The Noble Ignoble

Just the Seed of a System

Systems Crashing

Maybe this goes back to my brother and I building room-sized castles out of flashcards. But I’ve always loved creating systems for the joy of destroying them. Crashing a house of cards is fun, but crashing an emotional system is magnificent. It’s operatic. In novels like Fight Club and Choke and stories like Guts I depict a person who’s developed a sure-fire way of getting his needs met. A secret, devious method, yes, and when it collapses the character is returned to the living world.

But First a System

In writing most novels the hardest task is to create the threat, the dilemma that menaces the characters. I’ve always held that we create our own worst disasters, and those are more interesting to deal with because we’re trying to overcome a weakness within ourselves. Thus the narrator in Diary must recognize that she’s the reincarnated problem, and that her destiny will always be to catalyze a mass murder — unless she can tip her story to the outside world and scotch the entire system. Sure, she’ll eventually die, but when she’s reincarnated the world will be on guard against her repeating the established pattern of her destiny.

Which Brings Us to Christmas Dinner

Over Christmas dinner a friend told a story about dating a wealthy woman with a large art collection. She toured him through her paintings until he asked about one. The painting in question was her most-prized possession and hung in a place of honor. It was, she explained, an original work by the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. She’d haunted auction sites for years and finally acquired it.

My friend excused himself from her apartment and never looked back.

One of my favorite documentaries is Made You Look, a Netflix look at a decades-long fraud that involves countless rich buyers and fake masterpieces. The story is sexy and unresolved. Most of the villains escape. The master forger flees to mainland China.

But imagine if instead of hawking fake Pollacks and abstract expressionists, you had someone forging fake Gacy paintings. The pictures are so crude you could even have a kindergarten of five-year-olds cranking them out. Gacy-obsessed weirdos would be duped into buying these paintings for big money. The money could then be spent on some noble cause — the kid’s crumbling school, animal rescue, a beloved teacher’s chemotherapy.

My Point Is

Create a corrupt system that serves some nice purpose. We’re not going to feel sympathy for people duped into paying big prices for serial killer art. Likewise, our kindergarten could branch out into creating fake Nazi relics. People buy these objects in secret. They’ll have no official recourse if they find they’ve been fooled.

Or, will they take the “law” into their own hands and seek out the five-year-old con artists? However it goes, it’s a secret system. It can go anywhere. It’s clever so it will engage the reader’s admiration, and it preys on unlikable serial killer fans, so the reader will align with the con artists.

Let’s say the ring leader is the kindergarten teacher. Her brainstorm is to turn Art Period into a fake-Gacy factory.

• How would this idea occur to the teacher?

• What would the money be needed for?

• Would some inquisitive young parent begin to recognize the Gacy style?

• What’s the romantic thread?

• How would researching Gacy’s crimes begin to corrupt the idealistic teacher?

• Where would this scam escalate to?

As always, the dilemma or the system is the most important aspect of a story.

Things only get interesting when they begin to break down.

The conflicted motive is always more engaging.

If you get this pitch to some studio and make a fortune, please hire me to clean the toilets of your lavish mansion.