*SPOILER* This blog post ends with a question! *END SPOILER*

I try to read a lot, and since I have a full time job, a lot of that reading is done through audiobooks. I am currently listening to Stephen King’s Duma Key (good book, btw) and noticed there are ’spoilers’ littered throughout. Call me whatever, but I actually think they were easier to notice because of the eyes-off medium. Then again, maybe it’s just the result of a damn good reader. Either way, what I mean by ’spoilers’ is that King will drop sneak peaks to pretty significant plot points several pages before it actually happens. For example, there may be a scene between father and daughter, with everything happy-happy-smile-smile, then the last sentence of the chapter (in its own paragraph, of course): ‘He would never see her again.’

Before I continue, let it be clear that this is not the first time I’ve witnessed glimpses into the future in books. It’s a fairly common practice, something I’ve seen in novels all my life, but what does it do for the reader? Why is it used?

Well, let’s give it a name first. How about foreshadowing? That’s cool…but when I hear that word I think of my old High School Literature class and discussing a few lines of Shakespeare for anywhere between 1 and, oh….102 hours. For this blog post, when I say ‘foreshadowing,’ I’m really talking about spoilers. When the author tells you what’s going to happen, just to eff with you. And you love it.

Let’s look at a more concrete example. From Peter Straub’s Ghost Story:

Elmer Scales…sat up three nights in a row by his living-room window, holding a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun across his knees… He could not possibly have foreseen or understood what he would be doing with that shotgun in two months’ time. Walt Hardesty, who would have to clean up Elmer’s mess, was content to take things easy…

Not to spoil too much, but 200 or so pages later, Elmer had his ‘mess.’ So what was the point Mr. Straub? What prompted you to even put that in there if you weren’t going to write about it until half a novel later?

Letting your reader know a character’s fate far before it happens will do a few things, both good and bad. For one, all in-between writing involving that character will be put in to a different context. The reader will be looking for signs, reasons, and justifications for what’s on the horizon. Their brain’s will also be in overdrive trying to guess just exactly what’s going to happen. Whenever Elmer Scales (a character with a relatively small role) made his way back in to the writing, my attention went up. I became extra aware of his actions and his surroundings, because this man with a shotgun was supposed to make one hell of a mess and–dammit!–I wanted to see it! It’s like being in a haunted house for the first time but someone gave you a map of where all the scares are. Before every marked corner, you’re going to approach with caution, desperate to identify any hints to what kind of ghoul or creature you’re about to face.

Foreshadowing in this way also sparks that fairy-tale loving part of us, that part that wants everything to turn out ‘happily ever after’. We know someone is about to die (hell, the author just told us!) but we still hold on to that slim possibility that we read wrong, that things can and will turn out differently, all the way up until the fingers turn all cold. In this Elmer Scales example, this wasn’t necessarily true, but for situations where the future victim is well-liked, you have that natural anxiety. It’s a nice effect that keeps lights on and pages turning.

Of course, like any unorthodox technique, it is a gamble. There’s a reason internet brats who make it their full time job to spoil movies/books/video games for people are considered internet brats. People don’t like the spoilers and would sometimes rather come to the conclusion themselves. Additionally, what’s the incentive to read if you know how everything will turn out? Ever read a good book that started with ‘In 6 months all of the main characters will be dead.’ I thought not

Since I am using the term, I might as well touch on the more traditional connotation of ‘foreshadowing.’ Besides, not everything in this extravagant world is shot in our faces, spelled out in neat little letters on our kitchen tables while we have our morning cup of coffee. Foreshadowing can be a subtlety, an image, even as simple as the one fitting piece at the end of a set of coordinated events. Remember that the root of fiction’s difference from truth is one indisputable characteristic: fiction is made up. An occurence in real life has no one behind the pen calling the shots, so life can be filled with both significant happenings and those that hold no relevance at all for the future. Fiction doesn’t work like that. Everything between the covers is there for a reason–or, rather, should be there for some reason. This means that if something sticks out to you in chapter one that isn’t immediately addressed. you should expect to see that little detail come back around for a proper 15 min of fame.

