Lee Martin's Blog, page 21

Turn On the Lights and Be Fully Present

Cathy and I put up our Christmas trees this weekend. We have a prelit flocked artificial tree in our family room, and we also put a tree on our front porch. The flocked tree was new last year, and wouldn’t you know it, the lights on one of the sections wouldn’t work. The company had to send us a new section. This year—wouldn’t you know it, again—the lights on a different section wouldn’t work. On top of that, one of our landscape lights stopped working, and the smart bulbs in our porch and garage lights started coming on at irregular times. Oh, and we bought a lantern snow-globe thing, and the second night we had it, the light inside it dimmed. Long story short, we couldn’t get all our lights to come on.

Such can be the case when we sit down to write. Often, we aren’t fully present, and, as a result, we don’t illuminate all the corners of what we’re trying to create. We’re only partially there because we’re distracted. Maybe we’re worrying about something. Maybe we lack the confidence we need in order to write with authority. Maybe we’re filled with envy for other writers and their successes. Maybe we’re inclined to self-distraction—email, web browsing, social media. Whatever the case might be, we cheat ourselves and our work by not immersing ourselves in the writing. “Sometimes,” author Charlotte Eriksson says, “you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.” It seems to me this is getting harder and harder for us all to do. We tend to fear silence and solitude. I suppose we’re afraid that we’ll vanish if we’re too much alone. Isn’t that one of the appeals of social media? It gives us an instantaneous feeling of connection to other people. As writers, though, we need to make time each day for the sort of silence and solitude that sparks the imagination and the sort of depth of thought and feeling crucial to creation.

We need to do the same on the page. Often, when it comes to prose writing, I see writers wanting to hurry along a plot line, moving through a sequence of events and missing opportunities to burrow down into important moments. Writers who are fully present note the moments that alter their characters’ lives. Ann Beattie, for instance, in her story “In the White Night,” sketches out a very simple plot. A married couple, Carol and Vernon, leave a party and drive home on a snowy night. The one complication on that drive is when their car slides on the slick street before righting itself. That one little skid, though, is enough for Carol to ask Vernon if their host, Matt, had been talking to him about his troubled daughter, Becky. We find out that Carol and Vernon’s daughter, Sharon, has died of leukemia. The story ends with Carol and Vernon in their living room. Vernon falls asleep on the couch, and Carol, instead of going to the bedroom, curls up on the floor beside him, her coat over her for warmth. It’s here where Beattie illuminates the moment by being willing to stay with her point of view character, Carol, who considers the question of what people would think if they knew she and Vernon were sleeping like this in a house with four bedrooms, accepting, finally, this moment of grace: “In the white night world outside, their daughter might be drifting by like an angel, and she would see this tableau, for the second that she hovered, as a necessary small adjustment.” I suggest that Beattie had to be fully present in order to create this small, and yet significant, moment of resonance.

“Always hold fast to the present,” Goethe said. “Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.” If we can shut out distractions, we’ll be better able to shine a light on what really matters in our writing.

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Tips for Writing Scenes

Many years ago, I performed regularly in community theatre productions. I still recall the intense experience of standing backstage listening for my cue. Behind the flats, I was in the real world, but just barely. When my cue came, I stepped out into an imaginary world, transformed into whatever character I was playing. With one step, the words I was saying were no longer mine. They belonged to my character. I was immersed in a world no longer my own.

That’s the experience I want my readers to have when they read my narrative prose, the feeling of being a participant in the world I’m creating on the page. When I stood backstage during those community theatre productions, I was a spectator, but as soon as I made my entrance, I became my character who was, of course, actively involved in the play.

In prose narrative, the scene is the lifeblood of what John Gardner called “the fictive dream.” By that he meant the dreamworld the writer creates with words. We never want to give our readers a reason to leave that dreamworld. Any misstep can cause readers to disconnect from the narrative—a lack of specificity, any inaccuracy, any flaw in voice or tone, any underdevelopment, any hyperbole, any character inconsistency.

