Tag: writing

Learning from Bisson

First, a little context: the characters must fix a flat tire at night on an isolated road. Flashlights sputter. Then we read,

There was a flood of dim orange flickery light. But when I turned to find the lug nuts, I was surprised to see that the flashlight the boy was holding was dead. The light was coming from two bears at the edge of the trees, holding torches. They were big, three hundred pounders, standing about five feet tall. Wallace Jr. and his father had seen them and were standing perfectly still. It’s best not to alarm bears.

The character finishes fixing the flat in simple, direct statements, most starting with “I” and a verb: “I fished,” “I reached,” “I was relieved,” and “I put,” for example. And then these sentences,

All this time, the bears never made a move. They just held the torches, whether out of curiosity or helpfulness, there was no way of knowing. It looked like there may have been more bears behind them, in the trees.

Opening three doors at once, we got into the car and drove off. Wallace was the first to speak. “Looks like bears have discovered fire,” he said.

I’m quoting this story, Terry Bisson’s “Bears Discover Fire,” out of plane old admiration. It’s a surprising premise. Characters in an extreme situation cope methodically, calmly, without violence. Such calm is admirable and can be sort of funny in an understated way. The story is a kind of magical realism but without magic, using the (I’m not sure what to call it) “vastly unlikely” instead; “Bears Discover Fire” was originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. (It’s been reprinted in Lightspeed and Peter S Beagle’s The Secret History of Fantasy.)

Also, the premise isn’t hidden, not at all, but stated directly in the title. Discovering fire has all kinds of mythic implications. What else might? Hiding something or someone? Consider generating twelve three-word titles. Which imply interesting questions in simple, direct language? Pick one or two titles to develop into stories.

Learning from Davis

I’m reading Essays One by Lydia Davis. Some of the essays include her thinking about her own drafting, which I found fascinating. My thinking about my revision isn’t as interesting as hers, but here it is. Footnoting these sorts of changes is a great exercise.

The number after the title is either a word count or endnote.

You think you know someone. 139[1]

My snooty boss asked me to help her move. Now, we’ve worked together a long time and we’ve been social, but she lives in a big house and she has money. She’s downsizing and can pay for this sort of thing. But I go. Job security, you know. I did not know but for room after room she has butterflies, all the colors, pinned and displayed in flat glass cases. A hundred of them at least. Not something I wanted to trust to movers, she said. And the big stuff, beds, tables, books was gone. We filled each others cars, my teammates and I, with her butterfly collection. It took time, but the lifting was light. And it was me; after we placed the last case in her new place, I said, Karaoke? and she took us all dancing.

You think you know someone. 117

My snooty boss asked me to help her move. Now,[2] we’ve been social, but she has money. She can pay for this sort of thing. But I go. Job security, you know.[3] For room after room she has butterflies, all the colors, pinned and displayed in flat glass cases.[4] A hundred of them at least.[5] “Not something I wanted to trust to movers,” she said. The big stuff, beds and desks, was gone.[6] We filled each other’s cars, my teammates and I,[7] with her butterfly collection.[8] It took time, but the lifting was light. And it was me; after we set the last case in her new condo, I said, Karaoke? and she took us all dancing.[9]

You Think You Know Someone[10]

My snooty boss asked me to help her move. Now, we chat occasionally, but she has money. She can afford professionals.[11] But I went. Job security, you know. The fridge and mattress were gone. She said, “These are not things I trust to movers.”[12] She had butterflies, every color, pinned and displayed in flat glass cases, ninety-three of them.[13] My teammates and I filled each other’s cars with her butterfly collection. It took time, but the lifting was light. I confess[14] after we set the last case in her new condo, I said, “Karaoke?” and she took us all dancing.[15]

[1] This is the first draft, written after a throw of a set of Story Cubes. I used three of the nine cubes. One of my favorite places to try and publish is 100WordStory, so my first revision goal in this case is condensing. Cutting is usually a good revision technique. Footnoting additions (also a way to revise) could be interesting, but isn’t my project this time.

[2] I cut “we’ve worked together a long time and,” “lives in a big house and she,” and “’s downsizing and” because they are implied or common/cliched first-draft language. Leaving “She can pay for this sort of thing” characterizes as the narrator doubles-down.

[3] “But I go,” is a short sentence after longer ones. “Go” and “know” rhyme too much. I may change them yet. “Job security, you know” provides a motivation most people can probably relate to. It’s also colloquial, characterizes, and addresses the reader directly. The direct address is probably a small surprise which is likely to keep readers reading. “I did not know” is a rhyme too far and implied by the story itself. 

