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A monologue that doesn’t drone on – too much

By on Jun 18, 2010

We just read THE PORTRAIT (2005) by Iain Pears for the book club. Not to keep you in suspense, the book club loved it which is interesting because THE PORTRAIT is 211 paperback pages of a guy talking while he paints the portrait of another man. The sitter never speaks and the portraitist, Henry MacAlpine, creates a tightly constructed picture of this man, his nemesis, in words even as he does in paint. As the reviewer for the Washington Post wrote, MacAlpine “seems like a man who has been talking to himself for years and now is talking to himself in front of someone.” We might add that MacAlpine seems to have been talking about the same things for years, perfecting the monologue that is this book.
What is interesting about this style is it creates problems for the reader who can only participate in the book in a second-hand way. There is no interaction between characters, no conversation, no opinions other than MacAlpine’s through which the entire book is filtered. This is a book that breaks that cardinal rule of writing: show, don’t tell. THE PORTRAIT does nothing but tell, and the guy doing the telling is not a nice fellow. For example, he started out his career by stealing all his mother’s retirement savings. His voice is full of smarmy, self-satisfaction.
The style does not work for everyone. Reader reviews from Amazon warn of its potential to “become tedious” and scream that it is “dull, dull, dull.” That other readers, including the book club, liked the book says a lot for Pears’ skill, both as a writer and an art historian. He does manage to build suspense in terms of the plot which unfolds in a masterly way and holds some surprises, although the ending seems a foregone conclusion. To us, the real interest of the book is the creepy character of MacAlpine himself. Is he reliable? What makes him tick? Why did he lure the sitter to the barren island where he now lives? Note the ambiguity in the following quote, the hidden conversation MacAlpine is having with himself:
“It was I who summoned you. I who knew you would come, would have to come see me. I lured you here. I needed to see if you would come.”

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Robert Frost and Writing Places

By on Jun 15, 2010

We recently stopped by the Robert Frost cabin in Ripton, Vermont. The cabin – unchanged from Frost’s time – was where the great American poet spent summers during the last 30 years of his life from the late 1930’s until his death in 1963. He did much of his writing there.
Owned by Middlebury College, the cabin is too fragile to be opened to the public, but what one can see from the porch window is how remarkably spare it is. Constructed of unfinished logs and planks, it is not graced anywhere by so much as a coat of paint. The furnishings are equally spare, a few unpainted book shelves and a straight chair. The great poet wrote in a red leather Morris chair with a piece of plywood balanced on the arm rests for a desk.
Frost was successful and well-to-do at this stage of his life, but he chose this austerity as if the view from his windows – the swaying meadow grasses flanked by birch and pine trees and beyond them, the graceful Green Mountains – were all he really needed for his comfort.
The cabin made us think about the places where we chose to do our writing. It doesn’t matter where or what they are, but these are such important places, where the mind and the heart are free to roam – and, if one can turn off the Internet, it is possible to focus on the impossible task of filling a blank page.
One of Robert Frost’s last, great poems was written at the Ripton cabin in 1951. “A Cabin in the Clearing” is a dialogue between mist and smoke, exterior and interior vapors that mirror the exterior and interior voices of the two people living in the poem’s cabin, who are struggling with life’s big, existential questions.
Among other things, the poem speaks to the importance of place, saying that place is not only an intrinsic part of who we are, but also that we are an intrinsic part of the place we choose.
“If the day ever comes when they know who
They are, they may know better where they are.”


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You don’t have to rewrite with a toothbrush

By on Jun 8, 2010

A quote that is all over the Internet compares rewriting to “scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush”. The quote is a great deal more available than information about the writer to which it is attributed, Pete Murphy. We think this must be the Peter Murphy who wrote JOHN THE REVELATOR, an acclaimed coming of story in southeastern Ireland.
Here is a quote from that Peter Murphy which sounds a little like he might have written the toothbrush one too. He is describing his writing process:
“Spew onto the screen, shape, edit, printout, make notes, cut, rework, insert, reshape, printout again, make more notes, re-insert, re-cut, repeat, ad lib to fade. I’d love to eventually get back to longhand. A cramp in the hand sharpens the mind.”
A cramp in the hand, toothbrush scrubbing, see the similarity? In both cases, he, if it is he, makes the point that writing is hard, hard work. And so it is.
But perversely, we love rewrites. It has a lot to recommend it. For one, you have to have finished something – a book, a chapter, a story – to rewrite it. There is some comfort in that. You’re already immersed in it and the framework, that there is a framework, is not in doubt although it may need work.
In revisiting words and scenes that were set down at some earlier time, you may surprise yourself by liking them. If you don’t, you are coming at them with some perspective and will more easily see ways to improve them. We take great pleasure in reworking material because we can see it get better and we get a lot of satisfaction from that.

