Thursday 8/1/24
This is just a peek into what goes into writing if it's going to be done well. I'm going to use an example from one of these new stories I'm working on. I mentioned it yesterday--it's the one that had been in first person that I knew I'd be changing to third person and making. It was a mess on Sunday, but it was also mostly done, because I knew what I'd be doing subsequently. Then it's a matter of working, putting the time in, and making sure everything was is as it ought to be.
The story is called "Expect Delays." It's about a group of people on a summer morning standing outside of a train station whose doors are locked because something has happened inside, which the people being made to wait speculate on. A helicopter is overhead. We have onstage and offstage, and they're separated by what's essentially a partition--the actual locked doors. But they join up--onstage and offstage, and they're actually in the same place, as we learn.
I think what you want to do--among many things--when you write is give everyone lots of reasons to raise their hands. What do I mean by that? Think back to when you were in class. Everyone read the same thing, and the teacher asked some question, and you stuck your hand in the air because you wanted to weigh in on that, share your thoughts, say that you believed that this could also mean that.
Hands in the air. People opining, offering additional perspectives, interpretations. You can be very clear in what you're doing and cause people to have different interpretations precisely because you are so clear and you're consciously and acutely providing for many things at once. I know, for instance, what it is in a story of mine that will cause someone in that hypothetical class to raise their hand and say, "Or maybe..."
You can read a lot into this story. It's a story that could produce loads of theories and explanations. While still making abundant the clarity. One of the characters is a man we're told most people would identify as fifty-five or so, who is ten years younger. There's a college kid away from home during the summer for the first time, who is on his way to meet some buddies for a hike. There's a woman on her own. A spry grandmother. A childless couple who got back from their vacation last week.
Here's something that had been in the story:
A breeze ran up out of nowhere—the sort that feels like the first in hours and might be the last for days. Heads raised so that their owners would be less likely to miss the full effect.
Here's what it instead became:
A breeze ran up out of nowhere—the sort of breeze that feels like the first in hours and might be the last for days. Heads raised so that their owners would be less likely to miss its full effect.
Adding that second use of "breeze" changes quite a bit. There's variation despite the repetition of the word because of differing presentations that function as progression.
"A breeze" is general; it tells us what we're going to be talking about. We're at an outset. "The sort of breeze" kicks it up a notch with specificity, qualification. "The" is specific; "A" is general. See the progression? Tonally, the two uses have separate identities; it's as if they're in the same family, but they're not the same person. With the sense-based progression--and this sonic progression--the reader isn't caused to think, "This is repetitive." That wire in their brain isn't tripped.
A breeze running up out of nowhere is what a breeze can do, but it's a distinctive way of putting it. That's what you want. But you also need to help your reader. Don't make them fight you. Don't make them battle their way through what you want them to know. The second use of the word "breeze" means that the reader doesn't have to remind themselves what we're talking about here. I'm not saying it takes a lot to do that, or necessarily much of anything. But that allowance is still being made, because there's an additional benefit to it.
By using the word "breeze" in that second instance, I'm now free, as the author, to empower, if you will, this idea of a breeze. To give it more agency, which is also a form of metaphorical agency. We're talking about a breeze and more than a breeze. The "the" at the end of the second sentence can now become "its"--again, specific, because we know the "its" means "the breeze's," and the breeze is worthy of the possessive. Usually that's just people or animals, right? Not breezes. I've given it the possessive without also really having to formally give it the possessive--that is, I don't need to write "breeze's," which would stick out. The possessive is in there, but smoothly--it's not banging on a trash can with a hammer. The effect is happening, without disruption.
That additional clarity after the dash also the next sentence to start "Heads raised" rather than with some much more standard construction that gets employed in forgettable writing. The reader is being looked after. Considered. Treated as a guest. You want the reader to feel at home, even if you're terrifying them, punching them in the gut, whatever it may be. You don't want a reader thinking, "I don't belong here" or "What am I doing here?" They have to feel at home, no matter what else is going on.
The sentence before this paragraph is this one:
“I heard it was a homeless lady,” suggested a college-aged kid gnawing on some kind of tubular breakfast concoction dense with meat, the backpack at his feet crowned with badges proclaiming his most important beliefs in the least amount of words for those who read bags.
Note the use of the word "feet" and then how the next paragraph begins with the reference to running. You're always creating transitions in writing, but a lot of those transitions must be made to happen on what will be a subconscious level for most.
You're not just writing for the conscious mind; you're writing to the subconscious mind. You have to be aware of that and what it is for people. You have to know how they're going to think in terms of thoughts they don't know they're having. That speeds them on their way. It's like a really smooth road. You don't even know you're on it. You're not thinking, "Hey, there are no bumps in this road, no potholes, I'm making great time." But there are reasons why the ride is going the way it's going. And that's one of them.
This is the paragraph after the one with the breeze:
“Feels good,” a woman said to her husband who hated having to talk when it wasn’t necessary.
Because that breeze has been imbued with what it's been imbued, because it has agency, even if it is, in the one sense, just a breeze, when this woman says, "Feels good," we know what she's talking about. Further, we're there. Look at this way: You're with a group, it starts raining and someone says, "Oh no." You know they're referring tot he rain, because you're there. If you weren't there, you wouldn't know from the words. They could mean anything. "Feels good" could mean anything. But we're there. We are, in essence--and this is key--standing with these people as a part of this group. We are present, if not involved. But the story asks us, "Are we not involved, too?"
This is how you write well. Someone else would have to say, "The woman said that the breeze felt good." That's artless. The threading is the thing. The interweaving. The balancing. Working on the different levels simultaneously. The conscious mind, the subconscious mind, other parts of the mind, emotions, feelings, associations, certain trip-wires that take us into other rooms, set off other reactions.
It starts with you, the author, being aware of what all of these people are not aware. And you knowing people better that you have never met than they know themselves, in a manner of thinking. Then going to work as the guide, as the person bringing them into your home, but which is also their home.
What I would say to you right now is that there is no other writer in the world who thinks this way besides myself. What I'm saying here would never be expressed in an MFA program. None of those people would ever think that way. In fact, they have no thoughts for the reader, let alone thoughts like these.
But the reader is everything. I don't mean for the writer's ego, or so that someone who wants writing to be their special thing because they don't have anything else so as a result they enact some fantasy abetted by other people in these writing communities where delusion and brokenness reign.
That's not what I mean. I mean that the reader's experience with reading that work is everything. The better the writing is, the less it feels like reading when a person reads it. You are not trying to give someone a reading experience, but rather a life experience.
You see how we're getting into the nature of communication now in the story? Is this about right now? Our age, the here and now? These times. Topical commentary? How about topical and timeless? How about both very topical and also surprisingly timeless? A lot more than we would have thought.
The kid thinks he's saying so much, the man thinks he doesn't need to say much of anything. Who is communicating? Where is anyone getting? What is anyone doing? What is anyone, really?
Oh--it's a ghost story, too, by the way, but a very different kind of ghost story--and really two ghost stories in one.
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