Writers Teach Others How To Feel

I don't know if it's old age, but more and more I think about what the point to writing is. And, lately, while rereading one of my favorite books, To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, I realized yet another thing that we, as writers, are able to do. We are able to teach readers how to feel.

Writing happens through words. And, often, words help us to understand amorphous concepts. Words allow us to contain ideas by serving as symbols for these ideas. This comes in handy when we talk about emotions.

So often in an emotional situation, I feel overwhelmed. Several different sensations run through my head and heart at the same time. Often I don't stop to reflect about these sensations until later, at which time the emotion may be lost. But, sometimes when I read, a situation in a book is able to bring up my past emotions. And, with the very best writers, I am helped by the reading because I can suddenly understand my own emotions through words I may not have had before. The language helps me to frame my own emotions in a way that allows me to understand them better.

When I used to work with language in my own writing, I would try to come up with a unique way of stating something. Now, I think it's not about finding simply a unique way, but it's about finding a more accurate way of expressing ideas than other people may have done in the past. Just as the Eskimos have multiple words for snow, each one representing something different, I think writers should create different words for distinct emotions. How many types of sadnesses are there? How many happinesses and angers and melancholies?

Have you written or read an expression of emotion that you had never seen captured before?

On Moral Fiction, Part 1

A Question: Do you think that a piece of fiction ought to teach a moral lesson to the reader? Why or why not? More to follow after we have some answers.

Voice Advice?

Happy Monday, everyone!

I've volunteered to teach a class on finding our own writing voices. I've got some ideas based on my own personal experiences from about a year ago, when I feel like I discovered my voice. But, I was wondering if you all had some additional pointers for me.

Do you feel like you've found your voice? If so, what did you do to make that happen?

Friday! Random!

Sometimes, writing a novel is like suffering through a long illness. You are weak, exhausted and see no end to your misery, but you have no choice but to stagger along, day after day into the future.

Sometimes I can tell when I've written well or written poorly. Most of the time, however, I have no way to judge. It's all just writing and though I can get excited about new ideas I have while drafting, I feel mostly neutral about the actual prose during the writing itself. I can see that something needs to be changed, and I can see how, but I don't think of it in terms of "good" or "bad" so much as "works" or "doesn't work." Those times when I do think the prose is brilliant or is crap? I've discovered that later, when I'm revising or just re-reading, I can no longer tell which bits I thought were brilliant or crap when I was in the middle of writing it. So how I feel about the work while it's in process has nothing, it seems, to do with the quality of the writing. Which is just weird, you know?

Sometimes I go out for pints with other writers. Thursday night I met up with Layne Maheu (author of Song of the Crow) and over Manny's Ale and a plate of nachos we talked about his latest novel A Man of the World (which sounds brilliant and cool) and my novel The Stars Are Fire (which, after two pints, sounded brilliant and cool to me) and the future of publishing and all sorts of things. Layne was treats, so I should've had a third pint, but today is a school day so it's probably for the best that I didn't.

Split the Seams...

of literary convention.

In a universe of eels we are the strange ones with limbs and appendages and a tough substance near the end of what we call phalanges. Floating in this distant land we see

everything

and feel water in our lungs. It is a sort of death and there are no words for this beginning.

Writing wraps me around the universe. Stories push my sails. These things we call ideas are

the manna in our hands

palms held up to the sky, waiting.

If I visit your words I see through a telescope into your mind. If you visit my words and understand even a moment I have breathed, I know I am what they call a writer.

Breathe.

Write.

Split the seams and make a new pathway. Today is a universe and I see the eels swarming. They are a rainbow in this ocean-blue. Jump in.
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Today I feel like splitting the seams. I think when life catches up to me and so many things are tugging me in every direction, the only option I have left is to forge a new path. Forget trying to read every blog post I have marked. Forget trying to catch every typo in my manuscript. Forget trying to be perfect in everything I do because sometimes sanity is more important than perfection. My message today, if there is one, is that if fear keeps you from reaching your goals, you're not alone. Sometimes all we can do is jump in with our eyes wide open. I'm going to. What about you?

More On Middles: Starting Over

I've read any number of novels where the middle section moves the protagonist to a new setting and surrounds him with new characters. One of the difficulties of this sort of structure is that, in a lot of ways, the story sort of starts all over again. The author risks slowing things down to a crawl while she introduces setting, characters, backstories and all sorts of exposition. I cast my mind back to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, which does this "relocating and starting over" several times during the second act.

My work-in-progress has just moved into the second act, and I've written the first chapter of the middle. My challenges were to introduce a new setting and at least four new characters, as rapidly as possible while still keeping the action moving forward and not letting all the exposition display itself as exposition. Those are the same sorts of challenges we face at the beginning of a story, and I think it's essential that we meet those challenges the same way, with the same ideal of keeping the action going.

Rather than prolix and beazle on in the abstract, I think I'll just show you the first part of Chapter Ten, where my WIP's Second Act starts, and comment on what I'm doing as I go along. This is a pretty long excerpt, so you might want to come back and read all this when you have more time. Just saying. Also, this is still a bit rough since I wrote it only a few days ago, so all the usual caveats. Ready? Here we go:

(My explanatory notes are all in blue italics below.)

Chapter Ten

A local legend, very ancient, tells of the giantess Hvenhild who gathered up an armload of hills in Zealand, put the acres of earth into her apron and waded over the Sound toward Sweden, ten miles away. When Hvenhild was halfway across the water, one of her apron strings snapped and all her thousands of tons of soil fell into the Sound. I imagine the giantess looking sidelong at the great pile of hills she’d dropped, pushing at it with her toe for a moment and then lumbering off through the waves to sit on the Swedish shore and repair her apron, abandoning her lost acres without another thought. When Hvenhild was long dead and we Danes came to settle the island, we named it after her.

I didn't want to jump right in to a description of the new location, and I didn't want to say "So I got on a boat and went to this island." After about four false starts, I hit on the idea of introducing the island location by telling the myth of its origin. I may end up cutting this paragraph, as it's not really necessary, but I like the image of Hvenhild.

