Three Acts, Two Acts or No Acts?

I've been thinking a lot about structure lately, about the large-scale organization of novels. I have two books in the works at present: one in rough-draft form that I'm about to start revising, and one just starting out with about 11,000 words written. The novel in draft form has a very loose 3-act structure, but only because I was pretending to follow the conventions of the genre (it's a literary detective novel).

There was a time that I leaned very hard on the 3-act structure. It's dependable, for one thing. It works. It gets the job done. There were a few years where, if I thought about the overall sweep of one of my books, I always imagined a three-part story. If I was putting together an outline of a book preparatory to writing a first draft, I'd spend hours tinkering with the plot and character arcs, working the whole thing up into the classic 3-act structure.

A couple of books ago I came up with a variation on the classic 3-act, which was the inner/outer conflict story model. Go here to read about it. That seems a pretty decent way of arranging a narrative, and it's also a sturdy, dependable model. You can write sturdy, dependable stories.

When I was drafting the detective story, I found that my writing was pushing against the 3-act structure. The whole "beginning-middle-ending" thing made sense at one level for what I was doing, but it made no sense at all for some of the other things I was working on. I ended up with a sort of hybrid structure, with a linear 3-act story going on while a bunch of short story type things kept cropping up along the way. Some of these short story things were flashbacks, some of them were almost self-contained stories and some of them were other things. Most of them dealt with the emotional themes of the story that weren't really addressed by the main detective story plot.

Working on the new book, I can see in my imagination how the first half of the book will go: two alternating stories that will join up in the middle of the book. And then, once the two main characters have met, some other stuff will happen. I have no idea what the "story question" is. I have no idea what will happen when my protagonists meet. I do know what each of them thinks they want more than anything else and I can see how their meeting will appear to open doors in their lives, but I don't know how any of that resolves. But I do know that this new novel doesn't fit into the 3-act structure. There isn't an "inciting incident" nor is there a development where the protagonist attempts to solve a problem, nor will there be a third act where the main conflict is resolved. Nope. None of that stuff. Two people move along, they meet, and stuff happens. I have a vague sense of how it will come out on the page, but I can't really see a big structure to it. And you know what? I'm not looking for one.

I think I'm now more interested in a more lifelike, realistic way of building narratives. The transformative hero's journey is wholly inadequate for the type of stories I'm trying to build these days. People->Action->Consequences, possibly, is the real paradigm. Don't talk to me of rising tension, I say.

One of the books I'm reading right now is Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Davin and I have been discussing it while I read it. He loved it and I've been having trouble with it. Today I read page 325 and there's a passage where one character tells the protagonist that he's not insignificant, that he's working on problems for any number of people without even knowing it. On the one hand, this passage bothers me because anyone who's read more than a couple of novels has already figured this out and this novel is thick with handholding statements like this, explaining itself to the reader in a clumsy sort of manner. On the other hand, I saw that Murakami really was presenting a Kafkaesque protagonist who was waffling around in a world that was largely incomprehensible to him (and to the reader) and that the point of the novel was that very incomprehensibility (which Davin told me last week but I didn't quite get it). The protagonist's world--and the narrative itself--are unpredictably shaped. Unexplained events and unlikely coincidences coexist in every chapter; who knows why? Just like reality. Now I'm enjoying the novel and I read a lot of it at lunch. I don't know if any of the story's questions will be answered, but I see that it doesn't matter if they do. What's the "meaning" of most of Kafka's stories? No idea and I don't care.

I'm also reading a lot of Chekhov stories, and Chekhov sort of invented the indeterminate ending, as well as the story where the climax comes at any point and the story might continue for thousands of words past that climax because the climax, the resolution of the primary tension, is not the real point of the stories. What's the organizing principle of a Chekhov story? That's hard to say, really. People. Action. Consequences. Or not.

Anyway, what I find most interesting about all of this is that, when I began writing novels, I struggled hard and long to find a structure around which to build stories. When I figured out how to use the classic 3-act structure, I was relieved and I thought I had that part of writing all figured out and I never had to think about structure again. After using the 3-act structure for a couple of novels, though, the artificiality of the form has made it more or less useless to me and I have to find something else. That "something else" seems at this point to be nothing more than a strong sense of what happens in life, a vague idea of causality, though I am working very hard to steal Davin Malasarn's trick of having unexpected changes of direction come along in the story.

So none of this is particularly useful or interesting, but it's what I've got. I thought I'd have something definite to say about large-scale structure, but it seems that all I've really got to say is that while I used to preach the classic 3-act shape, I no longer do. There are loads of excellent stories to be made using that structure (and almost every movie made follows it), but it's not a necessity. You can find your own way. Sometimes you have to.

Nesting ... Flashbacks or Not?

