My good Christian eyes can't handle all the fuck in this story...I'm kidding lol
Thank you for another good Gloves Off, you know I live for this shit.
And I don't know if I told you this before but I had more fun reading Fight Club than ANY other novel in my life. And I think it's because of the fast pace, the uniqueness of the voice, the repetition of certain elements which evoke nostalgia. I wish that all my writing can inspire that kind of fun.
I'm having some trouble with something. I haven't written in a while. Do you know of any ways to ease myself back into writing? I'm finding it hard to backtrack where I was.
Do not be afraid to set things aside, okay? You're always the same person, so often the "next" idea is often a part of the current one. Parts of a story or book don't come to us in a clear linear order, so if you write what seem like random bits -- but keep track of them -- soon enough you can see how they can be fit together in various orders to create the overall larger project.
We need to shake the idea that a story is written from beginning to end. Instead, consider how they shook a film. They'll shoot all of one portion, then all of another, then another. It's only in the editing that the full story fits together.
This allows the creator to keep details in suspension for as long as possible. Then to combine and recombine those fragments in several different ways to test how they work in varied sequences for better effect.
That said, write in a notebook. Write when you hear something you love. Enjoy the process.
Thank you for that response. You called me out because I'm still stuck on the idea that writing a story has to start from beginning and go to the end. I have bits of this current story that are clear to me and are actually exciting but in my mind, if I don't follow a linear path, I can't just dive into dessert before finishing the actual meal. It's been hard for me to shake that mindset. Books are read from start to finish, so it seemed like I should write like that too.
But I want to write like you described. Random bits, then putting them all together.
And I'm actually writing on a legal pad. I have too many notebooks that will be filled, even if I die trying.
I wonder Mr. C, if you've heard about TV showrunner of COMMUNITY/RICK & MORTY's Dan Harmon's concept of "The Story Circle". Plot is the thing I have the most trouble with. I am the pretty sentence guy v. the journalistic writer. And I HATE the word STORY. But I was wondering if you were familiar because he's a pretty controversial character and it seems like you guys'd hit off fancifully. Very similar sense of Umour and so on and so on. I remember during an episode of HARMONTOWN (his podcast which is on a kind of hiatus right now) they were talking about their love of FIGHT CLUB & also how much damage it's done to Trump/4chan culture. Kind of like how the point of series like BREAKING BAD & SOPRANOS the point is to learn a cautionary tale and a portion of the viewership is rooting for the evil guy. Which is not the intent of the creators. At least in Gilligan's case. I remember you said, originally, FIGHT CLUB, at it's core, is about a guy and a girl who are in love, basically.
I am much more an aficionado of COMMUNITY than RICK & MORTY for some reason. Some shows that everyone is watching I just don't find any angle into. COMMUNITY was smart, unnihilistic, tender, comforting and hilarious. I mean I guess there's still a movie on the way so it's not completely over. The casting didn't feel like some kind of wokeness but a necessary choice and the character of Abed is something we all needed to know about for a long time. I think the writing on the show is brilliant. Especially the episode CONSPIRACY THEORIES & INTERIOR DESIGN. I love the idea that there's an old 80's style xerox printer that just prints out fake classes all day. I love machines that just sort of eject information that people just blindly obey.
I'm trying to satirize them with a story that's currently in the lab. Really fascinating to see how the manosphere developed since 2013. It started as a self improvement tool for young men. Atleast that's the promise it gives. But deep down its a male supremacy cult. With their own Language and daily habbits, and Gods, Idols, Prophets and Holy Books. Trump is an Idol for Sure. So is Andrew Tate and Rollo Tomassi who started the whole thing. The Red Pill Reddit group is at the heart of it all I think. The stuff they discuss is appalling!
Not sure I follow tbh. The only irony I see is how many of them turned down religions of the past and consider themselves 'Rational' males, only to switch to a cult just about the same.
I saw something recently where someone was talking about how Andrew Tate was the guy giving all the "How to Get Women" advice...but most women (those who have even heard of him) find him appalling. Meanwhile, the ladies are out here making thirsty memes about the quiet, decent guys like Robert Smith and Pedro Pascal. 😆
Disingenuous of creators to disavow or recast their intentions retrospectively. They don't accidentally conceive shows, films, books, characters, oozing with moral ambiguity. It's deliberate. It's why they're successful. To come out later with hand-wringing 'oh no, it was all clear-cut good versus evil, and the dumb audience picked the wrong side' is a baffling negation. If they'd wanted their audience to pick the 'right' side, they would have produced something completely different, and likely foregone their success.
Thank you for sharing The Cornhole Bungle with us!
