Louis Arata's Blog, page 26

What's in a Word?

Mark Twain wrote, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

I don’t claim any great shakes at vocabulary, but I do pay attention to my word choice.  So, it surprises me when friends complain they didn’t like a book because the author used too many words they didn’t know.

After reading Devil in the White City, a friend said, "What the hell is an antimacassar?  The writer shouldn’t put in archaic words that the reader doesn’t know."

In my case, some readers objected to my use of the word “gibbet” in a play.  They said it made them think of giblets, so I should use another word.  The problem was that “gibbet” was the proper word:  a device for hanging bodies for public display.  So, do I use “gibbet” because it’s what I meant or another, more common word that sort of represents the same thing?

Don’t we expand our vocabulary by encountering new words in books?  And if you don’t know what something means, can’t you use a dictionary?  Plus, e-book readers, such as Kindle, will provide definitions if you highlight the text.

Don’t we learn about the world by learning new words?

By the way, an antimacassar is a lace cloth that goes over the back of chairs to protect the fabric from being soiled by macassar oil, a type of hair conditioner Victorian men used to wear.  So, that’s like learning two new words for one.

Finding Time

This morning I was waiting for an appointment.  I had my laptop so I could have spent the time writing.  Knowing that I’d be interrupted at some point made it difficult for me to get into the frame of mind to write.  So, I opted to read a book instead.  Which left me feeling disappointed with myself.

For years, I spent my lunch hours reading — something I thoroughly enjoyed — so I always intended to write in the evening.  But once I got home, day-to-day activities often took precedence or I’d use the excuse that I was too tired to write.  Mornings weren’t available either, because that’s when I’d exercise.

In 2005, I started writing during my lunch hour.  I was amazed at how much I got accomplished in 60 minutes.  Certainly every day was not a stellar writing session, but that wasn’t the point.  I was getting stuff done, a little at a time.  Soon I became very protective of my writing time — I mean, my lunch hour, which had less to do with eating lunch and more to do with being creative.

For the last two years, I’ve had a free schedule to write during the day.  Some days I never wanted to stop writing.  Other days, I kept my butt in the chair until I hit my word quota.  

Now my schedule has changed again, and I’m learning where my writing time fits in.  It’s no longer an option to skip it; writing is always on the docket, no matter what.

By the way, this was written during my lunch break.

"Is This The Moving Picture Ship?"

The opening dialogue of King Kong (1933):

Charles Weston:  Say, is this the moving picture ship?

Watchman:  The Venture?  Yeah?  Are you going on this crazy voyage?

Charles Weston:  What’s crazy about it?

The story goes that originally there were 5 pages of exposition, but scriptwriter Ruth Rose boiled it down to these few lines.  What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in concision.  It gets the story moving fast.  Without wasting words, it tells you that there’s going to be a wild adventure involving a film crew, and everything progresses from there.

When I get bogged down in setting up a scene, I recall the opening of King Kong.  It reminds me to get down to business.  While it’s tempting to tantalize the reader with a sloooow unfolding of exposition, actually it’s a waste of time and doesn’t respect your audience.

My wife just finished copyediting Dead Hungry.  Following her recommendations, I cut another 1,300 words from the novel.  While some of those pieces were my “darlings,” I kept reminding myself to keep it simple.  The literary equivalent of Occam’s Razor.  Besides, the reader is not likely to miss them.

A constant challenge for me is that real life is made up of many fascinating details that influence and affect one another to create a rich experience.  In a story, however, the number of variables needs to be streamlined because you cannot possibly fit them all in.  While you may know your character won a third grade Spelling Bee, is it salient data?  Maybe winning allows her to go to the national competition in New York where she witnesses a mob hit; that would serve a purpose.  But if winning simply shows that she’s really good at spelling, does the reader need to know that?

Of course, the author may use this detail to help formulate her character, even if it never makes it to into print.

The question becomes what to keep and what to leave out.  In an old B.C. comic strip, Thor is sculpting a statue of Peter.  When B.C. asks him how he does it, Thor says he simply chips away the parts of the stone that don’t look like Peter.

So, when I write, I ask myself, “Is this the moving picture ship?”  The answer determines what comes next.

All The Names

Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Pecksniff, Smike, the Cheeryble brothers.  Dickens fashioned the best character names — full of word association and onomatopoeia, they conjure up distinctive personalities.

Compare that to Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, with the whole Finrod, Felagund, Fingolfin, et al.  As the emperor in Amadeus might say, “Too many F’s.”  (I know Tolkien was working linguistically, so all the names have particular meanings, but as a reader I found them difficult to keep straight.)

