred. His friend Beauregard sat watching him in mealy-brained silence.

Suddenly, Beauregard spoke up, interrupting Alex's angsty stupor. "I'm a vampire," he said. "This explains everything, doesn't it?"

"No, not really," said Alex.

THE END.

Q. Um, wouldn't it be better if the vampire thing actually did explain everything?

A. That's what your readers are expecting, isn't it? How are you supposed to surprise them if you give them what they expect?

Q. Oh, right. Genius! I like that one. I might just go--

A. Grasshopper! You will stay put!

Q. Sorry.

A. Ahem. So now we come to the last, which is the event surprise. If your story centers around an event, this is your best bet:

... It reminded him of THE MOUNTAIN, and all the horrible happenings that went on during those events that occurred.

Suddenly, the lights went out, bathing him in darkness. As Alex reached for a napkin to wipe some of it off, he was struck by the beam of a massive spotlight.

"Ugly bag of mostly water!" cried an alien from the gloom. "You will come with us!"

As Alex trudged to the metal gangway, he reflected upon his recent experience on THE MOUNTAIN and decided that it really had prepared him for whatever the horrors of being a guinea pig to a super-advanced race of purple, sulfur-based aliens might be. He instinctively patted his pockets. The crochet hooks were still there.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Q. "To be continued?"

A. Of course! You can't have your main character abducted by aliens on the last page of the book without writing a sequel, can you? You ought to be thinking about your future, Ronald.

Q. It's Roland. So is that all of them?

A. That's it.

Q. I like the vampire one.

A. I like the alien one. You should use that.

Q. I really don't want to write a sequel, though. This novel took a lot out of me, and I'd like to start something new. Besides, Alex is a complete pansy.

A. I see. I wouldn't want to write about him either. If you'd much rather end with "the end," you could still do the alien abduction thing, but have Alex commit suicide.

Q. With crochet hooks?

A. "O haggard crochet hooks." It has a certain charm.

Smells Like Paul Anka

2006-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Q. What's your favorite song?

A. I go through favorites like kettle corn. My current favorite is Smells Like Teen Spirit by Paul Anka.

Q. Isn't Smells Like Teen Spirit a Nirvana song?

A. I don't know what you're talking about.

[Ed: Paul Anka of Diana and Put Your Head On My Shoulder fame--yeah, your grandmother probably listened to him--has actually done a big band remake of Smells Like Teen Spirit. He's also done Eye of the Tiger. Anyone who wants to become a true music aficionado should listen to them. Prepare to be disturbed.]

Q. Your Q&A on MacGuffins got me thinking about using fractions in writing, because the One Trousers made Fabio float 1/4 inch off the ground. I'd like you to check this sentence for me:

Yikker, who was pleased to see that a lot of his men were still alive, that only 1/4 of his army had killed themselves.

A. I didn't correct Norbert because we were concerned with other things. You should always spell out fractions, like this:

Yikker, who's pleased to see that alot of his men were still all live, that only half his army had killed theirselfs.

Q. "Half"?

A. It's more dramatic. Notice that I also split up the posterior injective of "all live," because the sentence does not contain a caveat. You didn't ask about mixed fractions, but we should cover those as well. Here's an example:

Arthur still had one billion, nine-hundred eighty-two million, seven-hundred thirty-eight thousand, two-hundred seventy-three and twelve billion, five-hundred forty-nine million, eight-hundred seventy-two thousand, eight-hundred seventy-three one-hundred ninety-eight billion, two-hundred seventy-three million, eight-hundred twenty-seven thousand, nine-hundred eighteenths of beans left on his plate.

Notice the word "of" before "beans." This is a heterostrictive claudication, which serves to indicate that the fraction is over. Otherwise, the reader might be led to believe that Arthur had 1,982,738,273 12,549,872,873 / (192,273,827,918 beans) on his plate. This is not correct, unless Arthur actually had reciprocal beans (i.e. 1 / beans or beans^-1), meaning that someone gave them back to him.

Q. I have a friend who I want to put into my novel as a cardboard cutout. She has really bad breath, and I could just tell the reader that, but you said we should "show, don't tell." How can I show this?

A. You go from this:

Jenny, who is probably a caricature of you if you're wondering, leaned over to her companion and whispered something breathily. Her breath was really bad.

To this:

Jenny, who is probably a caricature of you if you're wondering, leaned over to her companion and whispered something breathily. Her companion's face decomposed on the spot and fell into her lap. The artifical plants in the room wilted like roses in a bonfire. Cockroaches as far away as Egypt drowned themselves in the ocean to escape.

Q. That's wonderful! She'll love it!

A. We can only hope, dear grasshopper.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Cardboard Development

2006-07-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

In this week's Ask Mr. Writing Person, we discover how to invent cardboard cutout characters by turning friends and family into giant slugs. [Ed: Giant, angry slugs.] Heather Blassin from Muck City, Alabama starts us off with a problem about a businessman:

Q. I have problems--

A. Really?

Q. Yeah. With a character. My main character, Denny, meets up with a businessman, but I'm drawing a total blank on the businessman.

A. Can you give us a couple sentences lead-in to when Denny first meets him?

Q. Sure. Here's the trouble spot:

The secretary smiled and fingered a friendly toodles at Denny as he approached the great oak doors. Denny took a deep breath and pushed them open.

Directly in front of him was...

... and that's where I'm stuck.

A. This is easy. You need to finish that last sentence.

Q. I know--

A. What have you determined about the businessman?

Q. Uh, that he's important to the plot, but he doesn't really need much development. He should be quite simple, actually.

A. Like a cardboard cutout. Okay, first, he's vile.

Q. Vile?

A. Sure. All businessmen are vile. In fact, I'm fairly sure that most of them are raised by wolves.

Q. Okay...

A. Or otters, at least. Otters are pretty vile. Second, if you're having problems inventing a character, just throw in a real person that you know, and--

Q. And I should make him different enough that nobody can tell, right?

A. No, you shouldn't, young grasshopper. You don't want to lie to your readers, do you?

Q. Of course I don't.

A. It's best to leave them as they are, except to change the name a little so you have a defense in case lawyers show up. That happens sometimes. Have you got a businessman friend?

Q. Yeah, a guy named--don't laugh--Bubba Hughes. So can I just drop Bubba into the story?

A. Sure you can. Now, the first thing Denny discovers about Bubba is his appearance, so let's start with that.

Q. Alright. Bubba's tall, and a little chubby--

A. That's perfect! Let's add that:

The secretary smiled and fingered a friendly toodles at Denny as he approached the great oak doors. Denny took a deep breath and pushed them open.

Directly in front of him was Bubba the Hutt, the largest, saggiest human being Denny had ever--

Q. Bubba the Hutt??

A. Do not interrupt me, young Philistine!

Q. I said he was a little chubby!

A. Such impudence! I shall forgive but once, so be forewarned. I've made Bubba into a whalish blob by taking artistic license, which is an industry term that means "exaggerating beyond all rational belief." Storytelling is an exercise in contrasts, and Bubba contrasts nicely with Denny, who is an anorexic waif.

Q. Denny's not an--

A. Whatever. The other reason I made Bubba into a whale is to emphasize his vileness. This is something writers like to call "show, don't tell." The best way to show that a character isn't a nice person is to make him fat, ugly, or albino.

Q. I know lots of nice--

A. Yes, I know. You know a lot of nice albinos. But this is fiction, grasshopper. You will allow me to finish this time:

Directly in front of him was Bubba the Hutt, the largest, saggiest human being Denny had ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on. He immediately removed them, fearing that they might be squashed.

Bubba shifted in his seat, causing the floor and the four chairs he was draped over to creak under the strain.

Now, isn't that just perfect?

Q. So Denny actually puts his eyes on Bubba?

A. It's artistic license. Specifically, it's an instance of a corpus iocus, which is Greek for "yes, he literally put his eyes on him." Of course, anyone who doesn't immediately understand that it's corpus iocus is an illiterate Philistine.

Q. What if Bubba reads this and figures out that it's him?

A. Hopefully, he will, and, finally understanding how his friends see him, decide he wants to lose some weight. If he's offended, he wasn't really your friend anyway.

Q. Um...

A. We need to continue. Denny will then discover a bit of Bubba's personality. What's Bubba like?

Q. He's kind, and--

A. Kind schmind. Who cares? There are only a few ways of being virtuous, and millions of vices. Simply by definition, nice people are boring. Let's hear about the vices.

Q. Well, he is nice, but he can have sort of a short temper at times.

A. Wonderful. I have a brilliant idea for this. Remember "show, don't tell?" We'll show Bubba's short temper, like this:

Directly in front of him was Bubba the Hutt, the largest, saggiest human being Denny had ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on. He immediately removed them, fearing that they might be squashed.

Bubba shifted in his seat, causing the floor and the four chairs he was draped over to creak under the strain.

"Denny!" he boomed, his bloated neck jiggling. A smile broke out on his face, folding it over itself in several places.

Feeling a bit more pluck, Denny shuffled into the exquisite office.

Just then, a man burst through the door behind him, breathless. He dashed to Bubba, pried apart a crack in the folds of fat (exposing an ear), and whispered something to him. It was obviously bad news, judging by the vermilion tones creeping up Bubba's neck.

Bubba quickly beat the man up and thrust him between a couple of huge rolls of blubber, suffocating him.

"I told him two years ago not to interrupt me again," he said. "Now, what's your problem?"

Q. He's really not that fat. Or angry.

A. Bubba Hughes isn't, but Bubba the Hutt is. You really need to differentiate. However, we can hope that Bubba will identify himself and determine to lengthen his fuse.

Q. He'd probably rip the book in half.

A. His loss, of course. I think we've mostly finished. You should employ this technique a lot. If you put all your friends and family in your books, you'll never find yourself wanting for another cardboard cutout again.

Q. I'll never find myself wanting to be friendless again, either.

A. Oh, pish posh, Heather. When you have women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue, you'll discover friends in places you didn't know you had places. For instance, I'll bet your friend Bubba has a few friends hiding on his person, living like hermits in an epidermal wilderness. If he'd ever wash himself--

Q. That's it! THAT IS IT! Bubba is NOT fat, he SMELLS FINE, he's the NICEST--

A. Whatever. I'm uninterested in virtues. That's twice you've interrupted me, young Philistine. You'll be in my next novel as Hagatha Blassin, character assassin. From Muck City. Ha ha. Has a nice ring, doesn't it?

Q. I don't--

A. Hagatha disagrees.

withowt and edider

2006-07-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

to-day i find myself withowt an edider, this meens that i hav, to transcrieb my own long hand wich turns out to be a chor to reed SHAIM ON ME to the bolg by mieself.

i hait keeboreds with a flaiming pashun

my coppee edider wood be fierd for tacking a day off withowt noatifying me at leest a month prior, car axident, notwithstanding, exept that i cant bring myslef to pay moor then a few dollers, 4 such a trivviul job and hes the ONYL 1 that will wirk for that kined of munny: he's a grajewit student.

rest ashurrd that hiz likeniss wil be malled to deth by jient sloths in a fuchur novvel

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Gracking Grits, Reefy Realism

2006-06-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome home, dear Philistines, to Ask Mr. Writing Person. Please, draw up a chair, sit by the fire and listen as Mr. Writing Person explains the intricacies of writing really gritty stuff. How gritty? Spleefing gritty, that's how. Ray Pistil from Tomorrow, Alabama joins us with a question about his science fiction novel.

