George's method (writing sentence by sentence, letting one sentence lead you to the next, followed by the P/N meter reaction and multiple edits) reminds me, somewhat, of John McPhee's. Here's McPhee, from his book Draft No. 4: "Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”
More from Bradbury: “I had a sign over my typewriter 50 years ago, which says ‘don’t think.’ All of my books are written by this interior self that wants to say something. I never get in the way."
'There's a grand goal just sauntered in lower stage right, gently ambled diagonally up stage, exited softly back stage right' he thought.
"Did you just see that?" said Rob in full blurt and heaving with excitement just before realising that it was Godot not Babel who had crossed the stage of his imagination and that no one else could have seen him so silent with such relief at having finally got there... to the end of such an interminable wait.
‘Blurted, heaved and babbled out 100 words that add up to something more than their sum? Hmm.'
This makes so much sense, and true in my experience as well. My mind keeps working on what I’m writing long after the writing itself, and often finds the solutions to a writing problem during those after hours.
Isn't that an abiding wonder of digi-tech? It sucks just when you'd least want it to!
Having said which, these old grey cells we carry loose and light in our craniums have that ancient inbuilt plasticity of mind feature that let's us see the pyramid you've constructed in all its aesthetic glory. And not a trace of time worn, erosive scarring... an enigmatic literary delight to recall as aid to reflection?
What's more Tod this concrete expression expression of a thought that you've had arrive on the ripple of a pebble post by George is sending out further ripples of it's own.
For example it seems, even to these tired eyes of mine, that it has structure when viewed through the lens of poetic intent.
For a second example: what scope your pyramid offers for creative word play of a more 'physical' kind, through capturing the text by copying and pasting into another format, say Word.docx, and manipulating the malleable words to make the pyramid you envisaged or a bigger mirror-imaged version.
"What larks, what possibilities, what positive perturbations Pip this pyramid's unforeseen landing with us brings to the quiet life we lead out here in these boondock marshes " . . . as Joe Gargery might, just conceivably and at a stretch to test the limits of imagination, put an alternative version of his spoken words had Charles D been a live and contributing subscriber to Story Club.
Hmm, indeed Rob. An intriguing twist to the pyramid your gray cells have conjured, and alternative perturbations stretching far beyond my original concept which in the aftermath, about embarrassed me in its simplistic irrelevance to the topic at hand. Thanks for your insights.
Hmm Tod. I didn't, and don't now, think that you being sparked to fashion a response to George's post conceptualised in the form of a pyramid is in any way, shape or form 'simplistic irrelevance'.
One of the things that it invites reflection on in is the way(s) in which great prose stories have a poetic dimension to them. George's approach - repeatedly 'tweaking and twiddling' or 'ditching and doing over' the first draft that he's hammered out - has frequently transported me to thinking of the ways talented poets get from Draft #1 to Draft #X which often enough is considered 'finished but not, necessarily, final' as it leaves the word forge to be typeset for publication.
Have you tried reading aloud the words as presently inscribed your pyramid as presently drafted? If not why not consider doing so?
If you do - and I'd suggest, more that could, you should - please share back on the experience and any effects it may have?
I comment here often about the transcendent nature of George’s observations and advice, about the way Story Club is secretly Therapy Club. Well, today’s post did it again - it took reading, writing and editing up to the level of truly seeing, deeply listening and generously offering. I particularly loved this at the end: “So, in a way, writing like this can start to feel like a spiritual discipline: we’re training ourselves to observe accurately (and there are volumes to be written about the difficulty of this), then react in a way that makes things better.”
The spiritual aspect of it comes during the momentary pause between the accurate (we hope) observation and the subsequent reaction. Without the pause, we may not be making things better. The thing is, we don't have to be knee-jerkers. We can choose how to react, and that makes all the difference--in writing and in life. And we may not get it right the first time, but you know--fail again (you know the rest).
Well, you kinda do (take your own advice). This week's "What Now" prompt, to me, had a lot to do with the pausing listening, crafting, before moving on as per the constraints of the prompt. It was a very different way of writing.
We're going to have to stop now, but we can pick up at the next session. Don't forget to get the venmo code on your way out. (And don't steal the magazines from the waiting room!)
I’ve been involved in Story Club for a while now, and this method has helped inform my process also. I just got the news recently that my novella-in-flash, Pineville Trace won the Etchjngs Press(at the University of Indianapolis) Book prize and will be published soon. This is my first book to be published, and I am grateful for the Story Club community and how helpful it’s been supporting my writing life.
"My artistic journey included a pivotal moment at which I realized I’d been neglecting/ignoring my desire to be entertaining (by keeping humor out of my work). It was like I’d been fighting for my life in an alley and then looked down and noticed I had one hand behind my back."
