Shut Up & Write!

by Judy Bridges

This is the beginning of the essay I wrote. It appeared in the Sunday magazine of The Milwaukee Journal under the title, “The Price of Independence: At 92, Eva holds tightly to her own way of life.”

  Eva stands in the hosiery aisle at Woolworth’s, shaking with anger. She glares at the baby-faced clerk like an eagle ready to attack. Suddenly the lines on her old face rearrange into a horrified look. There is a gushing sound. Her white summer shoes fill with the product of an irritated colon.

  After a stunned silence, Eva lifts her shoulders, steps out of the reeking puddle and hurries from the store.

  She lies to protect herself. “The doctor gave me the wrong cathartic.”

  The lie is almost convincing.

  “People like that uppity clerk think I’m feebleminded just because I’m old,” she says to her younger companion. “Well, I have news for them. I’m not ready for the fox farm yet!”

  “The Price of Independence” by Judy Bridges

  The Milwaukee Journal, November 28, 1982

  The lead of this essay raises some ethical questions that I discuss later in this chapter, in the section “Writing about Friends and Family?” At this point, what I’d like you to notice is that Eva “glares at the baby-faced clerk like an eagle ready to attack.” I’d forgotten about that glare until I put her characteristics on the wheel, but the minute I wrote it down, I knew I’d never forget again.

  Tips for Using the Character Wheel

  Practice

  Create at least two Character Wheels: one for an imaginary character, another for someone you know. Set a timer for fifteen minutes each. Moving quickly opens doors that may surprise you.

  Create a Wheel for Each Character

  Create a fully developed wheel for each major character. Include several items on each spoke and circle unexpected details. Less developed wheels will do for minor characters. In all cases, keep adding details until the character comes alive for you.

  Keep Your Notes Short

  One or two words should be enough. All you need is a reminder; your imagination will do the rest.

  Stay with Concrete, Sensual Details

  Later, when you’re writing, you will use these concrete details to illuminate the deeper psychological aspects of your character. Straight shoulders show pride. Flamingo-colored lace shows a touch of sauciness and maybe an interesting history.

  Notice Any Spokes that Are Regularly Light

  Chances are these are the senses that you tend to write lightly as well, which means you have an opportunity to beef up your writing by focusing more in these areas.

  Author Sara Vogan, my all-time favorite writing teacher, went through her drafts with five colored pencils, one for each sense, and circled the sense references as she came upon them. If she was light on any one color, she knew she had an opportunity to do better. When I do this, I am routinely light on blue for sound, and the truth is that my hearing has never been particularly acute—I have to pay close attention to hear sounds and even closer attention to write about them. When I see a lack of blue on the page, I see an opportunity to improve my writing.

  Aim for Simplicity

  It’s difficult to hit the right balance between adding details and overdoing them. There is no absolute rule for this, no exact number of things to say. Earlier I mentioned Alice Walker’s description of her mother having “a look that would make you sit down.” I adore that simplicity. But at other times, you might want to rewrite “Bob loved his ’67 Mustang” to “Behind the wheel of his ’67 muscle car, Bob felt intensely alive. When he pressed his foot on the throttle, the adrenaline flowed and his blood raced along with the well-tuned engine.”

  It’s a matter of taste and practice—and to use the Irish vernacular, there’s “nothing for it” but to keep writing until it sounds right.

  Play “Twenty Questions”

  Writers’ magazines often include articles that feature exercises you can use to discover deep psychological aspects of your characters, such as writing their resumes or answering lists of questions about their backgrounds, lifestyles, wins, losses, and miseries. The longest list of questions I’ve seen is seventeen pages. I never used it, but if I did, I would know what time my character goes to bed at night and whether she brushes her teeth straight up and down or sideways.

  Novelist Elaine Bergstrom distributes a list of twenty questions to participants in her workshops. Answering the questions allows you to delve deeper into the psychology of your character without forcing you to write more pages than you can keep track of (see Figure 6).

  Keep a Binder

  Place copies of your Character Wheels in a binder. Add photos of people who look like your characters, plus bits of background or dialogue you write in the middle of the night or while you’re hanging out in the coffee shop. Novelist Stephen Boehrer fills a binder with information about his characters, including magazine photos of clothing styles and colors. When he needs to bring a character to mind, he has only to open the binder and thumb through the pages.

  Playing Twenty Questions with Your Character

  by Elaine Bergstrom

  What does s/he look like?

  When and where was s/he born and raised?

  Siblings or an only child? If siblings, how did they get along?

  What kind of family life did s/he have?

  What kind of religious life?

  Education level?

  A good student or a poor one? Class leader or follower?

  Outgoing or introvert?

  How was adolescence? Sexually active or withdrawn?

  What sort of speech or physical mannerisms does your character have?

