Author: FH

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The Nutshell

nutshell

The Nutshell

The Nutshell is a highly acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan. It is a brilliant story which is both a fantastic flight of fancy and a sharply observed, gritty tale of murder. With the overlay of compelling comments on the state of humanity.

The plot in a nutshell

An unborn baby is the protagonist (no, that’s not a typo). By listening through the womb, he discovers that his mother-to-be plans to kill his father, John, to continue her affair with John’s brother, Claude.

The baby is outraged but helpless. He ‘witnesses’ John’s poisoning and the subsequent police sympathy for the pregnant widow (Trudy), on the assumption that John was a suicide. But the police become suspicious. Trudy and Claude decide to flee. The baby is desperate to stop them.

You can read a fuller summary by clicking the link.

The literary rules he breaks

I’ve already written how amateur writers break writing rules at their peril but here is an example of where, in the hands of an experienced writer, they can be trampled upon to great effect.

I want to concentrate on the cracked literary rules, but there are also many more exciting features. I encourage you to read a review  to get more on these aspects.

Inherently unlikely premise

Really, the story of an unborn baby—ridiculous. You’re supposed to write characters with whom the reader can identify. We’ve all been fetuses of course, but I think I may say with confidence that none of us told stories from the womb.

Impossible, and yet by the end of the first page, I’ve bought it. And the erudition of the baby who pronounces insightfully on the world he has yet to enter.  Some of this acceptance can be attributed to the authority of the author. McEwan’s mastery of the language and confidence makes it easy to fall into his world, no matter how unusual.

Both omniscient narrator and first person

The unborn baby is the first person narrator. Typically, writers should stick with one point of view. It encourages identification with the protagonist and focuses the story. But McEwan doesn’t allow the strait jacket he has chosen hold him back. He enters into every character’s mind to further the story and is a fly on the wall for events the baby could not have been present for. Again, we move seamlessly from one perspective to another, hardly noticing.

The protagonist doesn’t act

I’ve already written a post on avoiding passive observers as main characters. A protagonist needs to act to achieve his goals. He can’t just stand around wringing his hands.  Otherwise, the reader loses interest or gains impatience.

A baby in a womb. Is there a better definition of an inactive witness? Okay, he tries unsuccessfully to strangle himself with the umbilical cord, but for the most part, he can do nothing but observe. And I am right there, watching with him.

So, that’s just three rules trampled over. There are more, one of which I will go into more detail in the next post.

The Nutshell reinforces what I have said before—there are general rules for writing which master craftspeople can use with ease but also know when to break in the service of the story. You can do it also if (and only if) you have the same facility.

This primarily mechanical breakdown of the novel is not, I hope, how you experience it if you have read it or will (sorry, the tense agreements got a bit tangled up there). Because there’s a lot of fairy dust in the novel, too.

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Using Clichés

Clichés

Using Clichés

Clichés. There should be a bar sinister across them, right? We’re never never supposed to use them. I don’t know on which stone tablet it is written but seems like an immutable rule.

But I use them all the time (cf. stone tablet above) and I can’t even get excited about it.

For one thing, it’s a way to capture a thought or a moment in a way which is easier to identify with. I mean, I could have written: I don’t know from what mystic time or place the immutability is derived.  Or some such. But stone tablet seems so much more straightforward.

It also promotes a more informal relationship between you and your reader, as in this blog. And applies to a fictional character. Clichés can be part of a speech pattern to convey a more relaxed or unceremonious persona.

So, I don’t think they’re all bad. At least, not word clichés.

Clichés of thought

But where I can get excited are clichéd thoughts.

There are some ideas which are important to your story. You want to portray your hero as, well, heroic. So, first and always, his actions need to show this quality. But, as I’ve mentioned, as the narrator, you can bolster the action. But if you call him brave as a lion, the reader’s eyes are likely to slip right past this description because it is so familiar.

If the idea is important, then reach for unique, specific and even beautiful words that make arresting reading and imbed the quality in the reader’s mind.

What comes to mind is the haunting description Isak Dinesen wrote in Out of Africa of the grave of her lover Denys Finch Hatton.

…many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch Hatton’s grave. A lion and a lioness have come there and stood or lain on the grave for a long time. After you went away, the ground around the grave was leveled out into a sort of terrace. I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions. From there, they have a view over the plain and the cattle and game on it. Denys will like that. I must remember to tell him.

