Posts Tagged ‘writing’

Novels: Many Plots Or One Plot?

Posted: March 21, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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I was watching a movie recently and at one point near the end, a literature teacher is teaching her class that there is only one plot in any work of fiction: “Who am I?” And when I logged onto the Internet a little while ago, I read a blog post by my friend and fellow author Pat Bertram (see here:http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/where-my-books-originated/) where she stated that at the core of every one of her novels, plus her memoir on grief, the central theme was “Who are we?” This all happened within a 48-hour period, so I definitely started thinking hard about these questions. Do all stories of fiction have just one plot to them, which can be summed up in “Who am I?” or “Who are we?”

Well, a lot of novels do have this question as a theme throughout the story. Plenty of coming-of-age novels are about children and teenagers finding themselves and learning just who they are, or becoming individuals, or finding their place in this chaotic universe. Heck, my own science-fiction novel Reborn City has plenty of identity themes in it, especially for Zahara and for the Hydras as a whole.

But at the same time, I’m not so sure that all stories are about “Who am I?” Look at some classic novels like “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. I hated that novel, but I do know that the central story was about one character nearly getting his head chopped off because of a family relation’s crime. I don’t think the whole “Who am I?” question figured much, especially when one character kept trying to keep his head on his shoulders. And recently I read Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” for class. That had nothing to do with “Who am I?” It was an unidentified narrator telling us about a story he heard (with details and all) about a guy trying to court a naive young girl who spends too much time with men and gets slandered in society for it.

Of course if you would rather me use a modern example, how about “Daughter of Time” by Josephine Tey? That whole novel was about figuring out an actual conspiracy in history, not about the main character’s identity as a cop or anything. Or what about any of the Hannibal Lecter books? Those are about one agent trying to catch a serial-killing criminal while Hannibal gets in their heads.

Sure, one can make an argument that each one of those examples has someone trying to find themselves, whether they know it or not (Richard III certainly didn’t know in “Daughter of Time” that people were helping him clear his name, a form of finding themselves). But those arguments sometimes seem very circuitous to me, at least when I go through them in my messed-up head. And do they necessarily prove those stories are about “Who am I?” or “Who are we?” I’m not sure, but if you can make an argument that doesn’t seem long and circuitous, then by all means, go ahead. I’d love to hear it.

Still, I don’t think you can sum up all fiction in one sentence or one question. And as for my friend Pat Bertram, that’s just the sort of stories she writes. I write some that are like that and some that are definitely not like that (Snake comes to mind for the latter). So like many things in the writing world, it all depends on the author and their particular stories and preferences.

What’s your view? Are all stories under a particular question, or do they fall under different questions and themes and beliefs?

I’m A Semicolon Addict

Posted: March 20, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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semicolon: a grammatical tool of punctuation used to indicate two interdependent statements.

If anyone has read a good deal of my writing, they’ll know I like using the semicolon a little bit too much. I didn’t realize how much I liked using it until recently though, when my friend Matt Williams, who is editing Reborn City, pointed out how many semicolons I use and started taking them out of the stories. And then the other day, while critiquing a classmate’s short story for our creative writing class, I noticed how often she used semicolons as well, and how periods or different ways of phrasing the sentence can really affect how the sentence and the paragraphs flows.

With all that in mind, I realized how much I used the semicolon, and how I was really better off not using it as I had. So I decided to get rid of it, and to come out here and admit that I’m a semicolon addict. However, I am working on getting over this habit. For instance, during the editing of Snake I started cutting out many of my semicoloned sentences and phrases, changing them so that they were either all one sentendce or two independent sentences. And on my latest short story, which I’m naming Vile, my aim is to write the entire story without using the semicolon once. Hopefully then I’ll be able to get over this habit that my writing can do without.

Oh, and speaking of habits, here’s one writing habit I picked up recently that I’m unsure of its origin. In a few short stories I’ve written, I’ll describe something in a sentence that manages to encompass the development of something over a long period of time into a few words. For instance, when writing about a character’s relationship with his girlfriend: “They first connected over their biology projects, then over their mutual interest in Gothic literature, and then finally they connected with their bodies”. Or in Vile, the main character describing what his wife had done while he’d been dead: “She had continued to live and thrive and undergo plastic surgery that allowed her to look like a college student again.”

