Eli Wilde's Blog
September 27, 2015
Influence
‘Stories ought to leave the reader with a great sense of strangeness and mystery, but never a feeling of frustration.’
Raymond Carver
As a writer, many different things influence me. When I talk about influence, I mean the things that affect or inspire my writing. Those things that shape how and what I write. Music and alcohol affect the way I write the most. I never edit my work when I am under the influence of alcohol, or listen to music. Their affect is sought when I am searching for the next psychotic action my character is going to take, a shift in plot that moves my story into strange and mysterious territory or the description of a new kind of creature on planet Z.
I don’t always drink or listen to music when I am writing and searching for inspiration. Sometimes I get my best ideas when I am least inclined to write. When I am stone cold sober - wanting to do anything other than write (even if it means washing up the dishes or emptying the garbage), at these times I really have to push myself and in doing so, I once found a girl who synchronised death.
Other writers have had a major influence on my writing. Thinking about that right now, the writer who comes to mind is Raymond Carver. My first encounter with Carver came when I attended a scriptwriting course at Darlington Arts Centre. I was given five different short stories to read by five different authors and asked to choose one of them to adapt into a script. As soon as I finished reading Carver’s short story – Neighbors, I felt a connection with the writing.
Bill and Arlene Miller are asked by their neighbors - the Stones, to look after their apartment while they go away for a ten day break. As the story develops, we see this regular couple progressively invade the Stone’s privacy as they delve further into their apartment and morph into psychosexual activity. I knew the Millers weren’t going to be a regular couple when I reached page 2 and read this passage:
Leaving the cat to pick at her food, he headed for the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror and then closed his eyes and then looked again. He opened the medicine chest. He found a container of pills and read the label – Harriet Stone. One each day as directed - and slipped it into his pocket.
The more I read of Carver, the more I discovered he wasn’t a regular writer. One of the things I liked about his writing was that he liked to leave gaps. He trusted his readers to use their imagination to fill in these gaps. I guess he thought - who can write like the imagination, if it was ever given a pen?
His lack of free time dictated his writing direction which was made up mainly of poems and short stories rather than novels. He was concerned with stripping down fiction to the least amount of words. Some called it minimalist writing, but Carver didn’t like this tag. Carver’s writing may be minimalist in style and structure, but in meaning and the affect it has on the reader, it is often profound and unsettling. At least to this reader.
His characters are usually ordinary middle class workers, alcoholics, down and outs, the unemployed. Those ground down by life.
I write stories about the people who don't succeed. These lives are as valid as those of the go-getters. I take unemployment, money problems, and marital problems as givens in life. People worry about their rent, their children, their home life. That's basic. That's how 80-90 percent of people live. I write stories about a submerged population, people who don't always have someone to speak for them. I'm sort of a witness, and, besides, that's the life I myself lived for a long time. I don't see myself as a spokesman but as a witness to these lives. I'm a writer.
Raymond Carver
I look around at the characters I see each day. Work colleagues, friends, family and strangers. Some of them are like Carver’s submerged population, but most can speak for themselves. A lot of them are in my stories, everyday people who walk amongst ghosts, psychopaths or Tau Nutrino’s. Everyday kind of people placed in these situations, help to make strange and mysterious stories appear credible.
When Carver talked about dialogue in writing, he said the usual - it ought to advance the plot or illuminate character. When he revealed that he really liked dialogue - between two people who aren’t listening to each other, that really got me thinking differently about dialogue and what I wanted my characters to say to each other, or not. His influence on me is like whiskey over ice, it burns along neuron pathways, triggering a different kind of perception, where footsteps in the rain lead to more than beautiful lament.
‘Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.’
Raymond Carver
It’s a relief not having to be the smartest kid on the block, I never would have picked up pen and paper if that was the case. And that old shoe he mentioned, I know absolutely what he means about gaping at it that way. His writing has left me gaping in admiration on many occasions.
Describing his work Carver once said, ‘I began as a poet. My first publication was a poem. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd be very pleased if they put 'Poet and short-story writer - and occasional essayist', in that order.’
Raymond Carver's died in 1988 at the age of fifty. Although his death cut short his writing career, his influence still lives on today. If I could add something to his tombstone I think it would be this: His stories always filled me with a sense of mystery and strangeness, but they never once left me feeling frustrated. After reading his stories, it changed the way I write.