The problem is that this quote is from the movie and I have lost my copy of the book which I am sure included something like: “Nelson on his column could not have had a more fitting memorial.” If I am right—and even it is just the one paragraph above—this is a fine allusion to his bravery.

If the idea is important to the story, then put the time into remarkable phrasing.

(I know it takes longer to write. Stop it.)

Ensuring your central ideas are captured memorably will go a long way to avoiding clichéd work and stories which really are anathema.

Okay, there are some you probably shouldn’t use

So, after being all doctrinaire about using clichés whenever I please, I do accept that there are some clichés so shopworn that they no longer convey much meaning. Like bright as a button, fit as a fiddle, or don’t cry over spilt milk. Huffpost has a further list.

Oh yes, and of course, you really must avoid clichéd words and thoughts if the beauty of the language is your main shtick (sorry).

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Getting Pacing Right

pacing

Getting Pacing Right

You know how sometimes a novel moves so slowly that it irritates and seems to positively encourage you to put it down even if the story interests you? Or when events move so quickly that you’re saying to yourself, “Huh? Wasn’t he trapped in the underground cave?” Or, the best, when you move from revelation to revelation in the story in a satisfying way? That’s pacing.

It is subjective

Whether the pacing is right depends largely on the reader. If he revels in elaborate description, he won’t find things slowed down by it. If the reader prefers fast paced, he’ll skip over any moments of confusion or disconnection to get to the climax.

So this is annoying for the writer. There probably isn’t one right answer unless you already know your readership well as a popular mystery novelist might.

But there are some general rules which generally work.

Getting the pacing right

Mechanical ways

There are some standard ways to keep the pacing right

  • Description slows things down. Even beautifully crafted, heartfelt passages pause the action so we can admire the craft and heart.
  • Action speeds things up. When your characters are doing stuff, the pace of the novel picks up.
  • Slowing the pace of the action can build suspense. One of those counter-intuitive things but slowing the pace at the right moment can be more effective than barreling along.
  • Reflective/internal dialogue slows the pace. But may be necessary both for the story but also as a chance for the reader to recover from the previous fast-paced action.
  • Varying sentence length can break things up. It really can. Breaking up dialogue with bits of business (he tapped his fingers; she turned her head sharply) produces the same effect.

Soul-searching ways

You sometimes need to look deeper to ask yourself some hard questions.

  • Is the world you created more interesting to you than to the reader? [1] Writers can get very excited about the world they’re creating. They explore all the nooks and crannies of this creation, getting more and more enthusiastic about the possibilities. All to the good. And can certainly infuse your writing with that enjoyment. But by and large, this neat stuff is more important to inform your writing than the reader.

Long passages describing how fascinating the world is are probably interesting only to you. What hooks a reader is the action the characters take within that context. And the constraints and opportunities that arise because of the unique setting. The magic layer in your world may only start five thousand feet above the surface. The protagonist must figure out how to reach that layer in order to access the magic that will further his goal, whatever it is.

  • Are you rushing to the end? This is a particular problem if you’ve already decided how the novel will conclude. There is a tendency to write the scenes leading in a straight line to the climax. Which leaves the reader rather breathless and in addition, ignores the byways, asides, and subplots which not only give a fuller story but also slows things down enough for the reader to enjoy the unfolding of the tale at a more satisfying pace.

In summary, this is a Goldilocks thing. Not too fast. Not too slow. And varied pacing. Too much of the same pace—no matter how exciting—will begin to feel tedious to the reader.

[1] Lukeman, Noah The First Five Pages Simon & Schuster New York 2000

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Writing about Therapy Sessions

therapy

Writing about Therapy Sessions

What can I say? Writers, while not necessarily crazy (sorry, with mental health issues), nonetheless seem to be not infrequent users of therapy in various forms. And there is the whole write-what-you-know thing. So, sooner or later, we try to depict a therapy session.

And it almost always falls flat.

Not because you are a crummy writer but because of the nature of therapy. As those of us who have addressed our problems this way know, it is iterative, repetitive and slow process which takes a long time to get results. All things anathema to story.

So, if you try to truly reflect conversation in a session, you’re likely to get a boring, going nowhere mess which contributes little to the story.

How about speeding things up?

One option is, of course, to telescope the process in the novel. This compression in other areas is often quite justifiable to maintain the momentum of the story. So, the main character is completely open to all the suggestions made by the counsellor, integrates the learning with lightning speed, and is back on the right track in no time. She goes from mistrusting the world to complete and utter belief in the innate goodness of humanity.

