On Critiques (and humility)

Sorry I haven’t posted yet this week. I’m going to blame that on business travel. Also, the necessity of networking in the evenings with other people in my industry who (not incidentally) were willing to buy me drinks. I didn’t get anything done on my work-in-progress either, sadly, but that’s a story for another time.

Moving on, though, over at The Literary Lab blog, Lady Glamis ran an experiment today to see what the Lab’s readers would suggest by way of edits on a random, decontextualized paragraph. The results were interesting, to say the least. And since this is a blog (ostensibly) about revisions, let’s look at the paragraph, my comments, and the eventual results.

The paragraph was this:

It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet.

Let’s just say that I wasn’t an immediate fan of this graf. To my mind, the prose is a bit purple, and occasionally hard to follow. my comments, which (if you’re interested) are preserved here, were my typical, Hemingway- and Kotzin-inspired “streamline, cut, edit, clarify” deals. The most pertinent of my comments, and the ones I still stand by, concern the first and second sentences. In the first sentence, there seems to be a confusion between “light” as an electromagnetic phenomenon and “light” as an electrical or oil-fueled device. In the second sentence, the “She” of the subject may be well-defined in the wider context of the work in question, but in this isolated context may or may not refer to the maid, who was the only person mentioned in the first sentence.

My other comments were mainly concerned with rewriting for conciseness and clarity. I think I even said I didn’t like the word “circlet,” because it’s archaic. In my defense, I did retract that comment later, when I considered that the excerpt may have been from a much older work than I originally thought.

As it turned out, there were two primary views on this paragraph: those who thought it reflected an important “voice” and thought edits should be minor, and those (like me) who thought the whole thing was just overwrought and needed a total rewrite. Again, in my defense, I had the whole first paragraph thing stuck in my head because of that contest I entered a couple of weeks ago, so I was treating the excerpt like it was the beginning of a novel/novella/short story. It doesn’t really matter, though, because I didn’t, and still don’t like the writing style.

So I’m washing my crow pie down with beer right now, because the excerpt was from a reasonably well-respected novel by Kate Chopin called Awakening. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I have to like that paragraph any better, or change all of my comments. It does mean, however, that I might want to think more about voice and style before hacking up a piece of writing in a way that fits my aesthetic. The paragraph was in the middle of the novel (not at the beginning), and a lot of the things I didn’t like about it may not have bothered me in the context of the larger work. I’ll consider that a lesson learned and move on.

I still think, though, that one doesn’t have to like everything about a work in order to consider it, on the whole, a work of genius. My film example of this is Casablanca. I think it’s a phenomenal film, a work of brilliance, but in a couple of ways I was, and still am disappointed by it. Mainly I don’t buy Bogey as a romantic lead. Granted, the style of acting wasn’t quite the method acting we expect today, but I found him wooden and stilted in the romance flashbacks (by the way, I think Stanislavski was full of it, though that’s not pertinent to this blog). What makes that film brilliant, though, is the situation. Regardless of the execution, the conflict set up by the scriptwriters was such that one can’t help but empathize, to be drawn into the world of the characters.

In a similar vein, we’ve got bestsellers like The Lost Symbol that feature prose that’s clunky, painful to read at times, but that undoubtedly tell a story that bajillions of people want to read. Brown’s prose might suck compared to that of the masters, but he sure knows how to tell a story. A ludicrous, fanciful, credulity-destroying story, to be sure, but still a story that has us turning the pages ever-faster even while we roll our eyes.

Because story, ultimately, is what it’s about, isn’t it? We writers are in the business of telling stories. Sure, some of us aspire to an elevated prose style, but we should never forget that story trumps (almost) all when it comes to the vast majority of the novel-reading public.

So what, then, if I don’t like Chopin’s prose. So what if her grammatic structure isn’t perfect (at least in this paragraph). If the story she tells is engaging, the character development satisfying, and the thematic significance illuminating, who really cares if she occasionally drops into less-than-inspired prose?

I learned a lesson today. I’m not sure I won’t make the same mistake again (I probably will), but perhaps the next time I’ll critique with a bit more humility, and think a bit longer on context before pulling out my scalpel. After all, that’s what I’d like my critique partners to do for me, isn’t it?

The Respectability of Online Fiction Journals

Near the end of my Fiction Writing class this past spring, our teacher spent one lecture on how to get our work published. Her advice was quite simple, actually: read a ton of online journals, find some that seem to fit your work, and submit, submit, submit. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it’s kind of curious what she didn’t mention at all—print magazines. Why would that be?

