Talking to the Reader

On August 30th, I will be speaking at the Park Forest Library at the Local Authors' Fair. I love getting a chance to talk with people who have read my works, but I really love getting a chance to talk with potential writers. My talk, "So You Want To Be A Writer...," will be all about the journey to being a writer, but deep inside, I will be quietly thrilled that I am also talking to my readers. And that got me thinking - what are the best ways for a writer to talk to the reader in their stories?

I am sure that more than a few of you are familiar with the Marvel character Deadpool of comic and movie fame. With no offense intended to Ryan Reynolds, for this particular piece I will mostly focus on the Deadpool of the comics, even though the movie version has the same mannerisms. The point is, Deadpool has this habit of talking directly to the reader, either with comments about our world, some reminder that he exists within a graphic novel, etc. This is called, "breaking the fourth wall," and it is what the character is known for - along with abundant gratuitous violence. Deadpool's habit of breaking the fourth wall was pretty unique when he was first introduced, but this quirk is far from new.

While I don't know the origin, breaking the fourth wall goes way back before my time - even Shakespeare used it with a device known as an aside. This is when a character on the stage would turn to the audience and make a deliberate, informative quip about the scene that was unspoken but brought something new for the audience to appreciate. Sometimes it was the character's insight, sometimes a statement about the hidden implications of an action. In any case, this device gives additional detail to the audience, be they reading the play or watching it performed on stage.

Now, for us writers, how can we talk directly to the reader? Well, we can write a story in the second-person, which is written like the main character is telling the story to the reader - a one-sided discussion of a series of events, perhaps even with the reader assumed to be part of the story. The Edgar Allen Poe classic, The Tell-Tale Heart, is also a way to do this, where the narrator is telling the story directly to the reader, trying to convince the reader of his own sanity. These stories speak directly to the reader, but are difficult to fit into a longer-form story.

Probably the most common, and the simplest way to talk to the reader is to get the reader involved with a character, then explore the character's thoughts, motivations, and most importantly, their doubts. This can create a form of engagement that lets a story remain in the first- or third-person, but quietly prompt the reader to think about a particular situation and consider their feelings about it.

Consider this piece of writing about a person trying to consider someone else's motives:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Perhaps Steve had too much to drink last night and let things get carried away. Maybe Steve just needed to blow off some steam and took it too far. I thought Steve had his act together, but now I  more to consider."

This gives us the inside view of our character's thought process, and informs us about the issues at hand, but does it really talk to the reader? It discusses issues but the reader remains emotionally at arm's-length. Now consider this rewrite:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Did Steve let things get carried away because he was drunk? Was Steve blowing off some steam and let it go too far? I thought Steve was cool - have I been wrong about Steve all this time?"

When these observations and considerations get turned into questions, the reader gets challenged as well. The reader now feels prompted to find an answer for themselves, even as the story goes on. In the reader's mind, they are thinking about just how they feel about Steve, and they allow this to affect their feelings as they read on.

Setting Steve aside, this is how we can talk to the reader without actually breaking the fourth wall. Questions that interrogate the character from inside also target the reader, and bring them closer to the story. The reader and the character might not even come up with the same answers, but now the reader has an opinion about the whole Steve situation, and they are further invested in the story. At that point, the writer has accomplished a big part of their mission - engaging the reader on another level. So, if there's a need to get the audience closer, tricks like that are subtle ways of deepening the engagement.

And so you know, Steve was clearly being a dick that night. No doubt about it.  

   

What A Writer Does

 I have said it on several occasions, and I will say it again: The main thing you need to do to be a writer is simply write. Write down things and stuff. Write down poems, describe people and items around the house. Write up a bunch of things that you want to do, see, touch, and why these are important. The Being a writer is about communicating through use of words the world around you. It's not that difficult, and once you get into the habit of doing it, you can call yourself a writer.

Now, I usually know the next statement. "Yes, technically, that makes me a writer - a person who writes. But how do I move up from being a writer to being... you know... a writer-writer. When is it more than just the act of writing? That's the real question - people want to know when they will be a person who takes words and creates something meaningful and moving with them. When can a person be the one who can give someone the gift of a story, and when the recipient receives it, they will treasure it? When does the magic start?

To find that, let's start with the different tiers of write. The first levels involve being basically a reporter. No, I am not implying or suggesting that news reporters and their ilk are low-level writers. I am merely saying that when we first start writing about things, we start writing about its basics: What is it? Where is it? We go through the basic who-what-where-when-why-how of identifying whatever we are writing about. This gives the reader a good feel for the subject at hand, but it is sterile, distant and unfeeling. Even a wild thing like a vivid, surrealistic dream will seem less-than-fantastic at this level. That kind of reporting identifies the subject or topic, but little else.

