Serve the Work

As 2015 comes to a close, my writing news ends on a high note. After many, many rewrites, Mr. Agent says my manuscript passes muster and we can send it out to publishers in January, after the holiday chaos. I am beside myself with relief and excitement. Just when I came close to giving up on this story, I stuck with it. Maybe the gamble will pay off. Whatever happens, I take comfort in knowing I did my best. I also look forward to finally returning to the business of writing after such a long hiatus and reporting the process to you, dear blog reader, along the way. 

There is one small detail to attend to before Mr. Agent sends out the manuscript. It's a plot point that happens in the third act that he feels needs to be reworked. At first look it seems an easy fix, but as I move deeper into the changes I realize it ripples out and affects many scenes. Whether I make the changes or not is entirely optional and up to me--but his feeling was that since we're waiting until January, why not?

I've given his suggestion a lot of thought and I've decided to go for it. If it doesn't work, we can always revert to the previous version. Part of the reason why I'm taking on the challenge is that the change we came up with together is actually an idea I had pursued many drafts ago, but had abandoned. Why? Because even though the story led me there, it didn't feel literary enough to me. It was too obvious, predictable. I wanted to create something more subtle, nuanced. 

Looking back now, I can see many instances when I tried to steer the story instead of letting it steer me. And what happened? I veered off course. Trying to make the story something it was not cost me a lot of time and pages. 

On a whim, I borrowed a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's WALKING ON WATER: Reflections on Faith and Art from my local library. Shortly after my conversation with my agent I came across the following passage (don't you love it when this happens?) which refers to her process of working on A WRINKLE IN TIME, her masterpiece:

"I began to comprehend something about listening to the work, about going where it shoved me. And so the long two years of rejection slips which followed were especially difficult; it wasn't just that my work was being rejected; or, if it was, it meant that I had not even begun to serve the work."

Serve the work. Yes. This is what I've been learning. When we get in the way of a piece by trying to make it something it is not--either by deciding the story isn't lofty enough or it's in a particular genre we don't care for--we ruin it. Our job as writers is to accept the story as is and let it guide us into being. Our choice, our art, comes from how we tell that story. This is where we can let our heads rules our hearts. 

Is there a story you're stuck on? Think for a moment--are you trying to make it something it's not?

See you in 2016.

Don't Speed Date Your Characters

I'm back! I can't believe I haven't posted since July. As you could probably tell by my mid-summer lament, I didn't meet my goal of finishing my rewrite by the end of summer. It was too difficult to concentrate on my kids and my work at the same time. When given the choice my kids will always come first. I put away my laptop for the rest of the summer, forgave myself for not meeting my deadline, and spent my time playing games and having water fights instead.

Now that school's back in session, I'm right back on schedule. I'm nearly finished rewriting 2/3 of the book. My new goal for completion is the end of October.

So, where were we?

A while back, I promised a post about getting to know your characters. That seems like a good place to start.

Sometimes when writers talk about getting to know their characters, we treat the exercise like speed dating. We sit down and knock off a list of traits in the span of a few minutes. To show you what I mean, I'm going to set a timer for two minutes and come up with a character from scratch. Ready, set, go...

Character Name: Krista Mahoney

-Female
-22 years old
-Short brown hair, bangs
-Blue eyes
-Small build, sometimes mistaken for a teen
-Crooked smile
-Wears bulky clothes she can "hide" in
-Parents are divorced, one brother
-Dropped out of college after one semester
-Likes cats
-Works at an ice cream shop
-Shy
-Has no significant other
-Likes to read mysteries
-Eats a tuna sandwich every day for lunch
-Crawls under the bed during thunderstorms

Okay for two minutes work, I guess. Notice the kind of details I came up with--most of them are superficial. She's a little compelling but a bit of a stereotype. Could I write a story about her? Sure, but I don't have much to work with.

This list, dear blog reader, would not be enough information to know if you wanted to date someone in the real world, let alone spend time with them in a fictional one. A person or a character, is more than just a list of traits and likes/dislikes. Rather than just quickly sketching out the basics, getting to know your character should be more like those long, all night phone calls with a new crush; where you don't want to hang up so you ask every conceivable question that comes to mind. To truly know your character, to fall in love (which is a necessity for good writing!) you need to take some time and dig deeper. You need to know the answer to the following questions:

-What does this character want above all else?
-What is she willing to do to get it?
-What is she willing to lose?
-What does she need?
-How are her wants and needs in conflict with one another?
-What does she value most?
-What is her major weakness?
-How does she hide this weakness?
-What in her past makes her this way?
-What, internally, is getting in the way of her getting the goal?
-What, externally, is getting in the way of her getting the goal?
-What event causes her to change?
-How does she change?

Let's apply the above questions to Krista and see what happens.

-Krista wants to feel safe and secure.
-In order to feel secure, she is willing to avoid anything that involves risk.
-She is willing to sacrifice friendships and romance in order to avoid being hurt.
-What she really needs is to come out of her shell.
-Coming out of her shell will put her at risk of having her heart broken.
-Above all else, she values a peaceful, quiet life.
-Her biggest weakness is not allowing herself to trust others.
-She hides this weakness by avoiding social situations.
-She's this way because her parents divorced when she was ten. Her older brother, her closest confidant, sided with her father in the divorce and left to go live with him. Krista could never understand why her brother took her father's side. She felt betrayed. She lost both her father and her brother/best friend at the same time.
-Internally, she's unable to reach her goal of security because she's afraid to risk having her heart broken.
-Externally, she's unable to reach her goal of security because she lives alone and has a job that allows her to work in isolation (instead of an ice cream shop, maybe she's an artist?)
-The event that causes her to change is her work forces her to be in contact with a client/patron/philanthropist. If she refuses to contact this person, she will lose her livelihood. The person she is forced to deal with is unpredictable and difficult and keeps her on her toes.
-Krista changes by gaining confidence in herself. She realizes that even when she's involved in events  (or with people) she can't control, she is resourceful enough to handle the unknown and come out fine. With a little experience under her belt, she is now equipped to take bigger risks in her life.

