The Personal Experience

There's a common hurdle writers will come across, time and again, where they have the temptation to get themselves immersed head-to-toe in a scene, poring through the details, describing every feature, and really giving the reader the full and complete experience they deserve. Any scene with a magnitude of intensity - action scenes, love scenes, death scenes - present the writer with this opportunity, but it's a temptation that comes at a price. Getting too far into a scene can actually weaken it as an experience if the writer leaves out one key part - the character's participation in the event.

Sometimes, in life, we experience things so intense that our memories of the event overwhelm our capacity to process everything that happens. In particularly extreme cases we detach ourselves from the experience - disassociation takes over, and while we might still remember the event, we disconnect our own place within it, sometimes not even fully realizing we were a part of the experience we remember. This occurs in writing as well, but at least we, as authors, have control of how we discuss the character's participation.

Action sequences are very easy to lose the characters. Let's look at a car chase - not as fun in writing as it is in the movies, but for now let's overlook that. One car is being chased by several others through the city streets, dodging traffic, swerving around pedestrians while the horn honks away trying to clear a path. There might even be gunfire - bullets fly around the lead car, shattering the windows, ricocheting off the trunk - all during a 100-mile-per-hour chase down a one-way road. This can be several pages worth of action, but I can guarantee you it will get boring, or at the very least it misses a great opportunity to actually be interesting, because it lacks any reference to the characters involved.

It was no coincidence that in the brief example above, I made no mention of the characters. The action was the cars, the guns, the bullets, but no actual people. This is where scenes lose their punch - the cars drive through the scene, but it's just action, not tension. Now, what if you describe that car chase from the personal space of one of the drivers - pursuer or the pursued, your choice. If they are being chased, how are they deciding where to go? When the light up ahead turns red and crossing traffic fills the intersection, how does that character respond? We get very used to the movies where the car just magically flies through the crowded intersection with precision timing, but in writing, that's our opportunity to show how the driver responds. Does the driver see an opening that just might work and rushes toward it, or just lean on the horn and pray for daylight? Do they have a deathwish and no concern for the drivers ahead? Is their desperation so extreme that they will do anything to evade the cars behind them?

Of course, this doesn't mean the story has to be a cerebral exploration of a character's driving habits. However, it should be going on with a critical awareness that the character's actions and decisions are a part of the scene, and how it unfolds needs to fit the character. A driver who holds every life to be sacred might have a real problem taking a detour through a public park, but this can be a great source of tension for the character if they are just that desperate to escape.

Writing is a great form of escapism from the real world, which can frankly be very boring at times. However, good writing brings the real world into that space just enough to make anything interesting and make everything personal.   

Conflict and Story Openings

After doing a little review of my last post, I did a little more thinking about the importance of the opening line and just what it needs to bring to the table. My thesis in Friday's entry was that it was the hook that brings in the reader, and I will stick by that one. However, I think it's only fair to discuss what a good hook really is. Yes, it should provide a great mix between information and presentation of the unknown. It should also be worded quickly and sharply to bring that point to the fore. However, there's one problem to address with all these routes, and that is... the problem.

Courtesy of Battlefield 2

What do I mean by a problem? Well, let's put it this way: Presenting a question in your opening line or paragraph creates a natural urge for the reader to seek an answer - that part is great. However, a technique that can be even stronger is bringing up not just a question, but a conflict. Not necessarily a fight or an argument, but a clear, discernible issue that is creating some sort of friction with our main character. They can be in whatever starting pose you want, but bringing out the problem they face in the immediate first sentence or so creates a tension. It's no longer a question about what's happening, but whether or not the character can overcome it. 

This about this opening: The story begins with a sniper lining up his target in the crosshairs, his trigger finger trembling as he hesitates to take the shot. This creates questions immediately - is our main character the sniper or the target? Is the sniper a good or bad character? What is the situation around shooting someone? Good questions to put out there for the reader to ponder. However, we create a larger issue with the sniper hesitant to take the shot. After all, that's what snipers do, right? They shoot people from a distance. So why the trembling hand, the reluctance? This is a question, but it is conflict - the situation is going against the character's intended action, and needs to be overcome. At this point, the stakes are higher for the sniper, not just to take out the target but to overcome some personal resistance to this particular mission. The interest builds.

