Congratulations to Daniel McClary, winner of UCLAx Writers' Program's James Kirkwood Prize in Fiction. Every year I’m asked to nominate two writers for the award, and though it’s always difficult to pick from the talented writers I teach in my workshops, it was my honor to nominate him. Remember his name, because in a few years you're going to be reading his novel.
What is the concept of a character's "ghost?" According to Kristen Kieffer from the podcast and website, well-storied.com, a character’s ghost is "an emotional injury that, though suffered long ago, continues to haunt them into the present day." Whether or not we find enduring value in the idea of a character ghost, we can say with certainty that a character's backstory influences their primary narrative, because it's logically a no-brainer, unless your protagonist is a newborn, and even then, the newborn's experience in the womb will likely influence its behavior. Characters do not spring from a vacuum. Each character has lived a specific life that has led them to the launching point in the story. That backstory formed who they are and how they react. How much of that backstory do you reveal to the reader? That's something every writer must determine for every story they write. Some stories and writers require volumes of backstory. Other, little to none. The writer, however, should most likely know each character's backstory, whether they decide to veil or reveal that backstory in the narrative.
Events in the character's backstory create that character's dramatic needs, most simply stated as what a character wants. A character's conscious and unconscious objectives spring from their experiences, from their backstory. And just as importantly, unconscious objectives are often fear based. It's not just what a character wants; it's what a character fears. If we accept the idea that stories are based on the choices characters make when pursuing their objectives, we must also accept that characters make choices based on avoiding their fears, or on confronting their fears. Indeed, stories often climax when the protagonist confronts a source of fear, and either vanquishes it, or is shattered by it. Both Chinatown and Vertigo feature protagonists who are shattered by their fears, and I bet you can name a dozen stories that end with the protagonist vanquishing their fears.
Let's take a couple of famous Shakespearean characters to illustrate the idea of a ghost as it relates to backstory, if briefly. Macbeth has a backstory of unbridled, murderous ambition, but if he has a "ghost," it's firmly chained and locked in the closet. All you really need to know is that he'll kill to achieve power. The why is relatively unimportant. Hamlet is haunted by his personal ghosts, which takes the shape of childhood wounds that take shape when his uncle murders Hamlet's father to marry his mother. You need to understand the "ghost" if you want to understand the characters' psychology and actions.
Does every character have a ghost? Certainly, because every character has conscious and subconscious objectives that grow from their specific backstory. Is the ghost simply a new way of packaging old ideas? Or does it present traditional concepts in a fresh way that enhances learning? I'll leave that answer up to you.
If you attach to happiness narrow and impossibly reached criteria, such as whistling Dixie with a mouthful of crackers while riding a unicycle in a hurricane, your successes are going to be intermittent, and your happiness ephemeral. Detach your ego from the goal and submerge it in the process. Serve the creative work, as opposed to expecting the work to serve you. The best work is like God, in that it serves you in ways you don't expect, and can't always understand.
Imagine a scene in which a cop and a parole officer are grilling an ex-con about a fire set in the foothills of Southern California. What's wrong with the following block of dialog and dialog attribution?
“You underestimated the speed of the fire. You set it at the top of the hill and ran down. People always underestimate brushfires around here when the Santa Anas blow. You probably didn’t think the fire would get that big and move that fast. But it did, and if you’re lucky and smart enough to cut a deal, you’ll fall a second time for manslaughter. If you’re not smart enough to cooperate, you’ll go down for murder,” the cop said.
From the way the dialog is attributed, it's not clear who is speaking until the very last line, after the speaker has given a 30 second speech. It could be the cop, or it could be the parole officer speaking. If the concept behind dialog attribution is to let the reader know who is speaking, the above use of attribution comes too late to help the reader hear the dialog.
When attributing dialog that contains more than one complete sentence or a couple of phrases, consider inserting the speaker’s identity earlier in the block of dialog, rather than later. Why? Because the character who is speaking is important to the dialog’s interpretation, and ear. If you promptly tell the reader who is speaking, the reader can then hear the character’s voice in the dialog.
When revising the example quoted above, where would you place the attribution, letting the reader know who is speaking?
