Gloves Off: Erik Knudtson

Exploring the System Story

Today We’ll Take a Longer Look at In the Desert… by Erik Knudtson

To read the story as originally published, please click here.

In The Desert…

By Erik Knudtson

…darkness means it’s play time.

Sun goes down, freaks come out.

Cases of alcohol poisoning and overdoses spike after sunset.

This time of night the calls never stop. The people that call you, do so because they don’t want to alert the authorities.

“He’s not breathing, man…”

My Input: Let’s look at what I’ll call a “system story.”¹ In most cases this is an event set in a “system” or culture that’s novel and foreign to the reader. The story depicts the event—a child dying, whatever—but at least half of the story is dedicated to creating the unique world. For examples, look at George Saunders: the events take place in odd amusement parks, science experiments, subcultures. The same goes for most of my shit: Fight Clubs, fake choking in restaurants, underground kid spy rings.

You see, a unique setting allows you to sex-up what might seem like a mundane or melodramatic event. Some writers charge boldly into the melodramatic: Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult. Other writers need to invent the whole world in order to reinvent the core drama: Saunders and me.

The odd system/setting/world allows the writer to reinvent the language as well. And the system’s oddness plays against cheap sentiment, and ideally tricks the reader into experiencing real emotion. Without the novelty of the strange world, the core story would be maudlin and easily dismissed. So, the “system story” helps you put across a sentimental story without getting caught.

Outland, a series of deaths… set in outer space. The Name of the Rose, a series of deaths… set in a medieval monastery. Each must devote as much real estate to the world building as to the core drama.

That said, my guess is that Erik’s story is a “system story.” We’re going to see a system demonstrated.

Where are you located?

“…at the Bellagio.”

Need something closer.

Try an ambulance, asshole.

End Call

My Input: All good, I think. But a little confused. How many elements are in play here? The italics: Where are you located? I assume is the narrator answering a call. The italics “… at the Bellagio” seems like the caller. But the “Need something closer” is who? I can assume it’s the POV character, but does that force me to work too hard?

Can you see where just a little attribution would help? Yes, I can see where no attribution allows you to submerge the “I.” There are ways around that.

“Need something closer” can be unpacked; for instance, “This game calls for something closer to touch down on.” Can you phrase the sentence fragment into something—avoid a thought verb, “need”—that uses a physical verb to create the same effect. It’s a way to sneak physical verbs into a scene that’s not overly physical.

“This bird’s looking for a smaller spot to land.” Or, “Daddy’s not leaving home without an address to slot in.” By wording it a little longer you can suggest it’s internal dialog, and it might stand out better next to the actual dialog of “Try an ambulance…”

Some of them call because they are trying to save someone. But most of the time they are only calling to save themselves.

“Hello? Is this—”

Location please?

“Caesars Pala—“

Call 911.

End Call

My Input: All good. Establishing a pattern.

Sometimes the person has a chance to make it. Other times they are nothing more than a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

Trash to be taken out.

“Katie! Please wake up. Please—”

Which property are you staying at?

“The Strat—”

Hang up and dial 911.

Getting warmer.

End Call

My Input: It’s wonderful that you used the word “property.”

The affluent and well connected amongst us have people that contact Frank’s people.

People like you.

Tonight, you’re looking for a lead. Need the right type of fix.

"You gotta hurry man, she’s not breathing.”

Your location please?

“We’re at The D.”

The old Fitzgeralds.

Close, but no cigar.

End Call

My Input: Okay, got it. You establish a clock later in the story, but would you consider establishing it earlier? Right now the story is very linear, and one benefit of a clock is that it will allow you to jump around in time; use flashbacks, flash forwards. Citing the number of seconds that remain will become a touchstone that will bring the reader back to the present despite whatever tangent you might risk.

Please consider that we need fewer examples up front. Can you start the clock sooner? Doing so, can you make the story less linear?

These are the people that can pay to have their problems solved for them. The type that purchase favorable outcomes and preferential treatment.

Those who value their reputation more than their company’s life.

“…yea, hey. Shit… shit. Hello?”

