Now, with time, if you don't look at it for a week or a month, you'll have a fresh response to it—for a draft or two, at best. Then you're back to being illiterate again. If you're writing a long piece, like a novel, and you go straight through and don't look at the beginning until you've gone all the way through, you'll have a fresh response when you get back to the beginning and be able to rewrite well. But even with a novel, you can get stale, especially since you'll need to rework parts of it over and over. So, you can fall into the same rut with a novel.
For that reason, taking time off isn't a good idea—not to mention the risk of losing your edge, your nerve, or getting blocked during the break. No, time off is not the way to go. It's possible to refresh yourself, to regain your perspective, without having to forget what you've done.
So, it takes 5-plus drafts to get the most out of your story, but that still doesn't answer the question of how you know when you're finished. Now, we're talking about doing your best work at your present skill level—not writing the perfect story. The more stories you write, the better you get. You don't want to wear yourself out trying for perfection on a single story. You get it down the best you can at this time, within reason, and then move on. You can always come back and rewrite it later when you're a better writer.
John Fowles, author of The Collector (his first big novel/bestseller/movie) and later The French Lieutenant's Woman (also a bestseller and a movie—and a great example of a present omniscient narrator), also wrote a bestseller, The Magus, in between these two novels. Fowles, ten years after the success of The Magus, decided to rewrite the entire novel, which he did. This second version of The Magus was also a critical and commercial success and a bestseller for
a second time. So, there are two versions of The Magus, each considered equally valid and different enough from the other to justify its own book. Your library should have both. If you want to see what happened to the author and how he changed as expressed through his craft, you could read both versions.
So, when are you done? Never. But when you've gone through all the story and rewriting techniques, touched all bases, you will have gotten on to the page most (nobody gets all, not even Fowles in his second time around) of what you have at this stage of your writing. You're done for now, as far as you can tell. But maybe not for all time. If one of your stories comes alive in you sometime down the line (usually more like years than months), if you find new excitement in it because of new ideas or (more often) new skills, you can always redo it. This reworking of old work is most often done on unsuccessful pieces you're attached to rather than on successful ones.
Another good comparison is a story written twice by Flannery O'Connor. The first version was called The Geranium, written in 1947 as part of her M.F.A. thesis. The second version, called Judgement Day, was done in 1964. There was a great difference in the way O'Connor approached this story the second time. Both versions are in Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories, published by the Noonday Press (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Another excellent example of the craft in progress (rewriting) is F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. There's a paperback version, published by Scribner's, titled: "The Last Tycoon (unfinished) with a foreword by Edmund Wilson and notes by the author." The important part is "notes by the author." The novel itself is 126 pages. Following the novel is a synopsis pieced together from Fitzgerald's notes and things he said to others while writing it. Then, most importantly, we get Fitzgerald's notes to himself—notes that appeared on the manuscript pages along with diagrams, outlines, and notes from his notebook. The most instructive part of it, for our purpose, is to see not only how he worked, but how much trouble he was having, how he struggled with getting the novel into shape.
Now, that doesn't mean his way will be your way. You may develop a simpler, more straightforward approach or one that's more complicated and roundabout. Every author works differently. Go with what feels right to you, but don't be afraid to try different approaches to see if they'll get you there more easily.
Story is about experience. So, one thing you do when you rewrite is relax and reread what you've written to see how it affects you and how much of an experience you get. Since it's all about emotion, you need to feel your story. But we know that you can lose your way in your feelings just as you can while writing. You may not be sure how your story feels or what's the better choice.
So, you're lost. What can you do? How do you find your way back into your story? Any ideas? Where do you go first, always? When you're in trouble, what do you do?
Michael Jordan: the plan. Jimmy Connors: keep your eye on the ball. CRAFT. Go to your craft. Yes, here they are again: WANT, OBSTACLE, ACTION. We just went over them in the last chapter, but you need to go over them again and again. We're going over them several times in the course. Even if you feel they're a pain or think you know them already, go over them anyway whenever you run into them. You need to. We all do.
WANT, OBSTACLE, ACTION: go to them first—always. Check for those elements before you do anything else. If you don't, and if the problem is a lack of those elements (which it almost always is), you will waste a lot of time and energy working elsewhere and never fix the problem. It's like waxing your car when it needs a new engine. No matter how much you get it to shine, you'll never make it run right.
So, once again, the first question always is, WHO WANTS WHAT? If no one wants anything, that's the problem. That's where you need to work. But don't gloss over it. Don't decide the character wants and wants enough without taking a careful look at what you have on the page. Do not work in your head. The only thing that counts, the only thing that exists, is what's on the page. So, find the want on the page and mark where it first appears. Then answer these questions: Does it appear as early as possible? How strong is it? Could it be stronger? Is the character as determined/driven as he can be to get what he wants? Does he feel that he absolutely cannot go on with things the way they are, that things must change or else? (Is he as in love as Romeo or Scarlett or Gatsby, as obsessed as Ahab or Hamlet?) Why does he care? What are his specific and personal reasons?
