“Settle down please. Welcome to Creative Writing 101.”
Captain Robert Starcrusher swung his sonic saber as he charged the mob of tentacled Gwordolyans—
“You there in the back. Hold on for just a minute. What’s your name? Robert? Robert, you will be taking notes all semester, so give me your attention for this single, meager moment. This is Creative Writing 101…”
Disregarding the general's orders, Robert mashed the ship’s self-destruct button. If he was going to die in the wastes outside of the Gwordolyan star system, he was going to lead a whole parade of octo-filth straight to hell. Sweating like a Neo-Baptist Crypto-Heretic in a Hyper-Hindu Shrine, Robert—
“Hello! Robert! Pause for an instant to allow me to introduce myself to you and the class. Thank you. My name is Dr. Dampéne. William Dampéne. I’ve been teaching here for 17 years, and I’ll be able to tell you everything you need to know about creative writing. Let me warn you, however, crafting quality fiction is not easy. You must write and write and rewrite and rewrite etcetera. Even then you have no guarantees that your narratives will be selected for publication. Fortunately for you, I have been published in numerous places including Literoti, Writario Quarterly, and the prestigious Grande Uberwort Triannual. You may have heard of a few of my pieces for instance “Gordon Downley at the Post Office” or “Summertime Venice Ennui.” Of course my novel, Anton Walks and Anton Talks, was nominated for the Grubber’s Fine Lines Award. So you can see, I am highly qualified to lead you through this course and provide you with an authoritative education on the craft of stories. All right, Robert—now you can take notes. The first rule of fiction is to write about what you know.”
Despite having a talkative elderly neighbor, Robert Starbach could not imagine a different or better home. Whatever old Will Dampen said, Robert’s house in the suburbs, with his wife, two kids, one dog, and two gerbils, did not need a new coat of paint. What he did need to do was to figure out how to get Tommy’s math grades up, how to coach Kristin’s softball team to their first win, and how to help Helen get her home decorating business started.
“The second rule is you must make your characters suffer.”
Robert searched the burning house for the gerbils. How could he face his family if he didn’t save the gerbils? When Helen had had Dampen’s kitchen painted the wrong shade of blue, Dampen had kidnapped Helen, Tommy, and Kristin, shot their dog, and set their home on fire. Robert hadn’t been able to save them. He had to save the gerbils at least. As part of the roof fell in in Kristin’s bedroom, the smoke momentarily parted showing two charred little skeletons, one sprawled and one balled up, lying together at the foot of the bed.
“They must suffer, but not too much. You must take care that your main character, your protagonist, has not lost everything because to lose everything is to lose motivation.”
Robert wandered out of his burning home. All was lost. Then he noticed Queenie and her twitching tail in the yard. She wasn’t dead! She was only shot in the leg! He had to get her to the vet. He lifted Queenie from the yard and raised his eyes to see Helen running up the sidewalk.
“Readers don’t enjoy being told what is going on; they want to be shown. One of the chief methods for showing the reader what is happening in the story is through dialogue.”
“Robert!” Helen cried, “Dampen’s going to kill Kristen and Tommy unless we pay him five million dollars!”
“How are we going to get five million dollars?” Robert said.
“He gave me this file,” Helen said, “detailing which banks to hit and what their weaknesses are. He gave me this cell phone—he said we have to have the money by midnight and that’s when he’ll call us to set up an exchange.”
“As our course advances, we will briefly tour some of the major genres of fiction like crime fiction including detective, private eye, and hard-boiled stories. These stories have the hallmark of tough protagonists roaming the shadowy, mean streets of modern urban settings…”
Robert lit a cigarette in the dark as he and The Dame left Regional Savings and headed towards First Union Trust. It wasn’t the first time a blonde had stolen his heart, but he’d never knocked over a bank with a client. The dirt on the streets was the same dirt on the cops and the crooks and every last citizen of this sorry city. Robbing a bank was the same as building one, so long as you paid the right people.
“…as well as fantasy…”
“My treasure is mine own to keep,” growled Ungrith, the dread dragon protector of Community Credit Union. “And thy death is mine to give…”
The beast vomited forth a sulphurous burning deluge, melting most of the tellers’ windows and several of the scattering peasants. Sorceress Helen of Gemfall screamed an incantation against the dragon’s wrath. The spell encased my body in Silver Ice, shielding me from the hellish flames and allowing me to charge straight into the dragon’s mouth to plunge Excalibur’s shadow sister, Caliburesse, the Spirit Sword, into the Saurian’s brain.
“…magical realism, existential fiction…”
“Why are you a roach?” Robert asked the teller as Robert kept the pistol pointed at the teller’s thorax.
“Why are you a human?” it said as it filled a canvas bag with bundles of twenties. “Why is my wife a platypus?”
“Why indeed?” Robert replied.
“It is because the primary purpose of god or the lack of god is to provide the world with life that has no notion of its own purpose,” said the canvas bag.
