FIRST CAR

Setting The Stage

Drawing a Picture With Words

            From the beginning of my writing career, my wife Carolyn has been my working editor.  She pulls no punches and helps with so many things, like not switching character point of view, not losing reader momentum in backstory or subplot tangents, focusing the direction of character dialogue, and clearly setting the stage for key story events.  She is also good at reducing and simplifying my sentence and paragraph structures.

            She has always loved theater and thinks in terms of what the set (background, scenery and props) should look like.  Properly staging the story in crisp, clean wording helps the reader form a complete mental picture of what is happening, which keeps the reader oriented and engaged.

            Using the right props can make or break a key story event.  In addition, a good prop can be woven into the story to tie together a chain of events or people.  Certain props can even have their own character, almost a personality.  My first car was just a stripped-down dune buggy, an engine on a frame, but it still had lots of character, which contributed to the success of many of my teenage adventures.

            I got my first car because of someone else’s Christmas gift.  Gerald Rana and I played on the football team together throughout high school.  He was a hard-charging full back; I was a center.  One year, Gerald’s neighbor got an arc welding kit for Christmas and that very day, the neighbor pushed an old Pontiac into his front yard.

"Pontiac Straight-8" by User Bill Wrigley on en.wikipedia.

 Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

A straight-8 engine in a still intact Pontiac.

            No one worried about the lawn; Trona had no lawns.  The alkaline soil killed any grass (and even most weeds) that tried to grow there.  With no lawn to worry about, the neighbor decided to use the space in front of his house to turn an old car (with a great engine) into a dune buggy.

            Cutting arc in hand, the neighbor dove in and stripped off the car body, even removing the dash board with all its gauges. Then he sliced right through the middle of the car, drive shaft and all, so that the car lay in two separate pieces.  Cutting all the way through the car again, but now just in front of the rear wheel assembly, he hauled the whole middle section of the car away to the dump.

dimasobko/123rf Stock Photo
Arc Welding a Steel Frame.

            He was energized!  Work continued for days in every spare moment.  He welded together the front and rear pieces of both the drive shaft and frame.  The car was now less than half its original length.

            The straight-8 engine, with its eight pistons in a row, took up half the length of the buggy.  Behind the engine on the shortened frame was just a bench seat with a gas tank tucked behind that.  The car ended there.  With no real weight to pull, that straight-8 knew no bounds.

            The next step in the plan was to weld on roll bars and side supports, but Gerald’s neighbor ran out of steam at that point.  The project sat idle for weeks.  All along, Gerald had been observing the project next door with interest, so one day his neighbor called him over.

            “Hey, Gerald.  You like this dune buggy?”

            “Sure,” Gerald said.  “It’s going to be great.”

            His neighbor chewed his lip.  “I think I’m done.  My wife is tired of this project and keeps reminding me that I’ve got other things I should be working on.”  He raised his eyebrows at Gerald.  “If you want it, I’ll sell you this buggy ‘as is’ for just my out-of-pocket costs.”

            “Yea?  How much you talkin’?”

            “Fourteen dollars.”

            While you couldn’t beat the price, I think Gerald realized there were going to be ongoing costs of upkeep, and it would be good to have a partner sharing those costs.  There were a number of guys he could have partnered with, but he chose me, and the next day in school, he approached me with a proposition.  He would let me in on the deal as a 50% owner if I paid half the price to his neighbor.

            This sounded like a sweet deal to me.  I was 14 or 15 years old at the time and crazy about cars.  Though I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, I had been driving (mostly off road) for some time.  The buggy had no lights or plates or anything else that was required by law for street use, but it was after all, just a dune buggy intended only for off-road use.  I figured I could sell the concept to my Dad on that basis.

            Early the next morning, when no one else was around, I approached Dad as he ate a solitary breakfast at the kitchen-bar counter.  “Hey, Dad.  Gerald Rana’s neighbor has a dune buggy for sale.  Gerald and I want to go in on it 50/50.  Can I buy half?”

            Dad looked at me closely as he chewed another bite.  I could see dollar signs flashing in his eyes and knew he was wondering how many hundreds of dollars this was going to cost him.

            “It won’t cost much,” I said encouragingly.

            Dad smiled and shook his head.  “How much?”

            “Fourteen bucks is the total cost.  If I pay seven dollars, I’ll be half owner.”

             Surprise flitted across his face, and he stopped chewing.  Then his grin widened.  I was prepared with a list of logical reasons why this purchase would make good sense, but without another question, he stood up, pulled his billfold out of his pants pocket and peeled off a five dollar bill and two ones.

            Handing the money to me he said, “Here you go.  Just don’t kill yourself.”

            I had a dune buggy (half a dune buggy), but to us, it was a car.  We couldn’t drive it much at night, without using flashlights, or drive it to school, but otherwise it had many practical uses.  Since the County Sherriff only came through Trona on Thursdays, most of the time we drove it all over town.

            It was an educational purchase as well.  I learned a lot about auto repair.  Whenever anything went wrong, we’d drive out to the city dump and rummage around in the abandoned cars for a new part.  We didn’t care if it came from a Pontiac or not.  We could make just about any part from any other make or model work in our Pontiac.  Once, the starter motor went bad.  We found one that didn’t look too corroded in a Ford and drilled new holes in the frame to make it fit into our Pontiac.  The buggy started up like a dream.  Already a Frankenstein creation, we constantly attached more miss-matched parts, always trying to make it run better (faster).

            The real joy was what that buggy could do.  And the freedom we enjoyed.  We drove all over the desert, exploring places a regular car could never go.  We did tear up a lot of old tires, but there were piles of replacements available at the dump, and we were always trading out the buggy’s tires in a constant tradeoff between better traction or greater speed.