This poem by Carver is what is actually inscribed on his tombstone:
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth
Sources
Raymond Carver ‘Principles of a story’ Essay,
Hemmingson ‘The Dirty Realism Duo’ Literary study,
Marshall Bruce Gentry ‘Conversations with Raymond Carver’
William L. Stull ‘Two Interviews with Raymond Carver’
Raymond Carver
As a writer, many different things influence me. When I talk about influence, I mean the things that affect or inspire my writing. Those things that shape how and what I write. Music and alcohol affect the way I write the most. I never edit my work when I am under the influence of alcohol, or listen to music. Their affect is sought when I am searching for the next psychotic action my character is going to take, a shift in plot that moves my story into strange and mysterious territory or the description of a new kind of creature on planet Z.
I don’t always drink or listen to music when I am writing and searching for inspiration. Sometimes I get my best ideas when I am least inclined to write. When I am stone cold sober - wanting to do anything other than write (even if it means washing up the dishes or emptying the garbage), at these times I really have to push myself and in doing so, I once found a girl who synchronised death.
Other writers have had a major influence on my writing. Thinking about that right now, the writer who comes to mind is Raymond Carver. My first encounter with Carver came when I attended a scriptwriting course at Darlington Arts Centre. I was given five different short stories to read by five different authors and asked to choose one of them to adapt into a script. As soon as I finished reading Carver’s short story – Neighbors, I felt a connection with the writing.
Bill and Arlene Miller are asked by their neighbors - the Stones, to look after their apartment while they go away for a ten day break. As the story develops, we see this regular couple progressively invade the Stone’s privacy as they delve further into their apartment and morph into psychosexual activity. I knew the Millers weren’t going to be a regular couple when I reached page 2 and read this passage:
Leaving the cat to pick at her food, he headed for the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror and then closed his eyes and then looked again. He opened the medicine chest. He found a container of pills and read the label – Harriet Stone. One each day as directed - and slipped it into his pocket.
The more I read of Carver, the more I discovered he wasn’t a regular writer. One of the things I liked about his writing was that he liked to leave gaps. He trusted his readers to use their imagination to fill in these gaps. I guess he thought - who can write like the imagination, if it was ever given a pen?
His lack of free time dictated his writing direction which was made up mainly of poems and short stories rather than novels. He was concerned with stripping down fiction to the least amount of words. Some called it minimalist writing, but Carver didn’t like this tag. Carver’s writing may be minimalist in style and structure, but in meaning and the affect it has on the reader, it is often profound and unsettling. At least to this reader.
His characters are usually ordinary middle class workers, alcoholics, down and outs, the unemployed. Those ground down by life.
I write stories about the people who don't succeed. These lives are as valid as those of the go-getters. I take unemployment, money problems, and marital problems as givens in life. People worry about their rent, their children, their home life. That's basic. That's how 80-90 percent of people live. I write stories about a submerged population, people who don't always have someone to speak for them. I'm sort of a witness, and, besides, that's the life I myself lived for a long time. I don't see myself as a spokesman but as a witness to these lives. I'm a writer.
Raymond Carver
I look around at the characters I see each day. Work colleagues, friends, family and strangers. Some of them are like Carver’s submerged population, but most can speak for themselves. A lot of them are in my stories, everyday people who walk amongst ghosts, psychopaths or Tau Nutrino’s. Everyday kind of people placed in these situations, help to make strange and mysterious stories appear credible.
When Carver talked about dialogue in writing, he said the usual - it ought to advance the plot or illuminate character. When he revealed that he really liked dialogue - between two people who aren’t listening to each other, that really got me thinking differently about dialogue and what I wanted my characters to say to each other, or not. His influence on me is like whiskey over ice, it burns along neuron pathways, triggering a different kind of perception, where footsteps in the rain lead to more than beautiful lament.
‘Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.’
Raymond Carver
It’s a relief not having to be the smartest kid on the block, I never would have picked up pen and paper if that was the case. And that old shoe he mentioned, I know absolutely what he means about gaping at it that way. His writing has left me gaping in admiration on many occasions.
Describing his work Carver once said, ‘I began as a poet. My first publication was a poem. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd be very pleased if they put 'Poet and short-story writer - and occasional essayist', in that order.’
Raymond Carver's died in 1988 at the age of fifty. Although his death cut short his writing career, his influence still lives on today. If I could add something to his tombstone I think it would be this: His stories always filled me with a sense of mystery and strangeness, but they never once left me feeling frustrated. After reading his stories, it changed the way I write.
