Alan Watt's Blog, page 10

Writing the Reluctant Hero

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

– Ernest Hemingway

No one likes change. The unknown is scary.

The end of Act One involves our protagonist making a decision she can’t go back on. There is often reluctance that precedes this decision as she weighs her options. Even if the reluctance lasts but a moment, it’s an important beat in any story. Be curious about this reluctance, as it will keep you connected to the tension. For example: a character might decide to reveal a secret to another character. Just because she wants to share her secret doesn’t mean she feels no reluctance in sharing it. This is an irreversible decision. What if the other character betrays her, judges her, or rejects her? The tension, the interplay between “what if I do, and what if I don’t?” will lead to a more specific relationship to the end of the Act One decision.

Our hero is always making decisions, always taking action, but the end of Act One has a special meaning. There’s a sense that this decision will irrevocably change things, that the hero is leaving the familiar for the unfamiliar. This decision could be anything: going on a first date, accepting the promotion, moving to Australia, sleeping with someone, taking a stand, voicing a concern, cleaning the garage—anything at all! It’s not so much the action taken, but rather the meaning attached to this action.

Remember, story accumulates meaning as it progresses. Our hero attaches specific meaning to each decision. Reluctance helps the reader understand specifically what our hero is struggling with. By inquiring into the reluctance, you may discover a moment that makes your story more dynamic and specific.

Share your thoughts with me on this.

Upcoming Classes
THE 8-WEEK ONE-PERSON SHOW

Class Length: 8 weeks, begins Wednesday, Sept. 13th 2017

THE 90-DAY NOVEL © TELECOURSE

Class length: 13 weeks, begins Sept. 18, 2017

Finding Your Writing Voice

I work with many first-time novelists, and the question of voice always comes up.

“Do you think I have a voice?” asks the first-time novelist.

“Should it be in a different voice?” he wonders, as if voice is something we shop for at the store.

“How do I find my voice?” she asks, desperately, like it’s something she lost.

You already have a voice. Making art is not about right and wrong, it’s about telling the truth on the page. If you’re a new writer, embrace your unique perception of the world.

Share your thoughts with me on this.

Upcoming Classes
THE 8-WEEK ONE-PERSON SHOW

Class Length: 8 weeks, begins Wednesday, Sept. 13th 2017

THE 90-DAY NOVEL © TELECOURSE

Class length: 13 weeks, begins Sept. 18, 2017

Making Time to Write

We’re all busy. We have day jobs, families, therapists, and Facebook.

If you’re writing your first novel, you’re probably wondering how other writers do it.

It’s simple. Get your writing done first.

Every novelist who has completed his first book will tell you the same thing: “I made my novel the top priority.”

Stay off the Internet until you’ve completed your work for the day.

Please let me know your thoughts.

The 90-Day Novel © Telecourse

Next class begins Mon. Sept. 18, 2017

 

On Certainty in Writing

There is a particular comfort that comes from being certain. We can shut out the world, all of the noise and confusion and rest in the assurance that we are right. Except that certainty rarely contains the whole story. Certainty is the death of curiosity, and for writers it limits us to our preconceived notions of the way things are.

For example, let’s say we are writing a story from the point of view of a serial killer. This would require us to wonder about the nature of a serial killer. It would also require dropping any preconceived ideas of what it would mean to be one. Are serial killers necessarily unkind, anti-social, a constant threat, and so on?

There can be a desire to distance ourselves from antagonistic forces. Real inquiry disrupts certainty, forcing us to confront areas we might rather avoid, but will likely lead to a clearer and more specific relationship to the story.

Though the serial killer example may be extreme there are lots of situations that may cause us to feel uncomfortable: infidelity, cruelty to others, dishonesty, people who don’t use their signal light in traffic, etc. When we inquire into the nature of these things, and we question our assumptions, our story has a chance to live.

For those of us writing memoir, perceptions of our family invariably inform our work. This can sometimes be an area where we may hold tightly to our ‘story’, and dammit, nobody is going to change our mind.

But there’s a difference between certainty and knowing. A fundamental knowing is like a steady rock beat. It is unwavering. Knowing is the result of persistent inquiry. It contains all paradox. Knowing lives beyond our ‘idea’ of the thing. It has been road-tested against reality. When one knows, there is no need to argue or defend.

With certainty there is a white-knuckle quality, an unwillingness to hold one’s beliefs to the test for fear of the outcome. When we know something to be true, we do not fear being wrong, but are more interested in the nature of ‘why’ it is true.