I discovered this for myself, in a different realm, writing instructional materials. I'd try to sound professorial and expert, and had a terrible time writing and revising. But then I met a woman who I greatly admired for her entertaining and very helpful training videos (on Lynda.com), and was fascinated to find that who she was in those videos was who she was at lunch. And from then I tried to dial back the 'expert' me and begin the search for my own voice. It ended up freeing me tremendously, feeling confident that I was conveying information in a way that I knew well, once I paid attention to it. Made writing and revising much simpler.
I have heard this before, but still don’t understand how plot or other global aspects of story structure take care of themselves based on line-to-line revision. It is a fascinating concept to think about, the emergence of global structures based on local processes, that we also see in nature. But I seem to be missing something key about how this works in creating stories. Does anyone have further insights on this point? Examples or pointers for further reading? Thanks in advance for any help!
I would maybe reccomend the example I gave by suggesting finding an interview or two with Tom Robbins discussing his method, and then maybe try some of his work. If what he claims is true regarding his non-process process, it's a remarkable example.
I think considerations of theme, character, nuance, sometimes voice, and other more 'heart-based' aspects of writing can be emergent and flexible; they certainly are in my writing.
Plot is a different thing, in my mind: much more of a tool than a craft/'talent'/soul element. Plot is all technique related as I see it. Mapping. And in my experience it can happen in advance, but more often is better and more satisfying when it emerges and is followed, rather than sketched out in advance. Also, like any map, one can still get lost, go off the edges, read it upside down. I believe adherence to it is helpful only to a slight point. And such adherence can definitely get one to a destination that isn't at all what was envisioned in the heart, or even in the wild mind. Maybe to the monkey mind it will make sense, the same way a map is usually correct to scale, but it sure ain't the territory it represents.
George has told us that he has, at times, worked on a story for years. He is constantly editing and revising. He knows that a story needs escalation, and he's told us that a story ends when there is no more escalation to come. In his revision process, the structure appears. As does the question the story is asking him, as does the plot! He just doesn't talk in terms of plot or rising action, etc. But he sees all of it as he continues to revise. (George, if i have this wrong, please correct me.)
I studied "story structure" in as much as it was available for study from "experts" in the film and TV business, which is a metric ton. Ultimately, the most I gleaned was that contrary to popular impressions, Story Structure is not a cage or scaffolding that characters enter and climb around within. Structure, in the best work, is largely indistinguishable from character. Well not 'indistinguishable, but so interwoven that neither exists without the other. (except a character can kinda exist without a story, but not t'other way 'round'.) Lets just say inseparable, in good work.
It took some effort and growth and understanding for me to get my mind around that, but it's in my core now. Not everyone agrees. Not everyone needs to. Our mileage will vary based not only on what we drive, but on how we drive.
I see why you ask that. From my perspective it is a good idea to have some broad idea of structure, but then let the creative blurting process guide the evolution of the whole piece. I'm willing to let the story go in new directions as the creative juices flow.
Also, while George talks a lot about individual sentences he also refers to moving or eliminating paragraphs, and making other structural changes. So editing involves more than just the sentences. But they are very important. Bad sentences can really drag down the energy.
I was about to say something along these lines, and saw your comment, Mark with a K. And going with the spiritual nature of this discussion... I think its during the mid-phase of getting through the story (not that you necessarily know its the middle, in fact until this occurs you might have thought you were nearing the end) when you sit back, and realise something fundamental is not working, and you go deeper into your characters' minds, or the physical incongruities you have set up, etc, and take some time to really explore those things, and hopefully come up with a solution. (Which may be much more than a line or word edit, and it hurts, but it has to be done.) And in doing that, your sub-conscious is floating towards your consciousness, and, well, thats the spiritual bit. Said the barely-published fellow.
I've wondered about this too. Reading your comment Vishal made me think "intuitive imagination." So, there is a "force" in the writer that makes up a sentence to follow another sentence, initiated by the content of the first sentence. (I'm making this up on the fly here.) I think George has talked about this in terms of the energy of one sentence pushing forward into the next. So : Jack blew up his spare tire. leads to , Jack bicycled into the road and got hit by a car. An ambulance came and picked up Jack. Jack died at the hospital.
Here's a simple example where I didn't know what happened after Jack inflated the tire. The concept is liberating for sure. To pull off a novel would take an agile mind with lots of accessible storage it seems to me .
Vishal, your comment brings to mind Zadie Smith's essay titled "That Crafty Feeling," about Macro Planners vs. Micro Managers. Google it here: https://www.thebeliever.net/that-crafty-feeling/. Macro Planners build the entire structure first then go back and "decorate the rooms." Because they have the story mapped out, they can begin in any room they want. They can write the ending first, or the middle. They can switch out different endings to see how they might work.