At this point, the writer now has a game to play, which is offering a little bit of information to suggest possible reasons for the inaction, but still leaving some ambiguity as to what the best answer is. We can inform the reader that the target is a friend of the sniper, making the conflict even sharper. We can also point out that the friend is a double-agent, now creating a conflict between duty to the mission and believing the friend is somehow innocent. We build the conflict without resolving it, merely giving it more shape and texture without giving the reader an easy out. If we establish this early, we can carry this conflict throughout the story, piling layer upon layer of challenging beliefs onto the poor main character, giving the reader so much to think about that it might cause an argument at the book club. (The goal of any author should be to cause arguments at book clubs.)

As a last note, don't throw too much conflict on the reader at once. If, in our sniper scenario, we introduce the sniper with the shaking hand, the target, then point out the target is the sniper's friend, then challenge the friend's loyalty, and oh-by-the-way the friend is married to the sniper's sister, and the sniper's hands are shaking from a progressive nerve disorder, and taking out the target could save thousands of lives, but it might be the wrong person... well, there's such a thing as too much information at once. The slow build of our sniper's situation should be savored by the author because the reader will enjoy it that much more.     

Happy Anniversary!

It has been a long adventure, but here I am, celebrating the eight-year anniversary of this blog. Yes, before COVID, before so much chaos, this was starting off as a thing I was trying out as a way to talk with the writing community. And now, over 600 posts and countless thousands of hits later, I think I am getting the hang of it. More importantly, working through this post has really helped me flex my writing chops. So, to celebrate this anniversary, I wanted to discuss one of the subjects I have learned the most about: The opening line.

No matter what you write, it will all remain unread unless someone else is inspired enough to read it. And, unless the person is assigned to read all of your words, they need to be drawn into your work by something within those grand sentences. This is where the opening line comes into play - it is the hook that draws in the attention of the reader. It doesn't have to be a dramatic moment, explosive action, or even a brilliantly clever play on words. It just needs to contain an element that brings the reader a little closer to the subject, a spark that draws them to read the next sentence. And the next. And the next. And so on. Consider this opening sentence to a story:

My only memory of my father is the image of him spread out on the living room floor, eyes staring into open space. 

It creates an image, but does it tell a lot? Does it make the reader want to go forward? To some, yes - there is a little taste of the unknown in that line, leaving the reader wondering why the father character is in such a pose. But if we drop another hint, the sentence really takes off:

My only memory of my father is the image of him spread out on the living room floor, eyes staring into open space, gun still in his hand. 

Okay, things just got real. With those five extra words, the stakes have been raised and the reader's interest in continuing is pushing toward a need to continue. Those extra words open up a lot of unknowns in the story, and it is the unknowns that make people want to go further. When you make your writing a combination of grounded, sensible information and wildly interesting unknown features, readers go to the next sentence. And the next...

A great writing exercise is to write great opening lines. Maybe they will be so good that they inspire you to write the rest of the story, but for now, try this. Write an opening sentence for a story. Then give it a few extra words that make it exponentially more interesting. This is what will ultimately grab your readers. This is the art of the opening line. 

And it only took me 600+ posts to learn this.

    

The Compound Sentence

I made a promise in my last post, a promise to do a deeper dive into the work of art called the compound sentence, but I understood well in advance that such an exploration could get carried away in such a manner that any type of message in such a post would get lost within the lengthy explanation required to demonstrate just what a compound sentence is, therefore while I will still discuss the art behind creating such a work of grammatical perfection, I will not push too hard in suggesting whether it should be the preferred tool of choice as you go on your writing journey and develop the kind of process that best expresses your thoughts and desires.

That previous sentence is a bit of a grammatical nightmare, weighing in at a robust 120 words and likely to set off an alarm in the minds of editors. However, it is not what one would call a run-on sentence, but rather it is a compound sentence. The difference is, of course, that a run-on sentence wanders away from the subject and goes in tangential or even unrelated directions. A compound sentence, however, sticks to a central message or discussion point, with each phrase building upon the last one. It may sound like a modest distinction, but that's the important part, and I will explain why.

I was going to reprint the opening sentence from a draft of Newton Berry's The Hanged Man, but I can't seem to find my copy. If you find one, great, but allow me to explain. The book opens with a river raging through a limestone crag, with a man dangling upside-down from the edge of a cliff above, his foot caught in a gnarled root. Now, one could start the book off by focusing upon the man and his struggle to get back up the cliff. However, the author starts with a 234-word sentence describing the river's furious churning through this narrow crag. What does this do? It takes the reader immediately into a force of nature that is the river rapids, and holds them there as the scene builds from the cold water to the churning foam to the hard, relentless limestone cliff walls, then ascends the heights to the man dangling two-hundred feet above this violent situation. In that one compound sentence, the reader is immersed in the scene, not allowed to come up for air until that first period emerges just as the man hanging off the cliff is mentioned. And the reader is hooked.