This poem by Carver is what is actually inscribed on his tombstone:
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth
Sources
Raymond Carver ‘Principles of a story’ Essay,
Hemmingson ‘The Dirty Realism Duo’ Literary study,
Marshall Bruce Gentry ‘Conversations with Raymond Carver’
William L. Stull ‘Two Interviews with Raymond Carver’
March 23, 2014
Poetic Characterisation
I never started from ideas but always from character... Ivan Turgenev
Before I sit down to write a story I like to have the main character in mind. Like every other writer, it’s important for me to know my characters well, so that when I place them in certain situations I know how they are going to react. It is difficult to know real people in depth, few of those around us are an open book, we all have our secrets. The great thing about fictional characters is that the writer knows all about these secrets or hidden thoughts. The writer can choose to reveal them by putting the character into situations the character would never dream of going into without that push from his creator.
How does a writer get to know the fictional characters he or she creates? For me, one of the most useful ways is to get my characters to write poetry. Rufus Hobster is a vampire (I know, another one – and too many vampires spoil the bloody broth). I don’t know if I am ever going to finish his complete story, he is pretty pissed off about all these vampires roaming the street too and he’s stopped talking to me. Maybe I should turn him into a zombie instead.
Anyway, while he was telling me his story, he also wrote poetry. And that’s how I really got to know him. That’s how I was able to write the stories he was telling me. This is a Rufus Verse:
Emotion is Illusion
I need to get away from the light,
the rain.
Feelings aren't real
they only exist in the past,
like these memories I fake each day with you,
they fail to comprehend truth.
Only when you say my name,
when you whisper my name against my skin
only moments like these are real
and now that you are gone
everything is an illusion
everything is nothing.
His poem probably tells you that Rufus is a sad old bastard who needs to get a life. For me, it says Rufus is hurting. He has lost something more than life, he has lost the reason to live. He is dead in more ways than an unbeating heart. Yet he still clings onto life, faking his way through the day, or night. I want to know why he goes on living in this dead sort of way, I want to find out more about his past. And I want to discover if he is ever going to feel the same again when someone else whispers his name against his skin. The events in his past may not be told in his story, but as a writer, I need to know about them so I can judge how he is going to respond in situations I put him in. And when I put him into these situations, I need to bear in mind that always; in the dark shadows of his mind, he is hurting badly.
Here is another one of his poems:
Footprints in the Rain
I watched him die slowly
to the sound of raindrops falling on leaves.
He had lost too much blood
a melancholic trail leading me to him.
His eyes held acceptance
yet, he still flinched when I approached.
I knelt down beside him,
and held onto his hand.
He never spoke,
I think he was listening to the rain.
The damp undergrowth was pungent
a welcome distraction to the scent of his blood.
Both his feet had been chewed off
and discarded somewhere I could not see.
Something heartless had left the child this way,
something just like me.
Clearly Rufus is not heartless, the way he stays with the child until he dies tells me this. Yet, he feels heartless; he feels capable of killing the child in the same cruel way. If Rufus didn’t kill the child, then who did? Again, this particular moment in Rufus’ life may not end up in the story I write. What I need to keep in mind is that Rufus feels capable of behaving in this psychotic way. Why does he think that? Has he already killed in a similar fashion? Or is he seeing his future? Is this the way his vampire persona will evolve? It is going to be fascinating finding out the truth behind the feelings he has shown in this verse.
Rufus isn’t all hurting and death, there are other side to him as this verse illustrates:
Do You Want?
The world is beautifully synchronised tonight
let's burn it together before sunrise changes everything.
Then teach me gently how to bleed
while our flames wild the night-time air.
And when all the lights are turned off hungry
don't hide away from my touch,
take this hand I offer
and dream of music makers ravenous
as I take in the scent of your skin
and you gaze only into these darkling eyes.
Rufus may be a sad old bastard, but he certainly knows how to party. He can burn with the best of them. Knowing this, I want to see how he does eventually party; I want to see that very much. I want to write that very much, too. Being Rufus’s neophyte, I am in a privileged position, as he shows me gently how to bleed.
Evan Jameson is another character I got to know through poetry. Evan is the central character in both Cruel and Dublin. When he first met Emily Cullen, he felt like this:
Dark Wind
It’s crazing me, how your skin feels
when my finger moves
from your cheek to your neck
and you stare at me without saying a word.
