Joyce Carol Oates on writing characters

"Cousin, you live, even if you dance to my tune"

I just picked up a copy of Writers on Writing, Volume II. I was struck by Dorothy Gallagher's essay: "Recognizing the Book that Needs to be Written."

As you know, my thesis is a series of creative nonfiction pieces. I have been struggling with what to include in my stories, how much truth there needs to be and whether everything must be shared.

The complete essay can be found here on the NY Times site. Here are a few exerpts from the essay that I thought I'd share:

I have never written fiction, and this memoir may be as close as I ever get to it. No more than a biography or a novel is memoir true to life. Because, truly, life is just one damn thing after another. The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story. Not, you may note, to serve her family, or to serve the truth, but to serve the story. There really is no choice. A reporter of fact is in service to the facts, a eulogist to the family of the dead, but a writer serves the story without apology to competing claims.

***

Now you may ask: Just what is the relation of your memoir to the truth?

It is as close as it can be.

The moment you put pen to paper and begin to shape a story, the essential nature of life -- that one damn thing after another -- is lost. No matter how ambiguous you try to make a story, no matter how many ends you leave hanging, it's a package made to travel.

Everything that happened is not in my stories; how could it be? Memory is selective, storytelling insists on itself. But there is nothing in my stories that did not happen. In their essence they are true.

Or a shade of true.

***

What do you think about these ideas?

Keep the action going

I'm still reading Erik Larson's Devil in the White City. It's still a very good book that concentrates on two stories: the architechts who create the 1898 World's Fair in Chicago, and a maniacal serial killer operating a few blocks away.

Larson is an incredible writer, and he has done awesome research on this subject. No proverbial stone is unturned. But the strong -- albeit sensational -- part of the story is the serial killer. And what I've found is that I'm fascinated by his story. But, as the book progresses (I'm on page 238), his story is interrupted by HUGE chunks of that which concentrates on the architects. When that happens, the action (for me, anyway) slows down considerably. It's frustrating. I want to skip those parts and flip pages to find more about the killer. I won't, though, because I want the full experience the way the author intended.

This does not discount the author's writing ability because I find him to be tremendous. And, in all fairness to the author, this book was in the history section of Barnes and Noble rather than the true crime section. So, I'm guessing that the main thrust (and, obviously, the part with the most archival material) is the architect story with the serial killer just being an added bonus.

I still recommend this title.

Some questions:

Have you had this experience with books before? If so, what titles? (I think the worst was the "Left Behind" series. I did skip around through those!)

Are there tricks to keep the action going, rather than bogging the reader down in detail?

Are writers cheating the reader if we don't provide the "details" -- even if they're mundane?

Writing longhand

My wife and I still can't afford a laptop. So, while I'm away for five days in Denver, I'll probably spend some time writing longhand. During some of the little spare time I'll have during the conference, I plan to work on my thesis, as well as (hopefully) my novel.

It's amazing how quickly we've lost our "ability" to write in longhand. All of those notes that were passed around in high school and junior high were written in longhand. Back then we were happy to do it, even eager to do it, daily.

Last month, I had to use longhand to write four pages of essays for my linguistics final. It was almost excruciating -- literally -- because I was also writing in pencil. PENCIL??!! I had four of them onhand because there is little worse than writing page after page of single-space with a dull pencil. Actually, over the past year, I've kept several sharp pencils on my desk. There's just something refreshing about pencils.

I used to have pretty nice handwriting. But when I became a reporter, that was all shot to heck. I developed my own shorthand and myriad symbols, which eventually led to some whacked-out mess of ink that only reporters could (amazingly) decipher.

I think I'm going to try to write longhand more often. Books are being published lately dealing with letters that people have written to each other (I'm thinking specifically of books that feature letters between John and Abigail Adams and one that centers on an amazing amount of correspondence to and from Henry James). There was an art to that type of writing. There's something personal, individual, about longhand letter writing. You can almost "see" how the people were feeling when they were writing.

Now we're deluged with sterile emails, that if it wern't for those stupid smiley faces, we'd never be able to tell how the person was feeling -- whether they're being sarcastic, etc.

I've saved many letters that were written to me over the years. They're fun to go back and read. I've saved very few emails.

I think there's an exercise in all of this. I'd like to begin writing more letters to my wife -- something aside from the little notes I jot down in her birthday and anniversary cards. I think she'll appreciate that.

