Much of the time, I find that the issue for the next revision is that the writer needs to be a little braver, needs to trust their instincts and trust the story a bit more, needs to follow to the 'rules' a lot less and to just try something without worrying about whether it will be good or publishable or acceptable, but instead whether it feels right for the story.
And this is much more easily support when workshop participants aren't trying to 'fix' the story, but instead are trying to help the writer see where the story is going and encourage them to explore it more deeply. Maybe it's the questions they have that lead to this, maybe the ideas for how things can be approached differently. Because as much as the Great Pile On sucks, it can sometimes be really fun to have a group of writers who understand what the story wants to be and can riff with the author about possiblities and ideas to try, in the nature of bouncing ideas off each other rather than pushing one on the writer.
But in any case, I always let my students know that the worry of not knowing if it's good or not is often a good sign that they've let go of trying to be 'correct' and that instead they are listening to the story, taking some creative risks and being brave.
"I find that the issue for the next revision is that the writer needs to be a little braver..." This is really helpful for me. So often I get stuck on what I think a story should be, instead of being brave and letting it be whatever really weird thing it wants to be.
Be brave and be weird! How many times have you read a story that was weird and brilliant and blew your mind? It only gets there if you're brave and willing to let it be what it wants.
The systematic “draft by draft” approach to a completed story for which George advocates reminds me a little of the approach that some classical string players use to ready a new piece for performance. They set their metronome to a slow speed, only increasing it notch by notch as they engineer out the rough parts, eventually arriving at a performance-ready outcome (hopefully). Work in preparation isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just not yet fully realized.
I love this, and especially this: Art is hard, and it’s complex: nobody knows how it works.
And I’m not just saying that: every story has to be treated like a new adventure, or it will eventually rebel and refuse to go any further... Makes me want to go back to leading a writing group, maybe... and talk to my story more, stop rushing it and trying to fix it. Nobody wants to be fixed.
Last night I read Jon Fosse’s Morning and Evening, about a baby’s birth, and the same man’s death. Fosse has a strange, dream-like, impressionistic way of writing. He does things with words that seem magical, casts a spell. His repetitions are incantatory. Punctuation is infrequent. He said, “I have to go to the borders of my mind, and I have to cross these borders. And to cross these borders is frightening if you’re feeling very fragile.” I took this to mean he dives deep into the universal imagination, the subconscious, comes up breathless, and writes beautiful prose, plays, and poetry. If I had ever submitted a piece of writing like his to a workshop, people would have torn it to shreds, literally. Yet he won the Noble. So, what does that have to say about all our rule books, how-to-write books, and workshopping that goes over submitted copies with the fine-tooth comb, saying ‘fix it’. Yes, I agree with Mr. Saunders, we must attend to the story, allow the story’s own wisdom to shine through. As we write the stories we want to tell, our aim is to bring our stories alive. We care for our stories, with the same care we would give a baby, and give them our loving attention. The longer I’ve written and struggled over the stories I wanted to tell, they have come alive with meaning and have changed over time, as the world and I have changed. What we’re asking in a workshop setting is how to bring and keep a story alive.
You say "So, what does that have to say about all our rule books?"
I say, partly reprising the resonance of something I read said by a guy name of Saunders, "Method shmethod / Rule book shrule book".
This thread is, oh so helpfully, clarifying the case for workshopping as nurturing. And also confirming that a successful workshop is (a) unlikely to result from a formulaic join-the-dots-up approach (b) likely to have been characterised by less-turning-out-to-be-more.
Now those story seeds I planted a while back, must get back to see how they have or have not germinated 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Yes. Yes. Yes. Water your story-seeds, set them in the sunlight, and give them nurturing kindness. And most of all, believe in your stories, and honor their source.
And what I find germinating - or, more accurately, taking where it is taken from a cutting or grown from a tuber or the fruit of a judicious grafting - many unexpected delights ... roses🌹🌹🌹 rising in their English garden , and Dutch tulips 🌷🌷🌷 in their same-serried rows, and seed burst sunflowers 🌻🌻🌻 reaching for the vaults of bright lit heavens?
And that's it isn't it, this 'Story Thing', its as magical as that bean seed that that fool boy Jack traded for a milking cow ... from apparently boring beans do major magical beanstalk stories grow, like great oaks are the progeny of humble acorns.
But where I wonder are emojis to show the the summer drills of lavender in their fragrantly tended Provencal ranks? Or the emojis to represent the words that Wordsworth spun from his wanderings amongst those crowds of spring daffodils that featured in his in the English Lake District? Or that resonate, redolently, with those poppies that grew - and have become oh so symbolic - in those Flanders Field that Canadian medic John McCrae knew in his day and still grow in ours?
Makes us this think, makes us feel, makes us feel alive doesn't Joan ... this malarkey most modern that is Story Club. Who knows what thee, me or any of we might be find ourselves, moved to write and chip-up gently into Comments next?
Oh, almost overlooked saying thanks for referencing your reading of Jon Fosse’s Morning and Evening. I'd not - out here in the Sea of Stories that I'm washed and swashed about in - heard of Jon Fosse he was announced as Noble Laureate. Same as that Saunders guy I mentioned, though I'd known some Georges in my time never heard of him until he topped the Booker. On the strength of your, implicit, recommendation I've now acquired a copy of Fosse's short story collection 'Scenes from a Childhood'. Thanks Joan.
I wonder, if you have experience reading Fosse's work, where a good starting place might be to the uninitiated? "Morning and Evening?" Or something else entirely?
I must admit to being new to Fosse's writing. I like to read international authors, and often take the Noble committee's recommendations and read the winning authors. Also, my father's side of the family emigrated from Norway, so I'm interested in reading about the lives of Norwegians (hoping for a glimpse of my ancestors). That said, Morning and Evening is short--107 pages. Sometimes I wished for a break in the rhythmic, incantatory prose but, as Fosse said, if you want a plot, don't read my books. This book presents a meditation on birth and death and does in fact have a bit of a plot. Some people recommend beginning with A Shining but that hasn't been released yet (Oct. 31 on Amazon). I also read a fun article about the publishing house--literally, a house in San Francisco, where a husband-and-wife team work on the kitchen table.
Thank you for your generous reply! I hadn't heard of Fosse until the Nobel, but saw that authors I admire had been admiring his work for years. I put A Shining on my list, and will check out Morning and Evening, too. Great to know that if I want plot, I should look elsewhere (usually not a roadblock for me).
Reading Morning and Evening now, along with the Story Club selection, The Jilting, and to see how two authors approached the day of a man or woman's deaths was coincidental but led to interesting comparisons. I hope you enjoy reading Fosse.
I thought I would share Rebecca Makkai's menu system of workshopping that she sent out this week via her newsletter. It's an interesting take on the workshop, sort of a "choose your own adventure" for each writer submitting their story to be workshopped. I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about this model.
Best,
Jamey
Rebecca Makkai’s “Menu” System for Workshopping
The Menu
Obviously, doing ALL of these would result in a 12-hour marathon workshop. You’ll only have time for a few “courses.”