Hven rises up from the waters abruptly, a flat bluff with steep white cliffs all around and ringed with dangerous, rocky beaches. There is one small harbor on the north side of the island, where a steep road angles up through a gap in the cliffs, and visitors to the island are obliged to climb up hundreds of feet to the peasant village of Tuna. Standing, finally, on the rolling plain above the cliffs one can turn and look northward to see Kronberg, seven miles distant. The castle is a brick red and coppery green smudge on the faraway shore. Hven is likewise visible from Kronberg, the cliffs a white line floating on the Sound and the bell tower of the church of St. Ibb is a dark obelisk, a solitary tombstone. Elsinore and Hven seem far apart, different lands or even different worlds.

It was not snowing the morning I crossed from Elsinore Harbor to the landing at Hven’s north shore, but nor was it a pleasant day. A low mass of gray cloud filled the heavens and the Sound was a seething, undulating thing of gray wave upon gray wave. The coastlines of Denmark and Sweden were buried under three feet of snow, as was Hven. The world looked hewn from ice, ivory and granite.

The crossing took two hours in our small boat. Marcellus had assigned two Danish soldiers as my assistants, named Cornelius and Voltemont. They played dice, drank mulled wine and complained of the cold and wet during the voyage. They complained again when there was no one at hand to unload our supplies at Hven’s wharf, and their loud complaints as we dragged our trunks, sacks and boxes up the road from the wharf to the town were doubtless audible as far away as the moon.

So that's setting, travel to the new setting, and introduction of Cornelius and Voltemont, who will provide some comic relief. The typical style of their speech follows:

“There is no inn on this island,” Cornelius said.

“Nor a tavern neither,” Voltemont said.

“We must carry our trunks two miles, over hills buried in snow and then build our own fire at Brahe’s ruin,” Cornelius said.

“There will be no dry wood.”

“There will be no dry bed.”

“There will be nothing but a hole in the ground, and we three freezing in it.”

“You men,” I said. “Have either of you been to Uraniborg since Tycho left it?”

“Nay,” they answered. Neither man had stepped foot on the island in his life.

“Go to the church and borrow a cart and oxen,” I said. “We will light a fire in Tycho’s kitchen by noon, I tell you.”

Voltemont ran to the church while Cornelius and I stood at the edge of town, stamping our feet and rubbing our arms under our fur cloaks. Tuna was a village of a few score houses built from stone and wood with roofs of thatch. There were no people about but smoke rose from the chimney of every house and we smelled pottage and bread cooking.

That's right, more setting. This time it's the village of Tuna. Tuna is small. Also, everyone is warm and snug except our three plucky travelers.

“Voltemont takes his time,” Cornelius said. “Belike he joins the priest for a meal at the fireside. He will forget his friends, who turn to ice outside.”

Cornelius complaining. Get used to that.

“Nay, here he comes.”

St. Ibb’s is a small stone chapel that is centuries old and has a bell tower the height of six men. Voltemont hurried from the church, coming forth in a cloud of steam from a narrow side door. Before the door closed I saw the great bulk of Father Maltar. He was not smiling. I had almost forgotten Father Maltar.

Introduction of Fr. Maltar. "I had almost forgotten Fr. M" is meant to be ominous.

“That ancient priest refuses us,” Voltemont said. “His cart, oxen and driver are not at the beck of every slave from Elsinore, he says.”

What ho! Conflict! Conflict is good.

“Says he?” Cornelius put a hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Well, we ought at least claim right of sanctuary in the chapel and go inside.”

“Aye,” Voltemont said. “It is warm in the church. We have missed matins, but we may be in time for dinner.”

“Enough.” I picked up my cases and walked toward the church. With each step I sank an inch into the snow and I tried to remember Hven during the summer, when the hillsides flowed under deep green carpets of long grass where sheep and cattle grazed, when crops rippled in a gentle breeze while fish schooled in the sixty linked ponds Tycho had dug west of the observatory. I tried to recall the good smell of the earth beneath the maples where I had read Copernicus in the hours after dining. These memories refused me. I had nothing but the air filled with ice and wind, a low gray sky, the noise of the waves all around and deep snow lying over the whole of the island. My ears and nose felt brittle in the cold.

All of this is to show that Horatio (the protagonist/narrator) is familiar with the island, but he thinks of it differently than he now sees it. So Horatio is not a stranger, but he will still be uncomfortable there. Discomfort is conflict, which is good.

“Bring over your packs and trunks,” I called to my assistants. “We will speak to Father Maltar.”

It was dark inside St. Ibb’s, and humid, but it was warm. Father Maltar took up most of a low bench by the stove, a young priest and a boy who I took to be a villager sat beside him on wooden stools. Maltar did not look up even when I dropped my cases into a pew with no little noise. Cornelius and Voltemont set up their own racket a moment later as they dragged two large wooden trunks over the threshold and across the flagstone floor.

Two more new characters: the young priest and the boy!

“We are on a mission for the king,” I said, stepping over to the stove. I stood beside the young priest, stretched out my hands to the fire and tried to catch Maltar’s eye. “We require your assistance.”

“So you’ve returned,” Maltar said. His voice was low and rumbled deep in his chest. He looked at the grate of the stove, as if he spoke to it and not to me. “The great man’s toad hops across the Sound and into my church once again.”

Hey, looks like Maltar and Horatio know each other and don't get along so well. We jump immediately into their conflict. Maltar is characterized almost entirely through his animosity toward Horatio, since that's the single most important role he plays in the drama.

“Brahe is not here, only the will of the king,” I said. “We serve the king. As do you, Father.”

“Brahe is dead.” Maltar groaned out the words.

“Aye, but the king lives, and we do his bidding.”

“Brahe is dead.”

“Indeed, Father. I have been tasked with removing all traces of him from Hven. You should thank me.”

