Mostly Ghosts: The Drummers

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 6: Mostly Ghosts

Episode 2: The Drummers

Mostly Ghosts: The Elevator

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 6: Mostly Ghosts

Episode 1: The Elevator

Someday I'll Write a Book about Cider Apples

I went to a cider tasting workshop on Friday night.  We learned about what to look for when tasting a cider: the balance between acidity, sweetness, tannins, and alcohol.  We learned a little bit about the process of making cider, and then we learned some history.  And now I'm obsessed with the history of cider.

So cider comes from one specific kind of apple: the cider apple.  Cider apples are bitter and dry and basically inedible.   You can't really use them for anything other than making cider.  When prohibition hit the US, the vineyards could all continue to make grape juice.  The beer brewers could still use all their barley fields.  But there was nothing the cider makers could do with their cider apples.  The only choice they had (besides keeping an orchard full of useless cider apples that they couldn't sell) was to rip out the trees and replace them with (usually) culinary apples.

When prohibition was lifted, the vineyards and brewers got back in business, but the cider makers had no apples.  Cider in the US has never recovered.  The few cider makers in the US were mostly hobbyists, who started experimenting with culinary apples.  They combined different apple varietals of culinary apple with crab apples, which are tiny little apples that are too tart to eat raw.  Eventually, they developed what's called New World cider, which through sheer ingenuity manages to make a fun refreshing cider without the use of cider apples.  It also means that American cider has a foundation and ongoing history of experimentation that you don't feel as much in beer or wine making.  It embraces Americana ideals of innovation and preserveering through rough times.

They still use cider apples in England and France, and you can taste the difference if you try them.  They have complex tastes, and sometimes they're left to age just like wine, so they have the vintage stamped on the label.  How fancy!  They're much more like wine than New World cider, which I think of more like fun time apple juice that comes in a can.

There's a story in here.  There's a story about having to rip your life's work out of the ground because of a declaration from the powers that be that you're no longer allowed to do that work.  There's a story in here about trying to rebuild from culinary apples.  There's a setting of an apple orchard and a chronic tension.  It's not enough to carry a whole story, but it's enough to be the set up for a story.  Even though I'm overwhelmed with how much I need to get done and how many projects I already have going, I've spent the last several days overlaying story ideas onto this and seeing if I can get anything to fit. 

On Endings

If you're following the podcast, you might notice that I just end the episode when I'm done.  Maybe threads are left unresolved, because life is messy and I can't solve all this character's problems in twenty minutes.  Sometimes I leave a listener wanting more.  I consider this a victory, because it's far better than the alternative when a listener is thankful that the episode is over and they are 100% done with these characters.  Sometimes the resolution a listener thinks they want would be super dull if I actually gave it to them.  They would turn against me by the time I was done.  "Well, it was fun episode about kelpies until Carolyn stated talking about the process of getting a restraining order."  Maybe the lack of conclusion will eat at them until they start a conversation with my work by creating their own.  (That would be rad, but to my knowledge has never happened.)

This method of stopping when I'm done works for the podcast (or at least, I've decided that it works) because episodes are short.  Hopefully if a listener finds an ending unsatisfying, they won't feel cheated because they've only "wasted" twenty minutes.  Hopefully, their appreciation of the brevity will outweigh their disappointment that there's not more story. 

It does not work for a novel. 

In reading a novel, a reader has devoted hours to a single story, and they will feel betrayed if they are left unsatisfied at the end.  A reader has given an author's work their valuable time and valuable attention, so not providing they a payoff is almost aggressively rude.  Some novelists like breaking that implicit contract that they will resolve a problem (or at least not resolve it in a satisfying way), but I don't want to be one of those writers who purposefully frustrates their reader and purposefully makes a novel difficult to read.

So this is all a way of saying that endings are hard.  When my agent read my last novel, she asked if I planned a sequel.  I had not.  "If you're not going to write a sequel, you need to tie up these loose ends," she said.  "This reads like there's going to be more." 

Of course, I'd intended for it to be like "everything's not always tied up in a neat bow!  Life goes on and chronic issues take time to work on!  Whishy washy wishy washy."  But she was absolutely right, and what she said has stuck with me to the point where I've gone through other novels looking for this, and sure enough, it's there.  I tie up the main plot is a satisfying way, with some big show pieces and some drama and some fireworks, but what about all those other threads that flushed the novel out along the way?  I've just let those hang, thinking they'd fade into the background after the big showpiece climax!  But you know what?  If you let too many threads hang, you just end up with a frayed looking edge.

In trying to improve, I've been looking at my manuscripts and asking myself, "What story threads feel like they're leading into a sequel?"  And then working on those.  I've been removing them completely.  I've been altering how they play out so they end up with a conclusion, which is hard when I know how the story goes and this isn't it.

