Cat Rambo's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Stories as Arrangements of Patterns
(crossposted from Livejournal)
One of the things I like about teaching is that it makes you think about the things you're trying to teach. In the first Writing F&SF class, I asked the class what makes a story a good one - how do we know it's good? Answers included a world so well constructed you can sense it; immersion in the text to the point you forget you're reading; something you can identify with.
All of those are fine and true answers, but it occurred to me they point to something beyond that: a story must consist of a pleasing set of patterns, ones that fill it out and create its shape. For example, tension must rise and end in a climactic moment. The point of view must not change or at least do it in a meaningful way. What's allowable in the world of the story is usually set up in the first few paragraphs and they usually echo or foreshadow the main source of conflict in the story. For me, thinking about patterns and the shape of the story is a crucial component of my writing process.
Everyone's writing process is different. Mine varies from story to story somewhat. Stories have been known to arrive in my head complete. "Pippa's Smiles," a fantasy story I wrote a couple of months ago, is a good example. I was in bed, waking up and thinking about the story, and letting my unconscious mind help assemble the pieces. When I got up, I sat down at the computer and wrote it in the course of a morning. That's more typical of flash or at least short pieces.
More commonly, a story begins with an idea or a character. If it's an idea, a character soon follows, because it's a crucial part of the mulling process. Here's some of what went into "Long Enough And Just So Long," which will appear in Lightspeed Magazine.
I was thinking about heroines in YA literature as a result of a Wiscon panel I'd been on, and some of the stories that had been mentioned. At the same time, I'd noticed an announcement from Redstone Science Fiction about a contest called "Towards the Accessible Future".
One of my all-time favorite stories as a teen was Heinlein's "The Menace of Earth," and I decided I wanted to riff on that. A number of my stories are sparked by stories I hold particularly dear - The Mermaids Singing Each to Each takes Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as its inspiration. I also wanted to nod to a favorite Heinlein YA heroine: Podkayne of Mars.
So with all of that swimming around in my head, I was just about ready to write. I had a name for my heroine and I knew that she was missing limbs, which helped her in her career as a pilot. I wanted her to have a friend to play off of, and I knew that friend's name, taken from another girls' literary figure: Pippi Longstocking. It irritates me that we don't see many good female friendships in speculative fiction, so I wanted to make that friendship the overall arc of the story.
"The Menace from Earth" has an uncomplicated plot. Two Lunar teens, one male and one female, are friends. A visiting woman from Earth snags the boy's attention and the girl is jealous. Then she does something stupid and learns that the boy really loves her. Yeah, I know, it's got gender issues out the wazoo. At any rate, because its plot hinges on romance, I wanted something dealing with that to move things along in the story. A sentient sexbot was called for, and led to some of my favorite comic moments in the story.
Most of this was clear in my head when I sat down to write, and it was at that that I let the story flow out as it wanted to, which is always a weird process where you feel like Lucille Ball trying to keep up with a candy assembly line in that you're throwing words at the page in a desperate attempt to keep things flowing. Then you finish up, look back at what emerged in that spurt, and it informs the next one. Usually I go stretch and then sit on the balcony for a little while thinking about the story before starting the next chunk, which is usually anywhere from 300-1000 words, depending on how well I'm keeping up with the word assembly line.
I often don't know what will emerge. I didn't know the ending to Podkayne's story until I was nearly halfway through. My unconscious mind, which is much smarter than I am, is a vital partner in the writing process. The best way for me to access it is on a regular basis. If the pump is primed, the words flow better. Somedays the flow is smooth and effortless -- other days it's like grinding up your own guts to make sausage.
Pattern making enters into this. As I'm writing, I'm trying to construct patterns from the flow. Certain rules are ingrained: the more attention you give a character, the more important they should be to the plot; significant moments or motifs are pleasing in clusters of threes; bringing back something from the beginning at the end will make the story feel more complete; the resolution occurs near the end; a sentence or two that pulls out an ending and extends it provides a reader with the chance to savor and understand it; moments of tension should be spread out, rather than all clumped together; if anyone says something can't be done, it probably should be accomplished or in process by the story's end.