My default workshop mode is 1, 4, 6, 10, 14 (if there’s time), 15, 16. If you choose “default” in my workshop, this is what you’ll get (with 1, 15, and 16 taking very little time).
A few other combos that would work well:
4, 5, 7, 11, 12
4, 9
12
4, 8, 16
In just about all of these, there’s the option for the author to be an active participant, an occasional participant, or a silent note-taker.
These do not have to come in numerical order, but some make more sense early and some later.
None of these is an essential element, but I do strongly suggest that you allow room for positive feedback and don’t opt only for constructive criticism.
1) The author frames the pages
Examples:
How the pages came to be
Where they are in the process
How new these pages are
“This used be in third person, and I just put it in first.”
“For workshop, I omitted five pages in which we learn a lot more about the forest.”
“What I’m trying to do with this scene is explore Glen’s backstory but also keep the present stakes going.”
Note:
Blanket apologies, though, are silly and a waste of time. We’ve all seen rough drafts before.
The workshop leader or class might take this opportunity to ask the author any clarifying questions (e.g., “Can you pronounce the town name for us?” “Is this part of something longer?”)
2) Some or all of the work is read aloud
Examples:
The author reads an entire poem aloud
The instructor reads one page of a short story aloud
Students take turns reading paragraphs aloud
The author casts students in roles for reading a screenplay
Notes:
This can be especially useful for those focusing on language, those newer to writing, and those working on something meant to be read aloud (e.g., a play).
If there are words or names that might be difficult for some peers to pronounce, you might prepare readers with pronunciations, or choose your reader carefully.
3) “Pointing”
This is when workshoppers offer phrases or details or moments that they remember from the piece, or ones that resonated with them, without offering commentary.
They might refer to the pages, or go by memory. Of course the implication is that these were things people liked, but they don’t have to be big things.
Examples:
“The forest floor looking like a web of veins.”
“His heart was a polished stone.”
“His yellow hat with the blue stain.”
4) Workshoppers talk about what is working well, being as specific as possible
Examples:
“I love this description of mushrooms on page 5.”
“You got the physical details of place in there without stopping the story to describe the room.”
“I laughed so hard when…”
“The language is so richly textured. I was noticing the varied sentence structures on page 4…”
“I am fully invested in whether Glen finds this flute.”
5) The author asks one big question of the group, and the group discusses at some length
Examples:
Is my balance of backstory and present story working?
Do you feel you know Glen deeply enough?
Does the diary thing work at all?
Am I getting the stakes across?
As a woman, do I pull off writing with a male voice?
Is the timeline of the investigation clear?
Are the rules of this world clear?
Note:
“Is this any good?” and “Should I keep going?” are not super useful or answerable questions.
6) The workshop leader asks a clarifying question of the group, and the group discusses
Quite often, my question to the group will be about orientation or the timeline or the rules of this world; in other words, I’m making sure we’re all on the same page in our understanding of the story’s basics.
Examples:
“What do we understand about the rules of the flute goblins?”
“Let’s work together to chart out the timeline of this scene.”
“Let’s list everything we know about Glen, from these pages.”
“What is at stake for this character within this scene, and what’s at stake for him more broadly?”
Notes:
The author might be silent for this round, or might participate.
This can be especially useful for a more complicated piece, and if you choose to sit back and take notes, it can be a chance for you to see how well you’ve gotten your vision across. (We’ll likely ask you to confirm our reading, though.)
7) The group asks NEUTRAL questions of the author
Examples:
“How do you see backstory and story present working together here?”
“How do you want us to feel about the flute goblins?”
“How do you see the use of Scottish dialect in this piece?”
“What do you want us to care about most in this scene?”
“Have you considered writing this in the 1st person?”
“What would happen if you started with Glen finding the flute in the woods?”
Note:
“Why did you make the ending so abrupt and confusing?” is not a neutral question. “Tell us how you landed on your ending” is.
8) Workshoppers offer ideas for further scenes and plot points (rather than ideas for revision)
Examples:
“You could give the milkmaid her own chapter! I’d love to know how she feels about Glen.”
“I’d hope to see some real mystery develop here. One of these goblins could show up dead.”
“You could make great use of Scandinavian mythology!”
Note:
This is obviously best when a project is in an early drafting stage.
9) Free-for-all discussion; workshoppers may raise any issues on their mind
Examples:
“I know we were just talking about the setting, but can we talk about these verbs?”
“I have so many ideas for how you could expand this world.”
“I’m really lost on page 6.”
“I know everyone else is confused about how much spinach the goblins eat, but I loved that part.”
Note:
This can be fun but also chaotic, and the most vocal people tend to hold the floor. The writer might remain silent, or might pop in to respond to some things.
10) “Headlines”
Workshoppers give “headlines” for concerns they want to discuss; the workshop leader collects these, and calls on people for elaboration in an order that makes sense. These headlines should be topic headings, not value statements.
Examples:
“Character relations”
“Ending”
“Pacing”
“Dialogue”
“Believability”
“Goblin lore”
Notes:
“I was really confused by what this guy wanted” is a value statement. “Motivation” is a headline.
The writer might remain silent, or might pop in to respond to some things.
11) Workshoppers ask permission to offer suggestions
Examples:
“I have a suggestion about point of view. Would you like to hear it?”
“Would you be interested in hearing my ideas about the opening?”
“I have a concern about the character relations. Would you be open to hearing it?”
12) The author asks multiple questions of the workshop, leading the discussion
Examples:
“What did you all think of the opening?”
“What did you feel was at stake here?”
“Did the characters feel real?”
Note:
This might take up the bulk of workshop time, or this might happen just at the end, as the author has stray questions that need answering.
13) The page-by-page workshop
The group works through the piece one page at a time from beginning to end, addressing issues as they come up, almost entirely in order. For poetry, of course, this would be a line-by-line workshop.
Examples:
“This is an example of the clarity issues I was talking about on page 2.”
“Here we meet the father for the first time, and I’m not sure I get a clear picture of him.”
“You’re using the word ‘nonplussed’ here to mean its opposite. It actually means bothered.”
“This is my favorite part! I love that the goblins are so into flower arranging!”
14) Close editing
The instructor leads the class through a close editing of one paragraph of prose (weighing things word for word, the way one might in a poetry workshop).
Examples:
“So we’re looking at the line He mused upon the fact that he hadn’t exactly expected to find a Kmart so deep in the forest, and definitely not one that was so brightly lit with the illumination of fluorescent lights. We were talking about wordiness earlier, and I wonder if we have any candidates here for words to cut or ways to make this sentence more compact.”
“Our next line is There were so many things on the shelves. Jessica, I’m going to put you on the spot as the author. Can we brainstorm some of the objects Glen might notice? Let’s see if we can expand this sentence a little and get some specificity.”
Notes:
When I do this, I’ll actually bring up your paragraph on a screen and we’ll edit—but these are of course only suggested edits! This tends to work best when the author is an active participant, but even so we might end up with a group-think paragraph. You’re not obliged to keep any changes we make.