“Were I a younger man, I’d thank you with a beating.”

A very old priest threatens to beat you up. What's that say about you?

“You are thankfully spared that effort, then. We only require cartage to Uraniborg.”

“I had a dream.”

“Did you dream of an ox cart, Father?”

Fr. Maltar and Horatio will continue to snark at each other.

et cetera, end of excerpt

So that's what I've done to begin the middle of my WIP, introduce new characters into the story and set the stage in a new location. The technical bit that I think you should be aware of is this: whatever you do, do it quickly. Don't waste time. Get the most important information onto the page right away, and use it to show character. The dialogue here all serves not only to move the action forward, but to show us who the people are who are speaking. Cornelius and Voltemont are buffoons. Father Maltar is not the protagonist's friend. The young priest shows himself later to be allied with Maltar. The boy will be kind to the protagonist but there's some mystery about him. Get to the important stuff first; there is plenty of time later to round out the characters if you want to.

Also, just like at the beginning of the main story back in Chapter One, it's important to build mystery and suspense. That's why you never will get the story of Horatio's previous time on the island in one neat chunk, and every bit of information you get will lead to more questions. Questions = mystery = suspense = tension and all of that keeps the reader turning pages.

This was a long post, but I didn't know any other way to show (not tell!) my possibly useful advice about the start of Second Acts. Do forgive my going on like this.

Me and my writing

Hi everyone,

First off, I'm sorry to have disappeared unexpectedly. I was at a (science) conference in Rhode Island last week, and though one would expect that wireless internet would be provided for the 70-something university professors that were there, it was not. Bygones.

After the conference, I had the chance to spend the weekend in New York to attend a wedding--the bride in a beautiful traditional wedding gown and the groom in a tuxedo and monkey cap. I also went to a Broadway play called "Red" about artist Mark Rothko, whom I've mentioned before.

Since I don't feel like I have a proper post today, I thought I'd briefly describe what I've been working on writing- and publishing-wise. In writing, I've been focusing mostly on my cannibal novella. Given that I was traveling last week, I ended up handwriting a dozen -or-so pages, and I'm quite pleased with them. I'd say I'm about 80% of the way through my first draft. I like it so far. I think I'm writing this one with the right amount of restraint and the right amount of showing. And, even though the situation is a bit extreme, I'm finding more opportunities to write about myself in this story than I have in the past, which is interesting and scary.

In publishing, I recently sent a partial of my novel Rooster to an agent who requested it several months ago. I hadn't been in the mood to deal with publishing for awhile, so I initially ignored the request. But, after a few months of "rest" I sent it out. After having been sick of this book for awhile, I finally did reread it, and I'm happy to say that I liked it more than I thought I would. Getting the manuscript ready for this latest mailing also forced me to do the last polishes on the book. Even if this agent doesn't want to represent it, I feel like it's finally ready to be published, so I'll be getting it out soon.

Monday Trivia

It looks like Dr. Davin Malasarn is still away on business, so it falls to me to post some kind of placeholder filler material. I shake my fist at you, Dr. Davin Malasarn.

Anyway, I found out today that John Updike, best-selling author of a bazillion novels, never had a literary agent. He dealt directly with his publisher (Knopf) and let them negotiate paperback rights for him (he did pretty well with that). Updike also didn't take advances, and lived off his royalties (he did pretty well with that, too). Though I can't help but wonder if more of his books would've been made into films had Updike had an agent. You never know.

Also: Has anyone else read both Nabokov's Pale Fire and his translator's notes to Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time? I think the latter clearly informs the former, as Nabokov was as much editor/commentator as he was translator, and--in true Nabokovian fashion--little by little he takes over the narrative. You can't read Nabokov as translator and then see Kinbote's notes to "Pale Fire" the same way ever again. I am tempted to work with footnotes and the idea of countering the primary text in some future novel. Yes, I know: plenty of people have already jumped onto that bandwagon, but it looks like fun.

A Very Busy Week at the Lab

Your hosts here at the Literary Lab have all had busy weeks: Michelle is laboring furiously on a cool writing project (and wrestling furiously with a small child as well), Davin is away at a conference in his role as mad scientist (did he mention that he has a Ph.D.?) and I have been buried at work (end of fiscal and academic years bring many reports and a whole lot of last-minute spending). I have also been writing in a blaze of imagination, sallying forth into the middle of my current WIP. I had planned to actually show you the whole of Chapter Ten, which starts the midsection of my book, and discuss the things I'm attempting to do with the narrative as the story switches from the outer conflict to the inner conflict, blah blah blah, but I write longhand and I've not actually typed up the chapter and I've not even finished the chapter (I've got about 2500 words down, and I think I'll need another 1000 or so before I get to the end of it). That will be my post on Tuesday, so come back for that. Today, though? I got nothing today.

But!

I want to remind you all about our fabulous Notes From Underground Contest, Stage One of which is going on right now, and not many of you have so far chosen to participate. Why is that? Are the parameters too weird? Does it sound too hard? Does it sound like no fun? Because we want it to be fun, and not just for the three of us. Honest.

Also, tomorrow is Salman Rushdie's birthday. Send him a card, or friend him on Facebook (I did)!

Also, this is cool.

The String

Last year about this time I wrote a post over on my Innocent Flower blog that seemed to resonate with a handful of people. Since Davin is gone this week, and tomorrow is my regular posting day, I'm putting up my structure post in case you didn't get a chance to read it before. It's something I've been thinking a lot about lately as I revise my current work
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"It's not the pearls but the string that makes the necklace." ~unknown


Alex Moore did a post over at Adventures In Writing at the beginning of June, titled Got Armature? That's where I stole the quote above. Alex's post talks about armature, which in sculpture, is a framework providing a core for modeling materials such as wax, clay, and plaster. It is such a fascinating concept, the premise being, in Alex's words:

An armature provides structure and it is invisible to the naked eye. It is an essential piece of the overall product, but the viewer should never see so much as a wire poking through.