The important thing, though, is to get the story out. Then in editing, you can rearrange, reinforce, amplify, eliminate, and so forth to make the pattern more appealing. That's my first edit pass. After that things get nit-picky and labor intensive.
Everyone's process, though, is different, and any writing teacher who preaches the One and Only Way should be shunned. Figure out your process, experiment with it, find out what works, and then do that. Lots.
One of the things I like about teaching is that it makes you think about the things you're trying to teach. In the first Writing F&SF class, I asked the class what makes a story a good one - how do we know it's good? Answers included a world so well constructed you can sense it; immersion in the text to the point you forget you're reading; something you can identify with.
All of those are fine and true answers, but it occurred to me they point to something beyond that: a story must consist of a pleasing set of patterns, ones that fill it out and create its shape. For example, tension must rise and end in a climactic moment. The point of view must not change or at least do it in a meaningful way. What's allowable in the world of the story is usually set up in the first few paragraphs and they usually echo or foreshadow the main source of conflict in the story. For me, thinking about patterns and the shape of the story is a crucial component of my writing process.
Everyone's writing process is different. Mine varies from story to story somewhat. Stories have been known to arrive in my head complete. "Pippa's Smiles," a fantasy story I wrote a couple of months ago, is a good example. I was in bed, waking up and thinking about the story, and letting my unconscious mind help assemble the pieces. When I got up, I sat down at the computer and wrote it in the course of a morning. That's more typical of flash or at least short pieces.
More commonly, a story begins with an idea or a character. If it's an idea, a character soon follows, because it's a crucial part of the mulling process. Here's some of what went into "Long Enough And Just So Long," which will appear in Lightspeed Magazine.
I was thinking about heroines in YA literature as a result of a Wiscon panel I'd been on, and some of the stories that had been mentioned. At the same time, I'd noticed an announcement from Redstone Science Fiction about a contest called "Towards the Accessible Future".
One of my all-time favorite stories as a teen was Heinlein's "The Menace of Earth," and I decided I wanted to riff on that. A number of my stories are sparked by stories I hold particularly dear - The Mermaids Singing Each to Each takes Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as its inspiration. I also wanted to nod to a favorite Heinlein YA heroine: Podkayne of Mars.
So with all of that swimming around in my head, I was just about ready to write. I had a name for my heroine and I knew that she was missing limbs, which helped her in her career as a pilot. I wanted her to have a friend to play off of, and I knew that friend's name, taken from another girls' literary figure: Pippi Longstocking. It irritates me that we don't see many good female friendships in speculative fiction, so I wanted to make that friendship the overall arc of the story.
"The Menace from Earth" has an uncomplicated plot. Two Lunar teens, one male and one female, are friends. A visiting woman from Earth snags the boy's attention and the girl is jealous. Then she does something stupid and learns that the boy really loves her. Yeah, I know, it's got gender issues out the wazoo. At any rate, because its plot hinges on romance, I wanted something dealing with that to move things along in the story. A sentient sexbot was called for, and led to some of my favorite comic moments in the story.
Most of this was clear in my head when I sat down to write, and it was at that that I let the story flow out as it wanted to, which is always a weird process where you feel like Lucille Ball trying to keep up with a candy assembly line in that you're throwing words at the page in a desperate attempt to keep things flowing. Then you finish up, look back at what emerged in that spurt, and it informs the next one. Usually I go stretch and then sit on the balcony for a little while thinking about the story before starting the next chunk, which is usually anywhere from 300-1000 words, depending on how well I'm keeping up with the word assembly line.
I often don't know what will emerge. I didn't know the ending to Podkayne's story until I was nearly halfway through. My unconscious mind, which is much smarter than I am, is a vital partner in the writing process. The best way for me to access it is on a regular basis. If the pump is primed, the words flow better. Somedays the flow is smooth and effortless -- other days it's like grinding up your own guts to make sausage.
Pattern making enters into this. As I'm writing, I'm trying to construct patterns from the flow. Certain rules are ingrained: the more attention you give a character, the more important they should be to the plot; significant moments or motifs are pleasing in clusters of threes; bringing back something from the beginning at the end will make the story feel more complete; the resolution occurs near the end; a sentence or two that pulls out an ending and extends it provides a reader with the chance to savor and understand it; moments of tension should be spread out, rather than all clumped together; if anyone says something can't be done, it probably should be accomplished or in process by the story's end.
