The Pecman

Silly me! I guess my mistake is assuming that if one can write a good story, then you're a good writer. Lynn Truss points out in the introduction of the American edition the many problems between British English grammar (and punctuation) vs. Americanized English, so I'm well aware of that. Being fluent is one thing, but I find a lot of those British-isms annoying and clumsy. [Yet there are books I prefer to read in their original British editions, like the Ian Fleming James Bond novels and Jo Rowling's Harry Potter.) Still, seeing dialog punctuation placed outside of the quotes makes me absolutely nuts. Speaking as a guy who has read the Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, plus having actually written stylebooks for two magazines (including the late, lamented Video Review back in the 1980s), that one's etched in stone for me. Lapsing into a Comma is another fairly cool discussion of the subject, though with a decidedly American bent. (BTW -- note how I never mentioned your misuse of the word "writer.") :twisted:

I wouldn't be so fast about that. One place where I think it might be permissible would be for a first-person novel told as a biographical piece. I seem to recall reading a Truman Capote book a few months back that used this technique, and it didn't bother me. Capote's a better writer than you and me, and I suspect he could make it work. In general, though, I agree with much of what you say here about punctuation. I used to drive my magazine editors crazy about punctuation, and I had some very definite opinions as to when to use (and not to use) a semicolon. I did a lot of that just by gut instinct; after reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves last year -- a book that I found hilarious and also very informative -- I understood why my instincts were right. About the only time I disagreed with the author was when she veered off in a Veddy British direction, pointing out situations that were wrong in England, but textbook-perfect in America.

I know David quite well -- he lives about five miles from me, out here in Northridge -- and he has lots of stories on the Tribbles episodes that he's told for decades now. I think the Heinlein characters were called "Fuzzies," but my memory's kinda dim on these things. David's book on the making of "Tribbles" is still out-of-print, but Amazon's got 75 used copies out there very cheap. You can find them here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books BTW, David's excellent time-travel novel The Man Who Folded Himself, was recently reprinted. It's highly recommended, not only for its occasional gay themes, but also because it's extraordinarily well-written -- possibly the best story of its kind I've ever read.

I agree 100%. Two things that have helped me in my stories are: first, a timeline to tell me when and where every event takes place in the story. That way, if I have a character say, "hey, didn't you see her last Thursday," I know it was actually Thursday and not some other date. Keeping a sense of time straight in the story is important, at least to me. The second is character bios, which I jot down just to remind me who everybody is, what they look like, and what their background is. Nobody ever sees either of these two things except me; as far as I'm concerned, this is all part of the behind-the-scenes machinery that makes the magic work. Sort of like the hidden gears and motors at Disneyland. I agree to a point. But I have had some instances where either I made a major logistical error, or I made a bad decision in a story, and I had enough readers write me about it (in advance of the story actually being posted) that I went ahead and changed it. In some cases, I may not have done exactly what they wanted, but it was kind of a serindipitous thing where the original story went one way, the readers wanted it another way, but the final draft came up with a third compromise that I felt was better than either. One case like this was the dog in my story Jagged Angel. Everybody, including The Dude here, was aghast that I killed a dog in one pivotal chapter. They convinced me that readers wouldn't stand for that, and so I reluctantly had the dog simply be "badly wounded," and eventually recover. This wound up being a much better choice, dramatically, and even worked its way into the very final lines of the story. So, yeah -- sometimes readers know better than authors. On the other hand, then there are the readers who are upset when certain key characters depart the story. I've done this for very, very specific reasons, and my decisions are in stone on all of those. Still, it's gratifying to get email from readers who are practically crying over the death of a major character. You know when that happens, you've managed to craft a character who was good enough that they lived vividly in the mind of the reader, to the point where they felt a very real sense of loss when the character dies (or goes away).

I don't think that art, certainly not fiction, can boil down to a bunch of bullet points and numbers. To me, I think you gotta judge from your gut. Is the story good or not? Do the characters involve the reader or not? Does the story surprise you and hold on to your interest? Much more than that is just a buncha BS, in my opinion. Sure, you can start delving into technique and grammar and so on, but I can overlook many of these elements if everything else makes me want to read more. And I agree with WBMS elsewhere that the top rating should be used very sparingly.

Ah, that was my confusion. I did glance over Angel, and it looks very well-written. That's cool, but did I say otherwise? I'm confused. :oops: I certainly don't think a writer has to be gay (or straight or black or anything else) to write a good gay story, even from a viewpoint radically different from his or her own. Within limits, I think the same is true of actors -- though, I guess if a white teenage male tried to portray [black female equality pioneer] Harriet Tubman in a play, that might be a stretch. But I have no problem with gay actors playing straight characters, or vice versa. The same should be true of writers; they should be able to tackle the whole bredth of human experience, including all the shades of grey -- which, to me, are what make life interesting. BTW, be careful how you quote other people in your messages. Things can get very confusing, very fast if you quote much too much material. Just a sentence or two is enough for a quote. (And watch out for "their" and "they're" -- one of my pet peeves.)

Amen to that! I wish more people would understand that. Nothing drives me up the wall faster than when I read an amateur net story where the first chapter begins, "let me introduce myself. My name is *blank*, I'm so-so tall, I have this kind of hair, etc." Jesus, totally amateurville. I think not only do the characters actions help define who they are, you can let the other characters describe your leads so we get at least a little sense of how they look. Have one character actually say, "dude! You changed your hair! What's with the blonde highlights?" That kind of thing. There's a million ways to do that. I think having a character do something brave, stick his neck out where he didn't need to, or make a controversial stand for something he or she believes in... any of these things is worth 50 pages of dialog. It's the classic "show, don't tell": we need to find out what makes a character tick by what they do, not just by what they say.

I agree with WBMS: I think putting lists of characters and descriptions in the story talks down to the reader, and I also think it's kind of an amateurish cheat. You gotta figure, J.R.R. Tolkien had about 100 speaking characters in Lord of the Rings, and he didn't do it. (Of course, Tolkien was also a brilliant writer, and I don't think that many of us are even qualified to sharpen his pencils.) I do agree with you that jotting down a complete list of the characters and a brief bio of each is an enormously useful tool for the writer. To me, if the story is well-written enough, the readers will be able to figure out who everybody is. And if you can't find a way to do it, then my advice would be to combine two (or more) characters into one and do some rewriting and simplifying. Five or six lead characters is probably going to be enough for most novels -- though there are always exceptions.

Do tell! I'd like to read some of your stories, Mr. (or Ms.) Monk. I don't see any listed here on Awesomedude.com; can you tell me where to find them? I agree, avoiding the cliche is an enormous problem, particularly for neophyte writers. One reason I've dragged my heels in starting my new novel is that it's a time-travel story, and a) all the good plots have almost been taken, and b) avoiding the many potential cliches is going to take a big amount of work. As I've said before around here, though, I think the key thing is to try to surprise the reader, and never give them what they expect. I figure just doing that is a major part of any good story.

That's a tough call. The only writer I can think of off-hand who has written stories here where the fact that the characters are gay doesn't affect the story that much is David Buffet. Heck, he did a recent story awhile back set in a universe where gay and straight kids are accepted 100% -- obviously a fantasy world in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future. But I don't think you can have a story with teenage gay characters where some element of the story doesn't involve the fear of discovery. I agree, the discovery element can't be the single most important part of the plot, but it is a pivotal element. The first two novels I wrote did have these, even to the point where, in one story, a character accidentally killed another out of his fear of being outted at school. To me, this is natural conflict that comes out of the situation, yet it's not the central point of the story. I do agree that it's great to have a story where there's a real solid story wrapped around the relationship. Too many gay stories -- particularly those on the Net -- are only about the relationship between the key characters, and there's no real plot beyond that. The story isn't "about" anything; it's just an episodic smorgasbord of what goes on in their daily lives, with no real point to what happens. The problem with this, to me, is that it's generally too boring and not dramatic enough. The bottom line is that the best gay stories are those where you could strip the gay element out and still have the essance of a good story left. I'm about to start writing a new story where the fear-of-discovery won't be a vital plot element, only because there are other, more complex things going on. Like my first two novels, it's just an experiment to see what I can do in this framework. It'll have some action-adventure elements, along with some real romance, but also some violence and (I hope) unexpected developments. We'll see how it goes...

Jeez, simmer down! I said I enjoyed reading the story, found it "refreshing," and in fact have recommended that it be added to the BEST OF NIFTY list. (So far, no luck, but I'm continuing to make my case.) I also congratulated the author in Email, which I do only rarely, when I find a story I really think stands out from the pack. This is about as gentle as I can get. All my criticisms were done in a very even-handed, specific way -- nothing vague, I went right to the heart of where I think the story could be improved. Nothing more, nothing less. To me, if a novel is four chapters in and I can't figure out what the plot is, there's a problem. Some people get away with this by calling what they do a "character study" or a "serial." But I think the novel form works better when there's an actual structure there, with a beginning, middle and end, and each chapter builds tension and sets up the ultimate climax of the story. There are writers who can write pure character and get away with it, but I think those are rare. If you think my critiques are too harsh, I'm genuinely sorry. I'll be glad to bow out of any and all further discussions, if you think I'm causing more harm than good. Me personally, I choose my words very carefully; there's no insults intended there, and note that I'm talking only about words, not people.

I gotta say, I enjoyed the story, too. My only problem is that there's no real PLOT rearing its head yet, except for the conflict between the two or three characters. I also feel like the writer could've shown us more about WHY and HOW the characters fell in love, rather than just dealing with it in one paragraph, which was basically, "as the summer went on, they grew closer, etc.," which to me is leaving out a lot of story. But yeah, the story was very refreshing compared to the usual crap I see on Nifty. Another good one that I recommend is The Confusion Sets In, which is here: http://nifty.nisusnet.com/nifty/gay/highsc...fusion-sets-in/. Like Leaves & Lunatics, though, I miss having a real plot beyond just character exposition and conflict. To me, the story has to be ABOUT something, rather than just a series of episodic encounters. That having been said, both are entertaining and fairly well-written, as this stuff goes.

My answers would be "yes, yes, and hard-to-say." If you don't already have a publisher, a bona fide freelance literary editor will cost money -- typically several thousand dollars for a typical manuscript. A few I know of include: http://www.editorsforum.org http://editorialdepartment.net/ http://mybookedit.com/ http://www.editfast.com http://www.manuscriptediting.com/ http://www.book-editing.com/ Having a friend read your story to catch typos and problems with grammar are one thing, but they aren't going to necessarily catch or comment on dramatic flaws, structural issues, problems with internal logic, and so on. And to me, those are a lot harder to solve. A good general book on fiction editing is this one: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne & Dave King Paperback: 288 pages (2nd edition, 4/13/2004) Publisher: HarperResource [iSBN: 0060545690] I personally don't think a beginning writer can edit themselves, because they don't have the skills to pull it off and because they're "too close" to the story to look at it objectively. I also think that getting a second set of eyes (and another brain) to examine a story can be invaluable, simply because it forces you to look at your story from a totally different point of view. I say, if a portion of a story confuses or bothers a single reader, it might do the same for dozens of others, even if it's something you think is fine. So I think the book is useful just in terms of stopping you from making some brain-dead mistakes before they happen.

The reason for me is, number one, because the day-to-day grinds of life are boring. It's only the out-of-the-ordinary events -- accidents, fights, arguments, romance, passionate affairs, travel -- that are interesting. Nobody gives a crap about how a character studies, how long it took them to dress themselves, what bills they paid, what music they listened to on the way to work (or school), etc. Number two, to center on a group of entirely gay teens is unrealistic, at least in the world I know. Gay people are still an enormous minority. (I for one don't buy the typical 10% estimate, which I think is much too high.) Sure, it's easier now to come out, even at the high school level, where kids can have clubs and social events and so on. But the only story I can think of where all the major teenage characters are gay, and yet the threat of being outed isn't a plot element, is David Buffet's CONTROL & CHAOS. But even Buffet admits in his intro that this was kind of an "alternate universe" scenario: a world where nobody cares at all who's gay, who's straight, and who's inbetween. In the stuff I've written, I did deal with the day-to-day events, but only as a jumping off point for the action and conflict that follows. For example, I have a school dance in GROOVY -- typically a fairly predictable event -- but I threw in an unexpected sexual rendezvous as a twist. (A second dance has a much more violent, shocking twist.) I had a scene where the characters have to take a test in class, but one of them cheats, resulting in conflict and drama (with an eventual emotional payoff). I threw in numerous scenes that started out with one or more characters studying, but those were generally interrupted (for good reasons). But to me, to just dwell on mundane events isn't interesting, no matter how well it's written. I also did something I don't see in a lot of gay teen stories: I made a strong effort to get the characters away from their houses and schools, and into different environments: everything from the beach to boats to movies, sports events, car trips, restaurants, and so on. I think too many writers forget all the possiblities of getting their characters out into the world. And I also covered the difficulties of finding the right places for -- shall we say -- romantic encounters. Speaking as a former kid myself, I keenly remember the problems of trying to avoid getting caught while fooling around. To me, it's details like this that help make the story real.

I believe Samuel Delaney is one of the more famous "out" SF authors. My personal favorite, though, is probably David Gerrold; his Man Who Folded Himself might be the greatest time-travel novel ever written, with fascinating (and sometimes hilarious) gay overtones. David recently sold his book The Martian Child to New Line, who reportedly is going to turn it into a movie. The plot concerns a gay author who decides to become a single parent, but after adopting an 8 year-old son, begins to wonder if his child is human. Very funny book; deservedly won several prestigious awards. And the last gay SF author I can think of is none other than Arthur C. Clarke, of 2001 fame. In interviews, Clarke has deflected questions as to his sexuality, but it's generally assumed he's not straight. Either way, he's a terrific writer, and has contributed some of the genuine classics to the field.

I refer to comments I've received in Email. As of late August, I've gotten about 3100 emails on Groovy, and about 1200 emails on Angel. I'd say less than 10% were critical, but those that were sometimes had some good insights on some genuine issues -- either things I had overlooked, or subtle plot flaws that people flagged as being scenes they couldn't understand. Sometimes, they had just missed something from an earlier chapter, but other times, they had a genuinely good point to make. And yet even the critical letters stressed they liked the stories, which was gratifying. I also make it a point to answer every Email I get. I figure even if it's just a quick boiler-plate reply, at least it thanks the reader for the message. Emails are about all the rewards we get.

Blue, I read the story on your recommendation. Unfortunately it turned me off on two points: 1) the guy starts off by having the character describe himself to the reader. I hate that. 2) nothing much happens in the first 3 chapters beyond just introducing the characters. To me, this is a total waste of time. Any good book on fiction writing tells you to grab the reader immediately with some action, as close to the first page as possible. Certainly, you should be done with character introductions after page 3 or 4, and just let the story unfold. The writing's not horrible, but when I find myself saying, "don't bore us -- get to the chorus," I know something's wrong. Just my opinion, your miles will vary, batteries not included.

That's not always true. The lead character in stories written in a 1st person point-of-view is going to be described very differently than they would be in 3rd person; it becomes a subjective experience, rather than an objective experience. Point of view affects a lot of how the characters are described. It's a tough thing to get over, and I've succumbed to one of the most awful cliches you see in a lot of amateur fiction: scenes where one (or more) of the characters stands in front of a mirror and points out his flaws (or his own beauty). It's a lame cliche, but in both cases for me, I couldn't think of a better way to do it. But at the same time, nothing is worse than reading those stories where the writer has the character talk to the reader and say, "Hi, I'm this old, I'm this tall, my eyes are this color, my hair looks like this, and people tell me I look like so-and-so." I'm like, shut up! Don't ever talk directly to the audience. Let other characters describe how the hero looks, and let us find out over time what this guy's appearance is. I don't think it's as important as most people think it is for us to be able to precisely visualize the characters. I say, just give them the basic clues over time -- mention he's the shortest kid in class, or the tallest; mention that he hates his dark hair and is thinking of dying it blond; mention that he wears glasses -- briefly touch on these things over several chapters, as we slowly discover what the characters look like. No need to rattle off a laundry list of all their visual characteristics.

