Learning to Fly, and Other Things I’m Not Actually Doing

Hi, all.

Been a while since my last post. Sorry. When September kicks in and school begins to eat up six hours a day and I’m slaving over my second book, day and night, blogging is the first to go. But I do aim to get back to it, sometime soon. I love helping other writers craft wholesome, entertaining stories that hearken back to times when the cinema and the bookstore weren’t so polluted, and I plan to continue to do just that.

Meanwhile, however, I continue to tell stories of my own. SHADOW CATALYST is complete and out there, waiting to be read by people like you (shameless promotion, yes.) It’s been called the “best collection of otherworldly tales this side of Stephen King” (Jon Land, author of Strong at the Break) and I really appreciate all the other great reviews I’m getting.

This week I finished my second book, a full-length thriller called FLIGHT SCHOOL. Flying has always been a love of mine. There’s something romantic about it, and one of my dreams in life is to learn  to fly – it is, however, one of those dreams that I hardly think I’ll ever acheive, so the next best thing is to write a thriller about it. All I can say now is that in this novel, a man falsely-accused of a horrid crime has to learn to fly under somewhat unusual – not to mention life-threatening – circumstances.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a ton of ideas for sequels, other stories, and the like swimming around in my head. A few things I might be telling stories about (but not actually doing) include murder, blackmail, holding up banks, and falling in love.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest and would like to connect with me, check out my Appearances page on my website. A few signings are already in the lineup, and I’m in the process of scheduling more. Bear with me, I’ll get to your neck of the woods sometime soon.

Hope all is well with you guys. Keep reading. Keep dreaming.

-Brayden

Drowning Sailors, Laughing People, and Other Things That Make Me Mad

Sometimes I wonder why people laugh.

I’m being serious, here. I mean really. Look around. Today, the death toll for Hurricane Irene is at 45. Rioters are still pillaging throughout Libya. Looking beyond news headlines, it’s no secret that we have hundreds of thousands of homeless people within our own borders, and millions more who are struggling financially, trying not to be homeless. Thousands of children die of starvation, every day.

And people are still laughing.

It’s like an old story I heard once, about a crazed sailor who laughed at all the drowning people around him because they didn’t have any boats, and meanwhile he failed to notice the gaping hole in his own boat. He drowed while he was still laughing.

Are you drowning, and are you laughing about it?

Most laughing people today make me mad, sure – but don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against laughter. Henry Ward Beecher once said that laughter “is God’s medicine. Everyone ought to bathe in it.” But Western Society, today, is laughing about all the wrong things. Look at The Hangover. Look at Bridesmaids. Look at every single R-rated “comedy” that pollutes our theatres, offering people with mindless stories that don’t offer audiences an escape into a world where things are better, where heroism reigns supreme and good triumphs over evil, but worlds where things are as crude as reality, sometimes even cruder. We watch an R-rated comedy, something meant to be funny, and we are looking at blatant reflections of ourselves – or at least, our more animalistic sides. We watch something dirty and we think dirtier. ”Dirt” is the key word. We are digging our own graves, or at least a grave for our humor.

Sometimes I watch reruns of The Cosby Show. Or I see Barney Fife giving a speech to a few criminals in the Mayberry “slammer,” those who always manage, somehow, to get free from ole Barney’s ever-watchful eye. Or Bob Newhart. Or Mary Tyler Moore. I see these people, and I wonder:

Why don’t they make funny people like that, anymore?

I want to see comedies that are funny, and don’t make me squirm in my seat or cringe with every passing minute. I want to see people who are talented enough to be funny without being profane. But most of all, I want to see people laughing.

But I want to see them laugh at the right things.

I want to see them laugh after a day of hard work, after we helped out a lost soul who had nothing to eat, or after we stood up for someone who had less rights than us. I want us to laugh at jokes that don’t put people down, but bring people up.

I’m tired of the drowning sailor’s laughter. It’s empty. I want to laugh at things that are funny.

Nobody knows quite who said it – but it’s one of my favorite quotes. I think it rings true to us here, the drowning sailors, just as much as it does to those starving children who need our help.

The world always looks brighter from behind a smile.

Don’t Forget to Write

Yesterday, my ebook short story, “Don’t Forget to Write” was released on the Amazon Kindle. (So far this sounds like a lot of lame advertising, but hang in there. I might just have something important to say. Oh, and before we get to that, it’s only 99 cents. Here’s the link again.) The idea of the story lies behind a woman who is driven to insanity because, well, whoever she’s writing love letters to forgets to write back.

