Can Your Voice Be Found?

A few days ago, Scott wrote a post on voice, and (as sometimes tends to happen) he and I disagreed on something. Based on my own personal experience, I believe that a writer can discover some sort of natural or authentic voice. Scott believes that "we find ways to write that achieve our goals for what we're writing, and when we do it's nice and enjoyable and easier. It feels 'natural' and 'like us.'"

So, he asked me to expand on what I thought was this natural, authentic voice...probably so that he can disagree with me again. Yes, Mr. Bailey, I'm psychic.

An authentic voice

Without getting into too many details, in 2008-2009, I had the opportunity to spend much less time on my day job and much more time on my fiction writing. During that time, I tried a bunch of literary experiments and discarded a lot of ideas I had about what I wanted to write. I felt like I got all of my writerly promiscuity out of the way in just six short months.

When that happened, I found myself at a loss for words. Suddenly, all of the techniques, all of the poetics, all of the technical tools that I considered to be in my arsenal had been culled. I no longer relied on Faulkner's technique of splicing words together or McCarthy's stringing together of actions with the word "and." I stopped making my characters take quick steps like Anna Karenina, and I didn't let them blush to the hairline anymore. In other words, I stopped using other writers' inventions in a major way.

What I was left with was myself and my observations of the real world. If my character couldn't blush to the hairline (because, after all, Tolstoy came up with that), I had to observe real people in their real embarrassing situations and discover for myself how they responded. I needed to pay attention to myself and see how I responded when embarrassed. If I couldn't link together several actions with "and" I had to come up with my own sentence structures based on how I organized my own thoughts.

To me, this was finding my voice. I was writing based on what I was observing in life and how I was organizing those observations. That to me is authenticity.

Of course I couldn't completely be free. After all, I still had concepts like the metaphor to use. I didn't erase entirely my knowledge of the English language, and that in a sense will always be polluted by what I'v read before. But, I felt like I was working from a much simpler base.

In many ways, this made my life a whole lot harder. Writing progressed at a much slower pace. Everything I wrote required much more thinking for myself. But, my life also got a lot easier because I felt like I was making up my own answers and solving my own problems. When I was stealing techniques from Tolstoy, I was always comparing myself to him. He was an apple, and I was some sort of mutant, sub-apple. But, when I was inventing my techniques, I was suddenly an orange. And, even if I could imagine myself tasting better or glowing brighter to reach my own standards, I was comforted in knowing that I would have my own slot at the farmer's market.

I think that when we stop using other writers' voices, we start having to invent our own, and that comes out on the page. I believe that readers find these sorts of authentic voices more compelling simply because they are totally new ways of looking at the world. Now, more than ever, I feel like I am observing life, and I'm observing it because I want to write about it in my own voice.

Scene and unscene

I am working on a new novel, and as I write my way through the first act I find that I am being very careful--some might call it paranoid--about exposition. It's impossible to avoid exposition because at some point we have to actually talk about the characters and setting and situation (unless we're writing the sort of story where the reader is supposed to be kept in the dark about what's actually happening), but we don't want to write in big blocks of backstory and stop the forward momentum of the tale. Last night I gave up reading a novel because it was all exposition, more a nonfiction biography than a novel and after 100 pages I didn't know the first thing about any of the characters' emotional lives and I simply didn't care what happened to them so I shelved the book and I doubt I'll ever bother to finish it. That's something I don't want to ever happen to one of my own novels.

I wrote last week about my method of folding exposition into the middle of scenes, and how I'm not allowing myself to write anything but scenes in this book. If it's not a scene, it doesn't go in. I am even being as spare as possible in my transitional passages between scenes. But what do I mean by "scene?"

To me, a scene is a self-contained dramatic incident where we are shown a specific event in "real time." Moreover, my personal rules for scenes include such things as a change in situation for one of the characters (that is, something is different for some character at the end of the scene, and this difference will change the direction of the story in some important way--not necessarily a huge change, but a real change that cannot be ignored by the character in question), and either the introduction or increase of tension between two or more characters (that is, I don't let myself have scenes that exist simply to introduce a new character or setting; there must be, as just mentioned, some change for one of the characters).

So, I am writing my novel in units called "scenes" that:

Are self-contained dramatic incidents in "real time"
Dramatize events that change a character's life
Introduce or increase tension between characters

My scenes can do more than that, but they must do at least those things, or I have to start over. The plan is to have the entire book built of scenes, one after another, with little or no summary. I may cheat and have something like flashbacks by having my protagonist dream about people who have died, but I may decide that's too much of a cheat and not. We'll see when I get there.

I also admit that I am not going to be a tyrant about my rule of writing in scenes only. My basic concern is to stop myself from going off on long tangential digressions, writing chapter-length histories for each character or supplying readers with essentially lists of things and losing the direction and urgency of the story. My writing is constrained by a sense of doubt over each word I set down: do I really need this or that factoid, and why? It's a load of work, and I'm not even sure how necessary it is, but it's how I'm writing this book.

So here are my questions to you: Do you write in scenes? Do you know a scene when you see one? Can you take sections of exposition or narrative summary that stop the momentum of the story and make them into dramatized scenes? Bonus questions: Do you think this is important, or are you willing--as a reader--to let writers hand you pages of backstory? I happen to live with a bright, well-read person who is nowhere as impatient with backstory and exposition as the hypothetical stereotypical reader that agents and editors online go on about all the time. I don't, frankly, know if that reader exists. Just saying.

Multilingual Manuscript?

Have you ever included more than one language in your manuscript? How did you deal with it?

I'm working on a novel that takes place in Thailand. One of the main characters is American-born and often prefers to speak in English, especially when he's upset. Currently, I have scenes such as this:

"I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to look in the urn," Jaroen said in English.

"You idiot! Everybody knows you aren't supposed to look in the urn," his father replied in Thai.

I figure that was the most concise way to express both what people were saying and in what language they were saying it.

But, now, on a suggestion that I include more of the language, I've revised some of these scenes to be:

"I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to look in the urn," Jaroen said in English.

"Ai ngoh! You idiot! Everybody knows you aren't supposed to look in the urn," his father replied in Thai.

Here, I'm including some of the actual Thai words and immediately translate it. The other alternative would be:

"I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to look in the urn," Jaroen said in English.

"Ai ngoh! Everybody knows you aren't supposed to look in the urn," his father replied in Thai.

Here, I don't translate the words, but I think the emotion behind it might still be there, even if the reader doesn't know what's being said. (The argument could be made that the reader also might now know what's being said in the second example.)

Does anyone have an opinion on the pros and cons of these examples? How have you solved the problem of having multiple languages?

How to establish my own unique voice in my writing?

The title of this post is from one of the google searches that have led people to the Literary Lab blog. It turns up frequently in our statistical visitor analysis. Yes, we have statistical visitor analyses; we're almost like a professional blog, you know. Anyway, I have been considering the idea of voice lately and even though Davin, Michelle and I have all written previously about voice, I'm going to prolix on about it a bit more today.

