What I Learned from the Muse (Part 1)

Thanks for hanging in there everybody. Life and farm sort of got in the way this week. But perhaps that's a good thing, because I think I've finally gotten enough distance/perspective to put together a sort of Muse and the Marketplace recap.

First off, I want to thank Grub Street Writers for putting together an awesome conference. The thing that distinguishes "the Muse" is the combination of craft (muse) and publishing stuff (marketplace) and also the quality of the presenters and participants. And I got to hang out here:

This time around (my 3rd) I wanted to focus on plot (my big struggle) and revision. So I signed up for 3 plot related seminars and 3 revision/critique related events. I also attended an agents' Q&A panel and a face to face meeting with an agent, met a bunch of old friends and a few new ones and totally (totally!) exhausted myself because really I am sort of an introvert and schmoozing is HARD work.

So, where to begin?

With plot, I guess.

I attended Lynne Barrett's "Understanding Plot: The Fundamentals." Lynne was wonderful. I'd met her at Saturday's breakfast, and despite all my first day jitters, I think I managed to be coherent. Lynne talked about plot in context, using Cinderella as a model because, as she said, fairy tales are narrative in their most basic form.

We graphed the action in the familiar story and among other things, assessed when the "situation" became a plot and which characters acted on the plot. Expendable characters were those who did not "plot" or act to influence the events of the story. (An interesting aside: In some versions of the story, Cinderella has a father. But because he never "plots" he is expendable and dropped from most versions)

This was a great first dip into the intricacies of plot (Thanks, Lynne!)

I also attended Hallie Ephron's "Plotting a Page Turner." At first, I felt like I might be in the wrong class for this one, because we kept talking about "The DaVinci Code" and "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (my novels are more literary-ish).

But although Ms Ephron IS a suspense writer, she used these books as examples because most of the audience had read them. The class was not about a certain genre so much as using good plot technique to keep your readers engaged. We reviewed Aristotle's three act structure

and how it might apply to our own work.

Ms Ephron talked about "penny drop" moments when reader sort of get a small surprise or thickening of plot and how scattering these moments throughout the story makes it more engaging.

One of the practical things suggested in this seminar was to revise/assess plot by highlighting action in green, exposition in red and building suspense in yellow. You should have more green as the story progresses and more red in the beginning. (I'm going to have to give this a try!)

I also attended Micah Nathan's "The Essentials of Plot." Now, I must confess that when Mr. Nathan pulled out his own fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, I gave a little inward groan, expecting the same sort of information as in Lynne Barrett's seminar (Which had been wonderful; I just didn't want the same info twice). When he started talking about the three act structure like Hallie Ephron, my groan may have become audible.

But then Mr. Nathan did something awesome: he talked about the way plot and character are linked and that really we can't talk about one without the other. (I really needed to hear that I think, because I approach writing in just this way and I'd begun to get the sense that I was just plain wrong.)

Instead of recapping "Hansel and Gretel", we developed it-- asking ourselves a series of what ifs and why ifs and connecting the actions to "conflicts of noble ideals" and bigger moments of decision. In our Hansel and Gretel, for example, the children were abandoned by their father during a famine. (Backstory: Their mother was hung for stealing food while the father did nothing and is now wracked with guilt. He believes they have a better chance with the old lady in the forest.) But although Hansel is happy to live in the forest with the nice old lady, adolescent Gretel doesn't trust the old woman who she believes may be a witch and she conspires to trap the old lady in the basement and escape, only things go horribly wrong and... etc etc. You get the idea.

What was so cool about this plot stuff was that it was, as Mr Nathan said, "like playing in the sandbox." I can't tell you how freeing it felt to just try stuff out and see where it might take me. Usually, once I establish my characters, it's hard for me to see anything else but my original plot idea.

I spent the last session of that day playing in the sandbox, building (and wrecking) castles of what ifs.

Here are a few more random gleanings from the seminars on plot:

Micah Nathan said that basically stories are about getting your characters stuck in a tree (a metaphorical tree, of course) and throwing stones at them. This image has helped me think about how all the little twists and troubles (the metaphorical stones) help the narrative.

credit

Lynne Barrett talked about how all fiction is "contrived" but that readers hunger for interesting contrivance and are willing to suspend disbelief for it.

Ms Ephron talked about how each scene contains its own story arc. Even at the scene level, characters move from one state to another, never staying static.

In a discussion of outlining. Mr Nathan talked about how outlining the major events of plot shouldn't stifle creativity. He talked about the plot as being like a road map for a cross-country trip.

