In our "Just Ask" section, Sharon Mayhew asked us where she could submit individual "deep" poems.
Sharon, there are actually dozens and dozens of fine literary magazines that publish poetry. Some of the more popular ones would include The New Yorker and The Paris Review, among others. Not only would places like this give you great exposure, but they are also going to pay you some money to publish your work.
But, not everyone gets into publications such as this. It takes talent, luck, and probably some strong connections would help as well. If you think your work is good, I'd say give it a shot, but don't get your hopes up too high.
If you go to a website called Duotrope's Digest, you can also use their poetry search engine to find other publications you can submit to. Go to the site, click the tab that says "poetry," fill in the search criteria, and then click "search." You'll get the names of the publications, the genres they publish, length requirements, pay scales, and whether they are a print or electronic publication. It's a great resource, and you can use it for free, although they appreciate donations.
Getting into a literary magazine is a bit of an art. (This applies to everyone, not just poets.) Different publications have different preferences. So, you can submit often to many different publications in the hopes that you'll accidentally stumble on a good fit. Or, you can take the time to research the pubs and only submit to the ones that seem to like your type of work. Seriously, either way works. I tend to take the latter approach, but I know a poet who takes the former and has quite a bit of success. You can decide if you want to spend your time research or submitting--both are kind of tedious, at least to me.
When you find a publication you are interested in, go to their submission guidelines. They will tell you how to submit your work to them. Often with poetry you can submit multiple pieces at the same time if you have them.
There are a few other things you should know about submitting, including the value of online versus print publications, multiple submissions versus simultaneous submissions, and the cover letter. Check out a few of our other posts, to get more information (1, 2, 3)
For me, the key to submitting is to expect failure. That may be a bit depressing, but getting an editor or agent to like your work depends on so many factors that are out of your control. If someone turns you down, don't necessarily blame yourself. Yes, sometimes, your work might not hold up. But, sometimes, the editor could have just gotten a parking ticket and simply isn't in the mood to make anyone happy that day.
Hey, everyone, guess what's coming up? Yep, that's right - the deadline for the Genre Wars short story contest. Here's the contest guidelines again if you're interested and haven't entered yet. We'd absolutely love to receive your work!
Contest Guidelines
1. E-mail your 1 to 2,000-word short story to LiteraryLab@gmail.com before December 1, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Pastethe work in the body of the e-mail with breaks between paragraphs (hit return twice). We will be reading all submissions blind, thanks to a kind volunteer who will send us the entries with all names removed. No attachments will be opened.
2. In your e-mail subject line type GENRE WARS ENTRY. In the body of the email include your name, the title of your work, word count, and which genre category you'd like to compete in: 1. science fiction/fantasy, 2. horror/crime, 3. literary, 4. romance, 5. children's literature/middle grade/young adult, or 6. experimental--yes, you have to pick one.
3. Works must be previously unpublished, and we ask for the rights to post the winning stories online and/or in print in the anthology. Afterwards, you are free to include the story in your own collections or as a reprint in another anthology.
For the original post about the contest, please click here.
First: Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates that holiday (and to those who don't anyway). Mighty Reader and I had turkey, potatoes, yams, stuffing, pies and a lot of hooch. It was swell. I'll spare you any anecdotes and private jokes, and just say I hope you all had a wondrous Thursday, no matter what you did.
Today I'd like to talk about details. Playwright Anton Chekhov famously once said, "If a gun is loaded in Act One, it must be fired by Act Three." What he means by this is that if you make a detail seem significant at the time, then you owe it to your reader to make good on that significance. There should be some sort of payoff for drawing the reader's attention to a detail or an action. This theory of payoff from significance is known as "Chekhov's Gun."
Chekhov's Gun provides a good general rule about writing, one that forces us to pay attention to the level of detail we put into our stories. I'd like you to keep the idea of Chekhov's Gun in mind for a minute while I talk about something else.
When we are writing our first drafts--or when I am, at any rate--I tend to put in all sorts of details about people and places and then cut most of them out in revisions later. Some of the details are odd things that I have no idea why I'm writing them in, but at the time they seem to be the right details. For example, say that you're having two characters talk to each other, and for no reason you can think of, you have one of these characters mention his limp. Why's he have a limp? Who knows; it just works there so you leave it. You might also have another character wearing a foolish hat that nobody can stand but he won't be take off. Or you have a woman who is playing with a ring on the small finger of her right hand. These are little things you've stuck in to round out your characters, but mention maybe only once and then forget about as you finish the first draft. When you go back through to revise, you can't recall why these details are in the story and so you cut them and move on.
What I'd like to suggest is that some of these details, seemingly meaningless, did signify something to you when you were in the white-hot passion of drafting. At some level, they were the right details, and you should consider keeping them. But don't just leave them how they are. Do something with them. Think of these details as potential examples of Chekhov's Gun. Before you cut them out, ask youself what they could possibly mean in the larger context of the story. Do they say something about your characters that can be expanded, that will deepen the reader's connection to the characters?
For example, the guy with the limp. Maybe he limps as a result of some event about which he's ashamed. Whenever he gets to know someone new, they'll inevitably ask about the limp. How honestly he answers them can be a measure of how much he trusts the other person. You could even be clever and have an inverse relationship: the more honestly he answers about his limp, the less he cares for the other person and, maybe, the more likely he is to do them some sort of harm.
The guy with the hat could've gotten the hat from someone special to him that he's trying to reunite with. Or, to be more clever, he refuses to doff his cap to anyone because he sees himself as the equal or even the better of anyone he meets, and at some point he will, dramatically, take off his hat for some character.
The woman with the ring? Maybe it's her mother's wedding ring. Maybe it's a ring someone gave her when she was little. Maybe it's nothing of the sort. Maybe it's a ring she stole and can't remove and her playing with it is a sign of her constant worry that she'll be caught out in her theft.
Not all of the little details you spontaneously throw in will lead to bigger story elements, but some of them probably can. I scatter these things into my first drafts and I know at the time that they'll probaby be cut but I also know that they might develop into pointers to larger ideas in the rest of the story. One possible way to visualize this is that, with the mention of (for example) the walking stick the antagonist carries in Chapter Two, you are lighting a fuse that will lead to some kind of explosion in a later chapter. The explosion needn't be big. And it might not even be a sort of "A leads to B" chain of events. It could just be that your "insignificant" details can be made significant if you ask yourself not just what they mean where you've first written them, but what else they might mean. Sometimes, they mean nothing at all, and that's why you've got your delete key. But sometimes, they can lead you farther and deeper into your characters, and you should follow those leads.
Thanksgiving is probably my favorite day of the year. I used to love it because it was the time of year when the wind would blow the dry leaves around, and it was so nice to be inside a cozy home surrounded by my family. As I've gotten older, my view of the things I am grateful for has expanded. I'm still very grateful for my most excellent family, but I'm grateful for so much more.