Q. I'm writing a novel about a mercenary, set in a dystopian future--

A. Great. We can never have too many dystopian future science fiction novels, especially about mercenaries.

Q. Yeah.

A. In fact, it should always be the first kind of novel any science fiction writer produces. Is this your first, Ray?

Q. Uh, yeah. Anyway, it's supposed to be all gritty and realistic, and I'm having a hard time pulling that off. Can I show you what I mean?

A. Certainly, dear Philistine.

Q. Okay, this passage is from when the main character, Leslie--

A. A woman, surely?

Q. A man--Leslie. He's been hired to take out the prime minister, and he's just got himself into position:

Leslie squatted behind the bushes. Part of his hot-pink cape had fallen around his left side, so he pushed it back behind him and pinched a part into his belt. He removed his weapon lovingly from its case--a Winchester 2165 Custom with pastel floral print--wiped the muzzle, and gently kissed it.

A. What in the heck are you trying to accomplish, grasshopper?

Q. I'm trying to, um, get opposite things to, um, well, they draw each other out and make them more vivid, so it's supposed to help make the setting more realistic.

A. I have a better idea. Why don't you contrast Leslie's quirkiness with the gritty reality of the setting in order to present both more vividly to the reader?

Q. That's what I meant to--

A. Anyway, I know of two techniques that should work especially well to add realism to your story. The first is reverse psychology. If you state that the reader should not believe what's coming next, he'll work extra hard to believe you. You might do something like this:

You're not going to believe this, but Leslie squatted behind the bushes.

Q. That works?

A. I've used it numerous times myself. That won't be enough, though, because you've got that hot-pink cape tugging on the reader's suspension of disbelief. Fortunately, you can employ this little trick:

You're not going to believe this, but Leslie squatted behind the bushes. Part of his hot-pink cape had fallen around his left side, so he pushed it back behind him and pinched a part into his belt. He also pinched himself to make sure he was real. He was.

Leslie is now a proxy for you, pinching himself, as you might, to determine whether he's real. And he is! Instant realism!

Q. Oh, yeah, I'd definitely pinch an armed mercenary. I almost feel like I'm there.

A. We're getting there, anyway. Now we come to grit--which, it is important to note, is only partly related to realism. There are two main ways of adding grit to a story: the first is to use gritty words, and the second is to have every character swear like a boat full of sailors.

Q. Do they have to swear?

A. Of course they do! Everyone in a dystopian future is a major potty-mouth, and readers instinctively understand that. Let's do the gritty words first, though. I'm afraid I'll have to change the name of your main character. You aren't too attached to it, I hope?

Q. I really like "Leslie," but if it helps, you can change it.

A. Great. Here's your paragraph with gritty words in it:

You're not going to believe this, but Grit squatted behind the bushes. He shuffled his feet on the gritty dirt beneath him. Part of his gritty, hot-pink cape had fallen around his left side. He gritted his teeth, pushed it back behind him and pinched a part into his belt. He also pinched himself in the grits to make sure he was real. He was. He removed his weapon lovingly from its case--a gritty Winchester 2165 Custom with pastel floral print--wiped some grit off the muzzle, and gently kissed it. For some reason, he remembered eating grits that morning.

Q. Oh, yeah, that's gritty alright.

A. And clever.

Q. Sure. Where exactly are Grit's, um, grits?

A. It doesn't matter. They only exist to show the reader that this is a very gritty kind of story. And if they don't get that from this paragraph, they're thicker than a bowl of grits.

Q. No kidding.

A. Let's get on to swearing. I see that your story takes place in 2200 or thereabouts, yes?

Q. 2197, yeah.

A. Do you think people swore in 1806 like they do this year?

Q. I don't know.

A. They didn't. Therefore, your characters shouldn't use the same swear words we do. You'll need to make some up.

Q. How do I do that?

A. Just paste together some random syllables, like stimp, grack, blim, quirt, hip, spleef, groit, hlek, piftle, nerk, zorb, stlick, reef, ritch, derk and spit. Those words all mean disgusting and horrible things that shouldn't be mentioned in polite company.

Q. They do?

A. In your story they do. Let's litter them liberally throughout the passage, give Grit some dialogue, and see how it turns out:

You're not going to stimping believe this, but Grit gracking squatted behind the blimming bushes. He shuffled his quirted feet on the gritty dirt beneath him. Part of his gritty, hot-pink cape had fallen around his hip left side. "Spleef!" he swore. "This groiting hlek is piftling my nerkkid zorb!" He gritted his teeth, pushed the reefy thing back behind him and pinched a part into his belt. He also pinched his own ritching self in the grits to make sure he was real. He was. He removed his weapon lovingly from its case--a gritty Winchester 2165 Custom with pastel floral print--wiped some derk and grit off the muzzle, and gently kissed it. For some reason, he remembered eating spitty grits that morning.

That's just lovely, isn't it?

Q. In the prose, too?

A. For more realism, you should use deep penetration for your point of view character, so yes, it's absolutely appropriate there.

Q. He sounds like an idiot.

A. It's a well-known fact that people from dystopian futures sound like spleefing idiots.

Q. You're quite the ritching hlek yourself, you know that?

A. I can't believe you'd say that in a family-friendly column. Begone, you nerkkid, zorbing Philistine.

Kissing Chuck Lecter

2006-06-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

My Q&A with Chuck Poulter on book signings happened about four months ago, if I remember correctly. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of the nameless periodicals that shows up on my doorstep every so often contained a follow-up!

Apparently, it was written after the trial using material the reporter gathered just after Chuck was jailed. It's one of those human-interest stories that's supposed to help you feel sympathy for the criminal. They rarely work, and this is no exception: I feel thoroughly excited for him.

I'll quote the article at length and hope the magazine's publisher doesn't mind. He shouldn't. After all, copyright infringement is the sincerest form of flattery. Here's the first half or so:

I sit opposite a broken man. He mutters something about setting fire to a car.

"Can I get you something before we start?" I venture.

"Peanut butter to get these stupid wigs off." He waves carelessly at his armpits, which, indeed, appear to have black, curly wigs affixed. I try to keep my face impassive, but something gives me away.

"That won't work, will it?" He laughs a hoarse, half-maniacal laugh that sounds like it's seen a month of Mondays, all in a row. "I didn't believe it when he told me, but I want to believe something he said."

I look "Chuck" over--he politely requests that I don't give his surname--and I try not to fall into a fit of hysteria. He's still wearing a toga with a large, black 53 painted on the front. He scratches at the wigs under his armpits. An undersized laurel wreath adorns his head, outlining his bald spot. I've been told he refuses to give it up.

At least he doesn't still have the pistol. His plastic harp has likewise been confiscated.

"You know what I'm going to do as soon as I get out of here?" he says. "I'm going to a comedy show, and I'm going to laugh at all those drunk people."

Chuck is accused of assaulting and holding hostage a woman who asked for his autograph--at Chuck's own book signing. Yes, Chuck is a recently-published author. Things were going "swimmingly," he says, until he was duped into committing a felony by a con artist. He declines to give even a hint of the identity of the wretched person.

Why? Because one of these days, Chuck is going to set fire to his car.

"I don't want to get caught," he says. "If I tell you the victim, you could trace it back to me."

"Won't the act itself point at you?" I ask.

"Oh, I'm going to wait a good ten years for my vendetta to entirely consume my black, shrivelled heart like a charcoal briquet." He laughs again. "I'll be ready then."

I decide to dive into the questions.

"I suppose the thing everyone wants to know is why," I start. "Why did you hold a fan of yours hostage at your own book signing?"

"I didn't think I could pull off the hamburger stunt."

I don't want to know what that means, so I go on to the next question.

"Do you think you'll be acquitted?"

"Does peanut butter take wigs off your armpits?" He laughs at his rhetorical question. "Listen to my defense tactic: I was researching hostage situations for an upcoming novel! Do you think I'll be acquitted?"

"You could plead insanity," I suggest.

"I've thought of that. It might even get me off the sexual harrassment charges."

Chuck is also charged with sexual harrassment, for allegedly puckering up and asking multiple young female fans if they'd like to "kiss a cannibal" before he'd sign their books.

"I might combine them to make the insanity plea more believable," he says.

He might be insane, but he's no Hannibal Lecter. I try to help him feel better by telling him that.

"I wrote that, you know," he says.

... and it continues in its mushy, let's-feel-sorry-for-the-bad-guy way.

Chuck took my advice, and he's obviously better off for it. The whole world knows who he is! I do hope he realizes this--and the fact that this was his very last book signing for the rest of his career--before he goes about trying to exact revenge.

Also, in case you're reading this, Chuck: I don't own a car.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Book Signing, With Pluck

2006-06-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's time for yet another Ask Mr. Writing Person, where we aim to frighten and disturb you with the sick thoughts that drift through Mr. Writing Person's highly-evolved cranium. [Ed: CAUTION: Acting upon the advice given in this particular installment could be FATAL, and should only be attempted in small doses.] Chuck Poulter from Corbin, Kentucky segues us into our topic this time:

Q. My manuscript has been accepted, and I'm looking forward to being a published author, but not having to do book signings. I don't have very good public presence, and I'm afraid people will ridicule my signature.

A. It has nothing to do with your signature. Your name sucks.

Q. It does?

A. No. Chuck, I can tell you're the kind of guy who can't stand to go to comedy shows, because you can't shake the feeling that all those drunk people are really laughing at you.

Q. That's pretty much it. I'm a disgrace.

A. Sure. Now, it just so happens that I have the perfect formula for dealing with your problem. If you follow my advice, you'll only have to do one book signing during your whole career.

Q. That sounds great.

A. I'm glad you're on board, my disinclined disciple. There are two main points to every book signing. The first is to get your readers to trust you. You need to let those illiterate Philistines know that you are set apart from humanity. You are special. If they understand this, they'll know that your work is special too. The operative word is flamboyant, which is Latin for "toga-clad head case."

Q. I don't think I could wear--

A. Get used to it, because you'll need it to be properly flamboyant. At the book signing, you'll wear a toga and a laurel wreath. Paint racing stripes down your body and a black 53 on your chest. Buy a harp.

Q. I don't play the harp.

A. Who cares? What matters is that it's a girlie instrument. We're trying to create a general feeling of gender conflict to emphasize your otherness. To counterbalance the harp, you can glue black, curly wigs under your armpits. It's quite effective. Don't worry--a little peanut butter will take them off.

Q. I know women with armpits like that.

A. They could probably use some peanut butter. Anyway, your costume should strike a good balance between male and female, and should definitely involve a toga and racing stripes on general principles.

Q. I think I'd rather write my signature a few thousand--

A. Are you chicken, Clucky?

Q. Basically, yes.

A. Just look at it this way: with you wearing all that garbage, nobody will notice how ugly you are.

Q. I didn't say I was ugly, I said I didn't have--

A. After you've gotten your flamboyant garb worked out, you need to work out some of the flamboyant things you'll do. For example, I have a horror novelist friend who head-butts every fan whose book he signs. Would that fit your personality?

Q. Um...

A. If it doesn't, you could always pucker up. One that I like to do is... well, here's the deal. A lot of fans like to pretend to be literate with me, and try to discuss books other than mine. I used to get insulted. Now I just claim that I wrote whatever book they bring up. Saves me a lot of hassle.

Q. Actually, that one sounds great. I think I'll do that.

A. Fantastic. Lastly, I have another author friend who swears by this technique: strike up conversations with fans about the virtues of cannibalism. If you're lucky, your "fascination with cannibalism" will get into a story in the local paper.

