I Hate Downton Abbey

I know I lay myself open for a lot of hate mail by declaring my dislike of Downton Abby. But you can’t accuse me of just watching one program and writing it off. Nope, I watched every season.

Why?

Self-defence. Invariably, someone would ask, “Did you see Downton Abbey last night?” If I said ‘no’, I invariably got a retelling of the whole program in excruciating detail. So I watched and developed my stock answer: Yes, wonderful setting. Yes, great costumes. Good acting, too.

All of which was true. But I still hated it.

Why do I hate Downton Abbey?

Let me give you an example from the first season. So the heir to the estate shows up. The oldest girl of the family resists falling in love with him, but eventually succumbs. There is a scene of them dancing together to establish it. One wrinkle—the heir is already engaged to someone else and she sees them waltzing.

Right at that moment, I knew the fiancée was toast. And sure enough, she conveniently dies of influenza shortly thereafter, paving the way for True Love.

The whole series had that quality. When a character stood in the way of the advancement of the story, a convenient accident or death whisked him or her out of the way. It was like watching a train barrelling across a prairie towards you and then being asked to be surprised when you had to jump out of the way.

In short, Downton Abbey was predictable.

Isn’t predictability good?

Okay, I’m not saying that predictability is totally and invariably unacceptable. Take mystery novels. As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, they have a well-accepted format which readers expect and enjoy. Murder, suspect, detective, resolution. Same for Harlequin romances. Poor but worthy girl falls for virile but flawed male after series of tribulations.

And I don’t wish to imply that some authors aren’t very inventive in sticking to the expected while still weaving an enjoyable story around it. (Okay, maybe I’m just talking about mysteries.)

But where there is not a well-established path, where you aren’t supposed to know where the story is going—i.e., the rest of fiction—too much predictability is boring.

What should we be aiming for?

Fighting predictability is a constant battle. It’s not that you are aiming for it, but it is often the easy way out of a writing predicament. If your characters have become stock, then when the villain makes a choice, it takes little effort to have him act more evil than possibly explore some other option.

Even when you are striving for more nuanced characters, it is so alluring to have them act in predictable ways. The concerned mother, the feckless teenager, the embittered old man. These tropes aren’t bad in and of themselves, but good fiction aims to help the reader see the world in way he hadn’t before. Not with alien landscapes necessarily, but more with a perspective or insight which is new.

It’s harder to do that if you are using tried and true actions, feelings, or values from tried and true characters. Next post: Avoiding Predictability.

July 17, 2020June 5, 2020

When to Break Literary Law

In the last post, I featured another author, Muriel Spark, whose novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie thumbed its nose at literary law. Having already discussed why to be wary of Breaking the rules, I now want to discuss when you might want to.

Unfortunately, I fear this post is going to be pretty wishy-washy. I can’t tell you with certainty when to take the plunge or what form it should take. I may not even be able to give you examples from other writers. Because this is an idiosyncratic and personal phenomenon.

But I am pretty sure of (maybe) that sitting down, thinking, Right, I’m writing an iconoclastic novel, doesn’t work. The result is likely to be forced and false

Breaking literary conventions

I think the time to break literary laws is when the fracturing is required because of the needs of the story or because it is the nature of your voice as a writer.

You may get to the point that following the normal story arc just doesn’t suit or support where you want to take the novel. You might want to interject fantasy elements in an otherwise reality based tale, the significance of which will only become evident at the end. You might have drawn a protagonist who is so out of touch with who he is that the most effective way to show it is to omit any kind of inner life. These might be times when you dump conventions and go with what best serves the story.

I also accept that some writers can best express who they are, i.e. their voice, through elliptical, non-linear, and even chaotic novels where the joy comes from going along for the ride and not from following a strict story line. So ignoring rules may be what is needed to truly capture your spirit on the page.

So, if either of these (and probably others I haven’t thought of) fit you, then by all means, give it a go.

Some caveats

There are, however, some issues which might arise from these approaches which are worth paying attention to.

As I have discussed before, in order to feel true and realistic to your audience, writers must know that the readers’ expectations from fiction which are largely unconscious but which you ignore at your peril.