Location please?

“…I got referred to you by—”

Location. Please.

“…the Golden Nugget.”

The private number suggests discretion is required. The hotel quality says upper middle class. The dying person screams rookies.

What did the person take?

heavy breathing*

“Some pills. Shit… uh, Oxys.”

Bingo.

From the details provided by the caller identifying himself as Kyle, we have a female caucasian, unresponsive.

Seems as if this lady friend of his ingested one too many of what she thought were two tiny tickets to a terrific time.

I have you at a Deluxe suite in the north tower, room 1704. Is that correct?

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” from the phone.

My Input: Clear enough, but… I’m looking for a sequence of physical verbs that will contrast with the thought verbs—pay, value, provided, identifying. Can you replace any of the above sentences with a series of physical actions that will pop next to the somewhat abstract events taking place?

Don’t be afraid to have a first-person narrator talk about him/herself in the third-person. Big Brenda Fischer don’t take no calls to the g-damn Stratosphere, not after midnight, no way, no how. You can still bury the “I” if you burn the language by using a voice-y third-person.

Good. That means you have a kitchenette, which means you have a microwave. When I hang up, walk to that microwave, place your phone on the glass table inside, close the door and hit Quick Cook. This isn't a debate. I'm not asking.

"What… Why?”

Clock’s ticking, Kyle. Say it back to me.

“Walk to the microwave… shit! Walk to the microwave. Put the phone on the little glass stupid table!”

And then?

“And then push the fucking cook button!”

My Input: Okay, the phone going into the microwave hooked me, because it’s in the imperative mood—“you”—and because it depicts a physical task. And best of all, it’s unexplained.

I'll see you in a few minutes… and Kyle?

“What!?!”

Quick. Cook.

End Call

+++

12 minutes

That’s the average response time for a Priority-1 call for medical first responders in Clark county, whom you’ve alerted already.

Depending on the location, time of day and day of the week, this can prove to be a challenge, given the county is the size of New Jersey.

My Input: Okay, here your clock has started. But it’s midway through the story. Can you make this device work from, say, the second paragraph? Another trick you can do once you’ve established a pattern—as you do with the clock beats, and you do with the hang-up calls—is to break the pattern.

For example, skip a second. Jump from nine to six or seven. By that point your reader will be expecting the pattern to repeat. If you break the pattern you create tension. Consider that tension will build better if you skip a second or two.

11 minutes

In the elevator beside you, two cowboys in assless chaps fondle each other with their free hands, while the other hands balance yard stick tubes of slushed sugary cocktails.

Charming.

The smell of good weed and burnt plastic lingers in the air as you step off the elevator onto the seventeenth floor. Thumping house bass music and a muffled beeping echo throughout the corridor.

My Input: Who makes the observation “Charming”? Can you unpack “good weed” to suggest something about the POV character? Can you unpack “seventeeth floor”?

All of these abstracts are chances for you to describe the POV character by how he/she describes the world.

Do you see how if you avoid judging the cowboys, but you describe them in more detail, you force your reader to make the judgment? Do you see how when your POV character passes judgment, you cut the tension by dismissing the power of the image? How do those cowboys and their drinks smell? Can you put the entire burden of this interaction onto your reader? Can you trap your reader in that elevator with the stink of amyl nitrate and coconut oil?

Knock Knock*

A mid twenty something male answers the door.

You know the type.

Designer clothes. Expensive watch. Better haircut than you.

Bastard.

Kyle?

“She’s back here,” he says, and disappears into another room.

The sound of the smoke detector is still ringing from somewhere inside, where thirty seconds of convection cooked a thousand dollar smartphone into a thousand dollar paperweight.

Close the door behind you.

Latch the security bolt.

My Input: Likewise, can you unpack “mid twenty-something” per the POV character’s body of knowledge? From inside the POV, what would that person look like? What would be the insider jargon for such a person? In this moment you’ve earned the power to rename any/everything in the world, and we’ll suss out your meaning by context.

