Writers Must Persist in Remembering the Sweet and the Sour

Writers remember everything…especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.”
— Stephen King, Misery

Your Past is Never Over

"I don’t believe in 'laying to rest' the past. There are wounds we won’t get over. There are things that happen to us that, no matter how hard we try to forget, no matter with what fortitude we face them, what mix of religion and therapy we swallow, what finished and durable forms of art we turn them into, are going to go on happening inside of us for as long as our brains are alive." --Christian Wiman, "The Limit"

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 Yes! In fact I mine my past and go where it hurts. That's where the good stuff is; where I can go deep, where I feel it all the way down in my belly.  Then I know I'm writing.  I've got something worth messing with, putting the real words on paper.  -- Catherine

Setting, Landscape and Atmosphere

Setting - where the story takes place, how characters respond to their surroundings, the sights, sounds and smells that connect the reader to the written word.  This is the building site of the writer's craft.

Setting adds color to the story, affects characters, adds authenticity to the narrative and paints pictures in the imagination of readers.--Nancy Lamb, The Art and Craft of Story Telling.

Settings aren't just backdrops.  Just by where you have the action happening will tell a lot about the action itself and the people involved.--Ansen Dibell, Plot.

Setting grounds your writing in the reality of place and depicts the theme of your story through powerful metaphor. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care. Without a place there is no story.--Nina Munteanu, scribophile.

Landscape - the broad vista.

On the surface, it would appear that landscape and setting are the same creatures, identical twins given different names just to confuse the beginning writer. This, however, would not be the truth since setting is where a story takes place--including where each scene takes place--while landscape is much broader than that . . .  Landscape in writing implies much the same as that which is implied by the word when it's used to refer to a location in a country: It is the broad vista into which the writer actually places the individual settings of the novel, sort of like the canvas or other medium onto which a painter has decided to daub color.

You need to think about the landscape of your book because if you're able to make the landscape of place real, you can make the land itself real, which gives you a leg up on making the entire novel real for the reader.

Atmosphere - tone and attitude.

Sometimes referring to subject matter, sometimes to technique.  Part of the atmosphere of a scene or story is its setting, which includes the locale, period, weather, and time of day. Part of the atmosphere is its 'tone,' and attitude taken by the narrative voice that can be described, not in terms of time and place, but as a quality--sinister, facetious, formal, solemn, wry, and so on . . . As we need to know a character's gender, race, and age, we need to know in what atmosphere she or he operates to understand the significance of the action.--Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, a Guide to Narrative Craft.

Setting, landscape, atmosphere are separate entities but connected. The first puts you in the action. The second contains the story's broader vista. The third enables the characters to breathe.

  

  

Great Betrayals

The following is an excerpt from The New York Times' opinion page dated Sunday, October 6, 2013.  I quote from Anna Fels, a psychiatrist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical School:

As a psychiatrist, I can tell you that it's often a painstaking process to reconstruct a coherent personal history piece by piece--one that acknowledges the deception while reaffirming the actual life experience. Yet it's work that needs to be done. Moving forward in life is hard or even, at times, impossible, without owning a narrative of one's past. Isak Dinesen has been quoted as saying "all sorrows can be born if you put them in a story or tell a story about them." Perhaps robbing someone of his or her story is the greatest betrayal of all.

Linear Vs Spatial Narrative

Second part of Kim Barnes' handout at the July 2014 Fishtrap writing conference in Oregon:

"There are SO many ways to tell stories, but every story is, in its way, an argument. First, the story must argue for its own validity--its right to exist. That requires recognition on the part of the reader/audience of some melodic engagement--some 'base line' that we recognize as common to our narratival experience. The basic linear narrative is kind of like a number system or syntax or composition: 1-10, subject-verb-object, five-paragraph essay. It's the foundation on which everything is built and/or interpreted.

