Happy Friday

Happy Friday, everyone! And good thoughts go out to anyone who is stressed out or sad.

You Guessed Wrong

I remember it clearly. My mom had made cinnamon suckers - Christmas tree shapes, teddy bears, and reindeer. I was probably eating way too many of them. Snuggled up in the armchair with a blanket and a copy of Jane Eyre, I had my first experience with truly understanding symbolism. Maybe it was a little late - my Senior year in high school - but for some reason I remember this experience so vividly it is always what I go back to when I think of great literary symbols.

This is purely from memory, and since I haven't read Jane Eyre again for several years now, you'll forgive me for wrong details. There was a chestnut tree. Lightning split it in two at some point in the story, soon after Jane and Rochester's engagement. Not a good sign, right? I remember a scene with Jane or Rochester looking at that tree split in two, and like a hammer smashing over my head, I thought, "Oh! I get it now!!!!" I think I choked on a piece of cinnamon sucker because it was such a powerful symbol, so beautifully done and well-crafted. I wanted to write something like that one day.

Imagine my surprise when my English teacher told me I as WRONG about the symbol, that it didn't represent both Jane and Rochester's impending doom, but only Rochester. He even compares himself to the tree at one point, and that proved the author's intention of the symbol.

Bull crap!

Of course, I believed my teacher at the time, but I sure don't now. It drives me nuts when readers try to insist that an author meant only one thing in their writing. The beauty of symbolism is that it can have multiple meanings and layers depending on the reader. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had an English teacher try to insist on one meaning for something, am I? Is this why so many students have such a bad literary experience as teens? Is this why literary fiction gets a bad rap?

I used to view literary fiction as a box filled with puzzle pieces. And even worse, if you don't particularly enjoy puzzles, some of them don't fit together properly where they should. Now I'm with Scott when he says:

I embrace the slovenly, drunken and reeling thing that is the novel.

What a beautiful way to look at it instead of some stiff, uppity being that will slap your hands if you guess wrong. I guess my point is today that if you're turned off by literary fiction - I'm speaking mostly of classic literature here - give it another try. There are no right answers. In fact, there doesn't even have to be answers. The best part of Jane Eyre for me wasn't the symbol of the chestnut tree - it was reading that book and then reading The Wide Sargasso Sea to get Rochester's viewpoint of the story. That was fun.

I need my busker experience

Buskers are those musicians--singers, guitar players, the occasional violinist--playing in subways and street corners. For some entertainers, this is an opportunity to perfect performance skills and learn how to connect with an audience. After all, if you can get someone to stop and listen to you in the street, then you must be doing something right.

So, I've been wondering: As writers, do we get that similar kind of opportunity?

Now, more than ever, writers are told to get agents and not to self-publish. And, maybe, if we're talking about sheer numbers of books sold, that's the way to go. (Maybe.)

But, I wonder if this strategy separates us from the people we're actually trying to reach. Some of the most useful criticism I've gotten came from audience reactions when I read in public. Simply by the volume of their applause, by their silence, by their laughs, and by their tears, I came to pick up on what was working in my stories and what wasn't.

Michelle mentioned yesterday that I was down on my writing. I'm realizing that part of my depression comes from the fact that I feel too separated from the people I'm trying to entertain. I'm wondering if I need my busker experience.

Questions:

How would your writing be affected if you had to present your work directly to an audience with no middle person to help you? Would you learn faster? Would your writing evolve in a different direction that it has? Would that be a good thing?

Note added: Please check out Tricia's comment on this post. She makes my point better than I do!

Bunnies and Daffodils

Yesterday I promised that today's post will be all about bunnies and daffodils. Very likely, that was a bald-faced lie. Mighty Reader and I do have daffodils in our back yard (we planted the bulbs in the fall, using the method that amateur English gardener Beverley Nichols suggested in one of his books: putting the bulbs on a tray and then heaving them all up into the air to land where they will, and planting the bulbs where they fell) and I have been talking about buying more so that next year they will be more of a sight to behold in early spring. We do not, however, have bunnies (though my friend Jonathan Evison does) and the only things I can say about bunnies with any sort of confidence are that Anya, ex-vengeance demon, does not trust them ("What do they need such good eyesight for?") and that one of my friend Anthony's bunnies ("Oh, he's harmless") bit a hole through the leg of Mighty Reader's jeans when she picked it up. Violent little beast.

All of which frivolity gets us nowhere if we intend to talk about writing in any way. So I suppose we should talk about literature and fiction. Or, rather, I should bezel on and prolix about something obscure but I've been reading a book called "The Theory of the Novel" which is a collection of essays by authors (Henry James, Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster among others) and literary scholars. Some of it, dear reader, is heavy going because sometimes scholars cannot help but to write like scholars and that, I likely don't need to tell you, is a good way to help your reader get to sleep quickly. Oy.

Anyway, I have a growing collection of scholarly texts about writing because my chosen art/craft fascinates me and I like to see what the smart set say about what I'm trying to do. One thing that is becoming apparent to me the more I read, especially the more I read things about writing fiction that have been written by writers of fiction, is this:

There are only a few basic components of the craft (maybe a dozen or so separate subjects that are broadly applicable to writing fiction), and not all writers (even really good writers) care equally about all of the basic components of their craft. Which is to say, most writers seem to only care about a few tools on their workbench, and don't care about the others. I find this interesting.

