Active Settings

When describing setting, all these old bits of advice keep bouncing around inside my head:  Don't put your reader to sleep! Keep descriptions to a minimum; break them up. Readers these days don't want long, boring, set-piece descriptions of place. They'll refuse to read them and instead just skip ahead to the next action passage. Or worse, they'll put down your novel altogether. Horrors!

But that's not to say as writers we should limit ourselves to a few short lines of description once every page or two. A well-written passage of description can create a mood, or charge a story with emotion. Good description can move the story forward, delineate character, foreshadow action, heighten tension, and so on.  "Description in a good novel," says David Lodge, "is never just description."

One way we can keep from boring the reader is to bring our settings to life through action. Author, David Galef (director of creative writing at Montclair State University), has written a wonderful little article on the topic for his monthly "Fiction Workshop" column for "The Writer" magazine online.  In his article,  "Move it: How to activate your setting" (Oct. 5, 2011), Galef teaches us to give our description a more "kinetic feel" by personifying our settings and using strong verbs. He shows how this is possible even for the most inert of objects.  Your writing desk, for instance.

For this week's exercise I'm shamelessly stealing David's (from his column) but before you tackle it, I recommend reading his entire article (available here). To access it you'll need to register, but it takes less than a minute and then you'll have access to all of David's articles and all the other good stuff "The Writer" online has to offer.

David Galef: "The Fiction Workshop" for "The Writer" online: "Move it: How to activate your setting"
David Lodge: The Art of Fiction

Use Your Characters' Thoughts to Build Tension & Reveal Character

This month the online version of "The Writer" magazine has a great, in-depth article by writer and editor, Stephen Delaney, about how you can use your characters' thoughts to build tension in your fiction, reveal character, and more.  You can read the full article here. You might have to register, but it's free and you'll get access to all their online content including hundreds of articles on the craft of writing as well as interviews with authors, editors, professors, and agents.   We should do a writing exercise based on this article.  I'll come up with something and post it here next Monday!

Leslie

"Make Your Characters' Thoughts Dramatic"
by Stephen Delaney, for "The Writer"

Surprise Ending

Not all of us love a surprise party, but most of us probably enjoy a well-crafted and unexpected turn of events in the stories we read (be they fiction or nonfiction) just when we thought we had the whole thing figured out. I'm not talking about those playful-but-clever O. Henry kind of endings, but endings that feel organic and right--satisfying on every level. How do writers come up with those great endings? I wish I knew. I wish there was a simple formula for that -- or even a complicated one. 

Needing a break from my novel and the slow, seemingly never-ending progress I've been making on my third rewrite,  I thought I'd tackle something new for a while -- a project I could start and finish in a month or two -- a short story, maybe, just a few thousand words.  A piece of cake, or so I thought. 

It wasn't difficult to come up with a premise right away. A week later I even had what I thought was a pretty decent rough draft of the first two-thirds of the story.  So far so good, but as always, the final third of the story had my brain tied up in knots.  How do I find that perfect surprise ending, the kind of ending that resonates and sends the reader back to the beginning to see how in the heck I pulled it all off?  An ending that's totally unexpected, but feels in retrospect like the story was working up to that final moment all along...?  

To pull off a surprise like that, we need to really know and understand our characters, especially those who'll be surprising us with their unexpected and seemingly unpredictable actions.  We need to know who they are and what they're capable of.  What motivates them to behave the way they do? Have they shown through past action that they are capable of such behavior?   What are their secret and not-so-secret yearnings and fears? 

In Writing Fiction Step by Step author Josip Novakovich suggests that in order to avoid the sense of "foregone conclusion" when creating and defining our characters we should look beyond simple "character traits" that tend to pigeonhole our protagonists and other characters into behaving in predictable ways:   

When we do what Novakovich suggests above, we need to make sure that we've prepared the reader ahead of time. We don't want to spoil the reader's surprise, but we want the ending -- and the character's unexpected behavior -- to ultimately make sense. 

