Storybites Blog

I would love to know how many of my readers write literary fiction (we’ll use Wikipedia’s definition of literary fiction as “[focusing] more on style, psychological depth, and  character, [versus] mainstream commercial fiction … [which] focuses more on narrative and plot.” If you do write literary fiction, do you have a terminal degree in literature, and do you teach in a university? And if you don’t have a degree — or your degree is in the wrong area altogether, like nursing or engineering — do you feel you’ve had difficulty getting publishers to take your literary creations seriously?

This may seem like an odd rant, but a new literary magazine started up in our community, and when I read the bios of the authors, they all seemed to be college professors. I think that’s odd. No, I really do; I suspect there are many, many closet literati out there who just aren’t getting published.

If you love to read and write literary fiction but feel the publishers of that kind of work have shut you out, I’d love to hear from you.

Every so often I take a creative writing class. (A good thing to do, I should note.) I take away some new insight from each one, but in the last few workshops I’ve attended, I’ve picked up some strange hints or tips that just don’t fit the way I write. I don’t know this at first, of course, so I gleefully input these new ideas into whatever story I’m working on. Then I happily prance off to my writer’s group, manuscript in hand, ready to share what I’ve written and learned.

 My first clue that the story’s gone south is the looks on my friends’ faces. After I finish reading the story, they tend to look at me as if I’d just extolled the virtues of chocolate-covered squid. Sometimes they exchange uneasy glances; there is often pen-tapping and clearing of throats; a few timid souls venture to tell me they like the description of the urn, or the way I introduced the motif of the barking dog. Eventually, because they’re my friends, they give it to me straight. I’ve done it again; I’ve written a story in a style that is so completely foreign to the way I normally write that it’s not only at odds with my ordinary writing voice, it’s at odds with who I am as a person. I’ve written what would have been a perfectly serviceable story if it were written by somebody else.

Should this matter? I mean, if it’s a perfectly serviceable story… But yes, it does matter. I have a set of definite beliefs and attitudes that underlie not only what I write about, but the very way I write. For example, I don’t believe that the protagonist should ever get exactly what he thought he wanted when the story began. This directly flies in the face of the writing advice I give small children — “Think of a character, give him a problem, and have him solve it.” That advice gets the person going, gives the story a definite beginning, middle, and end, and ensures a unified whole. And it produces a good story most of the time. But that certainly is not the way I write, and it’s not the way many other famous writers write either.  

How so? Well, I love creating characters who don’t believe they have any problems at all (although we, the reader, can clearly see they are deeply flawed). Through a series of successively bad choices, the character gets into worse and worse straits, until the climax he has created forces him to stop and reassess his life situation. The end of the story isn’t “happily ever after” — the end of the story is the realization that he’s gone off track. Not so much resolution as epiphany.

I also love writing stories in which people get exactly what they wanted — only to discover they’re worse off than before. This sounds laughable and it often is, but nothing that has ever happened in my life has convinced me that the “plan ahead, work hard, and all your dreams will come true” philosophy has any credence whatsoever. If I don’t believe it, why should my readers?

I started off by mentioning that I’d taken a few creative writing classes that didn’t work. I should note that most of the classes I’ve taken have been wonderful, and I highly recommend taking creative writing classes, just as I highly recommend joining writer’s groups. But for me (and again, this may not be true for you) the classes that don’t work are the ones that seductively try to reduce my writing to a formula. ”In step one, your protagonist needs to recognize he has a problem….” No, no, no. Step one is whatever draws the reader in, engages his interest, quickens his blood… It’s whatever you want it to be. Your story is your story. 

 There are a few rules to writing, and as you continue to write (and read authors you admire), you’ll get a better idea of what those rules are and how they apply to you. But make sure that the story, as it unfolds inside your heart, makes sense to you. You’ll know. The pieces will start fitting like a jigsaw puzzle, and your heart will sing when the last one pops into place.