When writing dialog, the action in the scene often clearly conveys the indentity of the speaker, meaning the literal attribution (she said, she asked) isn't necessary, and can clutter the lines. How could you revise the following dialog to eliminate the attribution verb?
"This kitchen stinks," she said, and walked over to the garbage can to eyeball its contents. "What were you cooking last night, week-old skunk?"
It's clear that the speaker of the dialog is the same person who then walks over to the garbage can to eyeball the contents. The line can lose the attribution and play with greater snap.
"This kitchen stinks." She walked over to the garbage can to eyeball its contents. "What were you cooking last night, week-old skunk?"
Dropping the clunky attribution verb also allows the writer to add another beat, rendering the action in stronger detail.
"This kitchen stinks." She walked over to the garbage can, popped the lid, and eyeballed its contents. "What were you cooking last night, week-old skunk?"
When you read dialog attribution combined with action (she asked and/she said as she) see if it’s possible to cut out the attribution verb and use the action to identify the speaker.
Whether or not to hire a professional editor, or to use UCLA's manuscript consulting service, doesn't have a one-size fits all answer. It depends on the writer and the manuscript. It's not necessary to hire a copy editor, for example, if you're confident in your grasp of the basic points of grammar, or have a friend who can catch glaring errors. All writers miss stuff when they copy edit their own work, by the way. Agents will most often pass if the manuscript contains too many grammatical issues, but a slip here and there won't bother them. A good content editor should help a writer fix sentences that contain glaring errors. Copy editors are required before a work is published but not before submitting.
If you're confident that your novel is ready to publish, copy editing aside, and if you're confident that the scenes all click, the characters fully realized with clear objectives and arcs, and that the story pays off, then you won't need a professional content editor. Many novels are written in seclusion, then submitted to agents, represented, and then picked up by publishers. But often the writer needs someone to read the entire novel through, in depth, and to make comments regarding scenes, stories, and characters, before being able to push the manuscript over that final hurdle.
But be aware that hiring a professional editor does not guarantee that the novel will be published. I know a couple of good novels out there that haven't been picked up yet – though thankfully one less because of recent success story from a student. And hiring the wrong one can also be counterproductive. But if the editor sees what you're trying to do, is thorough and insightful, then at the very least the manuscript will be greatly improved, after you've done the hard work of revision. Because in the end, it's always the individual writer who makes it work.
Too often writers sidetrack a scene with descriptions of churning stomachs and beating hearts and swelling throats. If a monster leaps from a closet, shouldn't the focus be on the fearsomeness of the monster—its dripping fangs and razor-sharp claws—rather than on the rapidly beating heart of the character the monster scares?
Writers sometimes believe that to play fear they need to show their character being afraid, and this leads to the usual clichés about sweating brows and somersaulting stomachs. These distract the reader by taking the focus off the object causing the emotional response, and reducing the character's response to a purely biological reaction.
Instead, it's much more effective to show what makes the characters afraid, in such vivid and convincing detail that it terrifies not just the characters, but most of all the reader. It's easy to write that a character is afraid, so easy that anyone can do it. But if you can make the reader feel afraid, or angry, or tearful, then you'll have a reader for life.
Invite your inner critic over for lunch, listen very carefully to what she says, then slip a sedative into her wine. When she passes out, lock her in the closet and write. Just write. When you run into troubles, let your inner critic out of the closet, invite her over for lunch, ask her what she thinks, then slip a sedative into her wine.
Repeat these steps until your book is done.
“Never try to convey your idea to the audience. It is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”– Andrei Tarkovsky
Novels must have ideas to be any good, but Novels of Ideas are rarely any good. This is one of the fundamental paradoxes of writing fiction. The goal of the Novel of Ideas is usually noble, devoted to educating the reading public about one crisis or another, as espoused by the author. But the results of idea-driven fiction are too often leaden, with dull characters, unbelievable action, and long passages that are long on didacticism and short on drama.
Yet novels that are bereft of ideas rarely rise above the level of the page turner, and even then, bore the reader long before the final page is turned.
