U of J: Writing 201
U of J Creative Writing Course List:
Orientation
101, Basic Technique
201, Advanced Technique
301, Theory
401, Practice
Welcome to Writing 201, Advanced Technique. TENES NVNC TENEBERIS. If 101 is black and white then 201 is shades of grey. The basics are your line, your shape. Advanced Technique is the shading that will, more than anything else, define your style. These are not rules so much as considerations. How to approach, rather than how to execute.
- Dialogue, Part II.
What is dialogue if it’s not plausible? It’s nothing. That’s 101 level stuff. Dialogue enters the realm of 201 because it has more dimension and function than rendering characters plausible in the reader’s estimation.
First, it may be used to create variety in the structure of a story. It is one of a group of narrative techniques sometimes referred to as modes. Other modes being action, description, exposition, introspection, summarization, recollection, transition. Aside from the events of a story, the manner of its telling and the balance of these modes determine how good it is. (By good I mean loosely that it is well constructed, entertaining, capable of holding the reader’s attention and suspending his disbelief.) A story with too much exposition is boring. A story with too much dialogue lacks decisive motion. Et cetera.
Second, dialogue is just as capable as narrative exposition of informing the reader. The most common note of critique I make when reading novels is, “That could have been dialogue.” This is true of amateur and professional fiction alike. Most often the author has broken up his dialogue with exposition, but occasionally the interloper is introspection or summarization. In each case it’s usually more natural, more consistent, and less likely to cause hiccups, simply to convey the info in the dialogue itself. Naturally the info must be arranged to suit the character’s delivery. It might end up incomplete, ambiguous, not entirely true. But you get the bonus of further establishing your characters by showing the reader how they treat the information.
If the info is so crucial to the story that you can’t afford to have it misinterpreted, I’d recommend saving any relevant summarization until after the dialogue has run its course. Or, at least, until an appropriate lull occurs in the rhythm of the dialogue.
Robert De Niro said of acting, “It’s important to indicate. People don’t try to show their feelings, they try to hide them.” This advice transposes perfectly to writing. A writer is an actor responsible for portraying the whole cast. This doesn’t mean you have to be an accomplished actor, of course. It only means you’d do well to understand the principles of a convincing performance.
Have faith in your dialogue. Let your characters speak for themselves.
- Show vs. Tell, Part II.
De Niro’s advice carries over from characterization into the general level of exposition and explanation in a story. I mentioned connecting the dots. That’s a handy metaphor for explaining the advanced concepts of Show vs. Tell. To show is to give the reader dots. To tell is to connect them.
Too much showing and not enough telling results in a story that is difficult to penetrate. The reader may draw her own conclusions about the significance, the characters and even the events of the story, but she’s not as likely to feel a connection to them. Too much telling and not enough showing results in a story that reads like a report. Its events, characters, themes and significance are all laid plainly on the table — but it’s even more rigid than that, as if only a photo of these things is laid on the table. There’s no room for the reader to interpret or to draw her own conclusions.
Everyone’s heard the saying, “Easier said than done.” Keep this in mind when you’re writing. In most cases the easy way out is to say plainly, This character is shy, works at a bakery, and can’t carry a tune. If it’s a tertiary character and it’d be a digression to convey these qualities by showing them in a scene, then go ahead, tell it instead. If it’s your main character, though, and these qualities figure significantly in the plot, then take the time to establish them by showing the character in his natural habitat, as it were. It’s a story, not a speed date or a job interview. Let your readers get to know your characters as they would real people.
In description, showing is the purest parts of the description, the most journalistic — the who, what, where, when of a thing. Anything that is apparent.
He was tall and red, had dark hair, a crooked grin and a pointy tail.
Telling is anything that can be interpreted, or that is difficult to measure.
He was evil, intelligent, ancient.