So far I haven’t done any fiction reviews, and I can’t think of a better way to begin than with Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. It’s told from the point of view of three characters – something I normally dislike, since I think that makes it harder to really get into the heart of any of them – but O’Farrell does it incredibly well. First we have Iris Lockhart, a young single woman who owns a shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Iris receives a phone call that astounds her; it turns out that her grandmother, Kitty, whom Iris always believed to be an only child, has a sister. The sister has spent her entire adult life in an institution. But the institution is closing, and since Iris’ grandmother Kitty has Alzheimer’s and couldn’t be responsible for anyone, Iris is now responsible for a great-aunt, Esme, that Iris never knew existed.

Of course, everyone gives her the obvious advice. Esme has been in an institution since she was a teenager. Teenagers aren’t institutionalized for no reason, so obviously there’s something tremendously wrong with Esme. Just arrange for an alternative placement – no need to even go visit her – and forget all about it. But of course Iris can’t do that. She has to go see Esme. And the Esme she meets seems to be a surprisingly composed, lucid, intelligent woman who has simply had a very restricted life. Sort of cloistered, like a nun. And Esme desperately wants Iris to take her home.

A second voice emerges – that of Esme herself. She paints a picture of her childhood as a Scottish child in India in the early years of the twentieth century. Esme, from day one, has been willful, odd, her own person. In contrast, her older sister Kitty is graceful, poised, anxious to please. There is a little brother, too – Hugo – whom Esme loves dearly. Nonetheless, she’s put out when her parents, angry over her unpredictable behavior, leave her home with Hugo and the nanny when they take Kitty on vacation. She knows she’s being punished for something she can’t help – for just being the person she is. She takes a nap in the heat of the day – remember, this is India – and when she wakes up, she finds both Hugo and the nanny dead. Typhoid, she tells someone later on, and the person she’s speaking to replies soberly that she must have been saved for a purpose.

And suddenly a third voice emerges, and it took me a long time to realize who this third voice is. This voice is chaotic and disjointed, swinging wildly from past to present with only the most fragile grasp of time and place — more emotion than narrative.  It’s Kitty, Esme’s sister and Iris’ grandmother, rambling through her Alzheimer’s. Because her thought processes are not linear, it takes us a long time to orient ourselves to who she’s talking about, when the events she describes are taking place, and where. But her fragmented, splintered recollections are so sharp, so spot-on, that once we put them together with Esme’s more orderly recollections, we’re able to get a whole other view of the events that led Esme – not Kitty – to a lifetime of confinement.

Of course Esme does wind up going home with Iris, and it’s wonderful to watch their growing bond. It’s also wonderful to see how Maggie O’Farrell uses the two sisters’ voices – Esme who really doesn’t understand what happened to her, and Kitty who used to know, but no longer really remembers — to put together a story you’ll never forget.

Oh, by the way – I love unpredictable endings. And everything I’ve told you so far may have led you to think, “Oh, I know how this story is going to go.” Trust me – you don’t. If I say any more, I’ll ruin the surprise, so just read the book. It’s great.

I’m in the middle of reading the most amazing how-to book I’ve ever come across. Jon Franklin, winner of several Pulitzer Prizes, specializes in writing “creative nonfiction” – factual stories that read like fiction. But his advice applies to writers of pure fiction as well. In Writing for Story, he shows you how to structure the story before you write it to make sure you actually know where it’s going. He shows you how to flesh out your outline, how the pacing should work, how to modify the rhythm of your sentences based upon the degree of excitement you want to build into that part of the story — and he also shows you which parts of the narrative need to be exciting and which parts are more expository. The thing that sets this book apart from average “how-to” books is the degree of specifics. I’ve never read anything that told me exactly how to structure the book, exactly how to tell whether your structure is going to be satisfying or not (before you write a word, much less before you get to chapter thirteen!), and exactly where to put flashbacks, transitions, foreshadowing, etc. Franklin’s suggestions do not work on all kinds of stories, but they work often enough for this book to be a valuable addition to any writer’s bookshelf.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before I wrote something about politics or religion instead of just writing. Well, here goes. The U.S. claims to be fighting a war on terrorism. Well, when I was young, we were fighting a war on poverty. We didn’t go out and shoot poor people; we tried to help them. In the sixties and seventies, we also fought a war on bigotry. We didn’t go out and shoot bigots; we tried to be unlike them. Why, when we are confronted by terrorists who attack us with weapons, do we feel we must retaliate the same way? You can’t shoot an “-ism;” it can only be changed from the inside out.