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Scare Quotes: Aghhhhhhhhh!

By on Jun 4, 2010

Scare quotes are defined as the use of quotation marks to show that a word is not being used in its usual sense. Scare quotes can also be used to indicate irony. Here are some examples:
The people who lived in the small town, “the natives,” claimed to have a “big city attitude.” Many of them had memberships in the local “fitness” center which was merely a big room with some tread mills in it. A large group met there daily to discuss the town “news.” This often amounted to no more than a discussion of who went to church on Sunday and which “reprobates” did not.
What scare quotes really do is separate the writer from the term he or she is using. The writer of the paragraph above apparently does not want to be grouped with the residents of that town. Putting “the natives” in quotes casts doubt on whether the town residents were born there and also, makes a comment about them since natives tend to be thought of as indigenous peoples in grass huts. Putting “big city attitude” in quotes suggests the writer does not agree that the townies have a big city attitude. The same is true of “fitness” and “news.”
Here is the same paragraph without the scare quotes:
The people who lived in the small town, claimed to have a big city attitude. Many of them had memberships in the local fitness center which was merely a big room with some tread mills in it. A large group met there daily to discuss the town news. This often amounted to no more than a discussion of who went to church on Sunday.
Note that the second graph is entirely different from the first in feel and message.
Scare quotes do NOT merely call attention to words. They comment on them and sometimes they can hint at a sneer. They also interject the writer into the narrative which can be a good thing if the writer’s or narrator’s personal opinion is in some way central to the material. But if it isn’t, scare quotes can interfere. Think carefully about getting in between the reader and the narrative. It can be disruptive.

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Dexter and the point of view problem

By on May 30, 2010

We are watching the first season of Dexter, the Showtime series about a serial killer, that is now in its fifth season. Yes, we are a little behind but we weren’t sure we wanted to weigh in on the side of serial killing which is the dilemma the series presents for viewers.
But Dexter has made us think about writing and what influences writing. The character Dexter is a first person narrator. He observes along with the camera and viewer. He reports events as well as what is going on in his secret world. Occasionally, the writers throw in third person scenes in which Dexter is not present or knowledgeable about to advance the plot. There are also some flashbacks.
So what to make of the curious scene we saw the other night in which a minor character is yelling out a major clue and Dexter is seen in his car, chatting with his girlfriend and not hearing what is hitting us viewers loud and clear. The erstwhile first person narrator is a sudden plot pawn and the writers get away with it because by this time – nine episodes in – the suspense is high. But it is jarring. There is our trusted serial killer cast temporarily as a complete, uncharacteristic patsy.
It makes us wonder if television isn’t why so many of our bookwriting clients have trouble with point of view. Are they watching series like Dexter and thinking to create a novel in their image? If you want to write a book, read. If television is your thing, then consider writing for the small screen. Or maybe, try a book with video inserts, something that electronic readers now make possible. We wonder what these will do to point of view.

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Details, Details – Don’t skip them

By on May 25, 2010

“I like it a lot better! It seems ‘meatier’ for lack of a better word.” These are the words of a client who recently finished a revision of her novel along lines we suggested. The resulting change was dramatic and while there were other factors, the difference can be characterized by one word: detail.
Detail is what brings books to life. It is the icing on the cake, the difference between a boring white flour read and one with brightly colored frosting. Here is the first line of Alice Munro’s THE LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN:
“We spent days along the Wawanash River, helping Uncle Benny fish. We caught the frogs for him.”
In those two lines Munro sets up the scene that is to follow. She tells you where (the river), why (fishing) and what the action is (catching frogs for bait). Strictly speaking, it is all she needs to start the book. But then she brings the scene alive with detail:
“We chased them, stalked them, crept up on them, along the muddy riverbank, under the willow trees and in marshy hollows full of rattails and sword grass that left the most delicate, at first invisible, cuts on our legs. Old frogs knew enough to stay out of our way, but we did not want them; it was the slim young green ones, the juicy adolescents, that we were after, cool and slimy; we squished them tenderly in our hands, then plopped them in a honey pail and put the lid on.”
It is all this detail that brings the reader skating along the riverbank, ducking under the low-hanging willows and feeling the sting of those invisible cuts. It is a specific time and place, like no other, and the reader is there along with the still unidentified frog catchers, who are barelegged and young because who but a child would love frog bait enough to squish it?

