I have only wrote 1 finished (and a half not yet finished) novel, but I find this to be a really interesting question. I have a background in film and screenwriting, where everything is always very meticulously planned from the shorter forms of the script, before you write the long one and eventually make the actual product, which is the film. Litterature for me is amazingly different, in that you are conceiving the book (the actual product) as you are writing it, and is discovering it as you write. I often feel that the finished book already exists as an entity outside of me, and I am just fishing small parts of it up from a pond in which the finished work is lying on the bottom. It takes a little forgetting yourself and focusing at the same time. My girlfriend is a musician and talks about, how the magical time to play a song live is when you have rehearsed, but not very much, so you are slightly not sure what you are doing, and that is where the emotions happens. For me, it is the same with prose. You have to know a little where you are headed, but also stay exactly unsure enough, that you are as open for surprises as the reader will be. Does that make sense? Does anyone feel the same?
Similar experience here. Very rough outline, and many surprises along the way. With both fiction and non-fiction. Short, or long. Except, I will add, that for me everything starts with a question, so writing is a quest trying to answer that question. That is the fun part. I never know what I will find/ learn. But the question has to move me, and I have to care about the subject. Beyond that, everything is a bit of a mystery, or magic, as you say.
These are more personal questions, like “why am I feeling depressed when I should be the happiest?” which led me to write a book about motherhood. Or, “where is my home?” which led me to write a play ‘Someplace Else’ about a search for belonging. So it’s usually something personal and unsettling. It can be with both fiction and non-fiction. I’m not sure if it helps…?
Interesting--so the questions tend to be about your state of mind--more than about a character, e.g., "what makes someone unable to stop denying that her husband has alzheimers?" Or, "What would reconciliation look like between a mother and daughter?" or "Are there really ghosts in machines?" I confess I have always found it hard to pin down such questions.
Framing a story based on a question is smart. In stories I’ve read, a conclusion is at least implied by whatever events may answer that question. So, we’re starting with a before-and-after structure. Specific questions get more traction — as outlines, that is.
Interesting. Traction, such a good word RG for trying to get a story underway. More questions, e.g. "I've always wondered how different people handle their own pride" or, "Why do wealthy people shop lift" or "What happens when someone suddenly becomes confident" etc etc.
Excellent questions. Notice they serve backstory? Lots of necessary digging here to anchor a character to some central life issue. But your story would start with a more immediate question, like: Will Joe’s shoplifting or pride ruin his chances of, say, becoming a priest? Best!
Yes, personal questions but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the story would be about my personal experience. I then take it to a character. Even a more general question like, “what makes a responsible, conscientious politician go rogue?” has to have my personal interest.
This is me too.. People talk about plotters and pantsers, but I think most of us who attempt novels are somewhere in between those poles. If I had the work completely plotted out, it gets boring writing it, since I already know too much. If I have no outline at all, (I've done several times) I'll get 50 pages into the thing, and then I find myself against a wall, no way to go on, and no way to end it.
I feel very seen by this 🤓 Kind of thought other writers where plotting more, and that I was cheating, but so cool to learn how many others feel the same 🔥
Yes! yes! yes! "You have to know a little where you are headed, but also stay exactly unsure enough, that you are as open for surprises as the reader will be." And yes to George's "[in a novel] We’re going to march up to the attic and then slowly work our way down, a floor at a time. . . On the way down, if he stops for a long digression, or reveals a hidden closet, I’m O.K., with that, because I know the long game: we are working our way down." Stories discourage digressions, novels may thrive on them—room to breathe. Thank you Tone and George! And, yes to Ivan Ilych and buying the book too.
I also have a background in screenwriting and I definitely agree with your point here. Everything in a screenplay is planned before, there's extensive outlining, and while this helps, I think it often takes away from the discovery or the surprise which writing literature provides. As Hemingway said that all you need for starting a story is one good sentence, and even Saunders keeps bringing it up, writing short stories is writing one sentence after another; it's an adventure. The first draft can be just discovery, the refining and structure can come during editing.
" I often feel that the finished book already exists as an entity outside of me, and I am just fishing small parts of it up from a pond in which the finished work is lying on the bottom. It takes a little forgetting yourself and focusing at the same time."
I have exactly the same feeling - so much so that using that image has helped me further refine my writing process, using fly fishing as an analogy.
If I get to a point where I have a question about my story that doesn't have an immediately obvious answer, I take time to compose just the right question, then sleep on it, (presumably) allowing my subconscious - the eternal sea - time to work on it. Just like using the right type of fly for the type of fish I'm trying to catch, the question has to be totally specific.
I've talked about this in Story Club before, so I'll just quote part of that post here to illustrate what I mean.
"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."
I am fond of Stephen King's expression about writing where he feels like he's uncovering a fossil. Might not be exactly what you mean here, but it's something I think about a lot.
I think it's actually worth taking notice of the model that springs to mind when we describe what it is we're trying to do. This can potentially help us formulate the best way to progress - I'd approach something that felt like 'digging up a fossil' differently to 'trying to repair a stained glass window', for example.
The latter is a model I've previously used, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was a specifically helpful model for the thing I was working on. It was as if (and I know I'm stretching the analogy somewhat!) I could see the various colours, and had some of the connecting lead, but couldn't yet tell what the picture was. I also realised that I might not only be missing some pieces of the finished image, but that I might have pieces that didn't belong there at all.
It really helped to have the idea that what I had at that point was a degraded version of something coherent that I could repair, rather than something I'd built out of nothing without really knowing what I was building.
I've also had moments of inspiration arrive from unexpected sources. For example, I was working on a drama based on a complex real life situation, and, having done a huge amount of research - in part to feel it was legitimate for me to try to tackle a true story that wasn't my own - my storytelling was bogged down in lots of detail.
For some reason I can no longer recall, I'd downloaded the text of Toxophilus, a 1545 treatise on archery by Roger Ascham, and decided to read it during a break. In it there's a section where the author discusses the fact that it's more effective to fire an arrow that leaves a small hole but penetrates deeply, than one that leaves a wider hole but doesn't penetrate as far. That really helped me see how to improve the drama I was working on.
ABSOLUTELY agree. Also, I'll run that quote from your girlfriend by my daughter who is a rock singer and see how she relates to that very interesting concept.
Definitely ditto your girlfriend on the 'half-rehearsal' strategy for live performance, both of music and storytelling! I'd never thought of it like that before – please pass on my thanks to her for the insight!
That said, I totally use this approach with my novels too. I synopsis FIRST, then begin – not too dissimilar from your screenwriting process, I guess, though the characters are like my writers' room: if they don't like the way it's going, the synopsis has to change...
Yes it makes sense to me. My new project my essays are many. I am sure my book THREE WHISTLES exits for futere grandchildren to pursue a film. So carry on your good work. I
I would love to unpack a Claire Keegan story together. Her stories are so powerful, e.g. 'foster' would be a great one. (Though I guess we'd all have to buy it which isn't ideal.)
Well, folks, if we're going to buy anything, let's buy "Foster". Full of all the right words, no wrong ones, no excess, an absolute beauty and heart-wrench of a story!
I'm very game for Ivan Ilych, but piggy-backing on Angela's request, I'd love for George to dig into anything by Grace Paley. I recently (finally) dipped into her collected stories, which are often delightful and a little bewildering. I have to work to keep up and figure out what exactly is going on, but I WANT to figure it out and it's usually sly, humorous and insightful. How is she doing what she's doing?
I have four published novels, four in various stages toward completion, and probably about a dozen written from age thirteen onward (I was a solitary kid). I am no model of efficiency (or anything else, really), but I tend to start with an idea, write a potential outline, abandon the outline in favor of discoveries yielded by the characters, get stumped, outline again, use that for about ten to twenty pages, and then abandon it to follow the characters ... and so on. When I am sort of finished, I outline what I actually wrote, despair, cut out half of it, rewrite from the beginning, during which time it grows a different new half, and do that a few more times. The outline is for comfort; it lets me know I have somewhere to go, though I won't get there in the way that I planned and always find something more interesting as I write. It's almost the same for me with short stories. I do not hold myself up as an example anyone should follow. This is therapy. Thanks for listening.
Uh-oh! I am experiencing exactly your pattern! I, too, will have to cut out half of what I've written, but it hadn't occurred to me I might grow another half and go through that process multiple times. assuming I live long enough. How do you manage to get to the point where y you feel that you are really done?