I always start by reading the paragraph in question aloud, and end by doing a before-and-after reading of the paragraph we’ve focused on. It’s fun, I promise!
15) The author reenters the discussion at the end
The author summarizes what they’ve heard, asking stray questions, explaining things that people had wondered about. This is of course especially useful if the author has stayed quiet, but the summarizing can be useful in any context. The author might talk about ideas they’ve had during the workshop, or their plans for revision.
16) The workshop leader summarizes the feedback and gives suggestions for next steps
Alternatively, this might happen in a separate conference.
17) Something else
If there’s a way you want to be workshopped and it’s not on this list, let’s make it happen! Please talk to me about it ahead of class, though.
How engaging. What a smorgasbord of workshop delights. And such as gentle encouragement to avoid the mistake of trying to take a taste of everything in one single, short workshop ferry crossing. Lest we forget, the way to - metaphorically - eat and digest an elephant is, surely, "in small chunks, slowly".
This is fantastic. Thanks for posting. I think she’s really covered all the bases here and I love that each writer can choose how they would like the workshop to work.
Jamey: Thank you so much for these ‘menu’ items from Makkai! My students operate on very tight workshop times, so this is a great sample of which clear, concise steps can be taken so they get the most out of the experience.
It's a funny thing. About a year after returning to the US after living in SE Asia, I met someone. She was the mother of my daughter's friend. Sitting in her minivan after a literary event, she convinced me to take a writing workshop with her, that our writing lives depended on it. I doubted, I worried.
The workshop was a deep dive into short stories with nearly thirty students. Good but maybe a little overwhelming. Sharing a short section from a novel in progress, a student who had lived where the story was set, gave me the best feedback about the passage I read. That it brought him back there, immediately recognizing the place, the people, the sounds and smells of that tiny parcel of earth. It mean't everything to recreate what I carried back with me and share it with a reader.
Near the end of the course, I mustered up the courage to ask a few others in the class if they'd be interested in joining a small writing group. It's the ask that's so hard, but they each said yes. The five of us met regularly at a busy nearby cafe, two hours of an evening after partners/babysitters were in place with our kids. We were a small but diverse group of writers: American, Indian and Serbian writing short stories, YA stories, novels, and travel writing. Along with workshopping our own writing, we read short stories and a few novellas: work that energized our own writing, challenging storytelling we could wrestle with. It was a magical time, friends I cherish who solidified my intent to write.
To 'bring someone back there' and to be looped into that someone's feedback to let you know, as writer, that you have done so must have been a marvellous moment of joy Nan. Thanks for sharing.
You write of the small writing group, that formed-up with 'yes' responses to your courageous invitation, in the past tense. If it has had its day how long did it run for? If it continues to this day how long has it been running?
Thanks Rob, I hang onto those kinda moments dearly and know that feeling when reading someone's work that touches on both real and imaginary places in such a way.
Our group met over the course of a few years but then I moved out of state. We kept in touch and met up when I was visiting regularly. We keep in touch more or less but life happens and circumstances change.
Life does indeed happen and circumstances certainly change Nan.
I appreciate your reply, not least because it offers perspective on why we keep in touch, more or less, with some but not others in creative groupings we have been - thankfully - part of until a time came to part ways.
I watched my husband build things for thirty years. He built our house without a blueprint. It was a beautiful process to watch. How do you know what you are doing? Answer : I don't really but i figure it out as I go and I'm not afraid of making mistakes. I ask my brother who is a better carpenter than I am when I get stuck. You need the right tools. Sometimes fixing the mistakes makes something I never would have thought of even better. Well I could go on with the overused analogy, but he taught me a lot. Patience above all else. His workshop is messy, but I love to just go in there and sniff it . It smells like sawdust and magic. And in the winter when we bring Benny in from the cold, rabbit poop. The word Workshop. A place we sniff magic and try to build something. And learn from the masters . And pull rabbits out of ... well enough. Magic. Art. "No one knows how it works " Agree! Needed this one. Incentive to dive back in. Thank you.
Now I understand my goal to be: trying to say one, maybe two things, that will help the student have a better next draft - if the path to a Great Story is visualized as a long stairway, I’m just trying to bump the workshopped story up a step or two.
Finishing a story is a long process. We can’t expect the writer to leap over the dozens of intermediate drafts, since it is by those very drafts that the story is going to (gradually) open up to her.
I loved this and am thinking about how I can use these ideas in my group coaching program (I do career coaching for musicians) and also how to use these in the supervisory group I'm in with other coaches. This is such good advice on how to give respectful and actually useful feedback that the person on the "hot seat" can use!
FYI: there's a fabulous choreographer, Liz Lerman, who developed a Critical Response Process for giving feedback to anyone's work. It's great and may give others who facilitate workshops some fresh ideas:
Thanks for blipping Liz Lerman and her CRP up onto my reading radar screen Angela.
So many valuable insights and sign-postings being offered on the back of George's question pick.
I'm no dancer let alone a dance choreographer but I have, in my time and back in the day, facilitated learning more than now and again. I get the beauty of CRP ... so specific, so generalisable. Brilliant.
What do you do if almost the entire story is avoidance moments? lol
But seriously, this is a really helpful framework for me. I read a draft of a story in-progress earlier this afternoon and other than a few bright spots, I found it really dull. Most of it dips into the red or yellow. It's easy to let that discourage me, but thinking of it as the story telling me something is far more encouraging. It's telling me that I'm not as far along as I thought, and it's inviting me to use those bright spots to launch new explorations.
Thank you for this advice. When I get to the end of a chapter, let’s say about 5,000 words, I review what I have written and edit before moving on. Sometimes I will ask someone else to read it as well. Every time there is at least one part where both I and the other reader get confused about what I’m trying to say. Up until now, my approach has been to delete those sections. From now on I am going to highlight them and put a comment next to them saying “attend to later”. I think that’s probably harder but also more likely to produce a good story long term. I really appreciate the advice.
Whenever I do a practice of gratitude (which is not as often as I would like but frequent enough to mention) I do say how grateful I am for the desire to write. I don’t know if everyone has a passion, although I hope they do, but I am grateful for mine. It is amazing to lose yourself in writing and I am so happy to have discovered this and be able to cultivate it as often as I can without too much expense.
"Those two moments are cross-talking: depending on who I make him be on page 4, he’s more likely to do this or that on page 22." This is helpful. Fix one thing with focus and a related thing will (hopefully) be solved or move closer to solved.
I agree and I was so glad to hear it from George. I worked in product development for a long time. When we had a difficult problem to solve, it came in the form of observing X conditions. But even though we'd observed all X, all X could not be true at the same time. I eventually learned to ignore one condition completely to see where that would take me and almost always the knot would start to come loose. So, the fixation with getting everything right all at once didn't work for troubleshooting prototypes of new products either.
"But I’ve come to feel that such moments aren’t mistakes but, rather, places where the story has something vital to say but just isn’t ready to say it yet.
"The story is, very intelligently, delaying answering a vital question it’s not prepared to answer.
"But I think at, at every step of the way, some humility is in order. Art is hard, and it’s complex: nobody knows how it works."