And, of course, I'm grateful for everyone who stops by here and joins in on our discussions and debates about the beautiful art of fiction writing. I love learning about all of your lives: your stories, your publishing experiences, your rants and raves, your lifestyles. I admire the people who balance their lives with work or family, including taking care of family members that need a lot of care. I'm thankful for people who are willing to talk about their publishing experiences with the hopes of helping others who are going through the same thing. Most of all, I'm really just grateful that the internet allows all of us to find each other so that we don't feel so alone doing this thing that requires so much alone time.
I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you all so much for supporting our blog and sharing yours as well!
I'm actually attempting to make my first Thanksgiving dinner today, which also means that I'm home and will be checking in here throughout the day. So, feel free to leave comments if you want. Talk about anything: writing questions, brining, story progress, pumpkin pie, NaNo, internal meat temperatures, Harlequin, stuffing, Tolstoy. Did I mention Tolstoy?
What are you grateful for? Shout it out to the world!!!
Just a short one today. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I really think this is a powerful idea, so I'll mention it again. In Carolyn See's book Making A Literary Life, she describes how important it is to tell other writers that you like them and you're grateful to them. She advocates writing letter to writers you like, just to tell them how much they mean to you. Leave it at that. Don't ask for any favors. Don't ask if they will read your manuscript. Don't ask for a blurb. Just spread the love you feel for the art form, and somehow, miraculously, it will come back to you.
I've written a few of these letters in my lifetime, though admittedly not enough. Some of the people on my list have been Harold Bloom, Jonathan Safran Foer, Carolyn See herself, Nicole Krauss, Aimee Liu, Mary Yukari Waters, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, and some others that I'm not thinking of at the moment.
Who are some writers who would be on your list? Write them a letter!
There are a couple of cliches that get thrown at writers all the time, one of the most common being "write what you know." It's like the first piece of advice given to all writers and is, I think, one of the worst. The idea is that if you write about a subject matter in which you are well-versed and knowledgeable...something. I don't know what. You'll write well, I guess. Me, I think this is bollocks. Bad advice. Wrong and wrong-headed. Et cetera.
Writing about what you know will likely allow you to write at great length about subjects that don't inspire you, that don't challenge you, that are not particularly interesting to you. That's a recipe for bad, dull fiction. For example, I know a lot about spreadsheets. Should I write about that? No, I didn't think so. How about discretionary spending on grant budgets? No? How about expression matching in PERL? No! "Writing what I know" will not yield compelling stories or good fiction.
What I think we should do is write about what we care about. Write about what fascinates us, even if we know nothing about it. If we're really interested, we'll do the research and get smart about our subject, because we'll have a passion to find out the facts and the history and the details, and our writing will be informed by that passion.
Or, as John Gardner put it (so much better than I have), "Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination, nothing is quicker to turn on the psyche’s censoring devices and distortion systems, than trying to write truthfully and interestingly about one’s own home town, one’s Episcopalian mother, one’s crippled younger sister.”
And really, more to the point, good fiction is less about subject matter than it is about character. We should write about characters that we care about and in whom we are interested, and because we care and are interested, that care and interest will be translated into our writing and to our readers.
I'd like very much to lead a campaign to eliminate the "write what you know" advice. If someone is a beginning writer and asks you for advice, don't tell them to write what they know; tell them to write what they care about, what they are interested in, and tell them to write it the way their favorite writers would do it.
I was going to write about details, but this seemed more important today. Maybe I'll write about details on Friday, when everyone is out shopping. We'll see.
I didn't originally plan to revisit my post on Cuts and Continuity, but as I was revising some prose this weekend, I had a few more thoughts about it.
When we all start to read a story, we initially have to overcome an activation energy barrier. Activation energy is that energy required for a chemical reaction to occur, such as when you start a fire; you need some spark to get the fire to burn, but once it's going, you can leave it alone until the fire burns out. With a story, you need to overcome an initial disorientation before you are comfortable enough with the time, place, and characters to just read through it enjoyably.
I think we're all aware of this initial activation energy barrier, but I was finding in my own prose that I had unintentionally set up other barriers throughout my story. And far too many of them.
Every time there is a jump in a story, the reader has to overcome the activation energy barrier again. They have to read for awhile in a disoriented state before they can figure out exactly where they are. And, if they aren't up to the task, they are likely to give up. A jump from one chapter to another is probably an acceptable place for such a new barrier to be put up. But, I was finding in my own prose that I was making readers work, even from sentence to sentence in a single paragraph:
The man’s name is Mr. Paiboon. They had met him on their second night in Bangkok, when they went to a local trade school looking for work among the postings tacked to the bulletin boards. The man was filling out an ad. He overheard them talking and told Rana that he might be interested in having her work for him as a waitress.
Going from the first sentence to the second sentence, readers have to transition from learning about one character in the present tense to being in the point of view of other characters in the past tense. Then, from the second to third sentence, we are back with the original character, Mr. Paiboon, even slipping into his mind in the fourth sentence.
The same thoughts within this paragraph can be presented with fewer activation energy barriers:
The man's name is Mr. Paiboon. He had introduced himself to Bao and Rana on their second night in Bangkok, when the two had gone to a local trade school looking for work among the postings tacked to the bulletin boards. Though his ad was not yet up, Mr. Paiboon told them that he might be able to help. "I hope you don't mind that I was eavesdropping," he said. "But this young lady here might be perfect for a waitress position that has opened up."
The meaning in this paragraph is basically the same as the original, but the transitions from one sentence to another connect more easily. The character we learn about in sentence one is the subject of sentence two instead of the object. He is also the subject of sentence three, which is connected to the end of the previous sentence by the prepositional phrase. Then, the last part of the paragraph is dialog that expands on the sentence before it, still staying with the single main character of this scene.
Changing my prose this way, I think a reader will be led more easily from one sentence to the next. By eliminating or reducing the activation energy barriers, I have a smaller chance of losing the reader along the way.
We sometimes talk about hooks in writing. The idea of a hook in the beginning of a story is to "hook" the reader--like a fish--so that you can reel him or her in more easily throughout the rest of the story. Breaks in the continuity caused by changes in time, place, or point of view, then, are like when the fish manages to free itself from the hook. If this happens, you have to somehow snag them again. But, if your prose feels continuous, I think readers are less likely to fall off that hook. They will want to keep reading, in part because they can't find a good stopping place, a break where they must rest before overcoming the next activation energy barrier.
I was going to do a sort of follow up to my poll from last week about protagonists, and tie that in with Davin's recent discussion of sincerity and Lady Glamis' discussion of honesty, but I've been sick this week and I'm still not feeling quite right in the head, so I'm going to just fall back upon some practical advice for first drafts.