This is a piece of fiction. The story has nothing to do with what I’m about to say.

But it’s a reminder we writers sometimes need. So often we get caught up in blogging, social networking, talking to other writers, talking to our readers, trying to have a life outside our writing life, and we forget to write altogether. Needless to say, this is a problem. To actually improve with your writing, to truly get better and reach that status where you can be published, you have to actually write.

Writing takes time.

Writing takes effort.

I hate to say it, but in order to write, and write well, you have to make time and put in the effort. Here are a couple of pointers on how to do that:

1) Make space. It’s important, as writers, to find a spot where you are comfortable writing. If that means total silence, then write in silence. If you like writing amidst a whole lot of chaos, like Steve Berry does, then write amidst total chaos. Whatever works. Just make the space.

2) Take breaks. Yeah, I said that you’ve got to write, but to write well, you really have to take breaks. Take a sabbath. One day a week, don’t do any writing. Just take a break. Think about writing, sure – Stephen King calls the writer’s subconcious the “boys in the basement,” and he says to let them work. Even when you’re not working on your story, the boys are.

3) Writing is NOT rewriting. Yeah, there’s that one old saying that writers revisit constantly. But no matter what they say, you have to actually write before you rewrite. Without the original writing, there will never be any rewriting. Don’t edit as  you write, either – that just slows you down. Don’t obsess over the old saying.

Hope these pointers help. I haven’t had too much time to write my usual kind of posts, lately – my fiction has been eating up all my time. But at least I haven’t forgotten to write.

(Remember, 99 cents on the Kindle. You can find it here. )

3 Easy (or Easier) Ways to Build Suspense

Recently, while writing a story in my upcoming collection, Shadow Catalyst, I came across the problem of a story being too short. My editor complimented the storyline and structure, but something about the writing was missing. Too short, too bland, too summative and passive instead of being descriptive and active—finally I found all these things centered on one main problem: this was supposed to be a suspense story. Where was the suspense?

Now, please. Don’t be deceived by this article’s title. There is no “easy” way to build suspense—for some writers, it comes naturally, while others have to work harder. But there’s no way around it. Whether you’re writing literary or commercial fiction, you must have suspense in some form or another. In the dictionary, suspense equals a “state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty,” but as writers we must dig a little deeper. Suspense, in fiction, is anything that poses a threat to your characters, anything that pushes them closer to one of the three types of death—physical death (actually dying), psychological death (an emotional disparity), or professional death (losing one’s job). What works even better is when you can incorporate all three of these in your story. In The Fugitive, for instance, Richard Kimble loses his wife and his job in the movie’s opening sequence, but as the story progresses we see him facing psychological and physical death, too—it’s psychological because he absolutely can’t give up and dishonor himself in public, and it’s physical because, well, they’re coming after him with guns.

A correct approach and a deeper understanding of suspense and its purpose in your story is vital in the actual crafting in it. But if your story still lacks drama, there are a few easy fixes that all can contribute to your story.

Description

 

Now, you’re thinking I’m crazy. You’re thinking description takes up too much space in the constantly shrinking traditional publishing world. Lengthy passages of description hearken back to Hawthorne and Poe, and, while they were the best writers of their time, their style would never survive today.

And you’re right. I completely agree.

But keep in mind that fiction, in Alfred Hitchcock’s words, is merely real life, with the dull parts taken out. Good suspense must be real suspense, and you must show that, in one way or another. One way is description. An eye for detail, especially quirky or dark details, can contribute enormous amounts of drama to a particular scene. Take this passage, from John D. Macdonald’s Cape Fear, later on called Cape Fear, when Sam Bowden discovers convicted rapist Max Cady is watching him and his family:

He went over and put the sandwich and thermos on the sawhorse. As he was unbuttoning his shirt, he had his back to Nancy. He stopped, motionless, his finger tips touching the third button. Max Cady sat on a low pile of timbers twenty feet away. He had a can of beer and a cigar. He wore a yellow knit sports shirt and a pair of sharply creased slacks in a shade of cheap electric blue. He was smiling at Sam.

Sam walked over to him. It seemed to take a long time to walk twenty feet. Cady’s smile didn’t change.

“What are you doing here?” Sam kept his voice low.

“Well, I’m having a beer, Lieutenant, and I’m smoking this here cigar.”