As a writer, a novelist, why do you care? Well, Brian McDonald, screenwriter extraordinaire, explained it all like this: Your masterpiece must have a point that you're trying to prove. Every decision you make is based on that point. So, the armature is the message that your story proves. [Note: the message must go somewhere. You can't have a message like "love" -- but you can have one that states "love sucks."

So, in essence, I like to think of all this in layers, once again. A pearl necklace is the simplest structure I can use as an example. The meat of your story can't float in a beautiful line without structure. Those pearls need a string, and according to the premise above, that string - the message of your book - must be invisible. AND it must support your entire book, and tie together at the end. Otherwise - no necklace. Examples work the best for me. Let's see how good I am at this!

Wizard Of Oz - family is your home

Pride and Prejudice - love transcends selfishness

Lord of the Rings - limitless power always corrupts

Those are my best guesses. If you've got anything different, let me know. I hope that gives you a small idea of where I'm going with this. It makes me think of theme. I know that's a scary word for a lot of you. In most cases, nobody should pre-plan their theme, in my opinion. It should just happen. This is why I think that the string must be invisible. If it's "showing" it's probably because the writer was trying too hard to push something on the reader, or too excited to show their clever theme, or some other reason. But when you set to work on those second draft revisions (where I believe the real writing happens), you should be aware of this string/armature/theme, and you should strengthen it, not necessarily make it visible. Alex also states:

. . . every scene must prove this point- anything else just dilutes the message. Sub-themes may emerge, but they will always complement your point. Don't muddy the work.

I might have hit on sub-themes up there in my examples. Perhaps I'm not seeing the bigger structure, but it's a start. Sometimes it's hard to see the structure that's invisible all the way through!

I think knowing what the structure is in our work is absolutely essential. It provides focus, continuity, and builds to a dynamic, satisfactory end. Without it, your story might be a pretty pile of pearls, and quite possibly a mess. I know I've felt this way about my work, but when I've figured out what the invisible structure should be in the novel, I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes. Everything has direction, support, a goal! And it's all sliding onto the string, one pearl at a time.

Keep Your Middle From Sagging

I am thinking a lot about middles of novels right now, as I am just embarking on the middle of a first draft. The middle of a book is notoriously the place where the story slackens and readers find themselves slogging along, laboring to make headway through your book, almost fighting against you to make it safely across the swamp that is the Second Act of your story.

I think that there are a couple of things that make middles sag:

1. The story is too simple and the middle 100-200 pages are, frankly, padding (as Nick Hornby says, you're just keeping the reader's left and right hands apart).

2. The story is suspended for a few hundred pages while the writer digresses into discussions of his pet subjects, which have nothing to do with the story you're reading.

3. The plot becomes episodic, one similar conflict resolution after the other, and despite the author's imaginative new dangers to throw at the hero, the story feels repetitive (and dull).

4. The plot, the characters, the story are all sort of wandering around and going nowhere in particular for 40,000 words.

Now, consider that numbers 3 and 4 are actually symptoms of number 1.

In number 3, the story becomes a long series of episodes because the writer is attempting to show growth or progress or something, and it's all just mechanics: a dramatized list to prove that the hero is ready for the climax in Act Three. Or, the author is blindly following the maxim to "put your protagonist in a tree and throw rocks at him." But it's not a story, it's just the hero doing whatever the story's equivalent of pushups is. There is no real forward motion, there's just a lot of running in place or in circles. That is rarely interesting for long, and shows that (as I claim) the story is too simple to justify its length.

In number 4, the writer has no idea what to do and has to fill in space until it's time for the climax, so (because the story is too simple) the characters just mill about waiting for the bell to ring and let them back into class, as it were.

So really there are, as I see it, only two real reasons that middles sag: the writer decides to digress and leave the story behind for some length of time, or the writer has not got a strong enough story to fill the length of a novel.

Both of these problems are problems of structure, of the way the story itself is conceived by the writer. To fix Problem Number 2, my answer is Don't Do It. Seems pretty straightforward. But then you don't have a middle of your book, and you're back to suffering from Problem Number 1.

I pause to insert the idea that another possible problem with the middle of the book is that it's simply badly written and even if the story is well-structured, the telling is not well done. That's a whole other (and larger, sadly enough) topic. So back to where I was.

Problem Number 1: The story is too simple.

I see, in my wide travels as intinerant internet reader guy, a lot of early novels that have sort of one-dimensional stories. By that I mean stories where there is a problem put before the protagonist and they doggedly push on to solve it. There is, essentially, only one thing happening in the story, and the story operates at a single level: the level of the primary action of solving the problem. This means that these stories lack depth, usually, and they also lack variety and suspense.

They lack variety because there is basically one action: the protagonist moves toward a goal and encounters resistance. Even in those books where the protagonist gets the quest at the end of Act One, gathers strength during Act Two and then has a dark night of the soul before the climax in Act Three but suffers through the epiphanic moment to make the triumph possible (that is, books which follow the Campbellian Hero's Transformative Journey), you still have just the one real action, of the hero implacably moving against the antagonist. You throw in subplots all you like, you've still got a one-dimensional story going.

These stories lack suspense because the meaning of the actions are generally clear by the beginning of the Second Act. Yes, the story question ("will Luke destroy the Death Star and become part of the Rebel Alliance and clear up that skin condition?") remains unanswered, but if that's the only question the reader has, the suspense will turn to mere waiting during that long middle stretch. There is no mystery behind the story question, no deeper unknowns than the outcome of the primary conflict. That amount of suspense is not enough to carry a whole book.

What you need, then, is more variety to your story, more mystery and more layers of suspense. How do you do this? By making the story more complex. I am going to suggest a general framework for this, and it's a very old and reliable framework that's been around for centuries.

I call it the Inner and Outer Conflict Structure, and I have come to lean heavily on it because it works, it's flexible, it's generally invisible to the reader and it's applicable to all genres of fiction including literary.