  Name three defining moments in your character’s life before your story begins. If these were minor moments and the story is going to be the major event, give the minor ones and show how the seeds of her/his reaction color the present situation.

  What does your character hate most about her/himself?

  What are your character’s main flaws? Does s/he realize they are flaws?

  How does your character react under stress? Take charge? Weepy? Cowardly? Silly? If you’re still not sure, write a stressful scene and see how s/he reacts.

  How does your character react to boredom?

  Name your character’s greatest fear. Watch out for this. If you try to use it in the story and don’t do it well, the result can be transparent.

  If your character is good, what makes him/her good?

  If your character is bad, what caused it? (Yes, just being born is an answer.)

  How does s/he view the other characters in the story?

  How do they view him/her?

  Figure 6. Playing Twenty Questions with Your Character by Elaine Bergstrom

  Tips for Working with Characters

  Choose Characters Wisely

  Novelist Shauna Singh Baldwin says, “Before you settle in to writing a novel about particular characters, make sure you like them.” It can take two to five years to write a novel. During that time, you will be intensely involved with the characters, living their traumas, seeing and feeling the world through their bodies and minds. That’s entirely too much time to spend with people you don’t like.

  Choose Names Wisely

  Give your characters names that look different on the page. After the first few pages, readers skim lines of attribution, noticing only the first few letters and the length and shape of names. Julie looks like Judy; Kevin looks like Keith. Readers have to concentrate to sort out who’s who, which takes them away (momentarily) from the meaning of the writing. Choose names with different first letters, syllables, and even shapes—Julie and Annika, Kevin and Excelsior, Hank and Joshua.

  Just Say “Said”

  Not long ago I walked past the door of a fourth-grade classroom and heard the teacher telling students to write “uttered” or “muttered” instead of “said.” I almost rushed in to yell, “No! And don’t tell them to write, ‘He chimed,’ either!” Honestly, did you ever hear a person chime?


  You can—should—describe the manner in which a person said something if it adds information—if, for instance, he screamed, or spat, or choked out the words. Otherwise, “Jonas said” is quite enough.

  In his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith consistently used “cried” instead of “said.”

  “‘You cannot be ignorant, my children,’ cried I.”

  We can forgive Goldsmith because he was writing in 1747. If he wrote that today, would you stick with him through thirty-two chapters of “I crieds”?

  If the reader can tell who said what in a string of dialogue, you can skip the attribution altogether. When I know Jonas said it, you don’t need to tell me.

  Avoid Overly Chatty, Overly Described Dialogue

  Here’s an example of overly chatty, overly described dialogue.

  “Why don’t we meet for lunch today?” Chris suggested.

  “Just let me check my schedule to see if I have a meeting . . . hang on . . . where’d I put my calendar,” Joan muttered. “Oh yes, here it is! How did it get over here in this drawer?” she grumbled.

  “I had a client cancel, so I have an extra hour,” Chris added.

  “Yes, I can make it. Let’s meet at the Thai buffet!” Joan exclaimed.

  “Ooh, I love that place!” Chris cried. “See you at twelve-thirty?” she asked.

  Here’s an example of what happens when you rewrite the overly chatty, overly described dialogue to eliminate extraneous phrases and distracting attributions.

  “Why don’t we meet for lunch today,” said Chris. “I had a client cancel, so I have an extra hour.”

  “Just let me check my calendar. I’m always misplacing that thing,” said Joan. “Oh, here it is. Yes, I can make it. How about Thai Buffet?”

  “I love that place,” Chris said. “See you at twelve-thirty?”

  In the following dialogue, each line moves the story along and brings you closer to the characters.

  He could hear his heart thundering in his chest and the idea of Jiffy just standing there, for Christ’s sake, was totally freaking him out. He cursed loud music and gunfire and city traffic for his hearing loss. His right ear was working overtime, he could almost feel it trying to reach out toward the edge of the tent to figure out what was going on and let him know. Another step. He bolted out.

  There stood Jiffy, cane in hand, looking startled. “Hey,” he said, face pale in the flashlight beam.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Craig shouted.

  “Taking a walk.”

  “Around my god damn tent?”

  “Hey, no need to get upset, man, I was just walking around. Am I keeping you awake?”

  “Listen, why can’t you walk over there,” Craig said, swinging the flashlight, “or there?”

  “Because I need a starting point. I need something to walk around, Craig, I can’t just walk back and forth.”

  “So walk around your fucking trailer.”

  “I do that all the time. I am lacking in purpose, I believe.”

  “What? Listen, if you don’t stop it I’m going to just pack my tent and go to a hotel.”

  “I don’t believe there’s a hotel until you get to the next county, and that one’s probably sold out.”

  Craig did not like the sound of that.

  Jiffy eyed his cooler.