I'm not sure ... There just comes a point when I know that if I push any harder, it won't surprise me anymore. I suppose another way to say that is that I'm afraid of getting tired of it after being so very very involved with it for years. (Yes, this method takes years, obviously!) But nothing is ever really done, is it? A work of art is never finished, only abandoned. I wish you luck finding the point of abandonment (wish me luck too).
A novel set on the Arizona/Mexico border involving the missing son of a dentist and a migrant woman and her young son. The woman was a failing nun in a previous draft and may be again (see the brain soup referenced earlier). The butterfly effect takes on completely new dimensions when writing a draft.
And once you are done and a few months have passed, you probably won't remember which little details you went with. You'll remember all the things it used to be at once, and when someone talks about it with you, your answer will be, "Huh?"
One possible result.
So why a dentist's son? That is intriguing. Dentistry int he plot?
When you look back on your four published novels (each of which evolved through your process of starting with an outline then revising, recasting, reformulating as and whenever feels appropriate) do you find yourself able to outline, pithily, what turned out to what each story was about?
Thanks for writing Susann: I enjoyed reading your words with my 👂 listening 👁🗨 eye 😊
You are kind, Rob. At the outset, I always have a sense of "What's the big idea?"--but it changes and becomes something more interesting as I write (at least interesting to me). So something that started with "All of the queen's children are sick at once, and their sickness endangers the kingdom" became "The girls' bodies are battlegrounds for various schemers and villains, but owning the battlegrounds gives the girls the chance to change the narrative and the future." That probably could be expressed more pithily, and it sounds misleadingly like high fantasy. Near the end of a draft, I try to find the pithiest way of expressing what the story turns out to be "about," even if reducing it to a one-sentence "theme" (sorry, can't get away from quotation marks this morning) feels too simplistic and silly. I hope for and almost never achieve something like the theme of Romeo and Juliet, "True love conquers all obstacles, even death"--which is very reductive in a play about so many things, but it is that little foam pellet that creates the story when you drop it into the waters of the Avon.
What do you do about defining the Big Idea in yours?
Well, I'm going to have to remember it, then--I may have a cocktail party to try to charm sometime. Then the guests will glaze over like doughnuts and move away with just a hint of palpable anxiety. Oh no, they'll think, a writer on writing. Must ... get ... anywhere ... else ...
Nothing against Tolstoy!!, but I was hoping we might next tackle something that's a little less familiar, something many of us haven't already read multiple times, & something other than Russian. We already have your "Swim" as a guide with its Russians, plus the Russians we've already done in SC. Again, nothing against Russian!!---love' em!---but I was encouraged by our taking up Joyce's lesser known & maybe underappreciated "Clay" & took that to mean we might be going in a new direction, a direction that might even include some contemporary, or at least only recently departed, writers.
I think this approach helps when your starting point has already identified the core conflict. Like the 'Lincoln in the Bardo' example - which has both the premise (Lincoln, grief-sick, comes to the graveyard and interacts with his son’s body) and the conflict (Willie is not supposed to be there, and either stays, or goes). If you have that, then you know the general shape of your story. My problem with the novel I am working on at the moment is that I have the premise, but still don't know what the story is actually about. It's like the 'The Road' example George gives above - "A man and his son make their way across a dystopian landscape": the premise is there, the kind of story it will be, the cool idea that helps you write the first couple of chapters - but without the "the father teaches survival, but the boy teaches humanity" conflict (will they survive but lose their humanity? or will they die but maintain their humanity?), there's no way to progress the story. Same with Gatsby - "A poor man comes back rich to reclaim the girl of his dreams” is a cool idea, but what is the story actually about? What thread are you going to follow to tell that story? Without the "will his new money be enough to overcome the prejudice of his low-born status?" (or some other question indicating a core conflict), there's no guide in navigating how that story of 'the poor man coming back to get the girl' should unfold....
To find the conflict in my story, I've been trying George's 'crossing the wires' approach - looking back through what I've written based on the 'cool idea' (ie the first couple of chapters) and seeing what is ripe for exploring further, what is capable of producing a spark if they're pulled out and pushed together. Haven't found it yet - I think I need to keep riffing with the cool premise to discover it (but the ongoing questions of "what is this story even about?" keeps pushing me into procrastination...)
I've found it helpful to consider how conflict (and escalation) appears in other stories - i.e. the opposition can be between two people (Tom and Gatsby), or between two ideas (Joyce's Maria 'getting the ring' (her desire) or staying a spinster and going to convent (her lot in life), or between two duties (Kyle being the good boy and obeying his parents in George's 'Victory Lap' or being the hero and saving the girl)... between any binaries really. Maybe that's part of the trick - finding the binary that serves (and gives meaning and shape to) your story. Will Willie stay or leave?
I find your distinction between premise (cool idea) and conflict very helpful. I tend to start with the premise and often have difficulties narrowing down the conflict that moves the plot forward.
Sometimes I get lucky and the cool idea has the conflict clearly embedded, so it's easy to see. But sometimes, the cool idea does its thing and then turns to me with this look as if to say "so, now what do we do?"
Figuring out a story's central question can be hard. I don't mind not knowing it for the first 5k words, but after that it starts to itch. Starting a story with wildly divergent narrative threads and full creative licence is all well and good, but at some stage, the story needs to gain focus to maintain its power.
Maybe it's like George's hot wheels cars that he talks about sometimes - sure, they get an initial push (the burst of creativity that always comes with starting a new story) and subsequent pushes from the 'gas stations' (scattered bursts of creativity and surprise), but maybe they also need their own internal source of momentum (ie cohesiveness/focus) to traverse the distance to the next push...?
This is a really helpful way of looking at a book, thanks! Not that this is helpful in any way, but (apocryphally) Philip Roth once wrote 150 pages of a novel only to realize the novel began on the 151st.
Did he possibly manage to take a lesson from it? Like, maybe never starting in on another story without a better sense that the first words were, actually, closer to an actual beginning? Or, very concrete, paginating every one of his subsequent stories (even short stories, if he wrote any) so that the first words played out on Page 151? 🤔
At the same time the word efficiency, which has been referenced at various times here in Story Club, comes to mind.
In looking at a nicely quarried block of raw word stone does a writer, a word mason if you will, not sometimes find it helpful to have an 'established' outline of the kind being considered in this thread clear in mind before hewing words out and flowing them down on the paper?
Is 150 pages, as some might think, a whole chunk of 'literary inefficiency' before cutting to the chase?
Or maybe, thinking on as I type, one of the distinctions between a literary novel and a genre novel is perhaps a tendency for authors of the former to be inclined to be more indulgent of inefficiency (in the interests of a creating the best literary artwork) than writers of genre (in the interest of creating the best literary entertainment possible given, typically, greater pressures to produce routinely and in tighter timeframes)?
I hear what you are saying - the thought of needing 150 pages to figure out the true story is kind of terrifying - but I'm not sure inefficiency is the right word for it. Writing is a process of discovery - it would be like calling the old explorers 'inefficient' because they didn't take the easiest/most direct route from the known world to the unknown.
Look at Joyce's 'Clay' vs 'Christmas Eve' : not 150 pages, but maybe a good example of needing to venture forth a little before you can sense whether there is a better path and where it lies (ie not in the father's POV, but the girl's, and not hers when she is young and with hope and potential, but much later when it seems life has passed her by).
In hindsight it is easy to see the 'I should have taken that left at Albuquerque' moments. But in the beginning, you have to just start digging. If you wait until you're certain you have it right, you'll never start (and many a time the 'perfect' outline needs to be abandoned because it's neither truly perfect nor perfect for the story that unfolds (ie all the little details in the actual writing create a different kind of tone, direction and momentum than what was in the broad-brush strokes))
Like Christiane, I find that distinction helpful. It's also helpful to state the conflict as a question. I'm going to experiment with it and then take it back to my own current story/problem. Thanks.
My track record is also one published novel, a quasi-comedy about a law firm and quantum physics. I know...many publishers asked 'so where would I place your book on the bookstore shelves?, meaning 'I would need to market your book and I wouldn't know how.' In any event, my approach was similar to George's, I think -- general sense of the thing that I could always refer back to and then -- let it rip. This does lead to some degree of bloat, but part of the task is to control that And then, of course, the weight-loss program (I hate to use this, but: " killing your darlings"). One important lesson I learned at the Iowa Summer Workshop, when I thought I had just about finished the thing, was that not only does 'Freytag's Pyramid' hold for the novel, but it also holds for each and every scene in the novel; this is what gives a living pulse to the narrative and keeps the reader engaged. It was back to the drawing board for me -- every scene has its own rising action and its own little climax. Pulse.
