January 23, 2007: To the Scribblers of The Haunted Soda

We are presently experiencing a crisis of coherence . . . that is—the story is mired in delirium.

We snack on characters (a really sweet touch—I thought) and they return, undigested. Settings are swapped without rhyme or reason. And meaningful dialogue is practically nonexistant.

We cannot continue using hallucinations as a plot device. Let us operate on the principle that “less is more!”

Let us try to advance our tale . . . a sliver of plot . . . with each post. (What happened to the Ocracoke, sodality of effervescent Tsiknus! I thought that was a rather promising thought we might have pursued.)

Anyway, let us give Oswald von Farfenfarfer the luxury of a reasonable story line.

Fantastic elements (as well as your humorous touches, clever word plays/puns and in some cases . . . genuinely beautiful phrases) in the plot are most welcome, as long as they don’t confuse the next poster and they move the action.

Onward . . .

Thank you very much,
Local Peanut

P.S. If you have any ideas on how we might rescue our story, let us discuss . . .

I agree, and I suppose one of the first things we must do is determine whether Smithers is alive or dead.

For myself, in my threads Smithers lives and is a passenger along with Mary in a car that Oswald is driving to Walla Walla, torn between completing his original plan to murder Mary, ending the awful affair once and for all or trying instead to patch things up between them.

If the consenus is, however, that Smithers is dead and consumed I am happy to abide by it.

I think Smithers is alive if not well and that the whole lunch thing was one of the hallucinations. Mary needs more definition. Also there seems to be a blues theme involving the saxaphone that could be developed.

I think Smithers is a demon of sorts (not in the really evil sense), who can be a frog with false teeth, a human, and a reconstituted human at any given time. He is Oswald's constant companion and thorn in the side. It provides a nice contrast to the humanity of the others. In all other things, I agree with quartzite (#2).

Sorry, bookishbunny, but a careful reading of our text supports the positions of hailelib and quartzite.

To reprise, in the first 20 posts of Chapter One, we had a hung-over hero, “Little Mary” and “her” saxophone. In #22, quartzite has our hero pass out. In #25 he’s seeking a reality check, and it appears Mary has knocked him out with either the gin bottle or a jar of mayonnaise.

In #32, “Mr. Smithers” appears, nipping. (I suspect TheBlindHog thought he was introducing a cat?)
Calling Smithers a “toad” in #41 may not be taken literally, but meaning a toadlike man, since he and the hero are accustomed to sharing alcoholic drinks.

Then our hero finds Mary’s sax, bloody, and a gun in her bag and confesses his plan to kill Mary in order to end their affair. (#77-81) This can be a major plot for us to develop or negate.

At #88, Walla Walla is foreshadowed since Mary’s father and Sonny Rollins left the seminary there after blackmailing the mayor. A basis for plot when the trio gets to Walla Walla?

In #92-98, our hung-over hero gets sick from imagining Velveeta and gin, by #113 needs re-hydration, and states in #125 “Then my nightmares started”. So, Ocracoke, Tsiknes, a “he” or “she” confusion at the bar, flying soda can, explosion of stars in soup bowl, an orangutan , the Senator, his briefs and other underwear can all be dismissed as part of the nightmare scenario. That leaves open the question of whether (#194) Mary is really married to the Senator. This could be our plot - Oswald continuing his affair with, and absconding with, the Senator’s wife.

By #209, we see Oswald has been drug-affected, having had a “bad acid trip” on the john. But by #211, he is out on his way to the office. Smithers, at this point, is revealed to be his boss. (Or at least someone with authority over him.)

From this point on through the rest of Chapter One and up to #31 of Chapter Two, we have hallucination: He now considers Mary’s saxophone his own (#231-2), Mary's attempt to kill Smithers, the chase into the subway, Mary dancing with Smithers in the subway, Smithers appearing to be a frog, Smithers’ death and consummation etc. etc. can all be dismissed as hallucination. Just nice ordinary boss-hatred, if you prefer.

Mary appears with the antipsychotic medicine in #31, and by #48 he is in and out of restraints, on a gurney ride down the hall courtesy of a candy-striper coincidentally ( or a character to reappear? also named Smithers. In #90-91 Oswald is seen escaping the asylum “into the real world, finally“. However, he has vomited, and may have lost some of the effects of the risperidone for from #126 to 204 we have some recurrence of hallucination, but by #204 and Chicago sanity returns.

I would say that from here on, we can avoid further hallucination and head them to Walla Walla with various adventures on the way. They are, after all, in a stolen cop car, Oswald has at one time professed an intention to kill Mary, Mary has tried to kill Smithers, and there may be a love triangle arising with Smithers and Mary doing all that dancing together. Moreover, Oswald is a medicated, drug-using psychotic given to indulgence in alcohol. Seems like a pretty fruitful plot outline to me. :-)

I don't think I disagreed with #2 or #3. I said he was alive. I agreed wholeheartedly. It was Smithers own declaration when he 'assumed human form' that made Smithers seem of the supernatural type.

And what happened to the Senator, Mary's husband?

If you accept the extent of the hallucination, then anything within the hallucination is null and void. Ergo, Smithers is not a changeling.

