Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different

by Chuck Palahniuk

“And another thing,” he cautioned me, “don’t use a lot of commas. People hate sentences with lots of commas. Keep your sentences short. Readers like short sentences.”

“Action carries its own authority.” The audience will engage with action.

It’s only in porn that the talky parts work better at the beginning.

switching to big voice for short stretches will allow you to imply time passing. And it can also buffer between scenes in which lots of physical action takes place.

So we expect prose to move as quickly and intuitively as film. And to do this, let’s consider how people do it in conversation. They “whatever.” They say, “Let’s agree to disagree.” Or, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” My friend Ina quotes The Simpsons with the non sequitur, “Daffodils grow in my yard.” Whatever the saying, it acknowledges an impasse and creates the permission to introduce a new idea.

force the reader to really read word by word.

pastime. Don’t shy away from inventing rituals in your story. Invent rules and prayers. Give people roles to play and lines to recite.

To heighten this ritual effect, consider creating a “template” chapter. Using one existing chapter, change minor details and make it arrive at a fresh epiphany. Chances are the reader won’t realize what you’ve done, but will unconsciously recognize the repeated structure. Use this template to create three chapters placed equal distances apart in the book.

In this world where so many fraternal organizations and religions are disappearing, if you were my student I’d tell you to use ritual and repetition to invent new ones for your readers. Give people a model they can replicate and characters to emulate.

Consider that when you put a character’s dialogue in quotes you give the character greater reality. Conversely when you paraphrase someone you distance and diminish them.

the Thom Jones advice: Action carries its own authority. If you move through each scene with clear, physical verbs—taking steps, touching objects—your reader’s mind will follow as closely as a dog’s eyes track a squirrel.

If you were my student I’d ask you to consider the following methods for building authority within a story. Make the reader believe you. Make the incredible seem inevitable.

For quick, powerful proof of a character’s authority, few tactics work as well as allowing her to reel off facts that demonstrate she boasts a depth of technical knowledge no one would’ve expected.

To create a story in which the reader never thinks to criticize the characters, kill the mother or father before the first page.

During the filming of Fight Club, I asked director David Fincher if the audience would accept the ultimate reveal that Brad Pitt’s character was imaginary. Fincher’s response was, “If they believe everything up to that point, they’ll believe the plot twist.”

Case closed. The smallest mistake can destroy all believability.

Now if I were your teacher, I’d tell you to write a story in which a jaded on-air appraiser is asked to confirm the value of a cursed monkey’s paw…a shrunken head…the Holy Grail.

Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character.

writer. Stories have greater authority if they’re delivered with the same passion and flawed language that an actual person would use telling the emotion-laden truth.

So if writing from within a character, you should “burn” the language. Customize it to the speaker.

If you were my student I’d tell you to write the most outlandish, challenging, provocative stories. Take full advantage of the complete freedom books provide. To not take advantage of that freedom is to waste the one chief strength of the medium.

Use what the reader already knows to gradually move to the fantastic. The tragic. The profound.

Always, always, if you were my student, I’d tell you to allow the epiphany to occur in the reader’s mind before it’s stated on the page.

So were I your teacher, I’d tell you to write in the first person, but to weed out almost all of your pesky “I”s.

character chosen for success in life? What education or experiences does he or she bring? What priorities? Will they be able to adopt a new dream and a new strategy?

If you were my student, I’d push you to create an epiphany.

My skin recognized the quick blunt slash of tailor’s chalk. The peril of sharp pins. This Russian tailor with his motorcycle and black leather gear, he wasn’t my mother, but my body didn’t know the difference.

An epiphany bringing back the past via so.e physocal interact that recalls a memory.

them, “Write about something you can hardly remember.” They’d start with a scent. A taste. One tangible physical detail would elicit another. It was as if their bodies were recording devices far more effective than their minds. To repeat: Your body is a recording device more effective than your mind.

listen to your body as you write. Take note how your hand knows how much coffee is left by the weight of the cup. Tell your stories not simply through your readers’ eyes and minds, but through their skin, their noses, their guts, the bottoms of their feet.

Head authority is based on knowledge, used for evil or otherwise.

So if you were my student, I’d tell you to establish emotional authority by depicting an imperfect character making a mistake.

As Ira Levin saw it, “Great problems, not clever solutions, make great fiction.”

If your stories tend to amble along, lose momentum, and fizzle out, I’d ask you, “What’s your clock?” And, “Where’s your gun?”

In my novel Survivor, told aboard a jetliner that will eventually run out of fuel and crash, time is marked by each of the four engines flaming out.

Remember my novel Snuff and the sex doll slowly leaking air? That’s a clock.

In every story about the Titanic, the voyage is the clock.

A good clock limits time, thus heightening tension. And it tells us what to expect, thus freeing our minds to indulge in the emotion of the story.

While a clock is set to run for a specified time period, a gun can be pulled out at any moment to bring the story to a climax.

When you finally reveal it, you want the gun to feel both surprising and inevitable. Like death, or the orgasm at the end of sex.

Consider how an excited child tells a story. The sentences just cascade, one after another with few clear breaks. Such momentum! Almost like music, very much like music, like a song.

In the story “Loser” I wanted to rely on sentences that seemed to contradict themselves midway. For example, “The box looks red, only it’s blue.” Or, “Sally reaches for a stick, except it’s a dead snake.” By repeatedly using the words “but,” “only,” and “except” I can create a sense of rhythm and the absurd, constantly stating and contradicting my statements in the same sentence.

to recycle your objects. This means introducing and concealing the same object throughout the story. Each time it reappears, the object carries a new, stronger meaning. Each reappearance marks an evolution in the characters.

So avoid tennis-match dialogue. That’s where one character says something, and another responds with the perfect quip.

“Never resolve a threat until you raise a larger one.”

If a plot point is worth including, it’s worth depicting in a scene. Don’t deliver it in dialogue.

With that in mind, I’d tell you to avoid “is” and “has” in any form. And avoid abstract verbs in favor of creating the circumstances that allow your reader to do the remembering, the believing, and the loving. You may not dictate emotion. Your job is to create the situation that generates the desired emotion in your reader.

So once you’ve established your characters and settings, give your people a glimpse of the outside world.

You get my point? If you were my student, I’d urge you to find some unresolvable issue that will instantly guarantee tension and debate over your work.

Anytime you deny a possibility you create it at the same time. Such statements introduce the threat they appear to be denying.