Overthinking: When Your House Falls on a Witch

 

I live in Oklahoma. It is the state due south of Kansas and a fellow sufferer of Tornado Season. Like most people in the Midwest, I have several childhood traumas involving thunder storms, rumbling sheet metals roofs, and praying that my family's trailer house didn't get tossed across the meadow.

Currently, I live in a lovely brick house with large interior wall closets. It has done wonders for my anxiety. I now spend milder storms chatting with my reader friends on Discord.

Naturally, most of them are familiar with the Wizard of Oz. Most of my generation has seen the movie even if they haven't read the novels. During the last storm, someone made the comment “Don't squash any witches.”

My response, “If that happened, I am not looting the corpse in front of that witch's older and nastier big sister.”

That led to a very long ramble about funeral practices and related ehtics, and later this blog.

Illustraion by W.W. Denslow

A little context into my family tree is needed. I was raised by a geologist and a journalist. However, my parents are not the most interesting career combinations. There's a branch on my paternal side that has worked, run, and owned funeral parlors out in California. Great Uncle Ray and his son David demystified a lot of the icky around the subject.

Needless to say, I grew up with an odd understanding of “what happened after someone dies.” While I didn't have any insights on the metaphysical issues and worries, I knew what people on this side of existence had to handle.

A funeral director has an odd professional function. It's been this way since the Egyptians started mummifying the dead. In the U.S.A., they act socially as an event coordinator for the bereaved. This is a position of great emotional and ethical responsibility. Their job is to give the community a safe and orderly way to grieve the loss.

The other element, the icky one, is safe and orderly cadaver disposal. It's not just about hiding away reminders of our morality. Sources of decay quickly become dangerous to the living.

Most of Ray and David's stories were not about clients, living or deceased, but about people 'backstage.' You get all types in the business, and learning experiences range from awkward to ridiculous chains of events. (For example, if a living person lays down in a coffin, that coffin can't be legally resold for burial. A prankster quickly found himself with a very expensive price tag after a failed jump-scare.) I learned a lot by proxy.

Illustration by W.W. Denslow

Circling back around to Oz, I'm not Dorothy Gale. She is a child who lost her parents at an early age and grew up on a farm during the Great Depression. We have extremely different sensibilities and life experiences.

After accidental manslaughter, Dorothy quickly hones in on her goals, getting back to Kansas. She sets out on the Yellow Brick Road to the cheers of the Munchkins and the gifts from the Good Witch (named Glinda in the movie).

I, on the other hand, would not be going anywhere without addressing the issue of the dead body.

Picture this:

The Munchkins are celebrating liberation. The dictator is dead. People are singing and dancing in the street.

Meanwhile the Good Witch watches a shaken Okie piecing together bio-hazard protection. Horrible person or not, the deceased can't stay under my house. I'm having flash-backs to the time Dad had to dig out a burrow under the trailer house because a critter died in there.

Things become yet more complicated when the witch turns to dust. In the movie, this is the scene where the striped socks roll back up under the house, leaving behind the Ruby Slippers. In the book, the Good Witch literally shakes witch dust out of the Sliver Slippers before handing them to Dorothy.

This handily solves the issue of decay. However, my inherited sensibilities will not settled for leaving the rest of the deceased's clothes under my house. The dust itself would be handled with the same care as human ash. I'm going to need a large jar with a lid, and my painter's mask.

By this point, the Good Witch of the North should have serious concerns about my sanity and about handing magic slippers of any color to me. However, magic and fairylands have rules about this type of thing. To the victor go the spoils.

I also have concerns about those slippers. By my reckoning, Glinda has no business giving them to me. This feels scummy. And no, not because she's asking me to wear shoes that someone died in.

You see, funeral parlors and shoes have a long a sordid history. In the old days when shoes were leather and expensive, more than a few undertakers would remove the shoes after the viewing but before the internment. While up-cycling is good, this was often done without the permission of the people paying for the funeral. The shoes and other valuable items would be sold on the side and the undertaker quietly pockets the money. Grave-robbery before the grave is even filled.