Lately, there seems to be some kind of obsession with telling one’s life story. Perhaps as we age, we come to feel that civilization is losing the values with which we were raised, and we want to pass those values on to a younger generation before it’s too late. Or maybe we’re just self-indulgent, and we love to talk about ourselves. I really don’t know. But if the plethora of memoir-writing classes at our local community colleges and arts centers is any indication, talking about ourselves is a hot commodity.

Naturally, since I’m a freelance editor, many of these memoirs wind up in my lap. Some are deadly dull; most are at least interesting; many are really good. But just as novels have a point – a theme – the book of your life needs one too, and a lot of the memoirs I see seem to have missed that concept. Maybe your theme is “Even though I never graduated from eighth grade, I produced five college graduates – and here’s how.” If so, you don’t need to give me five pages about your Uncle Henry’s battle with gout. Maybe your theme is “Never say no to adventure.” That’s great – but then don’t spend half a chapter telling me about your grandmother’s home cooking.

It may be hard for you to pinpoint the theme of your own life. Sometimes your loved ones may have more insight into that than you do. More than once, I’ve been the one to tell my editing clients what the point of their life story seemed to be, because they honestly didn’t know. But once you figure out what it is, prune out the anecdotes that do not support that story at all. You don’t have to tell your readers every little memory you have. Carefully select the ones that most truly illustrate your theme, and let the rest go.

Comments? Questions? Feedback?

Lately several people have commented on the site, generally positively — nice site, good job, etc. — but I wasn’t able to post their comments because they included a) a link to something offensive, irrelevant, or nonexistent; or b) a string of random keywords that were clearly inserted in the post just to serve the business interests of the poster. Now, I don’t mind if, as part of your commentary on my post, you include a link that my readers might find useful as they become better writers, or even better human beings. But please don’t assume my readers share your more esoteric interests. And as you’ve probably noticed by now, I really do moderate each of my comments individually. (I greatly doubt that most of the people who actually read my blog are the offenders here — I know I’m preaching to the choir — but it merited saying, anyway.)

BTW– I’ve got two stories online right now! If you go to www.boundoff.com, you can hear me reading “Hurricane,” a short story I wrote (yes, that’s actually what I sound like). And if you go to http://www.haruah.com/index.html and scroll about halfway down the page, you’ll get to a story I wrote called “Fixed and Wandering Stars.” I hope you enjoy them!

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve worked with many people who have self-published their books. In some cases, I’ve done the page layout; in other cases, I’ve done various levels of editing, ranging from light proofreading to extensive rewrites. Once in a while, I’ve just consulted. But out of all those authors who have spent their own money to have their book published, I only know of one who has sold a lot of books.

One.

Does that mean I think you’d be nuts to self-publish a book? No, not necessarily. I just think you should have a very clear idea of what you plan to do with the skids of beautifully-printed copies you paid for.

Possibly, for example, you’re printing a very limited edition of a book that will have strictly local or family appeal – a history of your village, for example, or a genealogy. If that’s the case – and it’s a great idea, don’t get me wrong — take orders for the copies you plan to sell, print about 10%-20% more, and distribute them as planned, reserving the extra copies for unexpected orders or posterity.

But what if a limited edition isn’t your intent at all? What if your goal is to write the next bestseller?  If you expect to see your book on the shelves at the big bookstore chains all over the country, you really, really need to find out where those chains get their books. (Hint: normally, they don’t buy them from self-publishers.) Your local bookstore may buy a few copies of your book to put in a “local writers” section, but you aren’t going to get rich that way.