It is titled 'Skin in the Game' (Livingston Press) and I write as R.P. Finch. Thanks for your comment. If you read it , I hope you enjoy it. I also review novels, concentrating on debuts, for PopMatters.com. They can be found by Googling rpfinch,popmatters.
100% into Ivan Ilych. I haven't read it since senior year English! Riveting then and I expect it might be a richer read now! Just tell me which edition to buy. Thanks G.!
I've always considered myself a pantser. I really don't know how to make an outline, never have, and for that reason years ago I thought I could never write a novel. Then Stephen King, in his book "On Writing" told me I could just start with a sentence and see where it goes, and I was on fire, because, as George and many others have already said, you find out where you're going in the act of writing. The characters lead you—they tell you what they want and where they want to go as you excavate. You discover them and the story along the way.
But—I recently got an idea for a novel after a real life experience, and I wrote out this whole beast of an outline according to what happened over the course of that experience. I was trying to force the story into that mold. I brought the early draft pages along with a synopsis to a conference this past summer where I worked with Andre Dubus III, and he loved the draft pages, but as to the synopsis, he simply wrote on the manuscript, "How can you know all this before you've written it?" I realized that although the story I am writing is inspired by something that happened in real life, it's its own story, it's own entity, whole in the pond, waiting for me to fish it out (thanks for the wonderful analogy, Tone!) and if I try to force it into some particular mold I will suffocate it and completely miss the living, breathing, unique story that actually wants to be told.
As to Imola's reference to every story beginning with a question, Claire Vaye Watkins gave a talk at Bennington College a few years ago on this idea that there is a central question to every novel, and her latest novel's question was this: "What happened to me?" I remember thinking that the question doesn't have to be elaborate or even very specific to lead the writer down a path of excavation.
'The great enemy of fiction (or at least mine) is irrational bloat, the kind that comes when we just “throw something in there” for no reason and then decline or forget to ask if it’s doing any work - the stuff that results from a sort of, “Look, I wrote this, isn’t it clever?” vibe.'
This. A hundred times this. Reminds me of a previous post, where George mentioned the South Park technique of linking scenes with a 'but' or 'therefore' instead of 'and then'. (I have also heard 'because' thrown into the mix.) Here it is at length:
'I really like this little clip (https://nathanbweller.com/creators-of-south-park-storytelling-advice-but-therefore-rule) from a talk given by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of “South Park,” at NYU (recommended to me by my daughter, as we were talking about story, as we so often are), in which they advise that any two scenes should be joined not by “and then” but by “but” or “therefore.”
So, as an example: in scene A, a man wins the lottery. BUT (Scene B) he has lost the ticket. THEREFORE he has to frantically race out into the city to find it BUT he seems to be locked inside the house.
And so on.
This feels cohesive and intentional, doesn’t it?
Whereas, consider:
A man wins the lottery. AND THEN he goes home and does some things. AND THEN he has lunch. AND THEN he walks outside…
As is true with all writing advice, we should understand this idea as a way that things often work or tend to work. Are there exceptions? Jeez, of course, this is art. But if a bit of a advice light us up (i.e., we feel excited by it), then, good.
Good advice often feels more like a description of something we know to be true, from experience, but just haven’t ever articulated for ourselves.'
It's been so interesting to read about everyone's processes. I feel like I may be a bit of an anomaly here in that I'm a passionate plotter! :) For the novel I'm working on, after brainstorming and researching, I first wrote a synopsis. Then for the first draft, I expanded the synopsis out into abridged scenes until I felt I had a complete story. (I did this in a nonlinear fashion as ideas and plot points came to me.) With the second draft, I've been writing each scene into completeness from the beginning of the novel to the end. I've had to add, combine, eliminate, and alter scenes on occasion, but overall, I've mostly followed my original plan. At this point I only have 3 more scenes to go! Then I'll start revising. I'm also working on a short story, and I followed a simplified version of my novel process for that. Wishing everyone the best in their endeavors!
Wow, this is so helpful to read. I feel like I'm the exact opposite (and well, not that successful so perhaps I should learn!) Aside from two stabs at novels that failed, I've been writing short stories. I've found that most of my writing stems from a sentence I like. I wrote a really long short story entitled Herman the German because someone once told me about his family and began: "Herman the German loved fat women." (Sorry, I realize that sounds a bit rude.) I'm going to sign up for your substack, but would you mind recommending some books about plotting? I tend to write and rewrite in bursts and I think I lack the faith to look at a story and 'go oh, this isn't working, let's rewrite the scene. '
Thank you--I'm glad you found it helpful! My method for starting a poem is similar to yours in that it often originates from a single line that I like. And I think that's how I tackle scenes as well. I think first lines/sentences are very powerful. As for books on plotting, K.M. Weiland is my favorite. She has been studying and writing about structure (both story structure and character arcs) for a long time. Her website/blog is full of helpful information:
The two books I most utilized were Creating Character Arcs and Structuring Your Novel, although I feel it is helpful to look at them as two pieces of the puzzle that should be combined.
I'm in the early stages of my third novel, and each of the three has progressed very differently, each its own daunting mountain to climb. In common, I started with some images and ideas, and no clear idea of where the narrative would go. Whenever I tried to substantively plan (outline, predict story), the more contrived the writing would be, and I'd ultimately delete. I've come to believe that FOR ME (everyone surely finds their own way), I have to trust that things will cohere; even if I'm writing seemingly random snippets, they will relate and I'll understand how at some point!! I love the idea George mentioned: start the dance and gradually it will expand across the stage! I'd add: keep the faith:)
I don't find there is much difference between writing a story and writing a novel other than a novel is MORE. To clarify, I've only written one novel and it is in the final edits But I have approached them both in the same way. I'm not a major outliner -- I get a general ideal, research, write notes, repeat. The more research I need, the more I do and I might do more as I go along. My novel started with a basic concept and a line of poetry which fascinated me. I believe most writers lean more toward being "pantsers" or "plotters" - neither is right or wrong, it is simply the style of attacking writing that an individual writer finds most comfortable. A pantser will plot a little, just as a pIotter won't follow an outlinve exactly. I lean closer to a pantser, but my novel being historical fiction required a great deal of research. Still, that research often took me in interesting directions that I didn't original think about.
Do what feels comfortable to you, and you'll be able to be the most creative. Try new things when what you're doing isn't working or when you're first starting out. But just because you do it diffierently doesn't mean you do it wrong.
My first novel started with an argument my wife and I have - an envelope has shown up on our porch addressed to her. In it is an old photo of me before we met, standing next to a corpse. She asks if the man next to me is dead. I lie and say he's drunk. She doesn't believe me and storms out and then I realize I am deep in trouble, my past has caught up with me. And with her.
Would like to read the beginning of your first novel Tom. How this 'starting point' translated into the opening sentence; paragraph; page; chapter would make for fascinating reading. Just as beginning to think about what this 'past' that's caught up with husband and with wife might be?
Did you write in first person, I'm wondering?
STOP PRESS / You did, begin your novel in first person. Who is 'I'? I'm going to have read on to find out, aren't I. Killer Story indeed intrigues Tom / ENDS
Thanks, Rob! Yes, the book is A Killer Story (on Amazon and elsewhere). It's written in first person, based on journals I kept while living in New Orleans in my early twenties. I accidentally get connected with a gang of ex-cop vigilantes as their "photographer" as they dispense justice and I get in over my head.
Fascinating extra insight item: you saying, in writing, "based on journals I kept while living in New Orleans in my early twenties" leads to me saying aloud and in words "Ah! So that's the source spring from which, way along the river of life, the fiction flowed to a final full-stop and publication in 2020."
I had taken a sample which provoked the STOP PRESS edit; since when I've gone the whole hog and bought your novel. In the near term my focus will be on the opening chapter(s) as grist to my taking a particular look at the beginnings of novels written in first person. A ways ahead I'm pretty sure that, based on the way your opening chapter caught my interest and held to the turn to the second page and beyond, it's a red I will stick with and enjoy A Killer Story at the gallop.
You always surprise me. It's as if you're reading my mind and at the same time giving me food for thought and jolting me into questions I haven't asked before. Being a novice writer I am learning so much so thank you.
My novel started with an explosion in a mine. Firstly I had read somewhere that you have to grab the readers attention on the first page so my first chapter began with that. It is now the second chapter.