It works like this:

You already have a story with a conflict (if you don't, then you don't have a story and this isn't the post for you). This conflict is either an external (Outer) conflict (Luke versus the Empire) or an internal (Inner) conflict (Gogol versus his idea of his parent's expectations of him, which is to say, of his expectations of himself). What you need to do is figure out which type of conflict you have in your story, and then come up with a conflict of the other type. That is, if your story has an outer conflict (George must kill the dragon), you need to find an inner conflict (George's father was saved by a dragon and George is, you know, morally opposed to killing dragons because he was raised with stories of the benevolence of dragons even though he has never, it must be said, personally met a dragon).

So you have your inner and outer conflicts. What you do then is build a three-part structure where the outer parts (Act One and Act Three) are the outer conflict, and the middle of the story (Act Two, natch) is the inner conflict. Like so:

Act One: George versus dragon (unresolved)

Act Two: George versus his feelings about dragons (conflict resolved during this act)

Act Three: George versus dragon (resolved)

When Act One ends, the outer conflict is still unresolved, and the reader doesn't know which way things will go. This is the unanswered story question, and is the primary suspense that will go stale if that's all you've got. So Act Two introduces the inner conflict, which is related to the outer conflict. This is variety, and the new story question adds more suspense for the reader. Also, the inner conflict is often more interesting to the reader than the outer conflict, which makes the reader perk up her ears and become more interested in your story as the middle of the book progresses. There's no reader boredom because there is a whole miniature drama in the center of your story, and this inner conflict must be resolved before the outer conflict can be. George can't commit to battle (or not battle) against the dragon until he works out how he feels about dragons in real life, once he has some exposure to the ways of real dragons. If he decides that dragons are as he thought, peaceful but misunderstood beings, Act Three isn't going to be a bloodbath. If he decides that dragons are actually dumb, violent beasts and his father made up the story about being saved by a dragon to hide a crime he'd committed, then maybe George will sharpen his lance and go slay a large reptile. Either way, the story has become much more complex, much deeper, possibly more meaningful and certainly it will be easier to write the middle when there's really a middle to be written.

If this is all obvs to most of you, then I apologize. If this is new stuff, or if you disagree with/see flaws in this version of the 3-Act structure, say so. If you have a different, but widely-applicable way of structuring your stories that defeats the devil of sagging middles, please share it!

Bad, Bad, and Worse

Beginning #1
Naomi couldn’t remember how she had been kidnapped. She didn’t know why two men were keeping her in a motel room, untied, free to move around, but threatened with her life if she tried to escape. She didn’t know why the man named Eric was tall and handsome, angrier than a roiled hornet’s nest, or why the younger man, Jesse, spent most of his time lying on the opposite bed from hers reading novels and collections of poetry.

Beginning #2
She wanted to get her mother’s attention. A desperate need, something she had been feeling the entire sixteen years of her life, throbbed beneath her skin. She pushed the gas harder and glanced at her mother in the passenger seat.

Beginning #3
Naomi vanished during one of these foggy mornings. Nobody saw her except two men. They were breathing heavily, standing in the moist darkness of an empty parking lot, the heat from their mouths drifting through the air in thin, filmy wisps before it dissipated into the surrounding fog. They stared down at the young teenage girl clothed in jeans and a faded brown jacket. She was blond and delicate, like a pale flower thrown onto the pavement, her legs and arms bent at awkward angles, her face almost translucent in the soft red glow from the taillights of an idling car a few feet away.

Beginning #4
Naomi gripped the tan leather-wrapped steering wheel of her mother’s Mercedes and pressed on the gas as hard as she could. It was the first time she had ever felt any sort of rebellion flow through her, and she liked it as the pearl-white sedan zipped along the gentle curves of the California coastline. The sky was a clean azure blue, like thick paint or the underbelly of some exotic sea creature. It made the ocean outside her window look sullen and gray.

Beginning #5
There was an unusual amount of fog the spring Naomi disappeared. Each evening near the end of February, it rolled heavily from the ocean to the coastline, gradually spreading itself over the city until the warmer hours of morning chased it away. It was unsettling how everything appeared and dissolved within seconds, like some elaborate magic act.

Beginning #6
Naomi knew the man could kill her.

“My name’s Jesse,” he stated softly. Kindly.

She held still, immobilized from the pain in her head. She had been awake for several hours, but everything was blurry and dark, until now.

“Where am I?” she asked with a voice drier than cotton. “Who are you?” A sudden urge to cry washed over her. Throbs of pain spread like wildfire through her body, and she gasped. Pain everywhere! As if she’d been beaten with a baseball bat.

Beginning #7
A book of poetry. Naomi didn’t know why the man looking down at her was pressing a thin volume of poetry to his chest, but it was the first thing that fueled her hope of staying alive.

“My name’s Jesse,” he said in a hushed voice. He pulled the book from his chest and bent his knees, reaching down to touch her arm. “How are you feeling?”

That was embarrassing.

I have a trainer novel. It's the first novel I ever wrote, and it's a complete and utter mess. I've had it for 14 years now. It comes back to me whenever I take on a new project and wonder if I should be working on the trainer novel instead. This novel has bad prose and a structure that looks like a labyrinth. I thought I was being clever. As you can see from above, I've rewritten this book a bazillion times. Nothing seems to work for the dang thing.

I thought I was being clever every time I wrote this book. I finally participated in NanoWrimo to get this trainer novel out of my head. Now I have another book that I've been working on for 2 years and I can't seem to get anything to work for it, either. I thought I was being clever when I wrote it, too.

Clever.

We all think we're pretty clever, don't we? Then many of us hand our clever little stories to a reader who is honest and thumps us over the head with reality. "Your prose needs work. Your characters are flat. Your themes are mixed. Your structure is a nightmare. Your dialogue sucks." And what hurts is when more than one person says these things. Or an agent says them. Or someone we admire.

I have a feeling my NaNoWrimo book, which has evolved greatly, is still only a trainer novel. It seems to have the same deep flaws as the other one. So I wrote another novel, a novella, that I'm currently in love with. I think it's clever.