Wish I'd said that. And that and that. Great stuff on having the patience to feed and water a story until it blossoms. Or doesn't, and as George suggested, for it to provide the rich compost for the next. (I will be asking questions of my stories, at a higher level than "hey, what's for lunch?" but so anyone no one can see me talking to the screen.) Thanks for the now-standard sparking—and sparkling—insights.
Hi gang. I've been here, just haven't posted in a while.
Reread this post this morning (Sun) and my head exploded in a personal DUH! moment (i.e., an instance, of which there are many, of how slow and dull-witted I can be).
To wit, the workshop process George is describing is virtually identical to a process I'M LEADING in another not-unrelated area of my life. I run a workshop for seniors (75+, most in their mid-to-late 80s) called Generous Listening. The principle idea being that by the time you reach the last stages of life you've got a lot to say but probably haven't had a chance to say it. Why? Because, generally, people are sorry-ass listeners. And if you haven't had a chance to put what you most need to say into speech, you may not even be aware of and can scarcely "own" the wisdom and beauty you've accumulated. Everybody is impoverished.
Here's how it's similar to George's workshop process. In "Generous Listening"—a term I got from Rachel Naomi Remen, author of KITCHEN TABLE WISDOM, et al., and a national treasure, though I've taken what I learned from her and run with it—you learn to listen not for whether you agree or disagree, or for a problem you need to "fix", or for whether your experience jibes with the speaker's, etc; you listen for what is true in the heart of the speaker. You don't interject; you grant the speaker the hospitality of your attention fueled by your trust that something fascinating and true is trying to work itself free. The goal—i.e., your hope and desire—is to listen such that the speaker will hear more distinctly what she's really trying to say. It takes patience, you have to build trust. The most helpful feedback is often silence, attentive silence. Beyond that you might ask open-ended questions intended to draw the speaker out, inviting her to specify or dive deeper.
The GL workshop has gone great and every time I lead it (I'm in my third go-round) I learn more and it get's better. See what I mean about my personal DUH! moment. I didn't realize I could apply Generous Listening to someone else's writing. Or—DOUBLE DUH!—my own.
Another GL principle George's process implies is this: all the intelligence we need to unravel the challenges we generate is already within us. We may, probably do, need others to help us hear it.
I love this prescription. My daughter frequently commends me to the mystic, Neville Goddard, an advocate for the power of mind. His quotes challenge a person to recenter themselves, e.g., “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows."
And this is what your prescription to "listen for what is true in the heart of the speaker" does albeit in the immediately useful context of how to make workshops rewarding, effective, and fun.
This line: "But I’ve come to feel that such moments aren’t mistakes but, rather, places where the story has something vital to say but just isn’t ready to say it yet." Yes! I've never thought of it this way but yes. Those are the muddy parts that I'm struggling to articulate it.
As I was reading this post and hit the part about moments of avoidance, I thought to myself—I often finish a story with a few of these in there, but by that point, they are locked in. The story has firmed up to such a degree that those points either get solved by the necessity of the plot, or they show themselves to be irrelevant to it. To take a new direction in the middle of the story either requires breaking the story in a way that feels like an arbitrary exploration of all the things it COULD be, or I need to redirect the story quickly after the new direction in order to bring it back in line.
And then, this great point about the next story. This feels true to me. Gussy up the story for publication, or shelve it until you can read it from a point of detachment. But learn enough to want to make that next story better, if only to get the taste of the current one out of your mouth. <Insert here the obligatory Churchill quote about success being the trick of moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm>.
I agree with all you say. Before you could harness the mystical properties of the pyramid to sharpen razor blades, i.e., before the New Age, I was in the back of my mother's drop top '64 Chevy, at the corner of Thatcher and North Ave., when she said, "life is process." And hang it all if she wasn't right.
I have observed how fellow writer friends get easily fixated on "publication" but did not exactly know how to free myself from the same yearning. But recently, you know, I started to feel good about rejections because I got my story back so there could be a next.
Could it be that the avoidance syndrome is for this reason (among others!): that we're afraid of not getting out story back? Having it printed in God-knows how many unretrievable 100s or 1000s of copies with all its flaws exposed permanently to the world?
And the great idea is to "learn enough to want to make that next story better, if only to get the taste of the current one out of your mouth".
I've definitely been through similar phases, though I've now moved on - I hope!
One aspect of this was wanting to know every possible idea that could potentially be part of the story. I liken this to someone using dynamite to kill every fish in a lake - you may be 100% sure you've got all the ideas, but you still haven't identified the one / ones you need. I now try to be far more selective.
One way I do this is by writing until I hit a point where I'm not quite sure what happens next. After my first port-of-call (and, yes, I'm stretching this metaphor rather further than I should!) of checking there's not something before this point that I need to change, I then spend some time formulating a question that I need to answer. This can be a challenge in and of itself, but it's one I enjoy.
If I can't decide whether a given character (Joan, say) is alive or dead, I might start by asking 'Is Joan dead?'. I then don't try to answer it until I've had at least one decent night's sleep. The instinctive answer might come back 'Yes'. I write with that in mind, at first with excitement, but then the story flags.
I then try 'Is Joan alive?', sleep, find the answer to be 'Yes'. I write with that in mind, at first with excitement, but then the story again flags.
I then formulate a far better question: 'Is it possible that Joan is both dead and alive?' A sleep, a 'Yes'. Then I work on how that's possible - Joan might be a ghost, a reincarnation, a doppelgänger, an hallucination, etc, etc. Amongst all of the possibilities, if I'm lucky, there might be just a single idea that feels right; but even if there are a few, I can usually work out what those ideas have in common, in terms of what they do to the story.
Instead of using dynamite, I'm now fly-fishing, the right question being the equivalent of the right fly to catch the fish I need. This takes time, but sometimes you have to be brave enough to abandon counting words on the page, in order to make real progress.
I've also stopped 'trying out' both options every time I reach an 'either / or' moment in a story. As so eloquently pointed out in the original article, these are points at which characters need to make a decision, and once we know the character well enough, the decision becomes clear - or vice versa.
The other way, madness lies. If there are just five 'either / or' points in a story, that's 120 possible 'routes' from beginning to end. If there are ten such points, that's over 3.5 million!
Much of the time, I find that the issue for the next revision is that the writer needs to be a little braver, needs to trust their instincts and trust the story a bit more, needs to follow to the 'rules' a lot less and to just try something without worrying about whether it will be good or publishable or acceptable, but instead whether it feels right for the story.
And this is much more easily support when workshop participants aren't trying to 'fix' the story, but instead are trying to help the writer see where the story is going and encourage them to explore it more deeply. Maybe it's the questions they have that lead to this, maybe the ideas for how things can be approached differently. Because as much as the Great Pile On sucks, it can sometimes be really fun to have a group of writers who understand what the story wants to be and can riff with the author about possiblities and ideas to try, in the nature of bouncing ideas off each other rather than pushing one on the writer.