For example, in almost every book that claims to be a sort of study of fictional technique, there is always a section (usually pretty long) about point of view. The book I'm reading now makes certain claims about point of view being the most significant thing about a work of fiction, the most important decision a writer can make, the technique that will make or break the story. I'm as interested as the next guy in the different points of view possible while writing a story, and in the ways that narrative distance can affect the telling of the tale, but there's no way I'm going to agree that point of view is anything like the most important aspect of the craft of fiction. Gosh yes, it matters, and you have to know what you're doing and you have to use point of view as a system to control emotional distance, but I have a feeling that character development is more important in good fiction, and requires more skill and work. Or, you have people who focus primarily on dialogue but don't care about plot or story arc, or you have people who focus on texture but don't care about point of view, and so on. And even though most writers pay no attention to one or more of the basic tools of writing, they still manage to create great books despite having less than a mastery of their craft. I point to people like D.H. Lawrence, for example: his prose was clunky and wildly uneven, yet the characters and development of story in "Women In Love" are really great and in spite of his failures as a stylist, the book is unputdownable.

Which means, probably, that I am correct in one of my basic assumptions about the novel. I think that the novel is a flawed form, incomplete and open-ended and messy and that there is likely no such thing as a perfect novel; I think that every good novel ever written is good--or great--while being at the same time deeply flawed. There was a while when I nearly stopped reading fiction because no matter who I read, even re-reading books I love, all I could see were the flaws, the poorly-fitted joins in the workmanship, the clumsy attempts to experiment, the weaknesses in the structure, et cetera. Happily I have moved on from that mindset, and now I embrace the slovenly, drunken and reeling thing that is the novel. It's a bastard form anyway, a sort of cross breed mongrel descended from the romance and the epic poem and the tale and a successful novel--I think--actually challenges the basic assumptions upon which a novel is formed and so contains the seeds of its own destruction. No, I don't really know what I mean by that but I feel that the statement is correct nonetheless.

I don't know how much anyone but me really thinks about things like this, about if the perfectly-formed novel is possible or if it's a mythical beast, and a "finished" book is essentially a compromise we writers end up making with ourselves. There is of course no perfect version of any story, and we all are familiar with the idea of stopping work on revisions when we can no longer do anything to help the book, only to rearrange things in it, and there being nothing absolute with which to compare our novels so as to judge whether or not we're actually finished with it. We don't know if we're "there" yet, because there is no "there."

This is a long post, I know, and I've essentially said nothing and I apologize about that. But I would like to know if anyone feels the same way: that there are no perfect novels and that perfection (or even a real balance between technical elements within a novel) is impossible.

Also: Bunnies! Daffodils!

A Shrimp Discussion - All About the Mundane

I apologize in advance. This post is not a "shrimp-ish" post - more like a king prawn post. But I hope many of you find it interesting! What I have to say here is in response to the comments on my Thursday post about the mundane in our writing. I was quite surprised with the comments and reactions to the two examples I provided! I'm going to re-post those examples here in case you missed reading them before.

#1
Nancy peeled the shrimp one by one, her fingers pinching the firm, papery-thin shells as she slid them off the slippery meat. The shrimp made a wet slapping sound as she tossed each one into a glass bowl near the sink. She closed her eyes against the sunlight shining through the window. It was yellow, but cool, and made Nancy's mind soft at the edges, made her focus on nothing and everything at the same time. It was moments like this, standing alone, the salty smell of fish and lemons hanging in the air, that made her appreciate these moments she had to herself.


#2
Nancy peeled the ice-cold shrimp one by one, her fingers pinching the firm, papery-thin shells as she slid them off the slippery meat. The shrimp made a wet slapping sound as she threw each one into a glass bowl near the sink. She had to work faster if she was going to get dinner ready in time. Rick liked to sit down to a hot meal when he got home, and she liked to provide that for him. He did so many things for her, and this was the least she could do. She closed her eyes against the sunlight shining through the window. It smelled like the lemons she had just cut, cool and yellow. If she made this meal perfect, Rick might not hit her afterward. His fist might not feel like a hot brick against her cheek.

Now, my original expectation was that everyone would like the second one better because it spells out more clearly where the tension is for Nancy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 27 out of 36 of you preferred the first one! While 8 of you were either undecided, said it depended on context, or you said both. Only one of you flat-out chose the second one!

First, I'm going to share a few of the responses:

Davin... I do love the mundane and both of these examples showcase it beautifully. The first example lets the conflict rise FROM the mundane. The second shows the conflict AGAINST the mundane, more for contrast.

Beth... The first. But here's the thing. It's NOT mundane. The hints that she likes quiet time to herself foreshadow the real reason why this scene gets focus... it's NOT mundane--it's symbolically and structurally significant.

Anne Rallen... I think all fiction needs those "mundane" details to anchor the story in common reality and connect with the reader's own experience.

Simon... This kind of thing, I think, requires context. Evaluating them as stand-alones, though, I'd choose the second for having some inherent conflict.

Scott Bailey... it all depends on the context. The first one by itself is pretty but doesn't do anything for me except give me a moment of "oh, pretty." The second one isn't as well written but it got my attention and felt like it was part of a story.


Carla... Reflective moments done well take the mundane away.

The Obvious
After reading all 36 comments several times, it was obvious that people don't like to be told what the conflict is. That's fine and dandy. Showing is always better than telling, and I must agree that the second example is mostly telling. Tension and conflict should almost always be shown. What surprised me, I guess, is that most everyone who liked the first one, liked it because it let the reader infer almost everything. Like one of you suggested in the comments, if I hadn't put the second example up to tell about Rick, the first one doesn't infer hardly anything except that something's off-kilter. And that's enough, most of you say. Which is very interesting to me...I'll explain why in a minute.

I'm Confused
Davin says above that both contain the mundane, but that the first one lets the conflict rise from the mundane, which to me is like Carla's comment that states when mundane elements are reflective they work.

Beth argues that the first one isn't even mundane at all because there's foreshadowing that brings it significance and focus. That to me, is like Davin and Carla's comments about the mundane working because there's another element working with it.

Anne says we need those mundane moments to make the writing feel more real, and I'm wondering if she means just simple mundane things like the characters sitting down to rest, using the bathroom, etc., or something else?