            For a while, we were excited with a set of rear dual tires mounted on dual rims from an abandoned, flatbed truck, but in the end, we decided the duals slowed us down too much and went back to single rims.

            Sometimes, we considered the cost of getting a set of roll bars added to the frame, but we worried about the extra weight the bars would add to the buggy.  Long term, the only things we really missed were the gauges, especially the gas gauge and a speedometer.  We were always dipping a stick into the gas tank to see how much gas was left, and we never knew how fast we were going.

            Though we didn’t know our speed, we did know, in a drag race, we never had any trouble shutting down all the other buggies around town.  None of those new V8s could hold a candle to our straight-8, and with the right tires, we would leave the competition in the dust.

            Once when Gerald’s parents were out of town, he drove his Dad’s car behind me as I raced the buggy down the Trona-Wildrose Highway as fast as I could go.  We wanted to see what the buggy’s maximum speed could be on a paved highway, but in just a few miles on a straightaway stretch of road, Gerald’s car fell back quickly.  He wasn’t matching my speed, so I slowed, waiting for him to catch up.

            When he pulled up beside me in the opposite lane, I yelled, “What’s the matter?”

            “When you got past 120 mph, my Dad’s car couldn’t keep up anymore.  You were leaving me in the dust like I was standing still.”

            We never did find out what the buggy’s maximum speed was, and I never did tell my Dad about the speed test.  However, I am sure that buggy was the best $7 investment I’ve ever made, and to this day, I sometimes sit back, close my eyes and imagine that I’m flying through the desert behind a Pontiac straight-8 engine with the pedal to the metal and no cares in the world.

            That first car was a first love of a special kind, which takes on the magical characteristics of the best kind of prop found in any story, fiction or otherwise.  Whenever I think of setting the stage in a story with a powerful prop, I will always think of my first car in all its stripped-down glory, and then attribute the quirky characteristics needed to give my story’s key prop its own, one-of-a-kind personality—one that any reader could love.

DYNAMITE DAD

PEOPLE WATCHING:   The Skill of Character Development

A Call to Grow Up.

                 When people ask my brother, Andy, what he recommends to new writers, he usually says three things:   (1) keep writing – write about anything and everything,  (2) visit new places – keep traveling both near and far,  and (3) study people – pay attention to the people around you and take note of what they say and do.  This week, I’m still talking about the benefits of people watching.

                 From my earliest days, one of the people I watched most closely was my Dad.  I have many memories of Dad, but one sticks out in my mind from my high school senior year in Trona, California.  Dad was the only dentist in town and active in community service.  For many years, he served on the local school board.

                Trona is an isolated, small town, located deep in the Mojave Desert.  The principal employers in the area are the local mineral processing plants and the railroad.  The surrounding desert is studded with old mines and active prospecting sites, where stashes of dynamite have been abandoned, ready for the taking by curious teenagers.

                During one school board meeting, the recreational use of dynamite by high school students became a hot issue.  Recently, someone had blown up a small bridge at the Trona golf course.  (It wasn’t me.)  The local golf course was just one big sand trap.  It had no grass, but Dad sometimes played it.  In that board meeting, Dad waxed a bit hot under the collar on what should be done about this problem, until another board member interrupted to say, “AlDean, your son is one of the ringleaders.”

Looking West From Trona
Past the Old Trona Golf Course
Toward T Mountain in the Argus Range

                That stopped Dad cold.  Until that moment, it had never occurred to him that I might have dynamite.

                I confess.  I was guilty as charged.  For several years, my friends and I had collected dynamite.  With the hard caliche layer in our desert soils, the use of dynamite was common both in construction as well as in mining, and dynamite didn’t scare me.  I had researched the use of dynamite in a large university library while I was staying on campus at a week-long, youth conference for high school kids.  Along with learning the basics of setting a blast, I had researched safety issues.

               What could go wrong?

                I was late that night coming home from football practice.  We lived in Pioneer Point, north of Trona.  As I walked in, I saw Dad sitting on a straight-back chair in the living room, facing the front door, staring at me.  This was unusual.  I had never found him waiting for me before.

                “Come here and sit on the couch,” he instructed curtly.  “We need to talk.”  His unblinking eyes were stone hard, and I could see his cheek muscles tensing as he gritted his teeth.

                 Uh-oh.  My thoughts raced as I tried to think of what I might have done.

                “At the school board meeting tonight, someone said you were one of the kids using dynamite around town.  Is this true?”

                “Yes, but I never blown up anything around town—just out in the desert.” I never lied to Dad.

                He proceeded to tell me what a numb-skull thing that was.  He said I would get myself killed or, worse yet, kill someone else.  “What are you thinking?” he finished.

                “I never blow up anything that is worth anything to anyone, Dad.  Just big rocks out in the desert and old abandoned cars and other desert junk.  Things like that.  And I am always careful.”

                Dad glared at me, shaking his index finger.  “Do you have any dynamite right now?”

Looking East from Pioneer Point
Toward the Searles Dry Lake Bed
And the Slate Range Mountains

                “Yes”

                “Where is it?

                “Hidden out in the desert.”

                That stopped him for a moment.  “Well, get rid of it.”

                “Dad, how am I supposed to do that?  I can’t just put it out on the curb for the trash collector to pick up on garbage day.”

                Dad stared at me for a second in thought.  “Well, this weekend, go out into the desert and blow it all up.  Just be careful!  And, don’t get yourself killed.”

                “Okay, Dad.  I’ll be careful, and I’ll get rid of it.”

                His face relaxed a little, then stiffened again.  “And do not tell your Mom about any of this!”

