What I Want to Write

I don't write as much fiction as I'd like to. In fact, I write almost none, reserving my writing opportunities for the occasional journal entry or television-related screed. But I figure I can put one word after another until they form sentences, so why should I always be writing the allegedly humorous essays? Why not fiction?

Well, because I don't know what to write. I've got some ideas but they're more structural than anything. So if you don't mind, I'm going to use this space to sort of talk out loud about the sort of thing I want to be writing. Except that I'm typing, not talking. Look, let's just try to get out of this paragraph gracefully, okay?

One thing I really want to do is write characters with distinctive speech patterns. I don't mean I'm going to go overboard with the dialects (because I personally find that sort of thing annoying to read after awhile) but I'd like the reader to be able to tell who's speaking. My problem there is that I have to force myself to change writing styles from the one you're reading now. If I don't concentrate, I tend to fall into a pattern. You might almost call it a formula. For example, you see that first sentence? The "I don't write as much fiction as I'd like to" bit? I'm pretty sure I've used variants of that lead sentence at least twenty or thirty times on this website. It's just easy. So I need to come up with, at a minimum, one more way of writing that I can do without thinking about, and have that be the way someone talks. Because I really think it looks odd if every single character talks the same way. Especially if they talk the way I write. Believe me, I already talk the way I write, and I get enough weird looks at the office. If there were a bunch of people all talking like me, I think it would be disconcerting.

Another goal, which is more of a plot-related one, is that I want intelligent characters. I don't mean the sort of thing where the narrator claims that a character is brilliant, and then that character acts like an idiot; I'd like readers to really think these characters are smart. It's because I've seen a million plots that only work if everyone involved is an idiot, so I'd like something to represent the other side of the IQ chart. Plus, it's my contention that there are a lot of different types of intelligence, and I think I'd like to read scenes where intelligent people sit around and banter intelligently and say clever things but still look at things in different ways. Doesn't that sound good? Yeah, I should get around to writing something like that.

Really, the "sitting around and bantering" thing is the part I'm most interested in. I kind of like the idea of a huge complicated plot that the main characters keep ignoring so they can sit around and exchange witty repartee. I realize that this would require me to manufacture the repartee, but I'm not that bad at that sort of thing. Although as previously established, I'd have to come up with repartee in two different voices. Possibly more.

Something else I'd like to work in is a fairly complex attitude towards plot resolution. As you may know, the reason that a reader keeps going until the end is to find out what happens. This normally involves some sort of conflict. Like in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is trying to get home, so the reader watches her struggles hoping she makes it. Or in a lot of romantic movies, you have two really pretty people who want to get together, and there are a lot of unconvincing obstacles thrown in their way. I'm thinking specifically of Serendipity. The thing is, in a lot of these plots, it's obvious what the "happy ending" is supposed to be. I'm more interested in a plot where the conflict comes from somebody having to decide between to options that seem equally good (or equally bad). If the conflict is such that the readers don't know how they want it resolved but are willing to keep reading to see what happens, then you've got something.

It's like with jokes. The best punchlines come as a surprise but in retrospect have a feeling of inevitability. A plot that gives someone a seemingly impossible decision between two choices can be resolved by a surprise "third choice" if it's not completely out of left field. I don't know if I'm explaining this very well. Look, take Casablanca. Up until the end of the movie, the audience thinks the "happy ending" will be Rick going off with Ilsa but there's still the issue of Victor Laszlo. And Rick comes up with a different option where he sends Ilsa and Victor off together. See what I mean? Oh, skip it.

I've also got this fairly complicated theory about how if you write a story within a story, you don't need a plot or characters or anything like that, and then you can discard the framing story and decide that you're done. But it's not very convincing and it would take a really long time to explain it. Maybe some other time.