Tag Archives: craft

A TRIP TO IRELAND AND WHAT CAME HOME WITH ME…

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The Liffey at evening.

The Liffey at evening.

I returned a week ago from my fourth trip to Ireland, spent mostly in Dublin, this trip, at World Con (a science fiction/fantasy convention). I’m not sure how much I got out of the convention itself, but I went with a writer friend and met many of her friends–very open and friendly people. And that was worth a lot.

Dublin is much changed since I was there last, in 1997. With membership in the EU, it has become a much more international city. On my first morning there, I was astonished by how fast everything–pedestrians and traffic–moved, rushing off to work. It felt more like New York than DC does. I’m very happy for Dublin. But I miss Bewley’s counters and pots of tea made without tea bags. There seem to be a zillion coffee shops, and Grafton street seems to have an awful lot of the same stores we can find in any Mall here in the United States.

But I revisited Dublin haunts I remembered from past trips–the goldsmith, Declan Killen, on Fade Street, where I had bought my Irish knot necklace back in 1986. (I lost it some years later, but managed to trace a photo of it and sent it to him, and he made me a replacement.) This trip, I came to his red door on Fade street. One had to push a button, and he answered and buzzed me in. I went up a long flight of stairs covered with a red carpet, and was greeted at the top of the stairs. He ushered me into his small shop. His jewelry, necklaces, pendants, pins, and a few earrings, are lovely, though mostly beyond my means.  It seems that every twenty years or so, I visit his shop, admire his beautiful work without managing to buy any of it, and nevertheless, on each visit, he offers to–and takes–my silver necklace, and cleans and polishes it for me.

I also accidentally came upon the International Bar on a corner of Wicklow street, where I had had a humorous adventure on that 1986 trip (a story for another time). Lots of nostalgia.  20190814_160402_Film1This trip, I was staying in the Temple Bar area along Wellington Quay for some of my time, and on St. Augustine street the rest. I loved waking to the cries of sea gulls in the mornings, and the cool, fresh air. I also loved the Leprechaun Museum which, despite its name, is neither a museum nor a tourist attraction devoted to what Americans would expect Leprechauns to be. Rather, it is a place of Shanachies–storytellers of old Irish myths. We were treated to wonderful tales more performed than merely recited by a terrific, theatrical storyteller named Emily.

There was a guided day-trip to the Cliffs of Moher and Galway town that, due to circumstances beyond our control–weather and some other things–was rather a bust. But we did get to see the Aillwee Cave–which was fascinating: a series of caverns created by underwater rivers cutting through rock over centuries.

But the main piece of Ireland I brought home with me this trip, was the experience of seeing a small exhibit of Martyn Turner’s political cartoons at the entrance to Trinity’s Berkeley Library. I simply had to get a book of them. I tried Easons–they said the books were out of print, and suggested Chapters, which has a used book section. So off I went to Chapters, and found a number of them. I bought two. Turner’s themes mostly relate to Irish politics. But he also addresses world politics. Something clicked in my brain, and I came back with (a) a sudden enthusiasm to write and draw political cartoons; and (b) a zillion ideas pulsing through my brain at once. I had recently signed up to have a Daily Kos Diary, and have now decided to start posting political cartoons there. We’ll see  whether ideas will keep coming to me, how well I can draw them (I do have a style of my own, but I’m not sure how compatible it is with political import), how adeptly I can combine text and pictures to satiric effect, and whether or not I can develop an audience for them. (So far, I have posted two, and have received five recommendations for each.  It is not a lot, but at least someone has SEEN them and, apparently, liked them.) I am excited about this new endeavor. As I grow and develop, I hope to post here what I may learn about the craft and about developing an audience.

Uses of Setting; Example: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men

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Like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Robert Pen Warren’s All the King’s Men begins with several pages of description.  Penn Warren’s pages are not quite as directly metaphoric for the theme of his story as are Steinbeck’s opening pages of The Grapes of Wrath. (See September’s post.)  Rather, Penn Warren carries one along using run-on sentences to create a sense of speed and a strong first person voice–that of Jack Burden, a reporter working for Louisiana governor Willie Stark. He is in a car with the governor and his entourage, driving to Stark’s home town, Mason City.  It begins:

“… You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right from wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive.  But you won’t make it, of course…
“…But if you wake up in time and don’t hook your wheel off the slab, you’ll go whipping on into the dazzle and now and then a car will come at you steady out of the dazzle and will pass you with a snatching sound as though God-Almighty had ripped a tin roof loose with his bare hands…”

From there, Penn Warren goes into descriptions of what one passes on the ride, using that to show the changes over time of the society:

“There were pine forests here a long time ago but they are gone.  The bastards got in here and set up the mills and laid the narrow-gauge tracks and  knocked together the company commissaries and paid a dollar a day and folks swarmed out of the brush for the dollar and folks came from God knows where, riding in wagons with a chest of drawers and a bedstead canted together in the wagon bed, and five kids huddled down together and the old woman hunched on the wagon seat with a poke bonnet on her head and snuff on her gums and a young one hanging on her tit…Till, all of a sudden, there weren’t any more pine trees.  They stripped the mills.  The narrow-gauge tracks got covered with grass.  Folks tore down the commissaries for kindling wood.  There wasn’t any more dollar a day. The big boys were gone, with diamond rings on their fingers and broadcloth on their backs.  But a good many of the folks stayed right on, and watched the gullies eat deeper into the red clay.  And a good handful of those folks and their heirs and assigns stayed in Mason City.”

…”That was the way it was the last time I saw Mason City, nearly three years ago, back in the summer of 1936.”  The narrator then goes on to describe the different characters riding in the governor’s entourage.