                I’m not sure now who came with me that Saturday.  It might have been my good buddy, Ed Rockdale, who lived just down the street from me, but that weekend we had a blast blowing up 50 or 60 sticks of dynamite in some of the largest explosions we had ever engineered.

                A good dynamite blast is a real science.  Depending on how well the charge is set, the blast can range from just a loud boom with a sharp shockwave to a spectacular explosion throwing debris hundreds of feet into the air and significantly altering the face of the landscape.  The size of the explosion doesn’t necessarily depend upon the number of sticks of dynamite used if the charge is set deep in a confined space.  We usually rationed out the dynamite, but that Saturday we experimented with new variations on our normal blasting procedures and were rewarded with some spectacular results.

                Saturday evening, Dad asked me if I still had any dynamite.

                “It’s all gone,” I answered truthfully.  I did do more dynamiting while away at college in another state, with dynamite purchased from a construction company, but never again at home.

                After that, Dad never brought up the subject again.  In Dad’s economy of words, the topic of dynamite was forever behind us.  He was never backward about letting me know when I had messed up, but then, once the issue was resolved, the subject was in the past forever.  Dad didn’t hold my mistakes over my head, and even as a teenager, I felt he truly respected me.  I know I truly respected him.

                As I grew into adulthood, with a family of my own, Dad became one of my best friends.  I always valued his wisdom and advice.  I miss him a lot, now that he is gone.  I know that everyone thinks they have the best Dad, but I’m pretty sure that I did.

 

DYNAMITE DATE

PEOPLE-WATCHING:  A Spectator Sport.

Thank Heaven for Good Friends, who Survive.

            We’re still talking about the benefits of watching people.  Last week, I told you about my buddy, Jay Bell, and how by blind luck we all survived the rotten old ladders of Ruth Mine.  This week I’m going to tell a story about two more of my high school friends.  These are people who helped me understand a lot about human nature, and this is a survival story as well.

            I think it was during my junior year.  Debate class had gotten past the opening business, and we were breaking into small groups for individual work when Elaine Arnold slipped into the desk next to me.  Elaine was a year younger than me.  Good-looking, a straight-A student, and always a teacher’s favorite at Trona High School, she was a straight arrow if ever there was one and a good debate buddy.  I learned a lot from both her debate as well as her extemporaneous techniques.

            She spoke softly, leaning over the gap between us, so only I could hear.  “I’ve got a question.”

            I pulled back a bit.  “Oh?”  I was usually asking her the questions.

            “I know it’s ridiculous, but I’ve heard stories.”  She glanced around.  Everyone was busy.  “Do you go out in the desert blowing things up for fun?”  She shrugged.  “I just wondered.  Do you?”

            My shoulders relaxed.  I had imagined a hard question.  “Of course.  Doesn’t everybody?”

            I don’t know how I had earned the “mild-mannered reporter” label.  It always surprised me that everyone—except those who really knew me—saw me as the quiet guy who never did anything exciting or dangerous.  Most people incorrectly assumed that I was the careful, quiet type.

Put the Pedal to the Metal

            True, I was an introvert, hiding my shyness by being overly courteous to others, but that was just my outer shell.  Underneath, I hungered for the maximum speeds and loudest noises I could find. My definition of R&R included fast cars and high explosions.

            Elaine stared at me in earnest for a moment, analyzing what I’d said.  I wasn’t sure how she was reacting to this new revelation and was starting to feel nervous.

            She leaned in close again and whispered, “Will you take me with you sometime?”

            “Sure,” I said with a relieved grin.  “How about this Saturday?”  Saturday was a safe day to go out dynamiting.  The Sheriff from San Bernardino only came through town on Thursday.

             On Saturday morning, I got another long-time buddy, Ken Corbridge, to come along with us.  Ken was always available for a new adventure, but as I look back now, I realize that I may have made a mistake.  When we were exploring, if any one got hurt, it was always Ken. He had commemorative scars from all the big adventures.  He was the yin to Jay Bell’s yang.

            Whereas Jay Bell had a guardian angel who worked overtime, protecting him.  If Ken had a guardian angel at all, his angel had been missing in action for years.  In Ruth Mine, it was a good thing Jay came up the ladder last and not Ken, or Jay may have been the only one to get out alive.

            We picked up Elaine in my old dune buggy (with a Pontiac straight-eight engine) and drove out to our dynamite stash.  Elaine’s eyes got really big, but she made no comment.  The dune buggy had no sides, roll bars, or seat belts, and only one long bench seat.  We put Elaine in the middle of the seat, with me driving on one side and Ken seated on her other side to keep her from falling out.

            Ken held the dynamite in his lap.

            “We’re going to Gold Bottom Mine,” I explained to Elaine as we drove out of town.

            Before Airport Road, I turned off onto a wide, flat dirt road that circled around the dry lake bed of Searles Lake.  The mineral companies that mined the lake deposits kept the road in good condition, so I knew I could get up some real speed, which I hoped would impress Elaine.  The road, clearly visible through the many holes in the floorboard beneath our feet, whizzed by at ever increasing speeds.

            After the road curved south, I increased our speed on the wide, dirt road.  Elaine was enjoying the ride.  Suddenly, I saw the road leading to Gold Bottom Mine turning off on the left.  I spun the wheel, and we skidded sideways, throwing clouds of dirt into the air and massacring some bushes before finally straightening out onto the narrow, rutted mine road.

            Enveloped in dust, I felt Elaine tugging at my arm.  “We lost Kenny,” she yelled in my ear.  I glanced over.  Sure enough, it was just Elaine and me on the seat.  Ken was gone.

