Words and Coffee

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Yet more brilliant writing from Cormac McCarthy in cinematic form. McCarthy originally wrote No Country for Old Men as a screenplay, so the dialogue you’ve seen here is pretty much directly from the book. And it’s solid.

Beats sit neatly between the lines. Subtext simmers under the spoken words. The dialogue advances Ed Tom Bell’s character and relates to the overarching story.

You could do worse than trying to emulate that.

As I read through the second draft of my novel, I am looking for these things. I’m looking to tune up the dialogue, to make it more relevant, to make it more than just talking.

And so I’ll sit here in the writing shack speaking my lines out loud, searching for cadence and flow and voice. I may even talk in funny accents. Thankfully no one is listening. Yet.

There is plenty of advice on dialogue floating in the ether. Here are a few that should be helpful:

scottwesterfeld.com

writermag.com

dailywritingtips.com

It’s okay if your lips move while you write, just make sure you’re alone.

Telling about the Palace Theater

Showing the Palace Theater

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My earlier post about nuance in story, about delving into subtext and abstraction, did little more than scratch the surface. However, it brought me back to the the idea of showing rather than telling.

Why?

As writers, we hear this edict all the time. Sometimes I have a hard time determining if my writing is showing or telling. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that a way to determine if my writing is showing is if it conveys the subtext of the story. If a character’s actions and words hint at something going on beneath the basic story, if they give us a peek into a characters motivations without bluntly stating them, I feel like I am on the right track. Showing is the only way to get at these under layers of the story.

As a writer of fiction you are at constant pains not simply to say what you mean, but to mean more than you say.

Janet Burroway Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

By no means have I mastered this distinction, but I find it a useful barometer of how I’m doing. I also find that if I engage the reader’s senses–the more the better–I am doing more showing than telling.

If the author connects all the dots and then announces the conclusion for the benefit of the reader, the writing is less engaging for the reader.

Or, to put it another way, show smoke, and let the reader infer fire.

Dennis G. Jerz’s blog post on Showing versus Telling

That’s the heart of showing: Giving the reader enough credit to take your clues and put them together. Readers like to feel intelligent and to enjoy discovering the subtext of things. I have to remind myself to give them a chance to do so rather than bludgeon them with my “genius”. If my beta readers tell me the story is lacking or the characters seem two-dimensional then I know I have more work to do.

Sometimes telling is a good thing, though, so I don’t abandon it altogether. Sometimes I don’t want my readers to bog down in the minutiae of how my main character got somewhere, or drag them through relatively eventless gaps in story time. Telling, if done well, can get you from one point in the story to another without derailing the flow.

How do you know if you are showing instead of telling when you write?

For some other blog posts on the topic check out these:

The Writing Place

Editor Unleashed

Fiction Writing and Other Oddities

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I’ve been enjoying exploring the nuances of story telling, ideas that build on fundamental concepts such as story structure, word and punctuation usage, and writing discipline.

Over at Tribal Writer, novelist Justine Musk has offers two great posts (among many, really) on microtension and theme. Both posts underscored my goal for creating stories that resonate. To write fiction that leaves an impression, the writer must rely on meticulous revision to bring out conflict and theme that already exists under the surface. This excerpt from Justine’s post on theme captures the crux:

Thing is, you want to write something that’s fun and compelling, sure, but also layered in a way that resonates. You have something to say, dammit, even though you’re not really sure what that is.

It’s the laying down of those layers that takes time and diligence and perseverance. It’s what separates those who try from those who do. It’s part of the never ending learning process that accompanies writing. And it’s fun.

Charles Baxter, in the introduction to his book The Art of Subtext, he says:

In fiction, the half-visible and the unspoken–all those subtextual matters–are evoked when the action and dialogue of the scene angle downward, when by their multiplicity they imply as much as they show. A slippery surface causes you to skid into the subtext.

That sounds awesome! But it also sounds hard. How do you learn it? I’m banking on lots of reading, lots of writing and even more revision.

All the good stuff is below the surface just like this subterranean city scape.

I’m beginning to see results in my own work. I just finished up a short story that, as I read through it, had all these pieces that fit together better than anything I’ve written to date. I unconsciously created many of these pieces. They showed up raw in that first draft, but they were there. During revisions, I worked to tighten them up and tease them out more.

It’s still exciting to me now, just remembering that revelation. I didn’t set out to make that happen, but by writing almost every day and reading amazing authors and studying the craft, subtext and theme are beginning to bubble up. How cool is that?

One last thought: I’m borrowing a friend’s copy of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun series (see sidebar for link). My friend, Nathan, said to me that he first started reading it and felt like he was presented with all these disparate scenes that seemed adrift. As he read on, Wolfe wove those loose ends back into the story, giving resonance to those seemingly superfluous scenes.

That alone made me want to read it.

What do you enjoy most about the more nuanced aspects of writing? If you have any anecdotes of those “a-ha!” moments, please feel free to share.

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My lovely wife and I have come to an agreement: She gets to spend $50 on art supplies and I get to spend $50 on whatever floats my boat.

I’ve chosen books. More specifically, I intend to expand my writing library.

Jeff VanderMeer posts his list of favorite books on writing at Booklifenow.com. Go check it out if you haven’t already. It seems to be a great list, but I don’t know for sure because I own exactly ZERO of those books. You can be sure some of them will make their way into my currently meager library.

However, I’m also looking for suggestions for books that you, my precious few readers, consider indispensable for your writing life.

I’ve mentioned some of the writing books in my possession here, here, and here. Feel free to revisit any of those or hip me to one of the thousands of books out there.

Gettin' the job done.

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I’ve toiled along for the past 9+ months learning what works for me in terms of productivity. I’m feeling pretty good about that part of my writing process as I near the end of my second draft of my novel.

I also know that I’ve got so much more to learn.

I feel like I’m at the point where I can look beyond the basics of how to get my words on paper and delve into concepts that can help my writing become richer.

I want to know more about how individual writers do what they do.

There are two resources that I’ve come across in the last two weeks that have been particularly helpful: Jeff VanderMeer’s recent blog posts and Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel. In both, authors break down their process as it relates to a particular work.

Visit Jeff VanderMeer’s site Ecstatic Days, where he has provided a look at  how he decided to open Finch and the thought process that went in not only choosing when and where to begin the novel, but also where to place characters and why.

Is a lot of this “business”, like stage directions? Yes, and it’s important to get that “business” right if you want to achieve more complex effects in a novel.

Jeff VanderMeer on his blog, Ecstatic Days

If nothing else, this illustrates how much outstanding writers put into their work. While daunting, the prospect of refining and bringing out the story through more subtle techniques is exciting.

I mentioned Writing the Blockbuster Novel in a previous post, but I’m more interested in Follet’s outline process than I am in Zuckeman’s tips for writing blockbusters.

Follet’s four outlines of his book The Man from St. Petersburg show the changes he made from version to version. Instead of trying to rework the story after his first draft, he works through the story until he’s satisfied with it and then fleshes it out. His “outlines” are really summaries or synopses of the three acts of his novel. The value in this is that you minimize major reworkings after your first draft because the story has been developed to a high degree of satisfaction.

Check these guys out, if you haven’t already. What authors have inspired you as you’ve glimpsed their process?

Click here for a podcast of an interview with Albert Zuckerman that came out when an updated edition of his book was released in 2002.