A Thought On Cons And Raconteurism

So Jaym Gates linked to this piece – The Ten Commandments Of Flirting, Or: How Not To Be Creepy At Atheist Conventions.  She said, “I want to include these rules in every con packet EVER. These rules aren’t just for atheist conventions.”  So of course, I clicked, because I really don’t want to be That Guy, and was pleasantly happy to realize that (I think) I follow all of them.
This quote on respecting people’s time stuck out, however:
“If you want to tell someone else an anecdote, make it short and get right to the point.”
As someone who tells a lot of stories, I realized that there are certain tales I just don’t tell at conventions.  I’ve learned that my more involved tales (like this little doozy) won’t work, because con space really doesn’t allow a story of over a minute; people are coming and going and interrupting to say hello to old friends, and other folks are wanting their space to share, and if there’s a lot of setup then you basically have to arm-wrestle the table into listening to you.
It’s not like a dinner, where if you say, “This one takes a bit,” you can get some room for a five-minute monologue.  As people’s attentions wander, you’ll get a third of the way through the story and get to the first punchline, and people will think you’re done.  So if you’re committed, you have to either wave someone to shut up, or start up again after they tell their story, both of which are kind of dickish.
No big deal.  I just tell short stories.  And in the hullabaloo, sometimes I don’t even finish those.  It’s cool.  I’m there to listen to other people, not to spout my old tales to other people.
But it’s a little weird to realize that subconsciously, I’ve not only got enough stories to tell, but I have marked many of them as space-appropriate.  This one’s a good con story.  This one’s a good one to tell sitting in my living room.  This one’s a good one to tell in a crowd of four to six people.  I can think of a story and instantly know what social milieu I think it fits into, which is an odd thing to realize about how much I think about stories.
Then again, I’ve sat at the con when That Guy keeps going, “No, no, you gotta listen, and then – get this – this happened.”  And at a con, no tale is amusing enough to be worth hijacking an entire table’s worth of people for ten minutes.  Just trust me on that.
 

How Many Times Could You Ride A Roller Coaster? Okay, How About Winning An Amazon Gift Certificate Instead?

Would you ride a roller coaster for eight hours?  I wouldn’t.  I’d get sick and light-headed and probably dispense all sorts of crazy vomit-style fluids.
What if it was to help terminally ill children have the vacation of their dreams?
Well, my friend Angie is both crazy and brave, and will be headed down to Cedar Point next week to spend the weekend bobbing up and down at frightfully high speeds to raise funds for Give Kids The World, which gives free vacations to very sick children.  This sort of bodily abuse something I could never subject myself to, but this is just one of many reasons I admire Angie.
In addition, Angie is wise and realizes that incentives are needed, so she is offering a $25 Amazon gift certificate to anyone who donates and correctly guesses how many laps she will do over the day.  For your calculations:

• Yes, Angie is allowed to take breaks off the rollercoaster, so she’s not strapped in all day.  But she is both brave and enjoys roller coasters, so I suspect she will spend more time moving than not.
• She will be there from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• The coaster itself takes 2 minutes and 20 seconds.
• If she’s not taking a break, Angie can just stay in her seat between rides, which is the real guessing zone; how long will the loading/unloading process takes?  Angie thinks two minutes, but there’s some play here because one suspects there will be more than a few laps where no one actually gets off.
• Debates in the comments about how many times you could do it, or Angie could, are not only allowed but encouraged.

So.  Donate some money to sick kids, and bet on Angie’s stomach.  You’ll be doing some genuine good in the world, and you have a chance to win some nice merch of your own.

A Brief Rant On Weight Loss

You know what happens when you lose weight?  You’re the star of the show.  Everyone goes wide-eyed when you enter the room, tells you how good you look, asks you what your secret is.  You get your moment on stage where everyone stops and kisses your butt.
And then we wonder why women are so unhealthily obsessed with weight.
Look, I’m not opposed to losing weight as part of a healthy program.  But I do wonder what it would be like if we had the same astonished reaction to someone wearing a button saying “I think I’m wonderful just the way I am” and everyone crowded around to tell them how sexy they were and asked them how they did it.  Because there’s a constant stream of positive feedback for altering yourself to fit society’s needs, but pretty much zippo for happy self-acceptance.
You’re only sexy if you’re in flux.  When you hit a “normal” weight, people stop congratulating you, stop telling you you’re amazing, stop paying attention.  Is it any wonder yo-yo dieting’s a constant in life?
Is there any way we can actually get people to compliment you for who you are right now, and not just when you’ve changed significantly from last week?