I really enjoyed the relationship between Bobby and Jimmy. These guys almost seemed like people I knew or had met before. Or characters from a movie even, just you give a good feel for these guys off their banter, I can totally picture guys like these in the movies.
You had some excellent word-choices such as:
-“trolleyed”
- “waddles”
-“sloshing around”
Here is a visual I thought was disgustingly delightful: “laughing so hard there are strings of snot dangling from his nose like half-chewed maggots.”
These lines made me chuckle:
-“He rubs the back of his head like maybe I injured the hamster inside.”
-“I swear to god if you say that to me one more time, I’m gonna beat you over the head until it fits through the hole on the cornhole board.”
I know Chuck already highlighted it, but this is great: “pops up against my blocker and back doors into the hole.”
It's good corn hole lingo and it is physical stuff I can picture.
There’s a lot of talk about cheating throughout the story, but I’m very curious about how exactly these two plan to cheat, and what the heck is with this light thing in the pen!
And oh yes, speaking of That Pen!!! You could put a lot of tension in that pen if you wanted. You could have it be explosive as Chuck suggested, or — just the simplicity of Jimmy keeps chewing on it or bringing it out before he’s supposed to and maybe almost breaks it or something. The pen is just a good, concrete object that could be used much much sooner in the story and would help draw us along as we follow these guys.
I do want to know what the stakes are. Why does it matter if they win this corn hole game? Why do they need to cheat? What happens if they lose? Ask yourself what could go wrong? (And then make all the things go wrong!)
The moral is fun!
If you kept going. If you wrote that they played the game instead of getting stopped by the police, what would go wrong in that game? I say write that scene out—that’s where your tension is. But only if you first tell us what will happen if they don’t play/don’t win. Why must they play, the reader needs to know that or they won't feel any sense of urgency to continue.
My favorite advice from Chuck:
“Imply. Create that gap the reader must complete, and it allows for a participation that will draw the reader closer to the action.”
Yes, the pen! Flashing it in people’s eyes, drawing stupid shapes on the walls, distracting someone’s seeing eye dog...there’s so much fun stuff that could be done.
You write good dialog. It’s character specific and avoids falling into “tennis match.” But with that being said, I’d like to see what happens to your story if you don’t rely on it. Where does the action take you, when you’re forced to “point the camera” somewhere else.
I’d also like to get a bit more authority from the narrator. You tease that a little with “pops up against my blocker and back doors into the hole.” But I want to see more. I want this guy to make me feel like I’m suddenly an expert in cornhole. Because then I’ll trust him, and if I trust him, he can take me along with him where ever the story goes.
Was away on vacation when this email arrived. Took me some time to fully digest it all. I can't begin to express my gratitude and thanks to you Chuck for taking the time to provide so much detailed and valuable feedback. I am in awe of your efforts to provide so much value to your readers and subscribers. I signed up to substack because I saw you had joined. Somewhere near the beginning and have never once regretted my decision to join your community. It is a fantastic resource for writers (and readers). Every week I learn something new or am insipired to try a new technique.
I have never been in any writing classes or workshops so I have never had one of my stories critiqued before. I love to learn and want to grow as a writer so I am grateful to you for taking so much time to provide insight on techniques I can use and ways I can make the story stronger. I had never heard of Cornhole so this is the first story I've tackled that required some research. Your comments on how I can use burnt language to explore the sport is extremely helpful. Having re-read the story again with your comments in mind, I can see where I can amp up the tension and restructure it to spend less time in the narrator's head. There is just so much to take in and so much I have gained from being here.
But mainly I am still in awe that you took the time to read it and help me understand how to make it stronger. I know, I know, that's the second time I used the word "awe" but honestly, I am having a tough time expressing how much respect I have for you and the time you take to share your knowledge with the rest of us. I signed up because I love your writing but I stayed because you have done so much to help your subscribers get better at telling stories. And I thank you for doing so.
I love that similar themes often pop up: on the body, be particular, less abstract, etc. In this post, I particulary like how you said to plant the reader in the body before! setting the scene. It's helped me find another area of improvement, so thanks Chuck and Joseph.
How do we get our stories critiqued?
I think this is the latest Call for Stories. You can submit work here: https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/a-call-for-stories-v
Thank you!
My good Christian eyes can't handle all the fuck in this story...I'm kidding lol
Thank you for another good Gloves Off, you know I live for this shit.
And I don't know if I told you this before but I had more fun reading Fight Club than ANY other novel in my life. And I think it's because of the fast pace, the uniqueness of the voice, the repetition of certain elements which evoke nostalgia. I wish that all my writing can inspire that kind of fun.
Agreed. I'd prefer to see more gestures and fewer "fucks."
Remember I'm your namesake, St. Lawrence. My middle name. I'm watching you.
And we are watching you.
