From the Fiction Desk

I have innocently found myself caught between schools of thought. I have read about how different writers plot and have shared my notes with others. While the “how to books” describe a process that can be applied to all and admonish the reader to put their soul into it, it is surprising that often the process they describe is mechanical. Let’s face some facts, mechanical does work. Look at all the well published authors who use a formula for writing.

When I read their works and I know the formula, I do find myself somewhat underwhelmed by the story. All suspense is gone. The characters lose their three dimensional aspects and seem to be automatons walking through the story. When this happens, I do the thing every writer dreads—I stop reading. Maybe I am wrong with my guess in how their plot will develop, the problems the character may face, and what the resolution will be. I never know, for the book or short story is closed and I will unlikely return to it.

What is sad is that sometimes I fall into the mechanical trap. I am trying to get stories out and it becomes easier if you can follow a simple “paint by the numbers” routine—Act 1 is the introduction, etc.... The solution to this problem is to write organically. The characters, setting, and plot come out of the moral argument that the writer explores. The characters no longer move like chess pieces on the board, the fictional world no longer seems to be a construct of the imagination, and the plot becomes unpredictable.

I am trying to correct my writing to be organic and yet be as productive as if I was following the mechanical models I have learned. I will not forsake their lessons, for I believe at this point in my career that I need to be able to understand and apply both methods. The ultimate goal is to mine the vein of creative gold in my soul, not to be simply a machine writing boring stories. I must produce quickly and produce quality work. Can I do it organically?

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates to blogs, novels, and short stories that I write.

I apologize for the tardiness of this entry, but I wanted to write something of quality. My earlier attempts did not live up to my standard.

Since I was a small boy I have been fascinated with the history of World War II. The neighborhood I grew up in did not have many children and I ended up making friends with some of the older people on the street—many of whom were veterans and one person I met was a survivor of the Holocaust. Years later, I met an older woman while I was studying Chinese in college. She had survived a concentration camp in Vietnam after the war had ended. Then, not long ago I went to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Little did I know during any of these occasions that I was researching a story that I just completed the first draft of a short story.

I know I nodded appropriately when I listened to those stories and I almost cried after visiting the National Holocaust Museum, but I didn’t take notes of the occasions. The idea for the short story I just wrote wasn’t even a spark of a thought when these events occurred, yet it was the memories of the things I discussed and witnessed became the spine of the story. It was from taking time to listen to something that I didn’t realize was important—in that I would write about it someday—that formed the foundation of my research into a story. We who are writers are surrounded by ideas and themes that we may not realize or understand until the moment is upon us when a collection of ideas coalesce into a poem or story. By reading widely and by making friends and talking to those of various groups of people that are different from ourselves, we can set in motion a collection of facts and understandings we can use someday, and pass along the lessons we learned to another generation.

Thank you for reading. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on the short stories, novels and blogs I am working on.