Q. Um...

A. I know I can count on you to set yourself apart from humanity, Clucky. Now we come to the second main point of book signings: to never have to do it again. This takes a lot more pluck than just dressing up funny.

Q. What kind of pluck?

A. The kind of pluck that drives people to bound across a soccer field wearing nothing but a pair of socks. For example, suppose you bring a pistol with you, tucked into your toga somewhere. At some point, reporters from the town newspaper will come in for a photo shoot. When they do, whip out the pistol and take the nearest fan hostage.

Q. Wouldn't I get arrested?

A. Eventually. But you can claim that you're researching hostage situations for an upcoming novel. You'll certainly be acquitted.

Q. Um...

A. Or you could try something more tame but still requiring great pluck. Again, with the reporters: right before they snap the first picture, flip up the backside of your toga and moon them.

Q. I don't think--

A. I can tell you from personal experience that nothing sells books like getting your dimply derrière into the newspapers.

Q. Oh, that's way too much inf--

A. Or here's another I thought up just for you, because I think it fits your personality best. Bring raw hamburger with you, still shrink-wrapped, to the book signing. Set it to the side, and don't mention it to anyone or talk to anyone about it. Use it as a pen pincushion. When the paparazzi comes, tear off the plastic and throw chunks of hamburger at the reporters, shouting, "You killed her! You killed the princess!"

Q. This fits me?

A. Based on highly-advanced numerology using just your birthday and name, it sure does. Now, if you keep on chucking hamburger, you'll eventually be hauled off. When you are, make sure you're completely hysterical, and screech at the top of your lungs about, say, how the Chicago Bulls would have won Cricket World Cup, if only she had been alive.

Q. The Chicago Bulls play basketball.

A. Oh, do they?

Q. Are you sure this will all work?

A. Of course! After you get the straitjacket off, you'll be done with book signings forever! As a bonus, you'll never be afraid to go to a comedy show again.

Q. What about my signature?

A. Get a stamp.

Exchanging Injectives and Trousers

2006-06-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

Q. Since learning about "alright," I've been working on finding posterior injective forms so I can write better complimentary sentences that contain, or are followed by, caveats. So far, I've discovered "almighty" (for "all mighty") and "altogether" (for "all together"). I'm having trouble finding more. Can you help me?

A. It's natural to not be able to spot these very well when you're first clawing your way out of illiterate Philistinehood. I'll give you some examples in a piece of prose, and that should help you get started finding more.

My alcoholic relatives from Alabama went to the store to pick up some new alweather, alpurpose tires; however, Aunt Millie got alhot and bothered, but they gave her alot of egg albumen (which she didn't like at al) and now she's albetter.

Q. Do you have any pets?

A. I do! I have a pet python, which I'm really attached to. His favorite thing is to wind himself around me, especially my neck. It's abominably cute.

[Ed: Actually, it's a garden snake. However, such facts have never deterred Mr. Writing Person before, so why should they now?]

Q. Hi. This is in regards to building a party for a fantasy novel. I've heard before that you're required to have a grumpy dwarf, a lithe but hunky elf, a brooding ranger, a stuck-up royalty figure, and a wizard, but I've never heard that the wizard had to be gay. What are you basing this on?

A. The wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings is gay.

Q. Ian McKellen, the actor who played Gandalf, is gay.

A. Can I help it if that particular trait shone like a lighthouse?

Q. You really need to develop a sense of reality.

A. Come back after you've discovered why New York stop signs are written in both Latin characters and Braille. Then we'll talk about reality.

Q. I have a question about your last Q&A. I had trouble suspending disbelief even before finding out that Norbert hadn't rolled any stats, and I'm a little disappointed that you didn't point out the problem areas. For example, why would Stinky the dwarf need the One Trousers? Why couldn't he just squat in a corner?

A. In the middle of battle?

Q. Norbert had Fabio take off his pants in the middle of a battle.

A. Please notice that he did not succeed.

Q. Oh.

A. Actually, adventurers are generally quite skilled at exchanging trousers in the middle of a battle, though it is a tricky maneuver. Fabio flubbed it, apparently. If Norbert had bothered to roll stats, he might have discovered that Fabio's agility was to blame--it was probably under 14.

Q. What about that second gratuitous romantic encounter with Fabio with eleven flaming arrows sticking out of his chest? How does that work?

A. You've clearly never played pinochle before.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: MacGuffin the Magical Pants

2006-06-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

This time on Ask Mr. Writing Person, Norbert Dragoon joins us from Forks of Salmon [Ed: Huh?], California, with a question about his fantasy novel. Or is that a romance novel?

Q. It's primarily a fantasy novel, but I've added a touch of romance just in case nobody but Harlequin will take it.

A. Forward-thinking, I see.

Q. Oh, yes. I've even dug a bomb shelter under my car, just in case.

A. Right.

Q. I live in my car.

A. Of course. Now, what's your question?

Q. Well, my novel has become... dissatisfying. Can I show you an excerpt?

A. Certainly, young grasshopper.

Q. Okay. Here's my main character, Fabio, after singlehandedly wringing the neck of one of the dreaded Were-Gerbils of Hokum Pokum:

Peering through the light of the black hole sun, Fabio sighed, and a violent wave shattered the beach into a thousand tiny pieces. Elledron, the fair elven princess, was nowhere to be found. Fabio was a lonely pitchfork in the middle of space. He wandered down the street with a poise and sexuality very unlike a rabid chihuahua. The streetlights shimmered over his beautiful, naked torso [and so on...] Suddenly, a beautiful maiden ran out from the shadows and [gratuitous romantic encounter].

Meanwhile, an evil giraffe standeth over his diabolical plans for the end of the world. Long-neck laugheth maniacally. Lightning crasheth. Inchworms fleeth to Bermuda...

My problem is, well, now what? I've got Fabio seeking an elvish princess, and I'd like him to actually go save the princess from the long-necked man and stop his nefarious plans. How do I get from one point to the other?

A. I see you've been taking my lessons to heart, which is very encouraging. Just think of how stymied you'd be without having done that! Now, on to your problem. Do you have a MacGuffin?

Q. I think I had one at McDonald's once.

A. No, young Philistine, it's not a sandwich. Though it could be, if you wanted it to be.

Q. Is it a shapeshifter? I've got shapeshifters.

A. MacGuffin is an ancient Gaelic word for "week-old beer." Gaelic aside--never mind what it actually is--it's just an object that drives the plot. It could be anything from Great Uncle Abner's Vambraces to a pair of magical trousers. Or a cheap hamburger, if you like.

Q. Magical trousers could really steam up those gratuitous encounters...

A. Quite possibly, but let's focus on your problem. In Lord of the Rings, for example, the MacGuffin was the One Ring.

Q. Magical floating trousers would work really well... maybe some zero-G hanky panky...

A. The main thing is to have some magical object that both Fabio and the evil giraffe want. Do you have something like that?

Q. Yeah. I've just decided on magical floating trousers.

A. Great. The One Trousers. You might even be able to use those to drive some conflict about who in the party gets to wear the trousers, or to heighten tension by having two characters swap trousers in the middle of a battle. You do have a party, don't you? A ragtag group of rabble-rousing adventurers that were thrown together by chance to aid Fabio in his quest?

Q. They all got eaten by unchihuahuas, but I can have Fabio find another group.

A. Unchihuahuas?

Q. They're kind of like undead, but chihuahuas. Reanimated chihuahuas. Pretty scary, actually.

A. Right. So you'll need a grumpy dwarf, a lithe, hunky elf that looks somewhat like Orlando Bloom, a brooding ranger with perpetual five-o'clock shadow, some kind of stuck-up royalty figure, and a gay wizard.

Q. Well, I killed Grumpy the dwarf, so maybe he'll find Stinky under a rock...

A. Have them find the elf baking cookies in a tree...

Q. Yeah, and of course they find the ranger at a ranger station, tracking forest fires...

A. And wizards are everywhere, I mean, everyone wants to be a magic user these days...

Q. Right, and they'll be stopping by the kingdom of Bloodstainia to see the king, maybe he'll lend a son...

A. Or a daughter. You've got it. Now, about that MacGuffin, grasshopper. Let me show you how to put it in your story:

Meanwhile, an evil giraffe standeth over his diabolical plans for the end of the world. Long-neck laugheth maniacally. Lightning crasheth. Inchworms fleeth to Bermuda.

Even more meanwhile, Fabio pulled on his magical floating trousers as the beautiful maiden ran off to gratuitous another adventurer. He again felt woozy as he automatically floated 1/4 inch off the ground. It took some getting used to, but it was worth it. The evil giraffe, Long-neck, must never obtain them! For the One Trousers, while pleasantly floaty, also served another purpose: they automatically disposed of bodily wastes, which granted unto the wearer, on average, an extra half-hour every day of not squatting on the chamber pot!

Who knows what diabolical mischief Long-neck could get up to with that extra half-hour!

Yet Fabio knew he must wend his way into Long-neck's fortress, risking his life, nay, the fate of Medium-Earth, for the sake of Elledron, the fair elven princess.

Q. Oh, yeah, it's coming together now.

A. Can you see the light, Norbert?

Q. Not exactly. It's just coming together. Can we work on using the trousers to heighten tension?

A. We can. However, I'm not going to write anything for you this time. I think you can figure this out on your own. Try it, and see what you come up with.

Q. Okay. So they need to be fighting somewhere, like in a dungeon or something...

A. The Mines of... the Subway of...

Q. Moriarrhea? Yeah, the Subway of Moriarrhea. And they're fighting dorcs, and Stinky needs the pants:

"Fabio!" shouted Stinky the bullhorn. "I need them pants!"

"Now?" asked Fabio the contortionist as he simultaneously dodged a dozen attacks.

"Yeah! I got me full of them elfin beans, and I gotta go! Gimme that MacGuffin!"

Fabio glanced over his shoulder as he parried six more oncoming attacks. Stinky the country dancer-warrior was doing a fine Texas Two-Step as he battled his own half-dozen dorcs. Fabio sighed and rolled his eyes, and started unbuckling his magical floating trousers.

This left him in a very compromising position indeed; for as soon as the One Trousers were around his knees and his left arm was busy wrenching the skin-tight, sequined leather down further, a dorc with fire arrows appeared out of nowhere! It notched a flaming arrow and let it fly! And another! And another! And another! And seven more! They were drumsticks on a drum, hammering Fabio's chest like a hammer, beating on it like a bouncer in a bad mood, piercing it like a really loud scream, one after another! Fabio writhed in arrow-chested agony...

[gratuitous romantic encounter...]

Fabio was a blazing porcupine--a blazing porcupine writhing on the floor with its pants down--by the time Aragont the ranger arrived. Aragont's face twisted into a furious twisty shape.

"Hey you!" the ranger shouted at the dorc who had shot Fabio with flaming arrows. "You could start a forest fire with those!"

Aragont the loping jaguar gave chase...

A. That's looking very good. You have some very nice metaphors, and I especially like the transitive redundancy in the "furious twisty shape."

Q. I'm stuck again.

A. What's the problem now?

Q. I don't think Fabio can live through eleven flaming arrows stuck in his chest.

A. The question is easily answered, grasshopper. What's his stamina?

Q. It's pretty good, I think.

A. Is it above 17?

Q. I don't know.

A. You didn't roll his stats? 3d6, and all that?

Q. Well, no, I didn't think--

A. Then how do you know he could actually wear the One Trousers? Does he have enough intelligence to equip a powerful magical item like that?