One obvious reason would be that she co-edits an online journal herself. But that would seem a trivial consideration when weighed against the fact that there are literally thousands of online fiction magazines, as compared to the handful of print literary magazines. Seriously, off the top of my head I can think of only a few print markets for short fiction that have any kind off widespread distribution: Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, Asimov's Science Fiction, Weird Tales, and perhaps a couple of others. There are, of course, the mainstream magazines that feature fiction now and then, like The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, but what writing student will get published in those? The fact is that if a writer is looking to get some publication credits to his name, he’s best served looking to online fiction zines rather than print media.

“But,” I hear you saying, “are online journals even a respectable publication credit?” Well, the answer to that depends on the journal (obviously), as there’s a huge range out there. But let’s look at some archive issues of Per Contra to see what kind of authors publish online. Hmm, let’s see… Okay, contributors include: Stephen Dixon (fourteen short fiction collections, fifteen novels, two NEA fiction fellowships, O. Henry Prize, etc.), R.T. Smith (published in Best American Short Stories, NEA fellowship, etc.), and—wait for it—John Updike (only two Pulitzer Prizes!). Respectable? Um, yeah.

And it’s not just Per Contra. There are numerous journals out there whose contributors include celebrated, published authors. Really, it’s enough to give one an inferiority complex when reading their work.

On the other hand, there are many smaller zines that just love discovering new and up-and-coming authors wh0’re working on establishing themselves. I really like LitNImage and FlashQuake, but there are too many journals to name in any reasonably short blog post. It can get overwhelming, sometimes, trying to read and get a feel for what these zines publish, but it’s the best (and really the only) way to go about things.

Plus, if you’re regularly submitting work to journals you like and respect, then the editors might get to recognize your name. And if your work’s good, then eventually you’ll have something stick. Even if you’re rejected, sometimes the rejections come with notes that give you that little bit of encouragement. I got a rejection that called my work “powerfully written,” which I rather liked.

All this is to say that yes, publishing in online journals is a perfectly respectable way to build publishing credits. At least, that’s the way I’m trying to go about building my brand. That way, when I finally do get around to querying a novel, I have some writing credits to put in the author bio paragaph, right?

So what about you other writers? How do you feel about online journals? Have you been published in any? I’d be thrilled to read your work, if so.

Have a great weekend, folks!

On Noticing Things

Since I’ve started writing again, I’ve noticed that I see the world differently. From the writing books I’ve read, I don’t think I’m unique in that. Something about writing, thinking about things in terms of words, changes our minds, directs our thoughts and impressions into phrases and descriptions.

An example: last night at a restaurant I saw a small boy playing with a tennis ball. He was bouncing the ball off the floor and catching it in his baseball cap. Something about him caught my eye, and I loved the way he put his full attention into bouncing and catching the ball, and the way he interacted with his sisters while he did it. The artless innocence of his play was beautiful, and I found myself filing the mental image away for use, perhaps, in some story at a later date.

I’ll give another example. A couple of days ago I was walking toward the power plant I’m currently inspecting, passing a small, flat, grassy area next to a water culvert. The sun was just rising, and the grass looked silvery in the sunbeams spilling from the low clouds. This caught my eye, and I bent down for a closer look. At that time in the morning, the dew was still on the grass, and as I kneeled and sighted across the lawn toward the sunrise, I saw thousands of tiny beads of water caught in the curve of the grass stems, each a tiny, sparkling encapsulation of the cloud-streaked sky.

And then there was the next day, when the clouds were low and close, and the humid air pressed the steam from the cooling towers close to the ground, where it swirled around the construction trucks and workmen hauling plywood and scaffolding spars.

Do you see what I mean? Something about writing has enlarged my appreciation for moments, for images that I can use in my work, for that intersection of person and place and time that creates meaning when translated into words. I don’t know when I started to think like this, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m seeing more, appreciating more, living more. I couldn’t go back if I tried.

How I Got Published

So it’s not a novel, or a novella, or even a story in a print magazine, but I have been published. A bit of flash fiction I banged out for my Fiction Writing class last spring was published in this quarter’s issue of Per Contra (you can view it until the new issue comes out in February). Now, some of you might be thinking, ‘Online journal? Does that even mean anything?’ The answer to that is yes, it certainly does mean something, and I’ll tell you why. But first I’ll discuss how I came to be published.

