The battering ram...I remember my art teacher instructing us on our final project: "And please give me something guys. Please do not submit something boring. Please have more respect for me. Do anything. Make me hate you. Be outrageous but please don't boring." Words to create by.
If I pay you money can I send you pictures of my half done sewing projects instead of nudes? Don't worry. The pictures have the same vibe and do the same amount of psychological damage. Like nudes, they're hardly ever very good but you have to pretend like you like them. Furthermore, since I'm paying you good money I expect you to ramp up that enthusiasm a bit. Psychologically speaking, pictures of half done sewing projects and nudes are the same vibe in my world in the sense that I desperately need your approval Paula.
Oh! Fun fact. The poop cans are now deteriorating and oozing shit. Archivists and museum curators have to scramble to figure out how to properly display and store his poop. I would pay money to watch curators adjust the lighting on a Manzoni poop can.
Not to beat a dead horse but if there was ever a dead horse to beat this would be it...With an item like an artful turd canister, gas build up and pressure over the years must render some of these canisters deadly turd time bombs. And what happens if one of the curators gets taken out by shit bomb? What do they tell the family? What a terrible way to go.
Candice, that quote is so important and full of juice. Thank you for sharing that. I'd rather read about a protagonist I hate rather than one I'm bored by. Experiencing boring art is a silent killer, like high blood pressure.
I never thought of it this way. I think the hard part can be that in a work environment, or even in a family, he or she that holds the floor is usually not the most interesting but instead the one with the most power. So, I lose patience and want them to get to the f-ing point. This is why when at a family gathering, I'd rather sit at the kids table and listen to the chatter of children.
Agreed. We were blessed to not have a blow-hard in the family.
It was the 70s so we had the Desiderata decoupaged on every flat surface in the house. "Avoid loud and aggressive persons... They are vexations to the spirit..."
That was something I had never seen. Very interesting. While watching I turned into Robert Mitchell in Night of the Hunter with Cynicism tattooed on one hand and Peaceful Serenity on the other. I think it was a draw.
This is helpful. I’m awful at dialogue, and dissecting variables in a characters life that will further dictate their verbal delivery is something I never thought much about. Probably because I’m the type of writer to swoon over Faulkner’s (often tedious) style of painting a detailed, historical, rich picture. Once I get to dialogue, the pen gets thrown around the table. Thank you for the new perspective.
Whenever I read "tennis match" dialogue, it always feel like an opportunity was lost. In Consider This, I love how you touched on evasiveness and misunderstanding in dialogue. People are rarely direct. It's more fun watching people dance around their problem.
I am really enjoying finding out more about minimalism. I find it more inline with how I write and what I like to read. It's nice to find out the meaning behind the way things are presented. I feel like I knew some of this in my gut. A good amount of these posts are like AH-HA moments for me and they make my writing technique more refined. On the other hand, if you keep making the lightbulb turn on with me and other students, your contribution to global warming will be undeniable.
Thanks for the nod. I'd like to revisit many of the basic concepts in Minimalism, but fear repeating what's in the book 'Consider This' or what I wrote in the long-ago essays for The Cult. Just to keep everyone up to speed, I'll likely unpack some of the basic distinctions Tom learned from Gordon Lish.
(Raises hand) Yep— right here. The minute a room grows quite from something I might be talking about, I freeze. Totally not used to saying/writing about anything anyone really wants to hear. Always being cut off because I’m too nice or don’t feel important. Things changed after I was asked what kind of concession stand I would have, if I could have one— when I told everyone and talked about it, the whole room of men were listening— their wheels turning about how they could make my idea work for themselves—- I was furious and unforgiving to the 2 Uncle’s that ran off with my idea. Assholes! Even after they poo-poo’d my idea!!
Loving the wholesome family photos, Chuck! In the first one, you could have been a model. I don't think I ever had skin that smooth. What was your skin-care routine?
My beauty secret is low-resolution photography. We were given that family photo as a premium for opening a bank account. Like toasters are given. We're posed in front of a backdrop in the bank's lobby.
