What is your problem?

In writing, we know that good stories have tension and conflict if they are written to really grab the reader. These center around very simple ideas - a character wants somethings and tries to get it despite the obstacles, two people vie for the same thing, someone tries to escape an undesireable outcome, etc. In many cases, the desire and the obstacle are fairly straightforward and require little if any explanation. Writing about someone lost in the woods pretty much presents its own issue in the mind of the reader, because being lost implies an interest in becoming "un-lost." However, in more complex writing, and with more adventuresome works, sometimes part of the writer's goal should be to get the reader to understand why the situation is a problem in the first place. The reader should be able to empathize in some way with the character, perhaps even before they understand the character is in danger.

Let's re-examine our story of the person lost in the woods. What if we start writing about the character in the woods, but we don't explicitly state they are lost. What if we describe them walking through the woods, frustrated by the undergrowth and the thorn bushes tearing at their jeans, the tangles of weeds making some places mipassable, all while the character keeps an eye on the sun peeking through the canopy as it gets lower and lower in the sky. Are they lost? Are they just in a hurry to get home? Are they being pursued? Why the frustration? If we can get the reader to feel what the character feels before explaining the circumstances, it gives the writer more command over how they draw in the reader. If we open up by explaning that the character is lost, we immediately trigger a bunch of pre-determined associations within the reader, and lose an opportunity to introduce the reader to that character's very unique situation.

One of my favorite quick reads - Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - offers the lost-in-the-woods scenario and we immediately make all these assumptions about the girl getting lost during a trip. However, we are also offered enough insight into the little girl so that it becomes more than that, and when an external threat becomes another concern, we as readers are so deep within the character that we accept this sudden change of pace. If the additional element was introduced before we got to know the girl, it would've changed our assumptions about the girl's actions and become a different kind of story.

Now, why am I bringing up all this talk about getting the reader to empathize with the character and better understand their situation? Well, this is Pride Month, and a lot of people hear that term and dig up a lot of assumptions and phobias while forgetting to try and understand why it is an actual thing and its importance to many people. My response to them is just maybe to get to know the people first, try and understand their experiences, their obstacles, and why their situation, while different from other people's situations, is still valid and worth recognizing. Maybe use that empathy thing to figure out what the real story is instead of riding a bunch of predefined assumptions.

If you write with the goal being a reader empathizing with the character, you can get messages across a lot easier. And maybe if you live with a little more empathy, well, you can understand a lot more about the world around you.    

Whose Story Is It?

I had a real writing challenge before me this week. Not like a writing prompt or anything; this was more of a crisis of skills. I mean, I like to think I have developed a good toolbox when it comes to dealing with writing problems, but this one had me all tied up. I wanted to write about how I knew this person over the years, how my perception of them changed as I learned more about them, and my admiration for the person they had become. The story dealt with sensitive subject matter, but that wasn't the big hold-up. It was all about the presentation, and I didn't know what to do.

Here's a big writing lesson: When in soubt, write down something. Anything. Put words to the page, stitch some monstrosity together, and take it to a workshop to find out what other people think. Present the piece by saying, "Here's a thing I made - what is it and what does it need to be more than just a thing?" Leave yourself open to other people's input and opinion, and listen to every word. They may not know better than you, but they sure will be able to give you a perspective untainted by whatever your personal issues are. That's exactly what I did, and I will tell you why it helped so much.

As I mentioned, this was a story about how I knew this person from decades ago and how things evolved over time. Part of the feedback I received (particularly from several emails after the meeting) was that it was trying to be two stories - I was trying to tell the story about how my view of this person changed as I discovered more about them, but I was also trying to tell my friend's story to some degree, and this was creating problems with the task at hand. Depending on which story I wanted to tell, I should've drawn my focus toward one particular story arc and let the other characters support that story. However, this came with a monstrous caveat that writers have to acknowledge.

If I were to talk about my story exclusively, demonstrating my life and my growth as the world changed, that's fine. I can also discuss it from the perspective of how information changed my perspective, and thus how I perceived reality - perfectly allowable. The catch is, if I were to tell my friend's story and how it changed me, I am walking into dangerous territory because that's not my story to tell. I may be a part of it, but my license as a writer doesn't extend into explaining that friend's life. It would be similar to telling someone's secrets, to outing them or revealing a secret identity - absolutely none of my business. Now, I have written extensively about other friends who have shaped my life's pattern, and I write about them without hesitation, but that's because they either gave me permission to, or mostly because they were dead and could no longer tell their story. And in the latter case, I always make sure I keep it within the realm of the known world, revealing them only in the sense of how we related to each other.

