Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Online Writers Studio
Title of Course: Form and Theory Instructor: Joshua Mohr
Week 1: Generating narrative conflict
Introduction:
“I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction—by skipping the parts that bored me.” Jonathan Lethem
This quote from Mr. Lethem is a novelist’s best friend. In its emphasis of playfulness and personal satisfaction, it allows the writer to take some pressure of herself. We need to embrace the whimsy of the creative process. Certainly, we need to work hard, yet we also have to set realistic expectations on what can be accomplished on a draft by draft basis.
Most of you are either starting your first draft or working on its early chapters. Using Lethem’s axiom as our guide, we can find freedom, solace: suddenly, there isn’t as much pressure on our rough drafts, or any early exploratory drafts for that matter. We can have fun on the page!
The big chicken and the egg question that a novelist grapples with as she sits down to start a new project is what to focus on first: should she dedicate herself to learning about her main character, researching what constitutes the character’s sovereign set of perceptions? Or should she try and get things happening on the page from the external perspective, kick off the action, make sure things are cooking in order to seduce the reader into flipping pages?
The good news is that this isn’t an either/or situation. In fact, they’ll inform each other. Each new plot point that a character navigates will illuminate something about her nature. And the protagonist’s idiosyncratic decision making will directly influence that cause and effect relationship between plot points. Think if Holden Caulfield had been plugged into the plot of “Madame Bovary”? How different would that novel would be? What if Chief Bromden was the star of “I Know How the Caged Bird Sings”?
Point is that the main character’s very unique way of handling the obstacles that appear in her path will not only further characterization but will make sure that there’s enough conflict to entice a total stranger to donate her time to your book.
That’s important for us as novelists to remember. There’s a transaction happening: the reader is generously giving us five, seven, maybe even ten hours of her life depending on how long the book is. That’s her part of the transaction. Our part sounds simple but is incredibly difficult: we have to take them on a compelling journey. And nothing bores a reader quicker than a book in which nothing happens.
So, how can we make sure there’s enough conflict going on?
Narrative conflict is the foundation upon which story is constructed. It represents dramatically the physical, psychic, spiritual, and emotional tussles that your particular protagonist is dealing with throughout the duration of the romp. Often, it can be difficult to pinpoint both the internal and external dilemmas that you hope to confront your main character(s) with. Let’s look at how as authors, we can isolate what crises will visit them as the story unfurls.
Here’s how we can visually represent it:
(What your character wants) (The antagonistic forces working against their wants)
The leftward facing arrow represents what the character wants. They have to want something. Period. This isn’t a negotiable point. If your character doesn’t want anything, they aren’t emotionally invested in their story. And if your own characters aren’t involved in the story, why should a reader care? A writer’s chief pursuit is to illicit an emotional response in a reader: to make the reader feel something—more often than not, manufacturing that active, emotional involvement from the reader stems from the bond forged between reader and protagonist.
The rightward facing arrow represents the obstacles you’ve placed in your protagonist’s path to impede or prevent them from accomplishing their goals. These literal pressure points you’ve chosen should resonate with a metaphorical pressure point: you are putting certain pressures on the characters so they reveal new information about themselves to the reader. That word “new” is very important: don’t repeat yourself. Don’t tell your audience over and over again that a certain character is selfish. Tell this once, and then maybe tell us something else, something that might belie her selfishness: tell us about a moment of magnanimity. Humans are consistently inconsistent. Have the courage to tell your readers all angles of what makes your protagonist tick. Resist the bait of only showing the good side of a main character. Show us a more comprehensive litany of what makes them an individual, the lovely tangle of strengths and weaknesses that differentiates us from all other human beings.
The line that separates the two arrows is dramatic action. This line represents the impact of both sides. It is the moment where the opposing forces collide, smashing into one another. These are the moments when a character is revealing aspects of herself through action or inaction, depending on what’s happening in the particular scene. One key word for dramatic action is duress. That is, what is the duress—either physical, emotional, or both—that you have introduced into your character’s life in this specific chapter, this certain scene? And how’s this immediate conflict affecting their world in the short term (and maybe the long term, too)?
Let’s look at a specific example: say this guy Marty really wants his ex-wife back. His inner-conflict is that he still loves her, yet she’s unsure of any reunion. His external conflict is that his ex is thinking of moving across the country to take a new job, start fresh. The crisis becomes how/when/and in what way will Marty try to get what he wants. And of course, from there, he’ll have to adapt his strategies as his wife responds to Marty’s actions (notice how her trajectory affects his trajectory). You start to see how characters’ interactions can influence future plot decisions—or more to the point: how duress can mutate into tines of new duress, as the book continues on.
Do you see these pressure points that the author has placed on Marty? The stakes are high. Will he win her back? Should he win her back? Does he deserve to? What does the word “deserve” mean in the context of the novel? What will he do if she moves away? These questions all spring from the internal and external conflicts, leading to new plot points as the book progresses.
Summary of conflict:
• Narrative conflict is the collision between what your character wants and the obstacles you’ve put in her path. (Marty wants his wife, but she’s moving across the country.)