And Simon...well, Simon, you are with Mr. Bailey in saying that you like the second one because it has more obvious story and conflict. Both of you write literary work, so I find it interesting that you two seemed to gravitate more towards the obvious conflict piece rather than the one which most people said infers more. To me, the first one feels more literary for many reasons, and so I'm left utterly confused at the moment.

The Mundane as a Device
I think I might understand why Simon and Scott say they prefer the second - because, quite simply, stories need conflict, and that conflict needs to be clear from the start. This was the response I was expecting from everyone, so it surprised me when more of you preferred the more subtle of the two. I know it all depends on context, and even genre, and I must remind you that this was just an experiment. I don't think any of us can truly say whether a mundane element in a story works or doesn't work until we've seen it in the full context.

I think the main conflict in a story probably shouldn't come about from mundane elements. I've seen it done, but only by very skilled writers. Faulkner rings a bell, although I haven't read him in awhile....


Oh My! is that ... LITERARY?



Yes, I'll open a can of worms here and suggest that when the mundane is used as a device and actually pushes the story forward, it makes the story more literary. Yes, literary. Davin and I were talking about my post on Thursday, and we both expressed frustration that although many of our readers have expressed in the past - quite strongly - that they think literary writing is usually boring and dry and focused mostly on the writing, most of our readers on Thursday actually liked the more literary of the two examples. At least I think the first one is more literary, and not because of the pretty writing! But because it leaves so much open for interpretation, implies that something important lies in the mundane details, and nudges the reader to examine and think about the text.

Davin even said in his comment (jokingly I think, but I still take him seriously) that he wants everyone who liked #1 to read his book. I agree with him. Davin's book is filled with beautiful language and what seems like the mundane. It's one of the things I love about his writing. Davin graciously let me share this scene from Rooster:

She went back out to the yard and finished pruning her roses. Then, she turned on the hose and filled the circular troughs she carefully dug out around each of her plants in the beginning of the previous year. When Mr. and Mrs. Harvey walked by in matching jumpers with their bent-hipped Newfoundlander, Nui waved cheerfully. Then, something bright and yellow caught her eye. A ripe grapefruit hung low on the tree in her neighbor’s yard.

The windows of the house were dark and the driveway was empty. Nui crept over to the fence, stepping on the end of a cinderblock leftover from the remodeling. She reached her arm over the vees of rusted chain link and plucked the grapefruit from the tree. It lay heavy in her hand. A spray of fragrant mist drifted up from the peel as she dug her thumbnail into it, scrolling a coil up off the veiny flesh. When she ate a segment, the meat burst deliciously over her tongue. It was the best grapefruit she ever tasted.

I'll leave you with this: Maybe nothing we put in our writing that actually works is mundane. If it were truly mundane, it wouldn't work. I like how mundane activities for the characters make me feel more connected to them, and I like how the mundane can help a story feel more quiet and relaxed, but I think I'd have to argue that if we put truly mundane things into our writing, it would bore our readers to death.

John wiped his mouth off with his cloth napkin and then quietly excused himself from the table. He made his way through the crowded restaurant to the men's restroom where he washed his hands and returned to his seat. He resumed his conversation with the beautiful woman across from him.

Now that's kind of boring.

Don't Forget About The Book!

Just a quick reminder that the Genre Wars Anthology is available now!

Alien lovers, first kisses, bathroom mirrors, magic weapons--We've got it all!

100% of our profits will be donated to WriteGirl.

We've Been Interviewed!

Davin and Michelle have been interviewed by Victoria Mixon, a professional editor. Victoria wanted to discuss the Literary Lab's experience using the print-on-demand services of lulu.com to publish the Genre Wars anthology. You can read the interview here. Go, read!

In other news, life has been horrifically busy for some of us (that'd be me) and so I have no actual post today. I promise to do better next week, honest. One fun thing I did this week was have a couple of pints with author Layne Maheu (his book Song of the Crow is one of the reasons we now share an agent, because I love the book and had to know who repped it) at the fabulous West 5 in Seattle. We talked about how similar our experiences with our mutual agent have been, what new stuff we're working on (Layne's new book sounds amazing and I hope it gets sold soon so I can read it), our shared dislike of writing about modern times (as Layne put it, "You can get more pure colors when you move the story into the past, because you can see things more clearly at this distance") and a bunch of other stuff that's likely only interesting to Seattle residents. I don't know how he falls on the viaduct/tunnel question. Nor did we talk baseball, so I don't know where he is regarding the DH. Anyway, if you have a chance to hang out in real life with other writers, go do it. The internets is a fun space, but it's just not as much fun as making story maps using pint glasses, table tents and coasters. Really, it's not.

That's all I've got today. Have a swell weekend, everybody.

Should We Mimic the Mundane?

mundane: of or pertaining to what is common and everyday; ordinary; commonplace.

I've had some interesting thoughts the past twenty-four hours about what I should include in my writing, and what I should not. What works, and what doesn't. I was talking to one of my friends yesterday - she's a reader, not a writer - and she made the comment that she likes it when stories include moments of the mundane, when she feels like she's experiencing more of a real-life moment than something manipulated by the writer. It makes the characters and the story feel more real to her, and actually puts her more into the world of the story.

I'm going to include two samples down below. This is a bit of an experiment, so just play along. Let me know which excerpt you prefer, and why. Think along the lines of a scene focused on the mundane versus a scene packed with directional purpose - and what makes that difference.

#1
Nancy peeled the shrimp one by one, her fingers pinching the firm, papery-thin shells as she slid them off the slippery meat. The shrimp made a wet slapping sound as she tossed each one into a glass bowl near the sink. She closed her eyes against the sunlight shining through the window. It was yellow, but cool, and made Nancy's mind soft at the edges, made her focus on nothing and everything at the same time. It was moments like this, standing alone, the salty smell of fish and lemons hanging in the air, that made her appreciate these moments she had to herself.


