Whose Voice is This?

By The Word Process on Mar 26, 2010

There is only one way to find your writing voice, your style, and that is to write and rewrite until you get there.

To demonstrate that even great novelists struggle to find their voices, here is a 1927 excerpt from a book written by a famous writer before he found the voice he is so well known for:

“The Nausikaa lay in the basin – a nice thing, with her white, matronly hull and mahogany-and-brass superstructure and the yacht club flag at the peak. A firm, steady wind blew in from the lake and Mrs. Maurier, having already got a taste of the sea from it, had donned her yachting cap and she now clashed and jangled in a happy, pointless ecstasy. Her two cars had made several trips and would make several more, creeping and jouncing along the inferior macadam road upon and beside the spoor of coca cola and the almond bar betrayed the lair of the hot dog and the less-than-one-percent. All the jollity of departure under a perfect day, heat ridden city behind, and a breeze too steady for the darn things to light on you. Her guests each with his or her jar of almond cream and sunburn lotion came aboard in bright, babbling surges, calling, “Ship ahoy, every one,” and other suitable nautical cries, while various casuals, gathered along the quay, looked on with morose interest. Mrs. Maurier in her yachting cap clashed and jangled in a happy and senseless excitement.
On the upper deck where the steward broke out chairs for them, her guests in their colored clothing, gathered, dressed for deep water in batik and flowing ties and open collars, informal and colorful with the exception of Mark Frost, the ghostly young man, a poet who produced an occasional cerebral and obscure poem in four or seven lines, reminding one somehow of the function of evacuation excruciatingly and incompletely performed. He wore ironed serge and a high starched collar and he borrowed a cigarette of the steward and lay immediately at full length on something, as was his way. Mrs. Wiseman and Miss Jameson, flanking Mr. Talliafero, sat with cigarettes also. Fairchild, accompanied by Gordon, the Semitic man and a florid stranger in heavy tweeds, and carrying among them several weighty looking suitcases, had gone directly below.
“Are we all here? Are we all here?” Mrs. Maurier chanted beneath her yachting cap, roving her eyes among her guests…”

Can you guess who this is? We will tell you the novelist’s name and the book on Tuesday’s blog.

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Book Dialogue is NOT Talk

By The Word Process on Mar 23, 2010

For those of you who think that realism is the goal when writing book dialogue, don’t. How-are-yous, thank-yous, you’re-welcomes, may-I-introduces should almost never appear in books although these are words many of us utter every day. All these commonplace phrases just drag things down in books and can often be taken for granted so they don’t need to be included. Effective bookspeak is pared down; words are carefully chosen as specific expressions. Many times what is most important is what isn’t said.

To illustrate, here is a conversation one of us recently had with her husband. It is pretty much verbatim except that names have been changed to protect the identity of unwitting house guests:

She: Sit down. We have to talk about something.
He: What are you doing?
She: Leaving you
He: Oh, that’s great. When are you going to start packing?
She: Just kidding. It just sounded so dramatic asking you to sit down.
He: I thought you were just being your usual demanding self.
She: I got an e-mail from Nell today.
He: Oh?
She: She says they will be leaving Florida a day early so they will be arriving during the afternoon in time for the hockey game.
He: I told you John really wants to see Ovechkin play.
She: Maybe we should all go out to dinner.
He: John doesn’t do very well going out to dinner.
She: So you are saying that you will eat at the game?
He: I think that would be the best thing.
She: I will have to figure out something for Nell and me to do.

This is the kind of humdrum discussion that makes up everyday life for most of us. It has a lot of words in it, many of them unnecessary to communication and even more of them deadly to book dialogue.

Something else that drags the above dialogue down is the rambling nature of it. It’s not going anywhere, not plugged in to a greater whole. Book dialogue should always serve the plot. In the above case, there is no plot, it is just life.

So, with apologies to Capitals’ hockey left wing Alex Ovechkin, here is the same conversation edited to be included in a thriller:

She: We have to talk.
He: When are you going to start packing?
She: I got an e mail.
He: Oh?
She: They will be arriving during the afternoon.
He: John wants to see Ovechkin.
She: Maybe we should go out.
He: John doesn’t do well going out.
She: I will figure something out.

Reworked to be part of a relationship novel:

She: Sit down. We have to talk.
He: What are you doing?
She: Leaving.
He: Oh?
She: E mail from Nell. They will be arriving in time for the game.
He: John wants to see Ovechkin play.
She: Maybe we should go out to dinner.
He: John doesn’t do well at dinner.
She: You will eat at the game?
He: I think that would be best.

