Lunch with Aunty

I’ve just come from lunch with two very special people in my life: my cousin and good friend Anna and my Aunty Sandra. Aunty Sandra is sort of my surrogate mother when she’s in Brisbane, since my own mother abandoned me went to live out Whoop-Whoop (Australian slang for the boonies or boondocks) with her husband, Swami Guru Sam. (My step father happens to be five years older than me but he’s as grey as Einstein was, same hair-do even. Sometimes I wonder if he isn’t the incarnation of the great scientist himself; he shares Einstein’s eccentricity, wit, charm and philosophical prowess. But like Einstein he’s very modest about his qualities.)

My first memories of Aunty Sandra involve macaroni, and a homemade circus my siblings and cousins had put on for our parents and grandmother. Throughout our show my Aunty clapped and cheered as we sang and performed daring (read humiliating) tricks with Jedha the ferocious black kitten. Best of all she was such a good sport and allowed herself to be the butt of a rather cheeky prank. As a child I knew Aunty Sandra as a warm, fun, but somewhat mysterious person – she was my eccentric aunty from exotic Hong Kong, who always carried herself with grace and was never without a funny story about herself or her life. Her presence was magnetising for me. It still is. Every time I see her I feel as if I have touched a little bit of magic. I smile longer, laugh louder, feel more connected. This connection is more than just familial. I believe I have an independent link to each member in my family, beyond geonological relationships. Every one of them enriches me as a person and as a writer: My husband is mood stabiliser, educator, best ally, best friend, anchor, hemisphere. My mother is soul satisfaction, a compass, shelter, the reinforcement, endorsement and authentication for my life.  My sister is Chuddy (a chum and buddy), she is playmate, she’s funny voices and stupid laughing, she’s deep soul connection. My brother is integrity, a yardstick by which I measure other men, he is guardian, he is chiverly. Swami Guru Sam is my external ear, a fellow freak, a receptacle for my crazy ideas, and a manufacturer of crazy ideas. Cousin Anna is home cooked meals, she is eye to eye, and happy days. Aunty Sandra is nurture, creativity, effervescence. She is remember to play and to create. Everyone I know and love have unique personalities and irreplaceable roles. These are the kinds of characters I want to read and write about. What would my characters say about each other, I wonder?

Unorthodox questions for your character interviews

“Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam, butterscotch clouds, a tangerine and the side of a ham”. This is what Cynthia had in her lunchbox in Prince’s song Starfish and coffee. Bear with me, this is going somewhere . . . You might not agree that Prince is a great musician, but you must concede he is a clever lyricist. In five minutes or less Prince can deliver organic characters from a simple sketch. He does this not by telling us who they are, but by revealing them through action and interaction. But he also does this by asking unorthodox questions of them. Recently I’ve had trouble encouraging one character in my novel to reveal herself. I was feeling restricted by conventional methods of characterisation – interviewing, for example can be tedious and I often end up with pages of dribble with no real substance. Who cares what her favourite colour is? Anyway, I decided to take a leaf out of Prince’s book; rather than ask direct questions like “Who are you?’ I decided to discover who she is through indirect questioning and by asking unconventional ones. Asking these types of questions took the seriousness out of character development and allowed my imagination to flow more freely. I found I was able to expand on the answers after half a dozen questions. Here some questions I asked:

1. What does she have in her lunch box?
2. What kind of bird is she? Why?
3. Which song or songs best represent her?
4. Which musical instrument is she?
5. Which Rocky Horror Picture Show character is she?
6. What does her bed look like?
7. What is her favourite painting/artwork?
8. Describe a time when she did something considered clumsy
9. What does she think about when she crawls into bed at the end of the day, just before she drops off to sleep?
10. What is her favourite fairy tale?

You could ask as many questions like this until you find your pace. It worked for me, maybe it will work for you if you’re having similar problems.

