chaos

chaos--a dramatic condition in which there is no apparent order; a character behaving without a plan or design; a multifarious state of being in which there is no seeming thread that connects individuals or events.

Chaos is the world without story, its purpose random and unstructured. The writer enters the landscape of chaos, imposes a structure or plan, then steps back to watch the characters as they respond to attempts at design. Chaos is also the world without specific individuals being assigned starring roles; as it continues to unfold, the condition of chaos levels the playing field of agenda so that all agendas are of equal importance. When beginning a story, the writer chooses a landscape, which may be pure invention or fantasy or extrapolated speculative fiction but which nevertheless becomes a tangible place for the reader. The writer then adds characters, whose goals help define their prominence and focus.

Story, plot, design--they are all a purposeful rearranging of furniture, the feng shui equivalent of drama, allowing some procession or orbit of event, the totality of which eases the passage of energy from the beginning point to the resolution. Chaos appears at first to be all the distractions a character or group of characters may face, but as the reader grows interested in the characters, chaos morphs into "things that could go wrong," which is a sort of reverse feng shui, a negative energy that arrives in unanticipated increments.

Chaos is a series of laundry list events, awaiting the writer's hand to organize them in some form.

Dramatic Intensity: "Shut up," he explained.

intensity in language--the use of italic, exclamation points, all-capital-letter words to emphasize dramatic points; the use of "very" and other intensifiers to visually signify emphasis.

Mommy doesn't like it when you do that.

Mommy wishes you would stop doing that.

Mommy is tired of having to remind you not to do that.

Mommy is very tired of your behavior.

Will you please stop doing that?

How many times do I have to ask?

Stop it.

Stop!

I said, "Stop," damnit.

What is it you don't understand about shut the fuck up?

It is neither fair nor an intended slight to suggest that mothers alone are driven to the use of intensifiers in language. John Lardner, in a splendid reminiscence of his remarkable father, Ring Lardner, told of a time when the family was out for a Sunday morning drive, the auto being driven by father (RL) who was suffering the effects of last night's drinking spree with his newspaper chums. After a number of wrong turns, muffled curses, and roads being driven in reverse gear, one of the Lardner youth ventured to query, "Are we lost, Daddy?" To which the now classic reply, "Shut up," he explained.

It is encouraging to note that characters frequently blow their cool, over respond, lose composure, and experience other lapses of equipoise. How to represent these moments? The best way is through dialogue in context, which is to say with words, expressions, and accompanying gestures that do not require italic or exclamation point or all-cap lettering in order to convey the exasperation and/or frustration being experienced at the moment. The second best way is with some bodily response, the blink of the eyes, a tilt of the head, a flinch, a muffled grunt, a shift in stance, and yes, the sudden attempt to drive the human fist through the inhuman wall. The third best way is through an ironic combination of the first two, say pinching the bridge of the nose and saying, "I see." particularly when it is clear that the character doesn't see--not at all. Any other ways, such as italics or exclamation points or authorial intervention are "tells," clues poker players look for in their opponents, that the author doesn't know how to bring off the intensity or is afraid the reader won't get it without Las-Vegas-like displays of emphasis.

Imagine a spoken response to an incendiary disclosure of information. For instance: "I am very disappointed in your behavior." Now imagine an intensified response. "And I am very disappointed that you were so very disappointed in my behavior that you couldn't see the necessity for me to do what I did." The response obviates the need for such adverbs as "retorted defensively,"or "sneered sarcastically." The response is in what the characters say rather than the way the writer uses MS Word aps.

Chemical Reactions

chemistry--the tangible result occurring when two or more characters interact; an effect that seems to emerge and transfer into action when characters notably get along or develop an enmity; a palpable aura of reality emerging from the manner in which characters respond to one another; non-verbal signals which draw characters into friendships, alliances, or mutual distrust.