I almost fell into the same trap with Dead Hungry.  At one point, there were Joyce, Jonathan, and Josh.  As soon as I saw all those J’s, I knew something had to change.

Josh changed into Tristan before settling into Tucker.  It amazed me how much a name affects my vision of a character.  Josh appeared laid back.  Tristan was youthful.  But the character needed to be a grad student with personal problems, someone who is stoic.  For some reason, the name Tucker fit the bill.

Jonathan almost stayed Jonathan (two J’s might not be too bad), but then I heard a lecture by a man named Darien.  It seemed a perfect name for someone who feels a bit like an outsider.  Again, no apparent reason, it just seemed to fit.

Joyce stayed Joyce because … well, she’s Joyce.

One character in Dead Hungry influenced the entire story more than any other:  Robber.  Initially a minor character, he was the musician boyfriend of Caitlyn.  The name popped into my head:  his name is Robert, but his French grandmother always called him “Robair,” which got Anglicized back to “Robber.”  I loved the name too much to waste on a minor character.

Around this time, I was having difficulty getting into Tucker’s head; the guy was so guarded, he wouldn’t speak to me.  Then it occurred to me that Robber was Tucker’s brother, and the whole grunge rocker vs grad student dynamic was born.  Suddenly Tucker had someone personal to play off of.  I really believe I couldn’t have written the novel without Robber.

On a similar note, it wasn’t until I came up with the title, Dead Hungry, that I was convinced I could write the novel.

The power of the right name.

One Brain, Many Writers

In 1993, I wrote a novel, Come Undone, about a young man recovering from sexual abuse.  The story was told from Kenny’s perspective.  To highlight the immediacy of the action, I used first-person, present tense; this was not Kenny reflecting on his life, but rather the story was unfolding as the reader reads.  This was the story I wanted to tell, and it worked the way I wanted it to, to the best of my ability.

In 2005, I rewrote the book, focusing on what happened to Kenny later in life.  Now he is looking back on what the abuse meant to him.  While in the ‘93 version I tried not to shy away from writing about the abuse, still it was coded in euphemism and ineffective “hints” about what had occurred.  In this version, I wanted Kenny to be honest and direct about the abuse, his subsequent alcoholism and sexual addiction.  Again, I wrote the story to the best of my ability, and I was very pleased with it.

Except for that middle section.  That part never quite worked for me.

So, now I’m revising the book again.  The 2013 version contains a lot of the 2005 draft, but I’m reworking sections that were forced and contrived.

This is all to say that I’m a very different person now than I was in 1993 or 2005.  I trust I’m a stronger writer, but I’m discovering that the bluntness I strove for in earlier versions is a bit unsettling.  It’s much harder to write about Kenny’s self-destructive tendencies.

There is evidence in the earlier versions of literary sadism — i.e., putting my character through hell to prove how horrendous life can be.  But now I feel Kenny doesn’t have to go through every circle of Hell to discover his true self.

What does this mean for me as a writer?  I’m still me — only older, with different insights and perspectives.  I figured as a writer I’d retain the same degree of fortitude to address gritty topics.  But maybe I have to face the fact that age is softening me a bit.  And maybe being cruel to my characters doesn’t make the story more “real.”

"Posted on John Green’s Tumblr account:Students who considered themselves socialists were not..."

“Posted on John Green’s Tumblr account:

Students who considered themselves socialists were not so

much interested in the poor as they were desirous of leading

the poor, of being their guides and saviors. It was just this

paternalism toward the poor that the vision of solidarity I had

learned in religious settings was meant to challenge. From a

spiritual perspective, the poor were there to guide and lead the

rest of us by example if not by outright action and testimony.

As a student I read Marx, Gramsci, and a host of other male

thinkers on the subject of class. These works provided

theoretical paradigms but rarely offered tools for confronting

the complexity of class in daily life. […]

[W]hen I told friends and colleagues that I was resigning from my academic job to focus on writing, I was warned that I was making a dangerous mistake, that I could not possibly live on an income that was between twenty and thirty thousand dollars a year. When I pointed to the reality that families of four and more live on such an income, the response would be “that’s different”; the difference being, of course, one of class. The poor are expected to live with less and are socialized to accept less (badly made clothing, products, food, etc.), whereas the well-off are socialized to believe it is both a right and a necessity for us to have more, to have exactly what we want when we want it.

”

- bell hooks, where we stand: Class Matters, chapter 4 (via snailfan)