I was wondering how an explosion would affect not only the miners, but the relatives and inhabitants of a small mining village. I also had this idea of a woman living circa late 1930's who didn't fit the norm and wanted to be independent as a sort of revolt against the exploitation of women and workers and the conditions in which they had to work and live. What I hadn't realised is that this encapsulated the plot. I thought that I had just 'pants' it, but now realise that it was more or less a structure within itself.
If you are doing research, there was a mine disaster in Utah in August 2007 that killed miners, and then rescuers. There were interviews with relatives, media coverage, and so on.
PS I have also written several short stories and it always begins with some sort of idea, how else would one start?
The other thing I wanted to say is that a) I did an awful lot of research for the novel, particularly the conditions down the mines and sometimes a little research for the short stories, place accents etc.
b) After nigh on 28 edits of the book I took a break and went back to poetry for a short while. When I went back to editing the book. I was astonished how my view changed during the edits to that of the tightness of poetry.
Though as I said I am a novice writer - of novels , I have written poetry since the seventies, though never thought of going down the route of trying to publish.
In the case of my novel 'Where You Come From Is Gone' (to be published in October!), I started with a short story that was trying to do too much for the form and wrote some 'spin downs' for key scenes. (A spin down is a schematic for a scene in which the setting is identified, the characters involved listed, the purpose of the scene defined, and the action in the scene summarized.) I then set out to connect the key scenes with new scenes that developed the characters, built tension and organically moved the plot to the key scenes. As I wrote the scenes I allowed the characters to go in whatever direction felt natural, which resulted in the need to add new scenes and cut others. It is an iterative process of plan, write, validate, repeat.
Too much planning kills the narrative energy. Not enough planning will create an inconsistent mess. The trick is to find the right amount of planning to maintain control as well as keep the element of surprise organic and alive.
Rob, the title of my novel came last. I started the novel with a different intention and different working title. A different and better theme emerged while I wrote the novel than was my original intention, which is perfectly captured by the final title. I struggled to write a fitting title myself, going through four titles in the process. I can't take credit for the final title; it is a partial quotation from Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood.' The full quote is the epigraph to the novel.
'The great enemy of fiction (or at least mine) is irrational bloat, the kind that comes when we just “throw something in there” for no reason and then decline or forget to ask if it’s doing any work - the stuff that results from a sort of, “Look, I wrote this, isn’t it clever?” vibe'.
Oh. My. God.
This skewers one of the biggest flaws in my own writing so well that I'm torn between getting that paragraph as a tattoo, or changing my name to 'Irrational Bloat'.
I think the 'isn't it clever?' bit is hugely significant. I know for me this can be the result of me not trusting the material I'm producing, and my intellect saying 'Here, let me take over'.
Many moons ago I was part of an acting class where improv was one of the many tools we used, often starting with just a pair of actors, then evolving every time someone else joined the scene. We were once improvising a scene in a bank, which (very organically and pleasingly) turned into a bank robbery. When I joined the scene, I decided to be a pizza delivery guy - not a bad move, as it could either work in terms of me arriving and being completely out of my depth, or actually being an undercover police officer; pretty obvious ideas, but that's okay in improv.
Whilst travelling up in the imaginary lift [elevator], my intellect / ego kicked in and decided this would all be much more interesting if I took a bite out of one of the slices of pizza. This deflated the moment almost completely.
I'm not sure how well he's known elsewhere, but I regularly remind myself of this quote from Jimmy McGovern, one of the best screenwriters the U.K. has ever produced:
"Stories should be narratively simple, but emotionally complex."
Jimmy writes almost exclusively for TV; and clearly, it's possible to write good stories that are narratively complex - but this is a great rule of thumb that helps me avoid these dead ends in my own writing.
I also remind myself that, whilst a child telling a story might say 'and then', it can be more satisfying to say 'which means that' - i.e. having a single inciting incident set of a chain of events, rather than having a list of unconnected events happen one after the other. (One memorable way I once heard this described as the inciting incident being like a rock thrown into a pond, with the ripples getting wider and wider).
As always, as a playwright, I wonder how applicable my own perspective is to people working in other storytelling forms.
I imagine this might in part be because he makes the characters involved in such an incident seem like they have lives of their own.
Yet more examples from my favourite screenwriter, Jimmy McGovern.
1) In Cracker - a police drama - police personnel are going from door to door making enquiries about a serious crime. A pair have to wait for a particular door to be opened. When it is - by a slovenly-looking man - a woman's voice calls from inside 'Who is it?'. He answers 'If you wanted to know, you should've answered the bleeding thing'. [I may paraphrase].
This does nothing to advance the plot, and we never see or hear from these characters again; but what it does achieve is to give us a sense of the wider world being real.
2) Another scene from Cracker. Fitz (the protagonist, a psychological profiler) and Detective Sergeant Penhaligon are caught up in a discussion whilst waiting in a queue in a supermarket. An old lady behind them insistently taps Fitz on the shoulder and says 'Five items' [i.e. they're in a 'five items or less' queue, and Fitz's basket has more than five items]. Fitz tries to ignore her, but she won't be ignored, and repeats 'Five items'. Fitz turns on her and forcefully lists the things in his basket, including [and again, I probably paraphrase] ' . . . three bottles of whiskey, one item . . . '.
Again, this creates the sense of the real world outside the characters we're following, and again this very minor character never reappears. It also gives us a strong sense of who Fitz is by drawing our attention to what he's buying, without it seeming like exposition; and how he can use his bullishness and intellect to bulldoze people he disagrees with.
"Narratively simple, emotionally complex" really resonates with me. Are not our life narratives simplified versions of our lives that are complex beneath the surface? Our emotions tell the truth of the situation our minds have simplified.
I've just been reading an interview with Jimmy McGovern where he talks about "simplicity of narrative and complexity of character" - not quite the same thing, but close.
He's talking about his anthology series The Street, which essentially brought back single dramas to British TV, under the guise of the stories being linked because the protagonists all lived on the same street.
"We had - a couple of interesting mantras we had. One was, “the best stories” - don’t get me wrong, we failed often. But at its best we had simplicity of narrative and complexity of character, and I think that’s a wonderful mantra for a TV drama.
"What you do not want is simplicity of character and complexity of narrative, that’s ridiculous.
"That’s what we had, because characters are complex.
"There was that, and the other one was, at the end of it all, the story reigns supreme, leave your ego at the door. And they got battered, the writers got battered. I had them in tears sometimes, they really got a hard time. Because all that mattered was the story, nothing else, not your ego, not your training, not your ambitions, the story is all I care about.
"But when we got it really, truly right we’d end up with something approaching a final draft that was bloody good. And then we wouldn’t leave it at that, we’d have another go, and any trace of the writer was taken out. Any sign of effort, you expend more effort to disguise that effort. It’s as if, at its very best, it was as if we found a story in the street. The seeming absence of the writer, the simplicity of the storytelling, surely we found this story in the street.
"And hours and hours of work, to even get to the seeming absence of the writer and the lack of effort takes even more effort than you’ve ever envisaged, you know it really does. But at its best that’s what we got."
I have only wrote 1 finished (and a half not yet finished) novel, but I find this to be a really interesting question. I have a background in film and screenwriting, where everything is always very meticulously planned from the shorter forms of the script, before you write the long one and eventually make the actual product, which is the film. Litterature for me is amazingly different, in that you are conceiving the book (the actual product) as you are writing it, and is discovering it as you write. I often feel that the finished book already exists as an entity outside of me, and I am just fishing small parts of it up from a pond in which the finished work is lying on the bottom. It takes a little forgetting yourself and focusing at the same time. My girlfriend is a musician and talks about, how the magical time to play a song live is when you have rehearsed, but not very much, so you are slightly not sure what you are doing, and that is where the emotions happens. For me, it is the same with prose. You have to know a little where you are headed, but also stay exactly unsure enough, that you are as open for surprises as the reader will be. Does that make sense? Does anyone feel the same?
Similar experience here. Very rough outline, and many surprises along the way. With both fiction and non-fiction. Short, or long. Except, I will add, that for me everything starts with a question, so writing is a quest trying to answer that question. That is the fun part. I never know what I will find/ learn. But the question has to move me, and I have to care about the subject. Beyond that, everything is a bit of a mystery, or magic, as you say.
That’s so cool! I never know what the central questions are until I am a little way in 🥰
That happens to me too!
Imola could you give examples of the question you start with?
These are more personal questions, like “why am I feeling depressed when I should be the happiest?” which led me to write a book about motherhood. Or, “where is my home?” which led me to write a play ‘Someplace Else’ about a search for belonging. So it’s usually something personal and unsettling. It can be with both fiction and non-fiction. I’m not sure if it helps…?