Space in novels

Not a good writing day today. The day started with an early wake-up call from my hubby, who was getting ready to come home from night shift. I am not a morning person and normally crawl out of bed well after the sun has come up, but I had an early dentist appointment to finalise a root canal treatment. For the rest of the day I slept and stumbled around the house trying to find some kind of equilibrium. Tonight I’ve been downloading music. I heard In for the kill (La Roux) today on the radio and had to have it. The song makes me feel like I’m in a 1980s blue-light disco, which might be cringe-worthy for some, but leaves me with an easy nostalgia. Many of my firsts were in the 80’s, accompanied by the rhythmic styles of “Synthpop” – first real crush, first slow dance with a boy, first kiss . . . Thinking about the 80s gives me more than just a sense of nostalgia – I remember the mood, the ambiance, that special 80s attitude, the space the 80s occupied. Anyway, all this reminiscing eventually got me thinking about how to represent mood and atmosphere in novels. A novel’s characters have to occupy space.   Leonard J Davis in Resisting Novels: Ideology and fiction says that space in novels “must be more than just simply a backdrop”. They must have

“… dimensions and depth; they must have byways and back alleys; there must be open rooms and hidden places; dining rooms and locked drawers; there mus be a thickness and interiority to the mental constructions that constitue the novel’s space.¹

Novels ask so much of us, and creating space within a novel is one of the most complex tasks a novelist will understake. I have no answers today for this one since I’m still learning the process myself and I suspect it would take a lot more than a short post on a blog to explore the concept of space in novels. Food for thought . . .

¹Davis, Leonard J, 1987, Resisting Novels: Ideology and fiction, Routledge

Writing prompt 5 – Characters

This week is all about characters. Do you develop a character to fit the theme or develop the theme to fit the character? No matter what you do you’re going to have to come up with some three dimensional characters if you want to write a novel. One technique I use, which I call layering, is a good way to get started on developing a character when you have a specific role to fill. Here’s how I developed one of my main characters, B:

• For one crucial role in my novel I need a character who is a bit of a drifter and quite enigmatic. I thought about people I’d known as a child and remembered one fellow my family knew, Trevor. Trevor was not a drifter as such – he worked on a cargo ship and every six months or so we’d visit him on the ship at port when it came in. I loved being on the ship and loved the stories he’d tell to my siblings and me. Though this was Trevor’s full time occupation, his transient lifestyle was a source of fascination for me. I lifted this aspect of Trevor’s lifestyle and added it to the framework for B. Being a sailor seemed a perfect occupation for my drifter character. I have layer one.
• B needs to be a good story teller. He needs to be credible but there must a folkloric, almost mythical quality to his stories. I have known and do know a few people who fit this description. I’ll take gestures from one, articulation from another, and mannerisms from yet another. I have the second layer. 
• B has an unusual history which is important to the main plot. We live in a diverse world – there are a myriad of characters to choose from. Truth is stranger than fiction, as they say. For layer three I’m thinking about people I know with unusual histories. Layer three is shaping up
• Character B has many layers so I continue adding to the framework until I’m satisfied with the construction. Now it’s just a matter transposing the layers, filling in the holes, decorating the finer details, and checking that he is structurally sound.

The main points for layering are:

• define the role your character needs to fill
• use dot points to list the key traits and mannerisms etc. Each dot point represents a layer.
• it’s okay to base characters on people you know, or have known as long as they’re not carbon copies – unless it’s biographical
• characters are more than just personality traits, they gesture, have accents, mannerisms, they have back-stories, lifestyles, passions, secrets, dress sense (or no dress sense) and so on. When you’re thinking about subjects think about everything they do, what they wear, how they behave
• one disadvantage of layering is that some layers can conflict – but this can work to your advantage. There’s no such thing as a uniform human being. We’re all multi-layered and sometimes traits do conflict
• don’t always pick the best traits. No character is perfect. 
• sometimes a character’s behaviour deviates from what is considered natural for them. Think about people whose behaviour or deeds have surprised you 

Today’s writing exercise is to develop a character based on this layering technique. I’m interested to know if it works for anyone else, or better, how do you develop characters?

