I love how, although there is a precision to the sentence level work, the larger structure of the story and what it says (or asks) is found so much by intuition. For me this proves the importance of reading often and widely. Thank you for the inspiration.
'If it becomes too clear to the writer what that alleged “certain question'“ is, she might freeze up, in an attempt to “honor” that question and in that process, stop listening to the story and start overriding it.'
Being alert, attentive, and yet tender, is crucial to finding the deeper current.
Sometimes - especially in my novel in progress - I'm surprised at the turn the underlying theme or quest takes. I find I need to stick with the surprise because I'm learning something new. This is not always easy, it gives me pause, and sometimes I need to step out and take that pause. Meditate. What I thought I knew has morphed.
I need let go, look up at the sky, and be prepared to change with the current. This is being awake, fully awake - open to new learning. In this state I show up for the story and the characters. When I let go and allow myself to be open to the 'new', the current flows faster.
Thank you George for helping to shape something I instinctively felt about the deeper process of writing - finding the current that drives the story.
"When I’m done, the story might appear to have posed a question - but that’s a result, not a cause."
To me, this is the key takeaway from George's wonderful post. (I love this discussion!) I'm still not the writer I hope to one day be, but over the years I have finally reached the point of trusting my subconscious enough to let a story emerge through me and then look at what has appeared--almost like magic--on the page. The story then (with any luck) speaks to me, unlocks itself, tells me what I'm thinking. This is the beauty of writing. Through it, a person finds out what's ticking in there, what issues arise, what one's take on life really is. It's a form of self-investigation. Without it, I am far less self-aware. The hard part, for me, is deciphering the clues that my own mind has set on paper. I've given myself a treasure hunt! Sometimes, it can take a long time to "see" what I'm saying, to find all of the treasures. All of which is to say that writing with a question in mind, or a theme in mind, or a story in mind--this works for some people, but it doesn't work for me. It chokes off the true me, the authentic me that is always hiding in there, behind my surface thoughts. I'm not always happy with what my mind tells me about myself, but I'd rather do the seeking than not. I'd say, that when I think about my own stories, i don't look for the question they pose. I look for more of a statement (?), and that statement usually is something like: look what you had to go to in order to get there, character-of-mine. As I've said so many times in these threads it's gotten WAY past annoying, everything is always The Wizard of Oz story. We have what we need right in our own backyard, but we have to take the journey to find it. (I don't mean the hero's journey. I mean simply writing the story and getting to the end and seeing what was there all along.)
I am also wondering, since words are something we all share, universal, through writing we are perhaps able to go deeper into the self and maybe sometime deeper still, to the shared place.
I like this, this journey into the deeper mind at work when writing. This tapping into the universal mind George mentions, and this is what we start to "see" Bits of the universal ah ha!
Always good to be reminded that rules mostly get in the way of story telling. Imagine the story teller around the fire suddenly worrying that she may not have included a properly articulated problem. I'm thinking now of Chekhov's problem as a way of wondering, that might, or just as important, might not, enrich the story, and not a requirement. As always, thanks to George, and to Story Clubbers.
Fun to see and hear George at the Awards, and lovely to hear Deb. Treisman's introduction.
"I'd rather do the seeking than not." 100%. And yes to how this can take a long long time to figure out what one is saying. I look at earlier writing of mine and think I was trying to write, as you mentioned Mary, around a theme, or writing a story that felt a certain way. I have to think this served its purpose at the time, but I think I now do better when focusing on just the act of writing and connecting words than on aiming for an end result. Thank you for the reminder.
I saw this post and it brought back on old memory.... Yes, I raised a similar question a million years ago! Here's the link, for anyone interested in an earlier discussion George had with all of us.
And thank you George, for posting the link to the 2004 interview! It was so nice to see how long you have been on this path of rigorous storytelling as a form of spiritual appreciation of the world and to hold that along side the current day awards ceremony and your growing celebrity. I love when the good guy wins! Congratulations on all of it and thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.
Mary- thank you for trip down memory lane. It took me back to the early days in SC. I was just starting to fall in love with this group then. I was amazed by the discussions of how story and characters and motivation resonate for the reader and the writer - how we address (hopefully) the universal questions. Therapy Club was being born. I remember also being impressed when George called out your question - impressed by the insight in the question and the generosity with which George elevated it, mulled it, answered it, and left the door open for others to elaborate. Such leadership and generosity! A great teacher and some great students.