The next argument is that, in the absence of the linear 'melody,' something else (also recognizable and held in common) must come in to take its place. And that's the challenge for the writer/composer/artist/dancer. What is that 'something'?  Whatever it is, it must also be observable and have progression, movement, and pattern, with an inherent logic that we can follow, or learn to follow--be taught by the story to follow. If you can define/delineate that OTHER SOMETHING that takes the place of the 'melody' of linear narrative, you'll have an argument for a story that is outside of convention. But, no matter what, I believe it's all either STRUCTURE or ANTI-STRUCTURE that we recognize. Outside/between is chaos without chaos theory (because, of course, chaos as defined by theory is, alas, inherently linear and structured and observed and articulated via a rubric that is absolutely defined).

Giving yourself over to the simple narrative, the archetypal progression, is a kind of submission to the laws of the universe, in some ways. To EXIST is to abide by linear laws; to LIVE is to exist inside the spatial, and story must bring those two experiences together in a horizontal/vertical way. In my mind, this is the role of all art. But vertical movement expands, interrupts, deepens, slows, adds texture and space to an otherwise linear narrative. It's in the vertical movement that the 'why'--rather than the 'what'--of the story exists."

Vertical Vs Horizontal Movement in Narrative

The following is an handout excerpt from literary writer and Professor of English at the University of Idaho, Kim Barnes. I met her at the Fishtrap writing conference in July 2014 where she taught:

"Vertical movement is what gives a narrative depth, texture, tension and resonance.  It interrupts the forward, chronological pace of a story or essay (action--what happened) and replaces simple linear movement with spatial complexity (thought--the why of the story). It represents the act of imagination--what propels us into the imaginative leap. There are many ways to achieve vertical movement, including:

1) Backstory (part of plot/action--more of an interruption of horizontal chronology than vertical movement but provides spatial texture)
2) Associative memory (part of thought)
3) Intellectual contemplation and query
4) Detailed, concrete description of characters, objects, setting, landscape
5) Figurative language, including similes (like, as) and metaphors
6) Lyrical "flights" (extended poetic contemplation)
7) Inclusion of outside information and research
8) Appropriate and intentional intrusion of the narrator

As you work toward vertical movement in your writing, read essays and stories by  authors whose work you admire. Pay attention to places where the author is employing vertical movement. You will find that most successful literary prose is made up of a majority of spatial rather than linear telling. Remember that horizontal writing suggests what, vertical writing suggests why. It is this contribution of action and thought that defines our best stories."   

More tomorrow . . .

Conflict: The Indispensable Element in FIction

The following is paraphrased from pages 192-3 in a handy little hardback,  The Writer's Little Helper, about 7"x 5". Nice to carry in your pocket to read on the bus or subway.  

Conflict sells.  More so than sex, which in all its forms and treatments usually can be condensed into conflict anyhow. 

Conflict occurs in all literature, from Cinderella, to Tarzan to Harry Potter to the Bible, everywhere from Genesis to Apocalypse.  In a word, everywhere.

Good characters can't be interesting unless they triumph over something, normally an evil thing. This involves conflict. The stronger the conflict, the more precious the victory.

One of the best places to exploit conflict is in dialogue exchanges.
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I totally agree.  We are bound up in conflict.  It would be perfect if we all got along.  But then where would the stories come from? Rather than explain your conflict, let your characters take over in dialogue. They'll talk to each other, maybe in a dysfunctional way; but that's what we want. They'll be sarcastic, passive aggressive and insulting--just to mask their feelings. And the mask wears so thin that the reader soon catches on to their true feelings. Even if they lie.

In short, no conflict, no story.
  

Late Night with Fog and Horses by Ray Carver

Late Night with Fog and Horses" by Raymond Carver

They were in the living room. Saying their
goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ears.
They'd been through a lot together, but now
they couldn't go another step. Besides, for him
there was someone else. Tears were falling
when a horse stepped out of the fog
into the front yard. Then another, and
another. She went outside and said,
"Where did you come from, you sweet horses?"
and moved in amongst them, weeping,
touching their flanks. The horses began
to graze in the front yard.
He made two calls: one call went straight
to the sheriff - "someone's horses are out."
But there was that other call, too.
Then he joined his wife in the front
yard, where they talked and murmured
to the horses together. (Whatever was
happening now was happening in another time.)
Horses cropped the grass in the yard
that night. A red emergency light
flashed as a sedan crept in out of fog.
Voices carried out of the fog.
At the end of that long night,
when they finally put their arms around
each other, their embrace was full of
passion and memory. Each recalled
the other's youth. Now something had ended,
something else rushing in to take its place.
Came the moment of leave-taking itself.
"Goodbye, go on," she said.
And then pulling away.
Much later,
he remembered making a disastrous phone call.
One that had hung on and hung on,
a malediction. It's boiled down
to that. The rest of his life.
Malediction.

