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.

Happy Bloomsday!

Happy Bloomsday, everyone! Bloomsday is June 16th, the day upon which James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses is set. It's also, not coincidentally, the date of Joyce's first date with Nora Barnacle, who went on to become his wife. Yes, Barnacle was her real last name. Anyway, here are some ideas for celebrating the holiday. Me, I plan to have a pint of Guinness at some point. Possibly at lunch.

And now, because it's traditional, I quote some Ulysses. This is the opening passage:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown,
ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He
held the bowl aloft and intoned:

Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

--Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about
and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the
awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent
towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat
and shaking his head.

**********

In case you're wondering WTF that was, you should maybe know that Ulysses is a sort of version of Homer's Odyssey and that Joyce's opening salvo mimics and mocks that of Homer:

Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.

Homer uses a typical Ancient Greek invocation and Joyce, via Buck Mulligan (medical student) uses a parody of a Roman Catholic invocation. And the book goes on like that for 650-odd fabulous pages. Haven't read it? Why the heck not?

Have a swell day, folks! Don't forget the pints!

Contagious Words

I've been aware and annoyed lately by the seemingly contagious word choices used by the general public. It seems like some words get picked up and associated with certain stories, and that association somehow can't be disrupted. Did you hear about the maverick politician? Or the raunchy video made by the Navy captain? As accurate as these words may or may not be, why can't people mix it up a little?

A-choo!

I think maybe there's a sort of shorthand labeling at play here. Reporters perhaps use the same words over and over and over again so that listeners can immediately get in tune with what story is being discussed. But, I wonder if this repeated word usage only serves to take actual meanings away from the words that represent them. Or worse yet, this repeated word usage may be making fact out of opinion.

I think it's one thing to choose a word to describe a situation the first time. It would probably serve me well to describe my own writing as spellbinding or transformative. But, if those words spread through other voices lacking imagination or their own ability to assess my writing for themselves, then suddenly the world would seem to agree with my chosen self-compliments. This wouldn't make them true, but it could give the impression that the words were true, especially by people not willing to look at my writing for themselves.

On a sort-of related topic, did y'all hear that a new version of Huckleberry Finn is being published without the n-word in it? Rather than filing this under censorship, some scholars are claiming that this will allow the book to be read by a younger audience who is currently being prohibited. There's some argument (although I don't quite see the logic in it myself) that replacing the word with "slave" somehow helps to express Samuel Clemens' original intent in contemporary times. My initial reaction was that this is all wrong, but I'm willing to be open-minded temporarily to see if any argument can change my opinion.

What say you?

Whom Do You Hate? Er...Unlove? Strongly Dislike...

I received an email from a reader, Lindsay Samuels, a few days ago asking us to plug her site, and I must say it's worth plugging. She's pursuing a degree in Library Science (no easy task, I assure you) and has a site up which is informative and entertaining. Her latest post is great - 50 Most Hated Characters in Literary History. 

Lindsay begins the post with the disclaimer that literature is highly subjective art. Yeah, we all know about that around here, don't we?

I found it interesting and disturbing that the 1st hated characters on Lindsay's list were Twilight's Edward and Bella. Following in the list are Beth March from Little Women, Hamlet from Shakespeare, and Robert Langdon from the Dan Brown novels. I liked Lindsay's little blurb about him:

Historical and religious inaccuracies aside, one of the biggest complaints that readers had against Robert Langdon is his veritable Mary Sue status. The man can do no wrong and has no discernable flaws, making him exceptionally boring and frustrating to read about.

Ah, so true.

Lindsay's article is a fun read. You should check it out. And if you don't see a character you hate (or love to hate...) in the list, add them here! And tell us why. It might be fun to compile our own list of hated characters and put it up somewhere alongside our most loved characters (we'll save that for another day).

