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Advancing Finely Crafted Literature

Dan Kopcow

Best. Interview. Ever.

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We had the pleasure of a virtual sit-down with Dan Kopcow, author of the soon-to-released Worst. Date. Ever. and are delighted to share his responses to our questions with you.

We’ve all heard the advice that authors should “write what they know.” But fiction emerges from imagination and creation of new worlds. Do you feel a tension between what you’ve experienced and what lives only in your mind?

First off, “It Lives Only in Your Mind” sounds like a 1950s sci-fi horror movie I would definitely want to catch on late-night TV. 

As a writer and a reader, I want to escape everyday life.  So writing just what I know doesn’t excite me.  I want to take what I know, or more specifically, what interests me, and heighten it until it’s dramatic and entertaining.  Life doesn’t always throw coherent drama and absurdity at you so I think there is a fair amount of invention involved in writing.  Sometimes, it’s finding a nugget of reality and imagining a particular circumstance or character within that reality. 

If I wrote only what I know, things would tend to get dull for me.  In life, you’re trying to manage things to keep the chaos and entropy at bay.  When I write, I look for the extreme and try to figure out how I can maximize the chaos and make my characters squirm.  It’s all about possibilities; either comic, dramatic, or thrilling.  And I tend not to think in terms of genre – it’s all about what the story requires.  As Stephen Sondheim is fond of saying, content dictates form. 

As an example, I had heard a story on NPR a few years ago about something called the John Hour.  In 1979, Ed Koch, who was NYC’s mayor at the time, thought it would be helpful to broadcast the names of the men who had been arrested for soliciting prostitutes every day on public airwaves.  Well, as soon as I heard that, I thought it would make a great basis for a comedy of misunderstandings.  It took a while to crack the story but “The John Hour” is one of my favorite stories in “Worst. Date. Ever.”  You never know where you’re going to find your next bit of inspiration.

What surprising skills or hobbies do you have?

Because I work by day as an engineer, my hobbies tend to be more on the creative side.  I love woodworking and furniture making.  I’ve reviewed films and directed theater.  I used to be in a professional boys choir and once sang for the Pope at the Vatican while we were on tour in Italy.  I make a mean Tres Leches Cake.  Actually, I find all these things are tied to my storytelling.  Even the Tres Leches Cake, especially when it turns into an epic, mushy, failure. 

What’s your process for writing: do you outline, create flow charts, fill out index cards, or just start and see where you end up? Do you use the same process every time?

All of the above.  Usually, before I even start writing an outline, I think a lot about my characters and what they want.  That usually leads me to what the right point of view and tone should be.   Once I know who should be telling the story and what their perspective is, I’m ready to start writing.

Some stories are more plot driven so a roadmap is helpful to make sure I get to certain rest stops and destinations.  Others are more character driven so it’s all about the journey.  Some of my stories are very tightly-woven so flow charts are completely necessary to diagram where and when each storyline and character will bounce off the other to create more complications and resolutions.

So, all that is part of my process.  And massive amounts of cocaine and absinthe.  Wait, am I allowed to say that?

Who inspired you? Which authors influence you?

Keeping my eyes and ears open for strangers, their stories, expressions and turns of phrase is always inspiring for story ideas.  Teachers were a great inspiration, of course.  There was a guidance counselor at my high school who was in charge of the Drama Club.  He really encouraged me to pursue the creative arts and think about story structure. 

As an adult, I draw my inspirations from a variety of authors, playwrights, and screenwriters.  The list is vast but at the top sits P.G. Wodehouse, Stephen Sondheim, Truman Capote, David Mitchell, Michael Chabon, Kate Atkinson, and Jacque Tati.  I love the way each of them decides to tell their stories.  It’s rarely a conventional subject matter and almost always expanding the boundaries of structure and perspective.

My friend, Paul, started writing when we were in college and inspired me to take it seriously.  We’ve been sharing each other’s stories for decades and it always inspires me to keep going.  

And my wife keeps me whimsical and not so serious.

What’s next for you?