But...that's letter writing. When you want to write a book, there's no better method than typing. I'll probably end up with a hand cramp. But, as they say, no pain, no novel.

Subplots and organization

I'm going to admit that I haven't spent a lot of time on the novel lately, but I am anxious about getting back to it, as I am constantly thinking up ideas.

One thing I've realized is that there HAS to be a series of subplots -- something that is making the job of writing a little harder because I've realized that you can't just concentrate on the main storyline. Basically, there just wouldn't be the depth that I believe a novel requires.

My novel -- right now titled "The Father's Forgiveness" -- deals with several mainstream issues, including the death penalty (I'm intrigued right now with the Supreme Court's decision to hear a case about a guy who is scheduled to die for raping a child), as well as several religious issues which pit Catholic views against other ideologies. I grew up Catholic, and while I still hold dear to many of the Church's teachings, my thoughts on various issues (including the death penalty) differ greatly. Since one of the main characters is a priest, this is making for some great discussion in the book and has prompted a lot of soul searching on my part.

Anyway -- getting back to subplots and organization. I am considering using a tool that I learned about in a screenwriting course. I think I'm going to use 3x5 index cards to write out scenes, and then I will use those cards as puzzle pieces to create the best possible story I can imagine.

Have any of you used this technique in your writing? (I don't get a lot of comments here, but I like to pose questions in case someone stumbles upon this blog and decides to contribute.)

Archival treasures -- and a little apology

First off, I want to apologize for the "little vacation" I took from this blog. It had nothing to do with the blog, other than the fact that I hadn't worked much -- if any -- on the novel or my thesis for about four weeks! I was preparing for a final, writing the paper for my linguistics course and gearing down for the Christmas break, which is now over.

This is crunch time for my thesis, as the first draft is due in February. I'm sticking with the creative non-fiction and have found some new inspiration for some essays that I will write.

Since I have been working at Missouri State University, I've been captivated by our archives in the Meyer Library. People actually donate documents and memorabilia from their lives that -- if combed through carefully -- tell fascinating stories.

When was the last time you "dug" through your own archives?

The Christmas break allowed me some time to do that. I am so blessed to have a mother that has boxed up most of the things from my childhood, as well as momentos, writings, etc. from high school and college years.

In my old bedroom closet sits a wooden toy box with a treasure trove of Eric memorabilia. Right now, it is only of interest to my mother and me; but, hopefully, my sons will one day enjoy browsing through the items.

This Christmas I was on a quest to prove that I was once a promising artist. I was scouring the Eric archives for a high school sketchbook. After locating it (and realizing that that path probably wasn't as promising as I believed), I also found a manilla envelope. In the envelope was the only hard copy of an essay that I wrote in 1994. I hadn't seen this essay since my senior year in high school, and I was very excited to find it.

The essay chronicled a four-hour visit with Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster and longtime St. Louis Cardinal announcer Jack Buck -- a St. Louis legend, who is father to now uber-popular Joe Buck.

Over the years -- mostly at parties -- I have called forth my memories from that evening at KMOX radio. But this essay, which was written as part of a class project, filled in so many gaps that I had forgotten.

I intend to use this essay to help me write a portion of my thesis. Finding this work helped me to understand just how important "original" work can be -- especially when the goal is to provide accurate history.

I'm also convinced that EVERY life is interesting and adventurous in one way or another. That's why being a storyteller is so much fun!

A great mystery is dialogue, hmm?

My 4-year-old son has been watching the original three Star Wars movies for the past few months. Not too long ago (and not too far far away), he came up to me and said, "Love you I do" in his best Yoda voice. It was hilarious!

I am taking a pretty confusing linguistics theory class at the moment -- my fault, not the professor's -- so I used the prompt from my son to write my final paper on "Yoda-speak" and the Jedi Master's use of sentence inversion in The Empire Strikes Back.

What I realized while writing this paper is that Yoda's lexicon defines him as much as his green skin, diminutive size or his masterful use of The Force.

That made me analyze the dialogue in my novel, as well as pose some other dialogue-related questions:

1. Does my dialogue help define my characters?
2. Have I fallen into any dialogue traps? (using useless words, writing dialogue when I could paraphrase, etc.?
3. Can individual lexicons be over-used? (Personally, I think Yoda's has been overdone in subsequent films)
4. What are some good examples of great dialogue? Some Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind.
5. Are there any good dialogue resources out there?