• Great books have both internal and external conflicts. What will be your player’s internal one(s)? What external pressures have you introduced into their lives?
• Are you revealing new information about your protagonist with different plot points?
To Read This Week:
“The Sisters Brothers”: pages 1-75
Writing Assignment:
Compose a scene that is conflict-rich. Feel free to write your own imaginative scene; however if any of you would like a prompt to get going, here’s one:
Using the above example as your guide, write the scene in which Marty’s wife tells him she’s moving across the country. Where are they? Does Marty lose his temper? Does he cry? How does his internal conflict influence the external conflict?
Limit 500 words.
Supplemental Resources:
Chapter 1 from “Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction”
Discussion Points:
1. What kind of writer do you want to be? In the great constellation of authors—from Virginia Woolf to James Baldwin to David Mitchell—we’re all trying to accomplish the goal of telling a compelling story. So what kind of storyteller do you want to evolve into? How will you define “compelling”? What will the word “story” mean in your hands?
Final Thoughts:
Much of what we do as novelists is muscle-memory, developing the habits of consistently working on our books. Communities like the OWS/OWC are immensely helpful in keeping us motivated to prioritize our art. Let’s help one another carve out the time to bring these novels to fruition.
Week 2: Narrative Tension & Super Tension
Introduction:
“People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.” – David Mamet
Introduction:
To my literary eye, there is a slight difference between narrative conflict, last week’s topic, and narrative tension. Whereas conflict is a direct response to a specific character dealing with a specific set of antagonistic forces, tension sort of hangs above the action, like a layer of fog. To say it another way: we can be a bit more general with how we’re defining tension. But that doesn’t mean that as the author you have any less responsibility in learning these specifics.
Going forward, let’s define it as the discrepancy between these two paradigms:
This is the way my character would like her world to be versus This is the way her world is currently constituted
Thinking about the disparities between these two can be an illuminating exercise. What if your character wants—on one hand—to get sober, stop gambling, or change her job? But what if—on the other very persuasive hand—she finds herself incapable of making these changes in her status quo?
The relationship between these two—her desired life and the life she’s currently living— can be a wonderful way for your reader to get to know this protagonist more intimately. In the end, that’s the novelist’s ultimate goal: almost everything we do is in the name of furthering our reader’s understanding of the characters occupying the pages. If we use active characterization tactics in which a reader interacts with a protagonist doing stuff, reaching for her wants, shoved out of her comfort zone by the author’s cruel hand, then the reader learns about the character straight from the reader’s analysis. We see plot point A intrude into the character’s life—and how she responds to this duress will lead her to the next external conflict. And how she deals with that hurdle will heave her toward the next obstacle, etc.
Quickly, we see the very intimate relationship between plot points and characterization. We see that they might actually be the same thing, or at least working toward the same goal. And perhaps the ultimate goal can be summed up like this: to create characters that are so compelling the reader cannot look away.
Super Tension
Even if what I’m going to suggest next does not make it directly into your novel, this exercise is extremely useful in getting to know your character as well as you can. I call this super-tension, but it probably has several other names that aren’t as cool.
Here’s how the exercise works:
Identify what your character can’t live without, and then immediately find some way to take that thing away from them. Put the ultimate pressure on your player and see what she reveals to you. I promise it won’t be something you’d ever expect.
Novelists have to do a lot of discovery writing, especially in the nascent drafts. Spending time viewing your character under the auspices of super-tension will give you unfettered access into the deepest recesses of her heart and mind.
To Read This Week:
“The Sisters Brothers”: pgs. 76-155
Writing Assignment:
Identify what would constitute super-tension for your character. What can she/he not live without? Then write a scene in which they lose it.
Again, have fun with this. You might not get it right the first time, but all this exploratory writing is telling you lots about your character that you can’t learn any other way.
Limit 500 words.
Discussion Points:
1. How is DeWitt letting you get to know the book’s narrator, Eli Sisters? 2. Do you like Eli? 3. Is it important to like a narrator?
Supplemental Resources:
Chapter 2 from “Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction”
Final Thoughts:
Identifying the dissonances between how your character would want her life to be in an ideal sense and then contrasting that with the realities of her status quo can be a powerful tool in our literary toolbox. Try to come out of Week 2 knowing this about your protagonist.
Week 3: Plotting tactics – making a meaningful series of events
Introduction:
Here’s how the dictionary defines “plot”: The plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story, also called storyline.
Adam Sexton defines it as, “What happens [in the story].”
Local writer Annie Lamott teaches a mnemonic device to help her students remember traditional plot structure:
Action – Open with a scene (Lamott lobbies for opening with real-time), an inciting incident for the drama that follows—the lighting of the plot’s fuse. Background – Contextual information to ground the reader in the specificities of the story’s reality. Conflict – A protagonist wants something (hopefully something external and internal) and there will be forces in the story working against her/ him getting what they want. Development – The journey the protagonist takes. The plot points chosen by the writer to illuminate the protagonist getting either closer or further away from what they’re trying to achieve (rising and complicating actions). End – I’m putting words in Lamott’s mouth here, but I’m assuming this category is representative of closure, change (or the opportunity for change), and consequences/legacies of the protagonist’s decision making.