Now, anyone who’s spent time in writing courses in college know that the teachers of such courses often (if not invariably) have their own writing careers to tend to in addition to their teaching duties. (Yes, I’m broadly generalizing, and I’m sure there are exceptions, so please let me know if too far off base here). Such was the case with my writing class with Miriam N. Kotzin. She’s a poet who also specializes in flash fiction, and as such our course focused almost entirely on flash, with just one short story as the ending project.

The assignment that produced my story was to write a story incorporating the rules of some game or other (from the fun prompt book for writers, What If, by Bernays and Painter). Don’t ask me where I got the idea to use Twister as the game, but get it I did, and using some of my post-high school summer experiences with my slacker friends (disclaimer: the story is not autobiographical), I trotted out “Twister.” I thought it worked out well, and apparently Ms. Kotzin agreed, and once the class was over, she decided to option it for the online journal she edits with Bill Turner.

Now you might think that’s too easy a way to be published, and perhaps it is, but I’ll explain why I think Ms. Kotzin optioned my work. I think I’m a decent writer. I think I have a great many stories in me, and perhaps if I work hard enough I can excel at the craft and eventually publish a novel or two. So I don’t think Miriam chose one of my stories because of my current ability, but for the potential she saw in my writing.  (And I wasn’t the only one in that class who could put together a good story; if the class website wasn’t gone already, I’d look up their names and link ‘em). As she said once in class, editors are always looking to discover new talent, so I believe that’s why she chose to publish me.

I’m really trying not to sound arrogant here, because I know for sure that I have a ton to learn about the craft of writing and storytelling. I think luck has a lot to do with publication, and many of the agent blogs I read say pretty much the same thing. It was lucky that I just happened to need one last liberal arts course before getting my engineering degree. It was lucky that I took the course with Miriam. It was lucky that she just happened to co-edit an online literary journal. And—probably the most important bit of luck—it was lucky that I managed to turn in a relatively decent story that she thought might be a fit for her journal. All these factors contributed to me getting published for the first time.

I was in the right place, at the right time, and I wrote the right story. That’s what it took. But even though luck plays a part in publishing, we as writers would do well to remember Louis Pasteur’s quote: “chance favors the prepared mind.” Or, put another way, with a different slant: we make our own luck. So go ahead. Get out there. Get discovered. Be in the right place at the right time. And, more than anything, write.

Agent Comments: Priceless

I knew I wasn’t going to win Nathan Bransford’s First Paragraph contest. That’s not just retroactive modesty, by the way, since I did say it last Friday. I was fine with it then, and I’m even more fine with it now, because I got a couple of sentences from Nathan saying what he liked about my work. This gives me hope.

Actually, it kind of takes the pressure off, too. I wrote that paragraph specifically for the contest, so there’s no novel to back it up that I could even get a partial critique on. In fact, I have nothing I could query agents about  at all, so the runners-up and Travis are welcome to their prizes (though a bookmark would have been snazzy). I’d feel kind of bad taking a query critique away from someone who really needs it, when all I wanted out of the deal was props.

To be honest, my body of work thus far is pretty slim. Seriously, I counted it up last night, and I’ve written three short stories and fourteen flashes since I started writing again in March of this year, and most of those were for the Fiction Writing class I took my last quarter of school (Drexel U.’s on the quarter system; don’t ask, it just is). Since I graduated in June, I’ve written three flashes and two short stories. Not exactly banging out the word count here, am I?

Perhaps it’s because I write slowly, constantly second-guessing myself (that’s one of the reasons Nano wouldn’t work too well for me, though I understand that’s the point of the whole thing—to forget about the inner critic and just write, dammit!) Perhaps it’s because I can’t seem to go back into a work in progress without editing out adverbs, unnecessary articles, and the like before writing new stuff. Perhaps it’s just that I have a day job, a house, a wife, and three small children. Whatever the case, I’m moving along this writer’s road slowly, but I guess that’s okay as long as I’m making forward progress.

We all need positive reinforcement as writers. That’s why I’m in a critique group, why I submit my work to online journals, and why I entered the contest. Any positive feedback (constructive, that is) is enough to recharge my energy and get me excited to work on the next idea, or to revise the current work. That’s why I’m thrilled to tiny little excited pieces to have Nate Bransford call my writing “smooth,” with “great rhythm and great details.” I didn’t win the contest, but I did get noticed. And that’s what we all want isn’t it? In our solipsistic, attention-starved, authoristic little worlds, what we really want is for people to see us, to read the work we slave over and pour our guts into, and to approve.

