Tag: storytelling

An Issue Of Verisimilitude

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If I ever needed a clear sign that, in general, no one takes me seriously, it’s my overall failure to get anyone from my past life with the press industry to answer my call for help about something. (I finally got one person, but that’s really not very many given how many people I reached out to.)

The issue is, I really want to make the situation I’ve come up with for my heroine — that she owns both a strip club (where she occasionally strips to relax) and an alternative weekly — as real as possible. Like, how would that REALLY work out, especially in mid-1990s Richmond, VA?

I’m WELL AWARE that because of human nature and the needs of marketing, that there is a real risk that this novel would be reduced down to two tropes being fused together — “hooker (or sex worker) with a heart of gold” and “sexy slutty assassin” solves a murder mystery.

I think about this even more given how many men my heroine beds in the first act for the purposes of the plot. All the sexxy time is not gratuitous and definitely serves the overall plot. And, in general, I don’t even really show the spicy stuff that much. I do show it some, but it’s hopefully not so much that people get turned off.

And, what’s more, I’ve cut back the sex in the second act. I don’t know, but I think that best practices for storytelling is you delay sexxy time as much as possible. But, lulz, I never do anything the right way.

But the story is getting much, much better in general. I’m really pleased. But I have to prepare for people to attack me for how much sexxy time there is in the novel. While I’m very sex-positive and don’t see my heroine’s sexual activity as “slutty” I’m afraid there will be some people who think I’m replicating Debby Does Dallas with how my heroine seems to have so much sex on the fly.

Ugh. Anyway. Wish me luck.

Somebody Make This Movie

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a great idea for a movie, but, alas, I’m too old and too fixated on my first novel to get around to try to write its screenplay. The story goes like this — it’s 10,000 years ago and a bunch of humans are struggling to survive.

A very fey guy who isn’t strong enough to go on the hunt — but has a family to feed — comes up to the leader of the tribe, begging for food. The leader of the tribe scoffs at him and says why do you deserve any food, you didn’t do anything to help.

So this scrawny little guy proposes that in exchange for a good story, he and his family get some food. So, our Hero proceeds to tell a tale about a young woman who pretends to be a man so she can go on the hunt. The movie shows the tale as imagined by the storyteller on the screen, interspersed with him telling the story.

At the midpoint of the movie, our Storytelling Hero makes some sort of goof in the story because he’s never been on the hunt. He has to invoke the gods to keep the story going. Maybe have him make up a One True God on the fly or something.

The story continues. At the end of the third act, something happens to interrupt the story telling and it seems as though All Is Lost for our Hero and his attempt to get food for his family.

The third act begins when him going back to his starving family. He has to tell them there will be no food for the time being. He gets into a fight with his wife who says she should have listened to her mother and never had sex with him.

Then a surprise happens — the leader of the tribe again wants to hear the story. He’s so excited, he wants to know what happens next. So, again, our Hero storyteller continues to tell the story of the young woman who pretends to be a man to go on the hunt.

At the climax of the story, she is somehow saved in a due ex machina kind of situation, and the tribal leaders roar their approval because this is the first time anyone has every done such a trite ending. The joke is, everyone thinks this otherwise hackney ending is so original because it’s the first time anyone has thought it up.

The rest of the movie deals with the surreal situation that our Hero is involved in. He gives his wife and child some food, and then goes into the darkness of the cave to also give his male lover some food, too.

My Second Creative Track Will Be Photography


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It has occurred to me that it sure would be nice to know how to use a prosumer Nikon camera. So, as such, that’s my goal. I’m going to save up for a while I then buy a really nice Nikon camera — probably something like a Nikon 750 — and then throw myself into learning how to use it properly.

I do this for a number of reasons.

One, I honestly don’t have anything to take pictures of at the moment, so there’s no rush to buy just A Camera. So, I can take my time and save up the money necessary to buy A Great Camera.

Also, photography is something I’m natively good at. The main issue is buying and learning the equipment. With writing, I love doing it, yes, (Sorry Fran Lebowitz) but I’m more of a storyteller than writer. I love how a great photo is self-evidently great.

And, in a sense, it’s a lot easier to have photography as a second creative track because it’s a different skill and it’s easier to use a different part of my mind than it is it to, say, using writing in two different ways. (Though, I still have an acute interest in in screenwriting.)

But all of this is long term. Something could easily happen to cause it to all fall a part. If you don’t like me doing this with my life, you can fuck off — you have no vision and why are you reading my blog in the first place?

A Half-Assed Review Of The Movie ‘Nobody’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me begin by saying I almost always walk out of movies these days, since I started working on a novel. It really takes something special for me to stay. So, when I say I walked out of “Nobody” the moment I figured what the plot was, that should not be taken to mean I didn’t like it or that you shouldn’t go see it yourself.