IMPORTANT: Keep in mind the inverse relationship between setting and plot. A plot that’s novel and dense will work best in standard, unremarkable settings. While unique settings will work best to ennoble a mundane plot. It’s very tough to make a convoluted plot work in a bizarre setting. That said, you’re very smart to present this interesting story in bland hotel rooms that don’t tax our imaginations.

9 minutes

Empty bottles are strewn across the entranceway leading to separated bedroom area, where a motionless body lays with nothing other than a pair of pink panties and a matching sunburn that helps to contrast the blue tinge of oxygen deprivation.

Fold the ironing board down from its locked placement.

Remove the iron from the wall and turn it to High Heat.

“What… what’s with the iron?”

You called us. Not EMS. Why Kyle?

“I can’t call the cops. My dad will find out…”

I see.

Remove the hedge pruners from the bag, along with the Nalaxone kit, and cut the cord to the land line.

Place the pruners next to the iron.

“What the fuck, man?”

Check the woman’s vitals and find zero signs of life. She’s ice cold. Been like this all night in all likelihood.

People like Kyle will never learn.

Participating got them trophies.

Whining got them attention.

They see people as disposable, just as they see themselves as invincible.

My Input: All good. I’m on board because you’re depicting a physical process with objects—the iron, the cord, the pruners. Can you set the iron’s heat to a setting such as “Linen,” which is the hottest setting on most irons. A strange measurement device—the “silk” or “linen” setting—would land in a strange, almost comic way.

Do you see how you might salt in the earlier failed-call examples here? If the POV character were taking calls while doing a physical task the stress would build faster.

8 minutes

Life it what happens while you’re busy doing your best to fuck up the plans you made for it.

Then boom.

You go from getting engaged to getting embalmed in the blink of an eye.

Dance floors to death rattles, overnight.

It’s amazing how fast relationships can get redefined, isn’t it Kyle.

“What?”

Once the novelty of a partner or a friend dissipates, or they are no longer entertained, a person becomes a perishable item to be discarded.

The cumulative impact of shared experiences and connection becomes dust in the wind quicker than you can get room service brought to your door.

Where are the pills Kyle?

Kyle takes out a small baggy of blue pills with M etched into them.

These aren’t total shit. Better than the well disguised fakes that the street level hustlers pawn off on tourists that don’t know any better and junkies who have zero recourse.

My Input: Hmmm. You go to big voice for a stretch here. Having the POV character’s phone ring throughout this sequence might be a good device for keeping us grounded.

5 minutes

Out the window, 17 floors below, a battalion of lost souls wander through the streets on their trajectory of tragedy, broken, battered and disregarded. Their skin, the sun soaked bronze that's normally found at bodybuilding competitions and exclusive poolside day clubs.

They have learned to be indifferent to their surroundings just as we have learned to become indifferent to their sufferings.

Steam begins to hiss from behind you.

“Aren’t you gonna help her,” Kyle says.

She’s dead. 

He goes pale.

You let the news sink in while you place your left hand on his right hand, and pick up the pruners with your other hand.

“What now?” Kyle says.

This is the part where you normally tell them not to worry. That you’ll take care of everything.

Normally.

Now you’re going to tell me where you bought these.

“What?”

In for a penny. In for a pound, Kyle.

“What?”

clip*

The tip of a pinky finger falls to the floor.

“Ahhhhh!”

Grab the iron and push it to the fleshy void.

SSSS*

“Fuckkkk!!”

Give Kyle a warning.

slap*

Where did you get the pills?

“…fuck! What the fuck!”

My Input: We’re still in a room with a dead, naked body in pink panties. Would you consider keeping that in the awareness? Might the body serve you better for a cut-away than looking out of the window?

Also, please be careful of forwarding plot with dialog. Is there a more effective way to show us that the body is dead, so you allow the reader to really grasp that fact? Imagine if you put the iron to the body and demonstrated a total lack of response to any pain. Cut the body to show that it fails to bleed. How can you demonstrate “dead”?

Also, if she’s proven dead here, your countdown becomes obsolete. How can you keep the countdown viable if it seemed to apply to saving a life? If the countdown ultimately relates to the paramedics, maybe we could hear sirens, and later see the flashing lights on the street far below.