 

Characterisation and viewpoint

This week I’ve been trying to sweet-talk my main character (S) out of her hide. She has been frustratingly coy since the conception of the book, but I’ve persisted with her because evasiveness is exactly what is required for this role. Her supporting characters have been far more chatty – one in particular, an old man (B),  is particularly vivacious and needed no encouragement to introduce himself. So equipped was he that I even considered making him the main character instead of a supporting character, but S is the one who has the most to learn and B is the one who has the most to teach. All this thinking has left me with more questions than answers like: Do you have to like your main character?

 You don’t need to adore your main character, but at the very least you need to have confidence in her/him and you must be dedicated to her/his cause. If you’re not your ambivalence will manifest in your writing, making it difficult for the reader to identify with or care about her/him. For me the main character determines the narrative mode – that is, whether the story is told in first or third person, and if third is the voice subjective, objective, omniscient etc? If you can’t identify with your main character your voice will be contrived and the character will not be credible. So, whether your character is a great guy, an egomaniac or a middling, s/he needs to be well-crafted and appropriate for the role. There are a unmber of methods to help us achieve that:

• Bio sheets – bio sheets can be found across the Internet, or you could make your own. Use as much detail as you think necessary. Bio sheets are a good way to get you thinking about the character’s attributes
• Character interviews – interview each character about her/himself as well as other characters. Free-write the answers to see what comes out.
• Mind-mapping - or clustering, is my favourite method for getting to know a character. You could use a general mind-map or mind-map specific attributes. 
• Stalk your character – as you go about your day, consider how your character would carry out the same task. What does a typical day look like for your character?
• Go through her/his things – imagine you are in your character’s home. Open drawers, the pantry, check the laundry hamper,  do they have an office, or library? Visualising your character’s private world is a great way to get insight into who they are.
• Use techniques employed by actors to “get into character”. There is a great book on this very thing: Getting into character: seven secrets a novelist can learn from actors, by Brandilyn Collins

Five stages of writing a novel

Develop, research, compose, revise and edit. These are the five stages of writing a novel as I see it. [Publication is the sixth stage, and will not be addressed here.] I’ve devised a checklist for myself to keep track of my own progress through the process of writing my current novel and thought it might be useful to add here. Some of these strategies could apply equally well to other forms of fiction and even non-fiction. Feel free to copy and use this checklist.

Stage 1: Developing the novel

This stage is the most important as stages 2-5 are dependent on what you do here.

1. Idea
2. Working title
3. Identify a genre
4. Premise. A premise is a short statement of something the writer believes or intends to prove, for example, all you need is love.
5. Estimate the length of the book. How many chapters, pages, even scenes will you need to prove/disprove your premise
6. Identify the main characters. Name them, describe them, give them life.
7. Point of view
8. Identify the setting
9. Write an outline

Stage 2: Researching for the novel

All novels need to be researched. Here are a few strategies that researchers use that are helpful to fiction writers:

1. Make a list of what you already know
2. Make a list of things you need to find out – use question form
3. Identify potential sources
4. Use keywords to do a preliminary search. This will hopefully lead you to more comprehensive source
5. Check your facts (don’t rely on one source)
6. Synthesis your findings – organise your research
7. Evaluate your findings
8. Check that you have answered your own questions

Stage 3: Compose the novel

Return to your outline and start writing

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. and so on

If you like you can break this checklist down even further into scenes

Stage 4: Revise

Revision is a process of looking beneath the skin of the book, at the structure and shape of the novel. During revision you must resist the urge to edit spelling and grammar mistakes. No fixing during this stage. Generally when I’m revising a piece I read it several times looking for a particular aspect each time. Some writers might be daunted by the amount of rereading going on here, but it’s the only way you can get it right.

