http://www.succeedinevil.com

Thanks for all your feedback. It means more than you know to have your support. Trying to break through is lonely, demoralizing work. You guys make it easier and a hell of a lot more fun.

Part of the contest is judged and part of it involves visitor votes. So go vote already.

http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/629

And while you’re there, go through a few more entries. They’ve got them set up on a random system you just click and it serves up a fresh one to your critical ear. Check out the competition and help them weed through the entries.

Thanks again.

This Saturday I’m going to be on Matthew Wayne Selznick’s (author of Brave Men Run) new podcast. It will me and Scott Sigler (Author of Earthcore and Ancestor) talking, among other things, about how the publishing industry is changing.

Sure, I like the sound of my own voice, but I’m deeply interested in what Sigler has to say. He’s gruff and scrappy and he just scared the absolute piss out of the “establishment” by having Ancestor’s debut crack the Amazon top 10. I can’t wait to hear all about it.

And since we’re doing it through TalkShoe you can listen in live. May 5th 5:00 EST.

Check all of the out on YouTube. (more…)

This is an excerpt of Richard Posner from the Becker/Posner blog. It’s not important that you know who these guys are, but they are big brains in the fields of Law and Economics. They kind of guys who have theorems named after them. http://home.uchicago.edu/~rposner/biography. (more…)

But things are bubbling. I swear they are. For one thing, we’ve got a colorist (the Mighty Myron Macklin) and he’s awesome. And we’re almost, almost, almost, so close I can taste it, done with the color version of the book.
And of course, if you’ve caught up with the latest installment. We can expect many interesting things from Topper in what I’m going to call Season Two of How to Succeed in Evil.
Here’s a peek at the color (unlettered)

technorati tags:How to Succeed in Evil, Patrick E. McLean, comic book, Graphic Novel, Edwin Windsor, Nic Rummel, Myron Macklin

It was on this day in 1452 that the first section of the Gutenberg Bible was published in Mainz, Germany. It was the first book ever printed with movable type, Gutenberg’s revolutionary idea. At the time, all existing books were copied out by hand, and in order to be as efficient as possible, scribes had developed a way of writing that was full of abbreviations. Words were written in a dense cursive script, and there was very little space between letters or even words on the page.It was Gutenberg’s genius to imagine an entirely different way of writing, in which all the individual letters would be distinct from each other, rather than connected. That way, he could produce individual blocks with letters on them. He fitted these letter blocks into a frame, coated them with an ink made of linseed oil and soot, and then used an adapted wine press to print text on paper. The revolutionary effect of movable type was the ability to print an infinite number of pages from a small number of letter blocks simply by rearranging them.Within three decades there were print shops all over the European continent. It is estimated that more books were produced in the 50 years after Gutenberg’s invention than scribes had been able to produce in the 1,000 years before that.Today, about four dozen copies of the Gutenberg Bible survive. One of the most recent copies to come on the market was auctioned in New York in 1987. It consisted of only the first volume, but it was in good condition, and it sold at auction for more than five million dollars.

http://www.elabs7.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=25571&mlid=499&siteid=20130&uid=731c61ee4d

The last time I was in New York I was blindsided by a Gutenberg Bible. I literally backed into it while checking out the New York Public Library. It affected me tremendously. And perhaps most of all because it was still perfectly legible.

But a few facts not noted here.

1) When John Jacob Astor, one of the main patrons of the library, brought the Bible into the United States he made the Customs officers remove their hats.

2) Shortly after printing his Bible Gutenberg went bankrupt.

Happy birthday moveable type!

technorati tags:Gutenberg, patrick mclean, Seanachai, NYPL, New York Public Library

The average length of what I write is about two pages. Which means I started writing something new about 200 times last year. And as you’ve probably experienced, starting is the hardest part.

Hell, starting an email is hard. I write for a living and starting is hard. But if I don’t start, I can’t finish. And if I can’t finish, I can’t get paid. And when I really get stuck, this is what I do to avoid starvation:

I write longhand.

Seems silly, but, for me, this is the gold standard of all writing hacks. The problem with writing is, in many ways, the same problem as hitting a golf ball. Both the page and the ball just sit there. And when you write you have (theoretically) a lifetime to rewrite it until you get it right.

But that gives the critical part of your brain time to jump in a muck everything up. It needs something to critize. That’s it’s job after all. But when I write longhand, instead of giving me a stream of, “you’re writing sucks, it sucks, it sucks, sucks, sucks and you just changed tenses you eggsucking loser” it pours forth with “you’re HANDwriting sucks, it sucks, it sucks, sucks, sucks, go back to those huge pencils you had in kindergarden you loser.”