Micro Managers generally start at the beginning and decorate each room in its entirety before moving on to the next. The structure reveals itself in the process of writing. Zadie Smith, a self-proclaimed Micro Manager, says "I start at the first sentence of novel and finish at the last. It would never occur to me to choose between three different endings because I haven’t the slightest idea what the ending is until I get to it."
I'm a Micro and, to be honest, I'm a little jealous of Macros, because it can be easy to write yourself a down a long route that doesn't take you where you need to be—even though you don't know where that is yet—and then you have to go back, jettison pages of work (some brilliant, you tell yourself!), and try a different route, crossing your fingers that this one might be the charm. This can be especially tedious with a novel, where you might write 100 or more pages before realizing it isn't working. (I always save my dead darlings, with the hope that I might bring at least a few of them back to life somewhere else.)
Maybe you're a Macro Planner, Vishal, and that's why this concept of story being revealed in the act of writing seems mysterious to you. What do you think?
(I would also offer that Macro/Micro is a binary, and there is surely an infinite spectrum of writing methods between the two. Oh, and yeah, I agree with George. All of this is an attempt to define what is probably undefinable: the writing process.)
Thanks Patti! I am going through the Zadie Smith essay now. Very informative. I am still early in my writing journey. The one time I pre-planned a story, it turned out not very good and I ended up shelving it. Mostly I start with a feeling or an image, and then the rest of the story comes together around it by some magical process that I don’t even understand. 😊
I really like the idea of writing as being a sort of entertainer, keeping the reader interested. Also, the idea of writing as a spiritual discipline is a good way of looking at it and keeping at it day after day, even when the spirit is very unwilling!
I wanted to express my gratitude for a couple of things this morning. First, I'm so thankful the Story Club community has remained a stronghold of respectful discourse, stocked with so much wisdom, insight, and kindness. Every week, I am inspired by the contributions of you wonderful people and it makes me so badly want to read your work!
Second, I was reading an old "Teen Titans" comic book from the 1980s when I stumbled upon a suspiciously familiar villain named Gizmo. I'm just thankful our Gizmo decided to use his powers for good instead of evil.
If you ever wondered what George Saunders would look like as an evil genius (instead of a benevolent one), I offer this: https://ibb.co/Pw9bG2w
Tom Robbins always claimed to use this method, essentially, but sentence by sentence, revising each sentence until it was perfect before moving to the next, and (he alleges) never going back to revise them once he moves to the next. Tom's books are pretty good, and one suspects there's gotta be some revision at some stage. Maybe he was talking about first draft, it was never clear. But he does often site the creation of the first sentence of ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION ("The Magician's underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.") as a thing unto itself and that when he wrote and rewrote it till he was happy with it, claiming he had no idea who the magician was, and what came next. He describes it as insanely time consuming and inefficient way to write, also as the only way he can write. He further claims that he does not ever outline or plot, and truly never knows where he's headed. One quote at some point, which I'm paraphrasing: "How can I possibly know the where the book is going, or even what the next sentence will be until the sentence I'm working on is perfect?"
I personally have always used the very method George espouses, but until reading Swim/Pond I also always thought I was doing it wrong. How freeing that my favorite living author not only approves, but works the same way himself! Of course George also completes things, which is not quite a habit of mine. But even working endlessly is more joyful knowing the revision is always making the bits better.
What I always came up against was the advice from every writing teacher I've had, save one (David Milch) to never, ever read the previous days work or start revising until a draft was finished. They said it would be death. But I could never move on without tinkering. I would start each day reading the previous days work, or maybe reading from the top, and fix and fix and fix. As the work grew, I was able to start each day not from the top but from the top of the most recent section, if all else before had already been 'fixed' to satisfaction.
I was, however, when screenwriting, very able to move past place-holder 'bad versions' of scenes to progress (there was always an outline, index cards, etc, a map!). And then come back and write-for-real the lightweight placeholder scenes. One perk was that occasionally I learned that a 'bad version' could often be a pretty good version, or at least a signpost towards one.
I've been writing using more or less George's method, trying to adapt it to my own ways of working, and it has been working really well for me. Where I want to grow is listening to and trusting what George calls my micro-opinions. Because when I don't, I let certain aspects of the story harden too quickly, which in turn gets me stuck down some frustrating dead-ends.
For a (made-up) example, I might get stuck writing a scene where a character is driving to work. For whatever reason, I convince myself this scene is a load-bearing element of the story. But no matter how much I edit the scene, the energy still lags there.
What I have a bad habit of forgetting is that as a writer I have radical freedom to follow my micro-opinions. Why can't the character ride a helicopter to work? Or a helicopter? Or better yet, cut the scene altogether and start with him already at work in the dreaded meeting with the boss.
