On Writing: Have an Impact on the Reader

I finished up “Villa Encantada”, a short story with a frame clocking in at 4500 words yesterday. It’s urban fantasy, the same world as the novel I just sent off to beta readers.

The story’s set in a fantasy version of the complex I live in, which has been FRAUGHT with HO meeting woes that I will not get into here. It’s the result of sitting at many meetings thinking about how much more interesting it would be to live in Villa Encantada, a similar condo complex filled with witches, retired gods, defunct oracles, and even a centaur. Hopefully there will be more set in the same setting.

The story’s also dependent on a secondary frame story,, which I’m not sure about. Here’s the beginning:

The cats were telling stories, from their spaces in the Game, scattered around the sun-baked parking lot of the Villa Encantada complex.

A grizzled Siamese had grabbed control of the telling. He licked his haunches and said, Once upon a time there was a woman who could not forgive herself. Every day she tried to kill herself in the smallest of ways, with cigarettes and lack of sleep and careless driving. She punished herself for a crime she couldn’t name, burning cups of coffee uncushioned by food, high-strung nights of crap television, unsatisfying and numbing all at once.

A tortoise shell spoke from her perch on the arm of a weathered Adirondack chair, a second-story balcony overlooking the way. That’s not how it was.

He blinked, a gesture as majestic as an ice shelf, kilometers high, sliding into the sea.

The tortoiseshell remained undaunted. She continued.

This is how it was.

There’s pieces from the frame used in the actual story itself, which I think makes it feel less superfluous, but I’m also always wary about devices like that. When they work, they’re beautiful – when they don’t, they’re awkward and distracting. So what makes one frame “work” where the next one doesn’t?

Making the frame a story in and of itself is something that often works. If you want to see a book that is concocted of nothing but frame stories, look to Catherynne M. Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden (Kindle version and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice and Kindle version). Valente weaves frames in and out of each other so deftly that she constructs a beautiful basketwork ball of them, a construction where, following one line, you slip into another, and another, then somehow find yourself back in the beginning, with nothing but the world changed.

Other considerations for frame tales: they should be (in my opinion and perhaps not yours but who knows, feel free to chime in with a comment) as well-written as the content they contain. They should be connected somehow, so there’s a reason for the frame tale, something it contributes to the overall shape of the story.

For example, in Villa Encantada, the tortoiseshell cat appears in the story as well, and it becomes, through the interjection of the frame, her story, the story of her efforts in the Great Game played by the cats of Villa Encantada. And then I twist that again in the ending, but I won’t spoil that. :p

So, to recap, frame stories should be:

1. actual stories (or contain the sense of a larger story) in themselves
2. beautifully written
3. connect with the internal story and change its meaning

Anything else? What are your favorite frame stories and why? What have you tried with them and what’s worked best (or worst)?

Tried the balcony out for writing last night. Here’s a blog post that emerged.

For a long time I listen to the ocean, a background of some chirping insect, shrill arcs of sound going out against that massive, constant grumble. That is what life is like, singing out against that gray and empty grind, not caring what it sounds like, because singing is the only thing you can do.

I can feel my shoulders relaxing as I type, the guilt of several weeks (over a month, really) of getting little done, not just because of the traveling or the distractions but because I let myself get lazy and forget that what a writer does is write. If you want to call yourself one, that’s what is necessary and while that’s a hard standard to maintain consistently sometimes in the face of a multitude of crises of the mind or body or world or family, it’s one I hold myself to, first and foremost.

A confession: I am not one of those writers who “have to” write, the ones seized with such a fervid muse that they cannot exist without words spilling out of them. I envy them, and sometimes in my heart, get irritated by a smugness that is really an interpretation imposed by my own insecurities.

But I have always defined myself as a writer, even in the days when I wasn’t writing so much and was pouring all that energy into writing for an online game or technical documentation or some combination of the two. So when I don’t do it, it’s not so much that it’s the writing building up. In fact, some days I’m digging the words out, and they’re obdurately clinging to the inside of my skull so I have to wrestle them onto the keyboard. Even now, I want them to flow and they’re halting, the flow coming in fits and spurts while all the time the ocean softly roars, as though it can’t help itself at times, perhaps getting just a little too excited, a little too enthusiastic in its mutterings.

Here’s the thing. When I’m not writing consistently, when I’m not hitting solid word count on at least most of the days of the week, I feel unmoored, adrift, unsure of my center. What good is a writer who isn’t writing?

There’s also an awareness of time creeping up on me. Often I wish I’d done more with those early years “” though who would have known in all that young adult thrashing about? While I don’t want to let guilt consume me, it’s not a bad goad. I believe it was John McPhee that said any motive for writing is valid, even spite and malice.

And it’s a goal that I know is doable, to hit two thousand words “” and more when I’m being motivated, which often coincides with felicities of mind or body. I don’t worry about whether they’re bad or good, all that matters is that they’re words that actually make it from my mind to the page. Right now I’m adding these words into the count, even though I don’t usually count nonfiction, because right now the focus is warming up, priming the pump, getting myself back into that productive groove.

It’s the days when I get no word count, not even a page written in a notebook, that really bug me, so when the words are flowing, there’s a point where all is well, when I can feel myself assembling words to express what I want to say and they’re falling into place quickly, one at a time but in a constant patter, like raindrops falling on the keyboard.

So tonight is swell and good. We’re here for a month, then probably onward to another country to try a few weeks there. I can get into a routine that feels productive and which includes some of the things that help ensure my mood is good and I’m undistracted by feeling unwell, such as good solid walking bouts and not eating junk food and getting enough sleep.

So what will I work on this month?

First and foremost is finishing up the YA novel I’ve been working on, along with several stories, two for anthologies and a couple for the Patreon campaign. While the stories will be fun and I do want to get them finished, the novel is what I want to be spending most of my time doing. I’ll be posting snippets and word counts as I go, keeping myself accountable. Because that’s another thing for a writer — you have to hold yourself accountable, because there’s nothing out there, really, to do it for you.

Good writing to you all. I hope you’ll get some words today as well.