Knowing arises at the level of theme. It has been proven over and over again. It is universal law. We know that the truth sets us free, that pride comes before a fall, and that crime doesn’t pay. And because we know these things, we can allow the story to play out as it wishes, because eventually our characters will be led to these truths.

When we let go of being certain and approach our story from a place of knowing, our story is liberated from all our preconceptions.

Until next time,

Al

Let me know your thoughts.

The 90-Day Novel © Telecourse

Next class begins Mon. Sept. 18, 2017

Real Life in Fiction

Writers often use experiences from their real lives in their work.

It’s important for the writer to understand the “nature” of the experience, rather than his idea of what happened.

Writers can have a tendency to assume that the reader will understand the context of the situation, even though the context has been altered.

By exploring “why” the event is being told, you can distill it to its essence, and anything not germane to the story will naturally fall away.

Please let me know your thoughts.

The 90-Day Novel © Telecourse

Next class begins Mon. Sept. 18, 2017

The Rewrite: Expanding and Contracting

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

(Ernest Hemingway, “The Art of Fiction,” The Paris Review Interview, 1956)

As we get more specific in our rewrite, we are still holding our story loosely. We are always looking for ways to clarify, tighten, layer information, and conflate scenes, but the rewrite is not solely about contraction. Our manuscript is a living document. It contracts and expands as we move toward a more specific understanding of what we are attempting to express.

In the rewrite there are probably scenes that seem disconnected from each other. Exploring the connective tissue takes imagination. How do our characters get from here to there? We must allow ourselves to be surprised. As outlandish as our hero’s choices may appear, our only job is to support these choices, like a child does when he tells a story. A child’s explanations are seamless, assured, and have a certain (though often cockeyed) logic. If you’ve ever done improvisation, you know that rule #1 is to never negate. Your task is to always support what your partner has given you, while advancing the scene. This is our task in the rewrite. If we suddenly discover that our character is left-handed, we are curious about all that this means. If we discover that she was a golf pro in her earlier years, we are curious about how this experience has impacted her life, her relationships and her new profession as the night guard at a toy factory. Every choice we make has a ripple effect on the rest of our story. Be curious about these effects.

We don’t try and control the world. Our characters will resent us, and our imagination will pick up its ball and go home. By remaining true to the world that is being created through us, our story takes on the feel of reality. As we relax and trust our unconscious, it will make the connections naturally. Our job is simply to remain curious about where we are being led.

It’s challenging to continue holding the story loosely in the rewrite. We are making choices, while staying connected to that ineffable impulse that got us writing in the first place. Trust that within all of these pages is a basic idea that is valid and wants to be expressed. If you feel overwhelmed, step back and ask yourself “What am I trying to say?” In the rewrite we are looking for the most effective way to express a core idea. Anything that feels like it’s getting in the way . . . we can let go.

Please let me know your thoughts.

The 90-Day Novel © Telecourse

Next class begins Mon. Sept. 18, 2017

First-time Novelist – Ignorance is Bliss

I wrote the first draft of my first novel in just under 90 days. I had been writing stand-up comedy and screenplays for years, but very little prose. I had a strong sense of story, and a pretty clear first-person voice.

But as a first-time novelist, I really didn’t know what I was doing—which, in retrospect, was a good thing.

There was no fear. Why would there be? I had no plan to show it to anyone. In fact, it was really done more as an experiment to see if I could finish writing a novel while I was on tour. I was more interested in getting the pages down than I was in the quality.

When I finished my first novel, a series of incidents led to the book getting to a New York agent, who auctioned it for a half million dollars for the North American rights.

At the time I was living in a studio apartment in Culver City. I had a bed and a desk.

Later, someone told me that only one in seventeen-thousand novel submissions leads to publication, and of those first-novels only a tiny fraction get an insane advance.

If I had been driven to get published, I doubt I would have written with the freedom that I did. In fact, I had been trying to crack the screenplay market for years, and struggled mightily to write what the market was looking for.

The irony is that when I wrote my first novel for myself, everything changed. The challenge is to return to that place each morning when I hit the keys.

Zen Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind.” Athletes call it “being in the zone.” People spend years cultivating this experience.

I was just plain ignorant.

The challenge now is to forget everything I know so that the story can live.

Let me know your thoughts.

Asking “Why?” in Writing

“Don’t approach your history for its cautionary fruit . . . Tell your stories, and your story will be revealed . . . Don’t be afraid of appearing angry, small-minded, obtuse, mean, immoral, amoral, calculating, or anything else. Take no care for your dignity . . .”

