Tyree's Tuppence
by Tyree Campbell
The More Things Stay The Same . . .
A very recent news article in Yahoo informed the planet Earth that a hamlet in the state of Vermont was getting its electricity from cow manure. Apparently this was a Very Big Deal and quite an unexpected technological development, to read the way the article was written. Didn't the writer see the movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome? Where an entire settlement got its electrical power from methane, derived by processing pig poop? Of course, that movie came out in 1985, which is like totally so five minutes ago.
Someone whose name escapes me [at my age, there's a lot of that going on] once said that there is only one story, and I think it was "boy meets girl." Robert Heinlein expanded this somewhat by stating that there are only three stories, one of which was, yes, "boy meets girl." In other words, all stories ever written can be deconstructed to one [or three] fundamental event. The Iliad, after all, is essentially Paris meets Helen. Well, okay, it's also Paris absconds with Helen, Mycenaeans besiege Troy, Agamemnon confiscates from Achilles jus primae noctis privileges to Briseis, soldiers cram selves into large wooden gift with no toilet facilities, Schliemann unearths remains. The seminal [no pun intended] event is Paris meets Helen. Without that encounter, commerce in the Aegean is just a bunch of pushing and shoving.
Whether one or three, the number of "variations on a theme" approaches infinity. How many thousands of stories have been published already? How many millions more have been written but not published? Yet editors [including moi] continue to receive [and reject] the "same old stories."
This is not to say that an old story cannot be reworked. The key word here is "reworked." For example, the notion of a man playing the role of a woman is old [Greek actors did it in Aeschylus' time . . . to be fair, that was because women were not allowed to act]. Old, too, is a woman playing the role of a man. Big yawn. Yet several excellent movies have been made in variations upon this theme. What made those movies work? What was different about them, how did they expand upon the theme?
In Tootsie, the difference was introspection. Dustin Hoffman's character learned about the psyche of women by playing one, having to do so in order to work as an actor. In Orlando [which was based on the Virginia Woolf novel], there was a double role reversal, both played by Tilda Swinton. In Mulan, the adoption of a male persona was a means of survival that got a bit carried away. In Victor/Victoria, a woman [Julie Andrews] played the role of a man playing the role of a woman, which was twist enough to make any movie work.
[In the same year as Tootsie, Linda Hunt appeared as a male Indonesian reporter in The Year of Living Dangerously. In this instance, however, it was an actual actress playing a male role, not a female character in the movie playing a male role].
Probably I should also mention Boys Don't Cry . . . but I didn't see the movie. From what I understand, though, it involved certain violent responses of society to homosexuality and gender roles, and ran somewhat parallel to the murder of a young gay man named Shepard in Wyoming. Surely this would qualify the movie as an expansion of a common theme.
You'll note that all of these movies are substantially more than simple tales of someone temporarily switching gender roles [ooo, forgot to mention the movie Switch, with Ellen Barkin in the lead role. What made that movie work, besides the fact that Barkin is considerably and delightfully different from Jimmy Smits, is the introspection. The movie itself is a remake, though I don't recall the name of the original movie]. Still, these are movies, and we're looking for stories.
I don't mean we're looking for gender switching stories. We're looking for original stories that don't follow storylines previously written, but instead treat those storylines differently. Fresh thinking, fresh approaches, that's the ticket to publication.
Here's an hypothetical example of material I receive: a boy [or girl] trades a [duck, dog, younger brother] for a bag of beans [crayons, hydrocodone, fagioli]. Okay, this is not to say such a story cannot work. SDP has published several such. JoSelle Vanderhooft excels at reworking nursery rhymes and fairy tales. So did Erin Donahoe, before she became a lawyer. But you, as a writer, have to do something radically different with this tale, and/or write it extremely well, for it to work. You can't just complete a story template.
Um, yes, fagioli is Italian for beans. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.
Here's another example. A boy [or girl] in a poor environment finds a sword [pen, Dodge Ram, Swiss army knife, automatic pistol] stuck in a stone [tree, alley pothole, casket of ale] and takes it to his master [owner, guardian, best friend]. Later, he becomes king [or she becomes queen]. The pistol's name is .10-cal.
Been there, done that.
[Oh, sorry. .10-cal is ten calibre is X Calibre. Yes, I actually received such a story. The reference was obscure for me, too. Don't feel bad].
Above all, writers should not be influenced by programs on television. Twilight is a decent show [though Forever Knight was the bee's knees], but I don't want to see its storylines in submissions to Hungur Magazine. The megacrocodile movies on the SyFy Channel are mildly entertaining the first half dozen times you have them on for background noise, but I don't want to see such storylines in Aoife's Kiss.
Once more, with feeling: characters drive stories. Develop your characters. Give them problems and conflicts. Write in such a manner that the reader wonders [and demands to know] what's going to happen next. Write so that the reader experiences vicariously the events of the story, preferably through the eyes of the protagonist. If you can do that, the editors won't mind the reworking of an older tale.
Past Tuppence:
June 2009
March 2009
December 2008
September 2008
June 2008
March 2008
December 2007
September 2007
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001
Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:
The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell
Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3
Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology
Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2