Everything about you, everything,
every sense inside me
is affected by your touch, sound
taste
and now I breathe you in
as I too stare into your eyes
and find that place once more
where no one ever treads.
Evan thinks he doesn’t know how to love. He doesn’t want to love. He sees love as a user, an eternal consumer. Dark Wind tells me a different story, it tells me Evan is in denial.
After a while, Evan and Emily wanted to change their troubled childhood, so he wrote a new childhood through poetry, where they were together, instead of apart in their first childhood. Here’s a sample of the childhood they created together:
Culpitt
The Culpitt house at the end of the lane
had been unoccupied for years.
No one wanted to be part of its past,
except for you and me.
You felt at home in spring,
while I preferred walls sprinkled with ice
and snowflakes silently dropping
through open rafters.
I found you inside; that bleak day,
staring through broken glass
weeping melancholy tears,
but you wouldn’t tell me why
and for the first time since calling
I got the uneasy feeling
the tragic past of the house
shared the delicate future of our love.
Even in the childhood Evan created, the final line of the poem shows how fragile he feels his future with Emily is destined to be. I need to know why he feels that way.
When they finally meet up in Dublin, Evan’s poetry begins to reveal why he is so unsure about their future together.
Other Than
We bought them in Mongrel Heart
on the corner of Pimlico and The Coombe.
White, silver-heeled stilettos
and a sheer almost dress.
The dress was specifically designed
to reach only the top of her thighs,
while the heels accentuated the curve of buttock
and shape of her legs.
Mr. X entered the hotel room as usual for him,
with both hands in his jacket pockets.
He saw her facing the wall
with her legs crossed at the ankles
and I immediately spoke the words
that first came into my head -
'Other than penetrative sex,
she is yours to do with as you please.'
Now Evan has really got me interested in his story. Wtf is he doing? And why does such a strong character as Emily go along with these kind of games? I guess I’m gonna have to spend more time with these two characters to find out exactly what makes them tick and more interestingly, discover what secrets they are holding back from me.
Having a clear picture and understanding of your characters is critical to the story writing process. Once you know their strengths, flaws and motivations, you are well on your way to understanding them. Once you understand them, you can put them into situations that are going to transform and make them grow as individuals. Alternatively, you might just wanna see them get eaten alive by zombies. Either way, you are in for a lot of fun, and you can be pretty confident you will know how your character is going to react when those decaying teeth first bite into his or her flesh.
Before I sit down to write a story I like to have the main character in mind. Like every other writer, it’s important for me to know my characters well, so that when I place them in certain situations I know how they are going to react. It is difficult to know real people in depth, few of those around us are an open book, we all have our secrets. The great thing about fictional characters is that the writer knows all about these secrets or hidden thoughts. The writer can choose to reveal them by putting the character into situations the character would never dream of going into without that push from his creator.
How does a writer get to know the fictional characters he or she creates? For me, one of the most useful ways is to get my characters to write poetry. Rufus Hobster is a vampire (I know, another one – and too many vampires spoil the bloody broth). I don’t know if I am ever going to finish his complete story, he is pretty pissed off about all these vampires roaming the street too and he’s stopped talking to me. Maybe I should turn him into a zombie instead.
Anyway, while he was telling me his story, he also wrote poetry. And that’s how I really got to know him. That’s how I was able to write the stories he was telling me. This is a Rufus Verse:
Emotion is Illusion
I need to get away from the light,
the rain.
Feelings aren't real
they only exist in the past,
like these memories I fake each day with you,
they fail to comprehend truth.
Only when you say my name,
when you whisper my name against my skin
only moments like these are real
and now that you are gone
everything is an illusion
everything is nothing.
His poem probably tells you that Rufus is a sad old bastard who needs to get a life. For me, it says Rufus is hurting. He has lost something more than life, he has lost the reason to live. He is dead in more ways than an unbeating heart. Yet he still clings onto life, faking his way through the day, or night. I want to know why he goes on living in this dead sort of way, I want to find out more about his past. And I want to discover if he is ever going to feel the same again when someone else whispers his name against his skin. The events in his past may not be told in his story, but as a writer, I need to know about them so I can judge how he is going to respond in situations I put him in. And when I put him into these situations, I need to bear in mind that always; in the dark shadows of his mind, he is hurting badly.
