"Literary" Writing Techniques

Marisol asked a question earlier in the week: "What literary writing techniques do you feel are missing from genre fiction? It's part of your welcome message, and I infer that you feel pop fiction is missing something in that way."

Hot on the heels of yesterday's debate, I might feel a bit too exhausted to broach that subject again, but I'm going to attempt a manifesto of sorts. I haven't received my co-hosts' imprimaturs to say any of the following, so they have every right to distance themselves from this manifesto if they like.

Marisol's basic question seems to be "So what's wrong with non-literary fiction?"

My answer is: Nothing that isn't wrong with a lot of literary fiction. Let me explain.

Writing, as we all should know by now, is hard work. Writing well is very hard work. And most writers don't work that hard, even a lot of published and successful writers. There, I've said it. J.K. Rowling is a good story-teller, but she's not a good writer. Her prose is clumsy and unmemorable even if her characters and settings are very memorable. Ms. Rowling could do better. She could work harder. What would be the point? Her books would be better written, and reading them would be more rewarding for her readers. Yes they would, you boys. The same can be said of Mr. King, Ms. Steele, Mr. Hornby, and a raft of other writers. Their writing, their prose, is simply not very good, nor do they expend much effort on creating depth or multiplicity of meaning. Their books remain enjoyable. They just aren't that well written. And it's not just popular writers. Booker Prize-winning beloved literary author Salman Rushdie? He's written a few books I thought were unreadable, too. He owes me a refund for "The Ground Beneath Her Feet." Not because I didn't like the premise, but because it was badly written. Sorry, Sal.

The same goes for all of us, I am strongly tempted to believe. Writing is hard. Readers have no idea. Agents have no idea. Publishers have no idea. It's HARD WORK, even to write a bad book. 80,000 wrong words fitted into clunky sentences telling the story of cardboard characters doing boring things? That's still a lot of work. 80,000 perfectly-placed words in beautiful, effortlessly-read sentences telling the story of believable, compelling characters caught in imaginitive activities? Well, that's nigh impossible. And most of us don't work at it as hard as we should.

So here's the thing: Writing is as much craft as it is art. Writing is not just a creative endeavor, it's also a nuts-and-bolts, get-your-hands-dirty and change your own oil kind of undertaking. Whoever we are, we can all write better. We can all become more expert craftsmen. Davin, Michelle and I don't claim that we are experts. We do claim to be deeply interested in exploring the craft of writing, and we think it could be a great thing to explore, to discuss, to learn about, with a big group of people from the whole spectrum of the fiction-writing world.

So to get back to Marisol's question: Are there specific literary techniques that pop fiction seems to be lacking? Yes. But, as I say, it's not just popular fiction that needs to work on its technique, it's all fiction. Every writer can grow. Goodness knows I expect my next book to be better-written than my last. And I will only write a better book by thinking about the craft of writing, and trying to learn some good lessons from my fellow writers. That means you all.

And Marisol, the question you ask? The answer is this blog itself. Look at our old posts and keep reading the new ones.

On Literary

The word "literary" is really starting to annoy me. I've put off writing this post because the word makes me squirm and cringe. I talked to a friend yesterday who said she doesn't come over here because it's about literary stuff. Imagine my forehead hitting the keyboard . . . afjaklreioqu9

I wrote a post back in February on my writing blog about literary. Reading it now, I'm groaning about my own words. This is what I've thought in the past:

Literary is exhausting. Literary means you look smart, but only appeal to a small group. Literary means you'll never be a hit.

I went on to explain that I know I'm wrong in these assumptions. Of course I'm wrong. When I emailed Scott and Davin about doing a post on "literary" they both said the same thing: It's a pointless discussion. Well, perhaps it is. Scott sent me this in his response:

I like the term "interpretive fiction" rather than "literary fiction" because it emphasises the purpose of the writing rather than the form. Or at least that's what I tell myself. I stole that term from the book "Story and Structure" by Laurence Perrine; it's the text I had in an "Introducion to Fiction" class back when I was a college freshman. He divides fiction into "escapist" and "interpretive" classes, one for entertainment and one for edification, more or less. Naturally, there is overlap between the categories (what's the Iliad, for example?).

Davin has not sent me an explanation yet of literary. Davin, I don't blame you. Nathan Bransford describes literary fiction as:

In commercial fiction the plot tends to happen above the surface and in literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface.

He explains that literary fiction moves the conflict and climax in a story through the character's hearts and minds - internal, even if there's external forces. Genre fiction moves the conflict and climax in a story through external forces. "The things that happen are pretty much on the surface, and thus the reader can sit back and watch and see what happens."

Can a book have both elements? Well, of course it can. In fact, most literature that I love has a good mix of both. That's why I'm picky about what I choose to read and why I'm finding it so difficult to write my own book.



So what's with the snakes? Well, literary fiction often seems like one huge pile of snakes, if you ask me. Many people back away from it. It appears inaccessible, frightening, and oftentimes to those who don't wish to untangle it all, a pointless dangerous endeavor better left alone. Maybe for some, it is better left alone, but for others, those snakes can do some pretty cool things, especially under the influence of an expert. You know, one of these guys:



My husband took that picture when he was India a few years ago. I looked at it and said, really? They actually dance to the music? Yep.

In my opinion, literary can't be defined. And I don't think it needs to be. To some people it's a snake - inaccessible and frightening. To some it's a fine chocolate - savored and appreciated. To some it's a report on how a rocket works - just plain confusing and boring. And why is this? Because literary means lots of things applied in many different ways. In the end, to me, literary simply means going beyond the surface. That's it. Some books go deeper than others. Some use more literary conventions than others. The end.

So I should ask my friend if she might be more inclined to come over here if we renamed the blog The Writing Lab. Because that's what literary is - just another convention of writing. And it doesn't have to be scary. Really. Just pick chocolate over snakes.


~MDA (aka Glam)

Science-Fiction? Women's Fiction? Young Adult? - Represent Your Genre!

It's all about you! We're looking for writers to describe their preferred genre on our blog. Each day, we'd love to have someone else discuss the conventions of their genre, along with the advantages and disadvantages of that genre. Do you love your genre cliches? Do you love your genre despite those cliches? We're hoping this little adventure brings us one step closer to understanding one another and why we choose to write what we do. And, most likely, we're going to learn a lot from each other.

So, if you're up for representing your genre, please let us know in the comments section on this post (list your genre choice please). Chances are, even if you don't want to write the main post, you'll have some ideas for us in the comments section when your genre comes around. It's also your chance to win us over--we admit to being a tad biased when it comes to literary fiction. Prove us wrong!

And, because it's all about you, we wanted to take today to send out some congratulations to Tess Hilmo and Jody Hedlund, who both recently acquired agents. Congratulations!