That freedom can really open up a story for me. And maybe that's the real source of the problem: I'm impatient and just want the story to settle into something firm. Instead, I need to learn to keep trusting my taste and the process. As George talks about here and elsewhere, being okay with living in that middle discomfort for as long as it takes.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my self-therapy session.
It sounds like you're ready, George, to write a habiltation thesis (like we do in France)... You swept a little under the rug when you wrote "that, when using this method, I don’t have to do much thinking about themes or plot or rising action or any of that." Isn't escalation rising action? That's the major takeaway for me here: I didn't have a name for the way story progresses. I like your take on what counts as escalation in the stories we've been reading. It has helped me to become a better reader, more attuned to what these stories are doing to me and how they do it.
A hard truth has a light shone on it by your post here, Karen: I like not knowing exactly how stories make me feel the things they do. Maybe that's another reason I so enjoy obsessive re-reading of favorite stories and books. It's not that I forget them or the feelings they cause me, but I do get the feelings all over again, free of analysis of the why and how. I'd surely b e a better writer, or certainly craftier, if I paid more attention to why instead of just the feelings themselves. But fuck it, I'm old. I like feelings!
As a side note: this doesn't correlate to film/television storytelling probably since I studied directing and worked on movie crew for many many years. I love moves and the feelings they trigger, and enjoy watching the best work again and again and again. But in those cases, I am always aware of, and marveling at, how it was done.
There's clearly lessons in here for me, most notably because the only writing I ever consistently finished was when working screenplays. But like I said, I'm old.
my mother-in-law had a 20-page rule; if not engaged at that point, back to the library with you, book. She was 90 when she told me that, so I figure it was a policy derived from a sense of diminshing time.
I know this is really meta but I have to ask, isn’t the balance of what makes a readable, enticing story also partly having some of both credit and debit, in an appropriate for that story balance? What kind of role do people see for interplay between those enjoyable and not-so-enjoyable parts, both because both might be necessary in the story but also the additional benefit of cultivating relief and a sense of accomplishment for a reader having made it through a ‘debit section’, glad for its value and also glad it’s over (like climbing a mountain, for example). Like a satisfying challenge.
For me, the Shakespearean quoted passages in The Basement, as an example of this.
Passage below from post for ref:
I make a fix and next time I read that place…the “debit” moment is gone, replaced, I hope, by a “credit” moment.
This is such genius I have to read it really slowly. Or, it's so thrilling I can only read a little bit at a time. George is so by far the best short story teacher I've ever been exposed to...I don't know what else to say, or how strongly it can be said.
George's method (writing sentence by sentence, letting one sentence lead you to the next, followed by the P/N meter reaction and multiple edits) reminds me, somewhat, of John McPhee's. Here's McPhee, from his book Draft No. 4: "Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”
Bradbury was more succinct: "You throw up in the morning. You clean up in the afternoon". It's said he typically wrote a story a day.
Wow.
Just on weekdays. Damn good stories too.
More from Bradbury: “I had a sign over my typewriter 50 years ago, which says ‘don’t think.’ All of my books are written by this interior self that wants to say something. I never get in the way."
"Blurt. Heave. Babble."
"Breathe. Out. In. Break."
"Go again."
"Blurt. Heave. Babble."
"Breathe. Out. In. Break."
"Go again."
"Blurt. Heave. Babble."
"Breathe. Out. In. Break."
"Go again."
Makes sense?
Makes more sense?
Makes more sense indeed!
"Blurt. Heave. Babble."
"Breathe. Out. In. Break."
"Go again."
"Blurt...
Rob! So nice to see you popping up in these comments! Keep on blurting and heaving and you'll get there....
Babbling like Babel?
'There's a grand goal just sauntered in lower stage right, gently ambled diagonally up stage, exited softly back stage right' he thought.
"Did you just see that?" said Rob in full blurt and heaving with excitement just before realising that it was Godot not Babel who had crossed the stage of his imagination and that no one else could have seen him so silent with such relief at having finally got there... to the end of such an interminable wait.
‘Blurted, heaved and babbled out 100 words that add up to something more than their sum? Hmm.'
This makes so much sense, and true in my experience as well. My mind keeps working on what I’m writing long after the writing itself, and often finds the solutions to a writing problem during those after hours.
Thinking about what George said about process and imagined an upside down pyramid like this:
WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ REWRITE
READ REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE READ
REWRITE READ REWRITE
You’re getting close
Read !
Darn it, It didn't come out a pyramid. Oh well.
It’s a pair of high waisted pants.
Lol
Isn't that an abiding wonder of digi-tech? It sucks just when you'd least want it to!