After one has read the entire novel, the descriptions of going off the road or waking up in time to stay on it can be seen as foreshadowing Jack Burden’s journey throughout the story–and, on some level, Willie Stark’s as well.  Penn Warren’s description of changes in the landscape, of who came and made a profit on it, and who was left behind, tells us much about Willie Stark’s roots, the kind of man he is and, perhaps, what in his background made him that way.

The point:  setting rarely just describes scenery or sets a scene or mood to prepare us for the entrance of characters onto a stage.  At its best, it is integrally connected to the development of character and theme.  (Note:  this is not to say that it is done consciously, or in a calculated fashion, which could make such description feel forced.  But if the setting fits the story well, it may quite naturally supply these other connections.)

WRITING GENDER–HUMANITY SUPERSEDES

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Not long ago, I was listening to  Krista Tippet’s National Public Radio show, On Being.  Tippet was interviewing Joy Ladin, a transgender individual, about her journey between genders.  Ms. Ladin discussed her acute observations of the outward ways in which gender is expressed–of her need, before coming to terms with her inner self, to model the observed masculine and avoid what she thought was feminine and then, when she made the change from male to female, the need consciously to observe and model the outward ways  in which women move and express themselves. (As an example, she noted her observation that women tend to use their hands when speaking and men tend not to.)

I know very little about transgender issues (other than the threat to transgender people by those who hate).  I would never be so presumptuous as to write about the matters they must deal with emotionally, psychologically, physically, or societally, and I have not raised the Joy Ladin interview here in order to do so.  (I do recommend that people listen to the interview, linked above, to gain some insight.)  But, while it makes perfect sense that, in Ms. Ladin’s circumstances, she looked to outward cues to determine how to pass or function as one gender or the other in society, it troubles me that society creates such narrow strictures of what constitutes masculinity and femininity.  And, as I listened to Ms. Ladin speak, it reminded me of how these strictures tend to affect even the ways in which writers deal with characters in fiction.

Some writers express insecurity about writing from the point of view of the opposite sex.  I am reminded of one male author’s delighted amazement at my ability to embody male as well as female characters in my novel, Tinker’s Damn.

I am also reminded of a prospective agent’s reaction to another novel of mine in which the female protagonist was an IRA bombmaker trying to get a former cohort to observe a truce with the British.  That agent asked:  Does she ever wear a dress?  Does she ever think about marriage or wish she had children? –As if, in the middle of an encounter that will affect world events, the character should stop and ruminate on wearing dresses and having kids?  Indeed, one of the reasons I wrote the novel was to create a female counterpart to the male anti-heroes of the genre–someone of tough mind and integrity, and an ability to handle hairy situations.  Why, in an international thriller, should such a female protagonist, any more than her male counterparts, spend time considering  her personal domestic issues?

When, in irritation, I mentioned the agent’s questions to a writer-friend who happens to be a Lesbian, she replied, “well, you could just go all the way and make her a Lesbian.”  I’m sure this was an off-hand reply, meant either with a bit of humor or without giving great thought to it.  But, I have wondered since whether my friend realized that her statement was feeding into a stereotype of what it is to be gay or straight, as well as male or female.

There are all these exasperating myths out there of what it is to be manly or womanly:  men like to fight, women like to talk; women are the nurturers, men are the aggressors; men want to solve problems, women want someone to just listen; men are logical, women are intuitive.

I believe that our common humanity comes FIRST.  The rest are just trappings and societal constructions.  Fiction can reflect and reinforce these trappings and constructions, or it can be a tool to change them.  And not only by writing stories about characters fighting the strictures society places upon them, but by creating characters that, by their mere existence, defy those societal definitions.  (To paraphrase the film Field of Dreams, if you write them, they will come?)

I believe that human motivations are universal.  You can create any kind of man and any kind of woman and still have them be believable so long as you capture the essential humanity that will govern their response to their given circumstances.

Humanity comes before gender.

THE ACTOR CAN TEACH THE WRITER…

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I just finished taking an introduction to acting class at The Theatre Lab on Eighth Street near Gallery Place.  The instructor’s lessons in how an actor approaches a script also serve as good advice for someone writing fiction–perhaps more applicable to plays, but definitely applicable to novels and short stories as well.  Here is his advice for acting:

1. examine the “given circumstances;” that is, the conditions that exist and events that occur before the play begins, and the conditions and events that will presumably occur after the play’s end (as well, of course, as examining the events occurring in the story (ie., on stage);

2. determine the various characters’ super-objectives (what is the large thing they want all through the play?);

3.  determine each character’s immediate objective in each scene.  (The principle is that in any given scene, each person wants something from the other, something that he or she wants the other to do.  The something must be tangible, although it may be very small, and may represent something intangible.  In a play, it must be something the audience can see.  And, of course, one does not necessarily get what they are after–that’s what presents the conflict necessary to drama );

4.  determine each character’s tactics or strategy (the small actions we take to try to obtain the objective; eg., flattery, bullying, bargaining, etc.); and

5. for each line, ask not how one says the line, but why one is saying it.  (The how will ultimately arrive from an examination of that question.)

Although these precepts are meant for an actor’s interpretation of a script, I think they can also, with small adjustments, serve the novel and story writer well, most especially in revision.  Items #1 and #2 are a given.  But novice writers can get lost in a scene, lose the sense of what a character most immediately wants from the other character, and how that relates to the character’s super-objective and fits into the whole of the story.  Keeping items #3, #4, and #5 in mind can help the writer sharpen such scenes.