I'm reaching a stage in my own first draft where I've essentially already discovered the main things about the characters and the story and I'm sort of doing mechanics, by which I mean that I'm writing scenes that set up the inciting incident at the end of Act One. It remains interesting reading, I think, but on the writing end it can be more like playing a game of chess (strategizing and suchlike) than, say, falling in love. If you know what I mean. If you don't, bear with me and take my word for it that the similes above are fantastically accurate but I'm still too dragged down by illness to explain why.
Where was I? Oh, yes: I am at a place in my first draft where writing is now a lot like work and not a lot like artistic visionary trance, and I'm really laboring to start each scene. In fact, I find myself thinking about avoiding the draft because right now the work is hard work and I'm essentially a lazy old man. I sit down to my notebook, pen in hand, and don't know what to write because I think the next scene is going to be a real bitch, so I go off and make myself a cuppa or throw in some laundry and in the end I don't write anything at all.
The best way I have found to combat this is to simply write the next word down, even if it's the wrong word. In fact, the less likely the word is to be the right word, the better. For example, I'm writing a story about two men in Colonial America, so if I need a scene about these two going to a tavern to meet a third person but I have no point of entry into the scene, I'll write down something like "peacocks" because that's so obviously not the right word. But then I make myself finish the sentence that begins with "peacocks" because nature abhors a vacuum and I abhor an unfinished sentence in a manuscript.
Why does this help me? Because it usually forces me to come up with the right words. Sometimes it takes a paragraph or a page of rubbish about peacocks, but writing about the wrong stuff for a few minutes reminds me of what the right things are for that particular passage, and I'm able to bring the writing back into focus and get on with the scene.
Sometimes, the clearly wrong idea will spark something cool, too, and suddenly I'll have a brilliant passage about peacocks that I'd never have put in originally. The argument could be made that I chose "peacocks" or whatever because, subconsciously, this is really what I wanted to put into the book at this point, but I don't care about that because the trick is to get writing again and if I've tricked myself into writing something I subconsciously thought should go into the book, then well done me, right?
The larger point, of course, is that books are written one word at a time, and there is nobody but you to add those next words, so you have to do it all by yourself. I believe Neil Gaiman had some inspiring thoughts about just this very thing, and possibly later I'll find a link to them. No matter.
If you are stuck, then just write the next word down, even if it's wrong. Even if it's "the next word." Simply having something there on the page forces you to think about the story, and the more wrong what you've got is, the better your chances of correcting it with something that's right.
Anyone have any other simple but effective tricks for getting past those momentary "I have no idea what comes next" pauses in our writing, especially during first drafts?
I wasn't going to post today. I'm signing off The Literary Lab for a few weeks until January due to some personal stuff, but last week I said I'd do this post, so here it goes.
I brought up the issue of honesty in writing in my "They've Adapted" post. Honesty is a touchy subject. There were some great comments and ideas that got me thinking what makes writing honest, and how I can identify it in my own writing and others.
I'll begin with mirrors.
Do you ever feel like you're looking in the mirror and you can't even see yourself? I've done that a few times. It's as if you're dressed up for a show, decked out from head to foot, your makeup caked on, your lips bright red, your eyes popping like a peacock's plumage. In fact, you might even feel like a peacock. It might feel splendid. It might feel ridiculous. It depends on you.
I think our stories are mirrors. I've always felt this way. After I read something I've written it's as if I am looking into a mirror at myself. Sometimes it's a fun-house mirror all warped and frightening. Sometimes it's a lake with ripples. Sometimes it's a perfectly oval piece of glass showing me exactly what I am - and that's the scariest mirror of all.
Now I'll move on to music.
One of my favorite movies is Music & Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. I know it's a chick flick, but the show is brilliant on many levels (and you'll see this if you grew up in the 80's), but one of the things I love most about it is how much it gets to the root of what remains honest in our work, our writing, and what we choose to share with others.
One of my favorite quotes from the movie is this conversation:
Alex: It doesn't have to be perfect. Just spit it out. They're just lyrics.
Sophie: "Just lyrics"?
Alex: Lyrics are important. They're just not as important as melody.
Sophie: I really don't think you get it.
Alex: Oh. You look angry. Click your pen.
Sophie: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex.
Alex: I so get that.
Sophie: But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magic.
Magic. That's what seems to happen when I manage to get honesty into my writing. It's like a memorable, catchy song where everything comes together and it makes me feel a mixture of emotions that reach more deeply than I thought was possible. I look into the mirror and I see me, but I don't see me. It has become a creation that took on a life of its own. My honesty gave it that life.
Throughout Music & Lyrics Sophie fights for honesty in her work. Several of the characters seem to be taking it away from her - vying to please the audience instead. Alex, the other main character, learns a valuable lesson in teaching himself how to say what he really wants to say. In the end, he writes a song that Sophie calls "Dinner" - her version of what rings honest and true.
Now I'll bring up your comments.
Amy Tate said:
But you are so right -writing is a performance, but it has to be our own. The only sort of writer that I know how to be is myself. And I've finally reached the point where I'm o.k. with that - published or not.
Lost Wanderer said:
Honesty comes from writing what you want without worrying about impressing anyone, or without worrying about how it will stand out. If it's well-written and if you have written in your unique way, it will be different than others.
That's a key point, I think - being okay with ourselves. It's a tough place to get to. It can be an uncomfortable journey - one that I'm still taking, actually.
Angel Zapata had an interesting thought:
Don't ever write from the heart. The heart will mislead you, have you question the emotions. Write from the ear. Listen to what your characters have to say and put it to paper. Don't put words in their mouths either or try to jazz up their speech. Write it how you hear it, not how you'd like to see it. Honestly, that's how I write.
This is true. I recently received some critiques from a good friend of mine on a chapter of my book, Monarch. She was shocked at a character's choices, feelings, and reactions to another character's confession. And after she pointed it out I was shocked too! I realized that for the entire year I've been writing this book I've been ignoring my character's pleas to be heard. Sucks for my poor character, Lilian, and for me. I'm going to start listening now.
Letting our characters speak for themselves is honesty, but I also feel that, like a song, there's another aspect that makes it magic - YOU.
Nobody can tell a story like you do. Nobody.
If you try and take things from other writings you've read and studied (and most of us do this subconsciously), if you try to be clever, to impress, to be anything other than what you are, most of your readers will sense it. Davin says:
I think that some stories can succeed without relying on honesty. Many books are written as an escape. But, I think readers can tell when something is written honestly.
It's true. I've set aside books many times because they didn't feel honest to me. I didn't think of it that way: "I can't read this. The writer isn't being honest with me, his writing, or his characters. I will put this away now." No. It usually just doesn't capture my interest and I can't read any further. However, I do think Davin has a point about some stories succeeding without relying on honesty. They can. I've read many of them, and it works. I love to listen to some songs that aren't necessarily teeming with emotional honesty. They're entertaining. Something about them pulls me in.