Oh wow. I feel like there could be an entire series of stories for people to unpack there. Parents, promotional freebies, and impacts on children. Whole trips planned around free Vegas buffets that nobody wants to go to. I suppose that’s what some of the Lampoon’s vacation movies were tapping into. Very relatable.
Hey, I love the idea of people at a buffet eating beyond pleasure because they want to feel like they "broke the bank" as you would beating the odds in a casino. It would be such a physical story -- dad forcing the kids to puke in the bathroom, then get back in line for more cake. Or such a buffet being used as day care, where kids know they must keep eating in order to remain safe in a heated place. It would be a great twist on those "keep walking" narrative like 'The Long Walk.'
Wow. You’ve really got me thinking about that one. The prospect of the buffet being open 24/7. Shift changes between low wage employees who could care less about who these people are or what they are doing or why they never leave.
Maybe at first the kids are tasked by the parents with keeping the pukey bathrooms clean so as to not anger management. And maybe before you know it the kids are cleaning dishes and emptying dirty vats of old food, busing tables, collecting kitchen waste, and dumping buckets of grease in the alleyway.
Line cooks and waitresses start taking hours long ‘smoke breaks’ to shop or go to shows they’ve never had the chance to see. Maybe one kid takes charge and starts running the show, pushing the other children to the edge of sanity. Working them in eighteen hour days. Sleeping on bags of rice in food cellars. Grouping them into two competing shifts that alternate between cleaning and cooking. Adults disappear. Lord of the Flies.
A friend of mine’s mother is from a large Catholic family. She not only has a tendency to ho-hum the start to a story, but once she has everyone’s attention she starts to whisper so you can barely hear her. As if it’s a huge secret, exclusive, etc. Instead of front loading with rephrasing of the same sentence, she often states the hook of the story to draw you in (which she sometimes does restate), then she starts loudly rattling off a bunch of insignificant tangent details (oh and we were at such and such just before that and the food was terrible!) until she has everyone’s attention. That’s when she drops her voice and starts really saying whatever the story is.
The other very unusual social tick that she has is that she interrupts people in the middle of conversations. She does it as if the conversation isn’t happening. It’s almost always when she has not been a part of whatever people are talking about. It’s very rude, yet she is oblivious to it. I’ve seen her do it with everyone along the ladder of social hierarchy, so I’m not convinced that it’s meant to belittle — but initially I thought it was, and many people often seem to be understandably irritated by it. She just has to be the center of attention. I’m sure part of it is her personality, but it probably does have more to do with socialization within her family. She became a very successful sales person and is the youngest and also physically the smallest in a family of six kids. I think her mentality is similar to the way a runt of the litter can remain defensive of their food bowl for their entire life.
This is wonderful stuff. And exactly the behavior you should be aware of. In 'Gatsby' Daisy Buchanan does the same whispering trick in order to make listeners lean very close to her. Creating intimacy and a sense of secrecy.
I won’t pretend to be a writer. I am however a lover of books, and deeply wish I had the talent to write. The things I’ve learned since you started this has blown my mind and given me an even deeper respect for the art. This and guns vs clocks were wonderful for me!
Some complain that I try to win an argument through talking over all opposing views. I came from a family of at least 5 siblings, depending on dad's house or mom's. I consciously try not to talk over opposing ideas. I get this from my mom, she grew up with 9 other siblings.
I think there's something poetic or appealing in the say it twice concept. It is like get the hook in their mouth, then yank the hook to keep them hooked, maybe? Lead guitarist Ace Frehley says he plays everything twice, that's his secret for pleasing, melodic guitar passages.
On Substack, I also subscribe to Gray Mirror, a Machiavellian political philosopher, but I don't mind that he has strayed off topic this year because his wife passed away. He's been a closet poet for decades, even reading to audiences decades ago and now. He shares his poems more than politics lately. Most poems are about dealing with the death of his wife. It is very personal and nice of him to share that with his readers. But. Readers have complained that his poems do not rhyme. Despite deep insights, personal and political, his poems could be more enjoyable if they rhymed, instead of free style.