First of all, Happy, Happy Birthday to Scott this past Saturday! Yay! Scott is currently hiding away on vacation celebrating this fantastic event. Go, Scott!

I'm currently reading a book that nests several stories together - so, you know, a story within a story within a story. It's quite interesting and at times a little unnerving for me because I keep getting on edge about what's happening in the other stories. The author, however, has done a good job of keeping me informed, so I'm never too uncomfortable for any long amount of time.

I was wondering if you've done this in your own writing, or how you feel about it in books you read? I know we're all told the Golden Rule of Flashbacks is to simply avoid them, but I kicked that guideline out the window a long time ago. My novel, Monarch, which found a publisher despite it's huge "flashback" sections, contains a story within a story - I think. They could possibly be flashbacks, but in my mind they're more like those Russian dolls where you've got the big one and then one smaller inside. As writers, I suppose we could take this idea as far as we want to go. The movie Inception played with this idea on a very literal level, and I really liked that about it

Part of great storytelling, for me, is to take your reader to a place where they'll follow that story no matter where it goes because they trust the writer. That trust can be built on many different things which require posts of their own, but I think one of those things is a stable story structure. Most readers expect certain structures, but even a nesting structure can be stable. My thought about that, though, is that the nesting shouldn't feel like flashbacks. Flashbacks, for me, are pieces of back story given only to fill in huge gaps in the existing storyline. Nested stories (even ones that happen in the past) are different because they supplement the framework story and can even help move it forward on a level nothing else could touch.

Those are my nested thoughts for today. How do you feel about nesting story structures in the books you read and/or write?

Friday Filler: A Vacation in Dreamland

First up, if you want to win a free copy of Rick Daley's The Man In The Cinder Clouds, go here.

If you want to win a free copy of The Wild Grass and Other Stories, go here.

Two nights ago, I had a dream that it was Christmas and the neighborhood mothers had set up their annual candy tree celebration. I had the chance to climb onto my motorized flying pillow and hover around the tree to eat all of the candy I wanted. Really, I woke up wondering why such a childish fantasy was still floating around in my head. Where were all my politically philosophical dreams?

Lately, I've been including dream sequences in almost all of my longer stories. I think I started doing it because people said I shouldn't. I wanted to prove them wrong.

Have you had a cool dream lately? (Or a dream you're embarrassed about???) Do you put dreams in your books?

Making the Old New Again

Special thanks to Rick Daley for stopping by today! Rick is a long-time reader of the Literary Lab, and we're excited to host him today while he talks about his newly released book.
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I recently published a book, THE MAN IN THE CINDER CLOUDS. It’s a story-within-a-story (within a story) and it tells the origins of Santa Claus and many of the most popular Christmas traditions.

The challenge in writing this book…wait, strike that…One of the many challenges in writing this book was finding a way to load it with Christmas clichés, but to do it in a way that made each cliché feel fresh and original.

So how do you make the same old clichés new again?  Christmas trees, stockings, a fat guy with white hair and a red suit, his wife, flying reindeer, jingle bells, and lumps of coal…I needed to include them all, but I didn’t want it to be gratuitous.  Everything had to make sense and come from the characters and the story.

I did a full 15 minutes of light research on the history of Santa, which basically consisted of reading about 5 articles in Wikipedia.  I learned that many people have tried to trace a history of the Santa legend, but few have tried to make it a story, and of those, none really caught my interest.  This was a good starting point, it gave me room to work and create something original.

The first thing I did was make the book timeless, but very old: a team of climatologists finds a book buried deep in the Arctic ice.  This way I have the excuse of “Yes, but this book came first” if it is chronologically challenged.   Also, I had an Elf write the book, giving it higher authority than a book written by a mere human.

But that was the easy part.  Giving the clichés a feeling of verisimilitude in their origins meant that things had to happen for reasons and evolve, not just appear.   (Although the reindeer do just appear, but I blame that on the dogs.  If you read the book it will make sense…)

Sure Santa wears a red suit because red is his favorite color, but why is red his favorite color?  That’s the issue I had to tackle.  And to add to that, to give it more impact, he needed to lose something red so that when he receives his suit, it’s special because he’s getting his red back. 

It’s no spoiler to say he meets the future Mrs. Claus and they fall in love, but how does their relationship grow?  They need to go through a major event together that brings them close, not just meet and immediately fall in love.

And yes, you’ll probably deduce early on that there will be a lump of coal, but who gets it, why, and most importantly, what can that character do with it?  There had to be multiple options, good and bad, to give the story a dramatic edge.

I think the elements came together well, and I credit that to long hours thinking about the story and a few lucky visits from The Muse.  If you have the opportunity to read it, it’s available on Amazon.com in print and Kindle formats and at BarnesandNobel.com as a Nook book.  Read it aloud to your 1st grader, let your 3rd-6th graders tackle it on their own, and if you’ve ever believed in Santa, read it for yourself so you can believe again. 