– Mary Karr (author of Lit)

Our unconscious is perfectly designed for this process. It already knows the story. Our only job is to remain curious and inquire into the nature of things. As we do this, our story comes into focus. It takes time and patience. We are being asked to relax and trust while continuing to inquire. When we get scared, we inquire into the nature of our fear. When we get cocky, we inquire into the nature of that as well.

My ego, the personal, is what limits me. When I connect to the nature of the dilemma at the heart of my story I’m connected to the universal and specific images are revealed. Whether conscious or not, our desire to write is a desire to explore the nature of something through a particular event.

In essence, what we are doing is asking “why?” I tortured teachers my entire (and entirely brief) educational career with this question.

“Watt, quit asking why!”

“But why?”

“Because… that’s why!”

There is something primal about this question. Children ask it incessantly. It is about survival and evolution. Asking why is essential to get underneath the events (the plot) in our story. Underlying these events is a fundamental truth, as opposed to our idea of the way things are. It is not that our ideas are wrong it is just that they are not the whole story. It requires bravery to challenge our beliefs. Through story we seek revelation, where our perception widens and we are liberated from some idea that kept us tethered. For a long time the idea may have provided a sense of security, but somewhere within us lies the desire for a greater freedom.

That greater freedom seems to always involve love. At the core every story is about love, or at least love is the thing on the table. It is our truest nature and the ultimate catalyst in restoring order. We continue to fill endless volumes examining its countless manifestations. It is primal and essential to our evolution, and asking why is the gateway to an answer.

Let me know your thoughts.

Writing Tip – How to Show and Tell

“Action is eloquence.”

– William Shakespeare

If we find ourselves editorializing, that is telling or explaining what is happening in our story . . . it’s “OK” . . . however, we probably don’t want to stay on this track for too long. We want to get back to the action. We want to get back to showing what is happening even if it is an internal dialogue that the character is running.

In the opening of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield tells us about “all this madman stuff that happened last summer.” He tells us that we’re likely going “to want to know all about his lousy childhood and all that David Copperfield crap,” then tells us he can’t get into it because his folks are “very touchy” and “would have about two heart attacks apiece” if he talked about it.

Is Salinger telling or showing? Well, he is showing. Sure, the narrator is telling us stuff, but in fact we are experiencing this character as he tells us everything by not telling us anything.

There is a difference between showing and telling. Telling is the author sticking his nose in things. It can feel like the author has a bone to pick; it reeks of agenda and opinion and engenders distrust in the reader. Showing is allowing the reader to make up his mind. Showing allows the author to vanish and the reader to become lost in the story. Holden Caulfield never tells us how to think or feel about anything, and as a result we become lost in his world.

Ha Jin’s novel, Waiting, begins with the sentence, “Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.”

We are being told information, but with this opening sentence our curiosity is ignited and we must know more about this man and his culture. We are being shown a world. We are not being told how to feel about Lin Kong or Shuyu. We are left to decide that for ourselves.

The moment the reader understands the dramatic problem she naturally puts herself in the situation. Our reader will have an emotional connection to our work through showing, not telling. If I tell you that the quest for the American Dream can lead to nightmare, you likely feel nothing. But when you read The Great Gatsby or The Day of the Locust, it can be a life-altering experience.

We don’t need to be overly concerned with all of the big feelings that our story may generate for ourselves. If our story didn’t generate big feelings we wouldn’t be compelled to write it. If we find ourselves falling in love with all of the feelings our hero is experiencing let us be clear that our reader will probably not. Telling the reader what the characters are feeling is the surest way to pull the reader out of the story. What happens in the story is important. The reader will fill in the feelings for herself. We must trust that if we are being specific and staying with the tension, the reader will be invested in what is going on.

Let me know your thoughts.

Writing a Bestseller

Did Stephen King set out to write a bestseller when he wrote his first novel Carrie? Apparently his wife found the first few chapters in the trash and convinced him to keep going.

Did Norman Mailer plan on his first novel The Naked and the Dead making him a literary sensation?

What about J.K. Rowling?

They weren’t exactly outbidding each other for first-time novelist, John Grisham’s A Time To Kill. (He got a five-grand advance and kept writing.) 

The Help was rejected fifty-six times before first-time novelist Kathryn Stockett finally got a yes.

If you set out to write a bestseller, you probably won’t.

If you write the novel that is burning inside you to be told, you will discover, and I promise you this, that it will change your life.

Let me know your thoughts.