On Pace

Office Hours

Greetings, everyone.

If all goes as planned, today is the day I’m doing an event at the Chautauqua Institution, and tomorrow (July 11) we’ll get to hear some excerpts from the opera of Lincoln in the Bardo, composed by Missy Mazzoli, libretto by Royce Vavrek.

Very excited and hopefully will get to say hi to some of you there…

I also wanted to take a chance to recommend to you a new Substack presence, my long-time Syracuse colleague and compadre in the craft, the great Arthur Flowers. Arthur is a wonderful novelist and memoirist, author of The Hoodoo Book of Flowers, Another Good Loving Blues, and Brer Rabbit Retold, who has mentored so many of our great Syracuse students since we both started (on one-year assignments) back in 1996. He’s a dear friend, with an amazing gift, Zen-like for mentoring and valuing young writers and bringing out the very best in them. He is also a big-hearted, one-of-a-kind visionary in the griot tradition - I think you’ll find a lot of wonderful insights and wisdom over at De Brian Patch. I’ve benefited so richly from knowing Arthur all these years and I know you will too.

Arthur Flowers: The Great One

Now for our question of the week:

Q.

Hi George,

I'll start by saying that I've been particularly grateful for Story Club recently. I was laid off a few weeks ago, and this has continued to be a source of joy in an otherwise uncertain and stressful time.

My question has to do with intentionally making something a little slow without making it boring, and encouraging a reader to wait for a payoff.

It's a bit self-serving, but it's a problem I'm facing in the book I'm writing, so I'll use my own work as an example. It's essentially a road trip book, and in the first third the main character doesn't know where he's going, or why, and doesn't really care. I have a few chapters where the characters kind of go to this motel, this diner, repeat, and so on. Some early readers have told me this part feels a little listless and meandering.

The thing is, that's exactly what I want it to feel like at this point. So on the one hand, success. On the other hand, the actual reader is under no obligation to keep reading. Unlike my friends, who have kindly never used the word "boring," the reader could find the whole thing tedious and just stop.

Especially as a new writer who will have to find an agent and (hopefully) an audience, I find myself wishing I had a reputation to fall back on, to be able to say "listen, some reveals are coming later that will put this all in a new light, just trust me." But then again I return to, well, who cares. Nothing is stopping the reader from just putting the book down.

I've thought about revealing some things earlier, or making certain things more obvious to call attention to the hidden stakes the characters don't know, but it feels "dishonest." Or, to sum up another way, I think the book will be better as a complete project if the beginning meanders, and reveals very little, but if that's boring to readers, they won't finish it, and then who cares how good the full picture (again, hopefully) is.

Have you or your students ever dealt with this? How do you balance the need to keep escalating with taking things slow for a payoff later?

A.

First, so sorry you’ve been laid off and here’s hoping it won’t last long and you’ll wind up in something even better.

So, as always, let me start by saying that it’s hard to advise without having read the writing in question. So take all of this lightly, if at all.

But:

If we were working together, I’d start by asking a few questions.

First, re your statement that “the main character doesn't know where he's going, or why, and doesn't really care,” I’d want to point out that this likely isn’t literally true. That is, he knows where he is, how he got to that hotel, how he’s paying for it, where he’s headed next, and so forth.

If he was real and I asked him, “How long are you staying? Why are you here?” I bet he’d have some sort of answer.

So I would (in my trademark, friendly, New Age way) interrogate you a little, regarding the possibility that you’re doing some withholding here – performing a bit of sleight of hand, for whatever reason, in which the character knows something that you, the author, are deliberately keeping from the reader.

I’d ask you things like: When did they arrive? Who’s paying? If they are staying an indeterminate amount of time, are any of them restless? What is going to trigger them to leave?

And so on.

The goal is to create (or discern) some sort of surface tension in the scenario that makes the reader keep reading…and feels intentional. Both you and the reader can feel that tension and are enjoying it.

A reader is always wondering why you’re telling them all of this. That is, why have you, dear author, dedicated these, say, 10,000 words to making the section in question?

What are all those words for?

You write: “It's essentially a road-trip book, and in the first third the main character doesn't know where he's going, or why, and doesn't really care. I have a few chapters where the characters kind of go to this motel, this diner, repeat, and so on.

I remember facing this same dilemma with a book I was writing when I was young (also a road-trip book). Nothing seemed to be causing anything and, though the language was pretty good, the charm of that wore off pretty quickly.

