Timothy Johnson

Tag: Fiction

  • New Story Out Now…in Audio

    Do you like to listen to stories? You should. Verbal storytelling goes back much, much further in human history than textual. Listening to stories is basically a part of your DNA. It’s in the blood that keeps your ears from rotting and falling off.

    This is assuming you’re a genuine meat human, of course, and not some digital bot on generative AI steroids that can’t even be bothered to build itself a synthetic body.

    I mean, talk about lazy.

    Anyways, I have a story in the latest episode (S25E11) of the NoSleep Podcast, and I’m kind of tickled about it. The story is called “We Are Endless,” and as you can see from this beautifully haunting illustration by Alia Synesthesia, there are zombies in it.

    “We Are Endless” is this week’s premium story, which means you need to join the Sleepless Universe to listen to it, and I highly encourage you to support this podcast not only to hear my story but to listen to a stunning amount of amazing work that’s available through this wonderful horror podcast.

    HUGE thanks to Dan Zappulla who brought the narrator to life (and death) as if he’d pulled that guy straight out of my noggin. It must have been one of those days I had a migraine, because the rest of the cast seems to have been poking around in there, too. I’m endlessly grateful to Ella Boone, Danielle McRae, Jesse Cornett, Graham Rowat, Jeff Clement, and Mike DelGaudio. You can find them and info on their work on the NoSleep Podcast’s website.

    And thank you to David Cummings and the rest of the team at the podcast for liking this one enough to produce such an incredible audio storytelling experience.

    This is my first story to ever be adapted into anything, and it genuinely brought me to tears to listen to it. To write any character, I need to hear their voice in my head, so it’s extremely fulfilling to actually hear them in this episode, and it’s something I’ll treasure for a long, long time.

  • What I learned From The Dog Stars

    Good boy, Jasper.

    I really like lit-to-film adaptations, so when a movie comes out that I’m interested in and it’s based on a book, I’ll usually read the book as well as see the movie. I don’t think that’s weird. What’s maybe a little weird is how I then look at them in conversation with each other as if they’re simply two cameras showing us the same story with their own perspectives and filters and, from that, how I then think we can view the different interpretations of a common story as statement pieces of their respective storytellers.

    I once built and taught a literature class around that idea and got to teach it for a couple years. It was fun. I’m a huge nerd.

    So anyway the film adaptation of The Dog Stars came out, and it so happened some friends had recommended recently I read the book because they thought it was up my alley, and boy howdy is it. It was something of a surreal experience for me reading this story about a couple of guys and a dog trying to survive after an apocalypse and seeing how thematically and emotionally similar it is to this novel I worked on for five years and nobody seems interested in publishing (#NotBitter).

    It’s a very different book, of course, but if I could have a beer or a coffee with Peter Heller (the novel’s author), I imagine we’d have some things to talk about.

    As it is, I really enjoyed The Dog Stars (both the book and film), and they taught me some things. Such as…

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  • How to Live With Horror

    This is not how you do it. (Sam Neill, In the Mouth of Madness; RIP, King)

    When talking to people about writing and what it takes to create a good story, I often say writers have to live with their stories for a while. The most critical component in writing a good story isn’t the number of words you put on the page. It’s the time you spend thinking about the story.

    Each story I work on hums in my mind every waking moment, even if I’m not at the computer. I’m picking bananas at the grocery store, and it’s the static hiss in the ceiling speakers. I’m having a conversation with my wife in a restaurant, and it’s whispering to me from a table in the corner. I’m walking my dog, and the leash is off in my mind.

    Whatever story I’m working on, whether it’s a short or a novel, it’s with me every moment of every day for weeks, months, even years.

    Someone recently asked, if I’m writing a horror story, how I live with horror for that long. I get that question. It seems totally bonkers to live with horror always in your mind. Why would anyone do that to themself? They must be weird. There must be something very wrong with them. They must be sick.

    I used to have insecurities about that. I worried what people thought. I worried there was something wrong with me, too.

    The truth is, while I live with my horror stories for long periods of time, I don’t live with the horror. Not always.