Notice the precision of the details, but the brevity as well. The passage isn’t lengthy, but it provides just enough for readers to piece together an image in their heads. The finger stopping on the button, the “cheap electric blue,” the “long time to walk twenty feet”—all these things add, little by little, suspense to this scene.

Vignettes

Hitchcock used these all the time. Look at the cricket-playing Brits and the divorced couple in The Lady Vanishes, or the lonely woman, the musician, and the rest of the quirky neighbors in Rear Window. With these recurring everyday people, going about their everyday lives, Hitchcock communicated the reality of the story world. It adds a layer of believability to the problems that the lead characters were encountering. 

The great thing about the Rear Window vignettes is that they almost always contributed to the story—say, the musician with his party and the tinkling of the piano and the distant laughter as Jimmy Stewart’s character is discovering something new about the killer in the next building. Other times the vignettes serve as distractions that throw off, if only slightly, the pursuit of the lead character. If you can take this idea of believability and reality and inject it into your own story, with a little practice it will always turn out good suspense.

Setting

 

Of the three roads I’ve presented here, this one is likely the smoothest to travel. It’s not difficult to change up the setting of a scene, but it’s a simple, logical way to add suspense. When I write, I always try to cram as many intriguing settings as possible into my stories—scenes in a character’s simple, suburban house or a story’s climax in an empty basement just won’t do. Of course, it’s possible, but it takes a skilled writer to make an empty basement interesting. 

Look to Hitchcock again. We don’t call him the Master of Suspense for nothing. Consider the Mount Rushmore scene in North by Northwest, or the scene in the United Nations or the oceanfront car chase. All these places are not merely settings, but factors to how the story plays out. If Lester Townsend had been murdered in some remote forest, with no people anywhere in sight, then how would Roger Thornhill, played by Cary Grant, have been blamed for the crime? Interesting settings add both believability and intrigue to your story. Always have something going on around the characters while the story plays out.

Give these things a try in your everyday writing, and, whether you write thrillers, romances, or sci-fi, you’ll keep your reader’s attention until the last page—and, hopefully, your next novel.

Heroes, Villains, and Everything in Between (Continued)

It’s a poorly kept secret that Western Society is crumbling. Look at the economy – need I say any more? Look at the poverty and violence, tearing apart the streets of every North American city. Look at the entertainment world. We’ve replaced entertainment with something crude, something less clever, less funny, and less romantic. America, as we know it, is falling apart.

The reason, on the other hand, is a very well-kept secret.

We’ve forgotten heroes and villains.

In Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, he describes what he claims to have been America’s greatest generation, those who grew up during the Depression, those who fought in World War Two, those who, ultimately, had to work hard to attain a quality of living. Life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were the only entitlements of these people. They were not concerned with what society owed them, but what they could do for society. They knew what they did not what to be – the Nazis – and knew what they aspired to be: people who overcame. They had a vision for America, a vision of freedom. This same generation, or at least many of them, went on to fuel the Civil Rights movement and helped further the progress of freedom.

In other words, they knew their heroes, and they knew their villains.

Contrast that with today’s society, where in half the movies and books we read, the heroes are not heroic, even disgusting at times, and the villains are even worse. Do we even know what a hero is – honestly, can you answer that question? Does the cast of Twilight really exemplify heroic qualities, or just sex appeal? Does a character like Robert Downey, Jr.’s in the Iron Man movies really strike you as a hero – a sleezy rich man who’s so full of himself, so unpleasant? I don’t think so.

What about villains? I think, if anything, the villains in our entertainment world are not so much losing their villainous qualities, they’re simply disappearing altogether. Look at movies like Inception and The Adjustment Bureau. I mean, come on. Are there any villains in those movies? I don’t even know. There should be. In Inception, Saito (Ken Watanabe) is a slimy, greed-driven man who wants to take down a rival company using rather illegal techniques (inception.) He should, by all means, be a villain, but he’s not portrayed that way. In fact, after he gets shot, he almost takes the appearance of a hero. How many viewers actually sat there in the theatre, wondering why the villain was being treated in such a fashion? Not enough – next to none, in fact. How many on the screenwriting team for the movie actually wondered about treating a villain that way? Probably none, or the movie would’ve turned out in a better way. The Adjustment Bureau was the same thing: was there any real villain, there? Not really. None of the bad men in hats were anything more than 2-dimensional characters. The villain was the system, and the problems it had. It was Matt Damon against “the chairman,” some undescribable force.

The supernatural becomes the villain, and not one single human.