LEAVE A COMMENT FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A SIGNED COPY.  I'll make a sequential list of the comments and use a random number generator to pick one.

Do You Feel Completely Bombarded by Social Media?

Hello everyone! I really haven't been around here much, have I? I haven't even commented much and that's just lame. Still, I have a large stack of excuses to shell out, but I won't. My question today is how bombarded do all of you feel by social media? We're repeatedly told that it's important, but is that true? I was talking with a good friend the other night about this and he said something along the lines of, "It's cute that all the writers are supporting each other in this little social media circle, but that can push sales only so far when it's only writers buying other writer's stuff."

I do agree with that, but I have friends who self-publish and do quite well with Internet-only advertising. Somehow they've reached beyond the social-media circle and into main readership circle. I'm not sure that works for all books these days, though, and I'm thoroughly convinced that nothing sells books more than more books. I know when I've finished reading something I love, I always go look for more stuff by the author. If there isn't any, it's a bit of a letdown.

So maybe a social network platform is a great springboard, but I'm not sure it should be the main focus. I've made some really great friends by networking, and I love blogging and sharing my thoughts, but I think I'm about ready to step back a bit and stop worrying so much about where I stand in the circle - if it's even a circle. Sometimes it feels more like a ladder and I'm not even sure where it leads. It's just that the more I expand my "circle" the more there is to keep up with and it gets pretty overwhelming.

So what about you? How important is it to stay right on top of networking? How much time is it worth and how much time do you throw into it? And why? Here at the Literary Lab we like to keep things real and focused on things that turn your intellectual wheels. We certainly don't blog here for networking purposes because we adore literary fiction and reading and writing and we love to share it with others, even if it seems unpopular. Is that what networking is really about? Maybe it should be!

Sword Swallowing: Put Your Emotion On The Page

Successful stories can arise from many sources of inspiration. Sometimes technical devices such as an unusual point of view or structure can lead to the creation of an entire story. We hear about plot-driven stories and character-driven stories. We hear about genres and the strict guidelines that govern some of them. As my own writing has evolved, I find that, for me, emotion is most often my source of inspiration.

Emotion is a vague term. With any story, for example, there is an emotion that accompanies the characters. Reactions that lead to other actions are often based on emotion. But for me the emotion comes from within. Just like when I was painting, I write to try and release something that I'm feeling. I write because I need to communicate that something. As I get feedback on The Wild Grass, a comment I've been getting fairly frequently is that readers don't always understand the logical arc of my stories, but they feel the emotion. That's a criticism I'm fine with.

I think about actors who are capable of crying on command. It's something I've always wanted to do...sort of. To be honest, I tell myself I want to be able to cry on command, but often when emotions like that come up in my throat, I tense up and push them back down again. I think I'm constantly battling the people who raised me with the idea that boys shouldn't show their feelings. But writing is one arena where I do demand that I feel. As illogical as it may seem, I think that sincerity gets through to the reader.

Some actors have told me that the way they tap into their emotions is to always keep them near the surface. I've heard the great musician Bjork talk about something similar. My metaphor for it has always been related to sword swallowing. Or at least what I think sword swallowing must demand.

If you shove a blade down your throat, chances are you'll be tempted to resist it. But if you want to successfully swallow a sword, you have to train yourself against some instincts and learn to relax. It's the same way with writing for me. Sometimes when I'm at the keyboard, thoughts about what other people will think or how much pain I might feel by confronting certain emotions make me want to resist. I start to write this sterile prose that serves nothing else but to get my characters from point A to point B. When that happens I need to catch myself. I often stop writing and just close my eyes and relax. I coax myself to slowly approach the subject matter again and face it without getting tense.

I have to be in this sort of relaxed and sensitive zone to write my best work. It's almost like a trance to me, as silly as it sounds. But I do think it makes a big difference in my writing.

Hello Pansters, You Are All Mad Aren't You?

So I am working on a new novel right now, and I've allowed myself to be led astray by the methods of Davin Malasarn, who writes without an outline. This is my sixth novel. Way back in 1990 I started my first novel (which I like to call The Precious Unpublishable Mess) and spent a few years writing the first half of the story, working without an outline. One night I sat down and wrote out a detailed outline of the second half of the story and finished the book up within a few months. Huh, I said. Things went a lot more quickly with an outline than without one. After that, I wrote four more novels.