Having said which, these old grey cells we carry loose and light in our craniums have that ancient inbuilt plasticity of mind feature that let's us see the pyramid you've constructed in all its aesthetic glory. And not a trace of time worn, erosive scarring... an enigmatic literary delight to recall as aid to reflection?
What's more Tod this concrete expression expression of a thought that you've had arrive on the ripple of a pebble post by George is sending out further ripples of it's own.
For example it seems, even to these tired eyes of mine, that it has structure when viewed through the lens of poetic intent.
For a second example: what scope your pyramid offers for creative word play of a more 'physical' kind, through capturing the text by copying and pasting into another format, say Word.docx, and manipulating the malleable words to make the pyramid you envisaged or a bigger mirror-imaged version.
"What larks, what possibilities, what positive perturbations Pip this pyramid's unforeseen landing with us brings to the quiet life we lead out here in these boondock marshes " . . . as Joe Gargery might, just conceivably and at a stretch to test the limits of imagination, put an alternative version of his spoken words had Charles D been a live and contributing subscriber to Story Club.
Hmm.
Hmm, indeed Rob. An intriguing twist to the pyramid your gray cells have conjured, and alternative perturbations stretching far beyond my original concept which in the aftermath, about embarrassed me in its simplistic irrelevance to the topic at hand. Thanks for your insights.
Hmm Tod. I didn't, and don't now, think that you being sparked to fashion a response to George's post conceptualised in the form of a pyramid is in any way, shape or form 'simplistic irrelevance'.
One of the things that it invites reflection on in is the way(s) in which great prose stories have a poetic dimension to them. George's approach - repeatedly 'tweaking and twiddling' or 'ditching and doing over' the first draft that he's hammered out - has frequently transported me to thinking of the ways talented poets get from Draft #1 to Draft #X which often enough is considered 'finished but not, necessarily, final' as it leaves the word forge to be typeset for publication.
Have you tried reading aloud the words as presently inscribed your pyramid as presently drafted? If not why not consider doing so?
If you do - and I'd suggest, more that could, you should - please share back on the experience and any effects it may have?
"Hmm, indeed Tod, hmmm, get set, intone... READ, WRITE, READ, REWRITE, READ... hmmmm... repeat REWRITE, READ, WRITE, READ, REWRITE... hmmmmm?"
Hmm. You're giving this far more thought I am Rob.
In fact it never occurred to me to read it. Hmm.
Ok, I'll give it a try later and will report back.
Put this down bye read^^
I would not have had the patience to type that !
I comment here often about the transcendent nature of George’s observations and advice, about the way Story Club is secretly Therapy Club. Well, today’s post did it again - it took reading, writing and editing up to the level of truly seeing, deeply listening and generously offering. I particularly loved this at the end: “So, in a way, writing like this can start to feel like a spiritual discipline: we’re training ourselves to observe accurately (and there are volumes to be written about the difficulty of this), then react in a way that makes things better.”
The spiritual aspect of it comes during the momentary pause between the accurate (we hope) observation and the subsequent reaction. Without the pause, we may not be making things better. The thing is, we don't have to be knee-jerkers. We can choose how to react, and that makes all the difference--in writing and in life. And we may not get it right the first time, but you know--fail again (you know the rest).
Agreed, for sure. I would call that pause listening, or seeing, or you know, pausing….;)
If only i would take my own advice.
Well, you kinda do (take your own advice). This week's "What Now" prompt, to me, had a lot to do with the pausing listening, crafting, before moving on as per the constraints of the prompt. It was a very different way of writing.
I like that, Fred. Thanks for pointing it out!
You and me both, sista! Or if I could take your advice. Or George’s….
Me, three.
You can...If you choose how you react^^
This last line resonated with me as well.
We're going to have to stop now, but we can pick up at the next session. Don't forget to get the venmo code on your way out. (And don't steal the magazines from the waiting room!)
Has it been 50 minutes already?
And now my necks sore.
It has. Time flies when I’m nodding and saying “hmmm” doesn’t it.
I’ve been involved in Story Club for a while now, and this method has helped inform my process also. I just got the news recently that my novella-in-flash, Pineville Trace won the Etchjngs Press(at the University of Indianapolis) Book prize and will be published soon. This is my first book to be published, and I am grateful for the Story Club community and how helpful it’s been supporting my writing life.
Well done, Wes!
Thank you!
Congratulations!
Thank you, Lucy!
That's awesome - congratulations!
Thank you!
Great Wes- good news and congratulations.
Thanks, Gloria. I appreciate it!
That's very cool! Congratulations!
Thank you, Patricia!
Congratulations, Wes!
Thank you!
Yay you, Wes! Bravo!
Thank you!
Congratulations!
Thank you, Kathleen!
Congratulations 🍾🎉🎊🎈
Thank you, Sea!
What fantastic news! Congratulations, Wes!!