#2
Nancy peeled the ice-cold shrimp one by one, her fingers pinching the firm, papery-thin shells as she slid them off the slippery meat. The shrimp made a wet slapping sound as she threw each one into a glass bowl near the sink. She had to work faster if she was going to get dinner ready in time. Rick liked to sit down to a hot meal when he got home, and she liked to provide that for him. He did so many things for her, and this was the least she could do. She closed her eyes against the sunlight shining through the window. It smelled like the lemons she had just cut, cool and yellow. If she made this meal perfect, Rick might not hit her afterward. His fist might not feel like a hot brick against her cheek.

So, you tell me, which works better for you? Why? Do you include mundane moments in your stories, where it doesn't really move the plot forward? Or do moments like that in a story drive you nuts when you read them?

Fatten Your Active Vocabulary

I often got criticized for trying to use new words in my stories. "This seems too forced," someone might say. Or, the words I have come to dread: "Too writerly." I wanted to make my language richer, but going to the thesaurus didn't seem to be the answer.

That's when I started paying attention to writers like John Updike, who used vocabulary that I was already familiar with, but in combinations or places that were unexpected. I came up with much more creative lines in my own work, like this example to describe part of a scene where a character was rummaging around his apartment after accidentally cutting off two of his fingers: "He left bird prints on the walls."

I think the key to improving your language in writing is to be able to recall more of the words you already know--your active vocabulary. I try to do this throughout the day, challenging myself to come with quirky or interesting ways to speak with other people. You'll be surprised at how fun this is! I'd say about once a week I get someone to smile simply by using an adjective that was a little unusual. It loosens me up so that when I get to my writing, I'm able to come up with a larger variety of words without having to look anything up.

How do you improve your writing language? Do you have any great lines that show off your language?

My Hero Wrote This Chapter

Here's a little experiment you might want to try for whatever it is you're currently writing (or revising). Imagine that your protagonist and your antagonist are each writing their own version of the final chapter of the book (or the final paragraph of the story, if you aren't writing a novel). Ask yourself how they would write that chapter--what they want that chapter to contain. Then, go back through the story and every time your protagonist or antagonist makes a choice, see to it that the choice they make would be in line with that chapter/paragraph they'd have written. If they are making choices that would lead them away from their visions of the book/story outcome, then you either have some rewriting or some explaining to do. Don't take this to mean that your characters have to always be making the right decisions; but people in general think they're making the right decisions to get what they want. Don't take this to mean that your protagonist or antagonist will be able to predict the actual outcome of the book/story, either. Either or both of them will be wrong.

This isn't something you need to be able to do when you first sit down writing. So back off, pantsters! But it is a question that you'll have to be able to answer at some point before you can declare that your book/story is finished.

I also recognize that not all stories are about achieving specific goals or acquiring people/places/things or defeating/surviving enemies/adversity. Yes, I know this because I'm fairly widely read. But the thing is, if you are writing a story, then there is likely going to be some change in the main character's life, and that character will be interested in and have an opinion about that outcome.

Universal Foolishness

This is a little silly, but it's something I've been wanting to post about for a long time. First, I just wanted to remind everyone that our Genre Wars Anthology is now available! There's a link over to your right. I really am proud of this, everyone. I love that we get to showcase stories from several great writers and that we can also donate money (100% of our profits) to WriteGirl.

Now, on to the post.

About a year ago, a friend of mine directed my attention to this:

I started watching this and thought it would just be a good laugh. But, when the video got to the halfway point, I started to choke up. Here I was, at work on a Monday morning, and by the time the video was over I was weeping. Somehow, as silly as this video is, it managed to reaffirm all of the dreams I ever had as a writer. This video reminded me that, no matter what you choose to do, no matter how stupid it is, if you do it with passion, joy, and love, other people will be able to participate in that dream.

So often, I manage to remind myself that the stories I write are really just pointless. I'm not setting out to save the world. I'm not trying to rebel against some dictatorship like so many other writers are willing to do. I'm just writing because I love it. And, sometimes, that's enough. Sometimes, people will find my art and connect with it. Even if they see that it's foolish, they will understand that it is part of a universal foolishness, an opportunity to just let loose and feel alive.

Genre Wars Anthology is Available!

Happy Valentines Day!

Oh, and Genre Wars is available to purchase as of today! Is that enough exclamation points for you? Okay, so we're all excited, and you should be, too.





Get your copy hot off the press! Remember, all proceeds go to the non-profit program - WriteGirl. Oh, and please spread the word!

Note added by Davin: Hey readers, I just wanted to say that there seem to be some discounts if you order a few copies, and I think you save on shipping too. Also, if you have a Lulu account, they (often) offer small discounts that you can wait for.

It Isn't the Pitch, It's the Story

Last week I had a nice long chat with my agent and we were talking about future projects. I'd sent him a couple ideas via email (including, of course, the joke ideas, like an adventure story where all of the characters are penguins because Penguin Lit is the new Vampire Luv and there's already a major publishing house well-suited to selling Penguin Lit) and we were discussing which books I wanted to work on in what order. I've got my next three novels planned, and a couple other ideas bubbling away in Maybe Someday status. One of the upcoming book ideas is something that he felt was going to be a difficult sell these days, and I thought from the way he was talking about it that he didn't really get what the book was about.

"That's because I did a crappy job of pitching it in the email," I said.

"People keep saying that," he said. "And it just makes me want to bite them*. It's not the pitch, it's the story. If the heart of the story, the real meaning, isn't there, then who cares about the pitch? The book won't live up to it."

And that got me thinking, because I like to think and do it as often as I can and also because it's a good piece of advice that you don't hear much. Especially from agents. People talk a lot (and I mean a lot) about queries and the pitch and while I think that some people don't understand what a pitch is, it does seem that when you look at a great many queries, the biggest problem with the pitch is not the pitch, but the story. The book itself, that is.