See the pattern here?

My point today is that as writers, we follow patterns we unconsciously set for ourselves. We tend to keep the same deep flaws in our writing, and you know what? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing over the long run. I'm beta reading a novel right now for a good friend of mine, and I'm impressed with many things and unimpressed by others, just as I am with any piece of writing I pick up. Many people enjoyed my first novel. Nobody has read my 2nd novel. Many people have enjoyed my third novel. Many people will enjoy my fourth one. Perfection isn't attainable and we all have to pick and choose the things we improve upon in our writing. We can only perfect what makes sense to us as the writer.

I'll repeat that.

We can only perfect what makes sense to us as the writer.

All those beginnings you see up there are the result of too many opinions and my feeble attempts at trying to please everyone. Imagine the time - the years(!) I've spent with those attempts. See, I'll bet that most of you like some of those beginnings and dislike others. I'll bet some of you don't like any of them - probably because I never got around to writing the book just for you.
__________

Davin wanted me to put a note here today that lets you all know he won't be around this week. He's at a conference on the East Coast and although he thought he would have internet access there, it turns out he doesn't. He'll be back next Monday. Scott and I will attempt to hold down this fort in his absence...

A Tiny Airless Box

Excuse the randomness of this post today. I've been sick with what's called labyrinthitis, which really sucks and I feel like I'm going to puke all the time. I have puked, actually, and now I've given you way too much information. I can't be blamed. I'm disoriented and exhausted.

I wanted to share a few things with you today.

First of all, check out our new Publications tab. It's a place where we want to promote our readers' published works - short stories, poetry, self-published novels, traditionally published novels, fiction, non-fiction, going-to-be-published soon, etc. If you're not on this list and you want to be, let us know by leaving a comment or emailing us. Occasionally we'll highlight an author in a regular post.

Second, if you haven't heard of our new Notes from Underground contest, check it out! We've already received a few entries, and I'm excited.

Third, I read a post yesterday that I think you should read. Maureen Johnson writes great blog posts. She has a fresh perspective I like, and she recently wrote a post that makes a lot of sense. Ever heard of branding yourself? Yeah, maybe it's not such a great idea. Read her post, Manifesto, about social networking and branding. Here's her manifesto, but you should read the post, too, because if you don't you're missing something good.

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people—talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make. Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand—tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.

Also, she recently wrote a post about getting an MFA. We've talked about this before on The Literary Lab, so you if you've ever wondered if you need or want an MFA, go read it here: How To Get an MFA

I don't want to live in a tiny airless box, do you? I feel like what we do here is talking TO you, and I hope you feel the same way. We like interaction here, and our goal is to converse. Do you feel like we do that here?

The Best Characters Are Always Stubborn

When I think back on which characters in literature are the most memorable and exciting for me, the one trait I find in common with all of them is that they are stubborn.

What do I mean by stubborn?

Anna Karenina (it seems like forever since I've talked about Tolstoy!), Mahlke from Cat and Mouse, Brod from Everything Is Illuminated, Lena from Light In August, Ann from After Ann--whether it be their beauty, their penis size, their determination, their vileness, or the extent of their menstrual cramps, all of these fictional people have some part of them that doesn't conform to the norms set up by the book they participate in.

In fact, critic Harold Bloom puts it this way when he's talking about Shakespearean characters like Hamlet, Bottom, or Falstaff: The work that these characters are in aren't able to contain them.

When I say a character is stubborn, I mean they aren't willing to fit neatly into the story you have created around them. Do you want them to go down the dark basement so that the monster will have a chance to eat them? Do you want them to forget to look both ways before crossing the street? A memorable character doesn't give a flying frick about what you want! She or he doesn't care about your themes or your foils or your three act structure. She or he is going to do whatever the hell she or he wants to do because that is how vital they are...that is how stubborn they are.

One of my favorite writers today is Khuzali Manickavel. Her short story "Because Sometimes It Is Magic And Sometimes It is Everything Else" makes my mouth water every time I think about it. The story makes me feel like an utter failure in every way.

Needless to say, I have studied her writing extensively, and the one thing I've picked up from this is that a vital character and a pre-planned plot rarely if ever go hand in hand. A truly vital character will drive your story and take it to unexpected places.

Isn't there a term for that?

Many writers in the literary realm consider their work to be character driven. But, often the characters in those "character driven" stories aren't very memorable at all. I don't mean this in a bad way, since this category includes some of my other favorite writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and Cormac McCarthy. But, I feel like these works aren't about characters so much as they are writing about insight, or about life. Reading them teaches me about universals, not about individual people. The characters often are interchangeable.

That's all fine and good--really, I wouldn't mind writing like Jhumpa Lahiri at all--but if you're after a great character, if you want that person that can't be contained, you must give them the freedom to be stubborn.

In my own experience, I stumbled upon one of my best characters quite on accident. I had written a book told from the point of view of three main characters. But, it wasn't any of these characters that stole the show. It was a stuttering, lanky teenage boy who collected women's underwear and tore the legs off live crabs that everyone said was memorable.

Think about your characters...especially the ones you or others have loved the most. Are they stubborn? Do they make up their own rules regardless of what you'd like them to do?

I Am My Influences

I am currently reading Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. I am also currently rewriting my own novel, possibly to be titled The Stars Are Fire. Last night Mighty Reader asked me what I thought about McCann's book. My answer was, more or less, that I thought it was fantastic writing but I didn't know if I was enjoying it much. There ensued a short conversation about LTGWS and what, if anything, I expect from a novel. This conversation eventually turned to what I expect of my own novels (because I am never more than six sentences away from talking about myself), and I have made some observations. About me, of course.

The first books I can remember reading were fairy tales, Dr. Seuss and then adventure stories. Books heavy on danger and linguistic play. The books I write now are heavy on danger and linguistic play. Huh. Later I read Shakespeare, books heavy on (even the comedies) the dark side of humanity and full of linguistic play. The books I write now are (even in the comic moments) heavy on the dark side of humanity and full of linguistic play.