            I slammed on the breaks, slid to a stop, and backed up along the rutted track to return to the Searles Lake road.  Through the swirling dust, I saw Kenny lying flat on his back in the middle of the road, holding the dynamite tightly to his chest.  Jumping out, we ran to him.

            “Ken, are you okay?” I called.  “Are you okay?”

            I got to him first and stood looking down. “Ken?  Ken!  Are you all right?”

            Ken wasn’t answering.  It looked like he had some road burn on one arm.  Eyes closed tight, he lay perfectly flat and still.

            When Elaine joined me, she leaned over and commented, “He’s still holding the dynamite.”

            As soon as she spoke, Ken came alive.  Both eyes flew open.  Raising the dynamite above his chest, he set it over on the road away from him, and then pulled his hands back onto his chest again.

            I stared down at him, smiling.  “It’s too late for that, Ken.  If that dynamite were going to blow, it would have happened already.  With your luck, I’m surprised it didn’t blow.”

            “Don’t give me that crap,” Ken growled, using the one swear word he had not yet given up.

Abandoned Desert Junk

            After a couple minutes, Ken was up dusting himself off, complaining about the road rash on his arm.  It was bleeding and burning, but he had seen worse.  Elaine seemed fascinated by his quick recovery, so I explained that this kind of thing happened to Ken all the time.  I didn’t mention that it usually happened when I was driving.

            For the rest of the drive to Gold Bottom Mine, Ken insisted that Elaine hold the dynamite since she was in the middle and less likely to fall out.  Since Elaine was holding the dynamite, she insisted that I drive slow.  After all, the road to the mine was bumpy.

            I don’t remember specifically what we found that day to destroy, but we had a great time blowing up rocks and assorted, abandoned desert junk.  Elaine was suitably impressed with the power of dynamite, and being a quick study, soon had the science of dynamiting figured out.

            For my own part, I came away with a newly found appreciation of the power of dynamite in guaranteeing a successful date.  For the rest of my high school days and into my college career, I was never turned down once for a dynamite date, when I explained that we were really going to blow something up.  In fact, before we were married, I took my wife on a dynamite date, but I’ll let her tell that story.

BLIND LUCK !

PEOPLE-WATCHING FOR FUN AND PROFIT.

Thank Heaven for the Characters of this World.

            Last week, we established that, at least for writers, there can be creative benefits in tapping into the crazy side of one’s own id.  In addition, there can be creative benefits in understanding the crazy side of a friend or family member.  In fact, the closer the friend or loved one, the better the opportunity to observe and understand what makes that person tick, especially under stress, like when angry or afraid.

            I have to tell you about my good friend, Jay Bell.  Jay was blind, as in mostly blind, legally blind.  Born prematurely in a small hospital, the oxygen mix was too rich in the tent they put over him and his eyes were permanently damaged.   When I moved with my family to the isolated desert town of Trona, California, Jay was the weird kid with the heavy, half-inch thick glasses, but he soon became one of my best friends.  Throughout our high school and college days, we had great adventures together.

            Though Jay saw only a fuzzy version of the world the rest of us saw clearly, he was fearless, especially when exploring old mines.  In the dark, he often led the way.  I learned some important lessons about life while watching Jay face the unknown.  Many of his strong, and some of his quirky, qualities are now reflected in my stories--in my key characters, both protagonists as well as antagonists.

            In addition, being friends with Jay in high school had a number of great benefits.  First off, was his Mom.  “Hi, Berk,” she’d say with a smile when I showed up at Jay’s front door, and then she’d stuff me full with large quantities of home-cooked food.  At 6 feet 4 inches and the center on the Trona Tornado’s football team, I was always hungry.  My stomach was basically bottomless.

            Another benefit was the freedom we had to explore the desert.  I think Mrs. Bell thought Jay would be safe with me and let us run free in Mr. Bell’s old pickup truck--as long as I was driving of course.  Jay never did get a driver’s license, and his father had long since retired, so his truck was rarely used.  In hindsight, her faith in me may not have been justified. Though neither of us was ever seriously injured, it was not for want of trying, and to this day, I still carry minor scars from our misadventures.

Do Not Try This At Home

             One hot summer morning, a few friends, including Jay and me, decided to drive out to the Ruth Mine in Homewood Canyon.  It was always cool inside the deep mines, and we were ready for adventure.  Besides just hanging-out in the canyon, picking off mangy jackrabbits with our .22s, and gorging on Hostess cherry pies, we hoped to find dynamite left behind in the old, abandoned mine.  We were always searching for new sources of dynamite and rumor had it that explosives were stored in the depths of that mine.

Old Wooden Ore Car

            The main shaft of Ruth Mine is vertical, plunging straight down into the deep, dark core of the mountain.  Every fifty to one hundred feet, horizontal shafts branch off, reaching out to where more veins of ore had been discovered.  In our day, the only way down to the many horizontal tunnels was on a wooden ladder, really a series of ladders bolted in sections to the large, timber support beams bracing the sides of the main shaft.  The ladders stretched for hundreds of feet down the sheer sides of the wide vertical shaft.  

Tools for Mining by Hand

             Carrying extra flashlights and batteries, we descended into the bowels of the mine, which seemed to go for miles in many directions, on many levels.  Whenever we came across a cave-in or a tunnel closure, Jay was usually the one to squeeze through to see if there was anything worth exploring on the other side.  Not only was Jay thin and wiry, nothing seemed to intimidate him.  After exploring for hours and finding only old tools and mining equipment, but no dynamite, we were hungry and decided to climb back up to the truck.  Those Hostess pies were calling us.          

