Thinking about writing and travel, and somewhat bored with the biography I’ve been reading, I pulled out my copy of The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux (1975). At the time, he was young, intrepid, and wickedly humorous: a talented writer with the ability to observe closely and recount with precision.
As I traveled abroad, Theroux’s travel books and anecdotes often came to mind. I fell into the habit of using an expression he’d coined, “duffilled.” I would urge my travel companion, “Come on. Hurry. We don’t want to be duffilled.”
It was a reference to a pathetic man named Duffill who, at a train stop in Domodossola, Italy, failed to get back on the train and was left standing on the platform as the train sped away with his belongings.
In the same book (Railway Bazaar) Theroux has a conversation with a pimp that’s stayed in my memory long after the book yellowed on the shelf. In Chapter 7, The Khyber Mail to Lahore Junction, Theroux is only looking for a drink, but a street pimp tries to interest him in a prostitute. The pimp, with limited English, is attempting to describe how “good” the service will be. Theroux responds in kind, wishing the pimp the same “good” experience, much in the spirit of “Good morning to you, too.” That humor, mixed with gritty reality, made the scene come alive. Whether political or playful, Theroux’s travel writing is always engaging.
It’s occurred to me that if we could observe and relate human behavior as accurately in our fiction as many of the travel writers do in their accounts, we would be ahead of the game.
It’s not easy to develop a fictional character that resonates with a large percentage of readers, but when it does happen we have a Scout, a Harry Potter, a Miss Daisy, or the vampire, Lestat. Even harder, perhaps, is give our characters traits that lead to original, interesting dialogue. If we invent a compelling character, we need to make that character authentic for our readers.
I admit it would be difficult to conjure a character like the one Theroux met–a Thai who called himself Pensacola–not to mention inventing a story like the one the Thai told (a tale of holding off a gang of smugglers in an opium poppy field). It’s a tall order, but suppose we think like a travel writer who is meeting intriguing people: what are the physical, psychological, and situational characteristics that make them worthy of being noted and, eventually, included in the traveler’s journal, essay, or book?
Imagine that you are on a public conveyance and seated next to the character you’ve invented for your work of fiction. What are your first impressions? Heavy cologne? A mustache trimmed with military precision? A heavy sweater when the temperature outside is pushing triple digits? Now look closer. Crooked teeth or a toothpaste ad smile? Shiny hair or greasy locks? Open-collared shirt or chokingly tight necktie? Stilettos or trainers with Velcro fasteners?
Start a conversation with your character. What conversational traits do you notice? A slight lisp? Clipped enunciation? Peppered with four letter words? Are they loquacious? Reserved? Secretive?
Objectivity, close observation, and attention to speech patterns and gestures–trademarks of good travel writing–enable us to create original, memorable characters. Travel books are inspiring-give one a shot the next time you create a character.
Category Archives: Writing Pointers
Those Short Shorts
Stories, not Daisy Dukes, although they do have a lot in common–covering the bare necessities, making a point, and leaving an impression. Increasingly, contest promoters and on-line publications call for short shorts, ranging all the way from postcard shorts (stories that can fit on a postcard) to NPR’s Three Minute Fiction category. Usually a word or time limit is suggested, and the writer is expected to turn out an acceptable story with a starting point, development, and resolution.
In a previous post, I talked about the discipline that comes with having to cut a story down to a prescribed length. It can be daunting, but it can also lead to a more cogent, succinct work. But, suppose you write a very short story and want to use it as the bones of a longer story. Will it work in reverse?
I had a chance to try it when I ran across a short story contest. Besides a word limit, the submitted stories had to contain a reference to a haunted house in the first sentence. I couldn’t resist; it would be fun since there was little expectation of “winning.” It’s like trying to hit a target at a carnival stall–you know you haven’t much chance of connecting and walking away with a stuffed toy, but it’s fun to exercise your throwing skill.
The deadline was the next day, and I was pressed for time, so I scrolled through my short story collection. I found one that had been awarded first place in the Green River Mean contest. Complying to the “haunted house” requirement, I focused on how guilt dominated my character’s life. The promoters of the publication didn’t choose my entry, but the challenge of expanding on my original idea was worth it.