We can sort our way through this literary paradox by considering the original Greek word for drama, Δράμα, meaning "to do, to act." Δράμα in Greek is pronounced "drama," just like the English, Spanish, Italian, and Czech variants of the word. The idea behind the term is universal. To dramatize an idea is to play it through characters (to do) in action (to act). The author's ideas must rise naturally from characters in pursuit of their needs, rather than be imposed upon the characters by the political needs of the writer. This is the difference between characters who seem to spring living from the page, and paper-puppets who serve mostly as mouthpieces for the writer's opinions, however noble those opinions may be.
Nabokov says it best when he writes about one of his books, "Despair has no social comment to make, no message to bring in its teeth. It does not uplift the spiritual organ of man, nor does it show humanity the right exit. It contains far fewer ‘ideas’ than do those rich vulgar novels that are acclaimed so hysterically in the short echo-walk between the ballyhoo and the hoot."
And of course, Nabokov's books overflow with ideas, social commentary, and psychological insight. Few would argue that his novels are bereft of ideas. But his novels do not wear those ideas on their sleeves; instead the ideas rise naturally from the dramatic action, expressed by the dilemmas the action presses upon the characters. Even though he didn’t write Novels of Ideas, his novels contain ideas that can take a scholar’s lifetime to explore.
Beware of characters who sigh often in scenes, just as you’d be wary of characters tapping their foot, rolling their eyes, and checking their watch to show impatience. They’re summaries of more complex emotions the writer is trying to get at. An actor using these gestures would be thrown off the stage or set. Why? Because they're performance clichés. And they’re no less a cliché in fiction. Give your characters gestures that are specific to who they are. I often think of Bogart’s signature gesture as Philipp Marlowe in The Big Sleep, tugging his ear as he contemplates the mean streets he walks. Twenty years later, Jean Paul Belmondo paid homage to this gesture in the film Breathless, in which he rubs a thumb along his lips as he stares at a movie poster of Bogart. Look for a gesture that is specific to your characters and it will give them a spark of originality that might just be unforgettable.
Writers need to be careful when referencing works in popular culture, particularly if those works are relatively obscure, and the sentence/paragraph relies heavily on the reader to understand the reference to get the point. Fiction is relatively timeless. We can pick up a work by Chaucer and understand most of it, once we get around the changes in the language. Imagine if Chaucer filled his work with references to post-plague troubador bands of the day. Nobody after the 15thcentury would get it. Dante, however, populated his Inferno with his personal and political enemies, who would have been long forgotten except for their eternal condemnation on the pages of his masterpiece. Sometimes literature outlasts popular culture, so if you want someone to roast in eternal hell, you can give them a start in the pages of your novel. If the reader's understanding of the scene isn't contingent on knowing the cultural reference, you too can roast your enemies forever, or pay eternal tribute to that obscure garage band you've always loved.
A stock phrase is a phrase that describes a familiar situation or emotion in language approaching and sometimes tripping headlong into cliché. He was cold as ice, she burned with rage, it soared like a rocket, and it fell like a brickare all stock phrases. At one time, when the stock phrase was not so shopworn from use, it may have been a good example of imagistic, descriptive writing. He was cold as icehas the characteristics of good writing—the first readers likely shuddered at the image—but since then it has been used so often that readers no longer see or feel the image. Instead, the phrase functions as literary shorthand; the reader understands what the writer means but doesn't derive more than perfunctory meaning from it. A more original image or turn of phrase creates meaning specific to the characters, place, or scene. A stock phrase relies upon the generic meaning summoned by the countless times the reader has encountered it. To use a stock phrase or stock image is to hold a giant placard in front of the reader: SHE BURNED WITH RAGE = SHE WAS REALLY ANGRY.
The commonly expressed notion that voice can't be taught raises a complex question about the role of a teacher in creative writing or other fields of endeavor. In my view, a teacher isn't just someone who imparts a set of rules that students can then follow to success. Certainly, that approach works for some things (and I use that approach to teach specific craft-based techniques) and for some vocations a teacher isn't really called upon to provide more. But voice is a critical component of fiction and to say "it can't be taught" is a dodge.