Q. I'd think he'd have enough intelligence to put on a pair of pants, yes.

A. I can't finish this. My suspension of disbelief has just snapped. It was a vast, yawning suspension bridge. Now it just yawns.

Q. You're kidding me. I can't write a publishable fantasy novel without rolling stats on all my characters?

A. Not a fantasy novel, grasshopper.

Q. Ah. Good thing I was so forward-thinking.

Dr. Seuss's New Metaphors

2006-06-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

We'll forgo the general-interest material (don't worry! it's coming!) in favor of further illustration of the concepts I presented in my last Q&A. One of my dear Philistines has a question about applying the concepts to a moderately famous piece of writing:

Q. Can you show us how much stupendously better The Cat in the Hat would be if only you'd been around when Dr. Seuss originally and ignorantly penned it, assuming he knew who you were and took lessons from you and actually did what you suggested?

A. I can, and when I'm done, I think we'll all agree it would have been a much stronger novel. Here's the opening paragraph:

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold wet day.

It's pitiful, isn't it?

Q. Pitiful as a one-legged puppy.

A. Exactly. Notice the distinct lack of a dead body, the unresolved information issues (what state is the house in? what day of the year? what was the exact temperature in Kelvins?), and the lack of emotionally-charged dialogue and emotionally-laden words. No thesaurus work, either. The author does get one thing right: "we" is mysteriously gender-neutral. Yet we're not going to fix it up as a hook--

Q. Shucks.

A. No, dear Philistine, we're going to vividify the imagery by inserting simile and metaphor. It clearly needs it. The author even resorts to illustrations to help us imagine the scene!

Q. Shameful.

A. Quite. Here's a version of it with my inspired imagery:

The sun was as bright as a black hole.
Outside, the wind threw water against the window like a deranged automated car wash.
We sat in the house like a couple of little old ladies.
It was cold and wet outside like a sock that's been dipped in the toilet and hung on the shower curtain rod to dry.

Q. Love the sock-in-the-toilet part.

A. Fetching, isn't it?

Q. Oh, yeah.

A. Now, we aren't finished with it, because we can still strengthen our similes by turning them into metaphors. Recall that, to do so, we lie about the actual nature of things.

Q. Dirty liars, all of us.

A. Not dirty, but liars, yes. Here's the new version:

The sun was a black hole.
Outside, a deranged automated car wash threw water against the window.
We, a couple of little old ladies, sat in the house.
Our house was inside a sock that had been dipped in the toilet and hung on the shower curtain rod to dry.

Q. It's a one-legged puppy!

A. Actually, it appears to be a psychedelic science fiction story--like Philip K. Dick might have written--about two little old ladies that live in a house next to a deranged car wash, inside a wet sock on a shower curtain rod that orbits a black hole.

Q. It does appear so, yes.

A. But if you read between the lines--which any half-literate reader will be able to do--you'll see that the old ladies are actually two children, and that the car wash and wet sock represent the weather. It's obvious.

Q. Obvious as a one-legged puppy.

A. Enough with the puppy already. Anyway, it's too bad Theodor Geisel is dead. He could have used my inspired guidance. Think of all the books he could have sold.

Q. Millions.

A. Billions!

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Subcranial Ravioli

2006-06-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

In this week's Ask Mr. Writing Person, we tackle Paris Hilton horror and the similarities between brains and ravioli. Bring a sick sack, because you're going to need it for the Ernest Hemingway parts. Here's Ron Smiley from Hell, Michigan, who's having problems [Ed: snicker--look, I do it, too] writing vivid description:

Q. I'm writing a horror novel--not supernatural horror, just natural horror--

A. A lot of natural things are pretty horrifying. Just look at Paris Hilton.

Q. Natural horror. So anyway--

A. You're doing Paris Hilton horror--

Q. --and I keep writing really short sentences, and I like the pacing overall, but in some places I need to slow down and really show the reader what's around the point-of-view character. How do I do that?

A. Can you shoot us an example?

Q. Sure. Here's one of my primary offenders:

Marshall entered the room and took in his surroundings. It was cold. On the floor lay a dead man, face down, his brains spilled onto the floor.

A. Delicious. Well, young Philistine, you could always try Ernest Hemingway's approach and make the reader actually stop:

Marshall entered the room. Took in his surroundings. It was cold. On the floor. Lay a dead man. Face down. Brains. Floor.

Q. Ick.

A. No kidding. I can't read Hemingway without hanging a sick sack from my neck first. I think what you really need is simile and metaphor. We'll do similes first. For example, this really throws the scene into vivid relief:

Marshall entered the room like a geriatric disco chimp and took in his surroundings. It was cold, like the middle of the sun isn't. On the floor lay a dead man, like a dead fish, face down. His brains were spilled onto the floor like a bowl of stuffed ravioli in marinara sauce. Marshall stepped over the dead body, scooped up a sample, and tasted it. It wasn't ravioli.

Q. Why is my character tasting the dead guy's brains?

A. You're the author. Why do you think he's tasting the dead guy's brains?

Q. I don't know! You made him do it!

A. You have the imagination of a Philistine, Ron. Consider two reasons. First, at the style level, it highlights the difference between how brains and ravioli taste, which strengthens the similarity in appearance. Second, at the story level, Marshall used to be a professional taster for a high-class international zombie pot luck club.

Q. He didn't! I'm not writing supernatural--

A. Let's get back to the issues. I want to call your attention to this little emerald:

It was cold, like the middle of the sun isn't.

This is a little-used technique called subcutaneous reflexism, which is Greek for "nails on a chalkboard." The opposition of "cold" and "the middle of the sun" really highlights how cold it is. Clever, isn't it?

Q. Uh-huh.

A. Also, behold this darling little sentence:

On the floor lay a dead man, like a dead fish, face down.

This is called a transitive redundancy, which really hammers the point home that the guy is dead, in case the reader didn't understand it the first time. Readers are really dense, and a lot of times you have to resort--

Q. What's up with the disco chimp?

A. Have you been listening to me?

Q. Not really. I got hung up on the disco chimp part.

A. There is no disco chimp. It's just a simile. Forget about it. Let's see... where were we?

Q. I don't know.

A. Of course you don't. Let's go on to metaphors. Metaphors are like similes, except you lie to the reader about what things really are in order to call attention to the similar properties of the things you're comparing. It works especially well when there are a lot of similar properties, like Marshall and a disco chimp, or brains and ravioli.

Q. Marshall is nothing like a disco chimp, and brains are nothing like ravioli.

A. Have you ever been a brain taster for a zombie pot luck club? No? Marshall has, and he says they're very similar in texture. And he was discoing like a geriatric chimp when he told me. Q.E.D.

Q. Q.E.D.?

A. It stands for quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for "so there." We need to continue, so let's see how much more vivid the paragraph is with metaphors instead of similes:

Marshall the geriatric disco chimp entered the room and took in his surroundings. It was cold in the middle of the not-sun. On the floor lay a dead fish, face down, its stuffed ravioli in marinara sauce spilled onto the floor. Marshall stepped over the dead body, scooped up a sample, and tasted it. It wasn't really ravioli, though I did say that earlier. I lied.

Now isn't that a hundred percent more descriptive?

Q. Marshall's not a chimp, he's not in the middle of the "not-sun," whatever the bloody crap that is, and the dead guy's not a fish.

A. I know, young grasshopper. We lied for the sake of imagery.

Q. You mean I'm an untrustworthy narrator now?

A. Every narrator is, to some extent. You just happen to tell real whoppers about things like disco chimps and ravioli.

Q. You know, I think I'll stick with my original version. Thanks a lot.

A. That's fine, you may scratch out your little Paris Hilton horror on your own. However, if you don't get women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue, please don't come crying to me. I have other, more willing Philistines to care for. Stay in your cardboard box and weep it out on your own.

Q. You've got some nerve, man.

A. I am a nerve.

Q. You're not.

A. I lied.

Mr. Writing Person's "Fack"

2006-06-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

My copy editor tells me that it's good form to have a fack [Ed: my heck, that's hilarious] on your web site. He says it should contain questions that are frequently asked of me, along with their answers. I've found a few questions, and also snippets of conversations I've had more than once.

Q. What's your favorite food?

A. I like dipping raw broccoli in ketchup. When I'm feeling frisky, I boil them together to make stew.

Q. Gross.

A. If that doesn't suit your fancy, you might try strawberries with ranch dressing and a dash of vanilla.

Q. Are you related to Mister Language Person?

A. I wish I knew, for I admire the man beyond what words can express. Note that he spells out "Mister," where I take the more abbreviated approach.

I have entertained the idea in the past. I don't know who my father is--my mother won't tell me. I think there's a strong possibility of immaculate conception, and in that case, Mister Language Person could very well be my father.

Q. Did you recently acquire a new pair of shorts?

A. Yes! They're my first pair of cargo shorts, which I find thoroughly exciting. They have a total of nine pockets, and I've only managed to fill four of them. I can even put a few extra pair of underwear in the zippered pockets in front. How wicked is that?

The hems have drawstrings in them, which I suppose I could use if I wanted to wear knickers again. I don't. But if I become lost in the wilderness without food, I could consume them for sustenance, which is nice.

Q. Is "alright" a word? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Also, it's bad grammar.

A. "Alright" is the posterior injective of "all right," which is appropriate in complimentary sentences that are followed by, or contain, a caveat. An example might be more illustrative:

James done did alright delivering his wife's baby, but forgot to sever the giant flagellum.

Just because it's unfamiliar to you doesn't mean it's wrong. Check your Strunk and White.

Q. I checked my Strunk and White, but it's not in there.

A. Your Strunk and White doesn't contain all truth. For example, it doesn't address the extraterrestrial origins of pandas.

Q. I can't find posterior injective anywhere, actually.

A. I might have made it up while waiting in the doctor's office for an iron shot, but that doesn't make it any less true. You don't still use "all ways," do you?

Q. Pandas aren't extraterrestrial.

A. Are so.

Q. Do you really have a grad student living in a dungeon under your house?

A. Yes. He actually likes it there, in the dank and dark, frolicking among the rats and torture devices. He says it reminds him of the lab.

[Ed: Actually, I live on the bottom floor of a two-story flat, sharing rent with Mr. Writing Person. The whole extent of our interaction is when he chucks something down the stairs to me ("Copy Editor! I have produced yet another missive for my dear Philistines!"), or when I catch him sneaking down for more broccoli and ketchup. But our little charade reduces my rent considerably, so it doesn't bother me to keep it up.]

Q. Is your copy editor's name "Ed?"

A. No.

Q. Doesn't schadenfreude mean something like "happiness in the misery of others" or something? Because I swear I felt it once when I was playing a video game with my brother, and all I felt like was giving him a noogie.

A. I'm afraid you're wrong, young Philistine. It's a German coagulation of two words: Schaden, which means "genius" and Freude, which is loosely translated as "a strange tingly feeling of awe mingled with joy."

We don't actually have a word like Freude in English, because we're not weird like Germans are. But every once in a while, someone feels it--usually when reading my work--and that's when I point it out.

Q. I'm tingling. I think I might be feeling Freude.

A. Please keep it to yourself.

Q. Don't you ever worry that someone will take you seriously?

A. I hope everyone takes me seriously. There will be many, however, who will not. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

[Ed: Going all Gospel of John is obviously another point of evidence in favor of immaculate conception.]

