The Adventure Beyond the Story

Someone told me about the simplicity of stories. They explained it by telling me when Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he wanted to scale Mount Everest, he famously answered, “Because it’s there.” Well, first, it was George Mallory who said that. More importantly, this was easily one of the most to-the-point explanations in the history of the Himalayas – it says everything that needs to be said with an economy of words, and also speaks volumes about the mindset of the intrepid explorer.

It is also a very boring story on its own.

When we think of a story, we think of an adventure that goes from A to B to C and so forth, eventually reaching the final point. This is very efficient and accurate, and it completes the journey. There is nothing wrong with that style of writing, but it misses out on the opportunity to expand on the character and their adventure. Mallory made his point in three words, but what else do we know about him? The character is very narrow, and the reader does not gain the opportunity to see the person beyond the mission.

This should be where the adventure for the writer begins. As we write the story, moving from A to B to C and explaining the challenges along the way, we should think about how the character sees these things. If there is a choice about which way to go when climbing Everest, this becomes an opportunity to show what pushes the character one way or the other. The writer can show the options, explain the character’s decision-making process, and even inform the reader about past events that shape today’s choices. This is where we step beyond the story and make it an adventure.

Cheryl Strayed’s book, Wild, portrays a 26-year-old woman hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). It’s not Mount Everest, but it’s over one-thousand miles worth of travel on foot. The story about such a long hike would be interesting on its own, but would it really leave a lasting impression in the readers’ minds? How would that hike differ from any other journey? Plenty of people hike the PCT every year, so what would make this particular story stand out from all those other people?

This is where we look at the route from A to B to C, and find the parts that can turn the story into an adventure. Even at point A – hiking the PCT – we discover that our main character has no experience hiking. The reader should immediately think, “Then why are you doing it?” This now demands an answer, and something more satisfying than “Because it’s there.” At that point, the writer has an opportunity to fill in the reader about the main character’s damaged life, bad choices, and questionable decisions. With this kind of information, we can now head to point B and beyond with some idea of where this character is coming from.

As we reach each new turn in the trail, we feel more informed about why our character makes certain choices. We see her do something that no experienced hiker would do, but we understand that she is not experienced, and also that she thinks in the short-term. Now we know the character more, and even if we don’t agree with them or even like them, we understand them.

With all of this extra information, the biggest benefit is that there can be a payoff at the end. When the reader first sees this woman heading out, unprepared and clueless, on a hike that might very well kill her, the question is how will she make it? (It’s a memoir, so we know she survives) As the story progresses and the reader learns about the character, they should also see how the journey has changed them. A long hike is a bit of an obvious metaphor for a life journey, but still very appropriate, and the story should show her personal growth along the way. This way, by the time the reader hits the last page, they have not only read the story about hiking the PCT, but one person’s adventure toward realization and growth.

If you want to read about Mallory's adventure up Everest, well, he died up there, so there was no memoir telling the tale. If you want to read about Sir Edmund Hillary, read High Adventure: The True Story of the First Ascent of Everest. Cheryl Strayed has a lot of fan followers and sites for Wild (and a surprising number of detractors). But for the most informative story, think of literally any personal journey you had from A to B, and explore who you were at point A and what changed when you got to point B. That is where the adventure lies.

The Imperfect Art of Dialogue

Just like anyone else, when I put on my editor's hat, I become a very detail-oriented, nit-picking master of all mistakes grammatical. I will gleefully point out where the writer missed using the subjunctive form, or where they left out the hyphen in a compound modifier. While I do this in a constructive manner, the end result should be a clean, error-free narrative.

But then comes dialogue.

As much as we love writing narrative, dialogue is in some ways the opposite of narrative. It can be clumsy and excessive, it can wander, the words are not perfect fits and the sentences can drag on. More importantly, this makes it sound natural. It sounds flawed, like something we hear anyone else say (but not ourselves. We are perfect). The weak structure of dialogue is often what makes it sound real.

One of the reasons I think workshops are crucial for polishing our writing is because we expose the words to the open air, dragging them out from that space between our ears. In a good workshop, the author reads their work aloud, putting as much personal feeling into their reading as they feel comfortable with. While this is a nice way to get a feel for how the words flow, it also helps us understand the dialogue.