The Annual Tradition: A Love Letter To Those Who Kill

Every Memorial Day, I link to my Memorial Day essay: A Love Letter To Those Who Kill.
Two years ago, someone expressed concern about the gendered language of this essay, of the repeated usage of “our boys” when there are, in fact, a lot of women in the military risking their lives as well. She felt that using the term “our boys,” though traditional, renders women invisible. She asked me to revise the essay to change this.
Unfortunately, a combination of “this is a snapshot what I said then, no matter how dumb it may sound to me now” and “I’ve watched George Lucas edit his shit into horror” and “I’m not sure in editing I wouldn’t change the meaning/introduce other errors which would then need to be edited” makes me have a rule that I don’t edit an essay at all once it’s been up for a day or two. (Otherwise, I would doubtlessly edit some of my more controversial essays into such well-reasoned processes that people would wonder what the fuss was about. And the job of this blog is not to always make me look good or enlightened.)
But she raises a good point. This year, I’ll ask you to raise an extra-special toast to the women in our services, and will go out of my way to reference the women (and the gendered flaw in the essay) whenever I link to it in the future.
In any case, flaws and all, here it is.

Tales Of A Fourth-Rate Nothing: Busking On The Wrong Street Corner

During Clarion, I coined the phrase “busking on the wrong corner” to describe the phenomenon of “entertaining writing that doesn’t serve the story.” It’s the reason writers have to  kill their darlings.  It’s the trap that stops a lot of good writers from making the transition to great.
“Busking” is the practice of playing in public spaces for donations – you know, that guy playing the guitar, his guitar case open before him, full of scattered singles and quarters.  Buskers are often some of the most talented musicians.  But the buskers’ art is also partially a knowledge of where the crowds are.
You can sing your fucking heart out on a corner where there’s no foot traffic.  If you’re really good, you might make a few bucks.  But if you’re really good and really smart, you’ll position yourself near the subway where people are pouring out by the hundreds as rush hour ends, a place where even a mediocre musician can clean up.  Part of your strength is not just the raw force of your musicianship, but knowing where to place that skill so it’s maximized with silver rains of spare change.
Writers (me included, oh so included) are often putting their talents to use on the wrong corner.  This chapter is brilliant writing, it’s got great characterization, it’s exciting.  But underneath, the scene is at odds with what the story is trying to do, and what you’ll wind up with is a great scene that advances the story in the wrong ways.
Lemme give you the real-life example: the lead character of the novel I’m plotting right now, Autumn Akeley, is a taxidermist.  In the beginning of the book, Autumn is deep in the woods on a rumor, searching for the Hulk.
Why the Hulk, you ask?  Because she’s not just any taxidermist – she makes wild viral videos online parodying recent movies in order to drive business to her online taxidermy shop.  Autumn’s latest planned video (“The Bearvengers”) needs a gigantic, light-skinned animal she can dye green to play the part of the Hulk.  Autumn does not kill animals for her entertainment (she takes the death of any creature very seriously), but she just got a tip from a hunter that there’s a decaying grizzly in the woods she might be able to use.  She tracks it down with her friend Karla and examines the corpse – it’s a little too moldy for her liking, but it has very light fur.  She thinks she can salvage it.
Then a shot rings out across the forest: there are poachers in the woods.  As someone who hates to see an animal killed senselessly, she does not take lightly to poachers.  She sets off to investigate, starting the chain of events that sets up the novel….
…Now, that’s a pretty good scene.  It’s got an interesting character doing something we’ve never seen done before in a book, it displays her odd compulsions, it allows us to watch her work (if you have a character with an odd profession, people love to see the fine details), and for a short intro it’ll do quite nicely.
And yet we are busking badly here.  Why?
Because this novel is about Autumn’s friendship with Karla.
Okay, unfair, I didn’t tell you that – but the whole point of the novel is that a new man in town with a shadowy past begins to romance Karla, causing a rift when Autumn discovers the man’s past as a serial killer.  And this scene, while good in a vacuum, utterly fails to set up the dynamics of Karla and Autumn and their friendship.  In fact, you’d be excused for forgetting the existence of Karla in this summary, because while we can put in some nice dialogue and characterization to set up Karla’s character, the underlying structure of the scene is not about her at all.
This is a great scene for a novel featuring bold Autumn Akeley, bold adventurer.  It’s a terrible scene for Autumn and Karla’s big fight – especially since the next scene involves Autumn tracking down poachers, which has even less to do with their friendship.  And if you’re not a careful writer, you’ll think this is an awesome scene because it’s got it all – humor, good characterization, a quick hook to action – without realizing that it’s an awesome scene that’s structurally at odds with what you want to do in the long run.  It doesn’t set up the things that need to be established.
It’s a good scene in isolation.  In context, it’s a darling that needs to be killed… Or at least dramatically changed so that Karla does something so interesting here that the scene metamorphosizes away from Autumn’s search for the Hulk and into an expression of how Autumn and Karla couldn’t get along without each other.
The point I’m making here is that had I written that chapter, I’d have been very proud.  It’d be a nice, 1,500 word opener that would grab the reader, full of lovely details and fun stuff.
And then I’d have to place it into my trash folder, because ultimately it doesn’t do what it needs to, then hunt for the right scene to write.