It's been suggested that we write first drafts with our hearts and subsequent drafts with our heads. It's also been said that first drafts are crap. Likely, both are true.
When I start a new book, I try to keep that in mind. I usually know the beginning and end, but the impetus to write the book is nothing more than a series of images. A long way from crafting a novel.
It feels like moving to a different city and starting a new job all at the same time. I stagger from scene to scene, hardly knowing my way around, and spend most of my time with strangers. It's so uncomfortable, I end up focusing on editing to give my fingers something to do. But if I stick with it, I'm rewarded with new friends and a deeper insight into their lives. What's a bunch of badly written chapters compared to that. I can polish later. But nothing can replace living in the story.
Better to finish the first draft. As for the rest, that's what rewrites are for.
A strange and mightily obsessed book
I just finished rereading To a God Unknown, John Steinbeck’s second novel. I first read it many years ago when I was fifteen and it made a huge impression--not quite the book that started me writing, but close. I decided to reread it to find out why it had such an influence on me.
It’s not regarded as one of Steinbeck’s best or even a particularly good novel. Criticism ranged from lukewarm to scathing. The New York Times called it “a symbolical novel conceived in mysticism and dedicated to the soil” which “attempts too much” and “achieves too little” and hence “fails to cohere.” A reviewer for The Nation judged the novel “pitifully thin and shadowy.” The New York Herald Tribune called it a “strange and mightily obsessed book.”
In reading it, I could see the roots of Steinbeck's voice, but not enough to explain its impact on me. Thin plot, over-the-top writing and characters.So why did it impress me so much? At first, I thought it was the larger-than-life and deeply passionate protagonist, Joseph Wayne. I'm a believer in passionate protagonists (see blog entry on character). But then I realized what I so admired was that the book was original and ambitious. The young Steinbeck had taken risks.
Years of living and writing have hopefully tempered my writing with craft. But in an age when originality, ambition and risk are frequently viewed with caution (how many movies today are remakes of old TV shows and comics?), perhaps aiming high should be part of the equation as well. After all, when did attempting too much become so out of favor.
It’s not regarded as one of Steinbeck’s best or even a particularly good novel. Criticism ranged from lukewarm to scathing. The New York Times called it “a symbolical novel conceived in mysticism and dedicated to the soil” which “attempts too much” and “achieves too little” and hence “fails to cohere.” A reviewer for The Nation judged the novel “pitifully thin and shadowy.” The New York Herald Tribune called it a “strange and mightily obsessed book.”
In reading it, I could see the roots of Steinbeck's voice, but not enough to explain its impact on me. Thin plot, over-the-top writing and characters.So why did it impress me so much? At first, I thought it was the larger-than-life and deeply passionate protagonist, Joseph Wayne. I'm a believer in passionate protagonists (see blog entry on character). But then I realized what I so admired was that the book was original and ambitious. The young Steinbeck had taken risks.
Years of living and writing have hopefully tempered my writing with craft. But in an age when originality, ambition and risk are frequently viewed with caution (how many movies today are remakes of old TV shows and comics?), perhaps aiming high should be part of the equation as well. After all, when did attempting too much become so out of favor.
Details, details...
We're told today's twittering reader has a short attention span, is easily bored. Stories need to be fast paced and not bog down in details. No Jane Austin ruminations or Melville's descriptions of the whaling industry.
I recently read a book called Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose. The book was unusual as books for writers go because it's basic premise is that rules are made to be broken. It tries to prove this by showing techniques in great literature.
Ho-hum. Yes, Crime and Punishment is great, but would it get published today? But one example got my attention--this passage from the first few pages of The Great Gatsby:
The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored baloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight aorund the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young woman balooned slowly to the floor.
Lots of detail. But what have we learned from this passage? The setting is opulent, a playground for the rich (the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling), but everything is insubstantial, threatening to float away. The two woman we are meeting for the first time (Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan) match their setting (as if they had just been blown back after a short flight aorund the house). And Tom Buchanan represents the lie of their flawed world, where luxury hides underlying discontent. His entrance deflates the illusion (there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young woman balooned slowly to the floor.) There's trouble in paradise and we want to know more.
Try to imagine how you might impart this much information so early in the book, setting us up for the glorious illusion that is Gatsby himself? Could you do it in fewer words? Could you do it as well without details?
I recently read a book called Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose. The book was unusual as books for writers go because it's basic premise is that rules are made to be broken. It tries to prove this by showing techniques in great literature.
Ho-hum. Yes, Crime and Punishment is great, but would it get published today? But one example got my attention--this passage from the first few pages of The Great Gatsby:
The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored baloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight aorund the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young woman balooned slowly to the floor.
Lots of detail. But what have we learned from this passage? The setting is opulent, a playground for the rich (the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling), but everything is insubstantial, threatening to float away. The two woman we are meeting for the first time (Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan) match their setting (as if they had just been blown back after a short flight aorund the house). And Tom Buchanan represents the lie of their flawed world, where luxury hides underlying discontent. His entrance deflates the illusion (there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young woman balooned slowly to the floor.) There's trouble in paradise and we want to know more.
Try to imagine how you might impart this much information so early in the book, setting us up for the glorious illusion that is Gatsby himself? Could you do it in fewer words? Could you do it as well without details?
What makes a memorable character?
So many of the books on writing focus on one area: dialog, style, character, setting or plot. That’s why I’m so fond of the book, Story, by Robert McKee. It analyzes what makes a good story, well told. One of its most important premises is that plot and character are inseparable from one another. And what makes a story memorable is a memorable character. What does that mean? Likeable, attractive, heroic? Here’s McKee’s view:
“The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility, let alone likeability, than with a larger philosophical sense, our awareness that a character's actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author brooding over the face of the character like God over the face of the waters. That is how readers retain in their minds a sense of character.”
“The vitality of literary character has less to do with dramatic action, novelistic coherence, and even plain plausibility, let alone likeability, than with a larger philosophical sense, our awareness that a character's actions are deeply important, that something profound is at stake, with the author brooding over the face of the character like God over the face of the waters. That is how readers retain in their minds a sense of character.”
The Urge to write
The urge to write began in my teens and continued well into my twenties . Despite several software startups and a lot of years, it has stubbornly refused to go away. So to launch this blog, I thought I'd pay homage to it with one of my favorite writer anecdotes:
o The prolific science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, was once asked what he would do if he learned he had only five minutes to live. His response: Type faster.
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