You might decide that your ending should be vague and even confusing in order to fit with the rest of the novel. However, since readers by and large expect some kind of resolution, you may confuse and even anger them. While you might be going for the latter, do you really want to confuse them?

I’m not saying don’t do it but I think you need to be cognizant of the possible outcome. Because not only are you violating their normal expectations, you are asking them to conform to your new rules, however unspoken. Even if that rule is that there are no rules.

July 10, 2020July 5, 2020

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

One of the only silver linings in this historic period of social distancing is the chance to reread favorite old books. In my case, it is the novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. The book rather than the 1969 movie of the same name (although I liked it, too) is what I want to discuss.

Edinburgh of the 1930s is the setting for the novel. Miss Brodie is a teacher in a private girls’ school and her charge is the twelve-year-old class. She ignores the curriculum to introduce ‘her girls’ to her highly romanticized view of the world with its decided fascist leanings. The girls adore her and follow her teachings slavishly. Well, with one notable exception. Read the book—it really is worth it.

But it is Spark’s defiance of literary conventions which I find fascinating.

Brodie ignores literary conventions

Lack of internal thoughts

A novelist’s access to the thoughts of at least the protagonist allows we understand the character’s world view, her fears, her desires, and hopefully find her sympathetic enough to want to know what happens to her.

Spark never uses this technique. Absolutely no internal dialogue. And yet we have a perfectly clear image of who she is.

How does she do it? By having her girls, their parents, her colleagues and her various lovers be fascinated/annoyed/jealous of her. From those sources, we have a complete picture.

Normally, I would be all over this. It verges on tell, not show. Spark forces us to rely on the observations of others rather than our own. It should be difficult to ‘get’ the character if her thoughts are closed to the reader.

And yet, it totally works. I know who Jean is despite Spark writing with one hand tied behind her back.

Shifts of Points of View (POV)

Because of intense fascination of Brodie’s girls with her, we get lots of shifts into their POV. We are inside the heads of the non-major characters and it all seems perfectly natural. But multiple POVs are usually frowned upon, particularly, you would think, because there isn’t one for the main character.

Shifts of time

In addition, Spark casts forward into the future to talk about the fictional present. She depicts the Brodie girls as adults, discussing how they view Brodie now. Just fascinating..

Breaking the rules

You might think that Spark could get away with what she did as she was depicting an over-the-top persona. The flamboyance of the character makes it easy for others to know her and pass that knowledge on to us.

But other authors have used the same technique with much more taciturn lead characters. Cormac McCarthy, the author of, in particular, All the Pretty Horses features cowboys in many of his novels. Can you imagine a bunch less likely to admit to having inner thoughts, much less sharing them? And yet he also makes it work (also worth reading, by the way).

So, authors can and do break rules that are normally considered sacrosanct. In Breaking the rules, I discussed the danger of writers assuming that they can be as wild and crazy as they like, assuming that their readers will take it lying down. But news, the only thing they might lay down is your book. Next post: When to Break Literary Law.

February 21, 2020February 21, 2020

Creating a Page-turner when the Ending is Known

The stage musical, Come from Away shares a phenomenon with movies like Titanic, Apollo 11, and Argos. That is, from the start, you know how the story is going to turn out. The ship will sink, the astronauts will land safely, and the American diplomats will be rescued from the 1979-1981 Iranian revolution. In Come From Away, the airline passengers get safely home.

The problem is that a story often gets a lot of its uumph from the reader wanting to know how things turn out. Will the villain get her comeuppance? Will the lovers get together? Will Mary find her lamb? Who killed Cock Robin? (Sorry, got carried away a bit).

It’s tricky to write a plot with a known ending because you lack the element of surprise/satisfaction/ etc. at the climax. Readers can get impatient because they think they know where things are going.

This happened to me with Titanic. By the mid-movie, I was thinking, “Yeah, yeah. Sad story. Boo-hoo. When is the sucker gonna sink?” Also cut down on my empathy for Leonardo DiCaprio’s watery fate, as you can imagine.

So, it can be a difficult task to keep reader interest with one hand effectively tied behind your back.