A big revelations from reading the work out loud is that the audience gets to hear just how the author believes that character should sound. It is amazing to  see timid, soft-spoken writers suddenly become performers as they read their dialogue, unknowingly incorporating different dialects and styles during their presentation. This is great; this means they truly know their characters and their story. The task before them is now making sure the words on the page describe what the writer is saying aloud.

In narrative, editors hate words like "gonna," "ain't," "wanna," and other slangy words. In dialogue, they are priceless. As a writer, we need to sort through these situations and polish the narrative (where appropriate) but make sure the dialogue sounds natural. And once we hear the author read a piece of dialogue in that character's voice, we gain an understanding of just where that character's voice differs from clean grammar.

Consider the most common of grammar simplifications - the contraction. Didn't, wouldn't, shouldn't and so forth are very natural parts of spoken words, but frowned upon in clean narrative. However, when writers are told to write clean narrative, that voice can leak over to the character and give them totally out-of-place dialogue. The sentence, "I am not going to do that" is clean and tidy. However, when an eight-year-old screams that line when his parents make him clean his room, it no longer fits. Perfect grammar ruins the voice of the average eight-year-old, who would say something more like, "I ain't gonna do it!" Poor grammar, perfect character.

That example, however, can also be used in reverse. As a reader, what would you think of an eight-year-old who protested with perfect grammar? What would that say about the character? In some cases, perfect word use can say more about the character than anything else. Think about the control and discipline of perfect dialogue. Is the character highly educated? Very meticulous about detail? Annoyingly precise about everything? (In that case, they are probably an editor) The voice says it all.

Getting feedback about verbal cues is an important part of natural dialogue, and it makes your writing sound just like the voices in your head.

Staging Our Writing

I have been sick the past week, so this gave me a great opportunity to do some editing. More importantly, it was a chance to look at some of my writing not as a writer, but as an editor. During the past week on the couch, I edited a 118,000-word manuscript, and it ended up at about 98,000 words. Characters were eliminated, a couple of scenes were consolidated, but most of the 20,000 words I eliminated had more to do with stage management.

As writers, we are not only in charge of creating a world but also making it very real to our readers. In my mind, I can see the characters going about their activities, and I translate that all to the page to share this with the reader. This goes for describing the setting, visualizing the characters, and walking the reader through their actions. But once I do that, I then have to ask myself, "How much of that was necessary?"

The other day I was listening to the author Ravina Thakkar (The Adventure of A Lifetime) talk about her experiences with an editor. She offered a great insight that I think we can all learn from. She said, "I wrote a five-page description of a classroom, and then realized everyone already knew what a classroom looked like." This is a very concise way of pointing out that even the best writing might not be necessary. She didn't say her description was bad. Indeed, it might've been incredible. The question was what did it bring to the narrative? If it didn't contribute much, or give the reader something to work with, then it is worth taking up space?

I did a separate post about using description properly and for effect. This post is about how we stage-manage the characters, and what is and isn't necessary with their actions and mannerisms. These can also be very concise, very detailed, and often very unnecessary. And since there are more actions in a story than descriptions, there are more opportunities to tighten up our writing.

Let's take an example from the manuscript I edited from the comfort of my couch:

"Richie went into his bar, walked to the back room, opened his office door, moved to his desk and sat down."

This is the stripped-down version of a simple sentence -- descriptions taken out to get to the point. On the positive side, this does walk us through the entire route Richie takes in going to his office at the bar. It tells us the bar is his, that the office is in the back room, and he has a desk there. We walk his route, we arrive with him at his desk. There is nothing wrong with this sentence.

However, there is very little right with this sentence.

First, the structure. It's a chain of four- and five-word subject-verb-prepositional-phrase statements that reads without any interest. It has a monotonous pace. If we mix up the wording just a little at the beginning, the pacing becomes more interesting. "Richie entered his bar and went directly to the back room..." Now the pacing has changed, and it does not have the drum beat of a boring sentence. That doesn't save us any words, but it makes for a better sentence.