One character I strongly dislike is Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair because the reader spends a good portion of the book rooting for her only to see her turn into a scheming, devious murdering (murdering is debatable) liar. That wouldn't be so bad if one views it all as her position as a woman in that time period - and that her terrible deeds are all crimes of circumstance (haha) - but the fact that she never truly loves her child and remains un-devoted to him at all is what makes her unlovable to me. I love the book, though. Go figure. I do think the fact that Becky is unlovable in so many ways makes her an admirable tool in the literary work. We can save that for another day, too.

Reinvention

I was talking to a friend about Proust a lot this weekend, and it reminded me of how unusual his novel In Search Of Lost Time was. It's different from anything else I've read, not only in the sense of the plot or the voice, but more totally, it feels like a whole different type of novel. As if Proust had reinvented the novel form.

Of course Proust isn't alone in that. I think many of the great classic writers succeeded in doing this to some extent. I'm not as well-read as I could be, but I think Marquez, Woolf, Nabokov, Hemingway, Faulkner, Yoshimoto, Updike, Kawabata, and Shakespeare (though not a novelist) have all succeeded in making me think completely differently of what a novel could be.

I think what led these brilliant writers down this past of reinventing the novel form wasn't necessarily the drive to be new. In thinking about Proust, it seems like he HAD to reinvent the form to make it fit the story he was trying to tell. He reinvented out of necessity.

It all makes me wonder if contemporary writers are pushing themselves as hard to find a novel form that best fits their needs.

A few months ago, I went to a seminar that talked about the use of story as a framework. The idea was that the story wasn't the main thing a writer was striving to create. The story was more of the vessel that held the thing the writer was trying to create. I really liked that. It rang true for me somehow and managed to ease the process of writing for me. Now, I'm more excited to get in touch with a deeper material I've been trying to share and then develop a form around that material.

Do you feel like you reinvent things as you write? If so, what?

Creative Quote Usage

So, I've been studying Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, and I noticed that in several places Woolf was unpredictable in her use of quotation marks. In this passage, for instance, she sets off some parts of dialog with quotes but not others. I'm a bit at a loss for why she made the choices she did. Can anyone figure it out?

The scene first takes place between Mrs. Ramsay and her husband Mr. Ramsay. Their son James comes in next, and near the end they refer to a house guest named Charles Tansley:

(excerpt)

Not for the world would she (Mrs. Ramsay) have spoken to him (Mr. Ramsay), realising, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked Jame's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle Jame's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.

"James will have to write his dissertation one of these days," he added ironically, flicking his sprig.

Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son's bare leg.

She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to Sorley's little boy tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay.

There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ransay snapped out irascibly.

___

What do you think? Does Woolf's use of quotes in this passage make it stronger?

The Power Of Pity and Fear

As I mentioned before, I started studying Aristotle's Poetics this weekend. The first half of this work discusses the art of writing tragedy, and one of the things Aristotle stresses is that all tragedy should evoke both pity and fear.

The concept of having both of these emotions at play in a story was eye-opening for me. Aristotle argued that pity was important because it resulted from readers sympathizing with the character. Fear, on the other hand, results from readers putting themselves in the character's place and worrying about themselves.

For me, what's powerful about this idea is that a writer who evokes both pity and fear has engaged their reader on two levels. And these two levels work on two different planes, one "inside" the story, relating to the character, and another "outside."

I imagine the two emotions don't have to be only pity and fear. For those writers who aren't working on Tragedy, the concept of getting readers to feel emotions for both the character and for themselves still applies. It seems like sympathy for the character applies to every genre. But, the pairing with that sympathy might be desire in the case of romance, or joy in the case of comedy. I'm honestly not sure. But, either way, this allows us to transcend the world of our book into real life.

So, has anyone been able to create these two levels of emotions in their writing? If so, do you have tips on how you did it?

Where Are You Creative?

I think lately I've been stuck on finding creative premises for stories. Or, sometimes I'll try to come up with a creative character. But, I'm feeling like I'm neglecting all the other ways we writers can be creative in our writing. It can be in language. It can be in structure. It can be in metaphors. Really, anything.