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Writing for Immortality – or Not

By The Word Process on Mar 19, 2010

Electronically leafing through the issue of “Life Magazine” dated August 4, 1952, we came across a ten-page spread about an industrialist/author named Henry Yorke during his day job and Henry Green when he wrote.
The “Life” spread was timed to coincide with the U.S. issuance of Green’s novel DOTING by Viking Press.

It was his ninth book and he was a successful author in his day, as well as a friend to writers like Evelyn Waugh and W.H. Auden. DOTING garnered good reviews:

“DOTING has some of the best moments of comedy Mr. Green has yet written.” — Times Literary Supplement
“Pain gives a maniacal edge to the wild laughter that lies between the absurd lines.” — V.S. Pritchett, New Yorker
“There is possibly no novelist in business who punctures human pretensions quite so subtly as Henry Green. . . . ” — Atlantic Monthly

Told almost entirely in dialogue, DOTING is a comedy of manners that draws a distinction between those who love and those who dote, which is to say are fond. Set in post-World War II London, the book depicts a series of affairs among five characters, led by middle-aged and married Arthur Middleton, who becomes infatuated with a younger woman.

Green saw himself as a writing pioneer. The “Life” article says he was interested in reducing the novel form to its essentials. Says “Life,” Green “like Hemingway in the early short stories, refused to describe his characters at all, he has made pioneer explorations of all the ways in which they can describe themselves.” (This, by the way, is pretty much accepted writing practice now. Writers are often advised to keep description to a minimum.)

Today, there seem to be all of four copies of DOTING available on Amazon, only one a new reprint. Few, if any of us, have heard of Green, and maybe that would have been okay with him. He generally hid behind his pseudonym and shunned the limelight for his writing. But for writers who dream that their work will live on after they are gone, Green is an object lesson. His novel which he said in “Life” was “an advanced attempt to break up the old-fashioned type of novel” seems hopelessly old-fashioned now. Below is an excerpt taken from a 2001 article in the New York Times:

”All I mean is,” her husband patiently explained ”it must be an entirely different matter, my taking the girl out and a man like Charles to do so. I’m married, for one thing. Everyone knows I’m safe as houses. Whereas Charles, well, he’s just a voluptuary.”
”What’s that, darling?”
”Oh well, let it pass. I’m sorry I ever introduced them, now.”
”You did! But how tiresomely stupid of you, Arthur. You should have known you’d lose her by so doing!”
”You can’t lose what you haven’t got,” the husband objected.
”We won’t go into that again. Not in this crowded place! Yet why are you still sorry?”
”I am for little Ann, because Charles is the man he’s turned out to be.”
”I see, Arthur. So you don’t meet Ann, now?”
”No. And do you ever see Charles?”
”No more, no more!” his wife wailed comically. At which they both laughed in a rather shamefaced way at each other.
”In spite of all your tricks I love you, darling,” Mr. Middleton told his wife.
”You’re a wicked old romantic,” she said, beaming back at him.
”Enough of a one to put a spoke in your works every now and again.”
”Oh don’t worry,” she announced. ”I haven’t done with Charles yet, not by a long chalk!”

The “Life” spread on Green is at the link below:

http://books.google.com/books?id=YFYEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_slider_thumb#v=onepage&q=&f=false

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Showing Versus Telling, the Horror of it

By The Word Process on Mar 15, 2010

We recently took a road trip and to take our minds off the horrible monotony of the New Jersey Turnpike, we listened to horror stories, including one by Bram Stoker and one by Edgar Allan Poe. We were surprised to discover that the two masters of the macabre had completely different approaches to writing. Stoker showed; Poe told.

Here is the beginning of Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest.” He gets right into it with an urgent need to hurry that is shown in dialogue, with galloping horses, and by the bafflement of a passenger who stops the carriage at what we know is his peril.

When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d’hotel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door, “Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.” Here he smiled and added, “for you know what night it is.”
Johann answered with an emphatic, “Ja, mein Herr,” and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signaling to him to stop:
“Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?”
He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: “Walpurgis nacht.”

In the “Masque of the Red Death,” Poe’s style is descriptive. He breaks all the modern rules of writing by simply telling his story and doing it so effectively, it is terrifying:

THE “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.

The stories were startling in their contrasting approaches. After listening to both, we came away with a strong opinion about which one of these writers had the more effective technique. We wonder what you think.

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Book Characters are People Too

By The Word Process on Mar 12, 2010

The martini bar was full of career women that meant nothing to Arnold. They were drinking an array of `tinis from apple to chocolate that made his stomach slightly queasy.

The above sentences contain an error that is typical of many we read in clients’ manuscripts. Can you pick it out?

It is the use of the word “that.” We have used it twice, once correctly and once incorrectly.