This is a huge difference. Because now the critical part of my brain is no longer in the way of the creative part of my brain. The critical function is necessarily and naturally secondary to the creative function. Something must exist before you can start whining about it.

In fact, the more I focus on the quality of my handwriting, the easier the process seems to be. So when you’re really stuck - go low tech on the problem. Bust out the paper and pen and start scrawling away.
And let me know if it works for you.

technorati tags:writing hacks, Patrick E. McLean, writing, writing tips, Structure of Story, Seanachai

Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
Perry FergusonVan Nest Polglase
A. Roland Fields
Darrell Silvera

Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
Gregg Toland

Best Director
Orson Welles

Best Film Editing
Robert Wise

Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture
Bernard Herrmann

Best Picture
Orson Welles

Best Sound, Recording
John Aalberg (RKO Radio SSD)

Citizen Kane, the film that many pick as the greatest of all time, didn’t win a single one of these awards. Not one. The only Oscar that it garnered was for Best Screenplay.
Connect the dots as you like, but that’s how I try to put award shows in the proper perspective.

technorati tags:Parsec Awards, Patrick E. McLean, Succeed in Evil, Death of a Dishwasher, Seanachai, Seanachai podcast

Because if writing is a game, the reader’s expectation is the ball. If I can put some spin on that ball and move it around well, I feel like I’m doing my job as a storyteller. If I can’t I’m probably just wasting a reader’s valuable time.

Say I describe a character who’s an ex-drill instructor. Crew cut. Ramrod straight posture. The kind of guy who irons his t-shirts. You develop expectations about this guy. He probably doesn’t suffer fools gladly. You expect him to swear a bit and not back down from a fight.

And if tell a story where he swears and gets into fights, well, it’s probably going to be pretty dull. I could be colorful about how I describe the fights and invent all manner of interesting oaths, but that’s really fighting an uphill battle. All that stuff is the window dressing on the story itself. And if there’s no story beneath it, it basically has to be the best window dressing of all time. (Who wants to perfect window dressing when you should be building houses?)

But let’s say I tell you that this guy is scared. In fact, it’s been so long since he’s been afraid, he’s having trouble placing the sensation. It not what we expect from this character. Now it gets interesting. Why is he afraid? What is scaring him?

It could be a fierce monster. Or a guy pointing a gun at his head? But that’s what we expect. What if it’s a 9 year old girl? Now we’re curious about the girl. Why is he scared of the girl? She could have the power to start fires with her mind. But that feels kind of expected. What if she’s just an ordinary girl? No powers what so ever? What about an ordinary girl could scare a hard-ass Jarhead. And I mean really scare him.

Let’s make her Ebola Mary — a carrier of a fantastically lethal disease.
And what does this leatherneck do when confronted with a horrible, inglorious death. He could run away. He could talk big. He could break down crying. He could attack. He could whistle a happy tune. The entire universe of human action is open to us really. But which one is the least expected and why?

Because if everything happens as we expect it will, a story becomes dull as paste.
To be sure, this is quite a simplification of story construction. Some conventions must be adhered to. And paying certain things off creates a very enjoyable experience. But being aware of the expectations that story creates really helped me understand writing in a new way. In the next post I’ll test my analytical tool on a few well-known tales.

technorati tags:patrick e. mclean, Story, writing, The Structure of Story, Plots, Story Construction

High Noon - Bad guy returns to town on the day of the former Sheriff’s wedding. We expect the Sherriff to get married and leave town. But he doesn’t. We expect at least some of the townspeople to help him - but they don’t. We expect his wife to stand by him, but she doesn’t. (Do not forsake me oh my Darling…)

Rocky - Even though the conventions of the boxing story demand that the underdog win at the end, the story creates expecations that Rocky is a bum. That he doesn’t stand a chance. Further, we expect the guy who’s a boxer to be brutish and rough. But the plot with Adrian defies that expectation by showing him to be surprisingly tender and gentle.

To Kill a Mockingbird - We expect Boo Radley to be a monster. He winds up saving Scout.
Don Quixhote - We expect the good Don to take the first good beating and go home. We expect Sancho Panza to wise up and desert the old fool.

Raiders of the Lost Ark - We expect Indy to get into a huge brawl with the guy with the sword - but he just shoots him.

