Let me tell you something about writing Condoms. It is fiction, although portions of what take place are drawn from my own experiences. I’d say 25-percent of Condoms is embellished fact, 75-percent fabrication.
The following may sound like Creative Writing 101. If it does, sorry about that. It must be the teacher in me: my father was one, so was my brother. I have a nephew who is, so’s his wife. I was one for a while. It runs in the family. Indulge me; or, if you prefer, skip all of this and cut to the section below, “Condoms: A Synopsis.”
After establishing who my characters were—defining their weaknesses and strengths, their manner and style, their wisdom and wit—I had to provide a trigger for every move, for every action and reaction. Without motivation or a logic for it (or, worse, if you—the reader—had to search for it and in searching came up empty-handed), then my characters really had no idea who they were or why they did what they did wherever it was they were doing it. Neither did you. As far as I was concerned motivation was the imperative to a good tale: why does this person or this couple or this group of persons act the way they do. Have I told you enough about place and characters (and the interactions between the two) that you are able to somehow understand (or, in the case of an ambiguous diversion —a red herring, perhaps—been led to understand) why they are doing what they do? For example: This Person happens to be in This Spot who happens to be doing This with That Person. How come? What’s going on and why? If I have managed, through character definition, development and dialogue, to answer that question, then good for me. If I take the trouble to explain it, then I’ve failed: I’m like a comic explaining the punch line of a joke. Do that? No longer a joke.
In Condoms, motivation troubled me. If I had to dwell on a scene and/or activity and wonder why it was there without any basis for it being there, I’d cut or rewrite. Digressions and flashbacks were OK, provided they had relevance to or could be redirected seamlessly back to the present. Matter of fact, they often took on a life of their own. That’s one of the difficulties of writing stuff that has quasi-life-story roots: I’d find myself writing about an event that moves the plot forward, only to think of a life-story parallel that occurred eons ago that might embellish, illuminate, challenge, contradict, or ridicule. The difficulty? Was the flashback necessary and had I made enough sense of it so that you would get it; i.e., did it embellish, illuminate, challenge, contradict or ridicule, or was it a waste of time; or, worse, a redundant resemblance?
My novel? Nothing linear; no dark and stormy night ending with happily ever after. Episodic at best. The lives of three siblings and their relationships with their parents. Each episode—from one to the next—immersed in (and often overwhelmed by) some sort of quagmire of alienation that drives one sibling from the other and each from his/her parents.
I decided Condoms would have no plot line that moves encounters forward in chronological sequence; rather it would have a bunch of loose-ended stories dealing with antagonisms, hand-wringings, fears, sex, conundrums, and resolutions that, as the novel wrapped up, would be tied together (either implicitly or imperfectly) to suggest, finally, how siblings might cope with an absence of parental authority by running away, symbolically and realistically, from home (at various times of one’s growing up) and, in the case of one of the brothers (the narrator) still trusting his testosterone not to betray him, still hoping to preserve his sanity.
In looking back and trying to make sense of all of this in order to write Condoms, I found an embarrassment of riches to mine. In mining, I had to figure out what was relevant, what was trivial, regardless of influence: was the relevant ordinary, the trivial unique. Actually, it wasn’t that tough to figure out. I knew what I wanted to write about: sibling rivalries, parental neglect. Here was the tough part: if I expected you to identify with my characters and the situations they find themselves in so you were willing to follow them blindly wherever they go then I had to make damn sure I defined these situations as if, as far as you were concerned, they were happening for the first time, no matter how ordinary, unique, trivial or relevant, at first glance, they appeared to be.
The Synopsis
The novel, Condoms (a metaphor for life, death, protection, and safety), is about the relationships among three siblings (two brothers and a sister) and theirs with their parents.
In the opening chapters, we learn of the rather suffocating relationship between the mother and father (husband and wife), both Greek, and how that suffocation afflicts the behavior of the children as they try to cope with their parents’ authority that, to say the least, is often found wanting. The father is a professor of theology at a small liberal arts college in Ohio; the mother cares little about Ohio or the college or America and wants nothing more than to return to her roots in Greece. As she yearns ceaselessly and desperately to do just that and realizing there is little chance of that ever happening, she makes life miserable for everyone in and apart from the family.
There is a hint of impropriety between the father of the children and the wife of the college president, a rather stiff, yet affable academic, who finds his wife’s open flirtatiousness offensive and unacceptable. There is, later on, a parallel construct in the lives of the two brothers, suggesting a father’s influence; or, if not influence, then an intimation of nurturing. There are weddings, deaths, and funerals, none of which is without irritation, confrontation, challenge, or contempt; there are heated arguments between mother and children, mother and father.
Later chapters take the form of a lengthy letter from one of the brothers to the sister and the other brother. In it, he evokes episodes that mystify, illuminate, and confound yet serve to define who they are and what they mean to each other: there is confession, uncertainty, assertion, arrogance, and ambiguity; there are questions and, every once in a while, answers. There is humor and wit.
In the letter’s introduction the letter-writing brother explains what it’s all about: “If you look hard enough and pay attention, you will find here humiliations and mortifications; embarrassments and bewilderments; antagonisms and frustrations; breast-beatings and howlings; dreams and aspirations; affections and affectations; amusements and peccadilloes; disappointments and denials; fiascoes and failures; passions, both genuine and tasteless; trivialities, both absurd and vulgar; an occasional insipid remembrance and/or syrupy whimpering; and, finally and inescapably (and, often, of little or no consequence), rivers of events overflowing with all of the above in which (as Mother and Father are my witness)—as we were swept along by the current—we all held our breaths while trying to keep our heads above the torrent. Fair enough?”
If you are a publisher or an agent and think you might be interested in publishing “Condoms,” or representing me, please contact me at stephen@wordsink.us or at 216.696.8001.
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If you are a publisher or an agent and think you might be interested in publishing “Condoms,” or representing me, please contact me at stephen@wordsink.us or at 216.696.8001.
<< Return to Table of Contents