So, to recap, if you are tied up in a writing project, here are the main tips to follow: First, write down something. As the saying goes, it's easier editing bad writing than editing no writing. Second, know the story you want to tell and hone in your subject matter to that arena. When a sentence feels awkward or out-of-place, ask yourself if it's sticking to the subject. And lastly, make sure it's your story to tell. Or, at the very least, make sure you are not disrespecting them in any way, shape or manner - living or dead.   

The Role of the Hero

In every traditionally-structured story, there is a hero who faces adversity and in the end, overcomes it. Depending on the genre, this may determine how the hero overcomes the antagonist - in action-adventure and thrillers, usually the bad guy is jailed or killed. In more cerebral stories, the enemy is overcome through a triumph of the spirit, by defeating the urge to yield to the temptations presented, or simply by living in a genuine way. Of course, in more nontraditional stories, the main character is defeated, or learns an unexpected lesson that changes their life path. Sometimes the bad guys win. However, to get to this conclusive point, we have to ask ourself what we want to say with the main character's final situation in the novel, and what the message to the reader should be. A little more tricky than expected.

I will offer this from my real life: I have a constant back-and-forth with a friend of mine - let's call him Steve - about a particular story and the hero's decision. The situation is that a man has the opportunity to defeat his tormentor (and what a tormentor he was), killing him outright in an act of revenge, or he can place his tormentor in the hands of justice. Now, after what our hero has been through with a villian who has killed some of his friends and made his life quite horrible, the go-to move would be to kill him and be done with it. Now, Steve believes that is the very natural, very human response to such an action that most of us would choose without hesitating, and on that part I believe him. However, this is our hero. We ask more of our heros because readers often need their heros ot be the kind of person the reader can't be. In this story, the hero hands the villian over to the hands of justice. Steve is infuriated at that choice, but I see it as the best way to communicate that our hero has seen so much horror but still believes in the value of life. As a writer, you need to know what your characters' decisions will say and communicate about them and about the story.

In a more grounded example, I offer the classic novel, George Orwell's 1984 (spoiler alert). Our protagonist, Winston Smith, is a man whose dislike of the maleovalent Big Brother leads him to investigate the potential for rebellion. He is caught, captured, tortured, and eventually broken, then allowed to return to some semblance of a life, but now he openly accepts that he loves Big Brother. This is a horrible ending for our hero, and his final words, "I love you, Big Brother" are painful to read because any trace of Winston's rebellious self vanish with that confession. However, that is exactly what the author wanted to say. This hero was crushed by the state, but the message of this book is clearly a warning call about the dangers of overarching authority when it finds its greatest interest is keeping itself in power.With that being the message at the end, it's inevitable that poor Winston never stood a chance and that his fate was sealed. 

There's nothing saying a hero has to win, has to live, or has to reach their goal. What they are obliged to do - in order to address the reader - is act in a way that matches the message of the story. Do they maintain the moral high ground? If your message is about the importance of such a thing, then the hero either does that or pays the price for failing to do so. If your message is about the satisfaction of revenge, well, the ending is probably more like an action movie. However, in every case the important part is that the message and actions are consistent.        

The Importance of A Good Read

I am in the process of reading one of the classics - a habit I picked up back during my career as an economist. Back then, I would pick one book that was well-regarded, pretty thick, and could be read in a bunch of small, half-hour bites. Past novels have included Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and many others. The results have been mixed - a few now rank among my favorites, others were a challenging experience , and some were just kind of... meh. Right now I am in the midst of reading quite a whopper. It's a turn-of-the-20th-century book, well over 700 pages, and while I am a quarter-way into it, I am just not... into it, I guess. I will leave the name out for now, but let's just say I might not be Irish enough for such an endeavor.

Why am I mentioning this (the reading part, not the Irish part)? I am jumping into this subject matter because as a writer, it's always good to explore things and sources that can inspire creativity. Books are the natural touchstone for a writer's creativity, simply because they share the same medium but offer different approaches toward telling a story. Lewis's Liar's Poker, for example, was a book I read while I was exploring economics and trying to understand the behemoth that was the financial markets of the 1990s. The financial geek in me wanted graphs, numbers, and data, but the book actually appealed to the creative in me - showing me the world of high finance through the eyes of someone fresh off the boat and incredibly green. That's when I felt just how powerful a book could be in showing me the real world from another perspective. Yes, it was all about financial instruments and the build-up of amazing levels of greed, but I now understood it.