Each of those four books was planned in advance, at least in broad strokes: I knew what the big conflicts were, I knew how the stories ended, I knew who all the main characters were and how they related to the conflicts. As I wrote the first drafts, I was able to see how my subconscious was feeding me images that tied into the central conflicts/themes of the book and I was able to craft large-scale symbolic systems that tie the whole story together. Most importantly, I knew what the hell I was doing with each scene I wrote. I could see how what I was building all worked toward the vision I had of the novel.

Now, of course, I've got none of that. I'm sort of hurling words at the page and seeing what shapes they form, like some sort of Rorschach test or something. Really, it's entirely maddening. I have a bunch of characters and I see how they all fit together, sort of, but I don't really know what they'll do. I have two main storylines, but I don't know what the stories are. No, don't even ask how that's possible. The storylines might intersect at some point or they might not. I'll know if/when I get there.

Certain images are occurring to me so I write them down but I don't know if they matter to the themes or story because I don't know the themes or story. I just keep writing forward into the breach with no idea at all what's waiting for me in that breach, and I'll put down 1,000 words and then see that they don't actually follow what I've got but then I see that if I slip an additional 1,000 words between the extant prose and the new passages, it'll all fit together and there's a sense of forward motion but to what? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

It sets my teeth on edge. There are people who write like this all the time, who would rather write like this than know where they're going. I find myself getting upset and while I've managed to keep pressing on at the usual rate (the biggest surprise to me has been that I don't write more slowly without an outline than with one), I feel dizzy often when I consider the story, because it's like squinting to look at something that's invisible. Maddening, it is. Insanity.

You pansters, I say, are certainly making life hard on yourselves.

And yet, I am conducting this experiment because I believe in my heart of hearts that there are valuable lessons to be learned about writing with this method. I'm traveling through an unknown landscape with no map, no compass and no idea who or what or where I'll see along the way. I could argue that there's a sort of purity to this method, that I won't be hampered by any preconceived notions about the structure of a story. Certainly I'm not writing to the three-act paradigm right now. I can make a long list of what I'm not doing; what's harder is saying what I am. I have no idea. It makes me tense. Yet it's interesting, and that's enough. Also, the writing is really good. Some of my most gorgeous bits ever. So while there's a madness to this method, I keep at it.

Friday Filler

I guess it's my job to do Friday Filler since Scott managed to do a Thursday Filler post yesterday. Nice job, Scott. Are you signing up for a Twitter account yet?

Happy Friday, everyone!

I'm still in my Haruki Murakami phase and am rereading a short book by him called After Dark, which is really fantastic. I remember really liking it the first time I read it a couple of years ago, and this time around I realize how much of it I forgot. It's about this girl who is asleep while someone watches her, and it's about the girl's sister who is walking around the city in the middle of the night. Good stuff. I recently read The Scarlet Letter, and I think I wanted to go back to After Dark again to get back to something quirky.

As for my writing, I've been slowly, slowly, slogging through the final scenes of Cyberlama, which is really only making progress because Mr. Bailey keeps asking me about it. Thanks, Mr. Bailey! I'm reaching the end of my first draft and don't quite know how to end it. I almost think how I end it doesn't matter because it's likely to be headed in the wrong direction anyway. The best use of my time would be to read through the whole book and reorient myself, but I haven't been in the mood to do that yet. I've also been wanting to write more short stories. I've got two ideas for stories that I'm very interested in, and both have to do with mental illness. (I've been reading up on mental illness for my day job.) I think both stories have the potential to be substantial and deep, so really I want to write them.

What are you reading and writing? What are you filling your Friday with? I had the most delicious cream puff from Beard Papa yesterday. And I finally found a good grocery store nearby my new place. The picture is the view from the roof of my building, by the way.

Wow, Twitter

Apparently some people have been tweeting a link to a recent post. These tweets (am I using the term properly?) seem to be driving a lot of traffic to the blog.

Twitter has amazing power: yesterday 1100 people read (or at least looked at) that post, and so far today 461 people have read it. It's not even a very good post (sorry, you 1600 visitors!). We had 1400 or so page views on the Literary Lab yesterday and our average is around 300. So I don't know how this happened and I'm not on Twitter so I can't really say anything intelligent about it. I merely remark upon the phenomenon. Also, thanks to whoever is doing the tweeting.

Not Too Much, Just Too Soon

I have been thinking about pacing lately. Pacing is the rate at which you allow things to happen in your narrative, the speed at which you show things to your reader. The book I'm writing now is much more character-driven than my past books, which have all been heavy on character but also have tight, forward-moving plots to provide the basic structure. The new book? I have no idea what the plot is. I'm making it up as I go along and for the first time since my first (miserable failure) novel, I'm writing without an outline. So all I have is revelation of character, really. I'm learning that pacing is much more important (and harder to do) in a basically character piece than it is in a basically plot piece.