But in any case, I always let my students know that the worry of not knowing if it's good or not is often a good sign that they've let go of trying to be 'correct' and that instead they are listening to the story, taking some creative risks and being brave.
"I find that the issue for the next revision is that the writer needs to be a little braver..." This is really helpful for me. So often I get stuck on what I think a story should be, instead of being brave and letting it be whatever really weird thing it wants to be.
Be brave and be weird! How many times have you read a story that was weird and brilliant and blew your mind? It only gets there if you're brave and willing to let it be what it wants.
Be brave and be weird - my new mantra! Thanks, Sonal!
The systematic “draft by draft” approach to a completed story for which George advocates reminds me a little of the approach that some classical string players use to ready a new piece for performance. They set their metronome to a slow speed, only increasing it notch by notch as they engineer out the rough parts, eventually arriving at a performance-ready outcome (hopefully). Work in preparation isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just not yet fully realized.
"Practice practicing", a dear musician pal likes to say.
That's a really good analogy.
I love this, and especially this: Art is hard, and it’s complex: nobody knows how it works.
And I’m not just saying that: every story has to be treated like a new adventure, or it will eventually rebel and refuse to go any further... Makes me want to go back to leading a writing group, maybe... and talk to my story more, stop rushing it and trying to fix it. Nobody wants to be fixed.
Last night I read Jon Fosse’s Morning and Evening, about a baby’s birth, and the same man’s death. Fosse has a strange, dream-like, impressionistic way of writing. He does things with words that seem magical, casts a spell. His repetitions are incantatory. Punctuation is infrequent. He said, “I have to go to the borders of my mind, and I have to cross these borders. And to cross these borders is frightening if you’re feeling very fragile.” I took this to mean he dives deep into the universal imagination, the subconscious, comes up breathless, and writes beautiful prose, plays, and poetry. If I had ever submitted a piece of writing like his to a workshop, people would have torn it to shreds, literally. Yet he won the Noble. So, what does that have to say about all our rule books, how-to-write books, and workshopping that goes over submitted copies with the fine-tooth comb, saying ‘fix it’. Yes, I agree with Mr. Saunders, we must attend to the story, allow the story’s own wisdom to shine through. As we write the stories we want to tell, our aim is to bring our stories alive. We care for our stories, with the same care we would give a baby, and give them our loving attention. The longer I’ve written and struggled over the stories I wanted to tell, they have come alive with meaning and have changed over time, as the world and I have changed. What we’re asking in a workshop setting is how to bring and keep a story alive.
You say "So, what does that have to say about all our rule books?"
I say, partly reprising the resonance of something I read said by a guy name of Saunders, "Method shmethod / Rule book shrule book".
This thread is, oh so helpfully, clarifying the case for workshopping as nurturing. And also confirming that a successful workshop is (a) unlikely to result from a formulaic join-the-dots-up approach (b) likely to have been characterised by less-turning-out-to-be-more.
Now those story seeds I planted a while back, must get back to see how they have or have not germinated 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Yes. Yes. Yes. Water your story-seeds, set them in the sunlight, and give them nurturing kindness. And most of all, believe in your stories, and honor their source.
And I have watered as, kindly suggested.
And what I find germinating - or, more accurately, taking where it is taken from a cutting or grown from a tuber or the fruit of a judicious grafting - many unexpected delights ... roses🌹🌹🌹 rising in their English garden , and Dutch tulips 🌷🌷🌷 in their same-serried rows, and seed burst sunflowers 🌻🌻🌻 reaching for the vaults of bright lit heavens?
And that's it isn't it, this 'Story Thing', its as magical as that bean seed that that fool boy Jack traded for a milking cow ... from apparently boring beans do major magical beanstalk stories grow, like great oaks are the progeny of humble acorns.
But where I wonder are emojis to show the the summer drills of lavender in their fragrantly tended Provencal ranks? Or the emojis to represent the words that Wordsworth spun from his wanderings amongst those crowds of spring daffodils that featured in his in the English Lake District? Or that resonate, redolently, with those poppies that grew - and have become oh so symbolic - in those Flanders Field that Canadian medic John McCrae knew in his day and still grow in ours?
Makes us this think, makes us feel, makes us feel alive doesn't Joan ... this malarkey most modern that is Story Club. Who knows what thee, me or any of we might be find ourselves, moved to write and chip-up gently into Comments next?
Oh, almost overlooked saying thanks for referencing your reading of Jon Fosse’s Morning and Evening. I'd not - out here in the Sea of Stories that I'm washed and swashed about in - heard of Jon Fosse he was announced as Noble Laureate. Same as that Saunders guy I mentioned, though I'd known some Georges in my time never heard of him until he topped the Booker. On the strength of your, implicit, recommendation I've now acquired a copy of Fosse's short story collection 'Scenes from a Childhood'. Thanks Joan.
Joan,
I wonder, if you have experience reading Fosse's work, where a good starting place might be to the uninitiated? "Morning and Evening?" Or something else entirely?
I must admit to being new to Fosse's writing. I like to read international authors, and often take the Noble committee's recommendations and read the winning authors. Also, my father's side of the family emigrated from Norway, so I'm interested in reading about the lives of Norwegians (hoping for a glimpse of my ancestors). That said, Morning and Evening is short--107 pages. Sometimes I wished for a break in the rhythmic, incantatory prose but, as Fosse said, if you want a plot, don't read my books. This book presents a meditation on birth and death and does in fact have a bit of a plot. Some people recommend beginning with A Shining but that hasn't been released yet (Oct. 31 on Amazon). I also read a fun article about the publishing house--literally, a house in San Francisco, where a husband-and-wife team work on the kitchen table.
Thank you for your generous reply! I hadn't heard of Fosse until the Nobel, but saw that authors I admire had been admiring his work for years. I put A Shining on my list, and will check out Morning and Evening, too. Great to know that if I want plot, I should look elsewhere (usually not a roadblock for me).
All my best!
Reading Morning and Evening now, along with the Story Club selection, The Jilting, and to see how two authors approached the day of a man or woman's deaths was coincidental but led to interesting comparisons. I hope you enjoy reading Fosse.
Hello Storyclubbers,
I thought I would share Rebecca Makkai's menu system of workshopping that she sent out this week via her newsletter. It's an interesting take on the workshop, sort of a "choose your own adventure" for each writer submitting their story to be workshopped. I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about this model.
Best,
Jamey
Rebecca Makkai’s “Menu” System for Workshopping
The Menu
Obviously, doing ALL of these would result in a 12-hour marathon workshop. You’ll only have time for a few “courses.”
My default workshop mode is 1, 4, 6, 10, 14 (if there’s time), 15, 16. If you choose “default” in my workshop, this is what you’ll get (with 1, 15, and 16 taking very little time).
A few other combos that would work well:
4, 5, 7, 11, 12
4, 9
12
4, 8, 16
In just about all of these, there’s the option for the author to be an active participant, an occasional participant, or a silent note-taker.
These do not have to come in numerical order, but some make more sense early and some later.
None of these is an essential element, but I do strongly suggest that you allow room for positive feedback and don’t opt only for constructive criticism.