You also need to find out where schools and libraries get their books. (Hint: I’m a librarian, and I buy most of my books through a distributor who doesn’t generally purchase books from self-publishers, either.) I usually buy one copy of books published by a local writer – but just one copy.

You may sell a few copies every time you do a book signing or a TV or radio interview, but only a few – and how many signings and interviews can you possibly do? Within a month or so, everyone in your area who wants an autographed copy will have one.

 A friend tried to sell her book by doing a direct mail blitz of all the smaller, specialty bookstores within 200 miles of her home. To the best of my knowledge, she didn’t sell a single copy that way. Another client managed to get interviewed on public radio and several early morning TV shows. This resulted in a few sales, but not many.

And don’t get all excited because Amazon or one of the other online booksellers agrees to list your book. That’s only as useful as the number of people who know the book exists and have a reason to search for it.

So why is that one guy – the successful one – selling so many books? Because the focus of his business isn’t his book. He’s a professional motivational speaker and storyteller, and he sells his books at the venues where he speaks, as well as on his website. He’s never even bothered trying to sell his books in bookstores, although there are some “new and used” copies on Amazon. His book goes along with his presentations, and although it works perfectly well as a standalone product, he doesn’t focus on marketing it that way.
 
Will this approach work for your romance novel? Probably not. Should you self-publish your romance novel? Probably not. Not unless you want a garage full of shrink-wrapped copies – and I have a feeling you don’t. Make your novel the very best it can be – get a copy of the latest Writer’s Market and scope out agents and publishers who handle the type of work you’ve written – and keep sending your work out until it sells.

I want to thank those of you who have registered as subscribers of my site. I also want to thank you for your nice comments. But feel free to suggest a topic you’d like me to chat about. This is your site too!

In the meantime, though, I’ll rant about one of my other editorial pet peeves – dialogue tags. “What’s a dialogue tag?” you ask quizzically. Well, that was one — “You ask quizzically.” A dialogue tag is a phrase that describes 1) who is talking, and often 2) how they make the remark.  Dialogue tags are such a common part of fiction that we assume that every spoken line needs one. Right? I mean, how else would you know who’s speaking — and how?

Let me introduce you to Tom Swift.

Tom Swift is a character in a series of juvenile novels that were very popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Tom’s author (actually a series of authors) went to absurd lengths to avoid the use of the phrase “he said” followed by a mere period. Tom never just “said” anything. He retorted angrily, sang out cheerfully, pleaded earnestly… you get the picture. Today, Tom Swift is probably best known for a particular type of dialogue tag in which the tag is either a pun on the remark or upon itself.

Examples:
“Hurry!” Tom urged swiftly.
“It’s a frog!” Tom croaked.
“I can’t see!” Tom gasped blindly.

Few authors deliberately write in Tom Swifties, but many DO seem to feel that every remark needs to be followed by the speaker’s name, a colorful verb describing the speaker’s action, and an adverb describing how the action was done. None of those things are true. Consider the following. 

Mary picked up the grocery receipt. “You’ve been to the store, I see.”
“Yesterday.” Bob’s head was buried in the refrigerator.
“The date says today.”
“Fine, maybe it was today! How do you expect me to remember stuff like that?”

Without dialogue tags of any kind, you can sense tension between Bob and Mary, as well as the possibility that Bob is deceiving Mary and she suspects it. Contrast this:

“You’ve been to the store?” Mary asked in surprise.
“Yesterday,” Bob mumbled guiltily.
“The date says today,” Mary said suspiciously as she looked at the receipt.
“Fine, maybe it was today!” Bob exploded furiously. “How do you expect me to remember stuff like that?”

Nothing subtle about that – and not particularly good writing, either.

I’m not advising you to avoid dialogue tags altogether. But when you use them, consider the humble “said” and “asked,” without adverbial decoration, and use your character’s remarks and actions to tell the story.