You see those two sentences? They encompass so much, but say it in so little. I like it, but I can’t help but feel that I picked it up recently from some author I read either over winter break or in my American Lit class. Any ideas whom I might’ve picked it up from? Because I have absolutely no idea at all!

We Should Be Better Than This

Posted: March 18, 2013 in ideas, Journalism, Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, Scary Stuff, Social Activism, Writing
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To many, rape is just this: a hand reaching out of inescapable waters, but with no one to grasp it.

Over the past two days, I’ve read about four or five stories online about the Steubensville rape trial (for those of you unfamiliar, two teens from a small town in my state sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl while she was intoxicated and unconscious, urinated on her, and then posted the damning proof of it on Facebook). The two teens who committed the act were found guilty yesterday and sentenced to juvenile detention centers till they were 21. What upset me though, and what has upset many people as well, was not only that the poor girl was sexually assaulted, but the defense attorneys for the case tried to twist the concept of consent out of order by saying that since the girl was intoxicated, she never really said “no”; that there may have been a cover-up by the local high school, whose football team these boys belonged to and which is a source of pride among the local community; that those who witnessed the crime and were responsible for the photos on Facebook were not charged (though that might change pretty quickly, according to the Ohio AG); and that some of the coverage of the trial, which has gained nationwide attention through the Facebook posts, were actually in favor of the two boys charged.

The two rapists in question. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Yes, in favor. ABC News first reported the case not too long ago by saying the boys “took liberty” with the girl, which is definitely a new one if ever I’ve heard one. And yesterday, CNN seemed only able to lament the fact that these boys had promising futures stolen from them, that they could’ve made names for themselves at Ohio State and then in the NFL, that now they have to register as sex offenders, possibly for the rest of their lives. Underneath the spoken words, the silent implication: that the “good boys” weren’t to blame, but the victim for getting drunk and presenting an all-too-appealing oppurtunity for these boys to have a little bit of fun.

The same day, a story broke out about another gang-rape in India, where a camping couple from Switzerland were attacked, beaten, the wife raped, and then robbed. Arrests were made hours afterward (a record for India), but some public officials have blamed the couple for camping in that area. More victim blaming? I guess after the initial outrage of the bus gang-rape, some people still don’t know when to shut their yaps.

As an ardent supporter of women’s rights and of human rights, I’m abhorred, appalled, and disgusted. This victim blaming turns every woman out there who is the object of unwanted sexual advances into sex toys and shames them into being quiet, tells them they should accept what they get or they will be the ones at fault, that they will be scrutinized for their clothes and behavior and will be called sluts forevermore. Meanwhile, men can wear whatever and drink whatever and screw around as much as they want, and they’ll rarely be called a “man-whore”. This double standard mystifies me as much as it makes me ashamed to be a man. Yes, ashamed! I’m ashamed that my sex gets away with so much while the other half of the species is put down and turned into objects so much.

It also makes me think of a novel I plan to write in the future. I first came up with it by thinking to myself, “What’s the worst event that could happen to a singular person and then use whatever happens to them in the story to help them at least begin to heal?” Being so influenced by Law & Order: SVU (for better or for worse), my mind went right to rape. Only the victim can feel that terror and trauma that comes from rape, they often suffer in silence, and when they do come out, they are often at the recieving end of brutal victim-blaming and stigmas and questions about what they experienced that are never about clarifying the events as they happened. It fit what I was looking for to a tee.

At first though, I considered changing what that tragedy would be for this character. I mean, even I have my limits for what I’ll write, and that’s a lot for a horror writer. But I decided to stick with rape, though at the time I wasn’t sure why. But when I see articles in the news about victims of rape being blamed for what happened to them, even just subliminally, I’m reminded of why I kept rape as that character’s tragedy. Just like Reborn City has themes of the evils and lies of Islamaphobia, this novel of mine and this character can be a way to encourage women to come out about their attacks, to show men that rape, under any circumstances, is rape and their own fault, and perhaps a wake-up call for many readers that rape is a problem and our attitude towards it needs a major change.