1) The author frames the pages
Examples:
How the pages came to be
Where they are in the process
How new these pages are
“This used be in third person, and I just put it in first.”
“For workshop, I omitted five pages in which we learn a lot more about the forest.”
“What I’m trying to do with this scene is explore Glen’s backstory but also keep the present stakes going.”
Note:
Blanket apologies, though, are silly and a waste of time. We’ve all seen rough drafts before.
The workshop leader or class might take this opportunity to ask the author any clarifying questions (e.g., “Can you pronounce the town name for us?” “Is this part of something longer?”)
2) Some or all of the work is read aloud
Examples:
The author reads an entire poem aloud
The instructor reads one page of a short story aloud
Students take turns reading paragraphs aloud
The author casts students in roles for reading a screenplay
Notes:
This can be especially useful for those focusing on language, those newer to writing, and those working on something meant to be read aloud (e.g., a play).
If there are words or names that might be difficult for some peers to pronounce, you might prepare readers with pronunciations, or choose your reader carefully.
3) “Pointing”
This is when workshoppers offer phrases or details or moments that they remember from the piece, or ones that resonated with them, without offering commentary.
They might refer to the pages, or go by memory. Of course the implication is that these were things people liked, but they don’t have to be big things.
Examples:
“The forest floor looking like a web of veins.”
“His heart was a polished stone.”
“His yellow hat with the blue stain.”
4) Workshoppers talk about what is working well, being as specific as possible
Examples:
“I love this description of mushrooms on page 5.”
“You got the physical details of place in there without stopping the story to describe the room.”
“I laughed so hard when…”
“The language is so richly textured. I was noticing the varied sentence structures on page 4…”
“I am fully invested in whether Glen finds this flute.”
5) The author asks one big question of the group, and the group discusses at some length
Examples:
Is my balance of backstory and present story working?
Do you feel you know Glen deeply enough?
Does the diary thing work at all?
Am I getting the stakes across?
As a woman, do I pull off writing with a male voice?
Is the timeline of the investigation clear?
Are the rules of this world clear?
Note:
“Is this any good?” and “Should I keep going?” are not super useful or answerable questions.
6) The workshop leader asks a clarifying question of the group, and the group discusses
Quite often, my question to the group will be about orientation or the timeline or the rules of this world; in other words, I’m making sure we’re all on the same page in our understanding of the story’s basics.
Examples:
“What do we understand about the rules of the flute goblins?”
“Let’s work together to chart out the timeline of this scene.”
“Let’s list everything we know about Glen, from these pages.”
“What is at stake for this character within this scene, and what’s at stake for him more broadly?”
Notes:
The author might be silent for this round, or might participate.
This can be especially useful for a more complicated piece, and if you choose to sit back and take notes, it can be a chance for you to see how well you’ve gotten your vision across. (We’ll likely ask you to confirm our reading, though.)
7) The group asks NEUTRAL questions of the author
Examples:
“How do you see backstory and story present working together here?”
“How do you want us to feel about the flute goblins?”
“How do you see the use of Scottish dialect in this piece?”
“What do you want us to care about most in this scene?”
“Have you considered writing this in the 1st person?”
“What would happen if you started with Glen finding the flute in the woods?”
Note:
“Why did you make the ending so abrupt and confusing?” is not a neutral question. “Tell us how you landed on your ending” is.
8) Workshoppers offer ideas for further scenes and plot points (rather than ideas for revision)
Examples:
“You could give the milkmaid her own chapter! I’d love to know how she feels about Glen.”
“I’d hope to see some real mystery develop here. One of these goblins could show up dead.”
“You could make great use of Scandinavian mythology!”
Note:
This is obviously best when a project is in an early drafting stage.
9) Free-for-all discussion; workshoppers may raise any issues on their mind
Examples:
“I know we were just talking about the setting, but can we talk about these verbs?”
“I have so many ideas for how you could expand this world.”
“I’m really lost on page 6.”
“I know everyone else is confused about how much spinach the goblins eat, but I loved that part.”
Note:
This can be fun but also chaotic, and the most vocal people tend to hold the floor. The writer might remain silent, or might pop in to respond to some things.
10) “Headlines”
Workshoppers give “headlines” for concerns they want to discuss; the workshop leader collects these, and calls on people for elaboration in an order that makes sense. These headlines should be topic headings, not value statements.
Examples:
“Character relations”
“Ending”
“Pacing”
“Dialogue”
“Believability”
“Goblin lore”
Notes:
“I was really confused by what this guy wanted” is a value statement. “Motivation” is a headline.
The writer might remain silent, or might pop in to respond to some things.
11) Workshoppers ask permission to offer suggestions
Examples:
“I have a suggestion about point of view. Would you like to hear it?”
“Would you be interested in hearing my ideas about the opening?”
“I have a concern about the character relations. Would you be open to hearing it?”
12) The author asks multiple questions of the workshop, leading the discussion
Examples:
“What did you all think of the opening?”
“What did you feel was at stake here?”
“Did the characters feel real?”
Note:
This might take up the bulk of workshop time, or this might happen just at the end, as the author has stray questions that need answering.
13) The page-by-page workshop
The group works through the piece one page at a time from beginning to end, addressing issues as they come up, almost entirely in order. For poetry, of course, this would be a line-by-line workshop.
Examples:
“This is an example of the clarity issues I was talking about on page 2.”
“Here we meet the father for the first time, and I’m not sure I get a clear picture of him.”
“You’re using the word ‘nonplussed’ here to mean its opposite. It actually means bothered.”
“This is my favorite part! I love that the goblins are so into flower arranging!”
14) Close editing
The instructor leads the class through a close editing of one paragraph of prose (weighing things word for word, the way one might in a poetry workshop).
Examples:
“So we’re looking at the line He mused upon the fact that he hadn’t exactly expected to find a Kmart so deep in the forest, and definitely not one that was so brightly lit with the illumination of fluorescent lights. We were talking about wordiness earlier, and I wonder if we have any candidates here for words to cut or ways to make this sentence more compact.”
“Our next line is There were so many things on the shelves. Jessica, I’m going to put you on the spot as the author. Can we brainstorm some of the objects Glen might notice? Let’s see if we can expand this sentence a little and get some specificity.”
Notes:
When I do this, I’ll actually bring up your paragraph on a screen and we’ll edit—but these are of course only suggested edits! This tends to work best when the author is an active participant, but even so we might end up with a group-think paragraph. You’re not obliged to keep any changes we make.
I always start by reading the paragraph in question aloud, and end by doing a before-and-after reading of the paragraph we’ve focused on. It’s fun, I promise!
15) The author reenters the discussion at the end
The author summarizes what they’ve heard, asking stray questions, explaining things that people had wondered about. This is of course especially useful if the author has stayed quiet, but the summarizing can be useful in any context. The author might talk about ideas they’ve had during the workshop, or their plans for revision.
16) The workshop leader summarizes the feedback and gives suggestions for next steps
Alternatively, this might happen in a separate conference.
17) Something else
If there’s a way you want to be workshopped and it’s not on this list, let’s make it happen! Please talk to me about it ahead of class, though.
