Blooking is not for the faint of plot

If you're a regular visitor to FtQ, you know that I started a story blog a few weeks ago (Death Sucks: On being a vampire kitty-cat). Also called a "blook," it has proved to be a challenge that's causing me to approach long-form storytelling in ways new to me. I think there's an aspect of the blooking challenge might be something for you to consider applying to your writing.

One reason for a shift in my storytelling technique is the nature of the story. Because it has a strong fantasy element -- vampires -- it requires a certain amount of world building, of setting out in exposition how things work in my version of "reality."

In a regular-style fantasy or SF novel, that isn't a problem. Those readers are accustomed to and patient with pages of world-building exposition, especially if it's a strange and interesting world. For them that's the norm.

I can't count on that kind of built-in forgiveness for my blook. Who knows what kind of readers drop in? Some are random hits from search engines ("dirt woman" is frequently searched for -- can't figure out why -- and my first episode contains that term). I can only count on keeping readers engaged by what's happening, not with the bricks that build a world, no matter how artfully assembled. You see, my blook's readers have to be motivated to come back a week later, a majorly different challenge than motivating them to simply turn a page. My world-building has to be done in the context of what's happening while it happens.

Come to think of it, all fiction has to evoke worlds, especially historical fiction. Bottom line, it's just good storytelling to paint a world with and through action and character, not just exposition and description. But I've found that my blooking amplifies the need.

In Death Sucks, in order to inform the reader with my take on vampires (not powerful, in fact quite vulnerable, and no more evil than ordinary humans), I created a classroom situation wherein I could download all kinds of "world" exposition to help my reader understand. I thought I was set. In my "regular" novels I work to end chapters with unresolved tension every 10 pages or so. Plenty of room to spend a little time slipping some exposition.

But, in the blook, each post equals about 4 pages. I was halfway through the episode before I finally got my characters into the classroom where I could dish up some exposition -- but then I had only a couple of pages to go. Which meant I had to start building up some suspense and conflict, and that exposition had to take the hind seat.

To illustrate: we join the narrator, Patch the vampire kitty-cat, and his associate, Meg (she's the one who turned him into a vampire), as they enter the classroom. Sammy and Vera are presenters.

A half-dozen people sat in rows of metal folding chairs facing a lectern that stood in front of a large whiteboard. Sammy and Vera stood next to the lectern, and they nodded to us when we came in. Meg went to two seats together in the front row. After she set me on a chair, something caught her attention and she said, "That little bitch."

She strode to the other end of the row and stopped in front of a small woman who stared at Meg as she approached. She was more of a girl than a woman, tiny, with black pigtails and an Asian face, dressed in hip-hugger jeans and a t-shirt. The woman shrank down in her chair when Meg loomed over her. I thought Japanese, a fairly rare sight in a medium-sized Illinois town. Bloomburg was not known for its diversity. That's one of the cool things about cats; we've got no problem with diversity. A cat's a cat.

Meg shouted, "It was you!" and stiff-armed the girl's shoulders, propelling her back. The Japanese tumbled into the chairs behind her, and I winced at the clang and bang of metal. When you have hearing as sensitive as mine, loud noises are a pain.

Vera rushed forward and grabbed Meg's arms from behind. Meg pulled against her and fought to reach the girl. "You did this to me!"

The Japanese woman struggled to her feet. She took a deep breath and sobbed, and her face twisted in an expression of crying, though no tears came out. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't help it. The pain, that awful pain. . ."

When she said that, Meg pulled back and stopped. She glanced at me. Her scowl faded, and she looked back at the Japanese woman with a softer expression.

Vera released Meg. "You going to calm down?"

Meg nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay." She looked at me again, then said to the Japanese girl, "I know what that pain does to you."

No shit.

The girl nodded. Vera said to her, "What's your name, dear?"

After the girl answered "Seiko," Vera said, "Pick up those chairs, please, and we'll get started."

Meg sat next to me while Vera returned to the front of the classroom. Vera said, "Does anybody here know the cause of vampirism?

Now that perked up my pointy little ears. Yes, curiosity killed the cat, but that was hardly a problem with me now, was it? No one raised a hand. Or paw.

If I'd had breath, I'd have held it.

And that's where I ended the episode.

The sense of readers out there, of your story having to keep them engaged over days of time instead of a page at a time, and the pressure to constantly create new twists is very, very, very different from writing a novel at your own pace, in the privacy of your own place, with no eyes on it until you've rewritten and polished. Blooking gives me a whole new perspective on when my story needs conflict and/or tension. Which is virtually all the time.

With this demand for baited hooks at the end of each episode, I feel a pressure for constant inventiveness, of continually thinking of disturbances to a character's status quo, of hurdles that characters must leap to get what they want, of dangers that appear. That's very different from the more leisurely pace that seems appropriate for a 300-page, 75,000-word novel. This story is told in discreet episodes, 4 pages and 1,000 words at a time.

One recent comment by a writer said, "I love the way you put the characters in so much trouble that I cannot predict how you are going to get them out again." I'm thinking that, if I can maintain that throughout the whole blook, I may have something. I can tell you that it's already caused me to reconsider the opening of my other novel in progress, and opening that has been polished and set for many months. I rewrote it the other day to move a conflict element closer to the opening page.

Here's another aspect of this blooker's challenge -- there's no outline, I'm bootstrapping. So, while I have to keep coming up with action and tension that leaves you wanting to know what happens next, I also have to be aware of the larger world, and how this episode has to relate to what has happened and be consistent with what will happen -- whatever the hell that is.

If you want to buff up your writing muscles by pumping plot, try a blook. Even if you don't do it for real, convince yourself that you will lose your reader at the end of the next 4 pages unless you come up with some serious suspense. (I can't tell you how many opening chapters I see that would benefit from this strategy.)

Now, what am I going to do with this week's episode? I left Patch and Meg about to be shackled by huge security vampires. . .

For what it's worth.

Ray

Free edit in exchange for posting permission. You send a sample that you have questions about and of which you'd like an edit. I won't post it without your permission.

© 2005 Ray Rhamey