The next steps for the writer-in-the-making are about having an opinion or specific feeling about whatever they are writing about. In this regard, they install an emotion into the subject. For someone writing about an old car, the next step is to attach something to it that is beyond form and function. Is the car ugly or clunky? Does it chug annoyingly down the road or does the rasping of the tailpipe against the road grate on every nerve? Is it painted in a tired, lifeless gray or a loud, offensive orange? What makes that car stand out from the rest of the world? What makes it worth writing about versus every and any other item you see?

The biggest step is now engagement. This is where the writer finds the tone in themselves they want to use to communicate their feelings about the object. The first tier is writing about the item, the next tier is feeling something for the item, and finally the big step involves finding a voice that expressed those feelings. A voice is a broad brush, and can express both love and anger in the same tone. Finding one's voice requires bringing all of that writing through your emotional mind like an dirty, old Chevy going through a car wash. Voice turns writing into expression, not just about the subject but about the author as well. At this point, it's beyond communication because it appeals to the audience on more than one level. At this point, you are a writer-writer.

How long does it take? Well, how long you got? Or, more to the point, how much can you write? There are a lot of voices to discover, ways to express your interests and passions, and different kinds of cars to wash - so to speak. The main part is that it's an ongoing journey where you only stop progressing when you stop moving forward. So start writing, and really throw yourself into it if you want to get there faster.

Oh - and feedback helps. Get into workshops, have friends read your stuff, get critiques from outside sources. They can be harsh, but they provide you with growth and they help you be vulnerable, which is a priceless strategy in opening yourself toward the higher tiers. But most importantly, keep on writing.     

Radical Writing Still Needs a Few Rules

Rules. They're everywhere. Governments make them, parents make them, societies and cultures make them, and we make our own rules as well. And, as I have endlessly mentioned on this blog, there are rules for writing. Of course, just like all those other categories of rules, there also comes a time and place to break them (Disclaimer: I do not recommend breaking government rules). Sometimes we step out of those social and cultural norms, we go against our own best beliefs, and so on. We do the same thing in writing - we learn the rules, then figure out how to break them for full effect. This is the radical writing that can make reading interesting. However, it's not just breaking the law for entertainment's sake, and - believe it or not - you still need to follow other rules.

Proper adjective order

I've edited five manuscripts this year, each one a different length, style, and genre, and I guarantee you that none of them followed the same rules of style (Ultimately, they all answered to my editing rules, but the author has control after that). Depending on which editing conventions you prefer, you can choose the style pallet of MLA, AP, or any other that you stumble upon. They have different rules for the Oxford Comma, how to punctuate, and what gets capitalized or hyphenated. This is good to know and follow for consistency's sake.

(At my previous job, the company had its customized, time-honored gospel of style, which still, oddly, contradicted itself in various things such as the proper spelling of the word, "Euro-zone" - the hyphen was not always there, and sometimes it was two words, sometimes one.)

I bring up the company example to showcase the primary rule about breaking rules: If you go against convention, go against it consistently. If you capitalize titles, do it consistently and not just when you remember that's how you want to do things. when you list your adjectives, give them a marching order and follow it. And so help me, if you decide to go against colloquial references and be brutally detailed in your editing, then do it proudly, without shame. Example: Most people who love The Beatles would say, "The Beatles are my favorite group!" Grammatically, this is wrong. The Beatles is one group - singular - and it should be, "The Beatles is my favorite group!" Say that aloud a few times and it sounds just wrong. However, it is very much grammatically correct. Local convention, however, would use the plural incorrectly and everyone (present company excepted) would be cool with it. This is where you have to be consistent - either resort to what sounds right or go with grammatical purity (either is fine), but stick to it afterward.

Other opportunities to break the rules will come up, and you will have a choice to make. All I ask, from the desk of a humble editor, is to please be consistent with it. I am prepping for another manuscript review soon, and another set of rules to follow or break, and I hope they take this wisdom to heart.

    

A Few Comments About the Old Days

One of the many things I enjoy about the writing workshops I attend is the wide and varied observations I receive about whatever I bring for review. Whether it's a poem, an excerpt from a novel, an essay, short story, whatever - I get the advantage of a bunch of readers seeing it as something new and (hopefully) fresh, and providing insights I might otherwise overlook. This is even more helpful when I write stories from the deep, dark past that I call my life.

Now, you might ask yourself, "How can someone else help you write stories about yourself? You know the story far better than them, right? Maybe they should just take a seat and listen." Well, that first part is true, but while I know the story better than them, they need to be able to understand the story just from what I write. This is a difficult trick, and even more so when my job is not just to tell a story but to recall a particular era in my life and communicate it to them as vividly as possible.

