Category Archives: craft

Drawing out the Writer in You

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In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland suggests that beginning writers often write in a pretentious manner because they are anxious to impress.  She speaks of helping them to break through that not by pointing out what is bad or wrong in their efforts, but by helping them to write more freely.  She writes, “I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months.”  To combat this, she dared her class to write something completely bad from beginning to end, claiming that it was impossible to do.  Then, in examining their “bad” compositions, she pointed out what was good in them, both freeing the students in their writing and steering them in the right direction.  In my own teaching experience, I have found Ueland’s insight accurate.

Some years ago, I was teaching a class called Playing with Style, in Georgetown University’s  Continuing Education Program.  The students were all adults with day jobs.

At first, some in the class took too literally the old injunction, “write what you know,” and it made their writing stilted and restrained.  I’d go home each week after class, read the new work, target where they were tight, and try to construct an assignment for the next week to force them to loosen up.

In one assignment, I had them write a story from alternating points of view:  that of the protagonist and that of the antagonist, the enemy or opponent.  This was done to get them to make the empathetic leap that allows one to truly see a situation through another’s eyes. One man, I remember, wrote of fishing from the point of view of the fisherman and the point of view of the fish.  I believe he actually got it published later in a fishing magazine.

There were two other students’ works that were most memorable.  One, a lawyer, was an avowed perfectionist and loathe to read her work aloud in class.  I told her I’d never pressure her to read aloud, but would always ask her–always give her another opportunity to do so.  The second was a military man who said he’d never written anything but short releases.

The assignment was to interview a deceased historical figure or a character from literature; or to write a story in the style of a particular writer.  I said, for the interviews, they could conduct them anywhere they liked, and that their subjects would probably try to evade or give facile answers, but don’t let them get away with it.  Make them answer the questions, and make them do so honestly.

On class night, the lawyer, in response to my general call for readers, volunteered to read her story aloud, and I was never more pleased with the leap in someone’s writing.  She had chosen to interview the two male characters from Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.  The novel is the wartime story of a writer, a married woman with whom he has an affair, and her husband.  She breaks off the affair, and it is only after she is deceased that the writer discovers she made a bargain with God that if he survived the war, she wouldn’t see him again.  The writer is left embittered.  This student injected herself into the story.  With an assignment to interview the writer, she goes to his home, only to be greeted by the husband.  The two men, bound by their love for the deceased woman, are now sharing a house.  The student is ushered into the study, where she conducts the interview of the acerbic writer, interrupted by the husband’s small, mild interjections.  This student had imagined what could come next after the novel ended, and had captured Graham Greene’s style and the natures of the two men, while addressing some of the novel’s themes.  In my view, this particular exercise had permitted her to play in a way that freed her writing wonderfully.

The military man chose to interview Leo Tolstoy, and his story was lyrical and beautiful, as if he actually had been talking with Tolstoy.  Sadly, for whatever reason (possibly his work?  I’ll never know), he was not in class on the night when we examined these stories and did not turn up again.  I sincerely hope he didn’t stop writing, because this man, who said he’d only previously ever written short releases, had talent and insight.

There were many and varied exercises that preceded the ones referenced here that freed these particular writers.  So the “moral” of this post is that one never knows what writer will respond to what exercise, and it pays to experiment with many different techniques to find what will draw the best and freest writing from you.

 

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

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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.

 

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.