The important thing, though, is to get the story out. Then in editing, you can rearrange, reinforce, amplify, eliminate, and so forth to make the pattern more appealing. That's my first edit pass. After that things get nit-picky and labor intensive.
Everyone's process, though, is different, and any writing teacher who preaches the One and Only Way should be shunned. Figure out your process, experiment with it, find out what works, and then do that. Lots.
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Classes include:
Writing F&SF Stories
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Classes include:
Writing F&SF Stories
Everything You Need to Know about E-Publishing
Flash Fiction Workshop
Literary Techniques for Speculative Fiction
The Art of the Book Review
Building an Online Presence for Writers
Editing 101
See here for more details and to sign up for my mailing list - http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcom...
Writing at the Next Level: Getting Inside Your Character’s Head
Crossposted from kittywumpus.net.. Visit the site to find links to referenced fiction.
Once you’ve mastered the basics of getting words on a page and moving characters around through situations, there’s some things that (in my experience) the majority of writers need to focus on. Examples are narrative grammar, paragraphing strategies, trimming excess from sentences, and getting inside a character’s head. Here, I’m going to discuss the last of those.
A lot of this is taken from correspondance with my student Hasnain. He’d asked about story structures, particularly Freitag’s Triangle, and we’d discussed where the triangle occurs in Junot Diaz’s story, Fiesta 1980. In looking at his most recent story, I’d said I thought he needed to get inside his main character’s head more.
Hasnain asked: You mentioned today that going into the narrator’s head is a good thing since it helps the reader seat more firmly with the narrator. However, here’s where I am a bit confused. I read somewhere that what people think and feel should be shown in a sensory way through their actions and interactions with others. If I go into the narrator’s head, wouldn’t I be telling? In my story, this would be if the narrator thinks about how he wants to put Sal’s love to the test.
My reply:
Let’s go back to Fiesta. Here’s some places where I think we’re particularly inside the narrator’s head and seeing his thoughts.
We were all dressed by then, which was a smart move on our part. If Papi had walked in and caught us lounging around in our underwear, he would have kicked our asses something serious.
Rafa gave me the look and I gave it back to him; we both knew Papi had been with that Puerto Rican woman he was seeing and wanted to wash off the evidence quick.
Not that me or Rafa loved baseball; we just liked playing with the local kids, thrashing them at anything they were doing. By the sounds of the shouting, we both knew the game was close, either of us could have made a difference.
But even that little bit of recognition made me feel better.
This was how all our trips began, the words that followed me every time I left the house.
Another possible way to do this is by showing the thoughts on the page as words that echo what’s going through the narrator’s mind. Here I’m going to refer you to a piece of mine that appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, The Worm Within, and hope you’ll forgive me for using my own stuff, but it’s easier to go to it for examples than hunt around for other stories.
Here’s a few passages where I’ve used that technique (note that it’s also an unreliable narrator – being inside the head of an unreliable narrator is a tricky strategy but awesome when effective):
Nude, I revel in my flesh, dancing in the hallway to feel the body’s sway and bend. Curved shadows slide like knives over the crossworded tiles on the floor, perfect black and white squares. If there were a mirror I could see myself.
I don’t know where he lives in my body. Surely what feels like him winding, wormlike, many-footed and long-antennaed through the hallways of my lungs, the chambers of my heart, the slick sluiceway of my intestines — surely the sensation is him using his telekinetic palps to engage my nervous system. I think he must be curled, encysted, an ovoid somewhere between my shoulder blades, a lump below my left rib, a third ovary glimmering deep in my belly.
I walk in the park. Where did all these robots come from? What do they want? They look like the people that built them, and they walk along the sidewalk, scuffed and marred by their heavy footsteps. They pretend. That’s the only thing that saves me, the only thing that lets me walk among them pretending to be something that is pretending to be me.
Present tense works very well for this, I’ve found. Here, as another example, is an extended passage from the novel I’m grappling with:
The blade slices so close to my eyeball that my upper eyelashes brush against it. I pull back from that silver line hanging sideways in the air, roll on my heels on the gritty tiles.