I also remember being amazed that George was so willing to attempt an answer to my question. I loved all of the discussions in that thread. Story Club has been such a treat to so many of us!
"a story is a pattern of places where the narration resembles a fast, narrow river (that’s good), and other, less refined, places, where the narrative (lake-like) seems to spread out and slow down and become low-energy and vague (not so good). And there, revising looks like trying to make rivers out of those lakes."
Metaphors may be more or less imperfect, but this one is way better than most (ie, it speaks to me)!
The 100 word task on WN fully brought this metaphor to life for me... how you can do so much with so little, and how you can cut so much and still get nearer to something.
I have been taken aback, this week, by the 100 word exercise. Each time, as a sort of idea started to form, I thought, 'ok there's no way I can get this out in 100 words, because at a very minimum I need to go from here to here to here.' Then, I found, yes, I did need to go from here to here to here, but I could cut away so much of it and get simply and directly to it from one sensation, and yes, it could be done. A VERY interesting experience.
Agreed. And even more than that, I have noticed that what gets left after such savage pruning tends to be the more concrete or sensory, and not out of thinking, 'oh I better show not tell' or 'I need to be concrete and sensory', but subconsciously and out of just trying to get to the heart of it.
When I write a 100 word story, I aim for that from the start, so there isn't a lot of pruning going on. But yes, you are left with the "thing" itself. It's such good practice for understanding what a story is.
Happy holidays to you, George, and fellow Story Clubbers!
I don't begin with "Chekhov questions" either; I usually begin with a technique (ekphrasis is a favorite), link it to a character, then see how the story grows.
Two of the people in my writing group have spent November doing a NaNoWriMo-style sprint: a 50,000-word draft of a novel, or something like it, by the end of the month. Both of them started with clear ideas about the who and the what. However, they, too, are seeing where the draft leads; they are excited to see how their projects unfold.
Or, I guess, to borrow one of George's metaphors, to see where the current takes them. If a Chekhov question helps set a draft in motion, that's great. But there is something to be said for surrendering a certain degree of control after that.
George mentions complexity, but thinking about this question, I also feel a search for simplicity. I don't think it's a simplicity in opposition to the kind of complexity George is talking about.
The stories I respond to, often very great stories by towering giants, are often, at heart, really very simple.
As George says, Gooseberries is a story about happiness. The Iliad begins with its subject, right there at the start of the poem: rage. Hamlet has a very, very simple question right at its core.
The simple questions are the ones we often forget to ask, once we're grown up. Didn't Einstein say something like this? His questions were about space and time. Simple themes, in one sense. The push to answer them? Well, not simple at all, unless you're satisfied not really to think at all.
Isn't it interesting: the simpler the question, the more knotty, surprising, frustrating and diverse the paths we tread.
"The real game is for a given writer to develop her sense of what she prefers and learn to enact that value system in as many places as possible throughout the story."
Yes, this. To entertain this, and through it become entertaining to the universally like minded.
Be reminded that we share more in common with each other than those who deceive us would have us believe.
That a good story has all the gory glory of first love, the triumph and pain'd send us insane if it weren't for the truth that were all in the same game. Together forever. Amen.
(Playing with rap style in story as a way toward instinctive preference.)
I always take George’s analogies to heart because it’s often the first time something abstract suddenly makes sense to me. Like I can see the revision process better when presented with the stream/lake image. And there’s also the P/N meter which I use too now. Maybe I always sensed these things but now they are more concrete.
Thank you George for those, and thank you Chekhov for saving me from thinking I have to provide a solution to the “problem” which I kind of thought was my responsibility.
I like writing in order to discover the potential of a subject. A question does not typically start a story for me, but in the course of writing, I'm finding out what I think. I have a first reader whose question for me is always "What is this about?" He often has difficulty finding the thread that runs throughout a story and informs its meaning. That may be because I am not listening or listening hard enough to the story, not being intuitive or subconscious enough. There's a huge mystery and chance to writing a story. The good stuff comes out of the subconscious, but it has to be portrayed consciously, and that's a dance I end up dancing in every story.