Brandi Reissenweber, author of the “Ask the Writer” column for The Writer magazine (and my all-time favorite online writing instructor at Gotham Writers Workshop) explains in the following three snippets (from one of her many in-depth lectures on craft) the importance of carefully setting things up so that when the surprise comes it doesn't feel forced:

My favorite bit of advice on "endings" and "surprise" comes from author and creative writing professor John Dufresne in his enthusiastic and inspiring book on craft, The Lie That Tells A Truth.  It comes from his chapter on plot titled "The Queen Died of Grief." I find myself returning to this passage every time I approach the ending of a new story, and I imagine that you will, too:

Below the exercise I've listed a few of my favorite short stories with surprise endings that work really well. I'd love to hear about some of your own favorites. The more we read stories with good surprise endings, the closer we'll get to actually pulling one off ourselves.  Oh, and hey -- if, during your travels and studies, you happen to come across a simple formula for generating the perfect surprise ending, be sure to let me know, would you?

Maass notes that in his workshops, "nearly three-quarters of participants find that they prefer the approach to the scene that this exercise yields.  Why is that? First choices in writing a scene often are the easiest: the ones that make sense and feel safest.  But safe choices make a scene predictable. Reversing motives shakes up a scene.  It makes its course less expected, yet no less logical since the action still comes from your character's true, deep motives." 

Seems to me that you could use this same exercise for the "endings" of stories as well. Or the endings of novels.  Or the endings of chapters in novels. What is it your character yearns for? Make a complete list of his reasons for wanting it.  Come up with several new and surprising "endings" based on each of the motivations on your list and write a brief summary of each.  Do any of these new endings surprise you more than others? If so, find places earlier in the story to show that your character is capable of such an unexpected action. Can you convince the reader through your character's past experiences that his surprising action later in the story is not only plausible, but right? 

A few of my favorite short stories available to read online:

"Neversink" by David Benioff  

"Twin Study" by Stacey Richter 

"The Wig" by Brady Udall (transcript from "This American Life", NPR) -- my favorite flash fiction piece (only 372 words!)

~

Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction Step By Step

Donald Maass:  Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

John Dufresne:  The Lie That Tells A Truth

Brandi Reissenweber: writing instructor for Gotham Writers Workshop and author of the "Ask the Writer" online column for "The Writer" magazine

Telling Detail & First Impressions

I was re-reading one of my favorite Hollinghurst novels recently, hoping to somehow absorb through osmosis his exquisite way with language -- ah, those gorgeous sentences!  His character descriptions in particular are lovely little works of art:  lush, accurate, and insightful; and as Anton Chekhov would most likely say, "rendered with immediate and telling detail."  Even his walk-on characters come alive on the page with just a quick, simple stroke of his brush.  

In average stories minor characters and walk-ons are often easy-to-forget cardboard placeholders given little attention by their authors.  In better stories authors turn simple character snapshots into living, breathing personalities, usually by adding one or two carefully chosen "telling" details (think of them as significant, revealing, or defining details—not to be confused with "show, don't tell") as in these examples from several award-winning authors and literary giants:

=  She was fifteen and she had a quick nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  His eyes were pinpoints of trouble, his mouth a flat line of pain, his shoulders so strong and high that he appeared to have no neck at all.  He entered the room as if he'd just been asked to ascend a throne and, after an initial reluctance, now meant to show just how decisive he could be. [Edmund White]

=  [He was] very good company but somehow remote, the sort of person it is hopeless to fall for, as I quite did at first, with his hooting laugh and witty sentimental conversation. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  There was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling--perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something like madness. [Fyodor Dostoevsky]

=  There was a hint of spring in her sloe-green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk. [Toni Morrison]

=  [He] was geeky, nerdy.  His body was a stalk supporting the tulip of his brain.  As he walked to the car, his head was often tilted back, alert to phenomena in the trees. [Jeffrey Eugenides]

