Комментарии Whatever the Mess. Джейсон М. Харди

[DeJaVu]

This story was a crapshoot (or, if you don’t like it, then it’s just crap). I had no idea how TPTB would react to it—I hadn’t been so uncertain about whether a story would fly since “Ghosts of Hesperus” (and that wouldn’t have flown except for the fact that Loren believes in second chances). I’m happy that it made it through, but I was pretty sure that some people would like it, and others would find nothing there to interest them. The reactions so far seem to show that that’s the case.

The genesis of this story ties into one of the difficulties of writing as a job instead of just doing it for fun. This story started with an e-mail from Jason Schmetzer saying he needed stories of around 3,000 words. I read the e-mail, thought, “Hmm, that’s a shame. Wish I had an idea,” and went about my day.

But if I want to make a living doing this, I can’t always wait for inspiration to strike. Sometimes I have to go looking for it. So I kept my mind open to possibilities of a short story, and what do you know, when I was walking to the train one day it hit me. How it hit me I can’t say, as that’s the subject of the contest that I’ll get to in a moment.

For me, the core of any idea—or at least, any good idea—is the way the story is supposed to feel. When I know what it’s supposed to evoke—and this needs to be specific, not just “I want the reader to feel sad”—then I know I’ll be able to build up a story around that idea. In this case, once I had the idea, a structure suggested itself, mostly because it was a structure I had used before. My very first published short story was called “Triangle Monologues,” and it shared with this story the structure of three people sharing their feelings about relationships they were in. That one was not science fiction and was very plot light—what I wanted to do was capture the intensity of what the people were feeling and make it raw. “Triangle Monologues” was supposed to feel like rubbing a brillo pad on a skinned knee. But, um, more fun.

The rawness of that previous story is what made me want to re-use the structure for this one. The emotions are not quite as intense in “Whatever the Mess You Are” because the characters are a little older and are caught up in other things—they can’t afford to forget what’s happening in the world around them (in “Triangle Monologues,” there pretty much was no world around the characters, just them and their relationships). But the alternating first person voices gave me a chance to let the characters speak for themselves, and get their emotions and rationalizations and all to the forefront. It makes for a talky, not-action-packed story, but I hoped the energy of their words would carry readers past that.

The other fun thing about the structure is it lets me tell all sides of the romantic triangle story. Most of the times we see such a triangle in movies or books, it’s really just a solid line between two people with a third dot hanging around just to complicate the plot. There usually are two people who clearly should be together, and a third who is a jerk or an idiot or both who we’re all waiting to get out of the way. By looking at the situation from all sides, I wanted to avoid that and shade each character more—each character gets to be a good guy, each character gets to be a jerk, depending on the perspective. If I did this right (and you all are the judges of if I did), then you can’t point to any one of the three characters and say “Oh yeah—that’s the bad guy.” Hopefully readers can empathize and sympathize with all three of them.

Now, for the contest. I’ve mentioned that the idea just hit me, but it didn’t come from nothing. There was a specific source for the idea (besides my previous story), and I left a nice hint about it. So the winner of the contest will be the first person who can tell me what it was that inspired the idea for the story. The prize is that the winner gets to name a character in my in-progress Shadowrun novel. I will get to make the final judgment on the name—for example, if its overly obscene or jokey, it’s out—but I’ll be fairly open. So if you want a SR novel character named after you, or your nickname, or some friend, hop to it! Find the source of the story, post it here, and be a winner!

Thanks as always for reading and for commenting, whether you liked the story or not.

Jason H.