I’m always working on a few short stories.  I also have two novels I’m currently polishing.  Prior Futures is a social satire thriller that I’ve been working on for several years.  The Singing Boys is a fictionalized version of my time in a professional boys choir including our summer tour through Italy.  “Mac and Cheese,” one of the stories in Worst. Date. Ever., is a chapter from this novel.

I’m also continuing to work on my next novel, The People from Away.  It’s a quirky detective story and family drama.

How I Lost a Girlfriend in a Cave and Learned to Mine Empathy

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by Dan Kopcow, author of Worst. Date. Ever

Worst. Date. Ever. is a fiction short story collection about romantic dates gone horribly wrong.  As I sifted through my short stories to see which ones fit into this collection, it occurred to me that the narrator or main character in some of these stories was not always the one going through their worst date ever.   It reminded me that, as a writer, it’s good to let the reader figure out whom to empathize with.   

We immediately think of ourselves experiencing the worst date ever.  But keep in mind that there were times when we went on a date and caused someone else to have the worst date ever.  There were times in our life when we thought the date went fine but the other person never saw us again.  Perhaps, and unbeknownst to us, they may have had the worst date ever.  And we might have been the cause!

Many years ago, I was dating this woman and we decided to go on vacation together.  It was a tremendous test of our relationship.  For the first time, we would be spending every minute together, observing how we behaved in new situations, bathroom habits, the whole caboodle.  We  traveled to Montana and were having a wonderful time.  Then, we went to Jewel Cave National Monument.  

Jewel Cave

I don’t know if you’ve been but the trip involves driving for hours through prairies, with the mountains glaring down and judging you.  You arrive at a National Park office where you take an elevator about a mile straight down into the earth.  When the elevator doors open, the temperature has dropped and you are immediately aware of humidity and the fact that you are in another world.  A tour guide takes you through a roped-off path through some truly spectacular and colorful caves.  

When my date and I arrived back up to the surface, her coldness toward me matched the Jewel Cave temperature.  For the rest of the trip, she couldn’t wait to go home.  I never heard from her again.  And I couldn’t figure out what went wrong.  

A section of The Miseries

At the time of our trip, we were both in our thirties and she had been very clear that she was interested in having children.  In hindsight, after sifting through details, I pinned down the moment when things fell apart.  It happened a mile below the surface.  While on our family tour in Jewel Cave, we came to the end of our path, marked by some Do Not Enter signs.  Our tour guide told us this was as far as we could go.  We’d have to turn around and walk back the way we came.  The tour guide went on to explain that on the other side of the Do Not Enter signs was The Miseries.  The Miseries are a series of extremely narrow cave openings that only the most dedicated and experienced cave explorers dare to enter.  The openings are twelve to sixteen inches wide by two to three feet long.  You stuff yourself into this opening and slowly, painfully, shimmy your way through, sometimes a few inches an hour.  This goes on for some time while you get bruised and scraped in complete darkness.  For fun, The Miseries alters its claustrophobic openings from a vertical to a horizontal orientation.  It takes about half a day to get through The Miseries.  When you finally arrive through the other side, bloody and exhausted, you witness an enormous and glorious cave.  You camp out there overnight, aided by the camping equipment you have been dragging in a bag which has been tied to your ankle the entire time.  The next morning, you do the whole thing in reverse.

Worst. Date. Ever.

When the tour guide completed The Miseries description, I joked out loud, “Why don’t we send the children through there with cameras so they can show us what it looks like?”  The families held their kids close to them as if I were a serial killer.  My girlfriend, realizing I might not be ideal father material, was suddenly having the Worst. Date. Ever.

I think about that story as a writer and how, depending on whose perspective you’re following,  your empathy shifts and the story’s tone changes from comedy to horror.  My hope is that these stories entertain but also remind us to be more empathetic.  And to keep your mouth shut when you’re trapped a mile underground with strangers.

Dan’s stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines nationally and internationally.  His short story, “Brain Takes a Sick Day,” was selected for inclusion in the Satirica anthology. His short story, “The Cobbler Cherry,” was included in the anthology, Thank You, Death Robot, which won an Independent Publishing Award for Best Science-Fiction and Fantasy and was named a Top Ten Fiction Novel by the Chicago Tribune.  He is currently at work on three novels.