This is what good storytellers do. Yet doing so is surprisingly difficult, which is perhaps why Hemingway compared writing to sitting in front of a typewriter and bleeding. If we’re doing it right, the rawness of our humanity bleeds out onto the paper.
The process to create writing that is true to the human experience is akin to the Velveteen Rabbit’s process of becoming real. “Does it hurt?” the rabbit asks in Williams’ children’s story.
Where writing is concerned, yes, it hurts. It hurts because it is difficult to draw on those emotional reserves, to extract the essence of the most challenging moments we have lived through, and because honesty—especially with ourselves—can be unnerving even in small doses.
But is it necessary? Absolutely. Writing that is inauthentic is writing that is forgotten and put down.
When we write, we are given permission to break free from the mold of societal expectations about oversharing. In fact, our stories fall flat due to undersharing.
And like the Velveteen Rabbit’s becoming real, learning to share at this level, to reach those depths of honesty with ourselves and our readers, and finding the voice to express it, all take time.
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. (Williams)
The same could be said, I would argue, for the creation of good writers.
Writers must be real—first with themselves and, in turn, with their audiences. We must be willing to be the oversharer on the plane to the point of hyperbole, to tell not only the story, but to reveal its deepest emotional and psychological underpinnings. This catharsis requires a lot of mining. (The process may also be why Hemingway suggested writing while intoxicated, but that’s a different topic for another day.)
So, go ahead: Put yourself out there. Be “that guy” on the train. Be the grandma with the wallet-sized photos of her plethora of grandchildren. But tell it real. Tell it raw. Be, as a writer, the person polite society rejects in walnut-panelled parlors for saying what was best left unsaid.
Oversharing is the burden of being a good writer, but it is, too, its simultaneous freedom.
Make Up Your Mind!
“Ok, so what you’re telling me, Annalisa, is that I should not be too emotional, but I’ve got to be super emotional. Which is it?”
Yes.
The trick to quality writing is to be real without being dramatic.
This is what people mean when they say, “Avoid sentimentality.”
Because we are programmed to limit emotional stress, you, as the writer—as the emotional mitigator of the novel—have an important job to do.
You need to balance the emotional swings of your novel.
Let’s step into the Hundred Acre Wood. You’ve got Pooh, and Tigger, and Eeyore. Who gets the most time center stage? Pooh. Why? He’s neutral. Tigger, like, ohmigosh and what, and now I’m here, and oop, here we go, and woohoo. I love Tigger, but he takes a lot of energy to hang out with.
And then there’s Eeyore. Oh Eeyore, so sad and dreary, down in the dumps Eeyore. Sad, sad Eeyore. That takes a lot of energy too, right?
You are swinging the pendulum between these two ends and: To every action there is also an opposite and equal reaction. (That should be, like, a law or a rule or something.)
Most of the emotional tension is going to take place right around the middle (Pooh), but if you swing to high, sometime soon you’ve got to swing the same distance toward low.
How do I know which is which? How do I measure?
Again, another frustrating element of writing and revision, because there’s no unique answer. The godsend here is that we, as writers, like actors, in general, have an entrenched sense of empathy. We can usually feel what is right once we read through a draft.
AND...ACTION!
In real life, we have lots of goals, dreams, and aspirations. We’ve got several projects that take up our time: our family, friends, home, jobs, etc.
Characters are not afforded this luxury. While you don’t want your characters to be flat or one-dimensional, they are limited.
What am I talking about? We are complicated, we human beings, with a constant internal monologue and conflicting desires and, and, and. This complexity is not only difficult to convey, but it’s difficult for the reader to keep tabs on.
If the readers knew the characters on the same deep level as they know those who are closest to them, and (and the “and” here is important) they followed along on their adventure and knew all of the details, that would be overwhelming. There would be too many threads to keep track of. As the author, you choose which threads to go deep on, and which to only scratch the surface with.
Remember that thingie I said about balance. Here’s another balancing act.
So, if you’re writing a psychological novel, and you’re digging deep into character, you’re probably going to have fewer characters and less action. If you’re writing a quest, you’ll likely have a lot of action and perilous situations, and maybe one character we know well, but not too, too well.
Case in point: Detectives in crime fiction novels are working to solve only one mystery. In reality, of course, detectives work several cases at once.
Why is the balance of limitations important? Can you imagine the scenario where we have a detective working on the blue case and discovering the body, then running off to the red case where the fingerprints have just revealed the identity of the murderer, Colonel Mustard, and now he’s got to dash off to the conservatory to reinvestigate the crime scene. But wait, there’s a phone call about the blue case…
I am exhausted just thinking about it.