=  He was easily over six feet tall but appeared to regret it. [Edmund White]

=  Doa Vicenta, a woman with a dull brain, who when she was not sleeping, was complaining of everything, especially the noise… [Miguel De Unamuno]

=  He had on the grey suiting of a business man, but with unusual tucks and vents, which seemed to hint at his role in the arts. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  She had a radish-white, almost raw-looking body and a tiny head made big by puffed-up hair.  He never saw her out of her old torn kimono. [Edmund White]

=  A priest. A young priest, black-suited, with a black felt hat, one hand stiffly in his jacket pocket, thumb hooked outside, the other holding a black breviary, finger keeping the page.  So tall, his head had a stoop. Wire-framed spectacles saddled his nose.  Oddly, ever so, foreign-looking. [Jamie O'Neill]

=  She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across the ideas they didn't want to put into words.  [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  He was quite spotty, although probably about my age, and wore hopeless clothes--shapeless jeans, fluorescent trainers and complicated musician's knitwear; but he was beautiful, with his dirty blond hair and chestnut eyes. [Alan Hollinghurst]

=  Connie saw with shock that he wasn't a kid either--he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby.  [Joyce Carol Oates]

=  His ungloved hands, as big and white as boiled hams, hung down at his side.  He was wearing a velvet-collared Chesterfield which he'd thrown open as if to breathe more easily, or to cool off, though it was a cold night. [Edmund White]

=  He had fair brown hair, with a lock that fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look…  [Joyce Carol Oates]

In Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide (from Gotham Writers' Workshop) Chris Lombardi defines what Chekhov means when he refers to telling detail:

A telling detail does what it says: it tells the essence of what it's describing.  Telling details are the scotch tape holding up Susie's hemline in the back, the tiny piece of ice that never seemed to melt in the bottom of Mom's martini, the street sign on the corner that still says, to this day, SCHOOL CROSSING, though the school is long gone. A telling detail can speak volumes in a very short amount of time.  They help you achieve a golden mean--enough description to paint the picture, but not so much as to weigh it down.

Brandi Reissenweber, author of  the "Ask the Writer" column in "The Writer" magazine, cautions not to use too many details when one or two precisely-chosen details will accomplish the task:

Many writers will pile on details in an effort to capture a character, setting, or moment. This is certainly useful in early drafts, as writers don't often hit on the best details right away. Over describing can be a great way to find telling detail. It's important to go back and pare out what isn't necessary so that the good stuff doesn’t get lost in the clutter.

Miguel De Unamuno, The Marquis of Lumbria

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty and The Folding Star

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

Edmund White, Hotel de Dream

Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Chris Lombardi,  "Description: To Picture in Words" from Gotham Writers' Workshop, Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide

Brandi Reissenweber, "Ask the Writer"

~

Engaging the Reader

I was going through some of the early scenes in my novel recently and realized, sadly, that several of them are just really, really boring and probably at this point irrelevant. Time to wish them a fond goodbye and throw them out with the trash. There were others, however, that were just as boring but necessary to move the story forward.  Those I'll need to keep and revamp. What they're lacking is any kind of tension or emotion-- something, anything, to engage the reader and  make him want to read on. 

Donald Maass, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, says that most writers are aware that having tension on every page is the secret to great storytelling, but that few of us want to put in the time and effort to make it happen. In his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook Maass shows how even a brief dialogue between buddies can be loaded with tension as in this passage from Harlan Coben's novel Gone for Good.

Another way to add tension to your fiction (or nonfiction) is to create reader anticipation for what's to come.  A few years ago I came across an exercise that was part of a piece by Eric M. Witchey in "The Writer" ["Step by Step: Get the emotion into your fiction].  In this excerpt Witchey illustrates how a writer can take a simple action and expand upon it to "create sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events":
 

While developing the short story "The Mud Fork Cottonmouth Expedition," which appeared in Polyphony 4 from Wheatland Press, I was faced with my own flaccid prose:

Gordon parked the moped, and we started our hunt.