It doesn't describe the sights along the way, the conversations and music, cool diners and seedy motels. It just keeps you from getting lost. There's lots of room for creativity and you can always choose a new route when necessary. I found this really helpful as I am trying to evolve from being a "pantser" to a more careful plotter.

Okay-- Whew!There's lots more I could say, but this is probably already a bit much. I will talk about the revision stuff next and then the "Marketplace stuff" which was.... wow, intense!

Conflict in Fiction: Freaky Friday vs Freaky Friday

Personally, I'm not big on conflict. I tend to let the hard things lie a bit too long, talk about them only after the anger (or annoyance) has pretty much dissipated. This workswell. Dan and I hardly ever argue. Life is good.

But while avoiding conflict may be a great real-life strategy, it doesn't work on paper.

I have to fight my peace-maker impulses to create a compelling story. For example, in my first (and second and third) draft of Family, Genius, Species, I wrote about the break-up of my main characters from the point of view of someone listening behind a closed bathroom door. There was no dialogue, just the blah blah blah of angry-sounding words. My eavesdropping character emerged from the bathroom to find that a "dumping" had occurred (okay, I didn't mean to use a pun, but this is sort of funny so I'm leaving it.)

Not so dramatic really.

This week my eleven year old had the stomach flu. She flopped on the couch with her barf bucket watching Food Network (no joke) and Spongebob (don't get me started on how much I hate Spongebob...) until I dug up an old DVD of Freaky Friday, the new version, which she totally loved.

I didn't watch it with her, but I heard much of it from the next room and it got me thinking about conflict in fiction.

First off, let me say I have fond memories of the original Freaky Friday.

It was released in 1976, the same shaggy-dog year as my character, Roger "Zorro" Weitz's big hit. The movie was huge that year and I remember quite clearly standing in around-the-block lines to buy tickets for it at least three times over. In retrospect of course, Friday is terribly dated. (The daughter's main challenge is dealing with her homemaker mother's oh-so-difficult life of appliance repair people, grocery delivery boys and new curtain selection.)

But more importantly, from a writing perspective: It totally avoided the main conflict. The switched mother and daughter never (to my memory) see each other in their switched bodies or attempt to solve anything. This is an opportunity lost. The whole movie, to my grown up writer's sensibility, is anemic, episodic, a series of little conflicts, while the big one-- the one that could be really interesting-- is left untouched.

The newer version isn't having any of that. It goes right into the conflict: Mother and daughter in the same room, trying to switch back. This is rich dramatic territory, and funny too.

I imagine it was kind of scary to write this scene. So many things could have gone wrong. Too much dialogue, and drama could leach from it like helium from a slow-leaking balloon.

But here's what the 2003 movie makers knew: ya just HAVE TO do it anyway. If it doesn't work, try it again, and again.

Who knew Freaky Friday was educational?

In my current re-write, that argument will happen right there on the pages.

How do your personal preferences and style affect your fiction writing?

Book Review: "His Illegal Self" by Peter Carey

Here’s another “adult forms meaningful relationship with kid not his/her own” story, but one vastly different from “About a Boy” in focus and intent. I didn’t read this book as “research” but rather found it on the library’s scant audiobooks shelf and thought it sounded interesting. Little did I know, I was wading back into Zorro territory, if only slightly.

“His Illegal Self” is the story of 7 year old “Che”, the child of 70’s underground radicals, raised by his WASPy grandmother on a ritzy upstate New York estate. One day, a woman who Che takes to be his infamous and long absent mother shows up and absconds with him. At first Che is eager to join his notorious parents on the run, but the woman is not who he thinks she is, and the two end up in the Australian rain forest in a sort of subsistence level hippy commune.

This is the first of Peter Carey’s books I’ve read and I found the writing stunning. Descriptions of the Australian jungles and beaches are achingly beautiful, so lush and tactile I felt as if I knew these place down to the bones. The characters are interesting—though they take some time to know and understand. Perhaps this is intentional on Carey's part-- our initial impressions as confused as Che's as he sorts out the truth of his situation. It's a complex sort of truth, the characters are, in a way, as densely mysterious as the bush.

In fact, the whole book is structured so that the readers’ emotions mirror those of the boy as he sets off hopefully, becomes increasingly confused and frightened, before finally coming into his own sort of understanding.