But I must argue that it is the honest movies, honest songs, honest writing that separate themselves from everything else. As I judge entries for our Genre Wars contest it seems like I'm drawn to the stories that feel the most honest.
In the end, there's two aspects of writing that I find the most difficult, the most important to creating that MAGIC. First there's this, as Scott kindly explained in his comments:
The most honest I am is when I'm most invisible in the writing, when I'm not editorializing but simply presenting my characters as truthfully and as sincerely as I can.
Like the lyrics, I'd say - letting our characters speak for themselves (this is sooo much easier said than done). That's the first kind of honesty I can sense in writing. The other is the actual writing, the melody - what carries the lyrics. How is the story presented? Does it feel like the author is uncomfortable with presentation, with using flashbacks, dumping back story, using elaborate descriptions? Or does all that work seamlessly with everything else? If so, that's when it feels honest to me - when the writer is so comfortable with himself and the story he needs to tell that all that's left is . . . the story.
When I write something like that I look into the mirror and see me, but transformed. I think that's what the slippery term "voice" might be. The writer is recognizable, but they've created something honestly outside of themselves.
This has turned into a very long post. Hmmm. Many thoughts to share. I think I'll go eat some dinner now. Start cooking! I'll see you all in a few weeks.
A book is long. (Okay, I guess that isn't quite so profound.) But, while a book is long, it can also be short. Or, at least the parts of the book can be short: short scenes, short chapters, short thoughts.
Sometimes, short is good. A story that cuts from scene to scene, character to character, can be fast-paced and exciting. One of the things I love about Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is that, even though the book is a gazillion pages long, each chapter is probably about three pages long. Tolstoy takes us into one character's mind ever so briefly before whisking us away into another character. As a whole, this technique works to present the grandeur of the story. We feel like we are reading about a society rather than a small cast of characters. When I open up that book, I actually feel like I'm in outer space looking down at wee specks of people vibrating about. (It's just my preference that I like books like this. Everything Is Illuminated and Joy Luck Club are a couple of other nice examples.)
Of course, sometimes, long is nice too. I always admire a writer who can keep one character's story exciting over several hundred pages. Catcher in the Rye comes to mind, but I'm sure there are other examples. It takes restraint and focus to be able to do this well. And, when it works, the story never feels small. A different sort of richness emerges as the rest of the world is implied.
As structure and story are intertwined, the decision between breaking up a novel into shorter pieces or keeping the narrative long will have large effects on what you end up with. The trick, at least for me, is to not fall back on one of these choices by default. With my early drafts of Rooster, for example, I often switched points of view simply because because I was stuck. Jumping into another character's head allowed me to restart. As a result, I had a lot of unfinished scenes I needed to go back to.
So, how does one keep it long? For me, the answer is sensitivity. When I'm writing, if I want to stay with a particular story line and I suddenly feel stuck, I go back and try to clue in on avenues I have yet to explore. I try to be sensitive to questions left unanswered, details that could be expanded to reveal more about the character. If I'm going to stick to one narrative line, I want to explore it thoroughly. (Incidentally, I even think the different parts of the three-act structure are organized in such a way as to thoroughly explore you particular subject.)
To keep it short, for me, the answer is grace. A book made up of several short segments has to gracefully transition from one part to the next. If you're going into different characters' thoughts, one technique to transition gracefully is to pan out and then pan in. You start with one character's thoughts, you pan out to describe some external detail that leads to another character, and then you pan in on the other character's thoughts.
Both of these strategies can result in a great story, and it's simply a matter of choosing how you want to tell it. But, with each strategy comes a new set of tools you must rely on.
What about you? Do you prefer long narratives or short pieces? What are some techniques you use to carry out your strategy?
Thanks to Matthew Delman for getting me to write this post.
So one story (or group of stories) going around the writing blogs in the last week is that most of the mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by men (lists such as these from publishers weekly, amazon, and then there was the whole snafu about Tor--I think--putting together a "best short fiction" collection that excluded women writers earlier this year). I've been reading up on some things that might be peripherally related to this phenomenon, and I seem to have come up with these facts:
1. The abovementioned assertion that most mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by male authors.
2. Most fiction is written by/read by women.
3. Both the Nobel and Booker prizes this year were won by women.
4. The Pulitzer Prize has, in the last decade, been about evenly split between male and female writers.
5. Most men don't read books.
6. Most men who do read books tend to read either non-fiction or male-oriented genre fiction.
7. Mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by males...oh, I said that one already, didn't I?
8. I have no evidence to back this up except what I experienced in college and what I've seen around the internets, but most "serious" and "scholarly" literary criticism/writing seems to be done by men.
9. Female writers do not "write like girls." Flannery O'Connor could have kicked anyone's ass.
So I take all of that and I ask a couple of questions: how many of the writers who read this blog (and there are hundreds of you) are men? How many of those men read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you (all of you, I mean) know men who read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you know men who read fiction at all?
I had lunch last week with one of my best friends, and he assured me that he's going to go all out and make himself read One Whole Novel Each Year. Wow, I said. Okay, really I just gave a world-weary sigh and said nothing.
So I'm looking for not only thoughts about why males keep topping "best of" lists in mainstream press (because we live in a patriarchal society, duh), but anecdotal evidence regarding male readers. What's going on in the world? How often do any of you give a book to a man as a present (and then the man actually reads it)? Et cetera.
Also (I'm throwing out a lot of questions today, I know), if it's true that males read less than females, what do you think is the cause, and how can this be corrected?
Happy Monday, everyone! There are only a few days left before December 1st if anyone is still thinking of entering our Genre Wars contest. We hope you do!
Another writing program we're considering donating our anthology proceeds to is WriteGirl. I had the honor of interviewing Keren Taylor, the Executive Director and a Mentor for the program:
LL: Can you tell us about WriteGirl? What is your mission, and how did you get started?
KT: As a songwriter, poet, and freelance writer, I appreciate the power and versatility of the craft of language. While living in New York City, I helped establish a creative writing and mentoring organization for girls, and I saw first-hand what a tremendous impact it had on both the girls and the women involved – giving them self-confidence, new skills, new friends, and expanding their dreams and goals. When I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, I wanted to continue to combine my love of writing with my community work. I put a notice out by email to various writers groups, gathered an initial leadership group of about 10 women, and launched WriteGirl in December 2001. It helped that I had just been made a casualty of the dot-com crash – suddenly I had time and peace to think about going in a whole new direction. Starting a nonprofit was not only appealing in terms of making a contribution to the community, but it challenged me to apply all my business and creative skills. I’m always up for a good challenge.