I’m not sure if I’ll write an actual rape scene when I do end up writing this novel, but I do know that when I do write this novel, I’ll be channeling my rage, my disdain and my disgust for rape and rapists into it. Perhaps some will feel this underlying rage and learn something from it, like rape is never the victim’s fault. Or that the rapist is the only one to blame. Or there are no circumstances where rape is okay.

Savannah Dietrich was raped last year, but spoke out on Twitter and named her rapists when she felt the plea deal they got wasn’t enough. Sadly, she was nearly charged with contempt of court for naming her rapists.

And perhaps then, the world will change for the better. Because you know what? I shouldn’t have to be writing about this! I shouldn’t have to be telling people on my blog that I find rape and the double standards surrounding it disgusting, or that I plan to channel my rage over this insanity into a novel! I shouldn’t have to check my email and then see that another girl was raped, or that someone in an important position insinuated that the victim had no one to blame but herself. I shouldn’t have to, and neither should anyone!

But we live in the sort of world where all this happens on an all-too regular basis. And you know what? I’m not going to stop raging about it until it does stop, until change does happen, until that novel’s heroine is able to break free of her chains and start the move towards healing. Because I know the world should not be in this state, and I see a moral and an ethical duty to try and make it better. If what I write here does end up helping someone, then that’s great. In the meantime though, I have a lot of work to do, and I’m getting started right now.

For the victims who are blamed. For those who live in fear. And for those I can help before it’s too late, and this dark culture gets them into the wrong mindset.

What about you?

The Next Short Story Idea: Overcoming the Death-Barrier

Posted: March 17, 2013 in ideas, short story, Writing
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Well, I’ve been a busy little blogger today. This makes for the fourth post on this lovely Sunday, and the third in so many hours. But this last post for March 17th is one that I’m especially eager to share with you. Since I’m finished editing Old Sid and I’m not working on any novels except to get them ready for publication, I’ve got some short story writing to do. And this next short story is a strange but rather compelling one. When I told my dad about it over dinner, he was nodding like, “Yeah, that I can see as pretty interesting”. Now that was a motivator.

How many of you have heard of the death-barrier? For those of you who haven’t, this refers to what keeps us from becoming immortal, the inevitability of death. Everyday we hear about advancements that are meant to keep this barrier at bay, but every now and then we hear about people trying to remove the barrier altogether, essentially granting immortality. And not only that, but there has been talk of bringing back the dead.

Yes, bringing back the dead. Not through corpse bits and lightning though, but by regrowing healthy tissue and restimulating the brain to reanimate the dead. If you do your research, you’ll be able to find companies that will cryonically freeze your corpse after you die so that when this barrier is no longer an issue, you can be brought back to life…for a hefty donation to scientific research. Yeah, sounds a little like it’s out of a sci-fi novel, but it’s true. And if you’re interested, there’s a Castle episode where the whole plot of the story revolves around a murdered doctor whose body was cryonically frozen. It’s a ton of fun.

Assuming you could resuscitate the dead, what would happen? How would a revived person react? Would they enjoy being back? Or would they feel that being brought back was unnatural?

This is my short story. I plan to follow around someone who has died and been brought back and how they react to the world. It should be interesting and very challenging to write. I’m not sure what I’ll call it, but it’ll be interesting to see what results from it. I’ll let you know when I finish it. Wish me luck, especially with coming up with an appropriate title!

Have a good night, everybody.

“Old Sid” Is Finished!

Posted: March 17, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, it took me a while, but I finally did it! I finished Old Sid, the second short story I submitted to my creative writing class. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Old Sid is about a bunch of students at Ohio State University trying to delve into the truth of Old Sid, an urban legend I made up for the short story (so don’t go online trying to see if Old Sid is a real thing, because it’s only a product of my imagination). The story is narrated from the point of view of several people at once, similar to what Jeffrey Eugenides did with his first novel The Virgin Suicides.