This line delivers facts, but the reader response is, "So what?"

Contrast that line with Witchey's expanded scene below. To flesh out the scene and develop the reader's experience, he forced his narrator (Rick) to interpret every detail based on attitude specific to his current emotional state.  In the revised scene that follows, "the two boys have just driven a moped to the river to hunt snakes.  Gordon wants to amuse himself.  Rick wants to impress the older boy. As you read, consider how and where the text creates sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

               He pulled a little black pack out from under the seat of the moped.  It unrolled like one of Dad's wood-working tool sets.  Inside were tools and some cigarettes.  "Want one?"

              "Nah," I said.  I tried to sound like I might have said yes, but he laughed anyway.

               He flipped the lid on his Zippo lighter and lit it up.  "Keeps the mosquitoes away."

              "Yeah," I said.  "So, these moccasins.  How do you catch 'em?"

            "Different ways."  He followed a gravel trail behind the bridge abutment guardrail, past the concrete footings and down under the steel span that held up the pavement.  On the broken concrete below the bridge, he picked his way down to the water's edge and walked right into the river up to his knees. 

              "Come on," he said.

               I picked my way across the rubble.  "I'm coming." At the water, I hesitated. 

              "Afraid of leeches?" he asked.  "Smoke in the blood keeps 'em off."  He grinned around the edges of his Marlboro. 

              "Bull----."

              "So, what's keeping you?  It's easiest to walk in the water."

               It was my moment of truth.  I was about to put my brand new Converse tennis shoes into the water of the Mud Fork, water I shouldn't have been anywhere near, shoes that were supposed to keep me through the coming school year, with a guy who was smoking, and we'd got there on a moped, and I didn't have permission for any of this, and if the leeches did get me or if I drowned or if I even fell and got cut, I'd be grounded for freaking ever!

               Gordon didn't care.  He didn't have to ask.  He could smoke.  He had keys to the storage and a moped.  He turned and waded away in the brown water.

               I stepped in, and the water was up to my waist.  My feet sank into the muck on the bottom.  Pockets of iridescent oil rose to the surface of the water and trailed away from my legs.

In the same article (from a different story), Witchey gives us an example of another missed opportunity to create emotion, tension, and reader anticipation:

                        Marletta walked down the street looking for a place to hail Vincent's cab.

Here the character is involved in a goal-oriented action.  We know what she wants, but as readers, we are not engaged. There is no tension in that single sentence, no emotion. In the revised scene below, the author allows his POV character to interpret the setting based on attitude--Marletta's current emotional state--as she pursues her goal. Notice how the author creates tension and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

      The pay-me pumps were a given in her business, but three-day old slush wasn't.  Slipping and bouncing buns on the concrete would total her fox vest and the silk-slink dress she used to display her goods.  Vincent's cab would be along in a few.  He was a clock-work kinda guy, but the slush under her bucking spikes didn't care.  She hobbled along under shop awnings, one foot in the melt by the building and the other slipping in icy slime.  She tried to sway with the slip from knees and hips in case Vincent drove up behind her.  A patch of salted sidewalk under an awning invited her, but it was Gustav's Deli.  She'd only have a minute there before Gussie came out with his broom.  Her faux Rolex said four-twenty.  About right.  Grabbing the awning crank mounted on the brick building, she stepped out of icy slime and stood in front of Gustav's window.  She opened her fox vest to the Canadian cold front and hoped her charms could convince Vincent to help her feed the kids.

Eric M. Witchey's fiction has appeared nationally and internationally in magazines and anthologies. He has published in multiple genres under several names. His how-to articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer's Digest Magazine, Writer's Northwest Magazine, Northwest Ink, and in a number of on-line publications. His fiction has won recognition from Writers of The Future, New Century Writers, Writer's Digest, and www.ralan.com. Click here for a short, mini lesson from Eric on the ABC's of how to get emotion into your fiction (from the series "Five Minutes on Fiction").

~