What do writers mean by voice? The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition: "A mode of expression or point of view in writing; a particular literary tone or style."

Tone or style and point of view seem to be the most important and most easily discussed parts of this definition. Let's tackle point of view first, mostly just to dismiss it and thereby remove it from the discussion. No matter what the literary point of view from which the story is told (first person, third person omniscient, etc.) there is always an "I" even if that "I" is disguised. There is always a narrator, always a narrative presence from whom the words flow. This narrative presence has a tone or style that draws attention to itself or draws attention away from itself. Aside from recognizing that there is always a narrative presence, I don't think that distinguishing between first-, second- and third-person POV matters in what I'm discussing; let's just agree that there is some sustained voice (or some sustained voices if you have multiple narrators) that is telling the story to the reader. Whew, this paragraph is dense and dull but thank the gods we're done with it. Let's talk about tone and style instead, okay?

But no: the point I just failed to make is that some writers have a mistaken belief, that as soon as they create a first-person narrator for their story, they have created a unique voice (because, like a snowflake, every person is unique). Did I say "mistaken belief?" Hey, I did. I meant it, too. Too often, I hate to say and sound like an old crank, these unique first-person narrators are characters we've read elsewhere and they're not unique at all. Holden Caulfield has ten thousand clones, as does Bella Whatsername in Forks, as do uncountable hardboiled and cynical detectives and plucky young heroines. My real point is that a lot of you are trying too hard, and you're aiming your energies at the least important (though possibly most visible) aspect of voice. If you have a narrator who is actually a character in your story, work on that character's character rather than how they present themselves.

Why? To paraphrase John Gardner, "The best narrative voices, from Tolstoy to Lahiri to King, are invisible and similar; they don't draw attention to themselves." Let me give some better examples. Of the last ten Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction, only two of the books had narrative voices that stood out purely as voices: Junot Diaz' "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." McCarthy leans heavily on Hemingway and Faulkner, but even so, once you get past the first 25 or so pages, his prose creeps into the background and no longer self-consciously draws attention to itself. He makes himself invisible and you see the story in your mind's eye, not the words on the page, not the narrator. Diaz, on the other hand, is entirely self-conscious and intrusive and personified and a great deal of the hoohah surrounding that book is entirely about the voice. I'm going to opine that McCarthy's book is better, because its strengths are in characaterization and storytelling and revelation of humanity and Diaz' book is a lecture on the Dominican Republic and immigrant experience disguised as a story. But that's just me and hey, who the hell am I? I digress.

Tone and style, though. Let's talk about those. First off, there is an idea floating around that a writer will "find her voice" at some point and will have a way of writing that sort of ties together all her work once she's "matured." For some writers, this is maybe more-or-less true and a page from one book can--stylistically--be slipped into any of their other books and none could say but that it was from the same author. Antonia Byatt and Gunter Grass and J.K. Rowling and John Cheever and many good writers fit into this idea. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy and Peter Carey, for examples, do not.

So let's think about tone and style applied to story and not really think about narrative voice. Here are two excerpts:

She had lost all sense of the direction she’d been traveling and so she picked a path that looked easy to follow through the brush. A loose vine swung down and hit her on the shoulder and Hope screamed until she saw that it was not a snake and then she laughed and then she bit her lower lip and began to cry. John would be along any minute, she thought. John would be along and then they’d go back to the cabin and then they’d eat that boiled chicken and corn and have a pipe and a swallow of whiskey and it would be fine. She pushed on through the swamp and slipped again, twisting her right knee awkwardly and then going down forward into the mud, barely keeping her face out of it. Hope sat up and her knee hurt and she sucked in a sharp breath and knew she couldn’t go on. She would sit there in the downpour, in the mud and filth, and wait for the storm to end, wait for John to come and find her.

--and--

I stood there in the frozen air and let my eyes be drawn down to the patterns formed by the blood on the ice. It is a star chart, I thought. The king stands in Orion while Fortinbras drags his wounded foot through Cassiopeia and spits a mouthful of bloody sputum onto the Pleiades. I wondered if Fortinbras had any regrets. If he did, he did not have long to live with them. He swung wildly at the king, missed and fell to one knee as his lame foot slipped on the ice. He knelt in Perseus. There was frost and blood on the face of his helmet. King Hamlet stood in Taurus and brought his sword down in a mighty blow, cutting Fortinbras’ left arm apart at the elbow. Fortinbras bellowed like a wounded bear and dropped his sword and then the king rained death down upon him, hacking him to pieces. Bright blood spread onto the ice, flooding over my imagined constellations. King Hamlet, still ruler of Denmark, stood over his dead cousin. He pushed up the beaver of his helmet to lick some of Fortinbras’ blood from his blade. One barbarian had killed another, and the rebellion was over.

I may be no judge, but to me, the narrative voices in these excerpts seem different even though they're from the same writer. The difference between third-person and first-person is not, I don't think, the primary difference in the tone and style of these narrations. The first is more casual, with longer sentences that tumble along imprecisely, chaining ideas together to accumulate power. The second example is very high-flown and formal, with shorter sentences that are more precise in their meaning. The narrative styles, I claim, use different tones because the stories themselves have different tones. Which means (to finally arrive at something like a point) that it is the story that should determine the narrative voice, and not some ideas we writers have about uniqueness because we're told that we need to find "our own voices."

My claim is that by writing out the story, we will naturally fall into the proper voice for that story if we pay attention to the needs of the story and ignore everything else. Disingenuously I have used examples from my own writing above, and I arrived at those particular voices not deliberately, but by just writing the stories and thinking about (in the first case) the mood I wanted to set and the vocabulary I wanted to use, and (in the second case) the idea I had of the what the first-person narrator would think about when relating this story and the metaphysical/scientific language he'd use to talk about it.

The Same Notes Over and Over

Playful graphic interpretations of vocalizations in
“Messa di Voce” by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman
with Jaap Blonk and Joan La Barbara.

First, I was driving in my car the other day. I don't often drive, let alone by myself, so this was one of the times I actually had some time to turn up the radio and listen to whatever I felt like listening to. A song came on that got me practically dancing in my seat - a mix of rap and metal and pop. It was fantastic!

Then, I was playing Guitar Hero with my husband, and a question occurred to me as I pressed the same four keys over and over again: what makes it possible for only a few notes to be turned into something amazing?

The song in the car was very repetitious - the same phrase played to the same rhythm, completely predictable, yet so catchy I wanted to listen to it a hundred times over. Guitar Hero lets you play the bass or guitar lines to a variety of songs using only four or five keys. Writing is the same way. We have only 26 letters to work with, and if you ask me, only so many stories to tell over and over. I've always believed that there's only a set amount of plots, and they've all been told before no matter how you structure or tell a story - at its roots is the same ideas retold time and time again.

Yet, somehow, in the hands of a good writer, the same story can be turned into something incredibly unique, something that gets me dancing in my seat.

