Tough Act

Hope you enjoyed Episode 1—Tough Act—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already.

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And now . . . The Story Behind the Story . . .

"Tough Act," was previously published in SmokeLong Quarterly—my thanks to the editorial staff for publishing the story and for providing such a great venue for shorter fiction. SmokeLong is one of the premier sites on the web for flash fiction so get over there and be amazed.

"Tough Act" has a convoluted history, in fact its origins go back further than just about any story I've written. It owes its existence to the very first story I had published—"Caught"—which appeared longer ago than I care to think about in an also long ago defunct journal which shall remain nameless because there is another publication out now with a similar name. "Caught" was (is?) about 1200 words, also in first-person, and dramatizes a group of kids throwing snowballs at cars, getting chased, caught, and then being let go after giving fake names. What lesson did they learn? That getting chased is a blast. So at story's end they rush off to throw snowballs at more cars.

Uh, yeah, big chunk of autobiography in that one.

Sometime later, and for an undergraduate writing class, I wrote a much longer story called "Just Throwing Snowballs" that wrapped a frame around "Caught" (which was a one-scene story). The narrator is older, married, living in the same neighborhood as when he threw snowballs as a kid, and when the current neighborhood kids throw snowballs at him as he's on his way home for lunch—well, I'll spare you the full plot, which included sex; suffice to say he succumbs to nostalgia and decides to give chase, not out of anger, but to give the kids a thrill (starting to sound familiar?).

That story went through many permutations—most of them painful to look at now—until I had, after about 15 revisions, a 6000+ word story that began with a car crash and worked backwards to show how just throwing snowballs brought about that end.

Can you sense what was wrong with that never published version?

After the story gathered dust for a few years, I took another run at it and cut away all the extraneous stuff until I had a version—still called "Just Throwing Snowballs"—but that now ended with the car crash. See what nostalgia gets you? Busted up in a ditch.

Yep. That 2500 word masterpiece of nihilism was also never published.

Another couple of years go by and I decide to bring the story back to life. This time the brainstorm is to flip the sequence around and start later. Begin the story with the car crash. But instead of initiating the flashback, the story starts there, in the ditch, as he gets up and gives chase to the assholes that did that to him. So it's a revenge story, now called, for the first time, "Tough Act." Alas, I couldn't resist reintroducing all that nostalgia stuff, blah, blah, blah. And it collected a bunch of rejections before I stopped sending it out.

Another year goes by. I decide to make one last revision attempt and strip it down to the two core scenes you see today, although that version was nearly twice as long as the version published in SmokeLong. I sent the story to VerbSap. And then a remarkable thing happened. Editor Laurie Seidler rejected the story. But she also suggested I make the story more minimal and even sent me some edits just to illustrate the style she was looking for in VerbSap. Essentially a not that, but this rewrite of a few paragraphs. She didn't ask for a rewrite or suggest that one was welcome. Just offered kindly editorial feedback. (Thank you!)

To be honest, I had never considered doing a short-short version let alone a minimal one. I'd always thought of it as long story (all that nostalgia stuff, you know). Skeptical, but willing, and more as an exercise than anything, I gave the minimal approach a shot.

Couple of revisions later I had the story down under 1400 words and even though she didn't ask for it I sent the revision to Laurie at VerbSap.

She liked what I'd done with the story, but thought it too dark for VerbSap. Fair enough. So now what?

I decided, just for fun, mind you, to see if I could get the story down to 1000 words. I cut and cut and cut and could only get down to 1200. I was still hung up on that nostalgia stuff. Well, it was, after all, the very reason that I wrote the story in the first place.

And then I finally decided to cut the following passage—one of "my darlings"—

The clouds are a gray shroud sifting snow upon the neighborhood. A streetlight flickers, sparks on; the falling flakes become lit like moths, dance excitedly to earth. I turn my headlights on even though it is still early afternoon, and the beams shoot out across the snowy streets, leading me on as if they are reins. The blizzard has created a white tapestry of snowy roofs, feathered trees, shrubs, and fence posts adorned with puffy topnotches. The soft snow drapes the neighborhood with beauty, purity, innocence, shades of meaning not otherwise there. I am lulled by the steady drop of the snowflakes, the swish and squeak of the wipers, the nostalgic memories of my youth.

And cutting that—the paragraph I was in love with—freed me to make more cuts and very quickly I was pretty damn lean and sitting at 997 words, but not done yet.

I dug into my archives and found "Caught" (a typewritten—and I mean as done on a typewriter—version). As I read I saw what had been so good in that long ago story about throwing snowballs and waded into "Tough Act" again, lopping out words that six months previously I would have bet I never would have cut.

So here we are, at least 40 revisions and half-a-dozen completely different stories later, with the published version of "Tough Act" clocking in at 898 words.

You writers know this is true: As much as I love this version of the story, there is a part of me that still pines for all that nostalgia stuff I cut out. I know there is a story there, a huge story, lurking behind a grown man and punk kid fighting in the snow. Maybe "Just throwing Snowballs" wasn't it, but I still think I'll discover that story someday.

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One note on craft. A big focus in this story was the verbs. Even way back in the longer versions I had used a highlighter and marked every single verb in the manuscript and just kept revising until I had the most precise verbs. I did the same with nouns, but verbs were the real focus. Just look at the verbs in the story's first sentence: flinch, swerve, flattens, and sticks. Sometimes you'll need less precision to convey a different meaning, sound, or pace, but most of the time you want that kind of precision with your verbs.

Take the highlighter test. Pick the most recent story you have "finished." Now, using three different colored highlighters, mark the "to be" verb forms in one color, the adverbs in another color, and all the remaining verbs with the third color. You know what the task is. Excise as many of the "to be" verbs and adverbs as you can. Make the remaining verbs as precise as you can. Let the story sit for a week. Repeat the process. If you like the results (and trust me, you will), go after the nouns and adjectives next. Try to replace all indefinite pronouns (e.g. "it") with a noun. Results are guarnteed. Maybe writing can't be taught, but revision techniques such as that sure can.

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Ok. That's the story behind "Tough Act." Next week on the Winter of Different Directions podcast and here in the litblog it will be "Swept Aside," which was published in The Angler.

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