A Lament

I have been unable to express myself for awhile, now, and, well, while this is nowhere near what I intended to write when I sat down, when it's time to speak, it's time to speak.

This one is for everyone.

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I have not dwelt on the latter things;

"why haven't you dwelt, and pondered in your heart?" they asked of me;

"Because when I think of all our hands have wrought,

whenever I let my spirit consider long the deeds of men;

every time I hear the cry of blood,

and the poverty of children,

and the fear of women,

and the terror of all men--

when grief strikes my soul,

down to the quick,

turning my bones to milk,

the storm battering down on me,

causing the rivers and seas to rise,

breaks the barrier of ocean tide

and bursts the endless dam;

God above, hear our prayers,

forgive what us what we've done--

"You ask of me, 'why don't you lament?'

and I say, the sea is dry,

and all the creatures of its womb exposed,

even dread leviathan,

and kraken mighty beast.

When the ship-graves give up their dead,

spewing them on the ground,

when the devils  gasp for air,

and the proud are left panting,

then will end my lament,

then my soul will rejoice,

for justice like tsunamis will roll,

mercy rain down a hurricane force,

and truth will heal up the bitter gall,

and silence the toxic one."

"Lament! Wail! Wear sackcloth and tear your clothes!" I'm told,

and they cannot see me weep.

God divide between you, the humble and the upright;

the blood of Abel's sons,

screams from the ground;

they will not be comforted;

they are mourning still.

Take us to the River from whence all oceans spring;

take us to the City where Death is hanged from a tree,

oppression and violence and wickedness,

bitterness and weeping cease;

Take us to the one great tree,

whose leaves are for healing, and whose fruit forever;

step down from the throne of majesty,

lift our faces up;

how I long for lion and lamb to play,

for the last foe of ours to die;

how I long for Rachel's children,

Abel's sons, Abraham's daughters,

to find comfort and upturned face;

God forgive what our hands have done;

forgive us, Lord, we pray.

Shaleh.

God of Gods - a Tenebrae Poem

"And all the heroes of godlike ilk

fall 'neath the depths of watered earth,

crestfallen below sky and sea,

knocked down by fire and wind and light;

kingly though they may be,

but one crown claims eternity;

graveyards shake; church doors crash;

the gates below bulge and rust;

and then kings doomed to dust

cheered for heart and tongue thus stilled--

but what did they know of godly things;

their wisdom knew naught but heroes,

say nothing of more ancient ways,

older lore long lost,

things spoken, long forgot

with none to comprehend--

Those ghastly ones of divine right

pierced his very heart

and the rib from his side;

happy were they;

terror struck all around;

Sky lost her light,

Sea her luster;

and Underearth proud was put to shame;

There they were, wine and roast,

concealing pent-up fear,

for the wine sloshed from the glass;

tables quaked and feasting turned to plague --

too late, too late, they saw what they had done,

looked desperate on him whom they pierced,

tore, destroyed--

they wept;

he screamed out,

sea and sky and underneath

shuddered at the onslaught

while above, unknowing why,

they shivered, and they cried.

untitled poem

I fell into your shadow, 

chasing after the wind,

Falling into the depths of oceans

never touching its floor;

children reach skyward

for clouds they cannot touch.

I aspired to be what I am not,

yearned for heights so human;

children do not notice

that pedestals are for none.

So I found another shadow,

one who touched Ocean's floor

and spanned immortal skies,

Endless chasing endless.

Writing in Real Life: A Tense Relief

Spoiler Note: I talk about the original Star Wars trilogy in this post. While the new one will not be mentioned, I'm pretty much assuming anyone who cares has seen the original trilogy at this point. I mean, it's been 32 years plus a few months since Return of the Jedi came to theaters.


Hello again!

I have a sister and four first cousins. Growing up the rule at Christmas Eve was that we would eat first, then have a ritual passing out of gifts, then a ritualized tradition of going around the circle opening one at a time so we could all watch (until we hit a certain age, the kids would open first, then the adults, but by age 12 we were considered old enough to be patient).

My family jokes about one year when we cousins ran out of patience. Everyone had eaten, but the cousins were left to amuse ourselves while the adults had yet to vacate the dinner table and begin passing out gifts.  I'm not sure exactly how long it was we waited, and the length probably depends on who's telling the story, but finally the suspense got to us, and we began plotting ways to convince the adults to hurry up without being annoying. Ultimately, we  sorted the gifts (which also necessitated dictating who was sitting where, so the adults didn't get to pick their seats) and probably tried to make just enough of a show of it to make it obvious what we were doing, then joined the adults at the dining room table (the cousins' table was in the kitchen) and announced Santa's elves had distributed everything.

It worked.

If the First Law is that Characters Must Matter (because people matter), the Second Law is Tension.

I say "tension" over "action" because, as Steven James put it once in a lecture of his (and in his resulting book "Story Trumps Structure"): in a story, the bomb going off is the release of tension, whereas that ticking timer counting down to its going off is the tension/suspense. (He discusses suspense HERE.)  Up until the moment it either goes off or is stopped, suspense exists. Afterward is only the aftermath, dealing with whatever happened.

In other words, the tightrope of "what's going to happen next?" is much more important than "what happens?" (though the resulting event had better live up to said expectations, which is another post). Usually, you want things to escalate at a decent clip, but not necessarily at the same clip the whole way, and not necessarily at full-speed the entire time.

There are reasons for this. One, again citing James, if you start a story at Level 10 (this being the fastest pacing), you won't have anywhere to escalate. Take the original Star Wars. Lucas didn't start with the Death Star blowing up. If he had, he'd have had to come up with something even more sinister and devastating. (He did blow up a planet, but blowing up a planet implies something worse can and will happen if nothing is done about it.) Two, if a story stays at Level 10 too long, Level 10 becomes Level 1, and, again, you can't escalate. (The reason you feel breathless after some movies is because they did not give you room to breathe. The body responds to the mind, and the mind will tire if it is not given a break.)