Now, there are other forms of compound sentences that also pass editorial muster, but they are done in a different manner. In my mission to read James Joyce's Ulysses, there is a 4,391-word soliloquy at the end, taken from the spoken word of one of the characters. Now it's not exactly fair to call such a thing a compound sentence since it is written as a manner of speech, and in speech we can ramble on with stunningly imperfect grammar for hours and hours without stopping if our audience lets us. However, it is written word and done in a way to attract the reader to its message, so it counts and it's rather fascinating to read from the eyes of a writer. (In Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, there is supposedly a sentence registering just shy of 14,000 words in length, but I cannot attest to having read it. It is, however, on my bucket list.)

In short, the compound sentence, when taken to extremes, can give the author an extra tool when it comes to finding ways to draw in the reader - either into a scene, a character, or an emotion. When done right, they are extraordinarily immersive and quite memorable. Just as long as one does not ramble on and on and on and on and...    

Schoolhouse Rock Revisited

I will be the first to admit I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole this weekend. After my Friday post, Object versus Subject, I hopped on YouTube to awaen some nostalgic feelings and revisit some of those great Schoolhouse Rock videos (never mind that they are actually more jazz-oriented than rock and roll). Anyway, I think I went through most every one of them - some twice - just reliving the good memories and the absolute brilliance of these three-minute clips as teaching tools. I can't tell you how many times they've rolled through my head at one point or another during my adult life, but I can tell you a built quite an educational foundation upon those little songs. So now I would like to discuss the most important ones again - but as lessons for a writer and not just someone learning grammar. (Don't worry - I will neither sing nor rewrite any lyrics.)

Adverbs: We learned that adverbs are simply modifiers of verbs or sometimes adjectives. However, in writing, there is a lot of controversy about whether they are needed. Some people avoid them entirely because they are too easy to abuse, while others definitely believe they enrich descriptions of action. I make a special note to use my adverbs to offer extra punch, but only when the punch comes from a direction not expected - a sucker-punch, if you will. Like we learned, "quickly" is an adverb we can use to show how someone runs - but that's adverb abuse. If someone runs, we assume it's quickly, so just leave it out. If, however, they run trudgingly, clumsily, or drunkenly, well, those become some high-value adverbs. In short, only modify things where there isn't already an assumption in play.

Adjectives: Now, these are more important parts of description. Do not get them confused with their adverb cousins - use your descriptive words to fill in the blanks of our environment. However, like I mentioned with adverbs, use the descriptors that offer the most bang for their buck. The greenness of a tree, a blue sky, or blue water, these things are givens that really need to pop if you are going to push for describing the water's color. Murky, brackish, crystalline, iridescent with a shimmer of oily residue - now those bring out details that otherwise aren't assumed.

Noun: A noun is a person, place, or thing. Nothing new for writers here - I just needed to replay that song again as I wrote.

Conjunctions: These are toxic little friends of any writer because they attach thoughts and phrases. However, to follow up on the railroad metaphor used in Schoolhouse Rock, if we connect too many ideas and thoughts together it acts like a train with too many connected cars - it drags, weighs down the activity, and ultimately goes nowhere. As writers, we like bringing very complex ideas to life. However, we can get carried away with our ideas and create run-on concepts. In the case of complex sentences, unless you want to go for the compound sentence presentation (to be discussed in the next post), try to limit your sentence length to at best 30-40 words. Long sentences are often more for the author's ego than the presentation of an idea.

For the rest of them, well, go to YouTube and check them out.     

Object Versus Subject

If there's one thing I struggled with in high school, it was grammar. My language usage was just fine when I spoke (though a little slurred), but when it came down to the academic parts of breaking down a sentence, that was it - I tapped out. My identification of the parts of a sentence was exclusively informed by Schoolhouse Rock (check YouTube if you aren't familiar), so I knew that "a noun is a person, place, or thing" and interjections were for excitement, for emotion, etc., and verbs did things. Other than that, I was fairly lost. I actually learned more about grammar from my German class, where prepositions were all-important and you always capitalized your nouns. However, I digress.

