In the short story I’m writing the central piece of feedback I keep getting is that readers don’t understand the character’s motivation for starting wildfires.
To puzzle this out I write:
Why does anyone start a fire? Warmth during the winter. Heat for cooking. Companionship and comradery. Early in the fall, when the leaves first change colors and litter the ground with crunchy debris, you sit around a campfire drinking tallboys of cheep beer and swapping horror stories about your work and relationships and raising a child.
Some say fire is healthy: a natural part of forestry. They burn the trees and those minerals leech into the soil, helping build stronger trees while dispensing of the dried fuel that keeps wildfires raging.
In the story your character is depressed and seeking passion to beat the slow crawl of summer. He reattaches himself to his toxic high school obsession who, surprisingly, has changed from preppy almost-swim-team-star to forest ranger.
Why does anyone start a fire?
Manipulation.
He doesn’t love the main character but loves being loved and adored. He loves someone finding him special or cool or important. He loves passionate blazes of attention and affection and so he plays on that, drawing the main character closer and closer into his roaring flame.
But at the same time he does love the main character. He wants to be settled and the main character, despite his anxiety and depression, has a strong sense of self that’s constantly pushed away by doubt. He envies this: the easy way he moves through struggles and so he wants to force a love or draw it into him, making it a part of himself by extinguishing it in someone else.
Why does anyone start a fire?
Passion.
In New York I eat sesame Ice cream and bulgogi bibimbap from Cho Dang Gol, a restaurant everyone swears you have to get to early otherwise you wait for hours. I eat house made naan served with a carrot masala yogurt and a cilantro chutney, short BBQ ribs served on a bed of baked beans with pickled collard greens and potato chips, a hot dog from a stand, a too big slice of pizza slathered in grease, Oreo black sesame ice cream from a tiny plastic spoon.
While visiting the museum we run into a statue of a faun being harassed by cherubs or children and I jokingly tell Zach that it’s him and his kids. Stark marble and sturdy yet still in motion. I read a term for this while researching for my short story: Hellenistic (though the time periods certainly don’t align)—statues influenced by the natural world, marble shaped into flowing muscle and natural scenes of chaos or daily life or something similar.
We reads the plaque: faun being harassed by children—a perfect fit.
Why does anyone start a fire?
Attention.
Because I write stories about relationships I am always rehashing and replaying my own. I watch TV shows about couples going to therapy and read long (most likely fake) threads on Reddit from couples seeking advice. It’s strange to write about relationships but have so few. Hubris really, to think you have anything novel to say about them when most of yours have ended in ghostly disaster.
In the stories I write, the characters are too afraid to say the thing they think aloud. Instead, they same something else or speak in riddles, carefully pacing around the thing they want to say the most. I write stores about people afraid of lost love or losing someone important to them. I reiterate the danger of nostalgia or rumination. I write about how a certain form of love (obsession or devotion) can become a curse or lead to disaster.
In New York I walk and walk until my feet, legs, and ankles ache in pain. In New York I sweat and lead the way. I make a plan: move through space. I disappear into a crowd of tourists at rush hour and keep walking straight forward, certain of where I’m going.