A Few Spaces Left in my Teasing the Muse Workshop Saturday, July 26, 2014

Writing: Teasing The Muse   NEW! Can't get started writing your fiction or non-fiction? Are you stuck on a page? Join this workshop to incite your muse and end writers' block. Interactive exercises will put you at ease and let the words flow. Simply put, this class works.NOTE: Be sure to bring a brown bag lunch.

Writing: Teasing the Muse Item: C513 Catherine Alexander 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Location: Snoqualmie Hall   205 Sessions: 1 Sa 20000 68th Ave W Lynnwood, WA 98036 7/26/2014 - 7/26/2014 Fee: $79.00

Email:  uLearnartsnow@edcc.edu

Edmonds Community College
425.640.1243

Adjectives and Adverbs - Use Them Sparingly

"Adjectives and adverbs are rich and good and fattening.  The main thing is not to overindulge...Some adjectives and adverbs have become meaningless through literary overuse.  'Great' seldom carries the weight it ought to carry.  'Suddenly' seldom means anything at all; it's a mere transition device--'He was walking down the street.  Suddenly he saw her.'  'Somehow' is a weasel word; it means the author didn't want to bother thinking out the story--'Somehow she just knew...' 'Somehow they made it to the asteroid...' When I teach science fiction and fantasy writing I ban the word.  Nothing can happen 'somehow.'

Ornate adjectives are out of fashion.  Nobody much is likely to say that anything is sesquipedalian, these days. But some conscious prose stylists use adjectives as poets do; the adjective's relation to the noun is unexpected, far-fetched, forcing the reader to stop and make the connection. This mannerism can be effective, but in narration it's risky. Do you want to stop the flow? Is it worth it?

I would recommend to all storytellers a watchful attitude and a thoughtful, careful choice of adjective and adverbs, because the bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it's going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat."

        -Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin, pp. 61-62

Theodore Roethke on Craft

Theodore Roethke. Manic-depressive, hard-drinking male-chauvinist-pig. Extraordinary, nurturing teacher and legendary poet. In class he tread lightly on some students' strange work, in case this evidenced a hallmark of an emerging style.

We love to call him our Northwest poet, but he was imported from University of Michigan to the University of Washington. At the infamous Blue Moon in the University District where he hung out, there is a picture of him on the wall. The adjoining alley is named after him.

Here are some of his quotes taken from the book, On Poetry & Craft:

• Literalness is the devil's weapon.
• Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
• There are only two passions in art; there are only love and hate--with endless modifications.
• God is one of the biggest bores in English poetry.
• The sneer is easy to master and usually the mark of the adolescent.
• Break in on the reader sideways. Think with the wise, talk like the common man: Give noun a full swat, But adjective, not.
• The idea of poetry itself is a vast metaphor.
• Simple and profound; how little there is.
• Too eager to say what a lot of people will want to hear.
• I long to be a greater failure in life so I can write better books.
• Today I'm going to lecture on confusion.  I'm all for it.
• This course is an act of faith. In what? In the imagination of us all, in a creative capacity--that most sacred thing--that lies dormant, never dead, in everyone.
• Transcend that vision.  What is first or early is easy to believe. But...it may enchain you.
• I dream of a culture where it is thought a crime to be dull.
• Never be ashamed of the strange.
• There are those who can hold forth, but me, I have to holler.
• He was a man with little capacity for any kind of thinking: therefore he was made an administrator.
• Teaching goes on in spite of administrators.