I've been rereading Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and stumbled upon this glorious passage about a man, Mr. Ramsay, thinking about his own intellect:

It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q....But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation*. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q-R- Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn, and proceeded. "Then R..." He braced himself. He clenched himself.

Isn't that a creative way to express the idea of one's intellectual limit? It just inspires me to work harder in my own writing.

So, tell me, where are you creative? What parts of writing give you the free room to play? I need ideas, people.

Monday Trivia

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

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

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

The String

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

"It's not the pearls but the string that makes the necklace." ~unknown


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

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

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

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

Wizard Of Oz - family is your home

Pride and Prejudice - love transcends selfishness

Lord of the Rings - limitless power always corrupts

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

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

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

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

The Best Characters Are Always Stubborn

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

What do I mean by stubborn?

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

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

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

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

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

Isn't there a term for that?

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

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

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

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

I Am My Influences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinua Achebe's Author Photo is Cooler Than You

I am currently re-reading Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel "Things Fall Apart." I first read this novel about 32 years ago. That's a scary thought. Some of you lot weren't even born etceteraoldmangrumblingabouthislostyouth. Anyway. One of the best things about my copy of the book--a 1959 US paperback edition--is the author photo. I will never be as cool as Mr. Achebe was in 1958 when this photo was taken:



Yes, he's an old man in a wheelchair these days, but back then? Total badass*. That's what I want my author photo to look like. And yes, I admit it: it's things like having an author photo that made my child brain want to be a writer when I grew up. My wish was to join that group of people who had made me happiest, who had brought the most joy and thirst for knowledge and adventure into my life: novelists. It's not just the photos, of course; the books themselves are the magic and the fact that there are people who write them dawned upon me only later. But when I figured out what an author was, I wanted to be one.

* "Things Fall Apart" is still the most widely-read novel by an African author, so Professor Achebe, sitting in his wheelchair, remains a total badass.

Friday Filler!

Today is the birthday of Annie Dillard! Happy birthday, Annie! It's also the birthday of Larry Niven, whose books I read as a teenager. Also that of Luise Rinser, Cyriel Verschaeve, Rosalie Amstein, Jannetje Fisherman-Roosendaal, Watze Cuperus, Trijntje "Nine" van de Schaaf, William Lilly and Edmund Cooper.

Every day is the birthday of a writer. And that's a good thing.

In other news, last night Mighty Reader and I watched an episode of Agatha Christie's "Poirot" (with David Suchet) on PBS. Why is that important? Because it finally convinced me that the Literary Lab should in fact do another writing contest. And this time it should be...a serially-written murder mystery! What fun it will be! Details to follow, but first: is there any actual interest in this? I envision something where I'll write the first chapter of the mystery, introducing the setting, the corpse, and the investigator. Subsequent chapters will be written by you fine folks in a competition and you'll get to introduce/investigate suspects and clues, and someone (that'd be another of you lot, in a competitive round of writing) will have to tie it all up in a final chapter, reveal the murderer, and explain all the clues that will have been scattered about during the telling. Sounds impossible! Sounds like a mess! Anyone interested?

In other, other news, I have a bit of a headcold, but it's still Friday and that's reason to celebrate. Happy weekend, all!

You Guessed Wrong

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

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

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

Bull crap!

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

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

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

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

Legendary?

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

Onward!

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

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

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

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

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

Classic Plot Structure (3-Act Structure)

One of the cool things about the software we use to track visitor statistics for the Literary Lab is the ability to see what search terms were used to lead visitors here. A lot of people find us by entering "classic plot structure" into Google or whatever search engine. While Davin has written a post about the classic plot structure that you should by all means go read, it's more a commentary than a definition, so I'd like to take a few minutes and talk about the basics of the classic plot structure, which I'll henceforth refer to as the Three-Act Structure.