Interesting--so the questions tend to be about your state of mind--more than about a character, e.g., "what makes someone unable to stop denying that her husband has alzheimers?" Or, "What would reconciliation look like between a mother and daughter?" or "Are there really ghosts in machines?" I confess I have always found it hard to pin down such questions.
Framing a story based on a question is smart. In stories I’ve read, a conclusion is at least implied by whatever events may answer that question. So, we’re starting with a before-and-after structure. Specific questions get more traction — as outlines, that is.
Interesting. Traction, such a good word RG for trying to get a story underway. More questions, e.g. "I've always wondered how different people handle their own pride" or, "Why do wealthy people shop lift" or "What happens when someone suddenly becomes confident" etc etc.
Excellent questions. Notice they serve backstory? Lots of necessary digging here to anchor a character to some central life issue. But your story would start with a more immediate question, like: Will Joe’s shoplifting or pride ruin his chances of, say, becoming a priest? Best!
Yes, personal questions but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the story would be about my personal experience. I then take it to a character. Even a more general question like, “what makes a responsible, conscientious politician go rogue?” has to have my personal interest.
I love this, Imola. ‘What if’ is almost always where I start. Usually where I end, too…
This is me too.. People talk about plotters and pantsers, but I think most of us who attempt novels are somewhere in between those poles. If I had the work completely plotted out, it gets boring writing it, since I already know too much. If I have no outline at all, (I've done several times) I'll get 50 pages into the thing, and then I find myself against a wall, no way to go on, and no way to end it.
I feel very seen by this 🤓 Kind of thought other writers where plotting more, and that I was cheating, but so cool to learn how many others feel the same 🔥
Yes! yes! yes! "You have to know a little where you are headed, but also stay exactly unsure enough, that you are as open for surprises as the reader will be." And yes to George's "[in a novel] We’re going to march up to the attic and then slowly work our way down, a floor at a time. . . On the way down, if he stops for a long digression, or reveals a hidden closet, I’m O.K., with that, because I know the long game: we are working our way down." Stories discourage digressions, novels may thrive on them—room to breathe. Thank you Tone and George! And, yes to Ivan Ilych and buying the book too.
I also have a background in screenwriting and I definitely agree with your point here. Everything in a screenplay is planned before, there's extensive outlining, and while this helps, I think it often takes away from the discovery or the surprise which writing literature provides. As Hemingway said that all you need for starting a story is one good sentence, and even Saunders keeps bringing it up, writing short stories is writing one sentence after another; it's an adventure. The first draft can be just discovery, the refining and structure can come during editing.
" I often feel that the finished book already exists as an entity outside of me, and I am just fishing small parts of it up from a pond in which the finished work is lying on the bottom. It takes a little forgetting yourself and focusing at the same time."
I have exactly the same feeling - so much so that using that image has helped me further refine my writing process, using fly fishing as an analogy.
If I get to a point where I have a question about my story that doesn't have an immediately obvious answer, I take time to compose just the right question, then sleep on it, (presumably) allowing my subconscious - the eternal sea - time to work on it. Just like using the right type of fly for the type of fish I'm trying to catch, the question has to be totally specific.
I've talked about this in Story Club before, so I'll just quote part of that post here to illustrate what I mean.
"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."
I am fond of Stephen King's expression about writing where he feels like he's uncovering a fossil. Might not be exactly what you mean here, but it's something I think about a lot.
I think it's actually worth taking notice of the model that springs to mind when we describe what it is we're trying to do. This can potentially help us formulate the best way to progress - I'd approach something that felt like 'digging up a fossil' differently to 'trying to repair a stained glass window', for example.
The latter is a model I've previously used, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was a specifically helpful model for the thing I was working on. It was as if (and I know I'm stretching the analogy somewhat!) I could see the various colours, and had some of the connecting lead, but couldn't yet tell what the picture was. I also realised that I might not only be missing some pieces of the finished image, but that I might have pieces that didn't belong there at all.
It really helped to have the idea that what I had at that point was a degraded version of something coherent that I could repair, rather than something I'd built out of nothing without really knowing what I was building.
I've also had moments of inspiration arrive from unexpected sources. For example, I was working on a drama based on a complex real life situation, and, having done a huge amount of research - in part to feel it was legitimate for me to try to tackle a true story that wasn't my own - my storytelling was bogged down in lots of detail.
For some reason I can no longer recall, I'd downloaded the text of Toxophilus, a 1545 treatise on archery by Roger Ascham, and decided to read it during a break. In it there's a section where the author discusses the fact that it's more effective to fire an arrow that leaves a small hole but penetrates deeply, than one that leaves a wider hole but doesn't penetrate as far. That really helped me see how to improve the drama I was working on.
That's a great way of looking at things. Thanks for this.
You're very welcome.
thanks Michael, for the reminder. I think Stephen is on to something that I never thought of. sometimes my thoughts come best when I am sleepin.
I often wait to see what should happen next, or something about a character, but I never thought of framing a clear question. Thanks. I will use that.
ABSOLUTELY agree. Also, I'll run that quote from your girlfriend by my daughter who is a rock singer and see how she relates to that very interesting concept.
Definitely ditto your girlfriend on the 'half-rehearsal' strategy for live performance, both of music and storytelling! I'd never thought of it like that before – please pass on my thanks to her for the insight!
That said, I totally use this approach with my novels too. I synopsis FIRST, then begin – not too dissimilar from your screenwriting process, I guess, though the characters are like my writers' room: if they don't like the way it's going, the synopsis has to change...
Yes it makes sense to me. My new project my essays are many. I am sure my book THREE WHISTLES exits for futere grandchildren to pursue a film. So carry on your good work. I
yes, i love this and agree with you as knowing where you are heading but are open to detours
Yes to death of Ivan Ilych! And in terms of requests for later, please female writers? And some comedy? THANK YOU, GEORGE!
I would love to unpack a Claire Keegan story together. Her stories are so powerful, e.g. 'foster' would be a great one. (Though I guess we'd all have to buy it which isn't ideal.)
Well, folks, if we're going to buy anything, let's buy "Foster". Full of all the right words, no wrong ones, no excess, an absolute beauty and heart-wrench of a story!
I second this. And I already have a copy. :)
Oh, yes. I predict she'll do a thing here. I have a feeling about 2025. She'll come on here and unpack it.
I would love that
You been witchcrafting again, Sea? ;)
Agree, love Claire Keegan and she makes storytelling appear so effortless
I'm very game for Ivan Ilych, but piggy-backing on Angela's request, I'd love for George to dig into anything by Grace Paley. I recently (finally) dipped into her collected stories, which are often delightful and a little bewildering. I have to work to keep up and figure out what exactly is going on, but I WANT to figure it out and it's usually sly, humorous and insightful. How is she doing what she's doing?
I second digging into some Grace Paley.
Haven't read Grace Paley for years but I would to re-read. And Lorrie Moore.
I second both suggestions from Angela, yes please.
I have four published novels, four in various stages toward completion, and probably about a dozen written from age thirteen onward (I was a solitary kid). I am no model of efficiency (or anything else, really), but I tend to start with an idea, write a potential outline, abandon the outline in favor of discoveries yielded by the characters, get stumped, outline again, use that for about ten to twenty pages, and then abandon it to follow the characters ... and so on. When I am sort of finished, I outline what I actually wrote, despair, cut out half of it, rewrite from the beginning, during which time it grows a different new half, and do that a few more times. The outline is for comfort; it lets me know I have somewhere to go, though I won't get there in the way that I planned and always find something more interesting as I write. It's almost the same for me with short stories. I do not hold myself up as an example anyone should follow. This is therapy. Thanks for listening.
Uh-oh! I am experiencing exactly your pattern! I, too, will have to cut out half of what I've written, but it hadn't occurred to me I might grow another half and go through that process multiple times. assuming I live long enough. How do you manage to get to the point where y you feel that you are really done?
I'm not sure ... There just comes a point when I know that if I push any harder, it won't surprise me anymore. I suppose another way to say that is that I'm afraid of getting tired of it after being so very very involved with it for years. (Yes, this method takes years, obviously!) But nothing is ever really done, is it? A work of art is never finished, only abandoned. I wish you luck finding the point of abandonment (wish me luck too).
Thanks. And luck wished in return!
Wonderfully put. As an author in this brain-melting process with a novel draft right now, it’s heartening to hear I’m in good company.
I think our numbers are unfortunately legion. I wish you a solid and successful reconstitution of the brain. What are you writing?