[4] The butterflies are intended as another surprise. I’m tempted to add more details like sizes and Latin names, in cursive handwriting on cards next to each insect.

[5] A shorter fragment after a longer sentence adds variety, but do I do it too much?

[6] I left this sentence for this draft, but it could be cut and traded for more details about the collection.

[7] Here is an action that shows community, at least a little, in contrast with the isolation and transactional relationships early in the story.

[8] This phrase is also a candidate for cutting. Maybe. It provides a nice summary, but is that needed in something this short? It does clarify what is filling the cars.

[9] “And it was me” implies a confession, which could be surprising, and the question of what will be confessed might maintain reader engagement. “Placed” becomes “set” and “place” becomes “condo” because the rhymes were too heavy. What is being confessed is a call for karaoke (probably anticlimactic, but not too serious), implying a desire for continuing unity with the team and the boss, though that is is “confessed” adds a layer of complicated feelings about it. The sentence also continues to suggest a change in how the narrator thinks of the boss, probably no longer “snooty.” The final phrase confirms the new understanding of the boss and may contain another surprise.

Although the draft has gone from 139 to 117 words, more needs to be cut. “Bosses” are presented very favorably. Could “boss” become “supervisor” or “manager” or “union rep”? “Subordinates”? Or if the narrator explicitly sees the call for help to move as a cry for companionship?

[10] The title is both a cliche and gives gives too much away. It tells the story or sums it up too completely.

[11] “Afford professionals” seems abstract but less abstract than “pay for this sort of thing.” It’s also fewer words.

[12] Moving sentences to earlier in the story increases clarity. It makes trimming more words possible.

[13] A shorter fragment after a longer sentence adds variety but I do it too much? I’ll combine it with the sentence before.

[14] Making the confession hidden in “And it was me” explicit allows for an implied question. What the narrator confesses becomes more interesting at the same time?

[15] I made other cuts to reach the 100-word formal constraint. Now I’ll let it sit for a while, then reread, hoping it feels finished and good. The class issues and title still bother me.

Learning from Fowler

The first sentence of Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is “Those who know me now will be surprised to learn that I was a great talker as a child.”

If you’ve been reading my posts, you expect me to argue that there is an implied question in the sentence and that readers read beyond it hoping for an answer. You’re right. What’s changed for this character so that they no longer speak as much as they used to? Is this a good thing (“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt” –Abraham Lincoln) or bad (Silence = Death)?

The sentence also explicitly suggests a change in a character, and it characterizes because this is a character who thinks about their life, time, and others, or their audience. This first sentence, in some ways, begins to address the themes of the novel, which can be read as asking about sentience and what sentience in others (especially animals) ethically requires of humanity.

Finally, all of this reminds me of one of Donald Barthelme’s expectations of sentences, that they have a “metaphysical dimension.” Barthelme offers this definition: “By ‘metaphysical dimension’ I mean a quality that turns the mind toward original questions, first principles, the deepest sort of search for meaning.” Ethical questions, especially when they involve how we treat our neighbors, evoke first principles.

How do you know when a novel is finished?

. . . [O]nce I finish a draft, I reread the book. There I find things that are wrong or that don’t work. At that point I make the necessary changes through a new draft. I read the book again. More problems and another rewrite. This process might be repeated twenty times, more. Finally, I reread a batch of changes, see problems in the work, and yet realized that I have no answers. That is when the book is finished.

–Walter Mosley, Elements of Fiction

Learning from Evanovich and Goldberg

Consider the first paragraph of The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg:

Kate O’Hara’s favorite outfit was her blue windbreaker with the letters FBI written in yellow on the back, worn over a basic black T-shirt and matching black Kevlar vest. The ensemble went well with everything, particularly when paired with jeans and accessorized with a Glock. Thirty-three-year-old Special Agent O’Hare didn’t like feeling exposed and unarmed, especially on the job. That all but ruled her out for undercover work. Fine by her. She preferred a hard-charging style of law enforcement, which was exactly what she was practicing on that 96 degree winter afternoon in Las Vegas when she marched into the St. Cosmas Medical Center in her favorite outfit with a dozen similarly dressed agents behind her.