In brief, the Three-Act Structure is a framework to arrange story elements into a narrative, with pacing and major plot points as goals, a template into which you can pour your characters and events to give it shape. Narratives are constructed in three consecutive sections, or acts. The author has a distinct job to do in each of the three acts. The basic formula is:

Act One
Exposition, set-up, inciting incident. Hero is given a goal.

Act Two
The middle. The hero tries and fails to achieve goal.

Act Three
The climax and resolution. Hero makes last attempt to achieve goal and succeeds at last or fails forever.

(These are really sweeping generalizations, I know. But I didn't invent the classic plot structure, I just report on it.)

More detail:

In Act One, we see the hero (a word I use because it's shorter than "protagonist" and I'm less likely to misspell it) in his daily life, whatever and wherever that is. The hero has some internal need, usually, that can't be met in his daily life. Then, something happens to knock the hero off the rails of his daily life. He's been given a problem or a quest. Act One ends when the hero decides to solve the problem or take up the quest. The author's job in Act One is to establish the crisis in the hero's life that the hero must solve. There are lots of tasks involved in doing this job.

In Act Two, the hero struggles to solve the problem or complete the quest. He appears to be having success, though it doesn't come easy. The antagonist/villain fights against him indirectly. At the end of Act Two, the hero, who has been successful all this time, suffers a major defeat at the hands of the antagonist. Usually this defeat is caused by the hero's internal need which he has yet to deal with. This is the hero's lowest point, morally/physically/spiritually. All seems lost.

Lots of times, Act Two actually consists of the hero solving the problem that came up at the end of Act One, only to discover that it wasn't his real problem at all, and that he's got bigger fish to fry, which frying takes place in Act Three at the climax. The author's job in Act Two is to keep the action and the conflict rising toward the climax, and to show the hero attempting to re-establish equilibrium in his world (that is, achieve his goal). Lots of tasks involved in this job, too.

In Act Three, the hero bucks up and decides that he can go on, usually with greater resolve because yes, he's solved his inner problem that was holding him back. Or, he's realized he has this inner problem and is going to confront that. Either way, off he goes to fight the big fight at the Climax, after which there is a short denoument. The fight, of course, can be internal or metaphorical. Or fought with laser cannons; it's up to you. Your job, as author, is to resolve the crisis one way or another (or show how it cannot be resolved) in a manner that is believable within the rules of the story. The climax must seem both surprising and inevitable (except for those stories where you see it coming the whole time and hope the hero will avoid it). Again, lots of tasks are necessary to do this job.

So you have rising action, rising conflict, the possibility of total defeat and then even more action and conflict and then climax. Sometimes the hero dies or is otherwise defeated at the climax. Anyway, that's your classic Three-Act Structure in a nutshell. It gets more complicated as you layer on subplots and themes and other story elements, but you get the idea.

Another way of thinking about the Three-Act Structure is in terms of Action/Reaction/Results. Or perhaps as Problem/False Solution/True Solution. Or Crisis/Loss of Identity/Rebirth. Or At Home/This Is Not My Beautiful House/This Is My New House. Really, the different stories you can tell in this three-part structure are endless.

Now, is the Three-Act Structure of any use to a writer? I think very loosely in these terms when I do my outlining before I've begun actually writing. I also have begun lately thinking in terms of the Action/Reaction/Results 3-part structure when writing chapters and scenes, which gives a nice feeling of controlled flow to the writing. But I do think it's easy to fall into the trap of writing to a formula, which generally results in stories that are predictable, melodramatic, and otherwise suck.

The idea of the Three-Act Structure grew out of Aristotle's basic structure (which interested parties can read about in his Poetics):

Beginning, Middle, End

But Greek plays had only one act and don't divide nicely into the Three-Act template. Roman plays had five acts (as did the plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans), but that was to allow for intermissions and snack breaks. Ancient plays were longer than our two-hour movies so there were practical matters to which playwrights and theaters had to attend.