If you have a collection of short stories, poems, or partially-developed ideas stored on your computer (even those that didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped), consider revisiting them from time to time. You might be surprised at how useful they can be the next time you’re facing a blank page.
The two variations of For Sale by Owner (© Jennie L. Brown) follow:
Version 1
When Elroy stole the chain saw, he didn’t think much about it; his new neighbors acted like people who wouldn’t notice. When they first bought the little house, he dropped by to shoot the breeze. He was disappointed to find they were hurried, preoccupied with renovating the place. He missed jawing with the full-hipped woman who’d lived there previously.
Besides, it was their own fault for leaving tools in a garage that didn’t have a lock. Shoot! He could’ve taken the riding lawn mower, or a whole slew of bigger items, but all he snatched was that little chain saw. He figured they’d buy another one right away. But when he saw the new owner, Richard, out trying to cut down a sapling with an undersized hand saw, it made Elroy feel wicked. After Richard gave up and drove back into town, Elroy took his own chain saw, finished the job, and hauled away the wood.
That should have been the end of it, but then he saw the big, shiny, new lock on the garage door. He was shamed. Finally, he couldn’t drive by their house anymore, and took the long way into town. When he lost weight and couldn’t sleep nights, he put up a sign: For Sale By Owner. He packed a suitcase, waited until full dark, then drove the familiar road for the last time, flinging Richard’s chain saw into a ditch filled with spring runoff. Some things ain’t for keeping.
Version 2
Rumor was the house was haunted. The city people bought it anyway. Elroy scoffed at the stories that went around. He didn’t believe in ghosts and, as far as he was concerned, it was just a rundown place on a hill that got too much wind.
At the Community Hall’s pancake breakfast, to benefit the volunteer fire department, his neighbor, Albert, cornered him.
“Hey there, Elroy. I been wondering about the folks who bought Liz’s old house? Think they’ll see any of them spirits?”
Elroy slathered more sorghum on his pancakes and shook his head. “I think that spook business is a bunch of hooey. The only problem they’re going to have is fixing up that place. It’s been hard used.”
“Liz used to swear there was haints up there,” Albert said.
Elroy laid down his fork. “The only haint up there was Liz, but she was a good one while she lasted.”
Later that week, when Elroy stole the new owners’ chain saw, he didn’t think much about it; they acted like people who wouldn’t notice such a little thing. When they’d first bought the house, he dropped by to shoot the breeze. He was disappointed to find they were hurried, preoccupied with renovating. They were polite, but made it clear they didn’t want to stop what they were doing to visit with him–or offer him a cold, sweet tea. It was then he realized how much he missed jawing with Liz, missed her full-hipped body.
Besides, he figured it was their own fault for leaving tools in a garage that didn’t have a lock. Shoot! He could’ve taken the riding lawn mower, or a whole slew of bigger items, but all he snatched was that little chain saw. He figured they’d buy another one right away.
But when he saw the new owner, Richard, out trying to cut down a sapling with an undersized hand saw, it made Elroy feel wicked. After Richard gave up and drove back into town, Elroy took his own chain saw, finished the job, and hauled away the wood.
That should have been the end of it, but when he saw the big, shiny, new lock on Richard’s garage door, he was shamed. Finally, he couldn’t drive by their house anymore, and took the long way into town. He stopped answering his own door. When he lost weight and couldn’t sleep nights, he put up a sign: For Sale By Owner.
He accepted the first offer he got, and turned over his house, furniture and all. He packed a suitcase, waited until full dark, then drove the familiar road for the last time. Just before he got to the main highway, he flung Richard’s chain saw into a ditch filled with spring runoff.
“Some things ain’t for keeping,” he said to his dog. “I’m glad to put the whole disagreeable business behind me.”
Years later, in a cold, northern city, a police officer shook his head.
“This is the damnedest suicide note I’ve read in a long time. What do you think that poor slob meant by “The haints followed me?”
Filling Cracks With Gold
Recently, a friend shared an arresting photo on facebook. Since there were many shares, I’m not sure who originally posted it, but the photo and inscription are attributed to Billie Mobayed.