              One behind the other, we crawled up the series of old ladders, passing one level of horizontal tunnels after the other, with Jay reluctantly bringing up the rear.  He had wanted to go deeper, but we had prevailed upon him to take a break.  We could go back down later and explore more.  It looked like it would take days to explore the extensive, multilevel complex of horizontal tunnels.

            We had reached the top of the vertical shaft, which connected with a short tunnel leading to the outside, and were waiting for Jay, when suddenly he called, “Hey guys, I need a hand over here!”

            There was a large gap between the support beams that rimmed the top of the main shaft and the rocky ledge of the exit tunnel.  The ladder ended even with one of the timber beams, and there was nothing to hold on to while stepping across from the ladder to the stone ledge.  Jay had put his flashlight in his pocket so he could climb with both hands, and the exit tunnel at this point was far enough away from the entrance to be in perpetual dark.  Jay was completely blind as he got ready to step over to the tunnel’s uneven floor.

            Turning with my flashlight, I saw Jay’s free hand grasping helplessly at thin air, so I reached out and grabbed his hand.  With one hard pull, I dragged him up onto the ledge next to me, and as Jay struggled to get both feet onto solid rock, the whole top section of the ladder, twenty feet or more in length, broke away from the support beams.  With a splintering screech of old wood, the ladder dropped out of sight and crashed loudly as it fell hundreds of feet down to the bottom of the mine.

            In the total silence that followed, we all stood at the edge of the gaping shaft, staring down soberly into the deep, black depths, realizing that lady luck had just smiled on Jay.

            Finally, Ken Corbridge cleared his throat to speak.  I thought he was going to say we were lucky that no one was still on that ladder when it broke away.  Instead, he said, rather forcefully, “Oh, crap!  Now we can’t go back down that shaft again.”  That was as close as Ken got to swearing since he had sworn off swearing.

            Jay straightened up defensively.  “Don’t blame me!  It wasn’t my fault the ladder broke.”

            Suddenly, we were all grinning, so I added my two cents.  “Yea, sure.  You were going to try to ride that ladder like a sled all the way back down to the bottom of the mine.  You were the one that kept saying we should keep going until we got all the way to the bottom.”

            “Not that way!”  Jay backed away from the vertical shaft and turned to leave.  “That ladder probably fell halfway to Hell.  I’m not interested in any one-way tickets to nowhere.”

            “Well,” I said.  “Let’s not tell your Mom about this.”

            “Right!  And she wonders why I never have much to say about our adventures.  If she knew half of what happens when we go exploring, I’d be grounded for life.”

            That about summed it up.

            In silence, we trudged back to Mr. Bell’s old pickup truck.  I knew Jay was a great storyteller, when his Mom wasn't around, so I couldn’t help thinking, Someday, Jay is going to have some great stories to tell his grandkids.  I hope he remembers to mention my part in his stories.

            It turns out that Jay never got a chance to tell his stories, at least not in this life, but that is another story altogether.  In the end, it turned out that I would be the one telling the stories, and I do remember to include Jay in my stories—in more ways than one.

LOOK WHAT I DID

WHY DO WE LIKE QUIRKY CHARACTERS?

Is there a right way to develop a character?

            Recently, I attended a writer’s workshop presented by the St. George 2014 Book Festival on the Dixie State University campus.  Among many great presentations, I attended a class by Dean Hughes called  An Effective Writing Process.  Mr. Hughes has been writing for several decades and has published more than 100 books, both fiction and non-fiction, for all ages.

            Mr. Hughes explained eight rules of writing.  Rule One is don't start writing until you know the main characters.  He said the story comes out of the characters, so invent each key character first.

            Do a summary of each character’s life and personality--really get into the character’s head.  Even though much of the character’s summary will never get into the story, a writer needs the summary to accurately and consistently describe what the character thinks, says and does, because that controls the direction the story will go.

            By the way, one cure for writer’s block is to reanalyze (even rewrite) key character summaries.  Another cure is to take a break and get something to eat.

            Character development is a critical writing skill that is handled differently by different writers, but much of the strength of the story is built on the reader’s love (or hate) for the story’s key characters.  What is the best way to create a protagonist that readers will bond with or an antagonist that readers will loathe?  The correct answer depends on the writer’s personal style and writing skills.

            Working together, my brother Andy and I are co-writing The Dimensions in Death series, a young-adult horror series--the third book, FATAL GREEN, comes out this year.  As the story develops, I am fascinated by my brother’s thought processes and writing techniques.  In connection with the issue of character development, Andy has shared the following insight into his personal style:

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A Few Thoughts on Character Development

(Or what I DID by the seat of my pants.)

By A. L. Washburn

            Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the technical name for what we laymen refer to as a multiple or split personality.  It is a controversial diagnosis with some experts believing it is not real, or maybe even therapist induced.  (Isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?)  I bring this up, because I sometimes believe I may have a form of DID, though I have never seen a therapist.  (I was going to say, “Where is the fun for a writer in having a mental disorder if you get it fixed?” but then I worried that someone with a real mental disorder would be offended, and yes, I think that people with mental disorders are the most likely readers of my stuff.  Whatever.)

Andy on the Fly
Las Vegas NV Airport

            When I’m writing, I believe I have multiple personalities all battling to get out, or at least take control of the writing process.  And, most of these personalities, wait, no, all of these personalities are younger than me; healthier than me; and without a doubt, thinner and better looking than me.  The sixteen year old personality is especially keen to take over.  He must not have caught a look of me lately in the mirror.

            It is from these disparate and distinct personalities that I form the characters I write about in my novels.  To some extent or another, everyone I write about, or maybe I should say, everyone I write for is down inside my id somewhere. (Damn, I am esoteric!)  So, when I write about different people I am really just writing about some part of myself.  I am the young, good looking, high school football star, Cal. I am also the middle aged, overweight, balding, mean and obnoxious Mr. Samuel. (Both are characters in PITCH GREEN.)