What I think is as useful for a story template as the Three-Act Structure is to divide the story into two types of action: the action that creates the problem, and the action that resolves the problem. This is how real conflict works in real life. You might try writing down the action that creates the problem and then the action that resolves it, and then break those actions down into scenes and see what you've got.

So while the Three-Act Structure might be a helpful organizing tool, I caution anyone against tying themselves too tightly to it. Stories are about who we are and how we solve problems, and I suggest we think in those terms and not so much in terms of "I haven't raised the stakes for my protagonist" or "I need to use my antagonist's minions in this act."

Beginning, middle and end. Start with the end, if you know enough about your story to know who your characters are. Who is he at the end of the story? Then tell us how and why he got there. That is what you are telling us. That is a story.

Something Borrowed Something Blue

Okay, so the post title doesn't exactly fit, but I wanted to build off of Scott's "Old and New" post yesterday. Shoot me.

I AM going to talk about something blue, however, and surely these thoughts are borrowed, mostly from Harold Bloom. Maybe "Something Harold Something Blue" would have been a better title.

I'm a slight depressive. I like to be depressed. I used to fight it--being surrounded by people who are happy made me think that I was supposed to be happy too. Then, a few years ago, I had a shift in my world view. I decided that I liked experiencing a fuller range of emotions. I didn't mind feeling sadness as long as I wasn't sad all the time. (Strangely, this made feeling sad a happy experience, which perhaps messes up my logic.)

It's probably not surprising, then, that some of my stories are about depressing topics. I used to think this was amateurish--don't we seem to dwell on the depressing dramas when we first pour our hearts out? But, as I was recently reading some criticism by Harold Bloom, I saw how he was celebrating many dark writers. Bloom doesn't admire Faulkner because Faulkner knows how to show and not tell. No, Bloom admires Faulkner because Faulkner has explored and beautifully rendered the dark side of his characters. So, while a trickling steam of rejections has been depressing me lately, I feel hopeful after reading about the classics discussing depression.

Same thing with sympathetic characters. I can get caught up in rooting for a protagonist as much as the next reader. But, I'm still fascinated by the Momoi Gimpeis and the Joe Christmases and the Brods and the Mahlkes--the characters that seem to maneuver despite their hopelessness and nihilism.

But, I wonder: has the range of literary acceptability gotten smaller over the decades? Do people--even a small subset of people--still want to read about darkness? Or, more generally, do people still want to explore books about a variety of emotions, or have we centered more on reading for joy? Or, am I alone?

If My Life Were a Novel

Olivia Williams in Miss Austen Regrets - an excellent film about the later part of Jane Austen's life. I always like to think if she chose a book she could step into and live, it would have been Persuasion.


If My Life Were A Novel:

1. I could charge through to find out if I end up happy,

2. and then I could write up an outline and fix all the things that never made any sense

3. I could spend pages and pages on one delicious moment in time focusing on one or two details that send shivers down my spine

4. I could go back and change my words

5. I could make mistakes and know they'll probably be redeemed later

6. I could get feedback on every. single. word. event. moment

7. I could know what the other people in my life really think of me

8. I could relive the best moments over and over, and tweak them to make them even better

9. I could cut out all the boring crap where nothing happens, like cleaning the kitchen and laundry

10. I could have flashbacks where every detail is crystal clear and has something to do with an event that's just about to change my life,

11. and then I'd get rid of the flashback because they almost never work when I write them

12. Everybody would be amazed by my layers of expertly woven symbolism and metaphors

13. I could sum up my life in one really important blurb that makes me sound like the best thing you'd ever want to read,

14. and you could read me over and over again and keep me on your shelf

15. I would never die, even when my life ended

Who in their right mind wouldn't want to write a novel? But I think one of the most important things to remember when we put that pen to paper, or our fingers to the keys, is that novels are usually not meant to portray real life. They. Are. Fiction. Even if it's a memoir or an autobiography, we don't include the boring details that have nothing to do with the point. There must always be a point. Every scene, every line, every word needs to move the plot and characters forward. If it's something experimental or postmodern, there still needs to be a point, even if nothing happens or moves forward.