I did like it. And you should go see it yourself.

And, really, up until the moment I figured out what the plot was going to be, which, in this case, what just past the inciting incident, I thought I was going to finish the movie. But the moment I realized 1) the inciting incident was extremely contrived and 2) the movie was so violent as to be pornographic and bounced.

But the general conceit of the movie was great as was the implementation. I just couldn’t stand the violence, which was gratuitous and boring. Yet, I could see someone a little bit younger than me who didn’t mind such over-the-top violence enjoying the movie a great deal.

Though, I will note, there must have been some way to not have the inciting incident be sooooo contrived. If the protagonist had such an extensive secret life, why not come up with something a bit more organic that didn’t involve random people being at just the right place and time to cause the story to move forward.

Yet, I am extremely picky about storytelling because I’m working on a novel. So, lulz, two thumbs up. Go see “Nobody.”

Male Author Angst


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m beginning to wonder if, by definition, a man writing a story involving women is “problematic.” I say this as someone you is center-Left and extremely empathetic to many Leftist causes.

It’s just when I see that there are actual people who like crap like “Booksmart” it makes me wonder if I just have to suck it up and do whatever the fuck I want with my novel, damn the consequences. I hated Booksmart with a white hot rage for a number of reasons. One was out Olivia Wilde went way, way, way out of her way to make sure her heroine was a plain Jane. I felt this selection was an insult to the audience.

We go see movies — or novel — for escape. We want to see hot people do hot things that make us laugh, or cry, or have personal catharsis. When someone who is hot like Olivia Wilde specifically picks a plain person in an effort to prove a point about Hollywood and beauty it really fucking grates on my nerves

Hollywood is an industry. “Doubledees, doubledees” as the old SNL skit goes. Or, to put another way, sex sells. I really like Olivia Wilde. She’s smart, attractive and talented woman. But give me a break, lady, you could not possibly have been so naïve as to think the moment you started your career in Hollywood it wouldn’t be more about T&A at some points than your acting ability.

The reason for the above rant is the novel I’m working on. I just want to entertain people. I just want to give them a thought-provoking, allegorical thriller that wallows in Trump Era tropes. But I often find myself mulling some pretty dumb things. Like, why can’t I have a hot heroine? Why can’t she be sex positive? How do I have a really interesting woman without haters at VOX simply telling me I’ve created a thinking man’s “sexy slutty assassin?”

Ugh. Fuck Vox. They’re why we can’t have nice things.

It’s very frustrating. I just can’t win because I’m a member of the patriarchy. Or, put another way, I’m self-aware enough and look at enough Twitter to know that even if I do what I want to do — create strong, interesting female characters — that because I’m a man who hasn’t — uh — lived my life according to the media narrative that I’m inevitably going to be “canceled” for some bullshit reason.

And, yet, all that’s just me venting. I’m really sensitive at times, especially when it comes to my art. I know I’ve come up with a great, great pop-lit novel. If that means I have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous woke fortune, so be it.

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Why Phoebe Waller-Bridge Is Such A Creative Inspiration

Yasss queen.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

All my heroes are dead. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, John Lennon, Steve Jobs and Prince. All. Dead.

But one person who is alive who I get a lot of creative courage from is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. That woman has creative ovaries of steel and so as this novel’s development begins to quicken in pace (at least for the time being) I ask myself, “What would Phoebe Waller-Bridge do? Would she go there? Yeah, of course she’d go there.”

So, whenever I come up with an issue I, myself, have about the scenario I’ve come up with, I now address it head on. I wallow in it. I say to the audience, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But we’re going to talk about it so much that any worries you had about that possibility are eliminated.”

It’s wild how two things have really, really helped speed things up: establishment of a canon and pretty much totally flipping the script on some huge influences on this novel. A lot of problems have been fixed rather abruptly, so — for the time being –development is rushing full steam towards the end of the first act. I’m just letting my mind go down the rabbit hole of the most extreme possibilities to make a point about how fucked up the Trump Era is.

This helps the plot because it adds both drama and obstacles to the Hero and Heroine’s goals heading into towards the second act. A lot of avenues I had not really thought about have opened up and they’re organic to the concept and universe, so it’s really just a matter of free styling as I think up what would happen as part of the most obvious sequence of events.

The plot, characters and universe are getting far, far better because of this so, at a minimum, I feel cautiously optimistic that I won’t — at the very least– embarrassment myself.

Let’s rock!

V-Log: #Impeachment, #Writing A #Novel & Thoughts On Susan Orlean

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This one is a fun one. Enjoy.

V-Log: The State of My Novel & A Rant About The Perils Of Modern Storytelling

Some thoughts.