Here's an example of the difference:

In a plot-oriented story, you can open with a guy going to the office and thinking about how today is his 10-year anniversary. He needs to remember to buy a card and flowers for his wife before he meets her for dinner after work. He goes into his office, turns on his computer and suddenly there is a massive explosion down the hall as a bomb in the mail room goes off. No warning has been given at all to the reader that something like this was going to happen. And that's perfectly acceptable and you can do all of this in 500 words of prose (or fewer) and nobody will have any problem with the pacing.

In a character-oriented story, if you open with a guy going to the office and thinking about how today is his 10-year anniversary and how he needs to remember to buy a card and flowers for his wife before he meets her for dinner after work and then he goes into his office, picks up the phone and starts hurling violently angry and obscene abuse at someone, you might have a problem with pacing. Going from an essentially neutral tone to a needle-in-the-red moment like that is probably going to be disorienting and not really the effect you want to have on the reader. What the hell kind of story am I reading? your reader will wonder, and their faith in you as a craftsman and worthy storyteller will be shaken.

I think that big dynamic changes in plot can come with little preparation, but big dynamic changes in character have to be achieved more gradually. In the bomb example above, you don't need to insert into the scene an image of the bomber putting together the explosives and mailing them. But in the phone call example, you need to insert into the scene something to cue the reader that the guy is in a heightened emotional state. Maybe he grumbles about the weather on the way in. Maybe he says something a bit sharp to a coworker he passes in the hall. I don't know. But there should be something. Possibly you skip the bit about the anniversary or move it back to after the violent phone call, but the overall effect will be different then, and if the context of the first chapter is the impending anniversary dinner, you weaken that.

What I'm getting at is the idea that if you come across a passage in your work that seems to come out of nowhere, you probably don't need to rewrite that passage. You probably need to rewrite the passages that lead up to the awkward bit, adding in cues and foreshadowing. Your awkward passage is probably not too much, just too soon. So delay it a bit by preparing for it earlier on.

This is a lousy post because I'm just sort of thinking through some of my current storytelling problems out loud (so to speak, so to speak). I'll do better in the future, I promise.

Hawthorne and the Forces of Nature

Last week I wrote a post about the uneven pacing in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Today, I want to talk about another cool component of Hawthorne's style: his use of nature to emphasize and mirror his characters' emotions.

Note: There will be spoilers from King Lear and The Scarlet Letter throughout this post.

Now, I'll admit that I had learned about this concept years before. What's even more surprising is that I remember learning about this concept years before. (Thank you Mrs. Abood from Arcadia High School!) The example she used was the storm that struck during King Lear's descent into madness. At the time, I thought it was a really odd technique, actually. I mean, I don't get any storms when I'm feeling emotional. Nature really doesn't seem to care at all about my emotional state. Why would I try and depict such a thing in my stories?

But in rereading The Scarlet Letter, I really felt like this technique had some merit. As The English Teacher said in the comments section of last week's post, this book is mostly internal. There's some fun action stuff that happens, but really the vast majority of that is offstage and takes place before the book starts. In fact, in a way, The Scarlett Letter reminded me a lot of some Virginia Woolf stories because so much of the power of the story relied on psychological explorations of the characters.

Hawthorne, however, was able to add a little more oomph to his story, and he did this by using nature. Sunlight and plant life and even the protagonist's offspring was imbued with a sort of psychic power that gave them access to each character's deepest secrets and past experiences. For me, this technique accomplished two things. First, it helped to emphasize the internal discussions in a way that made them feel more concrete. (Virginia Woolf's writing often feels as if I'm drifting in a river of thoughts that doesn't have as much of a landscape.) Second, this technique put more "action" into the story in a physical sense. Even if the characters weren't doing as much, nature was dancing around and kicking and screaming and putting on quite a show.

In the end, the technique of using nature to mirror the internal dialog has this sort of old-time feel to it that might keep me from trying the technique much myself. But I feel like I have a better understanding of why it was used in the first place now.

Friday Filler! On Being Defensive

Last night Mighty Reader and I met for drinks and dinner before going off to see "How to Steal A Million," which is a 1966 William Wilder comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. It was the final night of an Audrey Hepburn film festival and the movie's quite fine and I don't know why it's not better known. But that's all just setting, isn't it?

Last night Mighty Reader and I were talking about writing, which is hardly a surprise because I have very few topics of conversation aside from What I'm Writing Now and Mighty Reader is very patient with me. A few days ago I finished the rough draft of my philosophical detective story and while I let it sit ignored for a while before I work on revisions, I am already toying with another book. As we discussed this new writing project, I became increasingly defensive. Being the overly twitchy sort that I am, I blamed my defensiveness on Mighty Reader, accusing her of actively disapproving my idea. Later I realized that what had actually happened was that this new novel makes me extremely uncomfortable and, really, embarrassed. Which is, I think, precisely why I need to write it.