When I was a young man, I read a lot of books that examined the existential problem (that is, attempting to find meaning in the fact of being human and delineating the social and spiritual contracts) and I thought that when I grew up and became a writer, I would pen introspective novels set in modern day that examined the existential problem, books that would be beautiful and quiet, revealing and heart-rending. Not quite books like Let The Great World Spin (which is not a book I wish I'd written, though it's got passages I wish were mine), but possibly books like...well, that's where I run into trouble. I'm not sure who is writing books I wish I'd written. I can't think of a book--even one I admire greatly--that I wouldn't change if I had the power.

Anyway, so there I am thinking I'd either be on the cutting edge of experimental prose (like, say, William Burroughs during his Cities of the Red Night stage or Italo Calvino writing If On a Winter's Night a Traveler), or I'd be writing solidly humanistic fiction like Dostoyevski or Chekhov or Prose or Hemingway. Instead I am writing big tragedies in the manner of Shakespeare that are filtered through the fairy tales and adventure stories (Doc Savage! John Carter, Warlord of Mars! Lucky Starr and the Pirates of Venus! Et cetera!) of my youth. In short, my writing and reading are both apparently strongly informed by my earliest reading habits.

I make no judgements about this (aside from the inescapable feeling that no matter what I write or how I write it, I could have done a better job and I'll never really be pleased with or impressed by my own work); I merely note it. I write the stories that come to me, that I am able to write. I work on the books until they seem right to me, and I read books that seem right for me, and neither the books I read nor the books I write seem to be the books I thought I'd be living with. Which confuses me a bit, and confusion annoys me, so I'm annoyed.

So am I going anywhere with this rambling confessional? Don't know. Possibly there's a buried theme about trying, through my writing, to reconcile my juvenile influences with my abstract concept of literature and either failing or not but being unable to tell the difference (because there is no success or failure in that attempt, which is predicated on a foolish and undefined standard). Or, you know, I've been getting too little sleep of late and everything seems a bit funhouse mirror, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, thoughts on this? Are we essentially writing versions of the books we first read? Can we move far from our "formative years?" Should we? Should we not?

Fleshing Out With Focus

We've probably all found ourselves needing to flesh out a scene. I tend to be a minimalist writer, especially in early drafts, so I often have to add more words to make my scenes come to life.

What do I do when I flesh out a scene? I try to imagine that scene in as much detail as possible, filling out empty or undefined spaces in my mind.

Sometimes, however, I hit a snag. I come up with a new detail that is making the scene richer, but it also creates a new problem.

Here's an example from my novel Rooster. In an early draft, I have my protagonist coming straight into his kitchen where he is about to find out that his brother has been murdered:

Bao is surprised to find his wife waiting for him in the kitchen when he arrives home from work.

This entry into the scene gets the job done, but as I was reading the book through, I felt like it was too sudden, given what had happened in the previous chapter.

I decided to back up a little, so that the reader gets to meet Bao at work, shortly before he comes home. This was where the new problem appeared:

Burbank, California--A thief is suspected at Behrin Metals, a gray factory building whose only adornments are rows of gloomy tinted windows. During the lunch break, several workers discover food missing from their coolers. Bao himself loses two days' worth of meals...

At first I thought this was quite clever. Without being boring, I was able to describe my protagonist's place of work, and part of his normal life before the conflict--the news of his brother's death--arrives. I kept it short, only two paragraphs, before I had Bao go home where he received the bad news.

But, the question that nagged at me was, "What about the thief?" Of course I had no idea what happened to the thief. He or she was really just a device to get information across. In my attempt to be creative, I had introduced a detail that led to more questions. I fleshed out in a way that made the story less focused.

I corrected the problem by still having Bao at work, but having him face a much more mundane problem.

Burbank, California--There is a backup at the bending station of Behrin Metals, Incorporated. The workers are losing traction under their boots because of some slippery rubber mats the new Assistant Lead ordered at discount.

I felt like this still had some interest in it without being interesting enough so as to lead the story in a new direction. I fleshed out the scene while still keeping it focused on the main conflict at hand.

So, if you're like me, and you end up having to flesh out areas of your stories, ask yourself if the new details you're creating are leading the reader down a wrong path. Sometimes a new detail or tidbit creates more questions than it does answers.

Have you had to flesh out a scene? How did you choose the details you used?

(Note added later: Check out Jeannie's comment for some great advice!)

Friday! Fill In The Blanks!

Today I thought it would be interesting (for me anyway) to find out who here has published what. So I'd like it very much if, in the comments, those of you who have books in the shops (you know who you are) or have a first book coming out soon (Alexandra MacKenzie) (or you, India Drummond), or have just made a deal for your second novel (I'm talking to you, Samuel Park), would call attention to your fabulous selves and link to your books, if links are available, or just announce your deals if there's nothing specific to link. If you have a book or two available on, say, Amazon's Kindle site, link to that if you want (I'm looking at you, FP).

That's right: it's Pimp Yourself Friday. Don't be shy. No, don't.

if i was going to enter...

I'll admit that we were worried about the reception we'd get for our new contest, Notes from Underground. I think overall it was great! Except that many of you expressed hesitation at the overwhelming nature of a free-form application. What do you do with a free-form application? What are we looking for? Ack!

Scott said in the comments:

1. You don't have to fill five pages if you don't want/need to.

2. It doesn't have to be experimental; it could be a short story or other example of your writing. But it could be experimental.

3. We aren't looking for anything in particular, so don't think we are. We don't know what we're looking for. We're just looking. That's what we mean by "free-form." You don't have to break down the barriers of form and structure, but you can if you want. Hell, we don't even know what "break down the barriers of form and structure" really means.

This might make it seem even more overwhelming because I know that I freeze up when I'm faced with something so absolutely non-restrictive. Where do I even begin?