I’d like to offer some tips for scene-making, but first let’s consider the question of how we know when to write a scene instead of summarizing action or delving into a character’s interiority to let them think about something. The answer is simple. We write scenes when they dramatize some significant shift in the action and/or the characters’ relationships. We talk often about how a complete narrative leaves our main character changed at the end. The same is true for the individual scene. Our main characters enter scenes as particular kinds of people. Something that happens, either via action or word, alters them. We dramatize these shifts because we want to imprint them on our readers. We want to show the major shifts in the plot as well as the evolution of the characters. In our first drafts, we usually operate by instinct, scenically sketching out the major scenes of our narratives. In revision we have the chance to ask ourselves whether each scene is doing its work when it comes to the resonant development of the narrative. We can also ask whether we need to add any scenes.

When it comes to scenic depiction, there are four techniques we can use:

Action: Our characters should do something. It can be something big like climbing a mountain, or it can be something small like trying to cut a coupon off a box of crackers while talking about ending a marriage. Let your characters be more than just voices. Remember they have bodies. Put them to use.

Description:  Actors use gestures, body language, and facial reactions to underscore the words they’re saying and to imbue them with emotions. The way a finger traces the rim of a glass, for instance, can express sensuality. It can also express hesitancy or contemplation. It’s only when we pair the description with the dialogue that we know what the actor/character is feeling. Don’t forget to use these descriptions to invite your readers into any exchange of dialogue.

Dialogue:  The dialogue we use must be interesting. It must do more than merely transmit information. It can reveal additional layers of character. It can put pressure on characters. It can be ironic. It can do several important things particularly if the characters have opposed intentions, and/or if the subtext is revealing. By subtext, of course, I mean the thing that’s silently said along with what is said. “I love the way the brim of your hat shades your face,” for instance can really mean, “My god! I can barely bring myself to look at you.” What better way for a prose writer to study dialogue than to read plays. I particularly suggest those of Harold Pinter. Better yet why not try some acting yourself? Portraying a character on stage requires you to think about what your character is saying alongside what they’d really like to say. Acting asks you to think about the suppressed feelings characters carry with them, perhaps not even realizing they’re doing it.

Setting:  Scenes occur in specific spaces, but it’s surprising how easy it is for writers to forget that fact. We must use the details of place to convince readers that what they’re reading really took place. Whether the scene is taking place inside or outside, we must rely on sensory details—those of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—to make the experience of reading our prose palpable.

When I was a little boy, my mother often said to me, “Oh, don’t make a scene.” Her message was clear. I wasn’t to draw attention to myself. As writers, we must draw attention to our characters and their stories. Nothing is more important than dramatization. With the techniques I’ve offered, feel free to make all the scenes you wish. Step onto the stage with your characters. Invite your readers to join you. Live in the world of your own making.

 

 

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The Art of Daydreaming

Yesterday, Cathy and I decided to put our community vegetable garden plots to bed for the winter. We picked the last of the spinach from our cool weather planting and let the kale and the lettuce, which had been prolific, succumb to the frosty mornings we’ve been having. I’d read that the frost often made the carrots and the parsnips better. The tops had been outstanding through the late summer and into the fall, but the few times I pulled one I was disappointed by the carrot or the parsnip on the other end. Yesterday, we pulled them all and were surprised at the size of many of them. While I’d been worrying that they wouldn’t make anything, those carrots and parsnips were doing their thing underground. All they needed was time.

Similarly, the writing projects that we conceive can benefit from periods of incubation during which we trust the unconscious parts of our brains to do the work necessary to bring any piece to the page in a more fully formed state. Often, we do our best work when we’re not aware of doing any work at all. We go on with the business of our days, and seemingly out of nowhere some image, character, plot premise, memory, voice, or turn of phrase pokes up and asks us to pay attention to it. We don’t ask where it came from; we give thanks for its appearance. When we’re in the throes of conceiving a piece of writing, we somehow open ourselves to the world, and when we do that, the world has a way of giving us exactly what we need. The creative process is the result of talent, yes, but it’s also the product of patience, silence, instinct, and luck.

This matter of tapping into the unconscious doesn’t have to be mysterious or haphazard. We can hasten the process by practicing the art of daydreaming. We can set aside time to clear our minds and to let them wander wherever they want. Remember the joys of daydreaming when you were a child? Remember how imaginative those daydreams could become? That’s because in settings that could bore us to tears—school, church, long car rides—we learned to check out, to escape real time, and to enter the stream of memory, association, and invention.

Periods of silence are becoming rarer these days, but they’re still crucial to the creative process. That’s why I encourage us all to make a conscious effort to engage the unconscious. Find a quiet place. Note everything that’s threatening your solitude—obligations, worries, demands. Exorcise the noise by writing it all down. Then close your eyes, think of something you know about what you’re hoping to write. It might be an image, a line of dialogue, a memory. It might be anything at all. Start there and let your mind do whatever it wants to do. The goal is to enter something akin to a sleep state where the unconscious mind is free to create what it wants to create. All you have to do is take note of what it has to teach you about the piece you want to write.

At the end of your daydreaming session, jot down anything you want to be sure not to forget. Let your notes invite you to begin writing. Any time you feel stuck, go back to your notes. Flesh them out while also being open to new associations and inventions. Be patient. Be willing to go where you didn’t know you’d have to go. Let your unconscious mind surprise and delight you with all it knew from the moment you first began to conceive an idea. The shaping and the revising will come in due time. For now, open yourself to your daydreams and all they have to show you if you’ll only take the time to look.

 

 

 

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Prompts for the Doldrums

That time of year when we set our clocks back an hour has rolled around, paving the way for winter days of short light. I don’t know about you, but here in central Ohio the cold and the dark are enough to sometimes send me into the doldrums. I just looked up the etymology of the word, “doldrum,” and Merriam-Webster tells me it’s probably akin to the Old English word, “dol,” which means foolish. Foolish or not, writers often find themselves struggling through stagnant periods during which the writing is difficult or perhaps nonexistent. To keep us all from a winter of discontent, I’d like to offer a few prompts to keep us writing even through the darkest days.

Start with an Object:  Choose an object that you find remarkable in some way. Write an opening line that includes this object. If you’re writing a narrative, perhaps a character is using this object, or maybe that character is desperately desiring it. What’s the story of how the character either got that object (inherited it, purchased it, stole it, received it as a gift, etc.) or decided it’s something they can’t live without (they envy the fact that someone else has one, they consider it a luxury they deserve, they think it will bring them happiness, etc.)? They key is to use the object to put a narrative into motion.

Write a Really Bad Sentence:  Write a sentence full of abstractions, lacking concrete details and active verbs, and using the passive voice. Here’s an example: Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the simultaneous joy and the burden of responsibility that came with motherhood. Now rewrite it, translating it into particulars and giving it forward momentum: Saturday afternoon she drove to the bakery in the shopping center. Yes, that’s the opening sentence of Raymond Carver’s story, “A Small Good Thing.” The objective of this prompt is to give yourself permission to write badly and then to challenge yourself to simplify and concretize with particulars that could start the narrative leaning forward.

People Watch: Go to a public place—the grocery store, the public library, the municipal courts, your dentist’s office, wherever—and get interested in observing people. Who makes you curious? Imagine a story for that person. Write an opening sentence that puts them into some sort of action. The purpose of this prompt is to invite you to become curious about someone you don’t know and to let your imagination engage with the details that you’ve gathered. Good writing is often the result of a writer’s curiosity.

Daydream Your Past: We all have memories from our pasts of moments we wish we could change. We often daydream those memories because something about them is unresolved. Let your daydream take you to the heart of what still troubles you. Let some question arise. Why did you do something you now regret? Why did someone do something horrible to you? What do you wish you could say to someone now gone? Turn those questions into fiction, memoir, or poetry. The objective is to find something that’s very complicated, something that may very well make you uncomfortable, and then to find a way to dive in and to write about it.

Find whatever tricks you can to keep the writing going through the dark days. Let your words light your way.

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Time in Stories

Modern hourglass on wooden background

The music swells, the bridesmaids and groomsmen are already in place, as is the groom, looking nervous-elated-placid-dour-hungover. There’s that moment of anticipation when the wedding guests turn in their chairs and crane their necks to look for what they know is imminent, the arrival of the bride. Suddenly, there she-him-they is/are, escorted by father and/or mother, and already people are near tears. I must confess I always get a bit misty-eyed at weddings even if I don’t know either the bride or groom very well. Weddings, like all our major rituals, are full of emotion.

I never really considered what it is about weddings that can bring an ache to my throat until the past two weekends when Cathy and I attended first, the wedding of a niece, and then the ceremony for a granddaughter. As I watched each processional, listened to each officiant, attended to the various toasts offered the happy couples, I realized that each step along the way was pointing out the precious nature of time. The little girl or boy now grown, the graying heads of the parents, the bonds of childhood friendships, the journey ahead of the married couple—each adhering to the strictures of its own clock. Time—it’s gathering and its passing—gives an urgency and a bittersweet quality to this ritual.

The same can be said for the stories we tell. The intensity of any narrative can be enhanced by paying attention to time passing. Think of summer coming to an end in The Great Gatsby, or the order to kill the two English soldiers one night in Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation,” or the school day coming to a close on the last day before Christmas vacation in Richard Yates’s “Fun with a Stranger.” Each of these works relies on time passing to make their main characters’ journeys critical. Gatsby has this one golden summer to recapture his lost love, Daisy. The Irish soldiers who have hosted the English prisoners are faced with the struggle between duty and friendship under the clock of war, a march of time more powerful than they. The children in Miss Snell’s class have their eyes on the pile of presents on her desk as they keep one eye on the clock bringing them closer and closer to finding out what they’re about to receive.

Passing time makes everything stand at attention. Choosing the perfect apple takes on additional weight when the person doing the choosing is aware of time running out. The man who promises to join his wife at church on Christmas Eve—a last-ditch effort to save the marriage—finds himself delayed at work where someone is in need of a kindness. Because the clock is ticking and the wife is waiting, we pay close attention to every detail of the plot.

Don’t be hesitant to put time to use in your stories. Let the ticking seconds give everything about your work an added significance. Newly married couples always leave us eventually. The bride tosses the bouquet, the couple hurry off to their getaway car, and we wave them off. “Goodbye, goodbye,” we say. “Good luck to you both.” Then we stand there, our voices lowering, our feet beginning to move. We return bit by bit to our regular lives, and the rest of the day we think about the ceremony and those moments when we felt a swell of tears because something was beginning and ending, and there was nothing we could do to stop the clock from ticking.

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Slowing Down in Fiction

I come from a family of worriers. Consequently, I’m often turning one thing or another over and over in my head. I feel something inside me speed up. For instance, I think about all the work I have to get done, and suddenly I’m so anxious, I feel like I’m racing, eager as I am to get to the other side of all that awaits me. I tell myself to slow down, to steady myself, to unwind the internal clock that, if unchecked, can leave me frazzled. As my wife Cathy always says, when you have to eat an elephant, you can only do it one bite at a time.

I mention this slowing down because often we writers can be in too much of a hurry. We’re overeager to get to the end of whatever it is we’re writing, so we push on. Before we know it, our characters have picked up on our anxiety, and suddenly they’re in too much of a hurry as well. Sometimes the writing has to slow down. Sometimes it has to move more vertically than horizontally.

In fiction, this often means that a writer has to know which moments of a narrative require more consideration of the main character’s consciousness. It means being aware of the major moments of the piece that require a deeper level of thought than narrative progression can provide.

We should think about the major moments of any narrative we’re constructing. What are the high points? They usually require some space around them to really make them stand out.

In Jumpa Lahiri’s story, “A Temporary Matter,” for instance, a husband and wife’s sharing of secrets leads eventually to the most hurtful thing the husband can confess. He held their stillborn son at the hospital and never told his wife. When he finally confesses at the end of the story, he says, “Our baby was a boy. His skin was more red than brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds. His fingers were curled shut, just like yours in the night.”

After the gut-punch of this confession, the story has to give that moment some space in which it can resonate. Lahiri does this by slowing down the narrative and writing down into the husband’s consciousness:

Shoba looked at him now, her face contorted with sorrow. He had cheated on a college exam, ripped a picture of a woman out of a magazine. He had returned a sweater and got drunk in the middle of the day instead. These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise.

The impact of the husband’s confession is fully felt by the readers because he has the space in which to feel the impact himself. This vertical pause in the horizontal narrative is a place where the characters and the readers can attend to the significance of what’s just happened. Lahiri gives us a breath in which to contemplate what the husband has done to his wife by telling her about holding their son. Then the narrative resumes with a final paragraph of action that dramatizes the sadness they both feel.

Yes, it’s permissible, and even preferable, to slow the action and to linger in your character’s consciousness. I know we’re often told to show and not to tell but entering the character’s consciousness at pivotal moments in a narrative is an effective way to give weight to something that’s happened.

 

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I Remember That

We went to high school together. She was a year behind me even though she was a year older, and one evening at an end-of-the-year picnic for the sophomore and junior classes, she got flirty with me. We ended up, later that night, kissing in the shadows of a recessed spot outside the school building. We went out a few times that summer, but now to be completely honest, I barely recall any of the details of our times together.

I remember driving her down to our farm in my father’s Oldsmobile Delmont 88 one evening. My parents and I had moved into town by then, but my father still farmed our land. The farm became the perfect secluded place to park with a girl, which is what I was doing on the night I remember. I hadn’t taken much notice of Pam before that night at the picnic when she grabbed onto my hand and claimed me. She was the older sister of a boy I ran around with from time to time. They lived east of town on Route 250. The few times I picked her up for our dates, she came out of the house before I had a chance to get out of the car and go to the door. That night at the farm, I remember sitting in the Olds while she smoked a cigarette. Then we kissed a little before we left. I drove up the lane and back to town, and I’m sad to say that’s really my most complete memory—watery as it is—of the summer we dated.

I’ve thought of her often the past few days because a mutual friend let my wife Cathy know that Pam was near death. Indeed, the next morning we’d find out she had passed. When I think of her now, a collage of images comes to me: her button nose, her thin arms and legs, her dimples, her friendly smile, her straight brown hair that fell to her shoulders, the low-cut canvas Keds she sometimes wore. I can’t say that I knew her, can’t even remember speaking to her after that summer. It was clear early on that we weren’t right for each other. A surge of hormones had brought us together that night at the picnic and then had waned over the course of the summer. I don’t remember how we agreed to end things. I imagine at some point I just stopped calling her and she probably stopped caring that I’d gone silent.

Ours was a passing affair of the heart—a dalliance I suppose we would have called it had we been older and more sophisticated, but we weren’t. We were just two small-town kids looking for someone who would make us feel special. A few years back at an all-class reunion, Cathy and I sat at the same table as Pam and five of her classmates, and I don’t recall the two of us saying a single word to each other. It was the only time I saw her after high school. Like all of us, she carried her age and whatever her life had done to her in a thicker body, a rounder face. She still wore her hair long, and she still had that button nose and those dimples and that smile.

I know no more of her now then I did when we were in high school, so what right do I even have to tell this story? Maybe to document the fact that one night, when we were in that awkward place between our teenage lives and the adult ones we would one day have, you reached for my hand, and, Pam, I let you take it. Through the veil between the living and the dead—and with hope these words might find you—I’ve come to tell you I still remember that.

 

 

 

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What Kind of Writer Are You?

This afternoon, while driving through Ohio farm country, I remembered how I was in an agriculture class in high school for exactly one day. That’s all it took for me to know I was in the wrong place. I was there because my father was a farmer, and even though he supported me in my eventual career path, I’m pretty sure he hoped I’d continue in his footsteps. Our first assignment? To bring in a soil sample. After class, I went to the principal’s office and convinced him that I should enroll in a general business course rather than Ag 1. The general business course didn’t exactly correspond with my natural talents, but it was certainly closer than the agriculture class. I was relieved to be surrounded by adding machines rather than dirt.

That said, I’m tremendously grateful for those who have the skills that I lack. I’m thankful, and yes, at times envious of the welders, the woodworkers, the mechanics, or any other professional who knows how to do what I can’t.

We can spend a good deal of time as writers wishing we were someone else—wishing we could write like this person or that one, wishing for recognition and success, wishing we knew how to write what we perceive to be the latest hot trend, wishing we were someone other than who we really are.

All of this wishing is wasted energy. We’d be better served accepting the talents we have and putting them to maximum use. An important part of our journeys involves figuring out what we do well on the page—that and understanding the sort of writers we are. We don’t have to be like someone else; we only must be the best version of ourselves.

I’ve always thought of my early attempts at writing as efforts to answer the voices I heard in the things I was reading. My mother was taking an American Literature course via correspondence in order to complete her bachelor’s degree, and I liked picking up her anthology and reading poems. I was particularly drawn to those of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg, particularly the narratives that moved me. I started writing because I wanted to respond to the work that brought a lump to my throat or a tear to my eye. I wanted to be part of the conversation that the realists were having. I was grounded in realism, at an early age, and it’s been an aesthetic I’ve appreciated all my life.

Then I found the Theatre of the Absurd, particularly the work of Harold Pinter, and I was drawn to the menace in his plays. If you look at my work over the years, you’ll see his influence. If we’re lucky, we understand our talents as writers, and we seek out the professionals who are writing in the same vein. Over time, we understand the worlds and voices to which we’re attracted, and little by little we start to write the things that only we can write. We pay attention to the way we respond to certain types of work, and we open ourselves to what they have to teach us about craft and also about the type of writer we’re meant to be. From that point, it’s a matter of practice, practice, practice. Read the work that interests you, steal what you can, sharpen your natural talents, explore the world you know more intimately than anyone else, and don’t waste time trying to be the writer you think the world wants you to be. We can only be ourselves, both in person and on the page. The sooner we understand that, the more we’ll be able to concentrate becoming the best writer of (fill in the blank) we can possibly be. There is work that only you can do. It’s your job to find out what that is.

 

 

 

 

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Options for Our Characters

This weekend, my birthday rolled around. Cathy got me this sit-to-stand desk, so I can work standing up if I choose, or I can lower the desk and sit down. I very much appreciate this gift because it should help with my recurring sciatic nerve pain that I often aggravate with long periods of staying seated. Such are the practical gifts that say “I love you” as we age.

From time to time, I whine a bit about aging, and Cathy always says, “It beats the alternative.” Wise woman, that Cathy. She has a way of putting everything into the proper perspective. She’s the reasoned balance to my tendency to complain. A friend once told me I could find the dark lining in any silver cloud, and she was right. I won’t go into the reasons here but suffice it to say my family’s history left me with the fear that something dark might be lurking just around the corner. I fight every day to overcome my mistrust of the future. That’s why it’s important that Cathy gives me the straight truth about how fortunate I am. I’m still above ground and in reasonably good health. I was able to run four miles yesterday. I enjoyed dinner out with Cathy last night and then a gathering of close neighbors for cake. I know I’m truly blessed even at the age of sixty-six. I’ve been telling people that six plus six equals twelve, which is closer to my true age. Indeed, there are times when I’m as goofy as I was when I was twelve and eager for my adult life to begin. The age of sixty-six—or heck even thirty-six or forty-six—seemed ancient to me then. I thought it would be forever before I’d have to worry about growing old, and now it seems I’ve become a senior citizen in the blink of an eye.

We all have choices when it comes to deciding how to feel about the parts of our lives that challenge us. We can kvetch, we can fall into despair, we can celebrate our blessings, we can do all of the above. The point I’m trying to make is the fact that for the most part we always have options, which brings me to how this might help our writing. We should never forget to give our main characters options from which to choose. We should never deny those characters their agency. We should never disregard the fates they create through their own actions and words.

Beginning writers have a tendency to put their characters into awful situations beyond their control. Natural disasters, serious illnesses, wars, plagues, etc. These characters are victims of outside forces. The writers have taken their agency from them, and consequently, the characters have no room to contribute to their own destinies. They end up being acted upon rather than acting.

When our main characters are in troubles of their own creation, the options for further action increase. They might do this or that. They might do a number of different things to try to get themselves out of trouble. They should have clearly defined options, so they can make conscious choices rather than letting choices be made for them. In this way, we writers are like parents. We put our characters—our “children”—onto the page, and we know we can’t protect them from their own poor judgment. We shouldn’t try. We have to let them create lives for themselves through the options they discard and the ones that they accept.

 

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A Little Something Sweet: Plotting Our Fiction

We start with a bit of jelly on a plastic lid. Cathy and I were having breakfast on a restaurant’s patio this morning and bees were swarming around each table, trying to get at everyone’s food. “All they want is a little something sweet,” Cathy said. Then she took the lid off the little plastic container of strawberry jelly, put a dab of jelly on it, and set it at the far edge of our table. It took a few seconds for the bees to find it, but once they did, they were in heaven, and we were left to enjoy our breakfasts without their intrusion.

Which brings me, believe it or not, to the writing of fiction. Sometimes we forget that our main characters all want something a little sweet. They want happiness, they want love, they want safety, they want any number of things. If we can make their desires tangible, we can help our plots find their shapes. What concrete manifestations can we find for our characters desires? Does your main character, for example, want to win a school spelling bee to gain his father’s approval? Is the trophy the representation of the love your main character seeks? Or does a woman want a Mustang because her husband tells her she’s too old to drive a sporty car like that? Remember, our characters all want a little something sweet. Clearly identifying that something will set a plot in motion.

It can’t be easy to get that something. It it’s easy to get the spelling bee trophy or the Mustang, we won’t have a story. We’ll just give the characters what they want, and we’ll call it a day. Stories and their characters become interesting when they have to struggle to try to get what they want. Those bees on the patio? The table where Cathy and I were sitting had a metal mesh surface. At first, a bee was stymied. He was crawling on the underside of the table, sensing the jelly somewhere above him, but not quite sure how to get at it. He had to figure out how to find his way through the small holes of the mesh to the top where the sweet jelly waited for him. At first, he couldn’t quite do it, and he gave up and took a few dives at my toast. I swatted him away. Now not only did he have to figure out the geometric design of the tabletop, he also had to deal with the madman waving his arms in an attempt to drive him away. You get the point; our main characters should have to strive to overcome a series of obstacles.

That bee never gave up. Eventually he found his way to that jelly, and he ate and ate and ate. He ate so much, in fact, that he ended up stunned and nearly motionless on the table. The lesson for the fiction writer? Sometimes, after a period of struggle, our main characters can get exactly what they want, but at a cost. We’re well-served if we think about what they have to give up for what they can gain. The end of a good story often lands in a place between achievement and disappointment. The main character gets what she wants but loses something in the process, or the main character doesn’t get what he wants but gets something else he may not have even known he wanted or needed. Stories that live in these gray areas become memorable.

The story of the bees was only possible because Cathy put a little something sweet within their reach. If we do the same, we improve our chances of creating a story with an interesting plot and also one that shows us something significant about the characters involved.

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