That question (why I'm writing this particular novel at this particular time) is actually what put me on the defensive last night. The new novel has a singularly unappealing lead male character and the lead female character isn't particularly charming either and the book is not anything like a tale of redemption or growth, at least as far as I can tell. My description of it, Mighty Reader tells me, did not make her want to read the book so why do I want to write it?

One thing I have learned over the years is that the more uncomfortable a writing project makes me, the more I must be on to something. Also, there are some big technical and artistic challenges presented by this new project, and the other thing I've learned over the years is that each book I write must have a higher degree of difficulty than the last or I'm just not challenged enough by the project to approach it with enthusiasm. I have a growing list of projects I've abandoned because they no longer look like they'll be hard to write. Something about that seems backwards, but that's the way I roll, as the kids say.

So I have set myself what seems to be an impossible challenge (for me at least): writing about uncomfortable and embarrassing subjects that I shy away from through the stories of people I don't necessarily like and producing a beautiful narrative that people will love to read. Well, it will give me something to do, won't it?

In the mean time, tonight it's "Porgy and Bess" from the Seattle Opera. We've never been to an opera before. I'm wearing fancy cuff links and expensive shiny black shoes.

On Endings

Yesterday afternoon I finished the first draft of my work-in-progress. I've been working on the last chapter for about a week, and on the final scene in the book for a couple of days. I admit that I always get nervous and twitchy when writing the last scene. It's the last real opportunity, after all, to panic about the book while drafting it. All that self-doubt I've repressed during the previous six months or whatever comes to a head and I am convinced that not only is the ending I'm writing a weak ending, but the book as a whole is the worst book ever written in the history of written books. You know the drill, I'm sure. But once I get that last word down and put down the pen, I can be a little more objective about the book and the ending.

When I write the endings of my novels, I usually do so with a specific image in mind, something I've kept hold of and written toward for most of the narrative. Sometimes I'm not at all sure how to actually get to that image so the final chapter becomes a kind of battle between where the prose seems to want to go and where I want the prose to go. It's like trying to sculpt a mountain out of a river, maybe. I feel like I'm negotiating with my narrative more than I'm just putting it down on paper. But still, there's that image I want to leave the reader with.

One thing that hadn't really occurred to me until just now is that my books all end with the protagonist in motion, moving into the future. Sometimes that future is really bleak but more often, I think, it's simply a great unknown future that's--if nothing else--sure to be different from the past. None of that sort of character arc stuff has been deliberate and now that I see it I'm not sure how I feel about it. But it's there. Which is fine, because I have consciously tried in my last chapters to do certain things:

1. Avoid summing up. I hate summations, or grand statements of theme.
2. Avoid tying up plot threads. I am bored by denouements that tell you how every character in the book's life will turn out beyond the last pages of the book. (I shake my fist at you, Mr. Tolkien and your Scouring of the Shire!)
3. Avoid cliches and pats on the reader's head.
4. Avoid an ending the reader will expect.
5. Avoid a complete sense of closure.

Which is to say, I want to give my readers something other than the stereotypical ending of a book that wraps everything up in a tidy package and allows you to stop thinking about the story. Which means, in a way, that I try to make my endings surprising and disturbing. Not disturbing-in-a-give-you-nightmares sort of way, but I do want to leave readers in an unsettled state. Victoria Mixon wrote in a comment here a few years ago that she thought an ending should "kick you into space." I'm not exactly sure what Victoria meant, but I like the phrase. I think the reader should find herself in a new and unexpected place when the book is over. I don't know if the ending alone can do that, but if the book leads properly up to the ending, then I think you can kick the reader into space.

Another thing I notice (especially about the ending I just wrote) is that I might ask as many questions during my last pages as I answer. I try, I think, to open doors and introduce possibilities all the way through the narrative, right up to the last word. I'm not sure if people will find the ending of my most recent book particularly satisfying, which I'm trying not to worry about, because I don't think my intention was to satisfy so much. One of the conceits of this book is that you don't know who is telling the truth, including the detectives (it's a philosophical detective story, my book), and in the final chapters you have a lot of people lying to each other, calling each other liars, and I think that where the truth precisely is becomes difficult to pin down and I make no effort on behalf of the reader to lay out what's actually gone on. Some readers might not like that so much. We'll see.

Mostly, and I think this should be completely obvious to everyone, I write this post to brag about having finished the first draft of my latest novel. This is novel number five, and I hope it's a good one.

Anyway, a question because really I do want these answers: Have you/are you trying anything new or different with endings to novels? Are you turning away from traditional endings? Why or why not? Do you think the writer has an obligation to provide anything in particular to a reader in an ending?