I got a little bit of that from this contest, and good lord, but it’s nice. And, to end with the title motif…

Laptop: $650; Microsoft Office Suite: $200; numerous writing books: $125; coffee and alcohol (weekly): $waytoomuch; agent approbation: priceless.

I’m a Finalist, and That’s Enough.

I’m probably not going to win Nathan Bransford’s First Paragraph Contest, but that’s really okay. It’s not even that I don’t feel as though the paragraph’s as good as it can be (though I don’t, and my edit’s here). I think what I’m learning is a lesson in how the market works.

Here’s the deal. Nathan Bransford chose his top ten finalists, then put them out for public vote. His blog readers then get to vote on their favorites, and presumably the one with the most votes after the weekend wins. Since that’s the case, I’m already out of the running, as out of 500+ votes, I’ve garnered perhaps 40 (I haven’t counted, so that’s an estimate, and probably a high one). But it makes sense for a literary agent to democratize the selection process, doesn’t it?

Look, an agent’s interested in what’s going to sell, right? And I think it’s fair to say that a large proportion of the writing public (from which Mr. Bransford’s readers are primarily drawn) can also be considered the reading public. Therefore, if readers vote on the paragraph that interests them most, does it not follow that this paragraph might be the most saleable, the work that it introduces the most likely to generate profits in the market (and sizable advances that pay Mr. Bransford’s bills)? Thus the winner by popular acclaim may not be the most elegantly written, the cleverest, or the most deeply felt, but the one that the market wants. Ideally, of course, all four qualities will coincide.

As a writer, I can only tell the stories that come to me. I can’t chase what I think people want to hear, or what I think a certain journal might publish. All I can do is write what inspires me. I’ll write that to the best of my ability, of course (and revise it as many times as it needs), but it’ll still be what I want to write, and not what I think people want to read. Though, as I hope to sell a novel someday, I really hope that people do want to read what I write.

It’s what we read in all these agent and editor blogs, isn’t it? “It’s just not right for me.” “I like it, but don’t know how to sell it.” “Does this make my boobs look good?” Y’know, things like that. But all those blogs are telling us that when our best work’s rejected, it ain’t necessarily us. It could be that agent’s personal preferences, that the market is done with werewolf-meets-vampire-meets-sexy lady-meets-mummy(?) novels, that Mercury was in retrograde, that Random House just published a similar book, or any number of other reasons. And in the case of this contest, it’s just that fewer people liked my paragraph than liked, say,miridunn’s or Travis’s. And that’s okay.

So a big “Congratulations” in advance to the winner. And, since Lady Glamis, blogger at The Literary Lab, notes that last year’s finalists (all six of ‘em) got a mention in the New Yorker online, I’d say that I’m honored, flattered, and downright chuffed just to have made it this far. Perhaps I should simply say “Congratulations” to all the other finalists. You certainly deserve it!

P.S. Monumental thanks to all those who voted for me. Truly, your comments meant a great deal to me.

What’s Wrong With Hemingway, Anyway?

So yesterday I discovered the very entertaining Edittorrent blog. But in reading Wednesday’s post, I discovered a surprising tidbit: romance writers (at least, apparently, savvy ones) enjoy poking fun at Hemingway and speculating on the size of his male equipment, because, after all, he must be compensating for something with all that testosterone-fueled, mannish, bullfights-and-safaris subject matter. (Okay, that last clause was my addition—the blog never went into the reasons romance insiders think this, so I’m making some assumptions.) This was a tad shocking to me, because I happen to admire Hemingway greatly.

Now, I don’t think everything Hemingway wrote was genius. In fact, I find his prose style unsuited to certain kinds of material. For example, at the end of A Farewell to Arms, the events are damn traumatic, but Papa’s prose keeps charging on, dialogue doing much of the work as usual, with the thoughts and feelings of the MC barely touched upon. Now, we know what the man must be feeling, and it can’t be nice, but in this instance, I felt that delving just a bit deeper into the character’s mind and feelings would have slowed down the ending and allowed the drama to sink in better.

That restraint, however, can work brilliantly, especially in the “manlier” of his stories. In Night Before Battle, the casual conversations of the characters stand in stark contrast to the nasty business that’s sure to transpire in the morning. On the Quai at Smyrna is a short piece about a horrific event that takes a decidedly sarcastic, understated tone about the whole thing. And again, in The Capital of the World, the prose is the same as it ever is with Hemingway, but the situation he sets up is filled with such ineluctable tragedy that you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach pages before the actual climax occurs.