Case in point: My current work in progress (WIP) involves a character going through life's challenges back in the 1990s, with flashbacks to the 1980s. Well, the storytelling is its own task. However, along with telling the story, I also need to give the reader the feeling of the 1990s in whatever way is best communicated. Do I need to talk about the Clinton presidency? Act out the Macarena? Have the characters argue about the movie, Pulp Fiction? Well, these things wouldn't hurt as long as they are properly incorporated into my WIP and don't stand out awkwardly as little timestamps for the reader. However, that's not the only complication.

With any dated reference, there also has to be a context explaining them in a way where people unfamiliar with the reference would still get the gist of what I was talking about. If, say, I made reference to the Macarena, I would have to do it in a way that tells any and every reader that this was a dance-craze in the US in the late 1990s that was a common reference even if not everyone knew how to do it. Readers who weren't even born in the 20th century would be able to understand this point well enough to incorporate the information into their understanding of the story, even if they still can't do the elaborate series of moves the dance requires.

I received this advice at a writing workshop when someone suggested I make reference in my WIP to a minor celebrity of the 1990s that everyone my age would know about (I'll leave the name out for reasons that would be obvious if I included it). Other people agreed, but some people pointed out that they had no idea who we were referring to. This was the teachable moment: If I were to include this celebrity's name, it would have to be in a way that included their claim to fame, thus informing younger readers about the salience of that reference. At that point, it gets a little tricky, and risks diverging from the story.

The reason I bring this up is as a reminder that stories in a particular era are far more rewarding when that era comes with all the trimmings and all the references of the time. When the reader not only reads about events in the late 1990s but feels the presence of that time, they engage with the writing on another level, and appreciate learning about minor celebrities who they might never have heard about in their regular life. And as I've said before, when a writer engages the reader on an additional level, they've done their job and they've won over the reader.

Okay, it was Lorena Bobbitt. The reference was about Lorena Bobbitt. Happy now? 

  

What Kind of Story Is It?

"How do I know if my story is just a short story, or if it might be a novel?" I get that question every now and then at my writing workshop, and it's valid to a point. Sometimes, we all get ideas about some project we want to take on, but a part of us wonders just what the final product will be like. Will a drawing be just a sketch, or a full painting? Will a poem just be a limerick or ten pages of beautiful prose? All creatives might go through a stage where they prepare to create something, but are not sure what the finished product will ultimately be. This uncertainty is common, and often can get in our way of actually taking on the task. Therefore, there is only one way to find out.

Start writing.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am, amongst other things, an avid bicyclist. I cycle mostly for distance and pleasure, rarely for speed. When I head out on a ride, I usually have a destination picked out, I know how much time it will take for a round trip, and how much water and rest I might need along the way. However, sometimes I just feel like getting outside. I don't necessarily know where I want to go or what I want to see, I just need to ride. This is similar to the hang-up of the writer wondering about the size of their story. The more they wonder, they less they actually create. So when I feel the urge to get out and ride, I don't concern myself with the destination. I just grab a water bottle and go.

Along that same vein, if my creative nerve gets tickled, I don't always know what that is going to become. Will it be a poem, a painting, a story, a song? What I do know, however, is that some idea has gotten under my skin and planted itself firmly in my awareness, and I need to act upon it to feel like I am doing it justice. It doesn't have to be a full concept or an outlined frame for a story. It can be boiled down to something very simple: "A monkey's favorite color," "happy lampposts," or "full-contact checkers." Do any of those have potential to be a full-fledged novel? Who knows? I don't know, but if I start writing about one of those, I might just discover some creative thread that turns the idea into something big.

Now, it's always worth noting that creations that emerge from wild ideas such as those can often grow into big piles of nothing. We write about a monkey and its favorite color, and nothing really catches fire in our minds. This is fine. This answers the question of, "What is this?" It's nothing - move on. Keep the writing in a file to perhaps revisit later, and go back to being a creative type. There's nothing wrong with this. The big mistake is not doing anything with it. Letting an idea wither on the vine does not do justice to the idea, and definitely does not do justice to the creative process.

And, as a side note, you should also know when to stop. If some little idea triggers you to write 300-400,000 words, you might actually have a few books on your hands. Or, perhaps, you have a real good idea to work with. In either case, keep on writing.      