The crowd is silent, watching from the vast stands. Not that many of them here, for a challenge match, particularly one no one thinks Crysa can win. But the fact that the Duke is here, watching, brings many.
Snap my left fist forward. Almost catch her.
Almost drive the side of the little round shield into her ribs as I push towards her. But she goes left, dodges with an exhalation that hangs in the frosty air between us.
Bitch is quick and fast as that Champion in the Southern Isles.
Built like her too.
Not as experienced, though. Spring’s always represented by someone young. Fresh.
She’s off balance from the step. Weight on that heel.
Make as though to kick forward into the other. Sweep a foot backward, into her calf. Make her falter.
You can even go so far as to mark thoughts as thoughts, usually by italicizing them.
Here’s a couple of passages from Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch, where we hear Finch’s thoughts:
Am I dead? he thought sometimes, walking down that green carpet he remembered from a different city, a different time. Am I a ghost?
Six in the afternoon. Time to leave. He packed Heretic’s list in a satchel and holstered his miserable gun. Watched Blakely and Gustat put on spore gas masks “just in case.” Just in case of what? Just in case there’s one fungus in the whole damn city you haven’t been exposed to yet?
Stephen King is a master of this. Here’s a lovely, complicated bit of it in Salem’s Lot. It’s a three part structure: A) a description of what he’s thinking about, followed by b) bits of the Catholic prayer for the dead repeating itself in his head and then c) a reference to the words of a profane ritual conducted earlier in the book. They’re designated with tokens of punctuation, such as italics and parentheses. 123, 123, 123, and so on, deliberate as any dance step:
The Catholic prayer for the dead began to run through his mind, the way things like that will for no good reason. He had heard Callahan saying it while he was eating his dinner down by the brook. That, and the father’s helpless screaming.
Let us pray for our brother to our Lord Jesus Christ, who said…
(O my father, favor me now.)
He paused and looked blankly down into the grave. It was deep, very deep. The shadows of coming night had already pooled into it, like something viscid and alive. It was still deep. He would never be able to fill it by dark. Never.
I am the resurrection and the life. The man who believes in me will live even though he die…
(Lord of flies, favor me now.)
Yes, the eyes were open. That’s why he felt watched. Carl hadn’t used enough gum on them and they had flown up just like window shades and the Glick kid was staring at him. Something ought to be done about it.
…and every living person who puts his faith in me will never suffer eternal death…
(Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh.)
What do you think? How many of these devices have you used?
(If this interested you, you might consider taking one of my online classes, particularly the Literary Techniques for Genre Fiction class.)
Once you’ve mastered the basics of getting words on a page and moving characters around through situations, there’s some things that (in my experience) the majority of writers need to focus on. Examples are narrative grammar, paragraphing strategies, trimming excess from sentences, and getting inside a character’s head. Here, I’m going to discuss the last of those.
A lot of this is taken from correspondance with my student Hasnain. He’d asked about story structures, particularly Freitag’s Triangle, and we’d discussed where the triangle occurs in Junot Diaz’s story, Fiesta 1980. In looking at his most recent story, I’d said I thought he needed to get inside his main character’s head more.
Hasnain asked: You mentioned today that going into the narrator’s head is a good thing since it helps the reader seat more firmly with the narrator. However, here’s where I am a bit confused. I read somewhere that what people think and feel should be shown in a sensory way through their actions and interactions with others. If I go into the narrator’s head, wouldn’t I be telling? In my story, this would be if the narrator thinks about how he wants to put Sal’s love to the test.
My reply:
Let’s go back to Fiesta. Here’s some places where I think we’re particularly inside the narrator’s head and seeing his thoughts.
We were all dressed by then, which was a smart move on our part. If Papi had walked in and caught us lounging around in our underwear, he would have kicked our asses something serious.
Rafa gave me the look and I gave it back to him; we both knew Papi had been with that Puerto Rican woman he was seeing and wanted to wash off the evidence quick.
Not that me or Rafa loved baseball; we just liked playing with the local kids, thrashing them at anything they were doing. By the sounds of the shouting, we both knew the game was close, either of us could have made a difference.
But even that little bit of recognition made me feel better.