  “What? You want a beer?” he asked.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Jiffy said.

  —From The Pilgrim’s Ground by Laurel Landis

  Writing about Friends and Family?

  If you plan to write about a person you know but modify him slightly, I suggest that you modify him more than slightly. It’s bad enough having your relatives imagine that they are the characters in your stories; it’s a lot worse if they know for sure. Humorist Erma Bombeck said she lost a friend for every story she wrote. Some weren’t even in the stories; they just thought they were.

  Writer Anne Lamott suggests that if a woman wants to write a character like her ex, she can spare herself some trouble by giving the character a teeny tiny you-know-what. The ex is not likely to insist that she was writing about him.

  In "The Price of Independence," I used a very personal event in a woman's life to introduce a piece on the fight for independence in old age. I could have started with statistics: “X number of elderly people fear the move to nursing homes.” Or a quote: “According to Dr. Wise, elderly people fight to stay in their homes.” Both are fine ways to begin, but I wanted more out of it. More intensity. More feeling.

  The old woman in the Independence story was my grandmother, Eva. It was because of her that I was interested in the issue in the first place and wanted to write about it. She put the passion in the story for me, and I thought she would do that for others. Obviously you have ethical questions to answer when you write something like this. Should you use a real person? Should you use someone you love? Should you show her in such embarrassing circumstances? You might decide otherwise, but my decision to use that particular scene was based on the piercing way it showed the conflict between infirmity and pride. I knew my grandmother would not be aware of the article by the time it was published, and that if she had known about it, she would have told me to "quit fussing around and write the damned thing!"

  When the essay appeared in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine, my sister’s mother-in-law called her and said, “You have to read this.” It took awhile, but when my sister finally got around to reading it, she said out loud, “This sounds just like Gram!” Then she looked at the byline. Well, wha’da’ya know.

  Here’s my rule: If you are writing about friends or family, don’t whitewash. It doesn’t work anyway; the reader can smell it a mile away. But don’t set out to hurt people, either. In other words, if your ex actually had a teeny tiny you-know-what, find something else to write about.

  Writing about Yourself?

  Think twice before casting yourself as the main character in either a fictional or true story. If you want to write a story about yourself or from your life, write it in first person, without pretending it happened to Megan or Maggie or Marlowe.

  If you absolutely must write your own story in third person, create a new character of yourself, starting with a radically different body shape and color of hair. That might keep you from making the child-you too adorable or the adult-you too excusable. But for the record, readers are still likely to guess it’s you. I once wrote a day-my-dog-died story in which I played a sweet little girl named Maggie. If it ever surfaces, I will simply die.

  The best characters seem like they’re real, whether or not they are. When I started reading this story, I thought it was about the author.

  I was in seventh grade that year, and my dream was to get my hair done at Sally’s Beauty Shop so I would look like the town girls. I had turned last year’s lunchbox into what I called my beauty box. It held the rusty scissors I used to cut my bangs, a bar of Ivory Soap wrapped in waxed paper, and my favorite belonging, a compact I found in one of the boxes up in the attic. The puff was missing and only a thin line of powder remained around the rim of the bottom tray, but the mirror was clear and the lid closed with a satisfying snap.

  —From “The Haircut” by Carol Wobig

  After I read the story, I got to thinking, Wait a minute, I know this author, she lived in town! How much of this story is true and how much is not? I’ll never know and that’s fine, because it’s none of my business. What is my business, as a reader, is to appreciate the exquisite way she put me into the life of a little girl who hid her girly treasures in last year’s lunchbox and, like so many other little girls, wished she was like the townies.

  When you write about yourself, you end up with a mix of truth and fiction anyway, because none of us has an infallible memory. When my grandmother was near her end and refusing to socialize, she said she’d rather just sit still and think about her life. Knowing her, I asked, “You mean, you’re rewriting history?” She said yes, she knew enough now to make things b
etter. Imagine the difference in the books she would have written at the ages of fifteen, and fifty, and ninety-four.

  My next book will be a collection of family stories titled You Drive. You’re Too Drunk to Sing. I will write it in first person and make sure to include the notice: “This book is full of lies.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  STORIES

  Fact or Fiction

  A novel can educate to some extent. But first, a novel has to entertain—that’s the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I’ll give you a reason to turn every page.

  —Barbara Kingsolver, novelist

  Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, novelist

  When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.

  —Raymond Chandler, novelist

  From parables to advertising, nursery rhymes to novels, we learn, change our lives, and buy products because of the stories we hear. Sometimes things we don’t even think of as stories affect us. When one of my cousins gave up a successful business to become a full-time fisherman, his wife said she knew exactly when he decided. It was when his dad told a story about a man who gave up everything to homestead in Alaska. As soon as the words left her father-in-law’s mouth, she knew their lives would never be the same.