These types of foreshadowing leave a greater sense of mystery for the reader and can add an extra layer of fun during that second read-through. In the end, though, it’s all about style and preference. So, dear readers who are also writers, please share your thoughts on ’spoilers’ and ‘foreshadowing’ in fiction. Good techniques? Cheap? Annoying? Brilliant.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Everyone in the world does not speak like I speak. Which, by the way, is a good thing, because I’m from New Jersey, and we fine New Jersey folk aren’t always known for our fabulous verbal skills. For instance, as a child I might have said, “Gimme some wooder!” Which, translated into proper English, means: “Give me some water.” My mother, bless her heart, seems to fully believe that parmesan cheese is, in fact, pronounced “parmeesheen” cheese. I live in California now, and people are able to spot my slight (I hope) New Jersey accent. Just because I’ve chosen to try to speak properly, it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy hearing the strange, funny, fascinating ways others speak the language. I’m an active listener; I sit on trains or buses or in coffee shops and bookstores and bars, and I listen; I want to know how everyone speaks. My ears tingle when a nearby stranger turns a crazy or original phrase. As a writer, I listen to people speak because it helps me tremendously when I’m working on dialogue. (As a human, listening to people speak is just great entertainment.) I want all of my characters to have their own unique voice. I don’t want my characters to all sound like they’re males who were born in New Jersey. That’d be pretty boring. If a story I’m writing has fifteen characters, I want fifteen distinctive voices. Every character must be unique, with their own perspective on life, with their own inner-voice, and their own cadence.

Easier said than done.

Earlier in my long, but not yet illustrious writing career, I had a terrible problem. All of my characters sounded like me. I had a voice as a writer, and all my characters were horribly afflicted that voice. Even the female characters sounded like me…like me if I were wearing a dress and didn’t have a penis. I was writing stories, because the stories were swirling in my brain and needed to come out, but I hadn’t fully developed the characters. They were just tools to get the story where I needed it to go. But they weren’t people. They were either me, people I knew, or they were generic.

I’ve written previously about my aversion to plotting. I simply prefer a story to flow right from my noggin to the paper or computer screen. What I will do, however, is write out a list of characters and any important attributes. Who are these people in my story? Where were they born? What schools did they attend? Did they come from a happy home or a miserable one? Was their family wealthy or broke? Does my lead female have Daddy issues? Does my lead male have Mommy issues? How much heartbreak or loss have they suffered? Are they cursed by nightmares? Have they seen a ghost? Have they been abducted by aliens? What’s their take on the JFK assassination? Writing a brief history of my characters helps me shape their actions and their voice. I need to know these people before I tell their story and speak for them.

Writing good dialogue, even when you have your characters nailed, is still tricky business. Dialogue has to sound natural, yet be completely unnatural; dialogue has to be wittier, more concise, and flow better than we humans actually speak, yet sound exactly like we humans speak. It’s smoke and mirrors. A magic trick.

I tend to write dialogue in a loose way. I’ll write, “I’m gonna get some milk.” When I read, “I am going to get to some milk,” all I can think is: That sounds completely unnatural. Or, I’ll read a line like, “Hello. My name is David. What’s yours?” and I’ll cringe. If I’m reading a story, and a single line of dialogue sounds phony, it takes me right out of the story. I work for a company that evaluates screenplays. Each week I’m given a few screenplays to read and review, and I’m stunned by how many of these scripts contain stilted dialogue. I want to scream every time I read stuff like, “I have heard there is a problem. What is going on? What is the problem?” It’s just lame and unreal. Dialogue needs to be dynamic. Dialogue is the hardest part of writing, for me, at least.

But when I read or hear great dialogue, it sends tingles down my spine. That’s what I strive for every time. I want people to remember my characters and the words they’ve spoken. I always read back my dialogue, either out loud or in my head.

So, always remember: Dialogue must be natural-sounding, but transcend “natural” completely.

When dialogue is done right, the results are downright amazing. You don’t forget great dialogue.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but since I still have this particular problem, I’m going to rehash it now: One of the toughest things about writing a story or an article, for me anyway, isn’t the actual writing of the damn thing, but figuring out what to call it. I have a tough time thinking up titles for pieces I’ve written, and have for as long as I’ve been putting ink to paper. Usually, if I’m under the gun, I’ll often end up with a song title, since I tend to think in musical terms. It’s my default position, and it’s something of an irritant to me, as it seems like a failure of imagination.