But Hemingway was never ignorant of women’s feelings. His celebrated short story, Hills Like White Elephants, is almost all dialogue, but despite the seeming casualness of the conversation, there’s a torrent of emotion boiling below the woman’s surface. The miracle is that it’s hinted at with such delicacy, such refinement, without resorting to yelled arguments and huffy body language. Then in Cat in the Rain, we have another woman whose desires are shown—but only tangentially—through her speech and her actions, and we can see that the real story is mostly submerged, iceberg-like, hulking below the surface of the  conversation.

All this is to say that I can’t quite understand romance writers’ disdain for Hemingway. Is it a reaction against his towering influence on prose style in the 20th century? Is it the often man-centered stories he tells? What’s really the problem with his writing, in their view?

There’s one more thing, though, and it’s a little theory I’ve developed that may or may not be original, but here goes with it anyway. Hemingway’s prose style was, of course, influenced by his training and early vocation as a journalist, but I can’t help but wonder if it was also a strange kind of coping mechanism. Writing’s a difficult business, sometimes. The things we write can occasionally touch a nerve, hit on some long-buried truth about ourselves that we’d really rather not uncover. When he was in the ambulance corps in Italy during WWI, young Ernest saw some pretty damn horrific things (see A Natural History of the Dead if you don’t believe me), and shrapnel injuries to both legs laid him up in a Red Cross hospital for 6 months. He was nineteen at the time. Could it be that, in processing his experiences through writing, he simply wasn’t able to delve too deeply into them?

I get the feeling that, like the seething undercurrents in Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway’s traumatic experiences during the war were never far from the surface. Perhaps he wanted to process them, needed to process them, but found that a matter-of-fact, direct, pared-down prose style was the only way he could do it. In that sense, his style may have been less of a choice and more of a necessity.

So that’s my theory. Not that it’s going to reverse the RWA’s unofficial stance on the man and his work, but I’d prefer to think that his life experience had more to do with his choice of styles and subject matter than did the size of his junk.

Why I Should Let Things Stew…

Over at Nathan Bransford's blog, he’s running a contest for the best first paragraph of a work-in-progress.  Now, since I’m still stalled at the beginning of that short story I blogged about the other day (bounce here if you didn’t get to read that scintillating little tidbit), I decided to write a brand new first paragraph, one that had no relation to any story I had intended to tell. I wrote it last night, reread it a couple of times, then thought, ‘What the hell,’ and posted it. Dumb move. Today, as I thought about the paragraph more, I realized it needed a good bit of work before I was happy with it, and so I just learned another lesson: always let a work sit for 24 hours before submitting it anywhere.

So what’s this little gem I crafted yesterday evening, and how did I change it? Let’s look first at the version I posted, then regretted.

It was one of those painfully trendy restaurants staffed by skinny hipsters in tight jeans and shirts that left nothing to the imagination, and she had brought me here because she knew there would be many opportunities to make me uncomfortable. We were seated by an effervescent pixie of a girl with long blonde hair and a bright smile who asked if we were from the area or just visiting. Margot said that we lived in the area but had heard nothing but good things about the food here and simply had to try it for ourselves. “My husband likes his food, as you can tell,” she said, and laughed. The pixie’s grin froze on her face. She wished us a good evening then pressed through the crowd of bodies at the bar and headed back to her station by the front door. I didn’t watch her go. Margot was looking at me with a smile on her lips that could have chilled every martini for a three-block radius. Her eyes were bright and very hard, and it had been three days since she found out about my addiction.

Okay, so I don’t think that’s awful. But it certainly is overwritten. It’s clunky in parts, and the middle feels spongy to me. (What do I mean by spongy? I’m not sure, but I know spongy prose when I read it. Maybe you do too.) The essence of what I wanted to say with the paragraph is there, though. I wanted a first sentence that set up an uncomfortable situation and a strained interpersonal dynamic—plus I wanted to poke fun at skinny hipsters and trendy restaurants. Also, I wanted a last sentence that set up the drama for the story to follow, but raised more questions than it answered. I got there, but not elegantly. After some more thought, and some more editing, I came up with the following.