I'm currently working on a novella that feels to me, cliched and overdone, but I'm telling myself that this story has never had my voice to it, and because of that, it can be something lovely and different. I'm using some notes that people are familiar with, and readers may expect certain things from what I'm doing, but I'm having a lot of fun twisting it all up.

So, I guess my point here today is that we should never shy away from a story idea that feels like everyone else has already done it. I used to think we should. Reinventing the wheel seemed like the only option for a long time.

What stories have you read lately that use the same "notes", but manage to hide it so well the story seems like something new that's never been done before?

Also, don't miss my post over on Innocent Flower today for Master the Shorts week. Davin is guest posting for me, and it's something you don't want to miss!

Who Created the Rules of Your Story?

While ambling through the internet, I once stumbled upon some videos of writer Kate Braverman teaching a class. I had particular interest in Kate because I had the opportunity to meet and study under two of her past students, Janet Fitch and Samantha Dunn, and according to both of these very strong writers, Kate was quite the taskmaster. (I wrote about her once before.)

In this video, Kate was telling a roomful of students that they weren't using their imaginations enough. She said that in all of our stories, we should be creating every part of it: the characters, the setting, the time...even down to the force of gravity.

I'm into pain. I like to challenge myself, and this seemingly impossible idea of creating my own gravity in my stories was something that has fascinated me for a long time. I often ask myself if I'm using my imagination enough. And, often my answer is no. And, more often, my answer is "What does that even mean?"

So, I'm throwing the question out for your thoughts on this idea. Do you use your imaginations enough? Do you create your own gravity? What does that even mean???

It's a Story From the Very First Word

I'm plowing ahead with the new version of my book, and as I head toward the midpoint of Act One I have to keep reminding myself that what I am doing is telling a story, and not setting up a story. What I mean by that is that the opening chapters of a book are supposed to be just as much of a story as the middle, or the end. The first act, or chapter, or page or even the very first word, is not introduction. It's all story. I have to be telling my story from the very first word.

I am not talking about "hooking your reader from the first word" or whatever bullshit advice non-writers are pawning off on writers this week. I mean simply that you have to have a real story you're telling and you have to start telling it at the start of the book and tell it all the way through.

A lot of the unpublished manuscripts I'm allowed to read spend a great deal of time at the start just setting the stage, moving pieces around the game board and explaining the rules of the game. None of that is story, usually.

The main way I use to determine if I'm drifting out of actual storytelling and into stage setting is to remain aware of my scenes. Am I writing a scene, or am I writing an essay? If there's no scene, if nothing is being dramatized, then I'm not telling a story and so I'd better stop writing and think about what I'm trying to do.

My book has some good-sized chunks of backstory to work in, and I have worked out a provisional system for giving it to the reader. There are a couple of rules I make myself obey for this:

1. Write in scenes. This is just my overall rule of writing novels.

2. There is no backstory. By which I mean that in general, I simply don't allow myself to talk about what happened; I only let myself talk about what is happening. If there was some incident in a character's past that had to do with his/her motivations or personality, I find a way to have that incident--or a similar incident--happen inside the main storyline, in the "story present." If I can't find a way to do that, then I am increasingly tempted to just not include it at all. We do not have to explain every single thing about our characters. In real life, we meet people where they are and figure them out as we go along.

3. Action before explanation. This is a sort of framework I am using in the current book, that goes sort of like this:

• Dramatized scene begins. Show major conflict of scene.
  
• Insert necessary background information.
  
• Finish dramatized scene.

Not only is this how I structure scenes, it's also how I am structuring chapters. It's also how I am structuring each act. It's also how the overall structure of the book works. I'm a fan of nested structures; they make me happier than is reasonable.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that, especially in the beginning of a book if it's a book being written by me, it's very easy to drift off from the story and describe the world and the history of the world and I don't think that's necessary and I don't think it's a good idea and so I am trying now to write carefully and make sure I'm still telling a story with each page of prose and that's causing me to write more slowly than I'd like and so it feels, frankly, like I'm making no progress at all. I have a large cast and I have to introduce all the characters. I have to introduce them in dramatized scenes. Each scene has to be an important part of the actual storyline; I don't get to have scenes just to introduce characters. I don't get to have standalone chunks of backstory. I don't get to have flashbacks or a prologue. I just have a story that starts with the first word of the book and continues to the final word of the book. Writing: harder than it looks.

Subjectivity Centered?

Last week in my post about me I mentioned that I had written a new short story, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to give it to people for feedback or not. Well, my curiosity got the best of me, and this past weekend I did share it with a few people. I got some compliments, and I got some criticisms. Not surprising, right? After all, it's all subjective.

I admit I never was a great believer in the idea that "it's all subjective." I think in many respects criticism can be quite objective, and the better the critic, the better the objectivity.

So, why does saying about subjectivity come up so often?

In thinking more about the criticism I got back today, I wonder if the reason criticism seems subjective is because most critics differ in what they think writing should be.

We see this among ourselves and our different goals. Some of us are striving to make high art. Some of us are looking to write a book that agents will approve of. Some of us want to see our books on a bookstore shelf. Some of us want to make a living through writing.

If we were to start with the same story, and each of us wanted to accomplish different goals with it, I'd argue that the direction each one of us revised in would also differ. Chances are, someone who is trying to write the type of book that has never been written before won't succeed very well in getting an agent in today's publishing world. That doesn't mean that what she or he wrote is bad.

So, I wonder if having the unity of vision is absolutely essential before a writer and reviewer can seek to exchange ideas that are actually helpful in the revision process.

Thoughts?

And...Happy Birthday to Michelle!!! Da da da-ta da-ta da da dah!

Friday! Filler!

It's late in the day and I have been feeling decidedly under the weather. So rather than post about whatever fascinating subject I was going to investigate in great depth with amazing insight, I give you this quote:

Then all my images, all my reflections and all my epithets, taken in themselves and with no memory of the failure of my aims that they represented, charmed me with their brilliance, their novelty and their profundity. And when I sensed too great a failure, I took refuge in the soul of your average admiring reader, and said: 'Well, how could a reader notice that? There may be something lacking there I admit. But heavens above, they ought to count themselves lucky! It's full enough of good things as it is, far more than they usually get.'

(from pp. 535-36, The Prisoner and The Fugitive by Marcel Proust as translated by Peter Collier and published by Penguin UK)

Happy Friday to all, and a fabulous weekend as well!

All About Me Day, Starring Glam!

This feels so narcissistic. To make myself feel better, why don't you tell me about yourself in the comments! What do you write? And what are you currently working on?

If you don't read my other blog, The Innocent Flower, you may wonder why the heck my name is Lady Glamis. Let's just say it has to do with Macbeth and my husband and nothing to do with being glamorous at all. I won't waste your time here with the explanation. If you're truly interested, take a peek here.

I've been writing since I was ten or twelve, and wrote my first novel when I was fifteen - about a teenage girl who hates her mom and gets kidnapped by jewel thieves. My second novel, written shortly after, is about a young woman who gets entangled in fish and corporate bio-terrorism, and my third novel, written only recently, is about a 50-year-old spy trapped between murder and love and lots of butterflies. My protagonists keep getting older, my plots always strange...