This is disrespectful and dishonest on multiple levels. Modern societies have complex laws about it, and grave clothes are not 'up for grabs.'

So, I ask if the deceased had any surviving next-of-kin.

Now, in the slower paced book, the two Wicked Witches hated and avoided each other. However, in the movie, this is the point where the Wicked Witch of the West, shows up.

Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz 1939

“Who killed my sister?! Who killed the Witch of the East?!”

Margaret Hamilton's performance terrified me as a small child. Now however, I'm a 5-foot 5-inch woman who has a younger sister who has nearly died in a car accident. I can recognize anger masking grief.

So, I have a jar of remains, a pile of neatly folded clothes, and magical shoes. Logically, all those items belong to the living witch. If Glinda magics the slippers onto my feet, I'm not going to be happy. That's receiving stolen goods. No thanks.

Luckily for Oz, I really dislike being screamed at or threatened. I would like to think myself mature enough to deescalate even when faced with a ranting witch. However, there is a reason I did not enter the family business. The minute she snarks 'I can cause accidents too' the sympathy bouquet goes away and the pepper-spray comes out.

Ironically, despite all my life experience and 'adult sensibilities' I don't see myself changing the story too much. Like Dorothy, I would want to get back home to my family. Like Dorothy, I have issues with setting out to destroy another witch, this time on purpose, but I would still try.

No, the main difference between me and Dorothy is that when faced with a brown, shapeless mess of melted witch goo, I would be looking for another jar. Dorothy literally throws more water on the remains and sweeps them out the door.

Illustration by W.W. Denslow

World Building Mundus: An Atypical Wizard

If you needed an old Sage with a flowing white beard and tomes of forbidden lore, that was not Leon. If you wanted to see a fabulously dressed courtier working to bring political revolution, that was not him either. 

Leon was the one to call when your magic mirror broke.

From the unpublished novelle The Odd-Job Wizard, Loren D. Selby

 

Unlike Celabramar who grew from a doodle, Leon the Wizard is was inspired by a real person, my late father Dwayne Leon Selby. The character is not a one-to-one translation and has developed his own mannerisms and quirks. However, his core concept, a highly educated man with a knack for a repair, a blue jacket, and odd social blind spots, has my father's fingerprints.

No, Dad did not practice magic or befriend dragons. He just loved learning and developing new skills. He was also well educated, a Bachelors in geology, and only worked in that field a handful of year during my life-time.

Having the skills and certifications doesn't assure you work. Dad also taught me that there is no such thing as a job 'beneath' you. Work doesn't care who does it as long as it gets done.

Leon's repair skills are strongly inspire by Dad's hobby of learning new things - car restoration, bee keeping, sew-machine repair, baking, small part fabrication, and wine-brewing. Dad could fix nearly anything, and what he couldn't he would find a book or manual for future study.

Another thing Leon took from Dad was being aware that you can accidentally scare people just by existing. My father had an intense personality, a booming laugh, and a love of debate. He also stood over six foot tall, with a barrel chest and a thick neck. People regularly thought he was a former high-school jock. Between his physical build, unfortunately shaped eyebrows, and some facial nerve damage, Dad's non-verbal cues were often misread.

Leon isn't physical threatening. However, he knows that it is all to easy for people to come to fear magic-users. He hides his frustration with his co-workers behind a mask of professionalism. He takes a walk to settle his temper. He takes every chance he gets to be honest about his powers and limits. He works hard to not be the typical aloof Wizard.

Ironically, this level of familiarity and permissiveness backfires on Leon. It often did on Dad. In the real world, people would take my father's desire to be liked and abuse his boundaries. When you hide or mask your frustration, people don't realize they are making you uncomfortable.