Nobody wants to hear this, I'm sure. "You might think about working on the book some more," is something nobody wants to say, either. Well, I might, because I'm a jerk. But I don't mean to say that if there's a problem with the book that becomes evident in the query, it's because the book is stupid or based on a stupid idea and should be abandoned. What I mean is that the writer may not be focusing on the heart of the story.

What do I mean by the heart of the story? I sort of mean something like theme, certainly. But more than that, I think I'm talking about the core value that belongs to the writer which has sparked her to write this book in this way. Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road" is a narrative about a man and his son making their way through a post-apocalyptic America, yes, but the core value that drove McCarthy to write this was paternal love. And I'd bet that if you queried it as "a father's love for his son drives him to walk across America in search of a safe haven in Florida," it would get more agent/editor/publisher attention than "a man fights off roving bands of survivors in a dead land after a violent catastrophe." There are a lot of good reasons for that, mostly having to do with human responses to human emotions and readers caring about characters who are emotionally invested in their own stories. The book I'm revising for my agent is about friendship being tested by opposing worldviews. That's much more human and engaging, I think, than talking about revolution and politics.

Do not think that I mean this as just a different way to pitch the book in a query. Because that's not what I'm really getting at. What I really mean to say is that there is some reason you chose to write the book you've written. There is something that this book affirms for you, or explores on a deep level. (Well, maybe not, and if that's the case, your book likely sucks because it's empty of humanity and nobody wants to read that kind of book. There, I've said it.) Think about that original impulse in you, the thing inside you that responds to the book you've written. If necessary, make that into a more important, more active (but not blatant and in-your-face) part of the story. And when you've figured out what the real motivation behind you writing the book is and you've made sure that your book is actually about that, then two things (at least) will happen: it will be a better book, and it will be easier to talk about in a query. And as a better book that's easier for you to discuss, it should (I predict) be easier for you to connect with an agent, and easier for that agent to connect with a publisher. And in the end, that will also make it easier for your story to connect with readers.

I know--or I think I know--that some types of stories (spy stories especially) don't seem to have anything to do with relationships or really deep characters or emotions, so possibly this advice doesn't fit for all genres. I don't know, because that's way outside my area of expertise (or pretend expertise, at any rate). What do you think?

* Extra points to him for saying he wants to bite people. Seriously, he's so cute sometimes.

Get Ready!

Look what I got!

It will be for sale on the 14th, Valentines Day. Be sure to order a copy and help out WriteGirl, the writer's program that got the most votes for all proceeds of the anthology.

I'm telling you, this book is gorgeous! As are all the stories. It's such a great read - so many twists and turns and different emotions. You won't get bored once! It's a great addition to your shelf - proving that the blogosphere is not just a virtual world - it's real!

Oh, and Davin and Scott wanted me to point out that all the author names are printed on the back, and that it's printed on nice cream paper like an old-fashioned book. Okay, so it's just cool.

Narratorial Ventriloquism

I've been a fan of Alice Munro for some time, and in reading her latest short story collection, Too Much Happiness, I picked up on a device she uses that I've also seen from the Great T. (Tolstoy, for those of you who are just joining us.)

Both of these writers tell stories in third person, and they often have a non-main-character narrator telling the story. But, in places, the narration (while still staying in third person) takes on the voice of one of the story's characters.

For example, here is part of a paragraph from Munro's story "Dimensions":

She liked work--it occupied her thoughts to a certain extent and tired her out so that she could sleep at night. She was seldom faced with a really bad mess, though some of the women she worked with could tell stories to make your hair curl.

I think some of this may be up to interpretation, but for me, most of this bit is told in a fairly intellectual voice: it occupied her thoughts to a certain extent and tired her out so that she could sleep at night.

But, as the paragraph proceeds, we start to hear a less formal voice with phrases like "really bad mess" and "stories to make your hair curl."

Munro manages to take us from a more distant third person POV to one much closer to the woman in this story, where we start to hear the character's voice even though it's not proper dialog.

Tolstoy does this to an even greater extreme, where a chapter's narration can take on several different voices. Here's a paragraph at random from Anna Karenina:

For the mother there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin. The mother disliked in Levin his strange and sharp judgements, his awkwardness in society (caused, as she supposed, by his pride), and his, in her opinion, wild sort of life in the country, busy with cattle and muzhiks; she also very much disliked that he, being in love with her daughter, had visited their house for a month and a half as if waiting for something, spying out, as if he were afraid it would be too great an honour if he should propose...

Can't you just hear the mother saying things like "wild sort of life in the country"?

Tolstoy (and Munro) manage two tasks at once by using this technique. On one hand, they are able to characterize their characters by having the narrator display a different voice. On the other hand, by not going directly into dialog, the writers maintain the ability to provide psychological insight that goes deeper than what the characters themselves could probably express.

Isn't this a cool technique? It's one that I've just started to play with. Has anyone done this? Or, can you think of places where this might be helpful to you?

The Protagonist, Asleep

One common problem among writers of all styles and genres is a protagonist who is passive rather than active. Things happen to this character, and they react to their environment and generally get pushed around by life. Or things happen to other characters in the novel and the protagonist comments and witnesses but isn't necessarily involved. I have seen a lot of unpublished (and a few published) novels where the supporting characters are more interesting, rounded and alive than the character who the book is supposed to be about.

I think that one possible reason we might write protagonists like this is because, as writers, we've become used to taking the role of observer of human behavior. We watch what happens and think about the lives of people and then when we pick up our pen/tablet/notebook/keyboard/whatever and write, we place ourselves within our protagonist and then make him more-or-less into us, an observer. This is perfectly natural, because in a large way it's what readers do when they pick up a book. To read a novel is in many ways to pretend that we are the characters in the book. It's one of the things that gives fiction its enduring power: the opportunity to safely sympathize or empathize with someone unlike us, in a dramatic situation.

