He Never Knew How Much His Life Would Change, Ever Since Then She's Always With Him, Even Though They Live Miles Away

--"So The Story Goes", Lewis

The first short story which I wrote that I was ever proud of was one entitled "Ten Minutes Later". It was totally written on a lark and I had no intention for it to be the forbearer of all my short stories, novels, and screenplays to come. Before then I'd been content to churn out poem after poem with no serious thought as to how I was ever going to make a living from it. I only knew that, up until the night I wrote the story, I thought I had no gift for dialogue and, therefore, no gift for storytelling.

As most of my life goes, it began with a serendipitous moment. I had been watching a movie called Little Giants that my brother and I had been enjoying. I mean--I can't tell you much of the plot now, but I remember it involved the usual ragtag bunch of kids who are the underdogs in a rivalry against the more well-coached and conditioned team. Of course, they claim victory in the end. Many lessons are learned and there are plenty of "aaah" moments to go around. Yet what stuck in my craw the most was that one of the characters in the movie, "Icebox," the tomboy on the team, was played by a young actress named Shawna Waldron. Normally, such an insignificant detail wouldn't be enough to generate a whole story idea, but I always get ideas from random places. You see, it wasn't the fact she wasn't any great actress. She was decent, to be sure. Yet it was the name that stuck with me. I had never heard of a girl named Shawna.

That, boys and girls, is all it took for me to want to write a story.

In much the same vein that the main character in the screenplay I am undertaking is named Cadence, sometimes a unique name is all the inspiration I need to begin the creative process. I liken it to the process of how Helen of Troy's beauty was enough to launch a thousand ships, except in my case the right name is enough of an impetus to write one good story.

After the movie finished I went straight to my room, intent on getting my ideas down on paper. At first, I thought I was going to write another poem, but somehow that didn't seem appropriate. Up until then, every one of my poems had been about or inspired by the two Sara's, Sarah Polley and the character she played, Sara Stanley. Two or three hundred poems strong were all constructed in her honor. I actually felt like it would be slightly adulterous to suss together a poem inspired by someone else. I only had one choice. I had to write Shawna's tale as a story.

I'd written short stories in elementary school, junior high, and high school, but they were always fairly insipid and always involved supernatural elements. I was very fond of comics and superheroes. My choice in subject material always reflected that. However, with all instances where the artist's talents are best suited for other subject matters, I never produced one work I could be entirely proud of. They always felt distant and disgenuine. Possibly, it could have been because I don't know the first thing about having powers or being responsible for the lives of millions of people. There's no way I can convey what that experience was like to people because I've never experienced that in the least. Knowing this going in, I was slightly hesitant to begin writing. I thought that this project would be doomed to irrelevancy like all my other previous stories. I thought it would only prove that I had no business writing stories.

Then a funny thing happened when I got down to the business of writing the story. Instead of making the characters larger-than-life, I wrote about characters I grew up with and would have known. It all started with naming the male character Patrick. It's a meta-fictional trick and that's probably one of my main influences in making that decision. I'd read a good deal of modern literature in those first few years at USC and the concept of writing about yourself with the knowledge that it is writing intrigued me. Instead of placing myself as an impartial narrator, I included myself in the fictional story I was concocting. It opened up so many possibilities as to what I could include and exclude in terms of storytelling. I started utilizing real-life anecdotes, mixed them up a bit, and blended them with outright tales that I thought would add to the tension or drama.

It was a rough process. I think the story itself took me about three or four hours to complete and it was originally crafted as a play, without benefit of inner dialogue or description. Yet even that first draft had cleared a lot of hurdles for me. Not only did I believe the dialogue, I believed the situation because, had I known a girl like Shawna and had I been involved in a night like that story describes, I probably would have reacted in exactly the same fashion as Patrick does in the story. In fact, that's what a lot of the story is, how would I handle the situation if I were confronted with it. I think that's what gives a lot of the story's urgency and personal nature. Instead of hiding behind a character, I let the reader in from the outset that you're not just reading a tale about somebody that doesn't exist, the reader is also gaining some insight to the author himself--namely, me.

It was a success from the beginning. "Ten Minutes Later" remains the only story that has been universally liked by everyone who has ever read it. From Heidi to Breanne, Dan to my cousin, everyone who has read it has thought it was worth something. It may not be God's gift to storytelling and I think I've come a long way since that story came into existence, but it's what finally convinced me that I wanted to write stories for the rest of my life.

Every subsequent story has played off the model. I always start with writing out the dialogue before I do anything else. I always try to limit the stories to two characters whose dialogue is the main action of the narrative. There are almost situated somewhere for the entire story; there's never more than one location. The story almost always plays out from the beginning of the conversation to the very end; so ends the conversation, so ends the tale. Lastly, they almost involve one person attempting to leave or pull away in some fashion or another and the other person attempting to convince them to stay. Sometimes the effort is successful and sometimes it is not, as evinced in "Ten Minutes Later."

For some reason I've also noticed that a majority of my stories involve people who live far apart for some reason. I think it's because the closest friends I've ever had all lived thousands of miles from me. There's an artistic touch in having two characters who connect so completely live or about to live so far apart from each other. That stems from this story too. The whole notion of long-distance relationships or friendships managing to survive is a topic I'm very keenly aware of. I always wonder what kind of percentages those types of arrangements actually possess. Is it mostly like Breanne and I who've managed to stay close after thirteen or so years? Or is it mostly like Jina and I, Heidi and I, or a half-dozen other examples, where it clearly does not.

I've progressed since then, of course. Sometimes I branch into adding more characters now. Sometimes I include a bit of physical action as the main focus of the conflict. And sometimes I even write stories where hardly one word is uttered. The screenplay I'm working on is a prime example of this. It has ten main characters, takes place all over the city, and delves on the topic of whether relationships can survive change. It's hardly my mileu, but, for the most part, I think I've learned enough to make it work.


here's a story of a boy and a girl
two hearts, one world

Yet when push comes to shove, I will always be most comfortable writing humble stories about one boy and one girl talking somewhere. In a sense I'm still telling the tale of Patrick and Shawna.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers