Toby Litt's Blog, page 11

Wordless post by author, Patience, of photographs taken whilst completing novel at Hawthornden Castle

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Writing and Shit – part 11 – Make it wronger

I am now going to give you a second definition of a story that, I hope, will from now on, forever after, make it easier for you to write stories that don’t just start but that go on through exciting, intensifying middles and reach satisfying, unpredictable ends.

The second definition doesn’t undermine or contradict the first, it depends upon it. A story is still about something or someone in the wrong place. But this is a rather static start point. Much of the time, it may be enough to get you going. The second definition is designed not just to get you going but to get you and your story over the hump – the hump at which they’ve previously stalled and rolled backwards.

The second definition introduces the extra element that I mentioned we needed as well as something, somewhere and someone.

It’s time.

Time, about which there will be lots more useful stuff to say, a little later on.

 

A story is about something going wrong, and something going more wrong.

 

By something, I mean an event that normally occurs one way – for example, walking down a flight of stairs or a happy wedding day.

Let’s take both examples.

Walking down a flight of stairs is something that many people can do without consciously thinking about it. In fact, becoming conscious of doing something extremely complicated but habitual, in the middle of doing it, can be very dangerous.

A man walking down a flight of stairs trips and falls. He hits his head, which starts to bleed, and –

We have enough to begin our story.

Let’s say, the man crawls to his front door and calls for help.

The passerby who stops happens to be a burglar, who drags the injured man back into the house, gags and ties him to the stairs, and proceeds to steal his valuables.

We now have enough for our story to continue for some time.

How will the injured man escape? What will the effect of losing all that money be on him? Will the Police catch the burglar? Will the man attempt to track down the burglar himself?

Let’s erase the burglar, however. Let’s not include the thing that goes more wrong because of the first thing that goes wrong.

In this version of the story, which is only the start of a story, the man crawls to his front door and calls for help.

The passerby who stops happens to be a nurse, who takes the injured man to hospital where his head is bandaged and he is kept in under observation for a night.

The next morning the man returns to his house and his life is much the same, although for several months he holds carefully on to the bannister whilst going down the stairs.

This is the panicked version, in which the box is opened but then the action is tidied up and put back in.

To Do:

Think whether you have written any stories that don’t progress because, looked at in schematic form, they go this way:

Person. Person encounters problem. Person finds way to solve problem. Story ends.

I am suggesting that, from now on, you avoid this too-quick solution.

Rewrite this story as:

Person. Person encounters problem. Person tries to find way to solve problem but, in doing so, creates bigger problem or multiple problems. Person tries to find way to solve bigger problem or multiple problems…

Let’s take the other example. Even though a wedding is not a routine day in most people’s lives, not for the bride and groom, not for the family and friends, but definitely and wearyingly so for the Vicar or Priest or Registrar, the organist, the photographer – though your wedding is not routine for you, it can pass off in a way that is itself entirely routine. It doesn’t, you hope, go wrong enough to become a story.

Let’s say the first thing that goes wrong is that the bride’s limo breaks down on the way to the church. Fine, someone calls a taxi – she gets to the ceremony a little late.

Not a story.

But then let’s say what goes more wrong is that, when the mechanic arrives to fix the limo, he turns out to be a someone the bride recognizes was a boy she was in love with at school.

Story.

But if we’re taking my second definition then something more needs to happen. Something’s gone wrong but something needs to go more wrong.

So, rather than get back in the now-repaired limo, the bride climbs up into the cab of the tow truck a drives away with the mechanic.

I am not making any claims for this as a great story idea. Only that, in looking at it closely, you realise the total difference between an account of a wedding day, centred around a happy bride whose wedding passes off without a hitch, and the story of the bride who ran away with the mechanic.

If this happened in reality – the runaway bride – it would be a story that was told and retold.

It would work in the bar. And not just the bar.

Aside: One of my basic tests of a story is whether, if you were on a bus or an underground train, and you could overhear someone telling someone else the story you’re thinking of – would you stay on to hear the end of it? Is it good enough for you to miss your stop?

In this case, that of the runaway bride, I think you would. If it happened years ago, you’d want to know whether the bride and the mechanic were still together. If it happened last week, you’d want to hear about the immediate fallout. How is the groom coping? Has he tried to kill anyone?

MAKE IT WRONGER

Now we come to the unvirgin territory. I began by saying this wasn’t a guide that presumed you were a new writer starting with a blank page or empty document. You have history, and it’s not pretty.

 Exercise: Reread your story-start thinking about whether it has what a story needs.

Explanation: What I would like you to do now is look at your recopied in handwriting story-start.

I’d like you to reread it, thinking of the two definitions – A story is about something or someone out of place. A story is about something going wrong, and something going more wrong. – and I’d like you to make a note of who or what you think is out of place. Is someone or something not where they normally are? If so, how quickly did you get them there?

I’d like you to underline every sentence in the story in which something happens which has never happened before in quite the same way.

In my example of the woman who works at the supermarket, first version, nothing would be underlined.

If you have done this, and are now looking at a couple of pages with some sparse underlining toward the end, then this may be your problem. It may be that you feel it’s necessary always to establish your main person or people’s daily routine before you show that routine being broken. And you may be boring yourself so much that you just stop writing. Or, in facing the break from routine, you may find yourself so anxious what might happen that you stop writing.

I would say that, in most cases, it is not necessary to show a person following their routine because, in writing about a break in their routine, the reader will get perfect well what they would otherwise have been doing.

Just the job description, shelf-stacker, will be enough to suggest hours spent in harshly lit canteens and grey back corridors. The reader, by themselves, will do the work of imagining or just assuming the details of the person’s life.

It’s quite possible that the last paragraph doesn’t apply to your story start at all. Perhaps the underlining begins with the very first word. In that case, I’d like you to see if the second definition applies to your story.

A story is about something going wrong, and something going more wrong.

Alongside the first thing that goes wrong, I’d like you to put a small asterisk.

What goes wrong doesn’t count as going wrong if it it has no consequences – throughout the rest of the story. In other words, if something minor happens, being late for a meeting or forgetting someone’s birthday, but that it is dealt with, put back in the box, and the routine has been resumed – as if it never happened – that deserves an asterisk but then you’re going to have to draw a box around the asterisk.

Alongside the second thing that goes wrong, the thing that goes more wrong because of the first thing, I’d like you to put a big asterisk.

If you did, honestly, feel you could put down a big asterisk, well done. You are getting to the point of writing stories that open up, that generate their own story energy.

What I would suspect, because it happens very often, is that the big asterisk is very close to where you got before you put the story aside – never until now to pick it up again.

This may be for any number of reasons, some of which are to do with life-interruptions. But there are possibly reasons within you. Some writers, when they get to the point where things are out of the box, are opening out, panic. They think something like, I have no idea what’s going to happen now. Or, I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to finish this. At this point, they do one of two things – the abandon the story as too scary, or they find some way, within the action, of closing things down as quickly as possible.

Ask yourself: Why did this story not get completed? Was it anxiety that it was going out of my control?

Some writers, conversely, lose interest exactly when they see that things are going their way. They think something like, It’s obvious what’s going to happen now and they put the story aside because completing it doesn’t seem worthwhile, either for them or for any potential reader.

Ask yourself: Why did this story not get completed? Was it boredom that it was too much under my control?

Mr But: Nothing you’ve said has any relevance to me at all. I simply stopped writing the story, at that point, because it no longer seemed to me like a very good idea. I like it to begin with, and pursued it for a while, but when I came to judge it, I found it lacking.

Yes, this is a whole guide about telling stories. Some of the problems writers have with stories are on the level of things going or not going wrong. It may be that we won’t hit on something that strikes home with you until much later. However, it’s also possible that you are overcomplicating your idea of what a story is. In fact, you’re making it too much to do with ideas – and what you want to happen in your story – and too little to do with things and people in wrong and wronger places – and what happens when you follow them in their catastrophic doings.

See you in a while.

Wordless post by author, Patience, of drawings done whilst completing novel at Hawthornden Castle

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Patience

Just to let you know, my novel Patience - which I think is the best thing I've done - comes out today.

It's published by Galley Beggar Press, and they still have some of the limited edition black covers.

https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/shop-1...

Patience

Just to let you know, my novel Patience - which I think is the best thing I've done - comes out today.

It's published by Galley Beggar Press, and they still have some of the limited edition black covers.

Novel Called Patience Published 4,581 Days After It Was Begun

You may have heard that I’ve written a novel called Patience, and that I started it over twelve and a half years ago – you may know this because, recently, I’ve been doing my social media dance to alert as many readers as possible to the fact it exists.

Today, it exists.

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Me, looking happy

I realise that seeing other writers boosting themselves can be depressing. I won this prize. I’m on this shortlist. I got this book deal. And it’s tough when that little air-punch comes in on a day you get a rejection, or are just generally feeling crap.

I realise this because, most of the time, I’m on the other end. The not-boosting end.

Although I’ve covered some of this in Wrestliana, the memoir I published last year with the great Galley Beggar Press, I’d like to say a little about why Patience is so important to me.

Quite a few of my other books have gone out of print. Corpsing. deadkidsongs. Ghost Story. (Some secret plans to bring them back, however.)

Of the previous three novels I’ve completed, only one has found a publisher.

Lilian’s Spell Book was self-published.

My Mother’s Seven Spirits Demand Justice was rejected all over.

Notes for a Young Gentleman was published by Seagull Press. (Who are great.)

This is embarrassing to confess. I liked all these three books, as I was writing them. I believed in them. They overtook me, and then they left me. I think they’re good books.

But Patience feels different. Better.

I’ve written a lot about writing. What I think is bad writing, good writing and better than good writing. Some of this is in the collection Mutants. A lot of it is in the lectures I’ve given at Birkbeck. But not all of the writing I’ve done has seemed to fit with these public statements. I’ve said one thing but seemed to be doing another.

Patience is where the two come together.

For some reason, it feels as if this book should go out into the world and get far away from me and from anyone who knows anything about me. It feels like it should have a life of its own.

That’s mainly because the narrator, Elliott, is such a special character – and writing as him made me write better than I have before. With more attention; with more compassion.

The reaction from the first few readers has been all that I hoped. I’m not going to quote them. (Todd McEwen’s review is here.)

I rarely feel that I’ve done my best. With Patience, I’m still trying to think – months after I finished – how I can come close to matching it.

I’m happy that, today, it’s available to read. I hope you’ll give it a chance – and pass it on to someone else, if you enjoy it.

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You can buy this limited edition of Patience direct from Galley Beggar Press here.

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And this paperback edition from Foyles here or hive here.

And please also use your local bookshop. Mine is Herne Hill Books.

 

Writing and Shit – Part 10 – Why this day?

A story is about a person or a thing that is in the wrong place.

Personally, because this story definition of mine is so basic, I can’t come up with any exceptions to it. (Maybe you can. If so, let me know.) However, I find it quite easy to think how it applies to both big and small stories with which most of us are familiar.

Let’s start with the beginning of European storytelling – Homer’s Odyssey. And let’s begin at the beginning – Odysseus is a long way from his home, which is where he desires to be. The story of the Odyssey, with all its adventures and mishaps, is the story of a person trying to return themselves to their right place. As soon as Odysseus returns home, and then returns his home to its right order, the story finishes. The next day, the day that Odysseus sits around, drinking wine and relaxing, that isn’t worth telling. It isn’t a story.

Now let’s think of one of the most successful big stories of our time, J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. What is in the wrong place? Not, this time, a person but a thing. The one Ring to bind them all is too vulnerable in Frodo Baggins’ comfortable Hobbit hole. For Middle Earth to be safe, the Ring must be destroyed completely – and the only place capable of destroying the Ring is the molten rock within the volcano Mount Doom. Every word of the trilogy is about the transportation of the Ring to its right and final place. This necessitates the journey of Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck through many places that are – for them – wrong places. Once the Ring is destroyed, Frodo and Sam are still in the wrong place, and the story does not end until Frodo (like Odysseus) returns to his home and returns his home to its right order.

Okay, so my definition works for big stories. What about smaller ones? Here examples become more problematic as we are all more familiar with big stories than small ones – I mean ones in which, you would challenge me, everything is in its right place and everyone is in their right place.

We need a story in which there is no journey, no epic quest. We need a story in which, unless you look closely, nothing happens.

Because most stories are stories, and do involve things or people that are obviously in the wrong place, it is very difficult to point to examples which enough people will know. So, instead of trying to find one that most people are likely to be familiar with, I am going to make one up.

A woman who lives alone and works in a supermarket, stacking shelves, gets up one day, showers, has breakfast, puts on her work clothes, drives the usual route to work, parks, clocks on, does her shift, takes her break, clocks out, drives the usual way home, takes off her work clothes, showers, has her dinner, looks at a screen, goes to bed.

Is this a story? Does this make it to the level of interest that makes a story?

I would say, in the neutral way that I’ve written it, that it doesn’t.

Why? Because what I have done is describe a routine rather than tell or make a story.

Here is an absolute law for you, from now on.

 

Take the pledge:

I swear that, from now on, I will never simply describe a routine.

Signed: ———————————–

 

Routines are not stories because, essentially, they have already happened – happened many times – and they will happen again. If there is to be no break from the routine then, even though we may not know what the routine is, it doesn’t deviate from what it’s been before or what it will be again.

Stories, put simply, are very often about people doing things for the first time.

(Make a note: When writing a story, it’s a good idea to have people visiting a new place, seeing new things. They see them more clearly. Did you look at your toothbrush this morning? Really look at it?)

We could turn our routine into a story by having the woman’s car not start, because something is in the wrong place in the engine. The woman then has to find some way of resuming her routine as soon as possible. She might get out her bike, or ask a neighbour to give her a lift, or catch the bus. And if she manages to get in to work on time, she will then be in her usual place. The story could then die, everything could be put back in the box, or the initial cause of the break from routine might cause the story to escalate. Because one major thing is still in the wrong place, the car. During one of her breaks, the woman phones the garage to arrange to have her car collected and repaired. When, that evening, the mechanic arrives with his tow truck, the woman recognises him as a boy she used to be in love with when she was at school. And now we have a story – because, for the woman, whatever she may be feeling, she is not in her usual place (in front of the screen) and she is not by herself (aloneness leads to routines).

However, let’s switch the point of view and see if we still have a story. We are now with the mechanic. We have been with him all day, through shower, breakfast, breaks, other pickups, other routines.

Say that when the mechanic comes to pick up the woman’s car, he does not recognise her as a girl he used to know, and he does not notice that she has recognised him – because he is unobservant and she says nothing. He simply gets the car up attached to the back of his tow truck and drives away.

Although something is in the wrong place – he is now, unawares, driving away with the car of the person in the world who loves him most profoundly – it isn’t a story when seen or told from his point of view, because he has experienced nothing but a routine day. Nothing, for him, has been out of place.

 

THINK OF YOUR OWN STORY

What I’ve just mentioned may be an answer for some of the Starters – why have lots of your wannabe stories gone for a couple of pages then stopped?

I suspect it is because you either simply described a routine or you opened the box, had something or someone in the wrong place, but then you got a bit scared it was running beyond your control or beyond what you’d foreseen, and you quickly put the lid back on.

For the Middlers, this may address why you’ve had problems with bringing alive some parts of your book-you-have-to-write.

If it’s based on real events that happened to real people, you may be understandably (if they or their relatives are still alive) reluctant to change the facts.

But let’s say that in the middle of your book, where in most novels things would be getting more complicated and happening faster, that you have a couple who lived a quiet life and brought up two children, then you have gone from story to routine – and your book will never recover.

The answer is simple: if a period is routine, refer to it as briefly as possible or leave it out entirely.

Enders, I’ll talk to you later…

ROUTINE ROUTINES

Routines are not stories, and stories can do with implying routines rather than describing them.

Mr But: But I’ve read lots of stories that begin by describing a character’s normal day and then it’s the next day that something unusual happens.

There are exceptions to this. The main one, I would say, is the story in which the events that occur are routine but the language in which they are described is itself the event.

This is a more Modernist approach to what a story is or can be. By Modernists, I mean writers like Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. Stretches of her Mrs Dalloway or his Ulysses detail routines. The event, for the reader, is the new way in which the world is brought to us by sentences. However, in both cases, the day on which the action in Mrs Dalloway or Ulysses takes place is – for the main characters – a significant, non-routine day. For the reader, the implication is, this is the day – of all days in these characters lives – that most poignantly gives them to us.

Literary aside: An even more routine bit of a day, that relies even more on the language itself being the event, is Nicholson Baker’s short novel The Mezzanine.

 

WHY THIS DAY?

It is a question that each storyteller should be able to answer about each of their stories.

If what you are writing could quite equally have been written about the day before or the same day last week, you are probably writing a routine and should probably stop and make something happen.

Look at your story. Are you able to answer this question about it?

A brief aside now. I have a new novel out next week – Patience. In lots of ways, I think it’s the best thing I’ve written. If you’re enjoying these posts, or have found other ones here useful, then please consider clicking on the cover and buying the book.

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Writing and Shit – Part 9 – Never do only one thing at a time

Welcome back.

You have now – from inside you somewhere – dug out the three elements of a story. It should be one that you wouldn’t have considered writing, before starting this guide.

Why?

Because with each exercise, in each case, I have nudged you toward doing more than one thing at once.

NEVER DO JUST ONE THING AT A TIME

 

I have deliberately made these exercises more than just the usual writing exercises – exercises you have no need to engage with emotionally.

Perhaps the main lesson I would like you to take from this guide is that, as a good writer, you will never do just one thing at a time – I mean, write in order to perform one task at a time.

There is no such thing as a “descriptive passage” or “a brief character sketch”. There is no separate chunk of prose to be labelled “brief witty dialogue section” or even, though the task may need to be accomplished, “sentence to get the character into the room”.

Everything – every sentence – will always be doing at least two but possibly half a dozen things.

For example, a description of a bedroom is also a character sketch of the person or people who sleep there, a contribution to the mood of the story as already established and also, perhaps, a foreshadowing of action that may happen in the bedroom or elsewhere. The description is also a piece of social observation that tells us about an entire class and culture, and any number of other things as well – many of them not easy to label; the stuff that goes on between writer and reader on an unconscious level. This is how I see the world; Oh, interesting, I see it the same/very differently.

I have tried to complicate even these basic exercises with desire and memory and deceit – not merely to make them harder but to ensure that, whilst carrying them out, you weren’t able to do just one thing at once.

If you’re in the shit with your writing, it may be because this is what you’ve been doing. It’s too obvious to you what each sentence is trying to achieve. This may make you bored with your own work, or – at the least – disenchanted with it. Hopefully, some of the suggestions soon to come will help you address this. Starting with –

 

EXCESSIVENESS

 

In getting you to do these exercises, I have nudged you toward writing emotionally and excessively.

By excessively I mean more than normally. This will soon become clearer.

Let’s, for now, just take a simple example. Straightness.

There are kinds of flamboyance, of dressing up, of having fun, that most people don’t allow themselves, apart from on Hallowe’en or Mardi Gras.

I am saying that you need to be able to access those excesses at all times. Your page should be more like a festival than, as my father used to say, a wet weekend. Because, if you don’t access excess, you may end up writing something boring.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF YOUR STORY THAT DIDN’T PREVIOUSLY EXIST

 

What is your story about?

It is about this – now read it back to yourself, out loud.

First, your place – this is where your story begins.

Then your person – this is who your story begins with.

And then your thing – this is what begins your story.

 

Is it an interesting story, potentially? Does it have more basic story energy than the last story idea you came up with by yourself?

 

Exercise: Copy out a new version of the story-start.

 

Explanation: You have your story-start kept safe somewhere, I hope – the one I asked you to dig out before. I’d now like you to make a new copy of it – but so as to get to know it better than you would just by photocopying it or printing it out again, I’m going to ask you to make another copy of it by hand.