But we have to remember that our role as a writer is not the same as our role as a reader. We don't get the luxury of sitting back and seeing what will happen, and neither therefore does our protagonist. We have to drive a wedge between our perception of the story and our protagonist's perception of the story, build a wall, and get some critical distance from her.

I think that another reason we sometimes write passive, observer or (worse yet) victim protagonists to whom things happen but who doesn't make things happen, is because we think that the best protagonists are characters with whom we can readily identify. So we try to write heroes who are essentially us, or people just like us. This is a mistake, because you and I, to a large extent, do not lead dramatic lives that lend themselves readily to interesting narratives. No, we don't. I don't, anyway, at least not anymore and thank all the gods in all the heavens for that. But I digress, as usual. To make up a protagonist who is just like you is a tactical error (though I'm sure you are a perfectly lovely person and we should have lunch sometime, soon). As I said above, the enduring value of fiction comes from the reader's opportunity to live vicariously through and safely sympathize with someone who isn't like them. Readers come to your work seeking to engage with it, seeking commonality with your characters even if they don't know that's what they're doing. So unless you really are an action hero, don't make your hero someone just like you.

How do you know if you have a passive protagonist? I suggest the following exercise. Read the first 50 or so pages of your manuscript. Make a list of every time something happens to your protagonist (each time they are a victim of an event), and make another list of every time your protagonist acts to change something. If there are more "victim" events than "act to change" events, you've got trouble. You can also just sit down and look at each scene and see if it's a scene about your protagonist trying to change things. Stories are about change. Stories are narratives that explain how a new status quo was developed by an individual, and why that change was necessary. That's a story. (It is true that some stories are about how an individual failed to make necessary changes in the status quo, but those stories are still about action.) Either way, the protagonist acts. The protagonist acts in every scene. If your protagonist is asleep, your reader will be.

So the point here, or one of the points, is that you as a writer have a role that is vastly different from the role of a reader. You do not sit and see what happens next. You MAKE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT OCCUR. And so does your protagonist. Because nobody else is going to do it.

Outgrowing Your Peers

This is a sad topic for me, but at the same time I'm trying to convince myself (and others) that it shouldn't really feel that way.

I think all of us have helped each other with our writing, at least a little. At the same time a few of us have struck something deeper, a friendship. But, what can happen as we all become better writers is that we also grow and have different needs, and sometimes we can outgrow each other.

In an ideal situation, we and our peers will continually develop and improve at about the same pace. I have that experience with my wonderful writer's group. We have been together for 5-6 years, and we've all grown as writers and as reviewers, to the point where we are celebrating our different styles and voices while still helping each other get better. Criticisms have diminished because we are all in more control of our art. Now, we can just read each other's work, point out small problems, but generally just enjoy some fine writing among friends. And, our shared high standards inspire us to push ourselves more.

But, I'm not always so lucky. Occasionally I also find myself among a group of writers that are not pushing themselves in the same way that I push myself. For a long time I felt bad about not wanting to work with these people, but in this past week I've come to realize that we have just ended up on different paths. I was so resistant to it, but really it is perfectly natural. Just as we graduate from our various schools, we should understand that we will sometimes graduate from our writing circles. I think we should accept that, maybe even celebrate it, because it is a sign of our improvement and a result of our hard work.

And, most importantly, just because we outgrow some people as writers doesn't mean we must outgrow them as friends. How lovely will it be, when we all get to a place where we can just admire each other's art and enjoy all of the different voices around us?

Have you all ever outgrown your peers or writing circles? Were you able to move on in a way that didn't injure friendships? I feel at peace today because I know that I'm lucky to be in touch with writers that are already good and still wanting to be better.

Who Is Your Protagonist When He's At Home?

Here's an amusing (if you're me, which I'll grant that in all likelihood you are not) story: About three years ago, I got the idea to write about the characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet, based on the observation that Hamlet keeps calling the Horatio character his "best friend" even though, based on the text of the play itself, there is no reason for him to think this. I thought that was interesting and I wanted to explore some ideas surrounding it. Anyway, I wrote me a novel and revised it six times and then queried some agents and found a high-profile guy all the way out in Manhattan who said he wanted to work with me on the MS. That was in March of last year. My agent has since then read two revised versions of the book, and he keeps coming back to me and saying that there is something missing, something about the protagonist that just doesn't work. The problem is that the protagonist is sort of more narrator than protagonist, and while the premise remains cool and my writing is quite fine, the second half of the narrative lacks the emotional drive it should have within the protagonist; my main character was too vague, too much a cipher. As my agent said on the phone yesterday, he could sell this book right away if he knew who the protagonist was.

I've been working for the last year to solve this problem, and I've tried all sorts of things that, frankly, haven't worked. My agent (because he kept pointing out this flaw in the book that I could not fix) has been high on my list of people to hate. And my brain kept revolving in a truly simply awful and maddening way around the question "Who is this guy?"

I kept framing the question as "What does he want and how does that affect this story?" and that, I tell you, was a huge mistake.

I was in effect treating the main character as a prop, a plot device to move the story along, and not as a character. I can tell you loads about all the supporting characters, but I could not have told you much of any substance about my protagonist until yesterday afternoon.

Now, of course, I have realized who the protagonist is and what drives him and suddenly the story has a sort of motor, a perpetual-motion machine at its heart that will drive every scene and by gum, that's a cool thing to have. My current book, "Cocke & Bull," has had that internal motor from the beginning, but that book began as a conception of the two central characters. The book my agent has did not, and I spent too much time thinking about Shakespeare's play and not enough time thinking about my protagonist.

