Posts Tagged ‘brigid & greg’
Whenever I get deep into my writing projects, I get an itch to return to Michael Macbeth. Originally conceived thirty years ago (yikes), Michael took a lot of (undisguised) inspiration from Dirk Gently, and to this day is a character I greatly enjoy—but for whom I have a very rough time coming up with ideas. I did manage to write one short novel featuring him, as a NaNoWriMo project, but it was… thin? There was some genuinely good stuff in it, but the whole was definitely lesser than the sum of its parts.
On a related note, the topic of the Brigid and Greg Fictionlets comes up in conversation periodically; Multiclass Geek recently pondered what a story about that dynamic duo now would look like, compared to their heyday of the early 2000s, but that idea would by necessity take the story places I wouldn’t really want to go (Isadora’s age being just one example). Like Jeeves and Wooster before them, Brigid and Greg are inhabitants of a particular moment, and letting time pass for them would force them to change into something else.
The biggest obstacle with both Michael Macbeth and B&G, I think, is that they are both about “a vibe.” Michael Macbeth is “creepy and kooky on a rainy afternoon in a college town.” B&G is “what if Jeeves and Wooster were Gen-Xers?” But a vibe is not a story, a vibe is just… a vibe. When I go to write about these characters, I get hung up on trying to think of things to actually happen, because part of the requirement is that it shouldn’t significantly change their status quo. A Michael Macbeth that doesn’t live in his shabby little apartment always just a few dollars away from broke, isn’t Michael Macbeth any more. The goal for Brigid and Greg in any long narrative would be “get out of whatever is going on and go home.”
In writing The Sky Pirate’s Prisoner, I had the freedom of characters who could end up anywhere as long as the journey was interesting—if anything the whole premise of that story is that the status quo is untenable and must be destroyed. How do you send heroes on a journey where the goal is to remain mostly unchanged by the end?
Obviously it can and has been done, many times over. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, just about any superhero you can name, all have long and serialized careers that consist of resetting back to starting point at the end of each story. And those work by focusing on the plot, the series of events, rather than on character development. As somebody whose strength is primarily in character development, I suppose it’s no surprise that I flounder there.
But I keep trying! And I will probably continue to keep trying, as long as I can put words together.
Fictionlet
“It used to annoy me when my elders would bemoan the sad state of the world,” said Greg. “But in this case, things really did used-to-be-better. All of our society’s evils linger on like a cold that just won’t go away, while everything good withers and dies.”
Brigid narrowed her eyes. “Is that some kind of crack about my mother?”
“What?” said Greg. “No! Your mother is a national treasure. I’m talking about the degradation of our culture.”
“Anything specific?”
“Even Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t carry crullers any more,” said Greg.
Brigid nodded sadly. “We live in an age of barbarism.”
Greg sighed, clearly fighting off despair. “How can we have fallen so low?”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
“You ever notice that people don’t squeeze the Charmin any more?” asked Greg.
“What?” said Brigid.
“Well, I was just—”
“Why would I notice a thing like that?” Brigid demanded. “Why would you notice a thing like that? Frankly I find it hard to believe that anybody in the history of ever actually did squeeze the Charmin!”
Greg shrugged noncommittally, but now that Brigid was warming up, she wasn’t about to stop. “I mean, come on. I know you’re Mr. Airy Persiflage, but you’re not stupid. Squeezing the Charmin was something some Madison Avenue suit came up with, just like the San Francisco treat or the quicker picker-upper. You’ve got to know that, haven’t you?”
“Mmm,” said Greg, more focused on his driving than her rant.
“‘Mmm’?” echoed Brigid. “Don’t you have anything more to say than ‘Mmm’?”
Greg glanced over at her. “You’ve got ring around the collar,” he said, then focused his attention on a tricky left turn. The fact that he was the one in the driver’s seat is probably what saved his life.
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
“So what exactly is your point then?” asked Isadora. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”
“Nothing terribly grand, I suppose,” said Greg. “I was just thinking, that Roy Clark is to guitar, as Victor Borge is to piano.”
Brigid wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know who either of those people are.”
Greg winced at her. “Do you say these things just to hurt me?”
“Oh please,” said Isadora. “Do you really mean to suggest that Mr. Picking and Grinning is on the same plane as Phonetic Punctuation?”
“Suggest it? I’m stating it explicitly!” said Greg. “Look at the facts. Both extremely capable musicians. Both leaning on humor to the point of being defined by it. Both constantly being asked to ‘play something straight.’ Roy Clark doing a duet of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ with Johnny Cash is right up there with Victor Borge and Leonid Hambro playing the Hungarian Rhapsody. The only difference is NBC or PBS.”
“Bah. Never!”
“I resent the fact that you two understand each other better than I understand either one of you,” said Brigid. “Can we talk about traffic accidents or something?”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
Greg paused, staring at a forkful of alfredo noodles.
“What?” said Brigid.
“Do you suppose,” Greg said slowly, thinking it through, “that when Harry Nilsson starts going wah-woh-wah-wah like one of Charlie Brown’s teachers, that’s supposed to be all the people talking at him that he can’t understand?”
Brigid plunked her fork down on the table. “For fuck’s sake, Greg,” she said. “Don’t you realize how old that song is?”
He blinked at her. “I guess so?” he said. “But you still knew which song I meant.”
She winced and closed her eyes. “I hate you,” she said.
Greg shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “Next time I’ll try to be a little more gentle on your mind.”
“SHUTUP SHUTUP SHUTUP!”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
They sat in silence.
Brigid was slumped in a chair, staring into space.
Greg had his legs up on the couch with Ozymandias in his lap, and also stared into space.
“I want to go back to college,” Brigid said.
“I want to go to college and never come back,” Greg replied.
Silence resumed.
-The Gneech