WriteGirl is designed to encourage self-expression and communication in several ways: weekly one-on-one sessions with a mentor, monthly writing workshops for all members (more than 100 women and girls in one room!), and the sharing of work at public readings and in our annual publication. We’ve created a safe, supportive environment that cultivates strong communication skills. We work hard to keep the program lively, engaging, and relevant to the lives of our members, as well as aligned with academic standards and goals. Over a nine-month period, roughly corresponding to the school year, I see girls and women really come out of themselves, take chances, try new things, and explore their ideas to the max.
LL: You mention the word "empowerment" in the introduction of your group website. What, for you, is the power of creative writing?
KT: We see a direct link between empowering a girl to develop her own voice and her confidence in herself. The more we encourage and support a girl's written ideas and perspectives, the more confident she becomes in herself, her choices, and her future. It’s amazing to see a girl enter WriteGirl as shy and withdrawn, or perhaps outgoing but a bit awkward, and see her in only a few months make an amazing transformation into a self-assured, well-spoken young woman.
LL: Can you tell us about some of your success stories?
KT: We have maintained a 100% success rate in not only helping girls in our Core Mentoring Program to graduate, but also ensure that they enroll in college, many as the first members of their family to do so. I have an email folder where I keep letters from mentees – unsolicited letters where they spontaneously share things they’ve learned or gained from WriteGirl. They’re like an espresso shot for me – I check them out when I need a lift.
We have WriteGirl alums at Dartmouth, San Francisco State, UCLA, Berkeley, Reed and many other colleges. It's exciting to know that we helped them get there, and even more exciting to hear about them graduating from college and wanting to pursue careers where they themselves could give back to their communities.
We are very grateful to our 140 women writers who volunteer their time to mentor our girls. We have a significant screening and training program to help find and prepare women writers to be effective mentors. In addition to our Core one-on-one Mentoring Program, we conduct weekly writing workshops in six schools in LA in critically at-risk neighborhoods such as Compton, Pico Rivera and South Los Angeles. These students are all either pregnant or parenting teens, and face all kinds of challenges personally, at home and in their neighborhoods. Some are on probation or have other significant behavioral issues. We have seen a direct impact on these students' academic standings through participation in WriteGirl creative writing workshops, and the resulting anthologies from these schools are very powerful and often surprising. They have many stories to tell, and we help them get them on paper and share them with each other and their families/communities through our books and public readings. We are very proud of the accomplishments of our In-Schools program.
LL: Is there anything else you'd like our readers to know about your group?
KT: We know that anywhere there are women writers, there are girls who need them. We look forward to expanding WriteGirl into other neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and eventually other cities. And as our alumni membership grows, we can’t wait to hear (and share) all their stories of achievement and success.
LL: Keren, thank you very much for taking the time to tell us more about your wonderful organization!
In a sort of continuation of Davin's post about sincerity and Michelle's post about honesty, I wanted to do a poll today.
(Poll closed, results below:)
Q: In your current novel, is the protagonist:
1. Someone unlike you or anyone you know? 41.5%
2. A stand-in for you, or an idealized version of you? 36.6%
3. A stand-in for someone you know, or an idealized version of them? 19.5%
4. A version of someone else's protagonist because you could write that story better than they did? 2.4%
In my last book, my protagonist was a minor character from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that I expanded and fleshed out a lot and he's nothing like me except, of course, that he reads a lot and is obsessed by fine food. Otherwise he's a complete stranger. In my current book (titled "Cocke & Bull"), the protagonist is a gay Irish highwayman in colonial Maryland. Again, not so much me though we share Irish Catholicism but I've never killed anyone, at least.
If your protagonist is essentially you, why is that? If not, why is that? Discuss.
Even if you're not a Star Trek fan, you've probably heard of the Borg, a collective-conscious race of half human, half cybernetics drones in the Star Trek universe. And they're incredible at adapting to any weapon fired at them. I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. Shhh, I'll blame it on my husband.
One of my favorite lines in all the Borg episodes is: "They've Adapted!", meaning "Oh, crap, we have no defenses against them now that they've adapted to our weapons. We'd better come up with something truly creative and unique to defeat them. Again."
As I write and read more and more, I've done something similar against a race my brain unfortunately likes to think of as the Borg: the collective mass of readers who may one day read my work in published form. I've seen readers follow trends, creative marketing and popular groups, oftentimes seeming as if they have no say in what they choose to read. Probably because if it's not marketed well - if it's not easily accessible or seen - they don't bother finding what else is out there to read.
So what do I do?
I panic, of course. I think I'll never get an agent's attention, a large audience, or any attention at all if my work doesn't stand out over everything else.
And what do I do to fix that?
I think, "Oh, crap, I'd better come up with something truly creative and unique to stand out."
Many times this mean upping the shock factor. Or sometimes it means an idea that's not only creative, but really stupid and makes no sense. Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm not really writing what I want to write; I'm writing what I feel will set me apart. That's not a bad thing altogether. In fact, it often drives me to more creative places than I would go otherwise. But, I have to be careful because more often than not that creative place is nothing more than a ploy.
I was the editor of my university's literary magazine over six years ago. I sat on the reading board many times. What did I see the most in all those entries? Obvious attempts to wow the judges, to come up with something so new and off the wall that we'd be blown away and impressed! I think it worked twice. And guess what? Over the years I've done the same thing with my own work to try and stand out against my peers in the classroom, or in a contest or call for submissions. Hmmm, even blogging.
I think what really sets any writer apart is honesty. I can spot an honest story five hundred miles away. Combined with a fine handle on writing, execution, and character development, honesty goes farther than any other writing device I've encountered. An honest writer can take the most boring, mundane subject in the world and make it exciting. An honest writer can blow the Borg out of the galaxy with one careful aim and fire.
Against honesty, resistance is futile.
Couldn't resist, sorry.
Scott wrote an excellent post awhile ago about honesty. A quick excerpt from his thoughts:
I have long thought that in order for a story to be a good story it must say something true, reveal something about us as a species or our times as they are, or some other truth. There had to be a revelation of some kind. This is of course one of the tropes of the modern short story: the epiphanic moment. I still think that a story has to tell a truth of some kind, but I no longer believe that what I write has to be Big and Important. I am beginning to think that I can approach my stories, my themes, my characters and more importantly my audience, with some humility and address them more quietly. I begin to think that it's possibly just as good to say, "This is interesting" as it is to say, "This is important."
Well said, Scott.
Question For The Day: Come back here next Thursday for my thoughts on what makes writing honest. First I'd like to hear what you think! What makes your writing honest? Don't tell me you "write from the heart." Think more deeply than that if you can. What blows your Borg out of the galaxy?
I've mentioned a few times how astounded I am that Tolstoy can write pages and pages about a man harvesting wheat and still make it interesting. I could never figure out exactly how he was creating any tension that way, but recently I've made some progress--I'm gaining on you, Leo!
