Be the Writer On Whom Nothing Is Wasted
In all the fiction-writing workshops I've taught I've tried to make the point to my students that what happens in their stories, the plot events that take place and the crises or challenges that arise, are never as important as what happens between the principal characters. Over a century ago Henry James made the argument to would-be novelists that the ‘story’ of a novel should not be an entity distinct from ‘character’-- that everything arising from the conflicts and desires of those characters should shape and generate the story's unfolding in much the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald, generations later, stated that “Character is plot.”
This is easier said than done, of course. (And it doesn't apply to commercial or genre fiction in quite the same way, whose readers generally expect stories to be "plot-driven.") But James explained that he didn't expect these characters, along with their plots, to spring full-blown from the writer's brain like Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Instead, in an essay he wrote in 1884, he advised the novice author to open his consciousness and spread it wide, ignoring fashionable pedantry of the time which discouraged would-be writers from tackling any subjects outside their social class or customary way of life (the "write-what-you-know" school of thought championed by Hemingway and adhered to, with maddening persistence, by writing teachers everywhere).
Instead, James wrote: “It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience… (But) what kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete, it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue… Therefore, if I should say to a novice, “Write from experience and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful to immediately add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
Being a writer who misses nothing is advice I have taken to heart very literally. I never go out of the house without tucking a paper notebook and pencil into a pocket (the smaller the notebook the better, as then if it is lost you have not lost so much). In them I record images, overheard conversations, stray details, observations -- anything I hear or see or smell that has some kind of potency, or authenticity, to it. Many of these notes have found their way into my formal writings, especially through the construction of characters. Here's the latest incident I recorded, a character as yet in search of a story:
"Middle-aged man with stiff leg, wearing shirt with his name stitched over pocket, picking up a number of prescriptions for his wife at small drugstore in G___ -- the copay amount is nearly $150. He tells the pharmacist as he pays: "If I'd let her mama run me off all those years ago I'd have a bit of cash by now."
I'm not sure why this moment appealed, but from long experience with the processes of my own imagination I assume it's because there is both character AND conflict/plot suggested in this short scenario. It is a little fly suspended in my spider web.
In January of 1895, Henry James was at a reception hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop told the writer a disturbing anecdote concerning a country-house with which both men were familiar. James jotted down the following notes in his book immediately after hearing the story: “…young children (indefinite number and no age) left to the care of servants in an old country house, then the death, presumably, of the parents. The servants, wicked and depraved, corrupt and deprave the children; the children are bad, full of evil to a sinister degree.”
Sound familiar? It should. Three years later, James’ goosebump-inducing novella, The Turn of the Screw, was published, and ghost stories were never the same. That was one juicy fly.
This is easier said than done, of course. (And it doesn't apply to commercial or genre fiction in quite the same way, whose readers generally expect stories to be "plot-driven.") But James explained that he didn't expect these characters, along with their plots, to spring full-blown from the writer's brain like Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Instead, in an essay he wrote in 1884, he advised the novice author to open his consciousness and spread it wide, ignoring fashionable pedantry of the time which discouraged would-be writers from tackling any subjects outside their social class or customary way of life (the "write-what-you-know" school of thought championed by Hemingway and adhered to, with maddening persistence, by writing teachers everywhere).
Instead, James wrote: “It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience… (But) what kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete, it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue… Therefore, if I should say to a novice, “Write from experience and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful to immediately add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
Being a writer who misses nothing is advice I have taken to heart very literally. I never go out of the house without tucking a paper notebook and pencil into a pocket (the smaller the notebook the better, as then if it is lost you have not lost so much). In them I record images, overheard conversations, stray details, observations -- anything I hear or see or smell that has some kind of potency, or authenticity, to it. Many of these notes have found their way into my formal writings, especially through the construction of characters. Here's the latest incident I recorded, a character as yet in search of a story:
"Middle-aged man with stiff leg, wearing shirt with his name stitched over pocket, picking up a number of prescriptions for his wife at small drugstore in G___ -- the copay amount is nearly $150. He tells the pharmacist as he pays: "If I'd let her mama run me off all those years ago I'd have a bit of cash by now."
I'm not sure why this moment appealed, but from long experience with the processes of my own imagination I assume it's because there is both character AND conflict/plot suggested in this short scenario. It is a little fly suspended in my spider web.
In January of 1895, Henry James was at a reception hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop told the writer a disturbing anecdote concerning a country-house with which both men were familiar. James jotted down the following notes in his book immediately after hearing the story: “…young children (indefinite number and no age) left to the care of servants in an old country house, then the death, presumably, of the parents. The servants, wicked and depraved, corrupt and deprave the children; the children are bad, full of evil to a sinister degree.”
Sound familiar? It should. Three years later, James’ goosebump-inducing novella, The Turn of the Screw, was published, and ghost stories were never the same. That was one juicy fly.
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