A novel set on the Arizona/Mexico border involving the missing son of a dentist and a migrant woman and her young son. The woman was a failing nun in a previous draft and may be again (see the brain soup referenced earlier). The butterfly effect takes on completely new dimensions when writing a draft.
And once you are done and a few months have passed, you probably won't remember which little details you went with. You'll remember all the things it used to be at once, and when someone talks about it with you, your answer will be, "Huh?"
One possible result.
So why a dentist's son? That is intriguing. Dentistry int he plot?
When you look back on your four published novels (each of which evolved through your process of starting with an outline then revising, recasting, reformulating as and whenever feels appropriate) do you find yourself able to outline, pithily, what turned out to what each story was about?
Thanks for writing Susann: I enjoyed reading your words with my 👂 listening 👁🗨 eye 😊
You are kind, Rob. At the outset, I always have a sense of "What's the big idea?"--but it changes and becomes something more interesting as I write (at least interesting to me). So something that started with "All of the queen's children are sick at once, and their sickness endangers the kingdom" became "The girls' bodies are battlegrounds for various schemers and villains, but owning the battlegrounds gives the girls the chance to change the narrative and the future." That probably could be expressed more pithily, and it sounds misleadingly like high fantasy. Near the end of a draft, I try to find the pithiest way of expressing what the story turns out to be "about," even if reducing it to a one-sentence "theme" (sorry, can't get away from quotation marks this morning) feels too simplistic and silly. I hope for and almost never achieve something like the theme of Romeo and Juliet, "True love conquers all obstacles, even death"--which is very reductive in a play about so many things, but it is that little foam pellet that creates the story when you drop it into the waters of the Avon.
What do you do about defining the Big Idea in yours?
“little foam pellet that creates the story when you drop it into the waters of the Avon” is the best metaphor I’ve read today.
Your note is the best thing I've read today. Suddenly one little thing was not wasted, and that is the gift of .... a little foam metaphor.
I thought it was the perfect way to express the relationship between a logline and the sprawling brilliance of Shakespeare.
Well, I'm going to have to remember it, then--I may have a cocktail party to try to charm sometime. Then the guests will glaze over like doughnuts and move away with just a hint of palpable anxiety. Oh no, they'll think, a writer on writing. Must ... get ... anywhere ... else ...
Nothing against Tolstoy!!, but I was hoping we might next tackle something that's a little less familiar, something many of us haven't already read multiple times, & something other than Russian. We already have your "Swim" as a guide with its Russians, plus the Russians we've already done in SC. Again, nothing against Russian!!---love' em!---but I was encouraged by our taking up Joyce's lesser known & maybe underappreciated "Clay" & took that to mean we might be going in a new direction, a direction that might even include some contemporary, or at least only recently departed, writers.
Yes, I agree.
I think this approach helps when your starting point has already identified the core conflict. Like the 'Lincoln in the Bardo' example - which has both the premise (Lincoln, grief-sick, comes to the graveyard and interacts with his son’s body) and the conflict (Willie is not supposed to be there, and either stays, or goes). If you have that, then you know the general shape of your story. My problem with the novel I am working on at the moment is that I have the premise, but still don't know what the story is actually about. It's like the 'The Road' example George gives above - "A man and his son make their way across a dystopian landscape": the premise is there, the kind of story it will be, the cool idea that helps you write the first couple of chapters - but without the "the father teaches survival, but the boy teaches humanity" conflict (will they survive but lose their humanity? or will they die but maintain their humanity?), there's no way to progress the story. Same with Gatsby - "A poor man comes back rich to reclaim the girl of his dreams” is a cool idea, but what is the story actually about? What thread are you going to follow to tell that story? Without the "will his new money be enough to overcome the prejudice of his low-born status?" (or some other question indicating a core conflict), there's no guide in navigating how that story of 'the poor man coming back to get the girl' should unfold....
To find the conflict in my story, I've been trying George's 'crossing the wires' approach - looking back through what I've written based on the 'cool idea' (ie the first couple of chapters) and seeing what is ripe for exploring further, what is capable of producing a spark if they're pulled out and pushed together. Haven't found it yet - I think I need to keep riffing with the cool premise to discover it (but the ongoing questions of "what is this story even about?" keeps pushing me into procrastination...)
I've found it helpful to consider how conflict (and escalation) appears in other stories - i.e. the opposition can be between two people (Tom and Gatsby), or between two ideas (Joyce's Maria 'getting the ring' (her desire) or staying a spinster and going to convent (her lot in life), or between two duties (Kyle being the good boy and obeying his parents in George's 'Victory Lap' or being the hero and saving the girl)... between any binaries really. Maybe that's part of the trick - finding the binary that serves (and gives meaning and shape to) your story. Will Willie stay or leave?
I find your distinction between premise (cool idea) and conflict very helpful. I tend to start with the premise and often have difficulties narrowing down the conflict that moves the plot forward.
Sometimes I get lucky and the cool idea has the conflict clearly embedded, so it's easy to see. But sometimes, the cool idea does its thing and then turns to me with this look as if to say "so, now what do we do?"
Figuring out a story's central question can be hard. I don't mind not knowing it for the first 5k words, but after that it starts to itch. Starting a story with wildly divergent narrative threads and full creative licence is all well and good, but at some stage, the story needs to gain focus to maintain its power.
Maybe it's like George's hot wheels cars that he talks about sometimes - sure, they get an initial push (the burst of creativity that always comes with starting a new story) and subsequent pushes from the 'gas stations' (scattered bursts of creativity and surprise), but maybe they also need their own internal source of momentum (ie cohesiveness/focus) to traverse the distance to the next push...?
This is a really helpful way of looking at a book, thanks! Not that this is helpful in any way, but (apocryphally) Philip Roth once wrote 150 pages of a novel only to realize the novel began on the 151st.
Did he possibly manage to take a lesson from it? Like, maybe never starting in on another story without a better sense that the first words were, actually, closer to an actual beginning? Or, very concrete, paginating every one of his subsequent stories (even short stories, if he wrote any) so that the first words played out on Page 151? 🤔
I think he learned what we all do at some point: sometimes you don't know the shape of a story until you start carving it
I agree Mikhaeyla.
At the same time the word efficiency, which has been referenced at various times here in Story Club, comes to mind.
In looking at a nicely quarried block of raw word stone does a writer, a word mason if you will, not sometimes find it helpful to have an 'established' outline of the kind being considered in this thread clear in mind before hewing words out and flowing them down on the paper?
Is 150 pages, as some might think, a whole chunk of 'literary inefficiency' before cutting to the chase?
Or maybe, thinking on as I type, one of the distinctions between a literary novel and a genre novel is perhaps a tendency for authors of the former to be inclined to be more indulgent of inefficiency (in the interests of a creating the best literary artwork) than writers of genre (in the interest of creating the best literary entertainment possible given, typically, greater pressures to produce routinely and in tighter timeframes)?
I hear what you are saying - the thought of needing 150 pages to figure out the true story is kind of terrifying - but I'm not sure inefficiency is the right word for it. Writing is a process of discovery - it would be like calling the old explorers 'inefficient' because they didn't take the easiest/most direct route from the known world to the unknown.
Look at Joyce's 'Clay' vs 'Christmas Eve' : not 150 pages, but maybe a good example of needing to venture forth a little before you can sense whether there is a better path and where it lies (ie not in the father's POV, but the girl's, and not hers when she is young and with hope and potential, but much later when it seems life has passed her by).
In hindsight it is easy to see the 'I should have taken that left at Albuquerque' moments. But in the beginning, you have to just start digging. If you wait until you're certain you have it right, you'll never start (and many a time the 'perfect' outline needs to be abandoned because it's neither truly perfect nor perfect for the story that unfolds (ie all the little details in the actual writing create a different kind of tone, direction and momentum than what was in the broad-brush strokes))
Like Christiane, I find that distinction helpful. It's also helpful to state the conflict as a question. I'm going to experiment with it and then take it back to my own current story/problem. Thanks.
My track record is also one published novel, a quasi-comedy about a law firm and quantum physics. I know...many publishers asked 'so where would I place your book on the bookstore shelves?, meaning 'I would need to market your book and I wouldn't know how.' In any event, my approach was similar to George's, I think -- general sense of the thing that I could always refer back to and then -- let it rip. This does lead to some degree of bloat, but part of the task is to control that And then, of course, the weight-loss program (I hate to use this, but: " killing your darlings"). One important lesson I learned at the Iowa Summer Workshop, when I thought I had just about finished the thing, was that not only does 'Freytag's Pyramid' hold for the novel, but it also holds for each and every scene in the novel; this is what gives a living pulse to the narrative and keeps the reader engaged. It was back to the drawing board for me -- every scene has its own rising action and its own little climax. Pulse.
