There’s a Book in Everyone. Isn’t There?

Is there a book in you?

Absolutely. I think that everybody’s life has the thrilling components of a book. Think of the timeworn stories you drag up when you’re with family and old friends. Aren’t they funny, poignant, inspiring, exciting, nostalgic, etc.? Otherwise, why do you tell them? The possibility that you are a repetitive bore I will ignore since I know none of you are.

And, in the quiet moments of life, on a long car journey or just before you fall asleep, don’t reflections on life lived or should be lived come to you? Wishes, aspirations, wisdom, regrets and longings—all the stuff of novel or memoir.

So why does Carol Shields believe that it is a myth that there’s novel in everyone[1]?

Because she knows about people like Amanda.

Amanda

This is an honest-to-god conversation I had with a would-be author (given artistic license, of course).

“So, you’re interested in writing?” I asked. “Fiction or non-fiction?”

Amanda passed a hand through the recently revamped blackness of her hair. “Oh, either one.”

“Oh, well…articles or a long piece?”

She shrugged. “Novel, articles, whatever.”

“What are you working on now?”

Her eyebrows went up high. “I’ve got a full-time job. I couldn’t do anything now.”

Of course. “Have you ever taken a writing course?”

“Do you think I should?”

I made a deprecating little noise. “Writing takes a lot of craft.”

“Oh, really? Well, maybe I’ll do that.” She smiled. “So, should I get an agent first or go directly to publishers?”

“Ah…I think you need to write something first.”

She waved that away. “Of course. That’s not a problem.” She tapped the side of her head in a significant way. “It’s all up here.”

Great. When wordless novels are the new wave, she’ll be ahead of the curve.

She continued. “Should I publish through a regular publisher or on-line?”

“Actually, I think you need to write it first.”

“Can you deduct research trips?”

“I suppose, although the tax department needs proof that you’ve written—”

“What about car expenses? Mileage, gas, repairs, car washes?”

“Well, writers aren’t in cars a whole lot. They’re usually at a computer.”

“But you must have to meet with your agent and publisher—”

“It’s mostly done on-line—

“On-line…” she seemed disappointed but took it well.

I make one last effort. “Amanda, I think you can deal with all of this once you’ve written something.”

She waved it and me away. “But I need to be prepared. Because it’s all up here.”

Do you know how to bring it out?

So that’s why Carol Shields calls the book-in-everyone thing a myth. We all have the stories but sadly, that’s not enough. As it turns out, the skill of writing things down in an interesting way is completely different from those of a good raconteur.

You need the ideas and stories, yes, but you also need to master the craft of writing enough (ADV for this blog) to shape them into compelling reading. You also need the perseverance to stick with a lengthy and sometimes frustrating process. And, unlike our friend Amanda, you need the courage to begin.

If you need a bit of encouragement or nudging, you might want to read my posts, Do I Start the Story at the Beginning? Or How to Start an Autobiography or Memoir. To address the stick-with-it-ness that you will need, read The Muse and the Piano Tuner.

And for daring and audacity, don’t take my word for it but Winston Churchill’s

Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.

[1] Shields, Carol, Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing Random House, Canada, 2006

October 15, 2020October 15, 2020

Self-Censoring

Self-Censoring

Self-censoring is pernicious, mostly because the people who do it most are often the ones who least realize it.

What does self-censoring look like?

I was in a writing group with a woman writing about a personally difficult topic—meeting a long-lost relative. She wrote effectively about her fears and hopes for the encounter. And about her reactions to it. But nothing about the meeting itself. It was as if she closed the door to her readers on what was the emotional core of the story.

The problem is that this writer was surprised (and threatened and offended) when it was pointed out that she had written around the story rather than about it.

I get it, I do. And have some sympathy for the woman who seemed to have felt that depicting the meeting was a bridge too far. But you can see how her unconscious self-censoring affected the quality of her story-telling.

Holding back affects the quality of writing

I’ve written before of the tough necessity to appear naked on the page. Being embarrassingly, shamefully, and completely honest is the only way I know to achieve the emotional truth which readers recognize and respond to. Readers know if you are giving the straight goods even if you don’t. Being readers not writers, they don’t think, “She’s not emotionally honest.” More likely, they’ll say “I just couldn’t get into it.” And not read what you have to say.

Are you repressing your writing?

I think we all do a bit of self-censoring. To capture a real person on paper, we might change the hair color or leave out the most obvious tic or quirk.

But the real self-censorship comes which you find yourself thinking, I can’t say that! and write away from that spot. The fear of exposing yourself or hurting others can happen at any time but is very common in memoirs. Self-censorship is death to the creative process. Without knowing it, you avoid some topics and choose others. You write charming travel logs rather than the abuse at the time of the travel.

What if I’m going for charming?

Nothing wrong with then but, while they might provide light entertainment, they rarely stir a reader’s soul.

But more importantly, here’s the thing. In a way I don’t understand, my finished product is almost never as deep, affecting, true—whatever words you want to use—as originally hoped for. Many writers have that experience. The piece may be good, even very good, but there is almost always some indefinable way in which you had yearned for more.

So, if you start out aiming for shallow or good enough, you’ll end up with even less. And your readers will know it.

What can I do?

I wish I could be prescriptive or even descriptive, but mostly this consists of being able to be—hidden under covers or in the middle of a forest—honest about your work. Ask yourself questions like: are there moments where I have ducked the real issue? Or have I glossed over a messy bit because it seems too hard or painful to write?

