Stories That Have Broken You

None necessary.

 

Luggie,

While I only know you from 'round these parts, I refuse to believe that you don't do good work.

Refuse to believe it.

 

jones,

i didn't realize you wrote the sandwich story in this month's esquire. it was worth the pain. quality stuff.

 

Dear Out, the original post involved the mind bending contortions often associated with long-form storytelling.

The majority of the responses have been mewlings on the unfairness of life.

That is about as constructive as I can get. Sorry if that does not rise to your standards.

 

Luggie,

Some stories seem like shiny gold coins sitting there to be plucked and turn into utter crap. That was one of them.

You did your job to the best of your ability. What would have been bad is if you went on the air with some one-sided or half-baked story.

Some just don't pan out. Sounds like you did all that was possible to try to do it right and it just wasn't happening.

 

Yes, but the closest most of the posters here are allowed to get to long form storytelling is a 30-inch gamer. So they contribute what they can.

 

Not that I own a deed for the thread or anything, but I don't mind the direction it's gone. It's not what I was expecting or had in mind -- I was thinking more about those stories that didn't turn out the way you wanted them to, things like that -- but it's not bad. I saw it as a place for folks to let go of those moments that mind-humped them in some way. That's what it is.

Someone asked if I'd worked along with someone with my story. I sent in a few sections, three of thirteen or fourteen, and got some feedback. But I found it kind of interruptive and just thought it was easier to write the whole thing, get it down on paper. I wrote the sections out of order, so it was hard for my editor to get a feel of flow and things like that.

We also agreed on the outset that I would write it backwards -- it reads like Memento, starting with the end. Hopefully now that it's in draft, my editor still likes that conceit.

It's submitted, anyway. We'll see where it goes. I'm still very tired from it. It reminded me of finishing my thesis -- you work on something so hard and so long and then it's done and you're like, What now?

 

Jones, it sounds really cool.

Thanks for the ups, Dirk & Ace.

 

Mr Jones,

Harold Pinter's Betrayal plays out that way, as well. Can't find the Irons-Kingsley flick on DVD, saw it at the theatre, not a great first-date film, I learned. I thought it worked because it was a limited number of scenes: this is 23 or 24 years ago, so I'm just guessing that it was about four scenes in all, reverse chronology. Maybe the construct as you describe it--if it's multiple scenes in reverse order, needs paring down of whole vignettes. Have you looked at that, or is it more the tape being rolled back in one piece?

YD&OHS, etc

 

FoF: It's more like scenes -- each section is a piece of a journey. So within the section, it plays forward, but for a very short window of time. Then the next section is the scene that happened immediately before it. The story is complete -- there are no gaps -- but it's not one long spool. I think it reads okay. I know there's some rule about not messing with chronology, it's confusing -- and as I try to explain it, it seems confusing to me -- but I think it's the only way I can guarantee that people will read through the whole thing. It's pretty heavy stuff. But I think people will stick with it, because they want to know how the story begins.

I think. Or I might have fucked it up. Hence, my trepidation.

Thanks, Lugs, though. I'll echo the others. I'm sure you're doing good stuff. I think the people who are best at this work are the ones who loathe their output.

 

I worked up a long prep story about a soccer team that had several second-generation immigrants and their parents, many of whom spoke little English. Worked with translators, took weeks to write and put story together.

Coach winds up playing a kid who was on academic probation within two weeks after story was published. Coach expected me to champion his cause because the player was a good kid in a tough family situation, but coach cheated and state's athletic association made them forfeit a slew of games.

 

The "story" that broke me was one I never wrote. In my cub days in the early 70s, covered cops. I still had sort of a Front Page, devil-may-care attitude about it, which was good because I saw some seriously bad shit on that beat.

After awhile, it started getting to me. Then one day heard on the scanner about a body found in the driveway of a home. Went out there, and it turned out to be a suicide. A guy probably in his late teens had hooked a hose up to the car tailpipe and was slumped dead over the steering wheel. We didn't write about suicides unless it was someone well known, so I was about to leave when the kid's mother drove up. She had no idea what had happened, and we all watched her discover her son was dead.

All these years later, I can still remember the sounds she made, which were almost inhuman. That was it for me. Went back to the office, told them I wanted the first sports vacancy that came up and a few months later was happily covering high school volleyball.