I had something of the same problem as a newspaper copy editor. It’s been a while since I was in the industry, so maybe things have changed, but one of the responsibilities of copy editors at most newspapers (at least, the ones foolish enough to hire me) is writing the headlines for the stories they edit. Usually, it falls to the first editor who reads the story, but not always, and the first attempt is rarely the final version.

Granted, it was a little easier for me as a copy editor; I wasn’t necessarily invested in the story when it came to my spot on the copy desk, so some pressure was off. Plus, I never had a problem with making outrageous lines up, since I knew it would get changed later down the line. Sometimes, the universe gets you back, though; every now and then, the headline I’d throw in as a joke would make it to print. Even though final responsibility for pages falls to section editors and, ultimately, the news and/or managing editors, newspapers are just like any other organization in that shit tends to roll downhill.

Anyway, I tend to get a little jealous of writers who can cough up evocative titles for their work, even if they’re ripping off other sources like I rip off song titles. Tennessee Williams wrote a play in the 1940s called Battle of Angels, which isn’t bad so much as it is bland (just like the play, as far as I’m concerned). He wasn’t done with it, though, and that madman kept revising it until it worked better for him, at which point he gave it the much cooler name Orpheus Descending. Sure, he stole that from Greek mythology, but say it out loud, and I think you’ll find title v. 2.0 is much more interesting, not to mention more ominous. Jack McDevitt, a hard SF writer, wrote a novel I picked up just for the title: The Engines of God. Simple, straightforward, but reaches out and says, “Pay attention; we’re gonna get some wonder up in here!”

In English, of course, certain constructions and rhythms lend themselves more to this kind of thing than others. The phrase “In the _____ of the ______ ______,” with its old-fashioned syntax and focus on the phrase’s end, tends to get a lot of use for this reason, probably ever since Grieg paired it with some awesome music and coughed up the only part of the Peer Gynt Suite that anyone under 40 knows, “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” Because English puts adjectives before the words they describe–unlike the aptly named Romance languages (romantic come-ons do sound better in French; it’s true)–we get a lot of mileage out of reversing that order, as demonstrated by the Williams example above.

Portmanteau words, where a new word is created by splicing together two previously unrelated words, also work well if applied creatively. William Gibson did this quite nicely with Neuromancer. Gibson is one of those guys who’s consistently good with titles: Although you could argue he ripped off the basic idea from a 1970s rock group, I must take my hat off (figuratively speaking) to the man for naming a book Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Of course, recognizing certain titling techniques and being able to put them into practice are much different kettles of fish. It’s something I’m still struggling with, as it’s one of the glaring flaws I see in my own work (as opposed to the glaring flaws I completely fail to notice), but it’s something I can at least tackle in a concrete fashion. Anybody have some good processes for generating interesting titles they’d like to share? Feel free to climb the soapbox and share. I don’t know about everybody else, but I could certainly use the help.

Wait…what? Research? But I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to do that stuff. What are we talking about here? Research papers, all-nighters in the library, endless Google searches? Maybe…but, then again, maybe not.

Authenticity is the name of the game, people. You can be the best writer in the world, with the best eye for stories, but if your lawyer doesn’t talk like a lawyer, you’re not going to impress your audience. Ever been to a movie with the friend who likes to yell out every two minutes how unrealistic the plot is? Yeah, something like that. People want to be taken to a new and different place, but they also want to be tricked (if just for a little while) that what they’re seeing is real. Or, at least, that it could be.

So how do you approach a topic that you are just burning to write about, but you don’t have the experience to give it the justice it deserves? You have the perfect character and plot for a jail-setting, but how do you make it authentic when you’ve never even cheated on a test? You want to take your journey overseas, but you don’t even have a passport? Do you just stop writing?

Of course not. Honestly, I’d rather write something and try it out without knowing diddly squat than abandon the work. But this should be worst case scenario. If you have the capacity, you should seriously look into livening up your subject matter by doing your homework. Depending on your lifestyle, certain things will be more natural for you to write about, while others will be as foreign to you as E.T. and his phone-home. As a writer, your job is to determine what those things are and whether its worth taking the time to increase your knowledge-base. For the sake of the story, of course.

Before you groan at the thought of ‘doing your homework,’ think of it this way: you’ve spent your whole life doing research. Your experiences, triumphs, failures, and observations all contribute to what you write. The catch is, you’re only one person, with only one life to live. But who’s to say you can’t take from the experiences of others? That’s what research for writing is: tapping into unused (by you) resources. This can be through interviews, day-to-day conversations, reading, or even putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Personally, I prefer the last.

Let’s say you were writing a novel and one of your characters just happened to be a police officer. What would you do, if anything at all, to give this character life? Would you be opposed to interviewing a cop? How about shadowing one for a day and riding shotgun in their cruiser? These are actual ways successful authors have added authenticity to their law enforcement characters, something that always intrigues me. It makes me wonder what kind of information you can get from these interactions that you can’t extract from television, movies, books, or the news. Why don’t those mediums suffice as research? If I read stories about police officers non-stop for a significant amount of time, will I be able to create my own? Or is that hands-on experience essential? Or is the mere ability to say you’ve done your research the real value?

I went to Ecuador a couple summers ago. I told people it was for ‘inspiration to write a book.’ I had the idea for a potential gem of a story involving your typical urban American youth forced to adjust to a sudden third-world life. The idea of travel came out of left field: I had never been out of the country before. But hey, I was in college. I figured it was the type of risky shit college kids were supposed to do. While there I tried to observe all I could, write everything down, and interview people left and right. Most of all I tried to be cognizant of my experiences–whether good, bad, or ugly–so that I could ring them up later when it was time to put it all on paper.

Was it enough for me to make something believable? Who knows. Did it give me a starting point? You bet. The important question, though, is whether I would be able to write with the same authority and authenticity if I had merely read up on the different cultures and lifestyles I experienced? Or watched multiple documentaries?

I honestly can’t say. And I guess that’s where the debate comes in. What is necessary when writing a story? When is research an asset, when is it an accessory, and when is it just a waste of time?

Thoughts, all around.

While watching Avatar recently, for the second time, I began to pick apart certain story elements that were familiar/trite/lame/silly/illogical, and I thought to myself, “None of that stuff really matters with this film, because I’m enjoying the hell out the experience. I’m hanging out on Pandora and I don’t want to leave.” Sure, Michelle Rodriguez wouldn’t have been able to get our hero guy and Sigourney Weaver and that other superfluous dude out of the brig because she’d be there herself for abandoning the mission, but so what? The 3D truly did suck me into this other world, and whatever concerns I had about the story didn’t really detract from the overall movie-going experience. It was the first time, for me, that 3D felt like an experience instead of just a gimmick. I thought, “It’s not about the story and words. It’s about the orgasm my eyes are having all over these funky 3D glasses.” I’ve heard people are distraught after watching Avatar, jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge because the real world can never live up to the Avatar World. The movie ends and they have to go back to their shitty lives. They are not distraught because the writing was so terrific that their vocabulary could not live up to the words spoken on the Avatar World.

With the success of Avatar (I’m fairly certain it’s eking out a small profit, or so I‘ve heard), and with the current slate of 3D films heading to theaters, I do have one itsy bitsy concern: Writing might not matter anymore. There are so many 3D films coming out this year and next that theaters are adding hundreds of new 3D screens just to keep up with Hollywood’s output. Now, obviously, movies have always been a visual medium, but the words were usually equally important. But the scales are tipping. Tim Burton has Alice in Wonderland set to his theaters in 3D; the next Spider-Man film will be in 3D. Technology is becoming so amazing that it’s starting to smother story and words beneath a dreamy CGI wave.

I worry about the words. I worry about the story. Writing can take us places too, wonderful places, but we are forgetting. Our eyeballs are saying, “Sorry, brain, it’s all about us now.”

Newspapers are dying. The internet has become a priest reading those crumply old newspapers their last rites. Getting news from the internet is fine and dandy, and quick! But certainly not always accurate. People want to break a story, and they can, in seconds, whether they have all the facts or not. Newspaper reporters trained for years and honed their craft. Sure, they made mistakes, too. On the internet, anyone and everyone is a reporter. Someone Tweets, “I saw Charlie Sheen sipping vodka off a stripper’s boobs!” and, voila! It’s news. I do get some news from the ‘net, and I believe there are reliable news sites all over cyberspace. Still, I miss the days when I woke up in the morning and opened the paper and was surprised by that day’s top story. On the internet, writing isn’t so important: what’s important is getting attention. Tiger Woods sleeping around is today’s Watergate. Big news.