Q. I noticed that your "self-portrait" looks like it was excerpted from an engraving of Voltaire, by Baquoy (ca. 1795), but with a halo added behind Voltaire's head. Did you really engrave that "self-portrait?"

A. There's only one explanation for this. Baquoy is a dirty thief.

Q. He lived 200 years ago!

A. Baquoy is a dirty time-traveling thief. Besides, that looks nothing like Voltaire.

Q. How do you know that?

A. Baquoy isn't the only time traveler around, you know.

Q. I really like your work. Can I be your apprentice?

A. No, but you may grovel as if you were.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Love, Technically

2006-06-02T00:10:00.000-07:00

In this week's Ask Mr. Writing Person, we learn how to informalize long, ponderous passages, and discover what Alan Cox hides in his beard. [Ed: Linux fanboy larvae?] Joining us is Crith Smith from Berserkeley, California. We're branching out a bit by addressing his questions about a technical book he's working on. Here's Crith:

Q. Thanks for taking time to talk to me. I'm writing a book on the Lisp programming language--

A. Oh, I love Lisp. I feel so warm and safe inside all those parentheses. By the way, even if you publish this you'll still be an illiterate Philistine until you publish a work of fiction.

Q. I know. I plan to follow up with a romance novel.

A. Well, that is the usual next step after a Lisp book.

Q. Is it?

A. Sure--just ask Paul Graham. Anyway, I have a lot of clever advice on how to write them. My techniques are so flexible that you might even be able to turn your Lisp book into a romance novel in a future revision. I always thought Lisp was a bit kinky anyway.

Q. Um, I have a few questions, and I hope you don't mind that the subject is outside your area--

A. Is your name really "Crith?"

Q. Yes.

A. How unfortunate. You should know, grasshopper, that nothing related to writing is outside my area of expertise. What's your first question?

Q. Um.... what should I call this book?

A. What have you come up with so far?

Q. Just Lisp.

A. Well, that's a bit bare, isn't it? I mean, it needs more words. As it is, if one goes wrong, the whole title is messed up. You should never have a single point of failure in a title like that.

Q. Okay...

A. You know, it's currently in vogue to make your readers feel like utter imbeciles for having to read your book.

Q. Too bad Lisp for Dummies would get me sued.

A. That's way too mild anyway, grasshopper. I'm thinking more along the lines of, You're a Complete and Utter Imbecile If You Have to Read This Book on Lisp with the subtitle something like, I hope nobody catches you. It's awfully clever, it's easy to remember, and it has tons of words, so if one goes wrong people can still understand what it means. Tell me, do you have a long, scraggly beard and wild hair?

Q. Um, yeah.

A. Like Richard Stallman?

Q. Something like that.

A. Is that a thing among Lisp hackers? Ah, well, never mind, because I have a grand vision! Imagine... your great hoary face on the cover of the book, with the book title in a cartoon callout... and the subtitle in a thought balloon!

Q. Um...

A. "By Crith Smith." How very, very unfortunate.

Q. You get used to it.

A. I'm sure. Do you have another question for me?

Q. Yeah. Why is Richard Stallman giving birth on the cover of my book?

A. Actually, I think someone caught him on the GNU/Toilet. Do you have a real question?

Q. Um... yeah. I've got a problem with diction level. I'd like my book to sound informal, but it just doesn't right now.

A. Give us an example of what you're talking about.

Q. Sure. This is from an introductory chapter:

Lisp is accepting of most identifiers accepted by other common programming languages. Implementations vary, but all accept a sequence of letters, digits, and extended characters that do not begin with a number.

A. May I wake up now? Ha ha.

Q. Ha ha.

A. One of the best ways to informalize a ponderous passage like that is to employ adenoidal sloppilism, which is Latin for "there's a gopher in my habit." It works like this:

"Lisp is accepting of most identifiers accepted by other common programming languages. Implementations vary, but all accept a sequence of letters, digits, and extended characters that do not begin with a number," said Fabio.

Q. Fabio?

A. We'll get to that in a minute.

Q. That doesn't seem less formal to me.

A. It is, a little. We need two speakers to make it really informal. Like this:

"Lisp is accepting of most identifiers accepted by other common programming languages," said Yvonne.

"Implementations vary," said Fabio, "but all accept a sequence of letters, digits, and extended characters that do not begin with a number."

Q. Oh, yes, that's much better.

A. Isn't it? And you could probably fix up your whole book in an hour. How good are you at writing women?

Q. I'm not very good at it. I'll have to ask my wife...

A. Oh! I didn't see your wife come in. Is she hiding in your beard?

Q. She's not here.

A. I heard that Alan Cox's wife hides in his beard when she doesn't want to be seen.

Q. Does she?

A. Oh, sure. But we need to get back on topic. Try not to get us off again, okay?

Q. I didn't--

A. So now you've got a little give-and-take for each concept rather than a straight dump. As a bonus, you'll probably add 50% or more to your book's length.

Q. Yeah, I need that. I've only got 90 pages.

A. That's it?

Q. Well, the writing is very compact, as you saw.

A. Alright, so with dialogue instead of dumps, you get 130-140 pages. This clearly isn't long enough for anyone to take it seriously. Have you changed the font size? Jiggled the margins?

Q. It's already at 20 point font with 2 inch margins.

A. My, my. It looks as if you need my genius after all. Here's my brilliant plan. Remember how I said you might be able to turn a future revision into a romance novel? Why don't you do that now, and publish your book on the Lisp programming language with Harlequin?

Q. Harlequin?

A. Certainly. They'll publish anything that's properly sopped.

Q. Will that work?

A. Of course! All you have to do is insert random romantic encounters at maddeningly regular intervals. Didn't you read my earlier treatise on the subject?

Q. I did, but I didn't think it applied to technical--

A. Puh-shaw! Your imagination is as wild as a sleeping nun's. Let's take your previous passage and add some steam:

"Lisp is accepting of most identifiers accepted by other common programming languages," said Yvonne.

"Implementations vary," said Fabio, "but all accept a sequence of letters, digits, and extended charact--what are you doing?"

Yvonne had taken off her horn-rimmed glasses and was in the middle of removing her smart suit jacket. "It's 4:13," she intoned with more than a bare hint of seduction, as she struggled with the sleeves.

Fabio took Yvonne down with a running tackle...

... and we fade to black, because this is a family friendly column. Do this to your dialogue every 17 pages or so.

Q. I feel weird inside.

A. That happens a lot around me. You'll get used to it. Now, this technique could add anywhere from 60 to 400 pages, depending on how long you drag out the encounters.

Q. Won't I lose the reader's interest in the actual subject matter?

A. What makes you think they'll read your book to learn Lisp?

Q. That's what my book is on.

A. Not anymore it's not. The Lisp parts only exist for sexual tension.

Q. I never thought I'd start writing a book on Lisp and end up with a romance novel.

A. It's happened to better authors than you, young Philistine. Much better authors. Just ask Paul Graham.

A Prime Example of Great Writing

2006-06-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have just chanced upon some of the greatest writing on the Internet. That is, my copy editor threw a printout up to me from the dungeon.

Life, by Dan Brown

I have never seen a finer example of elegant prose and well-structured plot outside my own writing. The author has so many techniques mastered that I could spend days enumerating them all. Rather than do that, I simply urge you to read and assimilate.

Go forth, dear Philistines, and educate yourselves!

Me, Engraved

2006-05-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that I finally have a photo up. I had been searching for the right one, and finally gave up and drew it myself.

Yes! I engraved this picture of myself, holding a mirror in my right hand. (That's why it's cut off in the picture. Yes, I am left-handed.) This is the only picture that properly captures my wit and boyish charm. A look of amused serenity catches my face as I consider the authorly welfare of my dear friends and Philistines, as the face of Abraham Lincoln upon Mount Rushmore considers the welfare of the country. He's a bit more stern, though, as a fistfighter would be.

I actually write with a quill. I find that the words flow better that way. My copy editor transfers my flowing longhand manuscripts to the blog when I drop them down to him in the dungeon. He's a computer science graduate student whose greatest ambition, bless his heart, is to publish academic papers. He spells and grammerizes [Ed: I'm not going to destroy a beautiful gem like this] as well as could be expected.

No, I am not wearing a wig. I've been working on these golden locks for ten years, and I think they're dead fetching. The last person who made fun of them found his way into a published science fiction novel as a red-shirt who was mauled to death by mutant squirrels. You have been warned.

A couple of my dear Philistines have asked questions about my last Q&A with Hooker Harlitt on writing romance novels. Here they are, in no particular order:

Q. You mentioned L. Ron Hubbard and Isaac Asimov as examples of science fiction romance novelists. What about Robert A. Heinlein? Isn't he at least ten times dirtier than Isaac Asimov?

A. Out of context, sure he is. The problem is that Heinlein's encounters aren't exactly random, in that they actually advance the story, or develop the characters, or at least make the reader think about some sick-but-intriguing thing they've never been predisposed to think about before. Sometimes.

Q. What about Piers Anthony?

A. Piers who?

Q. Hi. My question is about Yvonne and Fabio in your examples. I noticed that they were in a room full of people. Wasn't there an empty room nearby? This being a science fiction novel, couldn't they have put up an opaque force field or stopped time (or slowed it down until it's negligible), or, like, mind-melded everyone around them, or transported themselves or everyone else away first? I mean, in short, couldn't they have been more discreet?

A. No.

Q. Mark here. I want to write a romance novel, but I can't figure out what an "encounter" should consist of. Are they, like, playing Pinochle or something? I think they're playing dirty because you mentioned people throwing furniture and shouting.

A. Yes, Mark, that's right. That's exactly what they're doing: playing dirty Pinochle. Good luck on your romance novel!

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Serial Romance

2006-05-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

It's Ask Mr. Writing Person time, in which we discover the meaning of schadenfreude [Ed: which I feel all the time] and how to steam up the windows of any novel, no matter how tame. Hooper Harlitt joins us from Los Angeles, California. He has a question about writing romance novels:

Q. I want to get published by Harlequin, but all of my attempts at writing a romance novel fall flat. I keep getting rejection letters that say, "Not steamy enough." How do I steam them up?

A. You came to the right person, Hooker. I've got plenty of sage advice about this. Now, this is a very delicate subject for a family-friendly column, and we'll treat it delicately, okay?

Q. Yeah.

A. Good. The first thing you need to know is that romance novels are woman porn.

Q. Porn?

A. Exactly. They're the Playboy of print publishing. This basic premise will underlie all of our discussion.

Q. They don't look much like porn...

A. Well, duh. Woman porn is words. Man porn is pictures. You won't catch many women browsing a male picture mag, and you won't catch many men reading a novel with a scantily-clad woman on the front. Well, you might, but chances are it's a science fiction or fantasy novel.

Q. Okay, I can swallow that.

A. Good. Because we know the audience is made up of women, the first thing you need to do is create a female main character.

Q. Oh! I was writing male main characters!

A. Uh-huh. Okay, so take your favorite work-in-progress, and change the name and some pronouns, and that'll do.

Q. Are you sure that's all I have to do? Won't my female main character have a male voice?

A. If you're the type of man who tries to write romance, your male main character probably already talks like a woman anyway. Oh, and you should name your new male main character "Fabio."

Q. Fabio.

A. Right. You're going to be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to turn your novel into a properly steamy romance novel. In fact, you can do this to any novel, whether it's romance or not. All you have to do is force your characters into random romantic encounters at maddeningly regular intervals.