            In real life, I am not young or good looking, but neither am I mean or balding.  I’m only a little obnoxious.  But both these characters are inside me.  I only need to bring them out and put them in the story to write about them.  I am not writing about people I observe, though I love to observe people.  I am writing about myself.  No matter how different or unique each character is from the others, I’m there.

            Of course, this begs the question: What about the female characters?  (My sons will stop reading right exactly at this point.)  If I were cool, and politically correct, I would claim to have female personalities along with male personalities.  But I’m only cool, not politically correct, and no matter how deep I look inside me, I do not find a woman, or even any female-type being.  My wife will confirm this.

            This does not mean I cannot write for the women in my story.  Women are people (which sounds so patronizing), and people overlap as people, so I don’t have a problem writing from a woman’s perspective, as long as I have women, like my wife and daughters, who read what I write and then tell me when I have it wrong.

A microscopic view inside
 one of Andy's brain cells.

            This means, analogous with the way I write for guys, when I write for women, I look out their eyes at the world that is being created for them.  So, if I’m not part woman, (there are bullies from my high school days who claim otherwise), the women that I write about are part me.  (I said I was esoteric.)

            The way this works, evidently, is the guys I write for are looking out my eyes as I write. But as I write for the women, I am looking out their eyes. Weird, huh?  But, that is the way it works, and for me, it works pretty well. So far, I like the characters that grow up on the pages of my stories.

            Whether or not this means I have DID, I don’t know.  Though it is probably indicative of a need to at least go to therapy.  Yea, well, I’m still not going.  Why mess with all those extra personalities?  I need them to keep my id in balance as well as when I’m developing new story characters.  After all, that’s how I write.

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            Now, while drawing on multiple or split personalities may not work well for all writers, I agree with Andy that it doesn’t hurt to be a little bit crazy and that a whole lot of creativity can come out of being in touch with the crazy side of your own id.

            Taking the character development process a step further, I got some good pointers in a class on  Plot, Character and Conflict presented by Teri Harman at that same Book Festival workshop mentioned above.  Ms. Harman has published a young-adult fiction series of magic and wonder (BLOOD MOON, BLACK MOON, and STORM MOON)) and writes a book column for ksl.com and contributes regular book segments to Studio 5.

            She said that key characters (both good and bad) must be compelling in at least four fundamental ways.  So, when you summarize a character’s life, as Mr. Hughes advises, be sure your summary includes strong descriptive words and in-depth explanations in each of the following four character categories:

            1—Be REAL—create a whole person with real strengths and real flaws (give the person a balanced history with both good and bad experiences), maybe a person with poor coping skills in certain situations.

            2—Be UNIQUE—create a personality that is different, quirky and interesting, and depending on whether your building a protagonist or antagonist, make a person who is fun or crazy, lovable or scary, timid or wild, etc.

            3—Be FLAWED—create an emotional or moral expectation that exceeds the person’s current commitment level or capability to comply; allow the person to disappoint herself as well as others, but then allow the person to learn and grow.

            4—Be COMPLICATED—create both an internal as well as external conflict of good and evil; allow the person to be spontaneous, out of character when under stress, surprised by her own actions in new situations.

            In Andy’s esoteric musings above, he mentioned that he loves to observe people.  So do I, especially when they’re unconsciously showing part of their crazy side.  Next week we’ll speak to the benefits of people-watching as that might help us polish our character-development skills.

Cont'd. - WHO NEEDS HEADLIGHTS?

Why the suspense?

PART TWO.

            In Part One of this tale, the reader was left stranded in the night with three young campers in the cab of an old, broken-down pickup truck, which is stalled precariously on the edge of a deep mountain ravine.  Sniffing around outside the truck is a large creature of some kind that cannot be determined in the thick darkness of the moonless night.  While the campers have firearms back in the open bed of the pickup, they have no guns with them in the cab where they cower, hiding from the dark creature.

            Of course, the tale doesn’t end there.  The story is just getting started.  The scene has been set and hopefully the reader’s expectations have been prepared for a journey with these young campers into the unknown.  The reader knows the best part of the story is yet to come.  The campers must conquer or be conquered.  It is the expectation that the campers will find a way to conquer that keeps the reader reading.  The reader should now be gladly on board and excited for the ride--hungry for the rest of the story.  Oh, the beauty of suspense!

            Suspense is like an unsatisfied hunger that keeps the reader reading until the end of the story, where the hunger will be satisfied.  In the best stories, where the reader identifies with the main character, the reader relishes both the hunger, while it lasts, as well as the eventual satisfaction of that hunger at the end of the story.  And, sweet is the satisfaction of a hard-fought winning battle and a tale well ended.  After carefully building suspense, be sure to resolve it thoroughly.  A cardinal rule of storytelling is:  Do not gloss over the ending!

            Especially in young-adult literature, when the reader has bonded with the protagonist, the young reader will expect that no matter how great the odds against success, the protagonist will find a way to succeed.  Of course, the protagonist must win by pluck, not luck, and even a twist ending must not be a random win.

            A decision to resolve the suspense of the central plot with the protagonist’s ultimate failure is not satisfying to younger readers, and it is a sure strategy for permanently driving such readers away.  While frustration and failure are an important part of act two, the reader is looking for success by the end of act three.  A young reader wants to be immersed in a world of new beginnings and exciting transitions, a world where anything is possible and hope is a guiding star.  A world of despair, overwhelmed by failed dreams and missed opportunities, is for an older, more jaded audience—and it has few fans even there.