I've always wanted to write novels, but in college I focused mainly on poetry and short stories, both of which have taught me a great deal about writing well. I'm also a photographer greatly annoyed with my lack of funds to buy better equipment. You can view some of my photography work here.

As for writing, I've been published in the University of New Mexico's national literary journal, Scribendi, 2002, and was also given the staff poetry choice award for that journal in that year. I've been the editor-in-chief of my own university's literary magazine. I've won awards for my short stories at the collegiate level, and I'm recently putting forth my short stories into the literary market for publication. I've had one accepted so far to the Rose & Thorn Journal, which you'll be able to read on April 15th in their Spring Issue. If you'd like a taste of my fiction, I have a story up on Simon Larter's blog, Constant Revision, that you're welcome to read, titled "The Threshold."

I like to read and write in a wide variety of genres, especially literary, and have recently been dabbling in a screenplay that involves three different genres, including paranormal. My next piece of long fiction, starring a fairy tale character, is historical fantasy with elements of magical realism. I'm really enjoying experimenting right now, and hope all of you stick around to see the results!

I currently reside in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, graduated with a BA in English, and hope to one day meet Dr. Malasarn and Mr. Bailey when I take a trip over to the coast. That will be an interesting day, indeed!

I don't want a puppy.

All About Me Day Part II: I am not Scott

I thought it would be a good idea for us to talk about ourselves because I figure our readers should know who they're listening to, or not listening to, as the case may be.

I'm Davin. I've been writing for about nine years, and before that I painted for about nine years, give or take. So, I've been an artist for a long time, just changed media as I moved to smaller spaces and got tired of having paint on my elbow.

When I first started writing, the first stuff that came out of me was magical realism. So, deep down, I always feel like that's my natural genre. I later fell in love with more realistic stories. My first completed novel is called Rooster, and before that I wrote two other novels, one about a man and a magic swimming pool, and another about two families in an ultra-personified world. In all three I ended up writing from the points of view of multiple characters, and I think that's what I'll continue to do because it's the most exciting thing for me.

I've finished several short stories, often short short stories. Some new ones just came out:

"Dolores", which everyone assumes is true

"God In Frogs", based on a trip I took to the mines of Brazil

"Red Man, Blue Man", which is published in the current issue of The Los Angeles Review (with my name spelled as David instead of Davin, unfortunately!)

"Enchantment", published in a small and beautifully presented Paris literary journal called Upstairs at Duroc

Scott mentioned a short story in Opium Magazine where I got 17 writers to all collaborate on the same story. It ended up being nightmarish, but I'd do it again, so feel free to ask if anyone wants to collaborate!

I've got a few other things online , some of which I'm still proud of, and some of which I'm not as much. Plus, you can find some of my writing throughout this blog and in a few print publications. I've taught a couple of free writing classes in person and online, and I'm a staff editor for the online literary journal SmokeLong Quarterly.

Lately, I've been working hard to write more for myself. That has involved focusing less on story climaxes and more on sustaining a low and steady level of emotion throughout my stories. I know that's perhaps weird, but I think it's writing I enjoy more. And, I think it's finally teaching me about structure!

I'm not sure exactly what I'll do with Rooster. I did start querying agents again a couple of weeks ago, but I'm finding that my heart isn't in it this time around. I think about self-publishing a lot, but I feel like I don't yet have good enough marketing ideas to do that well. Or maybe Rooster isn't a strong enough book to self-publish. I keep thinking of ideas that could break out in a self-publishing forum and am currently working on some.

Other things: I live in Sherman Oaks, CA and have lived in California for almost my entire life. I got my Ph. D. in biology and get paid to do environmental microbiological research--I study algae, bacteria, nutrient deficiency, and water contamination.

Even more things:

I think commas should be allowed to go outside of quotation marks.

I very much want a puppy.

All About Me Day, Starring Scott

A little over a year ago, Davin Malasarn invited me and Michelle "Lady Glamis" Davidson Argyle to co-host the blog he'd founded, which blog you're now reading. It's been a swell year and we've had all sorts of interesting discussions and I have been pleased to meet a wide variety of writers (and readers) and I've been exposed to lots of cool stuff I'd never otherwise have read. So Davin, Michelle and I are getting to learn loads of things about you, our dear readers.

Yesterday Davin emailed me and Michelle and proposed that this week the three of us post a little bit about ourselves, just in the interests of full disclosure. Since Tuesday is one of my days to post, I get to go first. So here, then, is a very brief statement of who I am as a writer. Or something. I'm making this up as I go along, so I have no idea what I'm about to write. That'll teach Davin to propose this sort of nonsense.

Currently, my agent and I are getting a manuscript in shape to go out on submission. I've been working with Mr. Agent for a little over a year and I've been fortunate to not only have had his enthusiasm for my novel, but also his valuable feedback and the opportunity to meet some of his other Seattle clients. Which has been pretty cool. The novel I'm revising is a sort of wild take on Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and I write about the revision process on my own blog. When this finds a publisher, it will be my first published novel.

I wrote my first novel way back in the early 1990s. It was awful and I gave up writing novels for years, and began writing short stories. A couple of those have been published but since about 2007 I've mostly stopped writing shorts to concentrate on the novels. If you poke around my blog and the Literary Lab, you'll find examples of my prose writing. My most recent publication credit was as part of Davin's "200 Fingers Tapping" project for the exceedingly cool Opium magazine. A couple years ago I was rejected by "NOON" magazine, for which I've never forgiven them. A 2005 story I wrote called "The Solicitor's Clerk" can be found in a nice anthology. There is other stuff out there, but I don't so much want to draw attention to it.

You know what would be cool? If comments could include links to your published work. That would be cool.

My best work under wraps?

Last week, I finished a new short story that I'm tentatively calling "Catfish Mother." This was something I started back in 2008, worked on through a good part of 2009, and was finally able to finish this year after getting some great advice from F. P. Adriani. (This has something to do with daydreaming that I should also post about sometime soon.) But, the important thing is that I'm very happy with this story. It may be the best short story I've written--at least in my opinion.

And, a strange thing is happening.

I'm realizing that I'm scared to share this story with others.

This has something to do with fear. I fear that everyone will say they don't like my story. And, it's not the direct criticism that I'm afraid of, but I'm afraid of losing my own vision after hearing too many outside opinions.

I'm a pretty insecure writer. I question almost everything I produce, and it hasn't helped that some of my favorite stories are often ones that other people don't like. (Vice versa, the stories that people tend to like are often ones that I'm not as emotionally attached to and haven't put as much effort into.) I think right now I'm actually at a point where I'm producing work that I really enjoy myself. And maybe that grasp on what I like doesn't feel secure enough for me to test it against other people's judgments. I worry that others will persuade me to stop liking what I actually like.

Has this happened to anybody? Is it real? Is it a good idea for me to keep this personal success to myself, or should I test my own writing by exposing it to the world?