Notice that even in the first example we can safely assume the qualities in the second example without them being told. Tall and red, crooked smile plus tail. Most of us will have pictured something like a devil. Since it’s such a common symbol, it’s natural for us to assume he’s evil. But evil is highly subjective. We might not assume he’s intelligent. That’s a quality open to broad interpretation. Even once the character is introduced, he can still be scrutinized for interpretable qualities. You may introduce him as intelligent, but later narrate him perpetrating unintelligent acts. Ancient might tell us he’s old, but it doesn’t tell us whether or not it shows. Especially not in the context we assume given the similarity of the described character to the devil. Everyone knows the devil is supposed to be ancient but he doesn’t necessarily look it. That renders the quality moot as a descriptor.
Better than tell us a character is like this or that, just show the character doing things which indicate those qualities. If we see this be-tailed red guy causing pain and suffering, insinuating himself into the highest echelons of society and gumming up the works, relating first-hand stories of the dawn of time, then we’ll connect all those dots on our own. In the worst case, when the author’s treasure is the reader’s trash, there aren’t any hiccups because you haven’t labelled anything treasure for the reader to dispute.
Extend this to other nouns — the places and things you describe. Must you say, It was an eerie scene? Show us instead a disused Victorian manor on a precipice under moonlight with bats flying around and howling wind, odds are we’ll catch on that it’s eerie.
This may lead to variation in how your readers perceive the meanings and themes of your work, but that’s part of the fun in reading. Interpreting. We view everything through the lens of our experience and beliefs anyway, there’s only so much you can do as an author to ensure each reader unearths uniform themes in your work.
- Economy, Part II.
In the commerce of fiction words are not the sole currency. There are scenes, settings, characters, action, themes, and so on. Look on each of these with an economic eye.
That tertiary character who shows up in a late chapter and just hangs around, is he worth keeping? Does the plot hinge on a decision he makes? Is he the foil for revealing an important characteristic of the protagonist? Does he provide a moment of levity to counterbalance the previous heavy scene? If he doesn’t serve a clear purpose, cut him. Likewise, if there’s a clear purpose that needs to be served, find a natural way to fill the role. (By natural I mean let the solution arise from within the story, rather than inserting an arbitrary solution, deus ex machina.)
You may have heard of the rule called Chekhov’s Gun. To paraphrase Chekhov: if there’s a gun on the mantle in act one, it had better come into play in act two or three. Chekhov I think meant it in a fairly literal sense, but I and more contemporary literary theory take it in a broader sense. The gun doesn’t have to be fired. Instead it may symbolize a character’s past or internal state, or it may punctuate the story’s theme of violence or colonial oppression or whatever the case may be. But if you include a conspicuous element, it had better be there for a reason.
As for themes, it’s tempting, especially in first novels, to explore as many themes as possible. To convey a number of messages. To share with the reader every epiphany you’ve experienced thus far in life.
Resist.
The more themes you explore, the less potent each theme becomes. Naturally any story will touch on multiple subjects, depict a variety of relationships, convey an array of messages both intended and not. These are ingredients whose proportion and combination determine the overall flavour of the piece. Also, if you want a writing career that lasts beyond the first few stories, you’ll want to save up those experiences and mete them out. Don’t spend it all in one place.
- Description, Part II.
A description is capable of being more than the sum of its parts. Even the description of a simple object can communicate a great deal to the reader — tone, theme, texture. For example:
He crossed the street into his old neighbourhood. The houses sat shoulder to shoulder, windows open to the spring air.
He crossed the street into his old neighbourhood. The houses crowded along the street, windows like eyes vacant of whatever soul once lay behind them.
Both examples depict the exact same scene, but in a completely different tone. They set a mood without ever saying what the mood is. Especially in a story which shows more than it tells of its characters, moody description can establish pathos and give the reader a view to those characters’ perceptions.
- Openings & Closings.
I’m a big fan of strong, simple openings. Nine out of ten books I pick up in the bookshop I put right back down because the openings fail to interest me in the slightest. It’s not always for the same reason, though. One opens with Elmore Leonard’s hated rundown of the weather. Another opens with a conversation in medias res — a boring conversation at that, or one which dully sets up the plot or dumps a heap of back-story in the reader’s lap. The list of weak openings goes on.