I was reading Tolstoy's novella, Hadji Murad, when I stumbled upon a scene that was similar to Levin's wheat harvesting scene from Anna Karenina that I mention above. In chapter 2 of H. M., a group of soldiers carrying arms are moving to their new position where they are preparing to ambush their enemy. They have walked a ways down the road, and then turned off into the forest. This is the conversation they had:
"A good job it's dry," said the non-commissioned officer, Panov, bringing down his long gun and bayonet with a clang from his shoulder, and placing it against the plane tree. The three soldiers did the same.
"Sure enough, I've lost it!" crossly muttered Panov. "Must have left it behind, or I've dropped it on the way."
"What are you looking for?" asked one of the soldiers in a bright, cheerful voice.
"The bowl of my pipe. Where the devil has it got to?"
"Have you the stem?" asked the cheerful voice.
"Here's the stem."
"Then why not stick it straight into the ground?"
"Not worth bothering!"
"We'll manage that in a minute."
Did I mention that they were supposed to be preparing an ambush?
Two things are going on here. First, in the actual scene, there is a small amount of tension. A man has lost something, and the group is trying to figure out a solution. So, on a technical level, this is already working. Second, the entire time I'm reading this, my internal voice is screaming, "Get serious! You're at war! You're at war!" Over the small tension, a much bigger tension has been created.
That's the trick. Tolstoy is giving us the irony of the soldier's mental state. The entire time I'm reading what's on the page, I'm thinking about what's NOT on the page. Tolstoy decides not to stay focused on the story so that the power of the story becomes that much more powerful.
I've mentioned before that I have always wanted to create counterpoint in my writing the way music creates counterpoint with two different melodic lines. For me, the sort of irony that Tolstoy is creating serves that purpose. Though he only writes about one story, he's making me think about two, thereby keeping me distracted and doubly entertained.
I've been trying to do this in my own story about the cannibal. In a new scene, I wrote about a woman, Victoria, waking up and going to get a manicure. The entire description feels rather trivial to me, but I hope that the triviality gives the scene power when we learn that she is actually the victim's wife, and she has no idea what is about to happen to her husband.
Beyond making sure that our prose is smooth and clear, I think it's fun to think about how different scenes can play off on each other to create even more drama. Do you guys do this in your own writing? If you haven't tried it before, are there places you can think of where this might help you out?
As I get farther along in the first draft of my work-in-progress, I begin to suffer some sort of vague but growing doubts about the subject matter and the characters I have chosen. I'm not second-guessing my choices so much as I'm starting to feel a bit ill at ease over the reception this book will get from my agent, possible future publishers, Mighty Reader, et alia.
Mighty Reader and I were talking just last night (over dinner of chicken Provencal, if you must know) about books we won't read even if we admire the authors who've written them. There are subjects that I'll simply steer clear of: modern warfare, terrorism, pedophilia, serial killers, anything with explicit sex scenes, cyberpunk stuff, clown romances (kidding; I love clown romances), white collar crime; there are also subjects that aren't so nice that I will read: adultery, occult stuff, slavery, poverty, murder, imprisonment, death of all sorts. And the book I'm currently writing might, maybe, be one that I wouldn't necessarily pick up off the shelf and buy were I in a bookstore. Which is what I find most interesting here, that I'm writing a book about things and characters that I usually don't read about.
And, really, mosty my issue is that I'm writing about characters for whom I don't feel I necessarily have adequate standing. I am not an escaped female slave, nor am I a priest, nor am I a widow, nor am I a gay man, nor am I an American Indian. All of these characters appear in my book, as do (I attempt) all of the worst things about their lives when viewed through the above-mentioned societal identifiers. Who am I to presume to speak for any of them? Also, there is a violent act in each chapter. Is this the sort of book I normally buy? Not in the least. But it's the sort of book I am writing. Imagine my embarrassment at the library as I ask for books about how African slaves were tortured during the colonial era, or what the symptoms of syphillis are. Really, thank god for the internets sometimes.
Anyway, Davin's already written a post about "dark subjects" so I won't get into the question of avoiding possibly-inappropriate subjects, but I will wonder if any of you have awakened to the reality that you're writing a book about things you would normally never even consider reading about?
Lately, it seems like real characters are more interesting than fictional ones (and real stories more bizarre than fictional ones). So, why shouldn't readers flock to biographies, celebrity or otherwise, to learn about human nature?
There was a time when fiction provided more for readers. Aside from entertainment, fiction had the power to educate people on topics that were too taboo to discuss in the open. Want to learn about the psychology of adultery? Read Anna Karenina. Want to know what it's like kill someone? Try Crime and Punishment. When these books came out, they were revolutionary, not simply because they were well-written, but because they were valuable. They provided readers with information that helped them navigate through their own lives. They served as predictions, as warnings, as assurances. But, nowadays, when I want to learn about extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, I'm often better off in the realm of reality.
Times have changed. Subject matters that used to be private no longer are. And, because of that, I think readers don't see the value of fiction, if indeed that value still exists. It has become merely a form of entertainment--and an energy consuming one at that! If books aren't doing anything more than providing a few hours of distraction, why not see a movie instead?
So, I wonder: Is there still value to fiction? And, if so, what is it? Are we, as writers, neglecting to provide our readers with something more than just a story?
If you are basing your novel in any way on the traditional three-act structure, I think there are certain things you should think about when writing your first act. This applies to stories where the protagonist is goal-oriented and must work against some sort of active antagonist; other types of stories will require other types of structures, I'm sure.
In many of the unpublished mss I'm privileged to read, the first act isn't very strong. The ideas are there, the conflict is there, but there's just not enough of it. I don't like to hand out formulas or recipes for writing, but I do think that writers should have tools they can use (and no, I'm not prepared to distinguish between "formulas" and "tools" today), so I offer up these thoughts.
1. Your first act should end with the literary equivalent of a train wreck. What I mean by that is that you should be moving constantly toward a collision of conflicting needs and desires that results in the protagonist having to make a major life decision and consequently act upon that decision.
2. Your protagonist should have a clearly-defined goal. Often this is a wrong-headed goal based on a misunderstanding the protagonist has about the world. The train wreck at the end of the first act will leave the protagonist with a better picture of reality and possibly a new or modified goal to which he must direct his life and actions.
3. Your antagonist should have a clearly-defined goal. This isn't necessarily something Evil, but it has to set your antagonist and your protagonist on intersecting paths that will result in the above-mentioned train wreck. Generally, the train wreck leaves your antagonist stronger, and his goals won't change at all; he'll just keep moving in the direction of his goals and continue acting upon his desires and needs.
4. Your support characters should have clearly-defined goals. These are usually goals that are supported by or aligned loosely with the protagonist or the antagonist. Know which is which. Your protagonist could be allied with people who are actually working against his goals, even if not deliberately or with Evil Intent. Their lives will also be affected by the train wreck in some way. Some of them will change their goals, others won't, but all of them will continue to act to achieve their goals.