I have no problem with that, AJ. It's just that flowery comments from readers won't make you a better writer; they'll just make you feel good about yourself. Flattery is nice to get, but it's better when it's really deserved. I've actually learned more from criticism than I have from compliments. Several fellow writers (and a few fans) caught some pretty bad gaffes of mine in both Groovy and Jagged Angel, and without their critiques, I never would have noticed the problem, let alone been able to fix them. Just having the means to publish your work and get it read by an audience is not enough. Knowing how to do it well is far more important. You can only learn that by endless practice, lots of reading, and tons of hard work. Making it up as you go doesn't work for most people. Granted, Dickens and Shakespeare didn't read any books on how to write, but they had the advantage of being born geniuses, a gift which none of us have.

One last bit of advice, Blue: The most important thing I had to get over was that I didn't have to change who I was to accept being gay. I know that sounds weird, but I guess I couldn't reconcile the kinda guy I am with what I thought a gay person was "supposed" to be. Looking back (and remember this was like 1982 or so), maybe it seems lame and ridiculous, but it took me a long time to finally realize, just because the gay people I saw on TV shows and movies or encountered in life were one way, didn't mean I had to be exactly like that. Part of my problem was, the first couple of years I lived in LA, a friend of mine was a screaming over-the-top queen, and it took me awhile just to get past him. But once I did, I was pretty secure in it, and I felt nothing but relief. I swear, I bet that most of the neuroses and fears and just plain nuttiness that most gay people suffer from was totally caused by their years in the closet. The sooner you can ease yourself out of it, the better off you'll be. Good luck, dude, and hang in there. --Pecman