I am not bringing this up as a preface to a big writer's grammar lesson, but rather to set the stage that I am not one who dives deeply into grammar when it comes to writing. As an editor, if the verb and subject don't agree, I make the correction but I don't elaborate on the explanation. I don't go head-first into discussing split infinitives or dangling participles - I just point out the problem. And one thing I definitely don't want to get caught doing is preaching about when something is an object or a subject. I am, however, going to plant a little seed here about how you should consider these things in your writing.

We all know what an object is - a table, a dog, a chicken. We know how to describe objects - the sturdy table was made of thick oak and polished regularly to a bright shine. However, how does this help us in our writing when it comes to object versus the more enigmatic concept of a subject. Well, glad you asked. Per my earlier discussion, I am not going to go into the details of how things get defined and classified, and lay down a bunch of rules that most people don't know anyway. Instead, I will offer a way to think about things that should help differentiate between the two as far as your writing is concerned.

Too many times, we write about our characters as if they were objects. We give them a calculating description, going over them to bring out the details and provide an image that a good sketch artist could work with. However, when it comes to writing about a person, place or event as a subject, write about it not in clinical detail, but like you care about it; like you want to know it personally. If I want to identify a person at a bar, give me a description of them as an object. If I want to get to know someone better, tell me about their interesting features, their qualities that make them worth investigating.

If I am describing, say, a farm dog as an object, he might be a 100-pound sheepdog, his long fur patched black and white, with his big head hanging down below his shoulders. Now I can see that dog. As a subject, however, I would talk about how that big lug would chase the chickens that got out of the pen, barking and howling but never running fast enough to catch one, just putting a little fear into the ones trying to make a break for it. Now that dog has personality, even for a dog.

Sure, plenty of people might complain that I didn't discuss the object/subject rules. That wasn't my intention, so mission accomplished. However, treating your various characters like subjects versus objects brings them into the story as opposed to them being just set decorations. The writing is always better for it.      

Games Writers Play

We all know the basics of writing - either fiction or fact, the objective is to communicate a message to a larger audience. With storytelling, we want to give the reader the most valuable parts of the events and parties involved, along with anything that carries an emotional theme. With poetry, conveying the sentiment is paramount as opposed to description. And of course, our choice of dialogue is all about the spoken words. However, writers get to reach into a bag of tricks and play some little games with the reader if they so choose, along with the actual technical writing. These are some of the things that make a simple story very complex, or create a compelling narrative.

One of my favorite writer tricks is The Unreliable Narrator. The writer gets to tell a story from someone's perspective, but maybe doesn't tell the reader that this character might play fast and loose with the details. Maybe the narrator doesn't remember everything and leaves out critical details, maybe they have an altered sense of reality, or maybe they are trying to convince you of their innocence when they are, in fact, guilty. The Unreliable Narrator is broad in scope, and can cover a lot of different areas, but it has to be done with a purpose other than just to say, "Gotcha!" to the reader. It's the difference between a trick and a prank - the former being an impressive turn of events while the latter is just annoying. 

Another grand game to play is the Multiple Perspectives Narrator - giving the reader several characters' first-person perspectives, and letting the unreliability be sorted out by things such as deduction. We see this in mystery novels through the interrogation of various suspects, but when it is done from the perspective of those suspects, the reader gets to view the story from many different, perhaps conflicting angles. Epic storytelling often does this, leaving the reader to get a true-to-life feeling for the story because they have to fill in details.

Oh - regarding details, there are a lot of games writers can play with details. Everyone understands the basics of description and fleshing out scenes and characters. One great game is for the writer to describe characters without throwing in all these sensory cues but rather through metaphor, simile, and conneciton to ideas. The character's looks are never revealed but the reader should get a keen visual of what the character feels like. If I describe a shady senator, I can use terms like a lopsided smile, a sinister expression, shifty eyes, etc. and those physical traits will come through. However, what if I take their appearance and fill it in through character traits? Maybe I go with, "The senator stood at the podium with a smile made wide by dozens of broken promises, adjusting a tailored suit made entirely out of bribes and kickbacks." No two people would be able to sketch the same vision of the character, but the reader would have an unquestionable image of who that politician was, what he looked like to them, and what he was all about.

These games are all fun as long as they are done with a purpose. As long as the shady senator doesn't need to have a distinguishing physical trait, go ahead and describe him through his faults. If a narrator is unreliable because he is actually the bad guy, make sure his narrative is crafted to broadcast his innocence even in the face of evidence against him. And if there are several characters offering conflicting stories, make sure that you - the author - know the real story, and why everyone else's is just a little different.