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Writing without a net

By on May 21, 2010

There is no worse feeling than getting deeply into a piece of writing and come to the conclusion that it isn’t going to work out, that a character is behaving out-of-character or a plot twist is improbable or the ending is simply impossible. We come to these panicky realizations every day when we are writing.
The writing process is the dead opposite of the way most of us try to live our lives which is to say with a certain amount of control. No matter how tightly a writer plots her/his work before beginning to write it, uncertainty creeps in. Unexpected things happen, characters do their own thing or the plot just looks different on the computer screen. Writing is not knowing exactly where you are going to end up or how you are going to get there or even if you are going to get there. So yes, it is anxiety producing.
We have learned to talk ourselves down when we come to an impasse. And sometimes it is just panic. The character would do that, the plot will work and the ending is just fine. Sometimes, the work requires a step backwards and some rethinking. And often, it is the better for it. But it is important to remember that anxiety is part of the process. The writer is, after all, working without a net.
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath

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There is nothing short about writing a short story

By on May 18, 2010

Writing a short story requires almost as much legwork as writing a novel. The author has to bring the story’s characters to life, give them backgrounds, put them in a context, develop a voice and so on and on. It is a lot of investment for 3,000 to 4,000 words.
Last week, we sat down to write a short story, thinking to get it done, accomplish the task and move on to the next thing. Ha. It was not a good week. With only a very general sense of what we wanted to do, we spent almost the entire week looking at a blank computer screen with all too frequent forays into the land of the living on the Internet. By Thursday, we were in a state of such complete anxiety that the muse would have had to use a billy club to get our attention.
It wasn’t until Friday morning that we woke up with a phrase in mind that has become the seed of a possible story. This week, we are in the building block phase, deciding on specifics like the color of characters’ eyes and the décor of their apartments – and doing required research.
Maybe next week, we will begin writing.

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The ultimate judge – you

By on May 14, 2010

Hiring editors like ourselves can be very helpful in solving problems with manuscripts. We read carefully and give our best opinions about what can be done to improve the material. But all we can do is suggest. The writer has to be the final arbiter of what works and doesn’t work to improve an ms. – and sometimes, this requires an overhaul in thinking.
It is often suggested that writers put their work away for a while and come back at it later. This helps create space and can provide a fresh perspective. But it doesn’t necessarily provide clarity.
We once sent a manuscript to a well-respected editor who reviewed it and made numerous suggestions which we assiduously followed in a lengthy re-write. But the book still didn’t really work. We were getting comments from editors who weren’t really sure what was wrong with it, but felt it wasn’t successful. So, we hired the editor for another review. She sent back more suggestions, but among them in her critique, was a comment to this effect: “You just don’t want to be understood.”
This was a revelation. She was right, and of all the suggestions she made, this one alone was worth her fee. We were indulging in the fantasy of writing a book and not getting tough with ourselves about what we really wanted to say.
Sometimes, working out the kinks in your ms. can be a matter of working out the kinks in your head. Like everything to do with writing, it is not easy work.

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Writing a memoir is tantamount to writing a work of fiction these days.

By on May 11, 2010

Really. The market for personal stories is so over saturated that memoirs are almost as difficult to sell as works of fiction and as in fiction, they require a strong narrative voice.
In other words, it isn’t enough to have a good story to tell. You have to tell it with a strong voice and wonderful writing. If you want to know what this means, take a look at one of Mary Karr’s books. A poet, when she isn’t a memoirist, she has pretty much set the bar for this kind of thing in LIAR’S POKER and most recently, LIT. In LIT, she tells about coming to grips with alcoholism through Alcoholics Anonymous, an experience she probably shares with millions of people. So, it isn’t the story; it is the way she tells it.
If you have a personal story you want to tell, you will have to do more than just lay out the facts. Finding a voice requires trial and error. This is a process successful fiction writers go through, and it is not easy. Arguably, with your own story at stake, it may be harder to step aside and work on ways to present it. It is also hurtful to think other people might not want to sit down and read the straight facts of experiences that touched you so deeply.
But the days of dredging up some dark, personal experience and going on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote your book about it are over. The show is ending in 2011. It is not a coincidence.

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