Thank you, Mary!
"My artistic journey included a pivotal moment at which I realized I’d been neglecting/ignoring my desire to be entertaining (by keeping humor out of my work). It was like I’d been fighting for my life in an alley and then looked down and noticed I had one hand behind my back."
I discovered this for myself, in a different realm, writing instructional materials. I'd try to sound professorial and expert, and had a terrible time writing and revising. But then I met a woman who I greatly admired for her entertaining and very helpful training videos (on Lynda.com), and was fascinated to find that who she was in those videos was who she was at lunch. And from then I tried to dial back the 'expert' me and begin the search for my own voice. It ended up freeing me tremendously, feeling confident that I was conveying information in a way that I knew well, once I paid attention to it. Made writing and revising much simpler.
I have heard this before, but still don’t understand how plot or other global aspects of story structure take care of themselves based on line-to-line revision. It is a fascinating concept to think about, the emergence of global structures based on local processes, that we also see in nature. But I seem to be missing something key about how this works in creating stories. Does anyone have further insights on this point? Examples or pointers for further reading? Thanks in advance for any help!
I would maybe reccomend the example I gave by suggesting finding an interview or two with Tom Robbins discussing his method, and then maybe try some of his work. If what he claims is true regarding his non-process process, it's a remarkable example.
I think considerations of theme, character, nuance, sometimes voice, and other more 'heart-based' aspects of writing can be emergent and flexible; they certainly are in my writing.
Plot is a different thing, in my mind: much more of a tool than a craft/'talent'/soul element. Plot is all technique related as I see it. Mapping. And in my experience it can happen in advance, but more often is better and more satisfying when it emerges and is followed, rather than sketched out in advance. Also, like any map, one can still get lost, go off the edges, read it upside down. I believe adherence to it is helpful only to a slight point. And such adherence can definitely get one to a destination that isn't at all what was envisioned in the heart, or even in the wild mind. Maybe to the monkey mind it will make sense, the same way a map is usually correct to scale, but it sure ain't the territory it represents.
Thanks Fred. Will look up what Tom Robbins has to say.
George has told us that he has, at times, worked on a story for years. He is constantly editing and revising. He knows that a story needs escalation, and he's told us that a story ends when there is no more escalation to come. In his revision process, the structure appears. As does the question the story is asking him, as does the plot! He just doesn't talk in terms of plot or rising action, etc. But he sees all of it as he continues to revise. (George, if i have this wrong, please correct me.)
I studied "story structure" in as much as it was available for study from "experts" in the film and TV business, which is a metric ton. Ultimately, the most I gleaned was that contrary to popular impressions, Story Structure is not a cage or scaffolding that characters enter and climb around within. Structure, in the best work, is largely indistinguishable from character. Well not 'indistinguishable, but so interwoven that neither exists without the other. (except a character can kinda exist without a story, but not t'other way 'round'.) Lets just say inseparable, in good work.
It took some effort and growth and understanding for me to get my mind around that, but it's in my core now. Not everyone agrees. Not everyone needs to. Our mileage will vary based not only on what we drive, but on how we drive.
I see why you ask that. From my perspective it is a good idea to have some broad idea of structure, but then let the creative blurting process guide the evolution of the whole piece. I'm willing to let the story go in new directions as the creative juices flow.
Also, while George talks a lot about individual sentences he also refers to moving or eliminating paragraphs, and making other structural changes. So editing involves more than just the sentences. But they are very important. Bad sentences can really drag down the energy.
Said the un-published fellow....
I was about to say something along these lines, and saw your comment, Mark with a K. And going with the spiritual nature of this discussion... I think its during the mid-phase of getting through the story (not that you necessarily know its the middle, in fact until this occurs you might have thought you were nearing the end) when you sit back, and realise something fundamental is not working, and you go deeper into your characters' minds, or the physical incongruities you have set up, etc, and take some time to really explore those things, and hopefully come up with a solution. (Which may be much more than a line or word edit, and it hurts, but it has to be done.) And in doing that, your sub-conscious is floating towards your consciousness, and, well, thats the spiritual bit. Said the barely-published fellow.
I've wondered about this too. Reading your comment Vishal made me think "intuitive imagination." So, there is a "force" in the writer that makes up a sentence to follow another sentence, initiated by the content of the first sentence. (I'm making this up on the fly here.) I think George has talked about this in terms of the energy of one sentence pushing forward into the next. So : Jack blew up his spare tire. leads to , Jack bicycled into the road and got hit by a car. An ambulance came and picked up Jack. Jack died at the hospital.
Here's a simple example where I didn't know what happened after Jack inflated the tire. The concept is liberating for sure. To pull off a novel would take an agile mind with lots of accessible storage it seems to me .