This was how all our trips began, the words that followed me every time I left the house.
Another possible way to do this is by showing the thoughts on the page as words that echo what’s going through the narrator’s mind. Here I’m going to refer you to a piece of mine that appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, The Worm Within, and hope you’ll forgive me for using my own stuff, but it’s easier to go to it for examples than hunt around for other stories.
Here’s a few passages where I’ve used that technique (note that it’s also an unreliable narrator – being inside the head of an unreliable narrator is a tricky strategy but awesome when effective):
Nude, I revel in my flesh, dancing in the hallway to feel the body’s sway and bend. Curved shadows slide like knives over the crossworded tiles on the floor, perfect black and white squares. If there were a mirror I could see myself.
I don’t know where he lives in my body. Surely what feels like him winding, wormlike, many-footed and long-antennaed through the hallways of my lungs, the chambers of my heart, the slick sluiceway of my intestines — surely the sensation is him using his telekinetic palps to engage my nervous system. I think he must be curled, encysted, an ovoid somewhere between my shoulder blades, a lump below my left rib, a third ovary glimmering deep in my belly.
I walk in the park. Where did all these robots come from? What do they want? They look like the people that built them, and they walk along the sidewalk, scuffed and marred by their heavy footsteps. They pretend. That’s the only thing that saves me, the only thing that lets me walk among them pretending to be something that is pretending to be me.
Present tense works very well for this, I’ve found. Here, as another example, is an extended passage from the novel I’m grappling with:
The blade slices so close to my eyeball that my upper eyelashes brush against it. I pull back from that silver line hanging sideways in the air, roll on my heels on the gritty tiles.
The crowd is silent, watching from the vast stands. Not that many of them here, for a challenge match, particularly one no one thinks Crysa can win. But the fact that the Duke is here, watching, brings many.
Snap my left fist forward. Almost catch her.
Almost drive the side of the little round shield into her ribs as I push towards her. But she goes left, dodges with an exhalation that hangs in the frosty air between us.
Bitch is quick and fast as that Champion in the Southern Isles.
Built like her too.
Not as experienced, though. Spring’s always represented by someone young. Fresh.
She’s off balance from the step. Weight on that heel.
Make as though to kick forward into the other. Sweep a foot backward, into her calf. Make her falter.
You can even go so far as to mark thoughts as thoughts, usually by italicizing them.
Here’s a couple of passages from Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch, where we hear Finch’s thoughts:
Am I dead? he thought sometimes, walking down that green carpet he remembered from a different city, a different time. Am I a ghost?
Six in the afternoon. Time to leave. He packed Heretic’s list in a satchel and holstered his miserable gun. Watched Blakely and Gustat put on spore gas masks “just in case.” Just in case of what? Just in case there’s one fungus in the whole damn city you haven’t been exposed to yet?
Stephen King is a master of this. Here’s a lovely, complicated bit of it in Salem’s Lot. It’s a three part structure: A) a description of what he’s thinking about, followed by b) bits of the Catholic prayer for the dead repeating itself in his head and then c) a reference to the words of a profane ritual conducted earlier in the book. They’re designated with tokens of punctuation, such as italics and parentheses. 123, 123, 123, and so on, deliberate as any dance step:
The Catholic prayer for the dead began to run through his mind, the way things like that will for no good reason. He had heard Callahan saying it while he was eating his dinner down by the brook. That, and the father’s helpless screaming.
Let us pray for our brother to our Lord Jesus Christ, who said…
(O my father, favor me now.)
He paused and looked blankly down into the grave. It was deep, very deep. The shadows of coming night had already pooled into it, like something viscid and alive. It was still deep. He would never be able to fill it by dark. Never.
I am the resurrection and the life. The man who believes in me will live even though he die…
(Lord of flies, favor me now.)
Yes, the eyes were open. That’s why he felt watched. Carl hadn’t used enough gum on them and they had flown up just like window shades and the Glick kid was staring at him. Something ought to be done about it.
…and every living person who puts his faith in me will never suffer eternal death…
(Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh.)
What do you think? How many of these devices have you used?
(If this interested you, you might consider taking one of my online classes, particularly the Literary Techniques for Genre Fiction class.)
