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

by Chuck Palahniuk

This next skill might be the most difficult part of writing you’ll ever tackle. But once you get the knack of it, it will make writing easier and more fun than you ever could’ve imagined. Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character. This means that every way the character describes the world must describe the character’s experience. You and I never walk into the same room as each other. We each see the room through the lens of our own life. A plumber enters a very different room than a painter enters.

This means you can’t use abstract measurements. No more six-foot-tall men. Instead you must describe a man’s size based on how your character or narrator perceives a man whose height is seventy-two inches. A character might say “a man too tall to kiss” or “a man her dad’s size when he’s kneeling in church.” You may not describe the temperature as being one hundred degrees. Or trips as being fifty miles long. All standardized measurements preclude you describing how your character sees the world.

you’ll begin to see the world via the character’s experience and the descriptions will come naturally. Eventually, it will even be fun. Getting inside a character might seem like a vacation from being you. But face it, you’re never not you. No matter what world you create you’re always dealing with your own shit. Same shit, different mask. You’ve chosen to explore a certain character because something about it resonates with you. Don’t pretend for a moment that writing as a different person is evading reality. If anything it allows you a greater freedom to explore parts of yourself you wouldn’t dare consciously examine.

Another part of writing from within a character is using language as only that character would. No two people speak the same. Each has her own little wardrobe of phrases and slang. Each misuses words differently.

So if writing from within a character, you should “burn” the language. Customize it to the speaker. Even when writing in third person, make the language reflect the character’s perspective and experience.

The idiot character is more fun to hear because he bends the language for his purpose. So does the ESL character or the child. When we read The Color Purple the language demonstrates the narrator’s innocence from the book’s first word. This instantly primes us to care for and root for the character. Beyond that, no abstracts (no inches, miles, minutes, days, decibels, tons, lumens) because the way someone depicts the world should more accurately depict him. Unless, of course, you’re depicting a scientist who scores high on the autism spectrum. And no perfect newscaster language because the story should not sound fake, as if written by a writer. Lastly, avoid what Spanbauer and Lish call “received text.” Meaning, no clichés.

So when choosing an idea for a book, make sure it’s an idea that only a book can best present. If it’s an idea that film, comics, or gaming can depict, why bother writing the book? 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.

How do you convince a reader of something beyond his own experience? You start with what he does know, and you move in baby steps toward what he doesn’t.

Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger. To paraphrase, he tells the reader to imagine waking up on a Monday morning filled with dread. Another stultifying week looms. Another soul-crushing day at work, doing something you’d never planned to do for the rest of your life. You’re growing older, your life wasted, your dreams lost. And then you realize it’s actually Sunday morning. That rush of relief...that flood of joy and bliss that fills you and buoys your whole body with euphoria, multiply that feeling by ten, and that’s how a Vicodin feels.

It’s a useful structure, stringing anecdotes together to illustrate a theme. And it gradually walks the reader from the believable to the incredible.

linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath has said that readers value surprise above all else in a story. If you were my student I’d tell you to create a clear scene. Render the setting and physical actions without judgment or summary. Use simple Recording Angel as if you were a camera. Allow your reader to determine the meaning of the events. Let your reader anticipate the outcome, then—boom—spring the actual intention, the surprise.

So direct and misdirect your reader, but don’t tell her the meaning of anything. Not until she gets it wrong in her head.

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 never dictate meaning to your reader. If need be, misdirect him. But always allow him to realize the truth before you state it outright. Trust your readers’ intelligence and intuition, and they will return the favor.

“This book is awful...” He grinned like he’d played a joke that never got old, no matter how many students he’d played it on. To me, he said, “I wanted you to see how terrible a book could be and still get published.” He slipped the book back into its place among the books on the shelf, ready to be given to the next hopeless writer.

The theory goes that stories told in the first person carry the greatest authority because someone assumes responsibility for them. The storytelling source is present, not just some omniscient writerly voice. The trouble is that readers recoil from the pronoun “I” because it constantly reminds them that they, themselves, are not experiencing the plot events. We hate that, when we’re stuck listening to someone whose stories are all about himself. The fix is to use first person, Peter taught me, but to submerge the I. Always keep your camera pointed elsewhere, describing other characters. Strictly limit a narrator’s reference to self. This is why “apostolic” fiction works so well.