"I have stories of mine that I really like that I couldn’t reduce to a question/problem, except by really straining and putting on my “I am writing a college essay!” hat – and that answer would have little to do with the actual process I went through while writing the story."
That's wonderful advice. The less reductive we are in our storytelling, the more open we are, the more potential for our story than what we could produce with our, "literal, dull, merely-planning mind." That's always been a thought in the back of my mind while writing, editing, but you've nailed the explanation, George. Thank you, will apply it further and see what happens.
This answer made me very happy. I found that halfway through reading it, I had the urge to memorize it. George has the ability (among all the others) to crystallize how to achieve the alchemy of turning words into feeling. He makes this process seem possible to a slob like me. It’s like, you court the unconscious, allow it to spread its wings and reveal itself; your role is to be a good scrivener and focus focus focus—not that that is easy (of course) but it’s the recipe. Like a good recipe, it shows you how to do the work. I never used to make Thanksgiving dinner but these days I do. The hit is my version of Mark Bittman’s version of James Beard’s stuffing. A good recipe. With all things: Just let me know how.
I am grateful for SC. I get this on an intuitive level but it is harder to understand how it plays out technically. Gooseberries is such a wonderful story. Great to see it here again. It is a great example of posing rather than trying to answer but also pointing toward what is relevant to finding an answer.
In this light-hearted serious conversation about writing, Ian McKuen has a beautiful phrase that reframes writer’s block. The conversation parallels this one in fun ways. I hope the link is not behind a paywall — apologies if it is. Your local NPR station likely has it on their app, too.
Ian McEwan on Imagining the World After Disasterhttps://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/ian-mcewan-on-imagining-the-world-after-disaster
I love how, although there is a precision to the sentence level work, the larger structure of the story and what it says (or asks) is found so much by intuition. For me this proves the importance of reading often and widely. Thank you for the inspiration.
'If it becomes too clear to the writer what that alleged “certain question'“ is, she might freeze up, in an attempt to “honor” that question and in that process, stop listening to the story and start overriding it.'
Being alert, attentive, and yet tender, is crucial to finding the deeper current.
Sometimes - especially in my novel in progress - I'm surprised at the turn the underlying theme or quest takes. I find I need to stick with the surprise because I'm learning something new. This is not always easy, it gives me pause, and sometimes I need to step out and take that pause. Meditate. What I thought I knew has morphed.
I need let go, look up at the sky, and be prepared to change with the current. This is being awake, fully awake - open to new learning. In this state I show up for the story and the characters. When I let go and allow myself to be open to the 'new', the current flows faster.
Thank you George for helping to shape something I instinctively felt about the deeper process of writing - finding the current that drives the story.
George writes:
"When I’m done, the story might appear to have posed a question - but that’s a result, not a cause."
To me, this is the key takeaway from George's wonderful post. (I love this discussion!) I'm still not the writer I hope to one day be, but over the years I have finally reached the point of trusting my subconscious enough to let a story emerge through me and then look at what has appeared--almost like magic--on the page. The story then (with any luck) speaks to me, unlocks itself, tells me what I'm thinking. This is the beauty of writing. Through it, a person finds out what's ticking in there, what issues arise, what one's take on life really is. It's a form of self-investigation. Without it, I am far less self-aware. The hard part, for me, is deciphering the clues that my own mind has set on paper. I've given myself a treasure hunt! Sometimes, it can take a long time to "see" what I'm saying, to find all of the treasures. All of which is to say that writing with a question in mind, or a theme in mind, or a story in mind--this works for some people, but it doesn't work for me. It chokes off the true me, the authentic me that is always hiding in there, behind my surface thoughts. I'm not always happy with what my mind tells me about myself, but I'd rather do the seeking than not. I'd say, that when I think about my own stories, i don't look for the question they pose. I look for more of a statement (?), and that statement usually is something like: look what you had to go to in order to get there, character-of-mine. As I've said so many times in these threads it's gotten WAY past annoying, everything is always The Wizard of Oz story. We have what we need right in our own backyard, but we have to take the journey to find it. (I don't mean the hero's journey. I mean simply writing the story and getting to the end and seeing what was there all along.)
Thank you, Questioner, for raising this question!
