What's In A Ham Sandwich?

So I copied this from a word document, into my email, and then into blogger, so I have all those funky A's where apostrophes should be. Deal, I don't feel like cleaning it up.

Writing has always been a huge enthusiasm of mine, if not a talent. The conceptual process of developing ideas is a lot of fun to me, but I have a ton of trouble actually conveying those ideas on paper. I’m pretty sure one of my main flaws in executing plots is that I come up with several events which should happen over the course of the book/play/movie/story, but don’t necessarily know how to flow from one event to another. Put simply, I’m not a linear thinker, as I am in so many other situations.

The basic transformation which must occur in all of my plots is a character transformation, usually some sort of epiphany or drastic action. The trick is revealing this transformation to the audience as it unfolds, instead of springing it upon them at the end, in which context it actually makes little sense. But alas, I keep trying.

I was recently asked by a friend to write a short story for the school paper. I agreed hastily, not really conscious of what responsibility I had just taken on. It’s true, our school paper doesn’t exactly have high expectations, nor does its audience. But many people in the school community know that I write, and I felt a pressure not to disappoint. My other issue was that the story had to be about 2 pages long, and none of the plots I have ever hatched have been nearly simple enough to condense that much. So I had to start with a fresh, simple idea.

What I came up with was this: A man is getting ready to go to his friend‚Äôs wedding as a best man. The best man (the main character) is very well off  in life, and very happy with his life. As he s getting ready to leave for this wedding, someone knocks on his door. This man, whom he initially thinks is a solicitor, is just a man searching for company. The ‚Äúsolicitor‚Äù will not leave the man alone and will not let him leave for the wedding, asking him to have lunch with him so they may get to know one another. The main character resists and resists until finally he gives in and has lunch with him, to find that he is actually a very interesting and enjoyable person.

I know that the plot sounds like it sucks. But it’s not a simple story of a man being annoyed by another man. As much as I hate messages, it is about someone finding it a rewarding experience to put all of their wants and needs aside and enjoy another person’s company.

This entire thing has made me think a bit about my writing style. This two page story is a simple tale of getting from point A to point B, not wanting to have lunch to having lunch. And it was pretty damn hard for me to get between the points, because I have trouble leading up to the eventual payoff. But I’ve come to think- Maybe I shouldn’t compare my writing style to the norm (Fuck it, right?), because I’m not the norm. I don’t have the skill of dropping subtlety, but hopefully my enthusiasm can still carry me. Not subtle, but zany. Because my characters are weird, and they don’t come to realizations about things by mulling things over, they come to realizations by being forced into humorously surreal situations. Desmond and Lucy don’t have a heartfelt talk where they pour out their life stories and insecurities, they literally attack each other because they’re aggressive. And the truth comes out during their umbrella/cane sword fight, which isn’t a zany tip-of-the-hat to the comedy world, it’s a surreal drift into a place where characters don’t even know themselves, and fight like hell to protect their phony backstories.

I think that I write what I know. And I’m an Isolationist, so my characters inevitably find themselves away from the real world. People in the real world reason and rationalize to bring about change within themselves, but my characters are thrown into surreal environments in which nothing is concrete.
So are my characters real? No. Are they allogrical for my isolationist confusion?

Maybe?

-OSK

One year from today, providing I am alive and physically able to do so, I will make a post which has this very same fortune cookie. I swear to you.