The other thing she said, that I'm trying to keep in mind is that I need to be mindful of y themes.  Those themes I've been bringing up like motifs throughout the novel, need to come back at the end.  I need to bring those back up at the end so that when a reader thinks back on the book, they think back on its themes.  That's hard for me because I want a reader to think back on the big, exciting explosion at the end, and I have to wrestle that desire under control because it's not helping.  And if the themes are tied to the explosion, then they both stand out.  They're both more rooted into the story.

Someday, I'm going to nail an ending, and it's going to be great.

Tension and Paw Patrol

Lately, my son has been watching a whole bunch of Paw Patrol.  For those not in the know, Paw Patrol is an animated show from Nickelodeon with two fifteen-minute episodes, or the occasional half hour episode.  In it, there is a team of dogs, called the Paw Patrol, and each dog is a kind of community helper (police officer, firefighter, bulldozer driver, recycling truck driver, etc.)  Each episode, doofy townspeople have an issue and call up Ryder, the little boy who coordinates the Paw Patrol, and he sends the dogs that would be helpful out to fix the problem.  It teaches about community helpers and problem solving and teamwork.  It's also very formulaic, which kids like, and the theme song plays a lot and is super catchy. 

If you still have "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher" stuck in your head, I know how you could fix that.

There are a couple things that absolutely fascinate me about Paw Patrol.  The first is how quickly the stakes escalate. 

There's one episode (we tend to watch the same episodes over and over) where this kid, Alex, has a big-wheel that he's McGuivered together out of duct tape and spare parts.  He hits a curb and the big-wheel falls apart.  Pieces of his big-wheel are in the street, and it wouldn't be safe for him to get them, so he calls the Paw Patrol for help.  Ryder calls the dogs together and sorts out that the Police Pup will stop traffic around the scattered parts and Recycle Pup will help put the scattered parts back on the big-wheel.  They explain this plan, then follow through on the plan, and huzzah!  Fixed big-wheel!  But then, Alex takes off on his newly fixed big-wheel and careens down a hill straight toward a busy intersection.  What will the Paw Patrol do about this?  Well, Police Pup can block off traffic in the intersection and Helicopter Pup can help bring Alex to a stop.  Okay, that's a good plan!  Which they execute and it succeeds, and Alex learns a lesson about going slow on his big-wheel so he's not hit by a car.

There's another episode where there's been a bunch of snow, and the Mayor's car swerves off the icy road into a snowbank and gets stuck.  She calls the Paw Patrol to help tow her out.  Ryder calls the dogs together and decides that Bulldozer Pup will clear the roads like a snowplow and Police Pup will use the winch on his Police Pup Car to haul the mayor's car out of the snow.  This plan is successful, and everyone feels good about themselves.  Or at least they do until Ryder gets a call from a train engineer.  There's a bunch of debris on the track and the train is going to hit it and derail, and he can't slow down because the tracks are too icy.  Oh no!  Well, what should the Paw Patrol do about this imminent emergency?  They can have Police Pup clear some of the little debris and Snow Rescue Pup remove the big debris and Bulldozer Pup scrape the snow off the tracks with his bulldozer.  Does that sound like a good plan?  Good!  Yay!  They execute this plan and the day is saved and there's no train derailment.

Sometimes Paw Patrol makes me anxious.  There is a boy on a big-wheel hurtling towards traffic, and you're going to call a dog in a helicopter in from across town and talk about your plan before running after him?  Ahhhhhhhh!  But the other thing that's fascinating about Paw Patrol is how much it doesn't freak out my easily freaked-out kid.  By stopping the ticking clock, which is essentially what happens in this time dilation moment when they have time to make a plan--as my kid sees it--that means the ticking clock must not exist.  They have all the time in the world to decide on a step-by-step plan about what they're going to do.  And that step-by-step plan is comforting even in the face of a train derailment or an erupting volcano or a sinking boat.  The Paw Patrol's calm is comforting.  While taking their time makes me (an adult) anxious that they're not going to get to that kid in time, it actually lowers the stakes as my son understands them.

The episodes are also set up to mimic the way kids play.  You can think of it like there's a group of kids and they each have a different pup toy, and one of them comes up with a problem.  "Oh no!  There's a tree on the tracks and the train can't stop!" and the other kids jump in and say, "Police Pup can use his wench to move the tree!"  "Let's call in Snow Rescue Pup!  She can shove the rest of the trees off the track!"

It's the opposite of what you would do in a story written for adults, where you want the tension to be high and you want the reader/viewer to feel the danger.  For instance, I would have Police Pup tear after Alex the second he started going too fast down the hill, and Police Pup would rolling tackle him off the street right before he drove into the intersection.  So in a way, this show is demonstrating things not to do when storytelling: Don't stop and talk about your plan in the middle of an action scene.