Note: Check out Genie of the Shell's comment too! (Added later: There are several great comments here. Check them all out!)

Tell Yourself a Story

Over on my own blog, I wrote this post about the way I outlined the book I'm now writing. I didn't quite get at the real root of what I wanted to say about the process, so I'm going to try again here and hope I'll do a better job of it.

I know that a lot of you don't outline before you write your first drafts, and that's okay. A first draft is a wild and wooly creature, and any way you can get one is valid, I think. Even though I outline, my first drafts are still mostly improvised. But at some point you're probably going to revise/edit/rewrite your first draft into something more polished and presentable, and at that point you should take a good hard look at the mechanics of your story if you haven't done so already. I pause to say that I really think this is most helpful if you do it before your first draft, but you have to do something like this at some point.

One of the most important things you have to know about your story is what your story is. By that I mean, you as the author have to be able to stand back and see how the main storyline works, what the important events (or "plot points," if you will) are, what the character arcs are and how they begin, develop and resolve, and how your plotlines all work together. Yes, you do have to know this. Why? Because those are the moving parts of your story.

The way I come up with these moving parts, and the way they are organized into the shape of my story, is to simply sit down and try to tell myself the story in the order it will take place. For example, I might have an idea for a story about, I donno, a woman who falls in love and rises from a lowly estate to become happy ever after. I know, it sounds sort of old-fashioned, but it's a popular formula and I'm using it. I'll call the woman "Ella."

So I try to tell myself Ella's story:

Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three daughters. A handsome door-to-door salesman visits the house, he and Ella fall in love and he spirits her away.

Okay, I say. Not much there. How about a complication? And some motivation for Ella?

Ella is the maid of a nasty family with three nasty daughters who are less nice and attractive than Ella, but are all constantly besought by the best men of the town because they have money. Ella is from a family that was once powerful but is now in disgrace and poverty and she longs for the good old days she never saw but vividly imagines. A handsome door-to-door saleman--

Waitaminute. A door-to-door salesman? That worked for a second, but now I don't think so. And do I want a riches-to-rags-to-middle-class story? Maybe. Is this about escape, or about comeuppance for the nasty family? Is the nasty family the antagonist? Or one of the daughters? Or someone else, back when Ella's family fortune was lost? Will Ella work to restore that fortune, and the stranger who visits the house will be the key to that?

And so on. I basically sit down and tell myself the story over and over and over again, from start to finish, until there is something there that makes sense and is compelling. I try to keep it short, like 200 words or fewer though that's less important than knowing the core of the story. Sometimes I make lists of characters:

Ella
Ella's father?
Ella's aunt/cousin/distant relative?

Nasty Family:
Mrs. Nasty
Mr. Nasty
Sis Nasty 1
Sis Nasty 2
Sis Nasty 3
Butler/driver/gardener?

Handsome stranger

Magistrate
Townsfolk
Prince
Soldiers

And then I'll take the rough skeleton of the story, when I have one, and try fitting these characters into it in different places to see how they might influence the action or the backstory or the outcome. It is a lot like collage, the way I do it, or like trying on every piece of clothing in my closet in every imaginable combination until I say, "Hey, that looks goooood." The thing is to come up with a story arc for the protagonist that works. And then (or while creating the protagonist's story arc), you need to figure out the story arcs for the other characters including the antagonist (because he's not a prop, he's a character). Thanks to Lois Moss for pointing that out with such clarity.

Anyway, this is pretty much how I turn my vague ideas into actual stories. It's an iterative process of refining and changing and molding and it's a process that's been pretty good to me. Does this look like it could be a useful technique? If not, tell me a better one: I'm all ears, metaphorically speaking.

Also, I have been pretty slackerly in my posts lately and I thought I'd try practical advice again, even though it's Friday and traditionally Fridays are for filler.

The Only Way To Know...

I was talking with a good writer friend of mine last evening, and we discussed my current novel that I'm getting ready to query soon. In all honesty, I've been delaying the whole "query trenches" thing as long as possible. I don't want to go there, I really don't. All that rejection piling up, vague feedback, maybe some detailed feedback, more incentive to do more revisions.

Okay, so I'm just scared. I've never queried before. My friend barely went on submission for her novel yesterday, and she's not exactly in the best of spirits, either. More anxiety than anything, I think. Funny how I've watched some of my friends get agents and go on submission and sell books and their stress level hits the roof - to the point that it seems to overshadow most of the joy altogether. It all evens out in the end. Maybe?

So I told my friend, "You know, I'm not sure I want to do this, anyway. Maybe I'll shelve the book and work on two more projects for the next four years. Maybe I'll query then."

She laughed and said that wouldn't change anything. Publishing is slow. Might as well get the ball rolling now. Make connections, network, get agent interest, get my work out there, all that jazz. Besides, if I really do want to publish traditionally, I need to see if my work is good enough for that, and the only way to know that is to send it out there to the professionals in the field.

There is another way, though. Last week I blogged about hiring a professional editor for your work. That, of course, costs money. So what would be better? My stress or my money? I'd stress sending my work to an editor, too. I guess I've reached the point where I need to choose. Shelve it, edit it professionally, query it, or self-publish it. The only way to know the answer?

There is no right answer.

And as the brilliant Mr. Bailey has said here before, no novel is ever perfect. Messy things, those.

If you were in my position, what would the answer be for you?

If You Were Rothko...

Do you know Mark Rothko? He was an abstract expressionist painter who spent much of his time painting very large canvases with rectangles of color.

Here's an image of one of his paintings, taken from Wikipedia:

I've been a fan of Rothko's work for years, but it wasn't until 2009 at the Tate gallery in London that I saw his paintings the way they were supposed to be seen. When Rothko allowed his works to be viewed, he was very careful to specify the type of lighting he preferred (usually dim), the height at which they were to be displayed on the wall (sometimes close to the floor, sometimes several feet up), what other works were allowed to be displayed alongside his work...he even specified at what distance he preferred his viewers to look at his work (sometimes 18 inches, which is very close considering his paintings are larger than any large screen TV I've ever seen.)

These mandates by the artist might seem out of line, and maybe some would say Rothko wasn't even a very good artist, considering all he ever painted were rectangles. When I saw the exhibit at the Tate, the first thing I felt at trying to view his higher-placed paintings in dim lighting was frustration. I could barely see them. They were just blurry spaces, almost like ghosts of color. Frankly, I didn't like them at all.

But, I found myself thinking of these works weeks after I left the gallery. Not only did I like them more, but I found myself wanting to see them again...or, more accurately to experience them again. Rothko wanted his work to be displayed in a particular way because he wanted to envelop us with his color, to create something that surrounds us in an intimate way. And, without me knowing that, I suddenly longed for it. Only a year later--last weekend to be exact--did I learn about what his intentions were.

Rothko, in my opinion, was a brilliant artist. To compare his work to those of Rembrandt or Renoir or Dali or Munch would be pointless because he had created something new, something unique. And, when he was faced with wanting to do something that no one else had done before, he didn't change his work to conform. Instead, he changed the viewers, he trained people to see his work.