The quoted material, under the photo of a rustic, repaired, and beautifully photographed bowl, indicated that the Japanese fill cracks in damaged objects with gold, thus honoring the history of the object, acknowledging the damage, and making it even more attractive.
It’s occurred to me that, as writers, we can strive to do that as well. Unless you are singularly blessed, the odds are your manuscript, particularly the first draft, will have cracks–those spots where you’ve not chosen the best descriptive words, written go-no-where filler dialogue, or hit what the talented writer and workshop director, Alice Orr, calls the “muddle in the middle.”
When I find those spots in my work, usually after letting it rest for several days, I stare at the offending line, try out a different word, phrase, or expression and sometimes–but not always–improve it. What I’ve come to realize, reluctantly, is that I’m impatient and inclined to do a quick fix, move on, and create new material (which is, of course, a lot more fun). Obviously, hurrying to repair a piece of mediocre writing isn’t a great idea, and usually results in dull prose or poetry–cobbled together and disorienting to the reader.
The cracks and flaws in our writing provide us with an opportunity to turn them into gold. When I do a workshop, I often advise writers to identify the best line in their manuscript, then strive to make every other line that good. But what if we could make the offending lines even better than our best line? What if we take that nondescript line and turn it into a line that sends the dialogue in a new direction; that reveals a hidden truth about our characters or their circumstances; that delights the reader? I’m going to try. Let me know if it works for you.
A Valentine for Mr. Green
I’m in love with Mr. Green. Not just any Mr. Green–George Dawes Green. Well, not really in love with him since I’ve never met the man, or even glimpsed him from a distance, but in love with his writing. Just by chance, I found his book, The Caveman’s Valentine, in a small, indie bookstore the other day.
The title was provocative and the description had me hooked: a talented, brilliant musician with a wife and daughter has turned his back on it all to live in a cave in New York City’s Inwood Park. Throw in the fact he’s schizophrenic, finds a corpse at the mouth of his cave, and sets out to seek justice for the victim sealed the deal. I bought the book, expecting it to be interesting; I discovered it was much more. Green is an intriguing writer who is able to tweak writing conventions and twist plots without perplexing the reader.
For example, the dialogue. The standard pattern we are used to seeing looks like this:
“I just got here,” she said.
Green occasionally deviates and begins the sentence with “Said.”
Said Betty, “Romulus?” or Said Romulus, “Who was he?”
He also has the enviable ability to write blocks of dialogue between two characters without using any dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking. It’s not easy to do this and keep the reader from becoming frustrated. And it can happen to the best of writers; critics love to attack Hemingway for a confusing exchange in his short story, ”A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” While writing dialogue without tags can be disconcerting in the hands of someone less skilled than Green, he delineates his characters so clearly that there is never any doubt about who is speaking. His dialogue flows so smoothly it’s as if the reader is listening to the conversation.
I liked many other things about the book, including the fact that he has penetrated the mind of a brilliant, if deranged, man with precision and compassion. I was happily surprised with the twists and turns of the plot, and liked it that he offered closure at the end.
Other than a good read, Green’s work was instructive. I was reminded that, within the framework of orthodox writing rules and conventions, there is room for originality and experimentation. Room, that is, if we have carefully crafted our work and developed our characters to the point that their individual voices are so distinctive the reader takes no exception to either what they are saying or how they are saying it. How do we do that? Here are some excerpts from my handbook on oral history and the art of capturing voice:
The most memorable characters in fiction are emotionally engaging and distinct. We can usually achieve authentic sounding dialogue when we are dealing with the known. When we venture out of our comfort zone, and invent characters who are unfamiliar to us, we need to find out how the real life counterparts of our characters communicate. Consider the following:
The speaker’s age.
The speaker’s gender.
The speaker’s ethnicity and first language (if applicable).
Occupational or professional jargon.
Speech patterns and idioms of the locale in which the character functions.