In retrospect, the truth was, I just wanted to write about places – to describe things I’d seen and write some pithy dialogue, in the absence of any forward motion. At the time, “plot” seemed inscrutable to me and so I tended to disrespect it - that was something that old writers did, and so on.

In time, I came to see that the word “plot” didn’t do much for me; instead, I started wondering, “Would a reader care about these people?” To care about someone, you need to know them. And we feel that we know a fictional character when that person has revealed some sort of excess to us, which often takes the form of a fear, a frustration, a desire, a passion, and so on.

Once there’s an excess, “plot” will occur naturally, as that person’s excess goes out into the world.

So I might ask, in our imaginary meeting: Are any of these people excessive? Who wants what? Why don’t they have it?

You say, “that (‘listless, meandering’ feeling) is exactly what I want it to feel like at this point.”

I’d want to ask, “Why? Why do you want it to feel that way?” That is: “What purpose does that exact mood (slow/inactive) serve, in this particular story?

In a sense, I’m asking: “You’re saying that you’re ok with your reader feeling bored to the point of rebellion - what do you plan to do with that feeling?”

I get it that you have a surprise in store for your characters, but I’d want to ask why you feel that slow opening is the best preparation for that surprise; that is, what’s the dynamic relation between the listlessness and the eventual surprise?”

If the answer is, “None, there’s no relation, and that’s how I want it,” I’d again ask you to explain that position.

Another way of saying it: why not just cut the section in question?

I’m not advising you to do that, but I’d want you to think about why you wouldn’t do it, if, in fact, it has no relation to what’s coming next, i.e., is more or less random. (As an obnoxious thought-experiment: substitute in the equivalent amount of text from the phone book; what work is your section already doing, that the phone book isn’t, that will make the surprise even more powerful?)

The surprise is coming; what do you need to do to get your reader ready for it?

A lot of what we do as writers is 1) prep and then 2) deliver. (We could see a story as a series of preps and deliveries.)

If the surprise is coming on (say) page 35, then pages 1-35 are going to be understood as being in relation to that surprise. That’s just the way the form works. (In songwriting, the chorus and verse are just in relation, by juxtaposition; they just are and it can’t be helped.)

Your issue seems to be that you fear a reader may bail before page 35. And that’s a valid fear. If they leave, you have….no surprise. Also, no book.

So, I think the challenge is to make something happen in the pre-surprise sections that will add to the effect of the eventual surprise (that will speak to it/be in conversation with it).

Let’s say, for example, that the surprise turns out to be that, on page 35, one of them wins the lottery. What would make that land harder? Maybe they’re on the run because they’re so broke; maybe one of them, who is less poor, just got engaged to the lottery winner, but now the winner breaks up with her.

Because pages 1-35 and the surprise are in the same book, they’re going to be read in relation to one another and there’s no way around it.

So, right, just as you say: “slow” and “boring” are two different things.

And maybe it would be helpful to drop the idea of escalation and think about just maintaining the reader’s interest.

(I wonder if one of your early readers might be able to pinpoint the exact moment they started to get restless/ bored? That could be useful. Those moments can often be understood as places where something is supposed to be happening, but the writer has, for whatever reason, written past that event.)

Let’s say it this way: even in a slow section, things are happening (things have to be happening) that will keep the story from being boring. The writer has to somehow keep the reader engaged. Not thrilled, not entertained, not wondering, necessarily – but, somehow, engaged.

The reader is receiving text, and something is happening in her mind: expectations are being formed, pleasure is being felt; there’s an active alteration going on in there. That is what I mean by “engagement.” It doesn’t have to be a thrill-ride, it doesn’t even have to be entirely pleasant. Engagement can sometimes include a feeling of resistance, of “how dare you;” that ticking-clock, “I am about to put this book down” feeling.

But the foundation of this experience is mutual respect. The writer has to, sort of, “know” that she’s producing that particular feeling, and has to know (and desire to) eventually interrupt/alter that feeling, and thereby win the reader back, so to speak.

So I think I’d circle back to my initial set of questions: What are these people doing at that motel, at those dinners? What do they think they’re doing? What would each say, if we asked them? No doubt, each of them would have a different answer. Out of that, tension will arise. And that tension, once you admit to it, will give rise to all the good things: rising action, expectation, readerly engagement and will, I bet, make the surprise, when it comes, even more effective.

What do you think, Story Club? Might be useful for us, as a group, to brainstorm novels, or sections of novels, that fit this bill: that are slow but engaging.

What’s happening in these “slow” sections that keep them from being “boring?”