A Rose By Any Other Name?

I am currently working on my next book, which means that I'm outlining and making notes about plot, character, setting, theme and all the rest. One thing I tend to have problems with is the naming of characters. I have a tendency to give my characters symbolic names, names that give the reader a clue to the character's personality or thematic purpose (although, in the interests of full disclosure, two very minor characters--both children who got no lines and almost no screen time--in my last book were named after people I know).

The book I'm moving towards writing has a big cast, or at least big for me. One nice thing about my last book is that I learned a thing or two about handling multiple characters, so I don't mind having a dozen or more folks to track. But I have to come up with names for them all. There is a temptation in this book, which will be very, very dark, to balance that darkness with some Dickensian silliness, to give my characters absurd and not-quite-realistic names. I attempt to resist that temptation. Which still leaves me in need of twenty names for characters.

Truman Capote claimed to have gotten all his character names from the phone book. One doubts that "Holly Golightly" was in the Manhattan directory, though. I have some standard methods of finding names, none of which include using real people. I often will decide on a single word (like "star") that is a good symbol for the character, and find names that have that meaning ("Estelle" or "Stella" or "Astrid" all mean "star," for example). I also lean heavily on Butler's Lives of the Saints and the Bible for names, and I've also mined Greek myths and fairy tales.

Does it, do you think, really matter much what we name a character? Certainly it matters to us, as writers, but do you think that if Romeo and Juliet had been named Dominic and Luisa their story would have a different meaning to the readers?

So, then, two questions for you:

1. Do character names really matter much to readers, aside from the obvious need for names to be dissimilar enough among the characters for readers to keep them all straight while reading, and

2. How on earth do you find names for your characters?

When are you ready to query an agent? -or- 254

Litgirl01 asked: How many edits does one usually go through before querying an agent? When do/did you know that your book was ready to send to an agent? I can't imagine ever feeling like I am finished and ready to submit. :-)

Frustratingly, I think the answer to this question is as impossible to know as is the answer to “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” Some people submit before the manuscript is ready, and for those who wait successfully, describing the right moment requires complex calculations that take into consideration tongue surface area and wetness.

But, I wanted to discuss this topic anyway, since I’m currently on the brink of making such a decision. Back in January I initially thought my book was ready to go. I submitted it to three agents, got turned down by three agents, and after discussing it with a new friend, I decided to revise it one more time. Now, once again, I’m preparing to submit soon, and my emotional state is different from what it was back in the beginning of the year.

Put simply, I think I’ve outgrown my novel.

When you’re a beginning writer, as I consider myself to be, the slope of your learning curve is steep. Your brain is picking up new tips and tricks by the minute. Somehow, though, that knowledge doesn’t properly transmit down your neck and arms to the tips of your fingers. Try as you might, you probably have much more trouble creating your own masterpiece than recognizing quality or lack of quality in other people’s writing. So, you revise. You manage to make your manuscript far better than it was. Meanwhile, that clever brain of yours has dared to learn even more. While your book may reflect your best ability from two months ago, it again feels mediocre compared to what your brain actually thinks it can do. So, you revise again, but you’re starting to sense a pattern. If you’re like me, you might even sketch out a graph, and sure enough, it doesn’t seem like the improvement rate of the manuscript will EVER catch up to that brilliant bowl of noodles balanced on the tip of your spine.

While I believe that revision is immensely powerful*, I also believe that some unfixable problems can be introduced to your book early on. By unfixable, I don’t actually mean unfixable, but perhaps the fixing of the problem would make the book so unrecognizable that it is basically a different book. This sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, you came up with the idea back when your brain was just a fledgling, and now your advanced brain is having to deal with the mess. Ever try to fix a cake that a five-year-old started to make?

At some point, you have fixed your book A LOT, but it’s probably not as good as your brain could make it if it could start from scratch. This point probably coincides with the time when you are making changes in your manuscript and then changing it right back again. You know your book could be better, but at the same time, you can’t fix it without making it into a different book. I think that’s when you stop. Your project reflects who you were, and your next book will reflect who you are.

If you want actual numbers, you may have to start licking the Tootsie Pop, because everyone works differently. I think Scott was on draft 4 or 5 when he landed his agent. Michelle caught an agent’s attention in a contest after just a few months of working on her novel. As for me, my book is over five years old and is on draft 43. But, what I call a draft, Scott might call a sneeze. And, while Michelle’s current book is coming into focus in less than a year, her first book is at least a few years older than mine.

*Scott and Michelle both have great strategies for doing so—myself, I prefer the cat-in-a-rain-barrell approach.

Thoughts on Revisions

Having just completed the fifth version of my current novel, a major overhaul that added some 15,000 words while cutting thousands, I thought I'd talk a bit about the process, and some of the lessons I think I've learned.

Remember that revisions are not the same as edits. To revise is to change the story (improving or correcting), while to edit is to prepare the work for publication, cleaning it up to fix grammar and spelling.

The Revision Process Scott Uses(TM)

1. Ignore your novel! That's right, set it aside for a month. I know that seems like forever; I know that having just finished a draft, especially the first draft, you're wanting to look over your handiwork and start polishing. Don't. Not yet. You need to leave it alone and forget as much as you can about the story. Why? You want to get some sort of critical distance, to be able to come back to it fresh, to have your next look at the novel be as much like that of a first-time reader as possible. Some people advise setting the book aside for a year while you write the first draft of your next book. Those people are likely insane, well-meaning as they may be. I don't have that sort of patience. So I suggest at least a month and no less.

It is perfectly acceptable to have other people read the book during this phase, but don't read their comments until you're ready to look at the book yourself.

2. Read it, don't revise it! I recommend actually printing the whole thing out, either as double-spaced ms or in any format you like. For early drafts of my book, I actually went through the trouble of having a copy printed up via lulu.com, bound like a real book, so I could read it on the bus or at work, like it was any other novel I'd picked up. The idea is to approach it purely as a reader, to get a feel for your work as a story, not as a project you're working on. So just try to read it and not fuss with it at all. However, I recommend you make notes as you go along. Keep track of:

a) Things that you love
b) Things that you hate
c) Things that bore even you, the author
d) Things that make no sense
e) Things that are simply mistakes, like continuity errors
f) Whatever else strikes you as an issue

See if the story works. See if the plot works. See if your book holds your interest, getting you to turn the pages.

3. No line-editing! It's okay to fix spelling errors here and there, but revisions are the process of fixing the elements of the book, not the grammar. The first thing you want to deal with are the problems with plot, setting, character, pacing and theme. Sometimes those fixes will entail massive changes to your prose, and you waste time correcting grammatical mistakes in paragraphs you're going to delete later.