I’m not saying unexpectedness is the gauge of a good story - but there appears to be something going on here. You give me a good story and I’ll show you that a big part of it is unexpected.

technorati tags:Patrick E. McLean, Structure of Story, Story, Writing, Story Construction, Plots

“Your hat is on fire.”

“Yes, but I bought it on sale.”

If you just agree with the other person, the tension is dissipated. If you say no, you really have to know where the story goes next. You have to take the ball and run with it for a while, and you reduce the possibility of the other person bailing you out. But “Yes, but…”? “Yes, but…” is magic.

“You’re wife has run off with another man.”

“(Yes, but…) I’ve been trying to be rid of that battleaxe for years.”
The very same thing is what I think of as the cardinal rule of drama. A character can never get what they want. Or if they do, it must turn out to be something very different than what they expected. (be careful what you wish for. Because If they get what they want the story or scene is over.

For example:
Guy walks into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender refuses to serve him because he’s a Sneech with only one star on his belly, and everybody knows this is “Two star on thar’s” town. But our Sneech is thirsty. So he demands a drink. Patrons of the bar try to throw him out. The Sneech beats them down. Sheriff comes in and breaks it up. The Sneech appeals to the Sherriff for justice. The Sheriff tells the Sneech to get out of town. As the Sneech walks out, he defiantly grabs a shot off the bar and downs it.
Replace the Sneech with Danny Glover and you’ve got a wonderful scene from Silverado.

For my writing, I try and extend this rule. Not only can the character never get what they want, but whatever the reader/audience expects to happen can’t happen. Maybe it’s that I’m a masocist and I just like playing tennis with two nets. But that’s another post.

technorati tags:writing, Patrick E. McLean, story, story construction, drama

(It’s a doozy.)

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

This is the insight of Lester Dent, the pulp writer who created Doc Savage. This was a guy who would regularly churn out 90,000 to 100,000 words a month on a manual typewriter. There’s no two ways about it, he was a monster. (Carpal Tunnel? Try micro-fractures in your fingertips.)

So, naturally, I’m interested in anything he has to say about story construction. And it makes intuitive sense to me. I have an above average opinion of my prose style. Me makes pretty wordses. But for a long time, when I tried to write a story, it would suck. Literally, the thing would fall down when you were reading it.

My stories had no foundations, the walls weren’t square and the roofs leaked.

But when I started paying attention to the structure and the rules of story. Magic started happening. And I went through a fundamental change. Instead of just enjoying the experience of a story, I started to also enjoy how they were made.

For a while I outlined obsessively. (I still do, only less obsessively.) I felt like there was a dearth of information about story and story construction. And that most of what was out there was written by people who weren’t writers. Who weren’t involved in the often messy business of writing stories. In short, dilettantes.

I’ve come to realize that it’s just the opposite. There is a wealth of story information out there. It’s just locked up in all the stories and films we love so much. It’s just that the first time I read or watched them I was too busy enjoying them (not a bad thing) to learn how they were put together. Because a story, if properly constructed, becomes invisible. You don’t say - “What an elegant subplot.” You say, “Aw man, look what happened to Billy.”

So instead of keeping all these notes and thoughts in my head. I’m going to blog them.

technorati tags:story construction, writing, Patrick E. McLean, plot

My primary interest is how sound is used to convey effect and carry a story. In this sense the term rhetoric is used to indicate the persuasion of an audience that story which it patently fictional is in some sense true or real. Hopefully more true and real than everyday experience. And if we don’t feel this way about stories on some level, are they really worth anything?

Tentative (and Partial) Outline

Why does Sound have meaning?

The Uses of Sound

Sound as symbol

Sound as action

Sound as setting

Sound as character

Sound as emotion

Sound as closure

Sound as unknown

Storytelling vs. Story Reading

A broader definintion of reading
Voice technique
Towards a manual of style

A few questions for you

What if the Seanachai was less audio and more text? By making a podcast, I’m adding four hours, minimum to the production process. And I’m adding to the time it takes you to assimilate the story. (Ah, got to use the BorgWord there.)

So how many of you check the ‘blog or read this thing in a newsreader? And how many people would rather have an interesting post or story every couple of days, and audio once a month?
Read or Listen?
It’s the mournful refrain of the Econ tribe, “Tradeoffs. Tradeoffs. Tradeoffs.”

“I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh opento the bone. I pounded his teeth back into his mouthwith the end of the barrel … and I took my own damn time aboutkicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay therebubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling.”

