AUTHOR'S NOTES on THE DICHOTOMY OF DALLAS WINSTON

- So, first of all, I just want to apologize for the crap you have just read.

-Second, I would like to offer an explanation as to why I bothered to post the "story", even though I think it's complete crap.

I would really appreciate any feedback on this story - particularly constructive criticism. You can be harsh, too, because I already think it's shit, so I won't get offended if you think it's shit too. I do respond well to the shit sandwich method of constructive criticism, though. You know, the "this part was good… but this part was absolute crap… but this part was pretty good.". I am a firm believer in the shit sandwich.

Anyway, the reason I posted this story even though I'm not proud of it exactly, is because I am proud of elements of it, and I am eager to improve my writing and expand on the types of things I write about. I

really feel I can't do this without some constructive criticism, though, and since the only person I have to go to for constructive criticism on my writing has never read The Outsiders and doesn't really get the audience I'm aiming for, his input was minimal - though what input I was given was excellent and very much appreciated.

I was really writing outside my comfort zone on this one. I wanted to do something very different, to flex different literary muscle, so to speak, and attempt something a bit deeper than in Salvation - my first story - but still along the lines of working on characters. Dally was never one of my favourite characters from the book, but he is a very interesting character to me, and I'll tell you why. I was always captured by the line in the book where Dally says to Johnny:

"I just don't want to see that happen to you like it did to me" (or whatever it was).

While this obviously implies that Dally identifies with Johnny on some level - perhaps vulnerability? Optimism?, it also implies that whatever good he saw in Johnny and in himself, he felt was lost or beaten out by his circumstances in life. This is a pretty common thing in both literature and in real life, so that in itself didn't really capture my attention. What did capture my attention about it was that Dally was aware that he had at some point been like Johnny, and in addition to this realization, he also seems to regret having lost that part of himself. Ironically, he didn't lose that part of himself entirely, because if he had, he never would have ended up cracking after Johnny died, and ending up dead himself. At least so I think.

Since I changed the events of the book to make both Dally and Johnny live, I was able to keep this small piece of Dally alive. Even though it is not apparent, it is still, I feel, a defining characteristic of his.

This sketch was intended to do a few things. Primarily, it was intended to explore the different sides of Dally. I chose to do this by setting up mirror characters - that is characters who themselves are seemingly one-dimensional, for the express purpose of reflecting and thus clarifying that characteristic in the primary character or protagonist. In this case, the protagonist - for lack of a better word - was Dally, and the mirror characters were Tim and Johnny.

Tim and Johnny, as representatives of different aspects of Dally, were not intended to ever be in direct conflict with one another, but more in competition with one another - though one clearly has the upper hand. I took it a step further, though, and tried to set it up so that within Johnny and Tim, conflicting characteristics did exist, thus making both characters slightly more complex, and thus adding another dimension to Dally himself. I will illustrate:

Part of my inspiration, as always when to do with the Outsiders, came from a Robert Frost poem. In this case, Fire and Ice:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

This is the outwardly appearing Dally, and what Tim Sheppard is supposed to represent. I think the poem speaks for itself, but basically, I was trying to illustrate that both forces are destructive, but powerful. Dally uses passion and ice equally, and always to hurt. It is his defence and coping mechanisms of choice wrapped into one. Yet, superficially, fire and ice are in conflict.

I believe that the character of Tim - from the book The Outsiders and also from That was then… this is now was defined by these characteristics, and thus made an excellent mirror character for these aspects of Dally.

Johnny as a mirror character is to represent the Innocence and experience (I know, I know… it was William Blake and not Robert Frost who wrote Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience… I swear that only occurred to me after I thought this out).

Dally identifies with Johnny only partly because of their shared history of domestic violence, but primarily because of the innocence, the love and belief that beauty still exists in the world. Johnny represents the internal conflict between experience and innocence. How can one who has seen so such violence, and who has suffered so much, continue to believe there is good in the world?

I think I might explore the concept of faith a bit more later…

For now, though, this is what Johnny is intended to mirror in Dally. Though the fire and ice are outwardly apparent, it is this internal conflict of innocence and faith vs. experience which is the greater conflict within him.

The bit about the bees was suppose to be a representation of this child-like innocence and fascination with the beauty of life and nature and thus the world. The final scene where Dally is watching the bees while waiting for his friends is suppose to show that this is still alive in him.

One of the secondary themes of the story is the idea that "The more things change, the more they stay the same". I tried to illustrate that at the beginning of the story - most notably in the paragraph where Dally is thinking about how short the girls' skirts have gotten, and how he feels about the new model of mustang… and then in his neighbourhood, the girls' skirts have always been short, and there are no new models of mustangs.

The purpose of this was to show that even though Dally is aware somewhat of this internal conflict, he does nothing to change it. At the end of the story, he acts as though nothing has happened, but he cannot give up his affection for bees. He cannot cut off that part of himself, he cannot let it completely die. Therefore, nothing really changes. Though he's been to jail and his father has died - both major events in a person's life - no inner part of Dally has won the battle or the war, and he continues living on as he has.

FAILURES:

I'm not sure the reader is even able to get any of what I was attempting to put on paper out of it. This is why I didn't offer this explanation before reading the story. I want to know if you completely missed it (presumably because I didn't do a good enough job getting the point across). I would also like to know if you can now see that in the story, after my intentions have been explained.

I found it very difficult to get the right voice/perspective. I started writing from Dally's perspective, third person, but found myself drifting to Johnny and Tim. I really struggled with the best way to write it, and even considered writing it in first person or from the perspective of a fourth person as a narrator and observer - like maybe Ponyboy. Ultimately I tried to keep it from Dally's, third person perspective, though. Ultimately I think this is one of the major weaknesses of the story, and that it makes the entire thing lack flow.

I'm not sure I illustrated clearly enough the distinctions between the fire and ice aspects of Tim's character. Perhaps if I spent more time illustrating that, than I did on describing Tim and Dally's relationship and interactions, it would be better.

Same thing with Johnny, innocence and experience.

I think I should maybe go into a bit more detail about Dally's experiences in prison… though I purposefully avoided talking about it too much.

As usual, I think I started out strong and that the strength of the story petered out toward the end. I think this is when I really started to struggle with it

Those items mentioned above are the ones I would particularly interested in getting some feedback on.

Please note that this story has had minimal editing. A friend of mine who is a fiction writer read it through for me, and made some suggestions, but he has never read The Outsiders, and he is unfamiliar with the story and the audience, so his input was minimal though very helpful and very much appreciated.

I'm mentally exhausted over this one, so I'm going to be taking a long break from it before/if I go back to it. I think the ideas, though, and I may try to either re-write this story, or simply use the ideas in it for another story later on. I'm sure this one is salvageable.