Thanks for listening...er, reading.

First Chapters

I recently had a noted author write to me with this advice: "First chapters are critical in getting the attention of an agent, and agents are critical in getting your work before publishers."

Personally, from a reader's standpoint, I find that "first chapters are critical in getting the attention of the reader" too!

Some people judge a book by its cover. I often judge one by the first two or three pages -- and if the writing's good, the first chapter.

One of my favorite pastimes is going to Borders or Barnes and Noble, grabbing a half dozen titles from the stacks and sitting down to read with a cafe mocha. Last Sunday, my wife and I had the rare opportunity to break away from the kids and go to Barnes and Noble to do just that.

I brought my pile of books back to the tiny table and began to read. I was really excited about one particular author, so I grabbed several of his books. Unfortunately, I wasn't hooked by his writing style, so I put them down and picked up a random book from the "new fiction" shelf. I was captivated.

The book: Leo Furey's The Long Run

Wow! I haven't had a book grip my attention like that in awhile. I read the first chapter and was amazed at the emotions I went through. I literally laughed outloud at one character, Brother McCann, and then found myself ready to reach through the pages and kick him in the head until he was comatose. I was very impressed, and I can't wait to buy the book (My finances that night were going toward a movie -- American Gangster -- that was worth every inflated penny). I only hope the entire novel can live up to "first chapter" expectations.

The last few books that really caught my attention like that were Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

A very good resource for "first chapters" is the NY Times "First Chapters" site.

A few discussion questions:

1. What are some books with first chapters that grabbed your attention?


2. Do you find that subsequent chapters -- even endings -- often don't live up to first chapters?


3. Do you often trudge through clunky first chapters because you know that a good story is around the bend?


4. For writers, how much importance do you place on the first chapter?

Things I'm learning along the way

This blog is actually working...

No, there are not very many comments coming in (yet), but by writing my occasional posts, I have been motivated to work on my book and to seek out resources that I didn't know existed before I started this (Wicked Wordsmith, Crimespace, etc). As of today, my book is at 22 pages and I'm well into chapter 2! This is exciting for me because I have a definite direction for this work -- and that is a huge accomplishment for me, as I've started many things that just kind of fell flat.

Some things that I'm learning along the way:

1. The characters really do drive themselves. Yes, I have a conclusion in mind, but my protagonist has a life of his own. I often find myself saying things like: "He'd do this instead of that" or I'll go back and make significant changes because I'd have Tommy doing something that was totally out of character.

2. I read somewhere that you shouldn't introduce secondary characters without having them reappear again with some significance. That makes a lot of sense, when I think about it. I've actually introduced some characters for flavor, but coming across that advice, I need to figure out how they'll reappear. I'm actually very excited about this and have some ideas.

3. I need to write when I don't want to write. The other night, my wife and I were lounging on the couch and flipping channels. I told her: "I hate nights like this when you feel like you've just wasted an entire evening." She said "Why don't you go write?" At first, I felt like saying "I'm tired" or "I just don't have it in me tonight." Instead, I got up and dragged myself to the computer and pounded out three pages or so. I started to get tired and wanted to quit midway through a scene, but I continued to write -- just to finish the scene and "turn the corner." Before I went to bed, I had revised the first chapter (again) and was well on my way into Chapter 2 (It might even be time to move to Chapter 3). I was tired the next morning, but something had been accomplished -- which is the point, right?

4. Do chapters have to be similar in length? At this point, I'm deciding they don't because my second chapter ends naturally at about half the length of the first. Is this appropriate, or is there some rule regarding chapter length?

Looking forward to some comments!!

Resident Tiller of the Soil

Are you the "resident tiller of the soil" or "the trading seaman?"

In Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov", the author examines these two groups.

Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which
all storytellers have drawn. And among those who have written down the tales, it
is the great ones whose written version differs least from the speech of the
many nameless storytellers. Incidentally, among the last named there are two
groups which, to be sure, overlap in many ways. And the figure of the
storyteller gets its full corporeality only for the one who can picture them
both. “When someone goes on a trip, he has something to tell about,” goes
the German saying, and people imagine the storyteller as someone who has come
from afar. But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home,
making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions. If one
wants to picture these two groups through their archaic representatives, one is
embodied in the resident tiller of the soil, and the other in the trading
seaman. Indeed, each sphere of life has, as it were, produced its own tribe of
storytellers. ...