Writing a page-turner with one hand tied behind your back

First off, you need all the regular story-telling skills I’ve been talking about in this blog. But now, you need to put in special effort to keep the reader entertained until she gets to the ending. Here are some ways to do it.

Tension in every scene.

You can focus on how difficult it was to achieve the end goal and/or how easily things could have gone off track. You can ratchet up the tension and rivet the reader by detailing these trials.

Fate of (fictional) main character unknown.

Often, even in a true story, the main character (let’s call him Tom) is fictional—inserted in the story as an anchor for the reader to identify with. This allows you to play with that Tom’s fate. He can be instrumental in achieving the end (rescue, safe landing, etc.) and still himself come to a sticky end. Thus, assuming the reader identifies with him—and if she doesn’t, we have a whole different issue—but assuming she does, she is going to want to know how things work out for him. And thus you have a more typical story with an unknown climax. ‘Course, doesn’t work as well for memoirs.

Surprise ending.

Quentin Tarentino did this in Inglorious Basterds. The commandoes plan to kill Hitler in a cinema by igniting the flammable nitrate film. Knowing that Hitler did not die this way, I was intrigued to see how Tarentino would pull off a satisfying ending given this reality. And then Hitler dies in the fire! Despite a niggle that millions of Tarentino fans will have a distorted view of history, changing the ending does perk up the reader/viewer.

Surprise interpretation.

In my novel, SCAM, four out-of-work Canadian actors pretend to be an intact British acting family to win roles on an American sitcom. It took on the feel of a heist movie—i.e. it isn’t one unless you have a heist. Similarly, there is no novel if they don’t get the parts. Since the reader knows this, I interpreted the events in what I think was a surprising way. Please read it to see if you agree! (ADV.)

So, writing a story where the ending is known by the reader before she starts the novel can be tricky. But it is possible to do so if you are aware of the special challenge you face.

February 14, 2020January 7, 2020

Come From Away—Straight-forward Story-telling

Come From Away is a Canadian musical which played on Broadway and toured extensively. It tells the true story of a small community in Newfoundland which had to cope with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States.

Because of the attack, many planes were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland. This is the amazing story of the town housing, feeding, clothing, and even entertaining the stranded passengers.

As a play/musical, Come from Away has two writing characteristics I want to highlight: one here and one in the next post.

Technique: Straight-through story-telling

This technique is interesting, if only because the pure form isn’t seen that often. That is, the story starts at the beginning (the townspeople’s bucolic existence before the planes landed) and goes to the end in a straight line (the stranded passengers returning home). I know this seems kind of ‘duh’, but most fiction has diversions off that straight path.

For example, a passenger is the mother of a New York firefighter but doesn’t know what is happening to him. The playwright makes the interesting choice in allowing her to speak of her anxiety, but with no flashbacks to show their love. A flashback is as easy to do in the theater as it is in fiction writing—the mother and her firefighter son are in a spotlight and the dialogue shows this is the mother’s memory of her son.

Advantages of the straight-through

Well, for one thing, it’s the way we typically tell stories. What happened, then what happened next, etc. It’s a form we’re familiar with and can take comfort from as we would well broken-in slippers.

It is also more efficient because there aren’t any interludes which might impede the forward action of the story. While I don’t typically advocate for efficiency as goal in writing, when a series of events has to be covered in a limited period of time, you might realistically pursue a little efficiency.

Disadvantages of this approach

In particular, the use of flashback may be the opportunity to connect emotionally with a particular character such as I discussed above with the mother and her firefighter son. A flashback takes you from guessing or assuming what her love is to seeing it for yourself.

Scene setting can also be done in flashback. What if the musical started when townspeople were in the midst of their herculean efforts to help the stranded passengers? It would focus immediately on the central point of the play. How the townspeople got to that point could be done in quick flashbacks which give the reader/watcher the information about the setting or past he needs at the moment needed. This is rather than knocking off the explanations at the top when their significance may not yet be clear.

Which is better?

It’s all a matter of choice—straight-through or a more convoluted structure. One way isn’t necessarily better than the other—but it does shape how the reader/watcher experiences the event.

So when you have a story to tell, take a moment to think whether the familiar straight-through, soup-to-nuts approach best serves or whether you might want the soup at the end and dessert somewhere in the middle.