All the rules that I talk about, all the tools I present here will only get you so far. And, if you follow them perfectly, chances are you will end up sounding like everyone else who has learned to follow the rules. (Granted, a lot of people won't even get that far.) You can change your work if you think you are improving it. But, don't change your work because the world hasn't learned how to see it. Teach us. What would you demand of your readers if you were Mark Rothko? What rules would you give us so that you didn't have to conform to rules yourself?

This. Is. So. Cliche.

One thing I try to avoid when I'm writing is the use of current figures of speech. Not only slang, but also constructions like the title of this post. I know people tend to blog the way they talk in real life (I do, and you can see now why I have so few friends), but for me at least there's a difference between the way I speak and the way I write on teh internets and the way I write prose fiction. A lot of it has to do with the fact that my fictions tend to be based in the past, but when I write short stories, most of them are about action in the current time. Even then, I try to scrupulously avoid modern cliches and slang.

For one thing, slang seems to go out of date pretty quickly. A great deal of "the new smalltalk" (as Henry Higgins calls it) is disseminated through our culture via television shows, and those come and go rapidly enough. Though I do wish "shiny" for "cool" from Firefly had caught on at large. Alas. I digress, though. Slang and au courant constructions date books, and I think that means that they don't age well. Even a fairly well respected book like Kerouac's "Subterraneans," while still kind of shiny, is also embarrassingly doofy in the use of slang, cats and kittens.

But I know that a lot of fiction is written for immediate consumption and the shelf life is not projected into the coming decades for future generations. A lot of stuff is written to be consumed and discarded and replaced by new stuff next year or next season or next fall, and so slang or neologisms that will date books don't really matter, just as 100 years from now nobody will care that the way hippies talked on "Dragnet" is ridiculous. I mean, it was foolish and inaccurate then, but it gets increasingly hysterical as the years pass, and nobody can take Joe Friday seriously either. Again, I digress. It's early, I've had no coffee and I'm getting a cold, so be kind.

In the fiction I write, I will use slang from those time periods, but it's pretty much set dressing and clearly for characterizations. I'm still not sure how I feel about that (it might just be a gimmick, in which case I know where the "delete" key is to be found on my keyboard). But I know that I won't have one of my characters say, "Just. Stop. That. Right. Now." because that's a construction I expect to go away within a few years. I also won't have my characters say "scoop" for "pick up in a car" or "roll me up" for "drop me off in your car at some destination" or "hip to" for "inform about." There's this album by David Bowie from 1975 (I think) called "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" which is a great album, but really, it's just doofy sometimes. "Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah." That's not the sort of thing I want to look back upon in my own work.

Your thoughts? Am I just too fussy about stuff like this? Does it matter? Are current cultural references actually good things, especially in YA or MG fiction or in topical thrillers where I seem to see them the most? Do you even think about this sort of thing, or do you just write the way you write and I should just go have my coffee and let you find your own authorial voice?

Do you suffer from potential vision?

Hi everyone! Happy Monday! I'll be getting to the blogs late tonight, so don't mind me if I don't respond to everyone, please. I'm actually in New York as you read this...if all has gone according to plan. Rest assured I'll be reading it all when I get home.

Today, I wanted to talk about potential vision. It's something I suffer from. It involves me knowing that I have worked hard at writing for about nine years, and I've picked up the skills to write as well as anyone I can think of, at least some of the time. Okay, maybe not Shakespeare.

But, what I often need to remind myself is that, just because I know how good I am, A. this doesn't mean that I can convince others of my talent, and B. this doesn't actually mean I'm right.

This is where my potential vision becomes a problem.

Knowing how good you are doesn't mean that others will see how good you are. What does this mean for us? It means that if we put out a rough draft into the world, or any piece of writing that isn't our best, a reader/reviewer won't be impressed because they know where we are going to go with it. They'll be disappointed because they think this is all we can do. No matter how much we try to convince them that it's rough or that we aren't done yet, they will likely take our work at face value and respond accordingly.

"Your characters are too flat," they might say. What does this mean? It means that in your current draft, not in your imagination and not in your future plans, the characters might be flat. This doesn't mean you have to change your approach. In fact, it might be that if the reader had kept quiet until seeing the next draft, everything would have been fine.

The second problem is that knowing how good you are ignores the fact that it takes a lot of skill to go from your imagination to the final product. Even if you have the best idea, even if you have the best characters, the best language and best descriptions, none of this matters if you don't put the time and effort into getting this all down. This is a big problem for me because I often get bored once a project feels "finished" in my head. Sometimes, without even writing a story, I'm ready to move on to something more ambitious! It seems like I have to constantly rediscover for myself that the physical creation requires a completely different skill set...one that I'm particular weak at. And, it reminds me that if I read a book that I'm not impressed with, I shouldn't put the writer down until I physically create something that I deem is better.

What does this mean for me? First and foremost, it means that I shouldn't take critiques of my rough drafts too seriously. If I know it's rough, then I already know that things will change in ways that the reader can't imagine. It also makes me less likely to share anything until I feel like it's as good as I can make it. (There are exceptions to that, usually because I just have fun sharing work with my friends.) Second, it reminds me that I have to prove my potential to myself. Being brilliant in my head may be satisfying for awhile, but really it doesn't result in me making the books I want to make. To do that...I actually need to write.

From the Ground Up

I am working with an agent to get a novel in shape to submit to publishers. I've been working with this agent for almost a year now (in fact, I just realized that tomorrow is the anniversary of our face-to-face meeting wherein we became engaged--I mean, when he became my agent and I became his client), and I've done two major revisions to the work so far. Neither of those revisions managed to fix the problem with the second half of the book, and it was only during a phone call with my agent about a month and a half ago that I realized what the actual problem was. Some back and forth with Mr. Agent ensued at that point, and I told him that I know what the problem actually is, and that I can fix it, but it will take some time and work. (Now, you might be wondering what the agent actually liked about the novel since it's not submission ready and I'm doing major revisions to it, but honestly that's the way it works a lot of the time and when you get your own agent, be prepared to do more work on the novel; sometimes a lot of work.)

Anyway, here are the details. My protagonist is involved in a familiar story and is telling his own story as it relates to the famous story. The first half of the book explains my protagonist's growing involvement with the famous story (which is "Hamlet," by the way), and the second half of the book tells the story of "Hamlet," sort of, and my protagonist's role in those events. Or at least, that's the premise. In reality, during the second half of the book my protagonist often fades into the background and is merely a narrator of my version of Shakespeare's story. My version is significantly different from Shakespeare's (because I lean heavily on not only the sources Shakespeare stole from, but I also take the characters in new directions), but still I end up focusing not on my protagonist's tale, but on him telling the tale of "Hamlet." Which was interesting, but in the end confusing and a problem.