If your aim is to be a better writer, allow yourself to fully immerse in the scene in question—allowing uncomfortable feelings to surface, staying with them rather than pushing away.

I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s the only route I know which ups the possibility that you are writing as truthfully as you can.

October 2, 2020October 4, 2020

Avoiding Predictability

In the last post, I said that I hated Downton Abbey because of its predictability. I want to spend this post on how to keep your stories fresh.

But isn’t all fiction about predictability?

So here is where it gets complicated. Kurt Vonnegut, author of many iconoclastic, often sci-fi, novels like Cat’s Cradle and Slaughter House Five, maintained there were only six basic plots. Boy Meets Girl, Cinderella, etc. So readers, however unconsciously, are looking for your novel to fall into one of these formats.

If you buy this idea, and perhaps surprisingly, I tend to, then you’ve gotta think that it’s one for predictability and zero for freshness.

However, I don’t think that’s true. As Vonnegut also points out in A Man Without a Country, it is the unique perspective you bring to the writing which makes the work exceptional and worth reading.

So my writing should be unpredictable

Not that either.

Not if it means that your calm, cool and collected protagonist suddenly grabs a kitchen knife and stabs her calm, cool and collected husband. Because one of the annoying things about readers is that they also have unconscious rules for your characters. And one of them certainly is that what they do has to make sense in the context of the personalities you have already established for them.

Otherwise, the reader will find the action puzzling, erratic, and even unbelievable. And if so, you kick them out of the continuous dream you’re trying to create.

Creating surprising/fresh stories

Now, I’m not trying to suggest that your characters can’t or shouldn’t do surprising things. Not at all. But they can’t come out of the blue. One of the most convincing ways to do that, I find, is to imbed clues in your narrative which might not be noticeable to the reader. Then when the character does something startling, the reader should be able to remember those non-obvious moments so that you can retain the element of surprise while still making it consistent with the traits established thus far.

I know that’s a bit wordy but here’s an example.

The spouse of an abusive husband seems to just take it and even, in that sickening but common tendency, does all she can to please him. A friend comes over when she is doing the dishes. The friend urges her to leave him but she maintains she loves him. Right about then, she drops a plate which breaks. You might have the wife be terrified of her husband’s reaction to mask this clue.

Later, the wife notices that her husband’s suit jacket is split at the back. She widens it. He makes an important presentation without realizing the problem. He returns, boasting of how well it went. That evening, she quietly repairs the jacket and rehangs it.

So, if she eventually stabs her husband, while it might be surprising, it doesn’t come out of the blue nor would it seem unbelievable.

A unique perspective which keeps your writing fresh doesn’t mean erratic.

A final note

The problem with writing is that there are almost always exceptions to prove the rule. While generally, readers expect continuity in the story, techniques such as stream of consciousness have worked, James Joyce’s Ulysses being an oft-cited example. The movie Moulin Rouge starring Nicole Kidman is another example where a coherent story is lacking and it totally works. That’s writing for you.

September 25, 2020October 31, 2020

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.

September 18, 2020June 5, 2020

Does my Ending Work?

What ending you choose for your novel can make or break it. And where it should end. This post is about whether the ending you have written works.

Now, whether it works is to some extent in the eye of the beholder, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Your finale may not work according to this post but does according to your readers. Go with your readers. These are only guidelines.

Ending types

Although types of endings can be parsed in many ways, I am going to concentrate on two.

Inevitability

I certainly know the feeling. I’m coming to the end of the novel. I know the hero is going to get his comeuppance but I’m dreading it. I want him to succeed even though I know that everything is stacked against him. I’m yelling at the page, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” But he does and suffers the fate I feared for him.

With this type of story, even though you may not be happy with the ending, it is nevertheless satisfying and feels correct.

Surprise

The opposite but equally satisfying ending is unexpected for the reader. The story proceeds so that the reader thinks she knows where things are going. And then the conclusion is not what was anticipated.

For this ending to work, the novel has to be constructed so that the hero’s startling choice makes sense. That is, there have to be clues throughout the novel that he might choose the unexpected path but you have cleverly disguised them so that the reader doesn’t notice them while reading.

If you don’t do that, you run the risk of your reader tossing the whole book because the ending seems to come out of the blue and therefore is not credible. Establishing once again that Fiction is Not Life.

What doesn’t usually work

Deus ex machina

It literally means a god from a machine since plays in Ancient Greece used a crane to create the illusion of the gods descending from the heavens (did you really want to know this?). Anyhow, in present day fiction, it means an unexpected event which saves a hopeless situation. Your hero has to choose between his fiancée and the woman he is falling in love with (yes, Downton Abbey). Luckily, the fiancée gets the Spanish flu and is carried off by it. You can just see that crane yanking the fiancée out of the picture.

Seeing it coming from a mile away

On the one hand, with inevitability endings, you want the increasing doom (usually doom—happy is different—see below) to build over the course of the novel. Each action the hero takes pushes him down the inexorable path. On the other hand, you need to tread a fine line. Inevitability becomes boring and predictable and not worth reading if the reader can forecast the ending half-way through. You need to build tension without hitting the reader over the head with what’s coming. Not easy.

Happily ever after

I’m sorry, but as I pointed out previously, happy endings have rather fallen out of literary favor. I’m not saying it’s right but there you are. If the prince proposes to the surprised young thing and they live happily ever after—it’s all too pat for the modern reader. If you really really want a happy ending, you’d probably be better off trying to write a happy ending with a surprise finish. Give it a try but don’t say I didn’t tell you.