I’ve just finished reading Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West: A Novel. It’s an excellent text book on novel writing. Allow me to demonstrative (hopefully) with just one sentence, written as three of the characters cope with the death of another:

“Saeed’s father encountered each day objects that had belonged to his wife and so would sweep his consciousness out of the current others referred to as the present, a photograph or an earring or a particular shawl worn on a particular occasion, and Nadia encountered each day objects that took her into Saeed’s past, a book or a music collection or a sticker on the inside of a drawer, and evoked emotions from her own childhood, and jagged musings on the fate of her parents and her sister, and Saeed, for his part, was inhabiting a chamber that had been his only briefly, years ago, when relatives from afar or abroad used to come to visit, and being billeted here again conjured up for him echoes of a better era, and so in these several ways these three people sharing this one apartment splashed and intersected with each other across varied and multiple streams of time.”

First this sentence is a reminder of one of Donald Barthelme’s exercises, called, I think, “Assignment: Write a sentence with some attention to the notes below.” To summarize, Barthelme asks what should readers demand from sentences in fiction? He mentions four things: sentences should surprise, be true, be beautiful, and turn “the mind toward original questions, first principles, the deepest sort of search for meaning.” Barthelme’s exercise encourages those performing it to consider possible examples in the light of each of these criteria. As high as these expectations are, Hamid’s sentence meets them.

His sentence also illustrates two other principles. The first is that setting reveals the characters. Readers come to know and understand these characters because they are seen in this particular place. The objects that they have chosen to surround themselves with helps identify the characters.  Saeed’s father, having kept objects that belonged to his wife, is jolted from the present as he encounters them. Nadia, encountering objects from Saeed’s past, is reminded of her own. Saeed experiences nostalgia as he rediscovers a childhood room. In all of these cases, characterization and setting blur.

Secondarily and similarly, characterization and plot blur. The characters in this sentence are all responding differently to the death of Saeed’s mother. Their responses involve tiny changes in how they see and are in the world. What has happened to these characters has changed their way of being in the world. Their encounters with the objects and the place around them, the sentence clearly suggests, is different than it had been. Saeed’s father’s consciousness is swept from its current moment, Nadia finds connections between her past and Saeed’s, and the setting conjures up memories of a better era for Saeed. Characters acting or being acted upon, even in these subtle ways, are forms of plot.

And it would be easy to go on by considering how characters can mesh in thematically significant ways like they do here, or how the sentence is organized, or this sentence and Charles Baxter’s counterpointed characterization from his book Burning Down the House.

If you want to do any of these things, Hamid provides a model.

This exercise has its roots in Benjamin Percy’s excellent Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, specifically the “Get a Job” chapter.

Characterize by writing about the character’s job. Address at least the following prompts:

• How did the character get the job?
• How does the setting/dress of the character change as a result of it?
• Describe the character’s relationships with at least three people at work.
• Describe/contrast these relationships with at least three people not at work.
• How does the job change/shape/impact the non-job relationships?
• Given this job, what point of view makes sense? How is the character likely to see the world?
• List three metaphors this character would use.
• What new language/jargon/jokes does the character learn as a result of the job?

“For example, let’s say you have a main character whose feelings can be hurt if he’s spoken to sharply—unlike you, ha-ha-ha. Say he is also a little like you in the sense that when he gets a bit depressed or tense, he heads for a rib joint to eat a pound of burned, fatty meat. So he is perhaps also a little overweight—not that you are overweight. I’m sure your weight is just fine. Anyway, let’s make him someone who works in an office, someone who’s been pampered—what could he say that lets us see this?”

from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott

Lots of interesting things going on in these sentences. Humor is one of them. The suddenness, the surprising transitions might be part of this: “spoken to sharply–unlike you, ha-ha-ha,” for example, but also the end of the sentence after the next one: “not that your are overweight.” The sentence after that, “I’m sure your weight is just fine,” protests too much, as Shakespeare might say.

The use of second person and the distancing effect (“This ‘you’ is not me. Oh, no, no, no. Not me”) associated with it gives readers room to laugh, a bit, at how autobiographical a main character might be. At the same time, the persona doubles-down on the connection between the reader and the main character: “Say he is also a little like you . . . .” Readers can laugh at the autobiographical connection while knowing, to an extent, of its connection to them, humans generally, and Lamott’s persona.

The last phrase of the last sentence is a question, but one that the example before it answers. The persona is saying things that let the reader know the hypothetical main character is pampered, overweight, eats when depressed, and sensitive. Subtle and effective.

Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson contains endless lessons for writers. Here are four:

• Don’t be afraid to expand and explore. Rather than Netherland, which demonstrates the virtues of a tight focus, Cryptonomiconexplores widely and wildly. For example, I imagine a simple comparison like “The Vickers cut through the roadblock like a bandsaw cuts cheap wood” in a rough draft.  Stephenson seems to have revised by expanding both the tenor and vehicle of the comparison into long detailed paragraphs. The vehicle (a bandsaw) becomes a several page flashback from the narrating character’s past and the tenor (the Vickers) becomes a several page scene in the character’s present.
• Stephenson seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the main subjects of his book: WWII, cryptography, information theory.
• The novel consists of several long narratives that I expect to interconnect as the novel continues. Stephenson connects them thematically, obviously, but also by simply having the characters be related. The narratives take place years apart, but the characters are generally part of two families.
• The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing (a composition textbook) suggests what it calls the “Old/New Contract.” Old information, information readers either have already been told or can reasonably be expected to know, is presented before new information. The effectiveness of this for some forms of writing is obvious. But Stephenson builds many of the sections within his chapters (and the chapters themselves) in a “New/Old/New” pattern. This pattern seems likely to increase reader engagement because it offers at least some degree of surprise consistently. For example, characters often begin sections in new, relatively unexplained situations. The next paragraphs in the section explain some backstory, explain how the character got into that situation. Then the section or chapter ends with more new information, usually shown in a scene, pushing the narrative forward. This new information creates a new hook or “cliff hanger” to varying degrees, but always propelling readers on.