Generally, I think the deal in journalism is that it's considered politically incorrect to specify race in stories, except when there's a wanted criminal or something ("white male, about 25, 180 pounds, brown hair, scar on left face"). I believe the same is true with fiction, but it's dealer's choice. Provide as much description as you see fit. I think one subtle way to do it is to let other characters describe the people for you. As in, "hey, have you always had this mole?" or "do your parents freak out if you date a white chick, you being Chinese and all?" I wouldn't mess with the Jewish thing at all; maybe mention the kid's out of school on the High Holy Days or something, but anything beyond that is too much to me. I've read your first chapter, and my gut feeling is things are happening a little too fast to me. Me personally, my preference is for stuff to develop slowly, and start coalescing over time. I think trying to pace yourself (and the story) is a tough thing to manage, while still keeping enough details going on to make the story interesting to readers (and yourself). I think a lot of your questions really revolve around STRUCTURE, which to me involves how the plot develops over time, how the characters interact with each other, where the dramatic highlights (and lowlights) occur, and how things build to a climax. Both the novels I've written so far (Groovy Kind of Love and Jagged Angel) had a similar weird structural thing, where the real climax to the novel happens about 2/3 of the way in, and the rest of the story deals with the aftermath that follows, and how the lead character(s) react. I think it's important to outline where you're going with a novel before you actually sit down to write it. But at the same time, just make very basic, superficial notes -- like maybe two or three sentences per chapter -- so you know the gist of what happens in each one. There's still lots of room for you to invent things, and you have to go into it knowing that the outline can and will radically change over time. It depends on the nature of the violence. I think about a dozen people die in Angel, and each incident was different. Some happened "on-camera," with the violence fairly visceral, and some of it was a lot more subtle. Some of it was sudden and shocking, and some of it built up over time. Every incident is different; there are no rules on this stuff. The bottom line to me is to make the violence 100% realistic, so that even if it happens unexpectedly, the reader never says, "what the hell is going on? Why is this happening? This makes no sense!" For example, I have a school shooting in Angel, but I foreshadowed that with a couple of scenes beforehand, so we knew something was coming -- but we didn't know how or when it would happen. Hard to say. I find long stretches of dialog to take up much too many pages, and can be tedious to read. I think a balance has to be struck between descriptive prose and dialog. Less is more. If a dialog scene is relatively dull, and doesn't really reveal anything new or surprising about the characters, consider changing it to description instead. Internal monologues can be tricky, depending on whether you're writing in 1st person or 3rd. I think a little of this goes a long way, but be wary of ever showing the thoughts of two different people in the same scene. That can get very messy, very quickly. I think there are no rules here. Hell, J.R.R. Tolkien had -- what? -- over 200 speaking characters in Lord of the Rings. I think Stephen King has over 100 in The Stand. But those two guys are far better writers than you and me. My advice would be to keep in mind there are various levels of characters in a story. Some are peripheral to the plot, like "supporting players" in a movie, and we don't need to know much about them; some are the stars of the show, and we need to know anything and everything about them. Some are merely extras, and they may only have one or two sentences in the whole story. I do think it's important to constantly think about conflict and emotion in the story, but at the same time, make sure that they're blended in with the plot smoothly enough that nothing seems contrived or phony. Villains (even minor ones) can provide a jumping-off point for major conflict: fight scenes (verbal or physical), threats, suspicion, fear, even blackmail or worse. I thought one of the most effective scenes in Groovy was one where the lead character sees a villain beat up a gay kid, but he doesn't do anything to stop it, because he's too afraid to say anything. All of us have been through this kind of situation, and even though it's harrowing and unpleasant, the point in my story was to reinforce the fear the lead character (and his boyfriend) had about being discovered. So the villain served a useful purpose here, even though he wasn't directly harrassing the lead character. I know better than to force myself to write when I'm not in the mood. If I ain't feelin' it, screw it. I walk away and try to relax, or work out, or watch TV, or listen to music. I've had some of my best mental bursts of energy just after a good workout -- pump iron to the point of exhaustion, come home, take a shower, then I'm in the mood to write. I take a little notebook around with me everywhere, just in case some brilliant thought strikes me at an odd moment. I also keep a notebook by my bed, just on the miraculous possibility I'll get a good idea from a dream. (It's happened. One of the last scenes in Groovy came from a dream.) When I get really blocked, sometimes I'll jump ahead in the story and write something totally unreleated to the current situation. Or if I have a problem opening a chapter, I'll begin somewhere in the middle of the chapter, write to the end, then read what I wrote, and then come up with some kind of opening that works. Screw that. Write from your gut, and write what you feel. I have to say, though, I felt like you got into the sex scenes very quickly, without a lot of build-up. That's just my opinion, and I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong -- just not the choice I would usually make. I don't think every story has to have a moral, necessarily, but I learned from reading Joseph Campbell about how a lot of the greatest stories ever written present "a difficult moral decision that the lead character has to make." That's what influenced the way the story took a left turn in Jagged Angel, where up to a point, we mainly saw how the lead character reacted to different situations. We finally reach a scene where he has to actually act and make something happen, and that's a pivotal change. A lot of the books on writing that I've read stress that you need to be able to sit down and come up with one sentence that describes the "theme" of your novel. In the case of Groovy, mine would be "true love is worth all the risks." In the case of Jagged Angel, I think it would be "you're better off being honest about who you are." It's hard to sum up 175,000 words in one sentence, but if you can just articulate this, I think it helps you know in your gut just exactly what your story is really about. Ask yourself, "what's the point? What am I really trying to say here? What will the reader feel when the story is over with? How much will the characters change from the beginning of the story to the end?" To me, that's the most important thing of all -- along with just following all the rules of good storytelling. I can tell you there's a little of me in all the characers I've created -- good and bad. But even the bad people in my stories had little good moments, and weren't 100% awful. And the good characters all had flaws. To me, the flaws are what make them interesting, and what make them real. I think you have to think of them as real people, in that you're describing a situation as if you watched it unfold. In the case of Groovy, because that was such a personal story to me, I felt like I lived some of the scenes (even ones that never resembled my own life). I actually felt a sense of loss when major characters died. Some of my readers were furious when I did it, but I pointed out that there were clues there all along that these characters' days were numbered, and that I always knew who was going to survive and who wasn't. So to me, don't worry about satisfying your readers. Satisfy yourself first and foremost, and hopefully you'll entertain some people along the way. BTW, there's tons of good books that cover all of the above ad infinitum. I dunno if you've read any, but I list half a dozen writing books over in the "Writers Workshop" area. Lotta good tips there. I don't profess to knowing it all, but I do read a helluva lot, and I like to think I'm a much better writer today for having read these books. Without them, I just would've been flailing around in the dark, trying to guess at stuff I could've never figured out on my own.