Note that the want does not always express itself first. It's always there, but not visible until it is denied or thwarted, as in Hamlet when his father's ghost appears or in my Larry scene when I see my wife kissing Larry. Hamlet was not wishing, I hope Dad doesn't show up and order me to avenge his death. Nor was I thinking, I hope my wife's not cheating on me. Nevertheless, the want must be there even though it's buried since it's satisfied.
The second question is always WHAT'S THE OBSTACLE? Where does it first appear on the page? Find it, and mark it. Does it appear as early as possible? Could it be stronger? Is it as determined/driven to block the character as the character is determined to overcome it? Could the character do nothing and suffer no injury? If the character can ignore the obstacle and get away with it, you have a false obstacle/false conflict, which means no conflict, no drama, no story.
Once you have the want and obstacle cranked up to the maximum (without violating the sense of your story—a character can be driven without being as whacked out as Ahab or Hamlet), then it's time for ACTION. WHAT'S THE CHARACTER DOING TO OVERCOME
THE PROBLEM? Is he making an all-out direct attack upon (or defense against) the obstacle? Where does this action first appear on the page? Find it. Mark it. Could it happen sooner? What else could the character do? Could he do more? Is he using himself to the maximum? If not, make it happen. Remember, thinking is action if it's struggling with and planning how to attack or defend against the obstacle. Remember, the obstacle must counterattack/fight back/resist with equal force.
Now, if you have WANT, OBSTACLE, ACTION working, it's very rare that you'll be in any real trouble. The RESOLUTION, which is simply a matter of a victory or a defeat, should not be a problem if you have a deep want, a threatening obstacle, and a character who is using all he has to overcome the problem. With those elements, the one, two, three of dramati
c momentum, working, it's impossible to have a weak story.
Want, obstacle, action, and resolution are elements of form. The other crucial concern is not form, but a product of it. It's EMOTION, and it's more of an ingredient, a seasoning, that's all over the place, rather than part of form. But it doesn't matter what we call it, as long as we're aware of what the character is feeling at all times. A good way to get to the emotions in the character is to ask what the character's worries, fears, and hopes are at every important moment in the story. These should appear on every page and often several times on a page and should be expressed through both the character's inner thoughts and his actions, which are not always the same.
Anyone who is wrestling with a threatening problem that can harm him or something dear to him will be worried and afraid of what might happen while, at the same time, hoping that he can do something to win out. With such a threat, the emotion is intense and nearly constant and needs to be expressed in the character whenever you have the chance. Go through your story and ask of every line possible, "What are the character's worries, fears, and hopes?" Remember, emotion is the payoff. It's where the ultimate connection is made, where identification occurs, where the reader becomes the character. If the reader doesn't know where the character is emotionally, he doesn't know where he himself is, and he drifts away from the story.
The other concern is a matter of technique: SHOWING. Showing is creating the experience, making it happen right before our eyes, word for word, moment by moment, rather than describing it or generalizing about it. Showing is your constant method of presenting your story, your ongoing concern at all times. The purest and most effective form of showing is scene. You need to be showing as much as possible.
Those are your basic elements—CONFLICT (WANT + OBSTACLE), ACTION, RESOLUTION, EMOTION, SHOWING. They need to be working not only in the overall story, but in every single scene. For every scene and every chapter, you must deal with want, obstacle, action, resolution. Every scene is a struggle/confrontation between two forces, between the want and the obstacle. Every scene has a resolution—not a final resolution, but a scene resolution. In other words, every scene is a little story in itself. And at the end of each scene, things are worse than at the beginning. In stories, things get worse and worse, the plot thickens and complicates, until the final resolution—victory or defeat.
Romeo and Juliet, for example, is one complication after another. Shordy after Romeo and Juliet are secretly married, Romeo tries to stop his friend Mercutio from fighting with Tybalt, but instead causes Mercutio's death. In his anguish and fury, Romeo kills Tybalt and is later banished for it. Her lover gone, Juliet is despondent. That's bad, but to make matters worse, her father proposes that she marry Paris. When Juliet objects, her father flies into a rage and orders her to marry Paris and sets a date for the wedding. Shakespeare heaps one
difficulty after another onto the "star-crossed" lovers. Stars are crossed—who crossed them? Shakespeare.
Things may get better in a story, or seem to, briefly. If they do, it's only a setup to knock them down and make things even worse—to reenergize the characters and the drama. Each scene needs to end in the mind of the character, who is more upset than he was at the opening and stewing over the new complication besetting him and what to do now. If things aren't worse at the end of every scene and every chapter, your story is marking time, standing still. If the story isn't moving, the reader will move—away.
It's these basic elements that make you or break you. They're all you need. If you get them right, any other mistakes you make won't matter. Every story that I've seen that failed was lacking in one of these basic elements. So, the first thing to do when rewriting, always, is to go over your story and check for these elements.
Once you're sure that you have these elements working, you're ready to try the other rewriting techniques in this chapter to get the maximum out of your story and yourself. You can take each of these techniques and go through and apply it to your story. There's a lot here, and it may seem like an exhausting list, but with practice, you'll master them and be able to apply several if not all of them simultaneously.