Characterization works best when you create plausible voices. Just as the narrator’s voice must be believable and consistent, so must the dialogue of every character–even the minor ones who may only appear once or twice (waiter, taxi driver, witness, bank teller). Unrealistic, dialogue has been the death knell of many otherwise great plots.
Using the syntax of actual speakers eliminates artificial dialogue. People tend to speak in fragments, relying often on facial expressions and body language to fill in the gaps. Using authentic speech patterns also eliminates a problem many novelists encounter–telling the backstory in the dialogue rather than in the narrative.
Your goal is to develop characters that have personality, quirks, mannerisms, and habits. They may be kind or evil, cowardly or bold. They may be educated or illiterate, rich or poor. They may live in a city townhouse or a rural farmhouse. Regardless, they will come alive on the page or stage if the words they speak remind us of who they are, what they are feeling, and how they make us feel.
Coffee, Tea, or Too Much Me–or You?
You are partial to a special craft beer and addicted to an oolong tea only grown on a certain slope. You smoke, love soccer, listen to jazz and collect posters of abstract art. You stay in the shower until the water turns cold; you sleep on flannel sheets even in the summer. Your car is old, recalcitrant, and fails you at the most inconvenient times. Fine. I, too, have things I can’t imagine living without–not the least of which is high-end coffee, listening to K.D. Lang singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and a certain brand of really comfortable shoes.
When I open a novel, I like to read details about what the characters eat and drink; about what their living quarters look like; about what books are on their shelves. I like to know whether they go for a run at 5:00 a.m. or just dawdle over coffee. It makes them seem like people I know, people I’d like for a friends–or those I’d avoid. Describing settings and details familiar to you–whether the logo on your gym bag or the view from your bedroom window–will breathe life into your fiction; that is, unless you inadvertently have EVERY character in your novel lighting up, opening a craft beer, or hanging out in the shower (except maybe a character who is contemplating suicide by hanging himself from the shower spigot).
How much is too much YOU? We are admonished by many writing instructors, workshop directors, and how-to books on fiction to “Write what you know.” A talented writer I know used to work with his family in a decorative, wrought iron business. He incorporated details of their shop in an early work of his, and it was highly effective because it fit with the main character, the plot, and the setting. If what you know (like) fits in with a character–if your character is the type to really love those flannel sheets–then give him a set, but if it doesn’t fit save the sheets for another character in the book–or another book. And don’t, I beg you, have every character in your book loving soccer and collecting posters.
Stella, the protagonist in Nothing’s Ever Right or Wrong, is frequently baking biscuits–a lot of them. That was only wishful thinking on my part since I can’t make a decent biscuit; however, Stella could, and it fit her lifestyle and situation. That hasn’t always been the case. In the past, I’ve burdened my characters with habits or traits that didn’t fit them; they were my traits, my desires, my biases. Sometimes it almost worked; other time it detracted.
Description can be dicey. It’s easy to get an image or phrase fixed in our mind and, without realizing it, use it repeatedly. I just finished a novel by a New York Times Bestseller who is a very accomplished writer and a book critic. For some reason, the men tended to have long, glossy hair. The woman, with one exception, had long, shiny, black hair. Everyone seemed to be pale. Also, the men seemed to be very partial to black tee shirts. I couldn’t resist sneaking a peak at the author’s photo. Yep! Long, very dark, hair and she does look sort of pale.
Once, I found myself giving all the characters in a novel hazel-colored eyes. I don’t have hazel eyes myself, but I’ve always liked them. It seems that preference was lodged somewhere in my mind, and I used it thoughtlessly. What saved me that time was proofreading. Now I use the “find” tool in my word processing program, knowing I have a tendency to make that particular kind of error. If I type in “hair,” and I keep getting “blond and tousled,” I’m in trouble.
The best plan is to recognize your individual tendencies when writing character descriptions. Make use of your word processing technology (or a sharp-eyed, first reader), and you won’t make the “pale face, long, shiny, black hair” mistake.
Making Literary Lemonade: Or how to use the Very Concerned Environmentalist as a character in your next novel.
I have to start with a disclaimer. I am not anti-environment, nor do I disrespect concerned environmentalist. I love our planet and want to take care of it to the best of my ability. I admire people who feel the same and act on their conviction. That is, until they become so righteous that they are blind to their immediate environment and the humans who coexist with them.