As far as word count goes, Richie takes twenty-one words to get to his office, but how many are necessary? When he enters his office, is it necessary to use two phrases to say he goes to his desk and sits down? Can't he just go sit at his desk? Do we need to talk about him opening the door? If it is important to the plot that the door is closed or open, then yes. Otherwise, most people understand how an office door works and it can be left out. If we know where his office is, do we need to mention that he goes through the back room to get there?  Maybe we can strip it down to taking Richie from A to B:

"Richie went to his bar and settled into his office."

That sentence is half the length and moves the reader along with the same effect. This kind of stage management usually clutters our first drafts, but is easy to filter out once we look at it again and decide how much is really necessary.

On a final note, that sentence can actually say a lot more if the writer draws attention to it. Look at what happens when our example is preceded by some verbal stage-setting:

"The routine never changed. Richie went into his bar, walked to the back room, opened his office door, moved to his desk and sat down."

By pointing out the monotony, the boring sentence structure now helps describe the scene.

This is all part of the joy of editing, but as our writing improves, we start catching these things as we write them.

Finding Inspiration

One of the most important parts of a writer's physical toolkit is that thing that helps inspire them. This can be anything -- a coffee mug, a poster, or that thing in your office that always catches your eye and draws your thoughts, even if just for a moment. We need something like this because it reminds us about who we are as writers, and that we turn on some part of our brain now and then and really make things happen. It doesn't have to have meaning to anyone else but us, because it is our inspiration, and ours alone.

Mine is a stack of Post-It notes.

To most people, a simple office supply like that is nothing more than a thing we swipe from the supply cabinet at work (and I think that's where I got mine). However, like any inspiring item, its value is the attachment we place on it. There is nothing magic about these Post-It notes other than what I use them for, so when I see them, I become a writer.

We all have our tough periods for writing. I am recovering from a bad cold, so my writing is not at its strongest. However, this has been a benefit for my Post-It notes, and here's why. My little yellow stack of notes stays by my bed, a pen always close by. Whenever I wake up with some lingering idea from a weird dream still floating around, I write it on a Post-It note. Needless to say, the past few days of cold medicine and a mild fever has brought some weird ideas to mind. And whenever I wake from that fever dream with some random thought still echoing in my skull, I jot it down.

Is this magic? Does this capture the purest essence of the most brilliant of my many brilliant ideas? Not even close. However, it does grab something my mind had been processing so much that it leapt to the conscious side of awareness. Was it meaningful? Well, here are my last seven entries over the past month -- you tell me:

• Toys have souls
• 19th century penny-ante poker
• That place in Chicago where runaway trains hide
• Going back to grade school
• My pet fire
• I have to eat everything
• Fireflies by Montrose Harbor

Anything? Are there any real gems there? Maybe they each say a little about me, or the things that go through my mind while under the influence of cold medicine. They might mean nothing to another writer. However, each one of those notes brings back that dream in vivid detail, along with all the feelings, emotions and weird ideations. And with that suite of emotional detail, I could write something about any one of those.

Will I? We will see. I am still on the mend, and trying to edit a manuscript ahead of a hard deadline. However, I do like the thought of writing about a pet fire, and there's a story about the souls of toys for sure. I would wager they all have stories in them, if I choose to write them.

The most important part, however, is that when I look at that stack of Post-It notes, I know there is a bunch of inspiration waiting there. It is not because the ideas are so good, but because that stack reminds me that I am a writer, and I can spin those into something worth reading.

(The next thing here worth reading will be on January 5th, 2019, as I slowly recover from New Year's Eve.)

Christmas and the Gift of Modifiers

As we enter the holiday season, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

More to the point, I want to explain as a writer why I want your Christmas to be Merry and your Holidays to be Happy, as my words suggest.

Merry and Happy are modifiers; in this instance, adjectives that modify a noun. We use them all the time and usually fall back on the safe ones. If I wish you all a Regal Christmas and a Ravenous Holidays, the modifiers might distract you even though I still wish you these things. Even something like a Joyous Christmas might not sound right, because recipients have very specific expectations -- Christmases shall be known as being Merry and/or White, and any other modifier stands out. Bing Crosby literally demanded it by singing, "And may all your Christmases be white." All of them. Every one. No exceptions. 

Well, sorry, Bing. Writers have that obligation to mix it up. Any written material will be filled with traditional modifiers -- blue skies and dark eyes, stormy nights and scary frights; all the lingua franca of writers. However, a writer really helps their craft when they can bring out modifiers that change the mood and bring a novel idea to the sentence. 