For the record, in both these sentences “that” is being used as a relative pronoun. A relative pronoun links two clauses in a single sentence. It is a little like a conjunction (and, or, but). The difference is that a relative pronoun takes the place of a noun. In the first sentence, “that” is taking the place of the women. In the second, it is subbing for the `tinis:
The martini bar was full of women. The women meant nothing to Arnold.
They were drinking an array of ‘tinis. The ‘tinis made his stomach queasy.

The problem is “that” is used to refer to entities or objects, but not to people. Imagine a martini bar full of women who are not people and you get androids mechanically popping back drinks. Arnold may be objectifying the bar women, but surely not that in that way. The bar should have been full of women WHO meant nothing to him.

Here, thanks to Wikipedia are examples that illustrate the difference between that and who:

This is the bank that accepted my identification.
She is the bank teller who helped us open an account.

Apologies to those of you WHO think this is obvious. But we have seen this error repeatedly and we feel bad for the book characters WHO have been rendered to object status in the prime of their short, but vital existences.

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What The Ghost Writer says about Ghostwriting

By The Word Process on Mar 9, 2010

Since we are sometime ghostwriters, a movie entitled The  Ghost Writer was bound to hold an attraction for us. We went to see it during its first weekend in the theatres.

It is a wonderfully literary movie. For example, at both the beginning and the end are scenes featuring a taxi, a manuscript and the ghostwriter. The two scenes play out completely differently and the actors, if you will, play entirely different roles. In between, is the movie. Since it is a thriller, a lot happens. But of interest here, are the ghost and the manuscript and the changes they undergo between those bookend scenes.

In the beginning, the ghost and the manuscript could not be more separate. The ghost has never read the 600 plus pages he has been given. We are revealing nothing to say that in the end, he has absorbed the truth of the ms. he is carrying. In doing so, he has transferred its value to himself. The movie ghostwriter is never given a life outside of his job as a ghost and does not even have a name. But in the end, he becomes the story.

It is an interesting comment on ghostwriting. We often get queries from people who say they have a great idea for a book and are looking for someone to write it. If the idea is fictional, we suggest they write their own book; we don’t ghostwrite fiction.

The best way to tell your story, whether it is a novel or a memoir, is to tell your story. We are skillful writers but we don’t speak with your voice. Besides, the dirty little secret about writing books is that writing is its own reward. Like physical exercise, it requires discipline, but it pays off in all sorts of satisfying ways.

In the movie, the ghostwriter is hired to take a boring political memoir already written by another ghostwriter and make it a best seller. The result is to completely bury the politician whose memoir it is purported to be. You never know the truth about him.

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Novel Characters Should Not Know Anything – Ever

By The Word Process on Mar 4, 2010

We would like to ban characters in works of fiction from thinking, feeling and knowing. Okay, novel denizens may occasionally think or feel but they should never, ever know anything. Here is a passage that illustrates this point:

Crystal was feeling apprehensive about the meeting with Grayson. She understood she had broken the rules and that that would mean certain punishment. Grayson was capable of a slap on the wrist, but she knew the little man with the beard had a temper and that her life was in real danger.
Filled with a feeling of panic, she distractedly filled the basket and half dragged it down to the basement where she knew the machine was waiting. “This is your fault, George,” she said to her white Persian cat, who, she saw, had followed her down the stairs. If it weren’t for George’s shedding she thought that she could have avoided the task at hand. She knew the time would be better spent figuring out how to deal with Grayson. Instead, she had to focus on upending the basket and sorting the darks from the whites.
She thought at least she would face her fate in clean clothes.

In this passage – which is for illustrative purposes only and makes no claim to literature – the feeling, thinking and knowing just muck things up and drag the action down. For starters, the reader does not need to be told that C is feeling apprehensive. Her life is in danger, what else would she be feeling? Nor does she need to understand, think or know at any place in the passage. That is because this passage is from Cyrstal’s point of view. Everything in it is what she knows or thinks or feels so everytime the writer tells that she is thinking, feeling or knowing, it is unnecessary, dead wood.

Here is the same passage after editing:

Crystal had broken the rules. It meant certain punishment. Grayson was capable of a slap on the wrist, but the little man with the beard had a temper. Her life was in real danger.
She distractedly filled the basket and half dragged it down to the basement. “This is your fault, George,” she muttered to her white Persian cat who tagged along behind. If it weren’t for George’s shedding she might have avoided the task at hand. She could have used the time to figure out how to deal with Grayson. Instead, she upended the basket and began to sort darks from whites.
She would face her fate in clean clothes.

Still not literature, but we hope you see the difference. When characters feel, think or know, it gets between the reader and the story.

