Sunday, July 31, 2005

Turn on the Bright Light

Where most of my story ideas come from (in order of frequency):

1. Dreams
2. Other short stories or novels I've read
3. Stranges I see while I'm out and about
4. Fragments of childhood memories
5. Weird things that have happened to my friends (or to me, albeit less frequently)
6. Songs (sometimes the lyrics, sometimes the actual music)
7. Things people have left behind in books (notes, letters, train tickets, inscriptions)

Monday, July 25, 2005

Quotes on Fiction Writing

Hemingway's Iceberg Theory:

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

Raymond Carver:

"Abjure carelessness in writing, just as you would in real life."

"One of the things I feel strongly about is that while short stories often tell us things we don't know anything about--and this is good, of course--they should also, and maybe more importantly, tell us what everybody knows but what nobody is talking about."

"When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself. At this moment, if the writer has succeeded, there ought to be a unity of feeling and understanding. Or, if not a unity, at least a sense that the disparities of a crucial situation have been made available in a new light.... It should make such an impression that the work, as Hemingway suggested, becomes a part of the reader's experience.... In great fiction...there is always the 'shock of recognition' as the human significance of the work is revealed and made manifest. When, in Joyce's words, the soul of the story, it's 'whateness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.'"

I'm presently reading Carver's Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose. The book includes several essays about writing. I strongly recommend them. I also definitely recommend Carver's stories. When I have questions about my own writing, he's usually who I read to find the answers. What writers provide answers--or at least food for thought--for you?

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Short Fiction Endings

In the Editor's Note for the Summer 2005 edition of JMWW, Jen discusses the importance of nailing the beginning of a story. It is essential that a writer hook the reader with the first paragraph--preferably with the first sentence.

For me, though, the end is far more difficult to write than the beginning. And from reading JMWW submissions, I think many writers share this difficulty. Maybe fairy tales have hurt us--made us more likely to tie everything together with a bow so our characters can live happily/miserably/lonely/whatever ever after. Or maybe some writers are so afraid of tying things together too neatly that they don't tie anything together at all, so the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying (from a technical/stylistic standpoint).

It is okay for an ending to be provocative, but it needs a context as well. A story is about some sort of conflict, and thus in the end there should be some sort of resolution--the protagonist has to learn or decide something; there has to be some sort of choice made or action taken, or at least strongly suggested. And it isn't necessarily bad for the reader to predict where the story is going, as long as the ride to get there is enjoyable and engrossing. After all, we know at the beginning of Romeo & Juliet what will happen at the end. But we read anyway to find out why and how it happens.

One more thing. Some writers have submitted sections of unpublished novels to JMWW. And that's great. But those sections must be able to stand alone. There are writers out there who don't believe that there needs to be an arc to a story--because it's more realistic not to arc and not to resolve. And that might be true. However, there needs to be a reason for a story--there needs to be something cohesive that ties the story together and explains why the story starts and ends when it does.

And, you know, as with poetry, we like endings that won't let us go. Often those endings lead us to wonder what exactly happens next or what exactly that final image means. Readers want to wonder--but they need to have some direction.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

It's All About How You Leave Me

Lately, I have been paying careful attention to the craft of ending a poem. I have found that the most obvious way to end the poem is almost always the worst way to end the poem. This is quite possibly true of fiction and non-fiction as well.

I believe good poems haunt us. It is when we are eating barbecue at a cookout, watching a French film for the third time, or changing a bathroom light bulb that it creeps back in, not allowing us to focus on our task at hand. I guess I just want to be left wondering, and, for me, that is what good poetry does. Don't say "goodbye" when leaving--it's done already. Do something amazing. Surprise me.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

There is only what you do and what you don't do

I've been thinking about how I've read that a writer is like a god, creating his/her own universe. A god who perhaps tries to guide his/her creations, but ultimately has to let them run free. And it seems to me (or perhaps I read this somewhere; I probably did) that some writers are Old Testament gods, full of fury and vengeance.

I'm reading a novel by that sort of writer now. He created a character that I was able to love instantly--and almost as quickly he let me know that this character was going to suffer, and thus I was going to suffer. Which left me in a quandary--after all, I don't like suffering. So the obvious question is, why would a writer do this to his character and his readers? It isn't by accident.

The symbols in this book are obvious; the themes lack subtlety. And yet the novel is highly crafted and written with graceful force. There are no surprises--and that is the point. You are told something awful will happen, you feel the dread build up inside you, and then the thing happens, and perhaps the details of it are slightly surprising, but not much. What is shocking is how painful it is to read even though you know it is coming and how, even though you're reading about something completely foreign to you, you know that what you're reading is true and real--and how, even though you know better, you hope the god will step in and change the inevitable.

There are no gimmicks to this writing. And none are necessary. The writer just repeatedly kicks you in the stomach, and with each kick you realize that people are cruel, politics are ruthless, and fairness is nothing more than luck.

But why do people read such books? I considered shutting this one numerous times, but the blurbs on the back, all of which spoke of ultimate redemption, kept me reading. Also, there's guilt. I've been pretty lucky so far, and maybe I can choose my own penance for that: suffering vicariously (ah, catharsis). Readers, I suppose, are godlike as well. Plus, if I keep reading works like this, maybe one day I'll be able to write them.

I'd love to think that one day I might have the power to (metaphorically, of course) hold a reader's heart in my fist.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Best Advice

The best advice I ever received about writing came from a grammar class I took a few years ago. Until that point, I had loved writing long, complex sentences. Whether writing fiction or even an e-mail, my sentences flourished like leafy elms, branching out into clauses, parenthetical phrases, and compound sentences. But when we read some excerpts from Hemingway, his use of the short sentence really stood out. The idea of placing a short sentence in a paragraph of long, weedy thoughts fascinated me. The short sentence can be used to symbolize so many things: a stark emotion, a jolt back to reality from a narrator's daydreamy prose, a sudden accident, an unexpected guest, a change in tone, a transition sentence. In fact, in addition to diction, the choice of sentence type is very important part of writing that often gets overlooked by inexperienced writers—any story, from any point of view or any character, tends to get written in the style in which they are most comfortable, even if it doesn't fit what they're trying to do. My advice for writers is to read s story once for plot and metaphors and then again, taking note of sentence length/type and diction (another entry for sure—anybody want to field this one?). Study the sentence structures established writers use—they aren't there by accident.