You know, I was always one of those "100% straight-acting" kinda guys, to the point where I heard way too many "fag" jokes throughout my teen and adult years. I guess my disguise was a little too good. Only when I hit my 40s did I get to the point where I could glare at the joke-teller and say, "hey, some of us don't think that's too funny, y'know?" That usually shuts 'em up real quick, and it leaves them guessing as to whether I'm just gay or politically correct. Me personally, I never asked any of my gay friends if they were or weren't. But when I finally came out about 22 years ago -- more than half my lifetime ago -- those were the guys I came out to first. All of them were happy for me and said, "hey, congratulations! I guess you know I'm gay, too," and we got past it that way. (A few of them were kinda shocked that I had figured out which way they were, and I laughed and said, well, either you don't hide it as well as you think, or my gaydar is better than average.) These guys took me out to clubs, showed me the gay neighborhoods, and clued me in as to what was what. "Gay 101," so to speak. Always nice to have a navigator in uncharted waters. But there's no easy way to just ask somebody a personal question like that. Hell, this kind of thing can get you fired, if you do it at work. I'd say, if they're good friends of yours, just start by telling 'em about yourself. My line was, "I've been going through some changes lately, thinking about my life and figuring a few things out, and I finally came to terms with being gay." Or words to that effect. If they're really your friends, there won't be a problem. If they're gay, you'll find out quickly. If they're not, you both can get past it, and make it clear that you don't care either way. I gotta say, though, there were at least two or three friends of mine who I thought were close enough to tell. After I came out, I guess they were uncomfortable about it; they sorta stopped calling, stopped hanging out with me, and our friendship sorta fizzled out. They weren't ever hostile, like if I bumped into them somewhere, but they weren't exactly friendly either, and things weren't ever the same. As far as I'm concerned, that was their problem and not mine. I was disappointed, but I got over it as time went on. I don't know your age range, but in my case (early 20s at the time), I was careful who I told, particularly at the workplace. I've been a little more casual with it more recently, simply because it's a different time now. Besides, I live and work in LA, where there's a sizable gay population, and a good percentage of the entertainment business is either gay or "metrosexual." You might want to exercise caution, and be careful who you tell and how you do it. The important thing is, don't make a big deal of it. Make sure your friends understand, this is only *part* of who you are -- not necessarily your whole reason for existance. As I told my brother and sister, "I'm still the same jerk I always was... it's just that now you know one more thing about me you didn't know before." So I was like 23-24 when I finally took the plunge. As far as I'm concerned, it's never too late to accept the truth about yourself. The sooner you can do it, I think the more well-adusted you can be, and then you can eventually deal with how to fit it into your life. Oh, one last thing: I don't buy the "10%" thing. The Kinsey scale goes from about 1 to 6, with one end being totally straight, and the other end being totally gay. I think there's probably 25% of the whole male population that would be capable of having gay sex under the right circumstances, but probably only about 5% who'd be comfortable enough to do it on a regular basis. Don't forget, some of the most hostile, homophobic jerks out there are the ones that are up a notch or two on the Kinsey scale, but are too frightened or ashamed to admit it.