How engaging. What a smorgasbord of workshop delights. And such as gentle encouragement to avoid the mistake of trying to take a taste of everything in one single, short workshop ferry crossing. Lest we forget, the way to - metaphorically - eat and digest an elephant is, surely, "in small chunks, slowly".
This is fantastic. Thanks for posting. I think she’s really covered all the bases here and I love that each writer can choose how they would like the workshop to work.
Jamey: Thank you so much for these ‘menu’ items from Makkai! My students operate on very tight workshop times, so this is a great sample of which clear, concise steps can be taken so they get the most out of the experience.
Thanks for the note! I'm glad you (and your students!) might find this helpful. Cheers!
Brilliant! Thanks for sharing this. Just started a workshop with three writer friends so this is perfect timing.
"Obviously, doing ALL of these would result in a 12-hour marathon workshop."
Mmm ... thinks, at least a bit ... wonders ,,, could all 'these' be done in a 12-hour marathon workshop?
And ... wondering a long a bit ... "can't help it" ... is this 1, or 2, or 4, or 16, or 32 WIPs you have in mind?
Mmm ... you've made me think, and I - still - find myself thinking on, and on, Jame ... thank you.,
It's a funny thing. About a year after returning to the US after living in SE Asia, I met someone. She was the mother of my daughter's friend. Sitting in her minivan after a literary event, she convinced me to take a writing workshop with her, that our writing lives depended on it. I doubted, I worried.
The workshop was a deep dive into short stories with nearly thirty students. Good but maybe a little overwhelming. Sharing a short section from a novel in progress, a student who had lived where the story was set, gave me the best feedback about the passage I read. That it brought him back there, immediately recognizing the place, the people, the sounds and smells of that tiny parcel of earth. It mean't everything to recreate what I carried back with me and share it with a reader.
Near the end of the course, I mustered up the courage to ask a few others in the class if they'd be interested in joining a small writing group. It's the ask that's so hard, but they each said yes. The five of us met regularly at a busy nearby cafe, two hours of an evening after partners/babysitters were in place with our kids. We were a small but diverse group of writers: American, Indian and Serbian writing short stories, YA stories, novels, and travel writing. Along with workshopping our own writing, we read short stories and a few novellas: work that energized our own writing, challenging storytelling we could wrestle with. It was a magical time, friends I cherish who solidified my intent to write.
To 'bring someone back there' and to be looped into that someone's feedback to let you know, as writer, that you have done so must have been a marvellous moment of joy Nan. Thanks for sharing.
You write of the small writing group, that formed-up with 'yes' responses to your courageous invitation, in the past tense. If it has had its day how long did it run for? If it continues to this day how long has it been running?
Thanks Rob, I hang onto those kinda moments dearly and know that feeling when reading someone's work that touches on both real and imaginary places in such a way.
Our group met over the course of a few years but then I moved out of state. We kept in touch and met up when I was visiting regularly. We keep in touch more or less but life happens and circumstances change.
Life does indeed happen and circumstances certainly change Nan.
I appreciate your reply, not least because it offers perspective on why we keep in touch, more or less, with some but not others in creative groupings we have been - thankfully - part of until a time came to part ways.
Sounds like my kinda coffee break! :)
I watched my husband build things for thirty years. He built our house without a blueprint. It was a beautiful process to watch. How do you know what you are doing? Answer : I don't really but i figure it out as I go and I'm not afraid of making mistakes. I ask my brother who is a better carpenter than I am when I get stuck. You need the right tools. Sometimes fixing the mistakes makes something I never would have thought of even better. Well I could go on with the overused analogy, but he taught me a lot. Patience above all else. His workshop is messy, but I love to just go in there and sniff it . It smells like sawdust and magic. And in the winter when we bring Benny in from the cold, rabbit poop. The word Workshop. A place we sniff magic and try to build something. And learn from the masters . And pull rabbits out of ... well enough. Magic. Art. "No one knows how it works " Agree! Needed this one. Incentive to dive back in. Thank you.
You wrote:
Now I understand my goal to be: trying to say one, maybe two things, that will help the student have a better next draft - if the path to a Great Story is visualized as a long stairway, I’m just trying to bump the workshopped story up a step or two.
Finishing a story is a long process. We can’t expect the writer to leap over the dozens of intermediate drafts, since it is by those very drafts that the story is going to (gradually) open up to her.
---
That is incredibly wise advice.
I loved this and am thinking about how I can use these ideas in my group coaching program (I do career coaching for musicians) and also how to use these in the supervisory group I'm in with other coaches. This is such good advice on how to give respectful and actually useful feedback that the person on the "hot seat" can use!
FYI: there's a fabulous choreographer, Liz Lerman, who developed a Critical Response Process for giving feedback to anyone's work. It's great and may give others who facilitate workshops some fresh ideas:
https://lizlerman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Critical-Response-Process-in-Brief_CRP-one-pager_updated-2020_03_24.pdf
And can someone please remind me of how to submit a question for office hours? I've forgotten. THANK YOU!
storyclubwithgeorge@gmail.com
Thank you very much, Mary, I appreciate it!
Thanks for blipping Liz Lerman and her CRP up onto my reading radar screen Angela.
So many valuable insights and sign-postings being offered on the back of George's question pick.
I'm no dancer let alone a dance choreographer but I have, in my time and back in the day, facilitated learning more than now and again. I get the beauty of CRP ... so specific, so generalisable. Brilliant.
You're welcome, Rob. Yes, I love it, too, and love Liz Lerman!
Lurv Lizzy Lerman ... arrggh ... it's me auld tendency to alliterate, unstoppably, striking again ... 🐊 ... see you down the Nile Croco💬 ⚠
PS Especially in The 🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁
resist the urge!
What do you do if almost the entire story is avoidance moments? lol
But seriously, this is a really helpful framework for me. I read a draft of a story in-progress earlier this afternoon and other than a few bright spots, I found it really dull. Most of it dips into the red or yellow. It's easy to let that discourage me, but thinking of it as the story telling me something is far more encouraging. It's telling me that I'm not as far along as I thought, and it's inviting me to use those bright spots to launch new explorations.
Thank you for this advice. When I get to the end of a chapter, let’s say about 5,000 words, I review what I have written and edit before moving on. Sometimes I will ask someone else to read it as well. Every time there is at least one part where both I and the other reader get confused about what I’m trying to say. Up until now, my approach has been to delete those sections. From now on I am going to highlight them and put a comment next to them saying “attend to later”. I think that’s probably harder but also more likely to produce a good story long term. I really appreciate the advice.
Whenever I do a practice of gratitude (which is not as often as I would like but frequent enough to mention) I do say how grateful I am for the desire to write. I don’t know if everyone has a passion, although I hope they do, but I am grateful for mine. It is amazing to lose yourself in writing and I am so happy to have discovered this and be able to cultivate it as often as I can without too much expense.
"Those two moments are cross-talking: depending on who I make him be on page 4, he’s more likely to do this or that on page 22." This is helpful. Fix one thing with focus and a related thing will (hopefully) be solved or move closer to solved.