5. The story must MOVE toward the train wreck, and things have to REMAIN IN ACTION. Think of your first act as the opening of a game of chess, where each side is closing in on the other, and pieces are constantly being moved forward, some pieces captured and removed from the game as it progresses. Often the protagonist won't even know that there is another player opposite him, killing his pawns and planning to put his king in checkmate. The point is, the characters are all active and constantly moving forward.
You are, in a traditional first act of a traditional three-act structure, moving toward a point where all of these conflicting courses crash into each other with a big bang, from which the rest of the story will spin away toward the climax.
Your job is therefore to:
Keep your characters moving toward goals
Let your readers know what these goals are
Let your readers see what the conflicts are
Let your readers know what is at stake for each character
Let your reader see the train wreck coming before your protagonist sees it
Make sure all the motivations are plausible and clear
I do find myself thinking in terms of either a train wreck between locomotives racing toward each other on the same track, or a street intersection with two or more cars all speeding to a messy crash. Don't get me wrong; the pace of the story does not have to be breakneck. But you do need to set forces in opposition and have them collide.
The most effective way to do this is not, surprisingly, through plot but through character. What happens to people is not nearly as interesting as what people are trying to do. This is a very important distinction. Don't let your plot push the protagonist; have the plot result from the protagonist pushing against life. Agents, editors and, yes, readers generally aren't interested in characters who are reactive, who get pushed around by life. You might think that this sort of victimhood will make your characters sympathetic, and you may be right, but you will probably be wrong if you think that will make them compelling to readers. So think of the train wreck you'll be creating as a collision of characters and goals, not as the meeting up of plot strands, okay?
Sorry about all the italics. I got carried away.
Note: I am currently on vacation, so I won't be able to reply to any comments on this post. Hopefully Michelle and Davin can pick up the slack for me. Apologies all around. Also: someone needs to remind me at some point that I want to write about beginnings of stories, Chekhov's gun and how the two can work together to give a writer story options.
Last week's experiment was so much fun that I just have to do it again this week! I know many of you are writing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) so maybe you won't be interested in this experiment. But, it might just help you out, so perhaps experimenting will be great for you!
I went to a writer's retreat this past summer, and it was so much fun. Probably one of the funnest things we did was a writing exercise that really got me out of my shell. We were each given three words - a person, a place, and a thing. We were then given 20 minutes to create a story out of those three things.
I write really slow.
However, with this exercise my brain was on fire! I wrote 6oo+ words in 20 minutes. And I wrote something funny. I don't write funny. And I don't write fast. And how did I come up with a full-fledged story and character without any planning or outlining?
The answer's simple: I let go.
I'm telling you, if we just write with no ropes, no rules, nothing, our subconscious can do incredible things. Sometimes all that "garbage" you're spitting out for NaNo - what feels like garbage, is actually quite brilliant. Or it could be brilliant if you let it be brilliant. Maybe you just need a bit of practice with a very short prompt and a few minutes.
And for those of you who are thinking about entering the Genre Wars Contest we're holding until December 1st (or even if you've already entered and want to put in something else) this may be a fantastic way to get the start of something great! If you want to post your prompt anonymously, we're okay with that.
THE RULES:
(1) Here are your words. Time yourself for 20 minutes and just write. It goes by fast, I promise promise promise!
scuba diver, Swiss Alps, dandelions
(2) Copy and paste your finished (or unfinished if you ran out of time) prompt into the comments section to share. Feel free to just leave a comment if you really don't have the time to do this.
(3) Come back here after 7:00 EST. I will have posted below my thoughts on your prompts.
Here are the words I had for my prompt: sanitation worker, sea cave, telescope. And here's what I came up with:
The garbage man wasn’t really a garbage man. Well, he was, but he did more than that. Oh, he wore the blue overalls with the name “Stan” sewn onto the left breast. But his name wasn’t Stan, either. In fact, he did the opposite of garbage. He found treasures.
This particular morning Stan was running the G route up Madison Avenue. He looked at his watch and then glanced at his order sheet on the empty seat next to him. Angela. Hmm, that sounded promising. He shifted the truck into gear and headed up the road, his heart starting to beat faster and faster. Mondays were the easiest for some reason. That’s why he loved this route. Most of the single men he saw took their trash out early before work, still dressed in their boxer shorts or PJ’s. Stan always tried to find the ones who were at least decently dressed and clean.
It looked like Angela was looking for a tall one. And rich. Well, this was the neighborhood for rich. He drove past the exquisitely designed houses, maneuvering the mechanical arm of his truck with expert precision. He never dropped trash like the other guys. And he wasn’t even really a garbage man!
Finally. He spotted one. Stopping his truck, he leaned forward to look through the telescope attached to his dashboard. Perfect. He was even dressed in a suit. At least it wasn’t a neighborhood rich enough for most of the people to hire servants. At least these people had to take out their trash. Stan eyed the man with a careful gaze. He looked like he could belong to an Angela. Perfect. The man walked away from the trash can, brushed off his hands, and got into his BMW. Stan shifted his truck back into gear and followed him.
When he had first started this job he thought the men would think it odd that a garbage truck was following them. But they never paid attention too much. Stan at least expected this man to drive downtown. Instead, he took the Torrey exit and headed along the coast. Great. Stan kept his distance, wondering what on earth this guy was doing heading out to the middle of nowhere. He followed for miles and miles until finally the BMW stopped alongside the road and the man got out. He peeled off his suit jacket and threw it into the front seat, then slammed the door shut and stood staring at the ocean. Stan drove by and stopped a few miles up the road. He turned his truck around and peered through the telescope. Now the man was walking down the beach. What the hell? He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Maybe this guy wasn’t for Angela. Or maybe she really liked suit-wearing men who stopped by the beach before work. He watched in fascination until the man disappeared into a rocky crevice—what looked like a sea cave. Okay, that was it. Stan couldn’t take it anymore. He drove his truck up the road and parked half a mile behind the BMW, then jumped out and headed toward the cave.
The one thing that worried Stan most about his job was that he might get a bad egg. This one might be a bad egg. But that would be her decision. He groaned. He never knew how things turned out. He just handed over the information and told the client good luck. All they really needed was an address, a description, a list of habits, etc. But this was the strangest habit Stan had ever seen. As he approached the sea cave, he chewed on his bottom lip, wondering how he would explain his presence if this man suddenly saw him.
Then Stan saw her standing outside the cave—the last woman on earth he expected to see while he was working: his ex-wife, Jane, in blue garbage-man overalls with the name “Angela” sewn over her left breast.
THE RESULTS:
I think the results are that people are busy. Probably with NaNo!
I really liked the stories Rick and Christina put in the comments section. Vastly different from each other, like I expected. And very creative. Thanks, you guys!