One of the conventions of this genre is to simplify narrative by handling one case at a time. (In general. All rules, of course, have exceptions.)
Consider how you need to limit some plot elements in order to enhance others in your narrative.
(There’s that thingie about balancing again.)
The point here is balance in your reader experience. Remember at the beginning of this chapter I told you the three most important considerations in pacing: audience, audience, audience? Well, here’s how you take heed of that advice.
If you make your plot non-stop exciting with a bad guy around every corner, it’s going to exhaust your reader. Likewise, if you lumber to your point and beat around the bush, your reader is going to get tired and put down your book.
You will have high-excitement moments. You will have emotionally difficult moments. And the bulk of your novel will be just regular old getting from here to there moments: entertaining, lots at stake, but not overly emotionally charged.
On Being a Character
Sometimes English-teacher types (We won’t mention any names; save that for your therapist.) like to throw around lots of fancy lexicon without telling you why it matters.
“Hamlet is a dynamic character whose character arc is juxtaposed by...blah, blah, blah…”
You’ve tuned out. They’re showing off, and you’re not interested.
I know. I was never that teacher. (God help me; I hope I wasn’t!) And I am not that writing coach, so here’s, uh, what we goin’ ta do.
Let’s review character types, and I’m going to tell you why you should care.
Wait, characters? Wasn’t that a few chapters ago?
Uh huh. I knew you were smart. That’s why I like you. Keep reading.
We have two main ways we talk about characters. They are either dynamic or static AND either round or flat.
Let’s talk about science again.
Stop rolling your eyes.
In physics, that which is dynamic is that which
is related to force of motion. Motion. Keep that word in mind.
Again, in physics, that which is static is that which does not produce motion.
Ok, science lesson over. You may wipe the sweat off your brow now.
Look, I don’t know why we writers borrowed terms from physics, but we did. Here’s how the terms apply: Characters who are dynamic move, they go somewhere, they change. They used to be sad, now they’re happy. They were searching for a job, now they have a fulfilling career. They used to be lonely, now they’re dead.
That got dismal fast.
Moving on.
When we think about flat vs. round characters, we’re thinking about how well we know the characters.
A round character is someone we know well, they’re fleshed out, if you will. They’re in 3D. A flat character is someone we know very little about, and don’t need to. These are movers and shakers in the background of the story.
For all y’all visual learners out there, here’s the skinny:
Ok, vocabulary lesson over.
Some of those English-y types also think they’re teaching you important concepts, when really they’re just teaching you what words mean. I claimed not to be one of those hooligans, so let me prove it.
Let me tell you why you care about these words, and why this aspect of character belongs in the pacing section.
When you consider your characters, you’ll want to make sure that you have appropriate balance of character types. This is not nineteenth century British literature; we do not need every character fully fleshed out. (No offense to some of my favorite authors: Austen; Dickens; Thackeray…)
Think of a see-saw when you balance this section. If you’ve got one round character, be sure to have a flat one to balance him out; same goes for static and dynamic.
Were you the kid who tried to move in front of the see-saw seat, tried to move down the pipe, closer and closer to the middle to see if you and your friend could balance exactly evenly and hover in the air?
Good! Be that author. Balance out the degree to which your characters are flat and round, dynamic and static.
The key to a good novel is to have every aspect in balance.
Yes, this is why writing is work.
Think of your favorite sitcom.
Every moment of intensity is balanced with a moment of down time.
In each episode, a different character faces some challenge, while someone else fades into the background.
In the middle of the battle, Lancelot is not also having an existential crisis. He’s just slaying the dragon (or whatever).
And now for…
The Rainbow Bridge from Balance to Economy
We’ll be back, after this chapter break.
ECONOMY
WHEN IT COMES TO the economy, what you’ve got to understand is the relationship between supply and demand. The price of any commodity is determined by the relationship between its supply and its demand. Whenever there is a surplus of a good...
Uh, wait. Wrong book.
When we talk about economy in writing, what we’re really talking about is being economical. We often equate economical with penny-pinching, and to be sure that is one means of economy. When we use the term in writing, however, we mean: the opposite of being profligate or wasteful.
You are not the prodigal son here. You’re the son who stayed home.
(I’ll take Biblical References for $2000, Alex.)
In other words, don’t be wasteful.
Great, got it. What aren’t we wasting again?
When one is economical in writing, one uses one’s space wisely, like in a poem, or as if this is your last piece of paper and bit of ink to get your message out into the world. An economical writer is one who does not overuse words, who does not use two words when one will do.