Q. No way. Is that it?

A. L. Ron Hubbard is the greatest romance novelist that ever lived, and that's exactly how he did it.

Q. Didn't Hubbard write science fiction?

A. Have you ever read his Mission Earth series? It should be required reading for a budding romance novelist. That, and the later works of Asimov. He was getting there. And probably every other aging science fiction author. They tend to turn into dirty old men.

Anyway, there are a couple of main ways to enforce regularity. I'm going to demonstrate both on a passage from one of my books. It's a science fiction novel--not a romance by any means--which should help you see how to shoehorn an encounter into a story line. In this scene, Yvonne and Fabio--

Q. You named a character in a science fiction novel "Fabio?"

A. Why not?

Q. I just thought--

A. He even scored a picture on the cover art. He's a hunky one, alright. Anyway, Yvonne and Fabio are at work at the police station, arguing about a mind-control device that Fabio left in Yvonne's care:

"What do you mean, you might have left it here overnight?" said Fabio through clenched teeth.

Yvonne glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Everyone else had their heads down, concentrating on whatever dumb thing their terminals were showing them. "Just what I said," she hissed back. "I don't know what I did with it. Are you sure it's the only MindNumber(tm) in the area?"

"Oh, so it's someone else's responsib--hang on. My alarm's going off." He wrenched his left sleeve back, revealing a silver watch wrapped around his massive, manly arm.

Not again.

He gazed up at her, lust burning in his beautiful blue eyes. "It's time," he said.

Yvonne pressed her hands harder against the table to hide the trembling. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"It's 4:13."

"I have a headache," she said weakly.

"Nice try."

He moved toward her. Yvonne wasn't sure what happened next... she caught glimpses of Fabio and his long, golden hair, furniture being thrown, people shouting...

Q. I don't know what to say. I feel weird inside.

A. That's called schadenfreude, which is a German word that describes the feeling of beholding genius at work. You'll get used to it.

Q. I'll take your word for it.

A. Right. I said I'd demonstrate two methods. Here's the second:

"What do you mean, you might have left it here overnight?" said Fabio through clenched teeth.

Yvonne glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Everyone else had their heads down, concentrating on whatever dumb thing their terminals were showing them. "Just what I said," she hissed back. "I don't know what I did with it. Are you sure it's the only MindNumber(tm) in the area?"

"Oh, so it's someone else's responsib--" He stopped and stared down. "Oh, would you look at that."

"What?" she asked, squinting at the spot he was looking.

"Down at the bottom of the page. See it? 153--that's divisible by 17." He gazed up at her, lust burning in his beautiful blue eyes.

Q. Every 17 pages then?

A. More or less. There are studies on this, and they all come to the same conclusion.

Q. Um, okay. So, uh, what if on some page that's divisible by 17, I have two guys?

A. You won't, because your main character is female. Pay attention, grasshopper. If you have two women, just have some hunky man run in from somewhere.

Q. Okay. I still don't--

A. That's because you're an illiterate Philistine.

Q. Yeah, I knew that. Um, won't this kind of ruin the story's pace or its believability?

A. It's woman porn, Hooker. Nobody cares.

Q. Got it.

A. One more thing. If you want to be a real L. Ron Hubbard or Isaac Asimov would-have-been, you can't put any meaningful encounters into your novel. That would be like Playboy making a centerfold out of an anatomical diagram.

Q. Woman porn.

A. Exactly.

Harry Potter and the Crackling Dialogue of Storgé

2006-05-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't a clue why so much flat, emotionless dialogue is actually published. Perhaps it's because so many editors are artless cretins, who won't bat an eyelash at publishing pure dreck for dosh. You, dear grasshopper, must be a craftly cork in a sea of illiterate Philistines! Rise above, and let the waves of ignorance wash you to the shores of women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue!

Anyway, for practice, we're going to fix up a passage from a very popular book. It's from chapter 23, The Yule Ball, of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (a pretentious name if I ever heard one). Ron has just learned that Hermione is at the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum, the contest champion from another school.

"I'd never help him work out that egg!" said Hermione, looking outraged. "Never. How could you say something like that--I want Harry to win the Tournament. Harry knows that, don't you, Harry?"

"You've got a funny way of showing it," sneered Ron.

"This whole Tournament's supposed to be about getting to know foreign wizards and making friends with them!" said Hermione shrilly.

"No, it isn't!" shouted Ron. "It's about winning!"

People were starting to stare at them.

"Ron," said Harry quietly, "I haven't got a problem with Hermione coming with Krum--"

But Ron ignored Harry too.

"Why don't you go and find Vicky, he'll be wondering where you are," said Ron.

Rowling has done alright with the exclamation points, and they do lead us to believe that this is an emotionally intense scene. That crackling electric charge is missing, however. Some aspects of the story in her head were lost when she plopped them (messily) on the page, but we know how to put them back.

This is the same passage after replacing said-verbs with more descriptive verbs, removing adverbs, randomly picking names for tags, controlling pace through actions and gestures, and giving characters voice:

"Verily, I should die a thousand deaths if I should aid Viktor in his eggy quest!" verilied Bushy McBuckFace. "Never! How couldst thou utter such atrocity--verily, verily, I desire that Harry winneth the Tournament. Harry knoweth such, by his leave."

"****!" verbalized the gangly red-headed youth as he gestured.

"Forsooth!" forsoothed Smartypants as she actioneth and gestureth. "Thou knowest the tournament's purpose, thou beslubbering wastrel! Behold, only in befriending strangers is that which fulfilleth it!"

"It ain't!" expressed Scaredy-Pants. "Dat ****'s about winnin'!"

People were starting to stare at them.

"Ron, my good man," articulated Scarhead, "I say, I haven't got the slightest problem with Hermione's gallavanting," he gestured wildly, "with Mr. Krum--"

But Arachnophobe ignored Green-Eyes too.

"Why ain't you go an' find Vicky, dat ***-****ing *****'ll be wonderin' where you is," utterized Harry's best friend. "Peace yo, *****. I'm gone."

Outrageous.

What's missing still? Why, meteorological accentuation, that's what! The dialogue still seems a little flat without it, but fortunately, it's not too hard to add:

"Verily, I should die a thousand deaths if I should aid Viktor in his eggy quest!" verilied Bushy McBuckFace as the great storm washed over the castle. "Never! How couldst thou utter such atrocity--verily, verily, I desire that Harry winneth the Tournament. Harry knoweth such, by his leave."

"****!" verbalized the gangly red-headed youth as he gestured. Lightning struck!

"Forsooth!" forsoothed Smartypants as she actioneth and gestureth, and the sea moaneth and the earth shaketh. "Thou knowest the tournament's purpose, thou beslubbering wastrel! Behold, only in befriending strangers is that which fulfilleth it!"

"It ain't!" expressed Scaredy-Pants, while rocks an' bricks an' all dat **** was fallin' on da groun' aroun'em. "Dat ****'s about winnin'!"

People were starting to stare at them. The mighty earth moved! Streams of dirt as old as Slytherin's bones made small piles on the floor, and pieces of debris thumped around them.

"Ron, my good man," articulated Scarhead as the earthquake let up for a little while. "I say, I haven't got the slightest problem with Hermione's gallavanting," he gestured wildly, "with Mr. Krum--"

But Arachnophobe ignored Green-Eyes too. Just then, a wall broke inward, spraying bricks and dust all over the dance floor! The specular nose of an alien spacecraft poked in at them, but they paid it no heed.

"Why ain't you go an' find Vicky, dat ***-****ing *****'ll be wonderin' where you is," utterized Harry's best friend. "Peace yo, *****. I'm gone."

A small, green figure emerged from the cracks in the stone and fell to the floor. It held up a pleading appendage... and then was still.

That's wicked literate.

We have two branches we could take from here. We might leave the alien as is, simply for emphasis, and never mention it again. (Perhaps Filch's cat eats it.) Or we could use it to drive the story, and undreckify the rest of the book's plot. (Aliens land on the Earth all the time. We don't want to lie to our readers by not including them, right?)

Joanne Rowling needs me as her editor. Book 7 is still in production. There's still time.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Plum Great Dialogue

2006-05-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Ask Mr. Writing Person, where the weather is a puppet and the characters are vexed! Joining us today is Bruce Boondocks, from Bitter End, Tennessee. He's a long-time fan of mine [Ed: two days, is it?], and just as excited as can be to participate. Isn't that right, Bruce?

Q. Oh, yeah. I'm so plum excited, I'm gonna wet myself.

A. Please don't. What's your question?

Q. Every time I write some dialogue, it just don't sound right. It's all real emotional stuff, but it sounds flat. How do I put actual, honest-to-goodness emotion into it?

A. Give us an example from your work-in-progress.

Q. Okay, I got Bill and Jack, and they're arguing:

"I told you to keep your filthy hands off my fondue pot!"

"I wouldn't touch your stupid fondue pot if you'd keep it out of my luggage!"

Suddenly, the door swung open. "Hey guys! I just came from the housing office, and I got all three of us in this exact room next year, too!"

"Shut up, Nord!"

A. One problem, Mr. Bluecocks, is that your dialogue doesn't have any tags.

Q. Yeah, well, I was trying to establish a sense of mystery, you know--who's talking?

A. Part of emerging from the dark, cozy little hell of illiterate Philistinehood is learning how much mystery to use. The amount you've got doesn't work here. So sock it to us again, but this time, put in a few basic "he saids."

Q. You're the boss.

"I told you to keep your filthy hands off my fondue pot!" said Bill.

"I wouldn't touch your stupid fondue pot if you'd keep it out of my luggage!" said Jack.

Suddenly, the door swung open. "Hey guys!" said Nord. "I just came from the housing office, and I got all three of us in this exact room next year, too!"

"Shut up, Nord!" said Jack.

A. Great. Don't worry, you can still put who's talking mystery back in. Have you got more than one name for each of these characters?

Q. Yeah. Everyone calls Bill Moose, Big Stud, and Pimp. I think they call Jack, uh, Stewie, Artsy-Fartsy, and Bender. And Nord gets called Beaver Boy, Bucky, and, um, The Great Banana Rider.

A. Come up with about ten more for each character. We won't do this today, but when you go back to your story, tag your dialogue, and randomly pick one of these names for each tag. Your readers will have to think extra hard about who says what, and that's the kind of little mystery that readers just adore. It has the added benefit that it makes your dialogue appear to be happening among more people than it is, adding what I like to call body to your story.

Q. Genius.

A. You've done well with your exclamation points--you can never have too many in highly-charged dialogue--but you missed a prime opportunity here:

Suddenly, the door swang open!!!

The extra exclamation points should serve as a clue to the reader that Nord has opened the door in a particularly dramatic way. I've also changed the "swing" verb to its subjugular normative form for emphasis.

Q. Wow... I'da never thunk that one up.

A. Of course you wouldn't. Now, we should add what's called voice to your characters. Notice how Bill and Jack talk the same way? People in real life don't, so let's change Jack's:

"Forsooth, thine fondue pot within my luggage hath vexed me to action!" saith Jack.

Q. Sweet.

A. That sort of dialect works best in contemporary fiction like yours. Next, you should memorize this bit of advice: avoid "said" like the plague. Do you know why?

Q. Can't say that I do.

A. Three reasons. First, people tire of reading the same word over and over again. Second, there are usually better, more descriptive words you can use instead. Third, like many other English words, it starts to sound foreign when you repeat it too many times. Try it.

Q. Okay. Said said said said said said said said said said said said said said said said said--yeah, that sounds right funny now. Said. Ha ha. Said said said...