I guess for me it is a lot like song lyrics. I am always impressed when the two lines rhyme, wow, how did you do that! That makes if feel like each pairing is an accomplishment. I kind of feel cheated if they have to twist a word pronunciation to make it rhyme, but it just seems satisfying and correct, like the thoughts are in tune because they rhyme, and they usually do support the content of each other line.
You'll note how much of Minimalism seems to borrow from song lyrics. Songs never hesitate to repeat words, and eschew pronouns. Songs repeat elements and choruses. Standard Modernist writers avoid using the same word too often (called an 'echo') or using words that seem to rhyme by accident, or using the same attribution over and over (said). That's what makes those writers sound "writerly." And to Lish and Spanbauer "writerly" was the worse quality a story could have.
Arnold Schoenberg was an avant-garde composer and respected musical scholar, he taught that you must have repetition but with variations, the meat repeats with different seasoning is my translation of him.
I'm 58 years old, so I am proud to say I learned to read and write from garage sale Spider-man comics and Mad Magazine. Mad used to do their musical parodies of the latest hit movie. The word balloon said (sung to the tune of...) then they comedically rewrote the lyrics of a famous song. So I started that habit of my own new lyrics to fit the syllable counts and rhyme patterns of hit songs. I would recommend that exercise to anybody interested in poetry or song lyrics.
Thanks for writing this. It's always great to have another tool to try, but what I find even more exciting is the way that a new tool can make examine your own process. I didn't realize that I had a philosophy for writing dialog until it articulated in my head juxtaposed by your suggestion. In addition to a realization I ended up with a decent post about it. Thanks for the injection.
The battering ram...I remember my art teacher instructing us on our final project: "And please give me something guys. Please do not submit something boring. Please have more respect for me. Do anything. Make me hate you. Be outrageous but please don't boring." Words to create by.
Those ARE nice. So... you urinated in a beaker and submerged a crucifix?
At least I didn't do Manzoni poop cans. lol. Perfect. Passive terrorism is my specialty.
Dear Paula,
If I pay you money can I send you pictures of my half done sewing projects instead of nudes? Don't worry. The pictures have the same vibe and do the same amount of psychological damage. Like nudes, they're hardly ever very good but you have to pretend like you like them. Furthermore, since I'm paying you good money I expect you to ramp up that enthusiasm a bit. Psychologically speaking, pictures of half done sewing projects and nudes are the same vibe in my world in the sense that I desperately need your approval Paula.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE CANNED POOPS ARE WORTH NOW!??
Start canning! You could do an Etsy store.
Oh! Fun fact. The poop cans are now deteriorating and oozing shit. Archivists and museum curators have to scramble to figure out how to properly display and store his poop. I would pay money to watch curators adjust the lighting on a Manzoni poop can.
Pity the private collector. Or auction house. "Next up, Lot Number..."
Not to beat a dead horse but if there was ever a dead horse to beat this would be it...With an item like an artful turd canister, gas build up and pressure over the years must render some of these canisters deadly turd time bombs. And what happens if one of the curators gets taken out by shit bomb? What do they tell the family? What a terrible way to go.
Candice, that quote is so important and full of juice. Thank you for sharing that. I'd rather read about a protagonist I hate rather than one I'm bored by. Experiencing boring art is a silent killer, like high blood pressure.
Awww. Thank you. Yeah my teacher wasn't even upset. He delivered that speech with a defeatist, dead-pan attitude. It was more like a plead really.
And I'm sorry for the quote.
I liked the quote.
I never thought of it this way. I think the hard part can be that in a work environment, or even in a family, he or she that holds the floor is usually not the most interesting but instead the one with the most power. So, I lose patience and want them to get to the f-ing point. This is why when at a family gathering, I'd rather sit at the kids table and listen to the chatter of children.
Agreed. We were blessed to not have a blow-hard in the family.
It was the 70s so we had the Desiderata decoupaged on every flat surface in the house. "Avoid loud and aggressive persons... They are vexations to the spirit..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X8YnCq6UME
That was something I had never seen. Very interesting. While watching I turned into Robert Mitchell in Night of the Hunter with Cynicism tattooed on one hand and Peaceful Serenity on the other. I think it was a draw.