Chemistry is the unspoken glue in fiction, producing its own inexorable logic and the resulting consequences of that logic. Often coming as a surprise to the writer, particularly when it threatens to shift the predetermined direction of the story, chemistry is a jump-start to motivation and action. Sometimes the chemistry between characters is accepted by the writer and the reader on a non-verbal level, "just because it is." This very quality helps project a greater sense of reality and believability because of the way it overrides logic. Readers will probably have some sense in their own life of disliking or liking someone on sight, without any good reason; they probably make judgements as a direct result of such non-verbal signals, picked up by the sensory receptors of the social animal humans have become.

One of the many great chemistries in American fiction emerges in the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, each drawn to the other in ways that make sense only after they are considered in light of the activities shared by the two. To Tom, Huck represents the freedom and anti-convention that runs rampant in a young boy, the ability to come and go as he pleases and the "worldly" knowledge such freedom brings. Huck on the other hand has come to accept Tom's views of conventional behavior, a slap-dash view of chivalry as seen by Walter Scott, and the classroom view of the way the world worked at that time. Tom was social, Huck wasn't. In this primordial ooze came their boyish desires for adventure, and from this came the chemistry that bound them.

In real life, Harry Longabaugh and Robert Leroy Parker met while in prison, each jailed separately on horse theft charges. The chemistry between them brings the Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn chemistry to mind. Longabaugh morphed into the Sundance Kid, an appellation doubtless hung on him by Parker since the name of the prison in Wyoming Territory where they met was the Sundance Prison. Parker, of course, was known as Butch Cassidy.

Yet another version of chemistry between characters emerged in the lengthy series of mysteries featuring Robert Parker's investigator, Spenser, and the unorthodox operative, Hawk, often retained by Spenser as a consultant (for which trope, read "backup gun hand").

Not to forget Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

The important fact for writers to consider takes in the reaches of partnering (say Dashiel Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series, and Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias, in Aristophanes' play, The Frogs) and leaving one character alone on stage for too long. When two characters appear to get on well or, as in Louise Erdrich's remarkable short story, "St.Marie," plucked from her novel, Love Medicine, a young Native American girl in a convent school forms a totally explosive relationship with a nun, run with the energy. Follow the trail. Exploit the chemistry.

See also fun

conversely: a stasis report

stasis--a state or condition in which process stops or rests in balance; a situation or series of situations in which dramatic inertia pauses; passages in story where there is no action.

The battlefield for writers is populated with two armies, the army of background and explanation and the opposing army of action. The timid writer worries that the reader will not have enough guidance or information to understand the implications of the story, thus slowing it or completely stopping it with backstory, description, and explanation. The more active writer keeps characters in constant movement, sometimes to the bewilderment of the reader. By most accounts, the reader is more likely to continue with the latter rather than the former, hopeful of occasional squirts of information.

One truth emerges: if nothing happens for too long, the reader will set the work down with little probability of returning. The culprit is not so much bad writing as stasis, poor management of movement with necessary development and explanation. Another truth awaits just below the surface: most readers of fiction enjoy the process of active reading, a process by which they use their imaginations, their ability to deduce, their complete willingness to be led astray. Readers want things to happen; they want complications to attach themselves to the lives of individuals they have begun to care about.

Stasis is the enemy of fiction. In successful stories, even when nothing appears to be happening, something at some level is advancing the inertia of agenda, intent, and motivation.


conversation--communication and discussion among two or more individuals; possibly meaningful exchanges between friends, family members, co-workers, extending to complete strangers; sometimes mistaken for dialogue.

Conversation should not be mistaken for dialogue; dialogue doesn't work well in conversation--it is too focused. Although conversation may have some theme or agenda--Eat in or go out, What movie to see, What'll I wear today--it is more an expression of momentary feelings, ideas, questions. Conversation can and often does edge into discussion, which moves toward argument in the theoretical or moot court sense before tipping over into argument in the argumentative sense.

Being another matter entirely, dialogue exists more in the territory bounded by contention, clash of agenda, and the subtext of the space between what a character says and does and what the character thinks and feels while doing it. Use of too many conversations in a story leads to stasis.