I ended up changing a lot with this draft, and at times I purposely got easily distracted just because it was slow-going and I wanted a break. But the story’s done, and I really like how it turned out. Old Sid has his Boo Radley moment where the characters realize he’s not a legend but very human, but it’s done in such a subtle way that it’s not right in your face. I think my teacher will like it when he reads it, especially since Old Sid is in the vein of literary fiction and I’m barely able to write horror in short story form with any amount of competence.

After I get my grades for the semester and some feedback on Old Sid, I might edit it again and send it off to a literary magazine, preferably one based in Ohio or better yet in Columbus. It’ll probably have a better chance in a local magazine, since a lot of people are very familiar with Ohio State in its home state than outside it (of course). I’ll let you know if I have any luck in that department. Wish me luck.

A Welcome To My New Followers

Posted: March 17, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of new followers over the past month or so, and especially during these past two weeks. So with that in mind, I’d thought I’d extend a welcome to my new followers and thank them for deciding to follow me and read my blog. And to my returning followers, welcome back and thanks for continuing to read my blog.

Also, I wanted to clarify some things for the newest readers. Occasionally on this blog, you’ll see words and phrases such as The Quiet Game, Reborn City, or Snake. These are my works-in-progress that I’ll be self-publishing hopefully within the next year or so. Each is very different from the other, and are at different stages of getting ready for publishing. I’d like to take this oppurtunity to tell you all about each of them and to let those who are already familiar with the works in question how progress is coming along.

So without further ado, here’s a look at my WIPs:

The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones

TQG cover

This is a collection of short stories I’ll be putting out soon. I wrote these short stories over winter break and the beginning of spring semester, and it’s almost ready for publication. I’m just waiting for the US Copyright Office to get me my copyright and then I’ll be ready to upload this onto the Internet. Since the Copyright Office takes about two and a half months though, we’ve still got a bit of a wait to go before it comes out. So please be patient, and in the meantime you can read the description for the book on the page “Books by Rami Ungar” or watch the trailer below:

Reborn City

This is a science fiction novel about street gangs in a post-apocalyptic future I wrote in high school and that’s being reviewed by a beta reader before I prepare it for publication. The beta reader, Matt Williams, also happens to be a published writer and blogger, so you should seriously check out his blog here: http://storiesbywilliams.com/. Currently Matt’s halfway through the novel or thereabouts, and since he finished his latest novel Pappa Zulu, he’s been able to get the chapters back to me that much faster. I can’t wait to see what results from our collaboration.

Snake

This is a thriller novel I wrote over six months from June to December 2012 and follows a serial killer in New York who is hunting members of a powerful mafia family, his reasons for doing so clouded in mystery and in murder (how’s that for a description). I recently finished the second draft and have sent off the first four chapters to a beta reader I trust. Hopefully she’ll be able to let me know what she thinks very quickly. In the meantime, there are a few excerpts of Snake on this blog, so if you get bored you can probably go looking for them and find them.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. I hope this piqued your interest in some of my work. Once again, thanks for reading and agreeing to follow my blog. It really means a lot to me. Have a nice day, and I’ll post again soon.

Rami

Where Did The Original Zombie Go?

Posted: March 14, 2013 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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We’ve been done one way for too long. Ugh!

In 1968, George A. Romero introuduced the concept of a zombie apocalypse created through a pandemic illness in his famous movie Night of the Living Dead. Although the term “zombie” was never used in the movie itself but was applied by fans who saw similarities between the flesh-eating undead of the film and the zombies of mythology, the idea stuck, and has grown over the years until every zombie novel, movie, and television series out ther either involves a zombie-creating virus or the cause of the zombie pandemic is not explained.

Although I have been horrified and fascinated by this type of zombie like any other type of horror fan, I also feel it’s being overdone in this day and age. It’s like vampires–the market’s too saturated with the same old drivel under different names and different faces. It’s enough to make you get out your stake and you automatic weapon.