In addition, don’t screen the world through your narrator’s senses. Instead of writing, “I heard the bells ring,” write just, “The bells rang,” or, “The bells began to ring.” Avoid, “I saw Ellen,” in favor of, “Ellen stepped from the crowd. She squared her shoulders and began to walk, each step bringing her closer.” 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.

My point is that people measure stuff—money, strength, time, weight—in very personal ways. A city isn’t so many miles from another city, it’s so many songs on the radio. Two hundred pounds isn’t two hundred pounds, it’s that dumbbell at the gym that no one touched and that seemed like a sword-in-the-stone joke until the day a stranger took it off the rack and started doing single-arm rows with it. As Katherine Dunn put it, “No two people ever walk into the same room.”

My point is that our past distorts and colors how we perceive the world. If I hadn’t said something, this man would’ve heard “meat” instead of “me” for the rest of his life. And how your character describes the world doesn’t have to be based on anything factual. Actually, it’s more interesting if a character views the world through a mistake.

The other choice the funny boy or the pretty girl can make is to deny the choice. To continue living according to the pattern for success he or she has established. But now that the trap is recognized, the funny boy becomes the bitter, snarky guy. He’s the clever, hard-drinking put-down artist who lives to inflict pain. The pretty girl becomes the evil queen in Snow White, ready to destroy anyone who might be prettier. Most of my own books are about characters who’ve reached the limits of one, early form of power. They’ve been the good, obedient boy (Fight Club) or the stunningly attractive girl (Invisible Monsters) and they’ve reached the point where they must find a new form of power. Or to continue, in bad faith, to live according to the old, failing pattern.

So choosing a character’s body of knowledge isn’t merely about how their past and their priorities color their view of everything. It’s also about the pattern for success that they’ve chosen as children. The funny boy walks into a room looking for details to poke fun at, and listening for good setup lines he can riff off for laughs. The pretty girl walks in looking for potential competitors with clearer skin, better figures, brighter teeth. If you were my student I’d tell you that Playgirl ultimately rejected “Negative Reinforcement.” And instead of a luxury high-rise condo all I could afford was a three-hundred-square-foot shack in a neighborhood without clear television or radio reception. Cable television wasn’t available, and the internet was decades away. The roof leaked, but in that tiny house with no distractions I wrote my first four books—five if you count the disastrous attempt If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Already. I’d ask you: What strategy has your 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? Every detail they notice in the world will depend on your answers to the above questions.

Most stories engage the reader’s mind or heart, his intellect or emotions, but few also pull in the reader’s entire body. Stories that do elicit a physical reaction—horror, pornography—are seen as low culture. But if you were my student I’d ask, Why can’t a high-culture story engage the mind, the heart, and the body? Years back,

That, that’s the kind of physicality I’d tell you to develop in your work. To heighten that physical element of a story, it helps to depict characters using drugs, or suffering illness. Depict sex and violence, or medical procedures. These are all ways to exaggerate a character’s physical awareness, and to prompt the reader to have a sympathetic physical reaction. Whether it’s drugs or sex or illness, it also allows you to distort the normal world so that regular settings and events appear warped and menacing.

“going on the body.” By this he meant focusing on physical sensation within a character. As in, “This would be a good place to go on the body...” It’s a reliable way to unpack a dramatic moment. Just shift from describing the exterior scene to depicting the interior of a character. As the writer Matthew Stadler advises, “When you don’t know what comes next, describe the interior of the narrator’s mouth.” He was joking, but he wasn’t. If done well, this prompts a similar reaction in the reader’s body. With that complete, you can shift back to describing the scene, or intercut with a big-voice observation, or add a new stressor, or whatever you think will best keep up the tension of the moment. By going “on the body” you enroll the reader’s body as well as her heart and mind. You usurp his entire reality. If you were my student I’d tell you to watch what people do unconsciously. Collect the stories they tell to explain their behavior.

