Tag Archives: how to write fiction

Interrogation-Girl

Posted on by
Reply

One semester, when I was working towards a master of arts in writing at Johns Hopkins,  I turned in three very different stories that each happened to contain an interrogation scene.  One was the first chapter of a novel about an Irish Traveler who had stabbed a barman; one was in a spy novel, and one was in a surrealistic short story.  After the third one, I remember my instructor saying to me, humorously:  “What are you?  Turning into interrogation-girl?”   I laughed then.  But now, some years later, I find myself writing another  couple of stories in which interrogations figure prominently.  And though they are central to the stories I’m writing, not gratuitously injected, I do find myself wondering why interrogations are turning up again in what I write.

Perhaps the subject matters I choose as my themes have made such scenes inevitable:  a suspected criminal interrogated by a policeman; a suspected spy interrogated by his or her captors.  But these are not the only circumstances in which an interrogation could take place.  One could have a husband interrogate a wife (or vice versa), or a boss interrogate an employee, etc.

Interrogation scenes, when evolving organically from the story, are useful vehicles for bringing arguments out in the open, advancing conflict, and leading the story toward its climax.  I think that’s one reason why I gravitate towards them–they’re a good way to allow characters to argue.  A form of action.

But I suspect that I am also drawn to them because they bring to the fore a contest of wills and the issue of power:  who actually has it?  (Between spouses, who has power will vary according to the relationship established between the characters.  Is the husband a bully and the wife afraid of him?  Is the wife the stronger character and the husband’s interrogation an act of desperation?  Are they equally matched, like George and Martha, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

Where power is unequal–where the interrogator appears to control the environment, hold all the cards–how will the person at a disadvantage deal with it?  Does he cave and crumble?  Does he betray?  Does she stand up to it?  Does she find a creative way out of the situation?  Does he or she have the strength or the bitterness or the stubbornness to stand on principle and refuse to give in?  And if they do, what are the consequences?  Does the power shift?  Who ultimately will win a battle of wills?  By putting a character under stress, an interrogation tests the character’s mettle and, in so doing, can quickly and effectively reveal his or her essential nature.

 

 

“Lirty Dies” –“Spoonerisms” of The Capitol Steps

Posted on by
Reply

I went, not long ago, to see a performance of the Capitol Steps.  They’re very talented and very funny, of course.  But what struck me most was one particular routine, a solo speech entitled:  Lirty Dies: The Load to the Erection 2012–What a Lunch of Boozers, in which the performer swapped the letters in certain words to humorously irreverent effect.  In the title, for example, the first letter of the first two words are switched so that “dirty lies” becomes “lirty dies,” and the first letter of road is switched with the second letter of election  to become Load to the Erection, etc.

I found this speech fascinating on two accounts:  first, the way in which the switches created clever and pointed satire (the Capitol Steps’ stock and trade, but still…); and second, the fact that the entire audience, me included, could comprehend the new meaning and the original meaning simultaneously.  (Indeed, the humor–the laugh–came in part from the juxtaposition of the two meanings.)  It felt like listening to two very different kinds of music at the same time and being able to hear both equally.  I would not have thought it possible and was amazed at my being able to do it.   How did they and we accomplish it?

To figure out how our minds accommodate two meanings at once, let’s look at a couple of examples from the speech.  There’s the reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger:  “He had a waby out of bedlock” in place of “he had a baby out of wedlock.”  Perhaps it is the connection the mind automatically makes between wedlock and bedlock that permits one to grasp both meanings at once?  (I should note that the Capitol Steps play fair; that is, the speech also addresses the foibles of John Edwards and Anthony Weiner.)

Then there’s the reference to Rick Perry, referred to as Pick Rerry:  “The Stapitol Ceps have always said you were stumber than a dump.”  Which is more insulting?  To call someone dumber than a stump?  Or stumber than a dump, with the colloquial associations  “dump” brings to mind?  Either way, the mind registers the insult.

But how does one approach writing this sort of thing?  Do you write a straight speech stating what you want to communicate and then mechanically start inverting letters to see what combinations turn up?  Do you start with sentences like “We got the boring Mormon, Mitt Romney.  And we got our old pal Newt Gingrich,” and just start switching letters around, playing with them to see what comes up until one arrives (as the Capitol Steps do) at:  “We got the moring Borman, Ritt Momney.  And we got our old nal Poot Gingrich”?  Surely the swap resulting in a reference to Borman is not accidental; nor the reference to Poot, which one is bound to associate with poo.  Or does one somehow figure out what swaps will work when composing the underlying speech?

Finally, is this a technique best applied in satire and farce?  Could it also be put to powerful use in a darker form of literature?  Admittedly, I don’t think the technique could be sustained throughout the length of a novel.  But, I do think it would be an interesting exercise to experiment with it, to test the limits of its possible applications.  What’s the worst that could come of it?  Even if playing with the technique did not result in a new, innovative story, it would gain one the pleasure of playing with language and what the mind may do with it.  And that could lead one into  other new and interesting work.

 

Seigel’s “Think” System

Posted on by
Reply

According to my father, Robert Louis Stevenson taught himself to write by copying other writers.  And that was how I got started.  I figured that what was good enough for RLS was good enough for me.  If I had stopped to think whether I could do it, I expect my courage would have failed me.  But, as it happened, I dove right in, with a sense of joy and adventure, playing with styles, with words, with ideas.  I wrote a story in the style of Louis Carroll, following his lead in playing with the logic of language to absurd effect.  I wrote a dialogue in the style of Tom Stoppard, in which two actors argue about whether they should take bows for acting in his play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and in which I echoed Stoppard’s rhythms while discussing the philosophies expressed in his play.  Borrowing a device used by Hendrik Willem van Loon in Van Loon’s Lives, I wrote a story in which Oscar Wilde’s entrance into heaven depends upon the literary assessment of his works by a jury of quarrelsome fellow writers.  I have gone on, in the many years since, to play merrily with many other aspects of writing, and not as a study of anyone else’s work.

But how is this learning by studying, or “copying” other writers done?  How did I do it?

Some might attempt it through a purely analytic approach, breaking down components of style, language, phraseology, subjects, plot structure, etc.  But although that will teach one how someone else did it, it seems to me that a pure application of that technique alone would render a rather wooden replica.

What I tended to do was a variation of Professor Harold Hill’s “think” system.  In The Music Man, the con man, Hill, pretends to teach the children of River City to play instruments by having them think the Minuet in G.  Absurd.  But, it works!  And at the end of the film, they save him from being tarred and feathered by, lo and behold, playing the Minuet in G.  So what did I do?  I read the works of an author I liked until I heard his or her voice in my head, even as I went about my day, even as I talked to other people.  Probably the writer’s manner of speech did not actually come out of my mouth, but I felt the flavor of it on my tongue, the rhythm.  A form of osmosis.  It gave me my own sense of the author’s heart, not just an intellectual understanding of his or her skill.  And what I heard in my head came out on the page.  It was not, of course, precisely the style of the author I emulated, but his or her style as filtered through my brain–which also permitted it to be something other than just a mere copy.

What advice would I give to writers who want to learn from other writers?  First, read everything you can by an author you like.  Read it for pleasure.  Submerge yourself in his or her world.  Absorb it.  Then, perhaps, add some analysis of his or her techniques.  And then, go and play.  Try it out for yourselves.  Apply it to your own themes.  What have you got to lose?

Posted by Jessie Seigel on August 28th at 11:59 p.m.