I try to remember these things as I'm writing and revising. My readers don't care what the room looks like unless it matters. They don't care what a character looks like unless it matters. No matter how important it may seem to you, or how vivid it is in your mind, please don't put it in unless it accomplishes something productive.

I've talked about this before on several occasions, but even for me, even when I hear it over and over, I still throw meaningless things into my work. It's probably why I can usually cut my 102-thousand-word novel down to 70-thousand. Stupid details are okay for me with a first draft, but after that, they've got to go. If I only I could do that in real life.


Question For the Day: If you could live your life like a novel, what would be the best part for you?


~MDA (aka Glam)

Making a Scene

I am a firm believer that the basic building block of a story is The Scene, and that stories are most strongly told when composed of scenes. I am always surprised when I see a writer say that they aren't sure what, exactly, a scene is.

A scene, in my opinion, meets five criteria:

1. It is dramatized, not summarized.
2. It takes place in the "story present," seeming to happen in real time for the reader.
3. It has a beginning, middle and end and is clearly set apart from the surrounding prose.
4. It is a single, self-contained event in a single, discrete location.
5. The situation for the characters is different at the end of the passage than it was at the beginning.

Let's look at a passage that advances the story:

My journey seemed tedious--very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants--few was the number of relatives--the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of--scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.

This passage moves the plot along. You could say there is action even: the narrator is traveling across country, and we see her thoughts along the way. But it is not a scene, because:

1. It is not dramatized, but is a summary of action.
2. It does not take place in the "story present," and fails to happen in "real time" for the reader.
3. It has no dramatic arc (no beginning, middle and end) and is not set apart from the surrounding prose.
4. It is not a single, self-contained event, but is part of a longer summary of events, nor is it in a single, discrete location.
5. The situation for the characters is the same at the end of the passage as it was at the beginning, except that the narrator has apparently traveled and spent a night or two at an inn.

Plot is advanced, but that's not enough to make this passage a scene. It is, rather, a transitional passage between scenes. It's connective tissue, as it were.

Here is another passage from a page or so after the one above:

"Hillo!" he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. "There you are! Come on, if you please."

I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face--which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil--it is down: I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure.

"And this is Jane? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? Yes--just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?"

"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead."

"A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other world--from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I'd touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!--but I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh. Truant! truant!" he added, when he had paused an instant. "Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I'll be sworn!"

His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home--would that it were my home!

He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London.

"Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight."

"Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter."

"And did she inform you what I went to do?"

"Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand."

"You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won't look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now, fairy as you are--can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"

"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added, "A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty."

"Pass, Janet," said he, making room for me to cross the stile: "go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold."

I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast--a force turned me round.

"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home--my only home."


This passage meets all the criteria for a scene:

1. It is dramatized, not summarized.
2. It takes place in the "story present," seeming to happen in real time for the reader.
3. It has a beginning, middle and end and is clearly set apart from the surrounding prose.
4. It is a single, self-contained event, in a single, discrete location.
5. The situation for the characters is different at the end of the passage than it was at the beginning.

Think of a scene as real physical action that you can imagine, that's written to be read at more or less the same pace as it would happen in real life.

When I put together stories (no matter of what length), I write in scenes. I make a list (at least in my head) of all the events that must happen in the story, and how these events effect the characters, and then I make a list of scenes that will tell this story by encompassing the necessary plot events and character events into dramatic action. Those scenes make up the bulk of the writing, and everything else is transitional passage or the minimum of exposition that I can get away with. If I'm feeling poetic, I might add in a page or two about eel fishing, but in general, my stories and novels are sequences of scenes.

Do you make an effort to write in scenes? If so, how do you define "scene?" If not, why not? What is the basic building block of your stories?