Angier's Natural Obsessions hit me a similar way. Microbiology was a hobby of mine as it were, and I studied it in college with a bunch of electives and side-projects (If not for a scheduling conflict, it would've become a minor degree). However, what really set me going was reading Natural obsessions along with Watson's The Double Helix, and pairing off their approach to scientific research. I also read The Eighth Day of Creation, but the author eludes me. These all showed me parts of the world that fascinated me (and still do), but through a different lens. Watson reminisced about being a 23-year-old grad student tossed into the race to discover the structure of DNA, while Angier looked at the molecular level war against cancer from the perspective of an investigative reporter. All these demonstrations of how to see the world from outside my own framework opened up my mind to a world that was something more than me on my own. I now wanted to expand myself to fill that space.

Lastly, a classic I still appreciate is Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Nothing will get a writer more inspired than reading about another writer struggling to get along. More to the point, however, Bellow wrote about the areas of Chicago I knew very well - his protagonist lived in my college stomping ground of Ukrainian Village, for crying out loud. However, now I got to see it from the view of someone else's creativity, and indeed I learned a lot about myself. From that point forward I had a new appreciation for my Chicago life, thank to my golfing buddy Sual Bellow (inside joke).

So, to all the writers, poets, essayists, and creatives out there, I offer you this summer challenge: Read a book; one of the classics preferably. Find one that catches your eye or that has eternally drawn your curiosity, and read it during your lunch breaks this summer. And don't be afraid to let it open your mind a bit - you might be surprised.

Just watch out for those Irish authors. Some can be real... wordy.    

Writing the Adventure

I apologize in advance if the quality of this post is not up to the standards you expect from this blog. I am currently very distracted, as a rather obnoxious raccoon has taken residence in my attic, just above my office. This raccoon and I have never met, but I can already tell this will not be the start of some hilarious odd-couple mashup comedy. The rustling and scratching alone tells me this raccoon does not have any sense of personal boundaries, and I know myself well enough to know that while I do not suffer fools lightly, my tolerance for large creatures in my attic is basically zero.

However, to this soon-to-be-evicted past's credit, it did remind me about some of the key writing elements that make a story interesting, and that is the impending approach of the unknown. Most commonly seen in adventure stories, the unknown should be a key player as early as possible. If your story starts with a fight scene, don't let on too quickly that the main character is getting beat up by the school bully for having no lunch money to steal. Start with the character taking a punch and stumbling back, only to take another punch. All the reader knows is that this person is getting beaten - everything else is a question demanding answers, and the reader drives forward. 

Also, before revealing too much of the unknown, reveal the character's feelings toward it. Fear, hatred, animosity, or any other feeling one might have toward a person hitting them or toward a raccoon running roughshod in one's attic. Peel back the story from a personal perspective rather than an objective one. Don't tell the reader, "The 5th-rgade bully beat up everyone because of his frustration of have been in 5th grade for three years running." That creates too much information toward things like motive and personality. Instead, offer up the victim's thoughts about how they wanted to escape this cruelty but nobody in the school seemed to want to change things. That develops the important part - the main character's perspective - while leaving the antagonist bully as this unstoppable force making them miserable. 

Through all this, however, you as a writer need to know your bad guy as well, and know in your own way what drives them, what makes them tick, and how they see the world. You don't need to tell the reader this information immediately or in some cases, ever, but your writing should come from an informed place. If, say, your 5th-grade bully just beats kids up for their lunch money because he likes to fight, then you need to specifically portray that aspect of him. If he, however, has a tragic backstory and is acting out his anxieties against smaller kids because that's how he's been treated all his life, then play that out as well. The antagonist doesn't need to be a sympathetic character, but it definitely helps for the writer to know where they come from and how they want the reader to respond.

And of course, the adventure part should always involve reluctance by the main character, at least at first, in order to reflect how important this choice to pursue change really is. Whether it's the kid finally standing up to the bully or the writer going into his attic to bag a raccoon, it should take some effort in order to make for a good story. Otherwise, it's not as much an adventure as it is a person going out and doing stuff.

Once the adventure starts, questions can be answered, information offered, and a full perspective can be presented. But at least in the beginning, it should be an exploration of unknowns, with a slow-burn reveal of the key elements. And on that note, I am going to grab my welding gloves, an old tarp, and a baseball bat and have a little adventure of my own in the attic. Wish me luck!   