Here is another one of his poems:
Footprints in the Rain
I watched him die slowly
to the sound of raindrops falling on leaves.
He had lost too much blood
a melancholic trail leading me to him.
His eyes held acceptance
yet, he still flinched when I approached.
I knelt down beside him,
and held onto his hand.
He never spoke,
I think he was listening to the rain.
The damp undergrowth was pungent
a welcome distraction to the scent of his blood.
Both his feet had been chewed off
and discarded somewhere I could not see.
Something heartless had left the child this way,
something just like me.
Clearly Rufus is not heartless, the way he stays with the child until he dies tells me this. Yet, he feels heartless; he feels capable of killing the child in the same cruel way. If Rufus didn’t kill the child, then who did? Again, this particular moment in Rufus’ life may not end up in the story I write. What I need to keep in mind is that Rufus feels capable of behaving in this psychotic way. Why does he think that? Has he already killed in a similar fashion? Or is he seeing his future? Is this the way his vampire persona will evolve? It is going to be fascinating finding out the truth behind the feelings he has shown in this verse.
Rufus isn’t all hurting and death, there are other side to him as this verse illustrates:
Do You Want?
The world is beautifully synchronised tonight
let's burn it together before sunrise changes everything.
Then teach me gently how to bleed
while our flames wild the night-time air.
And when all the lights are turned off hungry
don't hide away from my touch,
take this hand I offer
and dream of music makers ravenous
as I take in the scent of your skin
and you gaze only into these darkling eyes.
Rufus may be a sad old bastard, but he certainly knows how to party. He can burn with the best of them. Knowing this, I want to see how he does eventually party; I want to see that very much. I want to write that very much, too. Being Rufus’s neophyte, I am in a privileged position, as he shows me gently how to bleed.
Evan Jameson is another character I got to know through poetry. Evan is the central character in both Cruel and Dublin. When he first met Emily Cullen, he felt like this:
Dark Wind
It’s crazing me, how your skin feels
when my finger moves
from your cheek to your neck
and you stare at me without saying a word.
Everything about you, everything,
every sense inside me
is affected by your touch, sound
taste
and now I breathe you in
as I too stare into your eyes
and find that place once more
where no one ever treads.
Evan thinks he doesn’t know how to love. He doesn’t want to love. He sees love as a user, an eternal consumer. Dark Wind tells me a different story, it tells me Evan is in denial.
After a while, Evan and Emily wanted to change their troubled childhood, so he wrote a new childhood through poetry, where they were together, instead of apart in their first childhood. Here’s a sample of the childhood they created together:
Culpitt
The Culpitt house at the end of the lane
had been unoccupied for years.
No one wanted to be part of its past,
except for you and me.
You felt at home in spring,
while I preferred walls sprinkled with ice
and snowflakes silently dropping
through open rafters.
I found you inside; that bleak day,
staring through broken glass
weeping melancholy tears,
but you wouldn’t tell me why
and for the first time since calling
I got the uneasy feeling
the tragic past of the house
shared the delicate future of our love.
Even in the childhood Evan created, the final line of the poem shows how fragile he feels his future with Emily is destined to be. I need to know why he feels that way.
When they finally meet up in Dublin, Evan’s poetry begins to reveal why he is so unsure about their future together.
Other Than
We bought them in Mongrel Heart
on the corner of Pimlico and The Coombe.
White, silver-heeled stilettos
and a sheer almost dress.
The dress was specifically designed
to reach only the top of her thighs,
while the heels accentuated the curve of buttock
and shape of her legs.
Mr. X entered the hotel room as usual for him,
with both hands in his jacket pockets.
He saw her facing the wall
with her legs crossed at the ankles
and I immediately spoke the words
that first came into my head -
'Other than penetrative sex,
she is yours to do with as you please.'
Now Evan has really got me interested in his story. Wtf is he doing? And why does such a strong character as Emily go along with these kind of games? I guess I’m gonna have to spend more time with these two characters to find out exactly what makes them tick and more interestingly, discover what secrets they are holding back from me.
Having a clear picture and understanding of your characters is critical to the story writing process. Once you know their strengths, flaws and motivations, you are well on your way to understanding them. Once you understand them, you can put them into situations that are going to transform and make them grow as individuals. Alternatively, you might just wanna see them get eaten alive by zombies. Either way, you are in for a lot of fun, and you can be pretty confident you will know how your character is going to react when those decaying teeth first bite into his or her flesh.
