Shouts From Down Under

STOP! HALT! 停! Стій! Mein Hovercraft ist voller Aale!

You know where the plot usually takes us, and you know when we've lost direction; when the way forward isn't comfortable, isn't believable, and isn't right. We all know when we've trodden in it, right there on the footpath / side-walk.

You know what the road should look like, and the conditions readers expect on their journey through a journal.

We know when there are pot holes in a plot. We know when the author is a pot-head. (mmm? huh? whasat? yeah bruvs. yeah mate. yeah but nah but yeah.)

Y'see, we know.

The debutante should look something like this, although not all would be as beautiful as my (our) daughter, of course.



A serious story should be serious. Aye, even after a wee drap of good stoof, after a few pints.

We all know what a halo is, what it's for, what it does, why it's used, why it's written about, and why characters have one. Let there be no confusion.

Google search "halo"

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=angels+ring+above+head&oq=angels+ring+above+he...

Yes, admittedly, there are stories specialising in the strange, silly and of sane deprived certainty. We know they are the 4wd, four wheel drive, or AWD, all wheel drive, rough cobblestone paths of literature. We accept the going will be rough. We already know, and give over our readers' rights; permitting the absurd to happen is what we do with our free time for that book.

We know it'll be crazy. The plot will be a suspension testing, cranium cracking good read where we expect the unexpected.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/fiction-fact-and-all-that-lies-between...

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/italian-singer-giuseppe-mango-utters-e...

Yes. I quote.

"Excuse me."

There is the plot design that should be smooth, expected, much traveled, familiar, accepted, and based firmly in the realms of reality.

Stuff should be stuff. Things should be things. Whatsies should be whatsies. Fact has to be fact. Access. Comfort. No surprises other than the plan. Based on fact and accurate research. It's reliable and secure.

Time and place people. Time and place.
Time for sensible. Time for crazy. Time for proper. Time for stupid.

This morning I left our house in my van, in the direction of the health clinic to do a chore, rounded the usual corner to find a park, when lo and behold! Road Closed. No access. There were brightly coloured plastic bollards blocking buses before blokes banged backs of bulldozers and bulk water tankers. If you think that's too many B words, I'm sure there were a few more B words said at this outrageous street closure, however much needed the *DADJOKE ALERT!* upgrade. (sorry for the pun- upgrade...grade?..oh never mind)

yES. hERE I AM BELTING AROUND THE CORNER, AND AS IF FROM THE BLUE, LIKE A CAPS KEY LEFT ON WHILE YOU TYPE AWAY, UNAWARE THAT YOU'VE GOT TO BACKSPACE AND RETYPE IT ALL BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T IT'LL ALL BE INTERPRETED AS SHOUTING. (i ALWAYS THINK SHOUTING SHOULD BE SPELT SHOUTING! NOT SHOUTING. Ok, Caps thingy fixed now)

Yes, as I was saying, belting around the corner in the Mighty Mazda, The Beast's Sister vehicle (another story for another day); when I saw the main access street blocked, and had to cross over to a car park on the side of the cul-de-sac. IF that makes any sort of sense.

This instantly seized upon my empty mind, the blankness sliced open like a yoghurt pack, the contents blurting out and flooding my head with unsebaceous blogaceous Bologna. Sort of sounds a bit gross, but you get the driftation. You get the IDEA. It's right soundingidity, isn't it?

They were upgrading the street. Smoothing it off with a grader, using other dinky machinery like giant Caterpillar or Mattel toys in a citizen sized sandpit.
It's unheard of witnessing zero cars parked in that street in front of the Medical Centre. None either side, just rows of hi-viz bunting preventing Occupational Health and Safety breaches by Bob and Beryl Public.