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Skipping out on the Ending – Don’t

By The Word Process on Mar 2, 2010

Lately, we have had a number of clients who simply pass over the endings to their fiction books. It is as if they arrive at the last scenes all out of breath and can only cough up, “Oh, by the way, this, this and this happened. The end.”

What a terrible way to repay the reader who has struggled through hundreds of pages in order to get that reward at the end of the book, whether it be a happy ending or a wallow of tears or an enigma that leaves the reader with something to ponder as she/he closes the volume or switches off the Kindle. Whatever it is, it is why the reader is reading the book in the first place: to get to the end.

Much is made of the importance of the first chapters of books. It has a lot to do with the marketplace and the reality that agents and editors do not want to waste their time on anything that doesn’t captivate them in the first few graphs. The same is probably true of readers in this impatient era.

Long term however it is that ending that counts. First chapters are rarely ever completely absorbed by readers. Try going back after you have finished a novel, particularly a substantive one, and rereading that first chapter. Odds are, unless you are an exceptional reader, you will discover tidbits that you missed. Sometimes authors tell what the whole book is about in those first pages and the reader, trying to immerse him/herself into the world of the novel, is apt to miss it.

But the ending lingers. The reader deserves to experience it fully in all its feel-good/feel-bad intensity. It is the novel take away and writers owe it to themselves and all their hard work to bring that ending to life in full technicolor. It too will have an effect on sales.

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Show…and Tell

By The Word Process on Feb 26, 2010

In our last blog, we talked about the importance of learning to show Using an example from John Le Carre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD we attempted to show what it means to show in writing.

Most books in their simplest form are a series of scenes that show the action of the book. Concocting these scenes takes work. The writer has to establish place, ambience, point of view and most importantly, action. The scene has to advance the plot. Novice fiction writers often take for granted that if these things are vivid in their imaginations, the reader will get them by osmosis and all he/she has to do is explain. The novice should probably focus first on learning to show.

But not everything in a book can be shown without dragging it down to a level of boring minutiae. That is where telling comes in. If showing is the foundation of the book – the cake – telling is the icing. We think it can make the difference between an okay book and a great one. Going back to that first chapter of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, here is a paragraph in which Le Carre chooses to tell:

“Pushing up the collar of his jacket, Leamas stepped outside into the icy October wind. He remembered the crowd then. It was something you forgot inside the hut, this group of puzzled faces. The people changed but the expressions remained the same. It was like the helpless crowd that gathers around a traffic accident, no one knowing how it happened, whether you should move the body. Smoke or dust rose between the beams of the arc lamps, a constant shifting pall between the margins of light.”

Okay, it has nowhere near the breathless excitement of the opening graphs we posted earlier. But here, told from Leamus’ point of view, we get a vivid image of the people on the street: the helpless expressions, the sense that something terrible and incomprehensible has happened, the shifting light. Le Carre is adding depth and foreboding to his work in this paragraph. He is also advancing the plot, getting Leamus out of the checkpoint building without showing us the scene, which might involve Leamus talking to one of the people on the street in order to learn that person is anxious and has the sense that something terrible has happened, etc., etc., etc.

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Showing, Instead of Telling

By The Word Process on Feb 23, 2010

Show don’t tell is an admonition often given to novice writers and with good reason. There is a tendency to explain, and mostly the explaining has to do with what is going on inside a character’s head. Telling how a character feels will bring the action down every time.

Here is an example: He was determined. He wasn’t going to let himself be talked out of waiting. He knew he had to make contact. Not to do so was unthinkable. He accepted a cup of coffee, but did not say anything when the suggestion was made that he should go back and sleep. He was careful not to reveal his impatience. He could get back tot he checkpoint in 20 minutes if he had to. But he choose to wait. It was getting dark outside.

Boring huh? Compare this to the first graphs of John Le Carre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. Here, he is showing what we just told.

“The American handed Leamus another cup of coffee and said, ‘Why don’t you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up.’
Leamus said nothing, just stared through the window of the checkpoint, along the empty street.
‘You can’t wait forever, sir. Maybe he’ll come some other time. We can have the polizei contact the agency: you can be back here in twenty minutes.’
‘No,’ said Leamus, ‘It’s nearly dark now.’”

Le Carre uses dialogue as a tool to show this scene. By doing so, he invites the reader directly into the checkpoint overlooking that empty street. He never tells us that Leamus is determined to wait, but we get it and at the same time, we are sucked into the story, wanting to know who he is waiting for and why is he is being so stubborn about it.

Telling cannot be eliminated from story telling; you would end up with a play. But learning when and what to show in a book is a large part of learning to be a writer.

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