A. Exactly. So we'll replace them--

Q. ... said said said said said said said said said said said said said said said...

A. --and you can kindly shut up. We'll crack open our eternally useful thesaurus to find replacements:

"I told you to keep your filthy hands off my fondue pot!" articulated Bill.

"Forsooth, thine fondue pot within my luggage hath vexed me to action!" forsoothed Jack.

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! "Hey guys!" verbalized Nord. "I just came from the housing office, and I got all three of us in this exact room next year, too!"

"Shut up, Nord!" commented Jack.

Q. Wow!

A. The new said-verbs are less repetitive and more descriptive. As a bonus, you prove to your readers that your working vocabulary is larger than theirs, which helps them respect you.

Q. Yeah, I need some respect.

A. I'm sure. Next, we need to control the pace a little. We can do that by inserting gestures and action into the appropriate places:

"I told you to keep your filthy hands off my fondue pot!" articulated Bill as he gestured at Jack.

"Forsooth," forsoothed Jack as he actioneth a bit, "thine fondue pot within my luggage hath vexed me to action!"

Suddenly, the door swang open!!! "Hey guys!" verbalized Nord, actioning and gesturing. "I just came from the housing office, and I got all three of us in this exact room next year, too!"

Jack actioned on Nord!!! He commented, "Shut up, Nord!"

Q. Yeah, that seems a lot realer. What are they doing when they, um, action? Is it bad?

A. It doesn't matter what they're doing, because they're only doing it to control the pace. Isn't that clever? Now, the dialogue is still a bit weak in one area.

Q. No way. I don't believe it.

A. Early in my writing years, before I emerged from my own dark, cozy hell, I stumbled across an ancient literary device, dating back to, say, the 17th century, for inserting a crackling, highly-charged atmosphere into any dialogue at all. Sadly, it is not commonly employed, and I know not the reason. However, I will teach it to you, young Philistine.

Q. Oh, man, I'm gonna wet myself...

A. Please don't. The technique is called... meteorological accentuation!

Q. Mastorectimal what? What's that mean?

A. It means you accentuate bits of dialogue by playing with the weather, my thick-headed disciple. Nowadays, authors accomplish the same thing, but with little flair, using adverbs. The best place to litter adverbs, however, is not dialogue, but everywhere else. Besides, this is clearly superior:

Outside, a cold, gray storm grew upon the horizon. "I told you to keep your filthy hands off my fondue pot!" articulated Bill as he gestured at Jack. Lightning struck!

"Forsooth," forsoothed Jack as he actioneth a bit, "thine fondue pot within my luggage hath vexed me to action!" Again, lightning speareth the ground! Rain beginneth to pelt the windows as a lunatick child who holdeth a sack of rocks.

Golden rays burst through the clouds. Suddenly, the door swang open!!! "Hey guys!" verbalized Nord, actioning and gesturing in the bright sunlight. "I just came from the housing office, and I got all three of us in this exact room next year, too!"

Jack actioned on Nord!!! He commented, "Shut up, Nord!" The clouds again engulfed the sun, bathing them all in gray, dismal tones. Thunder rolled in the distance.

Q. Wow! Wow!

A. Yes, it's really quite striking, isn't it? Ha ha.

Q. I know... I mean, you know... you know what this means? MY DUDES CAN CONTROL THE WEATHER WITH THEIR MINDS!

A. What? What's this you're blathering about?

Q. Check it out! Bill shouted, and lightning struck! And then Jack got all, uh, vexed, and it started to rain! They can control the weather with their minds!

A. I'm sorry, Bruce, but they can't.

Q. They can't?

A. No. It's just a literary device. And three moody, male roommates with the ability to mentally control the weather is a terrible premise for a book. I'd never, ever use it.

Q. Never?

A. Never. Ever. Anyway, you've been a good sport, if a bit dense. Keep up the good work and you'll be clawing your way out of your own private Hades in no time. Thanks for joining me on Ask Mr. Writing Person. Next time, take a leak before you come.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a novel to start.

Fleshy Plotting With Agatha Christie

2006-05-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in the comments of my last article that I had thrown a book across the room because its pedestrian plot vexed me so. That book is And Then There Were None (or Ten Little Indians, as my copy is titled) by Agatha Christie. Since we've been learning how to spice up a boring plot, this gives us a perfect opportunity for a demonstration.

To refresh your memory, this is the basic plot outline of And Then There Were None:

10 victims arrive on a deserted island
A victim is murdered
They sleep, and someone is found dead in the morning
Someone wanders off alone and gets killed
Goto #3

Christie does mix it up a bit at the end, when Vera Claythorne, a victim, kills another victim, Phillip Lombard, and then hangs herself. The basic plot, though, is horribly clichéd and uninteresting. I can't count how many books I've read or movies I've seen in which a bunch of people are stuck in some kind of locked room and die off one at a time. Christie's book even ends with a final girl, the idea for which she probably got from watching too many slasher movies.

It's derivative in the same way e^x is derivative of e^x. Really, she should have stopped after she realized that her novel was almost identical to the movie Clue, albeit much less interesting.

Let's fix it. We'll start by reviewing the lessons from the last article:

Make your characters true-to-life (we made Aunt Marge and her family into heroin addicts)
Launch major subplots with out-of-character moments (Aunt Marge strangles her boyfriend's hamster)
If your characters are too smart, use puppet stupidity (Aunt Marge runs off to Hollywood and becomes a disgrace to society)

Christie appears to get #3 exactly right, but the problem is she never does anything interesting with it! Yes, these characters wander off alone rather than stick together--but only to get killed immediately afterward! When the last two characters end up together and they know that neither of them could possibly be the killer, one of them shoots the other! Properly stupid, yes, but also boring. What a waste of a perfectly good device.

We're going to combine #1 and #2 into one small tweak that will totally change the story. Here's our new outline:

10 victims arrive on a deserted island
A victim is murdered
They sleep, and someone is found dead in the morning
Someone wanders off alone and gets killed
Phillip Lombard bites Justice Wargrave, who contracts rabies and dies

We'll stop there for now. Recall that, in the book, Justice Wargrave was the murderer. (If you think I just spoiled something for you, don't worry--you're not missing out on much. The book is dreadful.) If he dies, the whole story changes, because only three people are murdered.

How is this a real out-of-character moment? Remember, for the moment to work, it has to actually be in-character, but the reader doesn't know it because he can't read your mind. (Your reader should never presume to, or he's an uppity Philistine.) In this case, Phillip Lombard was raised by wolves. Of course he'd bite a cranky old judge. Cranky old judges run rampant in wolves' natural habitats, and young wolves are taught by their elders to kill them to keep their population under control.

(We can insert additional man vs. himself conflict if we like: Lombard's wolf-issued cranky-old-judge-hunting license has expired, and he spends most of the time struggling against his baser nature, but succumbs.)

What does this have to do with being true-to-life with your characters? Well, as it turns out, one out of every ten people is raised by wolves. There are ten people on the island. We should expect one person to have been raised by wolves, and if we don't put it in the story, we're lying to our readers.

There's a wide variety of places to go now that the story has been freed from Justice Wargrave's iron grip. Take Emily Brent, the pious one. She's so pious that she fired a servant of hers for getting knocked up. That's incredibly pious, and I wish I had the courage to be pious like that. And the thing about pious people--at least if you want to be true to life--they're all heroin addicts. (I also wish I had the courage to be a heroin addict.)

We could explore Emily Brent's heroin addiction and withdrawals, or Phillip Lombard's struggle against his desire to rip people's throats out. Or both! Maybe the six left alive decide to band together to create a comedy troupe and tour Russia. Or we could change the story around completely--a blatant, but brilliantly-done rip-off of Gilligan's Island.

The possibilities are endless. Agatha Christie was born way too early.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: Fleshing Out a Plot

2006-05-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Ask Mr. Writing Person, where we've been tearing down artless cretinism for nearly a whole week now. Today's question is from Lisa Swetchop from Taiwan, who has found herself with an unusually short novel because she's an unpracticed naïf. We can fix that right up with the right ideas. I'm full of them [Ed: it].

Here's Lisa:

Q. I'm working on a murder mystery, and I've almost finished. I've got a problem--

A. (snicker)

Q. --with the plot. It's just too linear. It feels scripted, like the characters are just going through the motions, things happen, and voilà, it's all wrapped up. How do I fix this? How did it happen?

A. The short answer is that you're still a Philistine.

Q. Yeah, I've heard that before.

A. Anyway, there's a long answer, so let's get to it. Give us a rough outline of your story.

Q. Okay, here it is:

Butler finds dead body, calls police
Police want nothing to do with it because the house is haunted, but the police chief's Aunt Marge finds out about it and investigates
Aunt Marge discovers the reason behind the "haunted" rumor and simultaneously solves the case

So how do I fix it? My novel's only 110 pages, and everything's done.

A. There's a market for those--they're called novellas, which is Latin for lazy Philistine. Plenty of authors write them, but you don't want to be like that. They're the kind of authors that other authors snicker about at parties and slap "Kick Me" signs on, who don't get all the women and fame and glory and millions in advertising revenue that the rest of us get. You want women and fame and glory, right?

Q. I guess so. What do I do?

A. First, you need subplots. I'll bet Aunt Marge is a heroin addict.

Q. She's not!

A. Nothing is sacred, young grasshopper. Nothing! Aunt Marge is a heroin addict, and the police chief is her main supplier.

Q. No, he's good and honest--

A. Sure he is. He puts up an honest veneer, when in reality, he's stealing drugs from the narcotics unit to supply his whole family, because Aunt Marge comes from a whole family of addicts.

Q. Wait, wait...

A. The world isn't full of just good people and murderers, Lisa.

Q. I know that.

A. It's full of good people, murderers, and heroin addicts. You need to add that to your story, or you risk lying to your readers. You don't want to lie to your readers, do you?

Q. No. No, I don't.

A. Good. Now that we've got that settled, we can talk about its effects on the story. Now you can spend at least 50 pages on Aunt Marge's heroin addiction, which brings you into short novel territory. You can even work in a more personal interest for Aunt Marge, because the dead guy was one of the police chief's friendly dealers. Your characters needed motivation, and now at least one of them has it.

Q. Terrific.

A. Okay, next item: does Aunt Marge have a love interest?

Q. The butler.

A. Great. We need what's commonly called an out-of-character moment. These are a principal driving force behind soap opera plots, and they work surprisingly well. Here's a new plot outline, with the moment inserted:

Butler finds dead body, calls police
Police want nothing to do with it because the house is haunted, but the police chief's Aunt Marge finds out about it and investigates
Aunt Marge falls in love with the Butler, strangles his hamster
Aunt Marge discovers the reason behind the "haunted" rumor and simultaneously solves the case

Q. She'd never strangle a hamster!

A. Of course not, and that's the genius behind it! Well, your readers would think she couldn't possibly strangle her lover's hamster, but you would know better.

Q. I thought we weren't supposed to lie--

A. It's not a lie, it's a mystery! A little mystery within your larger mystery, a cipher within a puzzle, like those stupid Russian dolls. You're holding back information on your character in order to spring it on your readers, to keep them on their toes.

Q. Won't they think it's too unbelievable?

A. If your readers are getting so uppity that they presume to know more about your characters than you do, they need something to jar them out of it. An uppity reader is a bad reader. A Philistine.