I agree and I was so glad to hear it from George. I worked in product development for a long time. When we had a difficult problem to solve, it came in the form of observing X conditions. But even though we'd observed all X, all X could not be true at the same time. I eventually learned to ignore one condition completely to see where that would take me and almost always the knot would start to come loose. So, the fixation with getting everything right all at once didn't work for troubleshooting prototypes of new products either.
"But I’ve come to feel that such moments aren’t mistakes but, rather, places where the story has something vital to say but just isn’t ready to say it yet.
"The story is, very intelligently, delaying answering a vital question it’s not prepared to answer.
"But I think at, at every step of the way, some humility is in order. Art is hard, and it’s complex: nobody knows how it works."
Wish I'd said that. And that and that. Great stuff on having the patience to feed and water a story until it blossoms. Or doesn't, and as George suggested, for it to provide the rich compost for the next. (I will be asking questions of my stories, at a higher level than "hey, what's for lunch?" but so anyone no one can see me talking to the screen.) Thanks for the now-standard sparking—and sparkling—insights.
Hi gang. I've been here, just haven't posted in a while.
Reread this post this morning (Sun) and my head exploded in a personal DUH! moment (i.e., an instance, of which there are many, of how slow and dull-witted I can be).
To wit, the workshop process George is describing is virtually identical to a process I'M LEADING in another not-unrelated area of my life. I run a workshop for seniors (75+, most in their mid-to-late 80s) called Generous Listening. The principle idea being that by the time you reach the last stages of life you've got a lot to say but probably haven't had a chance to say it. Why? Because, generally, people are sorry-ass listeners. And if you haven't had a chance to put what you most need to say into speech, you may not even be aware of and can scarcely "own" the wisdom and beauty you've accumulated. Everybody is impoverished.
Here's how it's similar to George's workshop process. In "Generous Listening"—a term I got from Rachel Naomi Remen, author of KITCHEN TABLE WISDOM, et al., and a national treasure, though I've taken what I learned from her and run with it—you learn to listen not for whether you agree or disagree, or for a problem you need to "fix", or for whether your experience jibes with the speaker's, etc; you listen for what is true in the heart of the speaker. You don't interject; you grant the speaker the hospitality of your attention fueled by your trust that something fascinating and true is trying to work itself free. The goal—i.e., your hope and desire—is to listen such that the speaker will hear more distinctly what she's really trying to say. It takes patience, you have to build trust. The most helpful feedback is often silence, attentive silence. Beyond that you might ask open-ended questions intended to draw the speaker out, inviting her to specify or dive deeper.
The GL workshop has gone great and every time I lead it (I'm in my third go-round) I learn more and it get's better. See what I mean about my personal DUH! moment. I didn't realize I could apply Generous Listening to someone else's writing. Or—DOUBLE DUH!—my own.
Another GL principle George's process implies is this: all the intelligence we need to unravel the challenges we generate is already within us. We may, probably do, need others to help us hear it.
Thanks, George and all you Story Clubbers.
Hi, Dan.
I love this prescription. My daughter frequently commends me to the mystic, Neville Goddard, an advocate for the power of mind. His quotes challenge a person to recenter themselves, e.g., “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows."
And this is what your prescription to "listen for what is true in the heart of the speaker" does albeit in the immediately useful context of how to make workshops rewarding, effective, and fun.
Thanks!
John
This line: "But I’ve come to feel that such moments aren’t mistakes but, rather, places where the story has something vital to say but just isn’t ready to say it yet." Yes! I've never thought of it this way but yes. Those are the muddy parts that I'm struggling to articulate it.
As I was reading this post and hit the part about moments of avoidance, I thought to myself—I often finish a story with a few of these in there, but by that point, they are locked in. The story has firmed up to such a degree that those points either get solved by the necessity of the plot, or they show themselves to be irrelevant to it. To take a new direction in the middle of the story either requires breaking the story in a way that feels like an arbitrary exploration of all the things it COULD be, or I need to redirect the story quickly after the new direction in order to bring it back in line.
And then, this great point about the next story. This feels true to me. Gussy up the story for publication, or shelve it until you can read it from a point of detachment. But learn enough to want to make that next story better, if only to get the taste of the current one out of your mouth. <Insert here the obligatory Churchill quote about success being the trick of moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm>.
MB,
I agree with all you say. Before you could harness the mystical properties of the pyramid to sharpen razor blades, i.e., before the New Age, I was in the back of my mother's drop top '64 Chevy, at the corner of Thatcher and North Ave., when she said, "life is process." And hang it all if she wasn't right.
I have observed how fellow writer friends get easily fixated on "publication" but did not exactly know how to free myself from the same yearning. But recently, you know, I started to feel good about rejections because I got my story back so there could be a next.
Could it be that the avoidance syndrome is for this reason (among others!): that we're afraid of not getting out story back? Having it printed in God-knows how many unretrievable 100s or 1000s of copies with all its flaws exposed permanently to the world?
And the great idea is to "learn enough to want to make that next story better, if only to get the taste of the current one out of your mouth".
John
I've definitely been through similar phases, though I've now moved on - I hope!
One aspect of this was wanting to know every possible idea that could potentially be part of the story. I liken this to someone using dynamite to kill every fish in a lake - you may be 100% sure you've got all the ideas, but you still haven't identified the one / ones you need. I now try to be far more selective.
One way I do this is by writing until I hit a point where I'm not quite sure what happens next. After my first port-of-call (and, yes, I'm stretching this metaphor rather further than I should!) of checking there's not something before this point that I need to change, I then spend some time formulating a question that I need to answer. This can be a challenge in and of itself, but it's one I enjoy.
If I can't decide whether a given character (Joan, say) is alive or dead, I might start by asking 'Is Joan dead?'. I then don't try to answer it until I've had at least one decent night's sleep. The instinctive answer might come back 'Yes'. I write with that in mind, at first with excitement, but then the story flags.
I then try 'Is Joan alive?', sleep, find the answer to be 'Yes'. I write with that in mind, at first with excitement, but then the story again flags.
I then formulate a far better question: 'Is it possible that Joan is both dead and alive?' A sleep, a 'Yes'. Then I work on how that's possible - Joan might be a ghost, a reincarnation, a doppelgänger, an hallucination, etc, etc. Amongst all of the possibilities, if I'm lucky, there might be just a single idea that feels right; but even if there are a few, I can usually work out what those ideas have in common, in terms of what they do to the story.
Instead of using dynamite, I'm now fly-fishing, the right question being the equivalent of the right fly to catch the fish I need. This takes time, but sometimes you have to be brave enough to abandon counting words on the page, in order to make real progress.
I've also stopped 'trying out' both options every time I reach an 'either / or' moment in a story. As so eloquently pointed out in the original article, these are points at which characters need to make a decision, and once we know the character well enough, the decision becomes clear - or vice versa.
The other way, madness lies. If there are just five 'either / or' points in a story, that's 120 possible 'routes' from beginning to end. If there are ten such points, that's over 3.5 million!