This sounds like my kind of book - is it still in print? What's the title?
It is titled 'Skin in the Game' (Livingston Press) and I write as R.P. Finch. Thanks for your comment. If you read it , I hope you enjoy it. I also review novels, concentrating on debuts, for PopMatters.com. They can be found by Googling rpfinch,popmatters.
Found it! Bought it! Looking forward to reading it!
Many thanks.!
A fun read! And I like how it all came together in the end ... except for a couple of loose threads that you could pick up to start the sequel.
Your description made me smile.
100% into Ivan Ilych. I haven't read it since senior year English! Riveting then and I expect it might be a richer read now! Just tell me which edition to buy. Thanks G.!
I've always considered myself a pantser. I really don't know how to make an outline, never have, and for that reason years ago I thought I could never write a novel. Then Stephen King, in his book "On Writing" told me I could just start with a sentence and see where it goes, and I was on fire, because, as George and many others have already said, you find out where you're going in the act of writing. The characters lead you—they tell you what they want and where they want to go as you excavate. You discover them and the story along the way.
But—I recently got an idea for a novel after a real life experience, and I wrote out this whole beast of an outline according to what happened over the course of that experience. I was trying to force the story into that mold. I brought the early draft pages along with a synopsis to a conference this past summer where I worked with Andre Dubus III, and he loved the draft pages, but as to the synopsis, he simply wrote on the manuscript, "How can you know all this before you've written it?" I realized that although the story I am writing is inspired by something that happened in real life, it's its own story, it's own entity, whole in the pond, waiting for me to fish it out (thanks for the wonderful analogy, Tone!) and if I try to force it into some particular mold I will suffocate it and completely miss the living, breathing, unique story that actually wants to be told.
As to Imola's reference to every story beginning with a question, Claire Vaye Watkins gave a talk at Bennington College a few years ago on this idea that there is a central question to every novel, and her latest novel's question was this: "What happened to me?" I remember thinking that the question doesn't have to be elaborate or even very specific to lead the writer down a path of excavation.
Thanks for this. I was just wondering if anyone else starts something with a sentence.
'The great enemy of fiction (or at least mine) is irrational bloat, the kind that comes when we just “throw something in there” for no reason and then decline or forget to ask if it’s doing any work - the stuff that results from a sort of, “Look, I wrote this, isn’t it clever?” vibe.'
This. A hundred times this. Reminds me of a previous post, where George mentioned the South Park technique of linking scenes with a 'but' or 'therefore' instead of 'and then'. (I have also heard 'because' thrown into the mix.) Here it is at length:
'I really like this little clip (https://nathanbweller.com/creators-of-south-park-storytelling-advice-but-therefore-rule) from a talk given by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of “South Park,” at NYU (recommended to me by my daughter, as we were talking about story, as we so often are), in which they advise that any two scenes should be joined not by “and then” but by “but” or “therefore.”
So, as an example: in scene A, a man wins the lottery. BUT (Scene B) he has lost the ticket. THEREFORE he has to frantically race out into the city to find it BUT he seems to be locked inside the house.
And so on.
This feels cohesive and intentional, doesn’t it?
Whereas, consider:
A man wins the lottery. AND THEN he goes home and does some things. AND THEN he has lunch. AND THEN he walks outside…
As is true with all writing advice, we should understand this idea as a way that things often work or tend to work. Are there exceptions? Jeez, of course, this is art. But if a bit of a advice light us up (i.e., we feel excited by it), then, good.
Good advice often feels more like a description of something we know to be true, from experience, but just haven’t ever articulated for ourselves.'
I happen to think that South Park (crude as it may be) is quite brilliant.
I think theirs may be another way of saying "cause & effect" or, as George has expressed it, "escalation."
It's been so interesting to read about everyone's processes. I feel like I may be a bit of an anomaly here in that I'm a passionate plotter! :) For the novel I'm working on, after brainstorming and researching, I first wrote a synopsis. Then for the first draft, I expanded the synopsis out into abridged scenes until I felt I had a complete story. (I did this in a nonlinear fashion as ideas and plot points came to me.) With the second draft, I've been writing each scene into completeness from the beginning of the novel to the end. I've had to add, combine, eliminate, and alter scenes on occasion, but overall, I've mostly followed my original plan. At this point I only have 3 more scenes to go! Then I'll start revising. I'm also working on a short story, and I followed a simplified version of my novel process for that. Wishing everyone the best in their endeavors!
Wow, this is so helpful to read. I feel like I'm the exact opposite (and well, not that successful so perhaps I should learn!) Aside from two stabs at novels that failed, I've been writing short stories. I've found that most of my writing stems from a sentence I like. I wrote a really long short story entitled Herman the German because someone once told me about his family and began: "Herman the German loved fat women." (Sorry, I realize that sounds a bit rude.) I'm going to sign up for your substack, but would you mind recommending some books about plotting? I tend to write and rewrite in bursts and I think I lack the faith to look at a story and 'go oh, this isn't working, let's rewrite the scene. '
Thank you--I'm glad you found it helpful! My method for starting a poem is similar to yours in that it often originates from a single line that I like. And I think that's how I tackle scenes as well. I think first lines/sentences are very powerful. As for books on plotting, K.M. Weiland is my favorite. She has been studying and writing about structure (both story structure and character arcs) for a long time. Her website/blog is full of helpful information:
https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/
The two books I most utilized were Creating Character Arcs and Structuring Your Novel, although I feel it is helpful to look at them as two pieces of the puzzle that should be combined.
I'm in the early stages of my third novel, and each of the three has progressed very differently, each its own daunting mountain to climb. In common, I started with some images and ideas, and no clear idea of where the narrative would go. Whenever I tried to substantively plan (outline, predict story), the more contrived the writing would be, and I'd ultimately delete. I've come to believe that FOR ME (everyone surely finds their own way), I have to trust that things will cohere; even if I'm writing seemingly random snippets, they will relate and I'll understand how at some point!! I love the idea George mentioned: start the dance and gradually it will expand across the stage! I'd add: keep the faith:)
Keeping the faith is very important (and hard at times)
I don't find there is much difference between writing a story and writing a novel other than a novel is MORE. To clarify, I've only written one novel and it is in the final edits But I have approached them both in the same way. I'm not a major outliner -- I get a general ideal, research, write notes, repeat. The more research I need, the more I do and I might do more as I go along. My novel started with a basic concept and a line of poetry which fascinated me. I believe most writers lean more toward being "pantsers" or "plotters" - neither is right or wrong, it is simply the style of attacking writing that an individual writer finds most comfortable. A pantser will plot a little, just as a pIotter won't follow an outlinve exactly. I lean closer to a pantser, but my novel being historical fiction required a great deal of research. Still, that research often took me in interesting directions that I didn't original think about.
Do what feels comfortable to you, and you'll be able to be the most creative. Try new things when what you're doing isn't working or when you're first starting out. But just because you do it diffierently doesn't mean you do it wrong.
I think most writers are somewhere on a spectrum, some "pantsing" and some "plotting." At least I am.
As a former therapist, I couldn't help reading another meaning of "on the spectrum" and thinking, yeah, probably.
I wish I’d said that.
My first novel started with an argument my wife and I have - an envelope has shown up on our porch addressed to her. In it is an old photo of me before we met, standing next to a corpse. She asks if the man next to me is dead. I lie and say he's drunk. She doesn't believe me and storms out and then I realize I am deep in trouble, my past has caught up with me. And with her.
That is a great opener.
Ouch!
Would like to read the beginning of your first novel Tom. How this 'starting point' translated into the opening sentence; paragraph; page; chapter would make for fascinating reading. Just as beginning to think about what this 'past' that's caught up with husband and with wife might be?
Did you write in first person, I'm wondering?
STOP PRESS / You did, begin your novel in first person. Who is 'I'? I'm going to have read on to find out, aren't I. Killer Story indeed intrigues Tom / ENDS
Thanks, Rob! Yes, the book is A Killer Story (on Amazon and elsewhere). It's written in first person, based on journals I kept while living in New Orleans in my early twenties. I accidentally get connected with a gang of ex-cop vigilantes as their "photographer" as they dispense justice and I get in over my head.