Q. Okay.

A. So Aunt Marge has anger issues, which only come out later in the book. Now you've got a love interest, a betrayal, and, if the Butler stays mum about the hamster's killer, another murder mystery within your overall mystery. That's worth at least 75 pages, which brings the total to 235. We're arriving, Lisa; we can see the light. Can you see it?

Q. Yeah, I can see it.

A. Go toward the light, Lisa. Your best friend now is puppet stupidity, a mainstay of television sitcom writing, and particularly effective. Am I correct in assuming that your main characters are unusually intelligent?

Q. Most of them, yeah, especially Aunt Marge. Otherwise she'd never be able to solve the case.

A. Great. One superb way of starting a new subplot is to have a main character do something really, really stupid. In this case, after Aunt Marge is discovered to be the hamster's true murderer, she should sell all of her possessions, pack herself off to Hollywood to find an acting job, and wind up scrounging for walk-on parts by day and working nights as a slinky cocktail waitress.

Q. What??

A. It's perfect! There's nothing better than carefully-timed and carefully-orchestrated stupidity to spice up a novel. You know why? Because smart people are boring. Aunt Marge is boring unless she ends up as a cocktail waitress.

Q. She's 56 years old! People won't believe--

A. Yeah, yeah. Your uppity readers again. Look, you're the author. You can make your characters do things. They're puppets, not people. And your characters are too smart to do anything interesting by themselves, so you have to do it for them. If your readers balk--

Q. (sigh) They're Philistines.

A. Exactly. Now, let's see... that's 50 for the heroin addiction, 75 for the hamster strangling, and at least 140 for the slinky cocktail waitress thing, making an additional 265 pages of riveting subplot. Add that to your current total, and you have a whopping 375-page novel!

Q. Truly astounding.

A. Isn't it? And fiendishly clever, too.

Q. Can I ask another question?

A. Sure.

Q. Now I have 265 pages of subplot and 110 pages of plot. Should I be worried about the subplots overshadowing the main story?

A. Not at all. Your main plot is so pedestrian I don't think anybody would really miss it if were subsumed by much more dazzling events. I mean, come on. A butler?

Q. I like butlers.

A. You do have something to worry about, however. I wasn't going to bring this up before to spare your delicate feelings, but "blatant Jessica Fletcher ripoff astounds the bungling police" has been done to death in the murder mystery genre. If I were you, I'd write a story about an old spinster heroin addict who strangles her boyfriend's hamster and runs off to Hollywood. It's a gold mine, and you've already got 265 pages' worth of material.

Q. I'd have to throw away--

A. I knew you'd agree. And make sure you have Aunt Marge, in a fit of angst against the film establishment, set fire to Sigourney Weaver's car. That would be wicked literate.

Do the right thing, my young puppet master.

Illiterate Philistines

2006-05-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

The only thing harder than discussing great writing with an illiterate Philistine is getting one to produce great writing.

Here, on this blog, I will post actual Q&A sessions that I've actually had, which I am not making up, with various Philistines who wish (or have wished) to become great writers. These morsels of counsel will cover the whole gamut of becoming a celebrated author, from hooks to plotting to manuscript preparation to proper flamboyancy at book signings.

I'm doing this because although most of the world at large is not worthy to put a pen to a piece of paper (or a mouse pointer to a multi-line rich text edit control, or even their concentration to a novel; heck, most aren't worthy to park themselves on the crapper and read the latest Reader's Digest), I have God-like compassion upon them all. I was once an illiterate Philistine myself. I had to pull myself up from the dregs and over the brim by my own bootstraps. I broke a fair few. Fortunately, they were leather, and tasted great with A.1. Steak Sauce. That was a big plus when I was still a starving writer, living mostly off of Top Ramen fumes.

(That last paragraph was a prime example of a standard deviation, which serves to draw the reader further into the narrator's point of view. See? You're learning already!)

Those who heed my words will become infamous. Those who do not will, um, not. It's that simple.

By the way, I just noticed that "Illiterate Philistines" would make a great name for a rock band. Outrageous.

Ish'txa'qrau and the Whale

2006-05-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

By popular demand--meaning that one of my dear Philistines has requested it--I am going to demonstrate the rules of hooking that I laid out on a popular novel. In order to preserve a sense of mystery, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but a bit of steady sleuthing will turn it up.

Q. It seems like a lot of published authors are actually artless cretins (which SUCKS because I'm JEALOUS), because they're not following your advice. Can you show us how their work would clearly improve if they'd only sup once or twice from the fount of your immense wisdom?

A. Why certainly, young grasshopper. The inability of many a published author to write a good hook is a well-known phenomenon. They get lazy after their first book, and rely on momentum to keep a reader through the first page. Big no-no! For shame! So here's a famous one after I apply my inspired pen to it:

"Come back here, you stupid whale!" I shouted. But let me back up for a bit, before the part with the harpoon and the mangled corpse.

I--a man or a woman--am called Ish'txa'qrau, and I can't decide which jacket I should wear today. An awful long time ago, I was a miserable pauper, owing to my natural inability to keep a steady job. Being poorer than a gambling-addicted church mouse without family ties to, say, a nice person named Guido, I thought it would be prudent to sail around the world. In a boat. I like to sail, because it helps keep me from beating people up, especially at funerals in November. On Thursdays. I hate Thursdays. The sun's morning rays caught my face just so, throwing it into relief like the face of Abraham Lincoln--who often got into fistfights with November funeral-goers like I do--on Mount Rushmore at sunrise.

Notice the sense of mystery established by not knowing the gender of the narrator or how to pronounce his or her name. (Imagine a woman with an impossible name beating up people at funerals for no reason! How do they ask her to stop?) Everything is explained and described. Conflict is created by various emotional words, a stellar opening line, a corpse, and references to harpooning and fighting. Pace is modulated through alternating short and long sentences. A colorful description of the narrator rounds out the ideas.

Surely it's obvious that this is superior to the original, even if you've never read the original before. It must be, because I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that outclasses it.

I leave running the result through a thesaurus as an exercise for the reader.

Ask Mr. Writing Person: The Hook

2006-05-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, friends, it's time for Ask Mr. Writing Person, the only weekly advice column on the Internet that's neither weekly, a column, nor full of advice. [Ed: It's actually one of six million, but we'll let Mr. Writing Person have his fantasy for now.]

Our question du jour comes from Greg Winnemucca of Reno, Nevada, who is having problems. (Allow me a sly snicker.) Problems writing hooks, that is:

Q. Hi, I'm Greg Winnemucca--

A. Yep. We knew that.

Q. --and I'm having problems--

A. Knew that, too.

Q. --writing hooks.

A. Oh.

Q. I can come up with a good first sentence, but the first paragraph is nearly killing me.

A. Only nearly? How disappointing. Shoot us a first sentence, then, and we'll fix it up.

Q. Okay, here goes:

Elaine stared out at the street below, wondering if she ought to plug the guy downstairs.

A. That's it?

Q. Yeah. Catchy, isn't it?

A. It has major problems, Mr. Moccasins, major problems. The first is, it needs another sentence.

Q. Yeah, that's what I--

A. Here's a revision:

Elaine stared out at the street below, wondering if she ought to plug the guy downstairs. He was a robot, see, and he was leaking out all over the place.

Q. He's not a robot--

A. Stick with me, here. What readers hate most is to have something left undescribed, especially when it's essential to the plot. They need things 100% clear. We didn't know what "plug" means in this context, and we didn't know why Elaine wanted to do it. Now we do.

Q. Okay.

A. Next, readers need a sense of mystery. Not a lot, because a mystery can't carry a hook, but just enough to keep them interested. The easiest way to do it is to name your character something unpronounceable, like "Myxinxy'jhidingmts" or something. This keeps them guessing every time they read it. A more nuanced approach is to lead with a pronoun (which, incidentally, is Latin for "easy to pronounce"). I prefer "it":

It stared out at the street below, wondering if it ought to plug the guy downstairs. He was a robot, see, and he was leaking out all over the place.

Q. But she's a woman!

A. Exactly! "It" is gender-neutral, which means we can change it later. It's part of the mystery! The first question your reader is asking is, "What gender is this person or thing?" A mystery! Isn't that clever?

Q. Sure.

A. This leads me to pacing. If you start with a tight sentence like that, you need to follow it up with something slower. We've already started slowing down, so let's finish:

It stared out at the street below, wondering if it ought to plug the guy downstairs. He was a robot, see, and he was leaking out all over the place. "It" was named Elaine, a woman, really, and she lived in a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment at the top of a 49-storey high-rise that was named after Abraham Lincoln. A cloudy sunset cast its molten gaze across her silhouette like an orange cookie cutter pressed into warm asphalt.

A. Isn't that wonderful?

Q. Yeah.

A. Readers also love imagery and lots of details, so we threw those in, too. Now, one major problem with this is a total lack of conflict. One great trick you can use is to start off with some emotionally-charged dialogue. You can also sprinkle the paragraph with emotional words and imagery. We're partly there, so let's dribble some more in and add some dialogue:

"You idiot!" she screamed.

It stared out at the street below, wondering if it ought to plug the guy downstairs. He was an angry robot, see, and he was leaking out all over the place. "It" was named Elaine, a short-tempered woman, really, and she lived in a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment at the top of a 49-storey high-rise that was named after Abraham Lincoln, who occasionally got into fistfights. A cloudy sunset cast its molten gaze across her silhouette like an orange cookie cutter pressed into warm asphalt.

Q. What do Abraham Lincoln's fistfights have to do with anything?

A. Just anger, that's all. It adds to the atmosphere. Notice that we didn't change the last sentence, because it already has "molten" in it, which is a Greek word for "hot-tempered" (think of a volcano). Also, we've made another pronoun switchup. Think of how fun it'll be when the reader discovers that "she" and "it" are one and the same!

Q. I'm not sensing conflict, here. I'm just confused now.

A. Sure, sure. That confusion is called mystery. Read enough books and you'll get used to it. But if there's not enough conflict, you can always throw in a corpse:

"You idiot!" she screamed as she tossed the corpse aside.

Q. She threw a dead body.

A. Isn't that clever? We all threw a corpse! Here's some more conflict, which arises from uncertainty:

"You idiot!" she screamed as she tossed the corpse aside, wondering what she was going to have for breakfast now.

Q. That's sick.

A. Conflict, young grasshopper! Conflict! Now we have one remaining problem. The reader might not trust us to string two words together--

Q. Not anymore.

A. --so we have to prove to him that we're bona fide wordsmiths. Let's take a look at the final version, in which we've chosen more colorful synonyms to replace our blandest words:

"You cretin!" she witticismed as she catapulted the carcass aside, marveling about what she was going to gormandize for her daybreak repast now.

It rubbernecked out at the corduroy below, wondering if it need obstruct the hombre on the lower underside. He was an apoplectic and shirty intelligent appliance, see, and he was absconding out all over his undersurface. "It" was nomenclatured Elaine, a cantankerous mademoiselle, really, and she populated a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot penthouse at the summit of a 49-storey bungalow that was baptized after Abraham Lincoln, who occasionally indulged in fisticuffs. A cloudy sunset cast its molten gaze across her silhouette like an orange cookie cutter pressed into warm asphalt.

Q. That's amazing.

A. Isn't it? I suggest you find a thesaurus and learn how to use it.

Q. Sure.

A. I have some homework for you. Add another paragraph, and rework the whole thing so the point-of-view character changes twice. It's a fun game for readers that I like to call "Who's really the POV?" Most people love it.

Q. I'm not sure I--

A. That's because you're an illiterate Philistine. You can change that only through much practice, young grasshopper.