A term I use a lot when I critique other writing is sincere. "This sounds sincere to me," I'll say. Or, the alternative, "This doesn't sound very sincere." I'll admit that it's not the best word to use. Much of fiction is created, and probably all of fiction has at least a few details that aren't actually true. And, even though I've tried to stop using such a vague word in my comments to other writers, I feel that the need for it comes up time and again.
Because, don't you think you can tell when a fiction writer is describing a real event?
A writing teacher once told me a quote that I think about often. She said, "Fiction is the mask that allows you to stand naked in front of your audience." Or something like that. (And, of course I forget who the quote originally came from). But, it's an idea that I have relied on often. I am willing to be more honest with my thoughts and emotions as long as I'm allowed to call what I write fiction.
At the same time, readers read to be entertained. I've been working on my first adventure book, and already I can feel myself caught up in the events of this extremely fictional story. I started it a couple of days ago, and in the first thirty pages, literally all of it came from my imagination. Then, at around page 31, I found an opportunity to rely on my real life experiences. A couple was preparing to do something very difficult, and one was losing faith in the other. Even though the first part of the book had action and drama and magic, I found myself getting truly excited--perhaps in a different way--about this little domestic squabble. This was my naked. This was the real emotion that was peeking through all of the stuff I was creating.
I think when we read, whether we are aware of it or not, something in our brain is always looking for the sincerity in the fiction. The naked. The facts. However you want to call it. For a story to be properly memorable, I think it needs to be the perfect balance of imagination and reality. To filter out the real emotion, the heavy stuff, is to tell a story that won't stay with the reader. To ramble on only about the things that really happened is likely to bore a reader.
So, what do you do with the naked parts of your story? Do you reveal them? Hide them? Consider them unworthy? How do you balance the fun details you are creating with the parts of the story that are actually real?
In my current work-in-progress, I am moving steadily toward the end of Act One (I like to pretend that I'm writing this novel in the shape of a classic three-act drama), which means that soon enough I'll be writing Act Two, also known as either the Middle or the Long Dark Nighttime of the Novel (LDNTOTN). As anyone who's ever written a whole novel knows, the middle (or second act, or LDNTOTN) takes up about half the total length of the story, and can be the hardest part to get through. It's also the place where most failed novels meet their doom, though they don't know it and stumble on for another hundred or more pages, sometimes managing to drag the reluctant reader along to the end. Sometimes not.
Anyway, I'm gearing up to write the middle of my novel, so I've been thinking about what the middle of a novel is and what the function of the Second Act might be in a long-form story. Aside from, that is, padding the book out by 150 pages.
If you use the traditional three-act structure, your Act One sets up a conflict that will be resolved in the climax at Act Three. Act Two, therefore, is the bridge between the first and third acts. But what do you, as a writer, do to bridge those acts? How do you make your second act a middle--a bridge--and not just a LDNTOTN?
My current working theory about how stories operate tells me that the beginning and ending of the story are pretty much where the plot resides. You set up a conflict and you resolve it. That's pretty mechanical, pretty easy and straighforward. So if the plot is in the outer acts, what's in the middle? Character, that's what. The middle of the book is where the writer explores the possibilities of the characters' emotions. It is, as lots of prior essayists have said, the heart of the book. It is also, at least in my current working theory about stories, a sort of separate and self-contained story within the novel. And as a self-contained story, it has its own structure.
The idea I'm working with now will be to give Act Two--my novel's middle--a three-act structure of its own. My Act Two will begin, go on a bit, and then end. Things will be different at the end of the second act for my characters. They will have gone through emotional story arcs that make Act Three both possible and inevitable. So the overall structure of the novel will be:
First Act
(~30% of length)
Second Act
(beginning...middle...ending)
(~50% of length)
Third Act
(20% of length)
In fact, each act will in turn be broken down into beginning/middle/ending, but that's a separate post. Let's just stick with Act Two.
My book's middle section begins with the protagonist and two support characters running for their lives. The basic task for them, plotwise, is to simply survive the second act. They don't even know a third act is coming. But my protagonist has an internal conflict (a problem) he must resolve, and Act Two will show him going through several emotional stages:
1. he first thinks that he need do nothing and the problem will go away
2. he thinks that he can make the problem go away
3. he realizes that he can't make the problem go away without stepping outside his normal way of behaving
4. finally he acts in a new way that will solve his internal conflict (which, happily for the author, will force the external conflict to resurface and give us the exciting and ultraviolent Third Act. In fact, his achieving stage 4 in this emotional arc is the beginning of the Third Act. Yay, structure!)
Along the way, in order for my protagonist to move through these emotional stages, he and his support characters will have some adventures that outline the central themes in the book, meet new characters and see the world in new ways. Their relationship with the world in terms of the plot will not change much during the middle of the book, but their relationships with the world and with each other in terms of their emotions and character will be dramatically different. This change is, in my current opinion, the purpose of Act Two in a three-act story.
And even if I'm wrong, it's nice to have a plan going into the draft. I'll let you know how it works out.
Questions for you: What is the function of the middle of a novel? What should the writer be trying to accomplish there? Is it essentially different for each story written? Do you use any sort of overarching structural ideas to shape your storytelling? Are these questions too overly academic? What's for dinner?
I've been experiencing a strange thing with my latest revision of Rooster. But, to really explain it, I need to step back a bit.
I started this novel because I wanted to understand a man that was very important in my life. This man had always confused me as I was growing up. I didn't understand why he was so angry and reclusive. I didn't get why he had such a tough shell. So, I wrote about him, starting with the facts, and generously filling in the cracks with details that I made up. I liked the story because it allowed me to explain this man whom I had never been able to explain before.
But, while the protagonist of my book, Bao Phamduong, was sympathetic, he was far from being likable. Just because people understood WHY he was the way he was didn't make readers want to invite him over for brunch. I heard many readers tell me this, but I didn't change Bao. I figured he was who he was, and I was content with the idea that he at least evoked sympathy. And, readers seemed to be impressed by the book, even if they weren't necessarily excited about it.
Then, a couple weeks ago, I decided to make Bao less of a grump. It was an experiment to see what would happen to my book. I started revising, taking away many of the places where Bao was being a jerk. That was when the strange thing happened. In the process of making Bao nicer, I noticed that I was physically feeling much less tense. Particular in my shoulders, I was noticing myself relaxing. I felt like I was in my yoga class even though I was actually in front of my computer.
Was this what my readers were experiencing? Is this why they could say that the book was well-written even if they didn't enjoy reading it? I really don't know. I'm letting this play out. I'm going through the entire book, making Bao more likable. I'm not sure if the book will still work for me when all is said and done. After all, my original source of inspiration, the man I set out to explain will be mostly gone from this latest draft. But, I feel like it's important for me to try and understand this new connection I have with my story.
What do you all think? Should one trust these physical reactions as much as anything emotional or intellectual? Have you had this sort of experience yourself? And...is it worth going through the revision if I lose the character I had originally wanted to write about?
