Tag Archives: on writing fiction

Venetian Masks–My Inspiration!

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Their empty eyes stare at you from their shelves. Or are their eyes behind those masks?

Readers often wonder–how do writers think of their stories? Do we stare at a computer screen or type like one of the proverbial Shakespeare monkeys until an idea takes root?

For me, inspiration is often serendipitous. When I don’t have an idea that grabs me, I am in a funk. Walking and/or talking with strangers often stimulates ideas. And stumbling across something new, even in my same old familiar world lights me up like a roman candle.

Today–a lovely, sunny day–I was determined to get out of my neighborhood and walk down to and around Georgetown. After a while the heat got to me and, bedraggled, I was ready to hop on a bus towards home. But as I passed Georgetown Tobacco, I saw these wonderful Venetian carnival masks in a glass case just inside the door.

I love carnivals and circuses–the theatricality of them, and those masks, so unexpectedly turning up inside a tobbacco store–lit up my imagination, and suddenly I was filled with energy– both physical and mental.

There’s something about those masks–their expressions, but also those black, empty eyes with no face behind them that makes me grin but also sends chills down my spine.

And then there’ are these:

Crafty Foxes, and ravenous wolves, and preying birds. Waiting to peck out your eyes, oh my!

These creatures are going to end up in a story–and soon!

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.)

Interrogation-Girl

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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.

 

 

FIVE Intriguing First Sentences:

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No. 1:  “Mira was hiding in the ladies’ room.”

The Women’s Room by Marilyn French

The second sentence of this novel reads:  “She called it that, even though someone had scratched out the word ladies in the sign on the door, and written women’s underneath.”  Between the first two sentences, the novel starts us out with some suspense (why is Mira hiding?  From whom is she hiding? And why in the ladies’ room?), a strong dose of character (Mira is not a feminist–or, at minimum, not the kind who would correct the labeling of bathroom doors), and a strong sense of what the novel’s theme may be.  It makes one curious about Mira and wanting to know more about her predicament, whatever it may turn out to be.

No. 2:  “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

That a man facing a firing squad should be thinking about his father taking him to discover ice rather than his imminent death is immediately intriguing.  Farther along in that first paragraph, Marquez writes:  “The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.”  Marquez is creating a place so isolated that they only learn of the world’s inventions through gypsies that come through once a year.  Farther along in the chapter, he tells one of a villager who, based only on the items he obtains from the gypsies, takes both the scientific steps and missteps that the outside world took centuries to perform.  (Eg. using a telescope to make astronomical discoveries, but also trying to turn lead into gold.)

No. 3:  “I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.”
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges

The conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia?  The idea that a mirror and an encyclopedia together result in a discovery suggests an unusual juxtaposition of ideas and a narrator (and a writer) with an unusual way of looking at the world.  And Uqbar?  What is Uqbar?  What was discovered?

No. 4:  “I am an invisible man.”
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (prologue)

Ellison’s paragraph goes on to explain the kind of invisible he is:  “…I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind.  I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”  Before one knows anything more about the story, the idea of someone being invisible not through accident or by choice or even because people simply overlook him, but because they positively refuse to see him gives the character a sympathy, and the start of this novel an interest and a power.

No. 5:  “Amoebae leave no fossils.  They haven’t any bones.  (No teeth, no belt buckles, no wedding rings.)”
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Okay.  So I cheated with this one.   Two short sentences and a parenthetical phrase.  But, one has to admit, it is an intriguing, tongue-in-cheek beginning.  Robbins is making a connection by contrast between amoebae and people, and one has to wonder, where is he going with this?  To Wonder sufficiently to be amused and keep reading.

WHAT ALL THESE BEGINNINGS HAVE IN COMMON, perhaps the most important thing they have in common (beyond a quick and sure introduction of compelling characters and/or situations), is an intriguing idea.  Something that suggests this writer’s way of looking at the world is different from what one commonly encounters, and that, if one reads on, that difference is going to make the work intellectually exciting.

 

Seigel’s “Think” System

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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.

Welcome to My World–A First Manifesto

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For the adventurous writer, no subject is forbidden, no device or technique off-limits.  The only constraints are those of one’s imagination and, of course, whatever devices ultimately work to tell a particular story well.  There are some who will try to narrow a writer’s world to one set of subjects, one genre, one style, one story structure or form, and/or one small group of devices.  But while there are standard ideas about traditional story structure that generally work, there is no recipe for the telling of a good story.

The devices and techniques that many writers call the tools with which they work, I call the toys with which we play.  Admittedly, for a story to be successful, it must hang together; must keep the reader’s interest; and, ultimately, express something that satisfies the reader’s expectations.  But there is no one way to do that, and the adventurous writer will play with all the toys in the toy chest with a sense of freedom and abandon, stretching their limits to see what they can do.

I propose, in this blog, to write about different ways one can play with those toys, along with bits and pieces of my own philosophy about writing, thoughts about what I happen to be reading (reading always helps to provide one with new toys), a bit about the adventure of marketing one’s work, and a bit about writer’s rights, too.

All those writers who like to play–and all those readers who have been curious about how a writer does what he or she does, the writer’s life, inner and outer–Welcome.  Come on in.  Let’s Play!

posted by Jessie Seigel at 8:30 p.m.