So I've figured out that the way to deal with this (or the way I'm going to deal with this) is to use my version of "Hamlet" as the framing story instead of the actual story, and I've come up with an original dramatic arc for my protagonist that overlays and intertwines with my version of "Hamlet" and keeps the focus on the protagonist. So cool for me and Big Win, right? Almost.

The problem for me now is that almost none of my prose is going to be salvagable. If I can keep 20% of what I've written, I'll be very lucky. I began writing the new first chapter this week, which I had planned to create out of the existing Chapter 4, but I think that I want to essentially rewrite the whole book from the ground up. I'll keep some of the work, but I learned a huge amount while writing a different new novel this winter and my now-much-smarter-writer-brain wants to use my newfound writer smarts and not try to retread the old stuff. It looks, frankly, easier to start from scratch. I have a sort of bet with myself that I can come up with a complete draft of the new version by July. We'll see how well I do with that.

I know that Michelle has rewritten her most recent book (Monarch) from scratch, and I know that Davin is thinking about rewriting (or writing a whole new version of) his novel Rooster. I also know that the latest novel I've written, Cocke & Bull, is in some ways based on my very first (and very bad) novel from about 15 years ago. There must be other people who have scrapped entire novels and rewritten them from the ground up. I'm betting some of you have done that, and I'd like it a lot if you could share your experiences with that, and pass along any advice you might have. Also, please tell me the work was worthwhile!

Also: Happy Friday, and about time!

Sharing WIPs, or The Milk of Human Kindness

First of all, I'd like to welcome Victoria Mixon! Victoria is a professional editor that I've known for awhile now, and I'm always fascinated with what she has to share on her blog about writing and editing. Recently, Victoria has been doing a series of posts about independent publishing. Davin and I did a guest post over there about our experiences with Lulu, and several other authors have been sharing their experiences with other self-publishing ventures. Go. Read. Great material!

So, onward to Victoria's guest post for me today!

__________

Michelle has asked me to write today about showing your manuscript to friends.

Oy!

I used to do that. Yes. Many years ago, when I was young and naive and full of hope for modern civilization, I theorized that the average reader was the ideal audience, so my reader friends were the proper people to tell me whether or not my novels worked. Of course my friends were intelligent, well-read folks with highly-developed tastes in particular fiction and the ability to express themselves clearly. Their opinions were heck of smart.

So one of the my most intellectual friends took my WIP with him on a roadtrip down the West Coast with his parents, who happened to be in the process of removing him from his current situation and committing him to rehab. Sweet, brilliant, strung-out to the eyeballs, he had the grace—when I said, “Well?“—to reply simply and kindly, “I’ll have to read it again.”

Another friend read that WIP during chemo treatments in the last year of her life. She called me up after the first chapter and cried, “I love this!” Then she never mentioned it again. (I certainly never asked.) She didn’t finish it.

Yet another friend—a writer friend—carried off her copy of the WIP, though, and after calling me to say, “I tell everyone I’m reading this amazing novel by a friend!” also stopped commenting. I eventually commissioned a mutual friend to retrieve the manuscript and destroy it.

Some years later I re-read that novel. The first chapters were a joy—vivid, poetic, exciting, word-perfect. The rest of it deteriorated with terrifying speed into a sloppy, inexplicable mess.

What did I learn from all this? Exactly. Sometimes the kindest criticism is silence.

However, sometimes friends can’t bear to hold their tongues. Sometimes they just have to say it.

Once I traded manuscripts with a published friend, the author of lovely, heart-wrenching literary works. We gave each other detailed, specific, incredibly concrete advise. She loved my criticism. I loved hers. Clear up until I got to the last paragraph of her letter, where she suddenly told me my ending was “melodramatic and unbelievable.” I sat there reeling dizzily in my chair.

Melodramatic? My baby? Unbelievable? But it was black humor!

I made two quick decisions, then and there: I would take her advice and toss the objectionable ending, starting over again from scratch. (She had, after all, given me tons of marvelous criticism on the rest of the novel, criticism I couldn’t fault in any way, and she had a history of telling me the things I needed to know, but could see in anybody’s work except my own.)

And I would stop asking writer friends to critique my novels.

The problem was the same problem I always had reading tarot cards for people I loved.

I knew too much.

Have you discussed your WIP with your writer friends? Shared the anguish of decisions, worked though plot ideas, held each other’s hands when characters died on the page (and not on purpose)? Have they been with you through multiple drafts, helping you shape where your novel is going, you helping them shape theirs?

Or are they coming to this manuscript cold? Do they know nothing about your work, only that they love you, they admire your dedication to the craft, and they’re determined to reward that dedication with the best possible criticism they can muster?

Do they care about you? I mean, really. Are they your friends?

Because if they are, then they’re laboring under one of the worst possible burdens a critiquer can have.

The burden of conflicting agendas.

Whenever I read tarot cards for friends in the old days (back when I had time for such frivolity), my biggest obstacle was keeping what I already knew out of the reading. Conversely, when I read the cards for total strangers, I blew them back in their chairs. “How did you know that?” they said, their eyes bugging out.

Single agenda.

Along the same lines, when I edit for strangers now, I bring none of my own baggage. I don’t know the authors. I’ve never read their manuscripts before. I know only that they care deeply, passionately, painfully about their babies and that my job is to help them turn those babies into grown-ups who can go out in the world and fend for themselves. It’s work. I do it for a living. I’m not going to confide in these people about my family life. All we’re going to ever talk about is what I know about the craft of fiction, specifically as it pertains to their struggles with it.

(Of course, this isn’t entirely true throughout the whole course of our relationship, if it stretches into years. Eventually I’m hearing about their daily travails—particularly as they pertain to wrestling a manuscript into a headlock—and sharing casual snippets of my own life in return. Very carefully considered snippets.)

I do not bring them my serious concerns, my worries, my fears, the dark heart of my soul. I don’t cry on their shoulders or ask them for advice. I certainly don’t bring them my own fiction. That wouldn’t be fair. Our relationship is all about theirs.

When you hand your manuscript to a friend, you automatically hand them a ticking time bomb.

“When will I say something casually that cuts to the quick?”

“How can I tell them this stinks without losing their trust in me?”

You’re playing with dynamite when you do this. Your WIP is not the one overriding priority of this relationship. Where does the milk of human kindness begin and end? If your friend is handing a manuscript back, you both have conflicting agendas.

But when you hand your manuscript to a hired professional, you enter into an unspoken agreement.

“If I don’t like you, I’ll take my baby elsewhere, and you’ll never hear from me again. You’re probably a scammer, anyway.”

“Half of my job is knowing what to say about individual manuscripts. The other half is knowing how to say it.”

Just as with therapy—real, useful, constructive criticism needs a solid professional relationship as its base. Yes, your friends will hold you when you cry and let you unload your endless, on-going irritation with the mundane trivialities of life. Mine do that for me, too. But it takes a therapist to go into your shadows and surgically remove the tumors growing there.

Writing friends are indispensable support in this devastating, elevating, death-defying craft of fiction that we all love. The power balance between writers can be nurturing and fulfilling in the extreme.