(Reminds me, I must do another blog about shearing sheds and farming that I said would be continued back whenever- Randomness but that's ok)





They were filling in the pot holes. These guys walking around waving at people, pointing, nodding, yelling something workman-like to the machine operators, and generally making lots of road engineering noise. INDUSTRIAL. Vibrations, heavy blunt impacts of something, clomping diesel engines ramping up their torque to meet the load of pushing dirt and scraping bitumen overburden away, and as I said- no cars or people on the street at all.

They were doing their job. Inconvenience of the whinging and unreasonable public (me) aside, they were, are, and shall, carryingest out their tasks like you'd expect of taxpayer funded, rate payer audited, council approved and federally budgeted roadworks.

All good, so where do we plod from here, you may ask? Well, even if you didn't ask, I'll say it.

Plot. Do yo'sef a favour and read back over what you've created and ask yourself the nitty gritty hard questions no one likes to hear.

Does it sound like something a douchebag would write?
Does it make easy, comfortable, cruisey, normal, wholesome sense?
Does it sound like something you'd read in a best seller?
Do your characters say stuff that sounds natural, and if it's meant to be humorous, is it?
Is what you've written something that you'd deliberately spill your coffee to grab and read?
Would you steal your book to read it?
Is your novel something you'd expect to see on the 50c sale trolley at the library, a month after it's published?
Can you relax when you re read your stuff?
Does your writing feel like a BMX bike track without the excitement?

Does your plot come to a dead end in the road, where the reader peers around trying to find where the road is to continue, but there is a fog of blah in the way, and when they've waded through that guff, all your run on sentences and self delusional fluff, they finally realise there isn't a way forward.

Oh sure. There's a track, a street, a lane way of sorts, but its a bit like some dog muck on someone's shoe that has just been invited into your home. Your carpet was clean. Now they are scruffing their shoe around, back and forth, with the comment: "Ewww, dang dawgs, ya can't step anywhere these days, ha ha haaaaaawww".

The way ahead is not clear. The storyline isn't welcoming, in fact, its beginning to creep out the reader, starting to fade, orange peeling surface, laugh lines widening into crows feet cracks in the paintwork of your creation.

The worst thing is about to happen. They are seeing the skeleton behind your work, seeing the dirty tradesman's tools and wheelbarrow full of mortar, a couple of busted crappy bricks thrown on the floor and a foam esky, the lid ajar showing the remains of a tradie's lunch, apple core, half empty coke bottle of H2O , crisp packet and Mars bar wrapper fluttering nearby on the filthy floor. This was meant to be a polished novel, not a work in progress.

They've seen through the façade into the reality. Your story isn't real. The world is collapsing, the masks of your oh so real characters are slipping, folding in as they deflate, skin crinkling and tattoos wrinkling smaller so that instead of a tough authority of credibility, they are now laughable smirking mockeries of your writing ability.

The reader has come to the turn-back moment in their reading experience. That bomb of *straightface*

DISAPPOINTMENT

Plotholes are one thing. But dog waste is something entirely different. Shape. Texture. Colour. Smell. Purpose even. (not sure what purpose potholes have, or plotholes, but dog waste's purpose is to avoid a sick dog, and for something to encourage people to buy new shoes)

Skinny or lethargic plot links and follow-ups can make reading a little edgy, but barring the way with something impossible, clashing, round peg in square hole loose, jangling, disturbing the Feng shui (http://markystar.wordpress.com/tag/shogun/), mucking up your wa, Shogun style, Wronggggggg is instantly publishable and worth a million dollars. Wronggggggggg.

Dis-Wa. The statement of unattainment. The bit that undoes all your does. The itching powder of doubt that you left lying around in a packet with a corner ripped open (seed packet style) and now they've spilt it down the back of their neck. Ignoring it until it begins an itch they cannot ignore.

You are a wally. Won't be reading that author again

(http://www.ineedmotivation.com/blog/2009/12/bring-a-little-wa-to-your-household/...)

And Mein Hovercraft ist voller Aale ?

This wa wa disturbance can be soothed by clicking this link for a path of monumentally greater enlightened moments of understanding.

(http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm)


Sparky