Oh, well in that case, I understand. I thought you meant this was REAL. Sure, I agree: getting rid of the parents by killing them in a car wreck is far too convenient. There are countless stories guilty of doing the same thing, and to me, it's often an easy answer. Anytime I kill off a character, I damn well think about it for a long time, and make sure the person's death is justified in the story. Sometimes, I'm guilty of going back and inserting some foreshadowing just to provide a clue that this person may not be long for this world. The laundry list of stuff you listed from that other story sounds a little over-the-top to me. But who knows? If it's well-written, and you buy it while you're reading the story, it's fine. But the moment a reader smells some plot point thrown in just to stir things up, I think they'll realize the writer isn't being honest with the story-telling. Conflict for conflict's sake doesn't work, either. There are always limits to believability, and I'm the first guy to scream about "internal logic" in a story, when things don't make sense or don't feel justified.

Give us an example. To me, as long as the conflict carries the story forward, and it doesn't come from out of nowhere, I don't see the problem. On the other hand, if you have a kid who gets discovered having sex by his parents, gets thrown out of his house, has to live on the street, then gets hit by a car, later gets cancer, then decides to kill a guy to make some money... all in the first three chapters... yeah, I can see where maybe that's a little too much, and it's all kind of random. So if you can give us an example of too much conflict, I'll be glad to give you my thoughts. Again, to me, as long as the conflict and action are logical, move in a pattern, and come out of the specific overall plot of the story, there's no problem. Of course, it all has to be believable; that goes without saying. Where did you read such a thing? This sounds like pure hokum to me. Do you have a website or online survey statistics you can direct us to? As far as I'm concerned, gay kids (and adults) are just as randomly stupid, smart, rich, poor, fat, slim, ordinary, and special as straight people. We get a kind of jaded "reality" of what gay people are in TV shows and fiction -- even our own. Whenever my partner and I attend the West Hollywood Gay Pride festivals every June or so, we're always struck by how "ordinary" most of the audience is. Some of them look like totally ordinary people -- which, when you think about it, they are. We're all just people, mentally and physically. To me, our sexual orientation is just one part of what makes us who we are; it's not necessarily the most important part of our existance.

Conflict is the very essance of drama. As I've often argued, conflict doesn't necessarily mean violence or catastrophe; you can have a lot of conflict just in a decision the hero has to make, or just in an internal monologue inside his or her own head. William Noble's excellent book, Conflict, Action, & Suspense (part of the Writers Digest "Elements of Fiction Writing" series) goes into all of this in great detail. While it's true that too much conflict can lead to kind of a soap opera thing, where the antagonist is getting assaulted in every single chapter, the point is made that you have to have something going on to keep the action moving and keep the reader's interest up. Think of conflict as another synonym for action. Conflict could be something as simple as a pivotal test a student has to take the next day, or maybe there's a traffic jam on the highway, and the conflict occurs because the hero is going to be delayed in a trip by fifteen minutes. Maybe the conflict happens when the hero is expecting a crucial phone call, then after he doesn't get it, he finds out his phone has been out of order for two hours. Conflict can be as simple as not knowing the information: I often see this done simply when a gay character is infatuated with another person, and we're not sure how that person will react. There's a million ways to work conflict into a story. Usually, when I criticize a story for being boring, it's the lack of conflict (and action) that drives me to it. Conflict is the very heart of drama (and comedy); without it, what you wind up with is little character studies, where there's essentially no real story there. Those can be entertaining on some level, but they aren't real stories, with a beginning, middle, and end, nor do they set up a situation and then resolve it. To me, it's the difference between a little musical "movement" and a symphony. When you try to drag out a "movement" to the length of a novel, it gets very boring, very quickly. BTW, I just discovered I have an extra copy of Mr. Noble's book. I'll be glad to give it away absolutely free to anybody who wants it -- first come, first serve.