Just don’t ask them to perform surgery. You don’t want that beloved support system to up and die on you right there on the table.

_______

Thank you for reading this guest post! I certainly have opinions about what Victoria discusses here. I will be doing a post either next Thursday or sooner on my writing blog, The Innocent Flower. Let me know what you think about all of this! Do you let your friends critique your work? And I mean writing friends, not your friends from grade school.

Too many characters in a scene? Mix and match!

If you write stories with multiple characters, chances are you've run into scenes like this:

Rudy ran up the stairs. Then Claire ran up the stairs. Then Vanessa ran up the stairs. Then Cliff ran up the stairs. Theo was sitting on his bed with his headphones on. Vanessa yelled at him, but he didn't hear. So, Rudy went over and stomped on his foot.

"Don't step on your brother's foot," Clair said.

"Well, he wouldn't listen to Vanessa," Rudy said.

Theo was wailing and holding his foot. Cliff ran downstairs to get his medical bag from his office. Vanessa was laughing, but Claire made Rudy apologize. Then, everything was okay.

No matter how well-described each character is, a scene like this can sometimes come out looking like a mess. I should know. I was just trying to juggle three characters in my novel, and I ended up keeping them in separate rooms as often as possible to avoid having to deal with it.

Now, I realize that with some organization, a scene with several different characters can turn into a masterpiece. Just remember that you can mix and match.

Match

Many times in a scene like this, characters are performing similar actions. You can group those characters and their actions together to keep from having to describe each one individually.

Instead of, Rudy ran up the stairs. Then Claire ran up the stairs. Then Vanessa ran up the stairs. Then Cliff ran up the stairs, you could write, They all ran up the stairs.

This doesn't have to stop with action. You can lump emotions together, or interactions, thereby creating microcosms inside the larger scene.

Mix

You can also mix things up to simplify them. Although this might seem a little counterintuitive at first, remember that as writers we can easily jump through time and space if it helps make our story stronger. In the scene above, I wrote out each character's actions in chronological order. But, there are other ways to write the same scene.

For example: They all ran up the stairs to where Theo was listening to his headphones. But, a moment later, Cliff ran back down to get his medical bag from his office. The children had gotten into a fight: Vanessa yelling, Rudy stepping on Theo's foot, Theo crying, until finally Claire intervened.

Here, I moved the middle events to the end of the scene so that I could unite the action of running up and down the stairs. The list of kids and their actions becomes even more hectic when they are grouped together, perhaps. But now, readers don't feel like they have to try as hard to remember who is whom. The kids become a single entity contributing to the chaos.

Another possibility might be: The kids were at it again. Theo was listening to his headphones. Vanessa and Rudy went up to pick a fight. And so, it was Claire who had to intervene while Cliff went to get his medical bag from his office.

This time, the scene is organized into more of a two-sided conflict, the kids versus the adults, instead of the five-sided conflict I originally presented. Even though there are just as many names, readers are able to keep them more or less organized in their minds.

So, if you're overwhelmed by having to juggle multiple characters in a single scene, keep in mind that you can mix and match them to make the scene more organized and more dynamic.

Question of the day:

Have you ever had to deal with a multi-character scene? What problems did you face? How did you fix them?

Note added later: See Jabez's great tip in the comments as well.

Come, Sir. I Draw Toward An End With You

This weekend I finished the first draft of my current novel-in-progress (not so much "in progress" now, I guess), which meant that I had to write the ending of the book. I knew, more or less, what I wanted to happen at the very end of the story. I knew the ending before I wrote a word of Chapter One. But there is, of course, more to ending a novel than dramatizing the final plot point. Isn't there?

I wondered the whole time that I was writing my ending what the purpose of a novel's last chapter is. To finish the story, certainly. To say "what happened." To tie all the strands together into something satisfying for the reader, I guess. To close things off with an image that's appropriate and aesthetically pleasing, I suppose. Really, I'm not sure. I wrote my way from where I was at the end of Chapter 23 to the image and final paragraph I had for the close of the book. The path took some surprising turns that I didn't see coming but those turns please me, at least right now.

I tried to push away all those thoughts about purpose while I was writing my way to the end, but I wasn't entirely successful. There was one point when I was convinced that I had to have something Significant--something that summarizes or comments in some way upon the story--and I resisted that urge as much as I could, mostly just by avoiding my protagonist. The point of view of my final chapter circles around the protagonist, the story coming instead through some of the supporting cast; we only actually get inside the protagonist's head about a page before the end of the book, and when he finally thinks or speaks, I make him sort of inarticulate so as to deliberately not moralize or make him a proxy for my authorial commentary on the story.

Anyway, I think I've written a satisfactory ending. I think.

Naturally all of this makes me wonder about endings, especially the way endings are written in "modern" novels, whatever that means. Modern novels seem to have a certain expectation regarding endings, an expectation I've not really figured out. I've read a lot of 19th-century novels, where there is a tendency to have the author look back and reflect upon the events of the novel, to make some kind of a statement to/for the reader. There is also a tendency to have long denouements where we get a picture of the lives of all the characters after the story ends. I used to follow that model, but now I prefer a more abrupt ending, where you get the hell out of the story once the principal action is over. My favorite ending of any novel is that of Joyce's Ulysses, but my actual model for endings, I think, is Shakespearean tragedy:

Hamlet: Ouch! (dies)

Horatio: That's all folks! (waves at audience)

(curtain)


My latest book (like all my books) is a tragedy. Because things end unhappily in tragedies, some writers try to put some kind of positive spin on the action right at the end. Dickens gives characters heroic speeches sometimes (think of the end of A Tale of Two Cities); Hari Kunzru in Transmission goes fantasy and his protagonist may be happy, somewhere, after all; Junot Diaz in The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao keeps tacking ending upon ending after the tragic finale until we are finally presented with an absurd and (if you're me) annoying happy ending. William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor were brave enough never to go that route.

Anyway, I am wondering in my long-winded way if you kind folks have any thoughts about endings. What is the purpose of the last chapter of a novel? Does the author owe the reader anything (I understand that in some genres there are conventions governing endings)? How do you feel about authors who supply morals and the like?

Revisiting

"[T]o shape a personal vision requires revisiting a subject over many images to create a more focused and particular view."

This quote comes from an essay by photographer Sze Tsung Leong called "A Picture You Already Know." Leong was referring to the practice of working in series, but I think this quote also applies well to matters of writing. Our vision, the reason we write, rarely appears fully formed with one try. We're bombarded by the work of other writers, by education, by the publishing industry to be anybody other than our true selves. To find or re-find our vision may require several attempts, either in the form of revisionary drafts, or perhaps in the form of multiple stories that all strive to do the same thing.

For myself, I find that with each story I write I'm defining a set of themes that are important to me. And, I sometimes wonder--since my first completed novel has gone so far astray from the initial inspiration--if it would be worthwhile to try and write the story again, creating something new, and perhaps better shaping my personal vision.

How do you feel about revisiting a subject matter or story? Do you think there's something to gain from it?