Unsteady Pace

When I read classic literature, I'm almost always surprised by how unusual those books are. I go in expecting some sort of conservative, traditional work only to find that the classic writers typically use many more techniques than I do. I'm reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter now, and one thing that really sticks out is how unusual his pacing is.

Most of the books I've read lately preserve a certain pace as we hop from one chapter to another. The chapter breaks serve to break up scenes, but the story tends to move at the same speed from beginning to end. (I know that's how I've written my previous books too.) But in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne will have one chapter describing a specific scene, such as Hester Prynne emerging from prison in the beginning, followed by another chapter that has no movement at all, such as a discussion of what sort of mind games two of the male characters are playing with one another, followed by another chapter that covers four years in a few paragraphs.

Hawthorne seems to be focused on getting out the information for the story rather than preserving momentum. If he needs to jump out of the movement of the story to explain something, he'll do it. Then, if nothing really happens for a few years, he'll simply skip those years.

I find his technique to be very clean, as if Hawthorne really valued a reader's time. I trust that each scene I do read will be important in my understanding of the entire story. The technique makes for a concise book, and I'm enjoying it as I approach the end.

Do you vary your pacing in your stories? How do you find that working for you and for your readers?

I'm Fast, But Not When I'm Slow

Davin has called me a fast reader. What he doesn't see is all the time I'm not reading. I currently have six books lined up to read in my immediate pile. I'm halfway through a good friend's manuscript, and I can't seem to sit down and finish it because I've been too distracted and busy with other things that won't leave me alone. I should probably be reading that manuscript instead of writing this post, but I don't think my daughter would let me. As soon as I sit down with the Kindle, she won't leave me alone. This is a problem.

What I mean by the title of this post is that when I finally do get around to reading, I'm fast. Really fast. It's actually getting there that's the problem. Am I the only one in this boat? I usually tell people I'm a slow reader, but that's not accurate at all. Also, it's rare that I read "slowly" because I don't like the book. If that's ever the case, I'm honest with the reader and let them know that the book is slow for me because of certain things. That's the whole point of reading for someone, anyway. As far as published books go, those seem to make it lower on my list if a writer is waiting for feedback on something. Speaking of which I have some reading to go do...

Are you a fast reader? How long does it take you to finish a book on average? For me it's 2 - 3 days if it's a full-length novel. If I didn't have to clean my house, take care of my child, or do anything else, I could probably read one to two books a day.

What I Talk About When I Talk about What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

This morning I finished reading Haruki Murakami's semi-mem, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Yes, it really is a book about talking about running, but occasionally (and I do mean occasionally) Murakami also talks about writing in a way that I found valuable. I'd recommend the book. Runners will probably like it. Writers will probably appreciate it. And there's a certain sadness to it, that I found beautiful.

Here is a little bit of what he talks about in regard to writing :

Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it...There's more, but really you should read the book.

Scott, Michelle, and I have sometimes talked about darkness in our stories. I think what Murakami's talking about touches on that same subject, though not necessarily directly. Nevets and Yat-Yee have also touched on the topics on their blogs. As I've been getting feedback from people about Wild Grass, I've had people tell me that some of the stories made them feel upset or uneasy. It's strange, because I don't necessarily set out to make people feel this way, but at the same time I do feel like it's somehow necessary to help the world in that vague way I try to help the world. I know Scott feels the same way.

Murakami goes on to talk about developing an immune system so that we can still write without injuring ourselves emotionally. I also think that's a necessary part of my writing process. Really, it's a fascinating book. Happy Friday Filler!

Theme and Variations and Themes

So we're all excited about the Third Annual Literary Lab Contest, right? We've all read the two "theme" stories and are now wondering how to create an interesting variation on one or both of these stories, right? Right?

What's that? You're stuck for ideas? You aren't sure how to turn an existing story into something your own without simply paraphrasing it? Well sit yourself down and I'll attempt to give some advice. Actually, "advice" is probably the wrong word. What I'm really going to do is sort of talk about what goes through my mind when I look at these stories and wonder what I'll do with them. It might be messy and pointless, but here goes. Ready?

First, there are some images common to both stories. Each starts with a guy walking through a forest and meeting a woman. One of them is a witch and the other is the man's abandoned wife. Hell, there's plenty of material there. What if both the witch and the abandoned wife showed up at once? or if the man's estranged wife was a witch? What if the witch or the estranged wife was the main character instead of the man? Lots of possibilities.

Next you've got (in the Chekhov) the wife pleased despite herself to see her husband, and she begs him to come home. But what if she wasn't pleased? What if he was trying to weasel his way back into her affections and she didn't want him? What if she'd found someone else? Hmm?

In the Anderson tale, the witch begs the man to do her a favor. She offers riches in payment for his retrieving her magical tinderbox. There must be some ways to turn this around, to spin it sideways, though I can't think of anything this second.