The actual extension of the realm of storytelling in its full historical breadth is inconceivable without the most intimate interpenetration of these two archaic types. Such an interpenetration was achieved particularly by the Middle Ages in their trade structure. The resident master craftsman and the traveling journeymen worked together in the same rooms; and every master had been a traveling journeyman before he settled down in his home town or somewhere else. If peasants and seamen were past masters of storytelling, the artisan class was its university. In it was
combined the lore of faraway places, such as a much-traveled man brings home,
with the lore of the past, as it best reveals itself to natives of a place.

At this point in my "career" I consider myself a resident tiller of the soil -- "the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions."

As a journalist, I have taken what others have told me, organized it, and passed it on. So far, that's been my form of storytelling (which, Benjamin would argue -- along with the novel -- is a step down from the oral tradition).

There's a lot more to the essay than what I've shown here, but I like the imagery of digging up the stories and sharing them with others. As writers, that's our job -- whether the stories come from others or from our own personal experiences, expressed in both fiction and non-fiction.

What do you think?

(Actually, I think I confused myself in all of this ...)

A few questions

What's in a name?

Do you ever have trouble naming your characters? My protagonist is Thomas "Tommy" Richter. I wanted a good German name, but now I'm re-thinking my choice -- Is the name "Tommy" appropriate for a 30-something? My thinking is that he's "Tommy" to the people in his neighborhood and "Thomas" in the workplace. Is that too distracting? Are there any really good resources out there for character naming?

Using real places?

Are there any dangers having your characters going to real places, like real universities? Right now, I have Tommy as a graduate of St. Louis University, but it's basically a place-holder until I can do some more research. Tommy is a journalist, but I haven't checked to see if SLU has a journalism program. I went to a Missouri school with a journalism program, but it's not in St. Louis. I want Tommy to go to a school in St. Louis. Does "creating" a university -- even if it's just a brief mention -- give the story less credibility?

Any good examples out there of dream sequences?

I'm looking for a creative way to insert a dream -- in real time -- into my story. Do you know of any good examples?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Personal Interviews

I have interviewed many interesting people in my life, and by using this tool of communication, I've found that some of the most ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.

The last couple of years, I've been "interviewing" my grandparents. Unfortunately the conversations are usually so impromptu that I don't have a tape recorder set up, but I've been able to absorb some wonderful historic information. This weekend, my grandmother visited for my son's dedication at church. We sat and talked for hours; she told me stories about herself and others, filling in many gaps about relatives I thought I'd known. And while it was fun to learn about my relatives, I couldn't stop thinking plotlines and characters. I know they'll show up in my writing.

My grandmother was born in the Old Mines area of Missouri, just north of Potosi. The area was mined first for lead; and when that ran out, they began digging for tiff. There's an amazing French culture that is literally dying out.

For those who are writing any health-related, suspense or (dare I say -- horror) fiction, my grandma told me the story of her grandmother's funeral. This would have been in the early 1930s. Apparently, my great-great grandmother died of dropsy -- we know it as edema -- when your organs swell with fluid. Before she died, she told her husband to wait three days until she was buried. He abided by her wishes, but those three days proved to be a bad idea. You see, my grandmother's body continued to swell with fluid. During the funeral procession, the casket was put in the back of a horse-drawn wagon. Much to everyone's dismay, the body was so bloated that it DRIPPED fluid from the house to the graveyard. Yuck.

Anyway, here's the reason my great great grandmother wanted to wait three days to be buried. Back then, when people fell into a coma, people thought they were dead because the diagnoses were so innacurate. So....the rumors were that many people were buried alive.

There were other stories, but that's the one that was most vivid. My grandmother is a great storyteller -- and I'm thankful that she's taking the time to tell me and she's also writing these things down for me.

Feel free to share your personal interview stories.

Wicked Wordsmith

Last week, I was excited to hear from an old friend, Angela Wilson, who worked with me at the Springfield News-Leader several years ago. Angela is an aspiring novelist. But she is also a communications professional who works to market books, as well as provide resources, tools, reviews, etc. to other writers.

She currently maintains a professional blog called Wicked Wordsmith. I would encourage any writer to frequent this awesome resource.

Like me, Angela is writing a novel and she's seeking encouragment. She's been kind enough to share with me a few pages of her manuscript, and I can say this: It is suspenseful and well written.

Keep writing, Angela!!

I look forward to following her career.