Okay, now that is clear I can ask–how many of your remember the ubiquitous posters that said, “When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade”? For a time, I think in the 1980s, they were plastered to the wall of nearly every office, classroom, or other public gathering place I entered.
“Make Lemonade,” flashed through my mind as I stood in line at a new super store that recently opened in our town of 60,000. You may know the chain, the one with great, fresh produce. It has only been open a couple of weeks, and the new employees are still trying to figure things out and get a routine going. In the meantime, it seemed everyone in town, plus several thousand from the adjoining counties, surged into the store around 11:00 a.m. last Saturday.
Self-check works great unless you have a dozen different produce items, not all of which have codes attached. So, I opted for a normal check-out line (for some inexplicable reason the quick-check lines–12 items max–was closed). I waited patiently while an elderly man fumbled and grumbled and finally figured out how to use his debit card. The cashier, a sweating, slightly overwhelmed young woman, was helpful and courteous to him.
Next in line, directly in front of me, was a woman, maybe 35 years old, with a heavily loaded cart. Once she got all her items on the conveyor belt, she stepped back and the cashier began to scan the first item. At that point, the VCE (very concerned environmentalist) stopped the cashier from putting an item in a plastic bag on the turntable. She produced a large, cloth bag, stuffed with more wadded-up cloth bags, and plunked them down in front of the casher. The message was clear.
Okay, cloth bags save landfills. I get that. What I didn’t get was that the VCE expected the cashier to extract the crumpled bags, one at a time, shake them out, attach them to the turntable that held the other bags, and fill them–again one at a time and to the VCEs specifications–then place them in the woman’s cart while the VCE stood there with a smug, self-satisfied look on her face, declaring to the rest of us that SHE–at least–cared. But, clearly not about the line that now reached far in back of me, or what the sweating, trying-to-be-accomodating, young cashier was going through.
The whole procedure took about five times longer than normal, and it occurred to me that, at the very least, the VCE could have assisted the cashier–or simply have the grocery items loaded back into the cart and fill the bags herself once she was through the line.
So, annoyed as I was by her lack of consideration, I realized this was another lemon from which to make literary lemonade. She will be a character in one of my short stories or novels. Maybe not a main character, but the catalyst for a robbery gone wrong in a crime story, or a love interest of a character in a book (the odd couple format), or maybe just a character who is her own worst enemy, caught up in a self-righteous fog.
Regardless of how I use it, the incident will give me a real-life description of a place, an incident, a character who will flesh out a scene. Plus, it will help me keep my blood pressure at a healthy level if I can think like a writer, not like a frustrated shopper. So, the next time the person in the car that cuts you off and flips you the bird infuriates you, take a second look and notice their ratty haircut or junker of a car. It can all go into your fiction.
That Love/Hate Thing
Do you ever begin a book by a writer you respect, only to find that this time the author has created a character you want to “slap upside the head”? The character, usually the protagonist, is making stupid, self-destructive decisions. You cringe. How can you care about the character, usually the protagonist, when they obviously are on a self-induced, downhill slide to sure disaster?
I just finished a novel (Fiona Range by the talented Mary McGarry Morris) that I loved, a novel published in 2000. I missed it when it came out, probably because I was trying to meet a deadline on a nonfiction book and teaching full-time. Maybe just as well I didn’t read it until this week, because I wouldn’t have had time then to reflect on how I could like a book so much when the main character, Fiona Range, is blinder than Oedipus.
Which led me to think about Oedipus and Greek theater. The audience knew what Oedipus did not–that he’d killed his own father and married his mother. Teiresias (the blind prophet) tells Oedipus, “. . . you, with both your eyes, are blind: You cannot see the wretchedness of your life.”
A component of Greek theater was the audience knowing tragedy was imminent, and holding their collective breath, waiting for the protagonist’s downfall. It worked then and it works now–if done skillfully.
I don’t know if I can do it successfully, but I admire the authors who can. So, what is the key to creating a reckless, foolish, hell-bent-on-their-own destruction character and still keep the reader turning the page instead of tossing the novel?
