Writing Notes #6
Technique notes on Mr Vertlan's File
Overview
I first drafted Mr Vertlan’s File in 2024 as an attempt to get something published. My Substack is a training ground for practicing techniques and forms. But they don’t always work, so I’m hesitant to send them to a publisher. The last thing I need is an agent from Big Publisher coming to my house with a silenced pistol to put two in my keyboard.
The first draft came in at ~1400 words but a scan of online ‘humour’ publications suggested it should be <1000 words. So it cut it back, hated it, shelved it, defecated it, and pretended I never wrote the damn thing. I only returned to it opportunistically; my little rat brain realised: if it’s not suitable for a publisher, then I could use it on my Substack. So I washed it, blew it out to ~2000 words, and now I love it.
The core of the story is the fear you are wasting your finite life. I see people on Instagram falling in love outside a Parisian cafe and I think, ‘Why can’t I have a chocolate croissant right now? Why is my life such a SHITSTORM.’ But there is no quicker way to waste your life than to worry about wasting your life. So instead I wrote this story. I turned my fear into something funny, I hope. And in doing so I was granted the opportunity to improve the skills required to follow my passion. That’s the thing with fiction writing: the stories aren’t just a commentary on our societal ills or the nasty things in life; writing is also the antidote. Writing is to life what getting a bull semen injection is for baldness.
Technique
Humour
Trying to be funny was my central technical focus. While attending a short course at the Story Studios Australia in Carlton, I was introduced to the 11 Funny Filters created by
. The 11 Funny Filters are as follows:Irony – Intended meaning is opposite of literal meaning
Character – Comedic character acting on personality traits
Reference – Common experiences that audiences can relate to
Shock – Surprising jokes typically involving sex, drugs, gross-out humour, swearing
Parody – Mimic a familiar character, trope or cliche in an unfamiliar way
Hyperbole – Exaggeration to absurd extreme
Wordplay – Puns, rhymes, double entendres, etc.
Analogy – Comparing two disparate things
Madcap – Crazy, wacky, silly, nonsensical
Meta-humour – Jokes about jokes, or about the idea of comedy
Misplaced Focus – Attention is focused on the wrong thing
Scott’s filters proved to be a great editing tool. I ran my entire first draft through each filter and was able to identify multiple ways to heighten each story beat. In turn the heightened beats helped reshape the plot. For Mr Vertlan’s File, I definitely used character, shock, parody, hyperbole, analogy, madcap and misplaced focus. I will use the filters in the future for sure. It also made me wonder if there was such a thing as ‘dramatic filters.’ I might start to observe great drama and try to pin-point what makes it dramatic: high stakes, competing interests, misunderstandings, strong emotion, scarcity… Not sure yet. If you know any similar frameworks let me know.
Sentence structure
Each story is a chance to improve sentence structure. It’s hard to park what exactly that means, but I find music the best analogy. To start you learn notes, then chords, arpeggios, scales, progressions, soon you go modal, and so on. The amount you know expands as your ability to access the increased knowledge speeds up. Soon you can improvise. It’s the same with writing. Each sentence is stuck to the next. How to stick them together requires an entire syllabus. Each story I’m trying to learn new ways to stick them together while at the same time becoming more familiar with what I know.
I’ll use the following paragraph from the story to illustrate:
The client peeled his glove Velcro and sighed. It sometimes felt like the Accountant was the multi-billionaire real estate mogul too busy to see, let alone find, his estranged children. It just goes to show: being out of touch is a state of mind not a bank balance. Putting yourself in another’s shoes and doing the right things, like recycling and such, that’s how you stay grounded. The client slid his 18-carat gold-shafted club into its slot and tried to squeeze the entire golf bag in the recycling bin, but it didn’t fit; it never fit. ‘I’ve lost my taste for golf, he said. ‘Let’s go to your office.’
I started with an action—the Velcro rip. It’s visual, its audible. For golfers it’s a common post-shot ritual. I then stick this action to the client’s thought. I didn’t feel the need to say, ‘The client sometimes felt…’ because it flowed. The qualifier seemed clunky, unnecessary. I then pivot to the client’s conclusion drawn from observing the client. This takes the form of a view about the world. The next sentence—Putting yourself—expands on that view of the world. Again, no qualifiers—‘He realised that putting yourself’—were necessary. After that quick descent from into the client’s mind, I return to action. And then dialogue. Dialogue is often the easiest to stick on because it works without much support most of the time.
While I wrote the above summary, the notion of scaffolding and support beams occurred. The goal is to write sentences that still work when you take away the obvious supports of ‘he believed, she thought, behind the church, looking through the door…’ In music this is implying the chord-type stuff. You don’t use the root note but the listener can still feel where you are. The best I’ve seen in writing is Saul Bellow in Herzog. Sentence to sentence it bounces around but where it goes, though surprising, feels natural. It isn’t jarring. And with the ability to jump to more places—from an action to a worldview to a thought to anywhere—comes greater story-telling options. more options mean a greater chance you might find your own voice, at least I hope.
Poll
I recently discovered Substack now includes polls. Personally, I don’t understand polls—their use, the benefit, what kind of people would do such a thing—but I’m willing to learn. Below is my first attempt. It’s a long road ahead. Let me know what you think.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this writing note. To see what I was talking about, read the actual story (link below). Or send this to a friend if you found it interesting.