The Senator may have been within the hallucination, or outside it. See my comment about Ch I, #194. It appears to me that he exists in reality, and the briefs, bra, etc. are hallucination, and I propose that we accept that Mary is really married to him, but I'm perfectly open to considering the marriage a fantasy, and the Senator a part of the hallucination. Anyone's call.

Briefs are not necessarily underwear. They can also be legal arguments/documents submitted to a court of law.

In that sense, they might make some contribution to a coherent plot.

That randomly reminds me of the old tale about the Vatican minion whose official duty was drawing up the Pope's briefs.

Ahem. Yes, myshelves, that was, indeed, the essence of the pun...to put it briefly, of course. :-P

There may be the need for multiple storytellings. Some more random than not. Perhaps open stories for all to join in, as is (now). And then closed ones for those who adhere to some sort of coherence and, as actors put it, the 'line-follow-through'.

p.s. I don't think LT has the ability to do this within the same group, so I would recommend an invitation only group aside of this one for such an endeavor.

localpeanut, whattayathink?

#10

Quite.:-)

I was just suggesting that the Senator's "legal" briefs might now make a contribution to a non-hallucinatory plot.

#11
Abductee,

I was going to ask if the posters wanted to start anew. Start a new story.

In uni, we had several false starts. It took about 4 or 5 stories before we settled down on something lucid. Hallucinations to carry a story forward was the easiest thing to do and so was a very popular plot device . . . but eventually the novelty wore off.

Yes, we had stories which were "by invitation" only. And it had rules on the length of the post (because those were "full sentence" stories, and we limited the number of characters we could introduce. And the settings. (We were not good enough writers to handle a "cast of thousands"--as it where.) And dream sequences were forbidden.

We also made up games within the story where--- when a character was introduced, we would try to marry the person or kill him/her within a certain number of weeks.

My favorite was the "Around The World" tales. There were quest plots--where we'd look for an object and clues would be found and we'd work the plot so that we would travel from country to country about every 4 weeks.

When we found out where we were going, we'd all read up on that country: culture, customs . . . the favorite was the Holy Land where we played about with Moses and Jesus and the Ark.

We also had genre writing. Horror stories were popular. Crime thrillers never panned out because we all had our ideas about how a crime had to be solved. (A lot of flame wars when we dabbled in crime.) Love stories . . . only got interesting when we made them into bodice rippers. Lots of heaving bosoms and throbbing this and throbbing that. It usually turned into porn. And not very good porn at that. We did well with fantasy . . . although sometimes we got carried away with the spells and talking trees. We even tried stories a la Jasper Fforde. Very hard because we had not all read the same books.

There was a great deal of planning before we started a story. And the restrictions we put on ourselves made it more challenging and ultimately made us better writers.

Are you interested in anything I've posted?

I notice that THE HAUNTED SODA thread has improved today by leaps and bounds! Yay!

I've run a few Round Robins where writers were assigned a specific chapter to write, and had to introduce and resolve at least one cliffhanger. Plus each person got to name the next writer's chapter, which that writer then had to SOMEHOW integrate into the story.

I based that structure on a 12-issue comic book Round Robin series DC Comics did in 1985 called THE DC CHALLENGE that got really crazy!

My favorite bits were when one writer stranded Aquaman in the middle of the desert, dying of thirst, and another had timelost cowboy Jonah Hex, kidnapped by modern day gangsters, shoot the driver of the car that kidnapped him, from the backseat, while the speeding car went careening out of control towards a crosswalk crowded with nuns and schoolchildren! Heee heeee!

Fun stuff!

#13> localpeanut, let's give this story a while to see if the current improvement leads anywhere. We can later start anew if we need to.

As to your suggestions, I believe the secret to success may lie in the "great deal of planning before we started a story". However, there is something to be said for the spontineity produced by our being limited to a set number of words in each post, although five may be a bit too few. The charm of this thing is the way what we expect someone will probably add as the next five words to those we've just posted almost always turns out not only wrong, but diabolically so.

If we can now manage to keep the "diabolically" within the realm of rationality, this may yet turn out to be a worthwhile exercise, and make us more adept for a new story later.

To localpeanut:

I agree that the story has greatly improved and we should give ourshelves more time to see if the group can make something of the current story.

The other, vastly different, story also seems to be moving along. It's entertaining in a different way.

If a third story is started, I would vote for something intermediate. Perhaps full sentences, but sentences with a word limit, or some definite rules about content, or maybe 10 word posts. What does everyone else think?

I agree that a happy medium would be nice and I think the ten word limit, perhaps with posts to page like this wher one could say what one was thinking when posting.

I agree with the ten word posts. At times I am tempted to post two different five word sentences, one after the other, just because I would like to say something more and cannot!

I'm in for that, too. We have exercised our wily writing ways. Now it's time to have more freedom (more words allowed) and more structure (content wise). I wonder what we will create within the paradigm.

A new group, Story-Writing Co-Op has just been set up to accommodate what you are discussing here. The first story is to begin February 1. Take a look at the proposal posted there, and if you are interested, join and help work out the parameters of the first story.

This is not meant to interfere with the writing going on in either of the two stories in the Haunted Soda group, but to add another opportunity for your creativity.