This is helpful. I’m awful at dialogue, and dissecting variables in a characters life that will further dictate their verbal delivery is something I never thought much about. Probably because I’m the type of writer to swoon over Faulkner’s (often tedious) style of painting a detailed, historical, rich picture. Once I get to dialogue, the pen gets thrown around the table. Thank you for the new perspective.
Just never, ever use "tennis match" dialog where questions are asked and answered, leaving no energy.
Whenever I read "tennis match" dialogue, it always feel like an opportunity was lost. In Consider This, I love how you touched on evasiveness and misunderstanding in dialogue. People are rarely direct. It's more fun watching people dance around their problem.
Most important... miscommunication creates tension.
Lester, no!!
I am really enjoying finding out more about minimalism. I find it more inline with how I write and what I like to read. It's nice to find out the meaning behind the way things are presented. I feel like I knew some of this in my gut. A good amount of these posts are like AH-HA moments for me and they make my writing technique more refined. On the other hand, if you keep making the lightbulb turn on with me and other students, your contribution to global warming will be undeniable.
Thanks for the nod. I'd like to revisit many of the basic concepts in Minimalism, but fear repeating what's in the book 'Consider This' or what I wrote in the long-ago essays for The Cult. Just to keep everyone up to speed, I'll likely unpack some of the basic distinctions Tom learned from Gordon Lish.
How many people come from childhoods where the rule "children should be seen, not heard?"
I did.
When company came over we shut up. Among ourselves we battled and screamed.
(Raises hand) Yep— right here. The minute a room grows quite from something I might be talking about, I freeze. Totally not used to saying/writing about anything anyone really wants to hear. Always being cut off because I’m too nice or don’t feel important. Things changed after I was asked what kind of concession stand I would have, if I could have one— when I told everyone and talked about it, the whole room of men were listening— their wheels turning about how they could make my idea work for themselves—- I was furious and unforgiving to the 2 Uncle’s that ran off with my idea. Assholes! Even after they poo-poo’d my idea!!
Loving the wholesome family photos, Chuck! In the first one, you could have been a model. I don't think I ever had skin that smooth. What was your skin-care routine?
Haha!
My beauty secret is low-resolution photography. We were given that family photo as a premium for opening a bank account. Like toasters are given. We're posed in front of a backdrop in the bank's lobby.
Oh wow. I feel like there could be an entire series of stories for people to unpack there. Parents, promotional freebies, and impacts on children. Whole trips planned around free Vegas buffets that nobody wants to go to. I suppose that’s what some of the Lampoon’s vacation movies were tapping into. Very relatable.
Hey, I love the idea of people at a buffet eating beyond pleasure because they want to feel like they "broke the bank" as you would beating the odds in a casino. It would be such a physical story -- dad forcing the kids to puke in the bathroom, then get back in line for more cake. Or such a buffet being used as day care, where kids know they must keep eating in order to remain safe in a heated place. It would be a great twist on those "keep walking" narrative like 'The Long Walk.'
Haha good God.
Wow. You’ve really got me thinking about that one. The prospect of the buffet being open 24/7. Shift changes between low wage employees who could care less about who these people are or what they are doing or why they never leave.
Maybe at first the kids are tasked by the parents with keeping the pukey bathrooms clean so as to not anger management. And maybe before you know it the kids are cleaning dishes and emptying dirty vats of old food, busing tables, collecting kitchen waste, and dumping buckets of grease in the alleyway.
Line cooks and waitresses start taking hours long ‘smoke breaks’ to shop or go to shows they’ve never had the chance to see. Maybe one kid takes charge and starts running the show, pushing the other children to the edge of sanity. Working them in eighteen hour days. Sleeping on bags of rice in food cellars. Grouping them into two competing shifts that alternate between cleaning and cooking. Adults disappear. Lord of the Flies.
I love how everyone in the top picture is smiling and Chuck looks like he's planning a murder.
Between my acne and my Dumbo ears Picture Days were not my favorite time.