There is a fun little exercise to work on modifiers, based on the old-fashioned party game, The Minister's Cat. Fortunately, a writer can do these without needing a party. It's a pretty simple thing, and with a lot of practice, it develops the writer's ability to break away from expectations and create memorable sentences.

It goes like this: Take a simple sentence describing a person or a behavior, and leave the descriptor blank.

• I am a _____ driver. (the modifier is an adjective)
• I drive very _____. (the modifier is an adverb)

Now think of the easy adjectives -- good, careful, fast, bad, experienced, etc. -- and get those out of your system. Do the same for the easy driving adverbs -- well, carefully, quickly, poorly, etc.

Now start throwing different adjectives in, particularly ones better used for things like food, sports, hobbies, art, etc. -- the further from driving, the better. Think about the ways that you describe your soup or a painting could describe your driving. Could you be a zesty driver? Fast and memorable, always capturing the attention of everyone around you? Could you drive very poetically? Each move and technique well-thought out and scripted with a rhythm-and-flow that not everyone can understand or appreciate?

(Personally, my driving is salty and I drive inquisitively. Does that tell you about my driving or about me? Would you want to be the car behind me or the one in front of me?)

As you learn to flex your adjectives and adverbs, they do more than add to the description, they tell a story. If an artist character begins describing his moods not with emotions but with colors and shading, we see how that character acknowledges the world. Someone replete with loving, affectionate descriptors -- even as negative ones -- creates a very empathetic world about them. Think of a character who who describes friendships, relationships, and love with calculated, mathematical terms. You might know more about that person from those odd descriptions than by their simple actions.

Do this exercise periodically, assigning weird words to simple tasks and see what they become. .The more you do this, the easier it will become, and the more open you become with using your whole palette of words to bring out the details in your characters and writing.

But for next few days, enjoy your holidays. Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and enjoy the love and friendship of those around you (you can write about them later).

(I will also be enjoying a few things myself, so there will not be a post on December 24th. The next scheduled post will be on the 28th, as I prepare for New Year's Eve.)

Memoirs – Remembering Time, Place, and Family

As diverse as everyone’s life story is, they all share one thing in common: They all happened in the past. How long ago the story was will differ, but this is a common thread. It might seem like a painfully obvious statement, but the purpose is to remind the writer that the past is not the present, and the difference between the two is the basis for a good memoir.

I went out the other night with some friends, and one of them put five bucks in the digital jukebox (Note: not too long ago, jukeboxes were not digital, and only had vinyl.) When my friend came back he said he put on some Lady Gaga, but wanted to hear her “old stuff.” Only at that moment did I realize that my present mind just accepts Lady Gaga as a musician, but once upon a time she was a new artist. Her “new stuff” was now her “old stuff.” That made me realize just how much things can change in a mere ten years.

The purpose of this note is never forget to bring your readers into the past. When we write about the lives of our parents, grandparents, etc., we are sharing a life that many people might not understand these days. If I was to write about my father’s life, I would talk about the three-bedroom house where my father spent his teen years and my grandmother spent most of her later years. People these days have a concept of a three-bedroom house, but this story would have to dismiss all of those modern-day preconceptions and establish the past reality.

My father was five when the Forties started. As a writer, it is my responsibility to bring out the details of that era. When two of my father’s brothers went off to serve in the Pacific, the household changed in a way we might not relate to these days. My grandmother hung a two-star banner in the window, just like other houses on that street. Conversely, my father had the excitement of finally having his own bedroom. When everyone came back from the service, not only did seven people live in that three-bedroom house (with only one bathroom), but they often had relatives and guests sleeping in the living area due to the post-War housing shortage. The back room was filled with laundry from the neighbors because the extra money helped my grandparents pay the bills and eventually pave the driveway in 1947. (Though they never did get that second bathroom.) And at night, everyone would gather for an evening by the radio in the parlor, or one of my great-uncles would come over and tell stories. Those are stories that take place in the Forties, and can hold the interest of the 21st-century audience.