In The Odd-Job Wizard, the townsfolk become used to Leon's services. Some of this is driven by the situation. They live in a town that's falling apart. However, there's a large gap between expecting someone to led a hand, waking someone up to demand instant repair work. They fixate on “what can Leon do for me?”

The current draft's opening features Leon being woken up by an unpleasant neighbor because the hot-water tank needs work. When Leon finally gets a paying project from Celabramar, the cracks in these toxic relationship widen. There is a difference between being valuable and being appreciated.

All of this makes Dad's middle name, Leon, fits the fictional character well. Leon means 'lion' in many languages. Lions have complicated relationships with humans. One one hand, they are easily demonized as threat to our bodily safety. On the other, we've seem so many videos of them behaving like big goofy cats that we forget to respect their boundaries.

On the journey to publication, I fear that the name, Leon, may be a problem. My own name Loren, has many of the same letters in it. However, I would honestly rather get a pen name than change the character's name.

Leon the wizard is a work of fiction. Dwayne Leon Selby was a father who valued creativity. While he is no longer present to read The Odd-Job Wizard, he read and commented on many of the earlier story lines. He would have loved how the character has developed and laughed himself silly over the idea of a wizard building a hot-air balloon out of patchwork fabric and leftover wallpaper.

Doodling Dragons

 

One of the driving forces in my novelle The Odd-Job Wizard is Celabramar the dragon. He has an intense personality, big appetite, and a quick temper. He has also been living in my head since I was thirteen years old and doodled him during my one year in private education.

I started one class with a pencil sketch of a chess piece. Later that drawing became a tower on a lake. Yet another class later I decided that tower needed a dragon. That dragon would become Celabramar.

Doodle of a Dragon and Tower
Pencil on lined notebook paper
by
A 13-year-old Overthinker with wobbly penmenship and poor spelling skills

Celabramar is fun to write. His wants are simple, a full stomach and a warm quiet place to nap. The conflict comes from the fact his is a large obligate carnivore with no need for human norms. He doesn't have to be malicious to cause problems.

The backstory conflict in The Odd-Job Wizard starts because ranchers settle in his hunting ground. Celabramar still needs to eat. The native prey is gone, so he just eats sheep. This is reasonable in his mind. However, much like in the U.S.A.'s Great Westward Expansion, the settlers freak out about 'marauding savages' threatening their lives and livelihoods.

Thankfully, Mundus is not America. Celabramar is not a human facing the combine forces of colonialism and the federal government. He is a fire-breathing dragon. Young, inexperienced, but still a dragon.

In human terms, he's just moved out from his parents house for a steady job. His 'job' for lack of a better term is managing his hunting territory. Keeping the land stable and reporting problems to his elders. I drew inspiration from interactions with ranchers, wildlife management, and my own education in environmental engineering. Celabramar acts as a key-stone species. He hunts mega-fauna and keeps the dangerous monster population in check – one bite at a time.

Madam Vircroc, the dragon diplomat, and Sage Owdigee, didn't exist before I started writing this novella. Originally, they were just to provide exposition. However, they quickly became an excellent way to contrast Celabramar's maturity and hint at the greater culture of the Dragon Nation.

The Dragon Nation is a, hopefully, polite nod to the First Nations of America. They have a different culture, a different society, and so treat the land differently than their neighbors do. The history of Oklahoma contains repeated clashed over ecological use and management between colonists and indigenous people. My story mentions fencing off water sources and how ranching, farming, and mining changes the land. This are the least horrifying things real people use to hurt each other. Illegal settlements due to misread maps, corporate interests, and misinformed pioneers was endemic.

Homesteaders having to abandon their claims and return to civilization actually happened. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder ends with the family having to leave the Osage Reservation because Pa Ingalls was too eager to get a choice location for his homestead.

Celabramar, much like the average citizen of the Osage and other First Nations, is in a painful situation Anything he does can spiral into a political disaster. He still needs to hunt and eat. He has random people wandering into his cave hoping to become 'glorious heroes' by picking a fight. It's exhausting.