In Minimalism we keep track of our objects. How can you keep that finger and earlobe in play?

3 minutes

People always assume they’ll get a chance at redemption. That they’ll have their repentance. Their day in court.

People like Kyle usually never have those days.

Until today.

Focus Kyle. Who sold you the goods?

“What?”

slap*

Who. Sold. You. The. Pills. Kyle.

slap*

A thin crimson worm trails from Kyles lips as a thick wet blot of urine inches down his pant leg.

“…the fucking bartender at Dino’s hooked us up.”

Tony. Hmm.

Thank you. Now. What’s her name Kyle?

“What?”

slap*

Her name, Kyle? What. Is. Her. Name?

“Ashley. No… Alison. Alison!”

clip*

An earlobe is down for the count.

“Ahh! Fuck!”

Say it Kyle. 

“Say what?!” Kyle sobs.

SSSS*

“AHHH!!”

Her name, Kyle. Say it.

“Alison! Alison. Fucking Alison! Ahh!”

The smell of burnt flesh combines with the lingering aroma of the toasted touchscreen in the microwave.

Think Hibachi grills on fiberglass tables.

Think singed hair after lighting propane bbqs.

Think retribution.

My Input: Would this be a good place to call back to the guys’ smell in the elevator? Or, how else can you use that element again here?

1 minute

The cold truth in life is that no one will ever have the ability to care about you the way that you care about yourself. 

We can forgive those who’ve harmed us but that can’t take back the damage they caused.

Sometimes that’s like trying to heal your dead cat by putting it in a blender full of bandaids and hitting frappé.

See you around, Kyle.

“Fuck you, man. You’re fucking crazy,” he whimpers.

Exit left down the hall, leaving the door ajar.

Smile at EMS as they pass you in the hallway with thirty seconds to spare.

Good for them.

+++

My Input: So is the girl actually dead? If you don’t kill her, you can still get Kyle to squeal and suggest the paramedics rescue her.

As always, how can you explode the ending into a whole new possibility? You’ve still got calls coming in. You can imply what’s to come at the bar, Dino’s. How can the closing line suggest an outcome—big, gruesome—that will play out beyond the final word of the story?

Thank you, Erik, for such a great teachable moment. I’ve wanted to talk about “system” stories for years. The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night is a standard murder mystery, except it’s made special by being set in the “system” of an autistic kid’s POV. Autism colors every word and every perception. Likewise, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil makes a standard courtroom thriller seem fresh and special by setting it in the “system” of Savannah, Georgia’s hothouse culture.

Because you set up your “system” so well, would you consider making something more of the drugged victim? Her identity or the repercussions related to Kyle’s father might be the story’s explosion into a bigger possibility. And creating this system might launch this story from a short story into the microcosm that will expand to become a novel. So many of my books—Fight Club, Rant, Lullaby, Choke—were short “system” stories that simply expanded to become novels.

Look at any dropped plot threads. Any of the failed hang-up phone calls. The two cowyboys. Kyle’s father. How can any earlier elements be paid off at the end?

The Meisner Technology for acting strikes me as—maybe—a milder form of hypnosis. We’re given rules, like in a game,² beyond that we’re told the circumstances of our characters. For example, “You two are a warring father and daughter, now go at it.” The actors psych themselves into the POV dictated by the teacher. That dictation feels like hypnotic suggestion. Fascinating stuff.

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For now I’ll be doing a Gloves Off on the first story linked in the Comments below. That’s unless the author has recently been up at bat. If the first link is to a writer who’s been up recently, I’ll choose the next link. If a story is too long to crib into a post… or the link won’t open… or the story is too politically charged, I’ll move on to the next link that’s offered.

1. In the past I’ve called these “social model” stories.

2. I’ve yet to understand all of the rules. Some of the other students have been in class for more than a year and STILL don’t understand all of the Meisner rules. Suffice to say that the three hours of acting exercises gives me vivid nightmares all Wednesday night. A fitting punishment when I consider how often my editors and agents have told me that my work gives them nightmares.