It was one of those painfully trendy restaurants staffed by skinny hipsters in tight jeans and shirts that left nothing to the imagination, and she had brought me here because she wanted to watch me squirm. We were shown to our seats by an effervescent pixie of a girl with long blonde hair and a sparkling smile. She asked what brought us out tonight, and Margot told her we’d heard the food was excellent here and simply had to try it for ourselves. “My husband likes his food, as you can tell,” she said, and laughed. The pixie’s grin froze on her face. She wished us a good evening then pressed through the crowd of bodies at the bar and headed back to her station by the front door. I didn’t watch her go. Margot was looking at me with a smile that could have chilled every martini for a three-block radius. Her eyes were bright and very hard, and it had been three days since she found out about my addiction.

I feel that the first sentence is cleaner now, with “wanted to watch me squirm” doing the job of the much bulkier “opportunities to make me uncomfortable” thing. I replaced “seated by” in the second sentence with “shown to our seats by,” because I realized that the former could be read to mean “seated next to.” The bit with Margot and the hostess needed to be shortened considerably, so I tweaked that, and finally “on her lips” in the last sentence was unnecessary. There you have a line edit of my original paragraph, and I think it’s better now. Of course, I can’t resubmit to the contest, so I’ll have to take my licks there.

It’s not that it’s a prestigious contest—it’s only a blog, for goodness’ sake, and the prizes are small. But it’s an agent blog, and the bragging rights for winning over a field of 2,000+ entries (which is where it looks to be heading) would be awesome! That’s why I wish I had let the paragraph sit overnight, then looked at it again tonight before posting it. The deadline’s not until tomorrow, after all. But I had to go and get all hasty and hurl my unedited dreck out there for general ridicule and opprobrium (always wanted to use that word in a sentence; hope I used it correctly).

That’ll teach me to be hasty. And hey, perhaps you, my half-dozen or so readers, can learn from my mistake as well. Next time you get excited to enter a contest, submit to that nifty new journal, or send off a requested manuscript, maybe wait for 24 hours to see if there’s one or two last little polishes you can put on your work. I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.

Review: Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver

In my quest to become a writer, I’ve read quite  a few books on the craft. I don’t mind that often I’m reading the same advice over and over again, because the more I read it—and the more I practice it—the more it’ll become ingrained in my psyche, so hopefully at some point this whole writing thing will be a snap! Um, right. I don’t think that’s how it works. Still, I never shy away from a refresher on the basics.

That’s why I picked up Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver (from the Uni. library, not the bookstore—I’m an aspiring writer, and thus have little to no spare cash, remember?). On the back cover, it promises to be “THE ONLY WRITING BOOK YOU’LL EVER NEED,” and we all know back covers are never a venue for hyperbole, so it must be true. Well, is it? Is this the only writing book you’ll ever need? In a word: no, it’s not. Fine, that was three words, but you get the point. What it’s good for is getting down to the absolute basics of the craft, but it’s notably deficient in addressing the polishing that can turn a good story into something just a little bit more.

What do I mean? Well, for one thing, Cleaver boils the craft of writing down to WANT-OBSTACLE-ACTION. The character must want something intensely, something must stand the way of him attaining what he wants, and he must take definite action to achieve his want. (Yes, I’m using the male pronoun. I’m male, and this is my blog so it’s my prerogative if I want to be non-politically-correct, dammit). Also, Cleaver propounds adding emotion to your narrative by delving into your characters’ thoughts, and reiterates time and again the old adage: show, don’t tell. And that’s pretty much it.

There’s more, of course (chapters on overcoming writer’s block, submitting your work, finding time to write, etc.) but what I’ve mentioned is the meat of the book. The WANT-OBSTACLE-ACTION motif is the one Cleaver comes back to most often, since he sees it as the basis of all stories. Now I think this is great for beginners who just want to write an engaging story, but I can’t help but think it’s overly simplistic for a writer who wants to be challenged and grow in the craft. Yes, we should have motivated characters, and they should be given some sort of trouble in the course of the story, but reducing writing to the absolute, rock-bottom basics to appeal to a beginning audience necessarily loses much of the subtlety that many writers value.

How about an example? Okay, let’s look at one of my favorite short stories, Tobias Wolff’s “A Bullet in the Brain” (You can read a [hopefully legit] copy of it online here: http://bit.ly/9s6D) What does Anders want, in this story, really? One might say that he wants not to be bored by life and literature anymore, but is that really a want that can propel a story? What’s the obstacle to that want? Um, I dunno. Boring people? Hackneyed situations? And the action? Here’s where Cleaver’s three-step approach to fiction breaks down: Anders takes no real action in the story at all; he merely reacts to the situation presented him. As I read it, the story’s about weariness, and how we can become jaded, and how we can miss the beauty and music in even the simplest of things, but there’s not much WANT-OBSTACLE-ACTION in it.