Back in the days before digital news, print newspapers only had so much space—they were limited by the size of the paper, see?
Journalists write in a special form called the inverted pyramid; this form ranks information by importance, placing what is most important at the beginning of an article, and least important last. Part of the reason for this organization is reader interest. (Most newspaper readers don’t read the full article.) However, it’s also in the interest of space. Back in the day the editor would start chopping off from the bottom up. This system meant that the most essential information would always be printed.
Hemingway, like so many others who had newspapers as a training ground, learned to economize. There was only so much space; he needed to use it wisely.
Today, with our word processing programs and online articles, these considerations are less important. For the most part, we can take as much room as we need—and so writers
FILL THE SPACE.
The art of being concise has been lost in many ways due to these new publishing media, and this shift has led to an increase in sloppy writing.
Sloppy writing loses clarity and your message gets lost in too many words.
Don’t want to be a Sloppy Joe?
Write as if you’ve got limited space, and see how your writing improves.
On Being a Character
Wait, didn’t we already see that section?
I told you you were smart. Stick with me as we talk about…
The Rainbow Bridge from Balance to Economy (part two)
In the previous section we talked about the importance of balance in character types. Closely related: what elements the plot needs to move it forward. This is where economy comes in.
Remember the glacier?
As authors, we need to know the whole life story of our characters; we need to understand why they do what they do, who they are, where they came from, and where they’re headed. But in the revision, when we’re considering pacing, we only include what moves the plot forward.
Considering economy in the revision of character arcs means considering what’s included and what’s not. Now is the the moment we figure out what goes above and below the water’s surface. (You’re still following the glacier analogy, right?)
Remember way back in the Introduction when the circling little string pen was at your feet to demonstrate the evolution over time of the creation of a novel?
Well, the string’s at your waist now. Now is the moment in the vortex where you’re ready to make more advanced decisions. You couldn’t make those decisions when the string was at your feet because you didn’t have enough material, enough information about character motivation to work with.
The work of what’s included and what’s not is the main work of revision, which for pantsers is all about polishing the pacing. Which, in turn, is why this aspect of character belongs in the pacing section, not the character section.
Aaaaah. Vortex. Here’s a little something for you visual learners:
Remember when I promised you I would tell you why you care? Well, I just did.
Being economical with your time
When you’re drafting a character, you might know whether she is flat or round. Being a pantser, though, you already know that anything and everything may change in the drafting—including who’s round and who’s flat.
No sense hiring a bathroom remodel in the Pantone color of the year, only to discover you hate it and you’re out $20K. What?
In other words, don’t get too attached to an idea before you’ve fully explored it. There are aspects of character which are great to consider once you know the characters very, very well, once you’ve set them in motion and seen what they do, where they go. Waiting to consider some of these aspects until the revision stage can help you to avoid getting lost in the rabbit hole of sitting around thinking about the characters and making them fit somewhere.
Many a writer has gotten lost in the trap of thinking about writing in the drafting stages rather than writing in an order, with a method, that will allow the answers to those questions unfold when they need to.
What Makes a Page Turner?
REMEMBER: The rea
der turns pages, and continues to turn pages, in the interest of answering a question.
What kind of question?
Details about setting? No.
No. Character appearance? No.
We can use these symbolically to move the plot forward, but no one cares about the fabric on the sofa unless it serves a purpose. (Red is boring. Blood-stained is intriguing.)
The kind of questions we’re talking about here are about the central desires of your characters and of the plot.
Economy means that every single word should serve the purpose of answering a question. There is one (sort of) exception to this rule. I’m going to tell you about the exception, and then I am going to tell you why the exception isn’t an exception at all.
The envelope, please. And the exception is...comedy.
ENTER Professor Parent [STAGE RIGHT]
Comedy can be used well and effectively to break up the tension in your piece, to give your reader a break, as it were.
Shakespeare was on to this trick, and all of his tragedies contain comic moments. (Notice I said tragedies there. Yes, all of his tragedies include comedy. Isn’t that inconsistent? Read on.)
Let’s consider Hamlet. The Prince has gone mad, and has been sent to England. Upon his return to Denmark, he finds a grave digger digging a grave. (What else would he be doing?)
Word play and avoiding the question in a “who’s on first” fashion ensues.
(I have a strong preference for the BBC’s 2009 adaptation starring David Tennant. If you’re looking to revisit this classic, which I strongly recommend, I advise checking out this version.)
Storytelling for Pantsers Page 10