            Literary suspense is the result of proper plot development, and a writer has many tools to use in developing a storyline that will capture the reader’s imagination and carry her along towards an anticipated salvation or destruction.  Tools like point of view can put the reader in a character’s mind, building an empathetic bond.  Repetition of seemingly innocent facts can build tension.  Foreshadowing creates curiosity, and the list goes on.  Make the reader hungry for more information, and then slowly, carefully feed and starve the reader as the tale unfolds.

            In our current tale of three hapless campers, facing a live predator, we want to know literally who will feed and who will starve?

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            “Man, that thing is big!”  Jay pointed out in a hoarse whisper.

            All three of us were now peeking carefully over the dashboard at the big, black shadow in the night, sniffing around the dying red embers of our bonfire.

            “Hugh, do you still have some firecrackers in your pocket?” I asked quietly.

            “Yes,” he said, nodding his head in the dark.

            “Open your side-vent window and drop a lighted firecracker out there.”

View of Panamint Mountains
as seen from the Slate Range

            Without a word, Jay fished out his box of matches.  He and Hugh had been lighting firecrackers all day and had the process down to a science.  Hugh held a firecracker down close to the floor, trying to minimize the glow of the burning match that would be seen from outside.  When Jay had lit the fuse, Hugh slipped it through the window vent, dropping it to the ground.

            All the while, I was watching the prowling, black pillar of darkness in front of the truck.  As soon as Jay had struck the match, the thing turned to stare back at the truck, seeming to stare directly at me in the cab.  A couple seconds later, the firecracker sounded with a bright flash and a satisfyingly loud bang that echoed off the mountain.

            Instantly, the black shadow sprang away from the truck and disappeared into the night, bounding up the trail into the mountains.  After listening to silence for a minute, I said, “Throw a few more firecrackers out there to make sure that thing is not sneaking back towards the truck.”

            Immediately, Hugh and Jay went to work tossing a series of lighted firecrackers out the side-vent window.  Again, the bright flashes and loud bangs were satisfying.

            Bravely rolling down my window about a foot, I stuck my hand out with the flashlight.  Clicking it on, I shined the light up the trail in the direction the shadow had run, and then down along both sides as far as my light would reach in each direction, looking for any movement or for a pair of light-reflecting eyes watching my flashlight.

            Seeing nothing and feeling bolder, I quickly stepped out my door, and reaching into the back of the truck, I handed rifles and ammo into the cab to Jay and Hugh before jumping back in to shut my door and roll up my window.  Once we had all loaded our guns, I had Hugh reach out his window, shining his light up the trail again and from side to side.

            Finally, I stepped out my door and began shooting up the trail into the darkness.  I wanted that black shadow to know we were not toothless, and as I listened to the ping of the bullets that ricocheted off the rocks up the mountainside, I hoped the creature was getting the message.

            It wasn’t long before we heard the coyotes start up yelping and howling again.  Apparently, they were no longer nervous, but we were.  We decided to stay close to the truck during the night.  Jay chose to sleep in the cab with the windows rolled down just a crack.  Hugh and I spread out our sleeping bags in the back bed of the truck, but we did more tossing and turning than sleeping.  Thinking it couldn’t hurt; we periodically tossed out a lighted firecracker.  If we heard a noise nearby, one of us would sit up to shoot into the darkness.

            During the night, Hugh and I decided that the big black shadow must have been a mountain lion, but it was the biggest mountain lion we had ever seen.

            It was a long, miserable night, but it gave me time to think.  With the first light of dawn, I gathered up the random tools that Jay’s dad had left lying around in the back of the truck.  Before long, I had the dashboard off so I could look down behind the cab’s console panel.  There it was—a foot-long piece of melted wire that had shorted out against the truck’s interior frame.

            Next, I went to work removing one of the rear taillights, where I cut out a length of heavy-duty wire long enough to replace the fried piece of wire behind the console.  After twisting the replacement wire into place, I turned the ignition key.  With the first try, the truck started right up!  Everything worked now, except the rear taillight of course.

Available Housing
A Fixer-Upper

            Just an hour earlier, we had been racking our brains trying to figure out how to get home, or at least how to signal for help, but suddenly none of that mattered any more.  We had survived the first night.  The danger had passed, and we were only the second day into our weeklong camping trip.  Nobody was interested in going home at this point—there were still too many unexplored canyons ahead of us.  Who knew what we might yet discover.

           We were ready for the adventure to continue, and it did.  We didn’t see any more large shadow creatures, and the truck didn’t break down again, but we had great adventures throughout the week with all kinds of interesting findings and happenings, but that’s a longer story for another day.

WHO NEEDS HEADLIGHTS?

Why the suspense?

PART ONE.

            School was out!  Summer vacation had come at last.  My younger brother, Hugh, and I itched for adventure, and we recruited Jay Bell to borrow his dad’s old pickup truck and come with us.  We could drive hundreds of miles in almost any direction out of Trona, California, and not cross a paved road, much less meet another human being.  This time we decided to explore the Panamint and Argus Mountain Ranges and told our parents we would be camping for a week.

Looking North from Trona
Panamint Mountains in the distance

From Searles Valley to Panamint Valley to Death Valley, the terrain is rugged with mountain trails climbing thousands of feet above sea level into regions of permanent snow and valley trails dropping hundreds of feet below sea level into arid desert that rarely sees a drop of rain.  Roads and trails were often washed out, overgrown with sage brush, and barely usable.  But, they were the only way to get to the old mining sites and ghost towns.  Not all the old sites showed up on our maps, and we were always excited to stumble across a new find.