“Our existence,” The Man With The Toucan Face said, “requires that we lack the knowledge of an overarching purpose.”
“That is the final joke or insult,” Helen said, who had temporarily become my mirror image but with pupiless eyes (as she sometimes does). “We must exist and we may have purpose but we must know whether or not we have purpose.”
“…and unfortunately, since the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey, we must devote some discussion to contemporary erotic fiction…”
With over five million dollars collected and two hours to go, Robert and Helen checked into a motel. Helen felt exhausted and yet coiled within. Robert told her to lie on the bed. Using handcuffs stolen from the security guard at the last bank, Robert bound her wrists together, looping the cuff’s chain through a bar in the headboard. “You’ll need to be able to twist around” he said. He ripped a strip of cloth from her dress, a makeshift blindfold. “I want you to feel,” he said, “not see.” Unzipping his—
“…notwithstanding a cursory treatment of western, apocalyptic, and children’s lit.”
Robert and Helen dismounted their horses. Helen’s hand twitched over her six-shooter while Robert tipped his wide-brimmed hat back. They were supposed to meet Dead-Eye Dampen in front of the Friendly Nuke Saloon. A three-foot-tall fuzzy purple thing staggered drunkenly out of the bar. With a smile plastered across it’s boozy face, the thing said, “A is for Apocalypse: the only world we know. B is for Burning: it all has got to go. C is for Cannibalism: your friends can help you out. D is for Death: what life is all about. E is for Ears: a necklace they do make. F is for family: the one you have to ba…” BANG. The smoke of Dampen’s pistol wafted up to join the sky’s permanent grey haze as he stepped out of the shadows and over the purple dead thing.
“Finally, I will guide you through creative writing terminology. You will build a writer’s vocabulary including setting, atmosphere, voice, flashback…”
The sneer on Dampen’s face sent Robert back fifteen years to his father’s study and his father’s face.
“Face it kid,” Robert’s dad said, “you’ve got too much of your mother in you. You’ll never amount to much.”
Robert’s dad was packing. Robert’s dad was leaving.
“I’m glad I’m not like you,” Robert said. “I won’t leave. I won’t give up. Not ever. When I’m a dad, I won’t leave.”
That’s when the sneer happened. Robert knew then and he knew now: he had no time for losers like his dad and Dampen and he wouldn’t let them stop him for any reason.
“…simile…”
“You will let my kids go,” Robert said, speaking like a hanging judge sentencing a felon.
“…metaphor…”
“I don’t just want the money,” Dampen said, a devil forging a devil’s bargain.
“…first person, third person, and even second person…”
“Your kids aren’t here,” Dampen said. “Hand over the money and hand over your wife, and I’ll tell you where they are.”
You don’t know how this will end. You only know that you can’t kill him yet.
“You’re going to die Dampen,” you tell him.
“Haha!” Dampen said. “Give me the five million and you’ll see what comes next.”
“…climax and plot twist.”
“No,” Robert said. “Give us our kids and then you’ll get your money.”
BANG.
“Sorry Robert,” Helen said. BANG. She shot Robert again. “Dampen’s lying. Dampen and I are keeping the kids and the money and you are going to die. We’re going to join ISIS and topple America. It was fun while it lasted. Goodbye.”
“Finally, I sincerely hope that you learn to love writing and write what you love. There is no more satisfying way to compose narratives.”
“The joke’s on you, Helen.” Robert Starcrusher said as he exposed the impermeable force field Einsteinium body armor beneath his shirt. “This whole meeting was a set up. Alpha-Zero Team secured the children hours ago. The last thing we needed was your confession. You will not be joining your cronies at ISIS, the Intergalactic Sinister Insidious System. Helen VennVoidenwar and William Zaroz Dampenblaster, you are under arrest by order of the Alliance of Quantum Reality Democracies.”
“Maybe, just maybe, you’ll end up as a successful fiction craftsman like myself.”
“You’ll never take me alive!” Dampenblaster screamed.
“Tell yourself whatever story you like,” Robert said.
Dampenblaster switched on his anti-grav boots and began to float up and away but before he’d gone ten meters a green laser shot towards him from a dark alleyway. Queenie ran into the street and shot another green burst from her mouth. With two direct hits, Queenie’s particle translator beamed Dampenblaster and then Helen from Earth to the Orbital Space Prison.
As Helen was fading away, she whispered, “Rob, please. Don’t tell Kristin and Tommy.”
“I’ll tell them you were assigned to some kind of long-term mission,” Robert said.
“Thank you,” she mouthed as her image dimmed to nothing.
“What will you do now?” Captain Lazorlord asked as he removed the Queenie disguise. “Are you finally going to take some classes to work on your Space Novel?”
“No,” Robert said, “I’m too busy. When I’m not throwing perps in the starslammer, I’ll write what I like and let the critics be damned.”