If you were my student, I’d push you to create an epiphany. You’d have to dredge up or dream up the moment I realized why the tailor at Brooks Brothers had provided me with more comfort than a fortune spent on Jungian analysis. Me, I can’t recall just one revelation so I’ve redirected you to other examples of physical memory. The toothbrush. The paper page that wouldn’t scroll.

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.

He’d tell 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. After I recognized the magic of the fitting room, it seemed less powerful. The tailor went back to being a guy with a cloth tape measure looped over his shoulders. From here my brain took over. The reason I’d always avoided buying clothes, even after I could afford to shop at places like Brooks Brothers and Barneys, was because it felt like an insult to wear anything nicer than what our mother could sew.

Schrödinger’s cat. Look it up.

Whether it’s a cat or a baby inside the suitcase, whether it’s dead or alive, the story is still a depiction of the Schrödinger’s cat paradox. That’s the archetype. And that’s why readers will readily engage with it. The lesson is: if you can identify the archetype your story depicts, you can more effectively fulfill the unconscious expectations of the reader.

In the story “Phoenix,” I create the circumstance where a mother demands a father hurt their child to prove his love for her. She’s away on a business trip and their daughter refuses to speak to her over the phone. Fearing the child is actually dead, she demands her husband hurt the girl because a cry of pain would prove the girl is still alive. Ludicrous and horrible as it sounds, the story works because it’s a retelling of the story of Isaac and Abraham from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament.

If you can identify the core legend that your story is telling, you can best fulfill the expectation of the legend’s ending.

Among the easiest ways to gain the reader’s trust is to get something wrong. To my way of thinking, there are two forms of authority. The first I call “head authority,” where the writer demonstrates a wisdom or knowledge beyond the reader’s. This can be something basic and earthy, like the passages in The Grapes of Wrath where characters use thin brass wire to compress piston rings while reassembling an engine. Or something less savory, like the mother in my book Choke who switches the largely identical bottles between boxes of hair dye, knowing the buyers will get hair some color they never expected. Head authority is based on knowledge, used for evil or otherwise. The second type of authority is “heart authority,” gained when a character tells an emotional truth or commits an act that shows great vulnerability. The character shows an emotional wisdom and bravery despite enormous pain. Often it involves killing an animal, such as the scene in my book Rant where a character must kill his pug dog when it manifests full rabies. Or

Denis Johnson short story “Dirty Wedding,” the narrator is waiting while his girlfriend undergoes an abortion. A nurse approaches to say the girlfriend, Michelle, is fine. The narrator asks, “Is she dead?” Stunned, the nurse says, “No.” To which the narrator responds, “I kind of wish she was.” At that the reader is stunned, but “heart authority” is created. We know the writer isn’t afraid to tell an awful truth. The writer might not be smarter than us. But the writer is braver and more honest. That’s “heart authority.”

Emotional authority also comes through doing something horrible but necessary for a noble reason. It’s the main character, Rynn, in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane who is forced to kill those who want to molest her. Or it’s Dolores Claiborne in Stephen King’s book of the same name, who tries to kill her suffering, suicidal employer. A character’s mistake or misdeeds allow the reader to feel smarter. The reader becomes the caretaker or parent of the character and wants the character to survive and succeed.

In either case, the shift to third person implies self-loathing or disassociation or both. So if you were my student, I’d tell you to establish emotional authority by depicting an imperfect character making a mistake.

In workshop Tom Spanbauer would always lecture about the horizontal and the vertical of a story. The horizontal refers to the sequence of plot points: The Woodhouse couple moves into a new apartment, Rosemary meets a neighbor, the neighbor jumps from a window one night...etc. The vertical refers to the increase in emotional, physical, and psychological tension over the course of the story. As the plot progresses so should the tension ramp up. Minus the vertical, a story devolves to “and then, and then, and then.”