Vishal, your comment brings to mind Zadie Smith's essay titled "That Crafty Feeling," about Macro Planners vs. Micro Managers. Google it here: https://www.thebeliever.net/that-crafty-feeling/. Macro Planners build the entire structure first then go back and "decorate the rooms." Because they have the story mapped out, they can begin in any room they want. They can write the ending first, or the middle. They can switch out different endings to see how they might work.
Micro Managers generally start at the beginning and decorate each room in its entirety before moving on to the next. The structure reveals itself in the process of writing. Zadie Smith, a self-proclaimed Micro Manager, says "I start at the first sentence of novel and finish at the last. It would never occur to me to choose between three different endings because I haven’t the slightest idea what the ending is until I get to it."
I'm a Micro and, to be honest, I'm a little jealous of Macros, because it can be easy to write yourself a down a long route that doesn't take you where you need to be—even though you don't know where that is yet—and then you have to go back, jettison pages of work (some brilliant, you tell yourself!), and try a different route, crossing your fingers that this one might be the charm. This can be especially tedious with a novel, where you might write 100 or more pages before realizing it isn't working. (I always save my dead darlings, with the hope that I might bring at least a few of them back to life somewhere else.)
Maybe you're a Macro Planner, Vishal, and that's why this concept of story being revealed in the act of writing seems mysterious to you. What do you think?
(I would also offer that Macro/Micro is a binary, and there is surely an infinite spectrum of writing methods between the two. Oh, and yeah, I agree with George. All of this is an attempt to define what is probably undefinable: the writing process.)
Thanks Patti! I am going through the Zadie Smith essay now. Very informative. I am still early in my writing journey. The one time I pre-planned a story, it turned out not very good and I ended up shelving it. Mostly I start with a feeling or an image, and then the rest of the story comes together around it by some magical process that I don’t even understand. 😊
I really like the idea of writing as being a sort of entertainer, keeping the reader interested. Also, the idea of writing as a spiritual discipline is a good way of looking at it and keeping at it day after day, even when the spirit is very unwilling!
I keep saying how Old I am, but clearly not grown-up enough to see myself as writing to entertain a reader, I'm just trying to entertain myself .
I wanted to express my gratitude for a couple of things this morning. First, I'm so thankful the Story Club community has remained a stronghold of respectful discourse, stocked with so much wisdom, insight, and kindness. Every week, I am inspired by the contributions of you wonderful people and it makes me so badly want to read your work!
Second, I was reading an old "Teen Titans" comic book from the 1980s when I stumbled upon a suspiciously familiar villain named Gizmo. I'm just thankful our Gizmo decided to use his powers for good instead of evil.
If you ever wondered what George Saunders would look like as an evil genius (instead of a benevolent one), I offer this: https://ibb.co/Pw9bG2w
Ha! And it's funny that he seems to be in the business of going into someone else's mind and extracting stuff from in there.
Also love the hoodie. :)
Thanks for this reprisal of your method George.
Tom Robbins always claimed to use this method, essentially, but sentence by sentence, revising each sentence until it was perfect before moving to the next, and (he alleges) never going back to revise them once he moves to the next. Tom's books are pretty good, and one suspects there's gotta be some revision at some stage. Maybe he was talking about first draft, it was never clear. But he does often site the creation of the first sentence of ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION ("The Magician's underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.") as a thing unto itself and that when he wrote and rewrote it till he was happy with it, claiming he had no idea who the magician was, and what came next. He describes it as insanely time consuming and inefficient way to write, also as the only way he can write. He further claims that he does not ever outline or plot, and truly never knows where he's headed. One quote at some point, which I'm paraphrasing: "How can I possibly know the where the book is going, or even what the next sentence will be until the sentence I'm working on is perfect?"
I personally have always used the very method George espouses, but until reading Swim/Pond I also always thought I was doing it wrong. How freeing that my favorite living author not only approves, but works the same way himself! Of course George also completes things, which is not quite a habit of mine. But even working endlessly is more joyful knowing the revision is always making the bits better.
What I always came up against was the advice from every writing teacher I've had, save one (David Milch) to never, ever read the previous days work or start revising until a draft was finished. They said it would be death. But I could never move on without tinkering. I would start each day reading the previous days work, or maybe reading from the top, and fix and fix and fix. As the work grew, I was able to start each day not from the top but from the top of the most recent section, if all else before had already been 'fixed' to satisfaction.
I was, however, when screenwriting, very able to move past place-holder 'bad versions' of scenes to progress (there was always an outline, index cards, etc, a map!). And then come back and write-for-real the lightweight placeholder scenes. One perk was that occasionally I learned that a 'bad version' could often be a pretty good version, or at least a signpost towards one.
A big thumbs up for Robbins!