And so, Celabramar decides to move. I expect some readers to mixed feelings about the message it sends. Traditionally, when the native population gets displaced, they don't get to come back.

However, Celabramar is a dragon, not a human. The Odd-Job Wizard is a fantasy fiction. To dragon, moving a few valleys inland is more like changing your phone number and buying new locks. He's not giving up. He's keeping himself from escalating the problem.

The young dragon with a literally fiery temper wants to be the bigger person. This is the core of his character. Over decades of daydreaming and writing, his mannerism, appearance, and even name have changed. However, the silver scales and lake island remain in honor of that first doodle.

Overthinking: Creating 'Good' Fictional Characters

 

Compelling stories need compelling characters. As I've reworked, and re-titled, my novella The Odd-Job Wizard, I've discovered that this description is oddly deceptive. What makes a compelling character? Why is it so hard to pull off?

Starting writers focus on uniqueness, making sure the character's back story and physical description them stand out as much as possible. Hair color, physical traits, childhood events, mannerisms, and motives.

The narrative events show off these traits in some dramatic moment. The quipy retort to the antagonist. A display of physical power or moral character. The writer wants their precious brainchild to stand out in your mind, to be vibrant and memorable.

However, a unique character is not necessarily a compelling one.

Take the supernatural romance genre and the vampire lover character.

Edward Cullen from Twilight is unique, to the point that people have turned him into a bit of a joke. He's a vampire, who glitters in the sunlight. His big reveal in the clearing as been parodied so many ways. Edward's sparkles could have been replaced with any traits - glowing in the dark, turning into living stone, carefully hidden wings – yet functionally his role in the story is unchanged.

People don't read Twilight for him. They read it for Belle, the girl-next-door who stumbles into the mysterious and dangerous world of romance.

If unique details isn't the answer, many writers settle into the more 'meta' elements of character design. Archetypes and meta-tropes. These are all ways that the character acts within the narrative and how those interplay with the audiences expectations of stories.

The girl-next-door is unremarkable in a crowd, yet lives a complex life.

The rebel princess will not permit an other injustice, no matter life's pressure.

The wanderer grows with each adventure until they reach the story's end as an inspiring hero or a monstrous warning.

People often select narratives based on their preferred archetypes. Using these meta elements to signal to potential audiences is an intermediate storytelling skills. It's like like running. It's something that comes naturally to all of us, but gets better when it's a trained skill.

However, just using a compelling archetype doesn't guarantee a compelling character.

Consider the fairytale Cinderella. At its core, the story is that people who stay kind in spite of tragedy and abuse are beautiful and get recognized for that. I greatly enjoy that type of narrative. However, when ever a new 'Cinderella' story comes out my first instinct is 'Oh, not again.' Half the time, the protagonist makes me want to reach through the pages of the book and shake some sense into them.

Audiences can and will reject a character, even a unique take on a favored archetype. 'they're flat' 'they don't make sense' 'I just don't get them.' Audiences want to connect with characters emotionally. The missing ingredient is empathy.

Compelling characters are understandable and the audience empathizes with them. This is not to say they relate to the characters on a personal level and are rooting for them.

Game of Thrones by George Martin is popular because he is very good at drawing the readers emotions into the stories. Despite the series violence and constant killing off of audience favorites, people keep coming back to watch the characters. Their struggles and moral choices resonate, even if it's just to digust and outrage. (I personally have many issues with his works. However, I freely admit that Martin is a master at his craft.) Thoughts like 'he didn't deserve that', 'she got what was coming to her,' and such are all signs that the audience is empathizing with the characters.

For the audience to empathize, to have an emotional response, the storyteller has to make the character understandable. This is not the same as making the character have 'common experience' with the audience.

For example, nobody living has 'stood in ulfish thought beneath a tumtum tree.' Most of us have never touched a sword, much less made a vorpal one go snicker-snatck. On a factual level, we have little in common with the unnamed hero of The Jabberwocky.