Plagiarism continues to rear its ugly head. Now, more than ever, people feel like they can just “borrow” other people’s words and not give proper credit. Nobody owns the words, but they do own how they shape the words. The rules of the game seem to be forgotten or simply not known by much of the younger crop of writers out there.

People are texting more than they are writing. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I simply can’t bring myself to send a text that isn’t grammatically correct. I can’t help myself. I want to preserve the language, because the English Language is glorious. The guy who invented words was the James Cameron of his day.

Me? I am not superior. I am reliant on my computer to a fault. Sometimes I flat-out forget how to spell. Because I know my computer will do it for me. My laptop will say, “It’s okay, Ervin. I will help you out with ’superfluous’ and ‘grievous’ and ‘nefarious’ because you are only human and I am beyond human.”

Story and words matter to me. I like eyeball candy just like the rest of you. I must admit, though, that Avatar scares me, because it is the future. And Avatar has nothing to do with story and words. In the 70’s, Star Wars and Jaws came along and ushered in a new era in cinema: The Blockbuster. Those gritty, personal films by Cassavetes and Altman and the like were suddenly less interesting because America discovered the epic.

We’re all in the Avatar World now. I hope we’ve brought our brains with us.

I found a folder in my file cabinet the other day that I haven’t seen in a while. It’s sitting on top of my computer right now, and my eyes keep drifting away from the screen and settling on it. I really ought to move the damn thing.

This folder has a collection of work that I printed off and saved from a long-ago machine, the big honking Brother I used in college that could only handle word processing. Most of the stuff in this folder is at least 15 years old, and some of it is north of 20. What surprises me about these fragments, these half-assed scenes and odd poems, is not how good they are—some are, but most stink on ice—but how much potential I see in them. I read through these pieces, and the problems I remember having with them are now readily solvable. Structure, character, plot: all of the issues I struggled with, I now see ways to resolve.

While I’d like to credit my insights with the awesome growth in my skills, most of these changes in perspective have simply come with time. There are 15 more years of reading behind me, numerous classes and workshops and other pieces that I’ve sweated over and learned from, and while I have indeed become a better writer, time deserves most of the credit. Learning to see things from other perspectives, learning to trust what I know and not make things more complicated than they have to be: all these and more have come with the passage of years and practice.

Revisiting these pieces has been a great help lately, because they reassure me I’m on the right track. I may doubt my skills at times, particularly after the latest addition to my rejection letter library, but I read through these pieces and know I’ve improved. Ever since coming back from LTUE, I’ve felt a renewed determination to chase success as a professional writer, and I’ve taken steps in that direction: picking up the revision process on my first novel, submitting stories to magazines, researching in the field by picking up my reading in the pro markets. Not believing in your talent is a common failing among writers—almost as common as hubris concerning one’s skills—but having proof in your hands that your skills have increased is an excellent tonic.

Do you keep an archive of your old writings? Maybe you’ve got a folder on your hard drive that you’ve ported from machine to machine over the years, or maybe a pile of dusty journals and folders under your bed. If you do, take some time to pull them out and look them over; see how much you’ve improved over the years, what you’ve learned and what flaws you’ve had from the beginning, or at least earlier. If you don’t have such an archive, it might serve you well to start keeping one. Even if you have no historical use for it, or get no creative stimulation from it, it’ll probably provide you with a good chuckle now and then. Besides, if you do ever get successful and famous, somebody may want to start a library of your papers, and what better seed stock than your earliest labors?

Knowing where you’ve come from, whether in your writing, your family or any other pursuit you chase for pleasure or profit, is invaluable in helping you figure out where you’re going, and more importantly, where you want to go. Taking a look back now and then is a useful exercise, as long as you don’t lose sight of what’s ahead. After reacquainting myself with some of the things I wrote in my first adult years as a writer—good, bad and plain inept to a disturbing degree—I have a better grasp on where I want to be, and feel more ready to take the steps necessary to get there. Here I go.