As a reader, I want the characters to have a goal, however unrealistic. I want them motivated to reach that goal. I want to care enough about them to cheer them on, even though I see them making mistake after mistake. I want to know they are trying to solve their problems, resolve their conflicts, fix their lives. And even as I hold my breath, waiting for the next predicament, I have faith they will eventually prevail.
So maybe we can take a lesson from Aristotle’s Poetics. When we create heroes or villains, give them some nobility, some goodness, some vulnerability. Make them intelligent, if misguided; determined, if weak; persistent, if hindered, even loving if hateful. Show light penetrating the dark side. Care about them yourself, and the reader will respond.
I won’t forget Fiona, and I’ll try to take my own advice while I work on the sequel to my novel.
You Poor Mother
“You poor mother,” the female character said. I stopped reading. Wait a minute. Was she calling the young man, who had just told her that his mother was comatose, a “mother” in the most derogatory sense of the word?
This was supposedly a caring young woman. Something wasn’t right. I went back and read the line again. Oh! It was supposed to read, “Your poor mother.” Of course. And therein lies the need for careful editing, even if you have to read your manuscript a dozen times, read it until the words swim and you hate it. Read it until you know it’s right.
One of the criticisms of self-published books is sloppy editing. But we can’t confine those observations to independent writers alone. I recently read the latest novel of a very well-known and admired mystery writer. She has a top level publisher and consistently hits the best seller list. Yet her latest book had errors that were too obvious to miss–wrong words, dropped letters, twisted timeline.
At a book fair in our area, I shared a table with a fellow author and I complimented her on her latest novel. She laughed and said, “Did you notice anything wrong?” I hadn’t, but she told me she’d changed the color of a main character’s car, describing it blue in one scene and green in the other. We talked then about how easy it is to overlook errors.
Sometimes we simply know the material so well that our mind supplies the correct word or phrasing. Sometimes we have read through so many times we can no longer concentrate. Sometimes our proofreading programs supply the wrong word–I’ve laughed until I cried over some of the auto-text correction errors people have posted. And, sometimes, we just have a mental block that causes us to consistently use the wrong punctuation or the wrong word (a friend didn’t call me the “comma queen” for nothing).
Do minor errors detract from the characters, the plot, the theme? Not usually, but they often confuse or irritate the reader.
In my nonfiction, true-crime book, I paid scant attention to the chapter titles once I set up the table of contents. Since it was a book involving two murders, two trials, and two executions, the chapter titles included dates. During the last proof (after discovering on previous proofs various oddities including two lines that, for some inexplicable reason, were in a different font), I realized that, according to my chapter titles, my protagonist went to trial a year after he was executed. It was just a typo, but still . . ..
Would anyone really notice and be thrown by the chapter title error, I wondered? Maybe not, but the one or two people who did notice might question the veracity of my other facts as well–or think I was just careless.
I was saved by FRIENDS, people who believed in my work enough to read it . . . and read it again . . . and again. One used a Microsoft program to add, delete, and suggest. The other read an early copy of the actual print book and made pencil notations. Their time and attention to detail was invaluable.
My best advice? Treasure your early readers, find a good copy editor, and read that manuscript just once more.
To Curse or Not to Curse: Lesson Unlearned on a Wyoming Sheep Ranch
Deciding exactly how far you should go when writing dialogue is a dilemma, particularly if you are writing for a yet undetermined audience. You want to keep it authentic, but refrain from offending potential readers. What’s the answer?
Having spent my formative years (until about age 8) on a sheep ranch in Wyoming that my father was managing for his three bachelor uncles, I was totally familiar with a well-aimed curse–usually not at a person other than something mild like, “When in the hell are you going to get that fence fixed?” Generally it was a piece of farm machinery, a recalcitrant ram, or the gumbo that mired the truck. That is, until it was time for me to start school.