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  • I’ve Been Had by Generative AI, and I’m Mad About It

    Months ago, I bought a few prints of artwork from a local artist at a pop-up market. I needed some new decorations for my new-ish office that I still hadn’t quite settled into, and I was excited to support a guy who seemed genuinely excited about his work and seemed like the type of guy I could hang out and have a beer or coffee with for a while.

    I wasn’t even thinking about generative AI because it was a local artist I was meeting in person at a local event, and he seemed genuine and earnest.

    I brought those pieces home, intent on framing them and hanging them on my wall for inspiration, but even as I set them down in my office, something about them bugged me.

    And it kept bugging me.

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  • How Writing Works (for Me)

    Am I doing this right? Photo by Haonan Wei from Unsplash

    Somebody on social media tried to tell me how writing works, and I thought it was weird. I feel like I have a pretty good idea at this point how it works. But it got me thinking: how does it work? More to the point, this was in the context of fiction writing being a non-deterministic, unquantifiable process. Writers around the world and throughout time have wanted fiction writing to be predictable and measurable, but we all have learned, for various reasons, it just isn’t.

    If you write 1,000 words a day, you technically will have a novel in 50-ish (depending what reckoning you use for a novel’s length) days, but will that be a finished novel? Almost certainly no (there are plenty of notable exceptions, of course), and that rests on the idea that you can maintain that pace consistently. 

    But let’s say you do hit that mark every day. How many of those words are the right words? And how do you know? More to the point, do you feel good about those words, ready to engrave them in stone for all time?

    Writing is strange in the sense that its very name indicates a simplicity in the act: typing one word after another. It sounds so easy!

    But when I talk about “writing,” I’m talking about the writing process, or what it takes to create a finished piece of writing and how that works.

    First things first, it’s essential to note writing works differently for everyone because everyone is different. Obviously. That’s part of the difficulty of learning to write: we all have to learn what works for us in achieving our own goals. Also, goals vary, and any process that helps you achieve your goals is 100-percent irrevocably valid.

    That said, there are some constants in the writing process because, despite all of us being unique snowflakes, we’re all snowflakes, so we have that in common, which is cool. 

    These are parts of the writing process we all have in common, the unavoidable truths we all have to face to produce a finished piece of writing. My deepest concern is that, in this time when anyone can just rattle out a story and publish it in minutes, young, beginner writers deny themselves vital parts of the writing process. What’s more, I’m concerned there’s a broad, too-literal understanding of what writing is and what the writing process entails. There is one view of writing that is as simple as putting one word after another until you get to the end of the story and then moving on. If that aligns with your goals and provides everything you want out of writing, okay, but for me, as a reader, I look for the writers who spend more time and energy on their writing than that. As a writer, I’m chasing a story that outlives me, and I know that, by simply putting one word after another, I will never produce it.

    Let me explain how writing works (for me).

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  • Surf’s Up! Ride the Progress Wave Instead of Counting Words

    Photo by Gian Luca Pilia from Unsplash

    For as long as I’ve been doing this writing thing, writers have predominantly counted their words as a measure of progress. That never really made sense to me because, frankly, some days I end up negative in the word count department, having emptied some of the shelves of products that just weren’t selling.

    Progress is progress, whether it’s etching words into stone or wiping chalk lines from a blackboard. Whatever your process as a writer, every minute you spend working on your manuscript is a step you need to take to create the finished version containing all of those final words. What’s more, when you’re getting those really good words you know you’re going to keep, the ones that will end up carved on the monument, that’s really good progress. Right? That’s the ideal, isn’t it?

    Trouble is “progress is progress” isn’t very satisfying because, well, how much progress did I make today?

    I’m a staunch supporter of the idea that a writer’s process is a writer’s process. What works for you is what works for you. That’s valid, and nobody can take it away from you. Part of coming to know yourself as a writer is knowing what works for you as a writer and identifying your process.

    Which is why I think counting words is a bit of a distraction.