First sentences and first paragraphs should hook readers, should give them reasons to be interested in continuing to read. This paragraph begins with the name of a character, and that character is interesting in part because the language of two distinct worlds is brought together in her: fashion and policing. Specifically, this character has a favorite outfit of police gear, an “ensemble . . . accessorized with a Glock.” The first two sentences use two characterization techniques, appearance and employment, presented using clear visual images. In the third sentence, a restated name and job title provide a transition from the previous sentence; readers are given the character’s age, and they are given access to the character’s inner life. We know already something this character does not like. The fourth and fifth sentences continue to allow access to the character’s feelings and vary sentence lengths. The change in sentence lengths provides emphasis, and the emphasis itself characterizes: “Fine by her.” Continuing attention to the character’s inner life, “she preferred,” provides a transition from the fifth sentence to the last sentence of the paragraph. That last sentence shows the character acting, another way to characterize, and acting in a specific setting. The character’s action suggests an ongoing process. If readers are hooked by nothing else, they read on to discover the results of the process. Characters and readers finish the paragraph with momentum. In other words, by the end of the first paragraph, readers know journalism’s “Five Ws”: “who” is doing “what” “where.” They can estimate “when.” To discover “why,” they read on. (The “Five Ws” have their roots in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.)  Finally, readers also know fairly specifically the genre they are reading.

Evanovich and Goldberg’s opening suggests several things we might try:

  • Using this paragraph and its sentences as a model, can you create expectations of a different genre?
  • How can your character bring together two disparate communities in a sentence or two?
  • What process begun by a main character in your first paragraph can create momentum deep into your narrative?

Similarly, Charlie Jane Anders wrote in Never Say You Can’t Survive, “I found that the more of a situation I could cram into those opening words, the greater the sense of momentum I could create, that could carry me through the rest of the story.” And also similarly, Elizabeth George in Write Away lists eight different hooks (page 70 in my edition) and many examples.

Learning from Ng

In the introduction to the Best American Short Stories 2025 annual, Celeste Ng writes about skipping reading the introductions when she’s read the anthology in the past. Even more interesting, she describes the criteria for good fiction she discovered in the process of making her selections. These criteria can be aspirational; they might be expectations we set for ourselves. Excerpts are below. I’ve added numbers and altered paragraphing.

[1] First and foremost, the story had to grab me. Sometimes this meant an unforgettable premise, or a propulsive plot, or characters so fully drawn that I felt I would know them if I met them on the street. Sometimes it was charm, or humor, or an unexpected twist. The stories that ended up in the Yes pile were ones I couldn’t get out of my head, that I kept thinking about days or even weeks after reading them.

[2] Second, the story had to feel complete…. I wanted a sense that the writer had considered the story holistically, that every choice had been made deliberately, and that all the pieces fit together, even if the… [whole] picture wasn’t fully revealed. And by the time I reached the last line, I needed to understand something more about the situation than I did at the start…

[3] Third, the language of this story had to be of the very highest caliber. If a piece didn’t have sentences that startled or surprised me, or images that took my breath away with their absolute rightness, they usually didn’t make the cut….

[4] And finally … stories had to have heft … They didn’t have to be serious or sad… But I had to feel that this story and these characters were deeply important to the author, not just a thought experiment or a whim…. I also tend to gravitate towards stories that are in conversation with big topics, whether that means our current moment or broad-reaching and eternal themes…. The very best stories engage with more than just the purely personal, and this is what turns a good story into a great story.

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.

Learning from Moore

Here are two paragraphs from Liz Moore’s God of the Woods:

She saw everything. She sat on the edge of the stage that overlooked the community room, watching her campers in all of their triumphs and failures, the ones having genuine fun, the ones pretending to have it.

If she believed in a God, it was in one who functioned something like Louise in this moment: rooting for her charges from afar, mourning alongside them when they were rejected, celebrating every small victory that came their way. She noticed the lonely ones, the ones at the edge of the crowd; she felt in her heart a sort of wild affection for them, wanted to go to them, to stand next to them and pull them tightly to her side; and yet she also knew that to intervene in this way would disrupt something sacred that—at twelve and thirteen and fourteen years old—they were learning about themselves and the world. And this, too, was how she thought of God.

Consider characterization by thoughts about the divine. Characters might not believe at all or might not believe as aggressively and fervently as the most devout evangelists or believe to various changing degrees. What characters consider divine (their money, spouse, time with their phone or family, God) reveals them to readers as well. Does what characters consider divine put them at odds with some of the other characters around them? Does it make them a member of a community or organization? How do they feel about that membership? How do people important to them feel about it? If you’re writing literary realism, is there a faith tradition you want to mention specifically? If you’re writing fantasy, do you need to invent a pantheon? How might meeting aliens change your characters ideas about all of this? What other life events might strengthen or weaken a character’s resolve, whatever their position?

Moore’s paragraphs above quickly show readers Louise’s view of the world, other characters in it, the setting, and a bit about her view of herself. That kind of quick characterization is valuable for writers.

Current events

Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. This might be easiest to explain if we use fiction writing as an example. When you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.

If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story. In neither case is it creating interesting art.

As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.

from Ted Chiang’s Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art