1. You need to approach your manuscript with a fresh and clear mind. Have you had at least a week’s break from it?
2. Read your premise and outline and keep them close at hand
3. Make a copy of the original manuscript
4. Read the manuscript from start to finish. Remember, no fixing and try not to take notes. You are only reading at this point.
5. Reread the manuscript looking for problems in the overall structure of the novel. Now you can take notes, but avoid editing – you can mark mistakes, but you must not fix
6. Reread the manuscript as many times as you need to, concentrating on different aspects, such as character continuity, chronology, scene transitions, dialogue etc.
7. Make the changes you’ve outlined for yourself
8. You might also wish to rework the beginning and end at this point
9. Read it again. Are you happy?

Stage 5: Editing

The editing stage is similar to revision in that you can read the manuscript several times concentrating on different aspects of editing. During the editing phase you’ll be checking your manuscript for errors in grammar, spelling and the structure of paragraphs.

1. Reread the manuscript and check for the following:

• Overuse of words, ie repetitiveness
• Are the sentences coherent – are there any fragments, run-on sentences?
• Consistency in tense
• Punctuation
• Adjectives

2. Make the changes you’ve marked
3. Check the layout
4. Do a spellcheck – it should be the last thing you do
5. Celebrate

On dialogue in fiction

I’ve just read some appalling dialogue in a novel I’m reading and I simply must complain about it. I’m no expert, but I do know that writing realistic dialogue requires more than just parenthesising. I also know that there’s nothing worse than reading long verbal relays between characters or endless mono-dribble.  Real language is filled with acoustic nuances. While it’s not necessary to include every inarticulate sound your character’s make, the dialogue must resemble real interactive speech and include sociocultural, gender and personal features.

Here are some things I try to remember while writing dialogue:

1. First and foremost a writer observes. Listen to how others speak and interact – it’s not eavesdropping if it’s research (ok it is, so don’t get caught),
2. Now that you’ve listened to how others speak cut out all the heavy crap like saluations (hi, hello, greetings), interjections (well, anyhow, so, um, ah), and even adverbs (advebrs are very bad in dialogue, really burdensome and frankly annoying): Observe: “Hi. So, how are you?” “Hello. Um, really good. How are you?” “Well, you know, I’m ah, I’m tremendously good too, thanks heaps for asking.” Ok, my example is excessive – the point is don’t waste your word count on unneccessary words,
3. Don’t use dialogue to explain the plot – nothing gets my goat more than reading a character dribble on about backstory or explaining the motivation of another character through dialogue,
4. Avoid trying to be inventive with action tags. One of my pet hates is the use of past participles like sighed or frowned. For example, “You can’t do that,” he frowned. The same goes for laughed, smiled, scowled, joked and so on. You can’t frown, sigh or jest speech,
5. Better yet avoid most tags altogether. Tags like cried, declared, exclaimed, responded, yelled, shouted, etc interrupt the flow of speech and are often ignored by the reader anyway. A simple he said, she said will suffice if you need to clarify who is talking. If your dialogue is good it shouldn’t be neccessary to explain who is talking all the time. Let the dialogue do the work,
6. Don’t let your characters go on and on, even if you have a deliberately verbose character,
7. All of us have accents, and so will your characters; it is best to avoid using phonetic spelling to express this. Try emphasising accents and dialects with colloquialisms and grammar,
8. Use appropriate language for your character’s nature. For example, if one of your characters is authoritarian and another is a rebellious teenager their expressions, diction and grammar will differ,
9. Read the dialogue out loud. Act it out, or have someone else read it with you.
10. Rewrite the dialogue to see if there is a better way

Background music

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” according to Elvis Costello. While I don’t agree it is a “really stupid thing to do”, I do appreciate the difficulties of portraying the presence of sound in writing. My current novel requires me to write about sound and music, but I’m struggling with the idea of enforcing my own experience of these sounds onto the reader. Still, others have done it: think of Louis de Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. Taking the concept one step further, author Margaret Attwood will be accompanied by performers who will play the characters and sing songs from her new book, The year of the flood, at its official launch later this year.