It also makes me wonder, does anyone care about the original zombie? And by that, I don’t mean a zombie whose body is so rotted that there’s barely any rotted skin left on the corpse. I mean the zombie that wasn’t created via science gone wrong, but by magic gone right. Remember that zombie? The result of a voodoo curse? Yeah, that was actually a thing, based on actual Vodun mythology, and there were several famous zombie novels and a few films based on that kind of zombie well before Romero came along with Night of the Living Dead. One of the first novels about the supernatural zombie was The Magic Island by William Seabrook in 1929, which is believed to be the first timethe word “zombie” entered our lexicon. Then in 1932, Bela Lugosi starred in the Victor Halperin horror film White Zombie, which permanently cemented the word “zombie” in the English language.

Poster for “I Walked With A Zombie” in 1943

Other films that have included the supernatural type of zombie is 1943’s I Walked With A Zombie and 1988’s The Serpent and the Rainbow, but not much else. The most recent entry into supernatural zombie lore is Drums, a four-issue comic book series that ran in 2011. Unfortunately, almost all of these examples are very old and might not appeal to the SFX and CGI-addicted audiences today. And the series Drums has had mized reviews, with the first issue getting strong reviews but some thinking that by the end of the series, it seems to be “laid out like a bad SyFy movie”. That’s quite the insult right there.

So can there be an original take on the supernatural zombie that doesn’t suck? I should hope so. At the very least I have an idea for such a story that I’ve been saving for a very long time, and I may write it one of these days. However, that might not be for a couple of years, so that leaves plenty of time for other storytellers out there to steal my idea come up with something on their own that doesn’t suck or seem like the same old story retold in a new way.

What would such a movie or novel look like? I’m not sure, but I do know that sort of story carries with it different intricacies and challenges. For example, how does one become a zombie, and can it be transferred to the living? If so, how is it transferred? Can there be a Frankenstein’s monster-twist in the story? How do you defeat a corpse infused with supernatural power, if guns or machetes aren’t enough? Do these zombies need a food source, or is magic enough? And can creating a zombie through magic cause other strange things to occur, whether intended or not? And if other strange things occur, what will they be?

A traditional zombie in a cornfield. Freaky in profile, right?

You see how many questions a storyteller has to wrestle with in creating this sort of story? It’s very different from a virus-type zombie story. And I hope somebody realizes it someday and sees the possibilities and potential in such a story. Whether that’ll be my zombie story or someone else’s zombie story, I hope somebody does. I’d pay good money for that sort of story given a modern take, especially if it’s well done.

Would you like to see a zombie story using supernatural zombies? What kind of story do you think it’d be?

How Prolific A Writer Must You Be?

Posted: March 14, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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As I was stepping out of the shower last night, I was thinking about all the stories I want to write in the future. Naturally, I thought of the list of ideas for novels, movies, and even video games I keep on my flash drive, with every idea getting a working title and a brief description of its plot. It was at this point I was struck by a thought: how prolific must a writer be?

Of course there’s no real answer to that question, but I feel compelled to examine the issue anyway in this blog post. So let’s take a look:

Many writers write several volumes worth of work for a variety of reasons. Many, like Stephen King or James Patterson, have written huge bodies of work, some of which might not be in their specific genre of interest. Why? Well, I’m sure the income they get from the sales is nice, even if most of it goes to the publisher, but I think it might have something to do with the joy many writers have when working with a story they like and then sharing it with the people. Otherwise, why would they continue writing when they have enough money to invest in several Fortune 500 companies and retire someplace warm?

On the other hand, some authors only feel compelled to write one story and leave it at that. Take Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird. She only wrote one novel her entire life, probably got a lot of money and plenty of awards for it, plus a movie adaptation. She never wrote another thing ever. Now, one could argue she enjoyed being a one-hit wonder so much she felt she had no need to write more. If you ask me though, I think the fact that she always lived in the same small town she grew up in and that she seemed more introverted than extroverted argues that she didn’t have anything else she wanted to say to the world. Also, every writer has to do some publicity for their work, especially in these tumultuous times for the writing industry. That whole advertising and promoting gig is not for everyone, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Ms. Lee got tired of it and didn’t want anymore of it after Mockingbird.

