Fill It Full Of Farts

I’m sorry…I can’t help it…farts make me laugh! Loud ones, squeaky ones, wet ones, silent ones, and especially the military-grade ones. Whether they are created naturally by someone who is gastronomically challenged, or artificially by whoopee cushions, it makes no difference to me. I understand there are LOTS of people who don’t go in for this type of crude humor (my wife for example), but I am not one of them. I seriously cannot recall a time when I heard one and it didn’t…at the very minimum…bring a smile to my face. I’m positive I can’t be alone in this. Most of us have more than a few things …maybe not farts… but something that elicits that kind of emotional reflex within us.

As writers, one of the things we strive for is originality. Monday I talked about telling stories in a way that’s never been tried before. How else can we hope to set ourselves apart and draw attention to our work…right? Well, today I’m here to flip the coin. There is another way to commercial success in publication and on the surface it might appear to be 180 degrees in the other direction. Want to publish the next best seller…fill it full of farts!

What I’m trying to say with my lopsided metaphor is there are elements of the human condition that tend to trigger emotional reflexes (just like farts make me laugh), and most good books make liberal use of them. Who doesn’t enjoy rooting for the underdog, or the hero up against insurmountable odds? What about wanting to see the unlikely couple find true love? These (and many more) are universal themes, scenarios, and situations that are used over and over and over and over again…successfully…because they strike a chord in us. Does striving for originality mean we have to abandon these time-honored principles? Not necessarily.

The challenge for us is to find a way to incorporate those reflex-inducing fundamentals into our stories in such a way as they don’t come off feeling stale or tired, thus sabotaging our quest for some measure of originality. This is not an easy task…but that is why we do what we do.

Give me a futuristic sci-fi novel with an android that farts, and I’m sold! :) 

Flop

One of my extracurricular activities when I was in high school was Track. To be honest, I didn’t actually arrive there willingly. Our schools Football coach felt it should be a requirement that all of his players run Track in the spring if you wanted to play for him in the fall. I don’t know if there was some kind of collusion going on between him and the track coach, or he just wanted his players to stay active during the offseason, or he got his giggles by seeing three hundred pound linebackers wearing those flimsy track shorts, but whatever the reason -- there I was. Fleetness of foot wasn’t part of my DNA makeup back then (or has it ever been), so I tended to gravitate towards the longer distances…the two mile becoming my specialty. But there was another event that I was inexplicably drawn to, one that made absolutely no sense and the idea of me doing it was like a Chihuahua trying to make out with a Great Dane. The activity…High Jump.

My first year in track, my junior year, I was only 5’6” tall (I’ve only grown 3 inches since). Because of my height I knew I wasn’t going to win any medals, but we were required to participate in at least one running event and one field event, and the high jump really intrigued me. And what interested me the most was watching the other kids experiment with this new style of jumping called the Fosbury Flop.

Dick Fosbury had brought fame to his new style of high-jumping just five years before then at the 1968 Summer Olympics and now jumpers all over the world were trying to emulate his technique…including myself.

What does any of this have to do with writing? Bear with me.

What’s interesting to note was that Dick Fosbury first started experimenting with a new high jumping technique at age 16, while attending high school in Medford, Oregon, but it wasn’t until his senior year in high school that he had perfected it enough to yield measurable improvements. His early efforts were nowhere near as coordinated as a well-performed straddle method jump, and one historian referred to Fosbury's early attempts as an 'airborne seizure', but during the latter part of his sophomore year and the beginning of his junior year, it began to produce results, and he gradually was able to clear higher jumps. Fosbury continued to refine his technique into college and ultimately had its coming out in the Olympics. The technique gained the name the "Fosbury Flop" after a reporter for a Medford newspaper wrote that he looked like a, "fish flopping in a boat", but it could also be argued that Fosbury’s early efforts were just that…a flop. But determination and perseverance proved otherwise.

You see my point now, don’t you? How many times have we been told that -- there aren’t any new stories, just new ways to tell them? Dick Fosbury found a new way to jump, but it didn’t happen overnight and required A LOT of experimentation before he got there. We are all searching for new ways to tell stories…with a fresh voice…but we have to be both patient and persistent.

My best jump in high school reached 5’6”, earning me 3rd place in one meet and much needed points for my team. I consider that one of the greatest physical achievements of my life. I flopped…and that was a good thing. As far as my writing goes, I am an evolving work in progress striving to perfect my technique and yield measurable results. I hope one day soon to flop again…and that will be a good thing as well. :)

In case you hadn't heard the news yet, this week we added  Diane Dalton, Managing Editor of Rhemalda Publishing as one our final round judges for WRiTE CLUB.  There are only two weeks left to send in submissions, so please help spread the word.

Presenting...Annalisa Crawford

Today I'm turning over my blog to a fellow blogging buddy and published author...Ms. Annalisa Crawford.  While she's entertaining you, I'll be off stirring up more interest for WRiTE CLUB.  Enjoy!!

Hey DL, it's great to be here today, thanks for inviting me over!

Shadows of Autumn is the story of a missing child. When a body is discovered, her mother has to wait before she knows if it's her daughter or not.

This is one of my favourite stories and I'm proud of it for two reasons:

1. I was only twenty when I wrote it, a long way from having children of my own, and certainly even further from having to deal with teenagers. But the voice of the mother was so clear to me. I could feel her anguish and pain; I could understand her point of view when actually I was much closer to her daughter's age.
2. I received some of the best comments for this story:
• QWF:  Your handling of prose is deft and light: simple words but extremely effective.
• Story Cellar:  Some telling description in what you did not say, superb sense of mood and atmosphere.
• Real Writers: Well focused, unusual because I want to know the story behind the husband. There is a lot going on beneath this seemingly simple story.

Note the progression of the title!

I hope you'll forgive me for sharing those comments, but they were the words that made me realise that maybe I could do this thing.

This was another story that needed a slight rewrite for the collection - I had to include Facebook. Nikki is a teenage girl, and has teenage friends - as soon as I read it, the omission was glaring. It's not important to the story, but it would definitely have jarred the reader a little bit, or greatly dated the story... I really need to write some new ones!

About Annalisa
I live in Cornwall, with a good supply of beaches and moorland right on my doorstep. I live with my husband, two boys, a dog and a cat. Despite my location. I neither surf nor sail, and have never had any inclination to try. I much prefer walking along the beach and listening to the waves crashing over rocks. For this reason, I really love the beach in the winter!

Buy That Sadie Thing here (this link should take you direct to your local Amazon)
Follow Annalisa here, or Like her here
Read her blog here