First of all, sucky tale. You’ve removed all the struggles and conflict that makes a narrative hum. But more importantly for our purposes, completely unrealistic. Because we know in our own lives, with or without guidance, change doesn’t happen that way. Change is iterative, repetitive and slow.

How to avoid writing therapist scenes

Despite this, the insights that come with therapy may be pivotal to your plot. So how do you write about it without writing about it?

First, you probably need a scene establishing that your protagonist is seeing a therapist. But it might be the first session, where the main character illustrates the real reason she is embarking on this process. She thinks it’s because her family is so difficult but her defensiveness and the sharp tongued way she communicates cues the reader that there are other issues. Tricky to write, but if done well, it provides the reader with important information early on.

From there forward, the therapist might not figure prominently at all. But the main character might recall something learned in therapy which she applies to the present point in the plot. You might even be able to get away with a short—very short—scene where the protagonist comes to a significant revelation which we then see her applying it to refocusing her actions and life.

So you might be able to get the juice out of these sessions without having to do all the peeling, pitting, and dissecting which actually occurs.

If you must write about therapy

It is possible that your plot is integrally tied to depicting therapy sessions.

The only thing I have ever seen which did this effectively was an originally Israeli series, adapted to North American audience called In Treatment. In it, a therapist treated four different patients. And it works. Even though the whole series takes place inside the therapist’s office and the patients are just basically telling the therapist their stories.

So, if you must, you would do well to study why this tell-not-show approach works. If it’s the acting or direction, then you’re sunk. If it is the extremely clever writing (and I suspect it is), study how the writers made it work. Unless of course, it’s just bloody magic.

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How to Keep Writing: Bum in Chair

bum

How to Keep Writing: Bum in Chair

Often, what keeps us from writing is not a lack of things to say or stories to tell, or the skill to tell them, or even the courage. It is sometimes as easy as keeping your bum in your chair. To keep writing even if you have the irresistible urge to throw in a load of laundry, play with the cat, or re-organize your cupboards.

So this post are some fairly simple-minded but I have found, effective, ways to keep going when these other siren calls intrude.

Keep your bum in chair with mantras

This isn’t at all new age. I don’t know why it works, but even if nothing is coming to you and the urge to check your Twitter account sweeps over you, just keep typing. Doesn’t have to further the story. Doesn’t have even to make sense. But the act of keeping your fingers typing seems to eventually force your brain back in gear.

I do have some mantras which I type when I’m just trying to keep my fingers moving.

Don’t reach for it. Let it come if it’s going to

Sometimes, I’m straining for the next idea, the next scene, the next sentence. By writing this phrase, over and over, it reminds me to have faith in myself. That it will come if I am patient. Perhaps not today but it will come. Just let it come on its own timetable.

Process not product

I can inadvertently get into a production mode. This has to get done. I need to finish this story. I focus on the end product and forget that the magic of writing is in trusting the process. You let yourself be immersed by that special cloud that comes to you when writing and allow its flow to direct you. Rather than trying to push it to the finish line. Process not product.

Fierce and bold

I won’t bore you with the story but suffice it to say that I have a rubber duckie with a pirate scarf and a machete under his little wing which reminds me that I need to be fierce and bold in my writing. No matter how weak or dull my writing machete feels right now, I can swing it with ferocity and bravery.

So, not rocket science but it works for me. Here’s what I wrote one time when I was being tempted off the chair.

Just do it but don’t reach for it. Impossible state. Magic state? Don’t reach for it. Let it come if it’s going to. Process not product. Fierce and bold. Fierce and bold. Keep the fingers moving. Keep the fingers moving. Don’t reach for it. Just let it come. Don’t try to shape it as it comes. Let it come. Let it be what it’s going to be.

Start your engines please

At other times, an almost opposite approach works. Sometimes it might feel right to put yourself under some pressure.

Then, I literally write: Start your engines, please, gentlemen (sic). It’s 10:32. I will write until 11:02. No stopping. No on-line.

Doesn’t have to be half an hour. Can be five. But set a timer and stick with it. This is the time to stop communing with your inner angst and get something on the page.

I use both approaches, mantra and engines, choosing the one which fits my mood at the time. Doesn’t matter what you use as long as it keeps your bum in the chair.