However, what we do have in common is the act of having to face whatever horrible thing is haunting our lives. Of deciding 'enough is enough.' You beat the monster and go home to a brighter world. This is a universal experience. The whole poem builds to this moment by pulling at your sense of uncertainty, caution, and second guessing. You celebrate with the narrator 'Frabjous Day! Callooh-Callay.'

One of my biggest fears as I send queries is that Leon, the handyman wizard, isn't a compelling protagonist. I have finished with round of editing, and believe a nice blend of uniqueness and a stable core concept. What I worry about my ability to make readers 'care' about what he does and feels. Like we seen in the Jabberwocky poem, this comes down to your skill with language and pacing.

I've been designing and refining Leon for a few decades. In my head he is a rich, full character. However, the only way to know if he is compelling is to send him out, to face the real chance of rejection, criticism, and mockery.

As I pluck up the courage to send querie letters to agents,

When the Pedestal Breaks

 

Bill Cosby, Roald Dahl, and now, Neil Gaiman. . .

All creators whose work inspired me. The comedy routines, the colorful character archetypes, clever banter, and layering and subverting storytelling tropes to send a powerful message.

They each left a mark on my childhood, strong influences in my writing style, and now, wounds in my heart.

Never meet your heroes. Don't buy into the hype. Reminds the Cynic.

'Good art' doesn't make 'good people.' Sighs the Rationalist.

My dream was to be like them when I grew up. Morns the Inner Child.

What lines will you cross? Asks the Pessimist. If you make it big, what hypocrisy will you commit?

I'm nearly thirty-five years old. I've have grieved many fallen role-models – from artists and storytellers, to community leaders and my own kin. It hurts each time. The betrayals compound into a single stinging feeling. “You can't trust anybody.”

However, a life without trust, without letting people into the deep and vulnerable places of your heart is impossible. When anyone gets deep enough to inspire you, they have the power to hurt you.

It's especially painful when you have to dig them out of that cherished place your heart. Beautiful memories you have shaped your life around take a new hue. Those sparks of passion and inspiration risk flickering out under the feeling of shame and rage. You have to ask yourself, “What does this mean for my dream?”

I will keep writing. I not hide the fact that flawed people played a part in shaping how I write.

I want to share stories. I want to dare people to put a little kindness, bravery, and whimsy back in this complicated world.

I'm keeping my dream.

Watercolor, Rima Staines 

My Second Draft and Internet Search History

 

As an chronic overthinker turned writer, I walk a delicate balance between attention to detail and spending too much time nit-picking things that the readers won't care about.

My brain is such, I need a degree of confidence to add anything into the narrative. This has led to long researchers sessions for my WIP (possible title changed to “The Odd-Job Wizard”). As I wrap up the second draft, my internet serach history had gotten very werid. Here are some of the highlights and an explaination for them.

Historical Building Design

The most notable example in the story are three 'sets' the water channel for the mill, assessors offices, smokehouses. Swindlers Bounty is a frontier colony. I needed a technology level that fit. Also, I had to see if it was possible for the characters to up-cycle the building. Leon's smokehouse was based of one from a Ante-Bellum plantation. They could cure multiple carcasses as once.

An invaluable resource were the illustrated 'If you lived in a __' books that were popular with Usborne and Scholastic in the 90's. The cutaways made it easier to get a sense of scale for the character. This helped with the water mill scenes. It also gave me the technical name for breakable-yet-could-be plausibly-repaired pieces.

How Big Is It?

Animals also required a bit of legwork. Mostly to check size and weight. My problem once again was getting a sense of scale. I ended up writing down numbers and pacing out the size with a tape measure.

The first draft had Celabramar's politically fraught snacks being cows and the ranchers more like old Western beef barons. This was changed to sheep as they were smaller and easier for a dragon of his size to lift off the ground.

I also fact checked the size of a moose head trophy through a taxidermist website. They are big, but surprisingly light. (Makes sense in hindsight.)