For our purposes, let’s be more precise with our working definition of plot. First, where is this magical storyline coming from? It starts in the author’s imagination, as she/ he constructs a character. But the best plots aren’t controlled by an authorial presence. Plot springs from the characters themselves (our protagonists).
Think about it like this: Authors create characters… characters create plot. This is due to the fact that the protagonist’s decision making will induce the next undulation, curve, revelation, heresy, etc. in the story.
Therefore, I’ll argue going forward that our working definition of plot should be this: A meaningful series of events. And the adjective meaningful is assigned to the protagonist—she or he will determine the moments we zero in on, the scenes to examine, the story we tell.
The more we program ourselves to think of it in this way—that our protagonists are sovereign beings with independent consciousnesses from our own—the better prepared we are to traverse what I’m calling “character-driven” plotting. With this mindset, we can begin to talk tactics for describing our main players’ meaningful actions.
Keep in mind, there are many different styles of plot points over the course of a book. We want to use variance, so our reader never sees a pattern with how we’re doling out information. We want to surprise and excite them in every chapter (or short story).
Here’s the first tactic we’ll discuss:
In medias res (“into the middle of affairs”): This plotting tactic dates back—hence the Latin—to the Roman poet Horace, approximately 15 BCE. Much like the opening A- letter of Lamott’s mnemonic device, this is a suggestion to start in the middle of the action, the plot already underway. In the following example, we’ll be peeking at the actual beginning (page 1), but remember that “in medias res” can be a vibrant tool for the beginnings of different chapters of a longer work.
In his novella “The Pedersen Kid,” William Gass begins like this:
Big Hans yelled, so I came out. The barn was dark, but the sun burned on the snow. Hans was carrying something from the crib. I yelled, but big Hans didn’t hear. He was in the house with what he had before I reached the steps.
It was the Pedersen Kid. Hans had put the kid on the kitchen table like you would a ham and started the kettle. He wasn’t saying anything. I guess he figured one yell from the crib was enough noise. Ma was fumbling with the kid’s clothes which were stiff with ice. She made a sound like whew from every breath. The kettle filled and Hans said, “Get some snow and call your pa.”
“Why?” I said.
“Get some snow.”
Notice that in this example of opening in medias res or with Lamott’s A-for-action, the narrative starts with plot points that have happened “off stage.” The reader quickly learns that the Pedersen Kid lives on the adjacent farm, which is a few miles away. He has staggered in a blizzard and fallen in the crib out front of the family’s farm from cold and exhaustion.
Immediately, Gass has introduced two conflicts: the immediate one dealing with trying to pack the Pedersen Kid in snow to deal with his frost bite/ “freezing-ness.” And the larger, lingering issue of why did the kid come in the middle of a blizzard, putting his life in jeopardy (the inciting incident for the drama to follow, as Big Hans, Pa, and the narrator, teenage boy, Jorge, decide to travel to the Pedersen farm to see what happened). All the Pedersen Kid can tell them is that a stranger showed up and locked his family in the basement, while he hid.
“He put them down the cellar so I ran,” the PK said... “He didn’t say nothing the whole time.”
As readers, we see the characters make an active choice here—to investigate what may or may not have happened at the Pedersen farm. This decision has mortal consequences.
Remember, there’s always time to circle back and pick up contextual information, but launching into the middle of the action has the potential to harness a reader’s enthusiasm in a way that she/he might not be able to put the book down.
To Read This Week:
“The Sisters Brothers”: pgs 156-325
Writing Assignment:
Construct a scene that takes advantage of the “in medias res” philosophy. Thrust us right into the middle of the action!
Limit 500 words.
Discussion Points:
If you allow your protagonist to define what’s meaningful to her, you can see how closely plot is tethered to characterization, our topic for the next few weeks.
Final Thoughts: I hope the DeWitt book inspired you. What decisions did he make on the page that might influence your own project moving forward?
Week 4: Characters Characterizing Themselves
Introduction:
For the next few weeks, we’ll focus on characterization because great literature is always about the main players. Charismatic protagonists stay with readers long after finishing a text. Yet most aspiring writers wonder: how do our imagined people morph into “real” ones? Why is it that my characters feel so flat, passive, and obvious on the page, whereas Salman Rushdie and Alice Munro have brought theirs to life?
As with most elements of craft, I’ll present the following discussion from the perspective that there are no “golden tickets” to get into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. There’s no easy answer or magical elixir. Strong characterization is the product of painstaking and tedious and fastidious scrutiny.
It’s the willingness (compulsion) of a writer to dig up the secrets of her/ his characters, like truffles. Foremost, this unearthing comes from familiarity—from the writer spending ample time burrowing in the following locations:
1. The character’s heart
2. Her/ his mind
3. Her/ his present & past (and depending on the narrative perspective, maybe even the future)
The longer a writer spends occupying a foreign set of perceptions, a consciousness independent from the author’s own heart, mind, and specificities of life, the author learns how the character herself would act. How would she respond to certain stimuli, certain pressures? What’s important to her? Is she funny? What are the great regrets of her life? What are her goals, her private desires? Has she ever been in love, in peril?