That’s not to say that Immediate Fiction isn’t worthwhile for someone looking to get into writing on the ground floor; I’m sure it is. As a veteran reader and aspiring literary fiction writer, however, I found Cleaver’s advice enthusiastic, encouraging, and occasionally helpful, but not challenging.

There are people in this world who want to tell stories, who want to feel a sense of satisfaction in creation, who want to write, but don’t really know how to go about doing it. This book is written for them. I, on the other hand, need to write because it’s how I process my own tumultuous and contradictory inner life. I want to dig into my characters and expose their weaknesses, their self-deception, their banality, because in doing so, perhaps I can excise those qualities from my own soul. I want to write fiction that challenges, that provokes thought, that changes people. It’s a hell of a hill I’ve set for myself to climb, I know, but for me, it’s worth it. That kind of craft, however, won’t come immediately. Ergo, Cleaver’s book’s not for me.

Even Before I Start…

So I made a tiny bit of a beginning on my most recent short story this morning. I got up later than I wanted to, and after putting the coffee on (which I’d neglected to do the night before, feeling lazy and all) and doing some random chores, I only had time to type a paragraph or two. Without disclosing trade secrets, I’ll say that the story’s premise is your average odd-couple roommate scenario, with a twist or two. The protagonist is a religious girl, rather quiet and mousy, who finds herself in financial straits and has to take cheap lodging where she can find it. Of course, she finds it with her polar opposite as a roommate, and thus the stage is set for my little drama.

My initial first paragraph, based on the scene outline I wrote on Monday (see my last post for commentary on that process), is as follows:

“Jane couldn’t see any way around it—after her tithe, tuition, books, food, transportation, and personal expenses, she only had $185 left over for housing. That wouldn’t get her far in University City, but that’s precisely where she needed to be. If she moved farther away from school, it would cost more, and take longer for her to get there in the morning, which could have deleterious consequences on her sleep, her work schedule, her homework, or all three. She sighed and double checked her numbers. Tuition was set, as were the book expenses. She might be able to cut down on food and personal expenditures, but she was already tight there (how many times a week could anyone be expected to eat baked potatoes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), and in any case, an extra $20 wasn’t going to open up much more in the way of lodging options. She sighed again.”

How nice. What was I doing here? Well, in my defense, it was about 6:30 am, and I had to leave for work in 15 minutes, so I wasn’t in top form. I can’t blame it on that, though, because my scene outline started in exactly this spot. Then next couple of scenes were going to be Jane checking the bulletin board at school for roommates-wanted ads, then checking the local paper, then making the phone call to the prospective roommate, then going to meet said roommate in person. There’s a problem with this approach though: it’s just damn boring. It’s entirely too much setup. Which is why I decided, while driving on the NJ Turnpike at 65 mph (yes, I drive a lot; yes, I think a lot while driving; yes, I write notes to myself while driving; no, I won’t tell you what kind of vehicle I drive so you can avoid me), to change the first sentence to something like this:

The copper trim at the roofline of the three-story brownstone glinted dully in the dappled sunlight as the tall elms lining the street swayed in the breeze, and Jane, standing on the front steps, thought that for a place like this, at a price like that, she could probably make a go of it.”

It’s still a work in progress—well, still a work waiting to really get started, in truth—but I like this beginning a lot better. It begins, as they say, in media res. Instead of wasting a lot of time fiddling about explaining why Jane has to take an apartment with someone so different from her, then grind through the apartment hunting process with her (which, let’s face it, isn’t interesting when we have to do it, so is likely to be deadly dull if we’re reading about it), I skipped all that crap and went straight to the meat of the story: Jane’s about to meet her roommate, and things are going to be a little strange.

I suppose I could end by saying something cute like, “And this is why I always say it’s never to early to revise.” Except I’ve never said that. Plus, I’m not sure what the moral of this story is anyway. I’m just pleased as all get out that I discovered the story-killing dead-end of a beginning before I wrote three pages of it. So I guess it is never too early to revise. There. Now I’ve said it.

Scene Outlines (also: My Humor Deficiency)

Yesterday I was challenged by a friend (yes, the same one I always link to) to write a story based on a want ad she found in a local paper. She thought the ad had comic potential as a jumping off point for a clash-of-worlds type story in which an impoverished conservative has to room with a flamboyant libertine because the price is too good to pass up. True to form, I took the ad and managed to come up with a story idea that has all kinds of trauma and sexual confusion. Go figure. I seem constitutionally incapable of writing humorous vignettes at the moment. Still, she threw down the gauntlet, so when she has to read my story of grinding angst for the next meeting of our critique group, she has only herself to blame...

