I’ve just posted the final installment of my latest serialized story to this blog.  And so now, for either those who’ve held off reading it yet and maybe need some enticement, or for those who just like to hear about what went into a story, I’d like to tell you a bit more about it.  We’re going to do this in a quasi-interrogation format, just for fun, and also to keep things from wandering too far afield.

Author Interrogations: SSCS-03 – Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About

Story Query no.1: When did it all start?

All stories are built up from so many things, and their beginnings can be hard to pin down.  Unlike anything else I’ve ever written, though, (so far at least) this story started with images from a dream.  I dreamed of lions prowling through a junkyard stacked high with shipping containers.  Not just prowling, but climbing the steel like cliff-ledges, staking out territory and enacting rivalries.  And I dreamed of a mysterious greenhouse seen from the outside, with some sort of mysterious goings-on within it.  Since this is one of my SSCS’s (Serial Stream-of-Consciousness Stories), I really just started with these two points as anchors within the setting of the story.  But some of the dreaming/waking quality also ended up carrying through, especially in the sometimes-harsh slanting of the light, in the uneasy, sort-of-lost bewilderment of the main character, Jhaani, at the start of the story, and in the use of first-person point-of-view.

Story Query no.2: How did it go?

This was my third SSCS, and in some ways I think it’s when I started to better sort out how to make this writing method work, where I don’t totally know what’s going on, but I push through by following the threads of what I think seems most interesting.

Of course, starting out (as I did here) with a character who also doesn’t really know what’s going on is maybe a little bit on-the-nose for this process, and means that said character also isn’t able to provide me any clues about what’s what.  And, even though mysteries are usually good, a good story also needs to have some clear ground rules or you risk making things too random and therefore actually really boring.  So, even though I try to keep edits on these stories really light, I did end up going through after the whole thing was drafted and subtly beefing up certain specific elements so they could give the reader some sign-posts of what the world was like and where things might be headed.  I was lucky I had a friend willing to read through the first draft and help point out which elements were really overly vague.

The other thing, which seems like it’s probably going to be common to a lot of my SSCS’s, is that when you don’t know either the arc or the ending of the story when you start, it’s very easy to generate a lot of different elements and different possibilities.  For SSCS’s, I also don’t usually allow myself to substantially cut from what’s already been drafted, so somewhere a little past the half-way point, I find myself with so many different threads and now I have to find a way to make them all tie together.  This story very much had that issue going on, but I’m pretty pleased about how I was able to tie it all together in the end, with an ending that feels intentional and whole.  I think some parts of writing are a little bit black-magic, even to the person doing it.

Story Query no.3: Where will it take you?

One of the things that I like best about this story is the setting.  The junkyards, of course, did come from a dream, but everything else is a city made up out of a mash-up of lots of Asian-inspired-ish things, without trying to be clearly any one culture in particular.  When I was in college, I took a trip to Tokyo, and so some of the alleyways are based off of what I remember there, and some of the food.  But I’ve also thrown in memories of New York and Denver and the lights at night, just for cityishness.  There’s some imagery inspired by the tree-covered temples in Cambodia.  There are lots of buses, but no mention of trains or subways (the opposite of my experience in Tokyo).  And the only hint about all those shipping containers is that the city’s built on a wide river that, at least in the past, has flooded the nearby streets enough to cake them with mud—and that isn’t at all safe due to unspecified (unthinkable) monsters.  I wanted it to feel like a city that is very big, even as the main character interacts with mostly only a small and sort-of run-down portion of it.  I wanted it to be a city that feels like it ought to make sense.

Story Query no.4: Who is revealed?

The characters in this story are all afraid of something and also all acting as though everything is absolutely normal.  Some of their fears are very normal, the same sorts of fears anybody has who works and works but still only just manages to scrape by—where just a little stretch of bad luck could be really devastating.  But those underlying, mostly buried fears are also amplified in this story—in this city—by the sense that there’s an extra chaos element in play with everyone’s lives.  Jhaani starts the story sitting on a bus, heading to a new work assignment, and we’re never really given a clear reason why she was reassigned—she certainly doesn’t know, and so in that her fears can’t be entirely suppressed.  She feels as though she’s a nobody, but also as though she better figure things out fast and can’t mess up even a little bit, because her mistakes will be noticed.  But she’s also not alone in this predicament; hers is just the latest occurrence.  The flip side of this fear, though, is that it leaves her open to considering crazy possibilities, to facing the darkness with her eyes open.  If you can’t control your life, you might as well see where it’s taking you.

Story Query no.5: Why is this story alive?

I’m a really tactile person, and in pretty much every story that I write, there’s some sort of physical anchor (at least one) that helps me gain access to the world my characters are inhabiting.  In this story, it was the bus rides, which are a thing I know intimately from when I first moved to Colorado for grad-school.  I took the bus in to class or work every morning, and know exactly that feeling of being numbly grateful that something else is taking care of transport while I’m still only half-awake (or less)—but still don’t dare quite let down my guard.  Without a car, the bus was how I gained access to this new place I was living in.  It brought me to new possibilities, but with a big heaping order of trepidation along side.  So, I can feel Jhaani sitting on those busses, trusting and not at all trusting at the same time, moving herself and being carried along, wondering what will happen next.

But even though mundane anchors can be key to making a story feel real, something else equally important seems to be those random, almost throw-away details that tack themselves on, almost by surprise while you’re writing.  When the characters and the story surprise you, you know it’s become at least half-way real.  For me, that surprise was Jhaani’s roommate, Nina, who we get to meet partway through.  She’s not directly connected to the story that’s playing out at all.  Even her connection to Jhaani is a little tenuous—they work opposing shifts and hardly ever encounter each other, except to help keep the fridge stocked with easy-to-grab lunches.  But she showed up in the story feeling real, a connection to real people and a real life outside the mystery Jhaani has found herself thrust into.  And even though Nina didn’t participate in the story other than just being there in the background, I don’t think the end result would have been whole without her.  (And that’s probably some subliminal commentary to myself about how I really need to get out and interact with other people more…)

Story Query no.6 and last: So, what’s it about?

Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About is about a woman living in a city that doesn’t really make sense, who finds herself being asked to do impossible things.  But she’s not a hero sort of character; all eyes aren’t on her.  Because nearly everyone in this city is in a strange situation that doesn’t quite make sense—for Jhaani, this is just being pushed to the extreme, forcing her to run up against the scary edges of things, forcing her to question.  Forcing her to dig beneath the surface, even if the only surface she has to start with is herself.

Or, the actual blurb for this 25,000-word novella goes like this:

A woman living in a mysterious city is suddenly assigned to work at a new factory.  At the factory, she finds the work somehow depends on dreaming, and also that she’s maybe being haunted by lions.  Or maybe it’s something more than lions.  Maybe it’s the mystery of the city itself.

This story is published in installments on this blog, and you can start reading it here.