So if you were my student I’d tell you to limit your elements and make certain each represents one of the horses your story is about. Find a hundred ways to say the same thing. For example, the theme in my book Choke is “things that are not what they appear to be.” That includes the clocks that use birdcalls to tell the time, the coded public address announcements, the fake choking man, the historical theme park, the fake doctor “Paige.” I’d tell you to watch television commercials. See how they never show you a fat person eating at Domino’s or Burger King? Watch how they ramp up the vertical in only thirty seconds.

A gun is a different matter. 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. It’s called a gun because of Chekhov’s directive that if a character puts a gun in a drawer in act 1 he or she must pull it out in the final act.

Whereas a clock is something obvious and constantly brought to mind, a gun is something you introduce and hide, early, and hope your audience will forget. 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.

For now if you came to me and said your novel was approaching eight hundred pages with no sign of ending, I’d ask, “What’s your clock?” I’d ask, “Did you plant a gun?”

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. So if you were my student, I’d urge you to cut your narrative like a film editor cuts film. To do this, you can use a repeating chorus: “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about...” Or, “Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.” Thus cuing the reader with a sort-of touchstone that indicates: We’re about to jump to something different.

Impulsively, she sells it for fifteen thousand dollars. That’s the amount of money she needs to walk out on her failed marriage. Again, the ring appears, disappears, appears, disappears, appears, and disappears, each time to serve a new purpose in the plot. That’s what I call recycling an object in a story. The reader is thrilled to recognize something that seemed lost. And because the object is not a character and can’t have an emotional reaction, the reader is forced to express any related emotion.

In my own lesser way, the liposuction fat in Fight Club becomes soap to be sold for money to finance the movement. Then it becomes nitroglycerin to be used by the characters to topple buildings. So, my student, today’s lesson is to recycle your objects. Introduce them, then hide them. Rediscover them, then hide them. Each time you bring them back, make them carry greater importance and emotion. Recycle them. In the end, resolve them beautifully.

you were my student I’d tell you to be clever on someone else’s dime. You’re not Noel Coward. Cleverness is a brand of hiding. It will never make your reader cry. It seldom makes readers genuinely belly laugh and never breaks anyone’s heart. So avoid tennis-match dialogue. That’s where one character says something, and another responds with the perfect quip. Think of situation comedy dialogue. Snappy comebacks. Perfect rejoinders. Setup and spike. Instant gratification. Tension is created and instantly resolved.

So it never accumulates. The energy remains flat. For example: Wendy snuck a glance at him. “Do you have herpes?” Brandon looked away. Gradually, his gaze came back to hers. “Yes. I do.” Question answered. Conflict settled. Energy returns to a big, boring zero.

Instead, if you were my student I’d tell you to never resolve an issue until you introduce a bigger one. For example: Wendy snuck a glance at him. “Do you have herpes?” Brandon looked away. Gradually, his gaze came back to meet hers. “I bought those place cards you wanted.” Or, “Wendy, honey, you know I’d never hurt you.” Or, “Geez! If you could just hear yourself!” Or, “That Megan Whitney is a liar.” To whic...

Always keep in mind our tendency to avoid conflict (we’re writers) and to cheat and use dialogue to further plot (a cardinal sin). So to do the first and avoid the second, use evasive dialogue or miscommunications to always increase the tens...

a plot point is worth including, it’s worth depicting in a scene. Don’t deliver it in dialogue. You’re not Shakespeare limited to the stage at the Globe Theatre and the endurance of the groundlings’ legs. You have the budget and the time.

It sounds harsh, but I forbid you from furthering your plot with dialogue. To do so is cheap and lazy.

Tom said he was amazed, wondering, Is he really going to go there? Is this guy actually going to describe a kid giving an old man a blow job? And Williams did. He didn’t redirect to something safer, for example having the narrator distract himself with the comforting childhood memory of eating a nice hot dog on July 4. Nor did he jump ahead to a future scene and recount the sex using dialogue or tasteful snippets of memory. Nope, the writer unpacked the details and read them in public to a crowd. Tom admired him for having the courage to write the tough stuff. And to read it. And if you were my student I’d tell you that that is your job.