Often, despite a writer’s best planning and preconceived notions of a character’s identity, I’ll argue that it’s a process of observation to truly pinpoint who our main players are. We have to see them act, talk, think, interact; we have to see them stalk the habitat of the page so we know the nuances and complexities of their souls. This is the essence of characters characterizing themselves.
This invariably (and frustratingly) will lead to some trial and error, false starts that take us in certain directions that don’t make the final draft. Resist the urge to think about the discarded scenes as wasted pages. Try to think of it as the research necessary to render an independent heart and mind. Writers have to possess a reservoir of knowledge in order to zero in on and reveal the right aspects of character.
To Read This Week:
“The Hours”: pages 1-74
Writing Assignment:
Let’s play with confined spaces this week. Put your main character in an elevator—a stuck elevator. Now put somebody (or more than one person) in there with her/him that is the last person they want to communicate with. What happens?
Limit 500 words
Discussion Points:
Cunningham is going to switch to different 3rd person primary characters. Watch how he builds personality types for each of them!
Week 5: Characterization con’t: useful “schizophrenia”
A writer is a “subversive barbarian at the city gates, constantly challenging the status quo.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “What Is Poetry”
Introduction:
Finding the correct balance between thought process (interior life) and the mechanics of plot (external life) is one of the hardest things we do as authors. Rendering the emotional landscape of a character is important, as it thrusts the reader into the decision making process, helping to create psychologically “real” protagonists. Readers want to understand why characters do what they do; they want to see that there’s logic behind decision making, even if that logic is flawed, sociopathic, or deluded (faulty logic is more interesting on the page anyway).
For our purposes this week, we’ll look exclusively at how to render a convincing consciousness, a thought process independent from the author’s yet one fully inhabited and brought to life.
If our characters are to be convincing body-doubles for real people, they must walk and talk and feel a range of emotion; they must giggle and have allergies and chew with their mouths open and grieve and play the harmonica (or whatever your particular story has them doing). The point is that they occupy an ecosystem in such a way that a reader recognizes the authenticity of life experience, even in a life that only exists on the page.
Of course, this idea of “useful schizophrenia” is an artifice, a dupe, a way for writers to dole more autonomy to the players. For if certain attitudes, biases, and crimes are assigned to the protagonists—rather than the writer—there’s a liberty to let the characters characterize themselves: they can stalk their habitats behaving however it is that they behave. The author is pardoned from the antics and can simply watch, channel, and document as the action unfurls.
This is the nascent stage of a character standing on her feet for the first time without the writer’s assistance. Yes, the author is always there, but the “useful schizophrenia” allocates thoughts, actions, and motives to the protagonist, letting them buoy the story. It’s a shift of emphasis in which Dr. Frankenstein sees the monster’s eyes open and turns it loose to live.
Once, the character begins to fend for herself, this is where unreliability becomes such a useful tool. Because, let’s face it, humans are ridiculous beasts when it comes to our own thoughts, actions, and motives. These delusions and rationalizations are at the core of compelling narrative, or what I’m going to categorize as Narrative Stockholm Syndrome (NSS) going forward.
According to the OED, an unreliable narrator is someone whose “account of events appears to be faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted.”
Let’s look at these juicy adjectives—“faulty”, “biased”, “distorted.” The writer in me sees these and immediately smiles. There’s freedom in their implied liabilities; there’s the possibility to forge a protagonist who has a nuanced vantage point, one with her own faulty, biased, and distorted consciousness.
Each of our minds is these things—every human has a thought process that tumbles with varying levels of haze (faulty), sometimes intentional and others unintentional. We also have varying levels of narcissism coating our days (bias). And of course, our memories are flexible, contradictory, often trussed up contortions that bear little resemblance to other people’s renditions of the same set of “facts” (distortions in interpretation).
There are facts in the world. 2 + 2 = 4. There’s a force called gravity. If my heart stops beating I’ll die. But in terms of narrative construction, for writers looking to bring their characters to life on the page, the idea of NSS can be a powerful weapon to have in our arsenal.
Here’s a very elementary and probably incorrect synopsis of Stockholm Syndrome: It’s a phenomenon that can occur when a hostage begins to feel for her captive. She understands their motives—why they’re doing what they’re doing—even if it’s malicious, violent, etc. Maybe she even defends them after the fact.
How does Stockholm Syndrome translate to narrative construction?
Well, one pleasure of reading is being imbedded in the main character’s thought process, ensconced in a different worldview. When a reader sees life through a new lens, the character’s consciousness, she is in a place she’s never been before. Even in realist modes of storytelling, the protagonist’s psyche is a NEW WORLD. This reminds me of the John Gardner writing exercise to describe a river from the point of view of somebody who’s just fallen in love, and then render the same setting from the perspective of one who has committed a murder. Are they seeing the same place?