The Secret Lives of Characters

While digging through a few boxes of family heirlooms and miscellany, I came across a few secret artifacts that surprised me. The first was a Little Black Book. Not just a little black book, but my father's Little Black Book containing the names, numbers, and pertinent information of various friends and contacts from his days right after leaving the Army. And, indeed, there were the names of at least a few girlfriends - including a listing under my mother's name (her maiden name). And amongst my mother's stuff, I found the class picture of her and her friends from second grade, including a friend she remained close to for the rest of her 86 years. I also discovered that my mother's nickname was "Giggles." Alas, why didn't I find this out sooner so I could hold that one over her head for a while?

All this is the introduction to a very simple point: in my life, my mother and father each held a very important role in my life: Parent. I knew them primarily through that lens - they were the couple that bore and raised me, taught me the things and stuff in life, and readied me to look down both barrels of being a grown-up. Most traits and aspects I attached to them were channeled through that conduit - something relating to being my parent. Therefore, sometimes it can feel a little odd to come to the cold, hard realization that my father dated women before even meeting my mother, and my mother was once a little girl that answered to Giggles. 

At the point when I made these discoveries, a strange thing happened. My parents transformed from these beings whose sole purpose in life was to raise me, and they became actual people. They became deep and real, Not just Mom and Dad but Carolyn and Jerry. I saw them outside of that pipeline of parents, and even conceived of how they lived lives very much like my own at one point. They horsed around, they had friends and got into trouble, they did odd jobs and had funny stories from them. They were full-fledged people.

When we write, we often know our characters through the filter of how they relate to the story. For our mystery, we might know our main lead is a detective who is a two-fisted drinker, good with a gun, great with the ladies, and short on temper. Or maybe for our horror story, the lead is a first-grade teacher with a dark secret that now threatens every child in the class. This is a great start, but out of respect for the story, we should ask more from our characters. We should explore who they are when they are not the protagonist. Do they have their own Little Black Books? Nicknames from second grade? 

Everyone who I have ever met has a favorite color, food, book, and song, and they can tell you exactly what it is and why they chose that one. If your characters are to be that real, at the very least you should know and understand their inner workings, their details, before you go too far with them. Play around with their thoughts, ideas, and motivations, and discover them as real people. Real people are so much more fun to write about.

But hopefully you will never see your mother's name in your father's Little Black Book.     

How Important is Genre?

We all have our preferences when it comes to reading, and we can all be picky at times. Even the more open-minded readers might hesitate if there's a story before them that is in a style they just don't click with. I will read most anything Stephen King writes, and I will hesitate at the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's nothing about them personally, it's just that I prefer reading certain a genre more than others. (Though I literally could not finish The House of the Seven Gables. Sorry, Nate.) However, genre often comes with bias, and sometimes, as writers, we need to consider whether we want to steer our writing to fit into that genre.

To broaden this idea out, let's look at action movies. This category is fairly well-known, and comes with a lot of packaged assumptions. We know that character depth will be limited, fights will be extended to inhuman lengths, the first option will be to swing, shoot, or destroy, and when we get to an elaborate set-piece, there's a very good chance it will blow up by the end of the scene. Now, going into an action movie, these assumptions are kind of baked in and we adjust our expectations accordingly when we buy our ticket. Things will happen a certain way, if the main character seems a little transparent and one-dimensional, well, you really came to see things blow up, and the bad guy gets bumped off in a big showcase way at the end. Anything more is really above the bar.

As readers, we act the same way with our stories. If we are reading a paranormal thriller, we find ourselves believing that there's some kind of spirit world seeping into our lives and everyone just kind of goes with it (except for the naysayer who gets bumped off early in the book to reinforce the point). A mystery novel brings us a Rogue's Gallery of mischievous characters with marginal scruples amidst the stand-out character who figures everything out while everyone else either watches or dies. And when reading the horror genre, well, we let our darker angels judge humanity harshly, allowing for the worst of the worst to be played out before us. And if we are not ready to do those things, we don't read that piece.

But how would we approach a piece if we didn't know the genre?

Putting a book into a genre draws it to a particular audience, giving it the best shot of finding people who will connect with the style. Any book cover should immediately tell you if it's romance, fantasy, horror, etc., despite what they say about judging a book. However, most stories at their core are about people, conflict, and hopefully growth. When you write, does it matter whether that personal struggle to grow is done on a Kansas farm or on an Arcturan battle cruiser? The story can be any genre you want, mostly because at its root, there is no genre to the main story. It's like a nice, lean, chicken breast - you can't say if it's Jamaican or stir-fry or baked because it's just the core ingredient. The rest is prepping it how you want.

If you specialize in a particular genre, that's great - write everything you can in that way and really hone your craft. However, if you come across the idea for a story, find out what it is at its roots before you try and put it into the "appropriate" genre. Let the story inform you what serves it best, then write it that way. That's the genre of writing that's called "good writing," and everyone enjoys that.