4. Fix one thing at a time! What's the worst problem your book has? Focus on that and make your repairs. Don't let yourself get lost in the revision process. Make a list, and refer to it. Look at the book as a whole, and take the long view of structure, texture, character and so on. Prioritize your layers of revision.

5. Keep moving! Don't get bogged down. Once you've fixed one problem, start over and fix the next one. Sometimes several problems and their solutions are intertwined and you'll have to work on multiple issues at the same time, but still you should concentrate on discrete tasks, and move on from one to the next.

6. Done? Time to read it again! The revision process, ironically enough, introduces errors while eliminating others. It's evil magic. But odds are, if you've made significant changes to plot or your prose, you'll have created orphaned sentences, accidentally deleted whole paragraphs you meant to keep, and renamed characters by mistake. This stuff happens. But now you get to do that line edit I wasn't allowing you to do earlier. I hate line edits. They make my eyes cross and my brain melt.

I would be very interested to hear if anyone else has a revisions method or formula they've had success with. (That's your cue to chime in.)

Create A Foil

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in the 1996 film version of Hamlet

I enjoyed Scott's post on Monday about contrast. His post was in response to Lois's post about contrast. Lois, you've hit on something here, apparently! I haven't been able to stop thinking about contrasting characters - namely, foils.


What is a foil?
A foil is a character who contrasts another character, usually the protagonist. This allows the protagonist's weaknesses and strengths to shine brighter or look darker than otherwise possible. Some examples are Gaston as a foil for the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Doctor Watson as a foil to Sherlock Holmes. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Collins serves as a foil to Mr. Darcy. And, the example that many say the term "foil" originated:

"I'll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance / Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed" (Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 2)

Laertes and Hamlet as foils to each other.

In each of these examples, you'll find that one character serves to contrast the other. This, of course, allows a much greater opportunity for deeper character development. I think much more can be learned about Hamlet by contrasting and comparing his actions and character to Laertes. There are, of course, more foils than just this one in Hamlet, but I'll let you have the fun of figuring those out.


More Than Just Characters
Foils can exist in other elements of a story besides the characters. For example, groups can act as foils to each other. A classic example is in Romeo and Juliet between the Capulets and the Montagues. One of my favorite examples, however, would be The Great Gatsby, with the West Egg and the East Egg serving as foils to each other.

Groups are usually pared down to individual character foils in the story, but if the groups are present enough, I believe they work on their own accord as well.

While researching foils, I also found that subplots can serve as foils to each other. Multiple plot lines can be layered against each other to bring out different elements of each. I have done this in my own writing. In my second novel I create a plotline between two secondary characters that is similiar to a previous event that occurred in the character's past. This serves to sharpen both events in the character's and the reader's minds.


Use Them!
Foils can really strengthen a character and a story. I think Hamlet's actions and character are strengthened by placing him next to Laertes. Would he have been as strong compared to just himself (as shown in the photo above)?

As Scott says in his post: contrast=depth=conflict=drama. And as Lois says in her post: Without the dark elements things are flat, like when there are no shadows in visual art. We need those elements to see our characters in three dimensions.

You probably already have foils in the stories you've written. I notice that mine happen naturally. But the trick is to realize these foils and make them work hard for you and your work. Highlight the differences more if you need to. Use symbolism, like a color or a seasonal change, to subtly draw attention to the contrast you want to create.

As Lois says in her post, contrast works well in art, too (photography and painting, for instance). Keeping this in mind, using foils is a great element you can use to paint more contrast into your written art.

Question For the Day: Have you recognized foils in your own work? Did you use them consciously or did they occur naturally?


~MDA (aka Glam)

MFA Bias?

Jennifer asked for my views on whether literary journals give preference to writers who have an MFA degree. My short answer is that some probably do.

A survey of the journals whose stories have been consistently selected for The Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories includes The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Harper's Magazine, Ecotone, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Granta, The Kenyon Review, and The Iowa Review, among others. Several of these publications are run by universities, and the editorial staffs of these journals include academic writing teachers and students. I think whether these editors do it consciously or not, they must have some tendency to lean toward writers coming out of academia, simply because that's what they've learned is representative of quality writing. As an academic scientist, I can attest to picking up biases when evaluating the work of other scientists for publication. Simply put, I'm trained one way, so I'm going to rely on those lessons when judging the work of others. The other part of this discussion involves the cover letter that accompanies a short story submission. If covers letters matter to an editor, then degrees, just like publications, will probably impress them.

Luckily, exceptions to this rule are plentiful. Jennifer mentioned Alice Munro, a regular in The New Yorker, who never got her MFA. From the editorial side of things, some prestigious journals still look at submissions blind, meaning the cover letters and the writer's identity is removed before a story is judged.

The second part of this question was whether or not there is an "MFA-type" story. I'll start by saying that, while I have taken a few university writing and literature classes, I do not have an MFA, so I can't completely discuss this topic from my own experience. But, I do believe that academia promotes a more uniform style than would be around if every writer had to develop on their own. Again, techniques and philosophies are shared since that's the nature of education, so I think it's normal that writers coming from the same place risk sounding the same.

Is this a good thing for literature? Probably not. But, I think education is good, and if a writer is attempting to learn writing from others, uniformity may be impossible to avoid. Just as with the rules and preferences we discuss in our blogs, the writer is faced with the task of learning the rules and then daring to break them for the better. That second step is crucial, in my opinion. Without it, I don't believe any writer can be great.

Contrast

Lois Moss posted about contrast in this post, which I like so much that I'm going to expand upon it here because I think it's an important aspect of storytelling.

What Lois essentially says is that contrast increases depth. Characters who are completely good are flat, as are characters who are completely evil. The same can be said of characters who are neither good nor evil. Without contrasting traits, characters lack depth. A flawed hero is more compelling than an invulnerable, unflappable superhero, and a villain who also has real human weaknesses and needs is more compelling than a purely black-hearted monster.

Why is this? I think it's because good and evil which arise out of each other (for example, a heroic act by someone who is afraid or petty or not truly likeable, or an act of treachery by a person acting out of fear or love or some other need) are more clearly visible, standing out just as a lighted surface is brighter when seen against shadows. "Good and evil" is of course an oversimplification, a generalization, and you could as easily stay "strengths and weaknesses" or any other pair of opposing/contrasting forces. Contrast heightens intensity.

This same concept holds for plot. If it's all one sort of action at the same pace, it becomes the status quo, eventually exhausting or inuring the reader and turning into a static background. Moments of quiet make the action scenes speak more loudly, and vice versa. This isn't limited to action/rest in terms of pacing; you should also think about the contrast of mood in your story, of emotional intensity. Is there variety in all your story elements? Variety is contrast. Contrast heightens intensity.

Contrast=depth=conflict=drama.

Drama is the essence of storytelling. If your hero is a spotless "white hat" and your villain is a heartless "black hat" and your plot never varies in its pacing, you don't have drama, you have melodrama. Melodrama is to be avoided. Just take my word on it. Certainly in melodrama you're contrasting one flat character against another, but that doesn't hold reader interest. Nor am I necessarily arguing in favor of moral ambiguity; I'm just saying that flat characters/stories are flat because they lack depth, and that to add depth you should consider adding contrasting elements to your characters/stories.

Give your protagonists weaknesses. Give your antagonist human feelings and needs (remember that your story isn't just your protagonist's story; it's your antagonist's as well). Give your subordinate characters needs and depth. Vary mood and pacing for contrast and effect. Your story will be more engaging, more interesting and more rewarding for your reader.

The Reader

I've been thinking about readers. I assume most of us writers are also heavy readers, if for no other reason than to learn our craft. But, the readers I'm wondering about are the people who read heavily without trying their own hand at writing. How large is this group of people? Are the majority of book buyers truly people who just enjoy reading with no aspirations of their own?

When I think about my own friends and family, I know about two dozen writer/readers. On the other hand, I only know about six people who read regularly (say, at least five books a year) without writing. Granted, I'm biased. I seek out fellow writers, so this uneven ratio makes sense. But, it makes me wonder where all the readers are. Or, perhaps more accurately, I wonder who's buying books.

So, let's take a little poll. How many heavy readers do you personally know who don't also write?

Symbols and Stories

I think a lot of writers are automatically put off by the word symbolism. It's an idea a lot of people misunderstand, and to discuss the symbolism in a novel is--to some people--tantamount to announcing that the novel is difficult and likely very dull. "Oh, it's got metaphors," people groan. So I'm going to discuss symbols and symbolism and attempt to demystify this subject. I want to talk more about symbols in stories in the future, so this post is sort of an introduction to terms and general ideas.

A symbol is something that stands for something else. A stop sign is a symbol to drivers that they have to hit the brakes. A red cross is a symbol for a hospital. The color white means purity in some countries, mourning in others, death in yet others. In some cultures, lambs symbolize innocence. The '*' key on an adding machine means "multiplication." Et cetera. A symbol is one thing that stands in place of something else. We all use symbols, every day.

Symbols in literature fall into three types: simile, metaphor and allegory. Let's have a look at them.

Simile

A simile is a statement that compares one object to another, using the word "like." This thing is like this other thing is the basic formula.

His head is like a football is a simile. Similes are the most common form of symbolism. They are also arguably the least creative way of comparing things, because they are the most obvious and prone to cliche. His love for her was like a red rose is a cliche. Excuse me while I yawn.

Metaphor

This is the one that causes people confusion. It is essentially a simile without the word "like." The writer says that an object is another object, usually something not commonly associated with the first object:

His head is a football.
His love for her is a red, red rose.

Those are lame examples (especially the love/rose), but I've already used them so I'm sticking with them. The thing about metaphor as opposed to simile is that metaphors can be extended, stretched, to deepen the commentary about your subject:

His head was a football, hard and full of air. Real life was going to kick him into the goal on more than one occasion.
His love for her was a red, red rose, splendid for but a few days and then falling apart, petal by petal.

Metaphors can also represent things that aren't directly identified by the writer. This is where things get tricky. Suppose that you read a story in which every time a man told a certain woman that he was faithful to her, her candle would blow out. When it turns out that the man is NOT faithful to the woman, she is alone while he's off dallying elsewhere and her candle keeps going out. The flame going out becomes--through repetition in a single context--a symbol for his infidelity. This symbol is never apparent to the characters; it exists for the reader.

In my last book, the behavior of birds, singly or in flocks, mirrors the behavior of characters in the book. The condition of a garden represents the political situation (I stole that image from Shakespeare; thanks, old man!). In "The Lord of the Rings," the ring represents power which corrupts absolutely. The Ents personify nature lashing back at technology. The elven race, possibly, represents religion. Et cetera.

Allegory

Allegory is a form of story where the characters act as stand-ins for other characters. Fables are frequently allegories, with talking animals standing in for types of people. "The Ant and the Grasshopper" is an allegory. "The Tortoise and the Hare" is an allegory. Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" is a retelling of "The Myth of Sisyphus," so you could say it's an allegory of a metaphor. The play-within-the-play in "Hamlet" is an allegory.

There is a special type of allegory called a Roman a clef, which translates literally as "novel with a key." Romans a clef are allegories about real people, and the identities of those people are kept secret to avoid things like libel suits. These novels include a "key"--a clue, basically--to let clever readers "unlock" the secret and find out who the real people being discussed are. Political figures are sometimes written about via roman a clef, though nowadays it's becoming rare.

Why use symbols?

We use symbols for a variety of reasons. Similes are used primarily to describe things and people. Allegory is primarily used to teach a lesson (usually a moral one). Metaphor, the most slippery of symbols, has many uses. Metaphor can:

describe something in a poetic or lyrical way

be extended to add depth and dimension to the description

foreshadow events (in the love/roses example, if there are actual rose bushes in the story, they might catch a blight before the love story goes bad; or see the big storm in Act One of "Jane Eyre")

reinforce plot and character (the candle flame example, as well as all the references in "Hamlet" to poison and ears throughout the play)

bring out theme (in "The Overcoat," Gogol uses Akaky's overcoat to symbolize his place in society, and the treatment of his overcoat parallels the treatment Akaky receives).

All of this deepens the story, adding layers of meaning and understanding for the reader, even if the reader doesn't notice the symbolism (and maybe it's better if it's all subliminal anyway). Character, plot and theme can all be reinforced in subtle ways, so you aren't beating the reader over the head through repetition of dialog or events.

Symbolism is sort of a magic trick that allows you to tell the story in several languages at once. Don't be afraid of using it. If you make any use of symbolism (especially in a way I've neglected to mention here), tell us about it!

~SGFB

He Cried. The End.

"Old Man In Sorrow (On The Threshold of Eternity)" by Vincent Van Gogh

I'm an emotional person. Many things push me over the edge - either to tears or screaming or laughter. Yesterday was exceptionally bad. I almost cried three times from feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and fear. Go figure that my post today is about emotion. Traci from Words, Words, Words asked a question over in our Just Ask! box in the sidebar.

What is the most effective way to write emotionally charged scenes?

Thank you so much for your question, Traci! It's a tough one. I don't think any one person, especially me, can answer it in one blog post. Or even 20 blog posts. I'll try and sum up my thoughts and advice as best I can. Here's a few thoughts from my colleagues here at The Literary Lab, since they're two very smart men. Sometimes I feel silly being the only girl on here.

Davin: When actually writing a scene, I try to be as honest as possible. I let the ugliness and the complications of the emotions interfere as they need to. Emotion and manipulation don't go together for me. If I'm trying to steer the story a certain way, I can't be emotionally honest. I have to let the feelings come out first and then think about the story structure and the consequences after.

Scott: I think the thing to do is build up to the scene over the course of the previous scenes/chapters. Scenes fall flat emotionally when something about it isn't compelling, and usually what's not compelling or emotionally resonant is the way the story is built. I don't think the trick is "emotional writing," whatever that might be. Your mileage may well vary; I only know what works for me!

Me: I'll be honest. I want every scene I write to be emotionally charged. I want emotion from the get go. I want my reader to adore, loathe, or envy the characters and their situations. But both Davin and Scott have very good points. One, you should never manipulate your characters or plot simply to get an emotional reaction. And two, you can't expect your reader to care about flat, inconsistent characters, a mismanaged plot, or slow, pointless scenes.

No matter how beautiful your descriptive passages of emotion, you'll never tug at your reader's heartstrings until they believe the characters you've created. Here's a few ways to make them believable.

Manipulate Your Reader, Not Your Characters
One of my beta readers recently sent me a critique of my novel. Like most of my other beta readers, she noticed that the men in my book cry way too much. She suggested that these characters shouldn't be devoid of emotion, but that it seemed pretty stupid to have my super-tough main character break down like a baby in the middle of a scene. Or any scene, for that matter. She said, in reference to Orson Scott Card's book on characters:

"If you let a character cry, the reader doesn’t have to. If you give the character every reason to cry but don’t let him, the reader cries."

Get Your Character Out Of His Box
To me, there's nothing worse than stereotypes. While writing, I often stumble into them by accident and have to fix them later. Now, don't get me wrong - predictable situations and characters have their place, mostly in comedy. But you should learn when and where these are appropriate. I have yet to write an emotionally charged scene where a stereotype or a predictable situation worked in favor of what I was trying to achieve.

I found a good example of this in an online article by Anne Marble:

Let's say you are writing a Medieval romance novel about a heroine who spends her day toiling for an evil stepmother and three ugly stepsisters. You've been here before, haven't you? How can you make this story different? The movie Ever After - A Cinderella Story found ways to twist the supporting characters, including making one of the stepsisters completely different from what was expected. Don't be afraid to take similar liberties in your story. Just because you're inspired by a favorite fairy tale, that doesn't mean you can't make the plot your own in some way.

Also, try to avoid using stereotypical language like:

Shakily clenching her hands into fists, she suppressed a tremor of hate.

Yes, I wrote that in my first novel. I could do so much better. It's terrible. Cliched. Telling. And there's an adverb I don't like. As Beth suggests in her post about showing vs. telling, it may take a lot more words to explain this character's feelings. And the emotion might come off better if I try it that way. In the end, it's not about the specific line, but the emotion I'm trying to convey in the scene that needs help. That specific line just shows that it's not working.

Are You Listening To Me?
Raise your hand if your characters talk to you? Okay, I see a lot of hands. It's true. Characters come to life if we've written them well enough.

While writing my first novel, I reached a scene near the end of the book where I planned for my secondary character, Eric, to physically harm the main character, Naomi. I had established Eric's anger throughout the book. I had backed up his intentions for him to almost kill Naomi with example after example that he is the type of person that would do this. The situation was perfect, but when I got to that intense moment of the scene, I couldn't write it. Every sentence on the page felt off kilter. The emotion didn't work. Eric looked more like a buffoon than a man exploding in anger. I got so angry with the scene that I couldn't write it for days.

Then I opened my ears.

Eric was talking. He told me anger wasn't the key to that scene. He was angry, yes, but he was more disappointed and filled with extreme sadness than anything else. That was a shock. A twist. Something I never expected. "Show that," he said. Not my anger." And I did. It is one of the best scenes I have ever written.

What I want to tell Traci today is that there aren't any set rules to writing an emotionally charged scene. Write what comes from your heart and what you know works for you and your characters. Read other scenes that work emotionally for you. Write. Practice. If you're not moved during the scene when you read it later, chances are your reader won't be moved either.

Question For The Day: How do you write an effective emotional scene?

~MDA (aka Glam)

How Do You Find A Critique Group?

Litgirl01 asked us about finding critique groups. Critique groups (or writer's groups) can be a great way to combat the loneliness of writing. They also provide valuable reviews by a group that stays with you long enough to see the evolution of a long story or novel. And, a good group will keep a writer on a regular schedule.

Critique groups can either be online or in-person. Online groups allow you to work with your own schedule, and perhaps more importantly for your question, they are easy to find!

1. The Zoetrope Virtual Studio was started by Francis Ford Coppola in 2000. Over 10,000 members participate, which may seem overwhelming, but the site is organized so that writers can go to separate “buildings” like the Short Story building, the Novella building, and of course, the Screenplay building. Writers within a specific genre can also find each other in public or private offices. Within the main boards, a writer must review 5 pieces for every 1 that they post. Reviews include ratings, and the reviews themselves are rated by the recipient. Bestsellers and editors frequent the site, even F.F.C. himself, on rare occasions.

2. Critique Circle Online Writing Workshop was started in 2003 by Sigrún Erna Geirsdóttir and Hulda Bjarnadóttir. It’s smaller, with about 2,200 active members. Like Zoetrope, you can participate in public or private forums. There’s a point system to maintain the proper checks and balances in reviewing the posting. This site can be free or it can cost money, depending on the services you want to have.

3. You can set up private online groups using sites such as Proboards. I’ve been a moderator for one of these sites for a few months, so let me know if you want an invitation to check it out.

4. In-person groups are harder to come by, but a good group is well worth the effort. I’ve been a member of two in-person groups. They’ve typically had about 5-6 members. I started one myself, which I think is a great way to stay focused on the genres you’re interested in. I simply sent a sign-up sheet around at a local author reading and made some follow up calls afterwards. Some of my published writing teachers rely heavily on their groups, which include both published and unpublished writers.

5. While I’d recommend starting your own, sites like Craigslist often post ads looking for people to join writers’ groups. (Just be careful who you meet.) You can also check out libraries and bookstores to see if anyone has posted up ads. If you’ve got writer friends or classmates that live close by, I’d start with them.

Hooks and Platforms

No, this post is not about fishing (though I have been fishing in my youth; my father taught me to bait a hook and we fished for sunfish and catfish in the shade of some trees along a still river in Georgia during the summers sometimes. I also went fishing for bluegills with a friend in high school once.) but is instead about the terms "hook" and "platform" as used primarily by agents. I'm not an agent, nor do I play one on TV, but I have an agent and I can at least pass on what he's told me about hooks and platforms.

Hooks

There are two different ways this term is used. In queries, the hook is the part of your pitch that catches the agent's attention, that makes him sit up and say, "Oh, that's supercool!" It is the premise, the idea in your story that makes someone want to read it. "Zombie president" is a hook. "Father and son fighting to survive in a post-apocalyptic world" is a hook, if you like that sort of thing. "Innocents venture into hell to save the world" is a hook. "Sleuthing monk tries to solve a series of murders in a monastery" is a hook. Whether or not something is a hook depends a great deal on the agent's taste.

To sum up: a hook in a query is the idea/premise/sentence that grabs the agent's attention. The hook in my own query was "A sideways retelling of 'Hamlet' as told by Hamlet's best friend, Horatio." There was more to it, but essentially that's my premise and my hook. You're either intrigued or you're not. There are no universal hooks.

Hooks in queries are important because they say what's cool and different about your book. They should spark interest and excitement, because you want an agent who is interested and excited about your book. Agents will take their interest and excitement to publishers and hopefully pass along that interest and excitement, resulting in a book deal for you. Which means that you should be interested and excited in your book when you write your query. If your hook doesn't hook you, it won't hook anyone else.

In the book itself, a hook is something in the writing that gets you to keep reading past the first page. This is a very vague area, because there are no universal hooks here, either. Genre, style, reader's taste and more all figure into this. Essentially, though, the hook on the first page of the book is something that gets the reader to follow the writer into the story. It doesn't have to be an event; it could simply be the way the story is told. Though most commonly, and in the broadest sense, the author gets the reader to ask questions about the story, and to demand the answers to those questions. "This is interesting," the reader says. "I have to see what happens next!" Sometimes beautiful, confident prose is enough to hook the reader. Sometimes it takes sparkly vampires. As I say, there are no universal hooks.

Platform

Think of platform in its literal sense: something to stand on that raises you above the crowd and draws attention to you. If you are an expert in a field and write a non-fiction book about your area of expertise, you have name recognition and the authority to write on that subject. Your expertise, your credentials, are your platform.

Are you a celebrity? Your celebrity is your platform and you can get $3.5 million like Tina Fey for your memoir.

If you are a fiction writer, though, platform is a bit more amorphous and hard to come by. Mostly, it still means name recognition. Has anyone heard of you? If they have, that's your platform.

People ask a lot these days if a website or blog is a good way to establish a platform, as it's certainly an easy enough way to thrust yourself into the public eye. The only thing is, everyone else out there has a website and/or a blog, so you've got to have a lot of traffic to have your site/blog considered a real platform. How much is a lot of traffic? Try a minimum of 25,000 regular visitors/followers/readers. Why so many? Because most of your blog readers won't buy your book. Maybe 1 in 10 will if you're lucky, so if you have 4,000 followers, that translates into maybe 400 book sales, which is not an impressive number.

Platform is also recognized authority as a writer, which is a fancy way of saying publishing credits. Have you been published anywhere that has a wide readership? And by "wide readership," we're talking numbers in the range of thousands rather than hundreds. Firebox 5000 or Granta or GlimmerTrain or Paris Review or Asimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy sorts of numbers. However, it's always a good idea in a query to list any pub credits you have, especially if you were paid for it. The fact that someone paid money to print your work is significant, which is also why print media have more weight than web-only publications. No matter what the media, you should try to get something published, as often as you can.

"You're a good writer," my agent told me. "I can't believe you haven't been more widely published."

"Thanks," I said, smug as can be.

"That's not a compliment," he said. "You've been lazy."

"Oh. Well...oh."

I realize that what I've said about platform seems disheartening, but remember what every agent says, and I know it to be true: platform is nowhere as important as simply writing a good book. You should build your platform as you can, but you should focus most of your energies on writing the best book you can.

Don't Let The Little Ones Slip Away

When I first started critiquing, I used to look for things that were wrong: inconsistent character actions, awkward language, bad similes--you name it. I'd also tend to make notes (and happy faces) around what I thought was great: beautiful imagery, lively dialog, perfect endings. The trouble was, there was a lot of writing that didn't fall into either category. I couldn't find anything wrong with it, but I also didn't love it. It was simply "good enough".

But, is good enough good enough?

I've since changed my critiquing style. Nowadays when I review, I try not to let any sentence slip by me, no matter how inconspicuous it tries to be. Lines that are not wrong and not great could probably still be revised. Why? Because no one wants to read a book that's just good enough. We want to be consistently impressed. We want every sentence to be a gem that plays an interesting role in your story.

So, check it out the next time you're reviewing your work or someone else's. See how many sentences fall into the "not bad, not great" category. At some point, everyone here is going to be able to write a competent story. It's not the major elements that will separate the greats from the less-thans. It's the little differences, the seemingly trivial decisions.

~DM

Note: I really wasn't planning to do any self-promotion today, but I just found out that Opium Magazine is doing something incredibly cool. They've printed a nine word short story on the cover of their next issue that will be revealed one word at a time every hundred years over the next millenium! Check it out.

The hero's piercing blue eyes narrowed as he...

I want to talk about the idea of writing exposition into action, and why I think it's generally a Bad Idea. First, you'll want to know what I mean, so here's an example:

I narrowed my brown eyes and saw Aeneas almost at once. He was sitting comfortably on the ground in his plain and worn soldier's clothes that were pulled tight over his well-muscled body, laughing at something one of the other men, also dressed in worn military garb, had said. One of the women handed him some flatbread piled with greens. He pushed back a lock of the long hair touched with gray that told me he was in his forties, took the food from the woman's matronly hands and smiled as he ate it. Beside him sat a boy, filling his teenaged mouth full of food. The boy watched Aeneas with his clear blue eyes in such a way that I could tell they were father and son. This must be Ascanius, I thought.

With him was a pretty boy his age. "Our meal is fit only for rabbits," this boy said, adjusting the red cap which sat askew over his thick black hair. The woman who had served the meal sat his cap straight with her strong, rough hands.

Ascanius adjusted his own worn tunic, shook his head covered in golden curls and said, "Well, it's not at every meal that you get to eat the table too."

Aeneas looked at him with clear blue eyes and sat motionless for a minute. Then he stood to his full height of six feet and spoke in a clear and solemn voice.

"That is the omen," he said. They all looked up at his handsome face.

That's just...bad. It's not as bad as I tried to make it, either, but I hope you know what I mean. We've all, I'm sure, read stories where the author is using constructions of the pattern:

[Character] does some action while [physical attribute].

Whole paragraphs, entire pages of this stuff until the author has exhausted all his description of the character while exhausting the reader as well:

"I'm not innocent," she said with a ruby-red pout, flipping her long beautiful blonde locks away from her face while batting the thick lashes over her sea green eyes.

This does not work. It's awkward, for one thing, and it's confusing to read if kept up for more than, say, a single sentence in a row. Heck, even a single sentence is too much.