Literally, the answer is yes. But when we think about how the contextual details of their situations colors the milieu, they are witnessing very different places. For a lover, the river might seem ripe with life, the water a sign of hope, cleansing, etc. Yet the murderer, perhaps racked with guilt and denial and self-hatred, doesn’t see this optimism in the scene’s setting; no, rather than seeing possibility, she sees nature’s cruelty, the water crashing the rocks, slowly eroding them, gnats swarming, overcrowding, a nearby tree leers like an accuser.
Here’s the heart of NSS: when a reader is thrust into a consciousness, camaraderie develops between the protagonist and the reader (much like captive and captor). Assuming that the author has done her job right and constructed a convincing logic system and thought process, the “friendship” stems from the reader being privy to the mechanisms of decision making. They see how/why our characters do what they do, and empathy develops, even if these characters are behaving badly. We can think of this as the kiss between psychological realism and motive, and if we take the time to dote on this prospect, it will involve our readers more intimately with the characters, and thus, up their affinity with the story as a whole.
To Read This Week:
“The Hours”: pgs. 75-152
Writing Assignment:
This week, you will (or your character will) write a rationalization. Let the reader see the main character defend a decision, an action, an inaction, a moral stance. If they’ve done something appalling, they probably think they had a cogent reason. What is it? Can you make a convincing argument for a character’s prerogative that you personally disagree with?
Limit 500 words.
Discussion Points:
1. How does it feel to be building a psychology independent from you own? 2. What’s the most challenging part of that? What’s coming easiest? 3. Is your character morphing the more time you spend sifting around in her/his consciousness?
Supplemental Resources:
Chapter 5 from “Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction”
Final Thoughts:
A convincing consciousness is instrumental for clear characterization. Remember, too, that during the course of writing a rough draft, your character is going to mutate as you learn more about her/him. That’s to be expected. The important part is that you remain open to changing your original schematic, as the book (and the protagonist) tells you more about herself.
Week 6: Character con’t – Dissonant notes
Introduction:
When I build characters’ psychologies/decision making mechanisms, I always imagine my readers to be leaves floating on a stream. In this example, the stream is the character’s consciousness, the logic system. The reader, while captive in this foreign landscape, just floats along, observing, witnessing, and after awhile, understanding how a character is hard-wired, even if that character is vastly different than the reader herself.
Maybe it’s in this space that literature can perform its most important function: maybe it can teach empathy. Maybe looking through the perspective of someone who challenges or belies our moral coding can help open our minds to the experiences of others.
Don’t we want these characters to think and act differently from us? They’re telling their remix of history. We as readers are the nosy neighbors peeking in and gobbling up the “facts,” even when we know the facts are contorted, slanted.
Besides, where would the fun be if things weren’t all gummed up, biased, and wonky? That’s the humanness, the “us.” We recognize ourselves in well rendered characters because they have a point of view, a vantage point, a voice, a heart, strengths and weaknesses. That’s not only what makes them real people on the page, it’s what brings us to life as well.
It also gets back to one of our working theses in this course: the importance of intertwining characterization with plotting and image.
Last week, we wrote a rationalization. Now let’s play with the relationship between rationalization (internal) and scene (external).
We all know the platitude: actions speak louder than words. How can this cliché be useful to novelists?
Let’s think about dissonant notes, the thing that makes the harmonious chord sound “off.” For our purposes, the dissonant note will be the discrepancy between what we see a character do in scene (some action) and contrast that with what they’ve been telling us about their behavior (motive, rationalization, trigger point).
Here’s an example from my novel “Termite Parade”:
• Derek loves his girlfriend, Mired. • He would never hurt her. • One night, she gets drunk and publicly humiliates him in front of their friends. • She’s so drunk, in fact, that once they get home, he has to carry her up the front stairs. • Mired continues to berate him as he carries her. • Derek loses his temper and intentionally drops her down the stairs, breaking her wrist and knocking her front teeth out. • But she’s so drunk that she doesn’t remember what happened. • Will Derek tell her the truth?
As an enlightened reader, we immediately judge Derek for this inciting; however, he thinks he has a reason for doing what he did. She pushed him with caustic words. She kept pushing, kept insulting, barbing, and he couldn’t take it anymore.
Why should he tell her the truth? What good can come from that? Derek will try to convince himself, and thus the reader, that he’s doing the right thing by staying silent. His guilt, though, has other ideas…
The dissonant note, then, is the discrepancy between what we witness as a reader versus what the character her/himself tells us.
To Read This Week:
“The Hours”: pgs. 153-226
Writing Assignment:
Write a scene in which your protagonist does something of questionable morality, yet she/he defends or explicates their rationale to the reader via thought process. From our earlier example, how would Derek explain what he did to Mired? Now put your character in a similar conundrum.
Limit 500 words.
Discussion Points:
1. Was it hard to make a convincing argument for your character’s dubious action? 2. What does it feel like to defend something that you personally would never do?
Final Thoughts:
I’ll make the argument that getting to know the things that embarrass or humiliate your characters about themselves, the deeper you will understand what to dramatize. We need to know the dark secrets of their hearts, and from there, we can construct scenes, images, metaphors to apply the necessary pressures to force these characters into action.