No, it’s because of who he was. He once said in an interview, “I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.” How do you not like that guy? Here’s what Robert Parker, author of the Spenser series of mysteries put it.

“I don’t think anyone, even in the solemnity of death, would argue that Mickey was a great writer, but he was a good guy and he was a successful writer and the combination ain’t bad.”

I once joked with a friend of mine that real tough guys don’t die, they just get so disgusted with getting old that they simply explode. (I was younger then.) But Mickey Spillane was a tough writer and it’s nice that he had a quiet end.
Anyway, so long Mickey. Sorry everybody turned Murrells Inlet into a touristy beach town on you, but is an awful nice spot.

Novelist Mickey Spillane dies at 88 (Reuters)

Reuters - Mystery writer Mickey Spillane, who created the tough-guy private eye Mike Hammer, died on Monday at his South Carolina home at age 88, a funeral home official said.

So head over to digg.com and give us a bump! We’d really appreciate it!

The Vampire in My Attic

So, there’s this vampire living in my attic. I mean it might be some other kind of undead semi-human – but I’m pretty sure it’s a vampire. On the skids just like I am. Because I live in a tiny, crummy little house. Hence, tiny, crummy little attic. He has to pry open a little half window thing to crawl in and out. And he’s not nimble or graceful. In fact, he sounds kind of clumsy.

I suppose I should be afraid for my life or eternal soul except; He has horrible taste in music. And I’m not talking about a self-stereotyping predilection for mid-80’s goth. Oh no. I mean, BAD music. Real guilty pleasures. Music that is in no way appropriate for a Lord of the Night. And what’s worse – he sings along.

It’s unbelievable. He comes home, drunk off his ass after inhaling the blood of some weak willed college student and sings along with the some AM Gold hit at the top of his undying lungs. You’re not a Lineman for the county, you’re a fucking Nosferatu and you should have some self-respect.

Many is the night (his night, my early, early morning) that I lay in bed screaming, “Kill me now! Kill me now.” in a vain attempt to be heard over Lionel Richie, Diana Ross and what I can only assume is Dracula’s gay nephew. Vlad the impaler indeed.

It is sad, but I don’t think he actually kills anyone. He’s more of a scavenger vampire. Somebody wanders out in front of a car, bang, he’s right there with a straw. A friend of mine who works EMS had to mace him twice last week. Honestly, what kind of vampire is dissuaded by Mace? Maybe a mace dipped in holy water.

But what are you going to do? I take pity on the guy. And I’m certainly not going up there in the middle of the day to put a stake through his heart. Attics are hot. Besides it’s an old house and I’m hoping the fiberglass insulation will make him so itchy that he’ll go away.

But if I have to hear how Brandy is fine girl one more time – All I’m saying is there are limits.

Behind the Keystrokes

So this odd little tale jumped into my head fully formed in the middle of a sleepless night. I heard an odd thump in the ceiling – it was a new house and I could not be certain of the usual noises of the place – and I wondered, “What in the hell is in the attic? What if it’s a vampire? Wait – what kind of vampire would live in my crappy attic? It’d have to be a pretty pathetic vampire. Ah, I could probably take him. Might as well go back to sleep.
But it was too late to talk myself back to sleep. I was already at the computer and typing.

By the numbers.

My father is a very quantitative kind of guy. And I have sometimes had difficulty understanding that point of view. Any attempt to codify or quantify writing just seems to wreck it. (Hello Microsoft Grammar) But I shouldn’t beat on Microsoft, it’s been going on in English ever since the Chancery in Merrie Auld England. But recently, I’ve found great comfort numbers.

Especially this number - ‘209′

30,000 episodes in May.

The Seanachai transfered 209 gigs in May. At an average episode size of 5.9 meg that’s 34,711 episodes transfered. With a weighed average size (just the last 5 episodes) of 6.6 meg an episode that’s still 31,030!

Here’s what the traffic looks like since we launched the new site.

(anybody want to guess about the mystery spike that happened right after I posted a Change in Orbit?)

So how many listeners is that?

No clue. Here the numbers become amibigous. The numbers only show who downloaded - not who actually listened. And of the people who downloaded and listened, how many episodes did they download? Just the two I posted this month - or did they go back and listen to more?

No clue. (Sure feels like numbers are turning on me once again.)

If you say only two episodes. 30,000/2 = 15,000 listeners. Let’s cut the episode number in half as a “fudge factor” and I’ve got 7,500 listeners. Or maybe each listener listens to 20 episodes a month for the first three months and then listens to them as they come out.