My great-uncle Bill, who did the milking and tended the garden, allowed me to tag along and help. When my entry into the first grade became imminent, he decided to take my education in hand and prepare me for the classroom. After extracting my promise that I wouldn’t tell my parents of his tutelage, he instructed me in the art of swearing. Having never married, he apparently hoped his niece would carry on his Wyoming sheep rancher’s traditions. (My apologies to those ranchers who refrain from cussing a blue streak.)
I lasted one morning in school, answering every question I was asked, including my name and age, with an adjective or adverb that the lovely, elderly teacher–who for years had maintained serene control of her class room–had never experienced. I was escorted home in the afternoon; my shocked parents were told to clean up my language before I would be readmitted; Uncle Bill thought his joke was the best he’d ever pulled, and it took my mother a full week to deprogram me. It was not completely successful, but I have managed some restraint in my writing.
So, what is too much? What is not enough? What is authentic? What is offensive? What is gratuitous?
Some of the characters in my short stories and novel curse: some do not. A wisecracking hairdresser, a frustrated father, a woman who has exploded with hurt and anger cusses out the man who hurt her. My guide is circumstances and what would be a natural “voice” for my character in those circumstances.
When I taught writing, some students had either discovered a range of four letter words (mostly just one) or were experiencing the freedom of their first year or two in college. Either way, they seemed to revel in including a minimum of two swear words in every sentence. When I suggested there might be another way to say the same thing, they’d retort that they liked what they had written. “Okay,” I’d say, “but will your reader?”
That’s the fine line a writer has to walk. What is authentic and what is gratuitous? We all have a definition, depending on our upbringing, our values, the image we wish to project. My time on a sheep ranch, and later visiting on other ranches, inured me to finding “language” offensive; however, like anything else, the situation dictates the response. Most of us differentiate our behavior depending on how solemn or rowdy the occasion warrants. So must our characters.
It would seem unusual for a character, regardless how constrained and conservative, to utter, “Goodness, I believe I just injured the digit on my left hand,” when the jack just slipped and he smashed his finger. Or to have a driver utter, “My, my, that car is coming straight at me,” before a collision. You can supply the more typical responses.
It all comes down to knowing your characters, gauging their typical responses, portraying their level of emotional involvement, and keeping their dialogue real.
Note: Uncle Bill is somewhere laughing his . . . head . . . off.
What a Peony Taught Me
Do you have a completed manuscript in the desk drawer? Sitting in a file on your computer? Handwritten in a notebook? Did you write it five years ago? Ten? Twenty? Did you try to get an agent or a publisher to read it? Then, when the lack of response became too depressing, did you go on to another project? Take up watercolors?
I’ve experienced all the above (watercolors were a failure). I currently have two manuscripts that, while I believe in them, probably don’t fall into commercially recognizable categories. One is a limited biography of an ordinary couple in extraordinary circumstance; the other is a novel I wrote in the 1980s. The novel almost made it, if I’d been smart enough at the time to know that a personal letter from a top publisher–with suggestions–was a rarity. But I was very busy with my job, and I couldn’t face rewriting (and retyping 325 pages on an electric typewriter). If I’d had a computer then, it might have been a different story but . . . that’s history.
Still, although I’ve written other books, short stories, and essays with some success, those two books beg for another chance. Maybe it would be worth all that rewriting and typing now. Why? A Peony’s persistence has made its mark.
Last September, I cleaned out a ragged, overgrown space next to the deck, clearing the area of weeds and out-of-control monkey grass. Near the middle was a once lovely Peony plant, but the blooms were long gone, the day was hot, and I was out of patience, so I hacked it down and dug it up along with the grass roots–or so I thought.
This spring, while spreading a new layer of cypress mulch, I was surprised to see that a portion of the plant had survived–underground, throughout the winter–and sent up one stem with a half dozen leaves. Wisely, it had sent the stem outside the brick edging I’d installed.
And on that stem was one incredibly gorgeous pink Peony bloom, large as a plate and perfect in every way. I’m not sure if that one exquisite flower was a reward or a remonstration, but it made me think about writing and how easy it is to give up on our work if it doesn’t get the desired response.
So, I’m going to dust off those manuscripts and take a good look at them. Maybe, just maybe, one of them will turn into a perfect bloom.
The First Straw 