I'm having some trouble with something. I haven't written in a while. Do you know of any ways to ease myself back into writing? I'm finding it hard to backtrack where I was.
Do not be afraid to set things aside, okay? You're always the same person, so often the "next" idea is often a part of the current one. Parts of a story or book don't come to us in a clear linear order, so if you write what seem like random bits -- but keep track of them -- soon enough you can see how they can be fit together in various orders to create the overall larger project.
We need to shake the idea that a story is written from beginning to end. Instead, consider how they shook a film. They'll shoot all of one portion, then all of another, then another. It's only in the editing that the full story fits together.
This allows the creator to keep details in suspension for as long as possible. Then to combine and recombine those fragments in several different ways to test how they work in varied sequences for better effect.
That said, write in a notebook. Write when you hear something you love. Enjoy the process.
Thank you for that response. You called me out because I'm still stuck on the idea that writing a story has to start from beginning and go to the end. I have bits of this current story that are clear to me and are actually exciting but in my mind, if I don't follow a linear path, I can't just dive into dessert before finishing the actual meal. It's been hard for me to shake that mindset. Books are read from start to finish, so it seemed like I should write like that too.
But I want to write like you described. Random bits, then putting them all together.
And I'm actually writing on a legal pad. I have too many notebooks that will be filled, even if I die trying.
I wonder Mr. C, if you've heard about TV showrunner of COMMUNITY/RICK & MORTY's Dan Harmon's concept of "The Story Circle". Plot is the thing I have the most trouble with. I am the pretty sentence guy v. the journalistic writer. And I HATE the word STORY. But I was wondering if you were familiar because he's a pretty controversial character and it seems like you guys'd hit off fancifully. Very similar sense of Umour and so on and so on. I remember during an episode of HARMONTOWN (his podcast which is on a kind of hiatus right now) they were talking about their love of FIGHT CLUB & also how much damage it's done to Trump/4chan culture. Kind of like how the point of series like BREAKING BAD & SOPRANOS the point is to learn a cautionary tale and a portion of the viewership is rooting for the evil guy. Which is not the intent of the creators. At least in Gilligan's case. I remember you said, originally, FIGHT CLUB, at it's core, is about a guy and a girl who are in love, basically.
https://youtu.be/RG4WcRAgm7Y
We're all in Jerry Daycare. Ugh.
I am much more an aficionado of COMMUNITY than RICK & MORTY for some reason. Some shows that everyone is watching I just don't find any angle into. COMMUNITY was smart, unnihilistic, tender, comforting and hilarious. I mean I guess there's still a movie on the way so it's not completely over. The casting didn't feel like some kind of wokeness but a necessary choice and the character of Abed is something we all needed to know about for a long time. I think the writing on the show is brilliant. Especially the episode CONSPIRACY THEORIES & INTERIOR DESIGN. I love the idea that there's an old 80's style xerox printer that just prints out fake classes all day. I love machines that just sort of eject information that people just blindly obey.
Sold! I will have to take a look at Community. Thank you.
What is Trump/4 Chan culture?
You don't want to know.
I have been asking friends on the hard left and the hard right what 4 Chan is and nobody seems to really know..
There's a documentary on HBO about it.
On Travis Bickle,The Joker, Tyler Durden , Walter White... you know the gang. The meme goes, ''You Missed the Point by Idolizing Them”
That subculture you've mentioned is not exclusive to 4chan right? You're talking of the Manosphere culture?
Yes.
I'm trying to satirize them with a story that's currently in the lab. Really fascinating to see how the manosphere developed since 2013. It started as a self improvement tool for young men. Atleast that's the promise it gives. But deep down its a male supremacy cult. With their own Language and daily habbits, and Gods, Idols, Prophets and Holy Books. Trump is an Idol for Sure. So is Andrew Tate and Rollo Tomassi who started the whole thing. The Red Pill Reddit group is at the heart of it all I think. The stuff they discuss is appalling!
Dude if at least one of those guys read INFINITE JEST, the irony would explode their head like in that Emily Dickinson poem.
Not sure I follow tbh. The only irony I see is how many of them turned down religions of the past and consider themselves 'Rational' males, only to switch to a cult just about the same.
Just trust me.
I saw something recently where someone was talking about how Andrew Tate was the guy giving all the "How to Get Women" advice...but most women (those who have even heard of him) find him appalling. Meanwhile, the ladies are out here making thirsty memes about the quiet, decent guys like Robert Smith and Pedro Pascal. 😆
Or Nicholas Hoult. He beats that bald fraud every day and twice on Sunday(s).
Tate's an 'anger' merchant. Didn't Greta Thunberg out play him on twitter months ago? She got him arrested. That was funny.
Yes! That was beautiful.