How do I find out? Maybe a survey? Seriously, all ideas are welcome.

The Seanachai was also recently featured on Odeo.

So welcome to all new listeners visiting from these sites. We hope you give our back catalogue a listen, and that you keep coming back!

There’s also another piece of artwork up at http://www.succeedinevil.com

I’ll be honest with you. I’m so busy writing and producing this podcast - and making a living - and figuring out ways to make my living a little bit less like “My Bologna has a first name…” and more like “So there’s this Vampire. Living in my attic.” That I scarcely have time to keep up with all the ways and places on the old internet that the Seanachai should show up.

So if you have any suggestions - of where or how the podcast should exist/be extended on the internet - please send them on.

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll really be looking at this and trying to figure all of this promotional stuff out. And it starts right here - with this link claiming my Odeo feed.

My Odeo Channel (odeo/11ff9b4ded0aece9)

St. Michael

St. Michael is a listener and fan who really stepped up and built the site you’re looking at right now. I highly recommend him. And if you need help with web stuff, you can reach him at stmichael@theseanachai.com (I have no idea if he likes this email address or not, but it’s my idea of a joke.)

In addition to a patron websaint, the Seanachai also has a new web address, www.theseanachai.com. Goodwordsrightorder is in a painful state of limbo at the moment. It seems the hosting company I was using registered in there name instead of mine. It is painful and maddening. I’m not too sure exactly what to do about it. If anyone has experience with this or suggestions (suggestions that don’t involve physical violence) or happens to be a lawyer who has handled this kind of thing - please drop me an email.

Again with My Brutal Drunken Uncle

So the only thing missing from this week is a brand new episode. Don’t blame me. Blame my drunken, brutal uncle Sam. All my extra time was taken up by taxes. And in honor of tax time I’m repodcasting My Brutal Drunken Sam. Even though I hate taxes. (Like mad-enough-to-throw-tea in-a-harbor hate taxes) this story still makes me laugh. Hope it taxes some of the sting out of taxes for you too.

Anyway, many of the sounds of interpersonal violence featured in the Seanachai have been made by me roughing up this defenseless chair. I knocked it over to make the sound of the clumsy vampire in the attic, I went a few rounds with it to create the sound of the Brawling Irishman and most recently I snuck up on it while it wasn’t looking and hit it below the belt to create the noise of Topper punching a golfer in the nuts. I haven’t shot it or stabbed it (where would I sit?) and I’m always careful not to leave suspicious looking marks. It just felt like a good time to own up to my abusive behavior.

So if you happen to be in the market for a new chair let me tell ya, this one can take a hell of a beating.

As romantic as that might sound, it’s not the wonderful part. The wonderful part is that centuries later, when Gaelic was being systematically suppressed, people calling themselves seanachai would travel from town to town seemingly for the sole purpose of carrying on the ancient tradition of telling stories. At night they would loiter in the pubs and spin their yarns (now that’s a living!) but during the day (I’m guessing more towards the afternoon) they would gather the children, lead them off into the countryside to teach them the Irish language and culture in secret.

What does all this have to do with a web site?

My we’re full of questions today. Well, the way I see it, a seanachai is a person who tells stories with a purpose. Especially the latter day seanachai with their covert educational agendas. As a writer this idea appeals to me very much because I believe that good stories seek to prove something in the telling. Not anything as crass and pedantic as who should be president those kind of stories are always awful. The kind of stories I’m after are the ones that are true for all time, not one instance. As John Gardner argued so eloquently in “On Moral Fiction”, a story is a kind of artistic proof. Delicate ideas can be framed, tested and communicated within the imaginary world of a well-told tale.

The McLuhan is the Message

Yeah, yeah, McLuhan whatever. (and if you don’t know who he is, he’s the man who said the “Medium is the Message” which set up me up nicely for that spooneristic subhead. The impact of which has been greatly lessened by all this senseless parenthetical explanation.)

Anyway, the point I was hoping to get to in that last paragraph is that some stories are better in the telling than they are reading. And technology has evolved to a point where we can eliminate the whole publishing hierarchy and get back to a more oral tradition. It’s not exactly a new medium, but it sure does feel like I’m playing with live ammunition.

With this line of thinking the name seanachai seemed perfect for the kind of storytelling and writing I wanted to play with.

The most important reason of all.

The reason this site exists at all is that I needed a woodshed to practice in. As Stephen King said, “Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

So it is my hope that the Seanachai will secretly teach me how to write while it overtly entertains you.