I really like this idea of a treasure hunt - that, it seems to me, is exactly the right mindset. "Let's find out."
"Without it, I am far less self-aware."
I am also wondering, since words are something we all share, universal, through writing we are perhaps able to go deeper into the self and maybe sometime deeper still, to the shared place.
that is the hope!
Looking deeply into the mirror, to find the specific and the universal…..
I like this, this journey into the deeper mind at work when writing. This tapping into the universal mind George mentions, and this is what we start to "see" Bits of the universal ah ha!
Always good to be reminded that rules mostly get in the way of story telling. Imagine the story teller around the fire suddenly worrying that she may not have included a properly articulated problem. I'm thinking now of Chekhov's problem as a way of wondering, that might, or just as important, might not, enrich the story, and not a requirement. As always, thanks to George, and to Story Clubbers.
Fun to see and hear George at the Awards, and lovely to hear Deb. Treisman's introduction.
Happy holiday to all who celebrate.
"I'd rather do the seeking than not." 100%. And yes to how this can take a long long time to figure out what one is saying. I look at earlier writing of mine and think I was trying to write, as you mentioned Mary, around a theme, or writing a story that felt a certain way. I have to think this served its purpose at the time, but I think I now do better when focusing on just the act of writing and connecting words than on aiming for an end result. Thank you for the reminder.
I saw this post and it brought back on old memory.... Yes, I raised a similar question a million years ago! Here's the link, for anyone interested in an earlier discussion George had with all of us.
https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/placeholder-for-june-12
Thanks for reminding me about that one, Mary.
And thank you George, for posting the link to the 2004 interview! It was so nice to see how long you have been on this path of rigorous storytelling as a form of spiritual appreciation of the world and to hold that along side the current day awards ceremony and your growing celebrity. I love when the good guy wins! Congratulations on all of it and thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.
Mary- thank you for trip down memory lane. It took me back to the early days in SC. I was just starting to fall in love with this group then. I was amazed by the discussions of how story and characters and motivation resonate for the reader and the writer - how we address (hopefully) the universal questions. Therapy Club was being born. I remember also being impressed when George called out your question - impressed by the insight in the question and the generosity with which George elevated it, mulled it, answered it, and left the door open for others to elaborate. Such leadership and generosity! A great teacher and some great students.
I also remember being amazed that George was so willing to attempt an answer to my question. I loved all of the discussions in that thread. Story Club has been such a treat to so many of us!
Happy Thanksgiving, George. Glad and grateful to be here.
"a story is a pattern of places where the narration resembles a fast, narrow river (that’s good), and other, less refined, places, where the narrative (lake-like) seems to spread out and slow down and become low-energy and vague (not so good). And there, revising looks like trying to make rivers out of those lakes."
Metaphors may be more or less imperfect, but this one is way better than most (ie, it speaks to me)!
The 100 word task on WN fully brought this metaphor to life for me... how you can do so much with so little, and how you can cut so much and still get nearer to something.
I remember a writing assignment: take a story you've written and cut it in half. I did exactly that and ended up with a MUCH better story.
I have been taken aback, this week, by the 100 word exercise. Each time, as a sort of idea started to form, I thought, 'ok there's no way I can get this out in 100 words, because at a very minimum I need to go from here to here to here.' Then, I found, yes, I did need to go from here to here to here, but I could cut away so much of it and get simply and directly to it from one sensation, and yes, it could be done. A VERY interesting experience.
It's such a good practice. Forces you right into the core of things. Makes you ask, now what is this story really about anyway?
Agreed. And even more than that, I have noticed that what gets left after such savage pruning tends to be the more concrete or sensory, and not out of thinking, 'oh I better show not tell' or 'I need to be concrete and sensory', but subconsciously and out of just trying to get to the heart of it.
When I write a 100 word story, I aim for that from the start, so there isn't a lot of pruning going on. But yes, you are left with the "thing" itself. It's such good practice for understanding what a story is.
Happy holidays to you, George, and fellow Story Clubbers!
I don't begin with "Chekhov questions" either; I usually begin with a technique (ekphrasis is a favorite), link it to a character, then see how the story grows.