How'd I have this breakthrough? Well, it's thanks to my agent (Thanks, Jeff! Love you! I mean that this time!), who suggested that I mentally remove Horatio (my protagonist) from the story told in the book and pretend that he never met any of the other characters and never traveled to the book's settings and lived his whole life outside of the story I've written. So in that sort of vacuum as just some guy and not the hero of any particular story, who is this guy? What's he want? What interests him? What would he do with his life if he hadn't met the Hamlet Family? My agent had a suggestion that was completely wrong, but when I thought about why it was wrong, it got me thinking about what sort of thing would be right. That line of thought sparked an idea of my own a couple hours later, and that spark turned into a flame which has overnight grown into a big roaring bonfire and I can't wait, frankly, to get back to work on this book because it all makes sense now and I keep thinking of ways to make it even cooler than it already is and that spells WIN.

So likely I'm coming late to this party, and you've all been doing this forever, but it's a really cool tool for me, to remove my characters from the story I'm writing and see who they are when they're at home, as it were. I wanted to share this epiphany and see how many of you are already thinking like this.

Also, please note that I write this on Thursday (that's yesterday via the magic of teh internets), because today (which is tomorrow as I write this) Mighty Reader and I are off at an all-day garden show where we hope to learn how to prune the fruit trees in our back yard, which trees had been ignored for years by the previous owner of our house.

Miss Baby Bear

I don't like my porridge too hot or too cold. I like it jusssst right.

To follow Scott and Davin's trend for this week, I'm going to talk about my writing process. How do I get my stories rolling, and what do I do once they are moving? I'm not a pantster. I'm not a hard-core outliner. I'm really just somewhere in the middle. Which, I think if most people look at how they write, are like this. Somewhere in the middle.

My process goes something like this:

Pantster Me
Oh, look, a shiny idea! Let's do something with that. Okay. Let's start with the scenes and locations and all the fun we can do with that. Butterflies. I've always wanted to do a story in the mountains with those Monarch butterflies that migrate to Mexico.

Who are we going to throw in there? How about a spy? A spy sounds super-cool and fun! I can put guns and explosions and a really bad terrorist guy out to get him. That'll create great conflict. Yeah. Now, where would that likely happen? The jungle? Cool. Okay, let's throw Brazil in there. Figure out where the butterflies would most likely be. West Virginia.

Research the heck out of my locations and chosen characters.

Write the book. (This takes forever, mind you, because I haven't really planned A THING. I've just got ideas of cool places and things that happen. Exciting things.)

Organized Me
What the heck are you doing? You've got this book written, these characters established, and you have NO idea what they want or how it's going to end. What is going on here? This is a freaking TRAIN WRECK! Back up! Back up!

Let's make a plan. Let's make charts and maps and models and character sketches. Let's MAKE A PLAN!

What do your characters want? Why? What's standing in their way? Is it logical to have him do that? That makes no sense. Map some stuff out, will ya?

Write the book again. Or heavily revise. Figure out the 3 Act Structure, mold the plot to a spine, give my characters some life, figure out role models and line of antagonism, plot out the climax, smooth out holes.

The KEY is that I already had most everything laid out in a full, completed manuscript. Even if it was a train wreck. I had clay to work with. I can't organize and plan something from nothing. I just can't. Not if it's only ideas floating around in my head. When I write a first draft it's charging full force down the train tracks, live or die, see what happens. Just go. And I deal with making it all pretty later. Which is what I'm doing now.

No matter how anybody writes a book, it's hard work. Even for a baby bear.

So, now that the three of us have shared our writing process, what's yours if you haven't already shared that? If you have, what do you think about writing process? Is it different for you with every project? Do you think there's a better way than another? Something all writers shouldn't overlook?

Moving Blindly Forward

I decided to write this post because of what Scott wrote yesterday about his narrative proofs, which I found quite fascinating. His strategy (and the other writers who also mentioned working the same way) seems totally logical to me, and at the same time it's so completely counterintuitive from what I do. So, as a fun contrast, I thought I'd describe how I go about developing my stories.

I start with a premise. I'll use the example Scott used:

Red is walking to her grandmother's.

At this point, I actually try very hard NOT to think about how I want the story to end. For me, knowing where I want the story to go makes me suddenly manipulate my characters in unnatural ways. If I decide I want Red to end up with a woodsman, I'll suddenly have her stumble upon the National Woodsmen Convention, where she's ushered into the main hall and forced to listen to some boring lecture by her soon-to-be lover. For me, that won't work.

Instead, I look at what I have started with, and try to carefully take the next step forward. Who is Red? Why is she walking to her grandmother's? These are clues for how the story should move forward. I inch my way forward, collecting data, not knowing where it will go. I try to take logical and interesting steps based on what I have before.

Red is walking to her grandmother's. She gets there and knocks on the door, and her hairy, long-fanged grandmother invites her in.

If I were writing this story, the woodsman probably wouldn't occur to me until very near the end, if at all.

I actually think of this approach as sort of setting up some game pieces that will eventually control themselves based on the rules of the game. What I can manipulate is the beginning, and what I try not to manipulate is the end. So, I guess for me, it's that middle section that is the most important and the most fun. I'm past the hard work of set up, and now I just get to sit back and watch. (The scene where Red is asking the wolf all of her questions is the most memorable scene for me.)

Along with this, I've found that when I love a book, I don't want it to end. And, the way I interpreted that was that the ending shouldn't be the best part. For me, this approach was the most true to my own life experiences. Living in the present always felt like being in the middle of the book, and it was always this middle that felt the most important.

As a result of this approach, I think my stories usually have vague or open endings. Again, for me, this is acceptable because it feels true to life--not that all stories must be true to life. I hope that it's the middle of the stories that people enjoy.

So, there you have it. The panster's approach.

Do you all think it matters how a writer approaches their story? What other effects can approach have on the final product?