Moreover, not only can you not escalate, but suddenly the two-hour life-and-death chase scene seems "boring."  It's not really boring. What's happened is at some point it's "here we go again." There is no anticipation anymore. The same sharp turns, near-misses, and almost-caught moments keep happening.  To fix that, the chase has to end. The chaser gives up for the time being. The chased temporarily eludes or buys  a few hours. Something more important than catching the chased comes up.  Something has to break up the action, even for a few minutes, or the action becomes lackluster.  (Even superhero movies do this. Maybe especially superhero movies, even if it's only long enough to re-group.)

So basically, the only way tension and suspense works consistently is to adjust the tautness of the line periodically. It never really goes away (everything would fall apart), but it does vary. (In case you don't believe me, this even works with family dramas. Everything may look okay, but we're still left with that one unanswered, unresolved thing that nobody's necessarily talking about at the moment.)


Writers thrive on tension - anticipation, suspense.  In real life we think we don't want this. We want all the answers resolved, all the conflict ended, and all the risk over with. But it doesn't happen in stories because it doesn't happen in real life. Writers are a conniving lot who like everything to come to a purpose: the chase scene, the pending doom, the inherent, endless conflict.  Usually, the peacemakers prevail. Usually.  Coincidence doesn't really happen in stories, and it doesn't really happen in real life.

Oh, I can hear the protests. Yeah. Loved ones fight. Bad - horrific - things happen. Misunderstanding happens. Confusion, lies, betrayal, miscommunication, natural and manmade disasters, all of that.  And here I am daring say that nothing is coincidence.   Does that make it okay? Good? Right?

I'm neither that cold nor stupid.  But there's this part of me that thinks if I, finite, limited, flawed person that I am, take care that no amount of tension is lost, that my characters and readers find some occasional rest and comfort in their struggles - whatever they are, however large or small - and if I, little mortal that I am, take that much care, how much moreso does the Author of us all know we must have relief, time to rest, time to reflect, to regroup, time for peace? The story's not over, so it will only be brief,  but it will be.

Writing in Real Life - The Blog Awakens

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, etc.



I've decided to go back through Writing Excuses' "Master Class" season, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Every time I listen to these, I start going down the list of things I've decided not to do in my own writing because whenever I read or watch them they only serve to make me crazy.

Yeah. I am horrible to characters, but there are things I will not do to a reader.  And yes, there is a physical list in existence.  

The First Law is: Characters must matter. It doesn't matter how cool the world is or the plot is or how great they are at what they do or how original and deep the themes are. If no attention is given to who this person is, then I really just won't care what happens to them. This doesn't really have to do with "relatable". I don't "relate" to Dracula, Hermione Granger (honestly, I relate to Harry even less), Katniss Everdeen, or a host of others in any sense of feeling like they're me. But it matters what happens to them. Even deplorable, completely unrelatable villains must have this sense of "what happens to them matters". If it doesn't matter whether the villain prevails or not, I'm not sure there's a real conflict to start.  (I *think* this is perhaps why I always liked Saruman better than Sauron as a villain. I just didn't care one way or another about an amorphous being I never really saw. Contrast that with the treacherous Saruman who's seduced by the Ring or even Grima who is a slimy little weasel you're sort of waiting for Eowyn to slice to bits, well, much as I like Lord of the Rings, I care considerably more about making sure Grima and Saruman get what's coming to them - my tendency toward poetic justice can be another post.)

The ways in which they matter are usually also the ways in which they're messy. People are messy, and the challenge is creating chaos, a semi-calculated mess of principles and behaviors, conflicting ideas, emotions, and beliefs, all piled on top of the absolute truth that they can only see through the two eyes they have. Experiences are always teachers, but they aren't always good or accurate teachers, and even if they are, previous, bad ones may just make for a confused student.

A few friends and I were talking, and we agreed that sometimes a writer or filmmaker will so accurately depict human nature that the audience splits between believing it brilliance and believing it madness.

That's the brilliance of it, though: capturing human nature in such a way that it exposes our flaws and weaknesses with as much power as our strengths and perfections.  Sometimes the former is captured so well it's offensive, a mirror in which we dare not look.

Really, though, that's the world we're in.  There's a journalistic saying that if you start talking about people by numbers, no one cares. If you highlight the one person, though, suddenly everyone cares.  A million people die in a tidal wave, doubly as many homes and livelihoods destroyed, and what gets people's attention is the one little story about this woman who managed to drag her family to safety. Or tried, but didn't. Or the one little story about the man who organized a total reconstruction project for his city in the aftermath of all of that. Or got sick before it was completed.  The point is, the one matters.

There are literally thousands of people somehow connected to me, thanks to the whole six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon. And my prayers go to them all, but then I hear about what's happening in the worlds of a few.

Illness.
Healing.
Family dissent.
Reconciliation.
Financial struggle.
Spiritual attacks.
Depression.
A pregnancy.
A miscarriage.
A college degree.
A drop-out.

It's not that I have no affection or concern prior to the news, whatever it is, anymore than the average person isn't concerned about hurting people wherever they are, but suddenly it's not "someone somewhere over there" but "THIS person, with a name and a face."


As a writer, it's my job to put faces and names on people, and make you care.  I read somewhere once that people who read are also prone to be more empathetic, because they immerse in The Other, the people not like them.  All of these things are happening, to this person who may or may not be like you, and whether they share your experience or not, they matter, because they're people.