Week 7: Characterization con’t – how to write dialogue in which my characters sound unique from one another.
Introduction:
Dialogue can be one of the most informative tools at a writer’s disposal, yet it’s also probably the hardest to master. We have to not only figure out what we want our characters to say, but how to phrase it. Our diction, the pacing of our dialogue, its layout on the page, these are all problems that can be solved in many ways, and we’re here to hone your unique style of tackling these issues.
Remember, writers ranging from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to James Baldwin to Aimee Bender to Alice Munro, etc., would all solve these dilemmas in their own nuanced ways. We’re here to further illuminate what your nuances might be.
Dialogue is such an indispensable tool because it allows our readers to draw her/his own conclusions about a character. They hear the words coming directly from a character’s mouth, without any narrative filters; thus, the reader gets to determine for herself: is this character forthright, earnest? Are they lying, omitting some facts, manipulative? Are they making a suspect decision, but doing the best they can to get by? Are they being taken advantage of? Are they taking advantage of someone else? Are they angry, sad, brokenhearted? And how can we use dialogue to convey these emotions without ever having to tell our readers how the characters are feeling?
The big thing we want to work on this week is building diction or syntax grids for each of our main characters (maybe some secondary characters, too). I assign a stable of specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives to each of my players.
Let’s make one for John:
Nouns Verbs Adjectives
John: robots slurp icky hens ogle luscious mongoloids slide delectable
All people have certain words that they use more often than other people in casual conversation. So on John’s diction grid above, you have nine words that start to help him sounds a bit more nuanced, especially if your other characters have their own systems of diction—each grid bolsters characterization.
Remember, calling a woman either “pretty” or “pulchritudinous” means basically the same thing. But what might each imply about the character?
I do the same exercise for punctuation, creating a syntax grid unique to each player.
Sentence Structure Punctuation ticks
John: speaks in run-ons never uses semicolons talks with gerunds
You have to paint with a light brush here, or you risk your characters sounding like demented mad-libs. But a dollop here, another there, and suddenly, your reader starts to see a realized player, one who speaks in a nuanced, intimate way.
To Read This Week:
Our reading load for the workshop component of the course (weeks 7-10) will be to read the three (maybe 4) 10-page submissions from your peers. Please try and read everything twice: once for plot and a general sense of what transpires; then please read a second time for all the nuances and subtleties of life.
Writing assignment:
Once you’ve done this, then compose your feedback. Write at least 250-words of feedback for each submission.
Optional writing assignment:
Make a diction and syntax grid for your main player(s). Then write a scene in which two or three people talk. Don’t use dialogue tags and see if it’s clear who is speaking simply based on diction and syntax. What’s the conflict in the scene? Is the action loaded with subtext?
Limit 500 words
Discussion Points:
1. How did you start the process of selecting language for your characters? 2. Do your characters stand as individuals with this new emphasis on word choice?
Final Thoughts:
Nuanced dialogue is a powerful tool, one that probably won’t be “mastered” in draft one. But it’s never too early to be aware of these things. Each subsequent draft will bring new information about how your characters speak.
Week 8: Plarachterization™
Introduction:
We talked about plot as a meaningful series of events, and as the authors, we need to let the characters determine what’s meaningful to their stories. Is this a sleight-of-hand, a way for us to temporarily trick ourselves, a backdoor way of learning even more about our protagonists through the rough drafting process? Absolutely. And it’s a necessary permission for us to gather all the data we possibly can. The more information we arm ourselves with, it will become increasingly obvious what an end-reader needs to see in the final, published draft.
I’d like to introduce you to my theory on “plarachterization.” Yes, it’s a word I made up, yet it’s useful for how we discuss the kiss between plot and character.
Plot + characterization = Plarachterization
The theory goes like this: as you get deeper into your rough drafts, the lines of what constitutes a plot point and what goes into the characterization bucket will be drastically muddled, muddied in a good way.
When we start off as apprentice writers, yes, it’s useful for us to think about plot and characterization as separate commodities. The deeper we get into the drafting process, however, we can't sequester these from each other. They become grafted, eventually they grow into the same entity. Plot and character become indistinguishable the further we draft ahead in our novels.
Let me explain this in theory first and then we’ll look at a specific example.
• In theory, let’s examine the plot aspect of plarachterization: plotting is directly related to our characters internal and external conflicts. You’ll remember that our protagonists have to want something—they need to be striving toward some goal(s) as the book moves on. They work toward accomplishing their aspirations, thus getting what they want, probably working even harder as the narrative reaches its climactic action as the author puts additional pressure on her protagonist.
If plot can be defined as a meaningful series of events, the varying plot points will reveal new aspects of your character. Each hurdle that she has to leap over on a chapter by chapter basis will wash the reader in new character-rich information. Each new plot point introduced reveals more and more of the protagonist’s nature, making it easy to see the pl- in plarachterization.