A strong opening can be descriptive, expository, dialogue, whatever you decide is best for the story. Its strength isn’t dependent on mode. Its strength depends, rather, on simplicity and relevance.
A simple opening functions in prose as a thesis statement functions in an essay. It is brief enough to establish a place, a person or a concept central to the plot. It does not begin a circuitous path which arrives several paragraphs later at the introduction of a central figure. It also does not wind or digress, hiding the direction and tone of the story rather than establishing it. That’s what I mean by relevance. The opening should give a clear sense of the story’s essence. Whether it’s clear in a literal, symbolical or emotional sense is up to you.
As for closings, I’m a big fan of punch. I like to finish a story and have to sit back for a minute to steady myself from an impact likewise literal, symbolic or emotional. I like a closing that leaves me not with the need for points to be clarified, but with guesses as to what the story’s ambiguities might mean. A strong closing makes you want to read the story again. A strong opening you’ll understand twice as well once you’ve reached the end.
This isn’t just creative advice, it’s business advice. Literary agents read hundreds of manuscripts per month, some per week. You’ve got about five pages, tops, to make an impression.
- Perspective.
Briefly, when deciding between first or third person, present or past tense — or, you brave soul, second person or future tense — consider the effect each has on the narrative. First person is intimate, directly involved. Third person is remote even when its exposition gets intimate. Present tense creates a sense of urgency and heightens the tension of events as they occur. Past tense is stable, perhaps more convincing because it indicates that events have already taken place and are not invented.
There are a number of nuances comprehended by the available perspectives. Is the narrator limited or omniscient? Is the narrator reliable? I’ll leave you to learn the differences on your own, since I have no strong opinions on their use.
The only other note I have on perspective comes from John Gardner. He made a point in his manual on fiction that it’s often unnecessary to explain, in description, that a character is witnessing said description. He saw that this had happened, She heard footsteps, They noticed Christ floating down in some clouds, etc. If you establish that the character is present, anything you then describe the reader will assume the character has observed. If the character misses a detail you are free to tell us he missed it. A lot of he saw / she heard kind of stuff is hiccup territory. It only reminds the reader that he’s not involved, he’s only reading about fictional people engaged in fictional enterprises.
- Narrative Math.
Last but certainly not least of these advanced techniques is narrative math. I hew to a formula of narrative time : narrative importance. Anything I describe, expose, summarize, etc., I try to do so in proportion to its importance to the story.
If a character makes only a brief appearance, I’ll only, if at all, describe her briefly. The progress of the story doesn’t hinge on the colour of her eyes. If the majority of a story takes place in a single city or building, I’ll describe the place in appropriate detail, summarize its history at appropriate length. (If it’s a real place — say, Paris — I’ll probably favour trivia which bears on the story or sets the mood, rather than go on about La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, or other shit everybody knows about already.) If an event in the past contributes greatly to later events in the story, I’ll indulge in a recollection, a.k.a. flashback. If the same event isn’t consequential I’ll instead relegate it to an appropriately brief mention in dialogue or whatever mode suits it best. If an action is characteristic of the protagonist, if it demonstrates her thought process or establishes a definite quality of her person, I’ll take appropriate pains to narrate it.
This ties in to economy. If buddy has a smoke, I’m not going to waste time explaining the minute steps involved. There’s nothing new there for many readers. (Read: for anyone older than four or five.) Why go on about how He drew the cigarette out of the packet, tapped it on the desk, pinched it between his lips, flipped open his Zippo and cupped the flame to the end of the cigarette? In rare cases you can use this kind of detail to set the mood, to create tension by drawing out a scene when we know there’s some serious action on the way. Mostly, though, no one cares. Just smoke the damned thing and get on with the story.
That’s the story of my life: get on with the story.
~J
Tags: 201, advice, boogie down, u of j
