Author: sdgibson

Learning from eavesdropping

Paraphrasing the hosts of the podcast Writing Excuses, someplace in season 19: When I say a narrative needs risk, it almost always needs a relationship. How does the failure affect the community around the character? People feel tension about things they can relate to, especially about things they can relate to being taken away from characters.

Learning from Bullwinkel

Consider this sentence from Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel:

Artemis Victor has no idea what it takes to own a house, but she knows what it takes to beat other people, which is what owning property seems like, beating other people at owning a piece of the earth and making that piece of earth yours, not to be shared with other people, because the owning of the property is a product of your victory over other humans, as in, you won more dollars than them so now this slice of land is yours for keeps.

Artemis is one of the young women boxers in Bullwinkel’s novel. This one-sentence summary of her appears early in one of the sections of the book in which she boxes. The novel is organized like a March Madness bracket, with each pairing of characters having a winner that moves on to the next pairing until finally the two characters most likely to win box each other. One thing to learn from Bullwinkel is the value of a clear organizational structure for a novel, especially one with many characters.

The sentence above is its own paragraph. It stands out on the page. It also reveals key elements of one character, specifically. It suggests what she does not know and how she thinks about the world. This is stated directly and succinctly. As readers learn more about the character, such as her feelings about her sisters, for example, Artemis becomes more rounded. So, one technique for writing a round character is a concise, memorable sentence juxtaposed with contrasting scenes. The sharper the contrast between the scenes and summary, the more sides the character will seem to have and the better readers will get to know them.

Learning from Crozier

Lorna Crozier’s prose poem “Vituperative” is an excellent example of several techniques. It also effectively models a structure. The title tells readers the name of the poem, and the body shows the title. This showing includes images driven by sensory language, synonyms, and examples. Poetic strategies include alliteration. Rather than the happy ending readers might be trained to expect, consistent with its title, the prose poem doubles down on its bitterness.

Simple and powerful.

Humanity in its infinite variety

Now, as the present crumbles away into a future that evolves more quickly than most of us can track, it seems impossible to write about contemporary life without writing science fiction. But the secret to doing it well doesn’t lie in suspenseful chase scenes, weighty messages, or mind-blowing existential puzzles. That stuff can be fun, but it can also feel pretty thin without something that’s supposed to be a specialty of literary novelists: the fullest appreciation of humanity in its infinite variety and intricacy. Do justice to that, and the wonders will take care of themselves. 

Laura Miller

Joyful outpouring

The goal of writing should be to produce something that feels like a spontaneous joyful outpouring but that is, on closer inspection, too finely made to be (merely) that—the story as fossil evidence of a deep process of exploration that, in our reading experience of it, is as fast and natural as a pop song.

George Saunders

Learning from Saunders

Consider this quotation from Saunders’s story “Victory Lap” in Tenth of Dec, “Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs. Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned.” These are the first sentences of the story.

They are good first sentences for several reasons. They suggest an ongoing process (“Three days shy . . .”) or two (Alison has paused) and readers are likely to read on to see how the process(es) resolves. In other words, the sentences presents portents of a possible future. Will the portents be fulfilled?

Another reason these are good first sentences is that they also characterize. Beginning with a character is likely to interest readers, especially if a connection to that character is likely or at least possible. I’ve had a fifteenth birthday, and I’ve even paused at the top of stairs and imagined that my surroundings might be different.

These two strategies are good ways to start stories.

Notice also this moment from the title story, “Tenth of December.” In it a boy is crossing a frozen lake. The ice under his feet has been making odd sounds as he imagines a conversation with a girl he knows. Readers are deep within his point of view or consciousness and have been for several paragraphs.

Maybe you should turn back, Suzanne said.

But wasn’t this feeling of fear the exact feeling all heroes had to confront early in life? Wasn’t overcoming this feeling of fear what truly distinguished the brave?

There could be no turning back.

Or could there? Maybe there could. Actually there should.

The ice gave way and the boy fell through.

The last sentence is a surprise (or it was for me) partly because of its suddenness. It isn’t telegraphed by a word like “suddenly,” for example. It is its own paragraph in a series of short paragraphs, one with dramatically different contents. But another part of what makes the last sentence a surprise is the quick movement from the character’s inner life to an external, objective, cinematic point of view. Readers flash from within the character’s decision making, his deliberations about his own safety, to a flat description of consequences. As much as those consequences may have been anticipated, seeing them on the page is surprising.

We might try similar strategies when we seek to surprise readers.

Learning from Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin has a lot to teach. Here is a paragraph from late in A Wizard of Earthsea.

They passed between Kornay and Gosk in foul weather, seeing neither isle in the fog and rain, and knowing they had passed them only on the next day when they saw ahead of them an isle of pinnacled cliffs above which sea-gulls wheeled in huge flocks whose mewing clamor could be heard from far over the sea. Vetch said, “That will be Astowell, from the look of it. Lastland. East and south of it the charts are empty.”

This is a paragraph of description. The paragraph before it sums up a conversation between Ged and Vetch. Summary and description are interesting when reading Le Guin. For example, in addition to summary, the paragraph I’m not quoting here builds the world of the story by describing magic and mentioning historical figures in that world and sharing their wisdom. One character watches another and reacts in ways that characterizes both. The last sentence is a portent of things to come. All of the sentences, in other words, are working in multiple ways, doing more than one thing.

The paragraph of description I have quoted above describes the fictional world and uses sensory language to do so. Sensory language is far more interesting to most readers than abstract language. Sensory language reminds us of how we experience the actual world so it can help connect us to a fictional one. Readers can draw or dream or film the passage between the islands and sailing past Lastland. That landmark is important enough to the characters that they speak of it and their speaking of it helps make it important to readers. The order of the sentences in the paragraph is not random or haphazard. It ends with “empty,” with the characters leaving not only civilization behind but any safety besides their boat. Like the paragraph before it, this one ends with a portent that increases the danger the characters face. The paragraphs are escalating tension in the story, as George Saunders suggests.

The sentences and the paragraphs do more than one thing. They characterize as they world build as they escalate as they engage reader’s senses as they provide portents/foreshadowing as they summarize. It’s excellent.

Toward characterization

These prompts are inspired by Ted Gioia’s “My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character.” I’ve revised his techniques to create fictional characters.

  1. What childhood experiences formed your character? List three and write a paragraph about each.
  2. How do they handle their time and material resources? What do they do with their free time? What sorts of things do they surround themselves with?
  3. Identify what irritates your character the most about others. (This may be the trait or flaw they dislike most in themselves.)
  4. Describe your character’s long-term relationship(s) so that it reveals what the character longs for and what they think they deserve or will settle for.
  5. How does your character treat people assigned to serve them, especially people who have no power or influence over them?
  6. Does your character cheat at small things? (Why would or wouldn’t that guarantee they will cheat at big things?)
  7. How do they handle unexpected problems? Do they exacerbate the issue (intentionally or not), try to ignore it, negotiate, or attempt a solution alone or with others?
  8. Describe the character’s inner conflict. What do they want? What will they not do to get it?