Narrative Proofs

I have been working on a new story idea lately, and as I push concepts around to see if I can actually make a story out of my idea, I have come to the somewhat startling realization that what I'm essentially doing, when I put together the barest of bare-bones original outline for novels, is creating a sort of mathematical proof of the story.

For those of you who slept through maths in school, a proof is a demonstration that a statement is true, using deductive reasoning. Sort of like a syllogism, you know. You essentially create a list, or a chain, of statements, each statement building off the preceding ones. Oh, go look it up. This isn't a math class.

Anyway, one of the very first things I do when I have an idea is begin attempting to build a story, creating a "proof" of the story. Me, I like to imagine the outcome of my premise as soon as possible, because my essential definition of a story is "a narrative describing how some state of affairs came to be." That means that I am telling my reader how we got to the end of the book, and that ending is the most important thing about the story. So I am working my way to that end, step by step, in my "proof."

For example:

I have this idea about innocence, and I get the concept Red is walking to her grandmother's. For whatever reason, I decide that I want Red to end up with a strong character. A woodsman, say. So my premise is "Red is walking to her grandmother's" and my endpoint, the theorem I wish to prove, is "Red ends up with the Woodsman." How do I get from my premise to my theorem?

1. Red walks through forest
2. Red ends up with Woodsman

I could have Red meet the Woodsman, they fall in love and run away together. Say, that's...dull. No conflict, no drama. I could have them meet and hate each other, and for some reason they get thrown together and have to solve a problem and see that they are indeed not only compatible, but they are attracted to each other. So that's more interesting. So I need a problem.

1. Red walks through forest
2. Red meets Woodsman
3. Red and Woodsman don't get along. Lots of conflict.
4. Red and Woodsman go separate ways
5. Red and Woodsman solve problem
6. Red ends up with Woodsman

So good so far, as Richard Butler used to say. So what's the problem they're going to solve? Maybe there's an evil creature in the forest. Like, I don't know, a wolf?

1. Red walks through forest
2. Red meets Woodsman
3. Red and Woodsman don't get along. Lots of conflict.
4. Red and Woodsman go separate ways
5. Red encounters Wolf, who is Very Bad
6. Wolf does Very Bad things
7. Red and Woodsman give Wolf his comeuppance
8. Red ends up with Woodsman

And so on and so forth. The original outline, the first "proof" of my WIP "Cocke & Bull" looks like this:



As you can see, it's just a list of chapter titles, but the titles all meant something to me and I could follow the narrative down the list and see that it all made sense and led from the premise to the theorem (the ending I envisioned). So I have, at least at the very basic compositional level, a fairly rigorous method to establish the character arc and the plot arc (the plot arc is a function of the character arc in the way I write), and I need to have this in place before I can start to write. There's loads of room to improvise, and sometimes the "proof" changes drastically as the ending changes. I am currently working on a change in the novel that's in my agent's hands, and for the last week or so I've been knocking myself out trying to create a workable "proof" for that novel that allows the story to work if I make the change I have in mind. It's been a job of work, getting that "proof" to function all the way from start to finish. I've wasted lots of paper making up versions of the story that don't work at all, but thankfully I have stumbled upon the Big Idea that will let my new idea play out correctly.

Anyway, as you can see these attempts to create informal proofs of the narrative are really just a form of brain-storming that result in lists. I'm a big fan of lists, though sometimes I make charts instead. Look back at the hand-written list of chapter titles for my WIP. As I begin to write each chapter, usually I don't just jump immediately into the prose, but instead spend an hour or so making one of my informal "proofs" of the chapter, so I know what I'm doing. These are looser in structure than what I've got above, and are combinations of lists and chunks of dialog, mostly. I have several notebooks lying around the house just for working out these sorts of proofs.

So my point, if I have any today, is mostly just to say that I realized at about 3:00 yesterday afternoon that what I was doing when working out my original story ideas was to create these informal mathematical proofs, and I think that's sort of interesting. To me, anyway. Does anyone else work in a method similar to this? I know that we have here our share of "seat of the pants" writers, so likely this post has been a long yawn-fest for you. But I'd be very interested to see examples of other people's outlines, if possible. Or descriptions of outlining processes, especially in the initial stages of pulling a novel together.

Legendary?

Happy Monday, everyone. First off, I wanted to let everyone know that the Genre Wars anthology will be delayed by a couple of weeks. We're sorry, but it's taking more time and effort than we thought it would to proofread and format the manuscript, and now that we have it just about done, we wanted to order our own hard copies to preview before we made it available to everyone else. We feel it's important to showcase the writers as best we can, and we want to avoid major formatting problems.

Onward!

The idea of legendary stories is something that often floats through my mind. I wonder how the Greek myths, or fairy tales, or the stories of the Bible are able to have such staying power in our civilization. Well, obviously some of those stories stick around simply because they are powerful stories. Icarus, Medusa, Little Red Riding Hood, Jonas, Moses...how can we not be captivated by stories like that?

But, I find it hard to believe that modern writers aren't also able to invent such thrilling tales. Something that doesn't happen now, however, is that these newer stories don't get retold.

When we walk through museums, how often to we see sculptures and paintings--masterpieces--based on classic stories? The best artists in the world were immortalizing the best stories in the world. These stories were being recreated and propagated through other art forms and through retellings in the writing form.

I'm not talking about "similar" stories. I don't believe, for example, that Avatar somehow helps to make Pocahontas more legendary. (Please let's not get into debates about what story is again!) My point is that I wonder if stories wouldn't be more exciting if we could build off of each other, retell the same stories, persuade artists, writers, and musicians to take our characters and their stories and retell them.

What do you all think about this? Would you want other writers to retell stories you're written? What about visual artists or musicians? How would you feel, for example, if I were to take your story, your book, and basically retell it?