Excellent. Thank you! ❤️
A friend of mine’s mother is from a large Catholic family. She not only has a tendency to ho-hum the start to a story, but once she has everyone’s attention she starts to whisper so you can barely hear her. As if it’s a huge secret, exclusive, etc. Instead of front loading with rephrasing of the same sentence, she often states the hook of the story to draw you in (which she sometimes does restate), then she starts loudly rattling off a bunch of insignificant tangent details (oh and we were at such and such just before that and the food was terrible!) until she has everyone’s attention. That’s when she drops her voice and starts really saying whatever the story is.
The other very unusual social tick that she has is that she interrupts people in the middle of conversations. She does it as if the conversation isn’t happening. It’s almost always when she has not been a part of whatever people are talking about. It’s very rude, yet she is oblivious to it. I’ve seen her do it with everyone along the ladder of social hierarchy, so I’m not convinced that it’s meant to belittle — but initially I thought it was, and many people often seem to be understandably irritated by it. She just has to be the center of attention. I’m sure part of it is her personality, but it probably does have more to do with socialization within her family. She became a very successful sales person and is the youngest and also physically the smallest in a family of six kids. I think her mentality is similar to the way a runt of the litter can remain defensive of their food bowl for their entire life.
This is wonderful stuff. And exactly the behavior you should be aware of. In 'Gatsby' Daisy Buchanan does the same whispering trick in order to make listeners lean very close to her. Creating intimacy and a sense of secrecy.
Chuck do you ever offer live or virtual master classes??
I won’t pretend to be a writer. I am however a lover of books, and deeply wish I had the talent to write. The things I’ve learned since you started this has blown my mind and given me an even deeper respect for the art. This and guns vs clocks were wonderful for me!
Some complain that I try to win an argument through talking over all opposing views. I came from a family of at least 5 siblings, depending on dad's house or mom's. I consciously try not to talk over opposing ideas. I get this from my mom, she grew up with 9 other siblings.
I think there's something poetic or appealing in the say it twice concept. It is like get the hook in their mouth, then yank the hook to keep them hooked, maybe? Lead guitarist Ace Frehley says he plays everything twice, that's his secret for pleasing, melodic guitar passages.
On Substack, I also subscribe to Gray Mirror, a Machiavellian political philosopher, but I don't mind that he has strayed off topic this year because his wife passed away. He's been a closet poet for decades, even reading to audiences decades ago and now. He shares his poems more than politics lately. Most poems are about dealing with the death of his wife. It is very personal and nice of him to share that with his readers. But. Readers have complained that his poems do not rhyme. Despite deep insights, personal and political, his poems could be more enjoyable if they rhymed, instead of free style.
I guess for me it is a lot like song lyrics. I am always impressed when the two lines rhyme, wow, how did you do that! That makes if feel like each pairing is an accomplishment. I kind of feel cheated if they have to twist a word pronunciation to make it rhyme, but it just seems satisfying and correct, like the thoughts are in tune because they rhyme, and they usually do support the content of each other line.
You'll note how much of Minimalism seems to borrow from song lyrics. Songs never hesitate to repeat words, and eschew pronouns. Songs repeat elements and choruses. Standard Modernist writers avoid using the same word too often (called an 'echo') or using words that seem to rhyme by accident, or using the same attribution over and over (said). That's what makes those writers sound "writerly." And to Lish and Spanbauer "writerly" was the worse quality a story could have.
Arnold Schoenberg was an avant-garde composer and respected musical scholar, he taught that you must have repetition but with variations, the meat repeats with different seasoning is my translation of him.
I'm 58 years old, so I am proud to say I learned to read and write from garage sale Spider-man comics and Mad Magazine. Mad used to do their musical parodies of the latest hit movie. The word balloon said (sung to the tune of...) then they comedically rewrote the lyrics of a famous song. So I started that habit of my own new lyrics to fit the syllable counts and rhyme patterns of hit songs. I would recommend that exercise to anybody interested in poetry or song lyrics.
Thanks for writing this. It's always great to have another tool to try, but what I find even more exciting is the way that a new tool can make examine your own process. I didn't realize that I had a philosophy for writing dialog until it articulated in my head juxtaposed by your suggestion. In addition to a realization I ended up with a decent post about it. Thanks for the injection.
https://cahall.substack.com/p/seeing-what-will-happen