Disingenuous of creators to disavow or recast their intentions retrospectively. They don't accidentally conceive shows, films, books, characters, oozing with moral ambiguity. It's deliberate. It's why they're successful. To come out later with hand-wringing 'oh no, it was all clear-cut good versus evil, and the dumb audience picked the wrong side' is a baffling negation. If they'd wanted their audience to pick the 'right' side, they would have produced something completely different, and likely foregone their success.
Hey Joseph!
Thank you for sharing The Cornhole Bungle with us!
I really enjoyed the relationship between Bobby and Jimmy. These guys almost seemed like people I knew or had met before. Or characters from a movie even, just you give a good feel for these guys off their banter, I can totally picture guys like these in the movies.
You had some excellent word-choices such as:
-“trolleyed”
- “waddles”
-“sloshing around”
Here is a visual I thought was disgustingly delightful: “laughing so hard there are strings of snot dangling from his nose like half-chewed maggots.”
These lines made me chuckle:
-“He rubs the back of his head like maybe I injured the hamster inside.”
-“I swear to god if you say that to me one more time, I’m gonna beat you over the head until it fits through the hole on the cornhole board.”
I know Chuck already highlighted it, but this is great: “pops up against my blocker and back doors into the hole.”
It's good corn hole lingo and it is physical stuff I can picture.
There’s a lot of talk about cheating throughout the story, but I’m very curious about how exactly these two plan to cheat, and what the heck is with this light thing in the pen!
And oh yes, speaking of That Pen!!! You could put a lot of tension in that pen if you wanted. You could have it be explosive as Chuck suggested, or — just the simplicity of Jimmy keeps chewing on it or bringing it out before he’s supposed to and maybe almost breaks it or something. The pen is just a good, concrete object that could be used much much sooner in the story and would help draw us along as we follow these guys.
I do want to know what the stakes are. Why does it matter if they win this corn hole game? Why do they need to cheat? What happens if they lose? Ask yourself what could go wrong? (And then make all the things go wrong!)
The moral is fun!
If you kept going. If you wrote that they played the game instead of getting stopped by the police, what would go wrong in that game? I say write that scene out—that’s where your tension is. But only if you first tell us what will happen if they don’t play/don’t win. Why must they play, the reader needs to know that or they won't feel any sense of urgency to continue.
My favorite advice from Chuck:
“Imply. Create that gap the reader must complete, and it allows for a participation that will draw the reader closer to the action.”
And Keep going!
Yes, the pen! Flashing it in people’s eyes, drawing stupid shapes on the walls, distracting someone’s seeing eye dog...there’s so much fun stuff that could be done.
Thanks for sharing, Joseph!
You write good dialog. It’s character specific and avoids falling into “tennis match.” But with that being said, I’d like to see what happens to your story if you don’t rely on it. Where does the action take you, when you’re forced to “point the camera” somewhere else.
I’d also like to get a bit more authority from the narrator. You tease that a little with “pops up against my blocker and back doors into the hole.” But I want to see more. I want this guy to make me feel like I’m suddenly an expert in cornhole. Because then I’ll trust him, and if I trust him, he can take me along with him where ever the story goes.
Again thanks for sharing. Write on!
Was away on vacation when this email arrived. Took me some time to fully digest it all. I can't begin to express my gratitude and thanks to you Chuck for taking the time to provide so much detailed and valuable feedback. I am in awe of your efforts to provide so much value to your readers and subscribers. I signed up to substack because I saw you had joined. Somewhere near the beginning and have never once regretted my decision to join your community. It is a fantastic resource for writers (and readers). Every week I learn something new or am insipired to try a new technique.
I have never been in any writing classes or workshops so I have never had one of my stories critiqued before. I love to learn and want to grow as a writer so I am grateful to you for taking so much time to provide insight on techniques I can use and ways I can make the story stronger. I had never heard of Cornhole so this is the first story I've tackled that required some research. Your comments on how I can use burnt language to explore the sport is extremely helpful. Having re-read the story again with your comments in mind, I can see where I can amp up the tension and restructure it to spend less time in the narrator's head. There is just so much to take in and so much I have gained from being here.
But mainly I am still in awe that you took the time to read it and help me understand how to make it stronger. I know, I know, that's the second time I used the word "awe" but honestly, I am having a tough time expressing how much respect I have for you and the time you take to share your knowledge with the rest of us. I signed up because I love your writing but I stayed because you have done so much to help your subscribers get better at telling stories. And I thank you for doing so.
I love that similar themes often pop up: on the body, be particular, less abstract, etc. In this post, I particulary like how you said to plant the reader in the body before! setting the scene. It's helped me find another area of improvement, so thanks Chuck and Joseph.