Let's think for a moment about the role of the teacher/mentor in myth. Joseph Campbell and other scholars in cultural anthropology, as well as philosopher-psychologists such as Carl Jung, have identified the archetype of the guide/mentor in quest stories and myths. The role of the mentor in quest stories isn't limited to teaching the hero specific technical skills needed to fulfill the quest. Though that may be involved, the mentor also helps the hero understand her true heroic nature, convincing her that she's destined or ready to fulfill the quest. In some stories, the mentor weighs in at key moments to offer more than advice.
A creative writing teacher should teach students specific technical skills, but should also serve as a guide to help the writer find within herself the components she'll need to complete her quest, and those components won't always be purely technical. Many of my lectures in workshop are intended to help writers connect with their subconscious, which is where most writers will find the answers to most of their deeper creative problems.
In one sense, the adage that you can't teach voice is correct. No one can impart voice to a writer in the same way one might a set of technical instructions. But a teacher should know how to listen, and what to listen for, and then to tell the writer where the voice sounds strong and true. This is much harder than it might appear at first glance. Rather than teaching voice, a teacher helps a writer identify her voice when she hears it, and then waits to see how the writer then develops that voice.
Writing backstory isn’t a sin. It’s part of the creative process. Writers at all levels of development often explore their story by writing reams of backstory. They learn about their their story by writing each character’s history in scenes that will never make the final cut, creating a comprehensive view of that character through time. The pages of a novel are the tip of the story’s iceberg, the writer having imagined a weighty mass of dramatic material supporting those few pages she decides make up the part of the story she shows. At some point, the writer must decide what part of the story she wants to show, and this then shapes the writer’s approach to how she uses backstory in the overall plot. Does this mean that the pages and pages of backstory a writer generates are doomed to be lost? Certainly, much of it sinks below the water line, supporting the primary plot but unseen by the reader. But some of it remains above the surface, in the form of backstory that gives the primary plot context and depth.
How can a writer determine when it’s dramatically effective to venture into a character’s backstory? The most certain way is to design the action to provide a dramatic prompt for the playing of that particular backstory at that specific time, and then to do what writers do best: tell a story. A writer can pen pages of backstory about a character, but if those pages aren’t prompted by the action, and the pages don’t tell a story, then the backstory will have little dramatic impact. A dramatic prompt gives the reader a reason to care about the backstory at that moment in the story or scene. A man in mourning sees a woman who looks from behind just like his dead wife, and this prompts a memory that’s key to the story. A woman being sexually harassed on the street remembers the last time a stranger called her a bitch, the surprised look on his face when he fell back onto the pavement, his nose broken. If the backstory is relevant to the action in the scene, then it’s more likely to work.
Another important technique is to explore backstory when the action in a scene or story pauses naturally. Stories have a pulse, or breathing pattern. At least, living stories do, and we want to write living stories. Writers can use this pattern to identify when to jaunt back to the past. Usually, something happens that creates a need in the character to remember, and then when the story rests for a moment, that memory dissolves/cuts into view. This technique avoids the problem of stopping the action to relate extended backstory, because the action is at rest for a moment, and the character’s need to remember something serves as the prompt to flow into the past. I call this concept the reflective pause, the moment for contemplation between bursts of action. In opera, the protagonist sings an aria during the reflective pause. In fiction, the character contemplates something from the past, something that serves the needs of the character in the primary story as it’s unfolding.
This quote has been attributed to many different artists, from Igor Stravinsky to Pablo Picasso and who knows, Yogi Berra probably even said something like it once, in regard to base stealing. But T.S. Elliot was among the first to deliver more than a one-line quote. What does it mean, to steal? Here's how T.S. Elliot defines it: One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
The idea, then, is to transform the literary ideas you take from others into something completely new.
If you take enough writing courses you'll hear the phrase, "Show, don't tell." Most writers probably hear this phrase quoted as the gospel truth in the first course they take. The idea that stories are shown and not told is misleading. Stories are told. Stories are told and shown, shown and told, told and shown. Narration, either in the form of a visible or invisible narrator, tells the story, contextualizing the characters, settings, and dramatic issues, allowing the reader to understand what’s going on when dropped into a scene. The primary level of narrative is not the scene, it's narration. It's someone telling us a story that (most often) includes scenes of action, but isn't strictly limited to scenes of action. So first comes the telling, then the showing. Writers get into trouble when they tell scenes, rather than show them, and when they fail to find an engaging narrative voice for telling.