Now that the background has been set for a story about my father, there is one element that needs to be incorporated, and it’s the most difficult of them all: Family. I could write a bunch of stories about my grandmother, but the only ones I knew firsthand were from the Seventies. My grandfather had long since passed away, so I never knew my grandmother as someone’s wife. Grandma was just a saintly woman in her seventies, very different from the one raising five boys during the Depression and doing the neighbors' laundry for extra money. It becomes my responsibility to try and bring out who she was back then, and present her to the world not as my grandmother, but as a mother, wife, sister, and all those things that I never saw.

And lastly, the most difficult part is writing about family members as complete characters. To be honest, this isn’t always necessary – we can write about the many heroic deeds of our ancestors without pointing out the embarrassing details that go with them. However, I personally connect the closest to characters who have flaws and shortcomings, doubts and fears, or bad habits that they just can’t seem to shake. Reading stories of those before us and their perfect lives can make us feel somehow inferior. Stories about those same heroes that include their problems and the adversities they overcame make them inspirational.

I have plenty of people in my life (that shall remain nameless) who gain my admiration not for what they did but for what they overcame. I recently celebrated the thirty-fifth birthday of a friend who was not supposed to live past twenty – there is a story of heroism. Another friend of mine overcame the worst set of problems – bad luck and bad choices – to finally get their life on track, and their story moves me to be like them. And yes, for those friends who were ultimately defeated by their obstacles, there is still inspiration in how they took on a challenge they could never win.

Those are lives worth writing about, even if just for those stories.

Nobody’s Life Fits In Three-Hundred Pages

A lot of my fellow writers carry at least one project that involves documenting someone’s life – their parents, grandparents, a special friend or maybe their own. A part of that adventure involves discovering all the facts and details, and also all the stories and hearsay about that person. That alone is a lot of fun, and a worthy adventure. Then the writer in them steps in to put all of this stuff into narrative form; telling these things as stories. Whenever someone takes on this huge task, I support them 100%. However, I also remind them about the difference between those crucial things that turn the process into a journey, and the other parts that don't need to go in.

Documenting someone’s life is the first step to writing someone’s story, but it is not an end in itself. More importantly, a lot of any person’s life does not need to be documented on its own because its most important part is being a descriptor for other sections. Think about all the time you’ve spent sleeping, quietly enjoying a meal, reading the newspaper (back when there were newspapers) or watching something mindless on Netflix. These moments would never make it into any memoir on their own, and if they did, they would only be there to support some part of the real story. “I tried to enjoy my dinner while bingeing on episodes of The Office, but my thoughts always returned to that one night in 1986…”

Anyone who knows me, knows that during the winter, my bad knee gets stiff and I drag one leg a little. That’s how I am, no apologies. What any author of my life story must decide is whether or not it is important to tell all the stories behind that habit: blowing out my knee playing football, the lack of proper care that allowed the injury to become a chronic problem, and how I am now fifty and what little cartilage I have left in my bad knee is just for decoration. Is all that important? Or would it be easier to just point out the dragging step as I walk and mention how it was the lingering effects from a cheap tackle back in school? The decision about how to write that will define the shape of the story.

Next, life isn’t just one story, so don’t try to put everything into one story. Rather, look at one critical turning point in that life, and start writing about everything that led up to that point. If someone’s greatest moment in life is their fiftieth wedding anniversary, then the stories about their first job, the neighbor’s oak tree getting hit by lightning, or that time they saw a dog in the alley eat a rat are not important. All that matters are the stories that contribute to that one magical day – stories that build up to it, strengthen it, or even threaten it. That’s the real story. Save the thing about a rat-eating dog for another discussion.

(The rat-eating dog was kind of true -- I couldn’t tell if the rat was eaten by a dog or just by a much-larger rat.)

Now, going back to the fiftieth-anniversary story, the choice of stories leading up to that point determines what the whole thing is about. If the supporting stories are all about the adversities that couple faced on their way to that day, that’s one thing. A different route would be with all the stories about why that marriage was so strong. How about all the stories of humor and mirth that made those fifty years just fly by? Stories about the family they made, the lives they led – these all create a different environment for the memoir about that fiftieth anniversary.

There is more to it than just the story choice. There is creating the place and setting, which will be discussed in the next post.

(and to a certain couple – happy Fiftieth and may the next fifty be even better!)