Writing vs. Journalism

Every now and then I feel obliged to point out a few little points about what writing is and isn't - and by "writing," I mean of the primarily creative sort. Most every type of quality writing requires some degree of creativity, but I think we can all agree that the different areas of writing - research/academia, analytical, explanatory, etc. - each have different amounts of latitude compared to fiction or poetry, where creativity is the primary focus. And then, of course, there's one area that some creatives tend to avoid, and that it the art of journalism. But not so fast, I would warn you. The hard rules of fact-based journalism have a lot to teach even us creatives and poets.

Let's look at some basic journalism rules. First, your primary objective is to convey the five W's of any situation - Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This is the mandatory conveyance of information necessary for any good news story, and good fiction writers have to recognize these as well in their storytelling. However, writers have the right to be biased, so they can, in turn, determined which W they want to prioritize, minimize, or leave as the big question. If I am writing some fiction-fantasy, I really need to look at Where first, recognizing how different my world is from the reader's reality. Mysteries and legal thrillers usually focus on the Who and/or Why, while historical novels (fiction or otherwise) target the When of it all. And all of them need to have an eye toward What - the actual purpose of the piece being written.

Now, another part of journalism is regarding questions. A good journalistic piece provides answers to the five W's, but the better writing knows how to present the deeper questions in a way that asks the reader these questions before addressing them. A story might present a situation and highlight particular aspects of the story in order to make the reader say, "What?" or "Why?" then immediately address those issues. Creative writing does the same thing - it gets the reader thinking about the characters, motives, scene changes, and plot wrinkles just before offering the answers. The result for both writing schools is the same - the reader gets their answer from a special "a-ha!" moment, and there's some satisfaction in the accomplishment... so they read further.

Unfortunately, I do not know where the common space is between journalism and poetry. If those two circles on the Venn diagram overlapp, that intersection is smaller than anything I can perceive. If any poets or journalists wish to chime in on this, please do. Otherwise, I will just leave it by saying I have never seen a serious news story rhyme.

    

The Law of Writing

I am guessing that today, everyone is taking some time off of work to commemorate the holiday. I am guessing many citizens are gathering around in parks (weather allowing) or in public areas to chime in this very important holiday that has been recognized since before I was born. It actually became an official day in 1958, and has been a part of our country's culture ever since. Now to be clear, I am not talking about May Day - your confusion is understandable. No, I am talking about Law Day, the day commemorated by President Eisenhower to recognize the importance of the legal framework of our country or of any functioning governed body.

Upon further reflection, I am guessing all the hype today is actually about May Day and not Law Day. After all, working is quite popular in this country, but following the law comes with a lot of squishiness. Just one drive down I-294 will demonstrate with terrifying clarity how people disregard certain laws if it gets in the way of their preferred NASCAR-like habits. We still do have laws in this country, and a number of them sometimes get enforced (I actually once saw someone on I-294 receiving a ticket). The thing about those laws, however, is that plenty of them look good in theory but don't translate to the real world.

Moving this to writing, you've probably heard that you are not supposed to end a sentence with a pronoun. It's a rule, right? Well, regardless of whether it is or isn't, like most people, it's something I don't put up with (because if I did, that sentence would read, "...it's something I don't up with put."). There are plenty of rules that get neglected just as much as Law Day, but this is a part of the writing process. First, we learn the rules. Second, we discover their purpose and intention. Third, we look at what can happen if we bend or break those rules. Lastly, we put those results to use. In the case of the symbolic speed limit on I-294, I know what it is, I recognize it's there as a traffic regulator and as a means to reduce the severity of accidents, I know that if I bend it a bit, I get to my destination a few minutes earlier, and so I respond by keeping up with the flow of traffic zooming along at about mach 3.

If you know your rules of writing, then play with them and find out how they bend. Technically, rules of grammar are less flexible and more confusing when they are twisted about, but as a stylistic measure it can be effective - you just have to brace yourself for the consequences. If you opt to consistently use pronouns for representing characters, you should expect there the be some confusion during crowded sequences. If what you want is to give the reader a sense of confusion and disorientation, well, mission accomplished. Just be prepared for some people to set aside the book entirely. Just like if you're driving 80 down I-294 -  there is a chance you end up with a ticket for your efforts or an epic accident that will likely make the local news.

During this holiday - whether it's Law Day or May Day or Worker's Day or the Feast of Julian of Bale (a real thing), I hope you get to put in a little time for writing, and maybe even get a chance to break a rule or two. Just not on I-294.