BLEEDING SHADES OF GRAY: WRITING COMPELLING ISSUE DRIVEN FICTION

with

Tawni Waters

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”

― ,

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INTRODUCTION One need only read issue-driven masterpieces like The Fault in Our Stars to understand the power heartfelt moral conviction can lend to fictional works. A truly passionate author’s enthusiasm transfers to the page, making the writing crackle with life. Writing about social and political issues certainly isn’t the only way to lend passion to a narrative, but it can be one very effective way. But how do you write issue driven fiction without turning into the literary equivalent of a nagging parent? No one wants to be beaten over the head with the sledgehammer of moral superiority. In this workshop, we will explore a sample of great issue- driven fiction, discuss techniques for masterfully and seamlessly incorporating social and political issues into our work, and participate in exercises designed to help shape characters that can effectively carry our beliefs into the world.

STARTING WITH AN ISSUE If you’re in this workshop, you probably have a burning desire to tackle some political or social issue. I certainly did when I wrote my lesbian coming of age novel, Beauty of the Broken. My second novel, The Long Ride Home, which will be released in September, also tackles a big issue—abortion. As I set about trying to find a way into these difficult issues, I learned from masters like John Green. When Green wrote his bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars, which was later turned into a blockbuster movie, he obviously wanted to write about illness, specifically cancer. But he didn’t want to write about in a pedantic, stereotypical, trite way. He said:

“I guess I wanted to show that people living with illness are also doing many other things. They aren’t entirely defined by their illness or by their disability. A lot of times I think that, from the outside, maybe we imagine sick people as being defined by their illness or as being simply, merely sick. Particularly people who are dying. My experience has always been, that the people who are chronically ill are also many other things. They’re capable of love and they have all the same desires

2 as other people. Their lives are every bit as rich and complex and important and meaningful as any others.“ (Excerpted from “Why The Fault in Our Stars author wrote a fictional book about cancer. Business Insider, June 10, 2014) So how did Green manage to pull that off? Let’s look at the opening paragraphs of his novel. (Excerpted from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, published by Penguin Group in January 2012.)

Ch. 1 of The Fault in Our Stars:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ's very sacred heart and whatever.

So here's how it went in God's heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going

3 to die but he didn't die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master's degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE READING Would you keep reading?

Why or why not?

What do you notice about the writing?

How does the narrator, Hazel Grace, defy cancer stereotypes?

CHARACTER COUNTS All great fiction begins with character. If we don’t write compelling, complex characters, we run the risk of sounding pedantic and beating our readers over the heads with our message. People like reading interesting characters’ stories. Being pummeled with dogma? Not so much.

John Green worked as a chaplain in a children’s hospital filled with dying kids. After that, he always wanted to write a book about a teen with an incurable illness. But he couldn’t get the character right. And then ten years later, he met, and befriended, Esther Earl, a teen who had terminal thyroid cancer. Suddenly, the pieces of the character flew into place for him. Notice Green couldn’t even start writing the book until he found his character. Writing an issue driven book isn’t about issues. It’s about characters.

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John Green chilling with Esther Earl

Of Esther, Green said,” I’ve said many times that The Fault in Our Stars, while it is dedicated to Esther, is not about her. When the book was published, lots of reporters wanted me to talk about Esther; they wanted to know if my book was “based on a true story.” I never really knew how to deal with these questions, and I still don’t, because the truth (as always) is complicated. Esther inspired the story in the sense that my anger after her death pushed me to write constantly. She helped me to imagine teenagers as more empathetic than I’d given them credit for, and her charm and snark inspired the novel, too, but the character of Hazel is very different from Esther, and Hazel’s story is not Esther’s.” (Excerpted from “John Green on Esther Earl, the Girl Who He Dedicated The Fault in Our Stars To” Parade Magazine, June 2014)

While Esther May not be Hazel, the obvious connection between the two remains, even in the film adaptation of the book.

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Esther Earl

Hazel Grace Lancaster, as portrayed by in the film by

By taking the time to get to know a person, instead of an issue, John Green was able to take his newfound knowledge and weave it into a character that became way more than a stereotype.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US? If we want to write a book about Syrian refugees, do we have to intimately befriend a Syrian refugee? No, though it would sure help to talk to a few of them. By any and all means possible, we do have to take a deep, respectful, close look at real people who are Syrian refugees, seeing them as human beings, not issues. We need to write unexpected, real, flawed, non-stereotypical characters. And then, when we write the book, we need to put our desire to communicate our morals on the back burner and simply let the characters, who happen to be Syrian refugees, or

6 happen to be pregnant and considering abortion, or who happen to be transgender, go about their lives. Because refugees are way more than refugees and pregnant women are way more than pregnant, and transgender people are way more than transgender.

We need to surprise our readers, make them forget that they are reading a book about issues and are instead following the adventures of a complex character they have come to know and love. This will likely create shades of gray. Moral imperatives may be hard to come by. But that is how real life works. Issues aren’t always black and white. And when you start from a place of character, you give your novel room to replicate the ambiguous, and often terrifying, often funny, circumstances of real life.

EXERCISE 1. Come up with an issue.

2. Write three cliché traits a character being embroiled in your issue might be expected to possess. (For instance, a cancer patient might have hair loss, do chemotherapy, and spend lots of time in bed.)

3. Write three unexpected traits. Wait. Your cancer patient loves hip hop, is getting a giant tattoo of a rat on her back later this week, and picks her nose compulsively? Those were silly, but you get my drift. Surprise me (and yourself).

4. Create a character that possesses all of these traits. Name her/him. Give her/him an age.

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5. Put your snazzy character in a scene, a specific place. It could be a mall. It could be a park. It could be a taco bar on Mars. But come up with a place. Later, as you write your scene, be sure to include sensory details—sight, smell, sound, taste, touch—to make the place come alive.

6. Give your character a problem, something he or she wants right this second. Pringles? To get laid? To go dancing? To punch a guy in the face?

7. Give your character something stopping her/him from getting what he or she wants.

8. Write a scene using all of the above elements, in which your character goes about trying to get what she wants. Maybe your transgender boy doesn’t give a darn about his transgenderness right now. Maybe he wants tickets to Hamilton, and they are sold out for two years. So his transgenderness becomes a part of his character, a nuance that is always with him, but isn’t a moral sledgehammer. I recommend writing from first person, because it’s a great way to get into a character’s head, but if you’d rather go for third, or even second, have at it.

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