But also, maybe I have such problems watching this show--maybe the reason it makes me so much more anxious than it should, is that it doesn't follow traditional story telling structures that appear in adult stories.  The beats are off, and I find that jarring and stressful.  So maybe that's a lesson too: do something jarringly to disrupt story beats to create a different kind of tension.  Get back to the story!  Oh my God!  Ahhhhh!

Trying to Cut back Ablist Language

 Ablest language is tricky.  I personally find it confusing, and I could explain what I don't get about it, but that would take away from the point, which is: some words hurt people.  When someone tells me, "This hurts me," it's my job to do better rather than explain why I don't get it and how their feelings are incorrect.  I don't need to understand.  I just need to try to do better, and I'm trying, even if I'm not perfect.

Using these words hurts people.  And wouldn't you rather not hurt people? 

Isn't not hurting people worth being mildly inconvenienced?

It's hard to cut words out of your vocabulary.  And these words are SO ingrained, that it makes it extra hard.  (Don't use the word "superfluous"?  Sure thing, boss!  Don't use the word "st*pid"?  ...Well, crud.)  There's the added bonus that as I try to cut words from my vocabulary, I also try no to expose my son to these words so he'll start life a step ahead of me: being a kinder person and not having to prune his vocabulary in the future.  And it's impossible.  These words are thrown around so causally on even the most wholesome kid's shows.  These words are thrown around casually at school and by neighbors and by the ladies in the Jewel checkout line. 

If you successfully don't use these words, no one notices.  You're not losing anything.  No one is offended by you not saying something is cr*zy.

In the last few years, I feel like I've done a good job taking cr*zy out of my vocabulary.  I think it's been relatively easy because when I used to say, "That's cr*zy!" I didn't mean, "That's illogical and counter-productive to the point of mental illness/disability."  I meant, "That's wild!  I can't believe it!"  So there's a pretty direct 1:1 between "cr*zy" and "wild," so I can just say "wild" instead.  Which I do now.  All the time.

I've had a lot more trouble with "b*nanas" and "n*ts."  I think that's because there's a subtle difference in my brain between something being wild and something being b*nanas. There's an component of endearment and playfulness to calling someone a n*t that doesn't exist in calling someone wild. In my experience, "You n*t," is like a soft way to say, "What you're doing is goofy.  You probably should stop, but I know you won't because you can't control your feelings or reactions.  I accept this about you and love you, but we both know it's still weird."  This connotation doesn't exist in the word "wild."  "Goober" or "Goofus" work pretty well, but I'm much more likely to call someone a "pine cone" and have them look at me funny, not knowing what I mean.

I just did a pass on my novel where I tried to search and destroy ablist language.  Yeah!  Doing good! 
The problem wasn't with these above examples, but with "st*pid."  When I say, "That's st*pid," I mean "That was poorly thought out."  I cannot think of a shorter way to say that.  Sometimes I mean "careless," or "reckless," or "thoughtless," which are shorter, but the problem is that in written dialogue, if one character just called someone out for acting "st*pid," changing that to "thoughtless" can mess up the voice.  It doesn't sound like a real person talking, or at least not like this character talking.

Then the huge hold up for me was "id*ot."  In this novel, there are multiple multiple times when one character will do something so thoughtless and poorly planned that it puts other people in danger and the main character is upset about it.  "You put people in danger by not thinking through your actions and I'm upset about it!" does not have the same immediacy and tension and anger as "You id*ot!"  I think the problem is that here I do mean it to be insulting.  And "id*ot" is meant to be insulting.  So I have trouble substituting, because this word is exactly what I want to convey: they were not smart and that is bad.

And that's the real problem with these words.  They actively compare lack of intelligence with a decrease in human value.  Our culture values being "smart," so when people do unintelligent things, that's viewed as bad.  This means that people with learning or intellectual disabilities are seen as having lesser value than someone who doesn't.  When I went looking for synonyms I found a list that included not just words like "thoughtless" and "nonsensical" and "outrageous," but also "bad," "contemptible," "gross," "horrible," and "evil."  When you say "st*pid," someone with an intellectual disability hears these synonyms, even if going that far is unintended. The very existence of these words says a lot about our cultural values, and who we value and why.

In this novel, I was mostly able to change "id*ot" to "damned fool."  But I'm worried about my next novel, in which the main character wrestles with her self-worth, which she (and people around her) have tied to her perceived level of intelligence.  She calls herself "st*pid st*pid st*pid," several, several times.  So I'm concerned, because it doesn't seem right to soften her negative self-talk and cut her a break, but at the same time, it doesn't seem right to drop ablist slurs left and right, harming readers.  So this is an ongoing issue for me to work through.

Monster of the Week: Jacob Shapiro

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 5: Monster of the Week

Episode 12: Jacob Shapiro