            The morning of our departure, packing was quick and easy--we threw all the big stuff into the truck’s open bed behind the cab.  This wasn’t our first time camping, and we packed our usual:  lots of easy foods, like Hostess fruit pies, nuts and jerky, a couple ten-gallon water jugs, a shovel and ax, our sheath knives, firecrackers and matches, guns with lots of ammo, sleeping bags, and TP.  Sun-protection gear for the day and cold-weather clothes for the night were essential.  In early June, mornings in the Mojave Desert heat up fast after the sun comes up, but nights get cold quickly once the sun goes down.

We always tossed in lots of extra batteries for our flashlights, hoping to spend as much time as possible exploring old, abandoned mines that we found along the way.  We also brought along a backup can of gasoline in addition to topping off the gas tank.  In the 1960s gas was cheap, but we had to make our gas last all week.  And, of course, this was B.C. (before cellular phones).  It was normal for us to be out of touch with our parents until we got back.  We were always camping, and they figured we knew what we were doing.  We didn’t think to tell them where we were going--and they didn’t ask.  Mom just waved and said, “Don’t get hurt.”

            The first day out, we drove north into the mountains, getting as far away from civilization as possible.  Though the desert seems desolate on the surface, we saw lots of wildlife.  Vultures, hawks and eagles filled the sky.  Besides the ever present scorpions, tarantulas and snakes, ground squirrels and jackrabbits bolted from clumps of scrub as we passed, and a scraggly coyote appeared in the distance, watching us warily.  We knew mountain lions prowled the high country, but they were usually too smart to show themselves.  The sky was clear; the air was fresh and clean; life was good; and we didn’t have a care in the world.  This was our kingdom, and we were the unchallenged rulers.

            After a long day exploring unfamiliar roads and trails, we realized the sun had disappeared over the mountain tops.  Night was imminent, and in the fast-dying daylight, we needed to pick a campsite safe from wildlife and weather before darkness engulfed us.  As we drove up a deep mountain ravine, just coming up onto the embankment, loud popping noises suddenly rang out under the dashboard.  The cab filled with smoke.  The dashboard lights blinked out and the engine died.  Turning the key off, I put the truck in park, and tried to restart the engine.  Nothing happened--nothing at all.  The starter didn’t even click.  The truck’s electrical systems were totally dead.

            Silently, we sat in the deepening gloom, surrounded by acrid smoke from the electrical flash fire.  Winding down the window to air out the cab, Hugh leaned out to look behind us.  “I don’t think this is a very good place to park.”

            The truck perched perilously on the edge of the ravine and straddled a well-used wildlife trail—the one we had followed up out of the wash.

            Looking back and forth from Hugh to me, Jay asked, “Did anyone think to tell our parents where we were going?”

            When Hugh didn’t answer, I said, “No, but it doesn’t matter since we told them we were camping for a week.  No one will think to worry about us until we’ve been gone for more than a week.”

            Hugh leaned back and closed his eyes.  “It will take a week to hike back to that last paved road we crossed.”  He let out a long, weary sigh.

            Jay nodded.  “And another week, if we’re lucky, before anyone drives by.”

            “And,” I added, “unless we figure out how to carry one of those big water jugs, all our water will be back here with the truck.  I didn’t see any signs of wet springs along the way.”

            With daylight almost gone, we decided to get out and look around while we could still see.  Things didn’t look good.  A wide web of small gullies fed down from above into the large ravine, on the edge of which our truck was precariously stalled.  If it rained higher up in the mountains, we could lose our truck in a flash flood.  Also, all the wildlife trails coming down the mountain merged into the wide path going under our truck and on down the deep ravine.

            Our truck had become a road block for any local critters passing through in the night.  The mountain grade was too steep for us to push the truck up the hill off the trail and away from the ravine.  Rolling the truck back down the hill would put it deeper in the ravine and in greater danger from flashfloods.  Like it or not, our truck had to stay stuck right where it was.

            Once the deep blackness of a moonless night was upon us, we hauled out the flashlights.  Scouring the area, we piled what dry sticks and dead brush we could find on the trail several yards up the slope in front of the truck.  As Hugh got a fire burning, we heard the yelping and howling of a coyote pack in one of the higher gullies.  We hadn’t brought firewood with us, and there wasn’t much dead wood in the area.  Our small bonfire wouldn’t last long.  Without a fire, the coyotes would soon be down to see who was trespassing in their territory.

            Suddenly, we heard the sound of larger rocks cascading down the side of the ravine not far downhill behind the truck.  Something big was climbing up the wildlife trail toward the truck, and it was making a lot of noise as if it didn’t care who knew it was coming.  Quickly, we climbed back into the cab, rolling up windows, locking doors, turning out flashlights, and slumping down in our seats--as if it wouldn’t be able to see us, if we couldn’t see it.

Checking around, I realized all the guns were back in the open truck bed, not in the cab with us.  Outside, everything had gone quiet.  Even the coyotes had stopped howling.  After holding my breath for an eternity, I slowly lifted my head to peek out the driver’s side window, just in time to see a dark shadow on four legs glide out of sight around to the front of the truck.  Lifting my head slightly higher to look forward through the windshield, I saw our bonfire had died down to glowing embers, blowing in the gentle wind.

As I watched, the dark shadow slid out slowly away from the truck toward the bonfire, blocking my view of the embers, but still not revealing any detail of what it was.  If only I could turn on the truck’s headlights to see what was out there!  For a second, I considered shining my flashlight through the window, but knew if I turned on my flashlight in the cab, the windows would reflect light back at me, and whatever was out there would see us all sitting in the cab.

We should have prepared for predators, I thought, but it’s too late now.  We’re sitting ducks, unarmed and trapped!

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