RULE NOTHING OUT
Go over your story, and let your mind run wild, imagining anything and everything that could possibly happen, what else the characters could think, feel, and do. Go for the far-out possibilities. Don't worry about going too far. At this point the problem is not going far enough. We shy away from pushing things to the limit—and beyond. We're organized personalities with boundaries and defenses. To ere-
ate, we need to break through those boundaries, to be open to anything and everything that's in us. And because you can't really go beyond yourself, no matter how far-fetched an idea feels, it will have your personal stamp, your sense of order, on it.
If you do go too far out with your story, you can always cut back. An old writing rule says: The best way to find out what's enough is to do too much. So, if the man's wife shocks him by asking for a divorce and he's desperate to keep her, what might he do? Initially, you might have him argue, make promises, beg, or even threaten. But later you might consider having him attack, stalk, bribe, blackmail, murder, or slander his wife—or a combination of these—to uncover what's in him and you. He may not do any of these, but you need to explore every possibility. And even if he doesn't do them, he could well contemplate and dream of doing them. Thought is action. So, go as far as your imagination takes you, then see what you have and use what works.
LET NOTHING BE EASY
Let nothing be easy for anyone ever. Create and take advantage of every opportunity to cause trouble. Think about how difficult things were for Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Ahab, Gatsby, Scarlett O'Hara. Who made them difficult? Who drove Hamlet crazy? It wasn't his father's request for revenge. It was Shakespeare. The whale wasn't the real cause of Ahab's death. Melville was.
You, the author, do it all. Make all the trouble. Exercise sadistic license. One way to do that is to raise the stakes as much as possible. For example, if a young, successful lawyer, practicing in a prominent firm in a well-to-do county is asked to do something he feels is unethical, immoral, or illegal and he tells the senior members of the firm that he can't, in good conscience, go along, they might tell him:
"Well, Martin, if you can't help us out on this, you don't have the kind of loyalty and team spirit you need to work here. In other words, you're out of a job."
OK, so it's play ball, or you're out. That's one level of conflict. But, for the same effort, without changing the meaning of the story, they could say:
"You're out of a job, and we'll see to it you never practice law again in this county."
We've intensified the drama without changing the sense of the story. But have we gone all the way? Can we go farther? What if the young lawyer's bosses say:
"We're sorry to hear you won't back us up on this, Martin. Frankly we had our doubts about you. So, just in case, we took some time to cook up a little file on you. Some of it's true. Some of it's not so true, but it'll stand up in court. If you don't go along, you're not only out of a job, but we'll have you disbarred. You'll never practice law again anywhere."
Now, we haven't changed the thrust of the story, but by raising the stakes we've made it more intense and dramatic.
Have we gone all the way? For this story, as I imagine it, we have. As I imagine it. That doesn't mean that someone else can't imagine it differently, push it farther, and make it work better. The senior partners could threaten to murder the young lawyer's wife and child. The story could get to that point, and it could be made to work, but it might border on becoming a different kind of story (a crime thriller)
than I had in mind. That's my sense of it. You may go for something more extreme, and it would be just as valid.
Fiction reflects reality—the truth of reality. But fiction is not reality. It's concentrated, intensified reality. It's the essence of reality. In a sense it's more real than reality. It certainly reveals more tru
th than everyday reality. And it's never as mild as reality often is. So, you must put pressure on your characters to force them to use themselves. The more they use themselves, the more they reveal themselves. The more they reveal themselves, the more we experience and identify. You'll never go wrong by making everything as difficult as possible for everybody, bad guys as well as good guys, at all times.
TRY THE REVERSE
Consider having your character do the opposite of what he's now doing. This may seem like a violation of your character, but there's truth in it. The frustrated mother who says of her bratty kid, "I give him everything he wants, or I beat the crap out of him. Nothing works," is expressing this truth. When we're desperate, we go to extremes. So, the powerful man, after trying to intimidate his wife into not divorcing him, may fall to his knees and beg. The nerd who tries to avoid being harassed by blending into the woodwork or pleading to be left alone could get a gun and go berserk, blasting his enemies away. By considering the reverse, you're working to uncover possibilities in your characters, your story, and yourself—opportunities for your characters to express themselves and reveal themselves. Remember, revealing character is the number-one purpose of fiction. So, consider the reverse. If it works, do it. You'll be surprised at how often it uncovers new possibilities and gets you deeper into the heart of things.
DOUBLE DUTY —TRIPLE DUTY
Your story and you, the author, should never be doing only one thing at a time. Only setting scene (describing setting), for example. You never want the reader to be sitting around waiting for you to set things up so the story can begin. Set scene, OK, but at the same time you can be revealing character. We get character if the setting has meaning for the character, if the character is affected by it, if he has strong feelings about it. The setting should be a necessary element of the story, and the character should be reacting to it in a revealing way.
In good storytelling, everything has a purpose. Everything contributes. Nothing is just there. Nothing is neutral. Nothing is along for the ride. The old writing rule is: If it's not helping, it's hurting. Now, this is art, not science. So, you have some latitude—a lot in fact. If you can thrill us with brilliant, poetic description for no other purpose than the beauty and pleasure of it, you may pull it off.
Immediate Fiction Page 12