From a writer’s point of view, I found the meandering plot really interesting. It had a deus ex machina feel to it in places, and was wide ranging and loose ended, but totally engrossing just the same. Some of the subplots seem to lead off into the dense brush and disappear, others are left shadowy, never quite resolve themselves. But the boy’s developing relationship with his unwitting “kidnapper” – and with a feral, paranoid hippie they encounter (Of course, this character sort of stole the show for me)—is complex and so well-depicted, the loose ends hardly mattered.

Carey is an established and well-respected writer. I wonder if a debut author would have been granted the space to be this sort of sloppy with the plot. Probably not. But I'm glad he was able to; "His Illegal Self" would have been a different book if he'd been forced to hack this wild and fertile jungle into neat little garden row plot strands.

Has anyone else read this one? Comments?

We'll be right back after these messages...

Well, there are no messages actually. But I'm going away for a bit-- vacation-type away. WooHOOO!

Mostly this is a vacation from work, and the hot, slobbery dog of a summer we are enjoying here on the farm. But it's probably a good idea to take a break from the manuscript, too, and especially the recalcitrant query monster, which, in my mind has grown to look something like this:

(Okay, that's actually a scene from "Sigmund the Sea Monster" but how else to describe a 450 word query that is just too damn much?)

And the manuscript itself is feeling a bit monstrous lately as well. I am trying to get a new handle on one of the more minor (but crucial to the plot) characters. He started off sort of cartoonish (intentionally so, I'm afraid) and now I realize I have to understand him, even care for him if its going to work. And he's sort of a tough guy to like....

If you are a fiction writer, you probably have all sorts of little tricks to get to know your characters, sort of like ice-breakers for the party in your mind, right? If you are not a writer, this whole post probably seems one step away from schizophrenia.

Anyway, this is one of the exercises I do while I am driving or otherwise semi-engaged: I imagine I am talking to the character, and he/or she is telling me about a childhood incident, a guiding principle, an ex wife, etc. etc. Again, if you're a fiction writer this is all great fun. If not, call in the straitjackets!

So, what sort of exercises do you (writers) do to get to know your characters?

I hope to check in and read about some cool, helpful writing practices. But this is a new blog, so mostly, I hope to keep the flame going while away.

So if it's slow around here, no worries. I'm probably still here:

Origin of Family, Genius, Species

Part 2: Hijacked!

If Idylwilde, my first completed novel was all first love heartbreak and drama, Family, Genius, Species is a more of a mature relationship-- a marriage, if you will.

I went into the thing with my eyes wide open. I knew it would take work, a lot of work. I was no longer afraid to erase whole chapters or cut my darlings from the page with a hearty punch of the backspace. I was "big picture" in my approach, I planned. (Well, I planned more than I had in the past anyway).

You see, in its first incarnation FGS was a mother daughter story. Zorro, my one-hit-wonder, cool-in-his-own-mind main character was a minor part of the original plot.

I wanted to explore the troubled relationship between Carla (mom) and her daughter Dawn. I thought the plot might work its way through the social service system, and so I talked to some social worker friends (research!) and spent many long commutes developing the plot. (Yes, this is often what I do on the 2 hour plus drives.... really. It's fun.)

When I thought I knew where I was headed, I wrote my first few pages. And THAT's when the trouble started. Zorro. my bit character, comic relief in the intense mother-daughter struggle, sort of took over.

What's more, I really liked what happened when he did. I discovered that he had his own agenda and that IT would drive the plot far better than all that "Women's fiction" social service stuff (Not that I have any issue with these things-- remember, that 1st book was Oprah-esque and all).

I wanted to sort through some pretty interesting ideas: the role of destiny (If we are so much ourselves do we have any real choice?) and How does a person sort of shapes him/herself over time? And love I wanted to explore a platonic, parental sort of love. And there's the interesting difference between how we think of ourselves and how we actually are in the world. (I don't know about you, but I am 5'9", thin brave and wildly amusing.)

Anyway, Zorro turned out to be the right man for the job.

Besides he's cool. Or thinks he's cool anyway.

The mother daughter stuff is still in there of course, along with the natural history stuff and the coming-of-ageness. Also there is a road trip and a pissed off teenager...

And yes, as in any mature relationship, I know I can plug away at it-- fully aware of the flaws and foibles, working towards that soul-mate perfection that would make the novel good enough.

As for Sweet Marie, the white-handed gibbon, that just happened. I have no idea how. You writers out there probably know what I'm talking about. The rest of you may be baffled by it.

I'll have to post more about this crazy process that can produce a full-grown gibbon out of thin air-- one with a goofy, Dylan-inspired name no less! But that's for another post. Suffice it to say that if you ARE baffled, you are not alone in that. My incredibly tolerant husband often feels that way too.