• The characterization component springs forth from these plot driven revelations: if in fact we have motion on the page, plenty of plot, plenty of obstacles in our protagonist’s path, it’s how they respond to these elements that will move the novel ahead. For instance, if your character’s in a liquor store and it’s being robbed, how will she act? Does she do something brave? Cower on the floor? Help the crooks to clean out the register to save herself?
And notice, too, that depending on how she responds to this specific plot point, the way the novel moves from here will be dependent on her actions (or inactions). Because of how she engages with a certain obstacle, the present action (plot) is directly affected.
The main point of all this is to see the symbiosis that has to exist between plot and characterization. Your plot will only work with your specific protagonist. If you try to jam another main character in your plot sequence, the book won’t hold up. Why? Because a different person will respond differently to the pressure points the author pushes throughout the book. Another character thrust into that same liquor store robbery might do something that would have never occurred to the original protagonist: she might get so nervous that she breaks into song, serenading the robbers with a remix of Cher’s “If I Can Turn Back Time.”
Point is the sequence of events is tethered closely to whom the reader is following on the page. You change the character, then you change the logic system, the moral compass, the backstory—and if those things are altered so too will be the decisions the protagonist makes under duress.
Okay, let’s get out of the abstract and peek at a specific example. Maybe a certain character, Wade, has found a briefcase full of money in the back of a taxi and what he wants—go figure—is to keep it. From his perspective, he has keep it. See, Wade has been on a string of bad luck—lost his job, estranged from his wife and daughter, and this newfound wealth might be his ticket to getting his family back.
At the same time, he’s separated from his wife and he hopes his newfound wealth might convince his spouse to give him a second chance. You can see that in this
Of course, whoever misplaced said stacked briefcase is probably missing it. If I suddenly lost a loaded briefcase I might try to track it down, or if I couldn’t track it down, I might hire somebody better suited for the job. The kinds of people that carry large quantities of cash in a briefcase probably know just how to find this mysterious stranger who’s appropriated their belongings. Thus, Wade’s decision to take it forces the briefcase’s rightful owners’ to act. Wade’s done something and now the owners must react to Wade’s initial action. They’re decision making is affecting not only the narrative moving forward but each other, as they volley to get what they want in the scope of the story.
Each plot point you include in the action is there for a reason: to reveal new aspects of your protagonist and propel the action forward. This is the heart of plarachterization— the these two things that can happen simultaneously.
In summation: Because your protagonist will affect, decide, alter, mutate, etc, all your plot points based on her specific ways she responds to these stimuli, it’s not necessarily helpful to think of plot and character as separate concerns. They transcend separateness. They are the same. In the end, the point is that the author gets deep enough in the process to truly maximize this collision point between plot and character. We must immerse ourselves and that vast base of knowledge can only be accrued on the page, following our characters around seeing them respond to a variety of stimuli.
To Read This Week:
Your peers’ workshop submission—read everything twice!
Writing Assignment:
In addition to the detailed feedback you prepare for your peers, continue to draft ahead in your novels-in-progress.
Final Thoughts:
Another reminder that this is supposed to be fun! Are you having fun?
Week 9: The Water Balloon: how much is enough? What’s too much?
Introduction:
Imagine yourself preparing for a water balloon fight. First thing you need (besides an adversary) is ammunition, the water balloons themselves. There you stand at the faucet, filling the first. You watch as it gains size, quantity, but you worry about letting it swell too big. Let’s say with the first one you play it overly cautious and take it off before it gets amply filled. In twenty minutes, without the right quantity of water to properly stretch the balloon for optimum splashing, it won’t rupture when you heave it at the opposition: it merely bounces off of them and lands innocuously on the lawn.
With your next attempt, having learned from your previous mistake, you try to cram as much water as is possible into the balloon, and it doesn’t even make it off the spigot, exploding right there from being over-inflated, drenching you.
You are no fool, though, and with your third and final attempt, you hedge your bets: you fill the balloon with neither too little nor too great a quantity of water. It is round and plump and will detonate on impact. Victory will be yours!
Building a scene in storytelling works much the same way. Early attempts will often lead to each end of the spectrum, leaving you with moments in your narrative that aren’t doing enough work to earn their space or perhaps they’re chock full of so much cogent information, that you’re asking the reader to retain an impossible amount of details.
So how do we go about finding that proper amount of information? How do we decide what’s a robust, rich scene squirming with vibrant details versus one that isn’t yet functioning as an ideal unit in our story?
Here are some suggestions to help you determine if indeed the scene (or chapter) in question is either too puny or too stout.
The balloon that contains too little to be dangerous:
• I use a simple exercise to help me answer this question. I make myself write a simple, declarative sentence about each chapter’s role in the book’s plot. So let’s say I’m doing this exercise for chapter eight of a new novel. The declarative might be: “This chapter complicates the story by introducing Jamie’s ex-wife is actually his current wife.” Or: “This complicates the book’s action because we learn Maggie has a body in the trunk of her car.” Or a quieter example: “The plot is pushed along because Jeanie decides to visit her estranged father.”
