Chuck Q & A - May 2004

1. From Petra:

Is Hiding the Gun something like uncovering the plot when nobody is ready to see it? Like the big hands in Invisible Monsters or the sex offer in the chapel in Choke? And how does it actually frame the story if the story goes on even after the Gun is shown?

Chuck Responds:

Okay, Petra. You have small guns (sometimes called “set ups”) and you have the big gun. For me the big gun is the framing device: What is Rosebud? In Choke, the big gun is the statement, “You can’t divorce your mom, or kill her…” It caps an entire rant about son/mother relationships. From that point, the story isn’t over until that issue is resolved. Victor proves, ouch, that you CAN kill your mother – even if by accident.

The smaller guns are nice bits of foreshadowing that “pay off” early and give the reader a steady stream of “Ah hah!” moments. That’s the glory of starting a story mid-stream, everything is chaos and the reader feels a rush of joy and relief as even the smallest parts of this strange new reality fall into place. It’s the same joy you feel, putting together a puzzle, when you find two pieces that fit.

2. From Vigorous Puppy:

Along with the hidden gun and the ticking clock, what are some other great framing devices in fiction and one or two of your favorite examples?

Chuck Responds:

Puppy! If I could think of more, I wouldn’ve given them… I was hoping you’d suggest some. They’re all so basic: the question, the clock, the journey. Knowledge, time, or distance. Everything I can think of uses one of those three. Aliens II uses a nuclear reactor-meltdown as its clock. To Kill A Mockingbird uses a trial as its question.

Now, you find ME a new gun – that’s not a clock, question, or journey.

3. From Jimmy the Kid:

My question concerns hiding monsters in addition to guns. You've talked about hiding terrifying topics inside metaphorical storylines so that readers would bear to read the stories and at the same time deal with the monsters inside. Let's call it "Hiding the Monster" for instance.

I have felt great unease writing about shocking and inhumane things. And I've found that it is a lot easier for me to tell the story in a metaphorical way. Is this a sign of a lack of guts to stare at monsters in the eye or is it really better for both the reader and the writer to deal with the story when the monsters wear costumes? How necessary is it to hide the monster?

Chuck Responds:

Good question. Right back at you, I’d ask: How scary is your monster? In college, I read studies where a test group was shown pictures of people with terrible, rotting teeth. Test subjests shown mild rot, improved their oral hygiene. People shown moderate rot, stayed the same. People shown stinking-bad rot, they quit brushing and flossing altogether.

This is why metaphor is so important. It allows people to be with a topic they’d normally run from. Don’t forget, but most people read to be entertained. Few people want to spend their lunch hour with their worst fears. So… the very worst topics, they need to wear some kind of costume. Just long enough to be engaging. Then, once the reader is laughing, suck their guts out.

4. From joefkamm:

Do you think revealing your gun once is enough? I fear that if its exposed only once, in the beginning, it will be forgotten by the end and loose its effect but at the same time I feel like if I bring it out too much throughout the story it will be too obvious. How often and at what point in the story would you suggest to reveal you gun?

Chuck Responds:

You should re-visit your gun, several times, before you whip it out at the end. But this means, very, very carefully. In Citizen Kane, people occasionally mention “Rosebud,” but they never stay on the subject very long. The digressions become the story, and the object of the “quest” disappears again and again. In Breakfast at Tiffanys, we see almost no reference to Sally Tomato in prison beyond the first half of the book, and even those references don’t mention the idea that Holly Golightly is committing a crime and might get caught.

5. From RWJ:

On "Hiding the Gun"

Should the "gun" only represent one forgotten aspect of the story, or can it represent many different elements found throughout the story?

Chuck Responds:

I’m not sure what you mean? If you mean combining several elements that become a gun… that’s a fine idea. For example: the way an Agatha Christie detective puts several clues together for the final confrontation scene. Beyond that, I’m not sure what you’re asking.

6. From BitOfFinger:

First of all, thanks for your latest essay. It helped me *finally* articulate what I hate about terrible sitcoms. The writers seem to think that "cleverly" hiding a tank with a piece of tissue paper constitutes "comedy".

On the topic of "Hiding Guns", at what point do you, personally, realize that you have to go back and hide a gun? You've often said that you don't know what the ending of your stories will be until the characters take you there. So when you know what the ending will be, does going back and hiding the gun involve a lot of plot restructuring and re-writing. It seems to me that hiding the gun could potentially completely change the course of the plot.

Thanks.
Kareem (CPnet Programming Mook)

Chuck Responds:

You and me, both. There is NOTHING worst than a poorly-hidden gun. In the first five minutes of “The Sixth Sense” I turned to my friends and said: “This is a re-make of Jacob’s Ladder…” They told me to Fuck Off, and I spent the movie sitting eight rows away from them, being bored to tears.