Unit Conversion and Geometry

The biggest time sink was converting units of measurement. I cracked open the old geometry book to figure out the size of Celabramar's horde. I used the length of the dragon as the diameter of a cylinder and figure out the average height of the treasure pile.

From there I made a guesstimate of the value, by creating three equations for treasure piles made of mostly gold coins, mostly silver coins, and most copper coins. For fun, I also looked up the market value of beef cows and calculated how many cows each would buy.

All this work was to figure out how much Celabramar was willing to spend on moving his lair. It also lead to the plot device of his horde having more value as an coin collection than raw metal.

There were also other equations. However, they were before I settled on the idea of hot air balloon travel.

Red Meat or White Meat?

One of the last, and perhaps silliest, bits of research was about meat.

Throughout the story, Celabramar hunts several different prey animals for trade or food. I felt confident writing about deer, goat, sheep, crab – I've eaten them. The two I have not are rabbit, which is expensive if you don't raise or hunt it yourself, and swan.
Swan used to be a commercial meat. However, the bird was granted protected status in the U.S.A. Unlike with rabbit, I had trouble finding repeatable and ethically sources descriptions swan meat.

In my first draft, Celabramar declares that swan is “Good red meat, lots of fats for the brain.”

My editor Meg Dendler was very confused by this. She replaced the the line as white and lean, more in line with a traditional poultry. I can safely say she had never eaten swan either.

However, I have eaten duck. Duck is dark meat, darker than turkey. It's also lean muscle fiber but the skin has a protective layer of fat that keeps it moist when cooked. I assumed, correctly, that swan was as to duck as turkey is to chicken – bigger with darker meat. My researched backed it up.

Nevertheless, the goal of a editor is to help the story make sense to readers. Duck is not a common dish in the U.S.A. However, turkey is a holiday tradition. With this common ground, I reworked the description to

“Nice dark meat, good bit of fat too. Excellent for the brain.”

This one line took about an hour of fact checking and world building. There are more detailed descriptions of swan like 'rich,' 'moist,' 'gamey,' 'fishy mutton,' etc. However, it's mostly for cooked swan and varies by dish. The dragon is describing raw, uncooked swan. He'd cares more about its nutritious value than its optimal wine pairing.

This is why it takes me so long to write anything! My brain overthinks everything.

Writers, Runners, and 'Making it Big;

 

As I try to transition from a hobbyist writer into a (hopefully) published and paid author, I know that making it big like JK Roweling or Brandon Sanders comes down to luck as much as skill. That doesn't mean I shouldn't make a serious go of it. 

Consider the Olympics. The gold medal winner doesn't win because the other runners didn’t train.. Everyone trains. There's a literally science to training for the Oylpmics. Often times, the finalists have slight bio-mechanical advantage. A lucky chance of genetics. 

It might seem simplest to throw up your hands, “I know I don't have that x factor. I'm not going to win the prize. It's a waste of time.” 

However, runners don't run just for that one specific moment of glory. That's an unsustainable motivation. They train and run, because they feel that the sport and journey make their life better. You hear terms like 'personal best' 'seeing how I measure up.' The contest itself is a prize. 

I would love my WIP to get picked up by a big publishing house. I could have a PR manager help with selling and royalites would let me live a decadent lifestyle of gluten-free baguettes and hazelnut spread. Realistically, I'm probably going to pay for a few vanity copies for my friends and family. 

The same is true for my social media presence. Before 2020 hit like a wrecking ball, my blog posts reached maybe three dozen people. There’s one comment thread – from my late gran. Why commit to every other week posts? 

Like the runner, I think the version of my life where I practice and build discipline to write is better than the one where I don't. The world where I create a master list of post topics is better than the one where I dally around for 'inspiration' and then slink in past a deadline. It’s training –the journey matters as much as the end. 

The effort I put into my writing habits does not guarantee I will have fame and fortune. The only guarantee is that I will have a better story to share.