• Now, we have to be willing to be honest about this. Say I’d written down about chapter eight, “This pushes the book because we see Jasmine’s thoughts about her family.” Or: “This complicates the story because Paul and his roommate cook breakfast together and the reader hasn’t yet met the roommate.”
• I’d argue that these last two examples aren’t yet doing enough in the story to be their own chapters. Perhaps, they can be rebuilt, reinvigorated with more juicy details to earn their space. You don’t necessarily have to cut them outright. Maybe the answer is to take it from a six-page sequence to a one-page sequence, alerting the reader that it isn’t that important. Maybe you can conflate it to another moment located somewhere else in the story.
Or maybe the whole scene does need to be chopped. That’s part of what we do as writers: we exchange the wrong moments for the right ones. It’s a transaction inherent in the revision process: finding and zeroing in on the sequences that most contribute to the book succeeding—a book is always a sum of its parts—and letting those moments that aren’t working land on the cutting room floor.
The overfilled balloon that blows up in our face at the faucet:
We’ve all reread chapters in our early drafts and thought to ourselves: yikes, there’s so much going on here, I’m not sure what to hold onto. The problem becomes what to do if we determine that all the material present is germane to the story. How do we edit, pare, shape stuff that’s crucial to the narrative?
Say that I write a chapter. It’s 17 pages. I reread and recognize that it’s too cluttered, that a reader might leave this moment confused about what’s important, where her attention should be, etc. So I make a hierarchy of information.
• Things a reader has to remember leaving this chapter (no more than 3 pieces of info; 2 is better)
• Things I’d hope an astute reader would pick up on before leaving chapter (3 pieces)
• Things only a stellar reader would pick up on (anywhere from 3-5)
Ponder the way you’re assigning value. Are you emphasizing the right details? Should certain things be louder, others quieted, still others muted entirely?
To Read This Week:
Workshop submissions—continue to read everything twice
Writing Assignment:
Detailed feedback for the workshop submissions, 250 words
Discussion Points:
1. How is your understanding of your book changing as your write more? 2. Are you learning anything about your character(s) that you didn’t previously know? 3. Were you surprised by a plot twist you hadn’t planned?
Final Thoughts:
“The Chief Enemy of Creativity is good taste.” Pablo Picasso
I love this quote because it reminds artists to disregard what’s popular: we don’t follow trends, we set them!!
Week 10: Mapping Images
Introduction:
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” -TS Eliot
In this quote, Eliot mentions the symbiotic relationship between the external symbols and the emotional landscape, which is one of a writer’s greatest challenges in story construction: selecting the “right image” (or “mapping image”). First, let’s begin with a working definition of what I mean by “right image.” How can an image, which is by definition subjective to a reader’s/ viewer’s interpretation, be considered “right”?
Stringently speaking, of course, it can’t. But for our purposes, for a writer’s purposes, the word “right” here means that the image, something external, something that exists outside the mind or symbolic-heart of any character, modifies the story’s emotional stakes.
As we’ve already discussed, the best stories contain internal and external conflicts for their protagonists. There needs to be synergy between these forces. In fact, perhaps we can even say that the best external conflicts map to what a character’s internal dilemma is (again, this idea of a character-driven plot: the action springing forth from the internal dilemma raging in the character his/ herself).
Here’s an example from Raymond Carver’s “Careful.” During the scope of this outwardly quiet story, Lloyd who’s recently moved into an apartment by himself is visited by his wife, Inez. Lloyd is an alcoholic (duh, this is a Carver story). Anyway, one afternoon while he’s drinking champagne by himself, Inez stops by.
It just so happens that on the day she pays him a visit, this is also the day that:
He’d awakened that morning and found that his ear had stopped up with wax. He couldn’t hear anything clearly, and he seemed to have lost his sense of balance…
Carver, a true master at putting pressure on his characters, knows that the story of Lloyd’s clogged ears isn’t meaningful if he’s alone, so he has to bring Inez onto the stage, too.
When Inez knocks on his front door, here is the interchange:
“I didn’t think you heard me,” she said. “I thought you might be gone or something…”
“I heard you,” Lloyd said. “But just barely.”
In this examination on the legacies of alcoholism—Lloyd’s internal conflict—Carver has found a brilliant mapping action to externalize it. Notice that it isn’t that Lloyd is choosing not to listen to Inez. It’s that he literally can’t hear her because of the wax. More importantly, however, on a subtextual level notice that he can’t hear her because of his alcoholism. Again, it isn’t that he’s choosing not to hear her; it’s that his disease has evolved (devolved?) to such a place that Lloyd is no longer in control of himself. Carver has externalized the emotional stakes of the story.
To Read This Week:
Workshop Submissions
Writing assignment:
250-words of feedback for your peers
Optional writing assignment:
Write a scene in which you use a mapping image. From the video recap, I used the example of a woman drinking wine in a park, the sprinklers go, and she never moves. Can you do something similar to convey the subtext without spelling it out?
Limit 500 words.
Discussion Points:
1. How are you taking advantage of mapping images in your novel? 2. Is there a relationship between the internal and external conflicts that you can flesh our more completely?
Final Thoughts:
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L. Doctorow