WIP: JOHN HAMLER'S ANTAGONY

Well, don't let me slide too far. Like I said: I'm probably just trying to make excuses for myself. Trust me, I've been hearing the same "where's the plot/beef?" complaint for years, equivocating for years. My process is pretty willy-nilly. I don't outline, I simply write the next line. Although, like Catch-22, I'm sure there must be a plot lurking in ANTAGONY somewhere. Thin as air, but it's there. Just gotta find it, wrangle it, tie it up or down.

Oops.  Got your name wrong.  Probably thinking of you and Mike Hammer going through the matter transmitter and getting their DNA fused.  Consider it a compliment.  lol

Well, it's not really like Trump. I was just grasping at straws to slurp from under the intense heat of your criticism. Of course, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Which again reminds me of Trump and his attack on the media. You can't escape the sheer gravitational force of the man! Which reminds me of Bambini and look... Here I am talking in circles!

You wrote: "How to Write Good. Love it. Wish I knew the answer. Right now I'm trying to shorten the chapters  on TNBW because I can't seem to shorten the dialogue. These characters talk and talk and... Well, that's how I go about characterization, I guess. As opposed to description or emotion. That's just me. Also, I've decided to write a book-length prologue. Something I've been threatening to do for years. I hafta hope that prose is entertaining enough to hook a reader because you know how shitty I am at plot. I'm literally (literally?) poring over every syllable. I stink, therefore I am."

First, you don't stink.  You write very engaging prose.  Second, Michael O'Donohue, of The National Lampoon, gave me the title, "How to Write Good."  One of his suggestions was:  if you don't know how to end it, have all the characters run over by a truck.  If they drive trucks, have them run over by a really big truck."  When the Lampoon wrote their spoilers, there was one movie where that actually happened, and they had to write, "No Joke."  The woman who wrote the popular Animorphs series had all the characters be in a spaceship that blew up, and Gene Roddenberry toyed with the idea that should be the end of Star Trek:  TOS.  I often wondered how he would have accomplished bringing them back.  Heinlein, in "The Rolling Stones," had the family support their space caravan by writing bad series.  They killed off their main character, then, when they brought it back, they had him just about to explain how he got out of his dilemma, then there was a Red Alert.  I figured, that would be how.  Let you characters talk and talk, just add the body language, some background.  I mean, "Waiting for Godot" was just two characters talking.  I think you should just forget about plot until you get about 120,000 words.  Then, look for some underlying principle and shape accordingly.  Then, have all your characters run over by a truck.  Cheers.

You, think too much, John?  Probably.  You do seem to let over-thinking get in your way.  My advice?  Just do it.  There's a place for thinking.  You are looking down a cliff. Can I survive a fifty-foot jump?  Even then, when there's a hoard of very angry cannibals heading toward you armed to the teeth, you might not want to over-think.  Can I talk my way out of this?  Is it really true that in water, even .44 magnum cartridges slow enough that they might not penetrate my skin? You may just want to jump.

And it doesn't matter if it's Malloy or Bambini who is karmically discharged.  Malloy may be the narrator, Bambini may be the m/c.  You like writing about Bambini, he always appears, even if a minor character.  You've established him as totally evil--the scene with the dog is one that makes me want to kidnap you and do a ritual purification to save your soul.  So maybe have him, because of some incestuous fetish with his mother, do something good.  (He finds out he has a sister, saves her, and dies horribly because of it, or maybe he saves the world from nuclear destruction because he can't have fun if the world comes to an end.  That wouldn't be good, though, as to make it an actual plot, you have to have the seeds of his final, good, deed, sewn in the very beginning.  Maybe the world is about to be eaten by a cosmic dog and the Government is full of dog lovers, so Bambini has to man up and well, you know... You can write the scene and tack it on the end after you're done with all the character portraiture and outre metaphors.)  You have him sitting next to Malloy on a cloud at the end.  Malloy asks him WTF happened?  And he says:  Fuhgeddaboutit.  (Jeez, there's a conventional spelling of that word--my Grammarly just told me to fix it.)