I know we're all told that we shouldn't dump our exposition on our readers in solid blocks. We're all told that it's boring and it takes away from the action, so we try to mix our exposition into the action and feed our readers character descriptions while our characters are doing things. I believe this is a mistake; it is very bad advice and promotes bad writing. Mixing description into action like this weakens the passages. The action doesn't move, and the descriptions get lost. The reader takes little, if anything, away from passages like this.

There is nothing wrong--and quite a bit right--with taking a moment of the reader's time to describe your characters, if you want to describe them. The reader won't mind as long as you put the description in the right place (before or after the action, but not during it). The same goes with places and things. Separate the descriptions from the action. See how your favorite authors do it and try modeling your work on theirs to get a feel for how it's done.

Here, by the way, is the actual passage (from Ursula K. LeGuin's Lavinia) that I murdered above. Note how she takes the time to set the stage and give us the characters before she has them act:

I saw my husband almost at once. He stood out among them, not by any ornament of richness of clothing--they were all dressed like soldiers on the march who'd been on duty a long time and crammed into ships on the sea as well, all plain and worn and dirty--he simply stood out, the way the morning star stands out from other stars. He was a man in his forties, with a strong face. He was sitting comfortably on the ground and laughing at something one of the other men said. They were having a picnic there on the grass. Almost all of them were men. They had brought flatbread up from the ship, which were run up stern-first along the beach. They had gathered a great basket of wild greens to pile up on the rounds of flatbread, having no meat or cheese, evidently, as well as no plates or tables. The few women among them were none of them young; one matron, smiling, presented Aeneas with a round of bread heaped with greens, which he rolled up and bit into with gusto. Close to him sat a boy of fifteen or so, who looked enough like him, and looked up to him in such a way, that I was sure it was his son Ascanius. With him were a very pretty boy of his age and a beautiful youth a few years older, wearing a bent-forward red cloth cap. The woman who had served the meal sat down beside him and set his cap straight with an unmistakably maternal fussiness, adoring him.

Red Cap said something about the meal being fit for rabbits not men, and young Ascanius said, "Well, it's not at every meal that you get to eat the table too."

At that Aeneas looked at him as if startled. After gazing motionless for a minute he stood up. They all looked at him.

"That is the omen," he said, his voice ringing clear and solemn.

~SGFB

Pick One (Or A Few)

So pick one. Action or romance? Huge world events and explosions or tight-knit relationships in their own little corners of the world? Wouldn't it be nice to have a scale in which you can easily categorize the type of stories you prefer?

I thought so, too.

So my father-in-law came up with The Fiction Scale. I have found it helpful in so many ways. In fact, I may ask those whose works I beta read in the future to categorize their work using The Fiction Scale so that I have an idea of where the story falls.

I apologize to any of you who have already seen this. I've been a walking zombie the past few days and just need to get some rest.


The Fiction Scale According to Steve Argyle
For my own convenience, I rate fiction on a scale that refers to the balance of characterization and plot. When I say "world events" I do not mean "our world events" but "book world events."

I categorize the books I read on a decimal scale. For example, I would rate the Harry Potter books at about a 5.8. Pride and Prejudice is a solid 1. My own life is a 2.6, so I mostly enjoy reading books in the 5 to 7 range

1. The characters have relationships with each other.

2. The characters have relationships with each other while world events happen vaguely in the background.

3. The characters have relationships with each other while doing things in the background.

4. The characters have relationships with each other while doing interesting things.

5. The characters have relationships with each other AND do interesting things related to world events.

6. The characters do interesting things that shape world events and have relationships with each other in the background.

7. World events compel characters to do exciting things. Relationships are a luxury.

8. World events ARE the real characters. People are just props in the background. Relationships are accidental.
____________________________

My first novel, The Breakaway rates 4

My second novel, Monarch rates 5.5

I like 1 - 6 stories

(update: Justus asked some good questions in the comments section pertaining to what "interesting things" means. As I can't get a hold of my father in law right now, I'm taking a stab at answering Justus's question.

I came up with this so far: Knowing my father in law, what he means by "interesting things" is that the conflicts and trials that the characters overcome are either more dangerous or "grand scale" than the simple everyday conflicts and trials we overcome, like deciding who or how or whether or not we're going to marry, like in P&P)

Questions For You: Where does your own writing fall? Does it differ from what you like to read and watch? Do you think a scale like this might help you discuss literature with your fellow writers?


~MDA (aka Glam)

Rebel Without A Cause

In our comments earlier this week, blogger Jennifer asked us to discuss using curse words, specifically the f-bomb, in sections of prose that aren’t dialog. She questions her own motives for using it, whether she’s subconsciously trying to be shocking or whether using the word is truly consistent with her character's personality. She also wonders about how much she is letting her readers influence her decision and how the word affects the tone of the piece.

We’re happy to offer our opinions! We hope you chime in as well with your own ideas and thoughts.

Michelle: Sorry, Jennifer, I'm going to use a dialogue piece to illustrate my point, but I think it can also apply to thoughts of the narrator or character, as well.

In the end, using profanity needs to fit, if that makes sense. In the play A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessup, the commanding officer of the Marine Corp. Company stationed at Guantanamo Bay, fires off the f-bomb soon after his famous speech titled "You Can't Handle The Truth".

My husband had the chance to play this character in a theater class. He and his classmates went in circles trying to decide if they should put the f-word in or not. They came to the conclusion that Colonel Jessup is a Marine Corp. officer who has completely lost his temper as he is being arrested. In the end, my husband delivered the line with the f-bomb included because using anything else weakened the character in that moment of passion.

I've included a movie clip of the courtroom scene of the movie, A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise. Please be aware that there is strong language in this clip. The scene I mention specifically is at 6:30 minutes into the video. It is an amazing scene and worth watching if you have the time and are okay with the language.

In the end, if the profanity draws attention away from the character or scene, it's not necessary or appropriate, whether it's used in dialogue or otherwise (sometimes the genre of the piece will set this precedence). Most of the time, in my experience, if the character is intelligent and not flying off the handle like Colonel Jessup, he or she will usually find a much "smarter" word to use than simple cussing.

I hate the f-bomb. I avoid most movies and books that use it excessively, and I don't plan on ever using it in my writing. I know that it might fit in certain cases, and if that ends up weakening my character, so be it. But I do use other curse words that fit into scenes and specific character's mouths and thoughts. I choose my words wisely to make sure they serve a purpose not in and of themselves.