I've been writing using more or less George's method, trying to adapt it to my own ways of working, and it has been working really well for me. Where I want to grow is listening to and trusting what George calls my micro-opinions. Because when I don't, I let certain aspects of the story harden too quickly, which in turn gets me stuck down some frustrating dead-ends.
For a (made-up) example, I might get stuck writing a scene where a character is driving to work. For whatever reason, I convince myself this scene is a load-bearing element of the story. But no matter how much I edit the scene, the energy still lags there.
What I have a bad habit of forgetting is that as a writer I have radical freedom to follow my micro-opinions. Why can't the character ride a helicopter to work? Or a helicopter? Or better yet, cut the scene altogether and start with him already at work in the dreaded meeting with the boss.
That freedom can really open up a story for me. And maybe that's the real source of the problem: I'm impatient and just want the story to settle into something firm. Instead, I need to learn to keep trusting my taste and the process. As George talks about here and elsewhere, being okay with living in that middle discomfort for as long as it takes.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my self-therapy session.
We like therapy around here….
We need it. ;)
Totally unrelated, but I saw a lovely avatar/caricature/portrait of you in El País today (Liberation Day was recently published in Spain). https://elpais.com/babelia/2024-04-18/el-dia-de-la-liberacion-de-george-saunders-como-gatitos-ciegos-en-un-sueno-amnesico.html
That’s a lot of beard!
This artist is amazing! https://www.agustinsciammarella.com/por-amor-al-arte
Big hair is having such a moment. Hair clothing is having a moment.
Here’s some big hair changing sillhouettes by Mark Jacob’s on @hautelemode
https://youtube.com/shorts/Smfh-ITpjqQ?si=D9kKYLrxlMx7LckI
And here’s Doja Cat bringing hair front and centre at Coachella
https://youtu.be/sHZXATIqdr4?si=8yYTcmkUech_KfIV
More great Carver advice
https://lithub.com/get-in-get-out-dont-linger-go-on-read-raymond-carvers-greatest-writing-advice/
Thanks, JDA, this is wonderful.
Thanks JDA! I have bookmarked this link and will no doubt refer to it again and again.
Thanks—so many topics all in one summary.
It sounds like you're ready, George, to write a habiltation thesis (like we do in France)... You swept a little under the rug when you wrote "that, when using this method, I don’t have to do much thinking about themes or plot or rising action or any of that." Isn't escalation rising action? That's the major takeaway for me here: I didn't have a name for the way story progresses. I like your take on what counts as escalation in the stories we've been reading. It has helped me to become a better reader, more attuned to what these stories are doing to me and how they do it.
A hard truth has a light shone on it by your post here, Karen: I like not knowing exactly how stories make me feel the things they do. Maybe that's another reason I so enjoy obsessive re-reading of favorite stories and books. It's not that I forget them or the feelings they cause me, but I do get the feelings all over again, free of analysis of the why and how. I'd surely b e a better writer, or certainly craftier, if I paid more attention to why instead of just the feelings themselves. But fuck it, I'm old. I like feelings!
As a side note: this doesn't correlate to film/television storytelling probably since I studied directing and worked on movie crew for many many years. I love moves and the feelings they trigger, and enjoy watching the best work again and again and again. But in those cases, I am always aware of, and marveling at, how it was done.
There's clearly lessons in here for me, most notably because the only writing I ever consistently finished was when working screenplays. But like I said, I'm old.
"some people are more generous readers than others, and insist on finishing whatever they start" I'm very generous. I finish the page : )
my mother-in-law had a 20-page rule; if not engaged at that point, back to the library with you, book. She was 90 when she told me that, so I figure it was a policy derived from a sense of diminshing time.
I try to finish each sentence I start reading, but sometimes it's a slog. It even was pre-internet, but less so.
I know this is really meta but I have to ask, isn’t the balance of what makes a readable, enticing story also partly having some of both credit and debit, in an appropriate for that story balance? What kind of role do people see for interplay between those enjoyable and not-so-enjoyable parts, both because both might be necessary in the story but also the additional benefit of cultivating relief and a sense of accomplishment for a reader having made it through a ‘debit section’, glad for its value and also glad it’s over (like climbing a mountain, for example). Like a satisfying challenge.
For me, the Shakespearean quoted passages in The Basement, as an example of this.
Passage below from post for ref:
I make a fix and next time I read that place…the “debit” moment is gone, replaced, I hope, by a “credit” moment.
And my story just got better.
Absolutely. We doubt, then get converted - and that makes for a powerful surge forward and a renewed bond with the author. 👍
This is such genius I have to read it really slowly. Or, it's so thrilling I can only read a little bit at a time. George is so by far the best short story teacher I've ever been exposed to...I don't know what else to say, or how strongly it can be said.