This thought, however simple it may seem onscreen, actually proves a lot about society, today. It proves that we’ve moved miles away from villains. We’re too afraid to insult anyone by deeming them a villain – it goes back to the concept of freedom = anything goes – so we brand villainy as “the chairman,” something mysterious, something we cannot explain. We don’t know what a true villain is, anymore.

And you know what the worst part is? I enjoy movies like Inception and The Adjustment Bureau. There’s nothing wrong with them, from a cinematic point of view. They’re both splendid films. But the ethics behind it are problematic, and the majority of viewers don’t notice it.

I don’t know about you, but that terrifies me.

As writers, this is something we need to address. Don’t run away from this problem. How? you ask. How can we “beat it,” how can we bring back heroes like Rick Blaine and Atticus Finch and villains like Max Cady and Darth Vader? Well, there are a couple things. For one, watch old movies. See how they did it back in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Read the classics. See how it’s been done in the past – read the Bible, because that’s the foundation for all heroes and villains. (You might not believe me now, but it’s true. That argument is for a different day.) And when you read contemporary books and watch new release films, look at them through a lens, a certain vision shaped by a knowledge of older times, times when we knew our heroes and villains. Read blogs like mine. Already I’ve written about The Imperfect Hero and the qualities of true heroes. I plan to keep writing about these things. 

And together, as writers, maybe we can make a change. We can steer culture back on-track. We can show them their heroes, and perhaps even more importantly, their villains.

The Progress of Stupidity

A lot can be said about a particular culture’s intelligence level by simply considering their entertainment. The cavemen of ages past entertained themselves with the simplest things – thus, they are considered perhaps the stupidest of cultures. The Romans enjoyed elaborate and usually violent spectacles in their great Colosseum. Judging by the beauty of the Colosseum itself, one would deduce that here we have a far more intelligent society, yet one that wouldn’t be pleasant to live in, in light of the bloodshed that entertained them so.

Yes, one could say without much doubt that as the years progress, mankind has grown increasingly more intelligent. Right?

Wrong.

A closer look, in fact, reveals that since about fifty years ago, Western Culture has grown, dare I say it, stupider.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about intelligence, as in the knowledge of facts. As in smarts. If that were the case, anyone could admit that today, we have perhaps the smartest culture in the history of the planet. Computer technology has made access to almost any information in the world easy. Easier than it ever has been. But when it comes to the kind of intelligence that really counts – some call it wisdom – we have lost something.

I have realized this, simply, by considering our entertainment.

Audiences today take after cavemen in every way – perhaps even more animalistic pleasures are counted as entertaining today than in the stone age. Let me show you what I mean.

Fifty years ago, when the Production Code reigned supreme, entertainment was purer. Romances were romantic. Comedies were funnier. Thrillers were actually thrilling. Horror films were more than just blood and guts. Look at Casablanca and The Great Gatsby and Psycho, The Andy Griffith Show, Abbot and Costello, Strangers on a Train, To Kill a Mockingbird. Each of these books and movies were more, more of whatever they were supposed to be and less of everything else. (Romances = more romance, less sex. Thrillers = more thrills, less special effects. Comedy = more laughs, less awkward moments, nudity, swearing, and anything else that contributes to R-ratings.)

You might disagree with me. You might think The Hangover is funny. You might think sex scenes are interesting. You might prefer explosions and elaborate gunfights to the bone-chilling moments of suspense that Hitchcock crafted. In that case, then, you’re wrong. I won’t avoid saying it straight. If you disagree with this, you are, simply, a victim of a less-intelligent society. I know I am; I’m not saying anyone isn’t. But it doesn’t take a genius to tell that there’s nothing entertaining about watching someone get bludgeoned to death on screen in one of these trashy horror movies. There’s nothing entertaining about most things in the media today. And yet we watch it, we read it, we listen to it. Sex sells, special effects sell, crude and cheap humor sell, sure, but they can only entertain to a certain point.

We have reached that point.

If you do agree with me, on the other hand, or at least can see where I’m coming from, then you might wonder, “How did we get here? What happened?”

I’ll tell you what happened. The abandonment of the Production Code happened. Writers and directors and publishers began to realize that sex sells. They let down their guard by offing censorship, and in return characters like James Bond, Travis McGee, and other playboys and playgirls infiltrated the media. Slowly, Western Society began to fall into a trap. We let down our guard.

That was the first stupid mistake.

