timwburke

…was honest.

I started submitting stories in August 1989. It took nine years for me to get a story in published in any market. What made the difference? What did I learn?

I stopped looking for the idea that impressed me and went with the feeling that challenged me.

Before, I wrote and rewrote ideas that had striking images. Ones that come to mind: a group of high school friends ditch the body of a police detective investigating their gun cult; a Luftwaffe pilot is washed ashore in his fighter; Romantic Love manifests as a kaiju to destroy civilization; and oh so many more.

Each idea presented a premise, but I did not realize that a premise is not a story. It’s the kernel of a story, sure, but the problem, I had was that I was in love with the inspiring image. Many times, the inspiration of a story does not make it to the final draft. A lot of times, the inspiring image stalls the plot.

The high school students had ditched the policeman on the way to shoot up their school. I had intended to make this scene the Rubicon for these friends, and also the climax of the story. But all they did “on screen” was ditch a body and encounter the ghost of their suicidal friend. I think we all see the story potential is in having the friends disagree about what they had done, up to and including the actual mass shooting. That would require character interaction which would have eclipsed the striking image I had loved.

The Luftwaffe story was the final image of the story. I thought out, well, what would have led to this? I imagined a pilot in 1941 about to crash in the Channel. Suddenly, he finds himself flying around in a fairyland. He panics and flies away with the fairies in chase. He crests through a shimmering light and ends up on the beach, decaying in his cockpit. As George Scithers put it, “both he and the story fall apart.” I did not give the pilot any agency, obviously. I knew something needed to happen in that fairyland, but all the ideas I had would have brought the short story to novella length and probably eclipsed the neat final image.

The Love Kaiju story was a mess. I wanted to write something that really stuck it to the idea of Romance, because hey I was bitter. I wanted to bring home that Romance Destroyed Us and have it happen in our world to bring home that Deep People’s Poet Point I wanted to make. So the Kaiju was in an alternate Earth and the protagonist escapes to our world, only to find the Kaiju was Society. Great Monstrous Image of a rose red kaiju with an immense heart shaped skull, smashing all in its path. But the protagonist had nothing to do but survive and activate whatever to get to our universe.

I had lots of ideas.

What I needed to do, and learned to do, was place a “me” in a real situation and let the situation spool out, and for “me” to react to. So my first story was “me” looking for an introverted friend last seen in a dance club. The club was home to a new craze that included Spooky Health Drinks. I described the puzzlement of finding the friend dancing with abandon. The concern that all in the club looked emaciated and diseased. The alarm that all of the dancers seemed to be one pulsing organism. The terror of discovering that yes, they were one pulsing organism.

I allowed my character to live their lives and I went along to document their feelings. The characters cared about each other. They experienced a range of emotions. The “pulsing organism” image that had inspired the story was still there, but I allowed the story to grow past it.

This became my first publication.

My point is that inspiration is just that: inspiration. The inspiration should not be the end-all of whatever story your characters reveal. “Reveal” is the important word, because it is active. They should work to get to the mind-blowing image, but also work to reveal something about their world and about themselves.