Fascinating extra insight item: you saying, in writing, "based on journals I kept while living in New Orleans in my early twenties" leads to me saying aloud and in words "Ah! So that's the source spring from which, way along the river of life, the fiction flowed to a final full-stop and publication in 2020."
I had taken a sample which provoked the STOP PRESS edit; since when I've gone the whole hog and bought your novel. In the near term my focus will be on the opening chapter(s) as grist to my taking a particular look at the beginnings of novels written in first person. A ways ahead I'm pretty sure that, based on the way your opening chapter caught my interest and held to the turn to the second page and beyond, it's a red I will stick with and enjoy A Killer Story at the gallop.
I am so honored you bought it, Rob. Many thanks and I hope you enjoy the ride (and read)!
You always surprise me. It's as if you're reading my mind and at the same time giving me food for thought and jolting me into questions I haven't asked before. Being a novice writer I am learning so much so thank you.
My novel started with an explosion in a mine. Firstly I had read somewhere that you have to grab the readers attention on the first page so my first chapter began with that. It is now the second chapter.
I was wondering how an explosion would affect not only the miners, but the relatives and inhabitants of a small mining village. I also had this idea of a woman living circa late 1930's who didn't fit the norm and wanted to be independent as a sort of revolt against the exploitation of women and workers and the conditions in which they had to work and live. What I hadn't realised is that this encapsulated the plot. I thought that I had just 'pants' it, but now realise that it was more or less a structure within itself.
Thank you again for making me realise that.
If you are doing research, there was a mine disaster in Utah in August 2007 that killed miners, and then rescuers. There were interviews with relatives, media coverage, and so on.
Thank you for that :-)
'reader's' attention. My spelling maybe not the same as that of the US sorry!
PS I have also written several short stories and it always begins with some sort of idea, how else would one start?
The other thing I wanted to say is that a) I did an awful lot of research for the novel, particularly the conditions down the mines and sometimes a little research for the short stories, place accents etc.
b) After nigh on 28 edits of the book I took a break and went back to poetry for a short while. When I went back to editing the book. I was astonished how my view changed during the edits to that of the tightness of poetry.
Though as I said I am a novice writer - of novels , I have written poetry since the seventies, though never thought of going down the route of trying to publish.
In the case of my novel 'Where You Come From Is Gone' (to be published in October!), I started with a short story that was trying to do too much for the form and wrote some 'spin downs' for key scenes. (A spin down is a schematic for a scene in which the setting is identified, the characters involved listed, the purpose of the scene defined, and the action in the scene summarized.) I then set out to connect the key scenes with new scenes that developed the characters, built tension and organically moved the plot to the key scenes. As I wrote the scenes I allowed the characters to go in whatever direction felt natural, which resulted in the need to add new scenes and cut others. It is an iterative process of plan, write, validate, repeat.
Too much planning kills the narrative energy. Not enough planning will create an inconsistent mess. The trick is to find the right amount of planning to maintain control as well as keep the element of surprise organic and alive.
PS That's a wonderful, thought provoking title.
Does the title of your novel possibly also read, in hindsight, as what an initial outline of your story might have done?
Interesting post Christopher. Thank you.
Rob, the title of my novel came last. I started the novel with a different intention and different working title. A different and better theme emerged while I wrote the novel than was my original intention, which is perfectly captured by the final title. I struggled to write a fitting title myself, going through four titles in the process. I can't take credit for the final title; it is a partial quotation from Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood.' The full quote is the epigraph to the novel.
Hmm. That's an interesting way of clarifying. Thanks.
Wise and generous words from George, as always!
'The great enemy of fiction (or at least mine) is irrational bloat, the kind that comes when we just “throw something in there” for no reason and then decline or forget to ask if it’s doing any work - the stuff that results from a sort of, “Look, I wrote this, isn’t it clever?” vibe'.
Oh. My. God.
This skewers one of the biggest flaws in my own writing so well that I'm torn between getting that paragraph as a tattoo, or changing my name to 'Irrational Bloat'.
I think the 'isn't it clever?' bit is hugely significant. I know for me this can be the result of me not trusting the material I'm producing, and my intellect saying 'Here, let me take over'.
Many moons ago I was part of an acting class where improv was one of the many tools we used, often starting with just a pair of actors, then evolving every time someone else joined the scene. We were once improvising a scene in a bank, which (very organically and pleasingly) turned into a bank robbery. When I joined the scene, I decided to be a pizza delivery guy - not a bad move, as it could either work in terms of me arriving and being completely out of my depth, or actually being an undercover police officer; pretty obvious ideas, but that's okay in improv.
Whilst travelling up in the imaginary lift [elevator], my intellect / ego kicked in and decided this would all be much more interesting if I took a bite out of one of the slices of pizza. This deflated the moment almost completely.
I'm not sure how well he's known elsewhere, but I regularly remind myself of this quote from Jimmy McGovern, one of the best screenwriters the U.K. has ever produced:
"Stories should be narratively simple, but emotionally complex."
Jimmy writes almost exclusively for TV; and clearly, it's possible to write good stories that are narratively complex - but this is a great rule of thumb that helps me avoid these dead ends in my own writing.
I also remind myself that, whilst a child telling a story might say 'and then', it can be more satisfying to say 'which means that' - i.e. having a single inciting incident set of a chain of events, rather than having a list of unconnected events happen one after the other. (One memorable way I once heard this described as the inciting incident being like a rock thrown into a pond, with the ripples getting wider and wider).
As always, as a playwright, I wonder how applicable my own perspective is to people working in other storytelling forms.
I wonder how Tarantino can make nonsequetor incidents so interesting and consequential seeming.
I imagine this might in part be because he makes the characters involved in such an incident seem like they have lives of their own.
Yet more examples from my favourite screenwriter, Jimmy McGovern.
1) In Cracker - a police drama - police personnel are going from door to door making enquiries about a serious crime. A pair have to wait for a particular door to be opened. When it is - by a slovenly-looking man - a woman's voice calls from inside 'Who is it?'. He answers 'If you wanted to know, you should've answered the bleeding thing'. [I may paraphrase].
This does nothing to advance the plot, and we never see or hear from these characters again; but what it does achieve is to give us a sense of the wider world being real.
2) Another scene from Cracker. Fitz (the protagonist, a psychological profiler) and Detective Sergeant Penhaligon are caught up in a discussion whilst waiting in a queue in a supermarket. An old lady behind them insistently taps Fitz on the shoulder and says 'Five items' [i.e. they're in a 'five items or less' queue, and Fitz's basket has more than five items]. Fitz tries to ignore her, but she won't be ignored, and repeats 'Five items'. Fitz turns on her and forcefully lists the things in his basket, including [and again, I probably paraphrase] ' . . . three bottles of whiskey, one item . . . '.
Again, this creates the sense of the real world outside the characters we're following, and again this very minor character never reappears. It also gives us a strong sense of who Fitz is by drawing our attention to what he's buying, without it seeming like exposition; and how he can use his bullishness and intellect to bulldoze people he disagrees with.
"Narratively simple, emotionally complex" really resonates with me. Are not our life narratives simplified versions of our lives that are complex beneath the surface? Our emotions tell the truth of the situation our minds have simplified.
I've just been reading an interview with Jimmy McGovern where he talks about "simplicity of narrative and complexity of character" - not quite the same thing, but close.
He's talking about his anthology series The Street, which essentially brought back single dramas to British TV, under the guise of the stories being linked because the protagonists all lived on the same street.
"We had - a couple of interesting mantras we had. One was, “the best stories” - don’t get me wrong, we failed often. But at its best we had simplicity of narrative and complexity of character, and I think that’s a wonderful mantra for a TV drama.
"What you do not want is simplicity of character and complexity of narrative, that’s ridiculous.
"That’s what we had, because characters are complex.
"There was that, and the other one was, at the end of it all, the story reigns supreme, leave your ego at the door. And they got battered, the writers got battered. I had them in tears sometimes, they really got a hard time. Because all that mattered was the story, nothing else, not your ego, not your training, not your ambitions, the story is all I care about.
"But when we got it really, truly right we’d end up with something approaching a final draft that was bloody good. And then we wouldn’t leave it at that, we’d have another go, and any trace of the writer was taken out. Any sign of effort, you expend more effort to disguise that effort. It’s as if, at its very best, it was as if we found a story in the street. The seeming absence of the writer, the simplicity of the storytelling, surely we found this story in the street.
"And hours and hours of work, to even get to the seeming absence of the writer and the lack of effort takes even more effort than you’ve ever envisaged, you know it really does. But at its best that’s what we got."