Then computers happened. Technology is not in itself a bad thing – quite the opposite, actually. But it’s like communism. It works when the people at the top are perfect and uncorrupt. But then someone starts filming porn and putting it on the internet. That entertains a few other people. Then more films of the same nature begin to appear all over the place, and the spread of unpure, and altogether wrong ideas begins, spreading like wildfire with the help of Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social networks. Meanwhile, technology in the entertainment world makes it “easier” for moviemakers to create “suspense.” They throw a few explosions together and, along with a few more sex scenes, they have “entertainment.” Today, a five year old can walk into a movie theatre and watch a movie that like Transformers, a film that, just fifty years ago, would’ve been considered pornographic – it still is today, by some of the more intelligent ones.

See, the problem is, our stupidity, our ability to be entertained by such animalistic things, resulted from other people’s smarts. Technology – a brilliant thing, no doubt, meant to make everyone’s life “easier,” but in reality, does it hurt you more than it helps you? Or consider the anti-censorship movement of the 1960s. Filmmakers, then, just wanted to have a little freedom. But a little soon turned to too much, and then freedom became just another way of saying “do whatever the heck you want.” It makes me think of Thelma Ritter’s character in Rear Window, when she says, “Intelligence. Nothing ever caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.”

I’m not saying intelligence is a bad thing, because it really isn’t, but when we stop owing our intelligence to the One who gave it to us, things take a turn for the worse. The Progress of Stupidity runs paralell in history with The Forgetting of God. I don’t understand why American society has turned its back on Him so drastically, lately. The United States was founded on principles that honored God - God worked great for them. Hollywoood’s Golden Age, and great stories like The Scarlet Letter and Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird all came out of a time when we as a culture honored God a whole lot more.

Let’s stop getting stupider and start making the right choices. Let’s thank Him for the intelligence he has given us, and give Him the glory he deserves, in our writing and our living.

Am I being preachy? Yeah, I guess. Am I right? You tell me.

The Sacrifice Factor

People often ask me:

    ”What makes a hero?”

    “When you write, how do you create characters that are living, breathing, and real?”

    “How do your heroes rise above their trials and save the day?

All these questions, and I have only one answer: I write heroes who love. Simple as that. You don’t have to be a romance writer to do this – in fact, many of the most romantic stories I’ve ever read weren’t filed under the romance genre at all. Love comes in a few different forms, see – there’s romance, love between friends and family and even a love or passion for something – a job, a hobby. You get what I mean.

A story - or a good story – in its simplest form is when you have a character who loves someone or something, and you, the writer, asks him what he would give up for that someone or something. Would he kill for it? Would he die for it? Would he sacrifice his freedom, his comfort, his happiness, his sanity, for that one thing?

This is the foundation of a killer storyline. It’s no secret – it’s just something built into us as humans. Perhaps it’s what seperates us from the animals. Sacrifice. There’s something admiral about it, there’s something poetic about it, even something romantic about it. Look at all the best movies, and there is an element of sacrifice. In Star Wars, Darth Vader overcomes his dark past and gives up his life for his son. In Casablanca, Rick could’ve run off and had a wonderful romance with Ilsa – an ending that would, if produced in the 21st century, have been completely acceptable – but he stayed back, sacrificing his happiness and love for the war effort, not to mention Ilsa’s marriage. To Kill a Mockingbird saw Atticus in a rough place, too. He could’ve just given up and saved his reputation. Instead, however, he gave up his public image for what all good lawyers have a passion for – the truth.

But people are beginning to forget even this, this foundation of good storytelling. The 21st century story is taking a drastically different form. For the most part, today, we have characters who are profane, unlikeable, and worst of all, self-serving - the exact opposite of the sacrificial hero. Michael Blomkvist in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one example. So are most characters in most R-rated movies – I’m sorry, but most R-rated movies include sex scenes, those sex scenes happen 99% in premaritial relationships, and most premaritial relationships are not truly romantic, sacrificial ones. These are only a few examples of the “heroes” who have infiltrated our entertainment world, heroes who don’t truly love anything and therefore cannot sacrifice themselves for anything.

In short, this is a problem.

It’s not one that can be solved instantly. It’s a problem that has crept up  on us slowly, and it will go away slowly as well – if we make it go. The only thing we, as writers, can do is to employ the sacrifice factor in our stories, and perhaps we can get people back on track, perhaps we can show them what heroes and villains are once again. Perhaps, as writers, we can change the world.

That’s all we can ever hope for, isn’t it?