Two of the people in my writing group have spent November doing a NaNoWriMo-style sprint: a 50,000-word draft of a novel, or something like it, by the end of the month. Both of them started with clear ideas about the who and the what. However, they, too, are seeing where the draft leads; they are excited to see how their projects unfold.
Or, I guess, to borrow one of George's metaphors, to see where the current takes them. If a Chekhov question helps set a draft in motion, that's great. But there is something to be said for surrendering a certain degree of control after that.
George mentions complexity, but thinking about this question, I also feel a search for simplicity. I don't think it's a simplicity in opposition to the kind of complexity George is talking about.
The stories I respond to, often very great stories by towering giants, are often, at heart, really very simple.
As George says, Gooseberries is a story about happiness. The Iliad begins with its subject, right there at the start of the poem: rage. Hamlet has a very, very simple question right at its core.
The simple questions are the ones we often forget to ask, once we're grown up. Didn't Einstein say something like this? His questions were about space and time. Simple themes, in one sense. The push to answer them? Well, not simple at all, unless you're satisfied not really to think at all.
Isn't it interesting: the simpler the question, the more knotty, surprising, frustrating and diverse the paths we tread.
Yes, and don't you think that simplicity is hard to attain if you are worried about rules.
"The real game is for a given writer to develop her sense of what she prefers and learn to enact that value system in as many places as possible throughout the story."
Yes, this. To entertain this, and through it become entertaining to the universally like minded.
Be reminded that we share more in common with each other than those who deceive us would have us believe.
That a good story has all the gory glory of first love, the triumph and pain'd send us insane if it weren't for the truth that were all in the same game. Together forever. Amen.
(Playing with rap style in story as a way toward instinctive preference.)
I always take George’s analogies to heart because it’s often the first time something abstract suddenly makes sense to me. Like I can see the revision process better when presented with the stream/lake image. And there’s also the P/N meter which I use too now. Maybe I always sensed these things but now they are more concrete.
Thank you George for those, and thank you Chekhov for saving me from thinking I have to provide a solution to the “problem” which I kind of thought was my responsibility.
I like writing in order to discover the potential of a subject. A question does not typically start a story for me, but in the course of writing, I'm finding out what I think. I have a first reader whose question for me is always "What is this about?" He often has difficulty finding the thread that runs throughout a story and informs its meaning. That may be because I am not listening or listening hard enough to the story, not being intuitive or subconscious enough. There's a huge mystery and chance to writing a story. The good stuff comes out of the subconscious, but it has to be portrayed consciously, and that's a dance I end up dancing in every story.
"I have stories of mine that I really like that I couldn’t reduce to a question/problem, except by really straining and putting on my “I am writing a college essay!” hat – and that answer would have little to do with the actual process I went through while writing the story."
That's wonderful advice. The less reductive we are in our storytelling, the more open we are, the more potential for our story than what we could produce with our, "literal, dull, merely-planning mind." That's always been a thought in the back of my mind while writing, editing, but you've nailed the explanation, George. Thank you, will apply it further and see what happens.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
I feel that the Chekhov question can emerge at some point in the process of revision. It's a discovery thing, if it's a thing at all.
This answer made me very happy. I found that halfway through reading it, I had the urge to memorize it. George has the ability (among all the others) to crystallize how to achieve the alchemy of turning words into feeling. He makes this process seem possible to a slob like me. It’s like, you court the unconscious, allow it to spread its wings and reveal itself; your role is to be a good scrivener and focus focus focus—not that that is easy (of course) but it’s the recipe. Like a good recipe, it shows you how to do the work. I never used to make Thanksgiving dinner but these days I do. The hit is my version of Mark Bittman’s version of James Beard’s stuffing. A good recipe. With all things: Just let me know how.
I am grateful for SC. I get this on an intuitive level but it is harder to understand how it plays out technically. Gooseberries is such a wonderful story. Great to see it here again. It is a great example of posing rather than trying to answer but also pointing toward what is relevant to finding an answer.
In this light-hearted serious conversation about writing, Ian McKuen has a beautiful phrase that reframes writer’s block. The conversation parallels this one in fun ways. I hope the link is not behind a paywall — apologies if it is. Your local NPR station likely has it on their app, too.
Ian McEwan on Imagining the World After Disasterhttps://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/ian-mcewan-on-imagining-the-world-after-disaster