So anyway, in the originals both women want the man to do something for them. You could get all Freudian and examine the idea of the man climbing up a tree to go down its hollow trunk carrying the witch's apron. That's clearly some sort of sexual imagery, isn't it? What on earth is going on with the soldier putting dogs onto the witch's apron and getting money? I have no idea but it's a disturbing image if I dwell on it so I don't. The forest has long been a symbol of feminine sexual presence and power in European fairy tales. So the soldier's already on her turf, in a way, with his rifle or his sword. Lots of freaky area to explore there, unless you want to just say that sometimes a forest is a forest, a hollow tree is a hollow tree, a sword is just a rifle etc and ignore the subliminal sexual images. But note in passing how the witch's request mimics sex while the abandoned wife offers the possibility of actual conjugal sex. Are there kids reading this? Go to bed, kids. Your mother and I are talking.

In the Chekhov story, the man declares that he's happier being single, working on an estate for a lord, and he leaves his wife in the forest, turning back and giving her a ruble out of guilt. This is a story about selfishness and guilt, and because the wife watches her husband as he goes out of sight, still pining for him, it's a story about unfulfilled love and hopeless dreams.

The fairy tale has the typical task-in-three-parts structure, with the stakes and the rewards escalating. It's also clearly (if you ask me) some sort of hybrid, with two stories grafted together: the magic dogs in the magic tree is one story and the forbidden princess in the tower is another story. I might be tempted to only focus on one of these stories. Or I might make the estranged wife the princess in the tower, somehow. Metaphor might be the way to go here.

Setting and tone will determine much of this. I might set it in modern day, and the witch might be a witch or something else. The hunstman/soldier might be a soldier, or he might be an arbitrage trader; I don't know. The whole thing might be told in letters, or via emails or text messages. Hard to say but I don't know how much that matters at this stage. Intriguing, though.

Endings? Well, there are the endings of the "theme" stories, with the huntsman going off without the wife and the soldier getting the girl and the riches. Use them or not as you like. I'll probably look for some other way, and I'm more attracted to the open and indeterminate nature of Chekhov's ending. More things might be to come; we just don't know, do we?

There are multiple characters in these stories, and you could write something from any of their points of view. The huntsman's new employer, maybe. Whoever owns the forest where the action takes place. And maybe the huntsman is The Huntsman, and the abandoned wife is Red Riding Hood and this is years after the Wolf was killed. Who knows? Maybe the soldier is a deserter and he hides in a tree stump and the witch discovers him while looking for her tinderbox, which she needs to light the fire under her oven which contains Hansel and Gretel? The directions you can take these stories are pretty much endless.

Me, I've decided to work forward blindly from this sentence: She was always meeting men in the forest. I have no idea what it means, but that will be a spur to creativity. So good luck, Mighty Writers! Off you go to write!

Our 3rd Annual Writing Contest and Anthology

Happy Monday, everyone!

Scott, Michelle and I are excited to announce our 3rd annual writing contest and anthology. This year, we present "Variations on a Theme".


As opposed to last year's celebration of free creativity with "Notes From Underground", this year we wanted to offer writers a more concrete jumping off point. Entries for "Variations on a Theme" should be inspired by one of two stories:

"The Tinderbox", a classic fairy tale

or

"The Huntsman" by Anton Chekhov

As there are different versions of both of these stories, you're free to use any version you choose as inspiration. If you click on the links above, you'll be taken to public domain versions you're welcome to use. (Or feel free to search for other versions of the story if you wish.) And, we're interpreting the phrase "inspired by" rather loosely, so writers definitely shouldn't feel too restricted by it.

Stories can be written in any genre and can be up to 3,000 words long. We do, however, prefer short stories as opposed to poems or visual artwork. The contest is open until December 31, 2011 at midnight PST. Paste your stories in the body of an e-mail to LiteraryLab@gmail.com.

We plan to announce our selections around the end of January, but please be a tad patient since we do this during our free time. Once again we have the wonderful Becca Brown serving as our organizer so the three of us won't know who writes what story.

We'll be publishing roughly 20 of the stories in our 3rd Annual Literary Lab Presents... anthology, which will come out in the first half of 2012. Additionally, this year, we're offering two cash prizes.

Our favorite story will receive $200, and our first runner-up will receive $100.

The three of us will also be including our own attempts at the contest, simply because we want to play along. Our stories won't be eligible for any prizes, and we'll make it clear in the anthology that they were not part of the official contest.

We hope you'll try out "Variations on a Theme"! We're excited to be able to reward at least some of our writers this year. We look forward to your entries!

Also, please help us spread the word.

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Questions? Or just general excitement? Let us know in the comments.