I spent about 30 minutes on the above. Still not a huge time investment, but there's a lot more meat to work with here than on the previous list. Better questions yield better answers. The answers to these questions even suggest the outline of a story. 

You could make a list of character traits even before you start writing a story, but where this exercise becomes most powerful is when you use it on the characters in a story you've already started, especially a story that has stalled. Often when we're stuck it's because we have yet to make some crucial decisions about what our characters want. Take what you already know about your character and use it to answer the questions. Spend time thinking through their motivations. As if by magic, new plot ideas may suggest themselves and you'll be able to move forward.

Are you stuck on a story? Give this exercise a try. Let me know how it works for you.

Swinging the Ax

I was so hoping, Dear Blog Reader, that by now I'd finally be in the throes of the publishing process and would have tons of juicy insider bits to share with you. Unfortunately--like most things in life--my journey toward getting this book published is not going according to plan. As detailed in my post The Summer of Crazy, my agent says I have some more work to do. I've spent the last three months revising the first third of the manuscript and now I have to do it again.

This is no small revision. I'm eliminating a plot that's going nowhere, changing all the characters' relationships toward each other (which basically means that every line of dialogue and every action between them has to be reconsidered), and get the story moving sooner. It feels a lot like building a beautiful piece of furniture, taking an ax to it, and then trying to rebuild it from the splinters. It's hard to make the pieces fit, but incredibly satisfying when they finally do.

What is surprising me about the process, though, is just how much stuff I'm able to cut out every time I go over it. Even though my prose can hardly be described as "lean", I like to think that I tell a pretty tight story. There are many points in the process where removing a paragraph or scene seems to jeopardize many other parts of the book. More often, though, in an effort to get the plot rolling faster, I'm finding just how much I can cut without affecting the story at all. It's scary and liberating and disconcerting all at the same time. Once I start swinging the ax, I can't stop. I wonder sometimes if I'm getting carried away. Am I going, once again, in the completely wrong direction?

Then I heard a great piece of writing advice from an unlikely source...The Princess Diaries 2 movie.

I had trouble determining if using the original movie poster image on my blog fell under 'fair use'. Let's pretend this is a royalty-free picture of Anne Hathaway, shall we?

My daughters were home sick (they're twins--they do everything together) and wanted to watch The Princess Diaries 2. When the movie was over, we watched the deleted scenes, introduced by director Garry Marshall. One scene in particular caught my attention. Anne Hathaway was poking around the hidden corners of the castle and found a secret passage hidden behind a wall. We follow her for several minutes in the hidden room until she discovers something that plays an important part later on in the movie (I'll refrain from spoiling it for you). While Hathaway's discovery is crucial to the plot, the director ended up cutting the scene. In the final cut of the movie, you see Anne Hathaway disappear behind a hidden wall and that's basically it.

 Marshall explained that he cut the scene because it had slowed down the pace of the movie and there was still enough information there for the audience to fit the pieces together. And that's when he said something so simple and so brilliant it should be heeded by directors and writers everywhere: "You think you have to explain everything, but you don't."

This bit of wisdom reaffirmed when I had been discovering during my revision--much of what I'd written was explanation of things that didn't need to be thoroughly explained. I'd found moments when I'd gone on for paragraphs about a bit of background when one sentence was enough. Rather than describing how a character feels toward another character, a line of dialogue could convey the relationship instead. Other things didn't need to be mentioned at all. As long as I was aware of the forces shaping my characters, I didn't need to clue the reader in on everything.

Art is shaped not only by what is present but also by what is absent. Sculpture is formed by what is removed. Rhythm is defined not only by the beats but by the rests. Fiction comes alive not only by what is written, but by what is left out. Simple, obvious, but not always easy in practice.

Situation vs. Premise

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve had a significant breakthrough on my current project after a long dry spell. Part of my problem, as I mentioned previously, was that I tend to develop the characters first, then try to build a story around them.

The breakthrough came about when I boo-hooed to my agent that I was hopelessly stuck. I told him about a few situations I had in mind for the characters, but that so far they refused to do anything interesting—they were just loitering. It was then that my agent suggested that maybe my problem was that I was looking for situations, when what I really needed was a premise.

The distinction, as he explained, was very subtle yet significant. A situation was merely dropping them in a setting with a set of problems. A premise was dropping them into a situation that forced them to take action. Here’s a rough example: a situation might be that a family that doesn’t get along very well decides to go to an amusement park for the day. They argue, they eat pizza, they go on rides. They exist within the situation, but other than that, not much is going on. A premise, on the other hand, would be that this combative family gets locked in the park overnight. A premise begs the question: What are they going to do? It indicates movement, direction. This is precisely the kind of momentum needed to start a story.

Basic stuff, I know, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded now and then.

My agent then suggested I brainstorm 100 plot ideas—the more outlandish the better—to get myself rolling. First, I went through all the clichés; the evil twin, mistaken identity, alien abduction. Then it became really hard, and I thought I’d never come up with 10, let alone 100 ideas. Still, I kept on. Then, I hit number 18. It was so simple and clear, I could hardly believe it. I’d found my premise.

But I wasn't quite out of the woods, yet. More tomorrow.