But most writers are not Stephen King, James Patterson, or Harper Lee. In fact, most have to continually write, especially if a writer is self-publishing and he or she doesn’t have skyrocketing sales. So as long as someone can sit at a computer and churn out a story, they will, especially if it makes the difference between paying the rent and not paying it. Like I said, many writers fall somewhere in this area, though most are doing a bit better than having to worry about rent payments. Of course, it’s not all about the money. Some just like sharing their stories with the world. I know I’m one of those folks, though I don’t mind a little cash flow here and there.

So how does this factor into how prolific a writer must be? Truthfully, it doesn’t. Writers write, and they write what they want, and how much they write is up to them. Some will keep writing new stories for years, up until the day they’re on their deathbeds struggling to type out one more word, one more sentence, one last story. Others will just write the one beautiful piece of literature and be done with it. They may not even send it to the publishers, though as far as I know that’s very rare. Why they do either of these options is their own choice and you’d have to ask them.

As for me? I’ve got many ideas for stories, and I’d like the oppurtunity to share them all with you and anybody else who might be interested. It might take me a while to get most of them out, but as long as a story keeps me interested, I’ll keep writing it and I’ll keep sharing it with the greater world.

What about you? How prolific do you feel you need to be and why do you feel this way?

Snake: The Second Draft Is Finished!

Posted: March 12, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Well, isn’t today full of editing pluses! I edited a chapter of my science-fiction novel Reborn City, and I just finished the second draft of my serial killer thriller Snake. I’m not going to go into word counts or anything, mostly because I’m waiting for a phrase or two to be translated into Russian so I can add it in before I add up the latest word counts. However, I will tell you that I took away a few words and I added some, and still I think this novel got a little longer!

Anyway, I’ll be calling my beta reader for Snake tomorrow, tell her that she’s got a new novel to put on her computer tomorrow. I hope she likes it. Wish me luck, and let’s hope she gets through it quick. Wish me luck and if there are any updates, I’ll let you know.

Reborn City: Zahara the Expatriate

Posted: March 12, 2013 in Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Writing
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Merriam-Webster.com: expatriate–to leave one’s country to reside elsewhere

I’m about to edit another chapter of Reborn City (yes, I’m still editing, but my beta reader’s schedule has freed up a little, so the chapters are coming faster than before). Before that, I read a blog post (read here:http://stevenglassman.de/2013/03/11/grokking-expatriates-in-sci-fi/) about how certain characters in science-fiction are considered expatriates and what category of expatriates they are (yes, there are categories. Read the blog post if you doubt me). The post covered everything from Superman to Futurama to Star Wars to even Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters, and it got me thinking: Zahara Bakur, main character of my own science fiction novel, is an expatriate, or expat for short.

For those of you who haven’t read the novel–which is basically everybody but me and my beta reader and fellow author Matt Williams–Zahara was born and raised until her elementary years in Cairo, which in the RC universe is one of the last remnants of the Egyptian state (don’t ask me why, just read the book when it comes out). However Zahara’s father moves the family to New York City, which is now its own independent city-state, to attend NYU’s law school, and the poor girl has to adopt to a much more liberal and sometimes very Islamaphobic culture. Over the years she gets used to New York and finds friends that don’t judge based on a person’s religious affiliation, but things shake up horribly for Zahara when she’s fifteen.

What happens? Her father has to relocate to Reborn City, which is the Las Vegas of the strange world of RC. There Zahara has to adjust to living in a city that is worse than New York City in how Islamaphobic it can be. When Zahara finds herself coerced into gang life, she finds the whole gangster culture mind-boggling, especially the taken-for-granted hostility between the various gangs and the equating of surviving violence and conquering enemies as being tough and cool. Zahara has to live with this sort of culture and try her best to adjust to it while also integrating the gang culture with the culture of New York, her Muslim upbringing, and her naturally peaceful nature.

Even without all the science fiction elements in this story, you can see how much conflict Zahara has to go through.  But as the story progresses, I hope Zahara can find a new strength that she didn’t have before. I’ll see where the two sequels go with the story and hopefully things will get better for Zahara and her friends.

But before that, I have to see the first book out on the digital bookshelves. I’ll let you know how things go as I get updates. Blog on you later.

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