I say this by way of introduction to a topic that’s only recently come to my attention. Since I was offered a challenge (and by God, I just can’t seem to pass on those), I spent some time today thinking about the story I plan on writing based on Laurel’s prompt. I’m fortunate enough (if you want to look at it that way) to have a job that regularly requires me to drive for sometimes two or three hours a day. That’s a lot of time to brainstorm. So as I was tooling down the New Jersey Turnpike this afternoon, I had a fine opportunity to sketch an outline of the new short story.

It’s new for me, this outlining thing. I’d never done it before my last story, but I found it so helpful that I plan on using it for everything outside of flash fiction from now on. The thing about my outlines is not so much that they elucidate the structure of my ideas, but rather that they force me to think in terms of scenes. Because that’s all my outlines are: a list of scenes. Certainly I’ll write character notes in the margins, write short bits of dialogue, possibly add background ideas (I find writing outlines longhand works best for me), but the main content of the outline is a list of scenes I’ll use to get where I want to go with the work at hand.

I think this is effective for me because I see plot, what actually occurs in the narrative, as scene-based. The action is where it’s at in terms of story, and if there’s nothing happening, there’s no scene to speak of. There are bridges, of course—short fillers that get us from scene to scene. But the meat of the story is in the dialogue, the activity, the doing. That’s where my scene-based outlines help me. If I can work out ahead of time the particular events I want to highlight on my way to the climax and denoument, it’s a great help when I sit down to actually write the damn story.

I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve spent staring at the wall because I don’t know what the hell my characters are going to do next. Outlining takes that out of the equation. Now I always know what they’re going to do next (in broad strokes, anyway). So now when I sit staring at the wall it’s because I don’t know how to write what they’re doing next. That’s an entirely different problem, though.

Reading and Critiquing

I’m of the firm opinion that in order to write well, one must read well. Now, by “reading well” I don’t mean that one should only read classic literature. Rather, I mean one must read intelligently. I read a wonderful book some months ago titled Reading Like a Writer, in which Francine Prose (great surname for an author, by the way) argued that writers learn to write by reading books. The book oozes with Prose’s love for the written word, and is endlessly encouraging. She discusses what it means to read closely, with an eye to understanding the craft of writing. One can read great literature or the most abysmal crap; each can offer lessons in what to do and not to do in one’s own work.

What does this mean in the context of writers’ groups? I’ll try and illustrate with an example from a few months ago at my own group. I had written a short story about a man obsessed with digging a hole in his back yard. I thought it was a pretty good piece, and was keen to hear how other writers would receive it. At the group meeting, one woman pointed out the weak, simplistic ending; another offered a way to add an extra emotional layer to some of the exposition sections. I listened to what they had to say, then dug back into the story with their comments in mind. And when I was finished, it was a much, much better story than it would have been otherwise. A few good readers made a great difference in the quality of my work.

It goes the other way, too. I was excited for last night’s meeting for two reasons: first, I had a newly-completed short story up for critique, and second, I felt I had some significant comments to offer on my friend’s work. I confess I was somewhat nervous too, though. I was worried because I was about to advocate excising an entire chapter from the beginning of the novel. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry—my comments merely reinforced something Laurel was already thinking about. However, I couldn’t advise such a drastic change to her work without seriously considering my reasons. I had to read closely, and justify my recommendations. Otherwise I might run the risk of offending a friend and fellow writer.

Of course, the critiques I’ve mentioned above were generously layered with affirmations. Most people who’ve taken writing workshops will have heard of the “praise sandwich”—positive comments first, then criticisms, then positive comments to finish. For my part, as I look for constructive criticisms, I also make sure to highlight particularly nice turns of phrase, telling details, and other good bits. It’s rare to find a piece of work so awful that one can’t find a single decent thing to say about it (though let’s be clear: sometimes it’s necessary to evaluate the strength of the writing and the strength of the idea separately).

Over the coming weeks and months, I hope to illustrate the revision and critiquing process with examples drawn from both my own work and that of published authors. I’ll try to look at what works, what doesn’t, and what might possibly be changed to strengthen the writing. Will I sound opinionated and obnoxious at times? Probably. But this is my blog, so I’m entitled to. As long as manage to be at least a little bit helpful along the way, I think it’ll be all right.