When approaching the next draft of a novel, it's important to read and reread the manuscript until you develop a vision of how to move forward. We often become so deeply engrossed in writing the first draft that we lose sight of how the story is being perceived by readers. When writing a first draft, it's important not to preordain too much of the action, to let the characters move and speak with a life of their own. When writing a second/third draft, the writer often must take more control, consciously shaping the story toward a vision of what it needs to read like.
When approaching a revision, it’s important for the writer to "re-envision" the plot, characters, and story. One of the primary reasons first books fail is because the writer has welded her vision to a flawed first draft so solidly that she can't see how to make significant changes, or is afraid to make significant changes. When this happens, a writer fiddles with a sentence here, or tweaks a scene there, but never sees or understands how to address the story's problems. Sometimes it requires great courage to change a story in order to make it work, because the writer is so familiar and comfortable with the existing version that the idea of making significant changes, and all the work and uncertainty required, is terrifying. The writer is afraid of taking the story apart and then putting it back together, because even though they know the story doesn't work well enough to be published, they're comfortable with its flaws, and worry that they won't be able to put it together any more effectively. But they've learned how to write a book, so when they launch into the next story, they aren't welded to a flawed way of seeing story and characters, and carry the energy of the new into the project.
Several writers have brought flawed first drafts to my workshops, and after rewriting and revising and rewriting again, have published those stories. Others have gone on to publish their next manuscript. Every writer is different.
Agents and editors often skip prologues because they see them as being backstory. In effect, the writer is either handing you a manual you’ll need in order to understand the primary story, or hoping to convince you to wade through a slow first few chapters by force-fitting an action-packed scene at the start. If you feel a prologue helps you get into telling your story, go for it. If you feel the prologue helps the reader get into the story, go for it. A prologue is easy enough to cut out or add at a later date. The first chapter is the tough one to figure out because it’s the true start of the novel, the opening moment from which all future moments flow. But keep in mind that in most manuscripts a prologue is little more than a way to write backstory that can more effectively be woven into the forward-moving story that begins with chapter one.
And because prologues are rarely key to first act structure, the writer can move on after having written one, with no negative consequences further on in the action.
Much of what I write about for this blog and teach in my workshops grew directly and indirectly from my early studies in directing actors at UCLA Film School, with the wonderful Delia Salvi of the Actors' Studio as my mentor. Though I became a writer instead of a director, I learned from Delia how to approach creating honest and dynamic fictional characters. Delia and Martin Landau were good friends, and she spoke with great admiration about his talents as an actor and teacher. In recognition of his passing this week, I'm quoting a brief snippet of his 1990 interview with Terri Gross, on her show, Fresh Air.
LANDAU: It's what motivates you unconsciously that drives you on. Characters reveal things inadvertently, very often, not purposefully. No one walks into a crowded room at a cocktail party filled with strangers and says, hello, everybody, I'm embarrassed.
GROSS: (Laughter).
LANDAU: You know, that's not something people do.
GROSS: Right.
LANDAU: Therefore, what you - what people in that condition are trying to do is trying to convince themselves they're relaxed and trying to appear relaxed to other people when, in fact, what's going on is contrary to that. So the actor has to create the degree of unrest and then try to cover it.
Writing and magic involve many similar concepts, perhaps chief among them the concept of creative misdirection. The magician seeks to direct the audience's attention away from the spot where the sleight of hand is being performed. A joke makes the audience laugh at a critical moment, or the magician gestures broadly with his right hand while his left is working the magic. In writing, you want to distract, or misdirect, your reader away from the plot turn you're about to make. If the reader knows the plot turn long before it happens, the reader will be bored. Although this concept applies to all types of fiction, in fiction involving detection the writer points supicion away from the character who will eventually be shown to be guilty.
All scenes – and comic scenes in particular – rely on the concept of misdirection, of leading the character/reader to thinking one thing, only to let the action surprise them, leading to a reversal or a revelation.