I was talking to Simon yesterday and he put it well:

What's hard about it? We woo you with our creativity, you give us 10 pages in an anthology.

Pretty simple, eh?

Okay, okay, it's still daunting. To try and ease some of your fears, I'm going to give you an example. Examples help, right? Keep in mind, this is only to give you an idea of what you could do. Your entry can be completely different.

Let's play.


Michelle's Entry for Notes from Underground

Dear Literary Lab,

Please accept the enclosed entry pages for your contest, Notes from Underground. I'm so excited to enter into such an amazing, fantastic contest. All three of you are absolutely brilliant. Brilliant, I say. I faithfully read your blog every day, and I'm always blown away by your brilliance. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. If I was an agent I'd publish you all right away. Yes, yes, I would.

(really, don't say things you don't mean...we do like honesty...)

Since I know you guys aren't super-picky, I've estimated the five-page entry to the best of my ability. I've used 12-point Times New Roman font for the prose, 1" margins, and I've attached the VIRUS-free pages to this email. I will now wow you with my creativity.

(you don't have to include a cover letter, but you can...cover letters can be used to explain stuff we might not immediately get with our brilliance...anything goes, remember)


1st part - a flash fiction piece:


2nd part - a poem:


Okay, that poem really needs work, but you get the idea.


3rd part - my short research paper about one of Flannery O'Conner's stories because she's amazing and I think I sound smart when I talk about her.


(paper continues...and seriously, you do NOT have to turn in anything academic. This is just me. I was an English major and like stuff like this. See, this free-form thing is all about me the writer. It can be all about you, the writer. Turn in weird stuff - we don't mind.)


4th part - a photo I took just to say oh, look, a pretty picture! (yes, your photos should be a .jpg please)




5th part - a paragraph explaining my goals as a writer and a little bit more about me:


You know, if I was actually doing this for reals and not slapping it together in an hour, I'd probably write that above thing in some sort of poem or something creative like that. Prose is just fine, too.

You could:

• turn in a query for your novel
• give us your publishing credentials
• attach pictures of your really cool apartment or writing workspace
• tell us about your favorite class in college and why
• introduce us to your pet dog or goldfish, etc.

Anything, you guys, anything!

So does this help? I'm around all day, so please leave questions in the comments if you have them. I'll try to answer to the best of my ability, as will Davin and Scott (I think...if they are around today).

Our Second Annual Contest: Notes From Underground

For The Literary Lab's second annual Genre Wars Anthology, we present our "Notes From Underground" contest!

What is "Notes From Underground"?

The title comes from a novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky that is part rambling narrative and part story. It's a piece of writing that is both highly experimental and deeply personal. For the contest, we want you writers to feel that same freedom of expression, taking out the judging process to the best of our ability.

To do that, we have two steps to the selection process. The second step will be completely non-competitive.

Step 1:

By August 15, we want to see a 5-page free-form application that convinces us that your writing should be included in the anthology. This will be the "contest" part of the contest. You can use words, images...whatever you want (that can be e-mailed). It doesn't have to be the story that you want to publish, even though that would be all right. It doesn't have to be a story at all. It could be a proposal, a resume, a story idea, poetry, flattery...anything. Got it? Anything.

From this first pool of applications, we'll pick 25 winners that we are excited about showcasing. These writers will be announced on September 15 and they will be guaranteed 10 pages in our anthology. Then, for them, it's on to the next step.

Step 2:

The actual writing! The 25 writers selected in Step 1 will now have 3 months to finish the story that they would like us to publish. Here, aside from the 10-page space limitation, you are the boss. We will do no judging, no critiquing, nothing unless you ask it of us. Whatever you turn in on December 15 will be exactly what we publish to the best of our ability. This writing will be an expression of you, you, and only you.

So, there you go! We hope you are excited about the contest, because we are. We feel like this is one of the few chances a writer has to really see what they would write when no one else is dictating rules to them. We're accepting applications now. Paste your 5 pages into the body of your e-mail and send them to LiteraryLab@gmail.com. All applications will be anonymous to the judges.

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Linked Short Stories in Genre Fiction

I'm currently reading Let The Great World Spin, a collection of linked stories by Colum McCann. This book won the National Book Award, was a big bestseller, and also has a really cool cover design. I should also say that I'm enjoying it immensely and it is--so far--an amazing book.

But it is not a novel. When I picked it up at the shop I knew nothing about Let the Great World Spin except that it had won the NBA and that lots of people had read it and that it was highly recommended by some sites I respect. I thought it was a novel about Manhattan, and when I realized it was a dozen stories and not a novel, I was disappointed. "Oh," I thought. "Another one of those."

Don't get me wrong. I've read some fine books of stories lately. Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer; so did Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. Antonia Byatt has written several collections of linked stories (Little Black Book of Stories, Angels and Insects, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye and The Matisse Stories). And there is a fairly well-established tradition in literary fiction of authors writing books of linked short stories. Yes, agents all say they don't want to see any of them, but they keep getting published, don't they?

What I was wondering, though, is if this tradition extends past literary fiction. I can think of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, and that's as far as I can get. I am aware that there are piles of collections of SF/F and mystery and horror and other types of fiction, but those were collected from a variety of sources and are from a wide group of authors. What I mean is, do genre fiction authors write sets of stories that are all published together as a single book, and are all connected thematically? If so, have these been popular? Do you read them?

As I say above, I was put off when I saw that Let the Great World Spin was a collection. At the end of the first story, I felt cheated. "Hey, what's this? You mean that's all? You mean I have to start over again with a new story? That's not what I signed on for, mister." As a rule, I choose novels over short stories (though I have a collection of stories at my bedside that I read from most every night; so much for my rules). Happily, all the stories in Let the Great World Spin are truly pretty great and I have forgiven Mr. McCann his transgression.

So tell me about story collections in the genres. Also, tell Lady Glamis how much you like the new look of the blog. I didn't know where I was when I first logged on today, but I like it a lot. Thanks, Michelle!