It doesn’t have to be neat. It doesn’t matter at all if you make the odd mistake and have to cross things out. In fact, it’s better if it looks like a working draft rather than a handwriting sample.

Drafts are not for being neat, they’re for making glorious messes over and over again. Copy out every work that you wrote, even the bits you wrote in two versions or left struck through.

Once you’ve done this try an experiment, if you like (don’t have to if you don’t want to share):

 

Experiment: Read out to someone you know, or anyone you trust, the three elements and then read out the first two pages of your latest story idea then ask them which they would like to hear more of.

 

I am gambling that, in most cases, the someone will be intrigued by all the mismatched elements and will feel a strong desire to see how they could possibly fit together.

I am gambling that, in your opening (because it’s in the shit), you won’t have created an equal amount of potential story energy.

Either way, they’ve chosen to hear more of something you’ve written.

 

Time for my two story definitions:

 

A story needs something, somewhere and someone.

 

And:

 

A story is about a person or a thing that is in the wrong place.

 

Aside: By wrong, I do not necessarily mean morally wrong or wrong in a way that would upset or offend someone (although this may be the case) – I just mean not usual.

It’s weaker, but just as much my definition to say A story is about a person or a thing that is not in the usual place.

 

In between now and next time, try and think of exceptions. Especially you, Mr But.

Can you come up with an example of a story, in any form, where every element from start to finish is in its right place – the person is where the person usually is, doing what the person usually does?

See you next week.

Writing and Shit – Part 8 – What is a person?

Aside: I am careful to say a person rather than a character. To refer to someone as a character already semi-fictionalizes them in a way that a thing and a place aren’t semi-fictionalized. And I want all our three plus one basic elements to exist on the same super primitive level.

Mr But: What about Watership Down? That’s about rabbits. How about I, Robot? That’s robots, isn’t it?

Thank you, Mr But. I should also have said, to anticipate the rabbits and robots objection, that by person I mean being capable of being a person.

This could very easily get philosophical, but – for now – my bare definition of a person is:

a living or non-living entity capable of moving itself around or picking up an object and putting it down in another place for a reason (not, that is, in obedience to a preprogrammed command or as an inveterate behaviour).

You could say, a person is a being that wants certain things and doesn’t want certain other things.

A goldfish isn’t really a person. A dog might be. A robot, in science fiction, could be – as could a rabbit in a fantasy where rabbits can communicate in complicated sentences.

Mr But: It’s easy to imagine how to begin a story without anything like a person in it. It could be about atomic interactions of planetary orbits, grass growing or an assembly line building cars.

Yes, Mr But, but to continue beyond the stating of very basic conditions will be very hard. If you write the personless story, please send it to me.

Literary Aside: Virginia Woolf wrote a couple of stories that seem to avoid having people in them as subjects. One is ‘Kew Gardens’, another is ‘The Mark on the Wall’.

Exercise: Write a description (third person, past tense – so it fits together with the other descriptions) of a person who is in heavy disguise.

Warning: Wait a minute before you start. This is slightly more complicated than just that.

As an executive order, I am banning clowns, so I can use clowns as an example of what you’re not to do.

You’re not to say, The man who usually dressed in grey suits and white shirts and black shoes was today disguised as a clown.

Your description needs to be deadpan – you say what can be seen (past tense), that is, you note items of clothing, their colours, their styles, make up, and so on.

You don’t directly tell the reader that the person being described is in disguise. You let the reader work this out for themselves.

Go.

Five minutes.

Now take a break – just make sure it doesn’t last six months.

Writing and Shit – Part 7 – What does a story need? continued

We now have two of our three things – we have an object, or something, we have a place, or somewhere, and I’m sure you will already have guessed that we also need…

a person, or someone.

We need a being of some sort – a person – who has a reason for moving the thing around the place, who can lose and find the thing, who can break the thing and mourn it.

What does a story need?

Something, somewhere and someone.

By thinking about what you’re writing in this really basic way, you’ll be able (I hope) to identify why you’re in the shit more easily.

If you can reduce the elements in your story even further, do it – try it. Otherwise, everything you do is likely to be an elaboration. And that’s where things are likely to go wrong.

Next…