To date, I’ve never had to go back and plant a gun. The dazzling part of writing is how a book seems to tie itself up so well. Part of this is because at the beginning you’re aware of your central issue or monster, but you forget it as you explore and exhaust it. When you near the end and begin to get stuck – that’s time to re-read your earliest chapters. Look for your original intention and any odd “dropped threads.” Always, it’s one of those forgotten early details that you can use as your gun to wrap up the end. The same way, in life, it’s that forgotten two weeks you worked in an asbestos mine that kills you eighty years later.

7. From lovehate:

My concern about the gun is avoiding the drift into the blindingly obvious - I guess because it is such a common technique.

So my question is: what system does Chuck use to work out whether his gun is truly hidden or actually out in plain sight for everyone to say "I'm sure that'll be what the bad guy gets impaled on at the climax." Does Chuck trust his instincts, get other readers opinions or something else?

Cheers and thanks for the workshop.

Chuck Responds:

You’re right, it is a common technique, but that’s because it’s the way life tends to work. Again, the small details, the forgotten mistakes tend to become the events that doom us. One of my ways to hide the gun is to stay un-aware of it, myself. With a fast-moving plot, you can stay blissfully ignorant of the impending crisis until it’s right on top of you.

To do this, many of my guns are in plain sight: The Machines, I call them. The scams. In Choke, it’s Victor’s scam – you know that one day two people who saved him will brag to each other, and the entire fake family he’s created, it will crumble in a moment. And in Survivor, because Victor visits the graves of people he coaxed to suicide, it’s inevitable that he meets a surviving loved-one. Those nice clock-work machines move the plot and create a “red-herring” gun to distract the reader.

The real guns: who shot Shannon in Invisible Monsters, or the betrayal of Misty by her daughter in Diary, or the kid’s sucked-out guts in Guts, those are well-hidden by smoke and mirrors until the very end.

8. From JackWalter:

What role do your dreams play in your writing? For instance, do you find answers to plot problems in your dreams or do your dreams suggest story ideas to you? How do you think dreams relate to the creative process?

Chuck Responds:

The stories you tell yourself to fall asleep, those fantasies, those are a good place to start when looking for a metaphor for a personal issue. Also, the first moment you’re awake, that’s a great time for ideas to just pop into your head. In this almost-awake state, inspiration and clean connections just seem to happen. Mid-day, you might try taking a shower. That’s always good for relaxing your mind to a near dream-state. Great ideas happen while washing dishes, too. Stephen King writes in the shower. Katherine Dunn writes while swimming laps. Like sleeping, these tasks seem to allow… something… to happen. So it helps to keep a notepad beside the bed, and in the bathroom. Also, long, boring car drives – without the radio playing – are good for creating this same kind of “trance” that allows ideas to form.

9. From Mixing 123:

Hey Chuck,
Thanks for all the essays and books and shit!
Anyway, I was wondering, I know that there is a point that just about everyone hits while writing a book where they have just finished "the perfect chapter" but then they're stuck. What now? How do I continue from here? I was just interested if you have any "writers block" type tips or methods that you use to pass things like this.

Chuck Responds:

Okay, Cody. You’re going to love this answer. When you run dry, go to a party. Or throw one. Throw a BIG party. Tell people the themes you’re working with – but in an anecdotal way, so your work prompts your peers to offer their own stories and help develop your themes in ways you hadn’t imagined. Also, listen for good party stories that will add to what you have. Also, go back and re-read what you’ve done, looking for a missed opportunity you can re-work for a better pay-off later on. Mostly, this will involve listening and paying attention. Exercise helps, too. Print some hardcopies of your chapters and take them to the gym to re-read and line edit while you bike or run or lift weights. Really sweat on them. Take your work out into the world, and you won’t get tired of writing. And you’ll seldom run out of ideas to explore.

10. From Inkwell:

Thanks so much for all your writing.

You've said some of your earlier work modeled the style of Stephen King. Since then, you've made your writing distinct from King, and from the Minimalist writers who influenced you. Hempel made her mark with her knack for the Lish sense of sentence, Spanbauer made his with Dangerous Writing, Ellis made his mark and you made yours -- each of you with great sense of story, and each in advancing different aspects of Minimalism. As much as there has been to learn in my stories here by modeling your style, where do you see room within Minimalism for the next generation of authors to break away?

Chuck Responds:

A big reason why I started writing is, I felt that fiction had stopped evolving. All other entertainments were getting better, constantly, as technology allowed. Movies. Video games. Music. And as their audiences became more sophisticated, these other media could experiment and risk trying new story-telling methods. Imagine a silent-movie audience watching “Gummo.” Still, it seemed that fiction was a little stuck… The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories. And books have the freedom to portray topics that movies and music never could --- because their success relies on attracting a huge broadcast audience. This combination of “sophisticated reader” and “freedom” will give future writers their advantage. Again, there is no “best” style for writing – minimalist, modernist, whatever -- but you should be aware of different methods. You should have the biggest selection of techniques and devices, and know how, where and why to use them.