Scott: I think to answer this question, you only need concern yourself with the story and the characters. What are you writing? Does the profanity fit? Does it serve the story or does it distract the reader? If you write a version without any profanity, do you feel the lack? Does it ring false? If you write a version with profanity, does it feel right to you? Does it ring true? The voice of the character and the needs of the story should determine what you do. I don't think the word itself is particularly shocking anymore. Is your intent to shock, or to show the character's internal conflict around her urge to use profanity? Would her use of profanity increase the conflict? Resolve it? Have any affect at all on the real story? Conflict is dramatic, but profanity in and of itself isn't. If it's your character's true voice (and I understand that she never curses, yes?), then it's not for shock value.

Davin: I’d discuss the shock/rebellious idea first. As an editor of an online magazine, I read through hundreds of submissions in a month, and curse words are everywhere. It isn’t shocking to me. I don’t read it and become impressed that the writer has dared to go against convention. It’s so common that, to me, it has become boring, and I’m often more impressed when a writer decides not to use curse words and works harder to come up with suitable replacements. Most curse words are fads, and as evidenced by phrases like “the bee’s knees” and “it’s hip to be square,” they can lose their cool in just a few years. At the same time, people really do curse. So, it can be a completely sincere choice to include a curse word in a story. If it’s situated in a way that doesn’t highlight it, so that the word really is simply part of the language and not the climax of a scene, then I think it can be effective.

Writing From the Heart

This weekend I traveled to glorious Vancouver, BC to see a show by Canadian rock band the Weakerthans. I rode the train up from Seattle and, as I knew the trip would take at least five hours, I packed along the book I'm currently reading: Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon. It's a collection of essays, mostly about books and writing. I haven't read any of Chabon's novels, so I can't speak to his general modus operandi, but I get the impression that Chabon wants to write to some higher purpose, to produce Works of Literature and Vast Meaning. Yes, Maps and Legends has as one theme the idea that literary writers should feel free to embrace the forms and conventions of genre fiction, but I also felt the whole time I was reading this book that Chabon wanted to dazzle me with his prose and his depth of thought.

I can understand that impulse, because when I think of the ideas I have for my planned books, there is a sort of reach for historical and thematic sweep, for Big Ideas and Grand Statements. I have been thinking that I don't plan to write any sort of small books (by which I don't mean anything about the length of the book). I wasn't really aware that I had such plans until about 30 minutes into Saturday night's set by the Weakerthans. Most of you have probably never heard or heard of this band, and that's fine. I'm not trying to sell you on their music. But I had an epiphany, as I say, 30 minutes into their show.

One of the things I love about the Weakerthans is the simplicity and honesty of the song writing. These are tales of lost love, of lost cats, of lost jobs. Stories about returning to your home city after failing to make your mark elsewhere. Stories about visiting sick friends in hospital. Short stories that are true, common stories, all of them told in a clear, honest voice. Not to say that the language, the lyrics, are simple or simple-minded. John K. Samson is as clever as the next song writer but that's not where the power of his songs lies. What draws me in, and what drew in the audience at the Fabulous Commodore Ballroom, is that Samson clearly is writing from the heart, and he believes in his tales and characters.

So there I was, standing on a dance floor with a thousand other people, a cold pint in my hand, having an epiphany about literary values and the power of simple honesty. 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."

All of which has, I continue to discover, changed the way I intend to write my next book. It will be more intimate, less sweepingly historical, and--I hope--better than my original plan would have allowed. This gets back to the idea Davin explored here a couple of weeks ago, about immanence versus transcendence. I wonder if a lot of writers, even if they aren't consciously aware of it, seek some kind of transcendent values in their work. I had no idea that I was attempting to write Grand Novels until I wondered what it was that I liked about songs by the Weakerthans. Now I don't want to write about Big Ideas. I just want to write honestly about things I care about.

How Flexible Are Your Sentences?

Have you ever gotten an “I infection”?

It can happen to the best of us.

I came home to a ringing telephone. I picked it up. I heard my uncle’s urgent voice on the other end of the line. I knew immediately that something was wrong.

Sometimes we get into a particular sentence pattern that can make our prose sound robotic. Of course it doesn’t always have to be the first person pronoun. Any sentence pattern, when used over and over again, can make for boring reading.

There are easy ways of preventing repetitive sentence structure. You can use compound sentences to combine similar thoughts. You can start some sentences with prepositional phrases. In a pinch, you could even use the dreaded passive voice!

But sometimes these tactics can still make prose feel too elementary. To show off sentence flexibility, you have to understand that every thought we want to write down can be expressed in hundreds of different ways. Instead of always starting a sentence with the character who’s being discussed or one of the common prepositional phrases, try starting the sentence with a word or phrase you wouldn’t normally think to use.

“Call me Ishmael,” from Moby Dick is an outstanding example. That’s a pretty unconventional sentence that’s amazing because it immediately gives us a sense of the narrator’s voice, and it’s a command to the reader, something we rarely see in prose. Melville could just as easily have started the story with, “There was a man named Ishmael,” but that makes for a much less colorful opening.

A Story From A to Z

Here’s an exercise that demonstrates how flexible sentence structure can be. Write a story using 26 sentences. Start each sentence with a different letter of the alphabet, using A for the first sentence, B for the second sentence, C for the third sentence, et cetera. Even though it might feel a little challenging at first, you’ll realize that you can still create a logical sequence of events, even with this strict rule in place. The language and sentence patterns you’ll end up using will have much more variety.

For a great example of how having sentence flexibility can make a story richer, take a look at the book The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. If you take the first letter of each chapter, you’ll find that it spells out a message. (The last letter of each chapter may also be illuminating!)

~DM

Dark Matter

My second work-in-progress deals with a dark subject matter. It’s based on a true story that involves a violent crime and how a person’s life has led them to commit this crime.

When I first started writing this book, I began having nightmares. My internet research also led me to interact with people I wish didn’t actually exist. I’ve tried to stop working on this book, but something keeps drawing me back to it.

I write to understand people. Whenever someone intrigues me, for better or for worse, I tend to write about them. If my work is worth anything, I hope that it provides insight into characters that might not seem sympathetic at first—I hope that it encourages people to accept each other for who they are.

But should some things remain unwritten?

I’ve asked myself that a lot lately. Even though I’m approaching the subject from a sympathetic perspective, I wonder if the world would be a better place if I simply left it alone.

Of course, I’m not the first person to approach a subject like this. Many great works deal with the dark matter. Crime and Punishment and Macbeth are just a couple of examples. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy is the latest book I’ve read dealing with something like this. For me, what makes this book palatable is the fact that I can distance myself from it when I need to. I can look out at the world and see that things aren’t as bad as all that. This book works because it reminds me to be grateful for reality. Maybe that’s what makes the journey into the darkness worthwhile. Maybe dark matters serve to remind us of the light.

The fact is, I couldn’t stop working on this story even if I wanted to. But this experience has led me to think more deeply about what I send out into the world. Whether I’m writing a light-hearted piece or something more serious, I ask myself if the book I’m writing is worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

~DM