Music is important to me, as much as for writing as it is because I’m human. I listen to music constantly while writing, I incorporate sounds I hear into the writing itself. I even develop soundtracks to go with particular pieces and I often wish there was a way to infuse my novel with that soundtrack so the readers could share the experience. But what I hear is not necessarily what the reader wants to hear. Even if I did produce a soundtrack, it would be influenced by my fondness for world music, my own cultural attitudes, and my desire for the rare and unsual and might be completely removed from the reader’s ideas.  As a reader I don’t like long descriptions of a character’s physique, exposition through dialogue or technical descriptions of objects, animals or music. I like writing that nourishes the mind’s eye rather than doing all the work for it. Writing that allows me to smell the aromas, see the colours, hear the sounds without overwhelming the page with exposition is true art and what I strive for in my own writing. But how do you give  your words volume? How do you explain a Jewish hymn, a Qedamai Silt (a mode of Ethiopian secular music) or an Iranian lullaby? How do you explain your own character’s rendition of Bailero from Chants d’Auvergne? Is it enough to say that it is song for the soprano voice? Or is it safer just to jettison the whole idea? It is hard to find a balance between escessive and ineffective prose. But that is what writer’s must do: we are technicians and part of our craft is learning how to submerse the reader into a scene so that they almost forget they are reading. It sounds hard, it is hard. But writing is about challenging yourself as much as the reader.

Plot or not

I like reading creative nonfiction. I even enjoy writing it from time to time. Recently I read In fact: The best of creative nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind, a collection of essays and personal narratives on topics from Jewish divorce ceremonies to racism and family dynamics. I admire the way these writers use fiction techniques, like using dramatic openings, plotting the story and showing rather than telling to craft their stories. The essay that stood the most though was Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain by Floyd Skloot who suffered brain damage after a particularly nasty virus. What is remarkable is that despite his, in his own words “humiliating” affliction, Floyd is able to produce a piece of intelligent and engaging writing. The essay made me aware of how much I take for granted my ability to recall details, to process and transmit information and to make logical connections, which are all very handy skills for a writer. But it also made me aware of how much of the difficulty I experience in getting words on paper is a manifestation of my own internal dynamic. In a note at the end of the narrative, Floyd states that he constructed the piece “a paragraph at a time”.  He says  “I have learned to trust that when I am jotting down isolated thoughts or episodes during the period of time that I’m thinking about an essay, those pieces will eventually belong somewhere in that essay or one of the others I’m engaged with then, because they all tend to emerge from the same emotional state of mind or complex of feelings.” Thinking about this now I am aware that I’ve been viewing my current novel as one massive ordeal requiring a marathon effort. I’ve been seeing it as a single, unremitting entity, and this has made it almost impossible for me to see the finer details.

All this leads me to contemplate the question of whether to plot or not – something I’ve been exploring with Swami Guru Sam. When I was younger I couldn’t imagine writing to a plan. The allure of diving in head first was strong. I loved discovering twists in the plot I hadn’t anticipated. I would start to write with a only general idea of the geography of the story, preferring to map it as I went, following each step with another, but now I’ve come to understand this can be counter-productive and, as (I hope) my writing has matured, I’ve feel I must now give some thought to structure and try to develop a strategy, to plot a path. I don’t have the memory or the cognitive vigor of a twenty-something year old to write a whole book flying by the seat of my pants. I don’t have time to write like that anymore, since it requires a lot more effort in the following drafts. It’s impossible to write a book and get it right the first time, but it might be possible to lessen the workload in subsequent drafts by writing to a blueprint. And of course blueprints can be amended if necessary. I can still write a paragraph at a time, but now I have a better idea of what the next paragraph should be about.