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  • Why Storytelling Works

    A book lies open on a wooden table, and black and white images of a pirate with treasure and a pirate ship pop up off the pages along with floating letters.
    Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

    Most craft essays focus on how storytelling works, but we don’t talk enough about why it works. I think the question is relevant whether you want to write stories or you just like to experience them, and it gets at the heart of not only the deeply moving effect storytelling can have but also its utility—why it’s so profoundly important storytellers keep doing what we do.

    Once again, I’m inspired by my teaching experience. I previously wrote about how I see stories as arguments, and while I think it can be helpful to think of stories rhetorically, teaching or educating is another part of argumentation; if you want someone to agree with you, you have to ensure they understand and know what you do. There are many ways to do that, of course, but let’s talk about two categories of learning. 

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  • Storytelling Elements Are Connected (in Triangles)

    Yellow, glowing triangles in the dark
    Photo by Jumping Jax on Unsplash

    Last time, I wrote about Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals and how they can play a role in storytelling, and it got me thinking about triangles. We often express Aristotle’s appeals in triangular shape to demonstrate effective rhetoric can’t exist without all three and to express the idea that they’re connected. Triads appear in all kinds of artistic theory, from the color wheel to the building blocks of musical chords. So what about literature? I’ve been wondering about other storytelling elements that we can visualize as triangles and how this frame of thought can help us better understand the stories we’re experiencing or telling.

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  • Four (Argumentative) Questions to Ask for Better Storytelling

    A statue of Aristotle holding scrolls

    All stories are arguments.

    I know what you’re thinking. That’s a bold claim, and what’s a fiction writer doing talking about argumentation anyway? Well, I’ll have you know I taught it at the university level, thank you very much, but that’s beside the point (actually, no, it isn’t; it speaks to ethos, which is a fancy word I’ll get to momentarily). If you disagree stories are arguments, that’s okay. How about we let that particular statement stand for the time being? If nothing else, we can use argumentation as a framework to look at storytelling through a new lens.

    Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher (maybe you’ve heard of him), conceived of the rhetorical appeals (ugh, I know, booooooooring, but stick with me as I crash you through a rhetoric lesson). Those appeals are logos, ethos, and pathos. Aristotle envisioned three different modes any speaker or writer uses to appeal to an audience. He also conceived of a fourth, kairos, or the moment in which the speech or writing takes place, which can affect the speaker or writer as well as the audience. We also often refer to this concept as context, and especially in writing, we consider the context in which the writer is or was writing as well as the context in which the audience receives that writing, which can sometimes be extremely different. Aristotle also considered logos, ethos, and pathos as wisdom, virtue, and goodwill, respectively.

    Got all that? Good. Now how does it apply to storytelling?

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  • Why I Love Storytelling

    The cast of Shrinking are gathered around a long park bench on a beautiful day.

    Recently, my wife and I finished watching the second season of Shrinking, and while the credits rolled, I leaned in, wrapped my arms around her, and just stayed there for a while because I cherish her so damn much.

    For me, it was a moment of pure storytelling magic. While stories can have myriad effects on us, depending on the story and the audience, Shrinking is a show about cherishing loved ones and growing by facing personal challenges together. It’s therapeutic and only natural that my response to it is an outpouring of love. Other responses also are perfectly natural or reasonable, though, if it makes you feel violent, you might want to talk to someone about that. I found myself profoundly moved.

    When I taught literature to undergrads, I distinguished between fact and truth with my students. One appealing aspect of nonfiction storytelling is it’s built on facts. We tend to call them “true stories,” but I wish we’d call them “factual stories” because there’s a larger truth to factual stories that goes beyond the facts. We watch a documentary about Bernie Madoff and think, “yeah, he had a really good life for a while, but when the hammer came down, they even took his underwear. Maybe stealing from people isn’t worth it.” We read a biography about a great political figure and walk away with a perspective of hope. We watch a 30-second clip on the Internet of a guy rescuing a doe from a frozen lake, and our faith in humanity is restored. 

    Fictional stories access these same larger truths even though they may be based on fabrications and fantasy. Fiction, despite being totally made up, contains truth or truths. 

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